Eye of the Mountain God ~Excerpt

Excerpt:

A short wide foot in a scuffed brown leather boot pressed the pedal of the loom, and the wooden bar clacked another strand of nubby wheat-colored yarn into place. Although the loom was indoors, a hat, the band rimmed with the sweat stains of many summers, shaded the eyes of the weaver. In his concentration, the tip of his tongue appeared under the heavy mustache.

Megan focused her camera, considered asking him to close his mouth, thought better of it and moved instead to the side to catch him in profile. The tongue was still there. She focused on his foot. Then she noticed his hands. Thick-fingered, with black hair bristling at the knuckles, they were agile in a heavy, rhythmic way, like those of a heavyweight boxer. She shot a whole roll of the hands while the weaver stared at her, as if he couldn’t believe it.

His name was Tenorio Clancy. The stray Irishman who apparently founded the clan sometime in the past had left no obvious mark on his descendant’s features except for the eyes, which she now saw for the first time as he tilted back his head. The eyes were an amazing clear blue.

She reached for her bag and changed cameras. For those eyes, she needed color.

This seemed to annoy Tenorio. He had nodded and shrugged when she asked to photograph him weaving in the back room of his little shop, had willingly scrawled his signature on the release form, but now his face took on a sullen cast and his jaw rose. “It is the custom to pay for pictures. Veinte. Twenty dollar.” Perhaps owning two cameras made her out to be rich.

“I’m sorry, I must have misunderstood,” Megan said, embarrassed. “I can’t afford twenty dollars.”

His eyes, now insolent, slid down to the camera, then back to her face. He stood up and stalked away from the loom.

She packed up the camera. She was finished shooting anyway. Never mind the eyes, the hands would be wonderful. “Thank you,” she called to his retreating back. He didn’t turn around.

Outside the air was cool, the light sharp, giving everything a hard edge, outlined in black, a real-time Matisse painting.

She backed the Honda out of what passed for the shop’s parking lot. The little church was just a few miles away. Maybe this time she could see the inside. She wanted to make the most of what would be her only shooting time this week.

She was still wondering if she should have trusted Ben. After weeks of succeeding in putting the arrowheads out of her mind, now she could think of little else.

Should she have mentioned them to the cops? Were they stolen from a museum or university? Could she wind up in jail for not reporting them? Did the paper boy mean to give them to her? Did he run away from home or did something terrible happen to him? Maybe he had nothing to do with the emeralds. Maybe someone else came into her yard and wrapped a small packet in the newspaper lying on the ground. But why?

This time there were no cars at all in the unpaved parking lot next to the church. Megan left the car there and made her way to the door. But when she grasped the handle, it would not open. She pushed, then pulled, but it didn’t budge. Did they lock churches?

      The mounded new grave was blanketed with plastic flowers already bleaching in the sun, giving it the look of something children might leave behind when called in to supper. She tried a couple of shots with the digital camera, but the light wasn’t right.

Following a path along the outer wall she was surprised to discover, directly behind the church, a hollow area in the shape of a horseshoe. Nestled there was a small amphitheater. Benches circled a large cross where a tormented Christ was laden with rosaries.

The scene seemed both eerie and forlorn. Here the light was good. She shot all the high resolution images the memory card would hold. Then re-shot with black and white film.

Searching for yet another angle, she stumbled and skidded down the rocky face of what she now realized was the shallow edge of a small canyon just behind the amphitheater. Barely managing to right herself in time, Megan gazed into the canyon and saw it was deeper than it looked. Green canopies of full-grown trees floated ten feet below the rim.

She was climbing up on a flat boulder to get a better look when a light glittered below. Through the treetops and scrub, she caught a flash of something blue but couldn’t make it out.

Using the camera’s telephoto lens to bring the bottom of the canyon closer, she saw people—a lot of people—down there.

Something touched her elbow.

Megan whirled to find a small, grubby face—almost certainly the same little boy she’d seen a few days before. Wide brown eyes gazed into hers. He was wearing a yellow tee shirt and denim pants that must belong to a child much larger and taller. The seat of the pants hung down almost to his knees. A rope that might have once been part of a clothesline held the waist of the oversized pants about his middle. He was holding one hand behind his back.

Megan said, “Hello,” but the child only stared, no more communicative than he was before. “Do you live around here?” she asked, keeping her voice low so as not to frighten him.     

His eyes slid off to the left then came back.

“May I take your picture?” Still he stared, motionless. She raised the camera.

Suddenly the hand behind his back snapped forward, pointing something straight at her head.

Knee-jerk instinct sent Megan’s hands flying to cover her face as she backed away almost dropping the camera. But when she finally got a good look, she saw the object in the child’s hand was not a gun but some sort of icon, a religious figure of faded blue and worn-away gold paint.

Bang! the boy mouthed. Bang. But no sound came from his lips. He turned and was quickly out of sight around the corner of the church.

When she looked again into the canyon, the people were gone.

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