She Walks in Shadows(49)
I couldn’t help laughing at that. Laurie had been trying to get me off the circuit and playing happy families with Lula for years, but this one took the cake. I looked back at him. “Sacrificed to the Devil? That’s the best one you’ve come up with, yet.”
“So, what are you going to do, Sam? What are you going to do?” He had that whiney sound in his voice that really irritated me. Pressed buttons I just didn’t want pressed.
“Exactly what you want me to,” I muttered and I flung back over my shoulder. “I’m going to get this dirt off me, go to the pub, and have a few beers. Then maybe I’ll go and check out some goats.”
It was an hour on horseback to Bunyip waterhole, where the tourist road ended. Nothing worth seeing beyond that but salt bush, tiger snakes, and red dirt. The canyon was another two hours beyond the waterhole, but both locals and tourists were discouraged from going further into the Outback. Though it wasn’t exactly sacred ground to the Aboriginals, there was an unspoken agreement that the canyon was off-limits to whites. It wasn’t the first time I’d heard it called the Sick Place. The tribal elders had probably known for centuries that whatever was in those stones caused illness and deformity. There was something evil there — call it a spirit or call it uranium, the name didn’t matter.
Laurie was riding Blimp, who was older than God, so we had to take it easy. Shade wanted to gallop; I could feel his muscles quiver under my thighs, and he’d turn his head and nip at Blimp if Laurie got too close.
Blimp was so slow and broad-backed that Laurie rode him like an armchair, letting the reins hang slack while he squinted at the cult’s leaflet. He was whistling like he’d won the lottery, which pissed me off. I knew what he was thinking — dreaming of a mother-and-daughter reunion, with me cooking pancakes for breakfast and wearing skirts, Lula skipping off to college and coming home to cooked dinners. He never told me straight out I was getting too old for the rodeo, but I saw the scared look in his eyes whenever I climbed into the pen.
Pretty soon, we were making our way down a gorge, steep slopes of sandstone boulders on either side blocking out everything but a strip of blue sky above. It was that fake, cartoon-blue sky you get out here in the desert. Looks pretty in the tourist brochures, but hurts like hell to look at. The track was just wide enough for a small truck — I could make out wobbly wheel tracks in the sandstone grit. Probably how the cult made their way into town to pick up supplies and hand out their leaflets.
“Get this, Sam,” Laurie was saying. “This leaflet here reckons a race of cosmic aliens are gonna take over the earth and the only way to be saved is to worship the Great Mother. She’s like a shepherdess of the flock. Shub … er, Shub-Niggurath, that’s her name.”
I snorted. “Sounds like Lula found the mother she was looking for.”
Laurie made a disapproving noise. “You are too hard on that girl. She left because she thought you wanted her to go. Because you thought she was weak. Not everyone can ride a bronco — hell, Sam, most people don’t want to.”
“Maybe that’s why we have clowns,” I said, knowing it would hurt him, but saying it, anyway. “The world’s hard. You got to be harder to survive. It’s just the way things are.”
“So, what are we doing here?”
I didn’t bother replying. Not that he expected me to. He knew me pretty well after 20 years on the rodeo circuit. I wasn’t great on answering Why are we here?-type questions. He’d got what he wanted. I just wished he’d shut up about it.
We rode in silence for a bit, then Laurie began to whistle tunelessly and edged Blimp closer. “You know we’re being watched,” he said softly.
“Yep. For the last three kilometres. A blind dog couldn’t miss them.”
I nudged Shade into a trot towards one of the sandstone boulders and a figure dressed in a grubby, white gown scrambled for cover behind another of the massive stones. I caught a glimpse of a shaved head, the crown unnaturally flat, and a protruding forehead like a stone ledge. I guess he had eyes, but I couldn’t make them out. I’d seen pictures of victims of nuclear disasters, so I knew exposure to radiation could do weird things to a person, cause deformities. There was something different about this man, though, an unnatural quality that made the hairs on the back of the neck rise up. And I could tell Shade sensed something was off. He was skittish, his eyes rolling, and he danced away from the boulders. I guessed there were at least twenty of them, maybe more, hiding on both sides of the ravine.
“Maybe they think we’re coming to join up,” Laurie said hopefully. He waved the leaflet in the air like it was a flag of surrender.
“I’m not seeing green pastures and goats!” I said in a loud voice. The word, “goats,” echoed down the ravine like a bad rap song. “Hey! We’re here to see the Great Mother!”
Okay, maybe my tone wasn’t the most respectful, but for people who were so keen on recruiting, they sure weren’t eager to come out and say hello.
“I think your whip is making them nervous,” Laurie hissed.
“You think so?” I slipped the coiled leather from the saddle and sent it lashing against a nearby boulder.
The walls of the canyon came alive with the scuttling figures of the white-robed watchers, all of them clambering for higher ground. They were as agile as monkeys and just as scared.