I can’t do this alone. Tell me where to dig next.”
“...Little bit east. This way.”
“I know which way east is, thank you.” I clicked my shovel handle against hers, like patting her back. “Hey. Come on. Don’t waste water crying. Dig.”
“X marks the spot,” she said through her tears, walking about twenty yards away and plunking her shovel into the sand. “Let’s try here. We’re not far, I swear.”
After a while my shovel clinked against something again; I stooped and gently pried out a ceramic mask. I laughed when it came to light, unable to help myself.
“What is it?”
“Just a mask,” I said, putting it back in the hole.
“Pretty.”
“I honest to God thought when I turned it over, it was going to be you,” I said. “I don’t know why. Maybe because that’s what would happen in a movie.”
“I don’t think there’s any Sumerian in my family, Nicky.”
“What does this thing, this talisman, look like, anyway?”
“It’s a magic circle, a solid one. It won’t be clay or glass or cement or stone. It won’t be anything you know. It’ll look weird. Very weird. I don’t know how big it is, though. And, I guess, one more thing: this close to the alignment, it might be glowing. Or it might not. Just keep an eye out.”
“Ark of the Covenant,” I said firmly. “I’ll know it when I see it.” I paused for effect before I began to dig again. “Is it going to melt my face?”
“It might melt your sperm.”
“Son of a...”
The sun was actually down now, and I could feel the air cooling by the minute. But it had been so hot earlier in the day that I doubted it would get cold enough to make us uncomfortable. I kept digging while Johnny dragged brush from the shrubs and fallen trees near our pit, and lit it up with one of the lighters in her bag. It was good to have the light, and it burned without smoke, a pure, clear blaze. When she wasn’t looking, I fumbled the bag of frankincense out of my pocket and threw a few of the honey-coloured crystals onto the blaze, waiting for the smoke to blow to her.
“Ha,” she said a few minutes later, turning around; her face was wan but pleased in the golden glow of the fire. “Good one.”
“Mm. I guess it’s an okay gift for the son of God,” I said. “I mean I guess it’s better than, like... a sheep or something. Or a goat. Or a fancy hat.”
“I guess. You’d get him some shit from San Francisco, wouldn’t you?”
“Novelty t-shirt,” I said. “Obscene magic 8-ball.”
“Shot glass set.”
The ground trembled minutely, transmitted up the haft of the shovel into my hands. I paused uncertainly. “Johnny? Did you feel that?”
She looked up instead of down. “Oh, shit.”
CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE
AT FIRST I thought it wasn’t alone, had several more things like itself concealed in the huge raggedy cloak, had brought an army, but then I realized that it had just grown to fifty times its size. What had looked like an overcoat at the Creek was now clearly wings, spanning half the horizon, obscuring the first stars. I froze, as if we were in Jurassic Park and staying still would help.
Between the wings was a tangled mass of gleaming tubes and tentacles. The pale face was not a skull but shards of bone arranged around flaming eye pits—black flame, the light all wrong. I looked down, trying not to meet its gaze.
“You dare,” Drozanoth cried, hanging there, billowing. “This, you dare. To interfere with Our realm, you and your dog.”
“It is not yet yours,” Johnny said, her voice very small after Drozanoth’s. I saw the circles on her hands light up as it drifted closer, and saw her visibly sag. The spells, drawing out more power. Jesus. The fire flickered as if it too had suffered a loss.
“You cannot stop Us. No one can,” Drozanoth said. “We will take back what is Ours, and you animals will once again find your proper place.”
“This world isn’t yours,” Johnny said. “It’s never been yours. Find some other world.”
“‘Find some other world.’ But you invited Us to this one, child. You and your... toy.”
She was kneeling in the sand now, face a mask of shock and fear; my stomach twisted. What did that mean? The reactor, yes, but...
A screech of laughter. “Do you not know? Can you not guess? With the gift We gave you, which you have been so assiduous not to waste?”