Cole smiled. “You’re full of surprises.”

He looked at the front door. “Since we’re going to be stuck here for the night, I think it’s a good idea to barricade the front door and windows.”

CHAPTER FORTY

The night was eerily quiet and calm. There was no winter wind whistling in the eaves around the cabin. There were no sounds of Frank or Jose calling out to them from out in the snow. No sounds of footsteps on the front porch. Everything was just … quiet.

Earlier in the night Cole barricaded the front windows and doors as best as he could. He managed to tear apart the dining room table and chairs so he could use the wood for the barricades. He used the hammer and various nails he’d found earlier in the cabinet underneath the sink. He used slats from underneath the beds and nailed the pieces of wood over the back door and the windows that looked out onto the front porch. They shoved Needles’ recliner against the front door; it wasn’t much of a barricade, but they didn’t want to use the couch as a barricade because none of them wanted to sit in the chair that Needles had occupied for so much of the time he was in the cabin. They upended the dining room table and shoved it against the entrance to the hallway. It closed off the bathroom to them, but they would just have to make do.

None of them wanted to go into the bathroom anyway after what happened to Trevor.

It was late, nearly two o’clock in the morning. David fell asleep on the couch. Cole and Stella sat on the floor in front of the couch, like they were guarding David.

Stella had Jose’s gun beside her on the floor. She stifled a yawn, trying to stay awake.

Cole looked at her. “I just wanted you to know that this was supposed to be my last bank job.”

Stella stared at him for a moment. “You guys seemed like an experienced group.”

“I used to be a part of Frank’s crew. Then I quit. But then Trevor got involved with them. He ended up owing Frank some money – a lot of money – and I needed to help them with one last job to help Trevor pay him back.”

Stella nodded.

“I don’t expect you to believe me; I just wanted to tell you that this was going to be my last time.” Cole thought for a moment. “I was really trying to change. I just wished I would’ve changed a little sooner. Before I got Trevor involved …”

“I’m sorry,” Stella said in a soft voice. “I’m an only child. I can’t imagine what it must feel like to lose a brother.”

They were both quiet for a long moment in the murky cabin. They had turned all the lights off except for the light over the stove.

“How did you get away from that dig site in New Mexico?” Cole asked Stella.

Stella looked at Cole, trying to determine if there was any accusation in his eyes or in the tone of his voice.

“You said your vehicles wouldn’t start,” Cole continued. “And then you said that the thing out there was taking your friends one by one.”

Stella sighed. “Even before I realized that the thing out there wanted David, I began to suspect that there was something … something special about David.” Stella stole a quick glance at David – he was still sleeping peacefully. “When the thing asked the few of us who remained to kill David, I began to believe that it needed us to kill David because it couldn’t do it by itself.”

“So David is …” Cole thought for a moment, trying to find the right words. “He’s special. Like powerful. Like you think he has powers?”

“There were only a few of us left,” Stella said in a low voice, looking away from Cole. “And Jake, my friend, he hadn’t been taken yet. But Jake and the others wanted to kill David. They felt like it was their only way out. I tried to convince them that once we gave it what it wanted, it wouldn’t let us go. It would just kill all of us because it wouldn’t need us anymore. But I couldn’t convince them, they had their minds made up, they wanted to kill David. So I took him and I ran to my truck.”

“And you knew it would start?”

“Yeah, I had a feeling it would,” Stella answered him. “It was a big gamble, but it was the only choice I had left.” Stella didn’t mention to Cole that she had watched Jake slit his own throat rather than let that thing take him alive.

They were quiet for a moment.

Stella thought of the things David had drawn in his book. She needed to take another chance right now, she needed to trust Cole. “I want to show you something else,” she said. “I want to trust you. And I want you to trust me even though I know you don’t have any reason to since I’ve hidden so much until now …”

“You had to,” Cole said quickly. “I understand why you did it.” Cole thought of her trusting him, and then he thought of the secret he’d kept to himself all this time – the snowmobile in the garage. But who knew if it would even work. The snowmobile could be old or damaged. Or maybe that thing out there knew it was there. Maybe that thing could read minds and had learned of the snowmobile from Cole’s thoughts.

Cole pushed the thought of the snowmobile out of his mind as Stella turned and carefully pulled the spiral notebook out from under David. She opened the notebook and showed Cole what was inside.

He took the notebook and flipped through page after page of what looked like some kind of symbols. He wasn’t sure what he was looking at, but it seemed like some kind of ancient language.

He looked at her, not really understanding what he was looking at.

“It’s the Anasazi language,” she told him in an awed voice.

Cole shook his head a little. “David’s been writing in this language?” Cole shrugged his shoulders like it shouldn’t be a big deal. “Isn’t David Native American?”

“Yes. I’m pretty sure he’s Navajo; most likely full-blooded. But he’s never told me much about himself.”

“But this Ana … ana …”

“Anasazi. Like I told you before, they lived hundreds of years ago and then they vanished. No one knows where they went to. Some say they intermingled with other tribes, or even became other tribes. Some say they left the area. Others even speculated that the Anasazi were the remnants of the Maya who also built massive cities and then abandoned them. But no one knows for sure.”

Cole nodded his head.

“The Anasazi, like many ancient peoples of North and South America, had no written language, or at least no significant evidence had ever been found.”

It was beginning to sink in a little to Cole.

“There have been bits and pieces of Anasazi symbols found, but not much, not enough to get a clear overview of any kind of language. It’s sort of like Egyptian hieroglyphics.”

Cole nodded; he’d heard of Egyptian hieroglyphics before.

“I asked David how he learned how to write all of this, but he said he didn’t know.”

Cole glanced down at the notebook which was filled with page after page of symbols. All this time in the cabin David had been scribbling down these symbols, one after the other. He looked at Stella. “Can you read it?”

“I can recognize some of the symbols, enough to know that it’s from the Anasazi culture, but I can’t make enough of it out to understand any of it.”

Cole sighed, thinking this over. “So David definitely has something to do with all of this. He has some kind of powers, he knows about that thing out there.”

Stella sat up a little, becoming a little excited, her eyes lit up a little in the darkness of the cabin. “The word Anasazi is a Navajo word,” she continued. “A lot of times the word is translated as Ancient Ones. But a more accurate translation is Ancient Enemy.”

“So the Navajo called this tribe their ancient enemies?” Cole asked.

“That’s what most scholars believe. But I have a different theory.”

Cole waited for Stella to continue. He could tell that she was a little excited, archeology was definitely her passion.

“I believe that Anasazi wasn’t a word that the Navajo used to name the tribe, I believe it’s a word they used to describe the beings that took the Anasazi and caused them to vanish.”