Ghost Canyon (The John Decker Supernatural Thriller Series Book 7) Anthony Strong (popular romance novels .TXT) 📖

Robyn hesitated a moment, then nodded. “It’s in the office. I’ll get it.”

“Hurry,” Decker said. “It’s already dark out and we have a lot to do.”

“Wait here.” Robyn hurried from the room. Less than a minute later she returned with a bunch of keys. She pawed through them until she found the correct key and unlocked the case. She lifted the entire glass side panel out and set it down, leaning it against the stand. She looked sideways at Decker. “Done. It’s all yours.”

“Thank you.” Decker bent over and reached inside the case, nudging the remains of the tattered duster gently aside to avoid damaging it. He pointed to the area below the skeleton’s pelvis. “See here? There are more bones than there should be.”

“Oh my God,” Robyn whispered. “You’re right. There’s an extra leg bone up by the left femur. I’ve seen it before, but I just assumed it was misplaced from somewhere else in the body. I never gave it any thought. Now it seems so obvious. It can’t be from the same skeleton. How did it get there? And where did it come from?”

“Ladies and gentlemen, I’d like you to meet Shilah,” Decker said. “Or at least, his fibula.”

“That’s why the creature didn’t leave after Travis Biggs returned Shilah’s bones to the grave,” Barnes said. “That’s the reason it’s still here.”

“Exactly.” Decker smiled. “Travis couldn’t return all the bones, although he didn’t know it at the time. Karuk didn’t trust the shifty prospector. He kept the bone hidden in his duster as insurance. Probably figured he’d hide it when they got back to town so that Travis would still need him.”

“But that’s not how it worked out. Biggs figured he had no more use for Karuk, since he already knew how to lift the curse on the mine,” Barnes said. “He wanted the gold for himself and couldn’t see any point in waiting around to dispose of the only other person who knew of its existence.”

“But he wasn’t aware of the bone Karuk had kept back. When he shot him and pushed his corpse off the trail, he also lost the ability to send Shilah’s spirit, and the supernatural creature he’d become, back to its resting place and make the mine safe again.”

“So, if we return that bone to Shilah’s grave, the creature will go away?” Barnes asked.

“That’s the theory,” Decker said. He turned to Robyn. “Was the skeleton articulated when you moved it?”

“Partly, yes.” Robyn motioned to the upper body. “The torso was still complete. The scraps of clothing still adhering to the corpse kept it together. We were able to move it with little trouble. The arms and legs, not so much. As you can see, we’re missing small bones in the feet. Scavengers probably carried them off. Some of the leg and arm bones got scattered too. We had to search for them in the surrounding area. That’s why I thought the third fibula was just a bone we hadn’t placed correctly when we reassembled the skeleton. It’s not like I’m an expert on this stuff. I wasn’t expecting there to be one bone from a second body.”

“That presents a problem,” Barnes said. “All three fibulae look similar. If the leg bones became scattered and were only put back in place after being moved to this display case, how do we know which belong to Karuk, and which one must be returned to Shilah’s grave?”

“We don’t,” Decker said. “Maybe a trained medical professional could tell us, but as it stands, any of the three could belong to Shilah. And if we return the wrong one, the creature will remain and most likely kill again.”

Chapter Fifty-Nine

Hector Ramirez and Emmanuel Garcia were more scared than at any other time in their lives. The two Mexicans sat huddled in the darkness, with only the beam from their flashlights to illuminate the tunnel in which they had remained hidden for much of the past twenty-four hours. They had entered the mine the previous afternoon and followed the map provided by the owner of the casino where they had spent the last three weeks working as low-paid day laborers. What began as an easy, if unusual chore—retrieving some lumps of quartz from a location deep inside the mine—had quickly turned into a nightmare they had not yet escaped. As they followed the tunnels deeper underground, nearing their destination, Hector had noticed an object on the ground ahead of them, laying half buried in the sandy ground.

A skull.

It gleamed white in the twin beams from their flashlights, hollow eye sockets staring down the tunnel in a deathly gaze that would never end. Scattered nearby were more bones and threads of clothing, including a pair of rotten suspenders, dating the remains back to pioneer days. The two Mexicans continued on, disturbed by their grisly discovery, but more afraid of the two men that waited at the mine entrance than they were of a man who had passed on more than a hundred years since.

But when they arrived at the indicated spot, a dead-end tunnel far from the gold mine’s entrance where twinkling rivers of quartz crystal weaved along the rocky walls, they came across something much worse. Three mummified corpses huddled together as if they had just sat down to wait for their own demise. Scratched into the earth in front of them was a strange symbol neither man recognized.

It didn’t take long to decide it wasn’t worth sticking around. The tunnels contained an ancient evil and these three corpses proved it. Besides, they could actually feel it oozing from the very rocks around them and permeating the atmosphere, thick and cloying. They didn’t care now if the two white men waiting above wanted some stupid chunks of quartz, or more accurately, what was contained within the crystalline rocks. Hector and Emmanuel were not stupid. There was gold here. Lots of it. But not enough to lose their lives