The sounds were coming closer, a deep guttural chanting from within the tunnels. With every heartbeat my pulse quickened with the fear of the unknown. I had the gun clutched to my chest, fully loaded and ready to shoot, if only I had the courage to fight. I took a few steps forward and stood in the line of the townspeople. As I stood there I looked down the line at Jasper who stood there looking back at me, he gave me a nod and resumed his stance.
All too soon, the band of warriors and Kachinas came through the mouth of the tunnel. The warriors were large and frightening to behold, armed with bows and arrows, spears, and knives, they came at us, charging into the line. The Kachinas weren’t too far behind. As they came closer they began to transform into what they represented. Some were great warriors, others were giant animals with barred teeth, and some were gods come to life, all here to avenge their people from long ago. The townspeople charged then as I lagged behind. Never before had I fought in a battle, I wasn’t prepared for what I watched before me.
The townspeople charged the warriors and Kachinas as the ground began to rumble and shake. There was blood and gore, as the warriors mauled and shot arrows into the group. Everyone was yelling and screaming out, some in pain and others in a battle cry. The warriors themselves were mere shadows of what they had probably once been, their bodies charred and broken. The smell of burnt flesh hung in the air wherever they stood. The Kachinas were fearsome to behold. They came in all shapes and sizes, some small and some large. They were terrible in their wrath and were ten times stronger than a normal human. They looked as if they could lift a person up, break their bodies, and throw the corpse against the walls. I dodged and weaved where I could avoiding the scuffle and staying out of the fray, until I came face to face with the largest Kachina of them all, and I recognized him as the first doll that had fallen off the shelf in the hotel.
He was huge, standing at least 7 foot 3 inches, wide and broad shoulders that spanned the length of my small frame. I felt like a dwarf in comparison to the mighty warrior. He held a spear in his right hand, long and straight, with the tip made of the hardest stone, sharp and pointed. He wore a terrible mask, painted red, yellow, and white with black accents that drove terror deep into my heart. I knew I wouldn’t last in a fight with him; I didn’t even stand a chance. I couldn’t fight and I couldn’t run. So I did the next best thing I could possibly think of. I surrendered. I laid down the gun at my feet and held my hands up in surrender. I then said the words that probably saved my life that night.
“I’m sorry.” I said maintaining my stance. “I wish I could undo what has been done to your people, but I can’t. It is not within my power to do so, but I promise as long as I live, I will pay my respects to those that were lost, and continue to make sure nothing like this ever happens again.”
With that, the Kachina paused, and looked at me for a long moment, lowering its spear, no longer waiting to drive it deep within my heart. He backed up and as he did so he grew smaller, and smaller, till he was no bigger than the doll that fell from the shelf, and stopped moving. At that time, I began to notice all around me that the other Kachinas did the same. The warriors stopped fighting also and stood back as a strong wind coursed through the tunnels, blowing away the warriors like ash till there was nothing left. The battle was over, with nothing left behind but the Kachina dolls that sat on the floor.
A confused muttering began amongst the townspeople, as they looked confused back and forth from one another. I saw Jasper come forward from where he had been fighting, looking every bit as confused as the others.
“Well that’s never happened before.” He said looking at the ground where the Kachina dolls sat.
In the back of the room I heard Deb chime in. “That’s because no one ever apologized before, ever.”
“What do you mean, apologized?” Jasper asked.
“Everyone has always fought against my people and for over two hundred years on the anniversary of the night raid, no one has ever done anything but fight. She just apologized for all those years and everything that had been done. No one has ever done that before. The spirits accepted her apology and her humility.”
“Well if your people didn’t come to curse the town again and again every year we would have never had to fight!” Jasper said as he raised his voice.
“And If your people hadn’t always kept repeating the same mistakes we wouldn’t have to keep teaching you the same lesson!” Deb responded in kind.
“Enough you two!” I yelled. “It doesn’t matter who did what, the only thing that matters is coming to an agreement and making a better way forward.”
They both looked solemn yet stern, staring at the ground, but both had to admit I was right. The night of the raid on the native peoples the white settlers were in the wrong. The night of the raid on the townspeople when they cursed the town, the Pueblo peoples had been in the wrong. While one side took what didn’t belong to them, and the other understandably sought retribution for what had been done, both sides had caused permanent damage that couldn’t be undone, and that led to both sides becoming the bitterest of foes. No one side was in the right, but they could set aside their differences and reach a parlay. Why no one had thought of this sooner seemed ridiculous to me.
After everyone had regained their bearings, we began to take count of those left. To my surprise despite the obvious bloodshed, everyone was still alive only a little worse for wear. We gathered up the injured and helped them walk out of the tunnels, while the rest of the townspeople stayed behind to clean up and place the guns back where they belonged. As we came to the second fork where all three tunnels divulged together, we met up with the other townspeople. They were as bloodied and disheveled as I’m sure the rest of us were, looking pretty rough I imagined. We all walked to where we all first came through and climbed the ladder up to the post office.
Once inside I could see the light of dawn shining through the front windows, drowning out the artificial light of the bulbs that dangled from the ceiling. Once we were all inside we proceeded to the front of the building and turned behind to assess the damage. The door in the front had been completely torn off its hinges, scattered shards of wood lay everywhere within. It looked as though a large battering ram had come through the door. The place was a mess, the windows were broken and every item lay strewn about the room. Nothing was in its place and by the looks of it, it would take a good while to clean and repair all the damage.
Exhausted and weary I sought to leave the post office to return to the hotel to assess the damage that had been done there. I silently, just as everyone else, stepped over the threshold and the shattered door, into the light of the morning sunrise. We had all lived to see another day, and for that I was grateful. As I stepped into the dawn I took a deep breath of fresh air as I turned to look at the others. They came one by one into the light and before my eyes vanished into a fine mist as if they had never been there at all. I was shocked to say the least. The only one who didn’t disappear before my eyes was Jasper. He remained on the front porch leaned up against the poles that held it up.
“New day dawning. You ladies get back to the hotel you hear.” Jasper said as he cocked his hat back a little with a flick. “Get some rest now.”
As we headed back to the hotel we saw the many footprints in the earth where the dead and the Kachinas had walked. Deb and I walked silently side by side as we went, neither of us speaking a word. Once we reached the door of the hotel, I was shocked by the damage. The windows looked as if they had exploded outward into the street. The door, much like the one at the post office, was barely hanging from its hinges, shattered and shredded. Inside there were shards of broken vases strewn all over the floor, there were chairs flung into the walls, broken and battered, and there were items from the counter flung haphazardly all over the place.
“Oh my God.” I said as I looked at the wreckage. “What did they do to the hotel? It’s ruined!”
The hotel had been but a casualty in the rampage of the night before. It was going to take me a century to clean and refurbish the place. I felt responsible for the hotels marring because everything happened on my watch. What was I going to do? I didn’t even have the number of the owners, Mary and Martha. So many questions without answers ran through my head, until finally a question popped up to the surface that I had to have answered. As I turned around in the lobby to face Deb who was solemnly looking around the room, I finally found the words to ask my question.
“Deb?” I started.
She looked up at me. “Yes Autumn.”
“In the tunnels, you and Jasper both said this had been a yearly occurrence for over 200 years. Why?”
“Well……” Deb began as she walked to the stairs and sat down on them.”Long time ago, after the town and hotel had been built, when the night raid by my people had happened, there was so much that went on that night. The townspeople were fast asleep and my people saw the opportune time to strike, so they did.”
“Yes I saw that in a dream I had, they came and attacked the town, but they cursed it as well. What even was the curse?” I asked sitting beside her on the stairs.
Deb looked surprised for a moment when I told her that I had seen something in a dream, but she quickly shook her head as if she had shaken off a thought and continued. “The curse that my people placed on the town wasn’t complete, it had two parts. They intended to enact a curse that would keep the townspeople trapped in the town and on the land they stole for all of eternity, damming their souls to reside in a permanent limbo of sorts. They could die, but their spirits could never leave the town. The second half of the curse was to keep them trapped for all of time in a certain time period, but before they could finish casting the curse, they were interrupted. By who or what I don’t know but for some reason things went awry. The town is tied to the land, but if you can figure out how, you can travel backwards or forwards in time, because time is relative within the town.”
“Like how I did with Mr. Elberton?” I surmised.
“Yes, just like that. But you have to be careful because you can never come back to the same moment in time as when you left.” Deb told me.
“That explains a lot.” I said when suddenly a thought hit me so hard. “The townspeople, are they……..are they all…..dead?”
“Yes, they died long ago, on the night of the raid. No one survived except those living in the hotel.” She said. “After that night, the hotel began to have a series of caretakers, all of which weren’t apart of the town originally, but had entered into it at some point. Every year a member of my tribe would come to the hotel around the anniversary of the night raid, to see if the hearts of the townspeople had changed or if the caretaker cared about what had been done, but until you, no one did.”
“So that’s what you meant about me.” I said
“Yes.” Deb replied.
As we sat there I understood more of why things had gone down the way they had. I was grateful for the mercy of the ancient spirits and the warriors, as well as from Deb. Maybe now, we could move forward and begin to heal the wounds of the past. I hoped we could at least. Either way, I decided the best place to start would be to clean up the hotel. We were going to have more visitors soon, and we needed to be ready. So as I stood up from the stairs and walked over to the cleaning closet behind the desk, Deb rose as well. I came back with two brooms and handed her one. Maybe we could begin by cleaning the hotel together I thought, and clean we did.
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