Daniel Hecht_Cree Black 02 (42 page)

And yet when she thought about Tommy, she still felt that belly-deep pull, the sense of recognition. A faraway thought occurred
to her: that this terrible fact created another possibility, that Cree Black should know about this, and soon. Or maybe that
was just her clinging to her craziness.

Whoever the parents were, they had loved this child: The grave was heaped with colorful trinkets that included sun-faded Power
Rangers action figures, plastic statues of Jesus, cat's-eye marbles, cheap jewelry, seashells. Not all were dulled by dust
and the bleaching sun; some had been placed recently. They still missed him. He had a such a happy face, despite his illness.
He'd been raised in a good home.

I have absolutely no right to grieve,
Julieta thought.
It is theirs entirely. How dare I.

There were the other graves, faded rainbow mounds with stripes of evening shadow along their sides. There was Joseph, standing
some distance away. There was that big empty sky. There was his truck, pulled over near the pavement. There was the highway,
a station wagon passing slowly, the family inside turning their faces away from the two strangers in the cemetery.

After a while it was time to go.

She went to Joseph, stood in front of him, looking at him, letting him see her face naked with all the feelings. She slapped
him once, so hard it smacked like a gunshot, and yet he barely flinched, not even enough to lose eye contact. She panted until
she'd caught her breath, glad that part was over. Then she took his face between her hands, stood on tiptoe, and kissed the
red blotch on his cheek. She held her lips there tenderly and long, as if it would draw all the hurt out of him. He put his
hands on her shoulders, steadying her.

Afterward, she just leaned her forehead against his chest. It didn't feel right, exactly, but really there was no one else.
There never had been.

47

THERE WAS a glow in the distance: dangerous like a forest fire in the dark, something malevolent that could rush toward you
and surround you and consume you. And there was an irritating insect that buzzed a harsh little song as it drilled into Cree's
thigh.

Startled, she brushed and slapped at the bug and half sat up before realizing where she was and what was happening. She was
lying in one of the sleeping bags under the roof of the sheep shed. The fire was a tumble of embers. The sunlight was gone
but for a dull, colorless brightness in the west, washing the dark landscape in a faint light that turned every feature a
monochromatic blue-gray. The silence in all directions was the sound of pure loneliness.

Right. Sheep camp.
She had taken a nap. Ellen had lain down, too, but now was gone. With Tommy sleeping and Raymond and Dan taking their shift,
Cree had opted to try to rest. She'd drifted off wondering how to tell Julieta about Tommy, her thoughts spinning in slow
circles, going nowhere.

The glowing dangerous thing was the battle between Tommy and his invader, always there, an emanation of psychic discord looming
just out of view, sixty feet away. And the insect on her thigh was Edgar's cell phone in her pants pocket, ringing and vibrating.
Ellen had told her that here on the higher ground, reception wasn't too bad.

She opened it quickly and tugged out the antenna, her heart thudding in her chest.

It was Julieta.

"I was going to call
you,
" Cree told her. "Where are you?"

"I'm at Joseph's house. In Window Rock. I called Dr. Mayfield to get your number." Julieta's voice sounded subdued, deliberate.
"How are things up there?"

"I'm . . . I was just taking a rest. Tommy's aunt and uncle and cousin are in with him."

"How is he?"

"Not good, Julieta. I'm sorry." Cree's mind was scurrying, wondering how to break the news.

Julieta went on as if she'd planned out what to say. "I called to tell you something I think you should know. Joseph brought
me to my child's grave today. He died about three years ago."

Cree's breath went out of her. She couldn't reply immediately.

"Joseph is being very kind. I'm screwed up about it. But I'm coping. I don't deserve to grieve, Cree. Somebody else knew him
and loved him every day. I didn't." Julieta's voice was so gentle it seemed disembodied. It faded and swelled as if the breezes
over all those miles of desert between them were blowing the signal astray, or lofting out and away some part of her feeling.
There was no bitterness or anger in her tone.

"So my first thought was, I was wrong about Tommy. Knowing him that way," Julieta said. "But . . ."

She let the word hang there. Cree understood her reluctance to say the rest:
But maybe I wasn't. Maybe I recognized him because the ghost in him is my son's ghost.

She couldn't say it because on one hand it could sound like a real neurosis, a delusion that she couldn't let go of no matter
what evidence contradicted it.

On the other hand,
Cree thought. The theory posed innumerable questions, but it would explain so much. Blood to blood, like to like. If true,
it would give them the key to releasing the ghost.

"Julieta, I'm so sorry. I know this is very hard for you. Thank you for letting me know. You're right, it's a very important fact. I understand exactly."

"I knew you would." Very faint.

"Wait, don't hang up! What was his name? How did he die? I don't mean to be so direct, but I . . . I need every bit of information
I can get."

"Robert. Robert Linn Dodge. He died of a congenital heart defect. He was sick for most of his life. Apparently he fought back
hard. I don't know where he died, or the exact circumstances. I'll try to find out, if you want me to." Julieta stopped, then
went on desperately, "Cree, he would have died anyway. Even if I hadn't . . . even if—"

"Julieta, you have to come here. The ghost's response to you could be crucial. I need to see you interact. And if you're why
it's here, you're the one who has to let it go. Can you come?"

"Of course. When?"

Cree looked around. The rising land to the east was a sweep of deep gray-blue, full of the humped black forms of junipers
and boulders. Stars had begun springing out of the night sky. Far too late for anyone to come or go through this wilderness
tonight.

"The sooner the better. Tomorrow. Early as possible."

She folded the phone away just as a circle of light edged around the back wall of the shed, bringing Ellen and Ray with it:
They'd lit one of the Coleman lanterns. Ellen hung it from a nail and then sat down to stoke the fire. Ray tossed himself
down near the fire pit and tipped the coffeepot to see what was left.

"Still sleeping," Ellen said. "Dan's over there, but he's afraid to be inside with him." She looked very worried, and Cree
knew why. Tommy hadn't eaten anything for two days. Physical exhaustion would only weaken him, give the ghost the advantage.
Even while he slept, it fitted itself more closely to him, a hand working determinedly into a poorly fitting glove.

"I'll go take over now," Cree told them. "I feel a lot better. You folks get some rest, okay? I'll call you if I need you."

"I'm sorry," Ellen said. "My husband and his sister were supposed to come up to help out, but I guess they couldn't get here
before it got dark. We're on our own for tonight."

Ray dumped the coffee grounds on the edge of the fire pit and began preparing a new potful. "So I guess we're what you might call a skeleton crew," he joked darkly.

A small scrabbling noise jolted Cree out of her drowse.

She'd been sitting with her back to the far wall of the hogan, keeping vigil on Tommy and the shifting auras and moods that
emanated from his sleeping form. Some hours must have passed, but she didn't dare lift her hand to check her watch. The only
light was the faint reflected glow from the lantern over at the shed, coming through the window.

It was just enough to see what made the noise: Tommy's right hand.

Tommy lay on his left side, facing her with eyes shut, mouth agape, his breath coming in ragged snores. But the hand was awake.
It flexed and stealthily slid along the floor to the leg of the little table beneath the window. When it encountered the leg,
it recoiled, then returned to probe the shape of it. That was the scrabbling noise: fingernails against wood.

Cree tried not to react outwardly. Inside, she felt an overpowering revulsion, the sense of the unnatural. A perversion, even
by strange standards of the paranormal. The hand moved as though disembodied. It climbed the leg of the table, felt along
its edge. When it encountered the corner of Tommy's notebook, it recoiled again.

Tommy shifted in his sleep, rolling slightly so that the arm fell back to the floor. The hand lay palm up and motionless for
a moment, like a stunned insect. Tommy's snores snagged and lost their rhythm. His breath seemed snarled in his throat, as
if his tongue were choking him. Cree put her hands to the floor and rose to a crouch, ready to spring to his help if his breathing
didn't resume.

And, as if it had sensed her in the room, the hand roused itself again.

This time the arm raised toward Cree and the hand made a beckoning gesture with two fingers. It trembled and shook and again
seemed to beckon her closer. The movement appalled her. Tommy's head lay canted onto his pillow, his mouth wide and slack,
eyes closed. And the thing was alert and beckoning.

Without thinking, Cree took two hesitant steps toward it.
Run!
screamed her instincts.
Surrender,
she commanded herself. She felt time slow and confusion consume the dark room, and knew she must have hesitated because now
Tommy's dark silhouette eclipsed the faint rectangle of window. He had risen from his bed.

As he turned, she glimpsed the ghost's body around the outline of his shape, a faintly luminous limb bending momentarily,
a shoulder emerging where it shouldn't be and then vanishing again. The dark form moved toward her. The desire to flee became
intolerable, yet she still couldn't move.

And then she realized he wasn't coming straight toward her. Tommy went to the door, east-facing as all Navajo doors were,
walked face-first into it, groped it with his hands, opened it. Before Cree could react, the doorway was empty.

Her reactions were delayed by indecision. By the time she got to the door, she could barely see his shape in the blue dark,
walking east, up the gentle slope toward the higher ground. Cree debated calling for Ellen or Ray, but there was no sound
from the sheep shed, and she assumed they were taking some much-needed sleep.

More important, she didn't want to distract the ghost. The freakish intentional hand had given way to the perseverator, and
it was living through its narrative now. She had to experience what the ghost was living through and glimpse the world it
thought it was in. Instinctively, she sensed she was getting close to identifying it.

She followed Tommy's puppeted body out into the darkness, keeping her physical distance yet extending all her senses toward
it. Around them, a wind moved in the sagebrush as if scores of invisible creatures were scurrying furtively through, each
suddenly tossing form igniting a fresh jolt of fear. The darkness seemed to flicker and flutter.

The invisible auras of the ghost's moods waxed and waned like an aurora borealis. Fear? Definitely. Or, more accurately, trepidation.
But that didn't impede the drive, the burning purpose that kept it moving. What else? Apology or remorse. That cocky self-confidence,
too, almost a machismo, a sexualized braggadocio. But so forced, pumped up, so desperate or artificial.
Garrett?

Confusion and doubt, too, and a childlike
neediness,
seeking consolation or reassurance. And that relentless desire to
overcome.
Maybe a twelve-year-old boy determined to fight off the effects of the badly formed heart that was killing him, frightened,
needing comfort?

Robert? Robert Linn Dodge?
she called to it in her mind.

Tommy's body stumbled hard on a knee-high rock and went down. Cree's eyes had adjusted to the starlit dark, enough to see
that when he got up, his movements were slack and disjointed. Not as if Tommy were fighting the ghost, but as if his body
were simply too worn out from the days and nights of warring to obey.

They were getting pretty far from the hogan now. Cree could barely see the building's dark mass, a hundred yards back; the
light from the lantern in the shed was mostly eclipsed by intervening junipers. She began having second thoughts about letting
the narrative play itself out. It wouldn't be good to go too far in country neither she nor the ghost knew. There were cliffs
here. Ellen and Ray might not hear a call for help.

She picked up her pace to close the gap between them.

Always east.
Brother would have been heading east as he desperately tried to get back to the ravine. He'd be proud he'd caught one of the
goats, maybe that was the cockiness, a young man proving his daring and worthiness. He'd be afraid of the approaching soldiers.
He'd be apologetic for disobeying his father's orders not to go back down the ravine.

They were getting too far away. Tommy's movements were weak, but the ghost seemed tireless. Cree couldn't wait any longer
for a confrontation. Scrambling in the dark, she flanked the ghost at a distance and came around to head it off. She stopped
ten feet away, directly in front of the dark form.

"Shinnai?"
she called out loud. She conjured in her mind the sense of the girl's mental world, her feeling for her brother.

Tommy took several more toppling steps, stopped, and swayed uncertainly. Now all the ghost felt was doubt and fear. "What
are you doing here?" he said breathlessly. Abruptly he put up his hands as if warding off a blow and immediately rage exploded
him. He swung his fist at Cree and caught the side of her head. She didn't fall, but it knocked her off balance and rattled
her and she tried to dodge him, but it was too late, she was moving too slowly. Tommy lunged again and she had to grab his
arms. He growled like an animal, but there was little force in his efforts. They fell over and rolled, Cree turning her face
away from the clawing hands, her mouth filling with grit.

"Tommy!" she shouted. "Tommy, stop him!"

Its movements faltered. She tried to push it away and partially succeeded, dragged her upper body out from under. Twisting
to look as its fists thudded weakly on her back, she saw that Tommy's body appeared to be fighting with an invisible being.
The ghost had drifted askew between worlds. In another few seconds it flailed hugely as pain exploded inside it. Its stomach,
its chest, everything bursting. The body began convulsing in regular waves. Cree broke free, scrambled a few feet away, fell
down as the pain consumed her. She rolled to look at the Tommy thing. It was fighting for its life. It couldn't seem to breathe.

That thought panicked her and she groped in her pocket for her key ring flashlight. When she put the spot of light on Tommy,
she could see the asynchronous breathing rolling his chest side to side, the gaping mouth as the lungs exchanged air. Still
she couldn't move. The sense of unrelenting purpose burned in the ghost's mind. It wouldn't surrender. Cree felt its will
encompass her, its body spirit irradiate her. The ghost felt itself lying on its back as the ground seemed to rise and fall
and shake. It was wounded or sick, dying, yet unwilling to relinquish its life or purpose. It was overpowering her. The ghost
or Tommy was looking at her desperately and saying something without breath. She felt the word in her own mouth:
away.
Then one eye fixed on her with enormous effort, and the ghost said it again. This time it sounded more like
awake.
Was the ghost telling her to go away? Was it pleading to awaken?
It wants to come back.
Then the power of it waned a little and she pulled back from the edge. Tommy's body was starting to die as it suffocated.