The Impossible Coin (The Downwinders Book 2) (10 page)

They do,
Marty said.
But
they’re not going to come out. These ghosts don’t like the light. I’m glad we
didn’t come here at night, though.

Winn saw Marty shiver. It
frightened him to see Marty scared of something – he rarely was.

McGraves said the person I saw
with the mountain lion was a Caller,
Winn said.
Is that what you’re
afraid of?

You didn’t tell me he told you
about that,
Marty said.
What else did he say?

He said the Caller was repaying
a debt.

Marty backed away from the cave
entrance a little.
Well, yes, Callers are to be feared,
Marty said.
But
there’s more than that here.

Padre Kino?
Winn asked.

Not just him,
Marty said.
There’s
a lot of angry souls in there, trapped. I think we should leave.

The serious look on Marty’s face
scared Winn even more.
Let’s go, then!
he said, rising into the air.
Marty quickly joined him, and they sped back to the trailer court, arriving
outside Winn’s trailer at the spot where he’d walked through the wall.

I have questions,
Winn
said.

Fine, why don’t you come on
over after you get back inside yourself? I’m gonna make some iced tea and you
can have some lemonade.

OK,
Winn said, turning to
pass through the wall. He saw his mother in the kitchen, moving around. He
quickly dropped out of the flow, feeling himself sit up on the couch.

“You know, I don’t mind you doing
that, because I know you’re gonna do it whether I want you to or not,” his
mother said, half way through a cigarette, her eyes half open and a thin robe
wrapped around herself. Winn could tell she was hung over and still a little
drunk. “But you could at least do it in the privacy of your bedroom instead of
out here, drooling all over the couch.”

Embarrassed, Winn walked back to
his bedroom, found his older sneakers, and put them on. As he left the trailer
he told his mom, “I’m going outside for a while.”

“Whatever,” she called back, her
eyes not leaving the television. “I’ve got another double tonight.”

He shut the door behind him and
walked to Marty’s, grateful that he’d have the trailer to himself again for
another evening.

“I’m worried,” Marty said, tossing
Winn a can of lemonade from his fridge and pouring himself a refill of iced
tea. “Things are bubbling in that cave.”

“Bubbling?” Winn asked.

“Active,” Marty said, sitting at
the table with Winn. “There’s movement. Things happening. Not good things.”

“How can you tell?”

“I’ve always been able to detect
things like that,” Marty said. “Every person who’s gifted has their own
specialty, something that makes them a little different from each other. For
me, I could tell if a place was dangerous or not, and once I’d see it in the
River, I could stay connected to it, kind of feel it.”

“So you can feel the cave, right
now, while we sit here?”

“I can,” Marty said.

“And it’s bubbling?” Winn asked.

“It is.”

“I wonder what my specialty is,”
Winn said.

“Could be anything,” Marty said.
“You’re probably too young to know for sure. As you get older, you’ll figure it
out. It might be an ability, like mine, or you might develop an interest in
something. I know gifteds who have dedicated themselves to certain studies, very
specific areas, and they’ve become experts.”

“Like what?”

“Well, there’s an acquaintance of
mine who lives in the Pacific Northwest,” Marty said. “His specialty is
demons.”

“Demons?” Winn said, a concerned
look on his face.

“Yes,” Marty replied. “If you’re
lucky, you’ll go your whole life not running into any, but if you do, you want
to get an expert involved, because they’re very tricky, not like ghosts. So,
there’s him. And I know of a man in Santa Fe who maintains contracts.”

“That doesn’t sound very special,”
Winn said. “Sounds kinda boring.”

“They’re special contracts.
Unusual ones. And then there’s my friend in Mesa who specializes in different
types of ghosts. Lately I’ve seen some young people who’ve specialized in these
Callers. That’s a dangerous pastime.”

“What is a Caller, exactly?” Winn
asked.

“Well,” Marty said, sipping on his
iced tea, “McGraves told you the guy with the mountain lion in the cave was
repaying a debt, right?”

“Yes.”

“He owes a debt to a spirit that
lives in the rock of the cave. He used to be just a normal ghost, but he came
across the cave spirit and they made a bargain. Ever since the nuclear testing
and the fallout, cave spirits have had the ability to turn ghosts into Callers,
and they do it for a price.”

“Blood?”

“Right you are!” Marty said.
“They’d prefer human blood, but they’ll take anything they can get. So, the
body of the Caller you saw was buried somewhere in that cave, and the spirit in
the rock gave his ghost the ability to be more functional. They don’t act like
normal ghosts, replaying patterns, haunting just one place. They’re smarter
than that, and they can organize with other Callers and cause all kinds of
trouble. And many of them can rope in normal ghosts to do their bidding. But
for all that ability, they have to feed the spirit in the rock the blood that
it craves. They’re like a slave to it, constantly looking for blood to feed to it.”

“What happens if they don’t feed
it blood?” Winn asked.

Marty raised his hand to his chin
and rubbed it. “You know, that’s a good question. I don’t know. Maybe they’d
lose their powers?”

“And they’d stop being Callers?”

“Maybe,” Marty replied. “I can
tell you the Caller in that cave has plenty of ghosts under his control. I
could hear them in there, moaning. It was good that we were there during the
day. If it had been night, they might have come out.”

“He didn’t call them out when
Brent and I were in there,” Winn said.

“That’s true…maybe he thought you
were just a couple of kids, playing in the cave. He might not have realized
you’re gifted.”

“I’m not afraid of ghosts,” Winn
said proudly with a sudden rush of courage. “I wasn’t afraid of McGraves.”

“True, true,” Marty replied. “But
then again, he wasn’t like the ghosts that are in that cave. The ones the
Caller can control.”

“How was he different?”

“McGraves has been a strong
presence in his house ever since he died there,” Marty said, “and he’s what I’d
call a powerful, but normal, ghost. But most of the ghosts who live in caves
and mines around here aren’t normal. Remember I told you about the radiation,
and how it changed things downwind?”

“Yes.”

“Well, it changed some ghosts.
Made them more dangerous.”

“How?”

“Well, it made them able to detect
if you’re in the River or not. And if you are, it makes them very angry. They
change when they get angry. They transform, as though they had bodies again.
And they come at you, wanting to tear you apart. Their hands are very sharp,
and they can rip you into pieces if they catch you.”

Winn gulped. “And they were in the
cave, with the Caller?”

“They were,” Marty said. “I could
feel them from outside the cave.”

“I was in the River inside the
cave,” Winn said. “Why didn’t they attack me?”

“I don’t know,” Marty said. “Maybe
you got lucky. You and Brent left the cave quickly; maybe the Caller didn’t
have time to summon them.”

“They probably live further back
in the cave,” Winn said, trying to piece things together in his mind.

“Maybe,” Marty said. “You’ve
barely touched your lemonade. I’m afraid I’ve scared you.”

Winn looked at the can of
lemonade, a bead of condensation running down the side of it and onto the
linoleum surface of the table. “Nah, I’m not scared.”

“Well, then – I haven’t done my
job very well,” Marty said. “You need to be scared of Callers and zombighosts.
They’re very dangerous.”

“Zombighosts?” Winn asked.

“That’s what we call the ghosts
who can become corporeal,” Marty said.

“Corporeal?” Winn asked,
struggling with the pronunciation of the word.

“It means they come back to life,
with a body,” Marty said. “A very dangerous body.”

Marty stood up and walked to the
door, abandoning his iced tea. “Come with me, I want to show you something.”

He led Winn to his shed behind the
trailer, and opened the lock with his keychain. He slid the doors open, and
walked to the shelving rack, where he removed a plastic box with a handle. It
looked like a small tackle box.

He set the box on his workbench
and opened it. Winn expected to see lures and hooks, but the tiny plastic
compartments inside held other objects; small metal eyelets, small glass jars
filled with colored gravel like the kind you would put in the bottom of a
fishbowl, and strange metal implements. Marty lifted the plastic tray, exposing
what was underneath – a collection of brown paper bags of different sizes. He
took one out and looked into it, then closed it back up and removed another,
checking it out. After looking through several, he came to the one he wanted.

“Ah, this is it!” he said,
reaching into the bag and removing a small black rock. He held it up for Winn
to see.

“I made these a while back,” Marty
said proudly.

“Looks like a rock,” Winn said,
unimpressed.

“Yes, I know it does,” Marty said,
“but it’s much more than that. Jump into the River real quick, take a look at
it, and come back out.”

Winn closed his eyes and let
himself enter the flow. He looked at the rock in Marty’s hand, and was shocked
to see that it looked like a small ball with dozens of pointy spikes coming
from it. In some ways it looked like a tiny puffer fish, without a face. He
dropped out of the River.

“Did you see?” Marty asked. “The
activators?”

“I saw lots of spikes on it,” Winn
said. “I’m not sure how you’re not sticking yourself right now!”

“You know those pop rocks you kids
like to throw on the ground and hear them go ‘bang!’?” Marty asked. “Well, this
is kind of like that, but more powerful. I designed it to be like a flash bomb
for zombighosts. You enter the River and throw it on the ground, as hard as you
can, and it makes a flash that disorients them. Just enough time to run away.”

“You made this?” Winn asked, in
awe.

“I did!” Marty said, standing up
proudly.

“What, right here in your shed?”
Winn asked.

“Yes, right here!” Marty said,
smiling. “I made them for a friend who used them while rescuing his son, who
had been drug deep into a cave.”

“How did you make it?”

“I mixed a few of these things
together, then I…” he stopped. “It’s a long process. I’ll explain it to you
some other time if you’re interested. Here, take it!” Marty said, handing the
rock to Winn.

Winn took it and studied it. It
was smooth and looked like any black rock you might find on the ground. He
slipped it into his pocket.

“You still have the nickel?” Marty
asked, placing the plastic tray back over the paper bags and closing up the
box.

“No,” Winn said. “I gave it to
Brent.”

“Brent?” Marty said, stepping out
of the shed and sliding the doors closed. “I told you not to give it to
anyone!”

“He needed it,” Winn said. “His
father beat him up, and he was in a lot of pain. The nickel seemed to help him.
It didn’t heal him, though, it just took away the pain. So I let him keep it.
It’s going to expire today, anyway.”

Marty locked up the shed. “What
did his father do to him?”

“Brent’s got a black eye. And I
think he got him in the stomach, too. I saw bruises.”

“That asshole,” Marty said,
walking back to the trailer. “I have half a mind to call the cops on him.”

“I should probably go check on him,”
Winn said. “Sometimes his dad lets him out on Sunday nights.”

“You do that, make sure he’s OK,”
Marty said, stepping back into the trailer. “Want to take this can of lemonade
with you?”

“Sure!” Winn said. Marty handed
him the can.

“Listen, Winn, before you go,”
Marty said, sitting down in the open doorway of his trailer. “I don’t want you
to be scared, but it’s important that you have a healthy respect for things
that can hurt you. What I sensed from that cave today, it was bad. Really bad.
I know you promised me you wouldn’t go back there, but I want you to promise me
you won’t go there in the River, either. Especially not in the River. I cannot
emphasize enough how dangerous the things in that cave are. You’re lucky you
got out of there alive, to be honest. I’m not sure why they didn’t tear you
apart in the first place.”

“Well, it was daylight, maybe
that’s why,” Winn said.

“But it’s dark inside the cave,”
Marty said.

“Oh yeah,” Winn said. “Well, maybe
they didn’t want to attack me because they wanted to help me. They did give me
the coin, after all, and it’s been a great help to Brent. Just like Padre Kino
was helped. ”

Marty eye’s widened as a new idea
struck him. “McGraves said that Father Kino gave you the coin,” he said, “but I’m
beginning to think he was wrong about that. Kino’s soul was pulled back to that
cave because he failed to fulfill his promise. Kino thought it was God that
healed him, but maybe it was the spirit in the rock, not God. I think Father
Kino made a mistake. He inadvertently sold his soul to the spirit in that cave,
in exchange for protection and healing. When he realized that it was the
spirit, and not God, that’s why he never returned to build a shrine. He didn’t
want to honor something he considered evil. If I’m right, it was the cave
spirit in the rock that saved Father Kino. And that would mean the same cave
spirit gave you that coin. It thought you wanted protection and healing, too.
That’s why the nickel does what it does.”

Winn was convinced. He had no
intention of returning to the cave, even if it meant he could get another coin
with special powers. “I’m going to go check on Brent. I promise I won’t go back
to the cave. Not for real, and not in the River.”

“I’ve scared you enough?” Marty
said, smiling at him from the doorway.

“Yes,” Winn said. “I’m completely
freaked.”

Winn smiled and gave Marty a wave,
then turned and walked down the driveway toward Brent’s home, sipping the
lemonade from the can.