The Skinwalker Conspiracies - 02 (11 page)

My plan wasn’t to betray Oswald at the first opportunity, but Silas was dead right – I couldn’t trust this crazy bastard any further than I could throw him. He has this policy about destroying all ghosts with no questions asked. Honestly, I don’t know whether destroying a ghost, or simply helping them pass on causes them to end up in the same place. Even the “all seeing” Virginia Poe doesn’t know the answer to what comes next. All I knew was that it feels “right” to help one cross. In a fight, I was usually a little too busy to stop and consider my feelings on the subject.

The hope was that when we nailed the Governor, Oswald would be finally ready to let go. If he wasn’t, well … I’d cross that bridge, and probably that spirit, when I got to it.

“So this is the Negro preacher you were talking about?”
Oswald said approaching us. It was a good thing Silas couldn’t hear what the assassin said. If he weren’t dead already, I’d have invited him to walk down the street in Montgomery County saying that and see how long he lasted.

“Yes.” I made introductions and didn’t see a point in trying to correct Oswald. We were supposed to be coming up with a plan for getting to William Travis.

“Here’s what I came up with,”
Oswald said, trying to act the part of being a former US Marine. 
“We go down there. I make some noise and take out a few of his boys. He’s too yellow-bellied to come out there, but will send most of his men, in the hopes that one of them gets lucky. That clears the way for you.”

Silas was right; this ex-jarhead was no Strong Vincent. I counter with the plan Silas and I worked out. “If our goal was to destroy him outright, that might work, but we need him for information first. Look, you mistook me for a Skinwalker right off the bat. It’s not the first time that’s happened, trust me. There’s no reason he and his group wouldn’t think the same thing, if I walk into the Alamo. Maybe I can make him believe that I really am one that needs to set up shop in San Antonio temporarily.”

“He’s going to want something from you, Ross. What have you got that interests him?”

“I tell him I’ve got a way to get to you.”

“What’s that?”
Oswald said looking less crazy and angrier than usual.

“I’ll tell him that I figured out what your anchor is.”

“What do you think it is?”

“Your wedding ring. You left it with your wife. If it was either gun, one of the ghosts up in DC would’ve already been using someone as powerful as you are, unless you’re fool enough to link yourself to a building. They eventually get torn down.”

“You’re not getting anywhere near that ring!”
Oswald snarled.

“Easy there,” I tried to reassure him. “Getting it would take way too much time. I’m going to go to a pawn shop and get a cheap wedding ring and pretend that I have your anchor. I act like I’m a big tough Skinwalker who has you by the balls and I want to barter you for the location of Eckels and De Soto.”

Oswald calmed down and thought it over.
“What if it doesn’t work?”

Sadly, it was a valid question. My professional acting resume was mighty thin. Jimmy Wilkes once told me that the only thing I could “act” was “guilty.” The plan we had concocted hinged on me being able to pull off the role of a Skinwalker.

My answer was, “We start ambushing his ghosts and disrupting his operation. Frontal assaults only work when you have numbers. Two isn’t a very big number. So, we take out his troops and force him to deal with us before his little empire is down to nothing.”

“I suppose,
” Oswald said. “
I’m not the only thorn in his side. There’s a whole group of Mexican ghosts who still want to take back everything the United States pretty much stole from them.”

Cringing, I was sorely tempted to remind him how the Soviet Union pretty much imploded with a whimper and the “dirty, stinking capitalist pigs” won – sort of. It was getting harder to tell every day. Either way, I wasn’t there to have an ideological debate with an avowed Marxist.

“That’s good. If he’s feeling pressure from the south and we happen to start weeding out some of his forces, he’ll be more likely to give us what we want.”

“Hey buddy, just what are you looking for? I ain’t got all day!” The guy at the pawnshop was giving me a look – torn between a paying customer and the baseball game on his television.

This was the fifth pawn shop I’d been in trying to find a used wedding band.

I’d been in enough pawn shops in my life to know that they always had this feeling of desperation hovering about. It didn’t matter whether the place was well lit and the people wearing shirts with logos on them, or some shady place with bars on the few windows and a guy behind the counter with sweat stains in his armpits.

Of course anytime I’d been in one, it was to sell something from my life at a discount.

No, I wasn’t too picky about what the ring looked like, but for my little plan to work, it had to have a touch of the supernatural to it. Our fallback plan was to get one plain ring and glue a few iron filings to it, so I can “charge” it and make a suitable forgery.  A real one anchor would be better, of course there would probably be a ghost attached. That was another fun obstacle in my way.

There’s that phrase the NCOs in the Army used all the time, “Work smarter, not harder.” I’d long since given up on that. Now, it was only a matter of how hard did I have to work. Right now that consisted of touching ring after ring and seeing if anything had some kind of spark accompanying it.

“Gimme a break,” I said preparing yet another lie. “I spent all my money on my girl’s ring, but still have to get something for me. I’ll know it when I touch it.”

The man grunted and pulled out another little felt box filled with rings somebody had exchanged for a few dollars.

A few rings down was this rather unspectacular looking gold band. My index finger tingled a little when I touched it.

“Let me see this one.”

It was dinged up and too large for my ring finger, but there was definitely something there.

“How much?” I asked

“Really? That one?” He sounded puzzled.

“Yeah.”

He raised his eyebrows in surprise, and his expression turned calculating. “One forty.”

“How about ninety?”

“Shit, I could melt it down and get that much for the metal. I can do one twenty, but that’s it.”

“Fine. I’ll take it.” I watched as more money left my “vacation” fund. If this kept up, I’d have to switch to staying at campgrounds instead of cheap hotels.

I hated spending money. I always had. There are different kinds of poor. Some just don’t know how to stop spending. I wasn’t one of those. I was the “never had it to begin with and never gonna have it” type.

Even though I tried many times to put it behind me, money – more specifically the lack of money – was always a problem for me.

Making matters worse, buying a secondhand ring got me thinking about the sad state of my love life. Girls like Jenny Goodman or even Candy wouldn’t want an engagement ring bought from a pawn shop. Considering all I got from my injuries in the Army was a mediocre disability check, two months worth of
my
salary wouldn’t get much else.

So there I was, walking out of the shop and into the blistering afternoon heat. My thoughts weren’t on how I was going to trick William Travis into thinking I was a Skinwalker. No, I was thinking about how any girl, who wanted to become a fixture in my life, wasn’t going to be doing it for the money. Danger and fear of the unknown were about all I had to offer at that moment and I had that by the boatload.

Other than the whole Ferryman thing, I was like most people. I ate, I drank, and I slept. Usually, I could only remember a tiny bit of what I was dreaming about and that typically faded before I’ve finished breakfast.

Miscalculating the traffic, it took close to seven hours to travel from Dallas to San Antonio. Once there, Silas, Lee Harvey Oswald, and I bunked in one of the budget, chain hotels near the airport. Oswald wanted to get right out there and start sniffing around downtown San Antonio. I wanted to get the most “bang for my buck” out of the hotel and be rested for my foray into acting.

Plus, I still needed to warm up to the idea of Oswald as a partner in crime. He didn’t exactly have a sterling track record, to say the least.

Realizing that I couldn’t chain him up or anything, I told Oswald to scout the area around the motel and stay out of trouble … something his history showed he wasn’t able to do. After a tiring drive, with nothing but garbled static on the radio and malfunctioning cruise control (thanks to the presence of a very powerful ghost in the backseat), I desperately needed some rest. After making certain Silas was comfortably situated, I climbed in – not bothering to take off my clothes because I was too tired to unpack.

My eyes opened and I could smell the sea air.

“Have a good nap, Paul?” A female voice asked. “I told you to put on some suntan lotion. You know how you burn!”

I opened my mouth to ask who the hell Paul was. What came out, though, surprised even a guy who could talk to ghosts.

“We haven’t been married for two days and you’re already nagging me.”

The curly redhead put her book down, adjusted her white hat, and smiled at me. She wasn’t a stunner, but the woman had a “girl next door quality” to her. Somehow, I knew her name was Tabitha. She said, “Should’ve run when you had the chance, sucker!”

Standing up, I felt the hot sand between my toes and could hear the shouts of children along the beach. My companion wore a green one piece that looked like something out of those old surfer movies from the sixties. Gazing around, I noted that everyone else was wearing similar attire. At any moment, I expected the music would start and everyone would start dancing like all those cheesy beach movies.

“Why run when I can do this?” I replied reaching down and hoisting her into the air. I threw her over my shoulder like a sack of potatoes and marched toward the water. The strange thing - I could really feel her weight on me. Everything was so vivid.

“Don’t you do it! Don’t you dare do it!” Her shrieks were punctuated by laughter while she kicked and beat her hands on my back.

“Let’s go for a swim and cool off.”

“Paul? Paul? Put me down! I told you I didn’t want to go swimming today.”

“Then what’s the point of coming to the beach for a honeymoon?”

Waist high in the waves, I unceremoniously dumped her. She came up looking like a drowned rat covered in freckles. The nasty glare on her face was a sight to behold.

“What’s the matter, Tabbycat doesn’t like water?” I playfully asked.

“My hair is ruined!” She pursed her lips in a sexy pout.

“Good thing I love you and not the hairdo.”

Her expression softened. She smiled and wrapped her arms around me. “You are impossible to stay mad at. You know that?”

Not saying a word, I leaned down and kissed her. The taste of the saltwater covered her lips.

“Mike, you okay?” The scene fades and I feel a hand on my shoulder shaking me.

“What?” I said sitting up in the hotel bed. Wiping my hand across my face, I could still taste saltwater and my toes twitched like when they had muddy sand in between them. Even in my bizarre new life, this kind of stood out as being odd.