“
Thanks,” Dex said and began
for the end of the barn.
“
I think it’s stupid. Leave
the man alone,” Miguel said. I gave him a small smile as I passed
him. His dark eyes were glaring at me with all their might as per
usual, but I felt an aura of fear radiating off of him. Maybe it
was my imagination. It was obviously having its way with me
today.
I couldn’t dwell on it. I
limped after Dex, our footsteps echoing down the cloudy hall until
we entered the sunlight again and made our way for Shan and
Miguel’s house, just behind a line of junipers.
It was a simple, small
bungalow made with faded grey wood. Maximus was standing alone
outside the front door. It was closed.
“
Thanks for waiting,” Dex
said sarcastically. “Where’s Sarah?”
Maximus ignored him with a
twitch of his head and pointed at the door. “She went in there.
Miguel said Shan was feeling ill and she freaked right
out.”
“
Chest pains?” I
asked.
“
I reckon so. Hope it’s not
a heart attack. I don’t know how well equipped the hospital is
here.”
“
Yeah,” I said absently.
That off-feeling was nagging at me again. I wondered if Maximus
sensed it too.
“
You can’t go in there with
her?” I asked him.
He shook his head and
stepped away from the door. He came over to us in a hush, putting
one big arm over each of our shoulders, and led us away from the
house.
“
Are any of you getting a
bad feeling about this?” he whispered, head between us.
Dex and I agreed. I hadn’t
been in a huddle since my childhood softball games.
“
I don’t know what though,”
I added.
“
Yeah, me neither,” Maximus
sighed and straightened up.
The sound of the door
opening caused us all to turn around. If Sarah could have seen us
we’d have probably looked a might suspicious in our little head to
head. But she couldn’t.
She closed the door firmly
behind her and said, “Hello?”
“
We’re here,” Dex answered,
walking over to her. “Is Shan OK? Miguel told us what
happened.”
She poked her cane out in
front of her, almost nailing Dex in the knee, and walked toward the
trees. “He’s fine, just has a sore chest,” she said
dismissively.
“
Sore chest?” I
repeated.
She stopped but didn’t turn
around. “Yes. A sore chest. Are you deaf? He probably pulled
something. He does most of the work around here, don’t let Miguel
or Bird tell you otherwise.”
Maximus walked over to her
and put his hand on her shoulder. “Want some help getting through
the trees?”
She brushed off his hand.
“Do I look like an invalid to you, white boy?”
I almost laughed at his
taken aback expression. He ran his hand through his red hair and
gave us a shrug. She began to walk again, quicker, as if to prove
she wasn’t an invalid. Not that we doubted that anyway.
I limped after her, the
boys following.
“
But if he’s a medicine
man, can’t he heal himself?” I asked innocently.
Sarah laughed. “You really
know nothing about the Navajo, do you? A healer cannot heal
himself. He must find another medicine man to do that.”
She sounded quite grave but
her tone became more flippant when she added, “Anyway, it’s nothing
that some Aspirin won’t fix. Maybe tomorrow you can have a talk
with him about this medicine man stuff. I’m sure he would love to
enlighten you all.”
We followed her to the
house in silence but came to a halt outside the door. After she
went inside, I turned to the guys and told them I was
starving.
And I did not want to eat
lunch in the house. I wanted to get out of there for a
bit.
Maximus nodded and headed
up the stairs. “I’ll just tell them we are getting lunch in town
before they start making us stuff.”
I looked at Dex.
“
Need anything from inside.
Books, perhaps?”
He shook his head No and
walked over to the Jeep. “There’s a few books in here I got from
the library while you were out on your little, uh, hike. I think
we’re going to want to read them. As soon as possible.”
~~
We ended up driving a
little ways out of town, to one of the gas stations on the
outskirts that doubled as a greasy spoon diner.
We piled into a small
booth, Maximus squished up against me, and quickly ordered our food
from the indifferent waitress before getting down to business. She
didn’t even bat an eye at my bandaged hands.
After she brought us our
much-needed meals, Dex had the books out and pushed one of them
towards us.
“
I think this is what we
are dealing with here,” he said, eyeing the book. He glanced at me
quickly and then looked away, giving the impression that though he
was serious, he was still a bit apprehensive of what I might
think.
I looked at the title.
“Navajo myths and folklore?”
“
All myths come from
somewhere,” Dex said.
I flipped open the book to
the index. “Any particular chapter?”
Maximus laid his
well-groomed fingertip beneath
Chapter
Two: Skinwalkers
and poked it hard for
emphasis.
I looked at Dex for
assurance. He nodded. I flipped to the chapter and skimmed through
it.
I had heard of skinwalkers
before, or shapeshifters, as they are called in other cultures. But
I mean, that really was a myth. Like the werewolf. And trolls. And
leprechauns.
It was all so strange and
fantastic that I stopped after a few pages and gave Dex the most
disbelieving look I could muster.
“
Are you kidding me? You
think we are dealing with skinwalkers?”
“
Shhhh!” Maximus shushed
me, glancing around the near empty diner. The few truck drivers and
the waitress didn’t seem to notice. “We shouldn’t be talking too
loudly about this.”
“
Why?” I snorted.
Dex leaned across the
table, his voice low, “Because the people here, they really do
believe in this. And if they hear a bunch of white people talking
about it, that could cause some problems.”
I got that but
still…
“
I know they believe it but
I mean…it’s impossible.”
“
What I do is impossible,”
Maximus said through a neat mouthful of his BLT.
“
What we’ve seen is
impossible,” Dex added. “What’s the difference?”
The difference was that
ghosts could be explained. To me, anyway, it almost made scientific
sense. After you died, it was inherently possible that you could
still exist in some form…whether it was not moving on, getting
stuck in some limbo alternate universe, leftover electric energy,
or some other kind of “force”, the concept of having something
survive after you die didn’t really seem like that much of a
stretch when you thought about it. But the fact that a person could
physically become an animal, at will, and then revert back to human
form was just ridiculous.
“
I hate to
get all Scully on your Mulder asses but I just don’t think this is
what’s happening,” I said. Maximus laughed at that, appreciating
the
X-Files
reference.
“
But you’d believe a curse?”
Dex questioned.
“
I don’t know,” I admitted
and tucked into my overtly salty French onion soup. “I don’t know
what I believe anymore. I mean, if it’s so obvious to you guys that
this a skinwalker situation, then why hasn’t anyone else, any of
the actual Navajo people, said anything about it?”
“
Because they don’t discuss
it with non-believers if they don’t have to,” Dex explained. “I
think Bird knows exactly what is going on, he’s just waiting for
the time to tell us. Or maybe waiting for the right person to tell
us.”
“
And he knows Will and
Sarah wouldn’t have any of it if that’s what it came down to,” said
Maximus. “Could you imagine it? After all their forsaking of their
beliefs and heritage, it turns out to be the very thing that is
causing all their problems.”
Actually, what he said made
perfect sense. It was a little too ironic. I told them
that.
“
But maybe it’s someone
tormenting them for turning their backs on the Navajo. Maybe
someone wants to teach them a lesson.”
“
If it’s a
skinwalker, it’s someone,” Dex lowered his voice even more, as if
that
someone
could
be in the diner with us. “If it’s a curse, it’s also someone. I
don’t think we are dealing with ghosts here. Not at
all.”
“
I agree with you,
brother,” said Maximus, pushing his empty plate away.
Dex narrowed his eyes at
him. “Don’t call me brother.”
Maximus met his eyes and a
testosterone staring contest ensued.
“
Oh come on, knock it off
you two,” I sighed. “Put whatever weirdass bullshit you have aside,
at least for this weekend, all right?”
“
Easy there, kiddo” Dex
said, reaching across the table and patting my hand. “We’re just
playing.”
Maximus smiled at me with
an Elvis-like lip curl. “If we aren’t dealing with ghosts per se,
it could be why I can’t sense anything. There’s no death
here.”
“
Not yet,” I said without
thinking, as the biggest sense of déjà vu slammed into me like
hailstorm. The room seemed to vibrate and shift, the drone of a fly
on the dirty window became louder and louder. Dex squeezed my
hand.
“
Perry,” he
whispered.
I tried to focus on my
soup, on the drowning bits of sodden bread in the briny broth. The
buzz of the fly became so loud, it was as if it were burrowing in
my ear, an audio root canal. Dex squeezed my hand harder and it
stopped. I looked at him, his eyes were full of knowing, knowing
more than I did. The room stopped spinning but the feeling of déjà
vu still lingered.
“
Sorry,” I gasped, not sure
of what just happened. Was that a panic attack? Or just a dizzy
spell?
“
Do you realize what you
just said?” he asked quietly.
He kept his hand on mine
and looked at Maximus. “And what you just said?”
I looked at Maximus. His
strong face was as puzzled as mine.
“
Perry had a dream a few
days ago,” Dex started and proceeded to tell Maximus all of it. My
mind caught up quickly. No wonder I had déjà vu, Maximus and I just
spoke to each other the dialogue in the dream. “There is no death
here,” I said slowly to myself. “Not yet.”
If everything in my dream
was slowly coming true…what was next, for coyotes to start walking
on two legs and then…? I shuddered. Perhaps the skinwalker
conclusion wasn’t too far off.
I pushed my bowl of soup
away, my appetite gone. I suddenly missed my old job. Working in
the safe, sterile ad agency didn’t seem so bad anymore.
After we finished up our
food, we made our way back to the ranch. I sat in the back of the
Jeep and listened absently to Dex and Maximus talk about what their
chums from the old college days were doing now. My attention
flitted in and out as I flipped through the book to feed my
overstuffed mind. If skinwalkers were a possibility, I needed to
know exactly what we were dealing with.
According to the book,
skinwalkers were “evil” Navajo witches who could shapeshift into
any animal form, usually something local like a coyote, a fox, a
bird or a bear. Sometimes they tormented their victims by throwing
stones or banging on the walls, other times they would attack you
in your car or they’d do some other sort of malicious prank. It
didn’t say too much about disfigured livestock, nor did it mention
any cases of anyone actually being physically hurt by the
skinwalkers, which was a relief of sorts. Not that I had even begun
to accept it, but it was good to know. If my dreams were some sort
of foreshadowing of events to come, I definitely did not want the
part where the coyote people ripped me from limb to limb to come
true.
“
How are you doing?”
Maximus asked, turning around in the passenger seat, his warm voice
slinking off the walls.
I shut the book and put on
a brave face. “I’m OK.”
He had such a sexy energy
at times that I couldn’t help but want to put up a front around
him. Me, scared of skinwalkers? Nonsense.
He pursed his lips for a
second and then grinned in his aw shucks way. “You’re braver than I
am.”
I leaned in closer and made
sure to speak a bit breathier, “I have a hard time believing you’d
buy into this skinwalker business, let alone be scared of it. You
look like you could take on a grizzly bear with your own
hands.”
Yes, that’s right. I was
flirting with him. I couldn’t help it. I think my nerves needed a
pleasant diversion. So, I flashed him a smile that made the cut on
my cheek sting. I could see Dex’s eyes float up to the rear view
mirror and glance at me curiously. I remembered what he said about
Maximus wanting to get in my pants. I wanted to test that theory
and part of me wanted to do it to see if Dex would care. Why he
would, I don’t know, but I was going to do it anyway.