Cruel forces.Maybe Myles understood, even if he refused to utter the worddemon.
“Amen,” Angela whispered beside him, hoping God’s ears would not be deaf to her.
Her whole life, deep down, she’d suspected God never heard her or Mama at all.
Myles had first gone hunting with Pa Fisher when he was ten, a month after he moved to Sacajawea, and on that first outing, Pa had taught him to respect the odds.
Hunting was a game of wits. Men might have superior weapons and pure intellect, but big game animals had a primary advantage: the senses. An elk could hear a limb snap a half-mile away. Or smell a human presence up to a mile away if the wind was right, and pick up the scent of the spot a human had passed through a day after you were gone. With eyes protruding on the sides of their heads, deer and elk had better than three-hundred-degree vision. Their eyes took in nearlyeverything. Even with camouflage, decoys, and mating calls, Pa told him, the hunted had the advantage. The more he appreciated that, the better his odds would be.
Today, Myles was both hunter and hunted. Angie thought Tariq was no mere man, but when Myles’s thoughts plunged in that direction, he felt himself seize up with childlike fear. A man with a gun in the woods was dangerous enough, but a beast with a gun in the woods could be invulnerable.
Myles’s lungs seemed to have climbed into his throat as he crept in the brush outlying The Spot, trying to find the best approach to Tariq’s van. Despite the cold rain, the air felt hot. The old lessons came back to Myles: patience and silence. A single misstep could betray him, so he couldn’t hurry. He’d seen part of the interior of the van at first glance, and that had been clear. If Tariq was inside, he was lying across the front or hidden in back.
Myles blinked away rain and stinging perspiration trickling into his eyes. His glasses were so spotted with rainwater, he cursed his decision not to take the time to put in his contacts today. Eyeglasses had no place in the rain, the beads of moisture blurring his vision. He wished he could forget the glasses and take his chances with the twenty-eighty vision God had given him, but in a jumble of forest tones, he couldn’t afford to miss a single shadow, jostle, or nuance. This hunt would be over if Tariq saw him first.
Myles made his way closer to the far side of the van from ten yards behind it; he was approaching the gigantic trunk of a fallen Douglas fir between him and the van. That tree could give him some cover, if it came to that. But first, he had to make sure Tariq hadn’t thought of it first, that he wasn’t stooped somewhere behind it. Myles’s arrow was already pulled tight, ready to fly. He nestled the nock against his cheek, staring past the arrowhead to the spot it would hit if he fired. “Steady…steady…,” Myles whispered with each step.
The beating rainfall worked to his advantage, helping soften the sound of the dead leaves, but Myles still took care not to let his feet land heavily enough to crack the twigs on the forest floor. He’d been unsettled by the thick mud covering the trail earlier, but he missed its silence now. His hiking boots were bulky. He and Pa had worn padded fleece boots on their hunting trips, and Myles would give a finger for a pair today. He crept as quietly as he could, four feet from the tree trunk. Two more steps, and he could see if anyone was hidden on the other side of it.
POP
The only gunshot Myles heard was in his imagination. There was nothing behind the massive trunk except weeds and crabgrass. Myles swallowed hard, so relieved he had to blink to send his attention back to the VW. He wouldn’t approach the VW from the open side because it would be easy for Tariq to come storming through the open door with his gun blasting, or to ambush him from the woods. The front seat windows were the only ones that weren’t hidden behind curtains. The front windows were closed tight, so the bow would be useless even if Tariq was even three inches from his face. But at least he would know where Tariq was.
Driver’s window first. Then, he’d step around to look through the windshield.
And then Tariq Hill is going to turn your face into a gaping hole.
Myles had known a guy in grad school with one of these old VW hippiemobiles, a red one with curtains partitioning off the front from the back of the bus. If Tariq’s van had the same curtain, he’d be exposing himself at the windshield and see virtuallynothing inside.
“But you knew this was insane in the beginning,” Myles breathed to himself.
Today was the definition of insane, from the moment Rob Graybold had called his house and asked him to bring Angie to Art’s jail cell. The insanity had only multiplied.
Myles ventured toward the clearing. Just like stalking a buck, he told himself.
“Myles?”
He had only taken his first step when he heard a woman’s voice behind him. He whipped around, uncertain, still ready to fire. It had damn near sounded…
“Myles? Don’t leave me here. I’mscared, Myles. I promise I’ll leave my socks alone.”
Myles’s testicles seized up. It was Ma’s voice, faint but unmistakable. The voice had come from the woods, where the cedar stand grew thick behind him.
The plaintive voice flew to him again. “Myles, take me backhome . I want my fish. Youdidn’t bring my goldfish. You left them in my room.”
As he stared back at the woods, Myles’s lips parted, dry. Through the beads of water on his glasses, he could see someone ahead, perched on the low-hanging branch of a leafless maple tree. Ma’s hair was tied back, and she was dressed in the bright yellow sweater she’d been wearing when he took her to Riverview. Her legs were swinging gently back and forth, like a child’s. She must be ten yards high, he calculated, stunned.How could Ma have climbed…
Myles’s heart curdled, and he swallowed back a sickly taste in his mouth. However she was up there, he had to get to her. If she fell, she’d break a hip, or worse. He could climb over that Douglas fir trunk and claw his way through the tight thicket of devil’s club that grew in his path, protected by yellow, spiny bristles.
But he didn’t move. He was rooted in place by a discrepancy his mind couldn’t dismiss:His mother could not be in that tree. His mother was in Skamokawa with Candace, where he’d left her.
“Let me go home, Myles. My memory is fit as a fiddle. We’ll talk over old times. Remember the day we brought you home and you saw the room we’d fixed for you? I remember, Myles.”
The skin on Myles’s back itched up and down his spine. Whatever he was up against had the power to create illusions in his mind. A womandid seem to be sitting in that tree, and that woman looked like Ma, there was no denying it. But it was a lie, a trick of the senses.
“I can’t live this way anymore, Myles. I can’t be a burden to you. I’m going to jump.”
Myles battled his instinct to run toward her. As he stared at Ma, years seemed to fade from her face, and she became a teenage girl, the way she looked in her old family photographs. Shockingly pretty. He blinked, stunned. She was only Ma again.
“No. That’s not Ma,” he whispered. “That’snot Ma.”
Don’t look at her,Myles told himself.Look away.
Fighting tears, Myles forced himself to turn his eyes away from the apparition. His hands were no longer steady on the bow and arrow. He would regain control if he kept his focus on the VW in front of him. Only trouble was behind him.
“Myles Richardson,do you hear me? I’lljump!” the woman in the tree said.
When he was a child, Ma used to call him by his old name, Richardson, when she was angry. He’d known she was using emphasis the way some parents did with middle names, but it had always sounded like a reminder that he was adopted.
You have to admit this is magic. This is a curse.
Don’t look back. Don’t look back. Don’t look back.
Myles’s teeth ground as he took another step toward the VW.
“Two blind men cured…the dumb demoniac healed…the shekel in the mouth of the fish…the deaf and dumb man of Decapolis…,” Myles whispered, digging up buried memories. As a boy, when he’d asked Gramma Marie why she b
elieved in miracles, she said she’d witnessed miracles here and there, the way another person would mention seeing a bald eagle. When he asked her to specifywhat miracles, she challenged him to memorize the miracles of Jesus in the back of her St. James Bible.If you think of them all, one after the other, you’ll see your way to believing.
“…a blind man of Bethsaida cured…Jesus passes unseen through the multitude…the great catch of fish…the widow’s son is raised from the dead…a woman is freed from her infirmity…” Comforted by his miracles, Myles kept his eyes on the VW six yards from him. If that driver’s side door opened suddenly, he was ready to shoot.
“See you soon, Snook!” the woman in the tree said. Myles did not look around.
Instead, he darted to peek quickly into the driver’s side window.
Two seats, the gearshift, a Wendy’s bag, and cassette tapes all over the passenger seat. Empty. And there were no curtains blocking the back. Good.
Breathing hard, Myles ducked down. Keeping out of sight, he crawled to the front of the vehicle, eye-level with the spare tire on the car’s nose. He took two breaths and popped his head up to peer through the windshield, his eyes trained toward the back. The first backseat was empty. The second backseat was out of his view. Even a man Tariq’s size could be hiding there.
Myles ducked again. This time, he didn’t hesitate. One, two,three, he thought.
He ran around to the still-open side door. Angling his readied bow, Myles climbed into the VW and surveyed it: The interior smelled awful, like rotting food and old condoms, and the floor was covered in garbage. Clumps of dead leaves sat atop food wrappers and cigarette packs.
But there was no one inside.
Myles ran back into the woods to hide. He ventured a look toward the tree where Ma had been sitting—or whatever had wanted him tobelieve it was Ma—and the branch was empty. Decoys don’t always work, Myles thought. Any hunter knew that.
Angie was where he’d left her, waiting. Embraced by the salal leaves, she looked like a girl again.
Approaching her, he thought of the two times she’d tolerated him during the summer when they were young kids, playing hide-and-seek on the endless expanse of her grandmother’s property. Her Gramma Marie hadmade her play with him, Angie never failed to inform him. With Angie’s intelligent eyes, bold attitude, and jet-black hair she wore in two pigtails, he had decided he was going to marry this girl the first time he’d seen her. But even then, life made it plain that he would never have Angela Marie Toussaint.Never.
But he had her today. Angie gave him a full, soft kiss.
“Tariq’s not there,” Myles said. He wanted to tell her about the woman in the tree, but didn’t. He felt weak, manipulated. Maybe he was losing his grip. Even now, he wanted to go back to make sure Ma wasn’t back there in a tree.
“I was worried when I didn’t see you for so long,” she said.
“I had to take my time. What do you need here, Angie?”
“I need to do a ceremony,” she said. Her eyes were earnest, unself-conscious. Angie believed everything she said, a lunacy that would either save them or doom them.
“What does that mean?”
“I need you to watch over me, Myles. While I sit.”
“Sit where?”
Her chin gestured toward The Spot, behind him. “Out there.”
It was bad enough to be hiding this close to Tariq’s van, inviting a chance meeting. But to sit out in the open? “Angie, that’s foolhardy.”
She nodded, agreeing, her cheeks drawn sadly. Despite the nonsense of her words, her eyes spoke perfect sense. He’d had the same reaction to her eyes inside Gramma Marie’s house, when she challenged him upstairs. There was a fever in her eyes, as if she were in the throes of a mild ecstatic state. But therewas sense, too, undeniable. God might be talking to her.
“You’re bent on getting me killed today, Angela Marie,” Myles said. He’d meant it as a joke, but it sounded more like simple-told truth.
Angie shook her head, her face distraught. He knew that the tear gliding down her face was for him.“No, Myles,” she said, pressing her palm to his cheek. “That’s why I asked you not to come. I’m still not sure you understand.”
“I…” Myles sighed, surrendering. “I saw someone in a tree who looked like Ma.”
“It wasn’t her,” Angela said, her eyes fervent. “You see? It was trying to trap you.”
Myles nodded. That felt more true than blaming his imagination. He shivered to his soul.
“I don’t know what happens next, Myles. Idon’t,” Angie said. “But this thing won’t want me to do this. It’s going to fight us as soon as I get close to finishing what I need to do.”
“So you need me,” Myles said. “Admit it.”
Angie gave him a full smile, a sight that made his heart gladden despite the terrible new weight it carried. “Yes,” she whispered, her face soft in a way it hadn’t been all day. “I need you.”
She pressed her hand against his parka, at mid-chest—to be sure he was wearing his pendant underneath, he realized. When Angie felt the hard clay pendant she’d given him safely in place, her smile relaxed. He thanked God he was wearing it, too. He thanked God for his cross of gold. Jesus help poor Art Brunell. Jesus help them all.
“I’m still me,” he said, touching her cheek.
“Me, too,” she said.
They kissed as if it were their last chance.
There are moments when time seems to slow, and others when it gains speed. Good times race past, memories before they’re properly under way; and bad times linger, interminable. To Angela, from the moment she walked to the center of The Spot, time became a fog. Seconds and minutes were indistinguishable to her.
Only one moment mattered:Now. Her future depended on it. Much more than that depended on it.
The Spot wasn’t muddied like the trail, Angela noticed. That didn’t surprise her.
Myles was out of sight. He had chosen a strategic spot to watch her and the surrounding areas, hidden. He’d used what sounded like military terms: The van was at twelve o’clock; the trail, Tariq’s likeliest entry point, was at six o’clock. Myles was hiding in the bed of salal at four o’clock, at a slight angle from the trail, which gave him a view of the trail, the entire clearing, and some distance beyond the van, except for one blind spot behind it. Myles had spoken his last word to her earnestly, holding her cheeks tightly between his palms:Hurry.
Everything rested, it seemed, on time.
Angela sat cross-legged as close to the fire-pit as she could, trying to anchor herself to the center of The Spot. Her gun remained in her hand, as Myles had instructed, the safety off. Thegovi was at her feet. She was as prepared as she could be.
Immediately, stillness enveloped Angela, a sensation so immediate that it startled her. Her heart had been racing when she left the sanctuary of the woods, but now it was so calm it was nearly silent. Angela was afraid to close her eyes. When she did, she felt as if she were releasing a part of herself, allowing one part of her to sleep so another could awaken. Her arms tingled violently, and then all sensation left them. Her feet tingled next, vanishing from her.
Frightened, Angela gazed toward Myles again, although his parka made him nearly invisible in the thicket. But she could see the brown spot that she knew was his chest, and she imagined where his face might be; where his eyes were gazing out from hiding, watching over her. She almost smiled at the place where she thought Myles’s eyes were, until she remembered not to give his position away. Tariq might be watching. He most certainly was.
During the most dangerous time of her life, how could she feel so safe?
Angela gazed upward, toward the soaring treetops. As she stared at the trees, Angela realized she could already see something she had never noticed before: All of the trees bordering The Spot leanedinward, toward the place where she sat. They did not lean precariously, so it hadn’t been obvious in all these years, but Angela saw the slight bend in their angles now, as
if the trees themselves were bowing in worship.
It’s happening now. I’m losing myself now,she thought, and she went rigid.
This felt like bedtime all over again, when she slowly surrendered to sleep and jumped to wakefulness as soon as she slipped into new territory, into places that scared her. She ran from the memories. She always ran. But she would not run now. She could not. With a deep sigh, finding strength in the scents of cedar and fir around her, Angela closed her eyes.
And slipped, as if through a hole in her mind. A low hum surrounded her; not a machine’s hum, but a hum that sounded like a chorus of human voices in soft unison. She heard the pattering rainfall, which sounded like drumming. She heard repeated rhythms, endless patterns inside the rain. One in particular transfixed her:
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