They got to the end of the dead end. Reg stepped to the edge of the boat, then jumped to the shore with a mucky splash. The mud was up to her ankles, and the saw grass again did its best to cut through clothes and any exposed skin. She pulled herself up the embankment, grabbing hold of whatever branches and vegetation she could. Damon and Corvin jumped off behind her, and the three of them made their way up to the higher ground with grunts and muttered curses when a branch would break or a misstep would mean falling to their knees onto the foul, marshy ground.
Reg stopped to take a break, looking back behind her. She could no longer see any sign of the boat. Corvin wiped his face with the back of his arm.
“There isn’t any sign that anyone else has been through this way,” he pointed out.
Reg looked at the ground. No footprints ahead of them. None but their own behind them. “Well, maybe there’s another way in. He might have gotten onto the shore at another place, or maybe even from the other side. I don’t know. But I know he’s this way.”
Corvin pulled out his phone and looked at it, tapping a few times.
“We’re not going to go any faster with you checking the time,” Reg snapped. “And I doubt there’s any signal out here.”
“Taking coordinates. I don’t want to get lost and not be able to find our way back here.”
“Oh. Okay.”
He had a point there. With how disoriented Reg had felt the night before trying to find their boat, it was probably a good idea. There was no guarantee that she would be able to get them out just because she had gotten them in. The Everglades was that kind of place.
It swallowed people alive.
That reminded Reg of alligators and other large predators, and she looked around carefully to make sure that there weren’t any suspicious-looking logs nearby. She didn’t want to run into Jock the Croc.
Crocodiles didn’t seem nearly as scary after being faced with a swamp goblin and Bigfoot, but she wasn’t going to take any stupid chances.
“Okay. Let’s keep going. This way.”
She rechecked her mental map and corrected their course slightly. They were getting close. Not quite there, but very close.
“What would he be doing out here?” Damon’s voice was querulous. “This is… the middle of nowhere.”
“The driver said there are rare plants out here. Maybe he’s looking for some ugly orchid. Or one of those plants that only blooms every fifty years and smells like a dead body. How do I know? Maybe he needs a rare ingredient for some magic spell he’s been putting together.”
“He missed it blooming the first time and had to wait fifty years for it to bloom again?” Damon demanded, heavy with sarcasm.
“Maybe he did. If he was stuck halfway and couldn’t finish his spell…”
“Why wouldn’t he go home for the intervening fifty years? Come back and try again next time?”
“You’re the one who knows magic. Maybe he wasn’t allowed to leave the park between gathering the first ingredients and the one he couldn’t get. Maybe that’s when he got sick. Who knows!”
Corvin looked at the two of them. “If you children are finished quarreling…”
Reg scowled at him. “What?”
“I think there’s something up here.” He pointed.
Reg and Damon turned together to follow the warlock’s outstretched hand. Reg first thought he meant there was something alive up there. Something dangerous. Her heart beat hard and she searched the trees for a man-shape. Or the shape of a large cat. Or a crocodile, though she didn’t think that a crocodile could have crawled that far from the water.
But there seemed to be something under the trees. A large, dark shadow. What? A house? A big fallen tree?
More like a UFO. As they walked toward it, Reg could see the sun glinting off of the metal body every now and then. It didn’t look like a plane. Not until they got right up to it. It was caught in the middle of the grove of banyan trees, the trunks and roots growing in weird shapes around it as if they were pulling it down into the ground. Reg couldn’t see both wings, mostly just the main body and a bit of the tail. It was close enough to touch, but she didn’t reach out to touch it. She knew by the weight in her stomach that the bodies of the pilot and passengers were still inside, their energy imprints still in the jungle growth so many years later.
“What is it?” Reg asked.
“A plane,” Damon offered.
Reg glared at him. “I think I know it’s a plane. I mean… what kind? Where—or when—is it from?”
Corvin walked around it, examining it from other angles. He didn’t touch it either, which surprised Reg a bit since she knew that he collected artifacts. But maybe that was only artifacts imbued with power, and he had no interest in any of the remnants of this crashed plane.
“World War II era,” he said. He noted the markings on the tail section. “I think… this might be the Lost Patrol.”
Reg stared at it. It was so big to be a lost object, and yet, so small when she considered the scale of the Everglades. It had remained lost for decades, even with people looking for it. And there it was, the trees consuming it.
Damon looked around. “You said that Wilson was close to the lost plane. So, where is he?”
Reg glanced around. She considered her mental map. But like before, she was suddenly stymied. Now that she was close, it was like the focus was off and she couldn’t pinpoint the Canadian’s location anymore.
“Umm…”
“Don’t tell me you lost him again.”
“Last time, that meant that we were practically on top of him,” Reg shot back. “So let’s take a look around and find him.”
“There isn’t anyone here.”
“He’s close by. We’re really close.” Reg walked a similar circuit to the one Corvin had followed, but looking outward from the plane this time instead of toward it. She looked for any movement, reached out with her mind for any flicker of Wilson’s consciousness around her. She had circled twice, each one a little wider; then she saw something else in the trees.
Chapter Thirty-Six
The man Reg had seen twice before was walking through the trees, scratching his head and looking at a brochure or map he held in front of him. He was dressed in light-colored clothing, not nearly as filthy as Reg’s were after crawling and stumbling up from the shoreline to the plane. He wore a wide-brimmed white hat. His face was still pale like a tourist’s. Not brown after years in the sun. But then, he was wearing a sunshade. Apparently it worked.
Reg walked toward him and called out as if they were old friends. “Jeffrey. Hey.”
He looked up from his map and smiled. “Oh. Hello.” He studied her face. “You look familiar…”
“Yeah. The Skunk Man Saloon and then the mermaid show last night.”
“Oh. Were you there?” His lips pursed. “I don’t have the best memory for faces anymore.”
“Yeah. I recognize you.”
“Did we talk?”
“Not really. You’re from Canada, right?”
He nodded, giving her a polite smile. “Yes, that’s right.”
“What are you doing out here? You’re kind of in the middle of nowhere.”
“So are a lot of places in Canada.”
Regina indicated their surroundings with a gesture. “But I bet they don’t look like this.”
“No,” he admitted. “Nothing like this.”
Reg was keeping an eye on Corvin and Damon in her peripheral vision. They were not approaching, but seemed okay with her making the initial contact and trying to put Wilson at ease.
“How long have you been here?” Reg asked.
“Here? Not very long. Just today.”
“And in Florida?”
He looked at her, his eyes cloudy. “What is happening here? Do I know you?”
“Sort of.” It was probably best if he thought that she was at least an acquaintance. “You’ve been here for a long time, haven’t you? In Florida, I mean. In the
Everglades?”
“I don’t know. There’s a lot to see here.”
“Yeah. There sure is. But you’ve been here for a really long time.”
“No… I don’t think so.”
“Have you looked in a mirror? Do you look the same as you did when you first came here?” Reg turned toward Damon. “Do you have the picture?”
Damon approached slowly. He looked relaxed, but Reg could feel his spiking anxiety. They didn’t want to do anything that would make the Canadian wizard run. They didn’t want to take the chance of losing him. Damon handed the photo to Reg. She showed it to Wilson.
“This is you, isn’t it?”
He studied the picture. He frowned and shook his head. “No… I don’t think so.”
“That was fifty years ago. You’ve changed since then. But this is you.”
“Fifty years?” Wilson laughed. “I don’t know who you are, lady, but you’ve got it all wrong. I’m just here for a vacation.”
“You left fifty years ago and never came back. You left your family behind. And you never called or wrote or did anything to let them know that you were okay.” Reg held the picture in front of him again. “This is you.”
He touched his face and then his fringe of hair, then pushed his hat aside as he felt for the large bald patch. He frowned and shook his head. “I think you’re mistaken, young lady.”
“Why don’t you come back to the hotel with us, and then we can work it out. If it’s just a case of mistaken identity, then…” Reg shrugged. “No worries. But if you are Jeffrey Wilson.” She indicated the picture. “This Jeffrey Wilson, then you need to come back with me.”
“Back to the hotel? I don’t want to go to your hotel.”
“It’s the one that the mermaid show was at last night. Or we can go to your hotel. You have your ID, don’t you? Your passport? Driver’s license?”
“Of course I have ID.”
Reg looked back over her shoulder at the plane wreck, which Wilson’s eyes had fastened upon. “Do you remember that? Do you remember when it crashed? Or hearing about it after that?”
“That’s a Grumman Avenger. I remember flying one in the war.”
“Yeah. That one has been crashed here all that time.”
She let him consider how corroded and overgrown the aircraft was. If he had been in the park for fifty years, he had been there almost as long as the plane had. And he could see what kind of shape it was in.
“Those boys,” Wilson said softly, looking at the plane.
“Did you know them?”
“No. I don’t think so. But how could I just ignore them? They had wives, families. People who have been looking for them.”
“And you have people who have been looking for you.”
“No… I don’t think so.”
“You have been missing for fifty years. They never knew what had happened to you. We need to let them know.”
“I would know if it had been that long.”
“You see how long that plane has been here. The whole jungle has grown around it. And the whole world has grown around you. Come with me. We’ll sort it out. We’ll help you figure out where to go from here.”
Wilson hesitated. “You seem like a very nice girl, but none of this makes any sense.”
“Why are you drawn here? Because it’s one thing in the park that has been here as long as you have. The one thing that makes sense. Cell phones and computers and color TV’s… smart cars and microwaves and video recorders… so much has just kept on developing while you’ve been here. It’s time to pull you out of the swamp.”
“I still don’t believe you.”
“What year do you think it is?”
He frowned and shook his head. “I don’t know. That kind of thing stopped mattering… a long time ago.”
Chapter Thirty-Seven
With continued coaxing, Reg managed to get Wilson to agree to go back with them to civilization. He didn’t indicate that he had a boat and driver waiting for him somewhere. Reg didn’t know if he had the skills to teleport himself across the swamp or if he had just forgotten where he had left his boat. But once she talked him into going back with her, he was amenable to going in their boat.
They retraced their path back to the waiting boat and driver. The driver made no attempt to hide his astonishment at seeing them come back with a man who hadn’t gone with them initially. His mouth gaped open and he stared openly at the wizard who looked like a retiree tourist that had just stepped off the plane.
“Who is he?”
“This is Jeffrey Wilson,” Reg told him. “That’s who we came for.” She blinked. “Didn’t you think we would find him?”
“Well… to be honest… no. There’s nothing over here. What was he doing? Did you drop him yesterday?”
Not that Wilson looked like someone who had just slept in the swamp.
Reg just smiled. “We would like to head back to our hotel now.”
Wilson shook his head. “Not that hotel,” he insisted. “Somewhere else.”
“We’ll hit a coffee shop or something close by,” Reg told him. “Is that okay?”
“I don’t want to go to that hotel.”
“Okay. We won’t. But why not? Did something there scare you?”
Maybe he had an innate fear of mermaids. Or water. Reg had to admit she’d had a certain amount of trepidation sitting next to that huge tank of water. It seemed sturdy enough, but if one of the walls had failed… if someone ran into the side or fired a bullet into it… she could drown sitting next to it.
“Yes. I don’t know.” Wilson shook his head, confused. Was that what the ghost of the little Seminole girl had meant when she talked about his sickness? Some kind of dementia? She could understand his being confused about how long it had been since he’d entered the park. A lot had happened since then, and she was pretty certain that there had been magic involved. But not being able to remember what had scared him a couple of nights earlier? He knew he was afraid of something at the hotel.
Wilson got agitated at the thought of getting anywhere near Miami. After some discussion, their driver suggested a fruit stand in Homestead where they sold milkshakes, a popular tourist attraction. Wilson seemed eager to go there, so the driver changed his course and headed south. After they disembarked, a quick Uber ride got them to the fruit stand, and they each ordered milkshakes and sat down to talk, hoping that Wilson would be more cooperative in a relaxed setting.
Reg could see his aura start to change as he took the first few sips of his fresh mango milkshake. He had been very anxious before, which had increased his confusion. The colors of his aura started to warm. Reg gave him a little while, just making small talk and asking him about what sites he recommended they should see or restaurants they should visit.
She could see, out the corner of her eye, how impatient Damon was. But he would have to wait until Wilson was ready to talk. It was one thing to find the guy. It was another to get him to the Spring Games. Reg could see that wasn’t going to be a “given.”
“Have you ever been to the Spring Games?” Reg asked him. “Damon was telling me about it, and it sounds like a lot of fun.”
“I was going to go one year,” he said. “I was invited to participate. But… I don’t know what happened.” He looked puzzled. “Maybe that was just a dream. I don’t think that really happened.”
“You were invited,” Damon agreed. “But you disappeared. You never showed up for them.”
“Why would I be invited? Those are… it’s the magical games, isn’t it? I’m not…” He gave an embarrassed little shrug. “I’m not magic.”
Damon’s mouth dropped open. “You’re one of the most powerful wizards ever!”
“Me? No. I keep telling you; you must have me confused with someone else. Maybe there is a Jeffrey Wilson who is a wizard, but you’re mixing us up. I’m just… well, I’m retired now. I don’t do anything.”
“What did you do?” Reg prodded, sensing that he didn
’t know.
“I was a… oh, it was so long ago now, it doesn’t matter anymore.”
It was like he had forgotten who he was. Reg was sure they didn’t have the wrong person. How would a non-practitioner of magic have heard of the Spring Games and known what they were? How had he gone to the site of the plane crash without hiring a boat? Why had she immediately homed in on him when she had started her search?
Something clicked in the back of her brain. She looked at Wilson for a few minutes, then switched her gaze to Corvin.
“What was it you were talking with Weston about in the restaurant.”
He shook his head. “What? I don’t recall. The conversation was all over the place.”
“About forgetting.”
He frowned.
Reg kept her voice low as if by being quiet, she could avoid upsetting Wilson. “You were talking about someone forgetting everything that had happened to them.”
“I don’t know if that has any bearing on this situation. That was a mythological reference.” His voice transformed smoothly to his lecturing voice. “While there is truth to many of the mythologies of the world, you can’t take them at face value. The stories change over the years. Sometimes drastically.”
“What was it? What myth?”
He considered. “Uh… Lethe. The river Lethe.”
“And the river Lethe became the Everglades river, right?”
“Well… no. Your friends said that it was in the park, not that it had become the Everglades river.”
Wilson and Damon were listening, looking puzzled.
“But they said it was here. And if it’s here, do you think that it could have affected the memories of… someone we know?”
Corvin glanced at Wilson. “Perhaps. I wouldn’t want to jump to conclusions, but it’s always possible.”
“You think it’s a coincidence that Weston showed up as soon as I saw Wilson in the restaurant and then starts talking about Lethe? And when he left, Wilson was already gone. The concierge said that he left in a hurry. And he doesn’t want to go anywhere near the hotel again.”
Skunk Man Swamp Page 19
