Owl Dreams

by John T. Biggs

CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  The wind met Robert as soon as he stepped out of the hospital. He was glad she wasn’t jealous of his new companion.

  “This is Sarah. I think she might be my girlfriend.” He whispered in tones only the wind could hear. Sarah didn’t know about their relationship yet.

  “But she will,” the wind assured him in a voice borrowed from a female country and western singer. “You know she will.”

  Sarah picked up her pace so the two of them were almost running.

  “So far so good,” she said. “Just don’t go crazy on me, at least not yet.”

  When they reached her car, Robert asked if they could ride with the windows open.

  “Why not,” she said.

  His old friend’s fingers felt good running through his hair.

  The wind celebrated Robert Collins’s freedom by blowing metric tons of waste paper along the streets like confetti.

  Sarah said, “Your friend’s a litterbug.”

  Instead of responding, Robert recited the unrhymed portion of a rap duet, told open-ended knock-knock jokes, and sang a fair rendition of A Double Shot of my Baby’s Love, accompanied by air guitar.

  Sarah told him, “I give it an eight. It’s got a good beat, and you can dance to it.”

  No response from Robert. He was busy reading a section of The National Enquirer that had just blown into the passenger window.

  “Did you know Fox News is run by aliens?” Robert held the yellowed newspaper fragment so Sarah could read the headline.

  Damn. She couldn’t believe he made her look. Another headline captured her attention. Who would have guessed Kim Kardashian had been born with a penis?

 

  “The wind brings me all the latest news,” Robert said. “Fresh from the grocery store dumpsters. It’s contemporary and timeless.”

  Sarah considered leaving him at the side of the road. A few minutes of schizophrenic dialogue can sound lyrical, but after a quarter of an hour it begins to strain the nerves.

  In the spirit of diplomacy, she rolled up the windows of her car. That helped on the trip to the cemetery, but once they left the relatively windless environment of her automobile, Robert started in again right where he had left off.

  “The wind thinks you are pretty.”

  “Flattery will get the wind nowhere.”

  “The wind likes you a lot.”

  Sarah locked her Subaru Outback with the factory-issue remote control attached to her keychain. She pointed the device at Robert and fiddled with its buttons.

  “Damn!” She returned it to her shoulder bag. “I guess there’s no way to turn you off.”

  No response, just the mind-numbed look of infatuation. Sarah had seen that look on all of Marie’s boyfriends. She snapped her fingers two inches from his face. Still no response. Maybe the remote had turned him off.

  She put her hands on his shoulders and gave him a shake. “Hey!” That got his attention, but how long could she hold it?

  “Pretend you’re not crazy, just until we find the right grave to rob.” Somehow that didn’t sound persuasive.

  “The wind is singing you a song.” Robert cupped his hand over one ear and sang Anita Carter’s version of Ring of Fire—even worse than the original.

  Sarah gripped him by his earlobes and turned his face toward her. “We have several hours before the sun sets. We need to locate that grave so we can find it again in the dark.” She was about explain why graves were best robbed at night, but thought better of it.

  “The wind says we should start at the old Indian Baptist Cemetery.”

  Almost sane, but no cigar.

  “That’s where I started running from Doctor Moon,” Robert said. “The wind thinks we should retrace my steps.”

  Sometimes the wind was very logical.

  Sarah had read about Choctaw bonehouses, but the ones within the walls of the Indian Baptist Cemetery were the first she had ever seen.

  “They look like mausoleums.” She recognized the marriage of traditional and Christian customs common among the Civilized Tribes. She wondered if Dr. Lindsay knew about these bonehouses. She wondered if the Choctaw ghosts were watching her.

  “Spirit garden.” Robert’s voice had almost none of the dreamy quality that dominated it only minutes before.

  Sarah looked at the leaves on the cottonwood trees inside the sandstone walls of the Indian Baptist Cemetery. No sign of the wind. Maybe she didn’t like this place.

  But someone did. Someone especially liked the mausoleum with the word Maytubby spelled out in green tile over the door.

  That building was in good repair, and the pathway to the Maytubby bonehouse was clear of the tangle of deadwood and clusters of flowering weeds that covered everything else.

  Sarah had seen pictures of weeds like these in an ethnobotany course just a year ago, but none of that material stuck with her past the final exam.

  “Moonflowers,” Robert said. “Jimson Weed.”

  Sarah recognized the two common names for Datura, the plant used by holy men on vision quests. Could Robert read her mind?

  The wind didn’t stir, and the ghosts within the sandstone wall were quiet.

  Sarah tried to identify the distinctive yellow puffballs growing on the rotten cottonwood branches strewn about the graveyard. Ceremonial mushrooms. Hallucinogenic. She was sure of that much.

  She pointed out the freshly-painted white owl on the iron door of the Maytubby bonehouse. “Could the artist be the famous Doctor Moon?”

  The sound of footsteps on the gravel road behind them didn’t leave Sarah much time for speculation. There was little doubt in her mind who she would see when she finally turned and acknowledged the approaching threat.

  I summoned him when I said his name aloud. She turned slowly, as if meeting a killer in a cemetery was something she did all the time.

  “Hashilli.” Did he recoil a little, when Sarah called him by that name?

  He pointed a boxy black pistol at a point midway between her and Robert.

  “Sarah Bible.” Hashilli’s words vibrated with a greedy enthusiasm, like a loan shark who is about to collect a debt owed to him for many years. “So good to see you and your crazy boyfriend.”

  “He’s not my . . . .” Sarah cut her denial short. Her next words might be her last. She shouldn’t waste them correcting the misperceptions of her killer.

  “So convenient,” he said. “It saves me so much time and trouble.” He motioned with the gun for them to walk through the entrance into the Indian Baptist Cemetery.

  The temperature dropped as they crossed the threshold. No bird or insect noises. Sunlight dimmed. Each step took them closer to the land of the dead.

  Sarah wondered if she died inside this graveyard, would her spirit be trapped here forever? Maybe she could run for it, vault the wall, keep the bonehouses between herself and Hashilli’s pistol, then follow a twisted path to freedom using monuments for cover. She might have tried, for better or for worse, if there was at least a small chance Robert Collins would follow. But the wind was blowing once again. Robert was oblivious to danger, content to leave his fate in the hands of an imaginary supernatural entity who read the The National Enquirer.

  “So much to do,” Hashilli said. “So little time. So many people want to interfere.” He marched them to the front of the Maytubby bonehouse, and tapped on the door with the barrel of his pistol.

  “Metal door,” Hashilli said. “Keeps out grave robbers and salesmen.” He tapped the door again. “Avon calling.”

  Hashilli fished a key ring from his pocket and sorted through it with one hand while he held the pistol in the other.

  “Skeleton key. Perfect for a bonehouse.”

  The tumblers inside the lock fell into place with a snap. The door squeaked and sagged on its hinges as Hashilli pulled it open. He ordered Robert and Sarah into the musty dark interior, slipped the pistol into his belt, and used both hands to shove the door closed.


  “My ancestors will keep you entertained,” Hashilli said. “They don’t get many visitors.”

  Sarah and Robert stood quietly listening to their captor’s footsteps recede while their eyes adjusted to the darkness. Dim, reflected sunlight filtered in through rectangular ventilation slits that circumscribed the building at the junction of the walls and roof.

  “Out of one prison and into another.” Robert ran his fingers over the oxidized brick walls around the metal door. He carefully selected several bricks and rapped his knuckles on each of them four times. If there was logic to the pattern, Sarah could not see it.

  He cupped his hands around his ears trying to enhance the sounds of circulating air. “Baffled.” He considered the word for a few seconds. “The wind can’t help me here.”

  “It’ll be pitch black when the sun sets.” Sarah showed Robert her shoulder bag. “Hashilli must have important things on his mind,” she said, “Or he wouldn’t have let me keep it.” She reached inside the bag, retrieved a small LCD flashlight and handed it to Robert.

  “No knives or guns,” she said, “but I have a cell phone.” She walked the perimeter of their little prison. She waved the phone around like a fairy’s wand. She held it as high as her arm would extend and as close to the ventilation slits as she could reach, but she had no bars.

  “A dead zone,” she said. “No pun intended.”

  Robert had no interest in the telephone, but the flashlight was another matter. He shined the intense blue-white beam onto a series of yard-long rectangular boxes that lined the wall opposite the door.

  “Bone boxes,” Sarah told him even though he hadn’t asked. “And if we’re lucky, maybe a means of escape.”

  The older bone boxes had been lacquered, but the more recent ones were painted various shades of green. A shower of paint flakes fell as Sarah lifted the uppermost box and set it in the center of the sandstone floor. She removed the lid without difficulty, blew off a cloud of dust, and held it in front of her chest like a panhandler’s sign. Robert’s light illuminated a name spelled out in crudely carved letters.

  “Timothy.” He directed the beam of light over the skeletal remains of the Maytubby ancestor.

  “Let’s see what toys Timothy’s ghost finds amusing.” Sarah reached into the box and removed a hand full of ribs, a femur, an ulna, and several vertebrae.

  Robert took two steps back, but he kept his light trained on the box’s interior.

  “No grave goods,” Sarah told him. “Maybe this Maytubby didn’t have any hobbies.” She returned Timothy’s bones to their container, and shoved it aside.

  Even in the dim light she could see Robert’s jaw muscles were clenching to the point of spasm. How close was he to the breaking point? What would a panicked schizophrenic do? Her only frame of reference was a 100 level psych course at UNM and a few movies she wished she hadn’t seen. Psycho, The Silence of the Lambs, The Collector. She was ashamed of having seen The Hills Have Eyes, parts I and II, but maybe she should have paid closer attention.

  “Bring me another box.” She’d involve Robert more in the escape attempt. Take his mind off of their desperate situation. “Be careful not to drop the light.”

  Robert looked the bone boxes over as if he were selecting a complicated reference volume from a library bookshelf.

  “Loved ones leave things with their dead,” Sarah told him. “Things they treasured in life. If you don’t believe me, ask the wind.”

  Robert cocked his head at an odd angle, like a dog listening to a curious sound beyond the range of human hearing. When a gust of wind blew leaves against the outside of the bonehouse, the tension evaporated from his face. His shoulders relaxed. His knees bent slightly. He lifted another box off of the stack and set it in front of Sarah. The name on this one was Helema.

  Over the next hour, the two prisoners went through painted boxes with more or less conventional names, like Tom, John, Lizbeth, Amantha, Randolph, and Suzan. They also opened older lacquered boxes with more exotic names like Talako, Masheli, Nakui, Hanan, and Sinti.

  Grave goods had been placed in all of the old boxes and in at least half the modern ones. Sarah found pouches of tobacco, packs of cigarettes, amulet bags, a jar of pickles, a fishing pole with an assortment of lures, and a collection of hand carved wooden animals stored in a felt bag along with a folding knife.

  “Sinti was a woodcarver.” Sarah opened the knife and evaluated its blade. “Not much good as a weapon.” She handed it to Robert and told him to work on the doorframe. The hinges were imbedded between a double layer of brick. If they could uncover those, it would be a simple matter to escape.

  The Inn & Out Motel was located half way between the State Capitol building and the Oklahoma City Zoo. Not one of Hashilli’s profitable enterprises, but a handy place to commit murder.

  His Seminole persona, Mr. Niilhaasi, bought the Inn & Out with money diverted from the Bureau of Indian Affairs. A place where state legislators could meet with troubled youth. Funding dried up long ago, but the meetings were going strong. Fifty dollars for a half and half. More kinky interchanges were negotiable. Rooms charged separately—no checks or credit cards thank you.

  Hashilli shape-shifted into Mr. Niilhaasi as he pulled his SUV into the motel parking lot. A diminutive Vietnamese woman greeted him as soon as he opened the door.

  “Bi’ch Pham,” he said. “Always a pleasure.”

  “Mr. Niilhaasi.”

  His fingers turned cold when Bi’ch gave them a light squeeze. She waved her French manicured hand in front of him.

  “Like my new rings?”

  His eyes dropped to the shadow of Bi’ch Pham’s hand on the macadam of the parking lot. It twisted like a deadly Asian snake.

  “Four rings. All jade. Like my name. You remember?”

  She’d told Mr. Niilhaasi the meaning of her name the day he hired her. “Pronounced Bik, not bitch. Means jade. Very pretty name.”

  He’d never forget. When Bi’ch moved her hand closer, Mr. Niilhaasi stepped back. If she touched him with that hand again he’d freeze solid. Bi’ch Pham had killed men with that hand. She hid single-edged razor blades in her hair, shuriken throwing stars in her bra, and derringers in places he didn’t want to think about.

  “Very nice, Bi’ch.” Looking at the rings was better than looking into her eyes.

  “You got Chickasaw tags, Mr. Niilhaasi.” She recited the number. He should have changed them when he left the cemetery. Bi’ch Pham noticed everything.

  “I need a room,” he said. “For at least an hour; two hours would be better.”

  She made a sound that Mr. Niilhaasi translated loosely as: “Tsk-tsk.”

  She pointed to the yellow crime scene tape across a nearby doorway. “Police closed number seven earlier today. Toilet stopped up in number four. You need toilet for your date Mr. Niihaasi?”

  He stifled the urge to explain. “No toilet necessary.” He walked into the motel office and wrote Sarah Bible’s name into the register, exactly the way she wrote it when she signed in at Flanders.

  More perfect than necessary. The police would never run the signature past a handwriting expert. Not after they found Sarah’s body in room four, strangled by her schizophrenic lover who she broke out of a mental hospital earlier the same day.

  Bi’ch Pham turned her back while Mr. Niilhaasi opened the motel safe and removed a baggie of his spirit powder. She pretended not to notice the yellow powder in the safe, stored right beside her vials of crack and bindles of heroine.

  Mr. Niilhaasi didn’t have to pay his motel manager. She lived off of drug sales, cash room rentals, and . . . “Bi’ch, do you have any video cameras working in room four?”

  “Why Mr. Niilhaasi, you think I’d do something like that to you?”

  He’d give the place a thorough check before he dragged his unconscious victims into the room.

  Sarah had expected the mortar between the bricks to crumble free without much effort, but after two hours
Robert had only removed three bricks. No sign of the hinges, and the LCD flashlight was losing its intensity.

  The wind whispered to Robert through the spaces where the bricks had been removed. She was free with advice, but none of it was useful.

  “The wind says we’d better think of something fast,” he told Sarah. “Doctor Moon will be back soon.”

  Sarah busied herself looking through more bone boxes. “Maybe you could ask her to save her breath until she has enough to blow the roof off of this place.”

  Her cynicism was wasted on Robert Collins. “No good—it’s way too sturdy.”

  “Maybe if it were made of sticks or straw,” she said.

  “Yes, that would make it easier.” If Robert had heard the story of the three little pigs, it hadn’t made much of an impression.

  The blade of the folding knife broke just as the fourth brick was loose enough to tease out of its recess.

  “Bad luck,” said Robert. “I just uncovered the edge of the top hinge.

  Perhaps Sarah could have found another folding knife if they had just a little longer. Perhaps Robert could have removed enough brick to loosen the hinges and dislodge the iron door. If things had worked out differently, Robert and Sarah might have escaped, retrieved the missing paper they sought, and taken that evidence to the police.

  Hashilli knocked on the metal door and said, “Avon calling.”

  Still not funny. Sarah turned her flashlight off when his key rattled in the lock. The crescent moon over Hashilli’s shoulder provided enough light to make his pistol look big and dangerous, but not enough to illuminate the dark interior of the bonehouse.

  “Step where I can see you.” He pointed to the spot where he wanted them to stand with his left hand. It was closed into a tight fist.

  Nerves, Sarah wondered, or is he holding something?

  Robert took two paces out of the deepest shadows and stood between Sarah and the muzzle of Hashilli’s gun.

  “Where’s the girl?” Hashilli scanned the darkness with a roll of his eyes, but he held his head and his weapon steady, giving no indication his attention was divided.

  He tried to repeat his question, but a sudden gust of wind blew leaves and cottonwood seed around his head and into his face. Hashilli squinted his eyes and tightened his lips against the airborne particulates.

  Sarah stepped from the shadows holding a Maytubby leg bone over her shoulder like an executioner’s axe. She aimed for Hashilli’s forearm, halfway between his elbow and his gun. She swung.

  The bone moved two inches over Robert’s head so fast its back draft disturbed his hair. A satisfying snap accompanied its impact. Hashilli cried out. He pulled his injured wrist against his body, but he didn’t drop his pistol.

  Sarah was left holding a brittle dagger shaped bone fragment. Hashilli was injured and angry, but not disabled or disarmed. He turned toward her. He extended his left hand and opened it revealing a clump of light colored dust.

  “A little powder for your face.” He adjusted the position of his outstretched hand and estimated the distance to his target.

  Sarah remembered the yellow dust on Victoria Tiger’s coffee table. She remembered Robert’s account of Doctor Moon rendering his victim unconscious with a handful of yellow powder.

  Hashilli filled his lungs with the thick musty air of the Maytubby bonehouse.

  Would holding her breath do Sarah any good? Should she close her eyes?

  Robert stepped in front of her just as Hashilli blew the cloud of dust in her direction. The powder coated Robert’s face and hair. It reflected and intensified the dim light of the crescent moon.

  Fairy dust.

  Hashilli waited for something more to happen. Sarah could almost see his lips move as he counted seconds. One thousand one all the way to one thousand forty. Plenty of time for her to find one of the bricks Robert had dislodged from the bonehouse wall.

  “What . . . .” Hashilli sniffed the residue of powder remaining on the palm of his left hand.

  Sarah stepped forward and clubbed him with her brick—not nearly hard enough. She might not get a second chance. Hashilli staggered backward and leveled his pistol at her.

  Sarah threw her brick, a tenth of a second before he pulled the trigger. Her missile eclipsed the pistol’s muzzle flash and absorbed the momentum of the slug. Ricocheting fragments stung Sarah’s face but they did not have the power to kill.

  She stepped back into the shadows and went down on her hands and knees. There were three more bricks on the bonehouse floor. She had to find one of them before Hashilli filled the air with bullets, but her eyes needed time to recover from the muzzle flash.

  There. The sharp corner of a brick dug into her shin. It would cause a bruise if she lived long enough. She gripped brick with her right hand. She’d throw it harder this time, if he didn’t kill her first.

  The pitch was already in motion as she rose to her feet. Her eyes had partially adjusted to the darkness. Hashilli stood with his back to the door holding his pistol in a double handed marksman’s grip. He couldn’t miss from this range.

  A shadow moved beside Sarah. One of the Maytubby ghosts? No, it was Robert. Something shiny in his hand—her flashlight. Robert depressed the switch and covered Hashilli’s eyes with a yellow circle of light. The batteries were low, but the flashlight did it’s trick. Hashilli’s second shot went wild. Sarah’s second brick did not.

  It made a satisfying thud when it struck Hashilli’s forehead. He made another satisfying thud when he collapsed onto the bonehouse floor.

  Robert kept the flashlight trained on Hashilli’s face.

  Sarah asked him, “Do you think I throw like a girl?”

  “A really mean girl,” Robert said.

  Hashilli lay motionless. Sarah nudged his body with her foot, a little harder than necessary.

  “You bastard!” The words satisfied Sarah, even though Hashilli couldn’t hear them. She poked the unconscious man with the toe of her shoe again. Some people might call the second nudge a kick.

  “Damn bastard!” Sarah’s vocabulary was sorely lacking in the expletive department, so she turned her attention to Robert.

  “Why didn’t Dr. Moon’s magic powder knock you out?”

  “I don’t have a clue.” Robert used his shirttail to wipe the yellow powder from his face. He collected a bit of the dust on his fingertips and brushed them with his tongue. “Moldy,” he said, “with a bitter under taste.”

  Sarah guessed the powder was a combination of spores from the puffballs that grew in the Indian Cemetery combined with pollen from Moonflowers.

  “I feel different,” Robert said.

  He looked different too—sharp eyes, erect posture. Not a sign of the confusion that dominated his persona ever since his antipsychotic meds had begun to wear off.

  Sarah collected Hashilli’s pistol. She found a set of keys and a billfold in his pockets. She put everything in her purse and told Robert it was time to finish what they had started.

  She repositioned Hashilli on the bonehouse floor, making certain his pulse was strong and his airway open.

  “We’ll turn him over to the police,” she said, “As soon as we collect the evidence you hid in the dead man’s pocket.”

  “Shouldn’t we just shoot him now?”

  Sarah opened her shoulder bag and showed Robert the gun. “Think you can do it?”

  His right hand moved toward the open purse and then veered away as if had fallen under the influence of a powerful magnet.

  “I guess not,” he admitted.

  “I didn’t think so,” said Sarah. “I’d be disappointed if you could.”

  They settled for locking Hashilli inside his family crypt. Sarah knew from personal experience it made a very effective prison. But would it hold him until she and Robert did what they had to do?