It was just a cat. She had risked her life for it. It seemed nuts, but then I didn’t have the power to heal. Maybe she wanted to do for this animal what she’d done for the wolf.
When I finally reached Kai, out of breath and pissed that she’d put us in danger, I noticed something really weird about that cat. It had a red arrow on its head. It looked like the same animal Kai had been petting outside her house on the day she’d gotten the award from the police.
I thought I was hallucinating again. An excruciating headache nearly split my skull in two. At that exact moment, the ghost of a woman with an arrowhead shape at the top of her hair appeared next to Kai. She wasn’t as fully formed as Brandon or his family or the little girl in the cave had been. She didn’t have any color. She looked the way ghosts always look in the movies: thin, transparent, basically white smoke in the form of a person.
She put her arms around Kai and held her close. Cradling the cat, Kai leaned into her shape as best she could and sobbed. The ghost turned to me and said, “I’m Kai’s Aunt Doli. I’ve watched over her since she was a little girl. Her mom—my sister—can’t always do that. She’s attracted to trouble. You have to help her now. Can you do that?”
I shook my head yes. I had no idea if I meant it. I wondered what happened if you broke your promise to a ghost.
She added, “I’ll leave it to Kai to explain to you what you just saw. There is evil here that I can no longer fight.”
Blip! She was gone.
Kai lost her balance and fell, dropping the cat. Her shirt was covered in blood from its wounds. Scrambling up into a sitting position, she wrapped her arms around her knees and wept. I sat beside her. And waited. I didn’t know what to do.
When Kai finally wiped the tears off her face, she said, “I sense something here, Shade. You have to dive into that water and see who’s waiting for you there. It’s another spirit, Shade—not my aunt. Whatever they have to say, it’s important.”
I felt this, too. A kind of draw. A pulling at my heartstrings, yanking me toward the water with as much strength as if someone was pulling my hair.
I hit the water at an awkward angle. My shoulder burned from hitting with so much force. I sank deeper and deeper until I reached a ledge where something glowed.
It was the face of a young Navajo boy. He had color, more features than the wispy shape of the ghost claiming to be Kai’s aunt. Dark brown hair floated around his face like a halo. He opened his mouth. Weeds swam out across his tongue. He choked, his face purpling and straining. Finally, he coughed out a clump of mud and a long string of weeds. He said, “Help me!” his words garbled by bubbles.
Then he disappeared and his light with him.
I hadn’t really thought about the fact that I hadn’t needed to breathe. Suddenly, I was alone in dark water, my lungs crushed with the need for oxygen. I struggled to swim upwards, flailing with my arms. Something wrapped around my leg like a snake, then slithered off.
When I broke through the water’s surface, Kai reached out a hand and helped drag my sorry body onto land. Exhausted from lack of sleep, my nervous system ravaged by terror, my eyes stinging from the water, I crawled out onto the shore. I just lay there. I put my arms under my head and sobbed.
Kai sat beside me, obviously not knowing what to say. Or maybe she was comfortable supporting me without words. I would have been unnerved had our roles been reversed.
Finally, my physical strength and emotions completely drained, I sat up and gazed out at the water and the cliff rearing up behind it. I felt too exhausted to hike back to the car.
Kai said, “I have something to tell you. Maybe you already guessed it, I don’t know.”
I said, “Kai, I’m bone-tired. Don’t beat around the bush. Just tell me.”
She started with a question. “You see ghosts, right?”
I rubbed my head. The headache was fading, but it wasn’t gone. I said, “Yeah. Actually, Kai, I just saw the ghost of a little boy under the water here. I’m kind of freaked out. He said, ‘Help me!’ but then disappeared.”
Kai said, “I knew it! I knew there was something dark and sinister under that water. I think I was drawn here because my aunt was in trouble; but once we got here, I sensed powerful evil in this spot—evil that’s been here for quite some time.”
I didn’t understand at all about Kai’s aunt. As softly and gently as possible, I asked, “Kai, why did your aunt show up here? When ... and how ... did she die?”
Tears poured down Kai’s face. She started to sob again, then got herself under control. She looked over at me and asked, “You know how that cougar changed into a man?”
Oh. My. God. We’d had the same hallucination. I said, “Your mind must have played the same trick on you...”
Kai said, “Do you believe the ghosts you see are real?”
I said, “Yes, of course.”
She asked, “Why do you believe they’re real?”
I had to think about that. “I don’t know. I just do.”
Kai said, “No one does anything or believes anything without a reason, even if they think they do. There’s always a reason.”
I stared out at the water—so alive with color, it looked like rippled cloth, the backdrop to a play. The actors were the little ghost boy and Kai’s aunt. I thought about Brandon and his family. I said, “Because they’ve actually made things happen that I could see and verify. Brandon contacted me through a necklace he’d left in my bedroom when he lived there. It functioned like an amulet. It had a large blue gem on a silver chain. It was beautiful. It glowed when he wanted to reach me. He made words appear on the blue gem when he needed to tell me something specific. All I had to do to contact him was to call his name into the gem. And he helped me with a lot of things, including figuring out what happened to Annie and the other missing girls.”
Kai said, “What if you’d never believed in the amulet? What if you’d thrown away the necklace and refused to interact with Brandon’s ghost?”
I thought about that. Knowing Brandon, he would have pulled my hair or some other immature thing until I paid attention to him.
Kai said, “If you had refused to acknowledge his existence, he would never have existed in your mind and your view of the universe, right?”
My head hurt. I couldn’t think this through right then. I said, “I guess so.”
Kai said, “You’re going to need to open your mind again. That man you saw changing from a cougar into his human form and running off? That’s my mom’s boyfriend. And that black cat with the red arrow shape on its head? That was my Aunt Doli.” She wiped away her tears. “There’s a huge difference between them. My aunt was a shapeshifter. She usually changed into that cat form when she shifted. But my mom’s boyfriend? He’s a skinwalker. Shapeshifters use good magic; skinwalkers use evil magic. Skinwalkers develop their magical powers by crossing the line over and over again into things that are taboo.” She shivered. “Even in human form, my mom’s boyfriend is dangerous. He’s a really bad man.”
Kai’s eyes glazed over. Emotionally, she disappeared for a few minutes.
It was scary to see her like that. And the stuff she told me was a lot to take in.
Finally, Kai turned to me. She said, “You’re going to have to accept this. I need your help, Shade. Recently, a lot of skinwalkers have come into this area to live. It’s like they’re trying to hide in plain sight. Living in a place where the local people blame abductions and murders on aliens from outer space is ideal. Plus stuff happens out in the desert that people just write off as quirky. All these people raising wild animals out here? Some of those animals are shapeshifters being abused by skinwalkers or by non-magical people trying to control them. Some are skinwalkers being abused by other skinwalkers, all masquerading as trainers and animals. Everyone believes the act. People just smile and comment on the quirkiness of desert life.”
That guy out in the desert where the UFO had been spotted ... What had he said to the mountain lion he’d been
whipping? I racked my brain to remember. “Change back, Freddy! Change back!” That’s what he had said. It seemed so odd at the time. And those animals in the cages inside the tent where we last saw Bobby Huffman ... The raccoon with human hands and painted nails...
My God, why did we move here? What had I stumbled into?
I said, “I’m not ready for this, Kai. But I believe you.”
Kai said, “No one’s ever ready. It just happens. And, then, there you are.”
I said, “Give me time. I want to help you. I really do. But I need time.”
Kai smiled. She said, “Well, let’s get you home. You’re shivering. You need to get into some dry clothes. I think I have a blanket in the truck you can wrap around yourself for the drive home.”
Something bothered me. I asked, “Kai, are you a shapeshifter?”
She said, “No. I always wished I was. I’m an empath and a healer. That’s the extent of my powers. You’re a ghost whisperer. That’s your power. We’re all unique.”
Kai picked up the ruined body of the cat with the arrow shape on its head, all matted and bloody now. She carried it back to her truck as carefully as one carries a baby, supporting its head and tiny legs.
At the truck, Kai pulled two blankets out of the back, both woolen and thick and embroidered with Navajo symbols. She placed one on a back seat. She set the cat down on it and wrapped it up by folding the edges of the blanket around it. She gave the other one to me.
Up in the front passenger seat, I wrapped the blanket around me and tucked it under my chin. I still shivered the entire trip home.
I decided to check my cell phone to see if I could figure out what creepy Mr. Mhavryck had gotten into on my phone. I didn’t see anything in my search. Had he maybe copied my contacts list? Suddenly, I remembered the photos I’d taken in the tent with Bobby Huffman. I checked. All my photos had been deleted—every single one of them! I thought maybe I’d made a mistake. I got out of my photos. Checked again. Turned my phone off and back on again. There wasn’t a single photo. They’d all been deleted. I was so glad I had downloaded all the photos from my cell phone into my computer before I’d written my article about the UFO Festival. At least I had copies. But I didn’t want anyone else having them unless I specifically decided to share the photos with them.
A stabbing headache nearly ripped my brain apart. I saw flashes of memories. The animals floating around inside all those jars in the Biology classroom. The way their eyes appeared to dart around. The bear heart that looked like it was beating. The way Mhavryck’s eyes took on a greenish glint. How his features sometimes looked like an animal’s. He had to be a skinwalker. I was sure of it. If he was capable of shifting into animal form, and I was sure now that he was, he was too weird and gave off too many evil vibes to be an innocent shapeshifter.
Other horrible possibilities occurred to me. What if the animals in his jars were shapeshifters, murdered in the same way that Kai’s aunt had been killed by her mom’s boyfriend? Or what if they were floating around alive, but under some kind of magical spell? Was that even possible?
I shared my thoughts with Kai.
She said, “Mr. Mhavryck Taylor?”
I’d only described him to her as “my Biology teacher.” I said, “Yes...”
She said, “Yeah, he’s a skinwalker. He’s part of the local group. I’ve seen my mom’s boyfriend with him.”
I said, “And no one’s done anything to fire him, to keep him away from kids?”
Kai said, “Seriously? Who’s going to believe he’s a skinwalker? You can’t exactly go to a PTO or School Board meeting and say, ‘Hey, our Biology teacher changes into an animal and does bad stuff.’ No one’s going to believe that’s what he is, or that skinwalkers even exist. People see what they want to see. Shifters are pretty good at not shifting while regular people are watching them.”
I said, “We have to do something, Kai. We need to expose him.”
Kai said, “There are ways to do this. Our local shapeshifters have their own governing council and law enforcement. We should work together to bring down the skinwalkers, Shade. I have a kind of telepathy to sense evil, and you should be able to get help from the ghosts of those who have been murdered by the skinwalkers.” Her eyes filled with tears. “You could also help me stay in contact with my aunt. That would help me more than you could ever know.”
I said, “I’ll try. I once summoned Brandon’s grandmother by using a Ouija board. We could try that.”
She reached over and squeezed my hand. She said, “Thank you. Would you go with me to her funeral?”
I hadn’t thought about that. I’d seen Kai’s aunt in ghost form; but I hadn’t faced the fact that she was actually dead, gone forever from the lives of people who couldn’t see her ghost. I said, “Sure. Just let me know when it is.”
She said, “There will only be a funeral run by shapeshifters. For everyone else, she’ll just be reported missing. There’s no human body to ever be found or buried. There’s only the body of the cat. At the moment of death, a shapeshifter is locked into its final shape.”
When I got home, there was a box sitting on the kitchen counter. I ripped it open, scared to death of what might be inside. To my great relief, it was cookies from Annie’s mom. Her heavenly comfort-food cookies. And chocolate chip, my favorite. It helped comfort me on a day that had practically destroyed me, and for that I was very thankful.
CHAPTER 9
At the next Newspaper Club meeting, I decided things absolutely needed to get modernized. I’d forwarded Version 2 of my article to Ms. Bell. She came bouncing into class—pink hair filled with curls that bobbed around on her shoulders, flowered granny dress with a lace hem brushing against white leather boots. Seriously, in addition to all the other weird things going on, maybe this town also had a time travel portal, one that had opened up a gateway to the sixties and whisked Ms. Bell away to our present-day community.
She stood behind her desk and beamed at us. She said, “I want to congratulate all of you. I’ve received some amazing contributions to this month’s newspaper. Today, we’ll lay it out. I’d like to publish it by the beginning of next week—hopefully, on Monday.” She named everyone who would be getting published. She had high praise for my article and additional praise for the section by Science and the photos supplied by Wolf Song, Moonjava and everyone else in our group. She gushed, saying the article totally encapsulated life in our town. She recommended everyone read it as a clear example of excellent writing.
That made my day.
Well, at least until I found out the school’s newspaper was published only on paper and only in black-and-white. And that included the photographs!
We were all huddled around a pile of large rectangular pieces of cardboard, each about the size of a Science Fair poster. Ms. Bell tossed a manila envelope filled with printed-out copies of articles, photographs and ads that we were to arrange on the top piece of cardboard for page 1 of the newspaper.
No! No! No! No! This isn’t the sixties. We can do better than this.
A girl named Amarine spilled out the contents of the envelope. I was happy to see that my article and all the photos I’d submitted for it were in there. We’d made the front page! That gave me courage.
I grabbed one article, picture and ad at a time. I snapped photos of them—all in beautiful, luxurious color—with my cell phone. Then I wandered over to a desk in the corner of the room, fed the photos into my laptop and quickly arranged them in a way I thought worked to draw in readers.
When I was done, I walked over to the desk where everyone else was still moving around pictures and articles on cardboard, as though trying to solve some intricate puzzle.
My legs were trembling so badly, I thought I might collapse. I thought about how much good we could do if we set up a forum to find Misty. If we published photographs in color that clearly showed the details of the caged animals in the eerie tent at the UFO Festival. That gave me strength.
I sa
id, “I’d like to show you all something...”
Ms. Bell beamed at me. I guess she really liked my article. She said, “Of course. Go ahead.”
I dragged a desk over, placing it right next to the one where the paper puzzle was being sorted out. I set my laptop down and pointed to the screen. I said, “I’d like to suggest we stop publishing the newspaper on paper and publish it only online.”
Ms. Bell frowned. She said, “Not everyone at this school owns a computer, Shade. We want everyone to have access to our school news.”
I swallowed hard. I asked, “Do all the kids save their copies of the newspaper?”
Ms. Bell looked confused. She said, “I doubt it.”
I pursued my line of reasoning. “So, would you say they read the newspaper once and throw it away?”
She said, “Most likely, yes. There might be times once in a while when they cut out special articles or photographs about themselves or their friends.”
I said, “That’s so wasteful. All that paper getting thrown out over and over again. And all the money spent on publishing copies every month. If we were to publish the paper online, we only need to create one copy. Students don’t have to have home computers to read it. They’d be able to read it on a school computer or on their cell phones. And people could still make paper copies of articles or photos they like—they just need to use a computer printer for those specific pages.” I pointed to my laptop. “Look at this. Using a program for laying out newspaper pages, I’ve already created the first page.”
Everyone huddled around the desk to take a good look.
I pointed to the photograph of the raccoon that had its nails painted blue with green spots. I used the mouse to zoom in on the nails. I said, “Look at those nails! Those would never be the same in black-and-white.”
Everyone laughed except those of us who had been in the tent. But I’d made my point.
Ms. Bell ran a hand through her pink hair. She said, “Well, I like to keep an open mind. Can you do this for us? Can you set this up online?”
Shade and the Skinwalkers Page 11
