Shade and the Skinwalkers

by Marilyn Peake

Annie’s response: “Wow, I wish I could stay longer. I’d like to see that!”

  I threw my arms around her and gave her the warmest hug. Best friends are the most amazing people in the entire world.

  After we cried and hugged, I realized I ought to call Moonjava about the animals out in the desert, ask him if I should report them to an authority or anything.

  I could tell I’d woken Moonjava up. He sounded groggy. That all changed when I told him what I’d seen. He said, “Those suckers carry rabies and swine tuberculosis. We’re supposed to shoot ’em when we see ’em. I’ll get my gun! Meet you there.”

  Wait. What? That is not what I had wanted. I was exhausted.

  I told Annie what was happening. I said, “You should stay here;” but she insisted on going with me. At that exact moment, Kai walked in and insisted on going with me as well.

  I sent a group text to everyone who had been with us when Moonjava had shot at the guy with the mountain lion. I needed support. Safety in numbers, right? Starshine, Violet Skye, Wolf Song and Science all agreed to meet at my house. Science volunteered to pick everyone up in his jeep.

  As soon as we heard the jeep screech onto the road that winds through our trailer park, I ran outside with Kai and Annie.

  It wasn’t the safest thing, all of us piling into the jeep, but we didn’t feel we had much of a choice. I figured on the way back some of us could ride with Moonjava.

  As we pulled up to the willow tree, we saw the shadowy hulking shape of Moonjava’s truck. Killing the motor of his jeep and turning off the lights, Science warned us to be careful because Moonjava might not see us in the dark and he had a gun.

  Wolf Song joked. “Yes, mom.”

  The rest of us were too nervous to find it funny.

  The feral pigs were still making their ungodly squeals. The mountain lion had been silenced.

  As a sliver of moon peeked out from behind clouds, light glinted off something. It was Moonjava’s gun. He hadn’t waited for us.

  We all watched in horror as he moved closer and closer to the feral pigs, stalking them, searching no doubt for the perfect place to gun them down one after the other in rapid succession.

  At that exact moment, something very strange happened.

  We heard the assault rifle go off: the repetitive discharging of bullets, the noise like that of a jackhammer. Simultaneously, we saw a man rise up out of the largest pig, as though crawling right out of its skin. Oh my God, it was my Biology teacher! Freaking Mr. Mhavryck Taylor! A split second later, his head exploded as bullets tore through it.

  Starshine shrieked. I wanted to tell her to be quiet, but my focus completely narrowed to the scene in front of me.

  A woman leapt out of the second pig’s skin and went tearing off across the desert.

  Moonjava dropped his gun to his side. He stood frozen to the spot.

  Violet yelled, “Moonjava! We’re all here! We’re coming over. Don’t shoot!”

  Moonjava whipped around. Running toward us, he said, “Did you see that? Did you see it? What did you see?”

  When we told him what we’d seen, Moonjava threw his head back. He bellowed at the moon. Then he said, “I killed a man! I blew his head to pieces. My eyes must have played tricks on me. I didn’t see him. I only saw the pigs ... and what was left of the lion. That’s it. Where did those people come from?”

  Kai found her voice and self-confidence. She said, “I’ll tell you what you saw.”

  Out there in the cold desert night, the group learned what Annie, Kai and I already knew. Shapeshifters walked among us. And among those were the vile and evil skinwalkers. Moonjava had killed one of the latter. He had also killed the Biology teacher.

  CHAPTER 25

  In the wee hours of the morning, Moonjava texted everyone in our group that did most of the work on the newspaper and forum. Kai’s and my cell phone buzzed at the same time, waking us up. Annie mumbled in her sleep and rolled over. I was glad Moonjava had included Kai; it meant she was accepted as part of our group, even though she was homeschooled. The text had also been sent to: Starshine, Violet Skye, Wolf Song, Luke, Jane, Mark Bahazhoni, Gail Dickerson, Felix Baker and Lin Zhao—in other words, our entire group.

  The text started out with these words: URGENT!! URGENT!! URGENT!! Those words in all caps with all those exclamation points certainly got our attention. I felt really scared. All kinds of thoughts raced through my mind. Having seen what the skinwalkers are capable of, the fear that kept looping through my brain was that they were after Moonjava. My second thought was more rooted in the pragmatic, obvious world: the police were after Moonjava for having murdered the high school Biology teacher. He had shot Mr. Taylor in his human form. The police would no doubt investigate the murder once the body was found and reported.

  Moonjava’s message continued on to say: i need to meet with all of u later 2day 12:00 noon my house. can u b there? URGENT!! URGENT!! URGENT!!

  I texted back to Moonjava: can annie come along?

  He texted back: can you trust her with your life?

  Well, that was ominous. With my life? Sure, I guess so. In a way, Annie had trusted me with hers. She trusted me and Kai enough to help her out when she was at her lowest, most desperate point. And she’d seen me completely possessed, flying into uncontrollable rage, and went on accepting me unconditionally. I texted back: yes, absolutely.

  Moonjava replied: ok bring her along then.

  Setting my alarm for 10:00, I thought I’d never fall back to sleep, but I did. I was bone-tired and my brain was fried.

  The next morning, the alarm woke all of us. I told Annie what was going on. She said she totally wanted to go with us.

  As soon as I stepped out of my bedroom, I saw my mom. Hunched over a cup of coffee at the kitchen counter, she looked like death warmed over. Her eyes were bloodshot. It looked like she’d been crying.

  I wasn’t sure how to handle this. I still felt incredibly pissed off at her for drinking, but I also felt ashamed of the way I’d behaved.

  We both started talking at the same time. I told my mom, “You go first.”

  She said, “I’m really sorry, Shade. I’m still freaked out by the idea of ghosts. I can’t believe they’re real. I want to pretend none of that happened last night.”

  I took a deep breath.

  I wanted to scream at her: You’re afraid of ghosts? Look what I have to deal with! Shapeshifters, skinwalkers, faeries, murders! Yeah, ugly, gruesome murders! And saving ghosts who can’t move on into the afterlife until I personally solve their murders and help them out! I’d give anything to have a mother I could lean on! But, instead, I have a mom who’s a crybaby, who turns to booze and drugs every time life gets freaky. Just grow up already! Just grow up!

  Instead, I said, “I’m sorry, too. I shouldn’t have lost my temper. Sometimes it’s hard, though, mom, seeing you wrecking your life with alcohol and drugs. Are you OK now? Can you stay sober and just deal with things? Sometimes reality takes weird twists and turns and you just have to accept where it goes.”

  A glimmer of hope flickered in my mom’s eyes. Offering me a faint smile, she said, “You’re very mature for your age. I’m proud of you, Shade. Thanks.”

  Yup. That’s me. The parent to my parent. I just said, “No problem.”

  Then I went off to the bathroom to take a shower. Warm water and soap never felt so good. Layers of misery, horror and sadness sloughed off me in the warm, scented mist and disappeared down the drain.

  When it was time to leave for Moonjava’s, I forced myself to hug my mom. I had no idea what was in store for me. Just in case the skinwalkers were after all of us who’d been with Moonjava when he’d shot Mr. Taylor and this was the last time my mom would ever see me alive, I wanted things to end well between us.

  CHAPTER 26

  I could never have predicted what the meeting at Moonjava’s would be like. Maybe Kai could have, but not me.

  Moonjava lived in an unusual place: a cave that had been transf
ormed into a home. I wasn’t clear if it was a real cave or if a builder had just made it look that way; but, no matter what, it was unusual and surreal. The walls looked exactly like the inside of a cave. There were even stalactites and stalagmites, but there were also normal rooms.

  I rang the bell next to a door that reminded me of one of the hobbit houses in The Lord of the Rings: round, painted bright blue, with a doorknob right in the center. It was set into a rock wall.

  Moonjava opened the door and invited us in.

  As we stepped into the front hallway, we basically stepped into a cave furnished and decorated for modern humans. The walls were stone; the floor plan was open. The hallway opened up into a large room with a kitchen area and a living room. Pots and pans dangled above a granite countertop next to a modern stove with black cast iron burners. In the living room, couches formed an L around a Persian rug. Framed oil paintings and photographs hung on the stone walls and flames flickered in a massive fireplace.

  Off in the distance, I heard a waterfall and birds shrieking and flapping their wings. I wanted to explore, but Moonjava hurried us along to his room. He said, “C’mon, c’mon, we need to talk.”

  Moonjava’s room was at least as large as the living room. Shelves had been carved into the walls. Three of the walls were completely filled with books. A king-size bed jutted out from the fourth wall. Next to it: a wooden desk with a large computer screen on top and two computers blinking away beneath it. The rest of the room held overstuffed chairs and a couch.

  Moonjava said, “Sit down. Make yourselves comfortable.” He seemed agitated.

  Pacing around the room, he said, “I have something to show you. But, first, I need all of you to swear this remains secret, that only our group ever hears of this, that what I’m about to show you doesn’t ever leave this room.”

  We all mumbled some kind of agreement. We just wanted him to get on with it.

  Seconds later, Moonjava’s bones started cracking and bending with a sickening, horrifying sound. I thought at first that he had some kind of debilitating illness, that he would soon be dead and he wanted us to know. Moonjava moaned and growled through an appalling transformation.

  Kai grabbed my hand and then Annie’s. She said, “I know what this is. Don’t be afraid of it. He’ll be OK. I’ve seen my mom and aunt do this a bazillion times.”

  Bones breaking and rebuilding under his skin, Moonjava shifted into the form of a Siberian Husky, then into the shape of a cat, then back to his human form.

  No one moved.

  When he returned to normal, Moonjava said, “I’m a shapeshifter.”

  Kai leaned over and whispered in my ear, “No kidding, Captain Obvious.” I don’t know how she found humor in any of this. Just another day in Kai’s world, I supposed.

  My hands were shaking. My heart was racing so fast, I thought it would explode. I knew shapeshifters and skinwalkers were real. I’d seen them with my own eyes. But to think that someone I’d known—another student at my high school, a friend, a fellow member of the newspaper club, for God’s sake—was one of them made me physically ill. It pulled the rug out from under me. I doubted everything I’d ever known. Anybody could be anything other than what I’d believed them to be. Whatever comfort I’d ever found in the real world had been yanked away, set on fire, turned to ash.

  Moonjava looked around the room. I followed his gaze. Everyone except Kai looked exactly how I felt: shocked to their core.

  Finally, he said, “I had to show you what I am. You know what happened to Mr. Taylor last night, right? You saw it with your own eyes. He was a skinwalker. He and his group have done unspeakable things to my people.” I thought of what they’d done to Kai’s mom, to Kai’s aunt. He continued, “My people have cremated him, sent him off to the afterlife. Word of the shooting brought all the vermin out to try and claim his body before we could dispose of it. We rounded a whole lot of them up. The Shapeshifter Council’s going to try them in their court for all the terrible things they’ve done. There will be no mercy for those found guilty.”

  Walking over to Kai and placing his hands on her shoulders, he said, “I’ve been aware of you before I ever met you. I knew there were shapeshifters in your family. All of us need to unite, to work together now, to get rid of the skinwalkers once and for all. I’ve been told one of the skinwalkers rounded up was your mom’s boyfriend. I’m sorry.”

  Kai started sobbing. Pulling herself together, she said, “Don’t be sorry. He was a monster.” I’m sure she felt relieved.

  Moonjava looked away. Addressing all of us, he said, “I have something else to show you.” Like a pied piper, he led us out of his bedroom, through his massive house and out a back door. We stepped into a cactus garden surrounded on three sides by desert willows and on the other, a massive rock wall. Against that wall, cages of animals were stacked up. Moonjava said, “Some of you have seen these before. At the UFO Festival, in the tent. It took us a long time, but we finally rounded up Bobby Huffman’s uncle, the creep who kept these caged animals and abused his nephew. Bobby was a good guy ... and a shapeshifter. His uncle let him think he’d been abducted and operated on by aliens from outer space when actually his skinwalker friends had experimented on him when he was in animal form—mostly just to violate taboos against family, to push against the boundaries of evil. I want you all to witness the freeing of shapeshifters he kept as pets for his own amusement.”

  With that, he unlocked and opened one cage after the other. I scanned all of them until I found what I was looking for: the raccoon with human hands and fingernails painted blue with green spots. I watched as Moonjava set it free. As it went running off through the willow trees, I realized I’d probably never know who it was. I desperately wanted to know, but it fled in its animal form.

  After all the shifters went running off, Moonjava said, “This does not go into the newspaper ever. I just wanted you all to know. We’re reclaiming this area from the skinwalkers, cleaning out the vermin. And the black-and-white striped coon cat you saw, the one half my size? That was Mr. Ashkii, the Newspaper Club mentor that Ms. Bell replaced after he mysteriously went missing. He’s back now. We’ll see if he decides to show up at the high school or not. It might be a little too difficult for him to explain his long absence. After he didn’t show up at school or call in sick for a few days, a couple of teachers had gone out to his home to check up on him. A body was found in the cage where he’d been keeping a lion, the cage door was open, and the lion was gone. The face had been completely mauled and the body torn apart. Everyone just assumed it was Mr. Ashkii. Turns out it wasn’t. You guys are fantastic journalists. You tried to report this story with the information you had. You knew you were on to something. Now you know what.”

  CHAPTER 27

  The world is full of secrets. I certainly have many. I thank my lucky stars I have a close group of friends with whom I’ve shared my most intimate and crazy ones.

  After our meeting at Moonjava’s, Kai and Annie and I had long conversations about it. Kai held Annie’s hands and helped heal her mind when she thought she couldn’t handle it.

  Annie went home the day before Winter Break ended. Kai’s mom and aunt said a tearful goodbye a couple of days later.

  And then the world snapped back together again. Have you ever noticed that happening in your life? Events come along that violate everything you’ve ever known about reality. Smashing it to smithereens, they cut you wide open and rip your soul to shreds with the broken glass of ruined reality. Then, all of a sudden, it’s over. The world goes on as though nothing so heinous ever happened. And you shake yourself off and pretend to do the same.

  After the night in which Moonjava revealed himself and told us the skinwalkers would be dealt with, the rest of the school year was basically normal and calm. During those months, I didn’t see anyone shapeshift into another form. (Well, if you don’t count Ms. Bell buzz-cutting her hair and dying the stubble green.) I didn’t see any ghosts and my necklace stopped l
ighting up, which actually made me quite sad.

  The biggest excitement in my and Kai’s life became worrying about whether or not we’d get accepted into any of the colleges to which we’d applied. And then worrying about the possibility of actually getting accepted because we’d never lived away from home before and the kids might hate us and the work might be too hard and on and on like that.

  Right before college acceptance letters were supposed to be mailed to students, Gabriella contacted me. She asked for a video conference with me and Kai.

  Her message had nothing to do with murder suspects or criminals or shapeshifters or anything else that was disturbing or weird. She just wanted to recommend another college, a place called Ocean View College. She showed us pictures. The campus was gorgeous! Every building looked like a castle. The first building ever constructed there stood on a cliff overlooking the ocean—an image that perfectly matched the college’s name.

  Gabriella showed us their list of courses. She pointed out a possible major for me: Journalism in a Broken World. And one for Kai: Shamanism for Empaths.

  After the initial thrill of looking at the scenery and coursework, I realized Kai and I could never go there. I had a scholarship and Kai had the life insurance her mom had left her, but I doubted either of us could afford to keep up with the extra costs. The majors Gabriella had recommended that seemed so perfect for us required multiple semesters of study abroad. We’d never be able to afford it.

  I expressed my concerns to Gabriella. She waved her hand, as though physically dismissing our worries. She said, “I know someone there. I’m sure we can get those costs covered for both of you.”

  So Kai and I applied. And we heard back that we’d been accepted one week later! We also got into most of the other places we’d applied, but nothing could beat Ocean View College. I had more dreams of that place than I can count, waiting to hear whether or not I’d been accepted.

  Graduation was a happy day, the kind of day that had been all too rare in my life.