Canyon Echoes

by Miranda Nading

  “That's what happens when you sit behind a computer all day,” Kristi scolded. “You need to get out more. Experience the park.”

  “Look who's talking!” Kari laughed. “If it doesn't involve fishing, a game console or DVD player, you're not going.”

  “Please! The only reason you get out of bed is to crawl into another one with some little stud muffin.”

  “The best exercise you can get!”

  With Gracie forgotten as they launched into goading each other, she looked up to find Julie smiling at her. Though still tight with concern, her relief at Gracie's lie was almost palpable. She seemed to relax, her eyes softening again.

  Night blackened the windows, creating a mirror that reflected the room back to them. Gracie let her eyes travel over it, but as she got to the bar, she locked eyes with a man who hadn't been there earlier. Late middle aged, paunchy in the gut with his thick silver mane cut short, the man could have been anyone's grandfather, but felt like a predator. She was sure she'd seen him before, but couldn't pin down just where.

  Feeling as if she had just been given an intimate examination, she looked away. It didn't seem possible that the darkly reflective surface of the windows could allow for such close scrutiny, but she couldn't shake it. She glanced back toward the bar, moving only her eyes and found him, still watching.

  He knows you did it. The voice that spoke up was her own, yet it wasn't. It was the one she knew best, the one that always believed everyone was out to get her, jealous of the life she had built, determined to destroy it. It was a constant warning in her darkest thoughts, an alarmist that said they were scheming, planning, to take it all away from her. It was always at war with that part of her that knew who and what she was.

  No, he doesn't know anything, she thought back at it. He's just here for a drink.

  He knows you did it, he's watching you.

  Laughing, teasing each other, Gracie tried to focus on Kari and Kristi's conversation.

  You can't trust them; they hate you; you'll never be good enough for them. That dark voice spewed the word out all at once; bombarded her with the old fears.

  NO! She screamed inside her own head. They're my friends—you're not real. You're the one that wants to hurt me.

  Laughter, low and ominous. Then why did you lie to them?

  As if she could hear Gracie's inner ravings, Julie placed a comforting hand over hers, giving her an anchor to hold on to, an anchor to the real world. “I'm exhausted from the drive into the park today. Anyone else ready to head home?”

  Gracie could have kissed her. She gave her a smile and squeezed her hand to say thank you, “Count me in.”

  Kari looked back at the bar and picked up her purse. “Not me, ladies. Mamma's been a good girl for far too long. Time to get my groove thang back on track.”

  Kristi stood up and hugged first Julie, then Gracie. “I think I'm going to hang here and finish watching the game. Corny will have the TV tuned to the nature channel and it'll take an act of Congress to get him to change it.”

  “Some people's children,” Kari mumbled. She scrunched her nose at Kristi before casting a glowing smile toward Gracie, a trial run for the one she would use on the boys at the bar.

  “They must offer a class on getting laid and no one invited me to it,” Julie quipped and they walked to the door with Kristi's laughter following.

  She didn't like leaving her friends in the bar with that vulture, but couldn't figure out how get them to leave without looking suspicious. Gracie forced a weak smile and waved, as the man who had been watching her sidled up to Kari at the bar handed her a drink.

  9

  Hudson tossed the electronic book onto the bed. The murder scene in the front chapter had been dark, intimate in every detail. Far more disturbing had been the later chapters, the chapters that hinted and explored child abuse—like a wound you knew you shouldn't mess with but couldn't quite resist picking at anyway. She didn't rip the wound wide open, not at first, just teased the edges, to let you know something darker was still on its way.

  In the dim light of the kitchen, his cellphone glowed in his hand. Mike's number was punched in and waiting for the send button to be pressed. He hesitated, the pad of his thumb hovering over the green button. Mike was going to think him a fool. It was just a book, a work of fiction. Yet there was something in the writing, which suggested it might be more than just simple words on a page. He hit the button and listened to it ring on the other end. Once, twice. Unease began to grow in the pit of his stomach until his partner answered.

  When the line connected on the other end, Hudson had to pull the phone away from his ear as voices and the sound of clinking glass tried to override what he was sure sounded like a soccer game. “Need me to read you a bedtime story, buddy?”

  Relieved, Hudson laughed and shot back, “The only stories you know would be too smutty for a young man with my sensibilities.”

  “Sure. Let me know after the pigs start flying out of your ass. I want pictures.”

  “Hey, this may be nothing,” Hudson began, took a deep breath and got it out so the old man could laugh at him. “I'm reading Gracie O'Dowdy's first novel. Man, it is dark. I mean 'make you double check your deadbolts and closets before you go to bed', dark.”

  Mike didn't laugh. He excused himself from whomever he was sitting with and the noises in the background faded. “She just left the K-Bar. Recognized her from the file you gave me. Cute little thing, but she looked as if she wanted to crawl out of her own skin when she saw me watching her.”

  “We'll need more than squirrelly to bring her in for questioning,” Hudson moved to his front window, as if he could see her winding her way up to Swann Flats as she headed back to Canyon Village. The Golden Gate trestle was too far away to see anything, much less headlights pointed south.

  “Well, she's not going anywhere. We have time to get this nailed down. What about that book has you so haired up?”

  Hudson took a minute to think, trying to put his vague feelings in order and make sense of them. “There's something dark there, and I'm not talking about the story. I think this girl has some serious issues. I don't know, rage, maybe. I can't define it any better than that.”

  “It's enough that it's got your Spidey Sense tingling, Boy Ranger. Thanks for the heads up. I'm with one of her friends now. I'll let you know if she spills anything helpful.”

  Hudson hesitated before hanging up. Mike was a seasoned ranger. He had been a ranger with Hudson's father when Hudson was still in grade school. He wanted to tell him to be careful, to watch his six, but if anyone could handle himself, it was the old man.

  He disconnected, tossed the phone down and went to take a shower. He needed to clear his head, get the images from that book out of his mind and figure out how to dig up some cold hard facts on this case. They had precious little to go on. He needed to get some sleep and forget about Gracie O'Dowdy.

  Canyon was Mike's territory, his side of the investigation until they had enough to jump on one person. When he went through Lester's office in the morning, he didn't want to miss anything because he had blinders on.

  If there was anything there, Mike would find it.

  Instead of getting into the shower, he picked up the book and started reading again.

  10

  Gracie woke, staring at the ceiling, bathed in cold sweat and trembling. Her heart hammered in her chest as she rode a wave of fear. The door was open, the hallway beyond was dark and silent as a grave.

  Mommy?

  The little girl. That sweet, innocent little girl. Gracie wanted to grab hold of her, pull her back into her little bedroom and close the door. She wanted to cry out, tell her to go back, tell her that only bad things lived here. But she had no voice, no strength in this world of mists and shadows.

  Glowing, luminescent in the dark hallway, the little girl's nightgown drifted as she moved, her small feet peeking out from under the hem as she stepped forward. Ahead, the moonlight reached in through
the windows, kissing the edges of the brass and silver fixtures. Each piece; the edges of a fluted lamp, the knobs at the corners of the glass coffee table, the blank, staring screen of the console TV that sat on the floor—grabbed that cold light and held it.

  It was all so familiar to her. She knew this place, somehow, yet couldn't force her mind to relinquish any detail other than what that precious little girl saw. It wasn't the darkness Gracie feared—it wasn't the unknown. It was the voice inside of her, a voice usually so confident and insistent, that warned her of the insidious schemes of others.

  That voice seemed fragile now, vulnerable and afraid. Each step into the labyrinth of this strange, yet familiar house, and the voice begged her to turn away, to run. With each step, the voice that had caused her so much pain, so much isolation, grew higher and more desperate.

  Mommy?

  Her fear, building to a fever pitch crescendo, urged her to heed the inner voice, to turn and go back to the bedroom. Told her to leave the little girl to her fate. Following the child was not her debt to be paid.

  She could no more turn and go back to the safety of the bedroom any more than she could reach out and turn the little girl. She could not run from what was coming, any more than she could comfort and console the child who called out to a mother that either would not, or could not, answer.

  Stepping into the living room, the cold light of the moon washed the color out of everything around them, wringing from it any warmth or love that may once have existed in this haunted place. The girl turned to the source of the light, moving toward it. Gracie reached out for her, tried to stop her. In doing so, she stepped into the kitchen and faced the moon, hanging in all its arresting glory above the backyard, blocking out what lay beneath.

  Breathe escaped her lungs in great gasps, ripping the moon and the ground beneath it to shreds and scattering the image to the four winds. Fighting to get herself under control, listening for anyone moving around outside, she looked to her dogs. If there was something going on, something external to her own treacherous mind, they would have picked up on it, reacted to it. They were her guardians, her warning system.

  Ginger crawled toward her on her belly and laid her small nose on Gracie's chest, her dark eyes large in the green glow of the alarm clock. Fred held his station at the foot of the bed a moment longer, then walked over to sit by her side. They were accustomed to her midnight panic attacks, used to the surge of fear that woke her in the pre-dawn hours. Reacting to her, instead of growling at some unseen enemy, Gracie pulled them into her arms and used them to force herself to calm down.

  A little more in control, Gracie swung her feet out of the bed, wincing as pain shot through the tender pads of her feet from her long trek on the snowshoes. Under her pillow sat her 9mm—she pulled it out and checked the safety. She knew, beyond a doubt, that there was nothing to fear. Fred and Ginger had already confirmed that, but knowing a thing and feeling it, had nothing whatsoever to do with the other.

  This was an old dance the dogs knew well. They leapt from the bed and made their way to their places in the living room. Fred took the captain's chair, at the front of the RV, where he could see the length of the motorhome. Ginger landed in the chair at the table that would be closest to her human.

  Without turning on any lights, content with the glow from the microwave, Gracie made her way from window to window, checking the locks and peeking through the blinds. With the small black handgun held close to her leg, she satisfied herself that there was no one out there, no one watching her and hit the button on the coffee pot to bring it to life.

  The irony of someone with mental and emotional issues carrying around a deadly weapon wasn't lost on her. She had learned a long time ago that just because most of the danger was in her mind, it didn't mean it was all in her mind. There were real threats out there, real dangers. The damaged and the lost carried targets on their backs. Every deadbeat and weirdo who came near their path was like a comet that traveled too close to the gravity well of a planet. The collision was inevitable.

  The idea that she might make a mistake and hurt someone who never intended her harm scared her. Being defenseless, being a victim again, scared her even more. It wasn't a chance she was willing to take. Even the most seasoned thug thought twice before attacking a woman with a gun. If nothing else, it would make them hesitate.

  Not that the deep well of her imagination ever failed to come up with alternate ways someone intent on hurting her could get the job done. Two years before, she had spent an entire week pulling off every exterior panel she could get to, searching the same systems repeatedly for explosives and rigged wiring. Nothing had been suspicious or pointed to some Machiavellian scheme to kill her, but she had struggled with the certainty of it for nearly two weeks.

  Moonlight, a kiss of silvery softness, glinted off the deadbolt on her door, dragging her back to the cold light in the dark house. Clenching her fist to stop the tremors, Gracie closed her eyes tight, took a deep breath and opened them again. The soft light remained, filling her with dread. Not because of the little girl and her haunted walk through the dark catacombs in Gracie's head, but because the thumb turn was not upright. The deadbolt had not been pushed home into the doorjamb.

  Locking the doors and windows before bed—even in the relative safety of Yellowstone—had become habitual. Very little was left to spontaneity or chance. Just like everything else in her life. The clock, like the calendar on the wall, could have been labeled with the rhythm that was her life.

  There was no way she had forgotten to turn the lock before bed, she was sure of it. She flipped the thumb turn over and heard the deadbolt slam home.

  Thinking about it would only ignite the voices waiting in the back of her mind, ready to pounce. Too dangerous to dwell on, knowing that she was safe now, she turned her back and her mind away from the door.

  With the premises checked, the coffee pot running and her sweet little dogs showing not the slightest sign that anything was amiss, Gracie opened her laptop to work. She reread the last two paragraphs to pick up the thread of her abandoned thoughts, and started to type. Two sentences in, she hit the delete button and erased both of them. After several attempts, she gave up and closed the laptop.

  There was something there, something hidden behind the glare of the moonlight. She was sure of it. She was terrified that whatever it had been would destroy that little girl, consume her and nothing Gracie could do would stop it. Worst yet, she was convinced that when that happened, it would take her out—like someone standing too close to the drop zone of a nuclear bomb, a victim of proximity.

  The curtains billowed and Gracie jumped, her hand going for the gun on the table. Fred and Ginger were on their feet, ready to respond to the unseen threat. Hot air blew from the vents, fluttering the thin fabric at the edge of the windows as the furnace attempted to fight back the freezing air outside.

  Feeling foolish, Gracie picked up the gun, intent on returning it to its place under her pillow. Her mind turned, churning over the waking dream that haunted her, the murder of the Lake location manager, and her own uncertainty, and she put it back on the table. It wouldn't protect her from haunts and a murder conviction, but it kept her from feeling completely helpless.

  Getting a fresh cup of fortification from the coffee pot, Gracie sat back down at the table and opened a new document. The cursor blinked frantically on the blank page taunting her, calling to her. Writing had been her own private form of exorcism for the past ten years, ever since she had confessed everything to Julie. It had been Julie's guidance– her understanding and support, which had shown Gracie the secret to quieting those inner voices, soothing the inner turmoil. It had been Julie who told her it was time to stop letting those voices control her, time to put them to work and make them earn their keep.

  Rather than giving the new document a name, she just started typing. Everything she could remember from the hike through Hayden—from finding Lester's body, the child who reached out to her eve
n as it reached up for that damned knob, found its way onto the page. She wrote about the terror that filled her each time the girl, in her white gown and dark house, took over her haunted thoughts.

  What the 'figurative pen had writ' should have calmed her and left her cleansed. It hadn't. It wasn't foolproof. There had been times in the past when she had finished and been left wanting for comfort, but at the very least it usually quieted the voices enough to allow her to function.

  Not this time. Though the inner voice was silent, she could still feel it in there, just beneath the surface of her conscious mind, waiting for its chance to speak up—waiting for its chance to taunt and terrorize her.

  Though not as clear as it had been, she could still picture the moon. Its radiant cold light blinded her eyes—but not her mind—to something in the shadows of the back yard.

  Without giving herself time to think, Gracie closed the lid on her laptop and reached for the cord to the blinds at the window. The muscles in her jaw bunched and jumped under the pressure as she clenched her teeth. Her hand trembled as she reached out. There is nothing out there that can hurt me, she thought, trying desperately to screw up the courage to pull the cord. Ginger whined, Fred left his post in the Captain's chair and took a seat on the other side of the table, staring at the blinds as if anticipating her actions.

  There is nothing out there that can hurt me, she repeated, sounding stronger now, more confident. She repeated it again and yanked down on the cord, snapping the blinds up and into the bracket that hid under the valance. The dogs jumped up, paws on the windows, whining and searching for whatever it was that tormented their mistress.

  There was nothing. Moonlight filtered into the campground, but did not show its luminous face over the towering lodgepole pines. No small child waited in the shadows under their branches.