Ghost Point

by James A. Hetley

  Blood showed differences in color, transparency, fluidity, smell, differences that came from the type of wound and the species of animal that bled. He sniffed at the lump in his hand. Oily? Musky? Tinge of herbs or onions or garlic? Acid or fermentation from the gut? Yes and no and maybe.

  Fish.

  And that made no sense at all. He tasted the snow, tasted the blood on the fresh clean snow, once again destroying evidence in his quest for facts. Observer interacts with the observed.

  Fish. Mammal blood, but fishy.

  Not just the salt of coastal snow, spray from the breaking waves tossed on a storm wind. Not seaweed, either. He tasted oily fish, the tang of herring or mackerel or maybe fat Atlantic salmon before the spawning run. If he didn’t have the evidence of deer hair, he’d say the dragged body was a seal. Not just a human who sometimes liked a sardine sandwich for lunch. That blood came from an animal that ate fish every day.

  Not a deer, not a browsing herbivore. This time of year, that doe’s blood and meat would be gaining a tinge of winter cedar. He’d seen the snow-dusted cedar tips piled in one corner of the pen, Carlsson sensitive to the seasonal changes of a deer’s diet in the wild.

  The guy shows a lot more sensitivity to animals than he does to humans, that’s for sure. Not much concern for the delicate feelings of Ms. Doctor-Tranh-to-you. ’Course, sensitivity would be kind of wasted there. She’s got all the finer feelings of a chainsaw. A dull chainsaw.

  He slid his skis forward another six inches, dusting back another layer of snow. Blew on his fingers and flexed them, fighting back the stiffness that threatened to make them clumsy, smear the evidence. Patience—wasn’t that supposed to be an Indian virtue, part of his Naskeag blood? The noble savage waiting motionless for hours on the hunt?

  He knew a lot of impatient Indians. Wanted jam today, not contented with jam yesterday or jam tomorrow. Wanted to clear-cut the timber on tribal corporation lands, wanted to over-hunt the land, over-fish the lakes and streams because they weren’t subject to state fish and game laws. Pity that Naskeag blood didn’t carry any dominant genes for stewardship of the earth-mother, but he knew too many slobs with brown skin to believe that hippie crap.

  Doctor Tranh wanted his help in nailing some possibly-native perps who were messing with her eagles. She didn’t understand that Naskeags had their own ways of guarding their lands and the creatures who shared this world. Ways less forgiving than Federal law. That shit was going to stop, no need for her to get involved. He slid forward another six inches, cleared another patch of the trail, blew warmth on his fingers again.

  Hell, some of his brownskin half-brain brothers wanted to negotiate for an oil refinery on a tribal cove, pull the big bucks from whiteskin corporate America, ignoring the odds that a supertanker would find granite somewhere in the monster tides and treacherous currents leading into Fundy. Those waters ate frigging lobster boats and draggers for lunch, in spite of fishermen who knew the weather and sea like they knew their wife’s left tit. Imagine sailing them in a floating bomb that took a mile to even think of turning.

  Turning. He started to hum Copland to himself, the “Simple Gifts” theme borrowed from an old hymn for Appalachian Spring, “to turn, turn shall be our delight, ’til by turning, turning we come round right.” The trail kinked in front of him, as if something had startled his poacher or the dragging weight had caught on a nub of rock underneath the snow.

  Rick had been waiting for this, working up to it in his slow methodical routine. He dusted a wider patch to each side of the line, hoping against hope that the kink revealed a sidestep, a stagger, some kind of catch in balance that would show a footprint outside the dragged packed trail in the snow. He wanted a boot style, a shoe size, maybe a wear pattern on the tread, something distinctive to narrow this down. He wanted evidence.

  He didn’t think he was tracking that damnfool Marine lieutenant Carlsson had caught. The two trails crossed but stayed distinct, separated by a few hours and a few inches of fresh snow, and this one didn’t show any sign of snowshoes. Even a brain-dead perp wouldn’t wallow along thigh deep in loose snow if he had snowshoes handy.

  Unless it was a survival test. Keep an open mind.

  There. Fresh sharp fluffy flakes that even reflected light differently, in an outline punching down in the older snow. Man-sized print, he measured it with his spread fingers, long and narrow and almost triangular, not that dancing bear Carlsson reported, not Bear. Three or four inches across at its narrowest, six or seven at the wide end, maybe twelve inches long. Nice neat “foot” in length, a large man’s foot or insulated winter boots. He set the picture of it in his head before digging down inside the print, destroying evidence again.

  Deep, mid-forearm deep, heavy man, working hard, dragging that weight, that maybe deer, probable deer, through loose snow. His fingers touched hard snow at the packed bottom of the print, flicked loose flakes out of it, studied the resulting hole. He shook his head. Odd. He slid forward to the point that he could look straight down at the print, bent over and blew into it, his warm breath melting some of the fresh light flakes and lifting others out to fall to either side.

  No tread prints. No boot outline. Often, with fresh tracks, he could even read the maker’s label in reverse on the instep print. Not here.

  Claws?

  What the fuck?

  He had the clear mark of claws, and a pressed line of webbing between toes, five toes, almost a beaver print. But the world hadn’t seen a beaver this size since the Pleistocene. Or whatever fossil era. Or it might be a giant otter, the webbing often didn’t show in otter prints but sometimes it did. Still, that track named a refugee from an extinct bestiary.

  It had to be something aquatic, anyway. Not a fake print, those toes and claws had rotated around the ball of the foot and punched down further in the snow, digging in for traction, functional, at least semi-retractable, not some hypothetical Spetsnaz wearing funny boots with steel claws tacked on to the front. Rick squatted back on his heels, staring off through the spruce and pine at nothing, remembering legends.

  “Bozhemoi.”

  “Huh?”

  Rick shook himself and came back to Ghost Point, to Spirit Point, and focused on Carlsson. “Old Naskeag word, roughly translates as ‘Holy shit!’”

  “Old Naskeag word, my sainted Aunt Hephzibah’s virgin ass. I know at least a little Russian. What you got there?” Carlsson didn’t make any move to come over and see for himself, still keeping his snowshoes out of evidence. Nice to know a few people understood crime scenes.

  Rick stared down at the footprint again, shook his head, and pulled a sheet of waxed paper out of his parka to cover the track, adding a layer of snow to weight the paper. He muttered, half to himself and half answering Carlsson, “‘I can call spirits from the vasty deep.’”

  “Huh?” Dennis looked like his brain had skidded into the fence on that last turn. “Henry IV, Part One, Glendower and Hotspur. ‘Why, so can I, or so can any man; but will they come when you do call for them?’ You tryin’ to tell me a spirit murdered a blind doe in a pen and dragged her off to the vasty deep for lunch?”

  Rick didn’t answer. He scouted around again, found another bloodstained lump of snow, and gathered it in his palm. Stood up. Shuffled his skis sideways from the track and over to Carlsson.

  “Sniff this. Taste it.”

  Carlsson wrinkled his nose, but had the sense and curiosity to do what Rick asked. He sniffed. He thought. He bit the chunk of snow and thought some more.

  He looked puzzled. “Fish?”

  “Good. All that Navy coffee hasn’t burned out my taste buds.” Rick shook his head. “Hey, I ever tell you about those last few days in Saigon, how I was busting up the embassy liquor stock and using all that high-rent scotch and bourbon as fuel to burn suitcases full of used twenty-dollar bills? Keep Charlie from grabbing either social lubricant and using it to grease the spread of world communism?”

  “Maybe thirty, fifty times. What the hell
does that have to do with the price of tea in China?”

  “Well, I’m a bit hazy on the details, damned near passed out from the fumes, but I’m pretty sure I didn’t burn up all the scotch in the world. You still got a few bottles of your daddy’s Glenfiddich?”

  Carlsson’s eyes narrowed. “Paleface not supposed to give firewater to brave. Brave get drunk, remember warrior past, go on warpath. Besides, aren’t you going to check out the rest of the trail?” He waved at the trace leading off through the snow and down to the landing cove and the surf.

  And the helicopter thumping away out over the water. Damned thing must have landed on the base and waited out that snow squall. Frigging swabbies still buzzed like a swarm of bees around a bear raiding their hive.

  Bear, and the spirit world.

  The Carlsson family and Bear. Just how much did ex-warrior Dennis Carlsson know about his ancestors and the Naskeags? About the reason why Naskeags gave Spirit Point to some nineteenth century Vikings just off the boat from Viking-land and looking around for more trees to cut? And why those Vikings didn’t cut down these trees?

  Bear Clan business, Totem business, and Rick didn’t know those secrets. He was Owl, the midnight hunter, soft-winged and silent. Leave it up to Jean Haskell. The Haskell witches told whatever secrets served their purpose. Or whatever lies served their purpose.

  “I think I’ll leave the rest of the trail for Aunt Jean and that obnoxious niece of hers. They’ve got their own ways of tracking. And you can take your racist firewater stereotypes and stick ’em where the sun don’t shine. I was quoting Glendower because I’m half Welsh. I won’t let my Naskeag brain cells touch the booze, just pass it all along to those Welsh genes and let them deal with the hangover.”

  He grinned at Carlsson, taking all the bite out of “racist stereotypes” and confirming that he stood inside the “us” wall. Friends can make jokes that would earn a stranger a busted jaw.

  “If you’re half Welsh, how’d you end up with a French name?”

  “Stole it from the Acadians. Part of our balancing act, back in colonial days. Same with all the tribal English names. Bit of one, bit of the other, smile at whoever ran the show that particular week.”

  Dennis shrugged and turned toward his old boathouse. That was one thing Rick liked about the guy, one reason he passed as an honorary Naskeag for the purpose of racist jokes—he took Rick’s decision at face value, didn’t second-guess it. A lot of whites, there was this lingering assumed superiority, the belief that any brown face fronted for a lesser brain. Rick had spent enough time outside of Sunrise County to have met that particular whiteskin religion.

  Speaking of whiteskin expectations . . . Rick slid his skis over to the snowbank where Carlsson had waved when he told about field-stripping that .45. Damnfool lieutenant. Rick found the hole in the snow, thin and short, like a bit of twig windblown from the spruce overhead, and dug out the cold steel pistol barrel.

  He flipped it in his hand, nodding at Carlsson. “Evidence. Pity they don’t stamp serial numbers on these things. You should have kept his ID card. White skin, rich, young, you’ve grown up to think The Man’s gonna believe you. Ugh. Injun scout go powwow with big chief at whiteskin camp. Tellum keep braves on reservation or they’ll get their young butts kicked from hell to breakfast. It’s assholes like that shithead lieutenant that lead to things like Wounded Knee and Watergate. Greeks used to call it hubris, had the gods destroy kings for it.”

  Rubbing Carlsson’s nose in Racist America, not nice, but the big lump did expect people to believe him. Ancestral privilege had that effect on people.

  Rick stared around again, photographing the scene into his memory in case he had to tell the tale in court. Snow-covered groove of the dragged deer carcass, snowshoe tracks of Dennis Carlsson coming in after the snow squall, the beaten snow where he’d hidden behind a tree and fired his father’s old M-1, the different snowshoe tracks on top of the new snow coming up from the cove and onto the side porch and leading away again, the tracks of a man without snowshoes leading away from the porch and standing in a snowdrift and then back to retrieve his snowshoes.

  And from thence to a place of execution, he thought, and wondered why he thought it. But the picture fitted perfectly with the story Carlsson had told.

  A trained eye could even see Carlsson’s plastic foot in his snowshoe tracks, the slight limp or drag on one side, it would show up if he’d swapped snowshoes to try to confuse his trail. Snow made a wonderful book for tracking, almost as good as drying mud. You could read every word of the story. Tracks might confuse you until you read them right, but they wouldn’t lie.

  Inside the boathouse, skis off, he stomped off loose snow in the boat bay next to that ancient sloop and then stepped through into the kitchen to stoke up the stove. Rick knew this stove and its little quirks from years of visiting. A sand-colored cat polished his ankles, requesting worship, but Rick’s fingers were too numb to do a decent job of scratching ears. He rubbed his hands over the warming stove and grimaced at the needles of returning circulation and stiffening, swelling fingers. But gloves might have messed up that track.

  Dennis handed him a cut-glass tumbler with a generous inch of amber liquid in the bottom, he’d been busy at the liquor cabinet and the ancestral crystal. Then he waved a matching glass in a toast.

  “To absent friends.”

  They drank in silence.

  Carlsson shook himself out of memories. “Okay, Injun Scout, what was that crap about spirits from the vasty deep supposed to mean?”

  Rick savored the tang of alcohol and Scottish smoke, sighing, pushing his own ghosts aside. “I prefer sprits from the vasty peat, myself. A man could grow to like this stuff. Pity my tastes don’t match my budget . . . .”

  Dennis glared at him.

  “Okay.” Rick sipped the amber nectar, letting its smooth bite glow on his palate. “Legends. No, oral history. I’m going to ask you to keep your mouth shut and your mind open until Aunt Jean passes judgment, but I think you’ve been visited by a legend. That damnfool lieutenant didn’t kill your doe.”

  He paused for another sip. “The blood, the tracks, the scuffle at your pen, maybe even the guards missing over at the base, all point to something we called ‘Swimmers of Dark Waters.’ Real old-time Naskeag word, seven syllables, you’d chip a couple of teeth just trying to pronounce it.

  “They disappeared when the English came, hunted out for their pelts. Legends describe them as man-shaped but furred like a seal, dark and mottled, bigger than men, strong swimmers. Claws and teeth that could rip you to shreds, but they weren’t animals. They were a People. They talked, they could use tools but mostly didn’t, they lived along side of us but separate. Sometimes we fought, sometimes we shared food, just like any other tribe. Nobody has seen them in over three hundred years. Damned if I know why one has shown up now. Or why it maybe has a severe case of the ass toward the U. S. Navy.”

  Dennis looked exactly as Rick expected, a face and body-language mix of “this guy is fucking crazy” and “this guy is pulling my leg.” He was waiting for the punch line. Hoping for the punch line.

  “You don’t have to believe me, just stay clear of that trail until Aunt Jean gets over here and sniffs at it. Just stand back and let the flow happen, see what comes down the stream. I’ll have a little talk with Captain Shea over at the base, no more Mister Nice-guy on his braves raiding off the rez. I’ve been putting up too much time over there in the last week, anyway. For an officer, the Cap is actually almost smart. For an officer.”

  Rick took another tiny sip of expensive whiskey, rationing his glass. A man could get addicted to this stuff. Too bad I have to drive when I get back to the road. This wee dram, and no more.

  Drive, and then make some phone calls. To Captain Shea, naval captain, full bird on his collar, and to Jeanne Alouette Haskell. Who sure as hell outranked a Navy captain and made him twitchy every time he talked to her.

  The question of Bear hung over all this.
Rick did know some things about Bear. Not clan secrets—things Carlsson could find out by reading Anthro texts at the university library, or other places.

  “About that dancing bear you saw, about Bear. Bear is a very important figure to my people, one of our most powerful spirits. Bear is very wise. Bear dies each fall and rises again each spring. Bear is a warrior and a peacemaker, a killer and a healer. Bear is strong and dangerous, but he always walks away from trouble if he can find a way. Bear is a survivor, living anywhere, eating anything, but he is shy and quiet. You’ll only see him if he wants you to.

  “Bear has let you see him. Like I told you back at the Coffee Pot, he has something important he wants you to do. Something tied to those tracks out of time.”

  Rick glanced at his watch. “Shit. Long day.” He drained the last of that lovely Scotch, every drop, looked out the window at orange light slanting low, and shook his head. “Longer for you. Just wait for Bear. Nothing to do yet, I think. Last thing about Bear, he isn’t subtle. He’s shy, but he doesn’t need to sneak around. When Bear wants you to act, he’ll tell you.”

  VII

  Damn the woman.

  Dennis stamped his meat foot to stir the blood and keep his toes from freezing, the snowshoe flinging clods of white around. He glanced at his watch. Yes, Doctor Tranh was late. He stared down the snow-covered driveway winding along the bay and through the spruces and pines to the curve where her brown ass should have shown up half an hour ago. That was half an hour waiting exposed along the most dangerous section of the bayside driveway, with a bitter wind off the water gnawing at his hands and feet and ears and the surf muttering hungry down below the cliff edge. Even his plastic foot felt numb.