Ghost Point

by James A. Hetley

  Susan turned left. They were headed back toward Winter Cove on whatever mystery mission Aunt Jean had assigned. Alice wouldn’t talk about it, just gave the turns a few seconds before they came up. So far, it had been a series of empty back roads, and the girl kept glancing out the back window at every turn and long straightaway as if to make sure nobody was following them. That was one strange kid, no doubt about it. A strange kid who carried an automatic and two spare magazines of ammo tucked into her backpack full of clothes and teenager stuff.

  “Well.” Susan concentrated on the road, a lousy curve with negative banking and a sheet of ice flowage from a frozen culvert. The new snow-tires chewed it up and spat it out like dry pavement. “I shouldn’t know about the connection between Rick Bouchard and binoculars and people trying to kill me?”

  “Nah, that’s just her being a cheapskate Yankee, talking as if words cost money.” Alice blew another bubble, popped it, cleaned it up. “I’ll fill in the blanks. Base stuff—first off, people don’t trust strangers. That’s pretty much wired into humans. You’re a stranger in Sunrise County. So they notice you, notice what you’re doing. Might not do anything hostile, but they notice you. They talk about you. Everyone knows where you go and what you do. You’re the Eagle Lady.

  “Second, Maine has been a den of smugglers since the first moonless night there was anything worth smuggling. That’s pretty much wired into Sunrise County. Dollar value, it’s probably the largest industry ’round here. These days, it’s mostly dope, coke and smack and grass, and it comes in by water. But there’s import-tax stuff as well, Canadian booze and cigarettes. Some illegal aliens, Chinese and such, no visas or work permits.”

  She chewed again, blew a bubble again, cleaned up after. “Third, where the connections start, there’s this stranger pointing binoculars out over the water in deserted coves at funny hours of the morning and evening. That gets noticed. Turn left here.”

  She threw another glance back through the rear window, gave a shrug. “Finally, you start having trouble right after that wicked big Navy search broke, helicopters and boats up the wazoo and even the P-3 Orion submarine hunters flying offshore. Sort of thing that could freak out any dope runner trying to sneak in a load of product.”

  “And where does Rick Bouchard tie into this?”

  “Rick Bouchard used to work with the DEA. Some folks think he still does.”

  DEA. Drug Enforcement Agency. Dope cops. Oh, shit. The things nobody tells you . . . .

  “And those names you mentioned, Morgans and Pratts, they’re smugglers?”

  “Ain’t saying.”

  “If I was DEA, you and Aunt Jean have already pointed the finger.”

  “But you aren’t. Eagle says so. Eagle knows your heart. And besides, whoever tried to scare you off is a fucking amateur. Stupid. DEA agents don’t scare, they shoot back. And wherever Morgans and Pratts came by the money for those fancy houses, no way they’re amateurs. They’ve been at it since before Jefferson’s embargo.”

  Susan drove. She recognized some of the roads, had never been on others. Alice was too young to drive, but apparently she knew every cow path and Jeep trail in Sunrise County. And knew what the Dart could handle and what it couldn’t—a couple of times, Susan had been sure they’d bottom-out on a rock, but the car slid over.

  And then Alice said another “Turn here” at a narrow gravel road on the left and Susan knew where she was for sure and stopped instead of turning. “That leads to Carlsson’s place. What the hell are you up to?”

  “Spirit Point. Aunt Jean wants us here. You gonna go back and argue with her?”

  Not really. “What makes you think he’ll let us in? Last time I was out here, he threw me into a snowdrift. Head first.” And then there was what came after. Susan shivered with the memory.

  The kid grinned at her. “Sounds like he really cares. He never threw me into a snowdrift, and I’m even more of a pain in the ass than you.” Then she sobered. “Look, he isn’t going to throw anybody anywhere for a while. He’s hurt. Aunt Jean wants me to take care of him, and you can help with the animals. Bouchard is here now, but he has a job to do. Two jobs, and a family. He can’t stay.”

  Hurt? With a smart-ass teenager for a nurse? “Why isn’t he in a hospital, then?” A nasty thought crossed her mind, Aunt Jean as Niccolo Machiavelli playing with puppets. “If that bastard has a bullet wound, I’m going straight to the cops. I don’t care what Jean Haskell says.”

  Alice blinked, tilted her head and stared at Susan for a moment, then shook her head. “Ayuh, you two have got it bad. That’s for sure. No bullets, you’ll see. And he got hurt a couple of days ago, afternoon before those scumbags hit your trailer. This is where we’ve been going when we left you alone, why Aunt Jean looks so worn out. He was risking his life to help . . . someone. Someone who Eagle wants you to help.”

  Smart-ass kid. What the hell was this, illegal aliens? Susan wasn’t about to rat on a wetback. As a second-generation American, she still remembered how her family had slid under the fence. Grandmother Tranh had told stories.

  “I can keep my mouth shut. If I think I should, not just what you or Aunt Jean says.”

  Alice shook her head again. “Not me. Not Aunt Jean. Listen to Eagle. Listen to the spirits. That is why my people call this land Spirit Point. Eagle will tell you what to do.”

  “Yeah, I always do what my Rice Krispies tell me to. Look, kid, I’m a scientist. I look for facts. That’s what the binoculars are for. Don’t talk to me about spirits.”

  The kid just sat there, a lopsided smirk on her face, chewing gum. The Dodge idled. The road stayed empty.

  “Facts. And if the facts don’t fit your theory, you throw them out? Statistically insignificant? Outliers on the curve, random noise corrupting the data? Facts you saw with your own eyes, heard with your own ears, but they don’t fit the hypothesis so they must have been hallucinations? ‘There are more things in heaven and earth . . . ’ Eagles that talk and lead people to safety. Houses that mess with people’s heads and doors that only open to a woman’s hand.”

  Susan had ignored that—Aunt Jean’s promise that no man could walk into the House without a woman opening the door to him and inviting him in. Nonsense. The House knows you. Bullshit. But that was what she’d felt, passing through the door. Recognition. Welcome. Protection. It hadn’t just been Aunt Jean working along as if she knew who was at the door. When Susan had closed that oak door behind her, it had felt like closing a vault door that locked her terrors out. And she had heard the eagles call to her. Twice.

  Alice was looking out the window now, staring at lumps of dirty snow by the side of the road. She looked . . . embarrassed. “About the House. Aunt Jean told me to apologize to you. We freaked you out. We’re sorry. The House is old. It remembers old ways. We’re not used to protecting strangers, women who don’t already know what the House is for, what it means. We should have told you things we assumed you already knew. It’s a woman’s house, in every meaning of the word. Any woman who needs help, white or yellow or brown or black.”

  Now the kid looked really embarrassed. “One other thing you need to know, beyond the witch bit, so you’ll understand crap you hear from idiots like that scarecrow preacher. A lot of the Haskell Witches are lesbians, always have been. Priestesses, shamans, spirit women, whatever, ever since we lived in bark wigwams. Aunt Jean isn’t queer, but I’m beginning to think I may be. You need to know that.”

  Oh, God. She’s fourteen, and living with that? I remember fourteen. It was hell. For one thing, all the other girls were getting hips and tits and boys. She’s got the same figure I have. That is, none. And looks like no prospect of ever getting one. Pile “queer” on top of that . . . .

  Fourteen. I wouldn’t be fourteen again for anything.

  No, Alice didn’t look embarrassed. She looked like she was fighting tears. A sudden impulse, Susan reached out a hand to touch the girl, gentle hand on the shoulder, just the gift of human touch, its own k
ind of magic, and then she froze. She pulled back. Lesbians. Queers. Cultural conditioning, yeah, but she’d grown up in it.

  Alice pushed herself further into the seat corner by the door, staring out the glass, anger replacing the edge of tears. “Screw you. Screw all of you. Even Aunt Jean doesn’t dare hug me. Hug a kid, get arrested for a sex crime. Normal girls, at least their female relatives can hug them. But you can’t touch a screwed-up maybe-lesbian. Got to protect the little darlings, can’t take a chance on bending them queer. Protect them by locking them behind glass.”

  Then she pushed herself back upright, staring forward. “Shut up and drive. You gonna turn here and head for that gatehouse, or are you going to tell Aunt Jean you’re scared of a man who’s so weak he can’t stand up? Even with Big Bad Alice to protect you?”

  So weak he can’t stand up . . . What the hell is going on here? That S.O.B. is as tough as . . . as the House.

  Susan reached out again, did lay that hand on Alice’s shoulder. The girl didn’t shrug it off. “I was fourteen once. I survived. Every woman alive has survived being fourteen. It ain’t fun, but you’ll get over it. Usually takes about a year. So even lesbian witch-bitches need hugs? Hugs are cheap. Unhook that seatbelt and slide over.”

  Making the kid come to her. If she slid across, that put a whole different meaning on the picture. Not like Tommy Sachs trying to pin Susan against the door of his parents’ Chevy, telling her that sex was the only way she’d ever get a boyfriend. She’d kneed him in the balls and walked home . . . .

  Alice sat there for a moment, another, stiff and staring out through the windshield. Then she slumped and clicked the seatbelt buckle and slid up under Susan’s arm. Awkward, sideways, but Susan just held the kid. Alice sat and cried. It seemed so out of character, the deadly pistol-packing gum-chewing smart-ass girl with the adult vocabulary, the educated adult vocabulary, full of sarcasm and innuendo and five-syllable words as well as the four-letter ones. But Alice just sat there and cried.

  Susan held her. She’d never tried to be a mommy before—had in point of fact gone out of her way to avoid the experience to the tune of prescription pharmaceuticals and mechanical aids. But hugs she could do.

  After a while, Alice straightened up, wiped her face and nose on the sleeve of her jacket, and slid back to her side of the seat. She clicked her seatbelt with a certain . . . finality.

  “Sorry. Aunt Jean’s right—hormones are turning my brain to mush.”

  “Any time, kid. I’ll talk to Aunt Jean about this hug business. Hell, if she’s going to call me daughter, that makes us cousins.”

  Alice looked sideways at her. “You got the hair and skin okay. If you could just do something about those eyes and grow a nose that stuck out enough to hold a pair of sunglasses, we could pass you off as Naskeag.”

  Okay, back to business as usual. Act as if nothing happened. “Smartass. Don’t talk to me about sunglasses.” It was true. Nine pairs out of ten would fall right off her face the first time she sneezed.

  “So. You gonna turn here and drive in, or do I get to call you chicken? Fraidy cat, fraidy cat . . . .”

  Brat. Susan crunched the Dart into gear and spun the rear tires until she was lined up with the side road. Then she cut back on her anger and drove at the pace conditions allowed. Which wasn’t fast.

  Come to think of it, this road seemed designed to slow cars down. Slow them down, and block any long-range views. Almost as if someone designed it to make defense easy. She remembered the way the gatehouse sat—right-angled turn when you came up to the actual driveway. Nobody could take that turn fast, get up a head of steam to ram the gate. And the gate was heavy, a wood beam as thick as her waist.

  You’d have a hard time sneaking up on the old house, either, the ruins. It stood where it had clear views all around. None of the trees or bushes stood close. Nothing older than the fire, anyway. Maybe that was why the place had felt creepy, had put her on edge. Maybe that was why she’d turned into a bitch. A worse bitch than usual, that is.

  One of her less suitable boyfriends had given her a bumper-sticker for the battered Volvo that had passed for her grad-student “car.” “Beyond Bitch” it had said. Maybe it had been printed as a joke, but she doubted if Tony had laughed much. That one hadn’t lasted long.

  Alice cleared her throat. “Just so’s you know—sometimes I hate this job. That’s what pushed me over the edge.”

  “Job?”

  “Yeah. ‘Haskell Witch’ is a job. Twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week, on call, no holidays, no vacation, no time off for good behavior. This time of year, most kids sit staring at the Christmas tree, wondering what goodies will appear under it next week. Me, I’m stuck out here on the ass-end of nowhere trying to save a couple of lives and also keep you and Carlsson from ripping each other to shreds. It sucks.”

  “Thought you said Carlsson isn’t up to ripping anything.”

  “Yep. And you’re scared of Machine-gun Alice. That’s why Aunt Jean thinks I can handle the job. Something simple for the kid to do while she gets into the interesting stuff.”

  “I thought you were just complaining about unpaid overtime, and now you want more challenge?”

  “Hey, if you want rational, you’ve caught me in a bad year. Pull over there so you can back in.”

  With that, they pulled up in front of the guest house and that massive gate. Alice disappeared around back of the buildings and reappeared with a key—that said something about the world of Sunrise County but Susan wasn’t sure just what. Anyway, the key opened the garage and Susan backed the Dodge in and parked it next to Carlsson’s pickup and she noticed, double-take, that the truck had to be at least ten years old and all ten of them had been spent on bad roads. But Carlssons were rich. Everyone knew that.

  And the garage door didn’t have any windows. Her parked Dodge wouldn’t show anyone where she was hiding. Alice might be one screwed-up kid, but she thought ahead.

  They unclipped their skis and poles from the roof rack, carried them to the edge of the unplowed snow, and Alice went back to lock the garage and stow the key. Susan didn’t follow, didn’t look, but the kid’s tracks would probably show where the key was hidden if Susan wanted to bug out without permission. Which might be a good idea. She didn’t like this setup.

  But that would mean leaving Alice trapped here. The pickup wouldn’t help—the kid was too young to drive. And probably too damn short. Susan was taller, and she’d had to drive state trucks a few times. She could barely reach the pedals.

  They shrugged into their backpacks and then they were skiing, she’d nailed the wax, swooping and soaring over the snow and she was an eagle again, the joy of kick and glide and the magical winter forest slipping past. And they stayed on the path, dammit, no excursions into frog ponds. Alice skidded to a stop with a little downhill flourish of flying snow and pointed to ropes stretched through the forest, looping from tree to tree.

  “Emergency trail, if you’re caught in a whiteout. Leads from the gate to the boathouse, sheltered, keep your hand on the line and you’ll be safe. This place gets dangerous in a storm.”

  Good to know. And Susan’s opinion of Carlsson went up a notch, not that it would have taken much. First step out of the cellar, so to speak. They’d stopped near the burned-out house, near that eagle colony that she’d told Carlsson had to be osprey nests. She winced at the memory.

  Alice stood in her skis, panting slightly like she’d pushed a bit more than normal. But grinning. “Hey girl, you ski good. My big sister’s too busy chasing after boys to ski with me, and Aunt Jean doesn’t like me going out into the big bad woods alone. Says I know just enough to get into trouble, but not enough to get out again. Can I adopt you?”

  “Sure.” Susan wasn’t paying much attention to the kid. She was staring up at the nests. An eagle perched on the edge of each one, staring down at her. They glowed. They opened their beaks and screamed.

  “Guard her. Keep her secrets.”

  How
could words ride on an eagle’s scream?

  Susan didn’t understand. “Me, guard her?”

  That was like telling Don Knotts to guard Richard Boone as Paladin. But the birds didn’t answer. They just launched themselves and vanished over the tops of the spruce and white pine giants.

  “Holy Mary, Mother of God. What did you do to earn five eagles?”

  Susan stood frozen, shaking her head, barely hearing Alice. “I. Don’t. Know.”

  She slid one ski forward, followed with the other, poled into a slow diagonal stride, mechanical movements while her brain struggled to swallow that sight. Five eagles. Glowing. Talking. Her skis pointed toward the boathouse in spite of Carlsson, the track led there, if it had led straight over a cliff she would have followed it. If it had led to Hell . . . .

  Alice was muttering, barely heard over the swish of the skis and crunch of the poles. “Guard her. They weren’t talking about me, girl.”

  “What?”

  “Nothing.”

  Another set of skis waited in a snowdrift by the door, probably Bouchard’s. She popped the bindings on her own and added them, stuck her poles into the snow, kicked her boots and swatted her pants until she wouldn’t track half the last blizzard into Carlsson’s kitchen. All on automatic pilot. Five eagles. Talking.

  Bouchard sat at the kitchen table with a mug of coffee and a book. He looked at her funny, looked over at Alice with lifted eyebrows, but didn’t say a thing. Susan dumped her gloves on a rack behind the stove, added her ski cap, shrugged out of her coat. Five eagles, talking. She wandered through a door, not noticing what she was doing, not thinking about it.