Ghost Point

by James A. Hetley

  Bear kept silent. He’d spoken English, not Naskeag, just the one word. Dennis chased after that thought, a tangent, no real meaning to it, but he wondered if Eagle spoke English to Tranh, or Vietnamese. Did Aunt Jean’s spirit animal speak French to her, concession to her native tongue and youth?

 

  Another shiver ran up Den’s back. Bear led him to the old cellar-way, the side entrance leading down for deliveries of wood or coal for heat, of beer and wine that needed to sit and meditate in the cool underground dampness before they could be served, of all the back-stair doings of a house of money and power. He’d never known the place that well—he’d been just five or six when it had burned, when the deaths, the murders, tainted it forever. The cellar had seemed magical to him then, a place of shadows and strange smells and heats and chills and twists and turns. He remembered one corner that always smelled of apples, even though he never found them.

  Bear led him under the small portico, through the door, down the cellar stairs. Led him through the door without opening it. Spirit Land, the rules of physics got thrown into a snowdrift. Spirit Land, the past changed or never been. Dennis didn’t feel murder in this place.

  Bear stopped and turned to him.

  They passed through doors and doors, down stairs, through doors again, passages he couldn’t remember or fit to his memory of the house above. They came to a door that he did remember but the younger Dennis had never passed, a door always locked and barred from the outside, only now did he understand how strange that should have seemed. They passed through that, into a cavern lit by torches.

  No, not a cavern—a megalithic barrow, a passage grave out of deep prehistory. Torches still burning? Dennis just filed that away, no questions now. He couldn’t breathe, much less think in this place that couldn’t be a place. If he wasn’t breathing, how come he could smell the pitch from burning torches, smell the mustiness of damp earth and stone, smell ozone of spirit auras?

  A man lay on a raised stone platform, a large man, broad-shouldered, black-haired and black-bearded and olive skin, no Carlsson genes there. He wore a scarlet toque and sash and satin shirt, blue velvet pants, spit-shined black boots, a French-Canadian logger’s finery but the axe laid on his chest was no logger’s tool. Dennis remembered it, a war-axe out of his family’s past, keen vicious double edges of black steel contrasted with silver inlay that showed twining snake-dragons straight from a Viking’s hoard, fascinating to the young boy he’d been.

  Lost in the fire, his father had said. And the man had to be Frenchy LeClair. This was the story those drunks didn’t tell, late nights at the crossroads bar.

  At his feet lay weapons, heap upon heap. Abenaki war-clubs, stone axes and knives, spears with fire-hardened wood points or chipped flint. Trophies of foes conquered. Pre-Colombian trophies, not a scrap of metal showing.

 

  Dennis braced to attention, stood for a moment and stared, burning the grave-scene into his memory, and then snapped a salute. No conscious thought, no barked command—it just came naturally, almost from his blood and bone. He didn’t have to understand what he was seeing.

 

  Bear vanished. Dennis stood on snowshoes again, blinking, breathing, teeth chattering, face to the collapsing ruin of his family’s old house. Bear tracks led from him to the portico of that cellar door. Large bear tracks. And the door stood locked, the snow undisturbed against it. He shivered again, nothing to do with cold.

  Jesus Christ.

  Snow creaked under his feet, a gentle breeze rustled the pines and firs overhead, gulls called. Surf boomed and hissed down on the cobble beach, remnants of last night’s storm and a warning that another followed close on its heels, darkening skies still gray with threat. The weather service said that the jet-stream pattern would be bowling lows up the Gulf of Maine and into Fundy for another week or so. The next storm would be warmer, likely sleet and freezing rain or all rain to turn the snow to mush.

  He stared at the snow. Bear’s tracks still led to and through a locked door that hadn’t been opened in twenty years. Dennis blinked and shook his head and the tracks remained.

  The Witch holds the key.

  Aunt Jean knew that place as if she’d been there. She’d mentioned it, told him of the Spirit Gate and the locked doors locked to keep things in. She was afraid of it. Even Aunt Jean, who seemed to fear neither God nor man, was afraid of it. Now Bear had laid a huge paw on that scale. He’d better get his ass in gear, hike out to the gatehouse and drive to a phone. Wouldn’t want to put this on the CB radio.

  First he’d better check on Grendel and give her a backup dose to keep the Navy from fucking with her head, and then go. He turned back to the boathouse. Movement caught his eyes, a shadow flickering through shadows on the snow-packed driveway. Alice or Tranh coming back? It moved like a skier, not Bear with his ponderous walk.

  It wore winter cammies, blotchy gray and white and black camouflage, cammies like that asshole Marine wore. Dennis froze and muttered some choice speculations on the ancestry, sanitary habits, and probable destination of the Department of the Navy and all its various nefarious minions. And this time he didn’t have a weapon.

  How fast could he get back to that M-1? On snowshoes and gimped up? Not fast enough, racing against skis. Against a good skier, swooping along like Tranh on a downhill, Eagle skimming the waves after Salmon.

  Eagle—no, Owl gliding gray silent death behind doomed Rabbit. That gait, that shape . . . Bouchard. Dennis relaxed. Bouchard in Army Guard uniform. Must be drill weekend.

  Dennis waited, standing out in the open. A woodsman like Bouchard couldn’t help but see him. And the warden did, and angled across the snow and slid to a stop and puffed for a moment, catching breath from the exhilaration of skiing.

  “Guess Alice and Doctor Tranh left about four hours back.” Bouchard waved at the tracks they’d made, stuff he read without thinking. “Sorry about the chopper. We were out checking the islands, Navy’s still running around in circles trying to find its own ass.”

  Then he shrugged. “I warned that fucking warrant pilot he was asking for thirty-cal up the ass, flying low over houses and boats like that. Catch a drug-runner in the open, poacher, we’re only half civilized out here. He just gave me this ‘Been there, done that’ shrug. Going by his First Cav patch, he probably had.”

  Dennis shook his head. “What’s the stir?”

  “That’s what I came over to tell you. A half-eaten body washed up out on Sheep Island, some lobsterman spotted the corpse. Big chief at whiteskin camp want Injun scout to check for Commie war party. Injun scout no find. Injun scout no tell other story.”

  “Cut the crap.”

  Bouchard shrugged. “Okay. That contract guard’s body floated in, crushed larynx and broken neck, martial-arts type injuries that still showed up even after the sharks and eels and crabs had lunch. The medical examiner ain’t happy. And ol’ Captain Shea still has Spetsnaz on the brain. He wants to know how two armed guards and a combat vet Marine ended up dead or MIA, with those overtones of Top Secret burn-before-reading shit going down offshore. Remember, I haven’t said a word.”

  He paused, catching his breath again from the fast ski run, and shook his head. “She-who-swims-dark-waters isn’t even on the map, but we still have a Cold War manhunt on, under the cover of a security ‘exercise.’ Gonna be official this time, Fish and Game, Marine Patrol, sheriff, Forest Service choppers, you name it. With search warrants, when and as needed.”

  Fucking brass. Fucking politicians that kissed military ass in the name of “national security.” Fucking Cold War that got the fucking politicians fucking elected.

  He was thinking Army again, one universal adjective.

  But that did crank up the heat on
Grendel. He could tell her to go swimming, stay out there, but he didn’t know if he could hide everything. Searches, with warrants, with guys like Bouchard that knew Maine woods and waters instead of dipshit Marine lieutenants . . . nobody quite as good as Bouchard, nobody who could find tracks under six inches of snow, but the other wardens and Marine Patrol would question Grendel’s tracks if they saw them. They’d even recognize that Spirit Bear’s tracks didn’t belong here and start asking questions about those.

  Those three dead men didn’t bother Dennis much. From what he’d seen of that looie, what he’d heard of the contract guards, you could chalk it up to Darwinian selection. Weed the gene pool and hope they hadn’t reproduced yet. Better men died every day. He’d seen them die . . . .

  He wiped the corpses off his slate, not his problem. Hiding Grendel, getting Grendel home—those were his problems . . . . “What do you make of that?” He pointed at the tracks Bear had left.

  Bouchard slid his skis over and looked. He knelt and spanned a track with his hand, measuring.

  “Bozhemoi.”

  “Yeah. Old Naskeag word.”

  The warden sat back on his heels and stared at the old ruin of the house. “That’s the cellar door?”

  “Yep.”

  “You ever been in there since the fire?”

  “Nope. Well, not physically.” And Dennis told him of the . . . vision? Of Bear leading him in, of the barrow scene, of Bear’s words at the end. Brought Bouchard up to date on what the VLF transmitters did to Grendel, and the only way he could deal with it.

  Bouchard nodded. “I’ll tell Aunt Jean. You stay here and work out how to hide our guest.”

  Who was flat on her back now, and likely to remain so as long as the Navy kept talking to itself. At least the weather was going to fuck over the searches, chopper and otherwise. That string of lows clear down to Mexico started to look almost friendly. The first rain spattered out of the falling dusk, cold on his cheek.

  Dennis started shuffling around on snowshoes, covering suspicious . . . alien . . . tracks with his own.

  XXIV

  “Peter William Levesque,” Aunt Jean repeated, “you bring shame to our People. You attacked a guest in our lodge. You attacked a woman. Once, twice, three times you attacked her. Your mother raised you as a son of our People. You know our ways. You know the meaning of my house. Vraiment, you know how this must end.”

  Susan watched, frozen, as the old woman raised her hand and pointed one finger at his forehead, almost like a gun. Her hand shook, not fear or even rage, Alice had said it was Parkinson’s, Susan thought it must be horrible to be such a dynamic woman and grow old and weak and fall to pieces.

  “Aunt Jean . . . .” The man stammered, still sitting on a tattered sofa that had been cheap and shabby when it was new, fit furnishing for the cheap and shabby and beat-to-hell rotting atmosphere of the old trailer. The place smelled like a fire in a rope factory, they must have a ton of hemp stored in the bedrooms. Mary Jane. A scattering of half-burned joints lay in an ashtray, and the guy looked flat-ass stoned. At least the pushers in D.C. had the sense to stay off their own dope . . . .

  “Shut up, boy. Bad enough you should break the whiteman laws and spread poison among your People. Do you have to be a fool? This woman follows Eagle. She has nothing to do with drugs or with police. Nom de un imbécile, you were warned, you have seen our words on her car and house.”

  The young man scowled, focused at nothing and then speaking slow disjointed words in drug-stupor concentration. “Nothing to do with drugs . . . Aw, come on, Aunt Jean . . . We saw her out there, that telescope thing aimed right at us . . . Held a radio up to her face and talked to it . . . Weren’t five minutes before one of them damn helicopters came over and checked us out.”

  Damned lobster boat got in my way, right between me and an eagle feeding on the shore, trying to ID the bird. Scared the bird away. Don’t have a radio, that was the fucking tape recorder I use for field notes . . . .

  Aunt Jean just glared at the guy. “Fools. Still you attack her. She is kind, much kinder than I would be. She wounded you, fired warning shots instead of killing. If she had been what you thought she was, you would be dead and in a grave of shame and the ones who hide behind you would be in jail. Fools, fools all of you.”

  “Aunt Jean . . . .”

  “Shut up, I told you. I know what I know. It is sufficient. You will leave. You will leave our People, you will leave our lands, you will leave our spirits and our ways and the roots that give us strength. You are no longer Naskeag. Go to the whiteman cities and live the whiteman ways and sell the whiteman poisons.

  “Three days. I give you three days, and if you still piss on the floor of our lodge, on the fourth day I take what I know to the whiteman police. I give you this time to spare our People more shame. I would not have strangers read of Naskeag fools in the newspapers, see Naskeag fools on trial on the whiteman television. This would be bad for our People.”

  The man paled and sank back into the cushions, away from the old woman’s wrath. She just stood there, pointing, glaring at him, breathing heavily with the length and bitterness of her speech. The man’s hand crept toward that gap between sofa cushions, toward a gun, dammit, even Susan had figured that out, and then crept away again. Susan shivered, she wasn’t sure whether it was the cold wind through the open door behind her or the curse of shunning Aunt Jean laid on the man or her memories of the pushers she’d known on the streets.

  Killers. The whole drug scene was killers. Those punks that shot Mom, those were small-time pushers and users stealing the money for their next fix. Killing meant nothing to them. How much weight does Aunt Jean swing with guys like that, just backed by tribal lore and legend?

  Aunt Jean nodded to herself and dropped her hand. The guy hadn’t pulled his gun out yet, hadn’t killed them yet. Susan began to hope she could get out of this alive.

  Why the hell hadn’t she listened to Carlsson, why the hell hadn’t she listened to Alice and Aunt Jean? They’d told her not to come along on this. Now she was a witness. Drug punks killed witnesses. She started to back toward the door.

  Aunt Jean’s hand grabbed Susan’s wrist, strong through the tremors. “Stay, my daughter. Evil must be faced. Fools must be faced. Turn your back on this fool and he might shoot you. Face to face, he isn’t brave enough to shoot an old fat woman even though my hands shake too much to hold a gun. He has lost his ancestors and his spirit guide and lost his balls with them. Do not fear him.”

  Oh, God. She’s going out of her way to make him shoot us.

  But the man didn’t move. His hand didn’t move toward that gun. He sat there, pale, sweat on his brow. Susan could almost feel his heart racing with fear. Aunt Jean holds that much power in her land?

  Aunt Jean nodded to herself once more. “Tell your deputy-man to leave, as well. Three days. I have the old floor mat from his truck, Charlie did not throw it away when your deputy-man brought his truck into the shop to be cleaned. That bloodstain, that is not rabbit’s blood, oui? Any whiteman lab could tie it to you, tie him to you and to that bullet in your leg. Another fool.”

  The trailer creaked, Susan thought it was wind, and then creaked again and she knew someone walked across the floor but none of them had moved.

  And then the man did move, his hand clawing at the gap between sofa cushions and missing and trying again and finding what he wanted, finding the gun he wanted, and he brought it up in a drunken waving swing that carried the cold terror of its black muzzle across Susan, across Aunt Jean, and it spat flame and thunder. Aunt Jean didn’t flinch. He’d missed. Five feet away, he’d missed. Stoned. He swung the pistol back again, at Aunt Jean, at Susan, beyond, back, she felt the blast again, saw fire and felt the heat of the burned powder, didn’t hear anything, ears stunned.

  The gun fell loose from his hand. He flopped back against the sofa, something wrong with his head, blood pouring down on the back cushion of the sofa. Blood and brains, the sofa, the wall beh
ind him, two holes in his forehead, his eyes bulging.

  Another man appeared in the hallway from the bedrooms. She knew his face. Sommers. Deputy Sommers, the cop that had shown up at her trailer that night. That gunshot night. He must have shot the pusher.

  No. He’d taken her gun. He’d burned her trailer. He was part of the gang.

  He had his own gun. He held it in both hands, pointed first at the open door, seeking a target. He didn’t look stoned. He didn’t look like he would miss. He wasn’t here to save them. He was here to kill them.

  He started to swing the gun toward Aunt Jean and the floor creaked again and Snap! Snap! metallic like a door lock clicking loud behind Susan and his head bulged and stuff flew from the back of his skull and his eyes popped out and his gun blasted fire past her cheek and he dropped the pistol and collapsed back against the wall and slid down it to the floor.

  Someone else was shooting. Someone behind her.

  Susan turned. Alice stood behind her, holding a pistol—not her custom automatic but something else, something squat and square and evil and black with a fat black cylinder on the muzzle, thin smoke curled out of it, must be a silencer, Susan had seen them in the movies but thought they were just props, not something real.

  The kid had just shot both men.

  Holy Mary Mother of God. They set this up. Aunt Jean was goading them, making them attack us. How the hell did Alice hide from them?

  The kid was shaking. “I couldn’t do it. I froze. I saw him going for the gun and I froze!”

  Aunt Jean looked down at the dead cop and shook her head. “We are both alive. We are not hurt. Next time, you do better, oui? And this way, there is no question of what they wished to do.” Then she looked up at Susan. “C’est très mal to be both evil and stupid. If you ever need to break the law, plan better than these did. Think more ahead. Now, if you need to vomit, please hold it long enough to go out to the car and use one of the bags from under the front seat. We do not want to leave evidence.”