The Shaman's Secret

by Natasha Narayan

  “Very well. You’ve asked …” he said. “Do you feel it too?”

  “Feel what?”

  “Feel it. I don’t know what it is. It moves in your head.”

  I went rigid, every nerve tense. I had felt it, but had tried not to dwell on it. Behind my frequent headaches, there was something strange, sinister.

  “Prodding, poking about in there. Like a maggot in your brain. Looking for a way to burrow in deeper—”

  “What’s doing this?” I interrupted. “If you know, for heaven’s sake, tell me.”

  “I don’t have the answers. All I have is a feeling. A very strong feeling. I think it’s Cecil.”

  “Your brother? But that’s impossible. How could he …” My voice trailed off. “How could he get in my head?”

  “I told you he is a shaman. A magician. He hates me now and he has always hated you. He is playing with us. Playing inside our heads.”

  “How can you know? I mean—”

  “We’re twins,” he cut in. “Cecil and I have been together since we were babies. We lost our first tooth in the same week, courted our first girl together. Not that there’s been much courting in our lives. The business always came first. Now we’re wrenched apart and it’s as if I’ve lost half my arm. Sometimes I think any hell would be better than losing my twin.”

  “You’ve been brave to leave him.”

  “Don’t you see? It’s just because I know him so well. In so many ways I am him. This is why I know it’s him in my mind. I know his … his … How can I put it? … His handwriting.”

  I glanced at Aunt Hilda. She was snoring lightly. I was shrouded in a chill fog. Me and Cyril Baker together, struggling through the murk. Everything was dark now, the momentary peace gone.

  “Playing inside our heads,” I murmured.

  Cyril’s mouth closed with a snap. To my left Aunt Hilda grunted and opened her eyes. She flashed a suspicious look at me and then at Cyril, as if we had played some trick on her.

  “It’s nearly dark,” she said. “Better wash off some of this muck and get to bed. It’s an early start tomorrow.” She heaved her body out of the tub, like a great muddy whale. Mutely I followed as she waddled off across the lawn toward our lodgings.

  I heard Cyril cough in the dusk behind me. Heard the slap of his feet on the path. How could he have described the feeling of something inside my head so well if it hadn’t happened to him too? But that his brother was some sort of magician who could enter other people’s minds … The idea was fantastic.

  I knew, deep down, that Cyril had only told me a part of the story. All the things I didn’t know cast shadows over my thoughts. I was convinced he was still hiding something. It may have been true that his twin was playing in our minds. But there was more—I knew it. I could only guess what Cecil was really planning: the beating heart of our mission was still secret.

  Chapter Nine

  I almost didn’t see Cyril Baker waiting by the stagecoach. The man was becoming more see-through every day. As if he was shrinking, vanishing. He didn’t mention our talk of the night before, but I couldn’t look at him without a dark cloud descending.

  There were eight horses to pull the stagecoach. They pawed at the ground, their breath rising in steaming fingers. The driver was on his seat, his whip between his legs. As well as a broad-brimmed Stetson hat, a holstered pistol and an ammunition belt jangling at his hip, there was another shotgun by his seat. The only law, as one went west, was the barrel of a gun. Indians, cowboys, miners and homesteaders fought for control of these wild lands. They would shoot first and ask questions later.

  The coach, built by the famous Concord company, was very sturdy. It had two huge wheels at the back and could seat nine inside. Two more could hitch up next to the driver, and for short journeys it was known for five or six extra passengers to clamber on the roof. At the moment the roof was stacked with our suitcases and trunks. Luckily this coach was hired for our private use.

  “The front seat, madam?” Mr. Baker asked my aunt.

  “Humph,” she grunted. “Should think so. Waldo, you can squeeze up here too. Sit next to the driver.”

  She had swatted Mr. Baker aside like a fly, choosing the most comfortable seats for herself and Waldo. Cyril was finding, like most men, that my aunt is an unstoppable force. The softer emotions were not natural to my dear aunt, but I wondered briefly if she ever dwelled on her friend Mr. Gaston Champlon, who had died in an avalanche in India. They were very friendly before his death, and I’d sometimes even hoped they might get married. But now it was impossible to imagine my gruff aunt ever letting a man rule her.

  For the journey across the mountains Rachel, Isaac and I were stuck with Mr. Baker for company. He sat across from me, knees locked uncomfortably close to mine. I was often conscious of his eyes on me. It was as if nothing else existed for him, just me and my mind. In a dark moment I even wondered if it was him who was entering my head, playing tricks with my sanity. Was this all part of some cruel game?

  I thrust the thought away as soon as it entered my head. You have to trust someone in this world. Hadn’t he given my friends solid proof in Chinatown of his change of heart?

  The sights of the California mountains were wonderful. Instead of our English oak and ash, they have trees such as the evergreen manzanita, the maple, the buckeye and of course the fabulous redwood. These monster trees grow higher than a church steeple, and there is one so huge they’ve cut a hole in it through which you can drive a wagon and eight horses. The giant redwood is somehow very American. Everything out here is simply bigger—Waldo, of course, would say better as well. The mountains touch the clouds, and the great plains are amazing in scale, stretching out as far as the eye can see.

  America can make dear old England feel very small.

  “The last time we journeyed by stagecoach we were kidnapped by you, Mr. Baker,” Rachel murmured as we drove along. “Let us hope this journey is more pleasant.”

  “My brother’s idea.”

  “Mr. Baker’s presence here will provide insurance against being kidnapped, I’m sure,” I said.

  He smiled uneasily at that and for many miles there was silence. Stagecoach travel in America is a bone-shaking experience. The seats are hard and you’re jolted and rattled up and down till your very breath feels shaky. Dust blows in through the open window, coating everything and leaving you choking for breath. We were all delighted to stop for lunch at a curious attraction called the Petrified Forest.

  This contains the stumps of huge redwoods that were coated by volcanic ash centuries ago, weird skeletal shapes that remind you of long-dead beasts. It is managed by an enterprising Swede, who bought this land to farm. He chanced on the fossils and decided instead to turn it into a business. Now he charges fifty cents to enter the forest. Such is the spirit of America. Even old fossils can be turned into gold.

  We ate our lunch of rolls, muffins, boiled eggs and ham. Well, to be honest, while the others wolfed it down, I picked. I hadn’t felt properly hungry since I’d woken from my coma. Food made a sick feeling rise in my throat. I noticed Mr. Baker hardly ate either. He was jumpy, starting at every noise, constantly on the lookout for his brother. Afterward, we wandered awhile in the forest. Eerily silent, the ghosts of past trees all around, it brought home to me the immense age of America. Only Aunt Hilda seemed unaffected by the spirit of the place.

  “We’d better get on, Baker,” she boomed after we’d been in the forest a mere half-hour. “We need to be at the trading post by nightfall.”

  So we were off again, keeping up the same relentless pace. Climbing the rutted track, up and up. The horses were lathered in froth before we reached the way station where we would change horses and spend the night. Not much of a place, I must admit. A wooden shack with a tin roof and another shack for the horses. Around the houses was some pasture, and a vegetable patch, but the forest pressed in on all sides, deep and dark.

  It looked a lonely place to live.

 
Waldo jumped down from his place near Aunt Hilda. He was smiling and looked fresher than the rest of us.

  “At least we’ll get bacon for breakfast,” he said, pointing to the pig pen near the shack.

  The innkeeper came out at last to meet us. He was a small, wrinkled man in a gray apron smeared with blood. He greeted us courteously and offered refreshments, but when he saw Mr. Baker his face twisted in a puzzled frown.

  “Back already? What happened to your red coach? Did you smash it up?”

  For a moment no one understood what he was talking about. Our coach was black, a very smart black and gold. Then the light dawned. Cyril Baker stared at him, blood draining from his already bloodless face.

  “What is it, man?” the innkeeper said. “You look like you’ve seen a ghost. I’m only saying you left yesterday—and now look at you. Back with a new gig. Not as fancy as the last one though.”

  “That must have been my brother, Cecil,” Cyril said at last. “People say we’re very alike.”

  “Alike? You’re the spitting image of each other. You two playing hide-and-seek over the mountains?”

  But Cyril didn’t reply. Turning away, he asked for his bag to be taken to his room, which the innkeeper’s son did. So our plan to throw his brother off our scent by detouring to Calistoga had failed. Even worse, Cecil Baker was ahead of us, which meant that if we didn’t make up speed he would reach the Grand Canyon before us.

  Cyril had warned that if he found the tablet before we did, the consequences would be catastrophic.

  That evening we partook of the most revolting meal of my life. In the inn’s rough kitchen we sat round a dirty wooden table. There were barrels for chairs, no stove, just a fire with a big pot suspended above. There were no cupboards or dressers or shelves, not even a floor, just earth packed hard under our feet.

  “Slumgullion,” the innkeeper said, sloshing some grayish stew into our tin cups. “Oughtter keep you going.”

  What can I say? Slumgullion is a mix of sand, bacon rind, grease, dish-rag and probably pig droppings. The others gulped it disgustedly down, along with gritty hunks of cornbread. I managed no more than one mouthful and Mr. Baker had not even that.

  After such a feast what could we do but retire early? There were no gas lamps in this simple shack so we took candles up to our rooms. I was sharing a mattress with Rachel while Aunt Hilda slept on the cot. Even if I had not been uneasy, my brain throbbing, my back aching on the hard floor, my aunt’s snoring would have made a good night’s sleep impossible. At midnight, Rachel put a pillow over her head. If anything, her snores became louder.

  I finally fell into a heavy sleep around dawn. I had one of those dreams in which you feel like you’ve been drugged, or hit over the head with a sandbag. I knew I was sleeping, but I couldn’t wake, as a very pale man in a very pale gown came up to me. He looked like a mummy, with no hands or feet but trailing yards of bandages. The man leaned over me, breathing in my face, his papery skin crackling.

  It was Cyril or Cecil Baker—I couldn’t tell which. His eyes drilled into my brain, and then he held out a pale hand and stroked my hair. Stroked it as if he wanted to pull it out by the handful. Then I noticed the snake on his neck, crawling up to his cheek.

  “WHAT’S THE MATTER? KIT, ARE YOU ALL RIGHT?” Rachel was holding me, her face inches from mine. In the background I could see Aunt Hilda was upright, awoken suddenly from her sleep.

  “Fine,” I gasped, backing away from Rachel. My face was sweaty, my hair damp. “Just a bad dream.”

  “You were screaming, child!” Aunt Hilda snapped.

  “Hush, everything is just fine. No need to worry,” Rachel said. “Shhhh,” she murmured to me, as if I was a small child. Her soothing voice stilled my heartbeat and gradually I found myself calming down.

  Aunt Hilda and Rachel were both gentle with me. Indeed, after a good bacon breakfast with the bright California sunshine streaming through the window, it was hard to believe in my night fears.

  After breakfast Rachel and I went to collect our bags and things. As soon as I entered our room, I knew something was wrong. Not that anything had been disarranged—but I could sense something. Rachel didn’t notice anything and we packed away our nightgowns and toothbrushes and so on while she chattered on about the amazing beauty of the West. She was nervous about the trip through the desert, where nothing grew except cacti. Finally everything was ready for our departure. Except one thing.

  “Have you got my hairbrush?” I asked Rachel.

  “No.” She turned round and scanned the room. There was no place to hide a mouse in the dingy little chamber. Just bare wooden floorboards, a chest of drawers, a wash bowl with a cracked mirror above it.

  “Have you looked in the chest of drawers?”

  “Why would I put my hairbrush in a chest of drawers?” I replied. “I left it by the washbasin. I know I did.”

  I could conjure up a picture of my hairbrush. Wooden-backed, full of my tangled brown hair.

  “Rachel, I brushed my hair before breakfast. I know I did, and then I left it right there.” I pointed to the empty space by the wash bowl.

  It was a mystery of the kind you will be familiar with. You lose a favorite hairclip or purse. Usually you blame imps, or borrowers, or your own absentmindedness, but this time the disappearance of my hairbrush struck both of us as odd.

  Rachel looked at the floor and stifled a small scream. There on the boards was the print of dusty shoe. A large shoe, far too large for either of us—or Aunt Hilda. I saw another footprint by the door—clearer than the first.

  That settled it. Though the room was dingy, it was very clean and the floor had been mopped before our arrival. The footprint belonged to a stranger. While we had breakfasted downstairs, someone—a man, by the size of his feet—had crept up here and stolen my hairbrush.

  “Who would want your grubby old hairbrush?” Rachel said. She attempted a smile. “Unless it’s Waldo, as a sort of love token.”

  I blushed. “What are you talking about?” I said. “He can hardly stand the sight of me these days.”

  “Witchcraft,” Rachel whispered. “Witches were stealing your hair. What do they say? A lock of hair, a piece of skin, fingernail clippings. That’s what witches use, isn’t it? This smells of witchcraft.”

  “Rubbish. All that stuff is just gibberish. Look out of the window at the mountains and that green grass and the pigs snuffling at the trough. That’s what is real. All the rest is just—”

  “That’s what you say, Kit,” Rachel interrupted. “I know what you’re up to. You’re keeping something from me … I saw how you looked a moment ago, just because your hairbrush was lost. Well, tell me that’s normal.”

  “It is normal,” I said. But I was lying. Nothing about this situation was normal. Not the feeling of something crawling in my head. Not the fear the missing hairbrush had stirred up in me. Not the snake, which had moved infinitesimally up my arm. I couldn’t bother Rachel with all this though. Her dread would only make me feel even worse. Luckily Aunt Hilda bellowed from below that the stagecoach was waiting, so with a hurried exclamation I picked up my bags and went outside for my shoes.

  But they were gone. Rachel’s pair was there, outside our door. But my own sturdy brown brogues had vanished. At that moment Rachel came out of the room, and when she saw my face she looked terrified.

  I rushed downstairs.

  “Has anyone seen my shoes?” I asked Aunt Hilda, who was carrying her bag out of the door.

  “They are outside your room.”

  “No, they’re not. They’ve disappeared.”

  She sighed impatiently. “I’ll show you.”

  Rachel and I trooped up the stairs after her and there, lying outside our door, just where I had left them, were my shoes. My dusty brown shoes.

  Either they had vanished and then returned. Or both Rachel and I were going mad.

  Chapter Ten

  Our passage through California to Arizona should have been wonder
ful. Giant sequoia trees, vertical cliffs, canyons and cascading waterfalls gradually gave way to parched deserts dotted with cacti. But we were too frightened, pushed ourselves too hard, to take pleasure in the landscape. Always we seemed to go on the hardest route, down trails rutted by the men and women who had come before us, those hardy pioneers. We kept away, though, from the main stagecoach stations. Cyril Baker had been badly scared by the reported sighting of his brother. When he heard the story of the ghostly shoes, he became as jumpy as a startled deer.

  I couldn’t help feeling sorry for him. He was living on his nerves, hardly eating. His white skin had taken on a bluish tinge and he was so thin a breeze could blow him over. I wondered if I looked as awful as he did. Our affliction had made a strange sort of friendship between us. After a day or two of our journey, Cyril had managed to boot Waldo off the shotgun position next to the driver. Now he rode with my aunt. He said he wanted to be on the lookout. I knew he was armed, like the driver and Waldo. We were bristling with pistols, which should have made us feel safer. It didn’t. The more guns there are around, the less secure you feel.

  The journey became harder every day. As we left California’s almond-scented climes, we saw fewer people. The occasional wary Indian, face painted with ochre. A couple of squaws, their babies tied in a bundle to their backs. Now and then a lonely rancher or wild-eyed cowboy. Sand blew in our faces, putting a burning screen before our eyes, making us gasp for air. Our throats rasped as we poured sips of warm water down them. But we had to be careful. Mr. Baker had brought plenty of supplies—the explanation for the boxes on top of the stagecoach—but as we came down off the Panamint Mountains and into Death Valley water was more precious than gold.

  This valley is the hottest place in America, with a sun that scorched our horses as they labored, panting, to pull our coach. Our cowboy hats protected us from the worst of it, but the sun still bored fiery spikes into our heads. The pioneers who had traveled out here in search of riches in the gold rush had named this area Death Valley. Like us they were in a frantic hurry. I hoped we would be luckier than they were and would not lose members of our expedition to sunstroke and dehydration.