The need for documentation was another way in which Ned’s acquaintance with Grant had turned to his advantage. Before Ned took off across the country, Grant had helped him obtain a California ID card using a baptismal certificate from a church in San Francisco who’d taken Ned’s statement of his birth date at face value.
How many strings Grant had pulled to make it happen, Ned didn’t ask. His instinct told him the less he knew about Grant the better. It had required more than a single visit to Grant’s hotel room, but Ned judged the benefit to have been more than worth it. The California ID card and baptismal record had been enough to get him a Social Security number, which he hoped would be enough to get him a passport. By Thanksgiving at the very latest he hoped to have it in hand, and the fact that Suzanne insisted on making the journey with him was the thing that enabled him to make it at all.
“Fantastic!” Bailey exclaimed, staring at Ned. “What a total gas!”
“Yeah, far out. Australia, man, that’s like on the other side of the world.” Daniel looked from Ned to Suzanne with pot-glazed eyes.
Suzanne was laughing. “The landscape should be a trip all by itself.”
“Wow, when are you going?” Bailey seemed more amazed by their honeymoon plans than anyone.
Ned shrugged. “As soon as we have enough money saved.” A shadow crossed Suzanne’s face but to Ned’s relief she kept her mouth shut. He’d not wanted it made common knowledge that they were bankrolling the trip with her money. “I think we’re done here,” he said, guiding her away from the grotto and toward the parking lot.
“Abso-fuckin-lutely!” trilled Bailey. “C’mon, Daniel, let’s leave the newlyweds to their own devices.” She linked arms with Daniel and the minister, skipping over the parking lot gravel.
Ned suddenly wished them all gone with a vengeance. He was through playing at pretenses and wearing a mask of civility that he didn’t feel. And something was scratching at the inside of his skull, wanting out.
* * *
In the apartment, Ned lay back on the bed, trying to unclench his stomach. He could almost feel the liquid darkness creeping in from all sides, telescoping his vision of the room and his new bride.
“Ned, are you there?” She was bending over him, no trace of a smile on her pretty face. “Neddy, don’t fade out on me.” He could feel her rubbing his hands.
He opened his mouth, but there were no words. There was only a nauseous hiss in his ears and a cold, reptilian slither of a consciousness invading his mind. There was no other way to describe it, that insidious taking-over by the bilious hunger of a presence that had been with him from the beginning. Ned fought for consciousness, but the other was more determined, its purpose more focused.
His eyes rolled back in his head and the world around him dimmed as he heard Suzanne’s pleading voice far, far away, begging him to come
back. But he couldn’t do that because his essence had already begun its journey through the wormhole that led to the wasteland where the blackened man-shell crouched in its wretched reed hut by the gray banks of the billabong in the place between.
Chapter 24
August 27, Saturday—Present Day
Nik watched the sky. It was reinventing itself by the minute, with two discernible layers forming and reforming. He understood how it worked—damp, humid air from the Gulf of Mexico was bumping up against a front of cooler upper-level winds. A major summer thunderstorm had been brewing for the past hour, and now it was rapidly morphing into a supercell. High above, cumulo-nimbus mountains piled up toward the southwest, darkening the sky and blocking the late afternoon sun. Closer to the ground, long streaks of gray storm scud raced along the wind as it gusted over the treetops. The massive cloudbank moved more slowly, trailing long streamers that reached from its underside toward the land. Nik stood in the parking lot of the university’s science complex watching with fascination as the elements made mischief overhead.
He knew that these hot, humid late afternoons of summer bred conditions just right for supercell formation, which in turn spawned flooding rain, hail, violent downdrafts, and tornadoes. He also knew that the flanking column of updrafting air would feed the supercell for a number of hours, during which all manner of extreme weather was likely. He wondered what they would get today. The darker base of the cloudbank lit up momentarily, as if in answer, as a twisting neon tube shot downward. The following thunderclap came ten seconds later, by which he knew the rain would move in shortly.
It was barely five in the afternoon, but already campus streetlights were coming on as the dark closed in around wide, slate-colored curtains of rain visible from miles away. He hoped Margaret would be ready to leave before the torrent hit. With her boxes and suitcase stowed on the floorboard and seat of his ancient truck, he waited for her to say her final goodbyes to counselors and friends. He also hoped Alice wasn’t driving through any of the looming storm. She’d gotten a late start heading over to Gull Harbor to help Hal close up the house as he prepared to move back to Miami. Her car, a low-slung Camaro in the old 90s body style, wasn’t designed for heavy rain and deep puddles, but the storm looked to be far enough south that the route to Gull Harbor might not be in its direct path. He hoped she would remember to call him as soon as she was safe inside the house with Hal and Carlisle.
At that moment, Margaret emerged from the dorm arm in arm with a tall, thin girl whose jet-black hair obscured most of her face.
“Nik, this is my roomie Tom. Tom, this is Nik.”
“God middag,” he said, knowing he was on display. “Good afternoon.”
“See, isn’t he cool?” said Margaret, still clinging to the arm of her girlfriend.
“You’re from Sweden?” asked Tom.
Ned nodded. “Stockholm.”
“My great-granddad’s from Norway. He’s blond and blue-eyed, like you,” Tom stated. “My mom’s a Gypsy. That’s why I have black hair. Your hair’s really long for a guy.” She was looking him over in a frank way that made him distinctly uncomfortable.
Nik shifted his feet, wondering what to say. He wasn’t used to having teenage girls check him out like that.
“Was camp successful, then?” he asked, and they both broke into a cascade of giggles.
“You could say that,” answered Tom.
“Um, Tom got third place in the camp science fair,” said Margaret. “Nik’s a mushroom scientist,” she said to Tom.
Tom’s eyebrow went up. “Ever eat any funny mushrooms?”
Nik smiled and shook his head. “Sadly, no.”
“Is that your truck? It’s wicked cool, like a train wreck on wheels,” Tom stated, with what sounded like approval, although Nik couldn’t be sure. Margaret was hard enough to read, but this girl was beyond him.
“It’s fun to ride in, especially on dirt roads and through the woods,” said Margaret. “My mom has a Camaro, and she won’t let anybody else drive it.”
“I wouldn’t either,” said Tom, nodding.
Thunder boomed in the distance, and the first few raindrops pelted their faces and the hood of the truck with fat plops.
“We’d best get this scrap-metal heap on the road,” Nik said to Margaret, opening the truck door to get her moving.
Tom hugged Margaret and kissed her full on the mouth. Margaret blushed as red as her hair.
Nik raised his own eyebrow.
“E-mail me,” said Tom.
Margaret waved as Tom walked away to join other campers straggling into the parking lot. “It’s not what you think. She helped me out a lot, so we’re really close.”
Nik noticed that Margaret cut her eyes away. There was something she wasn’t sharing, but it was not in his nature to pry, so he let the moment pass.
“Where’s Dawg?” asked Margaret as she climbed into the truck.
“I left him sleeping on the deck. He was so hot his tongue was hanging out this far.” Nik gestured, making Margaret laugh.
“He’s so funny. I love Dawg. Hund, right?”
/> “Ja. You’re picking up a Swedish vocabulary pretty fast.”
“Well, I wanna know what to say when we go there.”
Nik blinked. While he and Alice had been inching in slow motion toward a decision about where they were headed as a couple, or as a family, Margaret seemed to have leapfrogged ahead of them and was already making plans for life abroad.
“What’ll we do with Dawg, though?” she asked.
Nik turned on the windshield wipers as he navigated the traffic around campus and headed out toward the state highway that would take them into rural Massalina County.
“It depends on how long we stay.” That was, of course, the heart of the question. He was hoping to land a permanent position, likely in Sweden, after his doctorate was done. Alice would have to decide if she and Margaret would move with him or just visit and come back.
His thoughts kept being pulled back to Alice. He knew she’d made the drive to Gull Harbor alone any number of times, but it still made him uneasy to think of her on the highway by herself in potentially dangerous conditions.
They rode a few minutes in silence, listening to the thump thump of the wipers. “When’s Mom coming home?”
“Tomorrow. I believe she said she intended to be back by mid-afternoon.”
“I want to tell her about Kinigar. He’s just the coolest. And he’s not a stalker, like she thinks.
“She just wants you to be careful.”
“I’ve seen his picture. He’s this really cool sixteen-year-old high school kid from Sydney, and I like him a lot.”
They drove in silence for a while, watching the rain sweeping in over the highway and listening to it beating down on the roof of the truck. Nik could tell from the occasional pull on the steering wheel that some of those gusts were pretty strong. He was glad Margaret didn’t seem to expect him to chatter away in meaningless talk because navigating in the sheets of rain was taking his full concentration. So much so that he almost missed it when his cell phone emitted a faint monotone beep. He pulled onto the shoulder of the road and stopped the truck, removed his cell phone from its belt holster, and flipped it open.
“Hello?” Nik expected to hear Alice’s voice, but instead a strange man with a pronounced Southern accent asked for a “Mister Thorens.”
Nik identified himself and listened with dread as the man explained that he was Deputy Sheriff Crowder and was callin’ on behalf of a young lady named Alice who was in a bit of difficulty and needed him to come right away, seein’ as how there was no next of kin she could call.
“What’s happened?” Nik heard himself ask. His mind was falling over itself, imagining any number of possible scenarios, but none of them were what Deputy Sheriff Crowder described over the phone.
“Yes. I’ll leave now, but it’ll take me about two hours to get there. Please tell her I’m on my way.” He clicked off and replaced the phone in its holster.
Margaret was staring at him with wide eyes. “Mom?”
Nik watched the pounding rain, his stomach in knots.
“Alice is safe, but Dunescape has burned to the ground.”
Chapter 25
August 27, Saturday—Present Day
Putting her Camaro on cruise control, Alice settled back against the padded seat and took her foot off the gas. Traffic was light on the main highway heading toward Gull Harbor, and it appeared she would make good time getting there.
The sky off to her left looked troublesome, with cloudbanks massing and darkening near their base. She’d come through a couple of thundershowers about thirty miles back, but none had lasted more than a few minutes. Although the sky was heavily overcast, she was still hoping to pull out from under the rain altogether by the time she got to Hal’s.
The more she thought of Hal, the more pissed she felt about the way he’d kept her in the dark all these years. She supposed she should be grateful he’d parted with the briefcase and its cache of letters, but the whole deception while she was growing up just wasn’t right. Plus, she was truly dismayed at the unsavory whiff his obsession with Suzanne left in her mind whenever she thought about it, which was a lot these days.
Had Suzanne been aware? It was hard to imagine that she couldn’t have copped a clue somewhere along the line, but if she’d known, it was even harder to imagine her living under the same roof with him for so long.
“Shitfire,” she said, shaking her head. None of it made any sense.
It also made her more determined than ever to play her relationship with Nik as straight as possible for Margaret. No hidden agendas or secret plans. If her daughter wanted to know what was up, they would tell her.
Crossing the railroad tracks at the intersection of the state highway running north-south, she checked the time: 5:45. She would reach the driveway at Dunescape in another hour or so, depending on the traffic. Heading south, she eased into the steady stream of cars aimed toward the beaches along the Gulf coast.
She hoped Margaret wouldn’t mind just Nik picking her up on the last day of camp. Alice had hoped to chat with the counselors and Margaret’s girlfriends to get a measure of how well the session had gone and whether it was worth investing in next year. Hard to imagine it wouldn’t be, given the opportunities it offered to the students chosen to attend.
Her mind coasted back to the museum and the Legends introduction. One sentence she’d written about the senior men and women stuck in her mind: “The seer’s path would be seen as wisdom by some and madness by others.” That got her thinking about Aboriginal shamanism in general. Gifted individuals were obligated to make spirit journeys for the benefit of their tribes. Would we label them crazy by modern standards? Maybe there were modern-day shamans who practiced ancient arts when no one was paying attention. She wondered if she knew anyone who might qualify, and immediately the image of mild-mannered Cecil Rider came into her mind. That surprised her at first, but the more she thought about it, the more right it seemed.
It was clear the Reverend believed that Cadjer Harrow, who’d founded his tiny rural church in 1894, had returned to the corporal world and that she was somehow responsible, with her snooping around and digging up secrets he thought he’d buried. She remembered with a twitch of fear that she hadn’t done the one thing he’d demanded: destroy Harrow’s notebook. As an historian and collector of artifacts, she just couldn’t bring herself to do it, even though she had thought about it many times.
Alice’s right front tire rumbled onto the shoulder of the highway, and she jerked the car back onto the road. Damn! She needed to stop daydreaming and pay attention. She was still driving through intermittent gusts of rain but could see patches of late afternoon sky ahead. By the time she got to Gull Harbor, the storm should have done its worst and moved on.
She thought of Ned again and began to fantasize that he’d gone to Australia with Suzanne on a shamanic mission. The idea was pinging something in the back of her mind, a memory of something, but she couldn’t get to it. Her brain was so sleep-deprived these days that she sometimes felt like an Alzheimer’s patient, searching for words in a vocabulary that was long gone.
With any luck, she might be able to get some sleep at Dunescape tonight. She hadn’t bothered to pack an overnight case, figuring she could just wear the same tank top and cutoff jeans she had on now back to Magnolia tomorrow. Her toothbrush and a change of underwear were in a plastic bag on the seat beside her. She’d just help Hal deal with Suzanne’s things and then he could sell Dunescape and go back to his cronies in Miami.
Evil sonofabitch, deceiving her all those years. Well, she was going to make him open up all the dirty laundry, hidden agendas, buried memories, and leftover secrets still squirreled away. He might even redeem himself a little. She’d give him that option, at least.
* * *
Tires crunching on shell and gravel, Alice pulled into the driveway at Dunescape right at dusk. Shutting the car off, she heard Carlisle barking. That was odd. Not that he was barking, because he always sounded the alarm when people d
rove up in front of the house, but that he was loose in the front yard. Suzanne would have never let him outside like that by himself.
“Hey, big fella,” she said, calling to him as she got out of the car. “What are you doing outside?”
Carlisle continued to bark nonstop, jumping in little hops around a clump of weeds and grass beside the front steps, completely ignoring Alice.
“Hey, buddy, I know you’re mostly deaf, but, HEY!”
Unable to get his attention, she shut the car door and walked toward him, then froze in midstep. Even in the fading light, she could see what the dog was fixated on: the characteristic tan and dark-brown scale pattern and large triangular head were unmistakable. Carlisle had cornered the longest Diamondback rattler she had ever seen. A heavy-bodied snake under any conditions, this one was massive, with at least twenty rattle segments on its loudly buzzing tail tip. The biggest ones she’d seen in captivity were around six feet, and this one was easily that or more.
“Carlisle! Come here!” she screamed.
Having read that rattlers were sensitive to vibrations through the ground, she was afraid to move any closer, but she had to pull Carlisle out of the snake’s strike range, which for the Diamondback was more than half its body length. Alice had seen enough nature programs on television to know the basics, and she’d read up on snakes when she’d moved to the Florida woodlands. Occasionally, she’d found their calling cards, discarded molts of skin turned inside out, in the garden or along a trail. Now, everything she’d ever learned and feared about the Eastern Diamondback was materialized there in front of her.
The snake was coiling and recoiling in mesmerizing loops near the steps, hissing and rubbing its rough, ovoid-shaped scales together as its rattles buzzed an agitated warning. Carlisle barked in sharp bursts, feinting in toward the snake with little snaps of his long muzzle and then dancing away. Unlike western varieties of rattlesnakes, the Eastern Diamondback typically did not make repeated quick strikes at its prey, preferring instead to size up the target and deliver a single lethal blow, a tactic Alice hoped would give her a quick chance to dodge in, grab Carlisle by his collar, and drag him away before it decided to strike.
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