The Impossible Coin (The Downwinders Book 2)

by Michael Richan

  Don’t look down, look up! Marty called, and Winn raised his head to look toward him. When he reached Marty’s height of thirty feet, he stopped.

  Isn’t this high enough? Winn asked, panicked.

  Well, I don’t know, Marty said. Look around. You tell me.

  They were above most of the trees, and Winn could see the tops of the trailers and the power and telephone lines running to them. He could see the driveway running from the park entrance all the way back to Marty’s trailer.

  Kinda cool, isn’t it? Marty asked.

  Yeah, Winn said, slowly gaining his bearings.

  Here’s something even cooler, Marty said, and shot up into the air. Winn looked up and saw Marty another fifty feet up, hanging in the sky.

  Come on, Marty called. You’re already up here. Might as well enjoy a better view!

  Winn felt anxious left alone in the air. Marty’s proximity had made him feel more comfortable, so he allowed himself to rise rapidly to where Marty was suspended in the air.

  Whoa! Winn thought when he arrived. He could see for miles.

  Yeah, it’s different this high, Marty said. You can see a lot more. By the way, this is about as high as you can go without taking something first to keep your head straight. Remember that. If you go much higher without it, you can get dizzy and pass out.

  What do you have to take? Winn asked.

  It’ a compound you make from arganthumum, Marty replied. Remind me to teach you how to make it someday. But really, this is high enough for most purposes. Look around!

  There’s my school! Winn said, pointing south. Over there!

  Oh! Marty said, pointing down. Look, a hawk, below us!

  Winn saw the predator circling underneath them. Watching the bird shift direction from this angle was inspiring, and it made him want to move through the air and fly, too.

  Oh, that is so cool! Winn said.

  Winn, where was that cave, where you found the nickel? Marty asked.

  Winn turned, looking north into the desert. That way, he said, pointing.

  Let’s fly there and check it out, shall we? You head in that direction. Go as fast as you want, I’ll follow you.

  Winn turned back to look at Marty, all smiles.

  Alright, he said, and he leaned forward, feeling himself moving rapidly northward and down toward the ground, watching as it sped under him, imagining he was a hawk.

  He felt he could go faster, but he settled at a speed that made the trip exhilarating, floating about twenty feet off the ground. As they approached the canyon, he slowly drifted down, worried about a crash landing. Instead he merely came to a stop and allowed himself to drift about a foot off the ground. He smiled to himself, feeling more confident.

  It’s over here, he said, leading Marty to the cave’s entrance. Marty joined him, looking into the hole in the ground. You going to go in? Winn asked.

  Marty looked up at Winn, then back at the hole. No, I don’t think so, Marty said.

  You could just drift through the rock and right into the cave, right? Winn asked.

  I could, but I don’t think that’s a good idea, Marty replied.

  Why?

  Because something is… off. Something is wrong with it.

  Wrong? You mean the ghosts inside?

  No, Marty said. Something else. There are things in the River that are dangerous only when you’re in the River, and this has that feeling. Remember how this feels, Winn. When something feels like this, the way you feel right now, remember that it’s a sign danger is nearby.

  Winn felt a little of the feeling that had overcome him inside the cave, when he saw the bones and knew that he and Brent should leave. He began to get scared. Do you think they know we’re out here? he asked.

  They do, Marty said. But they’re not going to come out. These ghosts don’t like the light. I’m glad we didn’t come here at night, though.

  Winn saw Marty shiver. It frightened him to see Marty scared of something – he rarely was.

  McGraves said the person I saw with the mountain lion was a Caller, Winn said. Is that what you’re afraid of?

  You didn’t tell me he told you about that, Marty said. What else did he say?

  He said the Caller was repaying a debt.

  Marty backed away from the cave entrance a little. Well, yes, Callers are to be feared, Marty said. But there’s more than that here.

  Padre Kino? Winn asked.

  Not just him, Marty said. There’s a lot of angry souls in there, trapped. I think we should leave.

  The serious look on Marty’s face scared Winn even more. Let’s go, then! he said, rising into the air. Marty quickly joined him, and they sped back to the trailer court, arriving outside Winn’s trailer at the spot where he’d walked through the wall.

  I have questions, Winn said.

  Fine, why don’t you come on over after you get back inside yourself? I’m gonna make some iced tea and you can have some lemonade.

  OK, Winn said, turning to pass through the wall. He saw his mother in the kitchen, moving around. He quickly dropped out of the flow, feeling himself sit up on the couch.

  “You know, I don’t mind you doing that, because I know you’re gonna do it whether I want you to or not,” his mother said, half way through a cigarette, her eyes half open and a thin robe wrapped around herself. Winn could tell she was hung over and still a little drunk. “But you could at least do it in the privacy of your bedroom instead of out here, drooling all over the couch.”

  Embarrassed, Winn walked back to his bedroom, found his older sneakers, and put them on. As he left the trailer he told his mom, “I’m going outside for a while.”

  “Whatever,” she called back, her eyes not leaving the television. “I’ve got another double tonight.”

  He shut the door behind him and walked to Marty’s, grateful that he’d have the trailer to himself again for another evening.

  Chapter Ten

  “I’m worried,” Marty said, tossing Winn a can of lemonade from his fridge and pouring himself a refill of iced tea. “Things are bubbling in that cave.”

  “Bubbling?” Winn asked.

  “Active,” Marty said, sitting at the table with Winn. “There’s movement. Things happening. Not good things.”

  “How can you tell?”

  “I’ve always been able to detect things like that,” Marty said. “Every person who’s gifted has their own specialty, something that makes them a little different from each other. For me, I could tell if a place was dangerous or not, and once I’d see it in the River, I could stay connected to it, kind of feel it.”

  “So you can feel the cave, right now, while we sit here?”

  “I can,” Marty said.

  “And it’s bubbling?” Winn asked.

  “It is.”

  “I wonder what my specialty is,” Winn said.

  “Could be anything,” Marty said. “You’re probably too young to know for sure. As you get older, you’ll figure it out. It might be an ability, like mine, or you might develop an interest in something. I know gifteds who have dedicated themselves to certain studies, very specific areas, and they’ve become experts.”

  “Like what?”

  “Well, there’s an acquaintance of mine who lives in the Pacific Northwest,” Marty said. “His specialty is demons.”

  “Demons?” Winn said, a concerned look on his face.

  “Yes,” Marty replied. “If you’re lucky, you’ll go your whole life not running into any, but if you do, you want to get an expert involved, because they’re very tricky, not like ghosts. So, there’s him. And I know of a man in Santa Fe who maintains contracts.”

  “That doesn’t sound very special,” Winn said. “Sounds kinda boring.”

  “They’re special contracts. Unusual ones. And then there’s my friend in Mesa who specializes in different types of ghosts. Lately I’ve seen some young people who’ve specialized in these Callers. That’s a dangerous pastime.”

  “What is a Ca
ller, exactly?” Winn asked.

  “Well,” Marty said, sipping on his iced tea, “McGraves told you the guy with the mountain lion in the cave was repaying a debt, right?”

  “Yes.”

  “He owes a debt to a spirit that lives in the rock of the cave. He used to be just a normal ghost, but he came across the cave spirit and they made a bargain. Ever since the nuclear testing and the fallout, cave spirits have had the ability to turn ghosts into Callers, and they do it for a price.”

  “Blood?”

  “Right you are!” Marty said. “They’d prefer human blood, but they’ll take anything they can get. So, the body of the Caller you saw was buried somewhere in that cave, and the spirit in the rock gave his ghost the ability to be more functional. They don’t act like normal ghosts, replaying patterns, haunting just one place. They’re smarter than that, and they can organize with other Callers and cause all kinds of trouble. And many of them can rope in normal ghosts to do their bidding. But for all that ability, they have to feed the spirit in the rock the blood that it craves. They’re like a slave to it, constantly looking for blood to feed to it.”

  “What happens if they don’t feed it blood?” Winn asked.

  Marty raised his hand to his chin and rubbed it. “You know, that’s a good question. I don’t know. Maybe they’d lose their powers?”

  “And they’d stop being Callers?”

  “Maybe,” Marty replied. “I can tell you the Caller in that cave has plenty of ghosts under his control. I could hear them in there, moaning. It was good that we were there during the day. If it had been night, they might have come out.”

  “He didn’t call them out when Brent and I were in there,” Winn said.

  “That’s true…maybe he thought you were just a couple of kids, playing in the cave. He might not have realized you’re gifted.”

  “I’m not afraid of ghosts,” Winn said proudly with a sudden rush of courage. “I wasn’t afraid of McGraves.”

  “True, true,” Marty replied. “But then again, he wasn’t like the ghosts that are in that cave. The ones the Caller can control.”

  “How was he different?”

  “McGraves has been a strong presence in his house ever since he died there,” Marty said, “and he’s what I’d call a powerful, but normal, ghost. But most of the ghosts who live in caves and mines around here aren’t normal. Remember I told you about the radiation, and how it changed things downwind?”

  “Yes.”

  “Well, it changed some ghosts. Made them more dangerous.”

  “How?”

  “Well, it made them able to detect if you’re in the River or not. And if you are, it makes them very angry. They change when they get angry. They transform, as though they had bodies again. And they come at you, wanting to tear you apart. Their hands are very sharp, and they can rip you into pieces if they catch you.”

  Winn gulped. “And they were in the cave, with the Caller?”

  “They were,” Marty said. “I could feel them from outside the cave.”

  “I was in the River inside the cave,” Winn said. “Why didn’t they attack me?”

  “I don’t know,” Marty said. “Maybe you got lucky. You and Brent left the cave quickly; maybe the Caller didn’t have time to summon them.”

  “They probably live further back in the cave,” Winn said, trying to piece things together in his mind.

  “Maybe,” Marty said. “You’ve barely touched your lemonade. I’m afraid I’ve scared you.”

  Winn looked at the can of lemonade, a bead of condensation running down the side of it and onto the linoleum surface of the table. “Nah, I’m not scared.”

  “Well, then – I haven’t done my job very well,” Marty said. “You need to be scared of Callers and zombighosts. They’re very dangerous.”

  “Zombighosts?” Winn asked.

  “That’s what we call the ghosts who can become corporeal,” Marty said.

  “Corporeal?” Winn asked, struggling with the pronunciation of the word.

  “It means they come back to life, with a body,” Marty said. “A very dangerous body.”

  Marty stood up and walked to the door, abandoning his iced tea. “Come with me, I want to show you something.”

  He led Winn to his shed behind the trailer, and opened the lock with his keychain. He slid the doors open, and walked to the shelving rack, where he removed a plastic box with a handle. It looked like a small tackle box.

  He set the box on his workbench and opened it. Winn expected to see lures and hooks, but the tiny plastic compartments inside held other objects; small metal eyelets, small glass jars filled with colored gravel like the kind you would put in the bottom of a fishbowl, and strange metal implements. Marty lifted the plastic tray, exposing what was underneath – a collection of brown paper bags of different sizes. He took one out and looked into it, then closed it back up and removed another, checking it out. After looking through several, he came to the one he wanted.

  “Ah, this is it!” he said, reaching into the bag and removing a small black rock. He held it up for Winn to see.

  “I made these a while back,” Marty said proudly.

  “Looks like a rock,” Winn said, unimpressed.

  “Yes, I know it does,” Marty said, “but it’s much more than that. Jump into the River real quick, take a look at it, and come back out.”

  Winn closed his eyes and let himself enter the flow. He looked at the rock in Marty’s hand, and was shocked to see that it looked like a small ball with dozens of pointy spikes coming from it. In some ways it looked like a tiny puffer fish, without a face. He dropped out of the River.

  “Did you see?” Marty asked. “The activators?”

  “I saw lots of spikes on it,” Winn said. “I’m not sure how you’re not sticking yourself right now!”

  “You know those pop rocks you kids like to throw on the ground and hear them go ‘bang!’?” Marty asked. “Well, this is kind of like that, but more powerful. I designed it to be like a flash bomb for zombighosts. You enter the River and throw it on the ground, as hard as you can, and it makes a flash that disorients them. Just enough time to run away.”

  “You made this?” Winn asked, in awe.

  “I did!” Marty said, standing up proudly.

  “What, right here in your shed?” Winn asked.

  “Yes, right here!” Marty said, smiling. “I made them for a friend who used them while rescuing his son, who had been drug deep into a cave.”

  “How did you make it?”

  “I mixed a few of these things together, then I…” he stopped. “It’s a long process. I’ll explain it to you some other time if you’re interested. Here, take it!” Marty said, handing the rock to Winn.

  Winn took it and studied it. It was smooth and looked like any black rock you might find on the ground. He slipped it into his pocket.

  “You still have the nickel?” Marty asked, placing the plastic tray back over the paper bags and closing up the box.

  “No,” Winn said. “I gave it to Brent.”

  “Brent?” Marty said, stepping out of the shed and sliding the doors closed. “I told you not to give it to anyone!”

  “He needed it,” Winn said. “His father beat him up, and he was in a lot of pain. The nickel seemed to help him. It didn’t heal him, though, it just took away the pain. So I let him keep it. It’s going to expire today, anyway.”

  Marty locked up the shed. “What did his father do to him?”

  “Brent’s got a black eye. And I think he got him in the stomach, too. I saw bruises.”

  “That asshole,” Marty said, walking back to the trailer. “I have half a mind to call the cops on him.”

  “I should probably go check on him,” Winn said. “Sometimes his dad lets him out on Sunday nights.”

  “You do that, make sure he’s OK,” Marty said, stepping back into the trailer. “Want to take this can of lemonade with you?”

  “Sure!” Winn said. Marty hand
ed him the can.

  “Listen, Winn, before you go,” Marty said, sitting down in the open doorway of his trailer. “I don’t want you to be scared, but it’s important that you have a healthy respect for things that can hurt you. What I sensed from that cave today, it was bad. Really bad. I know you promised me you wouldn’t go back there, but I want you to promise me you won’t go there in the River, either. Especially not in the River. I cannot emphasize enough how dangerous the things in that cave are. You’re lucky you got out of there alive, to be honest. I’m not sure why they didn’t tear you apart in the first place.”

  “Well, it was daylight, maybe that’s why,” Winn said.

  “But it’s dark inside the cave,” Marty said.

  “Oh yeah,” Winn said. “Well, maybe they didn’t want to attack me because they wanted to help me. They did give me the coin, after all, and it’s been a great help to Brent. Just like Padre Kino was helped. ”

  Marty eye’s widened as a new idea struck him. “McGraves said that Father Kino gave you the coin,” he said, “but I’m beginning to think he was wrong about that. Kino’s soul was pulled back to that cave because he failed to fulfill his promise. Kino thought it was God that healed him, but maybe it was the spirit in the rock, not God. I think Father Kino made a mistake. He inadvertently sold his soul to the spirit in that cave, in exchange for protection and healing. When he realized that it was the spirit, and not God, that’s why he never returned to build a shrine. He didn’t want to honor something he considered evil. If I’m right, it was the cave spirit in the rock that saved Father Kino. And that would mean the same cave spirit gave you that coin. It thought you wanted protection and healing, too. That’s why the nickel does what it does.”

  Winn was convinced. He had no intention of returning to the cave, even if it meant he could get another coin with special powers. “I’m going to go check on Brent. I promise I won’t go back to the cave. Not for real, and not in the River.”

  “I’ve scared you enough?” Marty said, smiling at him from the doorway.

  “Yes,” Winn said. “I’m completely freaked.”

  Winn smiled and gave Marty a wave, then turned and walked down the driveway toward Brent’s home, sipping the lemonade from the can.