The ghost descended once again, mindlessly swiping at David, still missing him by a few inches. David ducked lower.
“Try pulling your arm free,” Deem suggested.
David tugged on his arm. “There’s some give. I think it’s working.”
“So you’ve never heard the term zombighost before?” Deem asked, trying to take his mind off their predicament until he could detach from the trap.
“No, I’ve never even seen one before today,” he said. “To be honest with you, I didn’t know they could claw you with their fingers.”
“Is it your father or your mother who’s gifted?” Deem asked. “They didn’t teach you about it?”
“They’re both gifted,” David replied. “They had only started to teach me some things. They didn’t think I was gifted until recently.”
“Well, ask them about zombighosts when you get home,” Deem said. “Anyone who works in the River around here has to know about them, or you’ll find yourself ripped to shreds.”
David didn’t reply, and she noticed he’d turned his face away from her.
“What’s wrong?” Deem asked.
“I can’t ask them,” he replied. “They’re gone.”
“Gone?” Deem asked. “What do you mean?”
David pulled his arm free from the wall and he fell to the floor in front of Deem. She pulled him a few feet from the alcove, far enough that the ghost in the attic couldn’t reach them. David got to his feet.
“Let’s get out of here,” Deem said, turning to leave. Instead, David walked back to the alcove, directly under the opening, and grabbed something from the shelves. He examined it, and threw it on the floor. Then he grabbed another item from the shelf.
“What are you doing?!” Deem cried. “Get out from under there!”
“I have to find it,” he said, grabbing another. He looked it over, and said, “This is it!”
The zombighost descended from the opening again, and Deem rushed forward to grab David’s jacket, tugging him backward and away from the creature’s claws. One of them grazed David’s cheek.
“That was stupid!” Deem said.
“I had to get this!” David replied. “It’s what I came here for.”
“What?” she asked.
He turned a small wooden plaque toward her. It held little engraved plates, and had a brass emblem of a roller skate at the top.
“A trophy?” she asked. “You can’t be serious.”
David turned the plaque back around. “Kenneth Hopkins, 1985, First Place,” he read. “My father won that year.”
Deem rolled her eyes. “Come on.” She led him back through the building, down the stairwell, and through the hole in the chain link fence. She rearranged the fence as best she could to hide the damage, then they walked to the parking lot.
“Come to my truck,” Deem said. “You’ve got blood on your face. I’ve got a first aid kit.”
Deem got in the driver’s side and David got into the passenger side. She opened the glove compartment and pulled out the kit, then opened it and removed antiseptic and bandages.
“That was stupid, you know,” she said as she dabbed at the wound on his cheek. In the light of the parking lot, and without the terror of a zombighost popping out at them, she had more time to look at him. He was clean shaven, and his face was classically handsome, but still had a healthy dose of boy-next-door. His frame filled out the letterman jacket nicely. She was startled when he looked up at her and she saw that his eyes were green.
“I didn’t think it was stupid,” David said. “I had to get that trophy. That’s why I went in.”
“You didn’t know what you were doing,” Deem said. “What if you’d gotten stuck a foot higher? I’d have found a corpse with a shredded head.”
He lowered his face, making it impossible for Deem to treat his wound.
“What?” she asked.
“I had to get it.”
Deem paused. “Is that your dad’s name on the plaque?”
“He’s missing,” David said. “They’re both missing. They’ve been gone for two weeks. I came home from class one day, and they weren’t there. Their cars were still in the driveway, everything in the house still there — nothing stolen. But they were gone. Haven’t seen them since.”
“What do the cops think?” Deem asked.
“They’ve been looking,” he replied. “So far, nothing.”
“Do you have brothers? Sisters?”
“No. Just me. I go to classes at DSU every day, then home to an empty house. Ladies from the ward bring casseroles around, every night. I have a fridge full of casseroles.”
“Geez, I’m sorry, David,” Deem said, resuming her attention to his wound.
“I know this just looks like a stupid roller skating trophy to you,” David said, holding the plaque, “but I was reading my dad’s journal, and he mentioned it. He was proud of it. I knew they were tearing the place down, and I wanted to save it. With them gone, I feel this urge to hold onto anything about them that I can. I couldn’t let them just tear down the place and have this plaque disappear.”
“I lost my father a couple of years ago,” Deem said. “I know what you mean. I take it back, it wasn’t stupid.”
They chatted a while longer before exchanging contact information and David thanked her for the rescue. Deem said she’d check in on him in a couple of days, to see how he was doing. David replied that he’d appreciate it.
She watched him walk to his car. Cute guy, she thought. Really cute. Not my type, but cute. She considered offering to give him some River guidance and tutelage, but then she thought about the trouble she’d had recently with Dayton and the skinrunners, and she thought better. He’s way too much of a novice for the kind of shit Winn and I have been dealing with. It’d just get him killed.
Still, he needs some help, she thought. Remember to check in with him in a few days.
▪ ▪ ▪
Deem had been scanning documents for hours when Carma burst into the small office. Deem looked up; Carma was panicked.
“So, so, listen, I have a huge favor to ask,” Carma said, twisting her hands together so tightly Deem was afraid she might break a bone.
“Yes?” Deem asked, lifting a piece of paper from the scanner and placing it in a cardboard box by the desk. “What is it?”
“I know you’re right in the middle of that,” Carma said, “but the problem is, I’m right in the middle of something, too, that I can’t drop. I’ve had some bad news from my niece in Fredonia. Her daughter is very ill. She’s received a diagnosis from a specialist that she can’t read, and she was wondering if I could go out there and help make sense of it. I can’t, not right at the moment. Things are at a delicate stage here, and I can’t leave.”
The tedium of scanning had been wearing on Deem and she was more than ready for a break. “Sure, I’d be happy to help. Is her eyesight bad?”
“No, her eyesight is fine,” Carma said, looking worried, as though she’d left something urgent somewhere else in the house and needed to get back to it. “Her daughter’s illness is River related, and the diagnosis likely requires the ability to jump into the flow to make sense of it. My niece isn’t gifted, though her daughter is, and apparently her daughter is so bad off she can’t be roused. So Ester is desperate to sort it out. Can you go? Figure out this diagnosis she’s received? I’d do it, but I can’t get away for the next while — some things with Lyman that I have to see through. I know it’s a huge imposition.”
“Not really,” Deem said, standing up and stretching. “I’m tired of sitting here. I could use a drive.”
“Of course I’d normally ask Awan, but with him being back east right now…”
“It’s no problem, Carma, really,” Deem said, grabbing her phone and keys from the desk. “I can be out there and back before the end of the day.”
“Good, then you must plan on supper here tonight,” Carma said with a look of relief. “I’ll ask Winn to come out, too.
You can fill me in on what you find out. You’re a godsend, truly, Deem. I don’t know what I would have done without you here to do this for me!”
And with that, Carma hurried out of the room.
I wonder what she’s doing with Lyman? Deem thought, making her way through the house and out the front door to her truck. She climbed inside, took a sip of the Big Gulp in the cup holder, and decided it was too warm. I’ll stop in Hurricane for a refill, she thought. Fredonia — what will that take? Maybe an hour?
She started up the truck and pulled around the driveway in front of Carma’s old, historic house. It was a good hundred feet from the house to the front gate, and the midday sun was beating down on the hot interior of the cab, making Deem wish she had a drink already. She cranked up the A/C, but it had been fritzing out lately and wasn’t doing a good job of keeping her truck cooled off on really hot Southern Utah days.
She rolled down a window and let the hot air blow through the cab. It felt good to be outside after sitting cooped up in Carma’s office, endlessly scanning the documents she’d recovered from Claude’s house. They were a history of some of the most unusual and nefarious activities of clandestine underground groups in the area, and Deem had been lucky enough to secure them when Claude was killed. She knew there were plenty of people around town who would love to have the documents, and plenty who would steal to get them, so she’d kept them at Carma’s, where they’d be safe until she could get them all scanned.
It was hard not to read through them while scanning, but Deem found that it just made the process take longer when she did, so she’d stopped looking them over and tried to become robotic, mindlessly placing them on the scanner and not becoming too involved with their contents. She knew she’d be reading them soon enough, looking for clues on Dayton and his council, and her father’s involvement with them. Claude had been tracking their activities for years, and she was sure that somewhere in his boxes of files and folders she’d uncover something that might help her take down Dayton and his followers.
That will come later, she thought. Scan first. Make a backup, get it into a safe deposit box somewhere. Maybe two safe deposit boxes. Spread it around in a number of safe places, so if Dayton ever discovers I have it and tries to blackmail me or torture me into giving it up, I can reveal a few locations and satisfy him. He’s a smart man, he’ll expect me to have hidden more than one copy.
She turned onto the interstate and rolled up her window, hoping the A/C would kick in. She held her fingers over the vents, feeling for cold air — but it wasn’t much colder than the air that had been coming in through the windows.
Damn, she thought. That’s gonna cost money I don’t have. I’ll have to beg more from Mom.
Even though it was uncomfortably warm, Deem was happy to be outside, the red rock surrounding her on every side, the asphalt racing away under her. A drive out to Fredonia would clear her mind, allow her to think. She needed that.
Once she refilled her drink and cleared Hurricane, she felt even more comfortable and was ready for the drive through the desert. She realized she’d forgotten to get the address of where she was going to, so she called Carma, but there was no answer. She called Winn instead.
“Hello?” Winn answered, breathing heavily.
“Winn?” I…” Deem started, then she listened for a moment, hearing moaning in the background. “Wait… are you… are you having sex?”
“None of your business,” Winn said. “Let’s just say you’re lucky I picked up.”
“You are!” Deem said. “I can’t believe you’re having sex while you talk to me on the phone!”
“As I said — lucky you!” Winn replied, ending with a grunt.
Deem paused a moment, listening to the background noise from the call, then stopped herself. “Really disgusting, Winn.”
“Nope, the exact opposite,” Winn replied.
She couldn’t tell from the sounds, and curiosity got the better of her, so she asked, “Is it a woman? Or a man?”
Before Winn could reply, she stopped him. “Never mind. I can’t believe I asked you that.”
“It’s because you have a healthy sex drive you’ve repressed, like all good little Mormon girls,” Winn said.
“I’m not a good little Mormon girl,” Deem replied.
Winn responded by grunting a few times. Deem imagined thrusting.
“So, sorry to interrupt and all, but you did pick up,” Deem said.
“Yeah,” Winn replied, his voice rising. “Guess you should tell me what you want… unless you wanna keep listening.”
“I need a favor,” Deem soldiered through, the moaning in the background continuing. “Carma’s going to invite you over for dinner tonight. In the meantime, I’m driving out to Fredonia on an errand for her, but I forgot to get the address of the place I’m supposed to visit. I tried calling her, but she doesn’t answer.”
“Yeah, I noticed she often doesn’t pick up,” Winn said, grunting. “I don’t think she likes using phones.”
“Well,” Deem said, “I’m well on my way out here, and I don’t want to turn around and go back, so I was wondering if you’d head into her place a little early, get the address from her, and text it to me? I’ll be in Fredonia in an hour and can kill time until you do.”
She heard the moaning in the background reach a crescendo, and Winn panted back into the phone, “Yeah! Yeah, no problem.”
“Did you just…?” Deem asked. “No, no − don’t answer that.”
“I can only imagine what’s going through your mind,” Winn snickered into the phone.
“That’s really disgusting, Winn,” Deem said. “I’m hanging up now.”
“I’ll text you,” Winn said with a long sigh, and Deem hung up her phone.
God, he’s such a sex fiend, she thought, and for a moment she tried to fill in the gaps of the conversation, but then she decided instead to wipe all of the images from her mind and pretend she hadn’t just talked to Winn while he climaxed.
Eeeww, she thought.
▪ ▪ ▪
She checked the address on the white adobe house in front of her with the address Winn had texted. They matched. Deem turned off the truck and hopped out.
She stepped over the corrugated pipe that arched over the cement irrigation ditch running in front of the house and walked up to the front door, passing nicely tended rose bushes on either side of the path. A curtain fluttered in a large window by the door, and she suspected someone had seen her walking up.
The door opened before she could knock, and a large black dog with a broad yellow collar leapt out at her. She stepped back, and the dog rose up on its hind legs, landing its front paws on her chest.
“Monte!” came a voice from inside. “Down! Monte! Come here!”
Deem looked up and saw a middle aged woman staring at the dog over small reading glasses. The woman looked up at Deem. “He won’t bite, don’t worry,” she said apologetically.
Deem reached out to pet the dog, and the animal, encouraged, leapt more.
“If you do that, he’ll just keep jumping,” the woman said, and then patted her legs and called for the dog once again.
“Friendly dog!” Deem said, as Monte finally obeyed the woman and ran back inside.
“Yeah, sorry about that,” the woman side. “What can I do for you?”
“Carma sent me,” Deem replied. “Said you needed some help reading a diagnosis?”
The woman’s eyes went wide, as though she was seeing an oddity from a circus sideshow.
“Oh, Carma didn’t tell me,” the woman replied. She lowered her voice. “So, you’re… you’re that way?”
“If by that you mean gifted, yes,” Deem whispered back.
“Come in,” the woman said, standing back from the door. Deem entered and was assaulted by the dog once again.
“Monte! Stay down!” the woman yelled, but the dog was too excited to listen to the commands.
“Give me just a moment, will you?” she
asked. “I’m going to tie him up in the backyard. Have a seat, I’ll be right back.”
Deem glanced around the room and chose a chair next to a fireplace. Hung over the fireplace, in an ornately gold frame, was a large painting of the St. George temple. Within moments the woman returned.
“I’m Ester Tait,” she said, extending her hand. Deem rose to shake it. “Oh, sit, please,” Ester said.
“I’m Deem.”
“What an unusual name!” Ester replied.
Deem had heard it a thousand times, so she just continued on. “Carma seemed overwhelmed with something, that’s why she asked me to come out. You’re Carma’s niece?”
Ester smiled back. “She said niece? More like great-great-great-niece. Might be more than that, I don’t know.”
“Oh!” Deem replied, surprised. Then she remembered that Carma seemed a lot younger than she really was.
“My daughter’s been ill for several days now,” Ester said. “We took her to doctors, but she told us they wouldn’t find anything, and she was right. She called someone the day before yesterday and asked her to diagnose what was wrong with her. It came in this afternoon’s mail. I can’t make heads or tails of it.” Ester held up a small envelope. She handed it to Deem.
“Can I talk to your daughter?” Deem asked.
“I wish you could,” Ester replied. “She goes in and out of consciousness. Right now she’s out; she’s been out since last night. That’s why I called Carma — I’m so worried! I don’t know if that letter you’re holding will matter one way or the other, but I need to know before I drive her back to the hospital! Come on, I’ll show you.”
Ester rose from her seat and walked down a short hallway, turning into the first bedroom on the right. Deem followed. Inside was a twin bed with a woman about Deem’s age lying under a blanket. She looked peaceful and calm, as though she was sleeping.
“You have no idea what’s wrong with her?” Deem asked.
“No,” Ester replied. “Neither did the doctors. But look…”
Ester walked to her daughter. She pulled down the covers and lifted her hand, showing Deem. Then she pinched her daughter.
The Impossible Coin (The Downwinders Book 2) Page 19
