Shadow People

by Bevill, C. L.

  After tossing the big Chevy she had settled down for a wait. It was possible that Dr. William Jonathon Littlesoldier was not working on Mondays. He was a Ph.D., after all, a tenured professor from a university. Two books and a slew of articles sounded impressive to her. After all, it was his knowledge that she wanted.

  Sighing, Penelope reached for the keys that Merri had conveniently left in the ignition for Penelope to appropriate the vehicle that she was presently using. It occurred to her that she would have to dump the Suburban for something else. She’d have to steal a car or perhaps borrow Jeremy’s garage-parked BMW. She knew where the keys were located and had an idea that Jeremy wouldn’t mind.

  But at that very moment, Will drove up in the rental Lexus and parked the sleek vehicle not a hundred feet away from where she was sitting.

  Chapter Eighteen

  Monday, July 7th

  Zombie (slang, origin probably 1960s American) - A particularly nasty mark for a thief. Someone who unexpectedly fights back and is cold enough not to care what kind of damage they do, including killing the thief in the process.

  Penelope couldn’t help herself. The moment she saw Will, she ducked. The cup of lemonade spilled onto the floor and the remnants of the corny dog tipped onto the passenger seat. She thought to herself, Oh, hell, why did I do that? After years of being one of the best cat burglars around, and I immediately let myself fall to pieces when I finally see my mark.

  She peeped above the dash, hoping that the man she had been waiting for wasn’t standing two feet away from the driver’s side window intently staring inside at her. With her luck he’d have a knowing smirk on his face and realize that he had the upper hand. Who am I kidding? He does have the upper hand. But maybe I don’t have to let him know that.

  Will wasn’t standing there. Instead, he was nonchalantly taking a briefcase out of the backseat of the Lexus. Dressed in crisp blue jeans and a button-down white shirt, he resembled a yuppie. Well, he would if a yuppie had long black hair tied into a manageable pony tail.

  Penelope had actively come to the conclusion that this man had wanted the same thing out of the Durfrene Row house that she had stolen. After all, he had asked her for it. Well, he had demanded the gemstone, the stuff of legends. And since he was a purveyor of legends, wouldn’t he know better than most what was so valuable about it?

  Black diamonds were rare. Not only were they rare but they came from meteorites and the vast majority were the size of pinheads. But one that was the size of an egg was a lot different. It had also been cut into elegant, exact facets, revealing its inner multihued depths and showing its fascinating shape to its very best. Someone had spent untold hours on the stone, polishing and refinishing its fine lines, and someone else had killed for it at least twice and most likely much, much more. And the cold hard facts were that if the myths about the Tears of the Spirit were even remotely true, then it was worth millions of dollars on the open market.

  But in truth it was worthless to Penelope. No fence she knew would deal in such goods. It would be like if she had stolen the Mona Lisa from the Louvre and tried to peddle it on a street full of art galleries, full of art experts.

  Jeremy would have tinkled at the thought of stealing such an item. Penelope suddenly frowned at her thought. She missed her friend. She needed him more than ever, and she knew deep down inside that she would probably never see him again. Now all she could do was think about saving her own ass. Well, her mother’s, too, and her mother’s was much more important.

  Her eyes were level with the top of the dash. Will Littlesoldier beeped the Lexus with his key fob, and his head tilted curiously for a moment. He hesitated and then abruptly began to stride steadily toward the museum, ignoring everything that was directly in his path.

  Penelope made a confused noise under her breath. Didn’t see me at all. Not quite so much like the others, after all. She waited a full five minutes. Then she got out and went in.

  *

  Will exited his car after parking it at the Dallas Museum of Natural and Cultural History’s lot. The moment he retrieved his briefcase from the backseat, he had a fluttering sensation that alerted him instantly.

  The previous day he had used all of his skills to meditate himself out of his ills. The headache caused by tension slowly was alleviated. The intense pain in the pit of his stomach fell away. The aches of long hours of sitting in a vehicle and standing watch were willed away by the burning of cedar, sage, and wild celery roots. When he had completed the various ceremonies, he followed up by a simple one of protection. Although he had managed to quiet his thoughts and organize his plans, he wasn’t sure if he were trying to protect himself or the girl who reminded him of the coyote spirit.

  Will was educated enough to realize that stress was the primary cause of these ailments, but the old ways were not harmful and often aided in recuperation as well as focusing his thoughts into a discernible order. However, he worried about the thief. The thief was a girl by the name of Penelope Quick who did not know the direness of the situation that she had become hopelessly entangled in. She had taken the gemstone that many others were scrambling to obtain. She could die at Anthony’s hands before she ever really knew what the true matter was.

  A smart woman. She had knowingly taken from him his wallet and his medicine pouch with the protective fetishes. She, herself, probably wasn’t aware of the significance of the pouch, but it might aid her to some extent. She had hidden the Tears of the Spirit, somewhere where the light did not shine, where it could not be so easily traced. She had escaped the evil spirits sent after her by Anthony not once but at least twice. Then she had disappeared.

  But the tingle that raised the hairs on his forearms told him that Penelope Quick had reappeared. Not only had she reappeared, but she was close to him. There was a connection between them that he could feel as if he were touching her flesh with his own. He could sense her lingering on the edge of his consciousness. There was a surge of emotion within him that staggered him. He was glad that she had survived. He wasn’t particularly surprised that she had, considering that she had managed to walk away from two previous encounters. But that little bit of unspecified feeling that felt remarkably like joy bothered him in a way he couldn’t identify.

  Shutting the door of the Lexus he hesitated for only a brief moment. The sun was bright and shining outside, showing the clear blue air of midafternoon. There were hours before the sun would set and hours before the shadow people could be on the move. He abruptly moved toward the museum, intent on his goal. If the thief was here, it could only be for one reason. She had tracked him down and wanted to pick his brains about mysterious beings. Penelope wanted something from Will. She didn’t just want it. She needed it. She had only just realized how much.

  Let Penelope come to me, Will thought. Let her see that I am not the one to fear. If she’s clever enough to have lived this long, then there must be much more to this than I envisioned. We will need to speak. And much, much more.

  *

  Penelope paid a clerk $8.50 for the price of admission. There was a clamoring group of children who gathered behind her and made excited noises as they eagerly anticipated the interior of the museum. “I want to see the dinosaucers,” one said excitedly. “Dino-saurs,” another one corrected superiorly. “We’re here to see the cultural history of African Americans in Texas,” a teacher of some sort corrected lightly.

  The clerk grinned at Penelope and shrugged. Penelope took her ticket and the brochure that was handed to her and went through the gates. A horde of rapacious children crowded up to the ticket window with the coordinator fighting her way through to pay for all of them.

  Once Penelope had entered the large Art Deco era doors in the front of the museum, she felt transported back to the past. The smell of her father’s aftershave lingering around her nostrils, and the tender touch of his guiding hands were only a memory away and seemingly closer. She had often thought that Jacob had enjoyed coming to the museums at Fair Park f
ar more than she did, but his enjoyment had been contagious, and she had never minded.

  The first room was the large open foyer with 1930s era chandeliers the size of small blimps hanging from vaulted ceilings which seemed as if they belonged in the interior of a huge European, medieval church. The floors were pale marble shined to a glossy hue that revealed the harmonious ripple of veins of gray strains streaking from one square to the next. Hanging on stucco walls were modest signs framed by polished wood with carved Greek and Roman patterns revealing the various themes that the museum was hosting. A magnificently elegant glass and steel stairway wide enough for ten people astride, spiraled upwards to the second floor.

  And although a dozen people meandered through the huge room on their way to other parts of the museum, Will was nowhere in sight.

  Penelope stepped several feet into the room, centering herself and cast a wary glance around. One exhibit sign pointed at what the teacher had already mentioned. “African Americans in Texas from the Alamo to World War II,” seemed to state its entire objective. Another sign proclaimed that the history of “Texas Myths and Legends” would be explored in detail with actual figures speaking about their personal experiences. That very afternoon, a ranch hand and historian from the infamous King Ranch would talk about the history of the largest privately owned property in Texas. The next day a retired member of the legendary Texas Rangers would discuss the most thrilling aspects of a unique law enforcement community. Another day an author and historian would tell the story of Texas’s participation in the Confederate States of America during the Civil War.

  Three children aged seven and younger ran past Penelope’s elbow and darted up the great steel and glass stair case, absorbed on their goal. The teacher went after them, in a rush to catch them before they performed some nefarious activity for which she would ultimately be blamed.

  Penelope watched the woman who was close to her own age scramble to cut off the three runaways. Maybe I should ask the kids where a professor in cultural anthropology would hang? With the cowboys? Cowboys and Indians? She almost moaned. That’s bad. Just because he happens to be a Native American doesn’t mean that his expertise is necessarily that. He could be an expert in the mating rituals of postmodern Pilgrims for all I know.

  Her eyes scanned the large area again. There did happen to be a dinosaur exhibit. It featured not the fearsome and famous granddaddy of all carnivores, the Tyrannosaurus rex, but something called an Acrocanthosaurus. Apparently, Acrocanthosaurus was an Early Cretaceous period dinosaur that liked to nibble on the local fauna in prehistoric Texas, millions and millions of years before the Alamo had fallen to Santa Anna’s Army. From the artist’s rendition it looked devilishly capable and extremely toothsome.

  Where would a cultural anthropologist be hiding out? Penelope’s eyes spotted an information desk off to one side. So she simply walked over and asked. A nifty woman in her fifties with pink-dyed hair merely smiled politely and said cordially, “Dr. Littlesoldier? He’s probably in his office on the third floor or in the Native American wing.” Then she covered her mouth with the back of her hand and added, “He’s so adorable, isn’t he?”

  Penelope judged her for a moment and found that the volunteer came up lacking. “His office? Where would that be?”

  “Third floor,” Miss Pink said primly. “But you can’t go up there. Museum employees only. However, he’s scheduled to do a talk on Native American Mythology in twenty minutes in B Wing.” She pointed helpfully in one direction. “It’s all the way down that direction. You’ll pass the T. rex skeleton and 18th century cowboy exhibit before you get to it. There’s a little auditorium there with the sign designating the event to be presented.”

  Penelope decided that to push the issue and demand that Miss Pink call up Will and ask him to see her would be detrimental. Watching him in action might be a valuable learning experience, not to mention that he would be discussing the things that she had so recently discovered weren’t exactly mythology. She nodded politely at the volunteer and walked off in the direction that had been indicated.

  After leaving the main area she found herself surrounded by various dinosaurs. Some were in skeletal form. Others were life-size, lifelike replicas painstakingly brought to existence by artisans specializing in the form. They growled and sneered and ran and performed all kinds of day to day tasks.

  Penelope stopped abruptly in front of a large skull of what was apparently a very large meat-eating beast from the Jurassic period. Its teeth were about the length of both of her hands put together, and its skeletal features snarled in perpetual eternity, forever stuck in a museum to give little children endless nightmares. There was a sign identifying it, but she didn’t even look at it as she was so caught up in the never-ending glistening of substantial fangs.

  As she stood there, frozen for the moment, the massive skull suddenly gave her a case of the willies. She hadn’t seen the seatco’s teeth, but she had an instinctive feeling that its teeth weren’t the flat things that would grind corn and vegetables into pulp but rather the sharp, ripping canines that the kachina mask had deliberately displayed in colorful and bloody design.

  “I bet those could tear a man into little pieces,” a young girl said from beside her. A glance determined that she was around eight and entranced. “One bite and you’d be fly bait.”

  “Fly bait,” Penelope agreed with a note of revulsion. The kid’s seen Jurassic Park one time too many. Isn’t eight years old a little too young to watch that movie? “You ever see Jurassic Park?” she asked anyway.

  “Sure. Twenty-seven times,” the girl said proudly. “Steven Spielberg kicks butt.”

  Penelope turned away before she said something she would later regret. The profusion of activity began to hastily die away once she passed through the dinosaur exhibit. It was readily apparent to her that the world of dinosaurs was still the hub of action in this museum, and a thousand budding paleontologists were divining their ultimate fates using the bones of that which was long dead.

  There were people in the wing where she walked. Not as many as in the dinosaur section to be sure, but there were people. An elderly couple was precisely reading each word on a display sign about a villainous Texas cowboy and gunman who had once shot up an east Texas town while fleeing the area with his equally nefarious mistress. The elderly couple was so intent on the words that they didn’t notice Penelope pass. Not ten feet away, a man who was obviously on the receiving end of his child’s visitation for the summer was trying to explain to his daughter why Texas history was so important. The daughter, about thirteen years old and showing a belly button ring under the edge of her middy shirt, was not impressed.

  Neither was Penelope. She reached the Native American section and paused by a case of kachina dolls. None of them were as hideous as the one she had seen in the Durfrene Row house or anything like the mask that the seatco had been wearing. Her eyes skimmed over the little display signs on each one and read about their histories. These little statues were from a Southwestern tribe, and, surprisingly to her, not from the Oregon one of which Will was a member. The Hopi people of the Four Corners region saw the kachinas as religious figures. They were known to reveal their material forms in the specialized masked dances of ceremonies. The kachinas were spirits of nature and of the dead. Some were manifestly good and others were not, but all played an integral part in creation and existence.

  The kachinas displayed in the case were those that aided in fertility and agriculture. They were not menacing or threatening in any shape or form. Penelope’s inner voice said, Certainly can’t have them scaring the little kiddies, can they?

  “Shut up,” Penelope muttered to herself. She turned away from the kachinas and wandered toward the far end of the wing, passing other colorful displays. Most featured Native Americans of the immediate area. Some displays looked at how the Americas were settled by Indians and somewhat conquered as well. The darker displays exhibited how Native Americans had been dominated by the intr
oduction of the Europeans.

  At the end was a set of open double doors and a sign proclaiming Dr. William Littlesoldier’s discussion of Native American Mythology and Legends. Two people, obviously a middle-aged couple on vacation wearing oversized Dallas Cowboy shirts and Dallas Stars shorts, were reading the details of the sign. The woman tugged on her husband’s arm and said, “Oh, if you’re bored you can leave.” The husband mumbled under his breath.

  Penelope took a moment, and then followed them in, keeping behind the pair as she entered the small auditorium. It was a room designed for more personal presentations so that the presenter could actually speak with those in the audience. There were about twenty people present, ranging from a toddler to senior citizens. A few were obviously Native Americans themselves. Will stood on the small stage in the middle, talking to another man who was wearing a bright blue shirt that indicated he was a museum employee.

  She took the opportunity that the paused couple presented to slip into one of the backmost seats that was cloaked in shadows. Will wouldn’t be able to see her face from where he was standing in the illumination of the stage lights. The couple meandered down to the front and genially argued with each other about where to sit. After a few moments they sat down with the husband continuing to mutter under his breath.

  Penelope stared at Will. He wore what he had been wearing when he’d exited the Lexus. Crisp blue jeans outlined long lean legs. A button-down shirt revealed a strong, lean torso. His blue-black hair was still secured by a band of turquoise beads and glimmered in the florescent lights. One wrist had a bold bracelet on it, hammered silver covered with bits of turquoise, coral, and other semi-precious stones that Penelope couldn’t identify.

  He grinned suddenly and showed a broad white smile at the museum employee. The man in the blue shirt handed Will another badge, and Penelope had the good grace to look momentarily ashamed. I’ll give his badge and wallet back, she told herself before her inner voice could interject its two cents worth of sarcastic criticism. She added, If he helps me, that is.