Shadow People

by Bevill, C. L.

  The museum employee approached the microphone in front and tapped it peremptorily. He said, “The Dallas Museum of Natural and Cultural History is proud to present Dr. William Littlesoldier. He will be discussing the mythology and legends of the Enumclaw tribe, of which he is a member.”

  Will looked at the floor of the stage while the man continued on about Will’s various academic credentials and professional standings. When he was done, he motioned at Will, and Will took the mike from him. A smattering of unenthused applause greeted him. Will grinned and said, “Well, it is Monday, after all.”

  There was weak laughter in response. Penelope sank further down into her seat and peered between the shoulders of the two people directly in front of her.

  “And I think I’ll wake you all up by telling a ghost story.” Will’s smile broadened. “After all, there’s nothing like a few evil spirits to get a person on their toes. It’s just like caffeine.”

  Then he looked directly at the spot where Penelope was sitting, and she could have sworn that he knew exactly where she was and why she had come there.

  Chapter Nineteen

  Monday, July 7th

  Phedinkus (slang, origin unknown, probably 1930s American) - nonsense

  The lights unexpectedly dimmed in the auditorium, leaving nothing but a trail of tiny yellow lights that indicated where the stairs began and ended. There was a gasp from someone and a nervous giggle from someone else. Then low music began to play through the sound system. The haunting echo of flutes accompanied by the beat of a drum filled the room. It began quietly at first and then gradually increased in sound. Bluish lights began to come on, revealing Will still standing in the center of the small stage. More lights slowly came on in front of him, showing his face, casting weird shadows across his countenance.

  At the instantaneous onslaught of blackness, Penelope sat bolt upright and was fruitlessly trying to peer through the darkness. Abruptly, darkness wasn’t her bosom buddy anymore. Will had looked directly at her, even as she sat in the deepest shadows. He had known that she was there, and for some reason, she itched to leap up, to escape into the full fluorescent lights of the museum, where normalness abounded.

  She looked down and saw her hand braced on the elbow rest of the seat, as if she were about to push herself up to walk away. She sat at the end of the row where the concealing darkness was thick. Five steps away, and she would be behind the partition that prevented light from the museum from spilling in to spoil the presentation of the various speakers.

  But Will began to speak, and her hand slipped away from the elbow rest. His voice was deep and articulate and it continued with a singsong manner that instantly enthralled her. He said, “The American Indian conception, you must understand, of spirituality begins with a belief in the supernatural world. The world is a living place, where the sky breathes and the darkness has an existence all its own. Spirits that both aid and obstruct the human beings of the many tribes are abundant, and even now the oral traditions of my people persist.” Will paused to smile at the front row of people. Penelope couldn’t tell, but she thought a few of the women were smiling back. He was a good looking man, and his voice was hypnotic. In another five minutes he’d have a room filled with transformed devotees, keen to listen to all that he had to say.

  Penelope shook her head.

  Will continued. The mesmerizing flute music accented his words and influenced the eerie mood of the room. “Ghost stories are a staple of all peoples of this Earth, the American Indian notwithstanding. The ghosts that walk in my people’s visions aren’t necessarily always evil, but all rules are off when one dies. And one doesn’t always know what will happen when the spirit of a loved one does not pass into the next world.”

  The audience was silent. Penelope couldn’t even hear the usual restless rustle of those with children. Will was telling the tale with a group of captivated individuals. He cast a long look over his listeners and went on. “The Enumclaw clan has a favorite, told to children in the night to warn them of what could come, lest they become lax and uncertain of their morality. Of course, like all children, not all of them listen.” His eyes scanned the room and came to rest where Penelope was sitting in the darkness, afraid to move because he would target her like a wild dog pursues a rabbit.

  “Like much of American Indian folklore, it begins with a happy man. He was called Magic Elk because he had the totem animal of the elk, a mighty beast and much revered in the world of the Native American. Magic Elk loved a woman called Nahkeeta, a beautiful maiden who was much admired for both her comeliness and her adept skills at weaving and sewing. They loved each other and took each other as husband and wife.” Will moved across the stage, looking at people as he spoke. His voice told the story, but his actions showed that he believed in what he was saying. “And they lived together, happy and content. Magic Elk hunted, and Nahkeeta kept the tipi. He brought home the best beaver pelts, and she weaved wondrous clothing and blankets. But like many happy stories, this one had an upset. Nahkeeta became ill. Deathly ill with a terrible fever. Some say it was a fever brought by the white man, as they sought to conquer the world’s ends. Others say it was merely the Great Spirit who was jealous of the couple’s happiness and sent a sickness to take that happiness away.”

  A little child in the front began to fuss, and the mother picked him up in her arms. Will paused to kneel on the stage, reaching out to cluck his tiny chin. With a smooth motion, he stood upright and continued. “Unfortunately, Nahkeeta died. Magic Elk was desolate. He was heartbroken. He clutched his dead wife to his breast and howled to the gods that they should not do this terrible thing, that they should bring her back, no matter what the cost.” Will stepped back into the blue lights of the stage and allowed them to silhouette his figure. His voice deepened. “Magic Elk prayed to every spirit. He sought out every ceremony and began to cross over into the darkest places in the heart of man. Finally, a wicked trickster in the form of a majestic Raven told Magic Elk that he could bring Nahkeeta back. Yes, Nahkeeta could live again. But it would be at a great price.

  “Magic Elk followed the instructions of the great bird trickster. Beginning a long and arduous journey that would test his true nature and that of his animal totem, he took nothing but the clothes on his back and the moccasins on his feet. For days he traveled through the spirit mountains where only the evil seatco, the worst of the evil spirits, live.”

  Penelope thought she was sitting straight up. At the mention of the word seatco, she felt her spine stiffen impossibly.

  “Magic Elk fought the worst of the seatco and conquered them. They told him to travel south until he reached a bottomless lake created by the mountain people when they cast out one of their own. The mountain god had been hurled from the Earth, streaking through the night as a cascade of red lava that hardened into the pitch black of night. The hole that he was thrown from filled with the waters from the skies and became a deep lake. Although one looked into the blue waters and thought the bottom was visible, the Indian braves who went there to fish or to hunt rarely returned. There, a witch lived from the fourth world, the world that is the one that will come after ours. She was a beastly thing, full of spite and venom and an eater of men. It was she who slaughtered the Indians who wandered too near to her camp, and she took on the form of a human in order to deceive those who would test her. But Magic Elk fooled her into believing that he would help her in her quest to bring ruin to this world, the third world. She told him where he should go next.” Will remained outlined by icy blue lights, his handsome features lost in the murk.

  “He traveled into the south, crossing a great salty lake and bypassing other Indian peoples. When he was desiccated beyond belief and almost at death’s door, he fell onto the earth and Nahkeeta came to him in spirit form. Fevered from lack of water, Magic Elk did not realize that Nahkeeta was a ghost and told her of his quest. She tended to his illness and fed him water with her own mouth. Just before he was well enough to resume his journey she war
ned him that such a trial would not result in the end he so very much desired. Then she disappeared.” The drums and flutes began to increase in tempo, and the atmosphere of the room began to reflect the darkness contained in Will’s tale.

  “Magic Elk was intent on having his much beloved wife return to her rightful place by his side. He continued to the south and eventually came upon a tremendous canyon, deeper than any canyon he had ever seen. At the bottom of this canyon was a tiny ribbon of blue that was a raging river at the floor. In the deepest darkness of the walls of the canyon lived the shadow people. Once they were occupants of a distant underworld. They had escaped to plague the humans of the third world. They brought death and destruction to those that crossed their paths, and sometimes they took on the shapes of the living, so brutal were they in their quest to cause mayhem and ruin. Their only failing was that they could only live in the blackest depths of darkness, and the deep canyon was the only place that could protect them from the great light of the sun. But at night they escaped to wreak havoc. Their eyes glowed red in the darkness like the reflection of light in a mountain lion’s eyes, and they moved as if made of the very thing they hid within. It was there that Magic Elk had to get the last piece of his puzzle. Like the witch at the lake he tricked the shadow people into revealing what he needed to know.”

  Penelope realized she was holding her breath. Not only had Will seen her, but he was talking only to her. Certainly there were over twenty other people present, but it was at her that his voice was directed, and she could feel the tones reverberating in her head.

  “The shadow people said if Magic Elk traveled further into the south and then headed toward where the great sun rose each day, he would come to a magical place where a god had dropped from the heavens above. Little pieces of the sky god still remained, and each of those pieces had the power to restore the dead to the living. One piece was especially valuable because it contained the way to open the door from other worlds. And it would open the door to the underworld, where his ghostly wife, Nahkeeta, resided.” Will finally stepped away from the blue lights. His face was meaningful in the dimness, and the audience was bewitched by the story.

  “So Magic Elk went on. He walked until his moccasins fell into pieces, and his feet became bloody shreds of flesh. He walked until the skin hung from his bones, not a bit of fat left on his frame. He continued because his love for Nahkeeta was so powerful that there was nothing else that he could do.” Will paused for a moment and let the depth of Magic Elk’s emotion sink in to his rapt listeners. “Then he came to the place where the sky god had fallen. A great Indian chief camped his tipi there to protect the remains of the sky god because he had been told by the Great Spirit that to allow it to go free would destroy the third world. But Magic Elk, so purposeful in his quest, slew the chief and stole the largest piece of the sky god. Strung on a beautiful necklace, it was in the form of a black diamond, a gemstone the Southwestern Indians called, ‘the Tears of the Spirit.’”

  Penelope made herself swallow.

  “And then Magic Elk made the journey back to where his wife’s body was. But the seatco, the witch, and the shadow people had tricked Magic Elk. They wanted him to return with the piece of the sky god. They knew they could take it from him and use it for their own evil purposes. Magic Elk, however, used the Tears of the Spirit first. Nahkeeta was brought back to life, but she was only a skeleton and nothing more. She would live forever as a bag of bones, and Magic Elk would be forced to remain by her side.” Will took a long look around his spellbound spectators, his gaze lingering on the spot where Penelope was concealed in the shadows. “The witch and the shadow people came to take the Tears of the Spirit from Magic Elk. But Magic Elk, having discovered their deceitfulness, hid the stone. And they were forced to leave without it, furious and angry, vowing revenge on the Enumclaw clan forever.

  “Magic Elk lived the rest of his life with his skeletal wife, and his children cared for her bones for decade after decade. His descendants’ guard the gemstone, knowing what would happen if it were stolen. This world would end and give rise to the fourth world, a world where evil spirits would reign forever, and humans would be mere slaves.” The lights abruptly came on and everyone couldn’t prevent a little nervous jump. Silence ensued and stretched out infinitely. Finally, he said placidly, “And the moral of the story is not to mess with things unknown.”

  There was a long moment of silence. Then someone laughed. Someone else clapped and then everyone clapped.

  The museum employee returned to the stage and waited for the applause to die away before announcing when Dr. Littlesoldier would next speak and that his books on Native American mythology were available in the museum gift store. Will was trapped as a few admiring souls approached him with questions.

  Penelope took the opportunity and fled into the museum. How did he know I was there? And how had he known to tell that damn story? End of the world crap. She nearly tripped over someone looking at a cutout portion of dinosaur tracks from the Glen Rose area before she made herself stop and let her racing heart slow down.

  For a minute she stood in front of the prints of a long-dead animal and stared at nothing at all. Someone jostled her from the side, and an apologetic murmur came from a pair of ten-year-old boys trying to get a better look at the tracks. Penelope glanced down at them and backed away. She stopped a few feet away and threw a long glance all the way around her, paying particular emphasis on the nooks and crannies where the illumination didn’t quite reach.

  When the lights in the auditorium had come on, Will’s eyes had been directly upon her form. Nothing or no one was going to hide her from him. He couldn’t very well leap up and run after her, not with a half-dozen people asking about various American Indian folklore and legends. He was a professor. An academic. He was not a police officer.

  But she wanted answers. In truth, his story had prompted more questions. It was clearly what he believed in. It was a story that he had been raised on. It was a story with an obvious moral. Some things in heaven and on Earth are not to be reckoned with. Or it might have been that sometimes people die, and when they die, it’s for a reason. Penelope had already learned the latter lesson, and she was working on learning the former.

  A cold breeze swept over her and caused a wave of bumps to erupt on her skin. Penelope swept her gaze around her again. She wanted to meet Will again. She wanted to talk to him. But she was also afraid. The story he had told made her more afraid. It encompassed all of the things she had encountered since Friday night. There was the seatco, a vicious evil being from the spirit mountains, something that is seemingly unstoppable. There were the shadow people with their telltale eyes. And finally there was Merri, the woman who was pictured in Will’s wallet with one of his arms around her. Was she the witch from the canyon? Was the beautiful woman an evil entity that was an eater of men and took on the shape of a human in order to instigate more chaos?

  Was any of this real? Was Penelope losing her mind? She nodded firmly. Oh yeah. That’s the answer. I’ve lost my mind and none of this is real. But she as she turned to walk toward the main entrance, she hesitated. If she turned a certain way she could feel the bruises sustained by her efforts to escape the things that had been chasing her. And the one person who seemed to know something was behind her, perhaps able to help her.

  Penelope walked on again, in the wrong direction. If he knows so damn much, then let him find me. I’m looking at dino-world. No more creepy little wings with kachina dolls that stare at me like they’re going to jump out of the case and kick my butt into the so-called fourth world. I’m a thief. A plain old thief. I sure don’t deserve some kind of saga concerning where a black diamond might have popped up at and why so many strange people are so interested in it.

  The group of children who had entered the museum behind her with the harried summer school teacher was threading its way through a group of reconstructed dinosaur skeletons. Penelope made brief eye contact with the teacher again and then loo
ked away. She didn’t want to be reminded of normality. There was no way that she was ever going to have a nine to five job with health insurance benefits and a check at the end of each two-week period.

  In his inadvertent way, Jacob Quick had ensured that route would never be Penelope’s. He wouldn’t have wanted her to be a creeper most of her life either. But after thirty years of creeping himself, Jacob had neglected to save a dime. They had wonderful memories of vacations. They had a few valuable possessions that went on the auction block the moment Jessica had developed the illness in her eyes that had robbed her of her sight. But they didn’t have any normal thing like “health insurance” or “social security benefits.”

  It wasn’t like most thieves had a retirement plan. The truth was that most thieves went away to the big house when they retired. Retirement was forced on them. Even Penelope had her own twisted logic. She would hit the big scores until Jessica was better and only until then. Well, Jessica was as better as she was going to get, and Penelope had hit one of the big scores one time too many. People had been killed. Jeremy had probably been killed or worse.

  After a few minutes Penelope reached the main area of the museum and looked around for directions toward the exhibit she was mildly interested in. The sun was shining into the large Art Deco windows, and the room was filled with the streaming array of late afternoon rays. It was a warm room, and a few people strolled about. Because of the innocuity of the room, she didn’t feel in any kind of danger at all.

  That was the reason why Penelope was so utterly surprised when the man who was the third member of the photograph in Will’s wallet tapped on her shoulder.

  Chapter Twenty

  Monday, July 7th