A terrible voice thundered from one shadowy shape. “Trust, Penelope Quick.” It was the sound of granite being tumbled into a rock crusher. Harsh and edgy and able to see into her thoughts, it reached for the very thing that had always troubled her. “You must trust.”
“I trust,” she said, and her voice was a little girl’s voice, tremulous and afraid.
Silence filled with doubt, and incredulity answered her. The shadows did not believe her.
Shadows disintegrated into dust, and the forest wind took the dust away. The coyotes began to cry again, much further away, leading into places where man had never trod. Penelope looked around and found herself oddly alone.
“Not alone,” came the harsh voice again from nothingness. “Never alone. But you must learn.” There was a hesitation of sorts and then it added, “Wake up, little thief. Wake up.”
And that was exactly what Penelope did.
*
The bed was comfortable. Penelope ascertained that before anything else. The bed was snug and warm. She had been lying here for an extended period of time and the temperature had adjusted accordingly to her ninety-eight point six degrees. Then she opened her eyes and saw that the sun was shining into a small window. The window had a set of homespun blue cotton curtains pulled across it, and the sun was causing a bluish light to be cast across her body.
She started to move but decided that she liked lying in the bed better. Looking around her, Penelope used her eyes to check out the tiny room. The walls were made of logs and the gaps chinked with white material. She was resting in a twin-sized bed and covered with a woven red and black blanket. Her covered feet were resting against a hand carved footboard. There was a small chest of drawers on one side with a stack of books on it and a single door to her right that was closed. The entire room was smaller than her studio apartment.
Penelope blinked, and the vision of the room didn’t go away. So she drew her hand up and pulled the blanket and the sheets back. She was dressed in a cheap, oversized T-shirt that she could see was white at the bottom and assumedly white all the way up. She had her panties on and nothing else. The T-shirt, she noted dully, didn’t belong to her.
A monstrous headache began to assail her head. Penelope knew that she didn’t belong here. But here wasn’t a hospital, nor was it a morgue. She swung her legs out of the bed as she sat up and brought a hand up to rub at her temple. The floor was constructed of wooden planks and was cold on her bare feet. She looked down and decided that it felt real enough.
There were various aches and pains in her body that she catalogued. She had been asleep for a while and damned if she could remember how she had gotten to be in this place.
Penelope suddenly remembered. Memories plummeted through her head like something going over an edge of a vast precipice. The house on Durfrene Row. The black diamond called the Tears of the Spirit. Running endlessly through the night. Things chasing her as if they were constructed from the elements of hell. The shadow people. The seatco. The woman once known as Merri. Then there was Merri’s brother-in-law, Anthony, who wanted to make a devil’s deal with her. And there was finally Merri’s husband, Will Littlesoldier. The one and same man who had blown something into her face at the Dallas Museum of Natural and Cultural History right before she had lost consciousness.
Just a few odds and ends on your mind, came her annoyingly sarcastic inner voice. What would Jacob have said about all this?
“Dad would have told me to run like hell and forget about the rest,” she muttered.
But surely he wouldn’t have meant Mama, and he wouldn’t have meant Freddy, and he wouldn’t have meant Jeremy.
“I’m not having this conversation right now,” Penelope snarled under her breath.
But you love Jeremy. Love him just like a brother.
“I couldn’t save him,” she said in retaliation. Anthony had implied that Jeremy wasn’t dead, but she knew Jeremy. She knew him pretty well. Too well. He had saved her ass on several occasions. He had never stiffed her. They had been the best of friends. She had been able to talk to him like no one else she had known. He couldn’t be gone. Not him. Not someone as lively and smart as Jeremy was. The thought couldn’t compute in Penelope’s mind.
But you know he’s gone. Has to be.
“Besides, if Jeremy were with them, then they would have showed up at his place, too, and they didn’t,” she said deliberately. “He would have told them everything, and he didn’t.”
Then he has to be gone.
“I don’t know that,” she insisted weakly.
“Do you always talk to yourself like that?” came another voice.
Penelope’s head shot up, and she saw Will standing in the now open door. Lost in her thoughts she hadn’t heard it open. His frame dwarfed the small entrance, and he had a closed expression on his face, as if he were wary of her reaction once she was awake. “Ah,” she said knowingly. “Dr. Littlesoldier, I presume.”
Will was wearing a green T-shirt and ragged Lee jeans. He had a pair of hiking boots on his feet, and his face was slightly flushed. A rush of warmer air came into the room, surging around him, and Penelope could hear the light crackle of a fire. It occurred to her that she was no longer in Kansas, or Texas for that matter. The dream about coyotes came back to her. She thought that if she peered out the little window with its homespun curtains, she would see the tall woods that she had dreamed about. It wouldn’t have surprised her.
“How did you get me out of the museum?” she said quietly. “Carry me?”
“You wouldn’t have come if I had simply asked you to,” he said firmly.
Penelope stared at him. His hair was parted down the middle and gathered in a neat braid, fastened by a little leather cord. “I don’t know about that,” she said calmly. “One does like to be consulted about her traveling arrangements. I prefer business class.”
“There’s something you need to do here,” he said, his voice as calm as hers. “Something you need to do and something you need to see. I didn’t have the luxury of time to convince your white sensibilities.”
“White sensibilities,” Penelope repeated. “You’re a bigot.”
“No. I’m not a bigot. I’m a realist. You’ve seen things that you don’t believe, that you’ve been taught your entire life don’t exist. You’ve experienced the like that few people ever will. Darkness has touched you, and you still struggle to come up with rational explanations that will fit your upbringing.” Will’s voice was sincere and quiet as he went on. “The moment you took the Tears of the Spirit, it all changed, and acceptance from you is crucial. The shadows come for you, and soon even the brightest light of day will not stop them.”
The cool words caused a nervous shiver to run down Penelope’s back. She looked at him and thought about what to say next. Nothing coherent came to her mind. So she smiled grimly and asked, “Did you undress me?”
Will sighed. “No, I did not. Sue Dick, a thirty-year-old female practical nurse, did.” There was a slight hesitation, and he added with a hint of amusement, “She did say that your hips were good for childbearing.”
Penelope stared at him.
He shrugged. “It’s the way Sue thinks. But just wait until you meet her father.”
“Where am I?”
“In my cabin.”
“Funny. How about a state? Name of a town? My cell phone? Or even my clothing?”
It was Will’s turn to stare at her calculatingly. Penelope Quick didn’t seem on the edge of hysteria, as he would have imagined. The past days had not dulled her mind, nor had it caused her undue trauma. She was one of those rare individuals who had the ability to roll with the punches she received. There were depths underneath her pale skin, and he didn’t like the way his mind was thinking about her.
“Oregon,” she said. “Never been here. But it smells like we’re in the middle of a pine forest. Not that they don’t have pine forests in Texas, but since you come from a reservation in Oregon and a town that I can
’t quite remember the name of, I’m guessing Oregon. I can’t imagine how you got me here without waking me up.”
“The drug wasn’t meant to keep you unconscious more than a few hours,” he said reluctantly. There was a tinge of regret in his voice that made Penelope look sharply at his face. “My guess would be that you were truly exhausted by recent events.”
“Your guess,” she repeated softly. She was thinking of her mother and of Freddy Clark. Both would have expected to hear from her by now. “How long have I been asleep?”
“Two days,” he sighed out the words.
Two days. Jessica would be sick with worry. Freddy would be, perhaps less so. Both would be itching to return to Texas to see what had become of Penelope. Freddy would be making phone calls and discovering some of the irritatingly gossipy grapevine’s tall tales. “I need my cell phone. There’s someone I need to call.”
“I’ll get you your clothing,” he said, not answering her demand. “And then you can use the bathroom. There’s a shower here, and the water is quite hot. Then I’ll make you some lunch. It won’t be anything fancy, but it will fill you up.”
Penelope helplessly glared at his back. When he had shut the door, she leapt to her feet and looked at the small window, pulling the blue curtains back with her hand. Although the window was tiny, she was afforded with a good view of the surrounding area. There was nothing there. There were no other houses and no one sitting on the small porch. The wind was whistling through the thick, large pines, and further along she could see the snow-covered, craggy peaks of a mountain far bigger than any she had ever seen before. But it’s July, she thought feebly. And it’s got snow on top. How is that so?
Because it’s a really, really big mountain in Oregon, came her mocking inner voice.
*
Penelope was sitting in a small, warm kitchen eating eggs and bacon. Will had served them to her on a chipped plate with a shrug, indicating that she sit at a two-person aluminum table covered with a crocheted tablecloth of pale gold strands. “Scrambled is the only choice you had,” he said. “Coffee?”
“Sure,” she said, looking at the eggs. “I need my phone, Dr. Littlesoldier.”
“You use that title as if it were a defense, Penelope,” he said from somewhere behind her. She didn’t even turn her head. She had showered in a shower that was almost too small to be called that, using liquid soap from a bottle and a clean towel that had been left sitting on the closed lid of the similarly tiny toilet. When she had peeked out the door of the bathroom, her clothing was neatly folded and sitting on the floor in front of the doorway. It was a baseball jersey she had purchased in Waco and a pair of cheap jeans from Walmart, as well as a pair of nondescript canvas shoes, white socks, and a simple bra.
Five minutes after that, combing wet hair into place, Penelope had entered the kitchen because that was where she heard Will rattling around with pots and pans.
Coffee in a dark mug was placed in front of her, and Penelope looked at that instead of the eggs. Her stomach was rumbling, but she didn’t immediately eat. She was thinking of the dust blown in her face and the way she had magically been transported two thousand miles without so much as even cracking an eyelid.
“It’s not drugged,” he said. Then he came around her and sat in the chair opposite her. He had his own mug in his hands, and he regarded her with a level expression. He proceeded to drink deeply from his mug of coffee.
“May I please have my cell phone?” she said. “It’s really urgent.”
“Who would you call?”
“My mother,” she said without hesitation. Penelope saw the surprise in Will’s eyes and laughed bitterly. “What, you don’t think I have a mother?”
“I imagine she’s used to not hearing from you,” he said, after a moment.
“You imagine wrong,” she said coldly. “Don’t make assumptions. You might have a buttload of education more than I do, but it doesn’t make you smarter or even more intuitive.”
“Why aren’t you screaming out the door for help?” he asked quietly. “You’re taking this more calmly than I would have thought possible.”
“You don’t know me, doc. You think you do, but you don’t, and that’s a bad preconception to have.”
He observed her thoughtfully. “No, I suppose I really don’t. You can call me Will. It’s just an academic title. It’s only a means to an end.”
Penelope picked up a piece of bacon and took a bite. After she chewed it and swallowed, she said, “Tell me why I’m here.”
“I told you. There’s something you have to do and something you have to see. You need to be convinced.”
“What if I just give you the diamond and call it quits? I’ll even throw in the rest of the jewelry and the cash.”
She picked up the second piece of bacon and was about to take a bite when his hand shot out and firmly grasped her right wrist. The bacon crumbled in her fingers. Penelope jerked her wrist, but he held on steadfastly. Slowly, Will turned her wrist so that the cut made from the seatco’s jagged fingernails was exposed. It was a nasty slash, purple around the edges and healing haphazardly. It would scar, and it wouldn’t be one of those kinds of scars that would simply fade away. It would be there on the inside of her wrist for the remainder of her life.
Will glanced at her wrist and then back into her face. When Penelope’s eyes came up to meet his, he said unhurriedly, “It’s too late for that. You’ve been marked, and you’ve marked the stone with your blood.”
“You said something like that before,” she said just as unhurriedly. “What do you mean? I know I bled on the stone, but I wiped it off.”
“It wouldn’t matter if you had wiped it with acid.” The new voice came from behind her. Penelope’s head shot around and saw an older man with white hair braided down to his waist. He wore a New York Yankees T-shirt and khaki pants with blue Reeboks on his feet. He stood in the open doorway and looked expressionlessly at Penelope. From the grooves lining his regal face, to the high imperial cheekbones and the haw nose, he was every inch Native American and strikingly arrogant in his pose.
One of Will’s fingers gently caressed the underside of Penelope’s wrist, and she tossed her open-mouthed glance back to him before peremptorily yanking her wrist away. Her limb went protectively into her lap before she turned her attention back to the older man.
“Quit with the cryptic crapola and just tell me,” she said to him, ignoring Will.
“This, Penelope,” Will said dryly, “is Joseph John Dick. He’s Sue’s father. He’s a tribal elder. A specialist in the mystical arts. He’s been anxiously awaiting your arrival.”
Penelope wasn’t impressed. She turned her head back to the table and proceeded to pick up the pieces of the crumbled bacon, neatly putting the pieces on her plate, she commented, “That’s going to stain your table cloth. You should soak it before it sets.”
Both men didn’t reply. Behind Penelope, Joseph John gave Will a curious look of astonishment. Penelope glanced up and cleared the little table, moving items aside so that the table cloth could be moved. She took the table cloth to the little sink and ran cold water on it.
“Table cloth,” muttered Joseph John derisively. “That doesn’t matter in the bigger scheme of things.”
“It matters to the woman who spent hours crocheting this piece with fingers that probably hurt when she was done,” Penelope muttered back. She thought of how her mother liked to crochet. She didn’t do as well after she had gone blind, but Jessica still liked to try. “Just tell me what my blood has to do with anything. Just tell me already.”
“Anthony needs you just as much as he needs the Tears of the Spirit,” Will said softly. “Once you bled on the stone, you became a part of it and it a part of you. One cannot be without the other, not until your death.”
Penelope laughed. She turned from the sink and stopped as she saw what Joseph John was holding in one hand. He held the stone up, the sunlight from the window over the sink showed its opales
cent hues brilliantly, shards of multicolored lights refracting away from it like the bits from a disco ball but a million times more dazzling. It was the stone that Penelope had hidden, the Tears of the Spirit. It wasn’t hidden two thousand miles away where she herself had put it, but not even five feet away from her, twinkling malevolently like the piece of space-borne rock it was.
“How did you…” her voice trailed off as terrible thoughts entered her head. They had the stone so why bring her into it at all, unless…They’re telling you the truth? came her inner voice without so much as a hint of sarcasm.
“Oh,” Joseph John said with a calm voice, “we didn’t find it where you’d put it. It was in your pocket. Poor little white girl. Don’t know what you’ve gotten yourself into, do you?”
Somehow Penelope knew that Joseph John was telling her the truth. The gemstone had been hidden along with the rest of her stash in a safe-deposit box using an alternate ID. She had put it there and watched the box being locked. But now it was being held in Joseph John Dick’s capable hand, and his warm brown eyes were staring her with an expression that conveyed a sliver of pity. He didn’t think much for her continued existence, and Penelope didn’t think much for that scenario either.
“Oh, crap,” she said. “I’m in trouble, aren’t I?”
Chapter Twenty-Three
Wednesday, July 9th
Pony up (slang, origin unknown, probably 1930s American) - pay up for something owed
Anthony was pleased. All it had taken were a few phone calls, beginning with one to Cedars on the Ridge. There he misrepresented himself as Penelope Quick’s lawyer with an emergency call to Jessica Quick. The nurse he had been speaking with informed him that Mrs. Quick had gone on an impromptu vacation. She hadn’t said where, and the nurse made it clear that even if she had, the nurse wouldn’t have related it to a stranger calling on the telephone.
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