"I'm… I was just taking a rest. Tommy's aunt and uncle and cousin are in with him."
"How is he?"
"Not good, Julieta. I'm sorry." Cree's mind was scurrying, wondering how to break the news.
Julieta went on as if she'd planned out what to say. "I called to tell you something I think you should know. Joseph brought me to my child's grave today. He died about three years ago."
Cree's breath went out of her. She couldn't reply immediately.
"Joseph is being very kind. I'm screwed up about it. But I'm coping. I don't deserve to grieve, Cree. Somebody else knew him and loved him every day. I didn't." Julieta's voice was so gentle it seemed disembodied. It faded and swelled as if the breezes over all those miles of desert between them were blowing the signal astray, or lofting out and away some part of her feeling. There was no bitterness or anger in her tone.
"So my first thought was, I was wrong about Tommy. Knowing him that way," Julieta said. "But…"
She let the word hang there. Cree understood her reluctance to say the rest: But maybe I wasn't. Maybe I recognized him because the ghost in him is my son's ghost.
She couldn't say it because on one hand it could sound like a real neurosis, a delusion that she couldn't let go of no matter what evidence contradicted it.
On the other hand, Cree thought. The theory posed innumerable questions, but it would explain so much. Blood to blood, like to like. If true, it would give them the key to releasing the ghost.
"Julieta, I'm so sorry. I know this is very hard for you. Thank you for letting me know. You're right, it's a very important fact. I understand exactly."
"I knew you would." Very faint.
"Wait, don't hang up! What was his name? How did he die? I don't mean to be so direct, but I… I need every bit of information I can get."
"Robert. Robert Linn Dodge. He died of a congenital heart defect. He was sick for most of his life. Apparently he fought back hard. I don't know where he died, or the exact circumstances. I'll try to find out, if you want me to." Julieta stopped, then went on desperately, "Cree, he would have died anyway. Even if I hadn't… even if-"
"Julieta, you have to come here. The ghost's response to you could be crucial. I need to see you interact. And if you're why it's here, you're the one who has to let it go. Can you come?"
"Of course. When?"
Cree looked around. The rising land to the east was a sweep of deep gray-blue, full of the humped black forms of junipers and boulders. Stars had begun springing out of the night sky. Far too late for anyone to come or go through this wilderness tonight.
"The sooner the better. Tomorrow. Early as possible."
She folded the phone away just as a circle of light edged around the back wall of the shed, bringing Ellen and Ray with it: They'd lit one of the Coleman lanterns. Ellen hung it from a nail and then sat down to stoke the fire. Ray tossed himself down near the fire pit and tipped the coffeepot to see what was left.
"Still sleeping," Ellen said. "Dan's over there, but he's afraid to be inside with him." She looked very worried, and Cree knew why. Tommy hadn't eaten anything for two days. Physical exhaustion would only weaken him, give the ghost the advantage. Even while he slept, it fitted itself more closely to him, a hand working determinedly into a poorly fitting glove.
"I'll go take over now," Cree told them. "I feel a lot better. You folks get some rest, okay? I'll call you if I need you."
"I'm sorry," Ellen said. "My husband and his sister were supposed to come up to help out, but I guess they couldn't get here before it got dark. We're on our own for tonight."
Ray dumped the coffee grounds on the edge of the fire pit and began preparing a new potful. "So I guess we're what you might call a skeleton crew," he joked darkly.
A small scrabbling noise jolted Cree out of her drowse.
She'd been sitting with her back to the far wall of the hogan, keeping vigil on Tommy and the shifting auras and moods that emanated from his sleeping form. Some hours must have passed, but she didn't dare lift her hand to check her watch. The only light was the faint reflected glow from the lantern over at the shed, coming through the window.
It was just enough to see what made the noise: Tommy's right hand.
Tommy lay on his left side, facing her with eyes shut, mouth agape, his breath coming in ragged snores. But the hand was awake. It flexed and stealthily slid along the floor to the leg of the little table beneath the window. When it encountered the leg, it recoiled, then returned to probe the shape of it. That was the scrabbling noise: fingernails against wood.
Cree tried not to react outwardly. Inside, she felt an overpowering revulsion, the sense of the unnatural. A perversion, even by strange standards of the paranormal. The hand moved as though disembodied. It climbed the leg of the table, felt along its edge. When it encountered the corner of Tommy's notebook, it recoiled again.
Tommy shifted in his sleep, rolling slightly so that the arm fell back to the floor. The hand lay palm up and motionless for a moment, like a stunned insect. Tommy's snores snagged and lost their rhythm. His breath seemed snarled in his throat, as if his tongue were choking him. Cree put her hands to the floor and rose to a crouch, ready to spring to his help if his breathing didn't resume.
And, as if it had sensed her in the room, the hand roused itself again.
This time the arm raised toward Cree and the hand made a beckoning gesture with two fingers. It trembled and shook and again seemed to beckon her closer. The movement appalled her. Tommy's head lay canted onto his pillow, his mouth wide and slack, eyes closed. And the thing was alert and beckoning.
Without thinking, Cree took two hesitant steps toward it. Run! screamed her instincts. Surrender, she commanded herself. She felt time slow and confusion consume the dark room, and knew she must have hesitated because now Tommy's dark silhouette eclipsed the faint rectangle of window. He had risen from his bed.
As he turned, she glimpsed the ghost's body around the outline of his shape, a faintly luminous limb bending momentarily, a shoulder emerging where it shouldn't be and then vanishing again. The dark form moved toward her. The desire to flee became intolerable, yet she still couldn't move.
And then she realized he wasn't coming straight toward her. Tommy went to the door, east-facing as all Navajo doors were, walked face-first into it, groped it with his hands, opened it. Before Cree could react, the doorway was empty.
Her reactions were delayed by indecision. By the time she got to the door, she could barely see his shape in the blue dark, walking east, up the gentle slope toward the higher ground. Cree debated calling for Ellen or Ray, but there was no sound from the sheep shed, and she assumed they were taking some much-needed sleep.
More important, she didn't want to distract the ghost. The freakish intentional hand had given way to the perseverator, and it was living through its narrative now. She had to experience what the ghost was living through and glimpse the world it thought it was in. Instinctively, she sensed she was getting close to identifying it.
She followed Tommy's puppeted body out into the darkness, keeping her physical distance yet extending all her senses toward it. Around them, a wind moved in the sagebrush as if scores of invisible creatures were scurrying furtively through, each suddenly tossing form igniting a fresh jolt of fear. The darkness seemed to flicker and flutter.
The invisible auras of the ghost's moods waxed and waned like an aurora borealis. Fear? Definitely. Or, more accurately, trepidation. But that didn't impede the drive, the burning purpose that kept it moving. What else? Apology or remorse. That cocky self-confidence, too, almost a machismo, a sexualized braggadocio. But so forced, pumped up, so desperate or artificial. Garrett?