Wilkins peered at her angrily. "You'd be afraid too if you had one of those things huntin' you. They're devils, come from Hell itself to bring Swanson back to get me. You seen it."
"It's not real."
"It was." Wilkins stared at the frozen ghost. "It was real enough then, an' it will be real again. You can't stop them."
Isabel glanced at the ghost. Did it just move? She wasn't certain. But she believed Kyle had been right when he'd suggested that the creatures were able to read minds, or at least were able to access a person's subconscious and find an image that would terrify him or her.
She turned her attention back to Wilkins. "Where exactly was the site where you found the bug?"
"Didn't turn out to be nothin' but a placer mine." Wilkins said. "Only had a spot of color, nothin' a man could make any money at."
"Where, Mr. Wilkins?" Isabel persisted.
Without warning, the ghost surged free of its frozen state. Even though Isabel knew the ghost hadn't broken free of her control on its own and that actually Wilkins had taken back control of the dreamwalk, a surge of fear still slammed through her at the sight of it. She knew the ghost couldn't hurt her, and still she was scared.
Wilkins screamed as the ghost grabbed him. The sound of a beating heart filled the basement again, but the beats were somehow different this time.
Isabel grabbed at the ghost's shoulder, intending to pull the thing off the old man. Instead her hands passed through the ghost. She tried again, reaching for Wilkins this time, but only met with the same result. Ghost and man were both intangible to her.
"Mr. Wilkins." Isabel stepped within arm's reach of the old man. "Mr. Wilkins, I need to know where you and Swanson found the bug."
Without warning, the battery-powered camp lantern dimmed so much that the basement walls could no longer be seen. In the next instant, Isabel was standing in deep black space with no way to orient herself. For all she knew, the world had ceased to exist.
The ghost slowly faded away, like smoke lifting from a field when the wind changed.
Wilkins remained against the wall, screaming and crying out for help. Then the heartbeat ceased thundering.
Voices tumbled out of the darkness, frantic and practiced all at the same time. "Code Blue! I've got a Code Blue!"
"His heart's stopped. Start CPR."
"CPR started."
Wilkins crumpled to a fetal position. Tears glistened on his face as his rheumy eyes sought Isabel's out. "I'm scared," he whispered. "I don't want to go."
Isabel didn't know what to say.
"He's in full arrest," a far-off voice said.
"Guy's old," someone else said. "Even if we save him, we could do a lot of damage here."
"We're breaking ribs."
"Give me the paddles."
Isabel listened to the voices, thinking it had to be a television episode playing in the background. She wanted to leave.
"Don't go," Wilkins begged. "I don't want to be alone."
Isabel shook her head. "I can't help you," she whispered. "There are people in the hospital. They can help you. They're helping you now."
"It's too late," Wilkins said. "They can't help me."
"Clear!" someone shouted from what sounded like a thousand miles away.
"I don't know what to do," Isabel said.
"Stay with me," Wilkins asked desperately.
The darkness shuddered around Isabel.
"Nothing," someone said.
"We're going again. Clear!"
Another shudder passed through the darkness, and this time it claimed Leroy Wilkins, blotting him from Isabel's view in a heartbeat. She stood alone in the darkness and felt it pull at her. Then she tried to slip out of the dreamwalk and return to her body in Michael's house, tried to feel Michael's battered sofa against her body.
She couldn't. She was still stuck in the dreamwalk.
Suddenly a pool of blackness darker than anything Isabel had ever seen opened up near her. Irresistibly, like a moth drawn to a flame, she was pulled to it.
"Isabel Evans."
The voice sounded familiar, but Isabel couldn't place it. She tried to turn around, but the dark pool floating before her kept drawing her in.
A hand caught hers, pulling her back and around. As she turned, she saw River Dog standing before her.
"Come," River Dog said. "There is not much time."
Isabel found she was freed from the pull of the pool. "What about Leroy Wilkins?"
"His time in this place is done," River Dog said. "You can do nothing for him. He must make his peace in the next world, and we can only mourn him and pray for him."
Isabel fell into step with River Dog, amazed at the way the black shadows suddenly gave way to a moonlight-kissed desert landscape. Another step and she was running, feeling the sand crunch under her feet.
"Where are we going?" Isabel asked.
"I have found the spirits," River Dog answered. "And they have found me."
"How did you find me?" Isabel said. Getting into the dreamwalk she'd had with Wilkins wasn't possible. At least, she hadn't thought it was possible from everything she knew about her power. Then again she didn't totally understand everything she did. She just accepted that she could do it.
"I am on a vision quest, Isabel Evans," River Dog responded. Despite his age, he loped easily through the desert. A nocturnal desert cottontail exploded from the shadow of a cactus and hopped furiously along the moonlit landscape, escaping back into the night.
Isabel watched the small creature for a moment, feeling disoriented and no longer in control. However, from the time that she had joined River Dog, she could also feel the connection to her body in Michael's house again. She could be back there in a split second and she knew it.
"The animals can sense us," River Dog said. "It's not unheard of. In a vision quest a traveler of the People is closest to nature."
"The spirits aren't ghosts," Isabel said.
"No," River Dog agreed. "They are travelers not unlike you and your brother and your friend."
"From another place?"
"Yes." River Dog ran harder. "We must hurry. If they find that I am talking to you, they may prevent it."
"Why are they haunting your people?" Isabel asked. "Why are they haunting Roswell?"
"Now that they have awakened from their long sleep, they feel they must protect themselves. Come. We must hurry." River Dog picked up the pace, still holding on to her hand.
Only a few steps later, Isabel saw they were running for the edge of a cliff high above the desert floor. River Dog showed no intention of stopping.
"Cliff," Isabel warned.
"It doesn't matter," River Dog said, pulling her toward the edge.
Resisting the impulse to dig in her heels and stop, Isabel ran with River Dog. If worse came to worse, she could always end the dreamwalk and be safe back in Michael's house. Two more steps and she was suddenly out over a fifty-foot drop.
She fell.
But even as she tumbled earthward, a change came over her. She stared at her arms as feathers suddenly jutted out, and in the next instant her arms became wings.
"Come," River Dog said from beside her.
Isabel looked at him, finding that he had become an owl. She saw her own reflection in his great moons of eyes. She was an owl as well, and her fear was mixed with apprehension and childish glee that she would have never owned in front of Max or Michael.
Instinctively she stretched out her wings and caught the air. A couple of wing strokes and she climbed into the night sky, following River Dog.
"Come," River Dog cried, putting on speed in a burst of flapping wings.
Isabel followed as smoothly as though she'd been shifting shapes all her life.
17
"And you changed into a bird?"
Isabel stared at Michael. "An owl," she corrected him. She sat on his couch in his house, feeling a little lightheaded from all the exertion of doing the dreamwalking.