He called Claire at work to tell her what he'd learned and to let her know that he was going to Wolf Canyon. She was not happy to hear it, and when he said he was going with a woman whose uncle had met the same fate as his father, he could feel the tension over the phone. He thought of asking her to come along, but he didn't really want her to and he kept his mouth shut. She wasn't involved in this, not directly, not by blood blood and he wanted to keep her as far away from Wolf Canyon as possible. Whatever-was out there was dangerous, and he would not be able to live with himself if, through negligence or selfishness or stupidity, he allowed something to happen to her.
"What are you going to do when you get there?" Claire asked. "Just stand there and stare at the lake? Wait for your ESP to kick in and suddenly explain everything?"
"I don't know," he admitted, and he realized that something deeper might be at work here. Claire was right. He had no plan and, logically, no reason to visit Wolf Canyon.
There was nothing he could learn empirically from viewing the site where the town was buried. But the impulse to go was strong, and what he had taken for an idea logically conceived was really closer to an imposed thought, an illogical plan that had grown from a casual notion to a definite desire. He still felt as though he had come up with the idea himself, but he also felt like a piece of metal being drawn to a magnet against its will.
"why does this woman have to go with you?" "I don't know," he said again. And he didn't. Claire was silent.
"Trust me on this," he told her. "I don't know what all is
happening, but..." The words trailed off as he realized that he didn't know what he wanted to say.
""But what?"
It feels right," he said finally. "I may not know what I'm doing or why, but I know that it's what I'm supposed to be doing."
"You're scaring me."
"I'm scaring myself."
Claire breathed deeply, trying to calm down, a stat icky sound that only emphasized how far away she was right now. "You really think that Bob went there?"
"Yeah!
What are you going to do if you find him?"
"I don't know."
"Shouldn't you have some sort of plan? What if? She sighed. "Shit.
Who knows how to deal with something like this? If someone had told me a month ago that we'd be back together and some kind of curse was killing off everyone connected to a dam in Arizona where your zombie father was headed... I mean, Jesus Christ, Miles. What have you gotten yourself into here.
"I didn't get myself into anything. It came to me. I didn't want it to happen. I didn't ask for it."
"I know, but how are you going to... right it? What are you going to do to get your father to stop walking around and die? With a vampire you put a stake through its heart. With a werewolf you shoot it with a silver bullet. But there isn't anything concrete like that here.
There's just a ... a big jumbled mess, and there's no way to sort it out, and there's only you and some woman against... God knows what."
"I know," he told her. "But I have to find out. I can't make a plan because I don't know what I don't know. I just have to investigate and roll with whatever comes."
A welcome wry edge came into her voice. "Part of you is enjoying this, though. Admit it, Miles. You always secretly dreamed of some big exotic movie-like case that you could crack."
"I'm too scared to enjoy it. BUt you're right. Maybe that keeps me going, keeps me from giving up."
"Just be careful," she said softly. "I don't want anything to happen to you. I love you."
"I love you, too. And I'm always careful." "Did you bring your cell phone?" "No. Damn. I forgot."
"Call me anyway when you get there. Use a pay phone. I'll probably be home by then, but if not, call this number.
Make sure you call me either way."
"I will," he promised.
"I love you," she said again.
"Me, too."
They said their good-byes and hung up. The sound of the handset dropping into its cradle with a quiet plastic clap had a note of finality to it.
He turned away to see Janet carrying a box out from the hallway and setting it down on the coffee table.
They looked at each other, met each other's eyes.
Janet glanced down at the box. "It's my uncle's magic stuff. Should
I?
"Bring it," Miles said. "Who knoWs what we'll need?"
Claire took off work early, stopped off to buy some groceries, then headed straight home. She always kept the drapes in the house closed when she was gone, and she put the twin sacks of groceries on the kitchen counter, then opened the front shades to let in some light.
And nearly jumped out of her skin.
She let out an involuntary cry, lurching back and stumbling into the couch. The homeless woman standing next to
the window and peering in at her was grinning crazily, both palms pressed flat against the glass. She licked the window, leaving a trail of blurred spittle.
Claire knew instantly who this was--the woman Miles had met at the mall before Christmas--and that frightened her far more than if it had just been some random loony who had wandered into her yard. How the woman had found her house she did not know, but she had no doubt that it was intentional, and that added another layer of fear onto what she already felt. She had not seen the old lady while walking in. Had she merely been unobservant, or had the woman been hiding from her, crouching in the bushes?
She refused to let herself be intimidated. Despite her embarrassing first reaction, she gathered up her dignity and strode purposefully out of the house, confronting the woman on the front lawn. "Who are you and what are you doing on my property?" Her voice, thank God, carried exactly the edge of authority she'd intended.
"He's gone there, hasn't he?"
"Who? Who's gone where?"
"Bob's son. He's gone to Wolf Canyon."
Claire's mouth felt dry. She was in way over her head. She stared into a wrinkled, dirty face that seemed both blank and crafty.
Whatever this was, it was far beyond her comprehension, and the scope and range of a creature or demon or power that could reanimate Bob's corpse and the dead body of a man in Utah, kill dam workers across the country and lead this homeless woman to her house left Claire feeling small and helpless and overwhelmed. She was terrified for Miles even more than for herself, and although every instinct in her body was telling her to run, to lock herself inside the house and dial 9-1-1, she stood her ground. "Who are you?" she asked again.
"May. I'm here to help you." She leaned forward confidentially. "I'm one, too. Like Bob."
Nothing was making any sense. Either she was getting stupid in her old age, unable to make those large connective leaps necessary to communicate for the first time with people she did not know, or the elements of this conversation were so far off the scale that making coherent sense of them without a shared blueprint was pretty much impossible. "You're one of what like Bob?" she asked.
"A witch."
Now it was making more sense.
She still could not completely reconcile Miles' ordinary down-to-earth father with a mystical power-wielding sorcerer, but it explained the collection of powders and nostrums, the mystery of his walking dead body. And if she was going to buy into this witchcraft thing, she might as well take it all the way and subscribe to the notions of good magic and bad magic; white magic and black magic.
Bob would obviously have been a good witch.
But why had he never told this to Miles... or anyone else, for that matter? And how had he kept it a secret all those years? In her mind, she saw him waiting until his children were asleep, then chanting paeans to Satan.
No. That was not Bob.
She didn't really know Bob, though. If this woman was telling the truth--and Claire thought she was--none of them had really known him.