Shades (17 page)

"What bug?" Isabel asked. She had to work hard not to get grossed out. The bones were filled with old spider-webs, and the husks of dead spiders knotted up inside the silken strands.

"Me an' him," Wilkins said, "we found this bug. A little metal bug. We found it at a dig site. Wasn't nothin' there. No gold, no uranium, no copper. Wasn't nothin' there but dirt. An' that bug he kept in that leather pouch at his throat. He thought the bug was somethin' the Mesaliko made. The bug was dead. As dead as Swanson." His eyes dropped to the corpse. "Only now the bug ain't dead, is it? And Swanson ain't dead either."

Spotting the leather pouch at the dead man's neck, Isabel recognized the article as the one Valenti had shown them back in Michael's house. Valenti had said something had torn through the leather.

As she watched, a gleaming silver thread poked through the side of the leather bag. Involuntarily Isabel took a step back. The silver thread worked quickly, joined by other silver threads, all of them clenching and unclenching furiously, like the segmented legs of a wasp. In seconds the side of the leather bag ripped out, leaving a ragged edge.

A silver shape emerged. Balanced on thread-thin legs, the improbable insect creature had the characteristics of a spider and a wasp. It spread two of the threadlike appendages, and a diaphanous foil wing pulled taut between them. The creature leaped and hopped as if trying to launch itself into the air, but never succeeded.

"I tried to kill it." Wilkins crept forward from the shadows, clinging to the wall. He took a fresh grip on the sledgehammer and raised the heavy head high. "I tried to kill it an' that's when Swanson come to life again."

Before he could bring the sledgehammer down, a ghostly form drew up from the tangled scatter of bones and rotting clothing. The man was taller than Wilkins, and thin as a rail. He wore an eye patch and a hard expression.

"You killed me, Leroy Wilkins," the ghost accused, leveling an accusatory finger. "You killed me, an' I come to kill you back." Moving with unnatural speed, the ghost closed on Wilkins with fists upraised and ready to strike.

Wilkins cowered against the back wall.

Using her power Isabel tried to erase memory of the ghost from the dreamwalk connection. Instead the ghost froze in midrun. The ghost probably wasn't, Isabel decided, much less scary frozen than it was while in motion.

Offering mute testimony to that fact, Wilkins cringed against the wall. He mewled plaintively, hiding behind his raised hands and arms.

"Mr. Wilkins," Isabel called softly. She approached the man cautiously, knowing he might attack her because he was so afraid.

"It's not Swanson," the old man whispered hoarsely. "But it is. He wants to kill me."

"This isn't real, Mr. Wilkins," Isabel said. "This is just a memory. A dream. This isn't happening. You don't have to be afraid."

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.

"Same difference," Michael said with a shrug.

"When you put it like that," Maria said, "the whole dreamwalk loses some of the coolness effect."

Michael looked at Maria. "Turning into a bird is cool?"

"Not just any bird," Isabel said again. "An owl. And yes, it was cool."

"Good for you," Michael said. "How does that help us?"

Isabel stood with Max's help. "River Dog showed me his cave. And where the… travelers… took him."

"They captured him?" Valenti asked.

"In a way," Isabel said. Her legs grew more steady. "His body is where he left it, but they have his mind. Actually they only think they have River Dog's mind. They don't know he was talking to me. Come on. I'll explain on the way."

Max rode shotgun in Valenti's SUV, staring into the lights of oncoming cars and feeling his eyes burn as if they were being microwaved. Anxiety thrummed within him.

Valenti drove a sedate five miles over the speed limit, handling the vehicle effortlessly. So far they'd passed two state police cars, a truck from the sheriff's department, and five Hummers filled with National Guardsmen. The radio and the scanner mounted under the dash continued to report poltergeist activity in and around Roswell. Law enforcement and military teams were responding.

"The area of effect is getting larger," Valenti commented.

Max nodded. Reports were coming in from the other side of Roswell now. At the rate of progression, the ghosts would be haunting other cities besides Roswell by morning.

"Is Isabel back with us yet?"

Turning, Max gazed into the backseat. Maria, Isabel, and Liz were sandwiched into the rear seat. Michael and Kyle sat hunkered on the rear deck.

Isabel sat between the two other girls. She was asleep, dreamwalking again, getting more information from River Dog that they would need to confront the travelers.

"No," Max answered. Before he could stop himself, he gazed out the window, looking for owls flying through the dark night sky. It was silly, he supposed. Maybe Isabel dreamed that she was an owl when she was with River Dog in the dreamwalk, but she didn't actually turn into one.

The car's greenish instrument lights painted Valenti's face in hard lines. "Do you believe she's really talking to River Dog? Or do you think those… things… the travelers are setting us up? Passing themselves off as River Dog to her?"

Max only thought about the question for a moment. "She's talking to River Dog. Isabel would know if she wasn't."

"I'm not so sure," Valenti said. "Today I saw the ghost of a woman I never thought I'd see again. Most people around here don't even remember her murder. If the travelers can find that out, maybe they do a pretty good River Dog imitation, too."

"No," Max said. "Isabel would know."

"We could be headed into a trap."

Max nodded. "We're headed into their stronghold. Trap or no trap, I don't think it gets any worse than that."

Valenti was silent for a moment. "The scary part is, you're probably right."

"But we don't have a choice," Max said. "If we don't try to stop this, events in the Mesaliko village and Roswell are going to get worse." He paused. "This situation has already attracted the attention of the government agencies. They may get interested in setting up an operation in Roswell again." The last one had almost caught them all, and would have if Nacedo hadn't stepped in.

"Max," Valenti said softly, "I don't think the government agencies ever got uninterested."

Max looked at him.

"It's nothing I've heard or seen," Valenti said. "But I've been around government agencies a lot lately. Got a really close look only a few months ago. Maybe not as close a look as you did."

Max silently agreed with that. He would never forget the things he had been subjected to in the white room where he'd been held.

"Government people like that," Valenti said, "never really give up. They just go away for a while. Till they find a new angle to use. Then they start all over again, digging and prying and pulling till something busts free."

"That's kind of downbeat, don't you think?" Maria commented from the backseat.

Valenti sighed. "Maybe it's the way things have been going on, or maybe it's just me. Kyle's been trying to tell me that I'm carrying around too much negative energy these days."

Max gazed at the front windshield. The instrument illumination created a reflection in the glass. He stared at Liz's image as she looked through one of the side windows.

"Maybe it would be better if a government agency or the military handled this," Maria suggested. "We could tip them off."

"No," Valenti said. "You've seen the government at work. Whatever these… travelers… are, a federal agency's first impulse is going to be to learn how to control them. To see if they can use the travelers. I don't know whether to be more concerned about them being able to control these things or not being able to control them."

"He's right," Max said. "We'll do this ourselves." If we can. If Isabel and River Dog can come up with enough information for us to act on.

Just knowing the location of the travelers wasn't going to be enough. That might only be enough to get them killed.

On owl's wings again, Isabel glided over the desert landscape. She had an owl's eyesight as well, and her vision turned the night into a confluence of light and dark that she could see through as easily as if it were bright as day.

She rode the dying thermals instinctively now, surprised at how quickly she learned the basics of winged flight. Of course, this was a dreamwalk. Pretty much anything she imagined in a dreamwalk was possible. Kyle had found that out when they'd experimented with a Playboy Playmate from an issue of the magazine. However Kyle hadn't found out as much as he'd wanted to about wish fulfillment.

Isabel's keen eyesight picked out River Dog sitting atop a ridge near where his physical body lay in a coma. Yet, he was miles away from the place where the travelers thought they had him trapped. If she had time to think too much about the situation, Isabel knew she could get confused.

On the ridge below, River Dog raised his hand in salutation.

Dropping a wing, Isabel lost altitude, stopping short of an actual plummet. The approach she had to take to reach River Dog was different from the one she'd used in the other dreamwalks she'd undertaken. Usually in those, all she'd had to do was link her mind with the person's she sought. But to get to River Dog, she'd had to journey.

Almost on top of River Dog, Isabel stretched out a wing to his outstretched right hand. Her feathers brushed his hand, but by the time her feet touched the ground, her feathers were fingers. He helped her step down from the air.

"Thank you," Isabel said.

River Dog inclined his head. "You have returned."

"Yes."

"The way was not difficult?"

"No. I had to look for you, though. That's not something I usually have to do."

River Dog let out a long breath, and the chill filling the desert night turned his breath misty gray. "You have brought the others?"

"They're on their way," Isabel assured him. "We're on our way."

"You told them the danger was grave?"

"Yes."

"Many would not take on such a dangerous undertaking."

"We didn't feel we had a choice," Isabel said. "I think you felt the same way. That was why you came up into the mountains looking for the travelers."

"Perhaps," River Dog agreed.

"We don't have much time," Isabel said. "What have you found out?" During their last conversation, River Dog had let her know that the part of him held by the travelers was learning things from the travelers that they weren't aware of. And, in turn, when his other self knew about the travelers, the part of him that he kept involved in the vision quest knew about them as well. However his conversation with Isabel was kept separate from the part of him that the travelers kept captive.

"The travelers came here a long time ago," River Dog. "In the before time, when even the Chinese had not begun marking the days. The travelers were on their way back from a battle that spanned incredible distances across space when their ship failed. Until that failure, the travelers were able to jump from star to star."

Isabel committed the story to memory, knowing she would have to tell Max and the others.

"The travelers were supposed to hold their position," River Dog went on, "until help arrived and the ship could be repaired or abandoned. Whichever became necessary. They were not allowed to remain there because their enemy, a ferocious band of warriors, didn't allow them to. They fled, making a final jump with their faulty star engine. When they reappeared in what they considered normal space, their ship was crippled worse than before. First they were trapped by the pull of the moon, then as they came around the moon, the earth caught them and pulled them in. They slammed into the desert here, arriving as a flaming comet. Gradually the sands of the desert pulled the wreckage down into the earth where I showed you."

"How are you talking to them?" Isabel asked, amazed at the wealth of information that the old man had accumulated.

"By the same means they are talking to me," River Dog answered. "It is all part of the vision quest. Perhaps the Mesaliko who first encountered the travelers learned it from them. Or perhaps the Mesaliko taught the vision quest to the travelers."

"How many travelers are there?" Isabel asked.

River Dog shook his head. "I don't know. I have asked them about this, but the answer is confusing. I know there are many, but they say there is only one. The drones are questioning me at the moment."

"The drones?" Isabel asked. "The little metal bugs? Like the one the corpse in Leroy Wilkins's basement had in the bag around his neck?"

"Yes," River Dog replied. "There are thousands of them. Like ants in an anthill. I've seen them. But since the four travelers came for me in the cave, I haven't seen any more of them. They are content to let the drones deal with me and the problems I present."

"You never said how they found you."

River Dog hesitated for a moment. "I think it was the vision quest. And once they found me, they didn't want to let me go. They still don't."

Without warning River Dog's image flickered into and out of existence in rapid syncopation. Concern darkened his features as he turned away from Isabel. "You need to go," he whispered hoarsely, and his voice carried scratchy white noise. "They have found you, Isabel. The drones have found you. If they are able, they will destroy you and your friends."

"I'll be back," Isabel promised. "We're on our way." Then she let herself be pulled from the dreamwalk and back into her body.

In the dark reflection against the windshield, Max saw Isabel stir and come awake. She pushed herself forward, staring down the highway.

"They're coming," she said.

"Who?" Valenti snapped.

"The drones," Isabel answered.

"What drones?" Valenti asked.

"The insect-things," Isabel said.

"Like the spider-thing I saw in the hospital," Kyle said.

"And like I saw when I dreamwalked Leroy Wilkins," Isabel said.

Max peered at the road, wondering if he'd even be able to see the small creatures. "What are the drones?"

"Tiny robots," Isabel replied. "The travelers have been using them to spy on the Mesaliko and Roswell."

"Spy gear," Michael said.

"And weapons," Isabel said. "River Dog says the ship is filled with drones. They were responsible for repairing the ship."

"So have you seen the travelers?" Maria asked.

Isabel shook her head. "River Dog said four of them entered the cave and captured him."

"I thought you said River Dog was in a prayer cave or something," Liz said.

Max saw his sisters brow furrow in frustration.

"River Dog is in the cave," Isabel said. "He thought they took him too. But it was all an illusion. They became forceful with him, trying to find more weaknesses and superstitions to use against the Mesaliko and the people in Roswell, and he found he was still in the vision quest." She pointed. "There's a road up there. Off to the right. It's a dirt road. You'll need to take it."

"They captured River Dog in his vision quest?" Maria asked.

"Yes," Isabel said.

"A psychic captive," Kyle said.

"More or less," Isabel agreed.

"Then River Dog hasn't even been to this downed alien ship," Valenti said.

"I've seen it," Isabel said.

Valenti glanced at her in the rearview mirror. "I don't mean to insult you, Isabel, but you've only seen what you thought was an alien spacecraft… the travelers' spacecraft… while you were dreamwalking River Dog."

"It's the only plan we have," Max stated quietly.

"If the travelers have River Dog captive, how did he get away?" Valenti asked. He pulled onto the dirt road when Isabel pointed again. At the speed he was traveling, the tires slid through the dirt for just a moment, then grabbed traction again and hurtled them down the road.

"When I dreamwalk, the things I see are real. You know that. That's how we found Laurie Dupree in Frazier Woods."

Nobody, Max noticed, said anything about that. Laurie Dupree's salvation had come at a cost to all of them in the long run.

"How can River Dog be in three different places at the same time?" Maria asked.

"When I leave my body on a dreamwalk," Isabel said, "part of my mind stays with my body, keeps the autonomous system going."

Maria looked over the seat at Michael. "The autonomous system keeps the heart and lungs functioning while you're sleeping," she said. "And other things."

Michael gave her a sour look. "I knew that."

"Maybe," Isabel said, "in time I could learn to do what River Dog has done and split off another part of my conscious mind so I can be in two places at one time."

"A doppelganger," Kyle said. "Another self. Some of the out-of-body-experience people talk about that."