Skunk Man Swamp

by P. D. Workman

  Corvin addressed Wilson. “Well? When you were there during the mermaid show, did you see anyone that you knew? Or someone who made you feel scared or uncomfortable?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “Why did you leave?”

  Wilson shook his head, his eyes wide. “I did not want to be there.”

  Damon was frustrated and impatient. “Can you read him, Reg? Find out what he knows and doesn’t know? What happened to him?”

  “Not without his permission.” Reg looked at Wilson. She tried to keep her voice pleasant and reassuring. Beside her, she could feel warmth exuding from Corvin. Not aimed at her this time. He too seemed to be trying to relax the former wizard. “Mr. Wilson… Jeffrey… do you want me to do a reading for you? I’m a psychic, and I could help you to get this sorted out, so you would understand better what has happened to you. I could read your palm or your aura. If you can get tea here,” she looked at the menu at the order kiosk, “then I could read tea leaves for you. Whatever you prefer.”

  “A psychic?” Wilson said doubtfully. “I don’t know about that. Most of the psychics I’ve met have been… well… not actually real.”

  “I found you, didn’t I? I came here and used my powers to pinpoint your location. That’s how we knew where you were, even though you were out by the wreck and no one else could find you there.”

  “You did that?”

  “Yes. That’s what I do.” That was one of the things Reg did. Sometimes. But he didn’t need to know that finding lost persons was not one of her main pursuits.

  “But if I don’t know what happened, then how will your trying to do a reading help?”

  “I might be able to figure it out. Right now, you’re limited by what’s in your conscious mind. I can probe further… maybe find out what’s hidden in your unconsciousness. All of those things that happened to you, they’re still in there somewhere.” Reg gave her head a little shake. “They don’t just disappear one day for no reason.”

  “Maybe they do.”

  Reg shook her head. “I don’t believe that. Why don’t you let me try? What harm could it do?”

  “I don’t know. It could… I don’t know; you could put something in my head. You could… cause damage. I don’t know if you’re one of those creatures who can absorb other people’s powers.”

  Reg glanced at Corvin.

  “I’m not.” She promised Wilson. “I won’t take anything away from you. I’ll only see what I can find out and then I’ll tell you. That’s what you want, isn’t it? To find out where you came from, why you’ve been hanging around here for so many years?”

  “I haven’t been here for that long. I told you. You have me confused with someone else.”

  “Then prove it. Let me see for myself.”

  Wilson banged down his milkshake cup. “Fine. Do whatever it is you want to do. You’ll see that I’m not lying to you. I’m not the guy you’re looking for. You’re just desperate to make someone fit the mold.”

  Chapter Thirty-Eight

  Reg waited for Wilson to settle down. She didn’t really have to. Since he had consented, she could begin probing around in his consciousness immediately, and it would probably be easier while he was so emotional. But she wasn’t going to take advantage of him. She wanted to make sure he understood what he was saying before she started.

  “You want me to do it?” She asked. “A reading?”

  “Yes.”

  “I need you to start breathing deeply. Make sure that you’re taking a long breath in, hold it for a few seconds, and then push a long breath out. Nice and slow, and even, and calm.”

  He rolled his eyes, and Reg was ready for his complaint about why she couldn’t just go ahead and do what she had said, without all of the fake rigmarole. If he were a wizard, then he probably had a pretty good idea that there was no need for window dressing. She might need to focus and meditate, but he didn’t.

  But he was still pretending ignorance of the unseen world and forces around them. Or he really couldn’t remember what he had once known and been. So he didn’t argue, but closed his eyes and started breathing with Reg, following her instructions. His body gradually became looser. His aura cleared. Reg focused her brain and sat across from him, sending out gentle feelers toward him.

  His defenses were still up. Reg waited and breathed, just exploring the outer edges of his consciousness and waiting for him to relax.

  If he were a non-practitioner, he certainly had strong defenses for one. Which just helped to convince her that he wasn’t telling the truth. Or he didn’t know the truth. Because he was definitely magical.

  “Just breathe,” she urged quietly. “It will be okay. I’m not going to do anything that will harm you.”

  “This is silly.”

  “It’s not silly. And you know that, or you wouldn’t be resisting so hard.”

  “I could help you,” Corvin offered.

  But Reg didn’t want to overcome Wilson’s defenses by force. She wasn’t using all of her power and failing; she was just waiting for him to relax and cooperate. Using her full strength and a boost from Corvin would be like… Reg didn’t even know what to compare it to. She had no intention of using force to get what she wanted. That would leave lasting damage and trauma. Wilson had to cooperate, or she would not get in.

  “Do you want to hold my hands? That would help.” Reg put her hands in the middle of the table for him to take.

  Wilson didn’t at first. He just sat there staring at her, not believing, not letting her in.

  The warlocks were impatient, moving around and hovering in a very distracting way. Reg jerked her head at them. “You guys. Take a walk.”

  “I want to hear what he has to say,” Damon objected.

  “He’s not going to say anything; I’m going to read for him.”

  “There’s no difference. I want to be here. I want to see and hear.”

  Reg shook her head. “Go look at souvenirs.”

  “Reg. I think one of us should stay here in case you need help,” Corvin suggested.

  “I don’t need any help. I can do this on my own without the two of you supervising and hanging over me. Just give us some space.”

  She outwaited them; both eventually walked away from the table in dissatisfaction. Reg nodded.

  “Good. Now it’s just you and me.”

  Wilson looked after the other two. “Where are the other men?”

  “They’re just going to wander around. Check out some of the stores. I didn’t want them in the way.”

  “No. Not them. The others.”

  “Which men?” The only person Reg could think that he might be asking about was the driver of the boat, and they had taken their leave of him. They wouldn’t be seeing him again.

  “The ones who were at the show last night.”

  “Oh.” Reg sighed. “Weston and Harrison.”

  He nodded. “Where are they?”

  “I don’t know. They don’t… take physical form very often. Not around me, anyway. I only see one of them every now and then. And they don’t really go anywhere. They just… disappear.”

  Despite his insistence that he wasn’t magical, Wilson seemed to take this new information in stride. He nodded slowly.

  “So right now…?”

  “They’re not here. But we should stop talking about them if you don’t want to see them, because I don’t want to call one of them accidentally.”

  “You can do that?”

  “That’s what usually happens.” Reg started to give a more full explanation, but that meant remembering other times when she had called Harrison, and telling him how she did it, and she would just end up calling him by accident. So she immediately moved the conversation in another direction. “Tell me what things you’ve seen here in the Everglades. Describe some of your favorite places to me.”

  “Oh, that’s a hard one. There are so many fascinating places in the park. I don’t know where to start.”

  “Skunk Man
Saloon?”

  “Well, when I’m just hanging out at the bar with the guys…? Yes. Definitely. Low stress, lots of ambiance. And I like the cheesy pictures.”

  “In the menu? All of those ugly old black-and-white Bigfoot pictures?”

  “Not Bigfoot…” He waggled his finger at her. “Skunk Man. Not the same thing.”

  “But the same species, right?”

  “I don’t know. It can’t be established by science unless we have samples for comparison.”

  “You want to capture him?”

  “No, no. Just compare things like hair, skin, body structure. A thorough scientific discussion…”

  “Have you ever seen him?”

  “Who?”

  “The Skunk Man.”

  There was a flash of something in his eye and then it was gone. He shook his head. Reg tried to dig further. He was more relaxed and discussing things he liked was helping him to open up to her.

  “Are you sure? You never saw him?”

  He’d been in the Everglades for fifty years. She’d been there for only a few days. What were the chances that he had never seen Etienne or one of his kind? Even though Etienne kept to himself, other creatures knew where he lived, and Wilson had, Reg suspected, the ability to move from one place to another, maybe even unconsciously. It seemed unlikely that he had never seen a Bigfoot. And Etienne had admitted to meeting a wizard thirty years before.

  “I think I would remember that,” Wilson asserted. But again, it was followed by a flash of doubt. Reg pried at it, trying to separate those little flashes of doubt, bring the memories back to the surface. She thought about Etienne herself. His size and shape. The way he talked. His kindness and quietness. She remembered him eating out of the hubcaps and putting them carefully back in his cupboard. All of the little details she could remember.

  His Hershey’s bars in that little cupboard.

  Wilson’s head twitched. “What was that?” he asked suddenly.

  “A memory,” Reg suggested.

  “No, I can’t remember. This was more like…” he reached for the words. “Something that was there… and then it was not.”

  Reg nodded, probing further. It seemed like the closer she got, the more fuzziness she encountered. Just like when she had used her powers to find him, but when she had gotten too close, suddenly lost the signal and couldn’t pin him down.

  As if someone didn’t want him to remember or be found.

  She recalled again how Weston had appeared when she noticed Wilson in the restaurant. How Wilson didn’t want anything to do with the two men she had been with that night.

  Why?

  Because they’d had something to do with his memory loss.

  They were part of the reason that he hadn’t been able to leave the Everglades for fifty years.

  “Remember Lethe?” Weston had asked, chuckling to himself, probably able to see Wilson over Reg’s shoulder from where he was sitting. Was it a prank, then? Causing an old wizard to lose his memories? To forget his whole life?

  “Lethe,” Reg said aloud, getting a feeling for the word.

  Wilson looked at her. “Lethe. What’s that?”

  “Those men that you saw me with. Did they ever give you a drink? Or put something into yours?”

  “I… don’t know. I don’t remember that.”

  Reg looked at his scattered consciousness from his perspective. All of his memories and powers were so widely dispersed, it was difficult to close in on one thing. Everything remained tantalizingly out of her reach. And out of his.

  She backed off, not wanting to push him any further.

  Chapter Thirty-Nine

  You see?” Wilson said, his voice tinged with regret. “There’s nothing there. I don’t know who the Wilson you are looking for is, but I’m not him. There’s nothing for me to remember. I don’t have any wizardry. You should go back to your Spring Games and forget about me again, like everyone else.”

  “Everyone hasn’t forgotten you. That’s why there is still a reward being offered for your safe return. Because people do care and want to help out.”

  “But you can see that there’s nothing to do. No way for you to help out.”

  Reg wasn’t ready to give up yet. She turned around to look for Damon and Corvin, and when she couldn’t see either of them, she called Corvin on her cell phone.

  “Reg?”

  “You can come back. We didn’t really get anywhere.”

  Corvin and Damon were back in a few minutes. They sat down at the table. Corvin looked at Reg.

  “Didn’t figure anything out?”

  “Well… I’m still trying to sort it out. I think… that he did drink the waters of Lethe. I think that’s what Weston was saying that night when he showed up. He wanted to check up on what I was doing because I was in the same place as Wilson. He remembered giving Wilson the waters, or enchanting him, or whatever it was that he did. And he didn’t want me undoing anything.”

  “That would mean that you can undo it.”

  Reg nodded slowly. But she couldn’t think of any one action that would help to restore Wilson’s memory. She could get further in a reading than she had done so far. But that didn’t mean it was the right thing to do or the proper way to go about restoring Wilson’s memories. What if she did manage to pry that door open by sheer force of will? What kind of permanent damage would that do?

  “In the mythology, is there any way to counteract the effects of the river of Lethe?”

  “Hmm.” Corvin rubbed his beard, thinking about it. “No… there was some talk about another spring that could reverse the effects, but that always seemed a little bit too… pat for me. Like the ‘eat me’ and ‘drink me’ in Alice Through the Looking Glass. One makes you bigger; one makes you smaller. Lethe makes you forget and another spring makes you remember.” He shook his head. “I never put any stock into that one.”

  Reg imagined trying to go to all of the different springs and inlets in the Everglades to gather a few drops of water of each, to try to give Wilson the antidote he needed. It would take another fifty years. Maybe that’s what he had been doing for the past fifty years. Wandering through the park, looking for the water that would restore his memory.

  “There isn’t anything else?”

  “Sorry. No.”

  Elbows on the table, Reg rested her face in her hands. She rubbed her temples and tried to come up with something else.

  “The Seminole said that he had giant sickness. Do you know the cure for giant sickness?”

  Corvin shook his head. “I don’t know much Seminole medicine. They didn’t sound too encouraging about being able to cure it. They said that some people get over it,” Corvin looked over at Wilson, his voice low, “but that most never return from the twilight.”

  “There has to be a way. I know he still has memories. I can see them now and then. Just flashes, very fast, but they’re there. Something is still there.”

  Corvin shrugged. “I believe you. But I don’t know what you can do about it. I don’t know if you can do anything.”

  Chapter Forty

  We don’t need to cure him,” Damon pointed out. “We just need to bring him to the Spring Games.”

  Reg took a deep breath and looked at Wilson. “How would you like that? A vacation for a couple of weeks. Get away from the Everglades and watch the Spring Games. You said you would like to be able to go.”

  Wilson shook his head slightly. “I told you, I’m not magical. So I wouldn’t be able to go.” His eyes went to Corvin and to Damon. “They wouldn’t let a non-magical person go, would they? They don’t do that. They don’t open it up to regular people.”

  “I could get you in,” Damon reassured him. “Whether you think you have any power or not, I promise, I could get you in.”

  “For how long? They wouldn’t be fooled for long. Then they would kick me out. Maybe punish me too. Please go ahead and do your own thing and leave me out of it. I’ve had enough…” He broke off, frowning and n
ot able to finish the sentence.

  “You’ve had enough of being punished?” Reg suggested. “Did you do something that made the two men punish you? Or even just one of them? Why did they make you forget?”

  “I don’t know. I have no idea.” Wilson’s face was flushed. “What would make someone like that angry enough to punish me this way?”

  Reg didn’t have any more idea than Wilson did. Corvin shook his head. “They don’t need much provocation to do something like that. Arachne was punished for thinking she was better at weaving than Athena. Men were killed in order for the immortals to steal their wives. Or they were targeted for being strong or brave. Not just if they were boastful, but if someone else boasted about them…”

  “So you’re saying, it could have been anything. It wouldn’t have to be something really offensive. Just something that Weston decided to retaliate about one day.”

  “Or Harrison.”

  “I don’t think that Harrison would…” Reg trailed off. She liked her “Uncle” Harrison. He had protected her and kept her safe. He had asked what she needed. He’d helped her when Starlight had been sick and with so many other things. But she knew he was also careless with human lives. He followed the few rules that the immortals had set down, like not doing anything to harm another immortal and not having offspring with a human. But as far as the humans’ societal laws and guidelines Reg tried to explain to him, he was just amused.

  So of course it could have been Harrison who had cursed Wilson just as easily as Weston. She saw Weston as the bad guy and Harrison as the good guy, but Francesca had warned her all along that no good could come of being too close to an immortal.

  “It isn’t fair,” she complained. “I don’t understand why the immortals have to poke around in human affairs and screw things up like they do. And if they do, they should at least acknowledge it and try to set it straight.”

  “Don’t call him,” Damon warned.

  Reg realized that she had been thinking about it. Knowing how great the immortals’ powers were, she knew that they could reverse Wilson’s amnesia and open the doors to his memories once more if they chose to.