by J. S. Volpe
All three henchmen found this to be the funniest thing ever and burst into raucous laughter.
“No,” Emily said, “but he could probably turn you gay. He could probably make your dicks drop off. He comes from a long line of powerful sorcerers.”
The laughter stopped. The henchmen glanced uncertainly at each other.
Buddy, however, wasn’t swayed.
“That’s bullcrap!” he said. He looked John up and down, his smirk more derisive than ever. John just stared back with the same stern, level gaze Emily had adopted, refusing to allow the slightest trace of fear or doubt to show on his face.
“Haven’t you heard about the Indian god named Old Man Coyote?” Emily said. “He could do all kinds of powerful magic. He could change his shape and turn invisible and turn people into animals and make people’s dicks fall off. Well, that god was John’s ancestor. Didn’t you ever wonder why John has the last name he does? Old Man Coyote’s blood still flows through John’s veins.”
“What, there was a god named after some mangy dog?” Buddy said. “That’s stupid.”
“No, it’s true, man,” one of the henchmen said. “I saw something about it on the Learning Channel.”
Buddy sneered at him over his shoulder. “What the hell’re you doing watching the Learning Channel for?”
The henchman shifted his weight from one foot to another and mumbled, “I dunno. It was just on.”
Buddy grunted, then turned back to John and Emily.
“A dog god, huh? Ooh! I’m scared!”
“You oughtta be scared,” Emily said, her eyes dark slits. “Anyone who messes with him is in for real big trouble.”
“What’s he gonna do, pee on my leg? And what about you? Are you named after, like, a bird god? Are you gonna poop on my dad’s car?”
“Oh, we’ll do much worse than that, Buddy. We’ll put a curse on you. On all of you. It’s the worst curse there is: the curse of ultimate bad luck. It’ll ruin your lives forever. The worst part is, you never know exactly what the curse will do. It can cause bad luck in a billion different ways. Maybe it’ll give you cancer, or maybe everyone you care about will die and leave you all alone in the world, or maybe you’ll just fail at everything you ever try and you’ll wind up living in a cardboard box in an alley somewhere. The only thing you can be sure of is it’ll always be bad. Real bad. So don’t mess with us. Cuz if you do, your world’ll go straight to hell and it’ll never come back.”
John and Emily stood straight and tall and stared down Buddy and his cohorts as if every word she had said were true. And for one incredible moment, John felt convinced that it was true, that having this crazy cool girl beside him had made it true, that with Emily on his side anything could become true. John thought he felt power coursing through him. Maybe he really did have god blood in him. Maybe Emily did, too.
The henchmen seemed to feel it as well. They were staring at John and Emily with their mouths hanging open. They looked like they wanted to be somewhere else really, really badly.
Buddy, on the other hand, didn’t look scared. But he didn’t look mocking or angry anymore either. Instead he regarded John and Emily with a closed, distant look. If it had been anyone other than Buddy Harris, John would have said he looked thoughtful.
But then Buddy’s lips twisted into a cruel smile.
“Bzzt! Wrong answer!” He yanked John toward him by the front of his shirt and cocked one fist back to punch John in the face.
“Don’t!” Emily cried, her stern and baleful aura washed away by alarm.
The henchmen, emboldened by their master’s fearlessness, began to circle around Buddy to aid in the impending beatdown.
John tensed up and clenched his fists, ready to blacken as many eyes and bloody as many noses as he could…
And then he didn’t need to.
“Stop that!” a voice cried.
Everyone turned. Anna West, another second-grader, was striding toward them. John knew Anna slightly better than he knew Emily. He had at least spoken to Anna a couple of times. Anna made it a point to speak to everyone, even if it was only the occasional “hello” or “how are you?” There was an aura of adulthood about her, of adult concernedness with good manners and fair play. Sometimes she seemed more like one of the teachers than one of the students.
The henchmen swiftly turned away from John and Emily and tried to look like innocent bystanders. Buddy’s arm dropped to his side and his fist unclenched as if he were hiding the evidence.
“What do you think you’re doing?” Anna said. She stopped in front of them and planted her fists on her hips.
“They—they said they were gonna do bad stuff to us,” one of the henchmen said, pointing at John and Emily. John had to give him credit: It was technically true.
Anna raised one eyebrow to show her certainty that that was far from the whole story. The henchman suddenly found something very interesting to look at on his shoes.
John glanced questioningly at Emily, thinking that maybe Anna was her friend. Emily just shrugged.
“Well, I think you guys had better stop whatever it is you’re doing,” Anna told Buddy and his henchmen.
“They got this coming,” Buddy told her. He clenched his fist again. “They deserve this.” He raised his fist.
“Is that what your dad says about your mom?” Anna said in a soft, sad tone.
The effect was astonishing. Buddy took a few stumbling steps backward, his flabby belly quivering, his cheeks flushing bright red as if he had been slapped. For the first time John could remember, Buddy looked hurt. An almost haunted look filled the bully’s eyes.
For a moment the only sounds were the shouts and shrieks of the other kids playing in the main section of the playground. Then Buddy’s face twisted back into its usual smirk.
“Screw this crap,” he said. “I got better things to do than waste time with a buncha babies.” He turned to his henchmen. “Come on, guys. Let’s go see if Cain still has those cards.”
They strode away.
“Thanks,” Emily told Anna.
Anna just shrugged. “He shouldn’t do stuff like that.”
“What was that you said about his mom and dad?” John asked. “How did you know about that?”
“Oh, my mom. She works as a police dispatcher. They’ve gotten a bunch of calls from Buddy’s neighbors reporting fights and screams and stuff. ‘Domestic disturbances’ is what they call it. The cops go and find the place all smashed up, and Buddy’s dad drunk, and Buddy’s mom with bruises and black eyes and stuff, and Buddy huddled in a corner.”
“Why doesn’t anybody arrest his dad?” Emily asked.
“Buddy’s mom never wants to press charges.”
Emily tutted.
They all turned and looked at Buddy as he jabbed a finger at Kevin Cain and said something that made Kevin nod vigorously.
“But if everybody knows what’s going on,” John said, “why can’t someone do something about it.”
Anna shrugged. “That’s just the way the law is, I guess.”
John grunted. “Then the law doesn’t work very well.”
“It works well enough most of the time.”
“Yeah, well, that doesn’t really help the people it doesn’t work for, does it?”
Anna grimaced a little. John couldn’t tell if it was because she disapproved of his response or because she shared his feelings.
“Nothing’s perfect,” she said.
3
John still didn’t understand how Anna could support a system that permitted bad people like Buddy and Buddy’s dad to get away with their bad behavior and that shrugged off these failures with a lame, lazy “nothing’s perfect.”
Honestly, Anna wasn’t the sort of girl John would have normally chosen to hang out with. The only reason he put up with her was because she and Emily had become best friends. Which in itself was kind of weird; Anna and Emily didn’t exactly have a lot in common. But apparently Emily saw some value in Anna.
John frowned. Maybe he was being too hard on Anna and the values she clung to. She had driven off Buddy Harris, hadn’t she? Permanently, too; neither Emily nor John had ever had a problem with him after that. In fact, Buddy deliberately avoided contact with them.
John looked up at Anna, who was still staring at him with that small, hopeful smile. When she saw him looking, her smile widened.
He sighed.
“All right,” he said. “What’s the first problem again?”
Chapter 15
Summit
Cynthia had expected Mr. May to lead them back downstairs to discuss their next move in the quiet comfort of the parlor. Instead they went up.
“Where are we going?” she asked.
“The tower,” Mr. May said. “It has always been my favorite place to sit and think. It offers a beautiful view of the woods. Besides, our progress so far has been ever-upward, from the parlor to the second floor to the third floor. We might as well see our symbolically weighty ascent all the way through to its conclusion.”
The staircase ended in a small square room with a window on every side. A telescope on a tripod sat in front of the north window. Between the telescope and the stairwell were a card table and four chairs. Otherwise the room was bare.
Mr. May pulled out one of the chairs and sank into it with a gasp. His breathing was harsh and rapid, and his face was pale and damp with sweat.
“Are you okay?” Cynthia asked.
“Just a little more activity than I’m used to,” Mr. May said. “Nothing to worry about.” He pulled a handkerchief from the breast pocket of his suit jacket and dabbed at his forehead and cheeks. “I regret not having had the foresight to install the Collection on the first floor. But when you’re young you don’t think about these things, and by the time I realized the oversight, moving everything would have been a massive undertaking.”
“How did you get that oil drum up to the third floor anyway?” Calvin said. “That thing must have weighed a ton.”
“Easy. I paid Mike and his friend to lug it up there for me. With enough money at stake, men can accomplish just about anything.”
He nodded at the other seats. “Please. I feel awkward being the only one sitting.”
Cynthia and Calvin sat down. While they waited for Mr. May to put away his handkerchief and get settled, Cynthia looked around to take in the view. Mr. May had been right about how beautiful it was. Up here they were nearly level with the treetops, and the autumn leaves’ reds and oranges and yellows made it look as if they were surrounded by a wall of fire. Cynthia was surprised to see that the sun had already begun to dip behind the trees. It must be at least four p.m. They had been here most of the afternoon. And yet despite all the fascinating things Cynthia had learned and seen today, she wasn’t entirely clear how any of it would help find Emily.
“So let me see if I understand this,” she said with a frown: “You think whatever happened to Emily is part of some, I don’t know, curse or—or some weird ongoing history of misfortune or something?”
Mr. May nodded. “I believe the evidence suggests that, yes.”
“But based on what the police have learned so far, it sounds like it’s just…” She winced, hating to state the unvarnished truth. “Just some pervert or nutbag who did it. That’s all.”
“Yes. And Luther Jones was just an alcoholic drifter. And Randolph Crow was just a foppish artist. And influenza was just a virus. And the settlers were just honest, hardworking souls trying to get by in the world. And so on. But these seemingly random and inconsequential elements came together in singular ways to form an unmistakable pattern.”
“What’s the pattern, though? Just, like, weird tragic events in the woods?”
Mr. May shook his head. “You’re missing the most important feature.”
“What?” She glanced at Calvin. He was frowning to himself, obviously trying to identify the feature in question. She felt relieved she wasn’t the only one who wasn’t seeing the forest for the trees.
“Visions,” Mr. May said. “Hallucinations. Perceptual alterations. First there was Firebird. Whatever he saw during his vision quest compelled him to construct a new and unfamiliar ceremony that culminated in his suicide. Next there was Luther Jones, who in the depths of his drunken deliriums was said to carry on long, involved conversations with people who weren’t there. Perhaps it was during one of these conversations that he was inspired to break into the May house and do whatever he did there that night. Whatever it was, the placement of Abigail’s corpse suggests odd, ritualistic overtones. Then Turner and Hamilton pursued Jones into Spirit Cave and the tunnels beyond, where they experienced a vision of a giant winged serpent. As a result of these events, Turner began to practice magic in the basement of the Crow house, and one night he and Hamilton had a ‘visitation,’ which presumably means they saw or heard something. The accumulation of tragedy and strangeness drove Turner mad and he sank into delirium and an early death. At the same time, the inexplicably sickly Olive Crow was likewise often delirious, and her final illness was accompanied by auditory hallucinations of beautiful music that seemed to come from the woods. Perhaps she was heading off in search of this music when she fell into the river and drowned. Then came Randolph and Anna. When she fell ill and sank toward death, he channeled all his rage and grief into a painting—a work of imagination and artistic vision—that he labeled ‘a gateway to a better world.’ And finally there was Wendy Crow, who first suffered seizures, and then psychic visions, and whose husband died in the Crow house under mysterious circumstances immediately after an intense and disturbing dream.”
“I don’t know,” Cynthia said. “I mean, I’m not saying you’re wrong, but some of it just seems a little dubious. A little…thin. Is having an idea for a painting really a vision?”
“It’s artistic inspiration. It involves seeing something that is not real or tangibly present. Throughout all of these events we are dealing with manifestations that exist only on a psychic or psychological plane.”
“So the vision of the dragon wasn’t real?” Calvin said.
“Mental phenomena are real. You just can’t touch them.”
“Okay,” Cynthia said, “so we’ve got mental or psychic manifestations appearing in and around and under the woods, and most of these manifestations link up with tragic events somehow. Is that the gist of it, then?”
“But it doesn’t sound like Luther Jones’s conversations with nonexistent people happened in the woods,” Calvin said. “And Wendy’s visions happened all over the place.”
“Well, all the tragic events definitely happened in the vicinity of the woods, though.” Cynthia frowned. “Except the massacre of the Mima.” She looked at Mr. May. “But that doesn’t quite seem like it’s part of the pattern.”
“I’ve never thought so, no,” Mr. May said. “It’s definitely a repercussion of the events in the woods. But the other tragedies happened in a very small and localized area.”
“So did the visions occur to set up the tragedies?” Calvin said.
“No,” Cynthia said, shaking her head. “That can’t be it. I mean, that makes sense with Firebird and Olive and probably Luther Jones, but it doesn’t really work with my aunt’s psychic visions, or Randolph Crow and Anna May. Especially Anna May. That was influenza. Randolph Crow had his visionary artistic experience or whatever you want to call it after the tragedy was already underway.”
Calvin grunted. “Yeah. I guess the cause-and-effect aspect of the whole thing is kind of sketchy. There’re just…connections. Correlations.”
“Correlation is not causation,” Cynthia muttered, remembering something Mr. Grant, her Sociology teacher, had talked about a couple of weeks ago. “Maybe both the visions and the tragedies are somehow being caused by the same thing.”
“Like what?”
“I dunno. Maybe something about this area is making people sick in the head somehow, causing hallucinations. Some kind of, I dunno, emissions from underground
or something. Maybe Olive and Anna got sick because of weakened immune systems.”
“But why would it be making people sick so selectively? And why would there always be a connection between visions and misfortune? Plus it still doesn’t explain the visions that occurred away from the woods.”
“What else is there, though? I mean, it seems like the evidence is pointing toward the fact that there’s something specific about this area that’s behind all this.”
“Maybe it’s Wakansa.”
Cynthia raised her eyebrows. “Are you seriously proposing that a dragon is behind everything?”
“Well, maybe that’s only how it chose to appear, but it’s really something else. A force of some kind.”
“A force? Like what? And besides, this is assuming we even believe Turner’s account, which I’m not entirely convinced we should. Considering his mental state, everything in the journal might just be the ravings of a madman.”
“Maybe,” Calvin mumbled. He looked a little annoyed at the notion that Turner’s story might be gibberish. Cynthia could tell that Calvin really, really wanted there to be a dragon and a mysterious underground chamber. “It doesn’t have to be a physical force. Maybe it’s some kind of energy, or…I don’t know. Some kind of psychic presence.”
“Psychic? Wait. That gives me an idea. What if, like, my aunt’s psychic powers have nothing to do with the woods or any of this stuff? What if they’re just a natural talent, and she’s inherently sensitive to psychic energy? But maybe it was that sensitivity that gave her seizures when she lived around here. Like, her psychic powers were being overwhelmed by something in the area, and her mind would just sort of periodically spazz out from the overload. In other words, maybe her powers didn’t suddenly manifest when she went off to school; maybe that was just the first time they could be seen for what they were, since it was the first time they weren’t being distorted by…well, whatever’s going on around here.”
He nodded. “That makes a lot of sense.”
She turned to Mr. May. “What do you think? You haven’t said anything in a while.”
Mr. May smiled. “I haven’t needed to. You two are doing a fine job without me. You’ve just covered a series of points and ideas it took me years to think through by myself. I too theorized that Wendy’s seizures may have had a psychic origin, but I have found no way to effectively test that hypothesis. I did invite several psychics out here to perform readings. And though some of them reported some unusual feelings, none of them came up with anything terribly specific or dramatic, and none of them had seizures or any other abnormal physical reactions.”