Shade and the Skinwalkers

by Marilyn Peake

  My heart started racing. I kind of sucked in my breath, then said, “Oh, wow...”

  Gabriella asked, “What is it, Shade?”

  I told her about the shadowy shape of the woman at the top of the cliff wall, her long skirt twirling, how Viola was wearing a long skirt on TV.

  I kept looking at Kai for support while I told Gabriella about the boy in the lake, how Kai and I had discovered him, and how anyone at the top of the cliff might have heard us talking about what we’d found, especially considering how quiet and still it was out at the park and how the cliff walls kind of magnified our voices.

  Gabriella said, “I’m sure that’s what happened. That lying, cheating witch.”

  The word witch struck me as odd, now that I knew there were real ones in the world. I let that go.

  Gabriella said, “So, what do you want to do about the situation? Are you planning to go to the police?”

  Oh my God, I never did want to go to the police. Maybe Kai wanted another shot at fame, but I did not. And, honestly, she might be better off without it, especially if the skinwalkers had her in their sights. Better to lie low, if you ask me.

  I asked, “Should I?”

  I felt so incredibly relieved when Gabriella said, “I wouldn’t advise it. If you report a murder that’s already been on the news, the cops are going to think something strange is going on with you.”

  I looked at Kai. She just shrugged her shoulders. Then she said in a low voice, “But what about Jason Huffman?”

  My sense of relief took a nosedive. I said, “Oh, yeah...”

  Gabriella asked, “Oh, yeah, what?”

  I pulled the amulet out from under my shirt and held it for comfort. I said, “Oh, sorry, I was talking to Kai. She reminded me that the little boy told me who murdered him. It was a boy named Jason Huffman. He told me he needs for Jason to be arrested before he can feel at peace enough with his murder to move on into the afterlife.”

  Gabriella asked, “Did you and Kai discuss this out loud at the lake?”

  I said, “Yes...”

  She said, “If Viola is true to her past, she listened to every word you said. Watch the news for the next few days. I bet my crystal ball a story will break about the arrest of Jason Huffman. Just you wait and see.”

  I actually let out a sigh of relief. Maybe I didn’t have to do anything else on the Sam Nakei case other than wait it out. And I didn’t have to be exposed on the news again, and neither did Kai.

  I asked Gabriella, “Do you have any information about the werewolves yet?”

  Gabriella said, “Don’t you have a bunch of missed phone calls from me?”

  My heart kind of leapt into my throat. I said, “I didn’t see any.”

  She said, “I left you a bunch of voice mails.”

  Ahhh, that’s totally different than missed calls. I said as politely as I could, “I’m so sorry, I always forget to check voice mails. What did they say?”

  Gabriella said, “Just to call me ASAP. I wanted to let you know that the werewolves are on board. They’re going to meet with shapeshifters who can take the form of smaller animals—rats are particularly helpful in these kinds of situations because not only can they squeeze into small spaces, they also tend to freak out and distract anyone standing guard—and get back to me with time and date for rescuing Misty.”

  A sob escaped my throat involuntarily. Deep down, I guess I never expected for this to be possible. If we could rescue Misty, that would be absolutely incredible.

  As soon as I got off the phone with Gabriella, I called Annie and told her about the plans for rescuing Misty. I talked to her for about an hour, filling her in on the reality of shapeshifters and skinwalkers. I thought she could handle it. I ended by saying, “You have to visit me. I’ll introduce you to some pretty wild characters.”

  When I got off the phone, I explained to Kai that I meant wild as a compliment. I put my foot in my mouth so often, there really should be a special kind of mouthwash for that.

  Then I told Kai everything that Gabriella had told me about Viola.

  Kai looked crushed. Blushing, she said, “Well, it’s good the police found Sam’s body. And it’s good they’ll probably catch the kid who murdered him...”

  Kai seemed to be holding onto the rest of that sentence. I said, “But...?”

  Kai’s eyes filled with tears. She said, “I wanted to report the crime. I want to be somebody.”

  I said, “You are somebody, Kai. You just don’t know it.”

  Kai wiped a stream of tears from her face, then lost herself in her computer to hide her disappointment and embarrassment.

  Two nights later, I woke up covered in sweat and screaming. Startled out of her sleep, Kai screamed in response, sat bolt upright and asked, “What’s wrong? What happened?”

  It took me a few minutes to calm down and catch my breath. I said, “Oh my God, Kai, I had a nightmare about Sam lying on a table in the morgue, all dissected for autopsy. His heart and liver were floating around in jars of fluid. His eyeballs were still in his head, but they were cracked and crusty and facing toward the ceiling, not really staring because there was no life in them. Then a female angel with glowing white wings, dressed in a glowing white gown flew into the room. Bluish white light shimmered all around her. She leaned over Sam’s body and I thought, Ah, she’s going to take him on to a good place in the afterlife. But, then, suddenly, she grimaced with the ugliest expression. She raised her hand and pointed at him with silver fingernails made of metal. I thought, Oh, no, she’s going to slash him open! Instead, she said, ‘Someone needs to identify your murderer to the police, so that he gets locked up and can’t murder again, before I can take you on into the afterlife.’ At that point, I saw something. It was the angel moving through time, hovering in different places across the universe. And Sam getting placed into a drawer in the morgue, then buried, worms eating his flesh, eventually nothing left but his skull and bones. Then he was back on the table. The angel whispered into my ear, ‘Every day in the afterlife is like a million years to the deceased person waiting to wrap up their unfinished business on Earth. Why are you making Sam suffer?’ That’s when I woke up screaming.”

  Putting her arm around me, Kai said, “It was only a dream. You’re doing the best you can. Maybe a day in the life of a deceased person seems only like a second; you don’t know. Maybe there is no such thing as time the way we know it.”

  She rubbed her face, struggling to stay awake. I said, “You’re probably right. Thanks. That helps. I’m gonna go make myself some warm milk.”

  As soon as I opened the door to my bedroom, I saw my mom in the living room wearing her nightgown and slippers. She asked, “Are you OK?”

  Reflexively, I said, “Sure. I’m fine. Why?” That was the habit I’d developed with her over the years. Deny everything. Shrug it off.

  She said, “I heard screaming. It woke me up. When I realized it was you, I came out here; but I figured you’d just had a bad dream when everything was quiet again.” She looked lost, like she hadn’t known what to do. What if I’d been murdered and was quiet because I was dead? Kai would have run for help. OK, but what if we’d both been murdered? Shouldn’t my mom have knocked on my door? Well, maybe not. I looked around. The house seemed completely normal and calm, obviously no sign of a break-in or anything.

  I suddenly felt sorry for my mom. She was really trying. I said, “Thanks for checking on me. It was a nightmare, a really bad one. I’m going to heat up some milk. Hopefully, that will help me fall back to sleep.”

  She said, “I’ll do it. I can do that for you.”

  I felt really bad about it, but I seriously needed to be alone just then. I said, “Thanks, mom, but I can do it. I need to do something to forget the nightmare. You should go back to sleep. You’ll be tired in the morning.”

  She smiled. She gave me a funny look and said, “You’re growing up...” Then she went back to her bedroom and closed the door.

  I breathed a s
igh of relief.

  As soon as the milk heated up and then cooled down enough to drink, I curled up in a living room chair with a big mug of frothy milk and turned on a local channel. Some goofy late-night car dealership commercial was playing. Run to our big sale like a bobcat’s after you! Some guy running away from footage of a bobcat tearing across a desert. I say footage because it was pretty obvious from the different lighting and different setting that that guy wasn’t anywhere near the bobcat. It made me laugh, though, so that was good. It brightened my mood. I put the steaming mug of milk down on an end table and wrapped a throw blanket around me. I started to relax, to feel the tension leaving my body.

  Then the commercial was over and it was Breaking News! Police were being interviewed outside their station. The caption along the bottom screamed in white letters against a bright red background: SUSPECT QUESTIONED FOR THE MURDER OF SAM NAKEI. And in smaller letters: NAME WITHHELD AS SUSPECT IS A MINOR.

  The police chief was answering questions.

  I turned off the TV and ran back to my room. Flipping on the light switch, I jumped on the bed and shook Kai by the shoulders.

  Sound asleep, she startled. Groggy and confused and annoyed, she said, “Whaaaat?”

  I said, “They arrested him, Kai! They got him!”

  Rubbing her eyes, then running a hand through her tangled hair, she said, “Who?”

  I said, “The police. They arrested someone whose name they can’t release because he’s a minor for the murder of Sam. It’s got to be Jason Huffman. Sam said he’s sixteen years old. The police chief said on TV you can’t be arrested as an adult in New Mexico until you’re eighteen years old.”

  Kai said, “Oh. So we definitely don’t get to report him? OK, I guess.”

  I felt horrified. How could she be so selfish? I gave her the benefit of the doubt, though. She was half asleep. And she’d been through a lot having her aunt murdered by her mom’s boyfriend, and then having her mom murdered at her aunt’s funeral. I couldn’t even imagine. My life was a bed of roses compared to that. Kai probably needed something to hold herself together. Lots of people use celebrity and fame to glue the broken parts of themselves together. Look at all the messed-up movie stars. That didn’t happen by accident.

  I said, “Yeah, everything will be OK. Hopefully, Sam will be at peace. Hopefully, he’ll get to move on into the afterlife like my friend, Brandon.”

  Kai said, “Yeah, that would be good.”

  Exhausted, I put my head down on my pillow and pulled the covers over me. This time, I dreamed that the angel returned to the morgue, grasped Sam’s little hand in her own, and flew with him up into the heavens, way past the stars. As they disappeared from view, I felt happy for Sam. In my dream, he had made it to a wonderful place in the afterlife.

  When I woke up, I felt optimistic about the future.

  CHAPTER 20

  Nothing major happened between Halloween and Thanksgiving. I felt on edge about whether or not Misty would get rescued. I checked the forums obsessively for any clear messages or any coded messages with hidden clues, but there was nothing. I tried to let go, to relax at least a little bit. There wasn’t anything I could do. I had to wait to hear from Gabriella. The rescue operation sounded risky and surreal and strange. I barely understood how it would actually work. There was nothing I could do to help.

  I changed the artwork for The Flying Saucer. Down came the Haunted House, the witches, werewolves and jack-o’-lanterns. Up along the top went a drawing of a family eating Thanksgiving dinner, a nice stuffed turkey and lots of side dishes on their table. Along the sides of the page, I created cobs of Indian corn covered in colorful kernels, half-wrapped in their husks, floating down the page. At the bottom, I drew kids with thought bubbles above their heads, filled with daydreams about what they hoped to get for Christmas. Thanksgiving’s an OK holiday, but everybody knows it’s just a gateway for Christmas. People are always so excited to launch the Christmas season, they basically shove all that Thanksgiving food into their mouths simply in order to fortify themselves for Black Friday shopping. The quicker they can dash out of the house and start shopping, the happier they are. And the next day—after everyone’s sated themselves with the food and the shopping—they transform their neighborhoods with strings of colorful lights, plastic Santas, mangers, and trees decorated with enough bling to be seen from outer space. That’s just how it is. Anyone who thinks there’s a war on Christmas must be experts at tuning out all the shiny things. And I mean all the shiny things. For more than an entire month, those shiny things are blinking and flashing everywhere, accompanied by music.

  It’s not like I personally expected any of my dreams to come true on Christmas. One year, my mom gave me a package of socks, a bag of clementine oranges and one of those gigantic Hershey’s milk chocolate bars. That was it. I was eight years old. I’d gotten used to disappointing Christmases, so I was actually quite pleased. The socks had Christmas designs all over them. My favorite was a pair of emerald green knee-highs with a bunch of Rudolph the Red Nosed Reindeers on them, each one with a glittery red 3-D ball for a nose. They were something I could wear to school after the holiday to brag like all the other kids about what I’d gotten for Christmas. I think I lied that year. I said I’d gotten a bunch of much bigger things, but the socks were the only thing small enough to bring to school. Except for the clementines. I brought them to school the next day and handed them out at lunch. I told everyone they were super-fancy oranges. Everyone gobbled them up, along with my exaggerations and lies. Except for me. I hated the clementines. I kept the chocolate bar to myself.

  So I knew about thought bubbles filled with dreams of wonderful Christmas gifts. It’s just that half my thought bubbles would never come true.

  The week before Thanksgiving my mom was absolutely beside herself. It’s like she was trying to make up for all the shitty holidays we’d ever had. She’d ordered a turkey—a really big one, too, 20 pounds!—an entire month ahead of time. She kept showing me recipes and asking what I thought about them. How would I know? Pizza with all the toppings was the fanciest we ever got. My palate wasn’t exactly fine-tuned to know the difference between cornbread stuffing and apple and walnut stuffing. I kept telling her, “What’s the basic stuffing recipe? I’d like that.” And I meant it. A lot of years, we’d only had TV dinners for Thanksgiving—turkey with stuffing, mashed potatoes and gravy; but, still, just a TV dinner. I wanted to try real homemade stuffing, the kind Annie had told me about, made with lots of butter. And gravy. I wanted homemade gravy.

  When my mom showed me a recipe where you just stuff the turkey with apples, I practically burst into tears. All the years of holiday deprivation must have come swooping back at me like one of those overwhelming colonies of bats that come pouring out of caves at twilight. Rabid bats. My voice breaking, I said, “Why can’t we just have normal stuffing, Mom? The kind made with lots of butter.”

  She said, “Oh, you want a butter recipe. That helps narrow it down.” She opened up a couple of cookbooks. Finally, she showed me a recipe made with four sticks of butter. Yes! That was it!

  My mom smiled. She said, “OK. Lots of butter stuffing recipe it is.”

  I liked that name. Lots of Butter Stuffing. Someone should rename the recipe. Because, really, that’s all you needed to know about it.

  Now, when my mom asked about dessert, I felt I could offer more of an informed opinion. Desserts I know. Maybe not homemade ones, but lots of diners have awesome desserts. Even McDonald’s has pretty good apple pie. Yeah, it’s compact and looks more like a taco than a pie; but it’s warm and sweet and gooey, and that’s enough for me in a dessert.

  We spent some time looking through recipes. My mom showed me her cookbooks. I showed her the Internet. I showed her how people rank desserts on the web. I told her, “Everyone has different tastes, but you probably don’t want to make anything for which 1,000 people gave it only one star. Reviews like, ‘This tastes like battery acid’ also mean you do
n’t want to try the recipe.”

  My mom was impressed. She said, “Wow. That really takes the guesswork out of trying new foods.”

  I showed her how you can do the same with everything: books, music, clothes. She just stared at the computer screen like a portal had opened up into an entirely new dimension of the universe. She reminded me of Brandon with Angry Birds. Except this time I was getting a Thanksgiving dinner with lots of butter, rather than the sound of snorting piggies and squawking birds, out of introducing someone to modern tech.

  In the end, we chose pumpkin pie (I wanted something super-traditional to make up for lost time) and Maple Granola Pecan Pie. My mom liked that our second choice had some healthy stuff in it for me and Kai. I liked that it had more than a cup of maple syrup and some brown sugar in it. I also requested whipped cream—lots of whipped cream—to put on top. Usually, I preferred healthy food and my mom preferred sugary crap, but this was a holiday. Things change on holidays. Or at least they should.

  On Thanksgiving, we almost didn’t have turkey after all. It turned out my mom had never cooked one in her entire like. Kai and I didn’t have a clue. We were all hanging out together in the kitchen when my mom decided it was time to get the turkey stuffed and into the oven. Reading over the recipe, we were stunned to learn that it takes 4-1/4 to 5-1/4 hours to cook a 20-pound stuffed turkey! It was already 2:00 in the afternoon. We realized we weren’t going to eat any time soon.