“Does this mean you’re giving us more time?” Kennedy asked as he held the small box.
“More time?” she had a smile on her face as she turned back to face the team. “Yes, as a matter of fact, we’re going to grant Dean’s wish, and yours. I have arranged for you and your patient to go to the one place in the world where you can figure this out. I monitored your last foray into the past with my husband. I heard him speak and also heard his request. I agree. He wants to go home.”
“Moreno,” George said.
“That is not what we are doing,” Gabriel said as he watched her. “He could never survive the trip. He’s exhausted.”
“Nonetheless, my husband is being granted his dying wish. If you accompany him, that’s fine; if not, my people will give you a ride to the airport.”
To the surprise of all, it was George who confronted the powerful woman. “You’ll be going also?” George winked in a show of confidence he hadn’t shown in years. “With your love for your husband, you do want to find out what’s causing this breakdown, right?”
Catherine smiled and then left the bedroom.
“I get the distinct feeling that she’s trying to speed along the president’s death.” John looked from the closed door to Gabriel as he stated what the others also knew.
“And guess who is going to be there when he dies?”
“We were set up from the start. I would bet my life who recommended we be brought in on this. The natural fall guys, the nuts,” Gabriel said, examining the black box he twirled lightly in his hand. He suddenly opened it as if it were a jack-in-the-box, expecting a demented clown to pop free. His eyes widened when he saw the box’s contents. He pulled them out and showed the others. They recognized it because they had just seen them in the dream. Gloria Perry’s green-tinted glasses were wire-rimmed and made for the blind.
The room was silent as they all saw Gloria’s glasses. The lenses were cracked and the earpieces bent and out of shape. Gabriel swallowed as if he were holding an ancient artifact of tremendous importance.
George stepped up to Gabriel and eased the glasses out of his hand. “Do you mind?” he asked as he took the item. He held them in his hands and then wrapped his small fingers over the frames. He closed his eyes and then just as suddenly he allowed the glasses to fall from his grasp where they hit the carpet. He backed away a few steps and then he looked from person to person.
“What?” Leonard said as he stood from his chair at the sudden change that had come over his friend.
“Fire, water, quicksilver. It was everywhere. Betrayal. How could he?” George said and then went silent. He blinked several times and took another step back from the glasses at his feet.
“Fire, water, quicksilver—what did you mean by it was everywhere, and betrayal?” Kennedy asked Cordero.
“It just came into my head.” George never allowed his eyes to stray from the glasses as Kennedy retrieved them from the floor and looked at Lonetree.
“Watch out what you ask for, John. It seemed mighty convenient for the First Lady to give us this as a gift.”
“I still want to do it,” John said, turning to face Hadley and then looking at Jenny. “I don’t know if it’s to help him”—he turned to the door—“or to stop her. I just know I have to see things from the girl’s side.”
Jennifer nodded. “How deep will you have to go?” she asked.
John looked at Gabriel and raised his eyebrows.
“I suspect pretty damn deep if you want to really connect. All other times you had a living person to link with; even at Summer Place, you had the house itself and the personal memories it held. But now you’ll be trying to connect to a dead girl.”
“Are you saying you’re going to do that kicker thing you talked about?” Damian asked.
Julie shook her head. “Put me on the record of saying that is the worst idea that I have ever heard.”
“George, what do you think?” Gabe asked.
“Whatever and wherever the enemy is, it’s not here right now. I believe John’s right about it being taxed by the power it had shown us earlier. It won’t remain weak for very long. I got the feeling of immense strength that hasn’t been fully realized yet. I think if you’re going to try something this stupid, now is the time.”
“Gentlemen, can we have the room, please?” Kennedy said to a shocked team of physicians. They protested, but Gabriel’s look said they must vacate. They filed out, again under protest.
“Like Julie, for the record, I’m against this,” Damian said, angrily pouring more water from the carafe next to his chair.
“Let’s get John ready.” Gabriel looked at his old friend. “You’re sure you are strong enough?”
“No, not at all,” John said as he removed his blue shirt to expose a white T-shirt underneath. “But look at it this way—I get one of your famous downer cocktails to go on. That’s one hell of a kicker.”
Jenny didn’t like the joking, but she knew when John and Gabriel were afraid, they joked, a tendency she never acquired after Bobby Lee McKinnon’s haunting of her soul.
“Okay, let’s try to get Gloria Perry’s attention, shall we?”
13
It was after midnight when Leonard and Jennifer connected the last of the leads that would monitor John’s health as he walked among the thoughts of a dead girl. John sat in a high-backed chair as he watched Jenny sticking the last lead to his chest. He smiled, but she didn’t return it. She slapped his muscled arm.
“If you think you’re going to get stuck in there”—she tapped his temple hard enough to make the big man flinch—“you’d better find a way to come back and get me. I would rather live in the days of Old Yeller and Khrushchev than here without you.”
“Hell, Jen, if he gets stuck there, he’d damn well better find a way to make money off fifty-plus years of Super Bowls and World Series winners,” Leonard joked as he finished hooking Lonetree up to the monitors. “If you’re going to be stuck in pre–civil rights America, it’s better to do it with money, right, Chief?” he said as he too slapped the large Indian on the bare shoulder and then wiggled the pain from his fingers.
“He’ll be back, or I send Bobby Lee McKinnon after him,” Jenny said, finally smiling and then quickly kissing the top of John’s head as Gabriel eased her aside and looked at his friend. He held up the syringe.
“Ready for Professor Gabe’s Magic Carpet Ride?” he asked.
“Dream between the sound machine? You bet,” he said with a nervous smile as George Cordero placed the glasses into his hand.
“Good luck in there, my friend,” he said and then left the bedside. With a look at Hadley, George shook his head. “Risking too damn much for this guy, that’s for damn sure.” He looked at Kennedy as he wiped an alcohol pad across John’s skin. “You know this man was responsible for killing that little girl, don’t you? Just because I can’t read this guy’s thoughts doesn’t mean that mean bitch downstairs doesn’t know the truth. It just turns out this guy is worse than even she is. A match made in hell.”
Kennedy nodded that Cordero had a point as he eased the needle into John’s arm and swabbed it again, covering it with a small Band-Aid. Gabriel patted Lonetree’s leg and nodded.
“Watch your ass in there. You are definitely the visiting team, and I don’t think this thing will be too welcoming if it knew you were again coming unannounced into its backyard. I forget who said nothing is darker than a dream of love and life,” Gabriel said. “Oh, wait, that was me.”
“Boy, you guys should write Hallmark greeting cards—real sentimental stuff,” Lonetree said. He felt the first heaviness start to creep into his eyes, and the sounds of voices had an echo-type quality to them. His eyes closed as he gripped the broken pair of dark glasses.
The Supernaturals watched as Lonetree drifted away on a tide of Demerol and the other special mixers Gabe had made for him. Kennedy looked at Leonard, who was going to be monitoring Lonetree’s vitals. He nodded that everything was up an
d running. Gabriel made sure the syringe was close by in case he needed to be brought out of his state if needed. The Adrenalin was placed in two locations for quick access. He looked at everyone and nodded at Damian, who used the bedroom’s rheostat to lower the brightness of the lamps. Kennedy went to the far corner and looked up into the camera. He gave the doctors out in the hallway a thumbs-up and returned to John’s side. Jenny finally released his hand as Lonetree had told her to do. He must not have any physical contact with anyone during the walk.
John’s eyes started playing under the lids, and Gabe got a knot in his stomach as Lonetree returned to the world they had just come from. He just hoped this worked.
“We’re going to be late! Let’s get a move on, girl!”
The voice was not John’s. Jenny’s eyes widened when the familiar snarl escaped his lips. She looked at the others around the room and could see that they had also recognized the voice. It was Gloria’s father, Franklin Perry, the very man that they had seen only an hour and a half before. Then John was gone. The eyelids still showed movement with the REM sleep he had achieved.
Lonetree was now a part of America’s past—a past they hoped he could return from.
* * *
The music was the first thing John recognized. The song seemed distant at first as he tried to open his eyes but failed as it always did. His vision and clarity would come; he just had to be patient.
Many a tear has to fall … but it’s all, in the game …
John smiled, or at least he thought he did in his dream, as he recognized the old song from the late fifties. Tommy Edwards, if he remembered correctly from when his grandmother hummed the tune while she cleaned houses for a living when he was a kid on the reservation.
All in the wonderful game, that we know as love …
“We’re going to be late! Let’s get a move on, girl!”
John’s eyes opened wide and he immediately jumped back as he saw his own reflection in the full-length mirror. He stumbled but steadied himself, realizing he had been frightened by his own image. For the first time in a dreamwalk, he found his own face. He shook his head as the man left the door without opening it and went about his business in another area of the house.
Somewhere, a radio was turned down, and then he heard her voice. It wasn’t what it should have been. It was like that of a younger child. He turned and saw the bathroom door open, stumbling as the young girl suddenly appeared with a blue below-the-knee-length skirt with a small dog or something on its hem. She was only wearing a bra. He turned his head as she lowered the antenna on a small radio and placed it down on the bed. She then slipped into a white blouse. Lonetree assumed this because he was too embarrassed to actually turn and see. The girl, maybe twelve years old at the most, had dark hair and blue eyes. Once she was covered, John braved a look at the girl as she finished dressing. The way she fumbled with the blouse and the way she tilted her head told John he was looking at a younger version of Gloria Perry. Confused, Lonetree stood next to her as she reached for the mirror and removed a pink scarf from its frame. She fluffed her hair as she pulled it back and fashioned a ponytail with the use of the silky scarf.
“I’m ready!’ she called out.
The bedroom door opened after a brief but firm knock. Frank Perry, Gloria’s father and onetime officer assigned to Robert Hadley’s OSS unit, was smiling, not irritated as the voice had been a moment before. He saw his daughter and shook his head. She sensed his good humor, which had been short lately.
“What’s so amusing?” she asked as she turned around, placing the dark glasses on her nose.
John smiled as he saw the young woman she would become in a few years. Why he was at this point in her life, he didn’t know.
“Not used to seeing you in those clothes.”
“I know you would be just as happy with me never taking off that Catholic plaid skirt you like so much, but I like this.” She twirled until the skirt unfurled as she spun. She stopped and felt her way to the door. She found her father leaning against the doorjamb and hugged him. “Thank you for giving in.”
“I didn’t have a choice, did I?”
“Never did,” Gloria said as she released her father’s neck and turned and grabbed her new school supplies from her dresser.
“Well, I guess it’s time to see if you can handle public school. Can’t hang on to you forever, can I? Next thing you know, you’re off to Washington to help Ike settle things there.”
She pursed her lips and made a kissing action as she moved past her father at the door. “Eisenhower doesn’t need my help. After all, didn’t you and Ike win the war all on your own?”
“Funny girl,” he said, reaching for an item on her bed. “Hey, are you forgetting something?”
Gloria stopped and then held out a slim-fingered hand as her dad gave her the telescopic walking stick. She took a deep breath, and John could see that she hated her predicament of blindness. Lonetree followed them out of the house.
The day was warm, and he sensed it was September. Gloria and her father went to an old 1952 Dodge pickup truck. John turned to see the small house that was well maintained. The yard was green and freshly cut, and the house looked to be painted just the year before. He could almost smell the newness as the sun warmed the exterior. He shook his head, and before he knew it, he was sitting between Frank and Gloria as they drove away from their cozy house.
The truck took the back way, or so Lonetree was thinking, because they skirted the town of Moreno as the pickup truck climbed a hill. The manual transmission of the Dodge was kept in low gear as it strained at the uphill fight on the old dirt road that no one ever used. John sensed that the kids out to neck after the movies avoided the place they were going. He knew in advance through his inner sight that they were heading to that place.
“This won’t take long, will it? I don’t want to be late on my first day of real school.”
Frank looked at his daughter right through John’s head as he sat there feeling uncomfortable in his spying.
“Real school?” he asked.
Gloria smiled as she turned her head to face her father. “Real as in real teachers, real students, and not nuns running the dog and pony show.”
“You’re getting as saucy as your mother used to be.”
“Yes, I am. You bet she would have never have been as paranoid as you about public schools.”
“Paranoid?” Frank Perry shook his head as he turned onto another dirt road even steeper than the first. John turned and saw the town of Moreno sitting below them, confirming where they were going. “Where are you learning words like that?”
“The Twilight Zone.”
“Damn, isn’t this world strange enough without adding that crap to it?”
Gloria turned and gave her father a condescending look.
“Good writing is good writing, and Rod Serling is the best. And that’s what I’m going to be. The best damn writer in the world.” She huffed and then moved her head as if she were looking away.
Her father smiled as he pulled up to a fenced off area and stopped the truck.
“Rod Serling, huh?”
“Yeah, and it wouldn’t hurt you any, sir, to get a little imaginative in your television watching. There’s more to life than Wagon Train, Dragnet, or Wanted: Dead or Alive. I can’t even see, and I know those shows are a little bit formulaic.”
“Where in the hell are you learning these words?” he asked as the pickup was approached by a man in a uniform. John could see the MP armband and knew that he had struck pay dirt. He watched the army cop tap on Frank’s window and gestured for him to roll it down. “Never mind, The Twilight Zone again, right?”
“You got it, daddy-oh.”
“Smart-ass,” he said as he rolled down the window with the use of the crank and then held out his ID to the sergeant. The man checked it and then looked inside.
“Your daughter will remain within the confines of the vehicle, Captain Perry?” the military police offi
cer asked as he handed back the identification.
“I’m not a captain anymore, Sergeant, and yes, she knows not to leave the truck.”
“Fascist,” Gloria mumbled loud enough for all to hear.
John cringed as the gruff-looking sergeant leaned in to look Gloria over.
“Excuse me?” he asked.
“I said Fabian; you look like Fabian.”
“Uh-huh.” The sergeant stood back and opened the gate. “The colonel is inside the security office, Captain.”
Frank hit the accelerator, and as he passed the uniformed guard, he said, “Mr. Perry, not Captain.”
He rolled up the window and looked at Gloria. “Fascist is not a word you toss around lightly these days, young lady.”
The truck bypassed the security hut and a 1956 Cadillac parked next to the two army jeeps used by military police.
“Sorry. I just don’t like the men here. They’re mean and always seem to be on edge. You know that one of them actually pulled a pistol on Ronnie Granger last summer?”
“And what was Ronnie Granger doing to get a gun pulled on him?” Frank asked as he shut off the motor. John sensed Frank had business to perform—unpleasant, more than likely—so he parked far enough away to protect her from hearing too much.
“He was just trying to get his dog that had wandered off. He was looking around … on the other side of the fence.”
Perry opened the door but hesitated. “I’m sorry about that. But you know as well as I that this place is dangerous. These ruins could collapse at any time.” He looked at the winery and then over toward the ruins of the Santa Maria Delarosa mission. “Ronnie Granger got off lucky. This is no place to get caught wandering around.”
“Yes, sir.”
“Oh, don’t give me the poor blind girl routine; it only works on special occasions. Now stay in the truck; this won’t take long. Then we can get you to that real school you’re so anxious to get to.”
Gloria smiled and nodded as she opened one of her braille books and ran her fingertips over the special characters.
Frank smiled, shaking his head and closing the door, only to turn and see a man in a ragged white coat exit the old winery. He gave Frank a look that said he was not pleased to see him, and then with a huff, he moved off toward the mission. Perry joined him, and together they walked the hundred yards toward the mission and the meeting that would end their commitment.
In the Still of the Night--The Supernaturals II Page 23