Seized

by Lynne Cantwell

  I could tell someone to get out of my way at an intersection, even if it put that person in danger.

  “Something weird is going on,” I finished, rather lamely.

  “Yes, it is,” Shannon agreed. “And now you know what the ‘ah’ meant.”

  I blinked. “On the phone?” I tried to sip my tea, burned my lip and swore.

  “Sorry, it’s hot,” she said, and fetched an ice cube for me. “Suck on that. Yes, on the phone. I’ve always sensed an odd aura around you, but it’s gotten worse over the past month or so.”

  “Worse?”

  “Stronger,” she amended. “Worse is a value judgment. I’m not prepared to make a value judgment at this time.”

  The ice cube felt good against my sore lip, but the melt water was dripping down my wrist. I dropped what was left of the cube into my mug and wiped my wrist on my jeans. “Okay,” I said carefully, afraid we were veering into the woo-woo. “When will you be prepared?”

  She laughed. “I know you don’t believe in the supernatural, Naomi, and some of it, you’re right to doubt. But a lot of it is real.” She reached under the novel and extracted a green handbill from atop the pile. Then she handed it to me. “We should go to that.” She bit into a chocolate cookie and sighed. “Your secretary makes good cookies.”

  I nodded in agreement as I nibbled at a star-shaped sugar cookie covered in yellow sprinkles and glanced over the sheet. Then I put the cookie down. “Oh, Shannon, come on,” I said, looking squarely at her. “You can’t be serious.”

  “I am serious,” she said. “These cookies are delicious. And we really should go to this sweat.”

  I looked at the handbill again. It advertised a “special Winter Solstice 2012 sweat lodge” up in the mountains near Boulder on Friday – two days away. “By invitation only,” it said.

  “We’re not invited,” I said, tossing the paper atop her novel.

  “We are,” she countered. “That’s the invitation.”

  “Well,” I said, “I’m not invited. I’d have to take off work, and I’m already planning to take next week off to go to Vail with Brock.”

  “Actually,” Shannon said, “you are invited. An Indian guy dropped off the invitation at my office today as I was seeing a client out. He said specifically that it was for you and me.”

  My head snapped up. “What?”

  “He said he knew you.”

  “He specifically said to you, ‘Shannon, this is for you and Naomi’?”

  She shrugged. “Not exactly in those words, but yes, he mentioned you by name.”

  I shook my head in disbelief. “He must have me confused with someone else. I don’t know any Indians. Not well enough to be invited to a ceremony, anyway.” I picked up the handbill again. “Is this going to be authentic?”

  “I think so,” she said. “Wait. What do you mean by ‘authentic’?”

  “Native American Church-type authentic. Including peyote.”

  She shrugged. “I don’t know. But if it’s a bad scene, we’ll leave.”

  “You can count on that,” I said, and then thought of another objection. “You’re not trying to sucker me into some goofy Age of Aquarius, end-of-the-world thing, are you? Real Indians are running this, not one of those New Age charlatans?”

  Shannon’s eyes had narrowed as I spoke, but she answered me. “The guy who gave me the invitation seemed authentic enough to me.”

  “What did he look like?”

  “Well, he wasn’t dressed in buckskin and fringe, with feathers in his hair, if that’s what you’re asking.”

  I dialed it back a bit. “I’m not making fun of you, honest. I’m just worried about us ending up like the people who died in that bogus sweat lodge ceremony in Arizona a few years back. Really, what did he look like?”

  She dropped her hackles a little. “A jacket over a plaid Western shirt,” she said. “Jeans. Boots, but work boots – not expensive cowboy boots.” Her eyes unfocused as she recalled details. “It was his face that sold me. He was dark-skinned and had those Indian features, you know? And long, dark hair, like yours. He had it pulled back in a ponytail and braided.” Her eyes refocused on me. “But his eyes were bright blue.”

  “And he said he knew me.”

  She nodded. I shook my head. No blue-eyed Indians were coming to mind.

  “Look, Naomi,” she said. “I see it this way. You already know weird stuff is happening to you. And on the same day you figure this out, a strange man invites us to a Native American ceremony. Maybe he has some answers for you.” And she said again, “If it gets too weird, we’ll leave.”

  I sighed. “Okay, fine, let’s go, I guess.” I read over the paper again, so I didn’t have to see the satisfied look on Shannon’s face. “This thing starts at sundown. That’s, what, 4:30 in the afternoon? And the light will fade sooner on this side of the mountains. I’ll leave work at noon and pick you up at your office. We can grab lunch on the way.”

  “No lunch,” she said. “We’ll be fasting.”

  “Maybe you’ll be fasting,” I said, “but I’m going to eat lunch. I don’t do woo-woo on an empty stomach.”

  I drove home, careful to keep my opinions about the other drivers on the road to myself.

  It was after one in the morning by the time I got back to my loft. I was in that weird state of keyed-up exhaustion in which you’re never sure whether you’ll be able to fall asleep. But the alarm was going to go off at 6:30 a.m., regardless, so I decided to give it a try.

  No sooner had my head hit the pillow than I started to dream. Or at least it seemed like a dream.

  I was about twelve. I was wearing a fluffy white coat that Mom had bought for me when I was in sixth grade, and my hair hung in braided pigtails behind my ears. I could hear someone droning on about some Indian legend. I turned away from the voice, and came face to face with a small, white buffalo. His withers came even with my eyes, and he didn’t have any horns. I reached out to touch his fur – I think I intended to pet him, like you would a dog – but his front half dropped to the ground, his skinny legs stuck out straight in front of him, while his back half stayed up in the air. The droning voice stopped, and then cried, “He bowed to her! The white buffalo calf bowed to her!” I heard more voices then, murmuring behind me. The little buffalo’s rump then sank to the ground, and as I bent to try to touch his head once more, I looked up.

  Behind the buffalo stood a woman. Her dress was made of white buckskin, elaborately fringed along the seams of the bodice and sleeves. Her hair – long, straight, and black as night – fell around her shoulders like a cloak. Her skin was deeply tanned; her eyes were black and kind, and their depths went on forever. And she was smiling at me, and nodding. She seemed to be encouraging me to touch the little buffalo calf, which still lay motionless at my feet.

  The voices behind me were approaching. My hand was a fraction of an inch from the buffalo calf’s head when a crow began to squawk. I looked up again, glancing around for the crow, who continued to squawk insistently. Repeatedly. Regularly.

  Groaning, I rolled over and hit the snooze button to silence the alarm. But I didn’t go back to sleep. Instead, I lay there, wide awake and staring up at the ceiling, remembering.

  I’d forgotten about that white coat, and about how Mom used to put my hair in pigtails. And I had totally forgotten about that field trip in seventh grade to see the legendary white buffalo calf that had been born over the summer.

  We lived in Logansport, Indiana, then, and the buffalo calf was born on a farm in Kewanna, a bend in the road nearby. We rode a school bus to the farm. I remembered using a fingernail to scrape away the frost flowers that had bloomed overnight on the inside of the bus window. Or maybe that was a different bus on another morning. I rode a bus every day to school, growing up. Anyway, it was cold that morning, and frosty, but we hadn’t had any snow yet.

  I’d forgotten how bored I’d become at the spiel the farmer gave our class about the white buffalo calf legend. I had be
en in the back of the group so it was hard to hear, and I was getting cold, standing in one spot. So I wandered away, down the dirt path to the corral.

  I remembered, now, spying the white calf with his mother near the barn, and propping my forearms on the fence railing to watch them together – my own private showing of the miracle calf. And then the calf saw me, and came over. And – how could I have forgotten this? – the little buffalo had indeed dropped to the ground in front of me.

  There was a big to-do when the farmer spotted us, just as there had been in my dream, and my teacher made a big deal about it when we got back to school. The kids on the bus called me “Indian girl” and “buffalo girl” for months afterward, all through that winter, during which I had to keep wearing that damned white coat because Mom couldn’t afford to get me a different one. But she stopped putting my hair in braids after that. And at the end of the school year, we moved to Lafayette, a bigger town. By the time I started classes at my new school in the fall, everyone had forgotten about the miracle calf and the girl it had supposedly bowed to – and even if they remembered, there was nothing in Lafayette to connect it to me.

  But how had I forgotten?

  And why had there been an Indian woman in my dream, when none had been there in real life?

  Chapter 2

  To say that I was uncomfortable at work the next day would be an understatement. For one thing, I don’t function well on less than eight hours of sleep. When I’m tired, the first thing that always deserts me is the filter between my brain and my mouth. Given what I suspected was going on, I was terrified that I would blurt out the wrong thing to the right person, or the right thing to the wrong person, or something.

  For another thing, I did not want to run into Brock, but I also did not want it to look like I was avoiding him. We had been circumspect about our relationship so far – people knew we were dating, but we avoided flaunting it around the firm – but it was unusual for us to not touch base at least once or twice a day. And now we were engaged, for goodness’ sake. I should have been inventing excuses to stop by his office and catch him alone, for whatever we might have time for before his next call. Instead, I found myself going the long way around from the elevators to the coffee station, and keeping my office door shut more than I usually did. I mentioned to a few people that I was trying to get through my to-do list in order to leave early for the weekend, and hoped my colleagues didn’t think I was being weird.

  I was so busy covering my own tracks that it didn’t occur to me to wonder why Brock hadn’t sought me out, either, until close to lunchtime. I mean, on one hand, I was relieved that I hadn’t had to ride herd on my tongue around him. But on the other hand, where the hell was he?

  Frowning, I grabbed my purse and sauntered down the hallway toward the ladies’ room, which was on the other side of the elevator lobby, past the coffee station, and past Brock’s office. I glanced quickly inside, and then stopped dead and stared. The door was open, the lights were out, and his laptop was gone.

  I pivoted and approached his assistant, whose carrel was right across the hall. “Where is he?”

  She looked up briefly. “Brock? He’s been at a client meeting out of the office all morning.”

  “Really?” I asked. You mean I’ve been sneaking around like a criminal for nothing? “Any idea when he’ll be back?”

  She consulted the calendar on her computer. “Not until late this afternoon, it looks like.” She clucked her tongue in annoyance. “I wish he would let me put all of his appointments on his calendar. I scheduled two calls for him this afternoon, and now he’s got the whole day blocked off for this meeting. I’ll have to reschedule these calls.” She glanced up at me. “Sorry. Didn’t mean to go off on you. Did you need me to get a message to him?”

  “No, no,” I said, “it’s not urgent. I’ll send him an e-mail.” We both smiled the smiles of professional pleasantry, and I went on my way.

  By four o’clock, I was sure my brain had melted into slag. I grabbed my laptop to make it look like I intended to work at home, and told my assistant, Tess, that I thought I had done as much damage as I could do that day and would see her in the morning. She laughed and asked me whether I was going to do anything special for Armageddon Day.

  “Armageddon Day?” I asked, feeling a guilty blush creep up my neck.

  “Oh, you know, tomorrow. The big winter solstice. The last day of the Mayan calendar. The world is supposed to end and so on.”

  “Oh, right, right. Guess I’d better pick up my dry cleaning tonight.”

  “Don’t bother. If the world ends, you aren’t going to need it.”

  We exchanged giggles and I headed to the elevators. I couldn’t help glancing into Brock’s office on my way past. It was very dark now – almost like a cave, with odd shadows gathered in the corners. He had clearly never made it in. Nor had he emailed me all day, or called. Of course, I hadn’t gone out of my way to try to contact him, either.

  Being engaged was just swell so far, thanks.

  Living in LoDo has its advantages, one of which is that my office is a fifteen-minute walk from my apartment. It has disadvantages, too – the lack of a decent grocery store chief among them – but then again, there’s always takeout. I decided to stop at Yoko’s in Sakura Square, near the Buddhist temple, for a rice bowl.

  Darkness was falling rapidly as I left my office building and started west on 20th Street. But the street lights were coming on, and some of the restaurants had dressed up their storefronts with Christmas lights. The temperature was also falling as night came on; I was glad for my long down coat and gloves. I pulled my beret out of the coat pocket where I’d shoved it that morning and perched it on my head at what I hoped was a perky angle, using my reflection in a shop window as a guide. As I adjusted my hat, I noticed a man leaning against the building on the opposite side of the street. That struck me as odd – he wasn’t one of our regular street people, and we were in the middle of the block, nowhere near a bus stop. I turned to get a better look at him, but he was gone. Must have ducked into the building. But I knew he hadn’t had time while I turned around. Maybe he was finishing a cigarette when I noticed him. Except that he hadn’t been smoking.

  I shrugged mentally and continued on. I’d gone about another block when an owl suddenly swooped past me, hooting. Startled, I grabbed onto my hat and stepped back. The owl hooted again, flew another hundred yards or so down the street, and then veered up and into the darkness.

  “Okay, things are getting just a little too weird around here,” I said aloud, and then clapped my gloved hand over my mouth. I looked around, a little wildly, but there was no one nearby to have made a suggestion to – never mind that there had been no command in my comment, anyway. Breathing harshly, I picked up the pace and nearly ran the rest of the way to the restaurant.

  Yoko’s has good food, but it takes a while to get it. The wait gave me time to get myself together, so that by the time I had my order in hand, I was beating myself up mentally for getting so spooked.

  I stepped out of the restaurant into a gust of wind that nearly took my beret off. Clapping my free hand to my head, I turned slightly so that my back was to the wind – and across Sakura Square, there was the same guy I’d seen in the window near my office. I was sure it was the same guy – I recognized the jeans jacket with the shearling collar and the work boots. He didn’t move from the spot where he was standing, leaning casually against a planter, but he tipped his hat to me.

  Thoroughly creeped out, I hailed a cab for the remaining four blocks.

  Safe at home, eating rice and tofu with a fork (I’ve never gotten the hang of chopsticks – Brock tried to teach me long ago, but finally declared me a hopeless case and refused thereafter to eat Asian food with me), the whole thing seemed silly. Lots of guys in downtown Denver wear jeans jackets with shearling collars. People have lots of reasons to loiter around doorways and in public squares, even when it’s cold. Maybe he was a new homeless guy. Maybe he was j
ust being polite, for goodness’ sake.

  I had a billion and one excuses for the guy being there. The owl, though – the owl didn’t fit into any plausible scenario. That block had been far too well-lit, and too well-traveled at that time of day; a predator would typically stay in the shadows, watching for prey, waiting to swoop in for the kill.

  Unless I was the prey.

  Oh, come on, I chided myself. This is ridiculous. Why would an owl be stalking me?

  I had no more reason for that than I had for a white buffalo calf to bow to me. Yet I couldn’t shake the thought that it was true.

  The buffalo calf made a reappearance in my dreams that night. Again, I was wearing that white coat, with my hair in braids; again, the little animal separated from his mother, trotted over to me, and lay down before me in the dust. Again, I bent over to pet him. And again, a bird woke me up – but this time it was the mournful hoot of an owl.

  I shot upright, heart pounding, and waited a long time in the dark. But I did not hear the owl again.

  I sat up for hours, until dawn. As the sky began to lighten, I emailed Tess that I would work from home that morning, after all. Then I reset the alarm for eleven o’clock and finally, with the sun’s rays warming the edge of my duvet, I drifted into a few hours of dreamless sleep.

  Shannon’s office was a block off Grandview in Old Town Arvada, not a terrible drive from her West Highland triplex. I found a spot on the street and backed in, marveling at my parallel parking skills despite two consecutive sleepless nights.

  Her office door opened into her waiting room. It was decorated in calming shades of mauve and lavender, with Rorschach-blot artwork on the walls and not-too-comfy chairs ringing the perimeter. Near the inner door, Shannon was making small talk with a woman in sweats. Shannon saw me and waved; the woman smiled at me on her way out.

  “I can’t help it,” I murmured. Shannon quirked an eyebrow at me while she grabbed her things: tote bag, coat, purse. “Whenever I see one of your patients,” I continued with a sly grin, “I can’t help but wonder what they’re here for.”