She shoved her notebook into her bag, and shot him a weird look. Sam wished he could shoot her a look of his own. He had a feeling she’d like him better if he could. But all he could do was shrug as he walked out of the building to the module where he had his shop class.
Normally, it was a relief to head out of the main building to the sparse room where tools lined the tables, where he felt like his brain and body could connect in a way they couldn’t when he only had pencil and paper. But today he couldn’t help but notice that Gothy-Sarah walked the same direction he did—veering off into the stage area for her theater class just before he got to the exit door. When he got into shop class, he found that the thought of Gothy-Sarah across the way distracted him. He failed to let the metal of his soldering iron cool and burned his finger. Twice. That was weird.
The dog was the same one she’d noticed wandering around her neighborhood—a dark-eyed mutt with eyebrows that seemed to lift when she looked at him, like he was ready for a chat. He’d been following Ella ever since the four-way stop across from the school. She’d never had an animal follow her home, and she was enjoying the cliché.
He looked pretty clean for a stray—his fur anyway. Two of his toenails were cracked and broken. Which didn’t stop Ella from sitting down next to him in front of the gates of Napper’s preserve. The dog put a paw in her lap, like it belonged there, and Ella felt she’d finally made one friend. It had taken long enough.
Both of them stared at the gate that blocked off the opening to The Property. Up a long cobblestone road Ella could see the huge Napper residence—mansion and museum wound together in an intricate series of turrets, columns, and large twinkling windows. Behind it, a tall hill rose up, arching on its left into a dangerous overhang. On the right side of the mansion, an expanse of woods stretched into a few rolling hills that were almost entirely lost in trees.
Ella wished her mother could see it. She could have named every tree, and the rock formations to boot. On the plaque that hung on the gates, Ella read that in the 1800s, treasure seekers had often come to these hills searching for silver nuggets, although over the years such stones had become increasingly rare.
The dog, Ella noticed, was looking to the right through the trees in an intense way. Ella wondered if he’d seen an animal moving. She stared hard, but nothing cool like a deer or wild turkey came into view. After a minute, her eyes started to water from staring and a stiff breeze caught the tree branches.
Beyond the trees, Ella swore she saw a column of smoke at the edge of The Property. She blinked and looked again, but she couldn’t see anything. She shook her head and smiled at the dog. “What do you think?” she asked him. “Are my eyes playing tricks on me, or is there something back there?”
The breeze blew again and the dog barked like he was answering her.
“Go on,” Ella said, laughing. “Tell me all your secrets.”
The dog looked at her with big, plaintive eyes.
Ella smiled and stroked his ear. “And now I’m begging animals to give me the low down. I must really want something exciting to happen in this crappy little town.”
She turned from the gate and hurried home. The dog, she noticed, stayed behind watching The Property like he was guarding it. He was just as crazy as she was. She’d call him Loco.
Every time David Witten saw the homeless man with his cart full of cans, hovering around the iron gates of The Property, he handed him a twenty. It was more than kindness or community concern or a hand out. It was a familial responsibility. You didn’t choose your distant relatives. And Witten surely wouldn’t have chosen this guy, but that didn’t mean he wouldn’t help him out when he could.
The old man’s name was Cres. When Witten had first come to town, he’d offered him dinner and—against his better judgment—a place to stay. But Cres was having none of it. He wanted to live only one place and would not go anywhere else. And so he loitered around the The Property, sneaking in, then getting kicked out, then waiting to get in again.
Chapter 12
It was a small stone that would fit into the palm of a child’s hand. Simple, gray, with metallic streaks and glints of blue and green. The stone had had a difficult journey here. Or, rather, those who carried it had had a difficult time of it. The bearer and the thief were both now dead. Gruesome business—automobile accidents.
The police had done a remarkable and clueless job of handling the incidents, as the police did a remarkable and clueless job of handling so many things that were within this realm. He appreciated that.
The good doctor’s drinking problem and penchant for women hadn’t hurt either.
Now the stone that most adults would have overlooked sat in a locked glass case next to the other valuables in his study. For the last two weeks it had remained there—safe and unusable—a reminder of the behemoth undertaking ahead of him.
Dangerous as this stone was, the task of bending a human will would be even harder. But she was young. And she had spent many, many years tragically poor. If her dear mother were still around, he would thank her for that.
A human without money was clay in his hands.
Loco always met Ella just before The Property as she walked home from school. He stayed close to her heels as though he was protecting her from something very fierce behind the gate. It was the sweetest thing Ella had ever seen.
Ella’s mom had loved dogs, treating strays like they were long lost friends. Looking at Loco, it was easy to see why—the big-eyed loyalty, the willingness to protect you even when there was no danger, the companionship.
It was proving a little difficult to find any of that at school. So far the closest thing she had to a human friend was that weird kid Sam who always stared at her like he was trying to remember something.
He wasn’t exactly creepy. He had nice eyes and dirty brown hair exactly the color her mother’s had been, plus the same sort of smile. He just never said anything. And you couldn’t be friends with a mute. Unless, she thought smiling, that friend was a dog. In which case you didn’t have to talk because dogs wore every emotion on their faces.
When they got to Vivi’s house, Ella went in to get Loco a couple of meatballs from the freezer. Then the two of them settled down on the grass. Ella did her homework and Loco rolled over for a nice belly rub. Ella was pretty sure her aunt wouldn’t approve of scratching a strange dog’s belly. She was pretty sure her aunt wouldn’t approve of scratching a strange dog period.
Not that her mom had gone around scratching strays. But every time they passed a stray her mother would feed it, even if it meant going into a store or restaurant to buy something. It used to bother Ella—the way her mother had treated the animals like they were people, maybe even better than people.
In Napper there were precious few people in need on the streets—only the one crazy grocery cart man that she’d seen—so Ella didn’t have to feel guilty doling the meatballs out to a dog instead of a man.
She watched Loco eat and then, as had happened so many times since her mother’s death, a long-ago memory stabbed into her—vivid and fresh. It always made her sad—the rush of the recollection, the ache at her mother’s absence, but Ella didn’t push it away. In the memories she often found her mother again—renewed, young, alive.
Ella had been little—maybe five or six. It had been night and they were walking home from her day care. The moon had hung so full and bright it’d almost outshone the streetlights, which was saying a lot in the city. They’d stood near several tall, blackened buildings waiting for the last bus of the night.
There, on the corner, had been a scraggly, dirty mutt. The ends of the fur by his belly had been tangled and clumped almost like dreadlocks and her mother had looked at the pitiful animal and sighed. “Let me guess,” she’d said. “You’re down on your luck and need a bite to eat.”
The dog had cocked his head to the side as though he didn’t appreciate her mother’s sarcasm.
“Well, sorry pal, I’ve got nothing and it
’s late; everything’s closed.”
The dog had nodded to the fluorescent lights that dripped down a crumbling building—‘BAR,’ only the ‘A’ had been burned out so it read, ‘B R.’
“I’m not taking Ella in there. I couldn’t if I wanted to,” she’d said, motioning to the bored bouncer in the doorway.
In Ella’s imagination, the dog had actually answered back. “Come on; just tell them you want a few peanuts. I love peanuts.”
Ella had loved peanuts too. She smiled at the way her imagination had given that line to the dog.
Her mother had stood for several minutes—forehead wrinkled practically to the hairline. The animal had looked at her—so hungry, hungrier than most.
“I’ll watch the girl,” the dog’s imaginary voice said in Ella’s memory.
And her mother had paused, considering. No—Ella wrinkled her nose trying to straighten out the memory. No, her mother had actually left her at the dog’s side and walked several paces toward the door. Then she’d shaken her head and come running back. “I must be out of my mind. This is going too far.”
Even so, they’d walked out of their way—it had seemed to Ella hours, but had probably been only twenty minutes to go to the nearest taco place. They’d bought two chicken burritos—one for the dog and one for Ella. Her mother had gone without.
After that her mother had avoided the strays most of the time, though she’d regularly bring leftovers from work that she’d place outside the trash cans where she knew the dogs liked to forage. And her bedtime stories had become peppered with tales of the talking dogs—a noble race equal to the humans, packs of animals who played and worked and sang. Ella had often gone to bed wishing just once to hear a dog sing.
Sitting on Vivi’s perfectly soft, perfectly green, perfectly cut grass, that life of walking home past strays and garbage cans seemed far away. Maybe that was part of what had drawn Ella to Loco. Maybe feeding him had given her a piece of her mother back. Lounging on the lawn, Ella could see how her mother might have talked so much to the dogs. Every time Ella looked into Loco’s face and said something, Loco looked like he absolutely wanted to answer back.
He sat at her heels and nudged her hand with his head as soon as she stopped scratching.
Ella laughed. The dog’s ears were soft and she bent down to look at him. She’d been trying to figure out what type of dog Loco was. He was some type of mix with light gray fur underneath and a large black patch on his back that made it look like he was wearing a super hero’s cape. “You’re part shepherd,” she said. “And maybe a little husky too.”
Loco seemed to nod.
Ella laughed again. “Maybe I’ll become a crazy animal person,” she said, rubbing the dog’s ears. “I’ll take you in, and we can be weirdo orphans together.”
Loco seemed to like the idea. He lay down on the sidewalk and stretched out for a good back scratching.
Chapter 13
Twenty years ago, the Psychiatric Ranch Retreat had promised full recovery from the hallucinations for next to nothing. It was a deal no parent who was worried for the sanity and well-being of their children could refuse. The arrangement was set up so that the teenage sisters would stay on site.
Later, when their parents died in a late-night car accident, it was determined that the girls would stay on permanently—taking classes, going to therapy, working through their rehabilitation.
Caring for the girls was not easy. They were used to their ways. They resisted the things The Ranch taught. Most infuriatingly, they insisted ever more strongly that they hadn’t been hallucinating at all—that every full moon they could hear dogs talk.
In time, however, his treatment for the pTr4 genome had been more and more successful. Without exposure to dogs, the girls had begun slowly—so slowly—to forget their memories of their life before. His medications had helped dull the symptoms as well, though he was always distraught that they did not completely cover them.
The Ranch would need to keep the girls many, many years for the treatment to have the desired effect. He would need them, he estimated, until they were in their late thirties.
For a while, it seemed like it might work. The girls were allowed free run of The Ranch. They rode horses, hunted for chicken eggs, and hiked along the trails. The older girl loved puzzles; the younger, books. In the fall, they made cider and picked apples. In the winter, they learned to sew and cook, and spent extra time on their lessons and recovery meditations.
Several years passed. The Ranch prospered; the girls grew. He thought that it would be his life’s greatest—and final—work.
But it wasn’t. He was rarely caught off guard, but the day—two decades ago—when he’d learned the girls had run off with two of his hired men, he was shocked. Even more so when he learned they’d left with his people’s most valuable artifacts. When the girls’ stolen car wound up at the bottom of a gully, he’d felt that his life’s work had been crushed with them.
After many years, Napper had built the Institution in hopes of one day finding others like them. And he had found many with similar symptoms and similar blood. But, until recently, he’d been unaware of any whose symptoms and gifts were exactly the same.
You should never name them. Ella knew this. I mean, it was Stray Animal 101.
Loco was gone. For two weeks they’d spent their afternoons together, but now Ella hadn’t seen Loco for five days. And it hurt. It hurt like her mother’s funeral all over again.
Ella knew that was stupid. She knew it was really stupid. It was a stray dog. It strayed. But that afternoon she didn’t go inside. She sat on the back step, poking a stick into Vivi’s immaculate lawn, digging up little clumps of sod. She might care when Vivi got home, but she didn’t right now—and right now was all she could see.
Why hadn’t her mother told her more about her father? Or any of her grandparents? Or her aunt? Or anyone at all? Ella didn’t even know where her mother had grown up. All she knew was that her mother had left her. Just like that dog.
Ella tossed the stick she’d been holding, then held her head in her hands.
When Vivi found her, her aunt looked at the sod, but didn’t comment. Quietly, she said, “Someone will be coming to meet with you later this week, someone the doctor’s office recommended. His name is Jack Sanderson and he’s a grief counselor.”
Fabulous, Ella thought. A counselor. For the freak. A freak counselor.
To her aunt, she said, “Okay.” And then, because it seemed like she should, “Thank you.”
Chapter 14
Sam watched the rain sheet down the window like a rich lady’s drapes—folding over itself until it seemed to be piling onto the window, not just splashing and breaking apart. He had spent the last twelve moves in the southwest and could remember nothing like this.
Watching the water was liked being hypnotized. He forgot to be afraid until the first thunder struck—the sound of a gun—quick and uncompromising. It shook the floor of the trailer. Sam reviewed what he’d read. The safest place if there was a tornado was a place with no windows or doors—a closet or the hall of their trailer. But Sam thought of the empty lots where the other tornado-struck trailers had been, and knew that the only safe place in a trailer was no place at all.
The thunder rumbled, vibrating his bones, and the panic burst into him. Sam ran. He ran from the closed walls of the home that could be lifted and dropped at the whim of a crazy funnel of air. He ran against the purple-bruised sky, down the road, to the locked gates.
Later, he would try to remember how he’d gotten through. What had happened to the four padlocks? Had they not been there at all or simply left open? But that part of his escape gaped from his memory—a spot as black as the sky.
All he knew was that he’d run through the open gate, up the path, and behind the little shack he’d seen when he first got to Napper.
A small line of smoke puffed out of the chimney, which seemed impossible with the waterfall of rain. He might have pounded on the
door, except that it opened on its own, just like in a horror movie, with no one standing behind it. Sam walked toward it anyway. After all, the little house was dry; and anchored to the ground.
There, at a small table, sat a very old woman sipping a cup of tea and eating a cookie. An orange tabby sat on her feet like a fluffy pair of socks. It was then that Sam wondered if something had fallen on his head and he was unconscious and dreaming. Or maybe the trailer had crushed him and he was dead.
Either way, the woman spoke. “Come in, child, and have some tea. What were you doing out there anyway?” She had a big, bright smile with white square teeth that seemed too big for her lips—dentures he guessed.
“I’m sorry,” Sam stammered. “I didn’t mean to disturb you. I—” He had no idea how to finish the sentence. I panicked and ran through a storm like a mental patient and then walked into a stranger’s house.
“Sit child,” she said.
The woman or trippy dream character or post-death apparition poured him some chamomile tea. Sam sniffed, then took a sip. It was hot—crazy hot. It burned all the way down.
He waited to wake up. He didn’t.
“Watch your mouth,” she said. “It’s hot.”
Yeah. Two minutes earlier that would have been nice to know. Sam was about to get up and leave when another jolt of thunder and lightning struck with barely a millisecond between the two.
“Stay child,” she said. “You’re safe here.”
Sam didn’t know what else to do. Unless his drink had been poisoned, he was pretty sure he could take on a hundred year old woman if he had to. She pulled her feet away from the cat and used an old wooden walking stick to get up and stir the fire.
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