It’s all witchcraft, as far as I’m concerned. And I don’t believe in witches.
You would if you read the stuff I’ve read.
What had she read? What had she found?
He hadn’t touched it since that day in Dennie’s office with Luna, but something pulled him toward it now, the thing—the “artifact,” he’d called it that night—that was left after Dennie had died, had been torn apart. Still sipping his coffee, he headed into Dennie’s office, opened the door reluctantly, not sure why he hesitated except for what always came back to him. He forced it from his mind this time, and went straight to the desk where he had put it.
Luna had told him to “drop it in a bag and put it in another room,” but he hadn’t done it; for the life of him, he couldn’t imagine where else he would keep it. It belonged here, whatever it was. He picked it up, examining it again. What the hell was it? He’d thought it was part of a claw, but it was shaped differently, with its wiry fur. It repulsed him, but not so much as it had before. He turned it over, studying all sides of it, remembering how he’d touched it that first time, remembered the blood he thought he’d seen on its tip. Nothing now. Had he imagined it? He held it carefully, taking care with the tip. A fang? Tooth? Or nothing at all, he thought with amusement, recalling Luna’s admonitions. Chances were, he’d attributed more to what Dennie called Luna’s “sense of wonder” than he should have. Still, Luna’s sense of things couldn’t be ignored.
She could help him make sense of what Raine had told him, if she chose to. Luna had probably known for months, but telling a secret to Luna Loving Moore was as good as telling it to the dead; he knew that from his own experience, from Dennie’s. I think I’d trust Luna with my life, Dennie told him once out of the blue, and he’d believed her, although he knew less about Luna and the life she’d led before they met her than he knew now.
He sat down in Dennie’s chair, picked up the wedding photograph to study her face in detail, trying to see every tiny bit of her that could be captured in a photo—the hair, smile, eyes.
Why did it take your eyes?
Because I saw, my darling, Dennie said, answering his unspoken question, and the sound of her voice struck him dumb. He surveyed the room, forgetting for an instant where he was, what had happened, and then, just as quickly from nowhere a question formed in his mind:
What did you see?
My killer, of course.
The last thing she’d laid eyes on before she died, whoever or whatever he or it had been—if he believed what Raine had said, and just thinking of Raine again brought a sigh that came so quickly and suddenly from so deep inside, he hadn’t felt it coming. Sitting now in the clarity of daylight, away from the enchantment of the night, from her smell and touch, he wondered if he could believe any of it—Davey changing, the thing chasing them. Unbelievable. That’s what it was. But why had she lied to him? Because he’d imagined there was more there than there had been. Because she didn’t have the courage to love him back. Because—
Because I saw.
Dennie’s voice again, yet not so clear this time, coming from within himself, calling him away from his thoughts of Raine, bringing him back to this room, his question. Saw what? The killer? Or the truth? Was that what she was telling him, if she was telling him anything at all, if he wasn’t losing his mind?
He slammed the drawer closed with so much force, he nearly knocked the photograph off the desk; leaving the office, he slammed that door, too, then headed into the kitchen. Dennie’s kitchen—where he had kissed Raine, from where they’d left to make love, with Dennie’s blessing. Despite himself, he smiled because he realized that even from her grave, Dennie would have made it clear if he’d crossed some kind of line with the wrong kind of woman.
Later when he asked himself why he’d decided so suddenly to listen again, he realized it must have been the kitchen as much as anything else—as much as hearing Dennie’s voice—thinking he heard Dennie’s voice—as much as trying to find out answers to what Raine had told him. But there was a purpose to it this time when he pulled his laptop from the briefcase underneath his desk and plugged it in. He was in work mode when he sat down at this desk, his own territory, his space for preparing lesson plans, correcting flawed homework, paying bills; this was business now. He was listening for a reason, not for the sheer pleasure of hearing her voice and her laughter, for snatching her back from the dead.
Because I saw.
He was determined now to see it himself, whatever she told him she’d seen. Where to start? On the day she left him—was stolen from him. April 18. He slipped the earphones over his ears and heard her voice:
My subject is late. Our appointment was for nine A.M., but an hour has passed and I’ve heard nothing. A loss of nerves is often the case in matters such as this, particularly when one considers the consequence for betrayal of these “sacred” oaths. I hope that the information offered will be worth my time and the fee I’ve offered to pay and that there will be no objection to my taping our interview. I am eager—yet strangely wary.
The doorbell rang in the distance; the tape recorder was turned off. Then Dennie and someone else, sitting from far away, began to speak. Where were they talking? Was it the other side of the room? At her desk, across from her? The voice was hushed, gruff. Woman or man? He couldn’t tell. Dennie’s voice was strained and tense. Not like her at all. Was it fear or anticipation that he heard?
—Thank you for coming. I know this is difficult for you.
—Nothing must go from here.
—You object to being recorded?
—Nothing must go from here!
—It will be only for research. I need to keep records. Accurately.
—Fields have eyes and woods have ears.
—What do you mean by that?
—(no answer)
—I won’t use your name.
—You don’t know my name.
—Then I can’t use it, can I?
A nervous laugh. Dennie’s.
—May I ask you something? Why did you agree to do this interview? Was it the money?
—No.
—Then why?
—You will know in time.
Cade turned up the volume, trying to hear the voice from far away, still unable to determine who was speaking. Woman? Man? Old? Young? Dennie gave no hint of identity, age, or gender.
Tape recorder, turned off again as abruptly as before. Who had turned it off? The subject? Dennie? He snatched off his earphones. Unwilling to hear what came next. Then put them on again, knowing he had no choice but to listen to the end—through the silences, through Dennie’s discomfort, to whatever was said or wasn’t. How much time elapsed before they began again? It was impossible to know. Dennie began again.
—Why did you come here? To this town?
—A calling.
—Calling? What do you mean?
—A duty to keep what is mine.
—And what is yours?
—If it lives, it will kill me. It is his duty as it is mine.
—And who is he?
A pause. Cade could hear Dennie’s breath. She was afraid, he was sure of that now. Five minutes. Six. Before the voice came back again. Dennie now, her voice calmly probing.
—There are some things I’ve read in the books about this … your ability, your skill, and the mythology surrounding it that I was hoping you could verify. You can nod your head if you want to if you don’t want me to record what you say.
Silence. Was there a nod? Dennie would note it, have filled in the rest when she typed it up.
—I’ve read the power began during the horror of the Long Walk, when the U.S. Army backed by the government forced your people, the Navajo, at gunpoint—women, children, the most vulnerable among you—to leave your homes in Arizona and walk to New Mexico. That your people were starved, beaten, children and pregnant women savagely whipped.
My people, too, experienced such horror.
I’ve read that the …
gifted people like yourself … among them learned to change their shape to be able to flee unseen from the guns and whips of your oppressors. Is that true?
The voice was clear but deep, and there was bitterness in the words.
—There is much truth in that.
—Can you read my thoughts?
A shifting of papers on Dennie’s desk. Silence. Had it been a nod? A smile.
—It is said that you can make any voice your own. Could you do that with me? Can you show me?
—It is said that you can make any voice your own. Could you do that with me? Can you show me?
The sound of it taking Dennie’s voice like that, using Dennie’s words stopped his heart, and a chill went straight through him.
—It is said that white ash on a silver bullet can destroy you. Is that true?
—A silver bullet? For vampires. Werewolves. Not for us.
—I thought it was a stake through the heart for vampires.
Dennie trying for a joke? The laughter that came was loud, dismissive.
—Silver won’t work. Not by itself, anyway. Try it if you want to.
—Should I be prepared to use it?
Dennie chuckled again, but it was forced and pretentious. She quickly changed the subject.
—How does it feel when you … change?
—I will show you when we meet again.
—And when will that be? I’m not sure how to interpret that. The look you just gave me.
Dennie’s words felt like a spike of ice driven through him. They had met again, as it said they would.
He sat at his desk, unable to move, then played the recording again—once and then twice—listening for something he might have missed, listening as Dennie might have done, and then turned it off. He considered erasing it, forever getting rid of the voice that hadn’t been there, but he knew better than that. This was where Dennie had led him, and he had to follow.
Because I saw, my darling.
He had it seen it, too, heard it now, and he could never forget it. The Jim Beam called him. He could feel the quick, pleasurable burn of it as it hit his throat, the warmth it brought to his belly as it headed there through his chest. The sweetness of it. He closed his eyes against it, his mouth, his nose, and pictured Dennie in his mind, before it had butchered her and destroyed his life, and in that instant, even before the thought had left him, he knew what he had to do.
Dennie’s books. Dennie’s notes.
He no longer doubted what Raine had told him. It had come back for his wife, and he knew now it would come back for her and her son like she’d said it would. He’d heard it himself, that dog that Dennie must have heard, and opened the door just to check because that was her way with all lost things.
I will show you when we meet again.
And it had shown her, too, in those moments before she died. She had mentioned the white ash on a silver bullet in passing and it had scoffed at the silver, but not the ash. Had she known more about killing them than she’d said? That must have been so, because Dennie’s research was always meticulous; she wouldn’t have asked the question unless she knew the answer.
Her office held no fear for him now, and he began with the notes on her desk, reading each and then starting with the three folders stuffed with transcriptions from blogs, each label identifying its subject: SKIN-WALKERS, WEREWOLVES, SHAPE-SHIFTING.
“My God, Dennie! What the hell were you into?” he said aloud, angry and at the same time amused. The blogs gave nothing, mostly ramblings and half-baked theories from writers who used only one name or an odd pseudonym: Witch Hazel, Wolf’s Breath, Dancer of Death. He doubted she’d taken them seriously, if you could take any of this stuff seriously, he thought, then chastised himself for his doubts. If he hadn’t been so doubtful, so dismissive, maybe she would have told him about what she was doing, maybe she’d still be … No, don’t go there, he told himself. But these blogs, some with e-mail addresses and claims to special knowledge, may have been where she got her subject’s name. She would never have told him.
Dennie was a scholar, so he turned next to her bookcases, scanned the volumes on skin-walkers and werewolves stacked one upon the other in random order: Some Kind of Power: Navajo Children’s Skinwalker Narratives, M. K. Brady; Meeting the Medicine Men: An Englishman’s Travels Among the Navajo, C. Langley; Werewolves, Shapeshifters and Skinwalkers, K. Marika; Navaho Witchcraft, C. Kluckhohn. Piles of them, some dusty with wear—gotten from God knew where—some clearly self-published, others long out of print.
One in particular littered with Post-its caught his attention: The Secretive Life of the Skin-walker, A. S. Doggett. It was a slim black volume of a hundred or so pages published in the 1930s by a press long gone. Short passages were underlined on nearly every page, and he eagerly searched for the answers he knew must be there and finally found the passages marked on various pages with Post-its and highlighted with the pink highlighter Dennie favored.
These are beings who have gained power by committing an act of horror upon the members of their tribe, by breaking a cultural taboo that will forever deny them inclusion in the community. Often it is the murder of a blood relative.
It is believed that they steal the skin of another human being and absorb parts of that person into their person. It is believed they steal the soul or sight of a victim by the theft of their heart or eyes. They are considered the most evil of the supernatural beings, homicidal and violent to their very core.
Although they can change or shift into many creatures, the dire wolf, now extinct, or a wolfish dog is their favorite. They also adapt the habits of these creatures. They kill their victims only when they are alone.
Anger, greed, envy, and revenge are the emotions that spur their attacks. It is believed that blood once spilled must be revenged.
The skin-walker, as the wolf or vicious dog, is territorial and will not allow another of its kind to live within its territory, which can extend from forty to four hundred miles. It will seek and kill interlopers, first locating, stalking, encountering, and finally rushing to the kill in much the manner of the animal it emulates.
According to old legend, the best way to kill the creature is to scream its human name, then shoot it with a silver bullet dipped in white ash. It is also said one can defeat the creature’s power by making it speak a loved one’s name while in animal form, thus causing it to lose forever its ability to shift. If the creature remains unchanged, its evil runs too deep and it will die.
Dennie had tried to kill it. She must have shot once, then twice, aiming for its head but didn’t know its name so it had made no difference. Her instincts told her to load the gun with bullets and she’d done that, her father’s gun, that old .38 found beside her on that terrible day. There had been no gunfire residue on her hands because there were no hands left, no bullets in the barrel or anywhere in the room, and if she’d wounded something, it had left no blood.
By the time Cade was ten, his father had taught him to shoot. Hunting was one of the things they did together, but they’d stopped going after his father in a drunken rage pointed a Saturday night special at his mother because she wouldn’t turn down the TV. But Cade wasn’t scared of guns. He didn’t like them but he knew how to handle one, and he handled this one with ease. God knew he’d been taught to do it, and seen his father do it—lock and load—find your stance, aim, shoot.
Dennie had shown him five silver bullets that day, he was sure of that, because he remembered her crack all those months ago about five bullets being enough to kill anything that growled in the dark, about how they’d cost a pretty penny. He was only half-listening, hadn’t thought much about it then, but silver bullets would have had to be specially made for this old .38. She’d taken the time to find out who made them and bought them because she’d thought she might need to use them.
Why hadn’t she told him? He answered the question for himself: Because she didn’t want to hear his relentless, dismissive teasing. He placed the gun and the
three bullets left back in the manila envelope, leaving them on top of the desk.
Then he went into the kitchen to call Raine.
14
raine
I woke up before Cade and lay there watching him sleep like I used to do with Davey when he was a kid, like I used to do with Elan. I thought about how vulnerable men looked when they were laid out like little boys, breathing deep and soft, defenseless against any evil that lurked and snuck their way. Elan’s voice came back to me then, that last night we stayed together, Davey kicking hard inside my womb.
Time for him to come out, he’d said, and he rolled on top and kissed me, careful not to hurt the baby, although I’d told him a dozen times that if babies came out that easy, nobody would carry to term, but he was always so gentle about everything, one of the reasons I loved him so. We’d made love then, silently and soft, so as not to wake Anna in the other room, so sure that our love and the baby would make things good for the rest of our lives, no sense of what horror would meet us, crouching in the dark, awaiting its chance. Anna had warned us to take care before the baby was born, and we’d listened but ignored her like we always did, so sure that our love would protect us from everything that could hurt us.
Why hadn’t he told me about the dangers? Did he think I would leave him? And maybe I would have, looked out for myself and our baby, gotten away while I could. That had been part of my grief, anger at him for saying nothing, for keeping the secret that he carried inside him, the threat that would destroy him and try to kill our child.
Cade shifted in his sleep, and my thoughts came back to the man beside me, as gentle in his own way as Elan had been. I doubted he believed what I’d told him, although I hoped he did. I doubted he would forgive me now, but I hoped he would do that someday, too. He stirred, reaching out for me, his arm falling against my breast, and I picked up his hand, careful not to wake him, kissed each of his fingertips and eased my body away from him and out of his bed.
The Moon Tells Secrets Page 15