The Skinwalker Conspiracies - 02

by Jim Bernheimer

  For my next trick, I waited five minutes and then did a copy of my Swiss army knife. It was harder than the bar of soap and I did get a sensation of dizziness again, but didn’t pass out. I slumped back against the headboard and waited for it to pass. My head took about five minutes to clear.

  “It might be on account of it being made of metal or because it’s more complex than the soap,” Silas offered an explanation as I gulped down some tap water.

  After the feeling passed, I used the little snips on the knife and cut through a piece of paper. It worked just fine, but I could sense that the action was sapping power from inside me like a conduit for my energy.

  “At least it isn’t giving me a heart attack.”

  “So far,” Silas added.

  “Always the optimist,” I said wondering if the old man would like to see someone flip him off for the first time in decades.

  “What are you doing?” I got tired of waiting for Tabby to come back and after a few hours, I went looking for her. I didn’t have to go very far. She was sitting in her beach chair at the very spot I first found her. Tabby’s basket of paperbacks was untouched and she was just staring out into the ocean.

  “Just doing a little thinking.” She sounded melancholy.

  “About what?”

  “I’m not sure what to do with myself now.”

  “You could always come with me,” I said, a little too quickly. “Or, do some traveling. There’s a whole big world out there.”

  She looked up at me and I couldn’t exactly tell that she’d been crying. It was just a hunch. “Maybe that’d be nice, but I don’t know. For all these years, I pictured Paul running across the sand and into my arms. It’d be like something out of a Cary Grant or Rock Hudson movie. I don’t feel like I have a purpose anymore.”

  I sat down on the sand next to her and said, “I can relate to that. After I got back from the war, I was just kind of coasting on autopilot. All my friends from before I’d enlisted had passed me by and all the friends I’d made in the Army were still back in Iraq, or dead.”

  “I’ve got an excuse, Mike. I’m dead. You shouldn’t waste your life. Trust me; it can be gone in a split second. Here, I got you something.”

  She reached on the opposite side of her and pulled out a large knife with a sheath and presented it to me. “One of the houses up the street has a big display of knives in the living room. Do you like it? I think it’s a Bowie replica.”

  I felt it and said, “Close, I think it’s actually an Arkansas toothpick.” Donnie Hodges would’ve known for sure. This was more his thing than mine. It was virtually a sword with a blade of over a foot and a half.

  “Either way, it’s very nice. I managed to pull ghost images out of a couple more items,” I said trying to change the topic. “Does it get easier with practice? Do larger things take more effort than smaller ones?”

  “The lawn chair and umbrella are probably the largest things I’ve ever pulled,” she answered. “I’d say practice and work your way up. Try not to smash your head into furniture along the way.”

  “Thanks,” I said. “I’ll keep that in mind.”

  “Well, I guess that means you don’t need me anymore,” she replied.

  I rolled my eyes. “Back home there’s this pair of ghosts – Kevin and Elsbeth. They met each other and fell in love after they were dead.”

  Tabby made a hollow laugh and said, “Are you saying that you’re in love with me, Mike?”

  Yeah, just what the hell am I saying? “No, I don’t think so, but I do like you. I haven’t been wearing the ring since we met. Of course I’m attracted to you. I’d be an idiot not to be, but I could use a friend. You’re one of the first ghosts, hell, first people, that hasn’t wanted something from me. Why don’t you stay around and see if there’s more out there for you too? We can kick a little sand in Virginia’s face together.”

  “Did you bring the ring?”

  “Right here,” I said and fished it out of my pocket.

  Tabby stood up and stretched. She reached her dainty fingers into the palm of my hand and “pulled” on the ring. The image was very bright and she slid it onto her thumb. She sucked in a breath and I saw her eyelids flutter - propelling tears down her face.

  “Are you okay?” I asked.

  She opened her eyes and smiled. Tabitha looked younger and, if possible, more radiant. “Thank you for bringing this to me, Mike. Now, I really know how much he loved me and I’m sure it’s time for me to move on. Tell Mr. Parker I said good bye.”

  “Don’t go!”

  Stepping forward, she kissed me again before pushing me away. “It’s a tempting offer and you’re a sweet man, but my time is over and I need to go find my husband. This is what I’ve been waiting for all along. Goodbye.”

  Her hand cupped my cheek and Tabby faded away. I was left standing there alone with a battered old ring in one hand and a phantom blade in the other. Putting the ring on my finger, I felt nothing. It was just a hunk of meaningless metal. Whatever spark had been in there was gone. I started to chuck it into the surf, but reconsidered given how little money I had.

  Somewhat numb, I closed the umbrella, picked up the basket, and folded the beach chair. Maybe I’d need them down the road.

  With arms carrying items no one else but Silas could see, I made my way back to the hotel.

  Tabitha Lawrence … she made me a new knife and it felt like she stuck another one right into my heart. I should’ve been happy for her, and I would eventually be. But for the moment I was licking my wounds and wondering for the thousandth time if all this was worth it.

  “Do you want to talk about it now?” Silas asked as we drove out of Galveston the next morning.

  “Not really,” I said as we crossed the city limits. “I know I’m supposed to feel good about what happened last night, but I don’t.”

  “They say time heals all wounds.”

  “Honestly, I’m beginning to think that they are wrong when it comes to that. Look at that ghost couple back in Mississippi, time didn’t heal their wounds. They were dead for a couple of decades and still torturing each other. Oswald’s been like that since nineteen sixty-three. He doesn’t look healed one bit and, if that sociopath is to be believed, I’m on a collision course with the ghost of a conquistador who has been dead and still causing trouble for hundreds of years.”

  Admittedly, I might have been a little too snappish there, but Silas took it in stride replying, “I have to concede the point there, Michael. But you aren’t them. They chose to become twisted by their hatred. You’re hurting because someone, you felt something for, left you.”

  I answered, “The way I see it, the universe likes to kick me when I’m down.”

  He laughed really hard and then coughed for a few seconds before saying, “Well the way I see it, the universe keeps kicking, but you ain’t stayed down. You’re like a stubborn mule who doesn’t know when to quit.”

  “Is insulting me supposed to make me feel better?”

  “Oh, I ain’t insulting you. Look at the Poe brothers, the one was famous, the talk of the town, but he wasn’t happy. The other one was jealous of his brother’s fame. They couldn’t rise above their shortcomings and they were doing this for years. You? You haven’t been doing this for a full year yet and you’ve already passed what they could do as a Ferryman.”

  I might score a point here and there with Silas, but winning an argument wasn’t in the cards. He was too intelligent for a “stubborn mule” like me.

  There was a pause before the holy man asked, “So are we headed back to Dallas, now?”

  “No, I want to go back to The Alamo first.”

  “What for?” he asked, but I could see the start of a smile.

  “I told Mom to tell Amos that I’d be there. I also want to set things right with Travis.” I stopped. “What?”

  “Exactly my point from before.”

  I could almost smell the smugness around him. Deciding to shut up while I was ahe
ad, or at least not too far behind, I drove onward.

  We’d stopped by a pawn shop, but my “spectral shopping spree” got off to a poor start. The dude behind the counter didn’t want to leave me alone with the knives or any of the bows he had in the shop. I needed some privacy to pull a phantom out of an object. The attempt got me thinking about Tabitha and that created an additional distraction.

  The only thing that came out that side trip was the fifty bucks the cheap bastard gave me for Paul’s wedding band. I’d paid over twice that a week ago. Oh well, I wasn’t going to keep it and the Caddy’s tank needed filling. On the other hand, that knife she made me, I had no plans to let go of that.

  “See, I told you he’d come back here. Hey Mike, how’s it going?” Amos Sweet asked.

  “Been better, been worse,” I replied. “It’s good to see you too.”

  “Why have you returned?” William Travis asked rising from the ground. He didn’t appear happy to see me. It was justified. Lee Harvey Oswald and I did wreck his little operation a few days ago.

  “For one, Amos was here. Plus, we have unfinished business.”

  The long dead legend looked apprehensive and said, “And what is that, Ross?”

  I handed him the phantom image of the Caddy’s tire iron that I’d pulled out when I was packing the trunk before we left Galveston. “I figured I’d make a deal with you, Travis. I’ll make you a few weapons so you have a better chance against your rivals and you forget I was here.”

  “That’s all?” he said tapping the tire iron against the palm of his hand.

  I shrugged before replying, “I wouldn’t mind some cash, if your Skinwalkers have any to spare.”

  The ghost scratched his chin and nodded. “If you can show me how to do this, I think we can come to an arrangement.”

  “I just learned myself, I don’t know if it will work for you, but we can try.”

  “I’ll send someone to contact my semi-living allies. Return in one hour.”

  Three hours later, we were at the house of the Skinwalker working for Travis. The detective’s name was Joe McKinney, or at least that was what the body was called. After the policeman sent his wife and kids to dinner and the movies, he took me up to his office where he had a small arsenal of weapons spread out on a table.

  Before starting, I asked for and put on a pair of latex gloves. There was no telling where the Skinwalker had gotten these from and I wasn’t taking a chance and put my fingerprints on anything. Just because I was attempting to make “nice-nice” with them didn’t automatically translate into trust. To quote my old friend Jimmy Wilkes, “Oh, hell no!”

  Travis tried for the better part of ninety minutes and gave up. I certainly couldn’t hold a candle to Tabby and Travis made me look like a paragon of patience. Best I could tell he had no aptitude for it. That just reinforced how some ghosts can do certain things, while others could not. This put me behind schedule and I knew I wasn’t getting out of San Antonio in the next day. At the rate I was going, I started worrying that I wouldn’t get out of Texas before it was time to go back to college.

  “So who are you really?” I asked the detective. As Skinwalkers go, he was pretty hospitable and seemed like he worked with rather than for Travis. “Are you famous?”

  “Not really,” he answered. “You might have heard of my brothers though.”

  “Who were they?”

  “Tom and Frank McLaury,” he said. The names sounded familiar, but like every other pop history quiz this summer, I couldn’t seem to place them.

  “I’ve heard the names before, but I’m not up on this region’s history like I should be.”

  “The Earps and Holliday murdered them in Tombstone or killed them in a fair and square gunfight depending on what version of history you choose to believe.”

  That caught my attention. I’d seen both the Costner movie and the other one with Kurt Russell in it. “No kidding.”

  “Yeah, I’m really Will McLaury, former judge, lawyer, and farmer. Spent all kinds of time and money trying to get those so-called heroes swinging from the end of a rope, but they got away with it.”

  I’d already learned enough to be suspect of what was supposed to be history wasn’t quite the full story. “So what really happened there?”

  “I was a lawyer in Fort Worth at the time, so I can’t really say, but back in the day, everyone’s hands were dirty. You could be a gambler and a wanted man in one town and a sheriff and a respectable businessman just a couple of hundred miles away.”

  I was impressed. “So what are you?”

  “I’m a lawman. Slip out of my body and I can search a house without a warrant, follow a suspect and find out if they’re the perpetrator, I spend my time catching the bad guys. It’s all I want to do.”

  “Handcuffs are harder than I expected,” I said after finishing a set. McLaury probably had loads of guilt issues over not being able to avenge his family, whether they were guilty or not, but he seemed to be the first ghost I’d met who had an obsession that was actually useful to society.

  I waited for a few minutes before pulling the image of the keys out of the real thing. I’d like to say that it was getting easier, but I’d be lying. I handed them to Amos as McKinney put another set in front of me. Tabby was right - it wasn’t possible to pull a second image out of an object.

  My head was swimming after doing the cuffs and a bow with five arrows. When I touched the first knife, I caught a flash of something vile and dropped it.

  “What’s wrong?” Amos and Will McLaury asked at the same time.

  “I caught an image when I touched it. Some guy was using it to kill a woman.”

  McLaury looked at the evidence tag on the item and then at me. “You can see what happened?”

  “Sometimes.” I was too tired to try and explain my object reading skills.

  “Can you grab it again and tell me what you see? It’s from a cold case - dead coed from back in ninety-five. I’d appreciate a fresh lead.”

  “Give me a minute.” I didn’t relish watching a real life murder, but it seemed like the right thing to do.

  That night, I made friends with a real Skinwalker over the license plate number of a killer who raped and gutted some pretty young thing who had the misfortune of being in the wrong place at the wrong time.

  Add another check mark under the doing something right for a change column.

  “Stick a fork in me. I’m done. I’ll come back in the morning and finish up.”

  “I’ll have the money then,” the detective answered. Two hundred and fifty bucks was all he could spare on such short notice, but he said if he could get a conviction based on my object reading, there’d probably be some reward money in it for me and the possibility of some work with the cold case unit. Reading objects seemed loads safer than fighting ghosts and it might actually pay something.

  What a novel concept!

  “Why in the hell are you still here?” The screaming voice woke me.

  If I’d been thinking ahead, I wouldn’t have used the same hotel by the airport, but thinking ahead has never been something I was that good at.

  This explained the furious face of Lee Harvey Oswald hovering in front of mine while I tried to shake the cobwebs out of my head.

  I kept my voice down, not wanting to wake up Brother Silas and said, “Actually, I just got back from Galveston. I came back here to meet up with my friend and we were planning to come get you tomorrow.”

  “We should already be in Amarillo beating the information out of that bitch! You’re wasting time!”

  “It’s nice to see you too, Oswald,” I said, on guard because he was that much of a nut job. “I’m cleaning up the mess you made here and, last I checked, I told you to wait in Dallas.”

  “You don’t boss me around, Ferryboy! I do as I please.”

  I turned on the light on the nightstand. It flickered because of his proximity and anger. “You know, for someone that hasn’t been able to find De Soto on your
own for the last fifteen years, you’re awfully impatient. Now, I’ve still got some business left with Travis in the morning. I’ll be able to finish up sooner if I have a good night’s sleep. Take a hike, Lee. Come back tomorrow.”

  “What are you up to with Travis?”

  “I’m making him some weapons,” I answered.

  The look on his face was priceless. “You’re what?” He screamed. The bulb in the lamp shattered. Silas bolted up from his bed.

  “Oh, will you relax?” I motioned to Silas to lie back down. The blind man looked at Kennedy’s assassin and then at me before returning to his resting position. “Like a phantom weapon is capable of injuring you. I’m sure Travis has sent people with them after you before and I’m guessing they didn’t harm you one bit. Besides, he’s too worried about the Mexican ghosts in the south to even consider taking a shot at you. I’m doing this for him so he keeps his mouth shut and doesn’t try warning De Soto that we’re coming for him, you dumbshit. I’d rather take him by surprise.”