Tahoe was now living in this moment that he’d long foreseen. They all watched as the hawk became distant, flying past the clouds and far away from their protection. They said nothing to each other, sharing the same idea and calmly looking around in case anyone had been watching. Thankfully, no one was in the parking lot, and they stood on the side of the van that faced away from the highway. The remaining five faces exchanged expressions of apprehension and fear.
“Don’t worry,” Tahoe said. “Brett will be fine. I had foreseen this. But we must get back to the farm as soon as possible.”
He said nothing of the vision he’d seen of the woods, showing him the paw prints of a wolf. Tahoe felt as if some kindred spirit was trying to send him a message, a clue, yet he still couldn’t make any sense of it. He continued to dwell on it as they rode away in the van, headed for the farmhouse they’d left the day before. Conversation was avoided for the first few minutes into the drive; then, Dylan broke the silence as he drove.
“Well, we can be thankful for one thing,” he said. “At least we don’t have to worry about the prospect of bloodshed, or Brett being a murderer.”
“Or ourselves being accomplices,” Susan said.
Those possibilities had remained unspoken for most of the time. Tahoe felt odd, knowing that those lingering issues had been brought about by his own suggestion, his own reference to a part of a legend, the validity of which he still questioned. Not to mention the fact that there were no guarantees. He suddenly realized that they had all been about to question that validity, to forsake the life of another for one whose life they deemed more deserving. They hadn’t even been sure if it would have been successful. He sighed as a million thoughts turned in his mind.
Then, a strange inkling he couldn’t identify twitched inside of him.
“There has to be another way,” Sidney said. “I wish that Vivian would speak to me right now, give me some kind of a clue, some small hint to help him. Now, I’m not hearing her at all.”
“How strangely our abilities work,” Leah said.
Earlier, Tahoe had snatched Brett’s jeans from the ground. Now, he was holding them in his hands, focusing as the others spoke. He was envisioning again. He saw the hawk soaring in the sky. Then suddenly, the farmhouse was coming closer in the vision. Something was moving toward it. Again, the vision quickly faded.
Nothing was making sense to him, until Leah’s last words had given him an idea.
“Child,” he said, calling her by his pet name for her. She turned and looked at him as he sat alone in the back. “Please, come and sit with me for a moment.”
She rose from her seat in the middle, moved to the back, and sat next to him. He grasped one leg of Brett’s jeans and offered her the other.
“Take it,” he said. “Find your third eye, and tell me what you see.”
She took the opposite leg of the jeans and closed her eyes. He watched the cherubic face of the strange angel as her closed eyes narrowed and twitched. He was sure that she was seeing something that he was not. After a moment, she spoke.
“I see the hawk,” she said. “It’s flying through and above the clouds. I see the farmhouse.”
“What else do you see, child?”
She paused through seconds of silence.
“I see a woman’s face,” she said. She moved her head, as if to gain a clearer psychic glimpse of something or someone unseen. Her face scrunched, and then, she opened her eyes. “I’m sorry; she’s gone.”
Tahoe felt his eyes beaming at his young prodigy. He loosed a hearty laugh he hadn’t felt the need to muster in awhile. As she’d said, how strangely their abilities worked.
“Thank you, my child,” he said. “Thank you.”
Chapter Twenty-One
From below, the clouds had been large, fluffy masses of white. But now, through a bird’s-eye view, they thinned into deep white mists as the hawk flew through them. Peace came over the hawk as it soared high above the world Brett Taylor had left behind. Below, the ground was a mere map, large structures and lengthy highways suddenly made smaller and squeezed into a larger existence. Along with the peacefulness came a heightened sense of euphoria, and a particular instinct of which the hawk was keenly aware.
Unlike the wolf, the hawk not only sensed the lingering soul that it hosted, but was able to identify it. The hawk had a mission, just like the last time when it flew next to the blazing sun, searching the barren desert. This time, the hawk and the soul that had broken free through its flight shared the strongest of vibes—the instinct to return home. Home was understood. Home was inevitable. And so the hawk soared, escaping the clouds and flying freely through the infinite blue sky.
Images of a familiar world met its magnified eye, and soon, certain sights became instinctively recognizable. Vast, rolling hills stretched for miles below, and the same underlying radar that had guided the hawk in the desert now steered it above the rise and fall of the familiar mounds. Just as it had found the old man, it would find home. Home was near.
The hills soon gave way to a dense, wooded area, and the hawk flew lower just above it. It was closer, closer to home. The hawk’s bird’s-eye view spotted a familiar trail that ran through the woods. Now, the great bird descended through the treetops, plunging deep into the woods, and eyeing the trail in closer proximity as it flew. The lengthy trail had been recently traveled. It was a path, where the faint paw prints of a canine caught the bird’s eye.
All that was familiar suddenly grew stronger. The soul within was beginning to wake from the dream of freedom. It was projecting images into the hawk’s mind: Brett throwing his shirt, the sweat drenching him, his rapid breath. The hawk saw the beginning stage of its flight: the fluttering of its wings, its ascension upward, and then soaring away as humans watched on.
The hawk flew through the forked gateways of the tree branches, coming closer toward an exit and the fullness of daylight. Soon, the forest disappeared, and its shadows were quickly swallowed by the sun. The land loomed large and familiar, and the hawk felt a spark sent from the soul within; it recognized home. The hawk descended closer to the ground, flapping its wings with a loud fluttering as it centered itself not far above the span of green below.
Once again, the change was instantaneous.
* * * *
Brett tumbled to the ground after feeling the drop from a height high enough to make his heart leap. He rolled and then rested face-down on the hot grass. He looked up, recognizing the farm, the house, and the back porch. He rose up on one knee, feeling the inward, outward wrench of his stomach, the dry heaves, and the dizzying spin in his head. He was also naked.
He shook his head as it all came flooding back to him. They’d gone to Appleton. Antonio was dead. He’d shifted into the hawk and left the team behind.
He stood from the ground and hobbled on wobbly legs to the back porch. He was fully aware that the slight sleeping stasis of his legs was the result of the change, or maybe even the flight. He made it to the back door and then remembered that he’d locked the house before leaving. Damn it! He thought of being locked out of his own house, naked, waiting out here in his birthday suit until the team arrived.
But then something caught his eye. Something about the back door wasn’t right.
He moved closer to it, trying to discern what had been different than when he’d seen it last. He drew back the screen door and noticed that the main door had not been pulled the whole way shut, as it should’ve been. He remembered locking it from the inside and pulling it shut before leaving, yet the memory was vague and one he experienced every day. But even in the current state of fading fog that filled his mind, he was almost positive that he had. He pushed the door in and it opened.
Strange, he thought. He checked the lock—locked as it should’ve been. The door had not been closed the whole way. He must have done it, though it wasn’t like him. He uttered an angry sigh at himself, walked through the kitchen, and up the stairs to his room.
He showered,
dressed, and then made his way back downstairs. The chaos had left him, yet the distress of disappointment remained, along with the bitterness of grief. So, this house now belonged to him. In the aftermath of everything, he hadn’t time to think about it.
What would he do here without Uncle Jack? He supposed he would listen to the quiet and try to spot the ghosts of Uncle Jack and Aunt Viv. The quiet, he listened to it now as it reverberated in his ears with a steady hum, a quiet so dead and void that it was noise. And then, he heard a soft popping sound followed by the crash of breaking glass. It had come from the back porch.
He stirred suddenly and spun around in its direction. Quiet followed the clamor, as though an unseen source sought to silence it. He tip-toed through the kitchen, toward the back door, cautious, though well aware that the sound could’ve been caused by anything. One of the animals from the woods could’ve found its way onto the back porch and caused some kind of upset, yet something inside was telling him otherwise. It was some random, unexplainable vibe, telling him that his caution was warranted.
He slipped silently out through the screen door and turned the corner to the back porch. There, he was hit with a sudden surprise, but he remained calm. There was a woman on the patio. He saw her fretting, attempting to make some effort to clean up the broken glass on the patio floor. She turned and saw him; she seemed nervous.
“I’m so sorry,” she said. “Excuse me, I’m such a klutz. I came here to see if anyone was home, and I was admiring one of the candle shades. Again, I’m sorry, I...I dropped it.”
He watched as she bent down to clean up the glass. Apparently she’d broken one of the rounded, glass shades that housed the nighttime candles. He figured that she was one of the mourners, coming a day late to pay her respects. He hadn’t thought of that possibility before he’d hastily departed for Appleton.
“Please, don’t worry about it,” he said. “I can get that later.”
She rose slowly from her crouched stance and faced him. He noticed that she was standoffish, fidgety. There was something about her nervous nature. She appeared to be in her early forties. Her brown hair was the shade of almonds, and her face was delicate, youthful.
Her glance moved up and down him, and then she looked straight into his eyes. He studied her face, and after moments, she seemed almost familiar. For a just a flash of a second, a face entered his mind, soft, delicate, seemingly beautiful as she held him. A memory that had been elusive suddenly fought its way to the forefront. She let out a weak gasp, as though a dull ache loomed heavily in her chest.
“Do you recognize me?” she asked, seeming to steady a slight quivering of her lower lip.
His instinct was strong, but he felt it was impossible. This moment didn’t feel real. He asked her only three words.
“Who are you?”
She took a deep breath before she answered.
“Brett, I’m Claudia,” she said. “I’m the skinwalker you’re looking for.”
Chapter Twenty-Two
She could see that the chaos was strong in him, just as strong as it always was in her. He was fatigued, forlorn, physically wasted from a recent shifting. She could see it even through the tears that were welling in her eyes. Standing before her was the grown man that had once been the baby she feared, the baby she abandoned because he was just like her. But unlike her, he hadn’t kept the secret hidden away from the world, and because of that, he was dangerous.
She’d been following him ever since she found out about Herb Haller. Yesterday, she’d shifted into the wolf and came here by the old path that ran through the woods. She knew this place well, having grown up here. She would never forget it, never could. It had once been her home, and it was his home also.
She’d watched as he and his friends entertained the guests that came to pay their respects after Uncle Jack’s funeral. She’d watched through the woods and listened with the wolf’s acute hearing. He and the blonde woman had talked about going to Appleton.
Soon, she’d taken flight as a bird and followed them to Appleton. She later watched and listened through a perfect disguise when Andre Anakas defamed her, snug in his cozy, comfortable house and far away from a past that he’d escaped. She’d made it back from Appleton long before Brett, but now, she arrived here by different means than yesterday. She’d taken a cab and made the driver let her off down the road, where she walked the rest of the way. She hadn’t shifted. She needed to save her strength for the moment when she would need to shift to fend him off, when she would need to destroy the baby she’d brought into this world.
She had hoped that this day would never come. She looked him over for what seemed like a lifetime. He was now in his late-twenties, a handsome young man with dark eyes and the gypsy look he’d inherited from his father. But he was lethal, and now that he knew the truth, he would try to end her life.
But it was she who was determined to end this curse once and for all. She’d killed already, but that had been a necessary evil. Now, she would have to kill her son before he killed her. But first, she would explain everything...
* * * *
The sight of her caused him to tremble upon already weakened legs. He’d asked her only three words, and her response reverberated in his mind...
Claudia...the skinwalker you’re looking for...
The more he looked at her, the more he felt lost in a dream world, as though none of this was real. His earliest images and memories flashed, subconsciously, like a slideshow, but they were fast and fading pictures he tried to catch before they disappeared. He recalled her holding him, her long brown hair falling down around him. And then it was gone. Her presence was uncovering what had been buried and forgotten for years, overlapped by the passage of time.
He continued to stare at her, as the past and the present seemed to merge together into this one, single moment in history. Her delicate face hadn’t changed. Her once long and flowing hair was now pulled back into a bun.
“You’re...you’re my mother,” he stammered. His response was both a statement and a question, his tone one of confusion and astonishment.
She took a handkerchief from her purse and wiped at the tears that wetted the corners of her eyes. The purse matched her black, knee-cut dress that could have passed as funeral attire. A little late, he thought.
“That’s right, I’m your mother,” she said, her nervous breath escaping through carefully spoken words. “Do you remember me at all?”
She asked the question once again, yet he didn’t answer her. He slouched down onto one of the picnic benches, not taking his eyes away from her for an instant. He motioned for her to sit alongside him on the bench. She moved closer and sat down, her eyes studying him. Then, she threw her arms around his neck and loosed a torrent of tears that soaked his shoulder. Her sobbing filled his ears with sounds of pain and regret.
He felt himself not clutching her in return. The thought of what her revelation meant hit him hard. She was the original skinwalker, not Antonio. He would have to kill her if he had any chance of ending this blight, of making certain that what happened to Herb Haller would never happen again. He had to drink the blood of the original skinwalker, the same blood that ran through his veins, and the very same blood that had given him life.
He felt his body turn cold. She must have felt it, as she quickly pulled away from him.
“I’m so sorry about Uncle Jack,” she said.
He wanted to explode just from her mentioning his name. He wanted to yell at her, to ask her how dare she, but he thought better of it. He couldn’t afford to scare her away. What he wanted was answers.
“He...” he began, and paused to remember Aunt Vivian. “They would’ve loved to know that you’d been here for them.” He was focused on remaining calm, trying not to let the tone of his voice rise in anger. “Why weren’t you?”
That question was only the bare minimum of everything he wanted to know, of all the questions he had for her, but since they were on the subject, he figured he’d s
tart with that one. Her answer was matter-of-fact and undisputable by her sudden conviction.
“I couldn’t,” she said, shaking her head. “That wasn’t possible.”
Her words tweaked the beginning of a new emotional cycle. He turned his head away from her, inhaling the fresh summer air and closing his eyes to compose himself.
“Why? Why is it that you could never come back here? Was it me? You’ll have to forgive me because just I don’t understand.”
“No, Brett,” she said. “It wasn’t you, although you were part of it. It was mostly me.”
She sighed and lowered her head for a moment, as though searching for where to begin.
“I’ve realized that in your adult life, you’ve shared this secret with Uncle Jack and Aunt Vivian,” she said. “I’m in awe of that, Brett. It was something I could never do.” She uttered a slight chuckle of amazement. “When I first realized what I was, it was the last thing in the world I could share with them. I’d allowed them and the doctors to believe that something else was the problem.”
“That you were...”
“Crazy?” She finished the sentence for him. “Sure, they’d diagnosed me as being bi-polar and having depression, but crazy?” She shook her head. “Not entirely, but can you imagine me telling them the truth? I could have been crazy one way, or crazy another, but I could never have revealed the truth to anyone. I never had that kind of strength. The last thing in the world I wanted was to be the monster I would’ve surely been deemed as. So, I left here and never returned. It was what was best for Uncle Jack and Aunt Vivian.”
She paused for a moment, her eyes looking down, remembering.
“I first realized what I was when I was about five,” she said. “Something came over me. My body burned as though at the stake. Suddenly, I changed, and I was a beautiful bird—beautiful, but surely the unfortunate result of a curse spoken ages ago. I dared never tell another living soul.”
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