by Jack L Knapp
Book Two, The Wizards Series
Wizard at Work
A Paranormal Thriller
By Jack L Knapp
COPYRIGHT
Wizard at Work
Copyright © 2013 by Jack L Knapp
Cover Copyright by Mia Darien
Cover Photo from BigStockPhotos.com
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Disclaimer: The persons and events depicted in this novel were created by the author’s imagination; no resemblance to actual persons or events is intended.
Product names, brands, and other trademarks referred to within this book are the property of the respective trademark holders. Unless otherwise specified, no association between the author and any trademark holder is expressed or implied. Nor does the use of such trademarks indicate an endorsement of the products, trademarks, or trademark holders unless so stated. Use of a term in this book should not be regarded as affecting the validity of any trademark, registered trademark, or service mark.
Contents
Dedication
Prologue
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Chapter Eleven
Chapter Twelve
Chapter Thirteen
Chapter Fourteen
Chapter Fifteen
Chapter Sixteen
Chapter Seventeen
Chapter Eighteen
Chapter Nineteen
Chapter Twenty
Chapter Twenty-One
Chapter Twenty-Two
Chapter Twenty-Three
Chapter Twenty-Four
Epilogue
Books by the author:
About the Author:
Dedication
For my family; John, Patrick, Rosaura, Kaye, Phil, Nick, Kaitlyn
And to the many who have helped me learn something of the craft of writing. Warren, Vincent, Jake, Steve, the many beta readers and commenters who’ve taken the time to write and point out errors or provide suggestions. Thank you one and all!
Prologue
T had put the PTSD behind him for a time. Now there was a new nightmare, an addition to the combat scenes he could never forget.
In this one, Ray looked at him accusingly as T tried vainly to warn him about the RPG.
There was no need to read his thoughts; an innocent attempt to find out if Ray had recognized T and Shezzie had led to his eventual involvement with madness and murder. The two had awakened latent Talents and soon Ray had been dragged into the attempted murder of Surfer and T.
Even Colonel Arschloch was there, hollow of voice, scowling, and with glaring eyes. He showed up at the end, after the little girl had died in the middle of a firefight, blown apart even as T frantically tried to reach her. Adding to the torment, Arschloch intoned “You’ll never make a soldier, but at least you could try to look the part!”
The nightmares had begun in Afghanistan. Depression, setting in after a soldier experienced combat; it happened. Nightmares are common and sometimes the nightmares last for a lifetime. When the combined effects are severe enough, the shrinks call it PTSD.
Not that a label helps, at least it doesn’t help the sufferer. Post-trauma is a good enough label for those who’ve watched innocents die, who’ve seen young men blown up by IED’s. Stress? That too. In spades.
Cops know the stress, as do firemen. But only soldiers and marines, ground troops at the sharp end, really know the full anguish. It’s their comrades who die, people closer to them than brothers or sisters. Comrades young and in the best of health, suddenly chopped down; often the end is horrible beyond description.
For combat soldiers, the stress just keeps on repeating until something cracks. Suicide is common among veterans.
Depression, nightmares, sleeplessness; in his dreams the RPG blew up and T tried to dodge the explosion, unsuccessfully. While the events hadn’t happened that way, his subconscious didn’t care. It fed on fear, on worry, on what-might-have-been.
He had ended up, crouched on the floor, as Shezzie woke him the first time he dreamed the new nightmare. She told him he’d been screaming, “Ray! RPG!”
Apparently, T had gotten more of a look at their faces as they died, the gang members who’d murdered Marisela. He hadn’t consciously remembered details at the time, but he saw faces clearly now. And recognized them, each of them, as he killed them.
And always, Ray stood by and looked. Sometimes he wagged his head accusingly at T.
#
The psychokinetic Talent had gotten stronger after T left Afghanistan, driven in part by the meldings with Shezzie and Ray. Still, the final push had only happened when he directly experienced Surfer’s death. Rage, like fear, can easily dominate thoughts. Barriers thrown up by the headaches washed away under the consuming rage; for the first time, T unleashed the full capabilities of his mind.
But none of his special abilities could help him now; every night, he slid closer to the edge of madness. The darkness reached for his thoughts promising comfortable forgetting. Just let it all slide away, you’ll never have the fear again...
Survivor’s guilt, nightmares, depression, suicidal thoughts. T had put them behind him while he worked to help Ana Maria. Perhaps the deaths of Surfer and Colonel Henderson had helped him do that as well.
Now they had come back, the symptoms of PTSD. And they were worse than before.
Chapter One
T and Shezzie had toured the Southwest, reconnecting and renewing their relationship. That had weakened while events played out in El Paso. There had been a lot of pressure on T during the events that led to the climactic encounter with the murderous street gang. But the gang that had murdered Ana Maria’s sister Marisela would kill no more.
The two spent a week in Las Vegas, then moved on. California had been fun and they had enjoyed San Francisco, but by mutual agreement they avoided southern California. Surfer had spent much of his too-short life there before dying in Mexico, a victim of Henderson’s paranoia. T had attempted to recover the remains but had been unable to prove family connections, so his request had been rejected. Surfer's ashes had eventually been interred in Juarez, just one more among the many unknown and unwanted dead in a city and nation with too many such.
They traveled up the California coast through Big Sur, sleeping late, making love, dining in local restaurants. From there they traveled north to Seattle. That city had engaged their attention for three days, then they left before it began to pall. From Seattle they’d driven southeast to the Utah desert. They marveled at the erosion; the tall buttes had been level with the surface before ancient water and wind carved the softer landscape away, carrying it to the Sea of Cortez and eventually to the Pacific.
The Grand Canyon had fascinated too, but only for a day. In the end, it was another example of erosion and in magnitude less dramatic than what had occurred i
n Utah.
They had seen too much of it by that time. A reservation had been made so they could visit Yellowstone, but again only a day was needed there before their interest flagged. Finally, jaded by all they’d seen, they headed home.
#
New Mexico was gripped by drought. The Rio Grande was nearly dry, in fact was dry in stretches. Conservationists worried about wild populations of the endangered silvery minnow; a captive breeding program had been established and might provide a restocking resource when the rains finally came, but there was no sign they would come soon.
Wildfires had broken out across Arizona and Texas as well as New Mexico. The state now ranked as the worst-hit regarding damage from drought. The normally-humid and cool tall pines and firs baked on their mountain slopes. The standing trees, the ones that still lived, were as dry as kiln-dried lumber. No longer able to resist the onslaught, weakened trees fell victim to infestations of bark beetles. The trees weakened and many died. Great swathes of the standing, dead forest then fell victim to lightning-sparked fires.
#
Shezzie became increasingly worried as they got closer to home. News reports that mentioned local conditions were grim.
The village of Jemez Springs, where they lived, was located in a pass just north of the Jemez Pueblo and south of Los Alamos. Bandelier National Monument also lay north of the village.
The monument, established to preserve the cliff houses located above Frijoles Creek, sheltered a Native-American ruin that had existed long before the Spanish invasion. Now, even the monument was threatened. Some portions of the national forest there had been closed to visitors because of the extreme fire danger.
The cabin where the two lived lay inside the mouth of a canyon about a mile north of Jemez Springs. The canyon slopes behind their home contained trees and brush that extended to the dry forest above the rim.
A short distance north of Jemez Springs lay Valles Caldera, the dormant crater of a super-volcano. It had been formed by the same geological processes that built the Jemez Mountains; there were still several hot springs scattered throughout the mountains, showing that the area was not geologically extinct but only quiescent. Forests within the region of the caldera were still open to visitors; how long that would last, no one could say.
#
T had driven back in near silence. He too had heard the news reports, but had kept his thoughts to himself.
For whatever reason, his sleep was again troubled by nightmares. Night sweats, a panicked look when he woke up in the morning, an exhausted and wrinkled face when they ate breakfast together, the sour smell of sweat from the night's terrors; if the nightmares were not as bad for Shezzie as they were for T, still they were bad enough.
She feared the other symptoms of PTSD had returned along with the nightmares, and she had no idea what to do. T refused to discuss whatever had happened in El Paso. Ray was silent as well regarding the topic; neither appeared comfortable when she tried to open a discussion.
The nightmares had begun almost as soon as the two men split up, Ray went home to see about improving his relationship with Ana Maria. T had disappeared with Shezzie into the isolated town in the mountains of New Mexico. Then they’d left on the trip, the nightmares had subsided for a time.
Now they were back.
Shezzie hoped T could now begin to put whatever troubled him into the past, leaving the two of them to resume their life together.
But T disappeared the morning after they arrived at their cabin.
Shezzie noticed his absence as soon as she woke up. His side of the bed was damp with sweat. He wasn’t in the cabin, and she then discovered that his truck was missing too.
She’d heard nothing when he left. Perhaps he’d allowed the truck to coast silently downhill, starting the motor only after he was some distance away from where they parked their cars.
However he’d left, wherever he’d gone, Shezzie was worried. She tried to comm him but he didn’t respond. Had the trip been for nothing, their relationship fading once again?
#
T held himself responsible; he’d allowed Ray to become part of the violence when they confronted a street gang in South El Paso.
Ray did not blame T, far from it. He’d lost no sleep over the deaths of a gang of murderous thugs. T, however, knew nothing of Ray’s feelings, nor would they have mattered. Logic had never played a role in his depression.
Sleepless, he had unlocked his truck, then left the cabin behind. Starting the engine after drifting downhill to the flats at the canyon’s mouth, he drove aimlessly through back roads and finally found himself heading east on Interstate 40.
The eastbound interstate follows the long canyon that runs up from the Rio Grande Valley as it leaves Albuquerque behind; dawn illuminated the landscape as T topped out on the interstate above Tijeras Canyon.
He soon tired of the interstate’s sameness and turned south, passing through the village of Tijeras after buying gas for the truck. He stopped wherever he found something of interest.
In one of the small towns, he found surprising amounts of graffiti. It was a moment's work to erase every bit that he could see as he drove slowly through the town. An infuriated gang of taggers and a bemused group of residents would wonder what had happened. For the first time in days, T let a smile crinkle his face.
He found a pull-off and slept for a time, stretched across the truck’s front seat. Continuing on his way after waking, he ate a late breakfast in Mountainair. Driving west from Mountainair on US 60, he pulled off to investigate an Indian ruin.
Abo had once been a thriving pueblo and there was still the shell of a Catholic Church within the ruins. The village had eventually fallen into disuse, finally crumbling after the native inhabitants moved away. Why had they settled here, so far from the river that other Puebloans used to water their crops? Clearly they’d had a reason, and that reason had remained valid for many years. Perhaps they’d come here to escape enemies?
The oldest ruins, quite primitive, were now blocked off by signs. They were also partially hidden by drifted sand.
T hiked the short trail through the monument, but avoided the ranger's station. There were no visitors as yet on this day; the solitude suited his mood.
A warning buzz announced the presence of a large western diamondback. T could clearly see the reptile, loosely coiled under the shade of a scrubby bush. The snake, an ambush predator, might have been waiting for a mouse or rabbit to hop by, or it might have sought to avoid direct sunlight; even this early, the day was warm.
Moved by impulse, T reached out with his Talent, softly lifting the big snake. It was as thick through as his forearm and nearly six feet in length. Did the numbers of rattles tell the age of the snake, as legend had it? Or did a successful predator need to shed its skin more often, therefore adding a new rattle each time it discarded the old skin? For whatever reason, the string of rattles was as long as his hand and they buzzed loudly.
The snake convulsed frantically in the air as it hung in front of T's face. He took control of the forward end of the snake's body and brought the head up until it faced him, mouth slightly opened, tongue flicking out to sample the air. The slitted eyes were poised a few inches forward of his own eyes and he closely studied them. A membrane slid across the eyes, then returned to its slot; the snake’s mouth opened wider. The fangs slowly erected from resting grooves in the snake's mouth, tiny droplets of venom sparkling in the morning sun. T attempted to read the snake’s thoughts, but picked up nothing. There were no thoughts or emotions at all, neither anger nor hunger, nothing. Perhaps the snake functioned solely on instinct.
The rattlesnake found no purchase to support a strike or an escape. Frustrated, it coiled and uncoiled in the air, the heavy body knotting with muscle under the scaled skin. T could see the black rings come into view around the tail, just forward of the whirring rattles, that gave the snake its other common name: coon-tailed rattler.
Finally, T tired of looking at the sna
ke. He floated it away and gently released it near a partially-buried dwelling, marked as off-limits to visitors. The snake rapidly disappeared into a hole in the drifted dirt beside the ancient dwelling. Perhaps a western pocket gopher lived down in that hole; the animal would not appreciate its new tunnel neighbor. Very likely, the angered snake would have folded back on its own length as it entered the hole, head facing outward to defend against any threat.
The gopher, organic digging machine that it was, would quickly wall off the snake by throwing up a dirt barrier, temporarily plugging the tunnel.
In time, the snake would crawl out from its temporary refuge. It would then resume hunting its normal prey outside.
T had felt no urge to kill the snake. Moving it away from where it might endanger human visitors was sufficient; the animal belonged here, among the ruins.
T followed the path and soon arrived back at his truck. He nodded at a family of four, watched them nod back as he passed. One of the children called to him in greeting. He smiled, waved, and walked on.
The drive, or perhaps the incident with the snake, had reminded him that he was not alone in suffering from depression and PTSD. Other veterans had troubles, some might be much worse off. Many, unable to adjust to life after military service, ended up homeless. Far too many killed themselves.
T took state highway 47 north, gassed up in Los Lunas, then joined Interstate 25 north just past the Isleta reservation. The reservation casino was busy, judging from the cars in the parking lots.
T commed Shezzie to let her know he was heading home.
#
He had worked his way through the worst effects of the nightmares, and he’d done it essentially by himself.
Ultimately, that falls to everyone who finds himself troubled in similar fashion. A combat veteran dealing with shock, any veteran or police officer who finds that the demands of duty have broken a marriage, even a prisoner or drug addict; T understood that rehabilitation does not come from others, it must come from within. By your own bootstraps you lift yourself.