The Man from Forever

by Vella Munn

  She deliberately hadn’t told anyone of her ties to one of the central players during the Modoc War because she didn’t want to risk someone deciding to exploit that. Still, in the back of her mind rode the question of whether she’d thought she’d seen a survivor of that time because her great-great-grandfather had died here.

  Like that makes any kind of sense.

  “Will you stop it!” she muttered, and got out of the car. A strong breeze brought with it a hint of the day’s heat, the pungent scent of sage and lava and an almost overwhelming desire to walk away from this spot of civilization and out into the wilderness where he might find her again.

  When she checked in yesterday, the parking lot had been filled with dusty, crammed vans, cars with out-of-state licenses, even a group of senior citizens on expensive motorcycles. This morning, hers was the only vehicle not belonging to park employees. She was surprised to see them here. Shouldn’t they be out doing whatever it was they did to maintain the lava beds?

  She opened the door to the small visitors’ center and looked around. There was a small collection of Modoc artifacts behind glass on one wall, a large, rough-finished wooden canoe against another wall, shelves filled with a display of books, pamphlets and postcards. A sign above the information desk, unmanned at the moment, informed her that anyone interested in exploring the caves that honeycombed the area were encouraged to sign in here so they could be issued hard hats and flashlights.

  There was nothing flashy about the room, no plastic trinkets. Still, it helped her put her incredible experience behind her. This was a place of telephones and probably even fax machines. There’d be computers somewhere, a park director whose credentials would put hers to shame. None of the dedicated professionals who worked and lived here would have seen a mirage from another time.

  And neither had she.

  Then what did you see?

  Someone had played a joke on her—that’s what it had been. An elaborate and very good hoax.

  Try telling your nervous system that.

  Hoping to squelch her thoughts, she opened her mouth to call out when she heard voices coming from somewhere behind the information desk. She guessed there was a room back there. Maybe park personnel were having a meeting. If that was the case, she didn’t want to disturb them. Besides, what would she say?

  A tiny tentacle of fear inched down her back, causing her to look toward one of the little windows. All she could see were weather-stunted trees and dark lava rocks—nothing to be afraid of.

  What was she doing here?

  Instead of forcing herself to answer what she hoped to accomplish by taking shelter under a roof when she should be out looking for a piece of her roots, she picked up one of the books about the Modoc War. She’d done no more than read the back blurb when the sound of raised voices caught her attention. Before she could decide what to do, she heard a door being opened. The voices became more distinct.

  “People will see right through it. You can’t get away with something that cornball in this day and age. They’ll laugh us right out of the water.”

  “No, they won’t. People love the unexplained. Besides, you already admitted you don’t have a better suggestion.”

  “Only because I haven’t had time to come up with one.”

  “The hell you haven’t. We’ve been staring at a budget shortfall for the better part of a year now. That’s what I’m here for. Why you’re being so…”

  Two men came around the divider that separated the public area from the rest of the building. They stared at her, their conversation trailing off to nothing. One of them, a tall, balding man probably in his late fifties, wore the standard green uniform and a name tag that identified him as Robert Casewell, acting director. Tory guessed that his had been the deeper of the two voices, the one who’d told the other that his suggestion wouldn’t hold water. The other man, closer to her age, wore civilian clothing. If he’d been sent here to deal with the budget in some way, he apparently wasn’t a park employee.

  “I’m sorry,” she said when the two men continued to stare at her. “I should have let someone know I was here, but I didn’t want to disturb anyone.”

  “It’s all right,” Robert Casewell said. “The meeting’s over.” He jerked his head at the other man. “You and I need to get together, Fenton. Come up with something that makes sense.”

  “What I proposed makes sense. You just need to open up your thinking.”

  The director muttered something under his breath, nodded at Tory, then walked out the door. Not sure what she was supposed to do now, she gave Fenton a tentative smile. “I heard a little,” she admitted. “I know what you mean about budget problems. They never seem to go away, do they?”

  “They will if I can get people to listen.” Fenton, who was maybe three inches taller than her, with the slightest bit of thickening around his waist and a thatch of windblown hair, smiled down at her. “I’m not a walking encyclopedia about the lava beds, but if you’ve got a question, maybe I can answer it.”

  Can you? Can you tell me whether I really saw a man who must be at least a hundred and fifty years old, who looked at me with the most compelling eyes I’ve ever seen? Stammering a little and hating herself for sounding half-bright, she explained that she’d been out on her own this morning but had decided she needed a map and game plan so she wouldn’t risk getting lost. “I love hiking, but I have the suspicion I could get disoriented in short order around here. It’s amazing. From a distance everything looks so level, but once you really look at it, you see all those hills and valleys.”

  “Yeah, there’s enough of them, all right. You’re here alone?”

  Wary in the way of a woman who has learned to navigate the world on her own, she simply shrugged. She should grab a map, ask a couple of questions and get out of here, but after what she’d experienced this morning, a roof felt inordinately comforting.

  “So am I,” Fenton was saying. He introduced himself as Fenton James and she felt obliged to introduce herself in turn. When he stuck out his hand, she did the same. “I’ve been here about three weeks now,” he said. “I thought everyone came as part of a group, mostly families on vacation, sometimes college students or history buffs. Couldn’t you find anyone who wanted to stare at nothing with you?”

  Something about Fenton’s tone didn’t sit right with her, but she didn’t have time to analyze what that was. “I’m on my way to a job,” she said, dismissing the understatement. “I just have time for a day or two of poking around.”

  “Two days. Most people are in and out in an afternoon, unless they take in the caves, which I can’t understand why. Where’s this job of yours? I can’t imagine anyone having to go through here to get to a job.”

  Why Fenton cared what she was up to remained beyond her. However, talking to the man had already taken her thoughts miles away from what she’d seen, or thought she’d seen, earlier. Even if he was trying to hit on her, setting him straight gave her something to do. Besides, he said he’d been at the lava beds for three weeks. If he’d noticed something unexplainable, maybe they could compare reactions. But she doubted that he’d been left feeling as if a huge chunk of what she thought of as her civilized nature had been sucked from him. Keeping the telling as brief as possible, she let him know she was part of the team selected to study some Native American ruins on the Oregon coast.

  “How did you accomplish that?” he exclaimed. “My God, that’s the find of the century! The opportunity for—what are you? An archaeologist?”

  “Anthropologist.”

  “Whatever.” He shrugged. “I never understood the difference.”

  She could have told him that an archaeologist dealt with the physical world while anthropologists concerned themselves with things social and spiritual, but what was the point? “You’ve heard of the Alsea discovery, I take it,” she said instead.

  “Who hasn’t? I’d give anything to be part of it. The chance for making one’s mark, well—say, maybe you can expla
in something for me.” He rested his arm on the counter, the gesture bringing him a little closer to her. Although the air still held a high desert morning chill, she thought she caught a whiff of perspiration. “The site was discovered over a year ago. What’s the holdup? I mean, I’d think everyone would be hot to trot getting their discoveries written up in the press and all. There’s Pulitzer Prize potential there, you know.”

  Maybe. Maybe not. At the moment that was a moot point.

  “What’s going on?” he persisted. “Why isn’t everyone up to their eye teeth in pottery and weapons?”

  “It isn’t that easy.” The sun had reached the window to her left, inviting her to come outside and experience the morning. If she did, would she find only other visitors, or would a look at the horizon reveal someone who couldn’t possibly exist? “There’s an incredible amount of red tape.”

  “I suppose so. What is it, the government wanting a piece of the pie?”

  There’d been concern about impact on the environment expressed by both state and federal agencies, as well as more than one politician trying to make a name for himself. And the Oregon Indian Council had insisted that they, not university staff, should be responsible for safeguarding artifacts, only they weren’t interested in the artifacts so much as protecting what they insisted was sacred ground. Once, the strip of land between ocean and mountains had been sacred to the Alsea Indians, but the culture that had lived there no longer existed. That was what she’d argued alongside Dr. Grossnickle during three trips to Washington, D.C. Finally, after more legal maneuvering than she wanted to think about, the Indians’ claim had been dismissed.

  Things were now clear for work to begin. That’s what she told Fenton, the explanation as brief as she could make it.

  “At least we don’t get much of that around here.” He gave her what he must think was a conspiratorial smile. “There’s an Indian council, but they don’t care what we do here. At least if they don’t like something, I haven’t heard about it. Not that I’d have time to deal with any opposition. I’ve got my hands full trying to put this park on solid financial footing.”

  She listened with half an ear while Fenton explained that because of governmental cutbacks, the park was hard-pressed to match last year’s budget, let alone plan for the future. He’d left a “choice position”—his words—with a San Francisco bank to spearhead a budget drive here, but so far all he’d met with was opposition. “Casewell calls my plan manipulation. Deception. I call it a stroke of genius. You tell me, what’s wrong with capitalizing on a few ghost sightings?”

  She’d been glancing at the window, both eager to be outside and grateful for the room and its proof of normalcy. Now Felton’s comment captured her full attention. “Ghost sightings?”

  He shrugged, his gesture casual when she was on edge. “Spirits. Ghosts. Whatever you want to call them.” Although they were alone, he leaned closer and would have whispered in her ear if she hadn’t pulled back. “I’ll tell you because you’re in the same business, so to speak. Most people, they come here, take a look around and say how amazing it is that the Indians held out so long, then go on their way. But some of them, particularly those who walk around Captain Jack’s Stronghold, say they feel something there.”

  “Something?”

  Again he shrugged his maddening shrug. “You tell me. I’ve never felt anything, but I’d have to be fourteen kinds of a fool not to realize there’s a potential in this. The way I look at it, people with overactive imaginations stand where the Indians stood and they convince themselves that the Modocs left something of themselves behind when they were hauled off to the reservation. I think folks want to believe that. That way they don’t have to feel guilty about what was done to the Indians.”

  “Maybe.” She hedged. “But you’re not talking about something that actually exists.” Or does he? “How can you capitalize on that?”

  He gave her what she thought might be a sly wink. “The power of suggestion. A few well-placed leaks to the press and we’ll have people swarming here, either because they want to believe, or because they’re determined to disprove the rumors.”

  “But when they don’t see anything, it won’t take long for them to decide they’ve been duped.”

  “You’re assuming they’ll come away disappointed. But if they don’t—”

  “What are you saying?”

  For such a brief period of time that she might have imagined it, Fenton lost his self-confident air; she could almost swear he’d started to glance out the window. Then, smiling deliberately, he briefly touched his hand to her shoulder. “I’m telling you this because, like I said, we’re in the same business. We’re both looking to make a name for ourselves, you through what you can gain from an extinct culture, me from what it’ll do to my career if I turn this park around. Anything and everything is open to different interpretations. For example, those who have been working here for years either count themselves tuned into something—shall we call it otherworldly?—or they don’t. Whatever it is, none of them quite know what to make of what’s been happening lately.”

  “What are you talking about?”

  “You’ve got me. I’m not the one going around admitting I’ve been seeing things, but there have been sightings.”

  When he stood there staring at her, she nearly screamed at him to tell her what he was talking about. But there was no way she was going to let him think she believed in this ghost or spirit or whatever he was rattling on about; neither would she do anything to discourage him from talking. Finally he shrugged and moved to the window and looked out as if assuring himself that their conversation would remain private. “What gave me the idea of capitalizing on things is that all of these sightings, or whatever you want to call them, are the same.”

  “Are they?”

  “Yep. A warrior, brave, whatever you want to call him.”

  “A warrior?” She thought her voice squeaked a little at the end, hoped it didn’t.

  “Good-looking stud, at least that’s what some say. Damn imposing, too. He’s always way off in the distance so no one can ask him what the heck he’s up to, but those who do see him are convinced he’s real.”

  Convinced he’s real. “You say he’s always a long way away.”

  “A real shy fellow. Not that I mind, because that keeps the mystery going.” He ended that with another of his winks, this one lasting longer and punctuated by a slight upward turn of his mouth. “That’s what I’m trying to get the director to understand. We don’t have to come up with anything folks can either prove or disprove. In fact, that’s the last thing we want. But if every once in a while people see something or someone they can’t explain, that’ll keep them coming.”

  Could Fenton have already put his plan into operation? Was that what she’d seen, nothing more than some actor Fenton James had hired to perpetrate this elaborate hoax of his? If that’s what it was—and she wanted the explanation to be that simple—she could tell Fenton that the actor was very, very good.

  “It’s certainly different from anything I’ve heard,” she said and moved away as if to leave.

  “It’s more than that. It’s a stroke of genius, if it works.”

  “If it works? It sounds as if you’ve done more than just presented the idea to the director.”

  “Maybe I have. Maybe I have.”

  Chapter 3

  Five minutes later, Tory had finally extricated herself from the talkative Fenton and had started toward her cabin. By now people were beginning to arrive at park headquarters, their voices following her until she’d traveled a good quarter of the way. If the heat kept increasing, she’d have to change to shorts before going out again. She should have brought her camera this morning; she wouldn’t make that same mistake again because—

  Biting the inside of her mouth, she stopped the errant thought. She’d been about to tell herself that a camera was absolutely necessary if she was going to prove the existence of a ghostly warrior for all concerned
when there was no such thing.

  By effort of will, she forced her thoughts on nothing more complicated than the best place to search for ground squirrels and other scurrying creatures. Looking around, she became aware of her isolation in a way she hadn’t been last night. True, she could see the faint jet trail left behind by a plane, and it was a simple matter to get in touch with someone via the walkie-talkie at the cabin, but she doubted that anyone would hear if she screamed.

  Scream? Why would she do that? Hadn’t she asked for the remote cabin because she wanted a little time with her own company, a welcome change of pace from the hectic meetings and yet more meetings?

  After unlocking her door, she stepped inside the single room. She’d left her small duffel bag on the couch because there didn’t seem to be much purpose in settling in if she was only going to be here two nights. Thinking to change into shorts, she started rummaging through her belongings. She stopped when she came across the folder filled with newspaper clippings. Although her own role in the Alsea project was essentially a supportive one, she’d been quoted numerous times and had had her picture taken on more than one occasion. Dr. Grossnickle teased her that she was robbing him of top billing, but that wasn’t true and they both knew it. Still—

  Frowning, she opened the folder and studied the most recent articles. Not only was she photographed alongside Dr. Grossnickle, but two paragraphs of the accompanying article were about her successful effort to discredit the Oregon Indian Council’s claim that they alone had the right to excavate and record. Not only was the article one of the most accurate ones that had been written about the project, it had appeared on the front page of a recent Oregonian newspaper. If Fenton James had read the article and seen her name on the guest register and decided—