The Shaktra

by Christopher Pike

  “He must have thought it didn’t matter.”

  Steve got an idea. “Is it possible he wanted her to have it?”

  “Who knows? But one thing’s for sure, he was not your warm-and-fuzzy kind of elf.”

  A young girl came over to them, and reached for Cindy’s ice cream cone. She was small, maybe six years old, had short red hair and dull violet eyes. Her eyes were so flat, Steve was not sure if she was able to see out of them. Her expression was utterly blank, as well. Steve suspected she was mentally retarded, or worse. Yet her hair, although poorly kept, was as bright and shiny as Ali’s. Steve could not help noticing it was exactly the same color, and had exactly the same luster. It looked like a living flame.

  The girl wore white pants and a torn yellow shirt. There were dark smudges on her right cheek and between her eyebrows. Her fingers—as they reached for Cindy’s cone—were dirty. She looked like an orphan.

  “Want . . . want . . .” she said, the words badly slurred.

  Cindy glanced at Steve. “What should I do?”

  “Say no.”

  “Steve! You see how she is.”

  “Give it to her then, as long as you don’t want it back.”

  Cindy looked around. “I wonder if she has a guardian or something.”

  “Want . . . want . . . want . . .”

  “She looks like she needs one,” he said.

  Cindy handed over the cone, spoke kindly. “You can have it if you want, sweetie. But try not to spill it on your clothes. . . .”

  Too late. The second the girl took the cone, she opened her mouth wide, tried to bite off the entire top, and a clump of the ice cream plopped onto her pants near her knee. The girl did not even notice; she kept digging into the cone. Within a minute her face was smeared with chocolate. They were not even sure if she was enjoying herself. She didn’t smile, that’s for sure. Maybe she did not know how.

  “I think she’s hungry,” Steve said.

  “She looks famished. Do you think we should find a cop, turn her over to him?”

  “That’s an idea. What do you think of her hair?”

  “It looks like Ali’s.”

  “Think that’s a coincidence?”

  Cindy paused. “What do you mean?”

  Steve was not given a chance to reply. A middle-aged Latina woman suddenly appeared, carrying a grocery bag, and from the look on her face she appeared relieved to see the young girl.

  “Nira, where did you get off to? You had me scared to death!” the woman cried, bending over to take the cone from the girl, wiping her face with a piece of tissue paper. The woman was dressed plainly in a long brown dress, had a thick accent, and more than a hint of gray in her hair.

  “Sorry, we gave it to her,” Cindy said.

  “She was begging for it,” Steve added.

  The woman glanced at them, smiled. She had a broad face, and looked as if she’d had a hard life. For some reason, Steve immediately got the impression she’d come from a tiny village where people labored from sunup to sundown. She was big boned, and had heavy calluses on both hands. Yet, unlike the girl, her face was expressive. Clearly she was not dumb, although she had managed to lose the little girl for a time.

  The woman nodded her head at their remarks. “You were just being friendly, which is more than I can say for most of the folks around here. What are your names?”

  “I’m Cindy and this is Steve,” Cindy replied.

  “I’m Rose. Nice to meet you both.” She did not offer her hand.

  “Nice to meet you. Do you take care of this child?” Cindy asked.

  “She is my responsibility. But she got away from me in the store. I don’t know how. She was there one second, gone the next.” Holding on to Nira’s hand, Rose took a weary breath and gestured to their bench. “Mind if I sit down?”

  “Go right ahead,” Cindy said, moving closer to Steve as Rose sat down. It seemed Cindy could not take her eyes off the girl. “Her name’s Nira?”

  “Nira Smith. Her mother’s president of that big company you see up there on the hill. She’s a busy woman, smart—an important person in the community. She hired me a year ago to take care of Nira, and that’s what I do.” Rose added, “I’m from Colombia.”

  “Do you have family here?” Steve asked.

  Rose lifted Nira onto her lap, continued to wipe at her face with the tissues, while Nira struggled to get her ice cream back. “Want . . . Want . . . Want . . .” It was not to be. The woman threw what was left of the cone in a nearby garbage can.

  “Nira’s my family now,” Rose replied.

  Steve hesitated. “What’s wrong with her?”

  “She’s autistic.”

  “Was she born that way?” Cindy asked.

  “Her mother says no. But Nira got vaccinations when she was a year old and she had an allergic reaction. . . .” Rose shrugged. “The shots might have done it, who knows? She’s been this way since I met her.”

  “Does she recognize you?” Cindy asked.

  The woman smiled at the girl, touched her right ear. “She knows me. We’re best friends, aren’t we? Yeah, you’re my girl, the best girl in the whole world.” She glanced at them, tried to explain. “There’s lots of love inside her. She can’t express it but I feel it.”

  “She has beautiful hair,” Steve said. “Does it come from her mother?”

  “Her mother is blond, but their eyes are similar. Why do you ask?”

  “Just wondering,” Steve said.

  “Thanks so much for finding her. I’m so embarrassed. She’s never gotten away from me before. For a minute there, I was in a total panic. I was imagining having to call Ms. Smith and tell her that I had lost her daughter.” Rose shuddered. “That would have been terrible.”

  “How did you meet Nira’s mother?” Steve asked.

  “In Colombia, through friends. She was there, shopping. They have the best emeralds in Colombia, and they go so well with Ms. Smith’s eyes. She has a beautiful collection of them.”

  “They sound lovely. Do you miss home?” Cindy asked.

  “This is my home now,” she said, partially repeating her earlier remark. As they spoke, the woman continued to stroke Nira’s hair, which seemed to make the girl forget about the ice cream cone. Nira just stared off into the distance, her face as empty as a prison wall.

  It occurred to Steve he might be able to find out more about Omega Overtures from Rose than Ali could fumbling around inside the company’s headquarters. Anything to quit being a cheerleader . . .

  “Ms. Smith’s company makes computer games, doesn’t it?” he asked.

  “Yes. They’re very successful.”

  “I’ve played a few, they’re great,” Steve went on. “I’ve always been impressed that their company grew so quickly. Ms. Smith must be a genius.”

  Rose hesitated. “She’s more a businesswoman, rather than a creative type. She works long hours and she makes everyone around her work hard. Understand, I’m not saying that’s a bad thing. To be in her position you have to know how to get the most out of your people.” Rose lowered her voice, leaned closer. “But—between you and me—I wish she took more time for her daughter.”

  “Toule is sort of out of the way,” Steve said. “I’m surprised she decided to locate her company here. Why didn’t she set up shop in Silicon Valley? Or in a big city like L.A. or San Francisco? Or Portland or Seattle?”

  “It’s a pretty town. Anyone would want to live here. Where are you two from?”

  “Bale,” Steve said. Ali had told them not to speak of Breakwater. She had also told them not to give out their real names to anyone in town, although Cindy had already broken that rule.

  Steve was about to ask more about Ms. Smith when something horrible happened fifty feet in front of them. A blond teenage boy—he was a year or two older than them—was casually walking across the street, in the crosswalk, with headphones on, a skateboard in his hands, when a red SUV came around the block and raced toward him. Even with
the music in his ears, the guy heard the vehicle and looked up. That was it—he didn’t have time to react, or if he did, the sight of the onrushing monster froze him in place.

  The SUV hit him smack on, doing at least forty-five miles an hour. The force of the impact tossed the guy into the air for a second, then he hit the windshield and flew even higher. Before he landed, the vehicle was already accelerating, tearing down the main street.

  The rest of the day Steve kept remembering the noise the guy’s body made when he finally crashed onto the asphalt—a sick mushy sound, as if half his bones had shattered on impact, and then sliced into his muscles. Steve doubted that anybody could take such a hit and survive. They all jumped to their feet.

  Rose screamed. “That’s Freddy! Freddy Degear!”

  “Oh no! You know him?” Cindy cried.

  Obviously, Rose knew him well. She had let go of Nira, and put a trembling hand to her mouth. “He’s the son of our next-door neighbor. This is horrible.” She drew in a breath. “Is he alive?”

  A pool of blood had begun to form around Freddy, but he was moving, making noises. Steve did not run to his side. Already a policeman kneeled beside the guy, and other help was on the way.

  “He’s alive. I’m sure an ambulance will be here soon,” Steve said to Rose.

  Rose trembled. “Oh God. I have to tell his mother.”

  “I have a cell phone you can use,” Cindy offered, reaching for her back pocket, clearly upset by the accident.

  Rose shook her head. “I can’t tell her this on the phone! Freddy’s her only son! I have to see her!” Rose paused, glanced down at Nira, then up at the sky. It was almost as if in the midst of her misery, she was praying to be told what to do next. Cindy, who had yet to regain her color, took a step toward the woman.

  “We could watch Nira for a few minutes, if it would help,” she said.

  Rose hesitated. “I don’t know. Poor Freddy. What should I do?”

  “You have to tell his mother what’s happened,” Steve said.

  Rose came to a sudden decision, nodded her head. “All right then, I’ll go, I have to go. Just keep Nira beside you at all times. I won’t be gone long, I promise.”

  Cindy nodded. “We’ll keep an eye on her. Take as much time as you need.”

  Rose hesitated once more, just for a second, then hurried off down the street.

  An ambulance arrived a few minutes later. By then a sizable crowd had gathered around the fallen boy, and it was difficult to tell if he was still moving. Steve could see the blood all over the ground, and people got it on their shoes—that did not look good.

  “It was like that SUV hit him on purpose,” Steve said.

  “It didn’t look like an accident,” Cindy agreed, sitting with her back to the scene of the accident, trying to shield Nira from the gruesome sight. For her part the girl appeared unaware that anything out of the ordinary had happened. Nira played with Cindy’s blond curls, which seemed to relax her.

  The ambulance loaded up Freddy and turned on its siren and raced off. From talking to people in the crowd, Steve discovered the hospital was only two blocks away.

  As the sound of the ambulance’s sirens faded, the gathering began to disperse. However, two policemen remained and roped off the area, and took pictures of the puddle of blood from a dozen different angles. Eventually they asked around for witnesses. Steve and Cindy were, of course, prime material. They had been standing only a few feet away. But Steve was reluctant to get involved. He said as much to Cindy.

  “But we have to tell the police what we saw,” Cindy said.

  Steve nodded in the direction of Omega’s headquarters.

  “I see Ali coming, let’s ask her,” he said.

  __________

  Walking back to her friends, Ali had heard the ambulance but had no idea what had happened. Yet that was not entirely true. Just before she had said goodbye to Mike Havor, she had felt a wave of dizziness, and had known from experience that there was a good chance that someone in the immediate environment had just been hurt. The empathic response was just another one of her fairy gifts, and it was a hard one to live with because it was a hard world and people were always getting hurt.

  Then she had seen the dark puddle of blood in the middle of the crosswalk, her friends waiting nearby, and policemen scouring the area. Steve gestured for her to talk to them away from the cops, on the other side of the small park. For some reason Cindy was holding on to a little girl with a listless face and bright red hair. None of them spoke until they were some distance from what had clearly been an ugly accident.

  “You won’t believe what we just saw,” Steve began. He told her the whole story about Freddy and the SUV, before Cindy backed up in time and explained how they had managed to inherit Nira.

  “Does this Rose expect you guys to stay here?” Ali asked.

  “Yes,” Cindy said, but she gave Steve a quick glance.

  “I think she’ll go to the hospital first, with the guy’s mom, to see how he’s doing,” Steve said. “That’s what I would do.”

  “We could go there and meet her,” Cindy suggested, and there was an odd note in her voice.

  “If Rose comes back here looking for Nira and you’re gone, she’ll report you as kidnappers,” Ali said.

  “We still think we should go to the hospital,” Steve said.

  “Why?” she said.

  Steve and Cindy exchanged looks.

  “We were wondering, you know, if you could help the guy,” Cindy said.

  “The way you helped Ted Wilson,” Steve added.

  Ali frowned. “He was just taken in. I doubt I could get close enough to help him. I certainly couldn’t get him alone.”

  “The SUV smashed him real bad,” Cindy said, wiping away a tear. “He was a nice-looking guy. I was just thinking it would be a pity, with you so close and everything, if we didn’t at least try to help him.”

  Ali turned to Steve. “You say he was run down on purpose?”

  “It looked that way.” He added, “If we go to the hospital now, you might be able to act like you’re his sister. They might let you in to see him.”

  “It sounds like his mom is going to be there,” Ali said.

  “We could beat her there,” Steve said.

  “Don’t you want to try to heal him, Ali?” Cindy asked, pain in her voice.

  “Sure I want to help him. But I cannot afford to call attention to myself, not when I’m just about to go back up the mountain.” Ali glanced toward the blood, added, “Odd that guy should get run down the minute we show up.”

  “I thought the same thing,” Steve said.

  Cindy was not buying it. “It had nothing to do with us!”

  Ali studied Nira, the little girl’s red hair and the mark between her eyebrows. At first the mark looked like dirt to Ali, but when she knelt in front of the child and examined it closer, she saw that it was more a scar or a tattoo. Gray in color, with flaky red edges, it bore the distinct impression of a human thumb print.

  Ali stared deep into Nira’s eyes. The girl’s blank expression did not change.

  Yet Ali felt something in those eyes. Something vast and inexplicable, and it made her shiver. Looking at the girl’s face was like reaching the edge of a cliff that overlooked an ocean without waves. She probably was autistic, but what did the word really mean? A soul without a personality attached? Ali sensed that Nira was cut off from the world, for whatever reason, but that there was still a world of life inside her.

  “Rose hardly knows you guys. Why did she leave Nira with you?” Ali asked.

  “She was in a panic. She could see we were good people,” Cindy said.

  “We were the ones who offered to watch her,” Steve said, adding, “Seriously, Ali, if you’re going to try to help the guy, we have to go now.”

  Still, Ali had her doubts. “Rose works for Ms. Smith?”

  “Yes,” Steve said. “She seems like a nice lady.”

  “So Nira is Ms. Smith�
��s daughter?” Ali asked.

  “That’s what we were told,” Steve said.

  “Is there a Mr. Smith?” Ali asked.

  “We don’t know their whole family situation!” Cindy cried impatiently.

  Ali ignored her for a moment. “Did Rose give you a phone number where you could call her?” she asked.

  “No,” Steve said. “But if you’d like, I can stay here until Rose returns.”

  “Someone should stay here,” Ali agreed.

  Cindy acted exasperated. “That guy could be dying this very second! Are we going to the hospital or not?”

  Ali continued to study Nira. Their hair could have been cut from the same cloth.

  “Let’s go to the hospital,” Ali said.

  As they walked down the main street, leaving Steve behind, Nira reached up and took Ali’s hand. She took it and would not let go.

  __________

  They were too late. There was a small crowd gathered in the lobby of the clinic and they quickly heard that the teenager who had been hit by the SUV was dead. Ali was surprised to see Cindy burst out in tears, but felt too distracted to comfort her. The death of Freddy continued to strike her as an extraordinary coincidence, although for the life of her she could not imagine how he could be connected to them.

  Even if he was dead, she still wanted to see him.

  She told Cindy as much, and her friend stared at her like she was a ghoul.

  “Leave him alone,” Cindy whispered, obviously drawing a line between healing and resurrection.

  “You brought me here,” Ali said. She tried to give the little girl back to Cindy. “Here, take Nira, and look around for Rose.”

  But Nira would not let go of her hand, and she was surprisingly strong. Ali was not sure what to do. Autism or not, she did not want to expose the girl to a dead body, particularly a bloody one. On the other hand, she was not even sure if she could get to Freddy. Steve’s idea of acting like Freddy’s sister was good in theory, as long as there was no family around, but in practice it might get her arrested. Again, she hated to take unnecessary risks with Pete’s Peak looming in her immediate future.

  Ali knelt in front of Nira, in a corner of the lobby, spoke in a firm voice. “Nira, I have to go. You have to let me go. Cindy will take care of you until Rose comes back.”