Land of Echoes

  "Tell me more about that," he said huskily, vamping. "How impressed?"

  He was fishing for intimate talk, but she felt confused, unable to find the mood. As she hesitated, a change in the light made her turn. Lynn Pierce had come to the door of the office. Seeing Cree on the phone, she smiled apologetically and passed by as if heading toward the big ward room. But Cree didn't hear the other door open. She must have paused, out of view in the hall.

  "Anyway," Cree said briskly, "I better get going now. We'll talk another time, okay?"

  Paul grunted, put out by her sudden change of tone. "Privacy issues?"

  Lynn Pierce still hadn't gone into the examining room. "Apparently," Cree said drily.

  31

  CREE WENT back to her room and made ready for what promised to be a difficult visit to the ravine later. She spent a half hour doing yoga, and when her thoughts intruded she steered them toward the many good things in her life: the twins, Dee, Edgar and Joyce, hiking in the Cascades range, her friends in the lovely Emerald City. And Paul, she added.

  That was the foundation, she reminded herself. The love, the connection. The world was full of dire things, but love managed to endure. That's what sustained you.

  And, in fact, the things Paul had told her were helpful. In the face of what she'd seen in Tommy, it was good to be reminded that most supernaturalist spiritual traditions agreed with her outlook: that the entity was not necessarily hostile or malignant. It wasn't just coiling serpents and rearing saints, or adolescent girls rotating their heads and spewing green bile.

  Feeling a little better, she put on thick socks and loaded a fanny pack with a couple of energy bars, a bottle of water, and one of the good flashlights Edgar had brought. As an afterthought, she included the small canister of pepper spray Joyce had insisted she carry. By nine-fifteen, she felt almost ready for the night's work.

  Then Lynn Pierce came into the ward room.

  She drifted across the floor from the hall doorway to stand at the end of Cree's bed, her silver braid thick as a hawser on one shoulder. "Your partner called from the admin building, said to tell you he'd be here in ten minutes."

  "Great. I'm just about ready." Cree zipped up the fanny pack and set it on the bed, then began consolidating the possession literature she'd spread on the neighboring bed and table.

  Lynn watched with interest, tipping her head to catch glimpses of titles and illustrations. "I've been thinking about what you asked. You're right, I've been around Tommy more than anyone else. And I think maybe I have noticed something that could be important."

  "Oh?"

  Lynn darted her eyes at Cree, and a little grin moved her mouth. Then she crossed over to one of the beds against the south wall and began straightening the blankets, slightly rumpled from Edgar's sitting on it earlier.

  "You're so close to your associates," Lynn said. "They really trust you, don't they? And you them. Really, you're more like friends than business partners, aren't you? It must be nice."

  "It's the line of work we're in. Sometimes it can get pretty hairy, and so you kind of have to deal with things. Interpersonal things, I mean. You get to know each other pretty well."

  " Joyce—one very smart gal, isn't she? I asked her how she got to know you, and she said you'd saved her life. What's that all about?" Her back to Cree, Lynn was plumping the pillow carefully.

  "It was some years ago. But it's kind of personal, Lynn. If she didn't offer the details, I don't think it's my place to—"

  "And Edgar. Dr. Mayfield. I get the sense he's very devoted to you. Are you and he . . . you know . . . ?"

  "Ed and I are very good friends and business partners," Cree answered curtly.

  "Hm. So the person you talk to on the phone at night—that's your boyfriend?"

  Given that Cree was using the phone in her office, it was unavoidable that Lynn would overhear snatches of conversation. But for her to deduce that it was the same person, and what the relationship might be, confirmed Cree's sense that she'd been deliberately eavesdropping.

  "Um, listen, Lynn—"

  "Oh, I don't mean to pry." Lynn finished with the bed and rounded on Cree. "I'm just curious. You're all such interesting people. You're so close. I'm just wondering how you all got together. But you're right, you hardly know me. It's inappropriate, isn't it."

  Lynn was watching Cree's response closely. At the corners of her mouth, her grin seemed to tremble. Cree's heart went out to her: the perpetual outsider, looking in.

  "Maybe later," Cree told her. "It's a long story, you know? When we get the time, let's all sit down with some hot chocolate and they can tell the saga from their own points of view. Right now, I'm anxious to hear what you were going to tell me."

  Lynn feigned surprise at herself. "Oh! I'm so sorry! Yes, I thought of a detail that might be useful." She hesitated, as if debating whether to tease and stall further, then opted to continue: "It has to do with Julieta and Tommy."

  That got Cree's attention. "What about them?"

  Lynn lowered her voice and glanced over her shoulder as if to make sure no one was listening. "I think it gets worse when she's around him."

  "Tommy gets worse?"

  "Oh, yes. Remember the other night, when he was looking at her that way, and then he lunged at her?"

  "How could I forget?"

  Lynn shivered. "That look! The only time I've seen anything like that was at the zoo. The big cats, when they stare at you through the bars as if they'd like to—"

  "He attacked you, too. He bit you!"

  "That was different! It happened as I was trying to restrain him. With Julieta, he has this. . .focus. I first noticed it during his second crisis, a couple of weeks ago, but it was more ambiguous then. But Saturday night, when we were at the cafeteria, he was doing pretty well until Julieta sat down at our table. I could see it change him to have her around. When he lunged across the table, I think he was going for her. I thought you should know."

  "Thank you for bringing it to my attention. Why would that be, do you suppose?"

  Lynn came toward her, trailing her fingers along the bedcover, then crossed to the foot of Cree's bed where she absently caressed the tube-steel frame. Reflexively, Cree drew away a step and turned to stack the papers. She wished the old woodcuts and engravings weren't so lurid.

  "I can't imagine," Lynn said. "Except maybe it has to do with something I noticed in a couple of your articles." She pointed with her chin at the stack of possession materials.

  Cree gaped at her, dumbfounded. "You came in here and went through my things?"

  "No, no! God, no. I would never do that! I'm sorry! I didn't think they were personal papers, or I would never have presumed, really. They aren't personal, are they? I would never have looked if I thought it would upset you! I was just checking up on the room, and—"

  "What, Lynn? Just tell me what you saw that was interesting." Cree felt like throttling her, but the clever, overeamest, speck-eyed face touched a nerve in her chest. "And in the future, just leave my stuff alone, huh? No, they're not personal papers. But it feels invasive."

  "Really, I had no idea it would . . . No, you're right, what was I thinking? How rude and intrusive it must—"

  "What struck you? I'm tired, Lynn. I need to charge up my batteries here. Just tell me what you were going to."

  Lynn came around the foot of Cree's bed to the table, took the papers and leafed through them.

  "It was part of a book on the psychology of superstition. Here. This one."

  The set of stapled pages she handed to Cree was a photocopy of a chapter analyzing features of the old literature on possession. Cree scanned it quickly to refresh her memory.

  "What about it?"

  "Who they always blame. For possession."

  Right, Cree thought.

  The author had pointed out a constant in the European history of possession: The possessed was believed to be the victim of a human persecutor—an enemy, usually a witch, who "called" or "cast" the demo
n into the victim. Often the supposed perpetrator was someone already unpopular in the community, or old, or living alone. The accused was invariably tortured and killed by religious authorities or by lynch mobs of fearful citizenry.

  "I was going to say, it's the same in the Navajo tradition. They often think of illness or spirit possession as being inflicted on the victim by a Skinwalker. Like a curse. And then this part"—Lynn reached across Cree to put a forefinger to the right paragraph—"here. Where he talks about how they knew who the witch was? I was thinking of . . . well, of Tommy's reaction to Julieta."

  Cree resisted the urge to sidle away from the silver head leaning so close to her cheek. She read the paragraph again. The basic technique was the supernatural equivalent of the modern police lineup: parade a bunch of likely suspects past the victim. The possessed person would invariably be seized anew, attacking or cowering, when in the proximity of the "real" witch.

  If it were true that Tommy's symptoms intensified when Julieta was around him, Cree thought, it affirmed her sense that the problem was related to the connection between them—the instinctive sense of recognition between mother and child. But what did it reveal about the entity? The best she could do was that maybe Julieta was correct, that the entity was Garrett's revenant, driven by a dying urge centered on his ex-wife.

  If Lynn was correct, this could be important. Watching Julieta and Tommy together might help her figure out what was going on. In Cree's view, accusations of witchcraft and demon casting were nothing but superstitious scapegoating or deliberate malice that victimized yet another innocent party. But Tommy's possession did fit the classic on-and-off pattern of "fits" and remission; if his crises resulted from any external catalyst, Cree could learn a great deal about the entity from what— or who—awakened or energized it.

  On the other hand, Lynn's observation could be just another example of the inexplicable ill will she seemed to harbor against Julieta.

  "It's a good point. Thanks for bringing it to my attention." Cree turned to her and locked eyes. "So what's your interpretation? Think Julieta's a witch?"

  "Well, we're not exactly the most compatible personalities, but I wouldn't go quite that far."

  "I'm serious, Lynn. You've got something against her. I'd like to know what it is."

  Lynn appraised her sourly. "You know, you can be kind of confrontational sometimes."

  Cree didn't break eye contact. "I think you keep information to yourself because you like feeling you've got an edge on other people. Because you habitually feel at a disadvantage and think you need something to even things up. But right now there's a boy who desperately needs our help. He doesn't need people playing games, Lynn!"

  "How lovely to be so thoroughly understood," Lynn said drily.

  "What else? What else about Julieta?"

  Lynn's face took on its prim, clever look. "There you go again, tempting me into indiscretions!" Then her facade faltered and revealed the anger just behind: "Let's just say I think her obsession with Tommy might be more complicated and less healthy than people like you want to admit. I thought you'd be grateful I'd pointed out his reaction. I thought I was being helpful."

  Cree almost stamped her foot in frustration. There seemed no way to break through the nurse's defenses. Part of the problem was that this transaction was just what Lynn wanted, an intense exchange serving as a bitter surrogate for intimacy. She started to plead with her but then heard noises from the front hall: Ed had arrived.

  "I'll watch them carefully from here on in. Okay? But if there's something else you think I should know, for God's sake tell me. And in the meantime, I still want you to respect my space, my stuff! How would you like it if I went into your room and rummaged around?"

  "Well. I'd probably be a little upset. But I might be kind of flattered, too."

  " Lynn—it was intended as a rhetorical question."

  The nurse's mouth made a surprised O, then smiled. "Yes. Of course it was."

  Cree turned half away to stack the papers again and go on packing for the night's work. She hoped Lynn would get the message, but still she hovered there with her purse-lipped smile. And then Ed was bumping through the doorway with a pair of equipment cases, apologizing for being late, and Cree turned to him with relief.

  32

  EDGAR STOOD at the crumbling edge of the cliff, looking west, enjoying himself immensely and ignoring the rocks his feet sent tumbling into the ravine. His face was vivid from the climb and the crisp air. From here at the top of the mesa, they could see all the way to the higher land of the Defiance Plateau, a glowing pink-purple band along the horizon. The early-morning sun was at their backs, throwing their shadows off the cliff and spreading the mesa's shadow like a dusky lavender cape on the ground below.

  "You know what it looks like to me?" Edgar asked.

  "What?" Cree followed his gaze.

  He gestured at the boulders, the slabs, the endless expanse of bare soil. "It's like . . . after God created the rest of the world, He had a bunch of raw materials left over. And He just sort of dumped them out here. Piles of stuff, just lying there for a few hundred million years, waiting for the next big project."

  He was in a good mood. Last night, he had assented readily when she suggested they change plans and nap before visiting the ravine. Cree's confrontation with Lynn Pierce had drained her, and bringing up witches and demons had obliterated the fleeting sense of relief she'd felt after talking to Paul. Ed was tired, too. They had agreed to sleep for a few hours, go out in the early hours of the morning, and end the vigil with this morning trip to the top of the mesa. It was a good way to get a better sense of the lay of the land.

  So for a while they'd lounged in the ward room, talking. Just being around Ed had calmed Cree. After a while she had caught some of his mood of curiosity and excitement, the thrill of the investigation. He loved the landscape here; like Cree, he felt exhilarated by it, wanting to embrace it, get out in it, immerse himself in it. Telling her about it, he'd paced around, gesturing expansively, unselfconscious and looking sexy in T-shirt and boxer shorts.

  When at last they'd put out the light, the snores from the other bed told Cree that Edgar had fallen asleep immediately. Lying awake, she found herself soothed by the gentle rhythm of his breathing and the sight of his slumbering profile in the faint light.

  The alarm clock had awakened them at two a.m. They'd dressed wearily and gone off into the desert night. At the ravine, Ed had taken up his post on the desert floor as Cree moved up the cleft, found what felt like an appropriate spot, wrapped herself with blankets, and waited.

  Waited for nothing, as it turned out. For whatever reason, she couldn't get past the ordinary world and her ordinary, if frightened, thoughts. It never failed to astonish her, the way a haunted place could be so dense at one time, so empty at another. Was it the cycle of manifestation—there when it was there, not when it was not? Or was it just cycles of Cree Black's sensitivity? She'd probably never know. But it was an experience familiar to every serious ghost hunter: the long pointless wait, the empty hours. The only startling moment had been awakening from her drowse to see a blanket-wrapped figure standing before her in the predawn light. For a jolting instant she'd thought it was some Navajo or Anasazi from centuries past. Then she recognized it as Edgar, a blanket draped over his shoulders, grinning. Light was creeping into the sky. She'd left her little nest and they'd set stiffly off up the ravine just as streaks of cloud at the zenith burst into peach-pink flame against the depthless baby blue sky.

  The rock dam where she'd sat the first night turned out to be a jumble of fallen boulders and slabs four or five feet high and about twenty feet across, tricky footing. Ed had brought a compact trifield meter and a Geiger counter, and as they picked their way he paused to take readings; though there was some rise in EMF activity, it was well within the normal variations he'd expect.

  Beyond, the gully tapered as it rose, then split into shallower runs that meandered toward the mesa top. They walke
d quickly in the cold shadows, trying to work off the chill of sitting so long in the open.

  It was wonderful to come to the top. Suddenly the sandstone walls angled away and then they were beneath the clear sky again, with the half risen sun blasting at them brassy as a trumpet and a coquettish breeze flirting with their hair. The mesa top was an uneven plane of soil and rock with only a thin cover of scrubby sage and rabbitbrush: as Edgar said, a pile of raw planet-building stuff left here for a few hundred million years, detritus left over from a huge construction project. The image made Cree smile.

  They explored the edges of the big ravine for a time, moving very cautiously among the boulders: Some of the rocks seemed precariously perched on the crumbling, undercut cliffs, ready to tumble. After a while Ed informed her that, in his infinite wisdom, he had packed some bananas and a small thermos of coffee. They crouched against the sun-facing side of a boulder as he opened the thermos and poured the black liquid steaming into the plastic cup. Cree warmed her hands on it for a moment, took a scalding sip, and handed it back.

  "When you were summing up the situation last night," he said, "I notice you omitted the issue of Julieta's being Tommy's mother. Was that because she doesn't trust the nurse? Or you don't?" Ed sipped coffee and grimaced at the burn.

  "She didn't feel comfortable about it. I can imagine that having one of your employees know that kind of thing about your past . . . well. And Lynn certainly seems to have 'issues' with her boss. What do you think of her—Julieta?"

  His eyes caught hers. "I admire what she's done here. Seems like a decent person."

  "And gorgeous, sexy, compelling—"

  "Not my type." He sipped some more coffee, blew a gout of steam into the sun, and then sat with his eyes closed, face to the light.

  "The nurse told me last night she thinks Tommy's symptoms get worse when Julieta is around."