‘Lie down!’ a man’s voice cried.
The two Black Eagle lurchers ignored the command and raced on up the mountain, caught in the bright beam of a flashlight. They were lean and muscular, with sharp muzzles and bared teeth – Zoran’s hunting dogs, sent to snatch at me, tear my flesh and drag me down.
‘Down!’ the voice repeated. It didn’t sound like Daniel. A man strode after the dogs, his flashlight waving unsteadily across the thorn bushes and boulders, his feet crunching over the grit and granite.
This time the dogs obeyed. They lay growling at our feet. It turned out the guy giving the orders was Callum, the Black Eagle medic.
‘Tania, is everything OK?’ he asked, pointing the flashlight into our faces. ‘I heard you might need some help.’
Orlando raised an arm to protect my eyes. ‘Take the light away from her face,’ he told the newcomer.
Callum redirected the beam. The dogs still lay panting and waiting for the next order. ‘You’re Tania’s boyfriend, right?’ he checked with Orlando. ‘It’s good to meet you. I’m Callum Ramsay, the medical doctor on Zoran’s team. We’re a little concerned about Tania. I’d advise her to fix an appointment with a neurologist right away.’
‘Just back off, hold it right there,’ Orlando cut in. ‘I find my girlfriend alone and scared half to death on a mountain in the middle of the night. She’s being chased by two dogs and a guy with a flashlight. And you’re telling me she needs to see a doctor!’
‘Thank you!’ I breathed, shutting my eyes and taking deep breaths. Believe in me, don’t let him tell you I’m crazy!
‘I’ve seen it before,’ Callum went on without a pause. ‘It’s a neurological reaction to strobe lighting, flashlight photography – quite common.’
‘Meaning what?’ Orlando looked like he was about to use his heavy hiking boot to kick out at the growling dogs then thought better of it.
‘It causes an epileptic seizure in the brain. The patient passes out. When they come round, the memory part of the brain is scrambled. They can suffer from memory loss, confusion, delusion—’
‘I hear you.’ Again Orlando cut Callum off. ‘So let me run that by you again. You figure Tania is seriously sick and still you let her run up here alone?’
‘Dan— We couldn’t stop her,’ Callum explained, checking himself quickly. ‘We’re having a small celebration; things got pretty wild.’
‘I’ve heard about your “celebrations”. They’re getting a bad name around here,’ Orlando muttered as he began to steer me around the crouching dogs. He took a flashlight from his own pocket and shone the beam down the slope. ‘Come on, Tania, we’re out of here.’
Callum nodded then stood back and kept the dogs to heel. Probably he watched us pick our way between the rocks and bushes. Then, as soon as we were out of sight, he must have headed back to the lodge.
‘Are you doing OK?’ Orlando kept checking me all the way down to the spot where he’d parked his car. He hadn’t picked up on Callum’s half-mention of Daniel’s name and for this I was grateful. ‘You’re still shaking like a leaf. Watch this rock up ahead. Take my hand. Here’s a low branch – bend your head. Not far now.’
He was strong, he was there for me. I held his hand and began to think more clearly, already planning ahead and working out what I had to do next to save Grace.
The World Wide Web is a wonderful thing.
Saturday morning, after a night’s sleep, breakfast with my parents and at least six messages from Orlando, I sat on the porch with my laptop.
‘Honey, I’d like you to stay home today,’ Mom had said, which is as forceful and direct as she ever gets.
‘You need rest,’ Dad had agreed.
This was after Orlando had given them his midnight version of what had happened on Black Rock and I’d laid down my no-doctor condition. ‘The problem is not with me,’ I’d insisted. ‘It’s with those guys up at the lodge.’
I wasn’t sure how far they believed me, but my parents knew me well enough not to pressurize me. They realized that stay home and rest was the best promise they could extract for the present.
By the way, the six Orlando messages were wonderfully repetitive: I luv u with ever increasing hugs and kisses.
There were two things I wanted to check on the Internet, and thank you to Wikipedia for the following.
First I searched ‘psychic powers’ and came up with this explanation. A psychic connects us with unseen parallel worlds. He or she (more often she) has unusual sensitivity to the occult. My italics. This type of medium goes way back in history and used to be called a shaman in other cultures. Big, big point – they can communicate with the spirit world.
I stopped reading and took a deep breath – this was my own personal dare-to-believe moment. Psychics connect with the other side, the astral plane, and can voice prophecies, predict the future and heal by the laying-on of hands. Another deep breath. They experience visions that make them the channel between the material world and the spirit world. Oh, and they can guard against ghosts and bad spirits, like sentries on duty at the gates of hell.
‘Tania, would you like coffee?’ Mom asked through the kitchen window.
‘No thanks.’ I was too busy mind-juggling with spiritualist concepts like the existence of the eternal soul, free will and karma, plus the ever increasing possibility that I was seeing dead people and hearing dead voices.
Dad came on to the porch and sat down with his latest brick-sized hardback – a study of the lives of Scott and Zelda Fitzgerald.
‘What happened to gold cross?’ he asked, looking closely at my necklace.
My hand went to my throat. I felt Orlando’s heart locket there but not the family crucifix. ‘I must have lost it!’
Dad looked disappointed. ‘You know when, where?’
‘Some time yesterday.’ I remembered Zoran glancing at it, saying it was pretty. Maybe I’d lost it by the pool – it could be on the terrace, even in the water, who knew? Then I had another memory of Zoran slithering towards me in the chapel, leaning in to clutch at my throat …
‘Maybe you find,’ Dad sighed as he opened his book.
Putting the loss to the back of my mind, I cleared my screen then googled again: epileptic seizures.
OK, so there are dozens of types of seizure caused by an interruption of electric signals in the brain, either as a result of brain injury or else it’s genetic.
‘Tell me something – did you drop me on the head when I was a baby?’ I broke off my reading to check with my dad.
‘Not that I recall,’ was his mumbled answer.
Read on. You can get the electrical interruption in different hemispheres and lobes. Frontal lobe disconnect leads to the sensation of a wave passing through the head, twitching in an arm or a hand, et cetera. Nope. Temporal lobe means you get an unusual smell or taste; you feel intense, unexplained joy or fear. Check. Parietal lobe – numbness or tingling, occipital lobe – visual disturbance and hallucinations. Check, make a note. That would be a Simple Partial Seizure (SPS) in occipital lobe.
Complex Partial Seizure (CPS) – confusion, loss of memory. Check, check. Generalized seizures send you unconscious. Check again. Triggers include lack of sleep, stress, alcohol and flickering lights, which is called photosensitive epilepsy and is the type Callum was describing.
I took in as much information as I could in one sitting then logged off and sat for a while staring out of the window and down over the town.
OK, so I was both a psychic who could connect with the astral plane, be reincarnated and get chosen to stand guard against evil spirits, or my brain cells were misfiring like old automobile spark plugs. Face it – neither of these are immediately appealing.
‘Scott put Zelda in high-security psychiatric institution,’ Dad informed me without looking up from his page. ‘If not crazy before, for sure after.’
Later that morning I had visitors.
Holly showed up first with a stack of CDs and magazines. ‘Are you
sick?’ she asked. ‘Or just totally hungover?’
‘Neither.’ I was shaky as hell and my head was hurting but I wasn’t admitting my symptoms to anyone.
‘Orlando said he found you going midnight walkabout on Black Rock. That sounds like an alcohol-related activity to me.’
‘Sit down,’ I told her, making room on the porch swing. ‘But no more comments, OK?’
‘I guessed the patient might like to listen to these while she convalesces.’ Holly grinned as she tipped the CD cases into my lap. ‘So what exactly did I miss?’
‘Nothing. Just another party at the lodge.’ I’ve said before – it’s best to tread carefully with Holly, in case she lets rip with her scornful tongue.
She pursed her lips. ‘Any more weird stuff?’
‘Maybe. What did Orlando tell you?’
‘He said, yeah – more hippie-tripping.’
‘Is that what he said word for word?’ Traitor – I trusted you.
‘No. It’s how I read it. He mentioned you went through a repeat of the heavenly bodies experience – freaking out and having hallucinations. And that makes me think drugs again. Maybe not Rohypnol this time, but hey, there’s a whole pharmacy of mind-bending pills and powders out there that could be investigated.’
‘“Don’t worry, guys; Holly Randle is on the case!” ’ God, it made me feel tired just to look at her firm, tight, tanned face, to hear the fresh conviction in her voice.
‘I mean it, Tania. If Zoran Brancusi is heavily into drugs, the authorities in Bitterroot need to do something.’
‘All rock stars are into drugs.’ Studying the plastic CD cases, I sighed and shook my head.
‘Sorry,’ she said after a long pause. ‘I’m confused and I’m not handling this well. I honestly don’t mean to make things worse.’
I revise what I said much earlier. Scratch the surface and you find deeper things about Holly’s personality that would make me want to be her friend even if she wasn’t my next-door neighbour. ‘That’s OK. It’s cool.’
‘Seriously, I’m freaked out by what I’m hearing.’
‘You and me both. Did Orlando mention Grace?’ I asked.
‘That she decided to join Zoran’s commune? Yeah.’
‘Grace shut us out,’ I told Holly with sudden, hot tears in my eyes. ‘We’ve been buddies all our lives, but now she doesn’t want to know.’
‘I don’t get it. Doesn’t she care about how much pain this is causing – to Jude, her parents, to us?’
‘I know – I’ve talked to her about it but she blanks me. It’s so totally not like the Grace we know.’
‘I’ve been thinking,’ Holly said after another pause. ‘About what happened to Aaron. It’s OK – we’re back together better than before and he explained to me about Cristal.’
‘He did?’ I swallowed my surprise, trying to guess where this was leading.
‘Aaron dropped her name into a conversation we were having about Black Eagle Lodge and I picked up in a nanosecond he had a thing for her.’
‘Did he admit it?’
‘I forced it out of him.’
Ouch! ‘He didn’t … I’m certain they didn’t …’ I ground to an embarrassed halt.
‘It’s OK, Tania – I know they didn’t. Anyway, who could blame him? Apparently she’s the total package. And sure, I was jealous when he told me he spent a morning with Cristal at Zoran’s place. Who wouldn’t be? It seems she offered to show him the recording studio. Well, you only have to be a beautiful woman talking bass levels and speaker balance to most guys, and they’re putty, Aaron included. He said the equipment was amazing.’ She raised her eyebrows at the innuendo and smiled. ‘After the studio, he got a guided tour of the house, the pool, even the chapel.’
‘Me too. I saw the chapel,’ I said faintly, without enough emphasis to stop Holly in her tracks.
‘And then he says you showed up with Zoran,’ she went on. ‘Right after that, the lights went out on my boyfriend’s budding romance. In other words, Cristal dumped him. Aaron thinks it must have been something you said, so thank you, Tania. You’re my buddy.’
‘He blames me?’ I thought back and came up with a different conclusion. ‘Actually, all I said to Zoran was that you and Aaron weren’t all loved up like you usually were. In fact, I told him you were taking a break, which is what he passed on to Cristal, because I actually heard him say it. He said Aaron wasn’t a good fit.’
‘How does that figure?’ Holly grabbed back a CD and tapped it impatiently against her knee. ‘Cristal dumps him because he doesn’t currently have a girlfriend?’
‘Whereas Grace does have a serious boyfriend in Jude, though you wouldn’t know it to see her with Ezra now.’
‘And you too – you’re a member of the loved-up division. Does Daniel know you’re still hitched up with Orlando?’
‘He does; I told him right at the start.’ My answer was too quick, too definite. ‘Holly, you have to promise me something. Don’t tell Orlando about Daniel – not right now, because we tried to talk it through before and Orlando didn’t understand. We had a big fight, OK?’
‘I promise,’ she said grudgingly. ‘It’s not the way I would handle it, but hey, what do I know? But anyway, let’s look more closely at this! Cristal dumps Aaron because he’s not in love. Ezra grabs Grace because she is. Likewise Daniel makes a big play for you.’
‘I don’t know. Maybe it’s coincidence. Can you establish a pattern out of a sample of three?’ I told Holly it wasn’t good science.
‘But say I’m right – just for once.’ Now it was my knee that she leaned forward to tap with the edge of the case. She gave a short, self-mocking laugh then grew serious again. ‘I do have a brain inside this thick skull, so hear me out. Zoran’s guys – the original members of the cult – they only go after people who are currently in a relationship, like it’s a kind of bet they make, a game they’re playing. That’s the reason Cristal dropped Aaron the second she heard he was single.’
I thought for a while and accepted Holly might be on to something. ‘But why?’ I asked. ‘It doesn’t make any sense – unless Zoran gives the order for his followers to wreck as many lives as possible out of sheer boredom.’
‘Spite,’ Holly added.
‘For his weird idea of fun.’
‘Because he can.’
Or because he’s evil and the monsters, the shape-shifting, the nightmares are true. The green-eyed serpent opens its mouth and hisses. It coils around my body and presses against my heart.
‘Tania, are you OK?’ Holly asked, laying her hand over mine.
‘One thing’s for sure,’ I whispered. ‘Whatever is happening here, you should let Aaron know he had one lucky escape.’
Second on my list of visitors that morning was Jude. He brought me flowers.
‘These are beautiful,’ I told him, finding a vase and setting them on the kitchen table. ‘Who told you I was sick?’
‘Orlando. We cycled out along Prayer River before breakfast. He told me about last night.’
‘Well, I’m good now – especially when a hot guy brings me roses.’ I could say stuff like this to Jude and he wouldn’t ever take it the wrong way. He just is the sweetest guy. ‘Seriously, you don’t have to worry about me.’
‘Tell that to Orlando.’ Accepting coffee, Jude sat at the table. His hands were shaking, I noticed, and his face looked drawn. ‘You freaked him out, Tania.’
‘I know. But he was amazing – my knight in shining armour.’
‘I told him I wish I’d been there with him.’
‘To rescue Grace?’ I asked quietly. ‘Yeah, right now she needs her own Sir Galahad.’
It was turning into a morning of visitors and pauses. A lot of thinking was going on. ‘This situation is what my parents always warned me about. They said right from the start to watch out for Grace – she’s the type to break your heart.’
I sprang to my friend’s defence. ‘No way! Grace isn’t like that. She’s swee
t natured and generous …’ I was halfway through this sentence before I realized the hundred wrong things about what I was saying and particularly my use of the present tense. I stopped short.
‘Well, it looks like they were right,’ Jude murmured. ‘They said girls like her – girls who are too picture-perfect – they have too many temptations thrown in their path. You can’t trust them.’
‘I still want to say that’s not true. I mean, how can you generalize?’
‘Maybe they picked up on something I didn’t. My parents are pretty smart people in their own way. Besides, they’re older. They lived through a lot when they were young.’
‘No, don’t believe it. Grace and you – you were perfect together.’
Jude shrugged and thought for a long time. ‘I thought we were.’
‘She does love you, Jude.’
‘Make that past tense.’
‘OK, so she’s going through something right now that we can’t explain, that makes her cut off from the rest of us. But it doesn’t mean we should say, go ahead, Grace – do what you like up there on Black Rock. We shouldn’t abandon her.’
This thought didn’t get through because Jude was fixated on his next question, the one that had wormed its way into his heart and was eating him alive. ‘Did she come right out and tell you she wanted to stay?’
I nodded. ‘But it wasn’t her voice, it was someone else. Do you know what I’m saying?’
Jude was staring at me, his brown eyes begging for scraps of comfort even while his mouth ran away with him. ‘This guy – Ezra. What does Grace see in him?’
‘I’m not going to tell you he’s ugly,’ I said softly, reaching out to put my hand on Jude’s arm. ‘He’s three, maybe four years older than us, he works for Zoran – I guess that’s part of it; the glamour, the guys he mixes with. But it’s more than that.’ Now it was my turn to create the silence, wondering how much more I could tell Jude without freaking him out. Should I even begin to describe the ceremony in the chapel?
‘How – more than that?’