Running with the Demon Part 15

The smile flashed briefly on Two Bears' face. "Indian magic." He looked at Nest. "Are you ready?"

She took a deep breath. "I don't know. What's going to happen?"

"What I have told you will happen. I will summon the spirits of the Sinnissippi and they will appear. Maybe they will speak with us. Maybe not."

She nodded. "Is that why you're dressed like that?" He looked down at himself. "Like this? Oh, I see. You're afraid I might be wearing war paint, that I might be preparing to ride out into the night and collect a few paleface scalps." She gave him a reproving frown. "I was just asking."

"I dress like this because I will dance with the spirits if they let me. I will become for a few brief moments one with them." He paused. "Would you like to join me?"

She considered the possibility of dancing with the dead Sinnissippi. "I don't know. Can I ask you something, O'olish Amaneh?"

He smiled anew on hearing his Indian name. "You can ask me anything."

"Do you think the spirits would tell me who my father is if I asked them? Do you think they would tell me something like that?"

He shook his head. "You cannot ask them anything. They do not respond to questions or even to voices. They respond to what is in your heart. They might tell you of your father, but it would have to be their choice. Do you understand?"

She nodded, suddenly nervous at the prospect of discovering the answer to this dark secret. "Do I have to do anything?"

He shook his head once more. "Nothing. Just come with me."

They crossed to a small iron hibachi that sat next to a picnic table. A gathering of embers, the source of the wood smoke, glowed red within. Two Bears removed a long, intricately carved pipe from the top of the picnic table, checked to see that the contents within its charred bowl were tightly packed, then dipped the bowl to the embers, put the other end of the pipe in his mouth, and puffed slowly to light it. The contents of the bowl ignited and gleamed, and smoke curled into the air.

"Peace pipe," he declared, removing it from his lips and winking at her. He puffed on it some more, drawing the smoke deep into his lungs. Then he pa.s.sed the pipe to her. "Now you. Just a few puffs."

She took the pipe reluctantly. "What's in it?" she asked.

"Herbs and gra.s.ses. They won't harm you. Smoking the pipe is ritual, nothing more. It eases the pa.s.sage of the spirits from their resting place into our world. It makes us more accessible."

She sniffed at the contents of the bowl and grimaced. The night around her was deep and still, and it felt as if she were all alone in it with the Indian. "I don't know."

"Just take a few puffs. You don't have to draw it into your lungs." He paused. "Don't be frightened. You have Mr. Pick to watch over you."

She considered the pipe a moment longer, then put it to her lips and drew in the smoke. She took several quick puffs, wrinkled her nose, and pa.s.sed the pipe back to Two Bears. "Yuck."

Two Bears nodded. "It's an acquired taste." He inhaled the pungent smoke, then carefully placed the pipe across the rim of the hibachi. "There."

Then he moved out onto the open gra.s.s and seated himself cross-legged facing the burial mounds. Nest joined him, sitting cross-legged as well, positioning herself next to him in the dark. Pick still rode her shoulder, but he had gone strangely silent. She glanced down at him, but he was staring out into the night, oblivious of her. She let him be. Overhead, the sky was crosshatched by the limbs of the trees, their dappled shadows cast earthward in a tangled net by the bright moonlight. Nest waited patiently, saying nothing, losing herself in the silence. Two Bears began to chant, the words coming in a soft, steady cadence. The words were foreign to Nest, and she thought they must be Indian, probably Sinnissippi. She did not look at Two Bears, but looked instead where he looked, out over the roadway to the burial mounds, out into the night. Pick sat frozen on her shoulder, become momentarily a part of her, as quiet as she had ever seen him. She felt a twinge of fear, wondering suddenly if what she was doing was somehow more than she believed, if it would lead to a darker result than she antic.i.p.ated.

Two Bears continued to chant, his deep voice steady and toneless. Nest felt the first stirrings of doubt mingle with her uneasiness. Nothing was happening; maybe nothing would.

Then a wind blew off the river, cool and unexpected, carrying with it the smell of things forgotten since childhood - of her grandmother's kitchen, of her sandbox, of Riley, of her cedar toy chest, of Wisconsin's lakes in summer. Nest started in surprise. The wind brushed past her and was gone. In the stillness that followed, she felt the hair on the back of her neck p.r.i.c.kle.

Small glimmerings of light appeared at the edges of the burial mounds, rising up into the night, flickering and fading again, moving with rhythmic grace against the darkness. At first they were nothing, simply bright movements that lacked definition. Slowly they began to take shape. Arms and legs appeared, then bodies and heads. Nest felt her throat tighten and her mouth grow dry. She leaned forward, peering expectantly, trying to make certain of what she was seeing. On her shoulder, she heard Pick utter a faint, surprised exclamation.

Then up from the darkness rose the Sinnissippi, their spirits taking form, coming back into a shadowy semblance of their lost bodies. They lifted free of the earth to hang upon the air, twisting and turning hi small arcs. They were dancing, Nest could see, but not hi the fashion she had expected, not as Indians did in the television shows and movies she had seen, rising and falling in that familiar choppy motion, but in another way altogether. Their movements were more balletic, more sinuous, and they danced free of one another, as if each had a story to tell, each a different tale. Nest watched, awed by the beauty of it. After a time, she felt the dance begin to draw her in. She thought she could sense something of what the dancers were trying to convey. She felt herself swaying with them, heard the sounds of their breathing, smelled the sweat of their bodies. They were ghosts, she knew, but they were real, too. She wanted to call out to them, to make them turn and look at her, to acknowledge her presence. But she stayed silent.

Suddenly Two Bears was on his feet and striding forward. He reached the dancers and joined hi their dance, his big, powerful body swaying and weaving as smoothly as their own. Nest marveled at the ease with which he moved, smiled at his grace. She felt the heat of his body fill her own, as if his pulse had mingled with hers. She watched in shock, then with a glimmer of terror, as his flesh-and-blood body began to fade into the darkness and turn as ghostly as the spirits of the dead Sinnissippi. There were drums now, their booming rising out of the night - or maybe the sounds were only in her mind, the rhythm of her heartbeat. She watched Two Bears become one with the dead, watched him become as they were, translucent and ephemeral, ghostly and unreal. She stared transfixed as he danced on, the sound of the drums heightening, the movements of the dancers quickening. She felt the summer's heat flood through her, causing her to blink against sudden flashes of crimson and gold.

Then she was on her feet as well, dancing with Two Bears, moving through the ghosts of the Sinnissippi. She did not feel herself rise or walk to him, did not know how it came to pa.s.s, but suddenly she was there among the Indian spirits. She floated as they did, not touching the earth, suspended on the night air, caught between life and death. She heard herself cry out with joy and hope. She danced with wild abandon and frantic need, whirling and twisting, reaching for something beyond what she could see, reaching past memories, past her own life, past all she knew...

Like a fever dream, the vision appears to her then. It comes out of nowhere, filling her mind with bright colors and movement. She is in another pan of the park, a part she does not recognize. It is night, black and clouded, empty of moon and stars, a devil's night filled with pitch. Dark figures run through the trees, hunched over, lithe and supple. Feeders, she sees, dozens of them, their yellow eyes gleaming in the black. She feels her stomach knot with the realization that' they are certain to see her. Across the gra.s.sy stretches and along the pathways they bound, swift and certain. A woman leads them, young and strong, her shadowed face smiling and wild-eyed, her long, dark hair streaming out behind her. Nest blinks against the sight - a human at play with feeders, running with them, unafraid. The woman spins and wheels, and everywhere she goes, the feeders chase after her. She teases and taunts them, and it is clear that they are infatuated by her. Nest stands spellbound within the darkened park, staring in disbelief as the woman rushes toward her, all wicked smiles and laughter. She looks into the woman's eyes, and sees there the lines that have been crossed and the taboos that have been broken. She sees the woman's life laid bare, sees her soul unfettered and her heart unafraid. She will dare anything, this woman, and has. She will not be cowed or chastened; she will not be made ashamed.

She dashes into Nest's arms, draws her close, and holds her tight. Nest recoils, then stares in shock. She knows this woman. She recognizes her face. She has seen her face, just as it is now, in a collection of framed photographs that sits upon the mantel over the fireplace in the living room. It is Caitlin Anne Freemark. It is her mother.

And yet it isn 't. Not quite. Something is amiss. It is almost her mother, but it is someone else, too. Nest gasps in shock, not quite certain what she is seeing. The woman breaks free, her face suddenly filled with regret and despair. Behind her, barely visible in the darkness, a man appears. He materializes suddenly, and the feeders, who are cl.u.s.tered all about the woman, give way instantly at his approach. Nest tries to see his face, but cannot. The woman sees him and hisses in anger and frustration. Then she flees into the night, racing away shadow-quick with the feeders bounding in pursuit, and is gone.

Nest blinked anew against the darkness and the sudden bright pain that stabbed her eyes. Images whirled and faded, and her vision cleared. She was sitting once more on the gra.s.s, cross-legged in the darkness, her hands clasped before her as if in prayer. Two Bears was seated next to her, his eyes closed, his chiseled body still. In the distance, the burial mounds rose silent and empty of life. No lights moved across the gra.s.sy slopes; no warriors danced on the air above. The ghosts of the Sinnissippi had gone.

Two Bears opened his eyes and stared out into the darkness, calm and distanced. Nest seized his arm.

"Did you see her?" she asked, unable to keep the anguish from her voice.

The big man shook his head. His painted copper face was bathed in sweat, and his brow was furrowed. "I did not share your vision, little bird's Nest. Can you tell me of it?"

She tried to speak, to say the words, and found she could not. She shook her head slowly, feeling paralyzed, her skin hot and p.r.i.c.kly, her face flushed with shame and confusion.

He nodded. "Sometimes it is better not to speak of what we see in our dreams." He took her hand in his own and held it. "Sometimes our dreams belong only to us."

"Did it really happen?" she asked softly. "Did the Sinnissippi come? Did we dance with them?"

He smiled faintly. "Ask your little friend when you find him again."

Pick. Nest had forgotten him. She glanced down at her shoulder, but the sylvan was gone.

"I learned many things tonight, little bird's Nest," Two Bears told her quietly, regaining her attention. "I was told of the fate of the Sinnissippi, my people. I was shown their story." He shook his head. "But it is much more complicated than I thought, and I cannot yet find the words to explain it, even to myself. I have the images safely stored" - he touched his forehead - "but they are jumbled and vague, and they need time to reveal themselves." His brow furrowed. "This much I know. The destruction of a people does not come easily or directly, but from a complex scheme of events and circ.u.mstances, and that, in part, is why it can happen. Because we lack the foresight to prevent it. Because we do not guard sufficiently against it. Because we do not truly understand it. Because we are, in some part, at least, the enemy we fear."

She squeezed his hand. "I don't think I learned anything. Nothing of what might destroy us. Nothing of what threatens. Nothing of Hopewell or anywhere else. Just..." She shook her head.

Two Bears rose, pulling her up with him, lifting her from the ground as if she were as light as a feather. The black paint gleamed on his face. "Maybe you were shown more than you realize. Maybe you need to give it more time, like me."

She nodded. "Maybe."

They stood facing each other in awkward silence, contemplating what they knew and what they didn't. Finally, Nest said, "Will you come back tomorrow night and summon the spirits of the Sinnissippi again?"

Two Bears shook his head. "No. I am leaving now."

"But maybe the spirits..."

"The spirits appeared, and I danced with them. They told me what they wished. There is nothing more for me to do."

Nest took a deep breath. She wanted him to stay for her. She found comfort in his presence, in his voice, in the strength of his convictions. "Maybe you could stay until after the Fourth. Just another few days."

He shook his head. "There is no reason. This is not my home, and I do not belong here."

He walked to the hibachi and retrieved his pipe. He knocked the contents of the bowl into the hibachi, then stuck the pipe in his belt. He took a cloth and carefully wiped the black paint from his face and arms and chest, then slipped into his torn army field jacket. He retrieved his backpack and bedroll from the darkness and strapped them on. Nest stood watching, unable to think of anything to say, watching as he transformed back into the man he had been when she had first encountered him, ragged and worn and shabby, another nomad come off the nation's highways.

"This could be your home," she said finally, her voice taking on an urgency she could not conceal.

He walked over to her and stared into her eyes. "Speak my name," he commanded softly.

"O'olish Amaneh."

"And your own."

"Nest Freemark."

He nodded. "Names of power. But yours is the stronger, little bird's Nest. Yours is the one with true magic. There is nothing more that I can do for you. What remains to be done, you must do for yourself. I came to speak with the dead of my people, and I have done so. I saw that it would help you to be there with me, and so I asked you to attend. What there was that I could offer, I have given. Now you must take what you have gained and put it to good use. You do not need me for that."

She stood staring at him in the humid dark, at his strong, blunt features, at the implacable certainty mirrored in his eyes. "I'm afraid," she said.

"Yes," he agreed. "But fear is a fire to temper courage and resolve. Use it so. Speak my name once more."

She swallowed. "O'olish Amaneh."

"Yes. Say it often when I am gone, so that I will not be forgotten."

She nodded.

"Good-bye, little bird's Nest," he whispered.

Then he turned and walked away.

Nest stood watching after him until he was out of sight. She could see him until he reached the edge of the park, and then he seemed to fade into the darkness. She thought more than once to call him back or to run after him, but she knew he would not want that. She felt drained and worn, emptied of emotion and strength alike, and she found herself wondering if she would ever see Two Bears again.

"O'olish Amaneh," she whispered.

She started back across the park, wondering anew what had become of Pick. One moment he had been sitting on her shoulder, all quiet and absorbed in the spirit dance, and the next he had been gone. What had happened? She trudged through the dark, moving toward home and bed, starting to be sleepy now in spite of all that had happened. She tried to make sense of the vision she had seen of the young woman and the feeders and the shadowy figure who accompanied them, but failed. She tried to draw something useful from what Two Bears had told her and failed there, as well. Everything seemed to confuse her, one question leading to another, none of them leading to the answers she sought.

In the shadows about her, a handful of feeders kept pace, as if predators waiting for their prey to falter. They watched her with their steady, implacable gaze, and she could feel the weight of their hunger. They did not stalk her, she knew; they simply watched. Usually, their presence didn't bother her. Tonight she felt unnerved.

She was out of the park and walking through her backyard toward the house when she realized suddenly what was amiss about the young woman in her vision. She stopped where she was and stared wide-eyed into the darkness, feeling the crawl of her skin turn to dryness in her throat. She knew the woman, of course. She had been right about that. And she had seen the woman's photograph on the fireplace mantel, too. But the photograph wasn't of her mother. It was of another woman, one who had been young a long time ago, before Nest or her mother were even born. The photograph was of Gran.

Sunday, JULY 3

Chapter Seventeen.

It was approaching seven when Nest awoke the following morning, and the sun had already been up for an hour and a half. She had slept poorly for most of the night, haunted by the vision of Gran, plagued by questions and suspicions and doubts, and she did not sleep soundly until almost sunrise. Bright sunlight and birdsong woke her, and she could tell at once that it was going to be another hot, steamy July day. The air from the fan was warm and stale, and through her open window she could see the leaves of the big oaks hanging limp and unmoving. She lay motionless beneath the sheet for a time, staring up at the ceiling, trying to pretend that last night hadn't happened. She had been so eager to watch the dance of the spirits of the Sinnissippi, so anxious to learn what the spirits would tell her of the future. But she had been shown nothing of the future. Instead, she had been given a strange, almost frightening glimpse of the past. She felt cheated and angry. She felt betrayed. She told herself she would have been better off if she had never met Two Bears.

O'olishAmaneh.

But after a while her anger cooled, and she began to consider the possibility that what she had been shown was more important than she realized. Two Bears had hinted that she would need time to understand the vision, to come to grips with what it meant in her own life. She stared at the ceiling some more, trying to make sense of the shadows cast there by the sun, superimposing her own images, willing them to come to life so that they might speak to her.

Finally she rose and went into the bathroom, stopping at the mirror to look at herself, to see if she had changed in some way. But she saw only the face she always saw when she looked at herself, and nothing of secrets revealed. She sighed disconsolately, stripped off her sleep shirt, and stepped into the shower. She let cold water wash over her hot skin, let it cool her until she was chilled, then stepped out and dried. She dressed for church, knowing her grandfather would be expecting her to go, slipping into a simple print dress and her favorite low heels, and went down to breakfast. She pa.s.sed through the living room long enough to check the pictures on the mantel. Sure enough, there was Gran, looking just as she had in the vision last night, her face young, her eyes reckless and challenging as they peered out from the scrolled iron frame.

She ate her breakfast without saying much, feeling awkward and uncomfortable in her grandmother's presence. She should speak to Gran of the vision, but she didn't know how. What could she say? Should she tell Gran what the vision had revealed or take a more circ.u.mspect approach and ask about her youth, about whether she had ever run with the feeders? And what did that mean, anyway? What did it mean when you ran with the feeders as Gran had done in the vision? Feeders were to be avoided; that was what Nest had been taught from the time she was little. Pick had warned her. Gran had warned her. So what did it mean that she was forbidden from doing something Gran had done?

And what, she wondered suddenly, had her mother done when she was a child? What did any of this have to do with her?

"You should eat something, Evelyn," her grandfather said quietly, breaking the momentary silence.

Gran was drinking her vodka and orange juice and smoking her cigarettes. There was no food in front of her. "I ate some toast earlier," the old woman responded distantly. Her eyes were directed out the window again, toward the park. "Just eat your own; don't worry about me."

Nest watched her grandfather shake his head and finish the last of his coffee. "Ready, Nest?"

She nodded and rose, gathering her dishes to carry to the sink. "Leave them," Gran called after her. "I'll clean up while you're gone."

"Sure you don't want to come?" Old Bob pressed gently. "It would be good for you."

Gran gave him a sideways look. "It would be good for the church gossips, maybe. You go on. I'll work on the picnic lunch." She paused long enough to take a hard drag on her cigarette. "You might want to give some more thought to inviting that boy, Robert. He's not what you think."

Her meaning was plain. Nest placed her dishes in the sink and waited for someone to speak. When no one did, she left the room and went down the hall to brush her teeth and give her hair a final comb. In the kitchen, she could hear her grandparents' voices, low and deliberate, arguing over John Ross.

She rode downtown in the pickup with her grandfather, neither of them saying anything, the windows rolled down so that Old Bob could smell the trees and flowers. It was just after ten o'clock, so the Illinois heat was not yet unbearable and there was still a hint of night's cool. Traffic on Lincoln Highway was light, and the parking lot at the supermarket as they turned off Sinnissippi Road was mostly empty. Nest breathed the summer air and looked down at her hands. She felt oddly disconnected from everything, as if she had been taken away from the home and the people she had always known and relocated to another part of the country. She felt she should be doing something - she had already been enlisted in the fight against the demon - but she had no idea where she ought to begin.

She looked at her reflection in the windshield and wondered if she really was only fourteen or if she was in fact much older and had missed some crucial part of her life while she slept.

Old Bob parked the pickup on Second Avenue in front of Kelly's Furniture directly opposite the First Congregational Church. They got out and crossed the street, stopping momentarily on the sidewalk to say h.e.l.lo to a handful of others on their way inside. Effusive compliments were extended to Nest on her achievements in running, sprinkled with comments concerning the depth of her compet.i.tion, the state of her health, and the nature of the town's expectations for her. Nest smiled and nodded dutifully, suffering it all as graciously as she could, all the while looking around without success for John Ross.

Then they were inside the church, pa.s.sing through wide, double doors into a vestibule that wrapped the sanctuary on two sides. It was cool and dark, the intense heat kept at bay by central air, the burning sunlight filtered by ribbons of stained gla.s.s. Greeters stood at, each door, waiting to shake hands with those entering, and to pin flowers on the men's coats and the women's dresses. An elderly couple welcomed Nest and her grandfather, and the woman asked after Evelyn. An usher took them to a pew about halfway down on the left side of the sanctuary. The church was rilling rapidly, and more than half the pews were occupied already. Nest and her grandfather sat on the aisle, holding their programs and glancing around in the hushed, cool gloom. The cathedral ceiling arched darkly overhead, its wooden beams gleaming. Organ music played softly, and the candles on the altar had already been lit by the acolytes. Nest looked again for John Ross, but he was nowhere to be seen. He wasn't coming, she thought, disappointed. But, after all, why would he?

Robert Heppler was sitting with his parents on the other side of the sanctuary near the back. The Hepplers liked the Congregational Church because it wasn't mired in dogma (this from Robert, purportedly quoting his father) and it embraced a larger span of life choices and secular att.i.tudes. Robert said this was very different from being Catholic. Robert gave Nest a brief wave, and she gave him one back. She saw one of her grandfather's steel-mill friends, Mr. Michaelson, sitting with his wife several rows in front of the Hepplers.

The choir filed in and took their seats in the loft beside the pulpit, and everyone opened their programs and began studying the order of events and their hymnals.

Then John Ross appeared at the far side of the chamber, limping through the doorway with the aid of his black staff. He wore a fresh shirt, slacks, and a tie, and his long hair was carefully combed and tied back. He looked ill at ease and unsure of himself. Nest tried and failed to get his attention. Ross followed the usher down the aisle to a mostly empty row behind the Michaelsons and eased himself gingerly into place.

Now the choir rose, and the organist played a brief introduction. The minister appeared through a side door on the dais and walked to the pulpit. Ralph Emery was round and short and sort of strange-looking, with large ears and heavy jowls, but he was kind and funny and he was well known for giving thought-provoking sermons. He stood now in his black robes looking out over the congregation as if trying to decide whether to proceed. Then he asked the congregation to bow their heads, and he gave a brief invocation. When he was finished, he asked everyone to rise and turn to hymn number 236. The congregation stood, opened their hymnals, and began to sing "Morning Has Broken."

They had just reached the second verse when the feeders began to appear, dozens of them, materializing out of the gloom like ghosts. They crept from behind the empty pews down front where no one liked to sit and from under the offertory and sacrament tables at the chamber's rear. They rose out of the choir loft, from behind the blue velvet drapes that flanked the altar, and from under the cantilevered pulpit. They seemed to be everywhere. Nest was so stunned that she stopped singing. She had never seen feeders in the church. She had never imagined they could enter here. She stared at the closest in disbelief, a pair that slithered beneath the pew in front of her between the legs of the Robinson sisters. She fought down the revulsion she felt at seeing them here, in this place where G.o.d was worshipped and from which dark things were banished. She glanced around in horror, finding them hanging from the ceiling rafters, curled around the chandeliers, and propped up within the frescoes and bays. Yellow eyes stared at her from every quarter. Her heart quickened and her pulse began to race. No one could see the feeders but her. But even that didn't help. She could not tolerate having them here. She could not abide their presence. What were they doing in a church? In her church! What had drawn them? Despite the cool air of the sanctuary, she began to sweat. She glanced at her grandfather, but he was oblivious of what was happening, his gaze focused on his hymnal.

Then she turned in desperation to find John Ross.

John Ross had seen the feeders at the same moment as Nest. But unlike the girl, Ross knew what was happening. Only the demon's coming could have caused so many feeders to gather - the demon's coming coupled with his own, he amended, which now, in hindsight, seemed painfully iD advised. He should not have done this, come into this holy place, given in to his own desperate need to ease in some small measure the loneliness that consumed his life. He should have rejected Robert Freemark's offer and remained in his hotel room. He should not have been influenced by the attraction he had felt for this church while on his way to Josie's. He should have done what he knew was best for everyone and stayed away.

He willed himself to remain calm, not to give away what he was feeling, not to do anything to startle those around him. His staff was propped against the seat beside him, and his first impulse was to seize it and ready himself for battle. But he could not find his enemy, could not identify him even though he knew he was there, hiding in plain sight.

An elderly lady several seats away glanced at him and smiled. He realized he had stopped singing. He forced himself to smile back, to begin singing anew, first reaching down for the staff, planting it squarely before him, and leaning on it as if he were suddenly in need of its support.