Shades

16

"This is not a good idea."

Isabel studied Max's face as he spoke to her. Apprehension showed in his eyes and the set of his mouth. He's always been too serious, she decided. Taking Max's hand, Isabel said, "You know I have to do this. There is no other way."

"It's too dangerous." Max looked over his shoulder, obviously hoping someone else would back his argument. "We know that Wilkins is a murderer. You don't know what he'll do when he sees her in his dreams."

Valenti met Max's gaze, then looked at Isabel. "If you can do it," Valenti said, "it will help to know."

Isabel nodded. "I can do this."

"Isabel," Max said, "you've never dreamwalked anyone like this. Wilkins is still in the hospital ICU, still on the critical list."

"I'll be all right."

Max fell silent, and with that silence came the full bore of his reproach at her chosen course of action.

"We need to know what Wilkins knows," Isabel said.

"There's another way," Max insisted. "We'll find another way."

"No," Isabel said with the finality she knew her brother would recognize. "Max, I'm going to do this. Because I can, and because it's the only way I can see for us to learn enough to figure out what we're supposed to do." If anything. There still remained the chance that they'd be just as helpless as anyone else.

"Come back," Max said. "Just make sure you come back."

"I will," Isabel promised. Sliding back on Michael's couch, she laid her head back and closed her eyes. In seconds, she was asleep, and in her dreams she reached for Leroy Wilkins, prospector and murderer.

When Isabel opened her eyes again, she found herself in a small, dark room with stone walls. A dank, earthy smell filled her nose and almost made her sneeze. The soft glow of a battery-powered camp lantern barely fought back the shadows that cloistered the room.

"What are you doing here?"

Turning toward the man's angry voice, Isabel saw Leroy Wilkins standing against the wall near the basement door. He was tense and frightened, his eyes sunken so deeply into his head that they were dark pools.

"It's okay," Isabel said in a soft voice.

Wilkins looked around the small room. "I ain't here. I got no business bein' here."

"Do you know where you are?" Isabel asked.

Madness lingered in Wilkins's gaze. "This is the basement in my house."

Isabel waited, noting that the old prospector's eyes settled on the wall opposite him. The wall was complete now, not the broken mass of rock Valenti and Michael described. Terrell Swanson's corpse still remained on the other side.

"I ain't in the basement in my house," Wilkins said. "I'm in the hospital. They took me to the hospital. Told me I was havin' a heart attack. I remember that."

"You are in the hospital," Isabel said. "This is just a dream."

Wilkins's eyes narrowed in suspicion. "I don't know you, girl. You don't dream about people you don't know, an' I don't know you."

"They're giving you medication in the hospital," Isabel said. "Medication causes hallucinations and dreams."

Wilkins shook his head. "You ain't no hallucination or dream, girl."

Isabel felt the strain of keeping the psychic contact. Wilkins wanted her out of his head and was trying to shove her out.

"I need to know what happened down here," Isabel said.

Wilkins grew more agitated. "Ain't nothin' happened down here."

"Terrell Swanson's ghost chased you into town," Isabel said.

"Don't know what you're talking about." Wilkins turned from her and started for the door.

"You killed Swanson," Isabel accused. "You killed him and you buried him behind that wall."

Wilkins wheeled on her. Rage and madness made a harsh mask of his face. "You'd best be watchin' what you're sayin', girl." He took a pack of cigarettes and a lighter from his pocket, stuck a cigarette between his lips, and lit up. The lighter's flame burnished his hard, wrinkled leather features and danced in his crazed gaze.

"Why did you dig Swanson out of the wall?" Isabel asked.

"Don't know what you're talkin' about," Wilkins said sullenly. He put the lighter away, inhaled on the cigarette, and made the coal glow orange, then exhaled a cloud of smoke into the basement that hung in the still air.

"Something happened," Isabel said. "What made things change? Swanson had been walled up for almost thirty years."

Wilkins turned to the basement door. "I 'spect the next person you're going to be talkin' to is my attorney."

Isabel stood helplessly watching, not knowing what to do as Wilkins's hand closed on the doorknob. Then a thunderous, sonorous boom echoed throughout the basement.

Wilkins cursed and yanked on the doorknob, but the door wouldn't open. The thunderclaps continued in regular syncopation. Wilkins continued fighting the door and cursing loudly.

Isabel gazed around the room, trying to find the source of the sound and couldn't.

Giving up on the door, Wilkins turned around, the cigarette tumbling from his lips as he stared in wide-eyed fear. He gazed around the basement and pressed his back against the door. "Can't get out. Can't get out this time. Just like the last time."

"What is that noise?" Isabel asked.

Wilkins glared at her, but the effort came off weak because there was so much fear in his eyes. "Don't you know what that is?"

The rhythmic booms continued, and now Isabel could tell there was a before and after sound, like a double-pump blast. She could hear the constriction, the boom, and the letting go.

"It's a heartbeat," she whispered, and the realization left. her dry-mouthed with anxiety even though she knew she was only dreamwalking and the events weren't actually going on.

"It's a heartbeat," Wilkins agreed. "It's Swanson's heartbeat."

The pulse beat more loudly. Isabel would have sworn the walls pushed in and out with the sound of it.

"He's alive, you see." Wilkins sounded stunned. He stared at the opposite basement wall. "Walled up almost thirty years over there, and somehow he's alive."

Isabel remembered Valenti's story about the skeleton lying in torn and tattered clothing on the basement floor.

"But he can't be alive." Wilkins shot Isabel a desperate look. "I caved his head in. Took a short-hafted hammer an' done the job myself. The strike was rich, you see. A uranium strike. An' it was bigger than anythin' we'd ever found. I knew it could make a man rich, but I knew it could only make one man rich. I wanted that man to be me." He shifted his gaze back to the wall. "So I killed him, an' he didn't die. Thirty years, he's been waitin' to get back at me."

Isabel wanted to speak but was afraid to interrupt

Wilkins's dream sequence. The answers were here; she just had to wait for them.

"Swanson's heartbeats got louder," Wilkins said, walking as if in a daze across the basement. "I heard 'em for days. Just listened to 'em. Couldn't turn the TV or radio up loud enough to get rid of them. Couldn't get drunk enough to forget them. They just stayed right there, an' wasn't nobody could hear them but me."

"I hear them," Isabel stated quietly.

"Swanson ain't comin' after you, girl," Wilkins said. "It's me he wants. He wants to drag me into that grave with him. But I ain't gonna let him." His face turned hard, but the fear remained intact. "I'm gonna take him outta that wall, show him I ain't afraid of him. Then I'm gonna bust him up into kindlin'."

Isabel stared at the wall. Despite the fact that she knew this was only Wilkins's memory, anxiety still tingled within her. She couldn't be hurt here, but that knowledge didn't seem as convincing as she'd hoped.

Wilkins took up a pickax from the basement floor and attacked the wall with a vengeance. Concrete chips spun free of the wall and shot in all directions.

Pain fired through Isabel as one of the chips slammed into her left cheek. When she touched her face, her fingers came away wet with blood. Nothing like that had ever happened. Suddenly the journey back to Michael's house seemed like an impossible distance. She turned and walked to the door. Her hand slid around the doorknob, and she twisted. The knob turned, but the lock didn't disengage.

She was trapped.

Max sat by Michael's couch and watched Isabel sleeping. His stomach knotted into a ball.

"Hey."

Looking up, Max saw Liz standing beside him. She'd come over to him and he hadn't even noticed.

"She'll be fine," Liz said. "Isabel knows what she's doing."

Max looked at Liz. "Do you really think so?"

Hesitation showed on Liz's face. "I don't know what to think anymore. All of this, Max"… she took a deep breath and let it out… "all of this is so far over our heads, I don't even know when the last time was that I felt like we could deal."

Glancing around the room, Max saw Michael and Maria talking quietly in the kitchen, picking pepperoni slices from the leftover pizza. Valenti stood by the door, like he was just about to go out and do something, but his attention was riveted on the television. News stories of people who had seen ghosts in Roswell continued to interrupt television programming. Kyle sat nearby on the floor, his injured arm elevated as he dozed.

"I know," Max said. "It's always been kind of complicated." He shook his head. "I had no right bringing you into this."

"You didn't bring me into this," Liz said. "You saved me that day in the Crashdown."

"I should have stopped there," Max said. "When you came back around asking questions, I should have just walked away."

"You couldn't do that," Liz told him.

Max looked into her eyes and felt as if he were standing on the edge of a cliff. "No. I tried."

"Life's complicated," Liz said. "Maybe yours is a little more complicated than others', but I'm sure it could be worse."

"I don't know. Roswell seems to be full of ghosts because of us."

"No. The ghosts were coming. You… we… may be able to help." Liz nodded toward the television. "Those people out there don't have a clue, Max. River Dog doesn't know what to do. He told you that. But you and Michael and Isabel, maybe you three can do something about this. Maybe you were meant to."

"I hope so," Max said. There was a lot more that he hoped for, but he didn't dare put those thoughts into words.

"No matter how complicated your life gets," Liz said, putting her hand inside his, "I'll be there for you."

Max looked at her, elation pushing up through him and overpowering the hopelessness and fatigue that had been dogging him. "You will?"

"Yes," Liz said. "That's what friends do."

Friends. The word dropped like an anvil through Max's stomach. Sour bile rose to the back of his throat, but he managed to swallow it back down. Friends. Could he just be friends when he wanted so much more? Then he felt guilty. After the way he had treated Liz, he had no reason to expect anything more. In fact, he should be grateful that she was still willing to be his friend.

Max tried to speak but couldn't. The effort hurt, and he knew his words would come out strained. Instead he squeezed her hand reassuringly.

"Max," Liz said, her voice soft and low.

Max turned his attention to her, but before she could continue, Isabel jerked violently on the couch. A low moan escaped her lips.

Releasing Liz's hand, Max leaned up on his knees and searched Isabel's face. Her features contorted in fear or pain, Max wasn't sure.

"Isabel," Max called softly, not wanting to wake her too abruptly. "Isabel."

Isabel moaned again, then jerked and tried to roll. Max caught his sister before she tumbled from the couch.

"What's wrong?" Valenti asked, suddenly at Max's side.

"I don't know," Max said.

Isabel jerked and convulsed, moaning again.

"Isabel," Max said. "Come on. Come on back. Isabel!"

Isabel stood with her back to the locked basement door. She wanted to go back to Michael's house, but she knew she might not get another chance to dreamwalk Leroy Wilkins. The answer to some of what faced them lay in this room. She was certain of that.

Wilkins hauled back the pickax again, then threw the gleaming point forward, digging the pick into the wall. Concrete shattered and broke. Sparks leaped from the contact, buzzing out like burning embers. The old man gasped for breath, sounding like a bellows in the enclosed space.

But the maddening thump of the heartbeat continued.

Isabel forced herself to stay when everything in her wanted to go.

The pick passed through the concrete wall with a metallic crunch. Wilkins gave an insane whoop of glee. "I got you now, Swanson. I got you now. You ain't gonna crawl out of that grave an' come for me some night. I'm gonna finish the job I started all those years ago. Gonna put you back in the ground, an' you're gonna stay there."

Fractures spread across the concrete surface, marking out the roughly rectangular shape the body had been hidden behind. Chunks of rock fell onto the basement floor at Wilkins's feet. Once the hole was made, Wilkins dropped the pickax and seized the sledgehammer. He beat at the opening in the wall, smashing it wider and taller.

The battery-powered camp lantern threw a golden glow over the skeleton dressed in rags within the makeshift tomb. The thumping of the monstrous heartbeat reached a crescendo, and the deafening noise vibrated inside Isabel.

"It wasn't him!" Wilkins cried. Dropping the sledgehammer, the old man reached into the hole and hauled the corpse out. The weight was too much for Wilkins, though, and the dead man slipped free of his grip. The corpse clattered to the basement floor, raising a small gust of dust that eddied in the illumination given off by the camp lantern.

Isabel watched as Wilkins backed away from the dead man.

"That heartbeat wasn't him," Wilkins shouted over the thundering thump. "Heartbeat wasn't him at all. I thought it was, but you can see for yourself: He ain't got no heart."

Through the ragged shirt that was stained with old blood, Isabel looked at Swanson's empty rib cage. It was true: The man had no heart. Where was the heartbeat coming from? Was the noise just Wilkins's guilt finally catching up to him?

"It wasn't Swanson," Wilkins said. "It was that bug. That bug that he kept at his throat."

"What bug?" Isabel asked. She had to work hard not to get grossed out. The bones were filled with old spider-webs, and the husks of dead spiders knotted up inside the silken strands.

"Me an' him," Wilkins said, "we found this bug. A little metal bug. We found it at a dig site. Wasn't nothin' there. No gold, no uranium, no copper. Wasn't nothin' there but dirt. An' that bug he kept in that leather pouch at his throat. He thought the bug was somethin' the Mesaliko made. The bug was dead. As dead as Swanson." His eyes dropped to the corpse. "Only now the bug ain't dead, is it? And Swanson ain't dead either."

Spotting the leather pouch at the dead man's neck, Isabel recognized the article as the one Valenti had shown them back in Michael's house. Valenti had said something had torn through the leather.

As she watched, a gleaming silver thread poked through the side of the leather bag. Involuntarily Isabel took a step back. The silver thread worked quickly, joined by other silver threads, all of them clenching and unclenching furiously, like the segmented legs of a wasp. In seconds the side of the leather bag ripped out, leaving a ragged edge.

A silver shape emerged. Balanced on thread-thin legs, the improbable insect creature had the characteristics of a spider and a wasp. It spread two of the threadlike appendages, and a diaphanous foil wing pulled taut between them. The creature leaped and hopped as if trying to launch itself into the air, but never succeeded.

"I tried to kill it." Wilkins crept forward from the shadows, clinging to the wall. He took a fresh grip on the sledgehammer and raised the heavy head high. "I tried to kill it an' that's when Swanson come to life again."

Before he could bring the sledgehammer down, a ghostly form drew up from the tangled scatter of bones and rotting clothing. The man was taller than Wilkins, and thin as a rail. He wore an eye patch and a hard expression.

"You killed me, Leroy Wilkins," the ghost accused, leveling an accusatory finger. "You killed me, an' I come to kill you back." Moving with unnatural speed, the ghost closed on Wilkins with fists upraised and ready to strike.

Wilkins cowered against the back wall.

Using her power Isabel tried to erase memory of the ghost from the dreamwalk connection. Instead the ghost froze in midrun. The ghost probably wasn't, Isabel decided, much less scary frozen than it was while in motion.

Offering mute testimony to that fact, Wilkins cringed against the wall. He mewled plaintively, hiding behind his raised hands and arms.

"Mr. Wilkins," Isabel called softly. She approached the man cautiously, knowing he might attack her because he was so afraid.

"It's not Swanson," the old man whispered hoarsely. "But it is. He wants to kill me."

"This isn't real, Mr. Wilkins," Isabel said. "This is just a memory. A dream. This isn't happening. You don't have to be afraid."

Wilkins peered at her angrily. "You'd be afraid too if you had one of those things huntin' you. They're devils, come from Hell itself to bring Swanson back to get me. You seen it."

"It's not real."

"It was." Wilkins stared at the frozen ghost. "It was real enough then, an' it will be real again. You can't stop them."

Isabel glanced at the ghost. Did it just move? She wasn't certain. But she believed Kyle had been right when he'd suggested that the creatures were able to read minds, or at least were able to access a person's subconscious and find an image that would terrify him or her.

She turned her attention back to Wilkins. "Where exactly was the site where you found the bug?"

"Didn't turn out to be nothin' but a placer mine." Wilkins said. "Only had a spot of color, nothin' a man could make any money at."

"Where, Mr. Wilkins?" Isabel persisted.

Without warning, the ghost surged free of its frozen state. Even though Isabel knew the ghost hadn't broken free of her control on its own and that actually Wilkins had taken back control of the dreamwalk, a surge of fear still slammed through her at the sight of it. She knew the ghost couldn't hurt her, and still she was scared.

Wilkins screamed as the ghost grabbed him. The sound of a beating heart filled the basement again, but the beats were somehow different this time.

Isabel grabbed at the ghost's shoulder, intending to pull the thing off the old man. Instead her hands passed through the ghost. She tried again, reaching for Wilkins this time, but only met with the same result. Ghost and man were both intangible to her.

"Mr. Wilkins." Isabel stepped within arm's reach of the old man. "Mr. Wilkins, I need to know where you and Swanson found the bug."

Without warning, the battery-powered camp lantern dimmed so much that the basement walls could no longer be seen. In the next instant, Isabel was standing in deep black space with no way to orient herself. For all she knew, the world had ceased to exist.

The ghost slowly faded away, like smoke lifting from a field when the wind changed.

Wilkins remained against the wall, screaming and crying out for help. Then the heartbeat ceased thundering.

Voices tumbled out of the darkness, frantic and practiced all at the same time. "Code Blue! I've got a Code Blue!"

"His heart's stopped. Start CPR."

"CPR started."

Wilkins crumpled to a fetal position. Tears glistened on his face as his rheumy eyes sought Isabel's out. "I'm scared," he whispered. "I don't want to go."

Isabel didn't know what to say.

"He's in full arrest," a far-off voice said.

"Guy's old," someone else said. "Even if we save him, we could do a lot of damage here."

"We're breaking ribs."

"Give me the paddles."

Isabel listened to the voices, thinking it had to be a television episode playing in the background. She wanted to leave.

"Don't go," Wilkins begged. "I don't want to be alone."

Isabel shook her head. "I can't help you," she whispered. "There are people in the hospital. They can help you. They're helping you now."

"It's too late," Wilkins said. "They can't help me."

"Clear!" someone shouted from what sounded like a thousand miles away.

"I don't know what to do," Isabel said.

"Stay with me," Wilkins asked desperately.

The darkness shuddered around Isabel.

"Nothing," someone said.

"We're going again. Clear!"

Another shudder passed through the darkness, and this time it claimed Leroy Wilkins, blotting him from Isabel's view in a heartbeat. She stood alone in the darkness and felt it pull at her. Then she tried to slip out of the dreamwalk and return to her body in Michael's house, tried to feel Michael's battered sofa against her body.

She couldn't. She was still stuck in the dreamwalk.

Suddenly a pool of blackness darker than anything Isabel had ever seen opened up near her. Irresistibly, like a moth drawn to a flame, she was pulled to it.

"Isabel Evans."

The voice sounded familiar, but Isabel couldn't place it. She tried to turn around, but the dark pool floating before her kept drawing her in.

A hand caught hers, pulling her back and around. As she turned, she saw River Dog standing before her.

"Come," River Dog said. "There is not much time."

Isabel found she was freed from the pull of the pool. "What about Leroy Wilkins?"

"His time in this place is done," River Dog said. "You can do nothing for him. He must make his peace in the next world, and we can only mourn him and pray for him."

Isabel fell into step with River Dog, amazed at the way the black shadows suddenly gave way to a moonlight-kissed desert landscape. Another step and she was running, feeling the sand crunch under her feet.

"Where are we going?" Isabel asked.

"I have found the spirits," River Dog answered. "And they have found me."

"How did you find me?" Isabel said. Getting into the dreamwalk she'd had with Wilkins wasn't possible. At least, she hadn't thought it was possible from everything she knew about her power. Then again she didn't totally understand everything she did. She just accepted that she could do it.

"I am on a vision quest, Isabel Evans," River Dog responded. Despite his age, he loped easily through the desert. A nocturnal desert cottontail exploded from the shadow of a cactus and hopped furiously along the moonlit landscape, escaping back into the night.

Isabel watched the small creature for a moment, feeling disoriented and no longer in control. However, from the time that she had joined River Dog, she could also feel the connection to her body in Michael's house again. She could be back there in a split second and she knew it.

"The animals can sense us," River Dog said. "It's not unheard of. In a vision quest a traveler of the People is closest to nature."

"The spirits aren't ghosts," Isabel said.

"No," River Dog agreed. "They are travelers not unlike you and your brother and your friend."

"From another place?"

"Yes." River Dog ran harder. "We must hurry. If they find that I am talking to you, they may prevent it."

"Why are they haunting your people?" Isabel asked. "Why are they haunting Roswell?"

"Now that they have awakened from their long sleep, they feel they must protect themselves. Come. We must hurry." River Dog picked up the pace, still holding on to her hand.

Only a few steps later, Isabel saw they were running for the edge of a cliff high above the desert floor. River Dog showed no intention of stopping.

"Cliff," Isabel warned.

"It doesn't matter," River Dog said, pulling her toward the edge.

Resisting the impulse to dig in her heels and stop, Isabel ran with River Dog. If worse came to worse, she could always end the dreamwalk and be safe back in Michael's house. Two more steps and she was suddenly out over a fifty-foot drop.

She fell.

But even as she tumbled earthward, a change came over her. She stared at her arms as feathers suddenly jutted out, and in the next instant her arms became wings.

"Come," River Dog said from beside her.

Isabel looked at him, finding that he had become an owl. She saw her own reflection in his great moons of eyes. She was an owl as well, and her fear was mixed with apprehension and childish glee that she would have never owned in front of Max or Michael.

Instinctively she stretched out her wings and caught the air. A couple of wing strokes and she climbed into the night sky, following River Dog.

"Come," River Dog cried, putting on speed in a burst of flapping wings.

Isabel followed as smoothly as though she'd been shifting shapes all her life.