Ghostcountry's Wrath (37 page)

Calvin bit his lip, suppressing the urge to slap the crap out of the lad. “But how?” he managed finally.

Brock shrugged. “It was in the cave. You and 'Kacha had gone; so had Sandy. I was by myself, and I guess I got scared 'cause I know how much you hate doing that; only you're a pretty cool dude, so anything you don't like's bound to be kind of a bitch. And then I saw how much it hurt Sandy, and I got real scared, only I knew I had to do it or look like a wimp. But just as I was getting ready, I looked down and saw this other scale. I'd figured old Tsistu was fooling when he said an uktena lived in that cave, but he must not've been, 'cause there was a scale there on the floor. So I said, ‘What the hey?' You were worried about running out of charges, so I thought I'd try another one.” He paused to take a breath; shifted his weight. “Anyway…it
did
work, but I changed back to me just to be sure, and then…I guess I figured I'd do us all a favor without telling anybody—I was afraid you'd get mad—so I swapped mine for the scale on your necklace real fast. It was kinda hard to bring 'em both through together, but I did it. I dropped the old one soon as I got through the gate, and then slipped it in my pocket when Sandy had her back turned while I was getting dressed.”

“Smart kid.” Calvin snorted. “Smart—but dumb.”

“It worked, didn't it? And this way we've got a spare.”

Calvin puffed his cheeks thoughtfully, at once pissed and relieved. The kid had a point, damn him!

“So, we cool?” Brock ventured, when Calvin did not continue.

“Maybe,” Calvin hedged. “I'm not the one you have to convince.”

*

“I'll try it,” Maurice McIntosh announced a short time later. He was sitting peacefully in the verdant, misty glade that had no right to exist around the corner of a stone outcrop in an arid land. “If it works, fine; and if it don't, I'm no worse off than I was.”

“Unless you get stuck in another shape,” Calvin muttered, shooting a glare at Brock, who stood behind him looking both cocky and contrite.

“That's my problem, son.”

Calvin gnawed his lip. “Yeah, well, I'm startin' to learn that it's never
just
one person's problem.”

“If you've learned that much, you've learned a lot, then.”

A shrug.

“I can't try that scale-thing until I have it, boy.”

Calvin grimaced, but unwound the scale from the wires that secured it. His father rose to receive it. “I'd suggest you try it at sunset,” Calvin advised, “then again at sunrise, and so on. Be warned, though: it hurts like hell.”

“I know,” Maurice replied quietly. “I've seen you do it. I just never knew that stuff about the scars, an' all.”

“What if it
doesn't
work?”

“It's magic of this land, therefore it'll work. I believe that as much as I believed in Spearfinger—more, in fact.”

Another shrug.

“You're still not happy?”

Calvin shook his head and slumped against a tree trunk, arms folded across his chest. Both Brock and his father stared at him, their faces dark with concern. “What's the problem, boy?” Maurice asked finally, reaching forward to rest a hand on his son's shoulder. Brock snared the empty nest of wires that had held the scale and began resecuring the original.

“You mean besides the fact that I won't know for hours whether or not I've done you any good?” Calvin replied sullenly.

Maurice's grip tightened. “This ain't the time for games, son. Here you have to say what you mean.”

Calvin scowled grimly. “You weren't the only one I came here to see about.”

An eyebrow lifted. “You mean them two boys?”

Calvin nodded. “Michael Chadwick—who I guess is in the same boat you are. And Don Scott. Have you, uh, seen 'em?”

“I've seen that
first
boy a lot,” Maurice told him. “His soul-blood's of this land. He follows me around some—at a distance. Used to follow me to look at you.”

“But he was
with
you…!”

Maurice shook his head. “That's how it looked, maybe. But it didn't seem that way from my side. I think he was held back by that other boy.”

“Don? Yeah, well, he's not even dead—or wasn't when he called up Michael. Have you seen him?”

“A time or two. He's—”

“He's asleep near here,” a new voice interrupted: young, and thick with sadness. Calvin glanced around, startled; saw Brock do the same. A new figure had entered the glade. Like Calvin's dad, he wore no more than a loincloth, but unlike the elder McIntosh, he was a boy—about Brock's age, though blond and a little taller and more filled out. He looked…lost.

“M-Michael?” Calvin guessed as the lad wandered forward.

Brock glared at the visitor sharply, even as the lad tried to grin. “Mike,” the boy corrected. “I don't look much like I did, do I? It's all clothes, though—and hair. When you live in the real world you see what you expect to see a lot of times. Nobody expected to see me as an Indian 'cause that blood didn't show much. Shoot,
I
didn't even know it until I came here. But my
soul
knew. It brought me to the place I'd be happiest.”

“You got a bum deal, then,” Calvin snorted. “If this is the best it could do.”

The boy shrugged. “I'm a very new soul, so they say. And eternity's a pretty long haul. I—”

“So, how'd you find us?” Brock interrupted. He'd finished restoring the scale and passed it back to Calvin, who promptly replaced it around his neck.

“By thinking about me, you summoned me; that's all it takes. Even in the real world it wouldn't take much more. Trouble is, Don did that little bit extra and got in trouble, poor guy.”

Calvin frowned perplexedly. “But I thought you wanted him here!”

Mike shook his head. “Not as much as he wanted to come! Me, I'm like your dad: I want to get to the good place beyond the river, hold up a while, then move on again.”

“So where is he?” Brock persisted. “I mean, Cal's dad said he was nearby—but where?”

“I come here a lot, anyway,” Mike went on, as if he hadn't heard. “And when I got here, I felt you guys thinkin' about me, and I zipped over. But I've gotta go now; I've gotta check on Don.”

Calvin reached out abruptly and took him by the shoulders, firmly, but not in anger.
“Where?
Mike!”

Mike dipped his head to the left over his shoulder. “There, not far.”

“Will you show us?”

“If you can help him, I'll take you to the end of the World!” Mike shot back savagely. “Come on!” He was already walking.

Calvin hesitated, gazing uncertainly at his father. “You comin'?”

“I'm better off here.”

“I'll be back—I hope,” Calvin replied helplessly. “Brock, how 'bout you?”

“Wouldn't miss it,” the boy grinned and fell into step behind.

*

As Mike had said, it wasn't far to where Don Scott's mortal portion lay—not
physically,
not from the point of time passed or exertion expended. But it might as well have been the other side of the world, for all the good reaching it accomplished.

One instant Calvin was following the ghost-boy through a tangle of ferns, the next they had rounded an outthrust finger of stone (which might have been one of those buttresses that knifed out from the cliff)—and were in another place entirely, one Calvin recognized.

It was a campsite beside Iodine Creek. Specifically, it was the place where Spearfinger had found Michael Chadwick asleep and murdered him. But now another slept there, nestled in a lean-to that was no longer fallen to ruin: a dark-haired boy Calvin identified instantly as Don Scott. He lay flat on his back on a mattress of moss, with his wrists crossed on his stomach and a peaceful smile on his face. He was bare-chested, too; but someone had thrown a bearskin across his lower half.

“Our clothes don't last here,” Mike explained apologetically. “Nothing synthetic does—an' most sewin' thread's synthetic.”

“So, what's wrong with him?” Brock wondered nervously.

Mike's already sad expression clouded further. “He's asleep, just like you are, but in a different way. The living aren't supposed to be here, see, and— Well, they just can't handle it for long, and even so they can only meet the dead in dreams, even when you were as close as Don an' me were.”

Calvin's eyes narrowed. “Even when you brought him here?”

Mike nodded, looking absolutely wretched. “That was a mistake. 'Cept that he kept callin' and callin', and he looked so sad, and I missed him, and I could feel him missin' me even more, and I…just had to.”

“Yeah, but what's
wrong
with him?” Brock repeated.

Mike squatted by his sleeping friend's head and stroked his brow in a gesture that was as appropriate here as it would have been incongruous back in Georgia. “He just…can't
sleep
much longer,” he whispered finally. “His body needs more than it can get here. There's no food, and the water's not the same.”

Calvin looked puzzled. “But if you're in a dream, and I'm my dream-self, and so is Brock—I guess—then why isn't Don's dream-self here?”

“'Cause it's tired,” Mike replied. “His body's tired, and so's his soul, now. But he can't go back 'cause he won't wake up. And I can't take him back.”

“But I thought you guys were friends!” Brock blurted out.

“We
were
!”
Mike cried. “We are! It's just that…well, one reason Don wanted to see me one more time was to… apologize. He said there was too much unfinished between us; mostly that he couldn't live with the fact that he'd had to just stand there and watch Spearfinger kill me. He kept thinkin' that if he'd just been a little stronger or tried a little harder, he could've done something.”

“He couldn't, though,” Calvin assured him. “I've been in her mind: I know.”

“So do I—now,” Mike agreed. “But Don didn't—'cept that he does now, 'cause you can't hide anything from people here—not for long.”

“So why doesn't he just wake up and leave?” Brock wondered, fidgeting impatiently.

“'Cause he's still bummed out about me bein' stuck here,” Mike replied. “I think most of him wants to go back, but part of him knows that if he does, he'll start worryin' again. So he's shut himself off. But… Oh, gee, guys, I'm glad you're here! 'cause if he don't get out of here soon—he'll
die
!”

Brock giggled nervously. “In the land of the dead? Big deal!”

“It's not his place!” Mike snapped. “'Sides, I didn't get to live out my days; he deserves to! I want him to—for both of us.”

Calvin swapped resigned gazes with Brock. “So, buddy-boy,” he sighed. “I guess our job's to take him back.”

“I wish you would,” Mike whispered. “Or I'd wish that, 'cept for one thing.”

Calvin stared at him. “What?”

“He's pining here—'cause I can't go on. He'll do the same back there. The only difference is that there they'll hook him up to machines to keep him alive. And that's even worse than bein' dead.”

“Which means,” Calvin continued decisively, “that the only way we can save him is if he knows you've gone on.”

“And the only way you can do that,” Brock added excitedly, “is if you're complete—have your, uh, liver, and all.”

Mike nodded.

Calvin managed a cautious smile. “Well, then, you've come to the right place, my lad—maybe.”

“Huh?”

Calvin flopped an arm across his shoulder. “Come on, kid. You need to talk to my father.”

*

Michael Chadwick studied the triangular object in his palm warily, his slim fingers rubbing the vitreous surface as if to polish through the tarnish of doubt to the silver of certainty. But the scale remained as it was: diamond-hard and glossy. It was the new scale, though; Calvin had made sure of that, though he checked the one on the thong around his throat to be sure. “You said sunset would be best?” Mike asked, looking at him expectantly.

“In a perfect world,” Calvin replied. “It's a
between
time. And that's the best time for workin' magic—'specially what you might call
between
magic. I mean, what with the uktena bein' a
between
creature—shaped like a snake, but horned like a deer—and with you guys bein' stuck in a
between
place, and all…”