The Temptation (Kindred) (9 page)

M
inutes later, as I sat on the floor of the cave,
rocking and hugging my knees, scarcely daring to breathe, silently praying and begging for Travis to return, I saw a faint glimmer of lights in my peripheral vision. Frightened, I snapped my head toward the lights, and where they had been I now saw a faint smoky shape floating in the air, sort of pale blue, about the size of a man.

“Travis?” I called softly, my heart hammering in my chest. What if it wasn’t him? What if it was whoever had just called me? The smoke undulated a bit, and sort of snaked along in the air toward me. Instinctively, I scooted away from it, until my back was pressed hard against the uneven surface of the cavern wall. I trembled. The haze seemed to pause, and it began to fade away. It was almost worse not to see it, because I knew it was still there, just invisible now.

“Travis?” I whispered. “Please don’t leave me here alone. Please give me some sign that it’s you.”

A brighter light caught my attention now, near the ceiling of the cave. I looked up and saw an orb, made of faint blue light, hovering above me. It hummed, in harmonic intervals of sound. I powerfully sensed his presence, in a way that is almost impossible to describe. I just knew, much as I had known he was with me in the dream. I felt his energy, and his smile, and his calm confidence as it surrounded me protectively. I knew that everything was going to be okay.

“I feel you,” I whispered. “I know you’re here.”

The orb moved now, first drifting down to eye level in front of me, and then zipping with incredible speed across the cave and back, leaving a trail of soft, shimmering light in its wake, like the faintest of tiny comets. It stopped, and hovered, until the light trails had disappeared, and then began to move again, this time tracing the shape of a heart in the air, with a smiley face in the middle. The fear drained out of me.

“You’re silly,” I whispered, and told him about the phone call. As I spoke, the orb glowed brighter, as if to reassure me he could still protect me.

The orb floated to the lip of the cave now, and went down, then back up toward me. It reminded me of the way a dog will run to you and then away and then back to you when it wants to be followed. Travis wanted me to go down the rock wall. Gingerly, I let myself over the edge, and felt with my toes for the indentions in the rock. I wished I had a rope to tether me to the wall. It was never smart to climb without one, especially in the dark, but a full moon had risen and there was enough light for me to see. Slowly, I descended, all the while with Travis hovering just beside me, reassuringly.

When I touched the ground, I heard the coyote howl, answered by others yipping madly. I began to shake, and the orb expanded into smoke again, and enveloped me for a moment. It was an invisible embrace that filled me with peace, calm, and strength. Travis. His spirit was so soothing to me, so profoundly peaceful, I could not imagine what he might have done to deserve the Vortex. I knew he was trying to protect me. I also knew, in that same unspoken way, that whoever had called me was out there, watching us, waiting.

Travis took on the orb shape again and zoomed along the path a few yards, then hovered to wait for me to follow. I traipsed clumsily along after him, trying not to notice the eerie night calls coming from the distance.

I could see light streaming from behind the crag where I had parked my car. As we rounded the rock, I saw that the headlights were on and every door was open, pouring yellow light from the interior of the car into the black night in every direction.

“Buddy!” I cried, starting for the car. Quickly, the orb was in front of me, glowing powerfully in a pulsating rhythm, as though in warning. I understood instantly. Be cautious. I slowed to a walk again, worried about my sweet little dog.

As we drew closer to my car, the orb became vapor, and enveloped me again, protectively. The peace it had given me earlier was weakened now, though; I didn’t know if this was because I was fretting so much over my dog or because Travis was also worried. I wished I could ask him and get an answer.

Soon enough, I saw that the car was empty. Buddy was gone. “No!”

The vapor undulated a moment, then became an orb again, darting into the vehicle as though checking it out for safety. I knew I was to wait until he was done with this inspection. I remembered the phone call, how the caller had told me to tell Travis that he’d know where to find my friend. Victor had my dog.

“Travis,” I called out to the orb. “It’s him. Victor took Buddy. He warned me about it when he called my cell phone. He said you’d know where to find him.”

The orb continued its check of the car, under the seats, around the steering wheel, under the car itself, on top as well. Then, in a display of what I could only think was poltergeist power, Travis somehow closed all the doors except for the driver’s side one. The orb, growing paler—perhaps from exertion—came to a halt directly in front of me.

And then my phone vibrated with a text message. I looked at the caller ID, and it was the line of continuous zeros I’d gotten when Travis had phoned me at the hospital.

The text read:
GO HOME NOW.

The orb floated into the car and hovered over the steering wheel, an invitation for me to go.

“Okay,” I said, shaking. “But I can’t just leave Buddy out there all alone!”

The orb stayed put, and I could almost see Travis sighing in frustration with me. I sensed that he was very tired.

In the near distance, again I heard a coyote howl, and I hurtled my body into the car and slammed the door behind me. The locks engaged without me doing anything, Travis protecting me yet again. The orb began to fade before my eyes, thinning to vapor, curling slowly into the darkness.

“I guess this is good night,” I said. “Thank you. Please help me find Buddy.”

The smoke enveloped me, and I did my best to hug back, mentally. Slowly, the smoke faded to nothingness, and I assumed this meant Travis had returned to wherever he needed to go. I looked out at the night, and saw a pair of glowing red eyes staring down at me from the rise. The eyes looked happy. Laughing. I hated them, and whomever they belonged to. I began to cry for Buddy, imagining the worst. I started the engine, revved it a couple of times in fury toward Victor—I was almost completely certain this was all his fault—before pulling a tight, fast U-turn.

Mercifully, Travis’s orb guided me until I hit the smooth blacktop of the highway. I hated leaving Buddy out there! But I comforted myself with the thought that Travis was looking for him. He knew how much I loved that dog. Victor must have been counting on that.

I leaned forward over the steering wheel as though that might somehow make me go faster. I fumbled for the phone pieces in my pocket with one hand, and as I drove managed to put the thing back together again.

Instinctively, I called Kelsey, using the car’s wireless device so that I could keep both hands on the wheel. Her voice was cheerful and normal coming through the car’s speakers, and I told her everything. I released all the tension and fear, and sobbed, and she reassured me and asked me to take a deep breath, to slow down, to tell her again so she understood.

“Where are you now?” she finally asked when I’d finished.

“Coming home, driving.”

“Please be careful,” she said.

“I am.”

“I’m worried about you.”

“Me, too,” I said, staring out at the cold, dark night.

“Call me when you get home to let me know you’re okay,” she said.

We ended the call after that, and whatever small reassurance had come from hearing my best friend’s voice was replaced almost immediately by a silent, ominous dread. I remembered my mother’s words, about how there were no atheists in an emergency. I finally understood what she’d meant. I began to mutter a prayer to the Maker under my breath—for Buddy, but also for Travis, and for myself, and for all the world, really, because for the first time in my life I knew, really knew, that evil existed, and that sometimes, in spite of us being good people, it had the power to reach out and snatch from us the things we loved the most.

B
y the time I made it to the comforting urban
lights and sprawl of Albuquerque, I couldn’t see any sign of Travis still with me. No sign of Victor, either. I was about to turn into the long curving driveway to my house when I saw Kelsey’s red Prius parked at the curb out front. It took me all of two seconds to figure out that it had been a colossal mistake to tell her everything about Travis and the Vortex, the eerie phone call and my kidnapped dog. She’d told my mother.

I let myself in through the garage, and tiptoed into the house.

My mother and Kelsey sat side by side at the granite island in the kitchen, facing the laundry room, waiting for me. Kelsey had a bottle of fancy Italian pear soda, the kind my mom got from Whole Foods, while my mother, in her nightgown, appeared to have consumed an entire bottle of red wine—a sure sign that she was not happy, and that I was in big trouble. The last two times my mother had waited up for me with a bottle of wine, I’d been grounded for two weeks.

“Hi,” I said miserably, dropping my keys into the wicker basket on the counter.

“Oh, Shane,” my mother groaned. She shook her head, disappointed and concerned, but also relieved that I had made it home. I hated that particular combination of parental mixed emotions.

I blinked obnoxiously at my former best friend, feeling incredibly naked and betrayed. “Well, hello, Kelsey,” I said facetiously. “What a surprise to find you here at eleven thirty at night on a Friday.”

“I told you, I was worried about you,” Kelsey said, her face registering terrible hurt. She thought she was helping me. Of course she did. Never tell the daughter of psychotherapists you’re visiting a hot dead guy in a cave, or that you get calls from scary people on dead phones, or that your dog has been taken by a demon named Victor.

Lesson learned.

“So, is that what the party’s for?” I asked sarcastically, indicating the wine bottle. “Shane’s gone cuh-ray-zay, let’s whoop it up?”

I was angry. I’d been through too much that day. I just wanted to drop into my bed and sleep.

“Kelsey called me after you called her from Chaco Canyon tonight,” my mother told me, standing up and coming to put her hands on my shoulders while she searched my eyes, her own filled with deep sorrow and grave concern. I hated this look.

“Great,” I said, averting my gaze.

“Shane, we need to talk.” My mother ducked down, trying to reconnect her bloodshot gaze with mine, but I turned away.

“No, we don’t,” I said, shrugging out of her grasp. I stormed from the room.

“Get back here, young lady!”

“Just leave me alone!” I yelled back.

I heard feet running down the hall after me, and Kelsey and my mother tag-teamed me, grabbing me and dragging me back to the great room, forcing me onto the sofa. They looked so self-righteous it made me want to throw up. They had no idea what I’d been through, and there was no way I could tell them and have them believe me. Holding me down on the sofa, and kneeling at my feet, my mother said sternly, “Shane Clark, where is your dog?”

I said nothing.

“Did you take Buddy out into the desert and lose him?” my mother asked me, mortified.

“I didn’t lose him. He was taken.”

“Oh, my Lord,” said my mother. “Who took him?”

I stared stonily ahead and said nothing.

My mother continued the interrogation. “Did you actually tell Kelsey you were rescued by a dead boy? And that you tried to go to purgatory to visit him? Did you lose your poor dog in the middle of the freezing desert?”

I refused to look at either one of them.

My mother sighed unhappily.

Kelsey rubbed my arm. “Tell your mom what you told me about your ghost friend and the demon, and how he stole Buddy to bait the ghost so he could ruin his chances at going to heaven.”

“The Afterworld,” I corrected instinctively, then flinched with regret.

Kelsey and my mother exchanged a look of bewilderment.

“Oh, my God,” said my mother, but not because she was worried Victor might get to me. She was upset that I was insane. “What is happening to you, Shane? This isn’t like you at all!”

“I’d like to go to bed now,” I said.

“Shane, honey. Listen to me. I’m a doctor. What you’re saying, it’s not normal. Surely you can understand that.”

“I realize that,” I told her, finally making eye contact. “You think I don’t realize that? I don’t want this to be happening to me! It wasn’t my choice. I don’t understand it, either. And I’m not lying. I’m not making this up.”

“I know, honey.” I could tell from the look on my mother’s face that she thought she had made some sort of breakthrough with me. “Listen to me. It’s not unusual to have hallucinations after hitting your head really hard. If you’ve injured your occipital lobes, it can lead to hallucinations.” She put her hand on the back of my head. “That’s here, sweetie.”

“I didn’t hit my head!”

“That’s not what you told me,” Kelsey said guiltily. She did not enjoy betraying me, I could tell, but she felt it was her duty. She looked at my mother again and spoke of me as if I weren’t there. “She told me she was nearly dead and that this ghost cowboy dude rescued her with stones and a slingshot before a gang of coyotes ate her.”

I gulped and said nothing. The looks on their faces were so insulting, and yet I understood it completely. If the situation had been reversed, if Kelsey had been the one in the accident, who met the ghost, and she had called me two weeks ago or so to tell me about it, I would have thought she was nuts, too.

“I know it sounds weird, okay?” I said impatiently. “But these things really did happen to me. If you love me, you have to believe me!”

“Shane,” my mother said again, in a patronizing tone. “Tell me, have you had trouble recognizing colors at all? Has it been harder to read and write since the crash? Have you noticed that it’s harder for you to recognize or understand things that are drawn on paper?”

“No! I’m fine. I swear! I had tests done, you saw the results yourself.”

“Sometimes tests miss things.” My mother looked at me as though I were a pitiful orphan rather than her own child. “Have you had trouble reading music? Or have you had any blind spots in your field of vision?”

“No, Mom! Stop examining me! I’m not your patient!”

Kelsey and my mother exchanged a look of sadness.

“It’s not unusual, Shane, to hit the back of your head in a car crash. The seat back is right there. Car crashes are common causes of this type of trauma.”

“I’m fine. I don’t have any trauma.”

This went on for a time, my mother playing doctor and Kelsey biting her lower lip and staring at the floor, while I tried to figure out a way to make this all better. I couldn’t. There was no way. They were convinced I was losing my mind.

Once the interrogation was over and my mother had announced that I would need to be taken to a brain trauma specialist, and Kelsey had apologized and told me that she had only done this for my own good, I asked if I could eat something. I was suddenly starving. My mother said yes, and she and Kelsey followed me to the kitchen, watching over me like hawks.

I poured myself a large bowl of cereal and milk. I took this to the living room, trailed by both of them as surely as a mental patient might be trailed by orderlies with clipboards. I sat in the chair across the coffee table from the sofa, and they sat anxiously on the sofa to watch me. My mother looked me up and down with worry. I looked her up and down with what I hoped was a blank expression. I resisted throwing cereal at her.

“We’re going to help you get through this, sweetie,” she told me uncertainly.

I spooned cereal into my mouth and said nothing, chewing with my mouth open because I knew it would annoy her.

“Is there anything else you want to tell me about what you’ve been seeing and experiencing?” my mother asked.

“Considering that I never wanted to tell you any of it at all, no,” I replied. “Oh, wait. Yes, there is something. Kelsey met him. The ‘imaginary’ cowboy who rescued me. She thought he was hot, too. Did she tell you that part?”

My mother, shocked and suddenly suspicious, looked at Kelsey for an answer. “No, she didn’t,” she said.

“You saw him, right?” I asked Kelsey. “But now you’re acting like it’s all made up.”

“I saw a guy, yes, and he was dressed like a cowboy,” Kelsey said. “He had her necklace,” Kelsey explained. “He said he found it at the crash site, but I bet he stole it so he’d have a reason to find her again. He brought it back to her at the bagel shop. He obviously isn’t a ghost. Just some random guy.”

“He’s not just some guy,” I insisted, tears burning in my eyes and spilling down my cheeks. “He’s—he’s perfect. I love him.”

Kelsey hugged her chest and looked around, making me think at least some small part of her believed me. My mother was not buying any of it, however. She was starting to cry with frustration and anxiety.

“This is worse than I thought,” she said. “But we’ll help you, darling. We will. I promise you that.”

“You know what, you guys?” I said before slurping down the last of the milk from my bowl. “I am just really, really tired. And I’d like to be alone now.”

“That’s a sign of brain trauma,” my mother assured me.

“It’s also a sign of it being night and me being human. So if you’re done telling me I’m psychotic, I’d like to go to bed.”

“No one’s saying you’re psychotic,” my mother said, insulted. “What you likely have is trauma, to your occipital lobe and possibly other parts of the brain. It’s perfectly normal to go through what you’re going through, honey. I know that’s hard to believe right now, but I am begging you, as your mother here, and not wearing my doctor hat, as your mother I am begging you, whatever rational bit of my amazing daughter we have left fighting in that beautiful brain of yours, I am begging you to at least consider the possibility that everything you think is happening might not actually be happening. Okay? Can we at least do that?”

I held the empty bowl in my lap and looked at it, and wondered if there was any way she could be right. If I’d only hit my head, like she said, then I might have imagined the injuries, and then imagined them going away. I might have imagined all of it. I might have just been sitting in the Land Rover the whole time today, dreaming that I was going into the Vortex. I shivered at this new possibility. What if she was right?

“Okay,” I said, starting to doubt myself in a very disturbing way. “Can we agree to say none of us know what’s happening to me, until I see the brain doctor? And will you leave me alone until then?”

“Sure, honey. As long as you don’t go driving around. In fact, I don’t want you driving anywhere until this is resolved.” My mother’s face brightened for the first time since I’d come home, and she got up to hug me. “I’m proud of you. It takes a strong girl to admit she might be hallucinating.”

“Yes, I think I saw that on a poster in the counseling office,” I said. “Very inspiring, Mom.”

My mother laughed, and kissed me softly on the head. “Nice to see you still have your sense of humor. That bodes well for your recovery.”

“If I’m sick,” I corrected her.

“If you’re sick,” she said condescendingly.

“I’m sorry, Shane,” Kelsey told me, getting up to hug me, too. She had tears in her eyes, but I didn’t return her embrace. “I know you’re mad at me, but I think someday you’ll thank me. I did it because I love you.”

I said nothing in return.

“I really hope you’re still going to help me with the Christmas party next weekend,” Kelsey told me.

“Sure,” I said.

“We should let her rest,” my mother told Kelsey.

“Okay,” Kelsey said. “Good-bye, Dr. Romero. Bye, Shane.”

My mother hugged Kelsey tightly and thanked her. “My daughter doesn’t know how lucky she is to have a friend like you,” she said. “Tell your parents they raised a great kid, okay?”

“Okay,” Kelsey said with a self-conscious giggle. “Bye.”

And with that sickening display of affection mercifully ended, I plunked my dirty bowl into the sink, and staggered off down the hall to my room, locking the door behind me.

I went to the computer on my desk, and moved the mouse to wake it. Then I opened the internet browser, and went to the search engine. I typed in “Travis Hartwell” and “New Mexico,” pressed Enter, and waited. Moments later it returned a page of results, the top six of which were stories from the
Valencia County Times
about rodeo competitions. I scanned past these, looking for something else—and found it.

The seventh entry was a news brief from an Albuquerque television station. The headline confirmed my worst fears, and also confirmed that my mother was wrong about me:
BELOVED BELEN BROTHERS DEAD IN FIERY CRASH.

I clicked on the story. It told of a freak accident on Highway 550, in which a truck hauling a horse drove off a cliff and was instantly incinerated. The truck belonged to a ranch owner named Deirdre Hartwell of Belen, New Mexico, but was mostly used by her younger son, a rodeo competitor. The boy and the horse were killed in the crash.

Suddenly, the pendant on my neck felt hot. I put my hand to it and nearly burned myself. Unable to bear its heat against my skin, I quickly undid the clasp and dropped the pendant on the desk. It seemed to be throbbing with light for a moment, and then cooled down. I was on the right track.

I continued to read the news story.

The truck was driven by her two sons, Travis and Randy Hartwell, last seen at a rodeo competition where Travis, a straight-A student at Belen High, had placed first in calf roping. Randy, a part-time student at the University of New Mexico, was employed at his mother’s ranch and often supported his brother during competitions. Hartwell was surprised to learn that her sons had been so far from home and had no explanation for why they might have been driving on that isolated road. The heartbroken Hartwell, who had only these two children, said that they were “good boys,” adding, “We were all very close.”