Chapter 13: NONE OF YOUR BEES' WAX!

Pitch black. Black. Dark grey. Grey. Clotted cream. Pale white. White.

“Ohhhhhhhhh.” The latter hurts his eyes.

“It’s all right,” a low, masculine voice reassures him.

Maybe, but Johnny Three Spirits doesn’t feel all right, although he is encouraged.

“Grandfather, is that you? I thought I’d killed you.”

“Yes, grandfather, here. For awhile there, thinking you had killed me. As it turns out, though, I’m alive and well, and possibly more enlightened from having had my near-death experience.”

“Where are we?” Not the sweat lodge, unless the rocks are cooled, the heat all gone, electric lights installed.

“Back at my house.”

“You carried me here?”

“Actually, it would seem you carried me here, and then collapsed.”

“I’m sorry. I lost control — again.”

“Not as badly as the last time. Last time you were snake, and cougar, and wolf. Last time, you bit Melissa Remoth. This time you were only snake and didn’t bite grandfather. Progress. Or, so we shall see it until it is proven otherwise.”

“What keeps happening that so puts things out of whack?”

“An answer which obviously still needs more searching.”

“Did chant-to-see-the-future tell us nothing, then?”

“Snake interrupted chant. In afterthought, I’m thinking we need call upon a source far more insightful than chant.”

“Such a source exists?”

“If I can still believe my dreams.”

“You had a dream?”

“If dream is what can occur when losing consciousness from life-sucking squeeze of form-changer grandson as snake.”

“And what did you dream?”

“Of you and I scooping warm wax of angry scrubland bees. Of you and I working the wax to make it malleable. Of you and I rolling a waxy column of crusty gold and creamy fragmented honeycombs with wick.”

“A candle, you mean?”

“So it would seem.”

“Have you become a candle-reader, then, between sweat lodge and now?”

“No. Have you?”

“Not that I’m aware. And for as long as I can remember, I have heard you and the other elders complain because our people have been deprived of one for more than three generations. Which was why we set out to snatch Melissa Remoth to know her latest reading, yes?”

“Possibly why, in my dream, grandson, it’s Melissa brought with us to do the reading.”

“Unless, of course, I again spoil things by snatching her sister.”

Copyright 2009 W. MALTESE

Chapter 12: THE STAY-AT-HOME

“Timothy!”

No doubt about it. His father’s voice can still send chills up and down the teenager’s spine and literally make the young man shiver. Timothy assumes it will take a long time for that reflex action to cease and desist. He’s determined, though, that it will.

“Timothy!”

Timothy stretches to press the volume button on the kitchen television’s remote control.

A lot of the local morning news, now louder, is devoted to the abduction and recovery of Timothy’s classmate Trish Remoth. Her assailant is thought to be a pervert … a madman … a druggie … maybe, even, a cult of druggies … or … when you come right down to it … no one is really sure; not even — it seems — Trish Remoth.

“Timothy!”

The momentary levitation of morning-breakfast PopTart within toaster slot, hot at cooking completion, almost cancelled that last holler from the bedroom across the kitchen, across the living room, and down the hall.

PopTart eaten, glass of milk drunk, Timothy fills a quart jar with tap water and grabs a box of cereal from the countertop.

He goes into his father's bedroom.

“About damned time!” Gyle Ranlin accuses his son from the bed.Timothy avoids his father’s reach and puts the quart of water on a bedside nightstand.

“What’s the problem?” Timothy asks. “The school bus is going to be here any minute.”

“What do you mean, what’s the bloody problem?” Gyle accuses.Timothy steps back, takes a good look at the way his father is locked in by the bed’s metal frame having been bent up and over to secure the man’s shins ever-so tightly to the mattress.

“This will really have to wait until I get back from school,” Timothy says. “In the meantime, here’s something to eat.” He tosses the box of cereal into bed with his father. Some of the box contents spill and look like bugs scattering among the rumpled blankets and sheets.

“Gregory won’t like this,” his father warns.

“Gregory is even older than you are. If he wants to keep in the game being played, he must rely on young people like me. I thought he already made that perfectly clear.”

Timothy leaves his fettered father and catches the school bus.On board, Jack Plenoc takes the seat next to him.

“Suppose you heard about Trish Remoth?” Jack says.

“I wonder if there’s anyone in Flicker who hasn’t.”

“I hear she was raped.”

Jack is a jackass! “I heard she wasn’t.”

At school, Timothy looks for Melissa Remoth. It’s harder to find her than it once was. The new building complex is large. Within the last year, there’s been more than a doubling of the student body.

He expects to find her in a crowd of curiosity seekers asking about her sister. He’s surprised to find her alone at her locker.

“Melissa,” he says. If not exactly on frequent speaking terms, they’ve shared classes together. Frankly, he’s surprised how cute she is. Before, his whole world centered on his father, he didn’t exactly have time to notice girls.

“Timothy,” she says. “Gril, right?”

“Can we talk for a minute?”

She checks her wristwatch.

“I’m afraid I can’t tell you anything more about what happened to my sister than what you’ve already heard on the news.”

“Actually, it’s not your sister I want to talk to you about but a certain girl in blue, with a blue candle.”

Melissa is obviously surprised but not nearly as surprised as Timothy would have expected.
She tilts her head slightly to one side. Her pretty blue eyes narrow as if to get a better look at him.

“Why is it, I wonder,” she says, “that I was led to believe you’d be Native American?”


Copyright 2009 W. MALTESE

Chapter 11: BITTEN, BUT NOT BY FROST

“Thank God!” Roger Remoth says into the telephone mouthpiece. “Is she okay? …Where did you find her? … Does she know who abducted her? … Yes, of course, I understand.” He checks his wristwatch. “We can be there within the hour. … Thank-you, and please tell our daughter we’re on our way.” He hangs up and says to his wife and to his younger daughter, “They found Trish across town on the lawn of one of the tract houses allocated families of air-force personnel.”

“To have transported her so far so fast, the shape-shifter would have had to be large dog or cat,” Melissa says.

“Is Trish okay?” Mary anxiously asks her husband.

“She’s rambling, by the police’s way of thinking,” Roger says. “She’s babbling about abduction by wolf, snake, and cougar. The police assume she’s been drugged and still suffers the aftereffects. They even think they’ve located two syringe puncture wounds.”

“The shape-shifter, as snake, bit her,” Melissa says; it isn’t a question. “Neither the police, nor doctor, will recognize it as a snake bite; the punctures are too far apart for any snake they know. The larger the shape-shifter, the larger the snake. The larger the snake, the larger the bite.”

“They’re taking her to the hospital for a rape kit.”

“Oh, dear God, tell me she wasn’t raped,” Mary begs.

“She says not, but the police have to be sure. They’ll run a tox screen, as well.”

“Melissa,” Mary turns to her daughter, “please tell me your sister wasn’t raped.”

Melissa shrugs. Shakes her head. “I don’t know. I only know that if there is any poison in her, whatever it may be, we’ll have to watch her very closely. As will the shape-shifter. He’ll have to help her, if he’s turned her, won’t he? So, Trish constantly should be on guard for someone, anyone, more curious about her than usual. Which might prove difficult once it gets around she’s been kidnapped — everyone curious. I would think, though, the shape-shifter will be a local Native American. Maybe even one of our classmates. Then, again, it could be someone older.”

“You can’t be more specific?” her father presses.

“I sense that he bit her by mistake. Therefore, snake probably a mistake.”

“He? His?” Mary wants gender confirmed.

“I think so. Also, I think, as I’ve already said, that his intent was merely to have answers. That would have best been achieved by wolf or cougar and quick and hurried carrying of Trish out of the area. That he lingered, even bothering with snake, let alone with snake bite, says incomplete control. Someone grown old, his powers not what they once were. Someone young, his powers not yet fully realized. Someone old or young with powers in shift because of whatever is happening all around us.”

“Is he our friend or our enemy?” Roger asks.

“We really should get to the hospital,” Mary interrupts. “The police and Trish will be wondering what’s holding us up.”

“Is this shape-shifter our friend or our enemy, Melissa?” Roger persists, determined to have an answer before going anywhere.

“I feel the presence of many friends, many enemies,” Melissa says, “but I can’t, at least at the moment, identify any of them.”

“We have to go,” Mary insists and heads for the door.

It’s only when they’re all in the car, pulling out of the driveway, when Melissa adds, “I can tell you that there are many more — friends and enemies, beasts and beasties — still determined to get here.”


Copyright 2009 W. MALTESE

Chapter 10: MORE CREATURES THAN A ZOO

“Oh, Mom, please, no!” Melissa’s punctuating groan is low and loud and full of frustration.

Back in their home, her mother has returned with the third candle in the last hour. This one is bright yellow and smells of freshly-squeezed lemon. Mary Remoth is desperate to have Melissa divine some hint as to Trish’s whereabouts. Even the police helicopter that scanned the Dry Wash Gulch camp area with infra-red hasn’t found Trish’s heat source. Which means what? Trish is no longer alive but stone-dead cold?

“Not one of your candles is working,” Melissa insists. She’s tired, even though she doubts she’ll ever sleep again. “We’re wasting our time.”

“Don’t say that!” Mary chides her daughter. “If the candles aren’t working, it’s because it’s the wrong combination of candles and you. Your father and Trish and my candle-powers have been in decline for quite some time. We all know that.”

“But are mine really on the rise, as you keep suggesting? It doesn’t seem so.”

“Did you, or did you not envision, the chimera while candle-reading at Dry Wash Gulch?”

“Chimera? That part cat, snake, and dog creature, you mean? Do you actually think any such thing exists?”

Mary takes Melissa and the candle to the table. She lights the candle wick and pulls out a chair into which she gently insists her younger daughter sit.

“You tell me,” she says. “In that, there are people who still don’t believe vampires exist, or werewolves exist, or witches, or warlocks, or candle-readers exist. You and I, though, know that they all do, don’t we? So, just because we’ve never seen a chimera in its own tangible flesh and blood, only the phantom you envisioned at Dry Wash Gulch, doesn’t mean that one or more isn’t out there — somewhere now — with your sister. You need merely ask the candle and wait for an answer.”

Melissa leans forward and blows out the candle flame. Inadvertently (or, is it on purpose?) she inhales the resulting twisting thread of smoke.

“No need to ask,” she says and turns to her mother. “Know that chimeras do exist. Know that we shall one day soon, to our peril, have to deal with one. Know that this time, though, it isn’t a chimera but a shape-shifter. And a shape-shifter who doesn’t any more have answers than we do but is merely seeking them as frantically as we are.

”The telephone rings.

Mary and Roger, though, are so taken back by what their daughter has just told them that they seem unable to register that it’s the phone that beckons them.

The phone rings again.

“A shape-shifter,” Roger finally echoes and nods the possible likelihood of that. “Why didn’t you or I think of that, Mary?”

The phone rings again.

“We didn’t think of it, my dear, because we’re more and more quickly being excluded from a game we’re too old to play.” The phone rings again. “Answer it,” Melissa says. “The authorities are anxious to tell us they’ve found Trish; though they can’t know it’s only because the shape-shifter has purposely dropped her there.”



Copyright 2009 W. MALTESE

Chapter 9: LONG DISTANCES TRAVELED

Cooper Loor senses that it’s about time he must officially start his day.

Actually his last name is Loo, not Loor. He’s unofficially changed to the latter — with his schools’ (and there have been many) cooperation. His mother’s permission came first, finally followed by his father’s. His mother won his father over after three years of Cooper being non-stop taunted in elementary schools, “Hey, Cooper, English Pooper.” Cooper was always amazed by how quickly school children, world-wide, could pick up on the British word, loo, for toilet, when a good harassing was in the offing.

Originally, Madison Loo argued that all of the schoolyard bullying would merely help his son build character. Madison felt himself a better man for his early-on having had the gumption and fortitude to carry on. He wore Loo proudly on the nameplates of his crisp military uniform, his desk, and his door. As a colonel in the United States Air Force, he never heard the derogatory chants that were still performed, only now too far behind his back for him to notice.

In time, because Madison loved his wife and his son, the latter a pretty poor specimen at the time the name change was proposed, he had decided what was asked would temporarily be okay.

Even though Cooper, by now a teenager blossomed into a stellar example of physical fitness and a powerhouse to be reckoned within high-school sports, still keeps the “r” on the end of his last name. His reasoning is that it’s become a preventative from his having to beat the crap out of any of his wise-ass fellow schoolmates; most of whom he rightly figures he can, by this point, dominate in any fair bout of fisticuffs.

Cooper’s muscular right arm stretches from beneath his bed’s comforter. His large easily-can-palm-a-basketball right hand softly slaps the alarm button before the wail of the time-to-get-up siren can interrupt the dimness and stillness of the morning air.

He gets up, showers, dresses, and heads downstairs to the kitchen. Along the way, he passes his parents’ room. His mother sleeps — alone — in a big king-sized bed.

Just because Cooper’s father called last night to say that “circumstances” would keep him at the Air Force base’s officer barracks for the night, doesn’t mean that this latest stationing will see him renege on his promise that he’ll be spending more time with his wife and son. It will take him time to settle in as the official Air Force liaison between Fort Rockpoint and the expanding town of Flicker. There is a lot for him to catch up on.

Relationship between base and town isn’t as good as it was when Flicker was merely a wide spot in the road, and the adjoining Fort Rockpoint was pretty much otherwise isolated within a wide stretch of central Washington State wilderness. Since an extensive underground water system has been discovered, two new housing projects are nearly completed and two more are on the drawing boards. Even a Walmart is insinuated to be in Flicker’s future.

Whatever it is that originally prompted the government to build its air-force base smack-dab in the middle of once-desolate scrublands, and Cooper doesn’t have a clue, it obviously makes his father (and Lt. Col. Loo’s military superiors) nervous to have the immediately adjoining area suddenly filling with civilians.

All of that, though, is his father’s problem to work out. Cooper’s main concern for the moment is getting himself breakfast. The rest of the day he’ll spend trying to fit into yet another school that already has its own groups and cliques and social clubs established well before his arrival. Luckily, he’s grown expertise at fitting in.

Turning toward the refrigerator, Cooper has a good view through one kitchen window to the bleak vista that’s drying (despite suddenly lots of available water) front lawn punctuated by vast expanse of wasteland extending to the horizon.

This time, though, he’s brought up short by the unbelievable sight of an apparently unconscious and disheveled Trish Remoth sprawled unceremoniously in the immediate foreground.

Copyright 2009 W. MALTESE