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

Chapter 8: HISSING STONES AND SNAKE

Naked to the point of even discarding his flashlight, Johnny Three Spirits pushes back the buffalo hide flaps to the traditional sweat lodge and steps on through.

Even more forcefully than usual, a wall of heat hits him like a battle ax and leaves him momentarily breathless.

He shuts his eyes and hopes they will adjust to the darkness. When he opens them, he still can’t see.


It’s only because he knows the space around him that he’s able to find his assigned place and sit in it.


Across from him, there’s a loud hiss. Frightening him, why? He knows it’s only his grandfather, Jimmy Who Knows, ladling water onto hot stones. As proof, another wave of heat brushes over and around him. His sweating pores sweat all the more.

“Is it done, then?” Jimmy Who Knows asks his grandson.


“Yes, Grandfather.”


“And were there more problems?”


“It was a continuing struggle but, this time, I kept wolf dominant.”


“Did Trish at any time see?”


“Only for a moment. Wolf made her faint.”


Johnny senses, more than sees, his grandfather’s disappointed head shake.


“From concealment at a distance, I did watch her recover,” Johnny adds.


“That much at least is reason for encouragement.”


“I am sorry, Grandfather,” Johnny apologizes. “It was all so strange, the way I was unable to control the shifts. It was like in the very beginning. All four of me battled for control. As I’ve said, I hadn’t a clue that I fetched Trish for you and not Melissa."




“You say you bit her just outside Dry Wash Gulch?”


“Yes, Grandfather. I couldn’t help myself. As I said, it was as if all of your teachings hadn’t been taught.”


“You say it was done as serpent, but you’re still not sure you delivered venom?”


“I tried not, but I may have failed. I wrestled so hard for my conversion back to speedier wolf that I was admittedly distracted.”


“We must monitor her very carefully. Should she become one of us as a result, she will need help with her transition. It will be your responsibility, if you should end up her initiator, to help her find her way as a shape-shifter; as I have been your guide.”


“Yes, Grandfather.”


“And now, let’s better try to analyze our situation.” “I’ve tried on my own without success.” “I suspect we are on the verge of events so long prophesied that we’ve denied they’ll ever come.”


“The battle after the flood, you mean?”


“All signs would seem to say so. I might know better if we’d accessed the right girl — even briefly. Unfortunately, Trish already verges on too old; as I am already way too old. If the time is near, it will be you, and young ones like you and Melissa, who must bear the responsibility for saving yourselves as well as the rest of us.”


“Is there some other way besides Melissa to confirm?”


“We can risk a chant-to-see-the-future. As you know, there is great danger in that. Even then, it may not work.”


“We need to know — I need to know — if just to prepare.”


“Then, we will chant — together — here — now.”


Jimmy Who Knows ladles yet more water onto hot stones.


Johnny Three Spirits hears the hiss, feels the heat. Without willing it, and unable to control it, his body becomes serpent, swiftly glides the floor to enwrap and entrap his grandfather in a suffocating embrace.






Copyright 2009 W. MALTESE

Chapter 7: BY THE LIGHT OF THE SILVERY MOON

Melissa screams non-stop. She continues until her mother slaps her hard across the left side of her face. Even then, her screams interrupted by her surprise (her mother never hits her), Melissa sobs uncontrollably.

“None of us is going to help your sister by being hysterical,” Mary Remoth insists and gives her younger daughter an accompanying shake.

Melissa, though, has been screaming just because she’s not at all sure anyone can help her sister now.

Trish and her sleeping bag have been pulled out of the tent by something or by someone. Trish has been yanked by something or by someone from her discarded bedding. There’s evidence, by way of scrapes across rock and ground surfaces, that Trish has been dragged by something or by someone into the darkness.

Melissa doesn’t sense her sister anywhere near and fears the worst.

What or who could have done such a thing? How could they possibly have managed it so quickly?

After having heard Trisha’s cries for help, her parents and Melissa had been at the tent within seconds — to find her gone. Roger Remoth kneels onto part of the scuffed and dusty rock surface that’s punctuated with his elder daughter’s skid marks.

“What is it, Roger?” Mary wants to know. “Trish’s cell phone, I think,” Roger says.

“I thought she said she left it behind.”

“As if we’ve lately been the best examples of truth-telling,” Mary reminds. “Having gotten us where?”

Roger manipulates buttons to recall Trish’s last call.

“She talked to Matty,” he says.

“Do you think she told him where we are?” Mary wonders aloud.

“Matty wouldn’t hurt Trish,” Melissa, between sobs, comes to Matty’s defense. “He loves Trish. Trish loves him. They’re going to get married.”

“Of course, you’re right,” Mary agrees, although she doesn’t sound at all convinced of Matty’s innocence.

“When did Melissa call him?”

“A few minutes ago,” Roger reads the call-up information.

“Matty couldn’t have possibly gotten here so fast?” Melissa continues to argue in the young man’s favor.

“Those things can cover an awfully lot of ground in a very short time,” Roger says.

“What things?” Melissa wants to know.

“What things?” she literally screams.

“Calm down, Melissa!” Mary insists.

“We’ll discuss all of this when you’re a little less upset.

In the meantime, Roger, you’d better phone the police. I suspect our chance of finding our daughter without help is nonexistent.”

Roger dials 911.

“My daughter has been abducted,” he says into the mouthpiece. “We’re presently camped at Dry Wash Gulch.”

Melissa hears but doesn’t hear the rest of her father’s side of the conversation. She’s remembering the dark shadow that passed across the candle flame probably just seconds before Trish was abducted. Would Trish be safe now if Melissa had commented upon the event instead of merely having assumed tired eyes had blinked from too much concentration?

“The authorities are on their way,” Roger says.

“As it may take some time, do you think we should try, again, to read the candle flame?”

“We’ve been trying all night,” Melissa reminds. “What makes you think we’ll come up with something now?”

She wishes she didn’t remember the moment of shadow passing between her and the light.

“It’ll be something to do,” Roger says. “We need something to do.”

Reluctantly, Melissa returns with her parents to the candle they’d been watching when Trish disappeared.

The wick has been extinguished. Did someone brush against it on the way to an attempted rescue of Trish?

Did a breeze arrive after the candle was left all alone?

Mary lights the charred wick and sits, pulling Melissa down beside her. Roger assumes a yoga cross-legged position across the flaming candle from them.

“Try to contact your sister, Melissa,” Mary instructs.

“It’s not going to work,” Melissa says, tears in her eyes. “I know it’s not going to work.”

“At least try,” Mary cajoles. “In that, what if it does work?”

Melissa tries her best to concentrate. It’s hopeless. Their whole candle-reading attempts since they’ve arrived have been hopeless.

A fleeting ghostly vision of a creature with the claws of a cat, the tail of a snake, and the head and body of a dog suddenly speeds before Melissa’s line of vision and makes the candle flame momentarily dim and flicker.

As if on cue, somewhere in the very far distance, some kind of animal raises its head dark-skyward and provides a low and plaintive bay at the moon.

The short hairs along Melissa’s neck stand on end.


Copyright 2009 W. MALTESE