William Krueger - Tamarack County

He knew this. So why did he feel so separate that night, so alien, so alone? He thought he understood the reason. He was still angry with Skye Edwards for intruding on Anne’s life, for tempting his sister from her destined path, one Anne hadn’t simply chosen but had been born to. Hadn’t she? Been born to it in the way his father had been born ogichidaa, destined to stand between his people and evil, and Jenny nakomis, full of a nurturing spirit, and he himself mide, meant to be a healer? Wasn’t the way they fit into the design of creation already decided before they were born, long before they were even conceived?

He’d been staring up at the ceiling, at the pattern of shadows cast there by the streetlamp outside shining through his window, a spiderweb formed by the bare branches of the elm in the front yard. Now he closed his eyes. Maybe, he thought, no path was meant to be a simple one. Maybe that was part of the journey. Maybe you were meant to stumble, even to stray. Maybe there was something to be learned in being lost. If so, he hoped he was learning, because he sure felt lost.

Sleep came to him finally, as it always did, and as sometimes happened, a vision came with it. Not a pleasant one.

Stephen flew. He often flew in his dreams, usually with a measure of control. Those were wonderful dreams. This was different. He’d been picked up like fluff from a cottonwood and carried into the night sky, borne on the wind. Usually he gave himself over to flight in a dream, but this time he fought it, because he had a sense that where he was going was a fearful place. He struggled, battled against the current pushing him. Useless. And then he found himself caught in the branches of a tree, and he knew the tree. It was the elm in the front yard. And now the wind was trying to pull him away, but he held tightly to a limb. The wind grew stronger, and his fingers began to lose their grip. And that’s when he saw the figure under the elm, dark in the night, watching the house on Gooseberry Lane. He was filled with an overwhelming sense of dread, a fear that made him go weak, and just before he let go of the limb, he saw the figure turn its face upward, and the eyes in that face were like coals of a fire, and Stephen felt their glare burn two painful holes in the skin of his chest. He lost his grip on the tree limb, lost his hold on the dream, and he came out of it with a cry and dripping with sweat.

“Stephen?” It was Jenny, calling from his doorway. “Are you okay?”

He didn’t answer immediately but spent a moment grounding himself in the reality of his bedroom.

“Yeah,” he finally said. “Bad dream is all.”

Jenny came and sat beside him. “A vision?” She was well acquainted with Stephen’s gift, and she asked this seriously.

“Maybe,” he said.

“Not a good one sounds like.”

He slid himself up and put his back against the wall at the head of his bed. “A scary one.”

“Want to talk about it?”

“I want to think about it first.”

Jenny wore a yellow sleep shirt. In the last year, she’d let her hair grow long, and it lay almost white over her shoulders, even in the dark of Stephen’s bedroom. As often happened when he was with Jenny these days, he was reminded of their mother.

She said, “When you were a kid, you used to have horrible nightmares. You believed in monsters. I remember Dad used to come in here, and you’d both go hunting for them. Under the bed, in the closet.”

“Never found any,” he said. “Not then.”

“I hope you don’t ever.”

“You sound like Mom.”

“I’ll take that as a compliment. You’re sure you’re okay?”

“I’ll be fine.”

“All right. See you in the morning.”

She walked out, and he was alone again.

Waking up didn’t take away the fear, the urgency, or what Stephen felt was the reality of the dream. He threw back the covers, got out of bed, and went to his window. He looked at the front yard, at the big elm with its mass of bare limbs and its great sturdy trunk. But what he looked at particularly was the shadow the tree cast across the snow as a result of the streetlamp at the curb. It was in that shadow that he’d seen the figure with the ember eyes. He thought about the vision Meloux had related over the telephone the day before. Had they both seen the same majimanidoo, the same devil? He saw nothing now, and he saw no tracks in the snow that someone-human or otherwise-would have left had they been there. He also thought about what Jenny had said. That she hoped he didn’t meet any monsters, ever.

Yet he had a sense that this was somehow the point of the dream, the vision. It had been eerily similar to the one Meloux described, and Stephen had a powerful feeling that a confrontation was looming. With whom or with what, he couldn’t get a handle on. At the moment, he was like the cottonwood fluff in the wind. He needed to bring the vision to him in a different way, bring it in a way in which he could participate actively. Despite his fear, he needed to face the devil. And he believed he knew exactly how to do that.

The ring tone of his cell phone woke him. The room was dark, he was sleepy, and he fumbled for several moments before he finally had the device in his hands.

“O’Con-,” he began but stopped because his voice was hoarse, both from just waking and from the dry air blown by the furnace of the Daychilds’ place. He cleared his throat. “O’Connor,” he said.

“Cork, it’s Marsha Dross. Is it convenient for you to come to my office?”

“When?”

“Now, if possible.”

He looked toward a window, saw no light at all in the sky outside.

“It’s important,” Dross said.

He wondered what time it was, but he’d put his watch in the pocket of his shirt, which he’d folded and laid on the floor at the foot of the sofa. He grabbed his shirt and began to dig.

Dross said, “I think I might have a handle on Evelyn Carter. I think her disappearance might be connected with the death of Wakemup’s dog.”

That brought him fully awake. He found his watch and saw that it was six-fifteen. “I’ll be there in half an hour.”

In the night, Stella had wakened Marlee and guided her, barely conscious, to the girl’s bedroom. Then she’d given Cork a blanket and pillow, kissed him a long, final time, and he’d bedded down on the sofa, so that if Marlee woke and came looking, it would appear that he’d been there all night. He didn’t like this kind of deception, but he wasn’t exactly comfortable with the idea of Marlee knowing-even guessing at-what had occurred between her mother and him. At some point, he’d have to analyze all of this, figure where he stood, emotionally and morally. He didn’t think of himself as the kind of guy who went looking for a one-night stand. Especially if it involved the mother of the girlfriend of his son. Which was a thought that, just in itself, was hopelessly complicated.

Stella must have heard his cell phone. When he stood up, he found her in the hallway, watching him, her hands in the pockets of her robe.

“I have to go,” he said.

“Not even breakfast first?”

“It’s business.”

“I’ve heard that one before.” Then she smiled, letting him know it was in jest. “Go.”

“The call was from Marsha Dross. She thinks she’s onto something that might help explain what happened to Dexter.”

“What is it?”

“I’ll know after I’ve talked with her.”

“You’ll let me know, too?”

“Absolutely.”

Cork had worn his pants to bed, and his T-shirt. He finished dressing, gathered his loose things, and stuffed them into his gym bag. While he did this, Stella got his parka. They stood together at the front door. This near to her, he could smell that she’d just gargled and could see that she’d run a quick brush through her hair and had put on lipstick. Just for him? Cork felt awkward, unsure what the protocol of parting dictated.