Daniel Hecht - Land of Echoes

"How lovely to be so thoroughly understood," Lynn said drily.

"What else? What else about Julieta?"

Lynn's face took on its prim, clever look. "There you go again, tempting me into indiscretions!" Then her facade faltered and revealed the anger just behind: "Let's just say I think her obsession with Tommy might be more complicated and less healthy than people like you want to admit. I thought you'd be grateful I'd pointed out his reaction. I thought I was being helpful."

Cree almost stamped her foot in frustration. There seemed no way to break through the nurse's defenses. Part of the problem was that this transaction was just what Lynn wanted, an intense exchange serving as a bitter surrogate for intimacy. She started to plead with her but then heard noises from the front hall: Ed had arrived.

"I'll watch them carefully from here on in. Okay? But if there's something else you think I should know, for God's sake tell me. And in the meantime, I still want you to respect my space, my stuff! How would you like it if I went into your room and rummaged around?"

"Well. I'd probably be a little upset. But I might be kind of flattered, too."

" Lynn-it was intended as a rhetorical question."

The nurse's mouth made a surprised O, then smiled. "Yes. Of course it was."

Cree turned half away to stack the papers again and go on packing for the night's work. She hoped Lynn would get the message, but still she hovered there with her purse-lipped smile. And then Ed was bumping through the doorway with a pair of equipment cases, apologizing for being late, and Cree turned to him with relief.

Edgar stood at the crumbling edge of the cliff, looking west, enjoying himself immensely and ignoring the rocks his feet sent tumbling into the ravine. His face was vivid from the climb and the crisp air. From here at the top of the mesa, they could see all the way to the higher land of the Defiance Plateau, a glowing pink-purple band along the horizon. The early-morning sun was at their backs, throwing their shadows off the cliff and spreading the mesa's shadow like a dusky lavender cape on the ground below.

"You know what it looks like to me?" Edgar asked.

"What?" Cree followed his gaze.

He gestured at the boulders, the slabs, the endless expanse of bare soil. "It's like… after God created the rest of the world, He had a bunch of raw materials left over. And He just sort of dumped them out here. Piles of stuff, just lying there for a few hundred million years, waiting for the next big project."

He was in a good mood. Last night, he had assented readily when she suggested they change plans and nap before visiting the ravine. Cree's confrontation with Lynn Pierce had drained her, and bringing up witches and demons had obliterated the fleeting sense of relief she'd felt after talking to Paul. Ed was tired, too. They had agreed to sleep for a few hours, go out in the early hours of the morning, and end the vigil with this morning trip to the top of the mesa. It was a good way to get a better sense of the lay of the land.

So for a while they'd lounged in the ward room, talking. Just being around Ed had calmed Cree. After a while she had caught some of his mood of curiosity and excitement, the thrill of the investigation. He loved the landscape here; like Cree, he felt exhilarated by it, wanting to embrace it, get out in it, immerse himself in it. Telling her about it, he'd paced around, gesturing expansively, unselfconscious and looking sexy in T-shirt and boxer shorts.

When at last they'd put out the light, the snores from the other bed told Cree that Edgar had fallen asleep immediately. Lying awake, she found herself soothed by the gentle rhythm of his breathing and the sight of his slumbering profile in the faint light.

The alarm clock had awakened them at two a.m. They'd dressed wearily and gone off into the desert night. At the ravine, Ed had taken up his post on the desert floor as Cree moved up the cleft, found what felt like an appropriate spot, wrapped herself with blankets, and waited.

Waited for nothing, as it turned out. For whatever reason, she couldn't get past the ordinary world and her ordinary, if frightened, thoughts. It never failed to astonish her, the way a haunted place could be so dense at one time, so empty at another. Was it the cycle of manifestation-there when it was there, not when it was not? Or was it just cycles of Cree Black's sensitivity? She'd probably never know. But it was an experience familiar to every serious ghost hunter: the long pointless wait, the empty hours. The only startling moment had been awakening from her drowse to see a blanket-wrapped figure standing before her in the predawn light. For a jolting instant she'd thought it was some Navajo or Anasazi from centuries past. Then she recognized it as Edgar, a blanket draped over his shoulders, grinning. Light was creeping into the sky. She'd left her little nest and they'd set stiffly off up the ravine just as streaks of cloud at the zenith burst into peach-pink flame against the depthless baby blue sky.

The rock dam where she'd sat the first night turned out to be a jumble of fallen boulders and slabs four or five feet high and about twenty feet across, tricky footing. Ed had brought a compact trifield meter and a Geiger counter, and as they picked their way he paused to take readings; though there was some rise in EMF activity, it was well within the normal variations he'd expect.

Beyond, the gully tapered as it rose, then split into shallower runs that meandered toward the mesa top. They walked quickly in the cold shadows, trying to work off the chill of sitting so long in the open.

It was wonderful to come to the top. Suddenly the sandstone walls angled away and then they were beneath the clear sky again, with the half risen sun blasting at them brassy as a trumpet and a coquettish breeze flirting with their hair. The mesa top was an uneven plane of soil and rock with only a thin cover of scrubby sage and rabbitbrush: as Edgar said, a pile of raw planet-building stuff left here for a few hundred million years, detritus left over from a huge construction project. The image made Cree smile.

They explored the edges of the big ravine for a time, moving very cautiously among the boulders: Some of the rocks seemed precariously perched on the crumbling, undercut cliffs, ready to tumble. After a while Ed informed her that, in his infinite wisdom, he had packed some bananas and a small thermos of coffee. They crouched against the sun-facing side of a boulder as he opened the thermos and poured the black liquid steaming into the plastic cup. Cree warmed her hands on it for a moment, took a scalding sip, and handed it back.

"When you were summing up the situation last night," he said, "I notice you omitted the issue of Julieta's being Tommy's mother. Was that because she doesn't trust the nurse? Or you don't?" Ed sipped coffee and grimaced at the burn.

"She didn't feel comfortable about it. I can imagine that having one of your employees know that kind of thing about your past… well. And Lynn certainly seems to have 'issues' with her boss. What do you think of her-Julieta?"

His eyes caught hers. "I admire what she's done here. Seems like a decent person."

"And gorgeous, sexy, compelling-"

"Not my type." He sipped some more coffee, blew a gout of steam into the sun, and then sat with his eyes closed, face to the light.

"The nurse told me last night she thinks Tommy's symptoms get worse when Julieta is around."

"You agree?"

She shrugged. "I've seen him sort of… fix on her. But I'm really not sure-I haven't seen much of them together."

Edgar nodded and thought about that as he peeled a banana, bit off half of it in one mouthful, and appeared to swallow it whole. "That would seem to support her idea it's the ex, no? Driven by lingering hatred or hostility?"