Ken Douglas - Ragged Man

“ The sheriff could use a stone like that,” J.P. said.

“ I sure could.” Sturgees turned to Rick and added, “Are you finished yet?”

“ Not quite. There is a never-ending battle between good and evil, between marangit and galka. The galka causes illness and kills. The marangit heals and protects. A galka will never stop trying to kill the marangit and even though it’s possible for a marangit to kill a galka, it almost never happens, evil usually wins.

“ The power of both the marangit and galka is passed on after death, usually to one of their children, however if they die away from their family and anyone else is present, the power and personality is transferred to that person, and that brings me to the crux of the situation.”

“ I don’t get it,” Judy said.

“ The man that chased away the galka had one of those dillybags. He opened it and let Ann look inside. She said that she saw the past, all of her lives, that is, all the lives of that old woman. She believed the old couple we buried were marangit and that they transferred their power to us and that the dingo with the canines was a mokuy familiar and the man with the bad breath, a galka. That galka won’t rest till he kills both Ann and me in such a way that we are not able to transfer our powers.”

“ Who was the man that chased away the galka?” J.P. wanted to know.

“ Remember I said there were two things that could stop a galka?”

“ Yeah.”

“ The other is a wongar. The Wongar are the creators of the Dreamtime and all mankind. They live in the sacred sites and aren’t dangerous unless they’re offended.”

“ So the man that chased away the galka and fixed you was a wongar?” J.P. said.

“ Bullshit,” the sheriff said.

“ I agree, Sheriff. In our lives together, it was the only thing that ever came between us. I don’t know what happened that night, but whatever it was, it scared Ann so much that it scarred her mind and somehow she came up with that fantastic story to deal with it. We never talked about it after we got back to the States, but I always knew she never shed that belief.”

“ So why are you talking about it now?” the sheriff asked.

“ You wanted to know about the Ragged Man.”

“ It was kids that left the note. Trust me.” The sheriff got up and walked toward the door. When he reached it he turned and said, “I’m going to go back to the office and try and get a little work done.”

The three of them saw the sheriff out and watched as he drove down the hill and out of sight.

“ Are we going now?” J.P. asked.

“ J.P., maybe Rick wants to straighten up first. He just got back.”

“ No, that’s all right. I’ll be over in fifteen minutes.”

“ I’ll be ready,” J.P. said over his shoulder as his mother pulled him along back to their house. “Then you can tell me more about the Ghost Dog,” he shouted, just before his mother dragged him inside.

He watched them till Judy closed her front door and, for a brief instant, he had the feeling that he was being watched, but he shrugged it off and went back into the house, unaware of the large dark animal watching from the forest at the edge of the clearing. An animal whose low rumbling breath sounded like the pump in a little girl’s fish tank.

Judy’s clock radio clicked on minutes before the sun. She rolled out of bed, glancing in the mirror as she passed it on her way to the bathroom. She was secretly pleased. She’d been dieting, doing aerobics and running for the last two months and she’d dropped ten of the twelve pounds she’d wanted to lose.

She passed into the bathroom and bounced on the scale. She looked at the digital read out and squealed with delight. One-fifteen. She’d lost the last two pounds. “And I’m gonna keep them off,” she told the scale.

She rushed back into the bedroom, shut off the radio and donned her sweats and running shoes. She was in a hurry to beat the sun.

Happier than she’d been in months, she tiptoed to J.P.’s door and eased it open. Satisfied that he was still asleep, she closed it and went down the stairs. She unlocked the deadbolt and went out the front door to meet the crisp morning.

She smiled into the cool breeze and glanced up at the sun starting its morning peak through the pines. She loved sunup and the birth of a new day. For her, every dawn signaled the beginning of another twenty-four hours away from the bad times and another day closer to the good times that she knew were coming.

She worried about J.P. Lately he’d been spending most of his time in town. She knew there were one or two children his age that he played with, but what she gathered from her conversations with him, was that he was spending a lot of time with the older boys at the park. She didn’t know if that was good or bad, but it wasn’t like him to spend so much time away from her. They were a team. Now it seemed like the team was breaking up. She didn’t like it, but she could understand why a boy would want to get out and play with other children.

If that’s all it was, maybe she shouldn’t worry, but he was neglecting the birds. He’d always enjoyed them and now it was like they didn’t exist. She didn’t mind taking care of them herself, she’d been taking care of pigeons all of her life, but it wasn’t the same without J.P.

Something was different. She wanted to sit down with him and talk it out, but she was afraid. Afraid that she was the cause, afraid that she was different.

She did feel different. She was more determined. She’d lost the weight that had been bugging her since J.P. had been born. She was getting up every morning and running, something new for her. She was taking more care with her appearance, trying to look her best. She bought new clothes. Clothes with bright colors, the opposite of the dull tee shirts and Levi’s she’d been wearing for the last ten years.

Now that she thought about it, she was different, but a good different. She couldn’t see why any of the recent changes she’d made in her life would drive J.P. away from her.

This morning, she resolved, when he wakes up, I’ll talk to him and we’ll work this out.

She continued fifty yards through the pines to Clark Creek, a slim stream of water that ran year round behind the two homes. She hopped over the slow flowing water and continued into the forest, listening to the sounds of the early rising birds. She wished she could tell which ones made which sounds. She would have to buy a bird watcher’s book.

She intended to wander through the forest until she came to a steep path that led down the hill to the beach below. She’d discovered it on one of her walks and she doubted that anyone else knew about it. She called it the sluice, because it was vee shaped, like a sluice. She had no idea what or who had carved the path through the trees. Maybe it was a former owner of one of the two houses, or maybe the creek overflowed in winter and this was a water path down to the sea, or maybe it was caused by animals seeking a way out of the woods, but she was grateful to what or whoever was responsible for it. She enjoyed the tricky, steep descent that provided her quick access to the beach, where she did her morning run.

But this morning, as she reached the beginning of the sluice, the forest turned quiet. She was instantly alert. She had become used to the various bird and insect sounds and their absence sent an eerie chill up her back. Go home, she told herself, and she slowly turned, trying to make as little noise as possible, and started for home. She was afraid.

She cringed at the crackling and crunching dried leaves under her feet. With every bird and creature silent, she was an elephant tramping through the woods and there was nothing she could do about it.