Footprints (5 page)

Dancing Deer looked at Annja closely. "Be careful. You are still learning to trust your instincts. At this point, it can be very dangerous to be too trusting or too little trusting. Do you understand?"
Annja frowned. "I…I guess I do."
"You need only trust in the spirit that moves in all things. The Creator will guide you to what you seek."
The sage smoke had ceased billowing from the bundle and all that remained were the blackened bits of the herb in the dish. But Annja could still smell the sweet scent in the air.
Joey got up and took the dish to the kitchen. Annja could hear him washing it before he once again returned to the living room. "You ready to go?"
Annja rose from the recliner, feeling as if she'd been asleep for hours. She stretched and heard her back creak a bit. "I guess so." She smiled at Dancing Deer. "That is one comfortable chair you've got there."
Dancing Deer grinned. "And as soon as you're gone, I'm going to fall asleep in it."
Joey gave his grandfather a hug. "Thanks for your help."
Annja could see the pride in Dancing Deer's eyes as he hugged his grandson. "Don't be gone too long or I'll worry."
"You don't need to," Joey said.
"You're all I have left. I don't have a choice but to worry."
Joey stepped back and nodded. Then he turned to Annja. "Let's go."
Outside, the night sky was filled with stars not overshadowed by the brilliance of the moon in the western sky. Annja picked out several constellations and marveled at how much she could see.
"Annja?"
She looked at Joey. "Sorry, it's just so beautiful here."
"We can look at it later." Joey pointed. "We need to get going. Did you see the direction we need to head in?"
"Let's start back at where you left Jenny. I was there and then I was taken away after I tuned into her…fear, I guess."
Joey nodded. "Dancing Deer says that is one way to do it. By tuning into the emotions of the person you're trying to track, it's very easy to find them. Fear is one of the strongest. Rage and lust are others."
"
Lust?"
Joey shrugged. "I don't know much about that one yet. But the things that people obsess over are stronger than just basic emotions. Pretty interesting stuff, huh?"
"
Definitely."
Joey led them back down the road and into the woods again. Annja laughed. I feel as if this is the third time I've traveled this route tonight. I'm almost getting tired of seeing it again.
Joey glanced back at her. "Old hat to you now, huh?"
"I was just thinking that."
"
Happened to me, too.
The first time I did it."
Annja frowned. "I thought you said you didn't know how to do it. That's why we went and saw your grandfather."
"What I said was I wasn't skilled enough at leading someone else on a spirit track. I knew it would have to be you."
"You never mentioned that."
"Would you have believed me?"
"
Possibly."
Joey chuckled. "I guess maybe you would have."
They wound their way back down the trail. Annja's legs knew the terrain by now and she was surprised at how relaxed she felt as she moved along. It was almost as if she was able to sense the flow of the land, to read it before she reached it and adjust her body accordingly. The result was she wasn't nearly as exhausted this time.
Joey led them back to the hill where he'd left Jenny. "Okay.
Now what?"
Annja glanced around. The last time she'd been there, she'd been out of her body and tuning into Jenny's emotional state. But now, being there in the flesh, it didn't seem possible to do what she'd done back at Dancing Deer's home.
"I don't know."
"
Annja."
Annja shook her head. "It doesn't look familiar. I don't know if I can do this again."
"Of course you can. You just need to stop thinking that it's different now from how it was when you were in the chair. It's not different. It's the same. It's all connected."
Annja closed her eyes. She tried to remember how she'd felt when she reached this point. She could feel her heartbeat increase as the waves of fear gripped her insides again. She was Jenny. She was feeling the approach of some kind of unseen danger. And then she was swept up.
Running.
Running.
Through the trees and across the hills and the valleys.
Branches whipped past her face. She could smell the wet pines, the dampness of the rain on the air. She could hear the breezes rustling the leaves and the deadfall. She could feel her feet on the slippery mud, but somehow kept her balance just the same.
And still she could feel Jenny's fear. She knew it now like it was her own. And she saw the darkness that surrounded Jenny.
The cave.
Annja opened her eyes and nearly fell over.
She wasn't by the pine boughs where Joey had left Jenny. She was somewhere else. Far away from where they'd been.
Miles away, in fact.
Joey stood nearby. He was smiling. "Hey."
"Hey, yourself. Where the hell are we?"
Joey shrugged. "I don't really know. This isn't a part of the woods that I've explored before."
"I thought you knew everywhere."
"Nope. This is a lot of land. Parts of this place are almost inaccessible. Frankly, when you took off running, I was a bit concerned I'd lose you. If you'd kept up with me like that earlier, we might have found Jenny even faster."
"
Funny guy.
I don't even remember moving."
Joey nodded. "Yeah, well, when you suddenly forget about keeping your body, mind and spirit together, crazy things can happen."
"I guess."
Joey glanced around. "This is some pretty steep terrain. You think Jenny's around here somewhere?"
"A cave," Annja said. She could see the darkness. "I think she's in a cave somewhere above us."
"We're almost above the treeline as it is," Joey said. "But these mountains and hills are packed with isolated areas that are almost impossible to get through. She could be in any one of them. Can you narrow it down some before we start poking our noses into every cave we come across?"
"How would I do that?"
Joey shrugged. "Close your eyes again."
"Okay."
"
One thing."
Annja opened her eyes. "What?"
"This time, try to consciously move a little slower, would you? You almost had me tired out back there."
Annja grinned.
"All right."
She closed her eyes and tried to focus on the darkness. If Jenny was in a cave, they would need to know where it was.
But instead of feeling like she could see the darkness, Annja found that she couldn't concentrate on the pitch-black interior any longer. For some reason, it didn't feel right.
She opened her eyes.
"Something wrong?"
"
I don't know. I closed my eyes and tried to tune into Jenny again, but I don't see any darkness. I'm trying to see the cave, but it's not working for some reason."
"Weird," Joey said.
"Maybe I'm not doing it right?"
"Maybe, but a lot of this stuff is just done by gut instinct. If something feels wrong, that usually means it is."
"So you think I'm doing it wrong."
"I didn't say that. I just said if it feels wrong, then perhaps something has changed that we can't see just yet."
"Like what?"
Joey shook his head. "I don't know. Maybe Jenny's not in a cave anymore."
"You think they moved her?"
Joey frowned. "Did you say anything to her when you were spirit tracking?"
"I called her name a couple of times."
"
Yeah, anything else?"
Annja frowned.
"As a matter of fact, I think I told her to find a way out of the cave and that we'd find her."
"
There ya go. She's probably making her way back down to us even as we stand here."
Annja looked around.
"Really?"
"Why not?"
"
Well, I didn't think she heard me."
"She probably didn't hear you in the way that you would if we were speaking normally. But subconsciously she might have suddenly gotten the idea to leave the cave and then done so."
Annja looked at him. "Is that how you contacted Dancing Deer when we were on our way to see him?"
"Something
like
that."
"
Pretty incredible."
"Nah, not really.
That's another problem with this stuff. When people find out, they always want to mumbo jumbo it up. Turn it into something mystical or magical when it's anything but that. The most incredible things are inherent in everyone. It's just that we forget about them or don't use them enough so that, over time, the edges get dull. And eventually we forget we have them at all. It's kind of sad, really, when you see the majority of people sort of sleepwalking through their lives. The reality of waking up to the truth is always so much more amazing than you'd think."
"
Through the looking glass, right?"
Joey frowned. "Huh?"
"Never mind. So where would you suggest we look for Jenny, then? She could be anywhere."
Joey shook his head. "I say we stay right here and that she'll probably be along shortly."
"Of all the places in these woods, you think she's just going to wander down in front of us?"
"
Why not?"
Annja smiled. "Methinks you've got a lot of faith."
"Just a confidence in the way the Creator works, that's all. If that's faith, then so be it. But I don't get all religious about it.
Just appreciative."
"Thankful."
"Exactly."
Joey hunkered down on a nearby log and started studying the ground. Annja watched him as he ran his hands over the dirt. "Any tracks?"
Joey shrugged.
"Not sure, actually.
I see some depressions, but I can't tell what made them."
"
Really?"
He looked up. "Well, like I said before, I'm still studying. I can't get out here every single day when school's in session. I still have to do homework."
"Sorry."
"Forget it."
Joey went back to studying the ground. "Funny thing, though, whatever made this was pretty large."
"
Meaning?"
"
Nothing, I guess. I'd sure like to know what track this is. There are no real impressions, just a displacement of dirt. It's weird."
"Why are you guys looking at the ground?"
Annja glanced up. Coming out of the trees in front of them was Jenny Chu.

Annja couldn't contain herself. She rushed up and grabbed Jenny in a bear hug. "Thank God you're alive!"
Jenny nodded and Annja let her go. "I don't know what happened exactly."
Joey frowned. "When I left you, you were passed out asleep."
Jenny smiled. "I think it was that tea you made me. It was so warm and delicious. I just about went out after a few sips of that stuff."
"Old family recipe," Joey said. "But what happened? I wouldn't have left you if I'd known you were going to up and leave like that."
Annja brought Jenny over to the side of the trail. "Are you feeling all right? Joey can make a fire if you need one."
"I'm okay, actually," Jenny said. "Getting down here helped warm me up, so that's a good thing."
Joey squatted and looked closely at Jenny. "Well, considering how bad off you were when I found you, I'd say that's definitely a good thing. You made a remarkable recovery for someone who was struggling with hypothermia.
Pretty impressive."
Jenny nodded. "I feel a lot better."
"So," Annja said, "can you tell us what happened to you?"
Jenny took a deep breath. "I left the camp early this morning. I'd come because a contact of mine out here found some tracks."
"
Tracks?"
"
He believed they belonged to the Sasquatch."
Joey rolled his eyes and Annja resisted the urge to. Instead, she smiled. "All right, that made you launch the expedition. But what happened this morning when you left camp?"
"I was getting a feel for the lay of the land. There's something incredible about this forest. I've been to plenty of places but it's almost as if this location has some type of spirit watching over it. The trails aren't beaten down by humans. There's very little, if any, litter anywhere, and the majesty of the place can be overwhelming."
Annja glanced at Joey. "I tend to think our friend here helps keep the place looking better than average."
Joey shrugged.
"Part of my duty."
Jenny smiled. "Well, you're doing a phenomenal job. But I tend to think there might be another presence here. And the footprint casts that I saw in pictures made me desperately want to come here and find out for myself."
"And drag along your skeptical friend," Annja said.
"Sure. Why wouldn't I?"
Annja nodded. "So you were out hiking this morning…"
"I hadn't planned to do much.
Maybe a few miles on one of the trails.
I didn't take a pack with me. I felt I needed to be out by myself, you know?
Away from everyone else.
I love my students, obviously, but the chatter can get annoying sometimes. I don't imagine you'd understand."
Annja frowned. "Actually, I have a pretty good idea."
"I was out for a good long time. Again, I just got caught up looking at things. I lost track of time. By late afternoon, I was heading back, but instead of the camp, I found it deserted."
"We had some nasty visitors while you were gone," Annja said. "They were very persuasive when they asked us to leave."
Jenny looked at her.
"The students?"
"
Safe back in town, thanks to Joey."
Jenny smiled at Joey. "That's one more I owe you, huh?"
"
Added to the tab, no worries."
Jenny looked back at Annja. "And you stayed?"
"Sure, I wasn't going to desert one of my friends. Especially not one who went through so much trouble to get me to come out here in the first place."
"Thanks. I mean it. And thanks for making sure my students got taken care of. If anything happened to them—"
"Let's not think about that right now. They're safe. So are you. That's what matters." Annja glanced at Joey. "Would it be too much to ask you to make a fire? Some of that tea you made Jenny sounds really good, too. I could certainly use a cup and I'm sure Jenny would like another, as well."
Joey smiled. "Consider it done."
Annja watched him vanish into the woods to find the necessary ingredients. Annja looked back at Jenny. "All right, now what the hell is really going on here?"
"What do you mean?"
"What I mean is
,
you bring me out here to some camp in the middle of nowhere. I get here and instantly I'm faced with three mean dudes with guns. I have to shepherd your students back to town. Then I have a run-in with a wolf. It's been pouring buckets and you almost die from exposure. I visit some old Native American man who surreptitiously teaches me how to do something called spirit tracking and we manage to find each other." Annja took a breath. "You're sure this is all about some set of tracks?"
Jenny took a deep breath. "I don't know."
"That's not much of an answer."
Joey emerged from the brush and started making the fire pit. "I take it you want this thing kept low profile?"
Annja nodded.
"The lower the better."
Joey nodded and within a few seconds had a small blaze started. Annja watched him fix several sticks together to make some sort of grill. On top of this, he placed a small container of water to boil. Where he'd managed to get the water, Annja had no idea. She wondered what else Joey had hidden away in the small pack he carried.
She glanced back at Jenny who wasn't looking nearly so happy. "Tell me about this contact of yours," Annja said.
"David? He's just a friend I met through an online site for Sasquatch aficionados. We hit it off and started comparing notes. He mentioned he was out here and that he'd come across something he thought I might find interesting."
"
The tracks."
"
Yes."
"And he showed them to you?"
"
Via e-mail.
He sent me a digital photo of them."
Joey sniffed. "Any fool with Photoshop can alter a picture and make it look like something else."
Jenny sighed. "Maybe I was naive."
"Have you seen this David guy since you've been out here?" Annja asked.
Jenny frowned. "That's the odd thing. He was supposed to meet up with me in town to discuss the search pattern we were going to run to find the creature."
"You actually thought you were going to find the Sasquatch?" Joey shook his head. "And they say kids are crazy."
"Make the tea, Joey," Annja said. She turned back to Jenny. "You really thought you might catch one?"
Jenny shook her head. "That's a bad choice of words. By
find
I meant that we would get some type of evidence on film that the creatures exist. I didn't mean that we were going to trap one and cart it off for study."
Joey sniffed again, but this time didn't say anything.
"What's the background on David? Is he local? Would Joey know him?"
Jenny shrugged. "I thought he was local. But I guess I don't really know."
Annja sighed. "For someone as intelligent as you are, Jenny, you really dropped the ball on this one. How in the world did you ever convince the university to back this expedition?"
Jenny smiled. "I used to date the head of the department of anthropology. He owed me a favor."
Annja took another breath. "So let me see if I've got this straight—you hook up with some guy on the Net. He sends you pictures. You agree to come out and meet with him and manage to convince people to give you money to do so."
"That's about it, yes."
"You realize this sounds exactly like some type of exposé on the dangers the Internet poses to children, don't you?"
Joey stirred a handful of pine needles into the boiling water. "Tea will be ready soon, everyone."
Annja frowned. She wished she had some whiskey to go along with that tea.
The thought that Jenny would be so reckless, not just with her own safety but with the safety of her students, really bothered her.
Annja couldn't believe it. It didn't seem like something Jenny would do, and yet here she was.
She decided to change the subject. "David never showed up, huh?"
"No."
"And just what did this guy look like?"
Jenny shrugged. "He was sort of tall. Nice face. Clean shaven. Kind of that scholarly look—you know the one I like."
Jenny had always had a thing for bookish guys.
"Yeah, I know what you like." Annja glanced around. It didn't seem as if this David had any connection to the angry gunmen. None of them fit that description. That was at least something in his favor. Still, Annja wanted to know more about this guy and why he hadn't shown up when he said he would.
"Did you have any established communication routine at all? Would he know how to get in touch with you?" she asked Jenny.
"He had my cell-phone number."
"And did he call you at any point?"
Jenny frowned. "No. He didn't."
Joey handed Jenny a cup of the tea. "Drink this. It will make you feel better. I added a few extra touches to it."
Annja accepted tea from him, as well. She could feel the heat emanating from the cup and sniffed it.
"Smells good."
"
It is," Joey said.
"So does this David guy sound familiar to you? You seem like the type who would know anyone in town, and this guy sounds just different enough that he might stand out in your mind."
Joey shook his head and sipped his own cup of tea. "Sorry, no. I mean, every once in a while, we get some kooks through here who think they're on the monster trail and all, but it's happened often enough that we just get bored with them. They camp out for a week or so, don't see anything and then pack it in. When the Sasquatch doesn't come out of the brush and sit in their camp, they tend to lose patience and move on."
Annja nodded.
"Looks as if David is a ghost, then.
If he even existed at all."
Jenny sipped her tea. "But I spoke with him."
"Online," Annja said. "There's no guarantee that it wasn't someone else on the other end feeding you a fake picture of who you thought David was."
"But why go through that trouble?"
Annja shook her head. "I don't know. But someone did apparently. Or else, there's the other option."
"What's that?"
"That David has either been kidnapped or killed."
Jenny gasped. "You're not serious."
"Why not? Missing people who don't turn up when they're supposed to? Let's not be foolish here and discount it so fast. Given the other characters I've run into since I arrived earlier today, it's not out of the realm of possibility that something bad happened."
Jenny shook her head. "I don't believe it. I think he's still around. After all, look what happened to me. I vanished and yet you found me."
"You found your way down the mountain, Jenny," Annja said. "I didn't do anything."
"You spoke to me in a dream," Jenny said. "It was very clear to me."
Joey raised his eyebrows. "Wow, pretty good for a first timer."
Annja shushed him. "You heard me?"
Jenny nodded.
"When I was in the cave.
It was completely dark.
Couldn't see a thing.
And yet, in the darkness, you spoke to me as if you were right next to me. I'd been crying softly and then it was like you were there.
Pretty amazing."
Annja took another sip of tea. "You remember anything else about getting to that cave?"
"Not really. I had the distinct sensation of someone lifting me up and running with me in their arms."
"They'd have to be pretty strong to do that," Annja said. "Maybe you were just hallucinating or sleepwalking?"
Jenny shook her head.
"No way.
This was for real."
"And just who do you think snatched you up like that?"
Jenny took a sip of tea and then looked right at Annja. "Why, big foot, of course."