Shaman's Blood (23 page)

It came toward her in a slow, relentless tick mosey. Margaret was about to lose her dinner and tears of fright stung her eyes. She knew what tick bites felt like and how painful it was to pull one off you once it was seized in. Even with tiny ones, those mouthparts went right in and buried the head up to its hard body shell in your flesh. Blow that thing up to this size, and you were looking at certain death.

Margaret was dizzy. The thing had reached the foot of her bed and placed one waving leg over the edge of the bed frame, questing. Slowly it began drawing itself up onto the bedspread, its foot claws grabbing hold of the quilted surface. It lurched forward, its body scraping over the wooden frame with a sickening noise like pieces of Styrofoam rubbing together. Margaret screamed, but her throat, constricted in terror, produced no sound.

At that moment, the door opened and Tom came in. She stared in surprise.

“Margrits, what are you doing standing on your bed?”

“Ohmigod—” Margaret pointed to the end of the bed, at nothing. Suddenly the room spiraled and she fell, cracking her forehead on the bedpost.

“Oww! Shit, that hurt!”

She felt Tom’s strong, skinny arms pulling her upright. “Hey, are you okay? Lemme see that bump.”

“Oww, is it bleeding?”

“Nah, it’s all right. Uh, what was up with that little scene?”

“Oh god, Tom, you saved me! That thing was coming up on the bed.” She clutched Tom’s arm and couldn’t let go.

“Like, what thing?” Tom stood up and scanned the room.

Margaret was getting her breath back and touched the rising bump on her forehead gently with the tips of her fingers. “Tom, do you believe in the supernatural?”

“Fukkin-A. Is this place haunted?” She sat down in the computer chair. “Hey, are you online with somebody?”

Margaret saw the IM icon flashing. “Oh, shit yeah, that’s Kini. Let me answer him back.” Tom got up and Margaret slid into the seat, grabbing the mouse. She scrolled to his latest entry.

“MAR-CHAN ANSWER ME!”

Margaret put her trembling fingers on the keyboard, but couldn’t type. Thank god for Tom, who sat calmly on her own bed, watching the screen with a detached expression except for pursed lips, which Margaret noted were devoid of lipstick.

Finally, she managed to respond: “Something horrible was here in my room, but then my roommate came in and it disappeared and she didn’t see it at all. So I dun know if it was really there or not. Kini, I think that Quinkan’s back. Can u help me? Seriousleh.”

“ur sure it was a Quinkan?” he responded. “They hang out in caves and billabongs and places like that, not girl’s dorms. Dunt make any sense.”

“I’m spazzin, Kini-kun. Wish I could talk to u for real. It’s not just me. Last year my mom saw it 2. A horrible black one-eyed dingo. But the Wandjinas came in a storm and we thought they killed it. No laff, this is for true.” She hit SEND, and wondered what he would make of that.

“Hey, Margrits,” said Tom, reading over her shoulder. “What’s a Quinkan?”

Margaret scrabbled through her brains for a quick and dirty answer that would explain a shadowy creature that had probably been around for hundreds or thousands or maybe millions of years. “It’s an evil spirit that can shape-shift and sound like somebody you know, so it can lure you where it can grab you.”

“Why would it want to do that?” Tom asked.

“To kill and eat you and turn the leftover parts into new Quinkans. It’s supposed to like children best. It’s also supposed to live in the Australian Outback, but I think it can go wherever it wants.”

“Nasty,” said Tom. “What does it want with you?”

“That’s what I want to know! This thing has been hassling me ever since I was little, mostly in my nightmares, but once it walked out of my closet and talked to me. It talks in Mom’s voice, and when it’s in a dog shape it has this awful snarly sound. Sometimes it’s a lizard. It’s just horrible and always threatens to chew me up for dinner. Usually I can make myself wake up, but sometimes I’m just stuck there, watching it drool on the carpet.” Margaret shuddered again.

“Ya know, Margrits, I never would have figured you for a spirit magnet. You just seem too… what’s the word?”

“Ordinary?”

“Yeah. I think you need to get in touch with your guardians.”

Margaret stared at Tom. “My what?”

“Guardians. Your totem spirits. Everybody’s got them, but most people don’t know what they are. This is mine.” She pointed to the tattoo on her chest.

“Everybody has one?”

“Damn straight.”

“Hold on a second.” Margaret turned back to the keyboard. She read Kinigar’s last message: “WTF? U called up the WANDJINAS?? How??”

She responded quickly, typing, “Kini, what’s your totem? Your spirit guardian, if it’s not a secret.”

“No secret,” he wrote back. “Native cat, that’s mine. He’s fukkin awesome. Nobody can see him but me but I know when he’s around. Sometimes he’s small and sneaky, but when I need him to protect me he’s so badass he even scares me!”

“How did you find him? How can I find mine?”

“Just ask it to show itself to yeh. If ur psychic it’s easy.”

Margaret took a deep breath. She was hatching a plan. “Thanks Kini-kun, gotta go now, but talk to me tomorrow, ‘K? *superclingcuddleglomps* BTW, your picture is The Sex!”

“Laters, mate. Yeh sounds okay now, so take care. Tell me about those Wandjinas next time, yah? XD, Kini.”

Margaret exited the forum and swung the chair around so that her back was to the screen. “Tom, can you show me how to contact my spirit guardian?”

Tom scratched her head. “Maybe. I can show you what I did. Who knows, maybe it’ll work for you.”

“Cool. What do I do first?”

“Okay, listen. If we’re gonna do this, we gotta do it right.”

Margaret was finally feeling close to normal again and leaned back in the chair. “Thanks. By the way, what did you do with Devin?”

Tom’s eyes went half-lidded. “Who wants to know?”

“The whole dorm.”

“Then the answer is, I been here all night, ‘cuz sure as I told one person, some fucktard would hear it and spread it all over.” She pulled her duffle bag out from under her bed and scratched around in it, eventually producing a plastic bag containing a dozen or so sticks of incense. She pulled one out.

“Lemongrass. Good for smudging and cleansing a room if you’re going to contact the spirits. Which we are.”

“You can’t light incense in here. Won’t it set off the smoke alarm?”

“Yep, it would. So we’re gonna go stand in the kitchenette, turn on the oven hood exhaust so it’ll suck up the smoke, smudge each other up quick, and then come back here and seal the circle.”

“What circle?”

“You’ll see.” Tom hustled Margaret out the door. No one was in the kitchen, so Tom turned on the hood fan, produced a lighter, and in just a few seconds a thin spiral of very pungent, aromatic smoke rose from the tip of the incense stick. She quickly ran the coils of smoke up one side of her body and down the other, and did the same to Margaret. Then she licked her thumb and index finger and pinched out the glowing tip.

“Awesomeness,” Margaret said, wishing she could someday be a tiny percent as fearless and cool as her roommate but knowing it would probably never happen.

Tom dragged her quickly back to their bedroom and shut and locked the door.

She stood in the middle of the room and motioned for Margaret to come stand beside her.

“Now, here’s what you do,” she said. “Point with your finger and draw an imaginary circle of fire all the way around us. Be sure you overlap the ends to make a complete circle. Try to see it real clear in your mind.” Tom did as she had just described, and then watched as Margaret copied her.

“Now, sit down inside the circle.”

They sat quietly for a moment. “Ready?” Tom asked.

Margaret nodded.

“In your mind’s eye, try to see some kind of reflecting surface, like a mirror or a pool, or even a TV screen. Ask your guardian to show itself to you.”

“Okay. Should I close my eyes?”

“If it helps. If it doesn’t, don’t.”

Margaret closed her eyes. She imagined herself picking up a hand mirror and looking at its surface, but all she saw was her own face. No matter what she tried to see, nothing could displace her reflection. She tried visualizing a large projection screen and mentally asking her guardian to appear when she flipped on the projector. The only thing she saw was her own face again.

“Tom, it’s not working.”

“Give it a minute. I didn’t get anything either, the first time I tried. Maybe you’re trying too hard. Just relax.”

“I’m trying to.”

They sat still, waiting and just breathing.

“I don’t know how to do this,” Margaret complained. “It’s just not working.”

Tom sat up straight and arched her back, stretching her arms overhead. “Well, maybe your totem doesn’t want to show up for some reason. Ask ‘em again and just wait.”

More silence. Margaret’s legs were going to sleep. She decided to try something different, and imagined herself sitting in a bright yellow pool of light. Then she saw her shadow-self get up and step out of the shaft of light, and stand on its periphery, watching as her body sat quietly with its eyes closed. The shaft of light rippled as something came into the spot she had just vacated.

Then Margaret’s body opened her eyes and stared at Tom, unblinking.

She heard Tom’s voice say, “Is somebody there?” as if from a long ways away.

Margaret’s body spoke in a soft voice, lower than her normal register. “We are here.”

Tom’s voice again. “Who’s we?”

“We are the Rai.”

Chapter 19

April 1969

Neddy! Please wake up! What’s happened?”

Kneeling between the mattress and the chair Ned had been sitting in before he fell, Suzanne lifted his head and shoulders into her lap, dreading that there might be blood. She didn’t see any, but he was out cold, and, in fact, his skin was cool to the touch. She pressed her fingertips to his temple and felt a pulse, but he didn’t wake up.

“Neddy, please …”

She eased his head down onto the floor and ran to the other bedroom. Its door was closed, so she knocked, hoping Crash was there.

“Crash?” She knocked again. “I need your help!”

The door opened a crack, revealing a pale sleep-fogged face. “Huh?”

“Crash, come help me, Ned’s passed out or something. I can’t get him to wake up.”

“He’ll get over it, man. Just let him lie there.”

“No, you don’t understand, we weren’t smoking anything. I was sitting on the bed, reading some of those stupid comics he likes, and he was working on a picture. I looked over at him and he was just staring off into space. I assumed he was just thinking, but then he went limp and fell out of the chair. I can’t get him to wake up!”

The door opened a bit wider. “I guess he didn’t tell you about his fits, huh? Ned has fits. He passes out, falls over, and then wakes up. That’s it.” Crash ran his hands through his tangle of dirty brown hair and yawned. He wore a pair of drawstring karate pants and nothing else. Suzanne realized she’d woken him up, but she didn’t care.

“At least help me get him onto the bed. Please.” She put her hand on the door so he couldn’t shut it.

“Okay, but I’m telling you, he’ll come around in a few minutes.”

“Thank you.” She waited for him to go to the kitchen and return with a glass of water, then followed him to Ned’s room.

Crash took hold of Ned under the armpits while Suzanne picked up his feet, and together they half-lifted, half-dragged him onto the bed, which wasn’t nearly as easy as Suzanne had imagined—he was dead weight. Crash looked down at him.

“Looks pretty out of it.”

“That’s what I was trying to tell you. Shouldn’t we call a doctor or an ambulance? What if he’s had a stroke?”

Crash dipped his fingers in the glass of water and flicked a few drops across Ned’s face. Ned twitched, but didn’t open his eyes.

“He’ll be all right.”

Suzanne knelt beside Ned and held his left hand in hers. “He’s so cold. God, Crash, what if he dies?”

“He ain’t gonna, but call an ambulance if it’ll make you feel better. Just give me time to hide my stash.”

Ned moaned and Suzanne felt the barest pressure from his hand. She squeezed it and held it to her lips. “Ned, can you hear me?” 

*    *    *

Ned was on his knees in the dark water again, soaked and shivering. His left hand held tightly to the spirit cord that stretched away into nothingness, while with his right he felt around in the water for a thing he’d dropped. It was an oval-shaped stone, heavy and slick with lichens, and it had slipped out of his hand when he’d stumbled over something in the water.

He couldn’t remember clearly why he’d been carrying the stone or why he was desperate to find it again, but he could feel a panicked despair constricting his chest. Something terrible would happen if he couldn’t find it. Red resin drops slid down the cord, stopping at his hand and forming a translucent pool around his fingers. Ruby tears of the bloodwood tree. They were said to heal wounds and illness, but because of them his grip on the cord was slipping. Ned knew in his soul that if he let go of the cord, he was lost; he would never be able to find his way back to his body in the directionless dark.

A willy wagtail darted past his head and flashed out of sight. He knew about wagtails. They were harbingers of death. The wagtail swooped back into his field of vision, chasing insects unseen, its glossy black wings and back nearly invisible against the gloom of the billabong. Its white belly flashed by his face, and it landed on the spirit cord beside his hand. The bird cocked its head, watching him with tiny bright eyes and fluffing its white eyebrow feathers in avian aggression punctuated by alarmed chattering. It began pecking at the resin, plucking out grubs or something edible, Ned guessed.

He was unsure who’d told him the lore of the wagtail or the origin of kino, the sticky red resin of the bloodwood, but it was old knowledge, something he understood with his bones and sinews. Like he understood the stone he’d lost. Fear flowed into him again as he remembered that he’d dropped it in the black water. Suddenly, he felt a sharp stab of pain in his hand.