Water and Stone (22 page)

She knew better than to challenge her sister outright.

At the same time, though, Yani realized that unless she acted proactively, Rancher would die. There was no one she could talk to... if she went around telling people that her sister was a witch who had cursed Rancher Ford, people would come to her aid, all right. They would help put her into a lunatic asylum.

They had the same blood running through their veins so it was possible they held the same powers too. Evalena was much more practiced at the nuances of devilry, however. Yani knew if she made but one misstep the girl would pounce upon her showing no mercy.

"Subtlety is the key to magic, Yani."

The words of the man she called father tingled in her ears as if he was standing right beside her. He always seemed distant to her as if he was fearful of establishing too close a relationship but now there he was, giving her the same good advice she remembered from her childhood. She had always been envious of how father and Evalena seemed to bond so completely while she was shuffled off to the side. Now, all that had changed.

Lately she'd been wondering if the distance he kept had all been but a ruse. She'd long ago accepted that the man she called father was not her actual father. That part didn’t bother her as much as wondering why he'd taken on the responsibility of raising a girl who was not his blood.

Rancher Ford had all but ignored Church for years even knowing that the boy was his son. Sometimes it was all she could do not to hate the man. But she knew he was married when she got involved with him. What did she expect?

That Church and Billy were brothers was apparent from the start. And sometimes when she looked at Evalena she thought she was gazing into a mirror.

At the same time she sensed that even though they weren't sisters she shared a bloodline with Evalena that went far back into time. Yani had never understood why the girl wouldn't let her live in peace... why she kept appearing in her life especially at times when she couldn't turn her away.

Decades ago she'd run off to the heart of Mexico thinking that she could hide there, that no matter how they looked the people who wanted her would never think of searching in those haunted hills hidden inside of high mountain passes and trees that touched the sky. Later she came north to Texas once again believing that the trail had long gone cold yet Evalena had found her as easily as if she'd drawn up a map and left it lying about to be found.

When the girl showed up at the chabola during the height of the storm Yani thought Evalena was the victim of bad timing... that the ferocious weather had caught her unawares. Now she wondered instead if the girl had summoned the storms simply to make it impossible for Yani to turn her away.

"A butterfly fluttering its wings here can result in a hurricane on the other side of the world, Yani. Small steps repeated result in the moving of mountains. Most people think of magic as the doing of great things but that's the wrong way to look at it. Magic resides in the small, not in the great."

The man she called father didn't often talk of such things so when he did Yani paid particular attention. He'd showed her no spells, he'd shared no books filled with ancient runes, and he'd performed no special feats in her presence. But something in his mannerisms belied the gentle ways he treated her.

Whatever he was, the man had loved her. Yani had no doubts about that. Yet he seemed hindered in doing for her the things most fathers bestowed upon their daughters. Sometimes even now Yani found tears in her eyes thinking of him and how much he'd done for her, and yet how much more he'd been capable of yet held back.

He was afraid of Evalena too.

Was it possible? Instead of being her mentor had the man she called father actually been a thrall to Evalena? What if their positions in life weren't at all what they seemed but an assumed stance, a ploy to fit into a society where father and daughter was a normal course of things?

It put everything in a whole new light. Instead of envying Evalena for the attention paid to her by the man she called father Yani should have been grateful to have been left alone... to be allowed the opportunity to grow into the woman she was meant to be.

What if she'd been wrong to blame the man she called her father for the attack upon her person that long ago night when she had just turned fifteen? Was Evalena the real power behind the assault? And if so, Yani wondered if the results of that attack had yet to fully manifest.

The blotches left on her body were unsightly but what if... oh, what did she know about anything... next to nothing. They'd kept her in the dark, both father and Evalena... and now she began to suspect there was a purpose to their actions, one she shuddered to think about.

They were trying to grow something upon her body, like a cancer, or worse. But how could anyone who professed to love another do such a malignant and spiteful deed against their person? Still, the world was a hard and a brittle place and love had nothing to do with what people did to one another.

The first order of business had to be getting Rancher back upon his feet again. Whatever had been done to her had occurred so long ago it no longer mattered but if she couldn’t resolve the mysterious reason for the man's illness he'd be dead within a few weeks.

She knew she couldn’t confront Evalena directly... the girl was too powerful. No... instead she had to figure out exactly what had happened to Rancher that day he visited the chabola to see how Billy was doing... later she could delve into her own problems.

They'd been living together for about a year or thereabouts. Yani was just settling into the hacienda... becoming comfortable staying there and enjoying what for her were the luxurious surroundings and grand amenities. It still thrilled her to flick a switch and see the lights come on instead of having to light the smoky lanterns at the chabola.

"I'm going to ride over to Cherry Creek today, Yani. I haven’t seen Billy and I'm a little worried about him."

"I'll come with you, Rancher... I'd like to get out of the house for a little while too."

"I'd rather do this on my own... it isn’t that I don’t appreciate your company, Yani... I'm concerned that maybe my asking you and Church to move in here might have something to do with Billy not coming around any longer. If so, you coming along might only aggravate things."

"Go, then... I'll wait for you here. Take care, Rancher... my sister can sometimes become aroused when someone unexpected visits the cabin... it isn’t that she dislikes you... she simply is set in her ways."

She'd wanted to tell Rancher how wrong he was about Billy and Evalena but Yani didn’t know exactly how to formulate the words. If she came right out and told him that Evalena was a bruja he'd only laugh. She kept quiet. Rancher had saddled up and ridden off that morning with a wave of his hand as he blew her a kiss.

Yani remembered him coming home with a high fever and a weird story about a broken down old man living at the chabola with Evalena... apparently his father—his long lost father who he thought was dead—or so he'd said. When Yani asked about Billy, Rancher told her that he didn’t see the boy around at all. He presumed Billy might have taken off for parts unknown—perhaps to track down Church—but Yani had her doubts.

"I saw the damnedest thing riding along Cherry Creek Road, Yani. The entire countryside was covered in spider webs... the trees, the brush... even the ground. I've lived here close to thirty years and I've never seen anything like it."

"How was Evalena? Did she invite you inside? Or was she churlish as I warned you she might be?"

"Well... actually she chased me off. Just the sight of her spooked my horse. I have half a mind to go back out there tomorrow and tell her that she's no longer welcome here."

"Let me talk to her, Rancher. My sister can be difficult at times, and if your father really is there she probably has her hands full with him."

"I'm going to lay down, Yani... I feel so light headed... I think I'm running a fever."

Putting a hand to his brow Yani noticed he was right... the man was burning up. The next day Rancher couldn’t get out of bed... he thought he'd sprained a muscle in his back. Yani was uneasy about the fever he was running but put it off to the flu... she reasoned to herself that he was coming down with something and that was why his back hurt too.

After three days of no improvement Yani called Dr. Martin and implored him to come out to the Triple Six to examine Rancher... the man was too stubborn to go to the doctor himself. After examining Rancher the doctor insisted that he be hospitalized immediately. The doctor had a grim look on his face as he told Yani that he suspected Rancher's kidneys were failing.

"But what would cause that to happen, doctor? Rancher hasn’t been sick a day in his life."

"He may look to be strong as a bull but I've been after Rancher for years to do something about his blood pressure. It's been borderline high ever since he was twenty five years old. He steadfastly refused to take the medicine I prescribed for him or to alter his diet. Then again it could be something else."

"Like what, doctor?"

"We can hope it's a virus. He could have picked it up anywhere, Yani. There is a good chance that once the illness runs its course that his kidneys will regain their functions. Until then we're going to have to rely on dialysis to cleanse his blood."

"Is that something we can do here? Rancher hates leaving the ranch."

"I'm calling the paramedics to take him to the hospital... he needs specialized treatment I can't provide here. Hopefully he'll only be there for a few days."

Despite the doctor's optimism Rancher only grew worse. Now there was talk of a transplant being his only chance... that necrosis had set in and the organs responsible for cleansing the blood had instead begun to poison it.

"I've applied to move Rancher to the head of the line as far as organ donation goes but with him growing weaker each day I'm not sure we'll be able to find a compatible donor in time, Yani."

"What about me, doctor? Will one of my kidneys work?"

"Unfortunately no... we've run your blood work and you're not a compatible donor. We need a close relative of Rancher's... a son? Is one of his sons available, Yani?"

"They've both disappeared, doctor, and I have no way of reaching them."

"Well... I have a sinking feeling that unless we can find someone compatible and ask them to donate a kidney Rancher isn’t going to last the week, Yani."

"Can I bring him home now, doctor? You know how much he hates it here."

"By all means, Yani... if you think you can handle driving him into the clinic for his dialysis."

She detested driving. Each time she saw a police car reminded her that she had no driver's license and the motion of the vehicle made her ill to her stomach. Still, if it kept Rancher Ford alive she was willing to risk it.

She loved the man. She'd always hoped against any reasonable chance that one day he'd come to his senses and realize how much he loved her too. Now, it had happened. But instead of their life being happy, everything seemed to be coming apart around them and nothing she could do seemed to halt the inevitable.

"Subtlety is the key to magic."

The words resounded in her ears as Yani assembled and loaded the high-power rifle that Rancher used to hunt from time to time. She had never fired the gun before—any gun, for that matter—but she figured with a little practice she could hit what she aimed at.

There were few things as subtle as a bullet.

He meant to leave months ago but the visions made him stay.

They'd started out as a fog rolling in over the basin, or was it his brain? From his cave in the mountains high above the valley floor he watched as figures emerged and then dissolved again so quickly that he couldn’t quite make them out or even convince himself of their reality.

Each day the apparitions grew clearer and more distinct and as they did Church got the impression they were looking for him, or perhaps they were drawn by what he was hiding. Though he tried to secret it deep inside the cave the music still sounded clearly and loudly even when he was down below in the valley on ill-fated attempts to leave the mountains and go back home. The piedra kept calling him back.

He remembered the men who used to come to the chabola to visit Tia Evalena... to pay their respects... how they crawled on their bellies like snakes. The figures in the fog moved the same way. He told himself that perhaps it was only the play of the rising sun on the valley mists that caused the illusion but he knew better.

Perhaps those men heard the music too. For a long time he believed he was somehow special, pre-ordained perhaps, and one of a chosen few who listened to the song of the stone. Now he realized that those men who paraded past Evalena were not drawn by her so much as by what was buried beneath that sycamore tree growing out of the old church not far from the chabola.

He could take the stone and leave... it was an option he considered a million times, especially in the dead of night with the tendrils of vapor seeking him out touching him with their damp fingers as if reassuring themselves of his corporeality. Did they envy his physical being?

He'd run out of food weeks ago but it didn’t matter. Eating was nothing. He had plenty of water to drink—a freshwater spring bubbled up out of the floor of his cave—and he'd always been a little chubby anyhow. It would do him good to fast.

His brother was in trouble.

After he went a week without food his mind became clear as glass. A month with a diet of nothing but water taught him to realize the futility of the life he'd been leading. Another month of drinking a tea made of boiled pine needles brought him a clarity that he never realized existed in the world.

Lorraine came to him in his dreams nightly now speaking in veiled whispers of the sacrifices he'd have to make to save Billy Ford but alternately cautioning against acting rashly. He had to gather power before there was any hope confronting the woman he thought of as his aunt.

Lorraine Ford had taken on other-worldly qualities that he put off to her being dead but there was more... he began seeing her even during his waking hours. Sometimes she'd be off in the distance and though he couldn't quite make out who it was he knew it was she. But why was Lorraine haunting him? They hadn’t even known each other in life.

It dawned on him that it was her guilt that drove her restless spirit to come to him, to seek him out and make right whatever wrongs she thought she'd heaped upon him. Once he even tried forgiving her... telling her that he didn't hold her to blame for anything and in fact it was his fault more than hers that they found themselves estranged in life when they should've been closer to one another.

She only smiled and from that moment on he loved her.

Somehow, though, when he thought about that smile he recalled how it was more of a grimace... like a wild animal might make just before the lunge and the knockdown. It occurred to him that whatever the manifestation was it might not be who and what he thought... perhaps something evil in the world had followed him to the forbidding place where he'd been hiding for the last few months... perhaps it had even lured him there.

When he made ready to walk out of those hills, however, something stopped him... a feeling, maybe, or a premonition. If he didn't stay put long enough whatever was waiting for him back in Texas would devour him. He didn't have the strength to face it alone and there was no one else to rely on.

It was a sobering feeling to realize he was on his own, now and forever. He'd been little more than a child when he walked into the hills but now he was a man of purpose. He knew what he had to do but he didn't understand how to accomplish it. If he failed, his whole family would die... then again, they'd all perish eventually anyway. What was born was bound to die.

He wanted to run, to flee to somewhere that no one knew his name or where he came from... an island, perhaps, at the end of the world. It would do no good, however. Oh, he might buy some time... he might even meet a pretty girl and start a family... but they'd come for him in the end and then he'd have more to lose than now.

Lorraine wore a pearl around her neck and nothing else. In the beginning he had been startled to see her naked as the day she was born yet within no time he no longer noticed.

Still, Church thought it was odd that a ghost would have such accoutrements about her person but she had something to share. Taking off the pearl necklace she first showed the stone to him... it reminded him of the stone in the box... the one that his mother told him not to open but he couldn’t help himself.

Waving a finger at Church, Lorraine led him to a spring issuing forth from inside a cave. The surroundings looked familiar as if he had been there before... then he realized it was where he'd hidden the stone.

Taking the pearl strand in her hand Lorraine dipped it into the spring water... into the pool that gathered at the entrance to the cave before diving down the hill and into the valley below to wet the fields and nourish the crops.

The spring seemed to freeze instantly... as if a sudden cold spell had blown in from the north... yet the temperature of the cave didn't change. The water turned a translucent white like the pearl... like the stone... only the colors wavered from white to green to blue and whenever his eyes settled upon the surface of the spring he couldn't discern of the color was what he was seeing or if it was something deeper.

"Give me your hand, Church."

"But why?"

He was suddenly afraid—terrified—of what Lorraine had become and how she was affecting him and his surroundings. He had heretofore told himself she was merely an illusion, perhaps a result of his long fast. But now that his faith in reality was starting to crumble he realized the visions were leading him to a place that he didn't want to go and yet he hadn’t a choice.

He held out his hand. He knew he was dreaming... that he was actually asleep inside a hole in a rock—a roughly hewn cave—nowhere close to where he'd hidden the stone... but the knowing did nothing to resolve the fear larding his spirit and bidding him to run away as fast as he could to anywhere that this wraith wouldn't follow.

She took his hand in hers... his sense of reality told him she was as real as the rock upon which he slept yet he knew it wasn’t so... it couldn’t be. That would mean madness. Pulling him down she plunged his hand into what he thought was the frozen spring.

Expecting his bones to shatter on the ice Church told himself it wasn’t real... that even if and when he felt the pain when he woke it would be but a memory. But the spring wasn’t frozen at all... the surface wasn’t liquid and yet it was not solid either. It was something all together a mystery, one which both amazed and horrified him.

Spirits of a thousand ages swirled about him howling both in rage and in pain and in ecstasy... men and women caught up in a magic beyond their understanding and yet powerless to deny its bidding. Somewhere in the turmoil he saw Billy Ford's face. It was distorted either by the whirlwind or by something far more sinister... it appeared to Church that the spell which had taken Billy was slowly dragging the boy under the surface, engulfing him.

Billy Ford had saved him once. Church had been just a frightened little boy facing a world way too big to comprehend and Billy had helped to right his spirit and lead him to a brighter place.

He was beholden to the boy. Even though Church wanted nothing more than to run away and hide from the monstrosity that was his life he had to go back to Texas. He had to face down the demons raging through the night all of them being directed by one source... the woman he called Tia Evalena.

Waking to the cold light of dawn Church gathered himself together the best he could before walking to the cave where he had hidden the stone. He knew what was required of him but that didn’t make the doing of it any easier.

It wouldn’t hurt to wait another day.