Mystery Walk

'Because he's either a cunning charlatan—or he's a genuine healer. And if that's so, I want him here. With me. It's time for my massage now.'

Niles helped Krepsin rise from the chair. The man's huge bulk—over four hundred pounds on a large-boned frame five-feet six-inches tall—left its shape impressed in the leather. As they neared the door, an electric eye triggered the mechanism that both unlocked the door and started a new flow of charcoal-filtered air in the outside corridor.

After they'd gone, a Mexican maid in a long white smock entered the empty projection room and began vacuuming the carpet. She wore spotless white gloves and white cotton slippers, and across the lower half of her face was a surgical mask.

45

There was a letter from Dr. Mirakle in the mailbox today. Billy read it as he walked up the hill to the house in the clear golden light of late October.

Dr. Mirakle said he had his eye on a cottage in Florida. He asked if Billy had read the last batch of books on spiritualism he'd sent, and how his piano lessons were coming along. He asked also if Billy had given any more thought to visiting that institute in Chicago.

Billy slipped the letter back into its envelope. Since that strange autumn three years ago, Dr. Mirakle had written frequently, and often sent him books on a variety of subjects. He'd visited once, about three months after Billy had come home to find his father buried, and had brought the old piano, tuned and repaired, that now stood in the front room.

The house was painted white, its windows glinting with sunlight. A wisp of smoke curled from the chimney. Around the house the trees had burst into color, and in the breeze there was a faint chill of approaching winter. An old brown pickup truck, an ugly and unreliable beast bought over a year before with money from a sizable corn crop, rested in front of the house. The Creekmore place was now one of the last houses that didn't have electricity, but Billy didn't mind. The dark wasn't threatening, and late at night the kerosene lanterns cast a soft golden glow that was much better, to his way of thinking, than harsh white electricity.

He was less than a month shy of turning twenty-one. In the last three years he'd grown another two inches and had gained twenty pounds, all of it firm muscle that came from hard outdoor work. His face had sharpened and matured, and thick dark curls tumbled over his forehead; his dark eyes glittered with an earthy intelligence, and could shine with good humor as well. He walked up onto the front porch and went into the house, past the upright piano in the front room; he'd been taking lessons for two years from a retired music teacher at two dollars a week, and had progressed from pounding hell out of the instrument to letting it draw the moods from him as his fingers rippled across the keyboard. Many evenings his mother sat with her needlepoint, listening to the slightly warped chords but appreciating the feeling behind the music.

'Any mail?' she called from the kitchen.

'One letter, from Dr. Mirakle. He says hello.' He sat down in a chair before the hearth and read Dr Mirakle's letter again. When he looked up, Ramona was standing over him, drying her hands on a dishrag. 'Did he mention that place again?' she asked quietly.

He nodded and handed her the letter, but she didn't read it. 'Chicago. I wonder what kind of city that is?'

'Probably dirty,' Billy replied. 'They've got gangsters up there, too.'

Ramona smiled. 'I believe that was a long time ago you're thinking of. But I suppose there are gangsters just about everywhere.' She rubbed her callused fingers; they were stiff and unresponsive. The lines in her face were many and deep. 'I wonder what that institute would be like. Don't you wonder sometimes?'

'No.'

'We could afford a bus ticket, if you wanted to go. From what I recall, they were eager to hear from you.'

Billy grunted, watching the small tongues of flame in the hearth. 'They'd probably treat me like a freak.'

'Are you afraid to go?'

'I don't want to go.'

'That's not what I asked.' She stood over him for a moment more, then she went to a window and looked out. The breeze stirred reddening leaves. 'You'll be twenty-one in November,' she said. 'I know . . . things happened to you when you joined that Ghost Show. I know that you came back home bearing scars. That's all right. Only tough folks carry scars. Maybe I shouldn't stick my nose in where it doesn't belong, but ... I think you should go to that institute, I think you should see what they have to say.'

'I don't belong up there. ...'

'No.' Ramona turned toward him. 'You don't belong here. Not anymore. The land and the house are in fine shape, and now you're just filling up your days trying to stay busy. What kind of life is ahead for you in Hawthorne? Answer me that.'

'A good life. I'll work hard, and I'll read, and I'll keep up my music ...'

'... and there goes another year, doesn't it? Boy, have you forgotten everything your grandmother and I tried to teach you about the Mystery Walk? That you have to be strong enough to follow it wherever it leads, and that it's up to you break new ground? I've taught you all I know about the ceremony, about the use of the jimsonweed and hemp, and how to recognize the mushrooms that must be dried and crushed into powder to be smoked. I've taught you what I know of the shape changer, and how it can use other souls against yours; I've taught you to be proud of your heritage, and I thought you'd learned how to see by now.'

'See? See what?'

'Your future,' she said. 'The Choctaw doesn't choose who's to make the Walk; only the Giver of Breath can make that choice. Oh, many before you lost their faith or their courage, or had their minds swept away by evil forces. But when evil can break the chain of the Mystery Walk, then all that's gone before is disrupted, all the learning and experience and pain might just as well be for nothing. I know that it left a scar on you that summer and autumn; but you can't let it win. The ceremony is important, but most important is what's out there.' Ramona motioned toward the window. 'The world.'

'It's not my world,' Billy said.

'It can be. Are you afraid? Are you giving up?'

Billy was silent. His experience on the Octopus was still burned into him, and there had been many nightmares of it to keep the wounds raw. Sometimes a cobra reared up in the darkness, and sometimes he had a gun that wouldn't fire as the thing coiled closer toward him. Soon after arriving home that autumn, he'd taken the bus to Birmingham and had gone to the hospital to see Santha Tully. The nurse there had told him that Santha Tully had left the day before, and had gone back to New Orleans; he'd stood in the empty room she'd occupied, knowing he'd never see her again. He silently wished her good luck.

'I'm not afraid,' he said. 'I just don't want to be . . . treated like a freak.'

“And you think they will, at this institute in Chicago? You under who and what you are; what else matters? But if the institute works with people like us, then they can teach you . . . and learn from you as well. I think that's where you belong.”

'No.'

Ramona sighed and shook her head. 'Then I've failed, haven't I? You're not strong enough. Your work isn't done—it hasn't really started—and already you think you deserve rest. You don't, not yet.'

'Damn it!' Billy said sharply, and abruptly stood up. 'Leave me alone!' He snatched Dr. Mirakle's letter from her and angrily ripped it up, throwing the pieces into the fireplace. 'You don't understand what it was like on the Octopus! You didn't hear it! You didn't feel it! Leave me alone!' He started past her, toward the front door.

'Billy,' Ramona said softly. When he turned, she held out the piece of coal in the palm of her hand. 'I found this on the top of your dresser this morning. Why did you take it out of the drawer?'

He couldn't remember if he had or not. Ramona tossed it to him. There seemed to be heat in it, and it gleamed like a black, mysterious amulet.