Mystery Walk

'It's sure been raining a lot today,' Billy said. 'Mrs. Brannon says she thinks it'll snow soon.'

Bonnie didn't respond for a long while. Then she said softly, 'I hope it keeps rainin'. I hope it rains and rains for weeks. Nothin' can burn if it rains like this, can it?' She looked at him appealingly, and he was struck by her simple, natural beauty. She wore no makeup, and she looked freshly scrubbed and healthy but for the dark hollows under her eyes. Not enough sleep, he thought.

He didn't understand her comment, so he didn't reply.

'Why do you always carry that?' she asked.

And it was only then that he realized he held the piece of coal gripped in his left hand. He must've picked it up when he left his room. He was seldom without it, and he'd explained its significance to Dr Hillburn when she'd inquired.

'Is it like a good-luck charm or somethin'?'

'I guess so. I just carry it, that's all.'

'Oh.'

Billy shifted his weight from foot to foot. He was wearing pajamas and a robe and slippers provided by the institute, and even though it was well after two in the morning he was in no hurry to return to bed. 'Where are you from in Texas?'

'Lamesa. It's right between Lubbock and Big Spring. Where are you from in Alabama?'

'Hawthorne. How'd you know I was from Alabama?'

She shrugged. 'How'd you know I was from Texas?'

'I guess I asked somebody.' He paused, studying her face. 'How come you've got one blue eye and one green?'

'How come you've got curly hair if you're an Indian?'

He smiled, realizing she'd been asking as many questions about him as he had about her. 'Do you always answer a question with a question?'

'Do you?'

'No. I'm only part Indian. Choctaw. Don't worry, I won't take your scalp.'

'I wasn't worryin'. I come from a long line of Indian hunters.'

Billy laughed, and he saw from the sparkle in her eyes that she wanted to laugh, too, but she turned away from him and watched the rain. 'What are you doing so far from Texas?' he asked.

'What are you doing so far from Alabama?'

He decided to try a different tack. 'I really think your eyes are pretty.'

'No, they're not. They're different, is all.'

'Sometimes it's good to be different.'

'Sure.'

'No, I mean it. You ought to be proud of the way you look. It sets you apart.'

'It does that, all right.'

'I mean it sets you apart in a good way. It makes you special. And who knows? Maybe you can see things more clearly than most folks.'

'Maybe,' she said quietly, in an uneasy tone of voice, 'it means I can see a lot of things I wish I couldn't.' She looked up at him. 'Have you been talkin' to Dr. Hillburn about me?'

'No.'

'Then how'd you know about Cappy? Only Dr. Hillburn knows about that.'

He told her what she'd said when she was startled out of sleep, and it was clear she was annoyed. 'You shouldn't be creepin' around, anyway,' Bonnie told him. 'You scared me, that's all. Why'd you come sneakin' down here?'

'I didn't sneak. I had a nightmare that woke me up.'

'Nightmares,' she whispered. 'Yeah, I know a lot about those.'

'Haven't you been to bed?'

'No.' She paused, a frown working across her face. She had a scatter of freckles across her cheeks and nose, and Billy could envision her riding a horse under the Texas sun. She was a little too thin, but Billy figured she could take care of herself just fine. 'I don't like to sleep,' Bonnie said after another moment. 'That's why I was down here. I wanted to watch TV and read as long as I could.'

'Why?'

'Well . . . it's just because I . . . have dreams sometimes. Nightmares. Sometimes they're . . . really awful. If I don't sleep, I won't see them. I . . . was even going to go out for a walk tonight, until it started rainin' so hard. But I hope it keeps on rainin' like this. Do you think it will?'

'I don't know. Why's it so important to you?'

'Because,' she said, and gazed up at him, 'then what Cappy's been showing me won't come true. Nothin' can burn like what he's been making me see.'

The tone of her voice bordered on desperation. Billy sat down in a chair, prepared to listen if she wanted to talk.

She did, and Billy listened without interrupting. The story came hesitantly: when Bonnie Hailey was eleven years old, she was struck by lightning on the stark Texas plain. All her hair burned off, her fingernails turned black, and she lay near death for almost a month. She recalled darkness, and voices, and wanting to let go; but every time she wanted to die she heard a clear, high childish voice tell her no, that letting go wasn't the answer The voice urged her over and over to hang on, to fight the pain. And she did, winning by slow degrees.

She had a nurse named Mrs. Shelton, and every time Mrs. Shelton would come into the room Bonnie would hear a soft ringing sound in her ears. She began to have a strange recurring dream: a nurse's cap rolling down a flight of moving stairs. A week later, Bonnie found out that Mrs. Shelton had tripped on an escalator in a Lubbock department store and broken her neck. And that was the start of it.

Bonnie called the strange, high voice in her head Cappy, after an invisible playmate she'd had when she was five or six. She'd had a lonely childhood, spending most of the time on the small ranch her stepfather owned near Lamesa. Cappy's visits became more frequent, and with them the dreams. She foresaw suitcases falling from a clear blue sky, over and over again, and she could even read a nametag and a flight number on one of the cases. Cappy told her to tell somebody, quickly, but Bonnie's mother had thought it was utter foolishness. Two planes collided over Dallas less than a week later, and suitcases were strewn over the plains for miles. There had been many other incidents of dreams and hearing what she called Death Bells, until finally her stepfather had called the National Star and they'd come out to interview her. Her mother was horrified at the attention that followed, and in came in a flood of crackpot letters and obscene telephone calls. Her stepfather wanted her to write a book—oh, just make it up! he'd told her—and for her to go on tour talking about the Death Bells.

Bonnie's parents had split up, and it was clear to Bonnie that her mother was afraid of her and blamed her for the divorce. The dreams kept coming, and Cappy's voice with them, urging her to act. By this time, the National Star touted her as the Death Angel of Texas.

'A psychiatrist at the University of Texas wanted to talk to me,' Bonnie said, in a quiet, tense voice. 'Mom didn't want me to go, but I knew I had to. Cappy wanted me to. Anyway, Dr. Callahan had worked with Dr. Hillburn before, so he called her and made arrangements to send me up here. Dr. Hillburn says I've got precognition, that maybe the lightning jarred something in my brain and opened me up to signals from what she calls a 'messenger' She believes there are entities that stay here, in this world, after their bodies have died . . .'

'Discarnates,' Billy offered.

'Right. They stay here and try to help the rest of us, but not everybody can understand what they're trying to say.'

'But you can.'

She shook her head. 'Not all the time. Sometimes the dreams aren't clear. Sometimes I can hardly understand Cappy's voice. Other times . . . maybe I don't want to hear what he's saying. I don't like to sleep, because I don't want to see what he shows me.'

'And you've been having dreams just recently?'

'Yes,' she said. 'For several nights now. I ... I haven't told Dr Hillburn yet. She'll want to hook me up to those machines again, and I'm sick of those tests. Cappy's . . . shown me a building on fire. An old building, in a bad part