'You've seen ghosts too,' Maria said. 'Liz and I are the only ones who haven't.'
'I didn't see the ghost until it wanted me to,' Valenti reminded. 'When Kelli was with us, she and Michael saw the ghost first. Later, after Michael took her away, the ghost changed shape, became someone I knew.'
'So how does that work?' Michael asked. 'The ghosts only appear to certain people.'
'In Roswell,' Max said, 'that appears to be the case. No one except Wilkins and Michael saw the ghost of Terrell Swanson even though the Crashdown was full of people.'
'And I was standing there with him,' Liz said. 'Not to mention, my mother was speaking with my dead grandmother this morning, and I never saw her. I'm sure that was part of this.'
'Whatever is empowering the ghosts has the ability to be selective,' Valenti said. 'They appear to whomever they want, as whoever they want.'
'Or maybe whatever is causing the ghosts is limited,' Isabel said.
'Limited?' Michael snorted, and helped himself to another pizza slice. The problem hadn't affected his appetite. 'Those things are throwing lightning bolts around like it was nothing.'
'There are things you can do that no one human can do,' Maria pointed out.
'How do they know who to appear as?' Valenti asked. 'Isabel, you said the woman who nearly ran you down saw her daughter.'
'A daughter who died in childbirth.' Isabel nodded.
'Where did the ghost get its information?' Valenti asked. 'How did it know who to appear as?'
'An unborn child wouldn't be so hard,' Michael said. 'Especially when the ghost appeared as a little girl instead of a baby. The mother had never seen the baby as anything other than that.'
'What about Swanson?' Valenti persisted.
'Wilkins killed him and buried him in his basement almost forty years ago,' Michael said. 'The eye patch may have been enough to freak Wilkins out.'
Valenti turned on him. 'You looked at Swanson's pictures. You said it was he. Was it?'
A troubled look crossed Michael's face. 'Yeah, it was Swanson.'
'So how did the ghosts know who to look like?' Valenti asked.
'The ghost could have known about Swanson from old newspapers,' Max said.
'Maybe,' Valenti conceded. 'But in order to know about Wilkins and Swanson, they'd have known where to look and what they were looking for.'
'Everybody in Roswell knows the story about Wilkins and Swanson,' Liz said. 'After I figured out who he was, I remembered the story.'
'Okay,' Valenti said, folding his arms across his chest, 'I'm going to play the devil's advocate here. Why would the ghosts wait so long to make their move?'
'He's right,' Isabel said. 'We've lived here all our lives. Excepting the fact that the ghosts want us out of here, they've had almost twenty years to do it.'
'They're not just after us,' Max said. 'They want the Mesaliko gone too.'
'Why?' Liz asked.
'River Dog tied the manifestation of the ghosts to the old legend,' Max said.
'That's a bunch of bull, Maxwell,' Michael said. 'We all know that some old Indian legend isn't going to make ghosts suddenly start appearing.'
Max stared at Michael, and he noticed the rest of them did the same.
'I don't think we can rule the legend out,' Maria said.
Michael turned stone-faced and shook his head in disbelief. 'You're grasping at straws, people.'
'Give us something else,' Maria challenged.
Michael crossed his hands over his chest. 'This is stupid.'
'Wait,' Isabel said. 'I think we're on to something here.' She nodded to Valenti. 'Keep going.'
Valenti held his hat in his hands, tracing the brim with one forefinger as he thought. 'Boil it all down to what we know. The ghosts appear to certain people, and somehow know who to appear as.'
'They read minds,' Kyle said.
Everyone turned to look at him.
Suddenly looking uncomfortable, Kyle shrugged. 'How else can you explain it? I mean, the ghost I saw was the first dead man I ever saw. I don't know the guy's name, don't know if I ever knew it, but I remembered him because Dad and I were on our way home from a ballgame one night when Dad got a call in about a traffic fatality. Dad had to cover the accident till the EMTs arrived. The guy lost control of his motorcycle on 285 and got shredded.'
Max saw Liz's eyes narrow as the gruesome image popped into her mind. Valenti had a pained look on his face, as if suddenly realizing some of the things he'd exposed Kyle to while growing up. But Max knew there was new guilt mixed into the feeling as well for not being there at the hospital today with Kyle.
'Ghosts that read minds,' Michael snorted.
'Yes,' Max said calmly. 'That could explain how the ghosts knew who to appear as and how they were only visible to the people they chose to haunt.'
'We could see them,' Michael said.
'We're not exactly normal,' Isabel put in.
'And some of you,' Maria said pointedly, looking at Michael, 'are less normal than others.'
Michael scowled.
Before Michael could pick up his end of the argument, Max said, 'Some form of telepathy, then.'
'Let's start with that,' Valenti said.
'With telepathic ghosts,' Michael said derisively.
'That's where we're starting,' Valenti said. 'That's not where we're going to end up.'
'Max said the Mesaliko were experiencing more manifestations,' Michael said.
'Maybe it has to do with their spirituality,' Kyle suggested. 'Maybe the Mesaliko are closer to nature than our culture is. They believe in vision quests, and some of what River Dog has shown you guys has bordered on spirituality.'
'Not exactly looking for New Age answers here, Buddha Boy,' Michael said.
'That could have something to do with it,' Max said. 'But maybe it's something simpler.'
'Like proximity,' Liz said.
Max nodded. 'Like proximity.'
'The legend may have been based on something that actually happened in the past,' Isabel said.
'Legends usually are,' Valenti said.
'But what event?' Maria asked. 'Spirits returning to haunt the Mesaliko? If we go that route, we're right back where we started.'
'River Dog said Raven stole flames from the Sun God,' Max said, his mind suddenly churning. 'Raven brought the flames back to the Mesaliko, only he couldn't hold them in his beak. He spat the flames out, and they crashed to the earth, creating the desert.'
'Let's keep the proximity thing going,' Valenti said. 'Looking back over Max's story, River Dog said that the ghosts had only haunted the Mesaliko people; they hadn't attacked them until today.'
'Until I was there,' Max said.
Valenti nodded toward the television. 'All those other people who have seen ghosts, they aren't saying anything about lightning strikes or strange winds. They're just seeing ghosts.'
'The ghosts reacted more strongly to us,' Isabel said.
'Yeah,' Valenti said. 'Know when the last lightning phenomenon occurred?'
'At the hospital,' Liz said. 'While Max was there.'
'Bingo,' Valenti said.
'Maybe,' Michael growled, 'but what does it mean?'
'Don't know,' Valenti said. 'It's another correlation we need to factor in.'
'Telepathic ghosts that react like a minefield to us?' Michael asked.
'That's a good way to put it,' Valenti agreed.
'Why would they do that?'
'Because they recognize you as a greater threat than anyone else they've met,' Valenti said.
