Garden of bone book 6, p.8
Garden of Bone: Book 6, page 8
How was she here? Yesterday, she'd gone to Rue Royal, to Mystic Vudu, and talked with the shop lady. Hadn't she? She'd wandered the streets and seen Emmaline, and then followed her down and around curves and corners, to a house she'd seen once before. In fact, the last time she’d seen it had been in a dream when she followed Emmaline through New Orleans—just like yesterday. Only this time, she’d opened the fence to the private courtyard and walked inside, and had begun digging in the dirt. That’s how she remembered it.
Had she really done that? That was a massive violation of private property.
She was an FBI agent. Though she was on leave, the badge remained in her pocket and she could use it to identify herself. Like many officers of the law, her private life was not completely her own, even when she was off duty. She was still a representative of the Bureau. And, if taken to court, the idea that she had no concept of her own trespass and violation would be laughable. She’d clearly committed a crime.
She had wandered uninvited onto someone's private property, dug in their dirt, and taken—
She paused. She'd dug something out of the dirt. She'd taken it, she thought—slipped it into her pocket. Eleri pondered it further and then had a brief flash of memory. It was bone. She’d found human bone in the dirt. A worn knob from the end of a tibia, she believed.
The piece had been short, appearing to have suffered a serious break just under the epiphyseal plate. The bone had been old, and had been in the dirt long enough for the sharp edges to have worn smooth—not into a perfect knob, but smooth enough that it didn't cut or stab at her as she dug it up. She had only the vaguest, foggy memory of sliding the bone into her pocket. Had she done that?
She thought about it now. She remembered digging it up and how surprised she was to find it, and even more surprised to recognize it as human, inside this courtyard garden. She had taken it as evidence. But even that was something she couldn't claim under the guise of law. Though it was definitely bizarre, she supposed there might be any number of legal reasons for a family to have a human bone buried in their own courtyard.
In many places, bodies could be buried on family property at will. It depended on the laws of the state and local province. But although Eleri wasn't up to standard on exactly what New Orleans burial laws were—especially given the graveyards, the mausoleums, and the sarcophagi that made New Orleans so famous—she couldn’t think of a good reason to have a human tibia buried in a private residence courtyard.
Still, maybe it hadn’t been buried there at all. Bones could move. Or maybe it had been buried there, but too long ago to associate with any current indictment. The problem in New Orleans was that buried bodies floated to the surface, because the ground was so very wet. Her find might make perfect sense. The area might have been an old graveyard. Urban growth, gentrification, reclamation—they all had a hard time here. It was entirely plausible that, at one point, any plot of land in and around the city might have been a graveyard. Who knew what tribe or ancient culture the bone might belong to? It might have just been someone’s great-great-grandfather, floating upward.
Surely, it was human. She recognized it. But beyond that, she could say nothing other than that she'd trespassed and stolen from private property—and possibly, depending on the local ordinances, violated several other laws.
Eleri was sitting up in bed now with the covers thrown back, thinking she needed to get into her pocket and examine the bone more closely, before she could make a decision about what to do with it. But when she went to the closet and pulled out what she'd been wearing the day before, she found nothing in the pockets at all. Had she put it down somewhere, or stashed it away when she came home?
After searching her brain for whatever she might have done, Eleri was surprised to come up blank. She had no memory of coming home the previous day. Nothing, in fact, existed in her mind beyond putting the bone in her pocket.
Eleri scrambled to get dressed. The whole time, her mind raced. How had she even gotten home? Had she walked back to her car? Driven it here? That would make sense. It was exactly what she had planned to do. But she had zero memory of doing it. As she thought it through, she wondered how she’d even gotten back to the car. She’d been following a ghost through the streets. They’d taken twists and turns, and while Eleri had tried to pay attention, she’d lost the direction along the way. She’d simply been following the tunnel vision that showed her sister in front of her, beckoning her along.
Assuming that she must have driven home—and for whatever reason, her brain wasn’t grasping the memory—Eleri searched her vicinity for where she might have put the bone. Though she was fully dressed in another pair of lightweight pants and a tank top—her best defense against the heat of the day—the familiar action of getting ready had not jogged her memory. Nor had it put her into contact with wherever she’d put that bone fragment.
It did not lie on the table next to her bed. It was not in the closet, nor in her purse, nor her travel bag. It should have been in a plastic baggie, the best method for carrying evidence. Though she was aware that, in Grandmere’s house, she might not find anything that was petroleum based, she didn’t know if she’d managed to protect the bone fragment at all. If she was smart, she would have stopped by a store and bought herself some paper lunch bags so she could preserve her finds and even label them somewhat properly—but it appeared that had not happened, either. She was combing through the room again when she realized it wasn’t here, and her search radius needed to extend a little further.
Gingerly, she opened the door, wondering still—How had she gotten home? And now, What might Grandmere think about her sleeping in so late?
As she went through the house in small, ever-widening circles, she searched for the bone—and now also for Grandmere. The woman was shockingly absent. Though Eleri knew and understood in her heart that Grandmere must, at some point, leave her home, it was a rare occurrence that she’d not seen very often. Though Grandmere would walk the girls around the block when they were young, they would be with her—not left alone. Grandmere might send them out to places while she remained behind. Eleri and young Emmaline had walked to play at the water, some ten or so blocks away. But Eleri couldn’t recall when her great-grandmother had ever left her alone in the house.
Now, Grandmere was markedly absent. Eleri continued searching for the bone. It could be assumed Grandmere was fine and would find her own way back, but the bone might be lost forever if she couldn’t remember where she’d stashed it. So she scanned every surface she could find. Had she brought it home and shown Grandmere? Her memory was blank.
If she had shown it to Grandmere, Grandmere might have put it away somewhere safe or special. But where would that even be?
When Eleri craned her neck to see into the driveway, she found her car parked exactly where she had left it the day before. Shaking her head and wondering how she’d lost such a big chunk of the day, she aimed back toward the closet in her room. When she’d been dressing, something had tugged at the back of her brain.
She looked inside again, and her gaze snagged on the pants she'd worn yesterday. Her eyes widened. The knees had absolutely no dirt on them. She'd knelt while she was digging in the little garden. They should have been filthy. They could not have been washed and dried in such a short time.
Now the question arose: Had she dreamed the whole thing? But when she checked her phone, the date was one day forward.
15
Donovan had waited almost a full twenty-four hours for Wade and Christina to show up at the compound in Montana. The area, just outside of Billings, reminded him of the de Gottardi compound in the Ozarks.
Though the areas were dramatically different, there were lots of similarities in the layouts. It seemed when the families had started these “family farms,” they’d had a plan. Each place had lots of land outside of the city—far enough out not to be stumbled upon, but close enough that a run for milk could be made, if necessary. The gravel roads on the land deterred people from taking them on a whim and just driving up to see what was there. Blatant signs along the road warned “No Trespassing.”
In the center of the property—much too far away to be seen from any passing roads—stood a handful of houses and buildings. Just like in the Ozarks, the largest homes dominated the center. Here, there had only been one other large home in the central position, though several smaller homes and other buildings held court.
Donovan had found what he thought looked like a schoolhouse. While it would hold about ten students and a teacher comfortably, it showed evidence of maybe five. He’d found another smaller, single-family home much further away from the large, multi-family home. It still remained close to the center of the property, simply because of the size of the acreage.
However, a second, even smaller family unit lay a little further beyond that, and a third one appeared to have been in the mid-stages of being built when it, too, had been burned. He found a small, burned storage building for furniture and perhaps cast-offs. He saw a storage area where he found that fruit and root vegetables had been kept. They weren’t under the main house in the cellar, where one might have expected. On this property, that space had an entirely different purpose. So here, they’d been given their own building, with its own cellar.
Interestingly enough, in the school building—again built on a cinderblock foundation that was slightly raised—he’d found another trap door. He’d seen a third in the small family unit, the one closest to the home. And he was now confident that a series of tunnels had been dug underneath, connecting all the buildings.
He would have thought the ground was too rocky for tunneling, but since he was no geologist or soil scientist, he eventually fell back on the idea that it was farmland, and thus had pretty good quality soil. The land probably had a decent depth of dirt above bedrock, as well as a good water table. None of that mattered now. The family had been burned out, hunted, and driven from the state to the relative safety of another area. The good soil and secret tunnels had lost their value. Donovan figured the secrets here were reason enough not to sell the land, even though the family might never be able to come back.
However, it was the map Wade had sent that bothered him when he’d tried to sleep the night before. The red dots had started small and grown. They appeared in different places on the map at different times. Donovan wondered if that was simply animation or if the timing correlated to the arrival of his kind to the area.
He’d been as patient as he could, waiting for Wade to show up and explain it all to him. But once his fellow agent arrived, he’d wasted no time and followed the man into his motel room.
Practically in his friend’s face and barely having given any greeting at all, Donovan assaulted Wade with rapid-fire questions. “You have to tell me what’s with the map. Do the dots correspond to historical arrival times? How recent is the data? Is this current?”
He only managed to shut up when Wade looked at him with eyebrows up. “Good to see you, too. How are you doing?”
The words were sarcastic, but Donovan ignored the fact that Wade looked at him as though he’d lost his mind. He pretty much probably had. He said a cursory “hello” and repeated the questions.
“What are you talking about?” Wade asked him now, almost deadpan, as he placed his go-bag onto the bed. It looked disturbingly similar to Donovan’s own bag. It was made from black, ripstop nylon. It was duffel style, with wheels on one end so it could be dragged through an airport. The utilitarian quality allowed it to blend in at a military base, and Donovan wondered for a moment what Wade had given up to be here again, back in full mode with NightShade.
He and Eleri had visited Wade at his office once. He’d worked for a private company, solving physics problems to improve their designs and designing his own DOD materials. But Westerfield had called him back. Wade—like each of them—was unique, and his skills were needed.
But now, after the death of Wade’s boyfriend Randall, he might have found an inner drive to be back in NightShade, back behind the badge. Maybe back here in Montana, where his extended family had been burned out and driven off. Maybe it wasn’t just Westerfield’s urging that had brought him back. He had no idea what the SAC might have held over Wade’s head.
Donovan just stared at his friend, and then he said, “I’m sorry. I’ll give you a minute. The whole red dots thing just kind of threw me for a loop.”
“Oh, the map I sent you yesterday …” Wade seemed to catch on. “Sorry, I sent out a crap-ton of stuff yesterday. It took me a bit to catch on. The one with the family history and locations …” He trailed off again, seeming to think.
“Yeah, that one.” Donovan let it roll out of his mouth, hoping Wade would pull himself back into the present.
“I’m hungry,” Wade spit out, almost point blank. “There’s a coffee shop about three blocks down. Give me a minute. I’ll come knock on your door and we can walk down together. I’ll tell you whatever I know.”
Donovan wondered if Wade had checked out the coffee shop closely enough. He’d caught his own glimpse when he headed by the day before. It seemed to have only coffee, and Wade’s hunger might not be taken care of there. But he suspected the town would have something to eat nearby. The place was not that large; they should be within walking distance of some restaurant. There was a McDonalds closer to the highway, but it was too far to walk. Donovan kept his fingers crossed. He’d wondered himself if he would spend this trip eating crackers and peanut butter he’d spread with a plastic spoon from the local mom-and-pop grocery.
He went back to his room and waited for what seemed an eternity before the knock came. Checking the time, he saw that it had been less than fifteen minutes. He threw the door wide and found Wade standing there, hands in pockets. “Come on, walk. I’ll talk.”
Wade continued as they headed down a relatively empty street. “That map was put together with information that I got in part from the compound and the documents we have there.”
Donovan frowned. “I didn’t know you made the map.”
“Mm-hm.” Wade only nodded. “It seemed an important piece of our history to have.”
Donovan noted then that, of course, the map was entirely unlabeled. It could have been a map of small airports, or Listeria outbreaks, or clusters of cases of Parkinson’s. As a former medical examiner, the latter two came easily to his mind. He often thought of populations in terms of disease and deaths. And the map could easily be for one of those issues. That was the point: It could have been anything.
“Does it correspond with times?” Donovan slowed down his brain and asked his questions now one at a time.
“Yes. These are records that we have of when our people came into the US and originally populated specific areas. Again, no labels, but it begins in the late fifteen hundreds.”
“Wow.” Donovan blinked and stopped walking, but Wade didn’t.
“Actually, the records go back much further than that. You know that. But that was the point when our European ancestors came and we began populating the North American continent.”
“We weren’t here before then?” Donovan caught up and asked, suddenly fascinated by a history he’d never known he had. The problem was, it still wasn’t his history. It was Wade’s. It was a history of people who were like him—so like him it was a stunning match. But it wasn’t his.
Wade couldn’t hear his inner disavowal of the people on the maps. “Well, there were rumors of ‘skin-walkers’ here before us.”
Donovan had long wondered about the stories of things that went bump in the night. Had his ancestors been those things? He skipped ahead a little, wanting to discuss this, but needing to get to a certain piece of information. “So, according to you, the largest populations aren’t even in the Ozarks, where your family is.”
Wade shook his head. “We may be a large cluster, and it’s definitely our family. My family has all the histories, the documents etc., so we know that population well. I can verify that dot, but I can’t do as well with the others. Still, according to my data, it’s all pretty accurate.”
“But the cities,” Donovan said. He’d noticed that the major metropolitan areas on the map not only now seemed to sport red dots, but that the size of those dots was growing exponentially. He said so to Wade.
Wade nodded in return. “It’s absolutely true. The ability to hide in plain sight has gotten better. And the ability to hide at all has gotten worse. Many have developed the attitude that we’re going to be found out at some point soon. When we are, they expect to pass it off as a medical anomaly. But so be it. The idea is that—if we are going to be found anyway—there’s no longer a need to make an effort to hide.”
“Is it Lobomau?” Donovan asked, the word still not rolling off his tongue.
Wade shook his head. “No. Well, some, but a lot more are like you and me—just people out in the general population.”
Donovan took a deep breath. The little red dots seared his memory with the shock of knowing he wasn’t nearly as rare as he’d thought. Still, the one that had bothered him the most was the growing red dot over the city of New Orleans.
Should he warn Eleri?
16
Eleri left the house and started her car. This time, she drove directly to the parking lot where she knew she would be able to find a space, even if at this time of day. It would be a spot being abandoned by someone leaving, but it would happen. It had taken three passes around the lot playing parking shark to find the requisite spot, but it had opened up. She managed to snag it and headed down the street on foot, not quite certain where she was heading.
She realized that yesterday’s path was still very uncertain. She believed she had come here. Then again, she also believed she had dug a portion of human tibia out of a central court garden in an area of the city that she now couldn’t pinpoint.
