Death and resurrection, p.19
Death and Resurrection, page 19
“These guys: they came piling out of their cars—a dozen of them.”
“Eleven,” Ewen corrected him, but no one heard.
“First they went at my little girl, Sheila, but I got her into the house. I saw them all chasing my friend Ewen here down his own driveway and I got my gun. Eileen called nine-one-one. I come out and two guys are shooting at this black kid I know—works with Ewen, and they got him down, and I . . . ” Mr. Kelly’s understanding caught up with his words and he finished. “I blew him away. My God and Mother Mary, I blew him away . . . ”
His voice drifted off.
Now police were darting all over with drawn guns. Ewen could see Barbie Cowell standing in the drive by Perry, looking harmless, her chain dart again in her pocket. Ewen raised his voice and asked if there was a detective he could talk to. There wasn’t.
“There are four more of them,” he said to the man in uniform. “Over the back fence. Four more of the eleven that came out of the vans.”
“Dead?”
“Some are.” The cop looked measuringly at him. “Dead how?”
“By bamboo.”
***
He was handcuffed. Ewen was handcuffed again: twice in three days. Ryan was handcuffed, very warily, and Mr. Kelly was handcuffed. Perry was not handcuffed because he was shot, and without explanation, Barbie Cowell was not taken into custody at all. She sat on the porch steps, her arms around her knees, watching the police quarter the area, call out the discovery of the bodies over the fence, gather together the few attackers still living and herd them to the other side of the yard from her group.
Ewen heard one cop’s exchange with another. “I dunno. All the asshole said was, ‘Go back where you came from.’ I was born in Seattle. I go home every night.”
Ewen wondered if they had told Sid Sundown to go back where he came from, too. How perfect that must have been. He waited patiently for Petersen and Ryde.
Chapter Twenty-one
“If you had an idea something was about to break, why didn’t you let us know?” asked Petersen, not chidingly, but in puzzlement.
“I left a message. I also called on your cell,” said Ewen, out of great weariness. “I also called Detective Ryde.”
“My cell was on,” said Ryde.
“Mine, too,” said Petersen. “And I never got a message at work.”
Ewen shrugged. “Maybe it’s still waiting.”
“I wouldn’t be surprised if it simply isn’t there,” said Ryde. And when Petersen glanced over he added, “Oh, I don’t mean Carolyn ditched it, or didn’t care. I just mean . . . ” He waved ambiguously, “Something wasn’t right, here.”
The understatement was such that Ewen almost began to laugh. Instead he started to hiccup. Petersen looked blankly at him for a moment and stated, “You have made the national news.”
Ewen stopped hiccupping. He stopped breathing.
“Yes, I thought that would take care of hiccups,” murmured Petersen, “but still you had to know, sooner or later. You are food for the tabloids.” Then he said, “You were all together. All your martial arts friends. Were you expecting it to go down like this?”
“Like this?” Ewen said, and then thundered, “Like THIS? . . . No. Not like this.” He cleared his throat. “I was more thinking we’d have always someone on guard at night. When . . . when Susan might be there.”
Ryde and Petersen looked quietly at him, Petersen’s hands tented together under his chin. Ryde said “I understand something . . . something supernatural is happening here, Mr. Young. At least I think I do. But we’ve got to put our thinking caps on and figure out what to say to . . . ”
There was someone else striding over the vinyl flooring toward them. Someone with heavy feet. Both Petersen and Ryde suddenly closed down their faces. Ewen looked up to see Lieutenant Kopek, whom he knew just from reputation. “How many men did you kill today, kid?”
Ewen started to stand but Petersen’s hand softly held him down. Ewen had not meant the move to seem aggressive, but he sat hurriedly. “I think two, sir. Lieutenant. I think it was two that died.”
“With bamboo spears? That a Chinese traditional weapon?”
“They were just growing in the garden,” said Ewen, defensively. Kopek, a pouchy, blond man, looked narrowly down at Ewen. “Surprised you aren’t lawyered up yet,” he growled.
“The only lawyer I know is in the hospital,” said Ewen. “He just got shot.” Petersen gave him just the slightest shake of a head and Ewen shut up.
Ewen went to jail.
Lynn found him a lawyer, a gray-haired woman who heard his story with wonder, horror, and amusement. He told her about the dog and the note in the mailbox. He told her about the death of Susan’s granduncle. He did not tell her about Bear Woman.
“Good thing this is Washington State,” she said.
“Why?”
“In Massachusetts, say, they have different attitudes about self-defense.” She added, “They probably can’t even hold you long. Not with the hardware the terrorists sent up against you.”
“Were they really terrorists?” asked Ewen.
“You think I should know? The press is calling them the ‘Go Back Where You Came From Gang.’ There’s a lot of talk about cults and xenophobia.”
“And what about Ryan? Ryan Watanabe. There were only machetes and a baseball bat against him.”
The amusement flickered larger over her weathered face. “Only. And only three. How very unsporting of him to kill them. No. I sincerely hope none of you are going to be in much trouble. In fact, you may wind up heroes.”
Ewen stood up in his chains. “Not for that!” he cried. “God! Not for that!”
***
Being in jail was a strange and new experience for Ewen. It was not a bad jail; it was much nicer than the ones he saw on TV, and he didn’t have to share his cell with anyone. But he was locked in. He sat on his little cot and meditated. It was not a pleasant meditation, but he stayed with it until roused by the man in the cell across from him, who was saying, “Hey, Bud. Hey, Bud. You doin’ some kind of protest? Jail house protest?”
Ewen unfolded and looked across at the man, who was wearing a disheveled suit. No tie. His face was sweaty. “No. No protest. Why did you think . . . ?”
“The way you were sitting. I thought maybe you were fasting or something.” The guy shuffled his feet and leaned against his bars. “I’m in here because I wouldn’t take a damn Breathalyzer test. That’s all. Then they take away my tie so I don’t hang myself. It’s my right not to take one of their damn tests.”
“I see,” said Ewen. He had never studied the matter of Breathalyzers and civil rights.
“What you in for?” asked the rumpled guy.
“I just killed a couple of people.” The man froze in position, leaning against the bars, and said nothing. “They’re trying to decide whether they think I was right in doing it,” continued Ewen. “My lawyer thinks they’ll let me out.”
The man blinked rapidly and looked Ewen up and down. “I . . . thought that was paint all over your shirt.”
“It is paint,” said Ewen, soothingly. “Oil paint. These are my work clothes. They took the stuff I was wearing away.”
After that conversation, it was quiet in the cell block.
Ewen worried about Perry. He worried even more about Ryan. He would not have wanted to be Ryan, today. He wasn’t sure he wanted to be Ewen. He missed Susan terribly. He even missed Rez. After a supper he could not eat he was taken upstairs to be questioned again, and not just by Petersen and Ryde. The gray-haired lawyer was there but objected to very little that was said. It wasn’t like Law and Order at all. He answered questions until he didn’t really know what he was saying, but at least the answers were consistent, because they were the truth and the truth is somewhat easier to say when one is exhausted. And no one asked about anything supernatural. That made it much easier. At last he was allowed to return to his cell.
Next morning Ewen woke up to a corrections officer telling him he could go. No charges had been filed so far.
Ryde led him to the basement garage and offered a seat in a car. Detective Petersen was driving—not his police sedan but his own vehicle—and they went out through the back entrance. Ewen was confused. “Are you taking me home?” he asked. “I hope so. Because my car isn’t here, and I don’t know how else . . . ”
Petersen answered, “I don’t know if I’m taking you home, Ewen. I’m not sure whether you want to be home right now. But I’m taking you wherever you want to go. Just now, though, duck down.”
Ewen ducked, not knowing why. “Is Susan . . . ?” he asked.
“She’s fine.”
“Perry?”
“He’s out of the hospital already,” said Petersen. “And Ryan Watanabe is released. They’re not charging any of you—at least not yet.”
Ryde turned reproachfully to his partner and said, “And they’re not likely to, either.”
Petersen shrugged. Like the lawyer, he added, “Be glad this is Washington State, not . . . Massachusetts.”
They turned the corner to Ewen’s street. “Well, here’s your place,” said Petersen. “What do you think of it?”
The first thing he saw was the parking problem, as both sides of the street were locked tight with vehicles. Some were police cars but most were vans. Most were sporting satellite dishes on their roofs. Once closer he noticed the amazing amount of crime-scene tape, which was draped like crepe paper at a party, all around his property. There were people gathered in casual little knots, conversing. It looked as though they were expecting a parade. Ewen saw one other thing down his driveway as he was driven by.
“The bamboo,” he said. “You’ve cut it all down. All of it. Back to the fence.”
“Not us,” said Petersen, smiling. “That was raiders from the outside, trampling our scene.”
“Huh?”
Ryde said, “People have snuck in and cut it down. All night it was a battle with them.”
“Huh?”
“Souvenirs,” said Petersen dryly. “ ‘Genuine Ewen Young martial arts bamboo.’ To be sold on eBay.”
Ewen ducked down again. He did not object when Petersen kept right on going.
The detective took Ewen to his own house.
Petersen lived in a log house, inconvenient and covered outside in algae and moss. Inside it was spare, unexpectedly clean, and full of books. Ewen sat his dirty and paint-spattered self down on the edge of a couch. The two detectives left him there.
Ewen sat alone with a Coke and a microwave dinner and wondered about the future. He called Lynn and told her where he was. He wondered just how much of all this his sister had been an involuntary party to, both in her mind-connection and from television. Lynn was being watched by reporters too. She said she was spooked, but not by the reporters. He need ask her no more about that. She had a police officer parked by the office door, and Teddy was with her, playing in one of the special rooms she had set up for waiting children. Teddy was not spooked; on the contrary, he had to be repeatedly restrained from going out to stare at the police officer.
Next Ewen called Perry’s house and got an ear-full from Perry’s father, who had worked extremely hard to get his son out of poverty and into a law degree, which he felt was now imperiled by Ewen’s shenanigans. Ewen listened to all this silently, feeling his guilt in every word. He was not told where he could find Perry.
Then he called Ryan and got no answer. This was disturbing, but then Ryan couldn’t have found Ewen either, if he’d been looking. Too much police protection; and it was the same for Barbie. Out of a perverse curiosity he turned on the TV to the local news, and found out that Ewen Young and the Patrick Kelly family had been attacked by Canadian terrorists. A pretty young woman in a bright red coat stood outside the Kellys’ yard in the freezing snow and imparted this information. She was Chinese.
Canadian terrorists. Ewen’s mind could not accept the conjunction of those two words. He found he was shaking his head slowly back and forth.
The woman on the television suggested there might be a connection to the Syrians. To the Syrians? Ewen wondered if they had bears in Syria. Was that demon, “Pazuzu” or whatever he had been called, in The Exorcist from Syria? He couldn’t remember. Ewen started doodling his idea of Syrian demons on a little square sticky-pad.
He heard heels and claws pelting up the porch stair, and in came Susan Sundown and Resurrection. He rose to let her in, but she already had a key. Ewen had never considered that she might have a key to Petersen’s house. He rose to greet her.
Her face was bright as sunlight. She said, “You’ve won, haven’t you? It’s over?”
He could not meet those shining eyes. “I don’t think so, love. We beat the shadow. We beat the Bear Woman’s human ‘hands.’ But we haven’t come against the demon itself. For that, it’s just a matter of when.”
She laid her head on his shoulder in a comforting manner, as though it had been she who had been given the bad news.
Two hours later, after a great deal of close cuddling, Ewen sat bolt upright. He suddenly had a thrill of knowledge. Abruptly he asked Susan to leave. She refused (of course) and when he tried to push her toward the door Rez interfered.
He sat down again cracking his knuckles. “Don’t be a damn hero!” he shouted.
“Don’t yourself! I’m the one with the power, remember? Raven messenger? What are you going to do against it? Flap away?”
There was a very good fight brewing, and Rez was spinning in circles of dismay between them. Then, between one moment and the next, Ewen cooled off. He stared past her into the distance.
“Susan,” he began slowly, “I have an idea.” There was a half-minute of silence and then he asked, “We need a bear trap. What’s a good trap? A good, strong trap that just won’t let go of you?”
Susan let go of her anger, and stood silent for some moments. She chuckled. “Sometimes I think my job is that. And sometimes my whole life!” And gazing into her rueful face, Ewen knew he had been given the answer. He knew the whole thing. Once more he asked her to leave, and this time she looked at his face, saw the new and different certainty in it and said, “Okay. For a little while.”
Ewen sat alone in the dark cabin. He saw a spider, hanging from a thread, outlined by the dim light of the window. It went up and, then, in its own time, went down again. Ewen was not quite calm, for images of the battle kept sliding through his mind, and everything in those images was lit with horror and tasted of blood. And in the battle just over, the terrible, lesser battle, he had only been risking his life.
He noticed a fall of white outside the back window. It had begun to snow. He went to the window and saw it had already coated the porch, and the boughs of the firs all around. Beautiful, as fresh snow is always.
Waiting was over.
Ewen opened himself up to the in between. He stood on the edge of what was manifest and what was everything else and he shouted, “Bear! Bear, you piece of shit! You stinking turd! I’m coming for you, bear!”
He thought there might be a pause. He thought (hoped) that nothing would happen at all.
In the next moment he was struck off his feet and sailed into the far wall, hitting with a blow that jarred his brain. The world filled with snarling, and with the stink of bear. Everything had all gone dark.
Chapter Twenty-two
Ewen fought to stay conscious, and with a huge effort he threw himself over the edge, out of this world and into the void. He began to spin, becoming a small crystal in the darkness. The thing that had struck him was sucked after and was upon him now. It was a bear. It was stinking darkness. It had many blank eyes and its soul was confusion. Confusion soaked Ewen and got in the way of everything he had planned his trap to do. It turned his mind to mud.
He saw the luminosity again—one last time, he thought—and he tried to do as Theo had taught, to see it as his own nature. Instead it just made him sick. The ground of being seemed nothing more than the ringing pain in his head; the light in it nauseated him. He felt himself running away from the monster and from the light, and from all he could see. He looked for a place to hide.
He remembered this long corridor; he had been here before, but now he didn’t remember what it meant. He was running down a hall and there were doors and lights on each side of him. Some were kind lights and some were comforting, but even the most gentle brightness hurt his eyes. And the monster was at his back.
They went on into the dirty dark. He himself was reaching toward the dark, towards a place of some safety, where neither the monster nor the light could find him. A place where he could catch his breath—maybe learn to think again. There were not many doors left in the corridor and it was black at the end.
Then out of one small door white-lit with snow stepped the figure of a man—an old man—and he took Ewen into one hand. It appeared that Ewen was small enough to fit in a hand. In the distance there came a wolf’s howl, a sound completely solitary, and the old man said, “Raven. You are Raven.”
Ewen recognized Sid Sundown and he recognized himself. He took wing.
The monster behind him—with its wrathful eyes, its breath of contamination and its huge malice—had slowed at the light from the door, and now it stopped, staring in all directions, striving to see a black raven in the dark. It did not look like a bear any more, but like one of those wrathful deities that Theo had hung all over the walls of his house. Protectors he called them, but this thing protected no one; it was all arms, eyes, and teeth.
Raven saw it and didn’t care if it was a wrathful deity or a brute beast. He came down like a bullet and took out one of its staring eyes. The monster roared. It swung around with many huge arms, and Raven dodged among them. He went for another eye and missed.
The wolf howling in the distance grew louder; it was a battle cry. Raven was distracted by it. The wrathful deity opened its impossible jaw.
Sid was right. This is no lady.
Ewen—Raven—was sucked into the dreadful mouth of the thing. He darted sideways. The great jaw closed and caught only his black tail feathers. It shook him. Shook a bird.
