Chapter 6

“An owl’s biggest weakness, great or small, is its desire to hunt alone.”

Crying Shadow’s teachings of the Great Owl

Translated by Erik Livingtree

A Monkey in the Cabin

1

“And just where is it you think you’re going?” the girl asked, stepping into the entrance of the doorway as Tommy approached. Nobody had to tell him who it was. Penny stood before him with a smug look on her face, her superiority bleeding through her expressions.

“I just need to drop off my sister’s things and then help her get familiar with the layout of everything,” he replied. He took another step forward, but Penny didn’t back away.

Penny wore one of the fluorescent orange staff shirts and she had one of the walkie-talkie cables strung over her shoulder with the microphone attached near her shoulder blade. The whole set up gave it kind of a military feel, which Tommy didn’t like at all. They were teens at a camp for fun, not a military training camp.

Penny shook her head in contempt. She wore her long blonde hair in ponytails as if she were trying to portray innocence. They lay on her shoulders, but as she shook her head no, it made her ponytails bob up and down like a teeter tauter. She pointed up and Tommy followed to where her fingers were directing him.

There was a sign above the door. “No boys allowed. No exceptions.”

“Oh,” Tommy said. He dropped Whitney’s bag at Penny’s feet and signaled to Kam to bring her suitcase. Kam walked up and dropped that one at her feet. They both started to turn and walk away.

“I’m not carrying those! She can do it herself.”

“Her eyes and ears are underground, Penny. Let your heart beat like a normal person.”

“Oh...” Penny said finally stepping aside. “The blind and deaf girl. You shoulda said that in the first place. CUCUMBER COMING THROUGH!” she finished in a yell.

Tommy shook his head, grabbed Whitney’s things and stepped inside. Penny showed him to where Whitney was bunked, and he was relieved to see she was pointing out a lower bunk.

The cabin had a higher ceiling than he expected, which gave it a more open feeling despite the number of bunks lined up along the walls and down the center. There was an open spot on the end opposite the door with a round table surrounded by chairs, giving the girls a place to sit and gossip.

Just beyond that, there was an alcove with a fireplace. It struck Tommy as a little odd in a camp used primarily through the summer, but he guessed that they probably used it in the colder months too.

Thanks for not forgetting me, bro! Whitney thought to him sarcastically. He turned back toward the door to see Kat leading Whitney in. She turned backward toward his sister and was telling her when to step up.

“Step, step, bang. Step, step, bang,” Kat said.

Tommy couldn’t help but cringe. Just two minutes before she was barking at Penny not to forget that Whitney was both blind and deaf. Now she was talking to Whitney as if she could hear. So much for consistency, he thought. He looked around to see if anyone else noticed the contradiction, but everybody just seemed to be watching as if rooting for her. The only question was whether they were rooting for her to get through the door, or rooting for her to trip so they could watch her fall.

Kat guided Whitney to her bunk.

“Sweetness!” Kat said enthusiastically. “We’re funky, punky-bunkies. Penny crunched my flower petal when she assigned me to the top, My leaves are brown, ya know and green leaves usually have to bunk high. That really grabbed my goat hairs at first, but now my feathers lay flat.”

“All right, cucumber,” Penny cut in. “Don’t be sprouting no vines. Time to go.”

Tommy felt Whitney’s sense of panic bleed through at the suggestion of his departure. He instinctively looked to her hands, and saw that her fingers were racing.

You okay, Whit?

Ummm ... NO! She barked back at him.

“Shouldn’t I get her oriented first?” Tommy asked Penny.

“You cucumbers are all the same! You think girls are so helpless without you! We got it!” Penny answered grabbing him by the arm and directing him to the door. “It’s bad enough I even let you in here.”

I’m sorry, sis He thought to Whitney, but she didn’t answer. He felt her pull angrily away from him. She was there and then she wasn’t. He knew she was blaming him for everything and he wanted to stay and talk to her, but he knew he couldn’t. He wished he could do the same thing that she could and wrap his mind around hers but he couldn’t do that either. That was her talent. Not his.

Instead, he turned back to the door and made his way out. He would just have to wait until later and hopefully the heat of her anger will have cooled.

2

Whitney felt her way over to her bunk and sat down. She took deep breaths, trying to overcome that feeling of loss that always came from her separation from her brother. It was kind of like watching your favorite movie and wishing it wasn’t over. She had to settle for being alone and in the dark.

It was a little worse than normal because she was in a strange place, surrounded by strange people. The only person in the room she knew was Kat and she only just met her.

Her finger exercise was doing very little to calm her down so she focused on her breathing and on the knot pressing on her throat. In her darkness, she could sense Kat close by, moving back and forth around her. It took Whitney a second to figure out what she was doing. She was putting her things away for her.

Someone else was standing near the foot of her bed and not moving at all, which meant that person was probably talking to Kat. If Whitney thought about it earlier, and if she had enough time, she would have focused on where everyone was positioned through Tommy’s eyes. That way, when she left him, she could associate names with the different signatures of the shadows that they left in her “radar.” She hadn’t done that, but she thought it was safe to assume the person talking to Kat was Penny.

More girls were coming into the cabin. There were still some girls sitting on their bunks and some were moving to where the table was. There was one girl positioned just outside where the cabin wall ended, which must have been where the bathroom was located.

Yep ... the moon she thought. I may as well be on the moon. She couldn’t help but feel separated from everyone else in the room, which is why she spent so much of the rest of her life apart from everyone else. Outside of her family, she never developed friends. There really wasn’t any way to do that, and even if there were, there wasn’t any way to trust the secrets they had to keep. Telling Kat and Kam was a big risk. She was glad about it, but if the secret got any more out than it already was, it would change their whole life.

Penny left the end of her bed and headed toward the bathroom. Two of the girls left their bunks and took Penny’s place. Kat must have finished putting things away (Whitney would have to remember to thank her for that later), because she was standing still off to her left.

Penny’s shadow came back up to them. She came in closer than Whitney was comfortable with and Whitney instinctively leaned away. She couldn’t tell exactly what was going on but Kat moved in quickly and she could feel the air move in front of her. A few seconds later, Penny’s shadow stormed away shaking the floorboards as she went. Kat took Whitney’s hand in hers, placed a wet rag in it and then tapped her finger on Whitney’s forehead next to the place where “The Chief,” painted the circle.

Whitney shook her head no confirming she didn’t want the marking removed. The rag was pulled away from her and the next thing she knew, Kat was pulling on her hand as if she were trying to guide her up.

Whitney’s first instinct was to draw her hands back with a snap and it actually took her a great amount of effort not to. She wasn’t used to being touched. New friend or not, the idea of letting someone else put their hands on her was driving her through a wall.

Kat took each of her hands and placed them on the bunks on either side of her. She was trying to show her how much space there was in between. Kat took a couple of steps back and Whitney took a deep breath and followed. She stepped to the edge of the bed and as Kat continued to back away, Whitney continued to follow. Kat took Whitney’s hands and continued heading back toward the bathroom, placing her hands on bunks and chairs along the way until they reached their destination. The timing was good, because Whitney found that she had to go anyway. Taking a couple of minutes to herself, alone in the bathroom, was a good idea.

None of the other shadows had any animation to them. All eyes were on her as Kat brought her to the bathroom. Will that ever change? God! What am I doing here? She thought to herself. I’m a two-headed monkey and this is my new cage! If she had a cell phone, she would call for a ride home. Not that I could hear anyone on the other end or anything her mind added, and she bit back a chuckle. Mr. Margraves was right after all. She didn’t belong with a bunch of teens that weren’t encumbered by sightlessness or deafness let alone both. As soon as she got to the threshold of the doorway, Kat stopped and placed her hand on it. Whitney knew what to do from there. She began to feel around the bathroom. Once she felt comfortable that she knew where everything was, she turned and shut the door.

She took her time in the bathroom. She was in no hurry and when it came time for her to wash her hands, she took her time doing that too. She was stalling. She didn’t want to go back out and she didn’t want everyone in the cabin to stare at her while Kat lead her around like a freak show. At the same time, she couldn’t drag her bathroom routine out forever.

After she washed her hands, she bent and nearly splashed her face with water. It was hot out, and she simply went to cool herself off when the tingling sensation on her forehead reminded her of the strange looking Indian and the paste he put on her forehead. What did he put on me anyway? She thought. I wonder if washing it off would be as big a deal as he made it out to be.

She thought about doing it. The water was in her hands and her face was poised above the sink. It would have been so easy to bring her hands to her face and wash the markings away. To be done with it. Didn’t everyone have enough reason to stare at her as it was? Did she really need to have a big mark on her head, giving people another reason to stare and question?

She didn’t think so.

She brought her hands to her face with the intention of going through with it, but his words came back to her just before the water splashed against her.

“Do it and IT’ll have her,” the chief had said. It was his conviction that she heard. He didn’t just think it. He knew it.

3

Okay, monkey! Might as well get back out there and continue the show, she thought to herself as she gripped the door handle. All activity in the cabin stopped, centering around her again as if she were performing some amazing feat. She wasn’t a trapeze artist and she wasn’t a part of a show. Yet she, without seeing it, knew every eye was upon her. She felt her chest tighten and she wished she could crawl underneath one of the bunks and wait until everyone in the room forgot she was there.

Kat took her hands again and her friend’s touch didn’t offer comfort to her. She followed Kat’s lead until she was standing next to her bunk again.

The next thing she knew Kat had her hands on each side of her face but she wasn’t sure what Kat wanted. Her friend was uncomfortably close to her. Kat’s shadow was closing in,, confusing Whitney. All she could think of was that her friend was coming in for a kiss.

Gross.

Whitney tried to back away, but was blocked by the proximity of the bunk behind her. Kat’s forehead touched hers, her skin began crawling, and her heart pounded. She couldn’t turn and run. She was stuck, and the stuck feeling reminded her of Carol and Blake pulling away in the S.U.V.

At first, she was terrified. She kept waiting for Kat’s lips to press against hers and she prepared to freak. What in the world must the rest of the girls in the cabin be thinking?

That happen. Her panic began to recede as she felt her friend’s skull vibrating against hers. The vibrations came in little blasts, reminding her of Morse code. Kat was trying to communicate with her. Kat didn’t know sign language and she was improvising. Whitney quieted her mind, trying to decipher her friend’s message despite the uncomfortable method of delivery.

The vibrations came in four blasts. Three long and one short and Kat repeated the same thing repeatedly. Whatever she was trying to say was four syllables. Whitney knew that much. The first two were separated by pauses and the second two were shorter and bunched together. Whatever Kat was saying was three words long.

Whitney’s mind automatically wrapped around Kat’s as she concentrated on her friend’s message but this wasn’t quite the same as what she did with Tommy. Instead of Whitney’s essence combining with Kat’s and becoming one, it was more like a catcher’s mitt wrapping around a softball. Whitney couldn’t see what was inside of her friend’s mind, but she could feel the stitches in the fabric there. She knew that she could penetrate it if she wanted to, but there was the chance that everything would unravel and the contents would spill all over the floor like a glass of milk smashing on the floor.

She focused on trying to see the words form as they left her friends mouth. She pictured herself mouthing the words. She focused on the vibrations as they transferred from Kat’s forehead to her own and she could almost feel the words. “Are ... you ... hungry?” That was what Kat wanted to know. She was asking if she was hungry.

She was. She was very hungry.

4

So far, the week was starting out as one big déjà vu fest for Tommy. It started from the first sight of Mr. Margraves, but didn’t end there. Nearly every event they experienced since arriving at the camp was accompanied by the feeling that he’d already experienced it before.

He wasn’t surprised by this. Tommy learned a long time ago that if he wanted to keep secrets from Whitney, he had to keep things hidden from himself in order to keep them hidden from Whitney. She occupied his mind a majority of the time and was privy to every thought on the surface of his mind. That was especially true with images and memories, but wasn’t limited to those alone.

It wasn’t too much time before Tommy created ‘the arena’ that he began to hide his dreams from her. At first, he did it because he dreamed of a version of Whitney that terrified him and he couldn’t imagine letting her see it for herself. The girl in his dreams had Whitney’s face and the non-piggyback version of her shiny silver retinas, but her attitude and demeanor was even more disturbing.

Her face was tattooed and scarred. She was dressed in a sleek white body suit and was armed to the hilt with hand to hand weaponry. She had a bandolier crisscrossing her chest with black bladed throwing daggers attached, a whip mounted to her hip, two swords across her back, and various other weapons he couldn’t name.

The look in her eyes made his gut wrench, and sent chills down his spine. Her eyes looked like they belonged on a cold-blooded killer. She looked angry. She looked determined. Most of all she looked like a maniac. The girl in his dreams was the polar opposite of the sister he knew.

When they bumped into the albino Indian along the trail, that sense of déjà vu crept along Tommy’s spine like a midnight stalker. Tommy related the feeling to that dream of Whitney and he did that because of the tattoos and battle scars that Whitney had in his dream.

She had the infinity symbol tattooed around her eyes, which, in a way, gave her a raccoon look. It also gave her an Indian warrior look. Just on the outside edge of each loop of the infinity symbol, was a little tear drop. Tommy heard stories of gang members that sometimes tattooed teardrops under the corners of their eyes after killing a person and even added teardrops for each kill. The girl he dreamed of didn’t have enough face to tattoo one teardrop per kill. If her scars were any indication, killing was her way of life.

Tommy wasn’t sure how she would have reacted to his dreams, but when you combined the vision of her with the other dreams that came with it? They were dreams of her fighting creatures that didn’t exist. Most of them she won easily, but in one of them? In one of them, she didn’t win. In one of them, she was defeated. In that dream, the creature that beat her finished her off by sticking his tail down her throat and somehow it drained the life right out of her.

That was the dream he really didn’t want her to see.

He kept those dreams locked away. He created a little room in the deepest regions of his mind and kept his prophetic dreams inside. The downside to keeping them locked away, was that he couldn’t remember the contents. He couldn’t see them any more than she could, but they were still there. Whenever he saw or experienced something resembling one of his dreams, he had that déjà vu feeling.

After Whitney pulled back from him in the cabin, Tommy opened the door to that secret place and let the dreams out. His mind was immediately flooded with tens of thousands of terrifying images including the ones of the tattooed Whitney, but those weren’t even the worst of them. There were more images and stories that made more sense now that they were at the camp. Before that, the images didn’t make a whole lot of sense to him and the people in the dreams were strangers. Now they weren’t strangers. Now they were people he knew—people he was beginning to like. If they weren’t careful ... they were people that weren’t going to make it home again. That’s what his dreams told him.

He saw horrifying images of Kat, lying on the ground, with purely white eyes. Her eyes were lovely. The bright blue circles of her eyes filled those sockets, giving her a doll-like appearance. Seeing them drained of all color and her skin deathly pale, chilled him. He saw Kam bent over the top of her holding her hand and begging her to come back to him with tears in his eyes. If he hadn’t seen it in his dreams he would have never been able to imagine the big lug crying, but there it was.

But there were many different versions of his dreams. When Tommy dreamed he didn’t have one or two dreams in a night—he had hundreds, and none of them told him what to do. They only told him what not to do. In some versions, some people didn’t make it. In some versions only half did. In some versions, nobody was going to make it out of the camp. Tommy’s dreams to covered a thousand different possibilities and none of them were desirable.

“Earth to Tommy! Come in, Tommy!” Kam said sarcastically. They were making their way toward their cabin. Tommy had his duffel bag strap over his shoulder, and Kam was carrying his suitcase.

“Oh. Sorry!” Tommy replied. “Zoning out a bit. I do that sometimes.”

“I’ll say. Been talking to you for the past five minutes and you didn’t answer. What gives?”

Tommy looked over at Kam and his mind automatically recalled a version of Kam, lying face down in a pile of leaves, with his arms splayed out at odd angles. You don’t wanna know, Kam, he thought. Trust me on that one. You don’t wanna know.

“Nothing,” he said instead. “Just worried about Whitney.”

“Ah. Don’t worry about her. Kat’ll watch over her. She can be annoying sometimes. She can talk the ear off a cornstalk, but she’s like a momma cat too. She’ll take care of Whitney as if Whitney was her own little kitten.” He said it in the loving, mocking way that only a close brother can get away with.

“Kat always talk like that?” Tommy asked.

Kam chuckled. “Yeah. If she tries hard enough, she can tone it down, but it’s easier for her to talk that way.”

“I think Whitney finds her interesting.”

“Whitney, or you?”

“Well, I uh...”

Kam laughed a little harder. “Don’t sweat it, my man. She’s a goof, but guys fall for her right and left. Don’t get your hopes up, though. I’ve never seen her crush on a guy. I doubt she’ll start now.”

“No, no. I wasn’t...”

“You sure?”

“Yeah. I mean, she’s cute and all, but—”

Kam lowered his gaze for a moment. He kicked a rock aside, staring at his feet as if he expected them to walk away without him. When his gaze returned to Tommy, there was trouble in his eyes. They quaked as if his sockets had worn gears.

“You all right?” Tommy asked.

“She’d kill me if I told you.”

“Told me what?”

Kam looked down the trail, his eyes penetrating beyond Tommy. His jaw muscles flexed and his Adam’s apple bobbed as he swallowed. “How much do you like her? And can the modesty crap. If you’re just another guy, I ain’t tellin’ you shit.”

Tommy sighed and kicked a rock of his own. Without looking up, he answered. “I’ve dreamt of Kat since I was fourteen. I’m not just another guy.”

Kam’s face puckered. “What? You aren’t some kind of stalker are you?”

Tommy shook his head no. I didn’t even know her name until yesterday, but her face ... the way she talks ... I’ve seen them for years.”

Kam studied him for a few minutes, his stare was the stare of a mountain gorilla warning off an invader.

“My sister’s head isn’t right. She had a tumor when she was eleven. It was in her frontal lobe, snaking through the portion of her mind that handles emotional responses, expressive language, and word associations. The doctors cleaned it up, but the operation was invasive and they had to take more than just the tumor.”

“Will she be all right?”

“She will. But she can be vulnerable. I swear, I’d kill a guy if he screwed with her, got it?” Kam said and Tommy never realized a guy could have so many muscles in his neck.”

“Got it,” Tommy replied.

“Good.”

Kam slapped Tommy on the shoulder, giving him a brotherly hug as they continued down the path.

Tommy chuckled. “Kat’s got her work cut out for her, you know. Whitney can be a handful. Especially when she’s cranky and Penny forcing me out so quick ... Well, let’s just say that Whitney’s pretty damned cranky right about now.”

“So you’re not umm ... talking to her right now? How does that work anyway? Do you guys really have ESP?”

There it was. The questions were going to start and Tommy wasn’t sure what to do with that. He wasn’t sure whether Kam and Kat could handle the truth. In the beginning, it would start out with curiosity, but where would it go from there? People were afraid of things they didn’t understand and people didn’t like things that they couldn’t control. Where would things go if their secrets got out?

He had an idea of where things would go if their secret got out. There were versions of his dreams that covered the issue and in those, he saw black vehicles following them wherever they went and a suspicious newcomer befriending him at school.

“You do realize that you can’t talk about any of this with anyone ... ever!”

“So that’s it, then? You guys really do have ESP?” Kam asked. “Your secret’s safe with us. It’s cool. I always thought that stuff was just shit you see in movies. I didn’t think it was really possible.”

“We don’t have ESP. Whitney can’t read people’s minds or anything like that,” Tommy informed Kam. He figured it was best to tell him that much because there would be no fear of Whitney digging into his thoughts.

“But she can read yours. Right?”

Tommy grabbed Kam’s arm and stopped him along the trail. He looked him square in the eye. “I’m going to go against my better judgment and level with you. I’m going to trust you because I don’t see any way around it. If I don’t tell you, it will piss you off enough that you might start running your mouth just to spite us. I can’t have that. Whitney likes you and Kat and so do I—and I really need for Whitney to start making friends—so I guess we’re stuck trusting you.”

“You’re a pretty smart guy!” Kam said. “When I walked off from you guys earlier, I knew there was something out of whack with you two. I was planning to spout off, but I swear on my sister’s life—now that you’re leveling with me—Mums the word,” he mimicked the twisting of a lock against his lips and throwing away an invisible key.

Kam looked sincere in his promise. Tommy took a deep breath, crossed his fingers, and went for it. “It’s not easy to explain and I really don’t even like the idea of telling anyone anything about it, but it’s more like she can shift her consciousness into mine. She still has control over her own body, but her mind can join with mine. Again ... This isn’t gossip material. This is our life and if people find out about any of it our lives are screwed.”

“Yeah. I can see that. Your lives probably would be screwed. Unless you like head doctors and government officials. I’ve watched some pretty whacked out conspiracy shows about government tests and programs where they try to use psychics to spy on our enemies. But I gotta ask you. When you say that Whitney likes us ... Is that a me? Or is that an us thing.”

Tommy turned and resumed walking down the trail. He knew he was taking a big risk by confiding in Kam, but a part of him was glad he did it. Sharing their secret felt like lifting a burden from his shoulders. There could be consequences and it very well could have been the decision that led to the dreams of being followed by the dark unmarked cars, but it did make his shoulders feel lighter.

“To be honest,” Tommy said. “It’s a little of both, but I wouldn’t get your hopes up, Romeo. Put yourself in my sister’s shoes and ask yourself this question. If you couldn’t see a guy’s face, hear his voice, or have a normal conversation with him—would you want to make him your boyfriend? Think about it. The only way she can talk to you is through me. The only way she can look in your eyes is if I do. Do you really want me gazing romantically into your eyes? Cuz I don’t!”

“Oh. Yeah. I guess you have a point.”

“Exactly!” Tommy said. “You’re way better off with someone else.”

“I don’t know. I do kind of like a challenge. And letting you gaze romantically into my eyes wouldn’t be so bad. If I knew that she was the one enjoying it.” Kam said. He said it with a teasing tone.

“Forget it! Never gonna happen!” Tommy said. “Not in a million years.”

5

“You ready for some belly fodder?” Kam asked Tommy after they had Tommy settled in. “I think my belly could fit a truck in it!”

“Shouldn’t we go back for the girls?” Tommy asked.

“You kidding? If I know Kat, she’s already on her second plate and going for her third.”

They both started heading for the front door of the cabin. “It’s kind of weird,” Tommy said. “Our cabin’s deserted.”

“What’s weird about that?” Kam asked.

“I dunno. When we went to the girls cabin it looked like pretty much all the girls were there, but we’re the only ones here.”

They walked outside. Kam started walking down the path that led straight forward from the cabin door and Tommy followed suit. “You guys ain’t going to the lake?” a voice called out from behind them.

They both turned around. There was a skinny boy with frizzed hair passing through and headed south along the path. He was wearing a black t-shirt with a caricature of Albert Einstein on the front of it. Einstein had a wooden golf club in his hand he was about to snap it in half over his knee. The caption said “Einstein! The real hero of golf.” The boy was walking with a brown cane and he was wearing thick horn rimmed glasses.

“Headed to the chow hall!” Kam said.

“Well hurry up! Otherwise you might miss it!” the boy said enthusiastically over his shoulder as he continued down the path. Tommy noted the back of the boy’s shirt as he passed. Einstein had one arm around Tiger and in the other he was holding a shiny new metal wood. “Without Einstein, Tiger’s average score would have a plus on it,” the caption said.

“Wait a second Mike!” Kam called out. “What are you talking about?”

Mike stopped and turned around on the path. “The Amicolola! I heard that it started up! The Chief’s stories are actually true! Can you believe it?”

“Get the hell out of here! You’re BSing me!” Kam said back to him.

Kam sounded doubtful but there was no doubt in Tommy’s mind that the young Einstein look alike, with his horn rimmed glasses and all, was telling the truth. Tommy had seen the anomaly in his dreams and he knew that the boy was speaking the truth.

“Seriously! I heard ‘em say it myself over the staff radio! Pretty much everyone’s down there already, but I’m still walking slower than I did before the crash, so I told them not to wait up for me. I’ll get there soon enough I think,” Mike added with a thought. His head remained lowered and thoughtful. He spoke with modest reverence.

“How’s your physical therapy coming along anyway?” Kam asked. “You think you can tackle the wall this year?”