Page 62 of The Forest of Lost Souls

“All right, yes, I will.”

“No murder.”

“None,” he agrees.

“No violence.”

“Oh, well, there will probably be some violence. Vida isn’t going to, you know, just give herself up. Your brothers might not kill her, but they’ll make it possible for someone else to do it.”

“You and the despicable Mr. Vector and his amoral associates are beyond my care. You will do what you will do. But not my poor brothers. They must take a baby step from no murder to no violence. They have promised me. Remind them of their promise.”

Her eyes are the unique, iridescent blue of the wings of a Ulysses butterfly, a flock of which he’d once seen in Queensland, Australia, years earlier. In numbers, with their four-inch wingspan, they had flurried out of the shadows, so dazzling against the vivid green of the rainforest that they seemed unearthly. In witness of their aerial waltz, he’d stood transfixed, overcome by a sense of the world as being far more than he’d thought it was, by asudden awareness of mysteries and fabulous possibilities of which he had previously been unaware. Now, looking into Wendy’s eyes, as when he’d seen those butterflies dancing in sunlight, he feels both that the Earth is unearthly and that by his life choices he has lost the ability to perceive wonders that are unfolding around him in every hour of every day.

“Remind them of their promise,” she repeats.

“I will, yes, I swear,” Regis declares as he launches himself into the SUV and pulls the door shut.

The next thing he knows, he’s two miles from Wendy’s house, a mile from his next rendezvous, with no idea how he got there. He feels as if he’s sloughing off some spell that was cast on him.

Before visiting Wendy, he’d been to Frank Trott’s trailer, where Frank’s gear had been readied by his son, Farnam, who was wired on something even at that hour. To express dissatisfaction with having been required to exert himself, Farnam repeatedly stuck out his tattooed tongue. Perhaps twenty years old, rail-thin, teeth yellowed, eyes bloodshot, with one eyebrow, having risen from a sofa littered with issues of the magazineHeavy Metal, he wore a T-shirt with the word STUDin bold letters.

After Trott’s trailer, Regis had visited Galen Vector’s house, where the crime boss’s hiking clothes had been prepared for pickup by Candy Sass, formerly known as Berta Gussman, who had left Kettleton at eighteen to become a porn star and, following a strenuous seven-year career that ended with an extreme allergy to penicillin, had returned home as the main squeeze of the mountain mafioso. Candy was still a looker, even after servicing legions, and she knew it. From Vector’s collection of weapons, she provided four AR-15s and sixteen extended magazines, providing enough firepower to contend with Vida if it turned outthe fugitive was going into the mountains to take shelter with forty members of a crazed militia. “You won’t need a backpack for Galen. He don’t carry his own. The others will carry supplies for him.” As Regis piled the gear and guns into the Lexus, Candy played with one rifle as perhaps she had done in a steamy sequence in one of her epics. Regis kept saying, “Hey, is that loaded? Are you sure? Are you sure that’s not loaded?”

Now, he’s three miles farther down the road, and his eyes are burning from lack of sleep, and his stomach is sour from too many caffeine tablets. He’s already mostly forgotten Candy Sass and the anxiety she inspired regarding his lack of hand-sanitizing gel. But he’s unable to forget the smallest thing about Wendy, anime goddess.

With dawn but forty minutes away, he is speeding toward the property where, according to Vector, Belden Bead and Nash Deacon are buried in their cars, their graves as unmarked as those of pharaohs in pyramids buried deep under the shifting sands of Egypt.

Having been Montessori molded, Pencey prepared, and fine-tuned at Harvard, Regis should have no capacity for superstition. He should be as free from fear of higher powers and spectral presences as he is unconcerned about black cats and broken mirrors. But he can’t shake the feeling that cosmic justice is coming down on him, on all of them who are pushing the project in order to drain its funds into their pockets, that the corruption of his heart is known and that his time to repent is running out.

He’s further unnerved when a disturbing Cheyenne word springs to mind—Maheo. He had encountered the word a few times during the extensive reading he’d done to familiarize himself with Kettleton County and its history, before coming to thisbutt-end of nowhere. The Cheyenne, a very spiritual people, believe in a supreme being, Maheo, “The Wise One Above.”

They also believe in another god, one who lives in the earth. Regis isn’t able to recall the name of the god who lives underfoot. This failure of memory suddenly seems significant. An underground god is surely of a darker nature than Maheo, more likely to extract vengeance for crimes against the Earth.And if you don’t even know your enemy’s name, how can you hope to know when he’s coming after you?

As he slows down to turn onto Vida’s driveway, Regis says aloud, “That’s stupid, just plain nuts. What’s wrong with me?” He answers his own question: “You’re tired. That’s all. You’re worn out.” He isn’t entirely satisfied with that explanation and says, “Hell no. It’s a lot more than that. Everything’s coming apart. There are forces rising that aren’t supposed to exist.”

Making the turn onto the unpaved driveway, he issues a sharp rebuke: “Stop talking to yourself, dammit. You’re scaring me.” And so he doesn’t say one word more as the stone house comes into view, bathed in starlight, the moon having descended below the towering peaks of the western mountains.

51

WHAT WAS AND WHAT CAN BE

In this deepest level of sleep, past and future are one with the present, and all of time is accessible. Vida sits in a rocking chair. She is ten years old. The night is dark and deep, although the moon is four times larger than it has ever been before, as dull as tarnished silver. José Nochelobo stands in the yard with another man, their backs to her, gazing at the celestial phenomenon. Strange as the moment is, Vida feels nonetheless safe, at peace. But then the seer in white robe and yellow sneakers appears in the other rocking chair, and the mood abruptly changes when she says, “Give me the thing you value most, and I will consider telling your future.”

“Before, it was the thing I valued least,” says Vida.

The seer shrugs. “Everything is more expensive than it once was.”

A low thrumming rises in the distance, as if some machine with a powerful but muffled engine is approaching.

Vida ages eighteen years in an instant. “I can’t give you what I value most. It’s not mine to give, and I’d never sell it.”

“That,” says the seer, “is the answer I wanted. Before you is your past and future, standing under the moon. Be not so foolish as to cling to what was, rather than embrace what can be.”

Although still muffled, the engine noise is closer, a deep and ominous sound that seems felt more than heard.

“What’s that?” Vida rises from her chair. “What’s coming?”

“Death,” the seer says. “When you hear it elsewhere than in a dream, move fast. Do what is expected of a woman who runs with wolves.”

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