Page 24 of Spooked
“And tell you what?” I yell. Like a baby, tears leak from my eyes. “That I’m going mad?”
His eyes narrow. “You’re as sane as I am. Now tell me what the fuck’s going on.”
“I can’t.” I sound like a petulant child.
He leans back in his seat, crosses his feet at the ankles, and folds his arms. “I’m not going anywhere. Speak to me, Hound.”
“I need more vodka first.”
Getting up, he passes the bottle to me but takes it back when I’ve had a few swallows. “Talk,” he instructs.
When he again focuses his sharp eyes on me, I feel myself start to fold. Won’t be long before all the brothers notice there’s something wrong with me and strip me of my role. Might as well come clean, then he can laugh and share the joke with them all.
“I think I’ve seen a ghost.” My voice comes out as a whisper.
As Mouse leans forward, his long hair circles around his face, and he pushes the strands back behind his ears before saying, seriously, “Think or did?” There’s no judgment, no laughter. Just pure interest.
How the fuck do I answer that?If I say, I did, he’d think I was crazy, but is just thinking about it any better? I’m hoping like hell, even if my hallucinations are a result of my traumatic brain injury, that just like the bones in my leg, in time, it will heal. There’s no need to get brothers looking at me oddly or thinking I can’t be trusted in the sergeant-at-arms role.
My mouth opens and shuts, probably making me look like a gaping fish as I wish I could withdraw my earlier statement. Now it’s out in the open, I don’t know how the fuck I want to deal with it.
Mouse’s dark eyes stare into me so intensely, I have to look away.
“Hound,” he says in an almost hypnotic tone. “Listen to me. You know my heritage?” I know some of it, but I can’t summon up a reply, so he answers his own question. “I’m mixed race, Anglo and Navajo. Spent most of my childhood here in Tucson, enjoying the Anglo lifestyle. I had game consoles, played football, ate fast food, and was a typical teenage boy. Then my dad died, and I returned to the reservation with my mom.” He chuckles softly. “Fuck, you can bet I rebelled against it. It was like going back to the Stone Age, but slowly the place took hold of me, seeped into my bones until I acknowledged my Native roots, and along with that, some of the beliefs of the tribe my mom was born into.” He pauses, comes and kneels in front of me, then places his hand on my chin, forcing my head to face him. “Hound, listen to me. I learned that most stories had a basis in truth and saw enough to realise there are things that we can’t explain, living on the edge of our consciousness. Some spirits are only too real and frighten even me.”
“Spirits?” I hang on his word, then think he must be fucking with me, getting me to admit to what I’ve seen, then share a joke about it with the rest of the club.Old Hound is losing his mind. You’ll never guess what he just told me.
But there’s no mirth in his eyes, and he remains totally serious as he retakes his seat. “It wasn’t easy melding the Anglo and Native parts of me. I had to find a way to live with them both. Once I met Mariana and we had the kids, I became more settled. But prior to that, and before you came to the club, I usedto disappear for months on vision quests. You know what they are?”
All I can do is shake my head.
“It’s where I had let the Navajo part of me take me over, tapped into my spiritual side, felt the world wash away from me as I let the spirits in.” He chuckles softly. “Some people would say I was mad, but the club gave me the time, knew I needed to ground myself every now and again.” He sighs. “I still get back to the reservation from time to time, but once I was married, my wife and family were all that I needed to ground me. But, Hound, I’ve seen things no white man would ever understand. If you think you’ve seen a ghost, believe me, I’m not the one to mock you or disagree.” He shudders, and I swear I see goosebumps rise on his arms. “Yee naaldlooshi,skinwalkers. Like my tribe, I swear that they’re real.”
He's not mocking me.The opposite, he’s opening up in ways that give me ammunition to turn the tables and make fun of him. But I don’t. “I need coffee.”
As I start to reach for my crutches, he stops me. “I’ve got it.”
I take the time while he’s in my kitchen to analyse his words.I’m going crazy keeping this all to myself. But can I really trust him?I study the man, answer him automatically when he asks how I want my drink doctored, and consider how he’s always been a steady member of the club—an established fixture long before I joined. Though other brothers aren’t against having a joke at someone else’s expense, Mouse has never started shit that I can recall. I may be doing him a disservice to doubt his sincerity.
Weighing my options in my mind, I either consider he’s a brother who won’t let me down or laugh at the preposterous nature of the story I could relate to him, or I can politely tell him everything’s alright, see him go, and continue suffering in lonely, tortured silence.
Feeling I’ve got no choice, first I ask, “What day is it?”
“October thirtieth,” he responds, with an eyebrow raised.
“Groundhog day.”
He snorts. “Not as far as I know. Care to expand?”
Drawing in a deep breath, I shudder as I let it out. “You’re not going to believe this.”
“Try me.” After passing me my coffee and opening another soda for himself, Mouse sits once again on the chair opposite mine.
Heaving a loud sigh, I preface my story by being straight. “When I came out of the coma, the doctor told me I’d suffered a traumatic brain injury, and that it could affect my head in a myriad of different ways.” I huff and dismissively wave my hands. “I ignored his warning, of course. Thought I knew best.” Another rush of air leaves my mouth. “To be honest, Mouse, now it’s my greatest fear. That what I think has happened over the past couple of days could be all as a result of fucked-up damaged wiring in my head.”
“Tell me,” he says, simply, his eyes focused as though he’s taking every word in.
Taking both a deep breath and the plunge I hope I don’t come to regret, I tell Mouse everything. Going to the house, the pictures I took, returning to Bullet’s office, meeting Maeve, taking her back to the house, and the things that we saw. It takes me a while to relate, but I leave nothing out. I’m bolstered that he simply looks interested. There’s no sign of judgment or scoffing. I even explain how I fell down the stairs, only to come to having apparently fallen exiting my house. How I ended up in the hospital yet again, and the next morning I revisited Bullet’s office to go through the whole thing again. Only, this time, Maeve didn’t appear. I’m overly emotional with tears running down my face as I get to the end of my story. I can’t even be bothered to care. I sound ridiculous, even to myself, and expectMouse to start making the arrangements to get me immediately admitted to the nut house.
