Wings to the Kingdom Page 32

Page 32

 

  Kitty rolled her head back and forth, like she was trying to crack her neck the way she’d popped her toes. “But your friends, do they believe you?”

  “I think they do, yes. ”

  “It’s like faith, though. They believe without knowing. ”

  “Something like that, but I don’t think there’s anything but good intention behind it. They want to believe, at least, and knowing me gives them a little bit of an excuse. We got some evidence the other night, at the battlefield. ”

  “Evidence? You going to go to the newspapers?”

  I shook my head and waved my hand at her. “Oh no. Not that kind of evidence—not empirical evidence or anything. Nothing that would stand up to scrutiny. ”

  She offered me a thin-lipped smirk. “Not much in the way of evidence, then, is it?”

  “Not to anyone who wasn’t there, no. We took a tape recorder out to the battlefield and asked the ghosts there if they’d talk to us and tell us what’s going on out there. We picked up some voices. But I couldn’t prove to someone who wasn’t there that the voices we got were really spirits. You’ll have to take my word for it, is all. ”

  “What’s going on out there—you mean, with all the pointing? I saw that on the news the other day, how they point and disappear into nothing. ”

  I knew they’d been pointing, yes, but I hadn’t thought of it as a theme until Kitty put it that way. “What do you think they’re pointing at?”

  “Some place. Some thing. I don’t know. ”

  “Dyer’s field, maybe,” I said, mostly to myself. “We think there might be something fishy going on at Dyer’s field. ”

  “You never know. Could be. You’re right for sure about the Green Eyes thing, though. I saw him. I didn’t know at first it was him, because, well, you know. You don’t think ‘Green Eyes’ except for when you think of the battlefield. Someplace else it takes you a while to figure him out. Jesus, but he’s scary. ”

  I rocked my rear back and forth, sliding away from an uncomfortable spring. “I don’t think I’d call him scary, except that he’s different. Really, really different. He’s not like the ghosts I’m used to seeing here and there. He’s something more solid. More real. ”

  She agreed, but in a way that disagreed with my assessment. “And more able to hurt you if he wants to. ”

  “What makes you think he wants to hurt you?”

  “I don’t know if he does or not, but if a ghost wanted to hurt me, there wouldn’t be much it could do about it, except scare me. But the thing out there”—she wagged her shoulder towards the window—“if he wanted to do something bad, he could. ”

  “You’re right, I guess. But so long as he’s uninterested in molesting the rest of us, I’d prefer to think of him as ‘mysterious’ and not ‘sinister,’ if I can help it. ”

  “Think of him however you want. He’s dangerous, and horrible, and I want as much thick sanitarium wall and floor and tight metal bars between me and him as I can get. ”

  Out in the hall I heard a muffled pair of soft-shoed footsteps, and I knew our time was all but up. Kitty heard them too. I was almost disappointed; I felt like we were only just starting to communicate, and I think she would have rather kept talking as well.

  “Let me know how it works out,” she said, beginning her slow curl back into the cramped position I’d found her in. “You can come back, if you want. I don’t mind. We could talk, if you want. I’m tired of talking to all these crazies. ”

  I didn’t make her any promises, but I thanked her for her time and let the orderly lead me away. I fled the premises with a sense of relief, and a touch of sadness.

  I was terribly glad to go.

  13

  Back to the Battlefield

  I met Benny at his home about twenty minutes after midnight, after calling Lu and Dave and telling them I’d be out for another few hours. God bless them for not asking any questions; I think when I told them Jamie was involved they assumed I’d gone out dancing, which I do almost exclusively when Jamie drags me. We usually go to the gay bar out in the bad part of town, because the drinks are strong, the music is good, and the worst thing that happens to Jamie there is that he gets hit on because he acts gay—which he finds more palatable than just plain getting hit because he acts gay. This is a tough town for a guy to be so femme in, and if there’s anything I respect about Jamie it’s that he doesn’t let that stop him from doing as he pleases. Dave and Lu think he’s funny, and they don’t mind if I stay out late with him—which aided my small deception.

  My uncle hadn’t noticed that I’d made off with one of his older cameras. I figured the missing equipment would fly under his radar, since I’d selected an older manual number that he’d set aside for a newer model a year or two before.

  I was pretty sure I remembered how to use it.

  Jamie was waiting at Benny’s too, as previously arranged. Between us, we ran through a final rundown and made sure we had everything we needed. We even played back some of the EVP for Jamie, who hadn’t heard it yet.

  “You think we’ll catch more of the same?” he asked, clicking the mouse on the play key again.

  “I don’t know. Maybe. Maybe not. ” I reached around him and picked up the tape recorder, and I stuffed it into my bag. “If we’re lucky, maybe some generous dead guy will recognize us from last time as friends, not foes, and lead us to where the action is. ”

  “What about the Marshalls?” Benny let fly a half-smile that said he didn’t object too deeply to the thought of running into them.

  “Let’s hope we miss them altogether,” I said, hoping to nip his apparent enthusiasm in the bud. I didn’t want any subconscious sabotage, and I sure as hell didn’t want to meet the Marshalls any more up close and personal than we had earlier.

  “But what if we do run into them?” he pressed.

  “Then we will run the other way and hope they don’t see us. Back me up here, Jamie. ”

  “Sure. What she said. ”

  “Thanks, I guess. I’ve got the camera. You got the film?”

  Benny shook the baggie until the canisters fell out. “I got the film. ”

  I tossed my head over at Jamie. “What’ve you got?”

  “Passion. Charm. Talent. And an irrepressible desire to charge around a battlefield while I’m being pursued by the dead. ”

  “Okay,” I agreed. “If that’s all you’ve got, it’ll have to do. We ready?”

  “We ready,” they said, and I believed them. Benny was carrying his same khaki bag with the military flashlight and assorted peripherals; I had the tape recorder and a camera bag with Dave’s manual camera and the infrared film clattering around next to it. We were as ready as we were going to get.

  I drove, for the same reasons I always drive: Benny drives for a living and refuses to do so during his extracurricular activities, and Jamie’s car is a piece of shit that none of us trust to go fifty feet without exploding.

  At least he offered to chip in for gas money, a gesture which was appreciated, if refused. I had a full tank, and he needed the five bucks worse than I did.

  We made it out to the battlefield just before 1:00 A. M. and parked back near Ted’s place. In the event that we were stopped by authorities, Ted wouldn’t care if we used him as an excuse for being there. And even if no one believed us, it was good to have a backup plan. Saying that we had wandered over to the battlefield while visiting a friend was less incriminating than admitting, “We drove all the way out from north Chattanooga for the sole purpose of trespassing on federally protected property. ”

  So that was our story, and we were sticking to it.

  The excursion began cleanly. There was no sign of anyone else in the fringe neighborhood—a crowded maze of half-paved streets interspersed with trailers, and without regular streetlights.

  We kept it low-key, just the crunch of our shoes where there was no asphalt. Benny�
��s flashlight led us with its telltale red halo, drawing us back to our starting point at the Tower. Dyer’s field was off to the right and across a road, but we liked being able to approach the position by skimming through the edge of the tree line.

  “Do you see anything?” Benny asked, hunching down in front of us as if making himself shorter would make us all more difficult to see.

  “No,” I whispered back. “Not yet. You?”

  “We don’t see ghosts, remember?”

  I nudged his back with my knuckles. “Maybe not, but you might see the Marshalls’ field party. I can’t be on the lookout for everything at once. Work with me, here. ”

  “Oh yeah,” Jamie breathed. “Them. ”

  I’d loaded the camera with the infrared film before we’d left the car. It hung around my neck on a festively embroidered, hippie-looking strap Dave must have picked up in 1970. As I walked, I tugged on the strap to shorten it so the heavy apparatus wouldn’t bang up and down against my breasts. I liked it better up high, perched above my sternum.

  “Need a hand?” Jamie offered.

  “Got it, you perv. Thanks. ”

  “Where are we going?” Jamie asked, tapping my shoulder.

  “Dyer’s field. Right?”

  “Right,” Benny backed me up.

  “Why?” Jamie asked.

  “Because,” I said, too loud. I cleared my throat and lowered it again, continuing the conversation in our best “inside” voices. “Because something’s going on over there, and we’re going to find out what. ”

  “Are we sure?”

  “No,” Benny and I answered at once.

  We walked on without talking for another few minutes before a sudden stop caused us to collide into one another. We had to halt—we’d reached the edge of the Tower area, and the woods had made way for the two-lane road. We retreated en masse back into the trees.