Soul Scent: A Zackie Story (The Zackie Stories Book 2) Read online

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  A booming sound could be heard from the driveway. If this was a raccoon, it had to be the granddaddy of them all. I was the first to arrive and parked next to Peyton’s truck. I thought I’d scope out the situation and get the ball rolling before she noticed I was there. Stepping out of my car, I glanced toward the back of the property at the house. It was an old, stone structure that used to be a pump house and she was slowly restoring the building and making it livable. No sign of Peyton yet, so I stepped away from the car, leaving the door open to avoid making noise. The gravel crunched beneath my feet as I took another step and extended my feelers for anything that might indicate Maggie’s presence. Suicides produced a particular sensory signature where everything was muted. Colors were leached and appeared gray or sepia. Sound lost its true dynamic range and flattened, so it was like listening to the world with water in your ears. Even smell and taste lacked sharpness and definition. All I would get was a kind of funky, mushroomy taste in my sinuses that made me want to spit.

  What I actually perceived surprised me. I caught a whiff of tangy fear-sweat, and my own adrenaline spiked a notch in response. There was abandonment and hopelessness. Was that Maggie? Then I sensed confusion and a blazing anger. I suddenly felt cornered and an atavistic reflex raised my hackles and I hunched to protect my neck. Lifting my hands to fend off an attack, I barely suppressed a warning snarl. Enough! This definitely was not Maggie. The spirit was strong and dangerous and he was taking over my reality. I started building a mental defense like Cam taught me, envisioning myself surrounded by a shark cage that let me keep an eye on the predators swimming outside, but allowed me to remain protected within.

  Isolated from the influences of the spirit, I closed the car door and stood rigidly next to it, taking a few deep breaths. Peyton emerged from her house just as my heart beat was returning to its normal cadence. I waved at her, pretending to have just arrived.

  “I thought I heard a car door slam.” As Peyton approached from the house, another vehicle pulled in and took the space next to me. Cam stumbled out of the truck, rubbing his face and yawning. While he opened the tailgate to let Zackie out, I suggested to Peyton that coffee might be in order. From past experience, I’ve learned some people get traUmatized if they brush up against the dead, while others go into full-scale denial. Either way, it made it hard for us to resolve the problem.

  As soon as Peyton was out of earshot, I filled Cam in on my impressions.

  “It’s not Maggie, then.” Cam rubbed the stubble on his jaw and concentrated on something in the distance with unfocused eyes. He needed a shave and more sleep. “Did you get anything specific about who we are dealing with?”

  “Other than emotional turmoil, nothing. But I think he got a little pissed off when he felt me tapping into him.” As if confirming my diagnosis, another loud boom echoed through the yard. Zackie’s ears perked and her head angled up as she put her nose into the wind.

  “I suppose there’s nothing for it. Let’s go have a look.” Cam stalked towards the trailer with Zackie at his heels. I followed, keeping my eyes and ears open for anything untoward. The door to the trailer had been left ajar. Perhaps Peyton held out hope that the raccoon would just wander off on its own. Cam squatted at the doorway and took his time scanning the interior. Looking over his shoulder, I did the same. We both came up empty.

  Cam shrugged. “It’s possible he doesn’t want to make contact.”

  “He didn’t seem like a shrinking violet to me…I don’t know…” I shook my head, not quite believing that the spirit hid from us. Before I could move to check the surrounding woods, Zackie jumped up on the side of the trailer in the classic pose of hunting-dog-treeing-her-quarry, her ID for a high find. Something had manifested on the roof of the trailer.

  Cam and I backed up to get a proper look at the roof. On the top of the trailer crouched a man in breech-cloth and buckskin leggings. He wore a shirt made from the pelt of some animal with the fur against his skin. His muscles bunched and he looked ready to spring. The sides and front of his head were hairless, but black hair stood up aggressively at the crown of his head. Two feathers twined into that dark mass of hair and his face was a shocking red. He glared at us wide-eyed with teeth bared. I took an involuntary step back as he smashed his fist on the trailer’s roof, creating another sonic boom that made me cover my ears. Drawing a steadying breath, I concentrated on sensing past his blood-red features and snarl to see the man. Even with these features stripped away, the man was terrifying.

  “I don’t think he’s happy to see us.” Cam mumbled to Zackie and she dropped to the ground. Gazing up at the very angry Native American, Cam called up to him. “Hoy, do you think you’d like to come down and speak with us?”

  The man growled a response. “Awèn hèch ki?”

  “What’d he say?” I heard the words, but had no comprehension. Normally, my brain accommodates and senses the meaning if a spirit garbles words or speaks an unknown language.

  “He’s blocking us.” Cam furrowed his brow, concentrating, trying to break through. “I think he’s testing us with the language. He doesn’t want us to understand his meaning if we can’t understand the words.”

  “Ahpu hèch awèn kèski alënixsit?” The spirit pointed to us, loudly exclaiming the words.

  “Sorry, mate. We can’t understand you. You’re going to have to try harder if you want to have a conversation.”

  The spirit smashed his fist into the trailer in response and disappeared, leaving us with an acrid smell of ozone, as if there had been a lightning strike close by. My heart raced, my skin prickled and I felt like I had just survived a near miss. “Holy crap,” I croaked.

  Cam eyed me with concern. “Easy there. It’s over now.”

  Peyton chose that moment of unbalanced chaos to appear with mugs of coffee. Thanking her in a weak voice, I took mine and concentrated hard not to spill it. My arms contracted in a muscular anarchy after accepting the slight weight of the mug, still spastic from the carryout. But if I forced myself to be honest, it was our contact with the angry spirit that caused my hands to tremble. I stole a look at Cam as I surreptitiously took some tight breaths, trying to slow my galloping heart. His calm was contagious and my gut unclenched, allowing me to breathe a little easier. Cam has told me that my reactions might be a form of PTSD, on account of my traUmatic childhood and early, uncontrolled experiences with the unseen world. This wasn’t fear I experienced, but an adrenaline-charged preparation for battle that I had trouble controlling.

  Peyton scrunched her face and stooped to check the power cable to the trailer. “I smell something…did that critter chew through the wiring?”

  Peyton had some sensitivity if she could smell it too and Cam shot me a worried look. I had met plenty of people who had varying degrees of ability to sense these presences, and in general, those with a weak awareness had some protection. I hoped that was true for Peyton, because this was a delicate balancing act between the interests of the spirit and well-being of the person affected by the encounter.

  I think this whole thing worked something like bear attacks. People like Peyton, who had some sensitivity, were like folks who were woods-aware. They made noise to let the bears know they were in the area and the animals gave them a wide berth. They don’t absolutely know that there was a bear near them, but they mostly avoided being attacked. I should emphasize the word ‘mostly’ here. People who were insensitive were like hikers with no sense of caution in the woods. They might accidentally stumble across a bear, surprise it and bring on an attack. They had no idea about the danger they were about to walk into. The spiritually insensitive were the people I worried about the most. Then there were those of us with the highest levels of sensitivity. We were just bear bait. There was something about us that helped these spirits to charge up and manifest full-strength, so it was like we were walking through the woods in a meat suit.

  Cam stalled with comments about possible damage as he grappled for a way
to control the situation. “We didn’t see any obvious damage inside the trailer….” Rubbing the back of his neck, Cam looked down as his face flushed and he stammered out a response. He was failing to launch a believable explanation, so I interrupted.

  “Hey, Peyton, we didn’t let Zackie flush out the raccoon because it might be injured. It would be more likely to fight than run. Best to keep clear of the trailer and maybe let it wander off slowly on its own.”

  “Injured! I’ll get my rifle and deal with this. I don’t want Simber –”

  “Don’t be foolish.” Cam swept his hand towards the equipment in the trailer. “The operative word is ‘might,’ so don’t go about trying to put holes in things. You don’t want to damage any of the laptops or radios, do you?” Peyton hesitated and chewed on her lip, so Cam pressed forward. “Just leave the door cracked as you’ve been doing and let it go its own way. Simber hasn’t paid it any attention, so she’ll be fine if you don’t mess with the situation.”

  After a long moment, Peyton nodded. “All right, all right. I have to go to my cousin’s wedding tomorrow, so I’ll just let this lie.” She raked a hand through her and then put her hands on her hips, looking at the ground and shaking her head. “But if this thing doesn’t disappear and stop making booming noises in the trailer, I’m calling in animal control to trap it. Funding’s been cut, so they’ll take forever to respond. I just hope we don’t get another callout before this is resolved.”

  I exhaled the breath I held and relaxed a little, now that we had her cooperation. “Sounds like a plan.” With a flash of inspiration, I formulated an excuse so that we could return to the trailer as needed. “And about the radios? I’d like to program them with the frequencies we’ve been using on searches. It’ll make it easier if we’re called out to get everyone communicating quickly. Cam said he’d help me, so we might come back to work on this in a day or two.” I saw Cam compress his lips out of the corner of my eye, but after a moment, he nodded as if we’d discussed this earlier.

  “What if the raccoon is still around when you come?” Peyton glanced from me to Cam and her brow creased.

  Sticking his hands in his pockets, Cam jutted his chin at Zackie. “We’ll bring Zackie. She’ll let us know if there’s something in the trailer.”

  # # #

  At Cam’s insistence, I wiped my cheek with a napkin to remove the ketchup. He moistened another napkin in his water glass and handed it to me. “You missed a spot.” The waitress artfully looked away as she passed us while we engaged in this social grooming behavior. Cam went back to sipping his third cup of coffee and looked thoughtful. “This one is going to be tricky. He’s given us little enough to go on and the records for Native Americans are sparse, especially the earlier you go.”

  Cam worked as a genealogist, so I trusted his judgment about our ability to find information on this angry spirit. “Any idea why he’s so pissed?”

  Cam shook his head. “I didn’t pick up on anything specific. No clues from his spirit body, other than maybe the red on his face.” I thought back on what I had learned about the symbolism that spirits use to convey everything from their history to their emotional states. Body parts would go missing or they manifested in some way that provided visual cues to what they were feeling or what they experienced. It was similar to the way dreams try to convey information to the conscious mind, never coming out and saying something blatant or easy to interpret by the dreamer. This was a language of symbolism and metaphor and it was personal to the dreamer, or in this case, the spirit expressing these symbols.

  “What do you think the red face means? Embarrassment?”

  “No… It doesn’t feel right. I don’t think it fits the rest of his profile.” Ticking off the list of emotions on his fingers, Cam continued. “Besides this incredible hostility, you said you got abandonment, fear, hopelessness and confusion. Am I right?”

  “That about sums it up.” I slumped down in my seat, the energy boost from the food already worn off. “You’re right. Embarrassment is not something he’s putting out there.” I wadded the ketchup-stained napkin between my fingers and concentrated on what we could do to help this spirit. I did not want to fight this guy. I needed a peaceful solution. “We need to get him to talk to us.”

  “And how are we going to do that?” Cam squinted at me and then raised an eyebrow.

  “How do you get anyone to open up? We need to find common ground and somehow build trust with this guy.”

  The eyebrow stayed up. “We need something better than platitudes on how to win friends and influence people.”

  I took a deep breath, stared at the wet ball of napkin in my hands and dredged up a bad memory. “When I was seeing shrinks on a regular basis, I learned a lot about how they operate. Mostly, I learned for self-preservation, but some things may have application to the non-crazy world.”

  “Like what?” Cam sat up and leaned forward.

  “Well, there’s a school of thought that only like can counsel like. So, for instance, only an addict can truly reach another addict. You have to have that life experience if you’re really going to make a connection.”

  “Wouldn’t that drastically cut down on the number of available therapists?” Cam frowned and stared into his coffee, clearly not liking the idea. “I could see that approach leaving a lot of people in need out in the cold.”

  I twitched a shoulder. “From what I could tell, it was applied selectively. I remember this approach because I knew this guy who was Native American. He was adopted by a white family when he was a very little kid and he made trouble for them from the get-go. He was angry and violent all the time and it was only getting worse the older he got.”

  I took a deep breath, trying to de-stress and tossed the wadded napkin on the plate. The discussion roiled the contents of my stomach and queasiness reminded me that what goes down won’t necessarily stay down. I hated talking about my past. “The shrinks worked with him, worked with the family, handed out pills like candy and nothing made a difference. The family ended up sending him for treatment out West. He lived with other tribal members and went for therapy with a Native American psychiatric counselor. He eventually got better, I think. We used to keep in touch, but things with me probably got too weird for him.”

  “So, what are you suggesting?” Cam spoke softly, careful not to make eye contact. He knows how touchy I am about this stuff. I never talk about it and he never pushes me.

  I slid my coffee away and tucked my hands into my armpits, hunching over my uneasy belly. “I could try to get in contact with him. His name’s Ron Falling-Leaf. He knows all about me, so I wouldn’t have to pretend around him. Last time we spoke, he was big into learning about tribal spiritual beliefs and practices, but that was almost ten years ago when we were just kids. Maybe he’s an accountant by now.”

  Cam’s lips quirked and then he smiled a little. “I would hope that people don’t change that much.”

  Grabbing the opportunity with both hands, I launched into a rapid change of topic. “Speaking of people not changing, I got a call from Lucas. It sounded like he might have a job for us. I would have thought after Hannah passed away, he’d quit doing the ghost show. He only did it to pay for her treatment after all.”

  “Maybe he still has bills to pay from the hospital and the funeral. Maybe he just wants stability after all the turmoil. Who knows?” Cam shrugged. “Did he say what he had in mind?”

  “No, he left a message and it was pretty vague.” I cocked my head as an idea presented on how to return Lucas’s call without having to engage in a risky one-on-one conversation. “I’m thinking we should call him from your truck and see what this is all about.”

  Cam looked at me for a moment without blinking, but refrained from making a direct comment. “Okay, let’s both talk to him.”

  After settling the bill, we reconvened in Cam’s truck. Zackie was unaccountably absent. “Huh, this is where I left her.” Cam turned in the driver’s seat and scanned the back sea
t and the truck bed. Lifting a shoulder, he faced forward again. “I guess she must have had pressing business elsewhere.”

  I put my phone on speaker and poked the screen to call Lucas. He picked up after a few rings, sounding tired and subdued. His voice was a rich baritone and he had an easy cadence when he spoke. The producers of his show loved both the voice and the way he looked on camera. Lucas had blond hair that he wore longer than was fashionable, but it gave the impression of someone who had no time for something so trivial, rather than vanity. Close-up shots emphasized intelligent gray eyes that conveyed honesty and sincerity to the viewers. Objectively speaking, Lucas was gorgeous and the camera loved him. But there were a lot of male models out there, primping and posing for the camera. What set Lucas apart was that he was unconcerned with his looks and completely unaware of his appeal.

  “Hey, Lucas. I have you on speaker. Cam’s here with me.”

  Cam leaned towards the phone. “How’s it going, Lucas? I hear you have a job for us.”

  Lucas seemed to perk up and he sounded more animated. “Oh, yeah! What do you think of making a trip to Scotland?”

  Cam’s brow furrowed and he blew out a breath. “I don’t know what Fia thinks, but I’d be delighted. There’s a bit of a problem though… We have something local cooking right now.”

  Lucas did not speak for a moment. “I hadn’t considered that.” He sounded dejected and a little lost and my heart went out to him. The happiness from a moment ago had evaporated.

  “Do you have a feel for when the Scotland thing might happen?” I bit my lip and held my breath. If we had to go right away, this would be a non-starter. We couldn’t leave Peyton in the lurch, but I held out hope that we could make this work. Lucas’s happiness meant a great deal to me. He wasn’t in a good place and maybe a trip abroad would help turn things around.