Nanowrimo
Well, I didn't finish it in time. Not for lack of story, just lack of getting it typed out in time. I still have quite a but left to finish up. But now the time limit is off and I can relax a little. So here's the next part anyway.
They were in Kansas City. Shay couldn’t believe the train had brought her that far in a day. Was it possible that she had slept for more than a day? She didn’t know, but it was upsetting. She instinctively trusted Vince and told him everything that had happened to her. She wasn’t sure if she should tell him about the Sleeper, but did anyway. He didn’t laugh or tell her she was crazy. His brow furrowed but he looked more thoughtful than skeptical.
She let him think it over and attacked the cheeseburger the waitress bought for her. She hadn’t eaten since cereal that morning (if it had even been that morning) and was starving. It wasn’t as good as her dad’s backyard grilled burgers, but it wasn’t half bad either.
Inside Vince’s head, Rustle was confirming all this. He had been there, he said, when Tom Whitaker’s mine team had gone crazy and gone missing. He remembered when they had climbed back out of the sinkhole. He had been safe in young Antonio Mazza’s empty head when Tom had started having conjugal visits at home before going back under the mountain. He had fathered a whole pack of children with his timid little wife and they in turn had been fruitful and multiplied until this latest generation had made it here in front of them.
She didn’t look anything like lanky Old Tom or slender, fluttery Ruthann. She was taller than average as all the Whitakers were, but pretty unremarkable besides that. Her voice had cracked when she told what happened to her mother’s cousin, Copperhead. Luckily the cheeseburger had shown up in time to keep her from being too upset.
“This is important,” Rustle murmured to him. “The Sleeper hasn’t moved in all this time, but now things are happening. Is it waking up? Was whatever chased her another angel, come to put a stop to this nonsense?”
“I don’t know,” Vince said under his breath. Shay heard and looked at him, but correctly decided that he wasn’t talking to her and went back to eating with a vengeance.
“It could be the wild goose call is coming from the Sleeper,” Rustle whispered as if he was afraid of being overheard. “You could be kin to whatever it is.”
Vince was saved from answering by the tremor that went through the whole diner. Shay sputtered with her mouthful, grabbing the table.
“Third one today,” Vince said. She looked bug-eyed, waiting for the ground to shake again. “The first one was the worst, but this one wasn’t too bad.”
“I haven’t felt any of them,” she said. The run through the tunnels and then the long train ride had been so rattling that she must not have noticed them before.
“GranGran always said we were on a fault back home,” she added. “But she was afraid of everything… especially the water. She used to tell all the kids that they could drown in a teacup!” It was meant to be light-hearted, he could tell, but she was upset.
“Where’s home again?” he asked her. If she had said earlier, he hadn’t connected it.
“Garford,” she said. Her expression had a plea in it, but he had to disappoint her.
“That’s where it was first reported,” he said. “She must have been right.”
Shay’s face went completely green. He leaned back in case she threw up. Tears welled up in her eyes again.
“That thing must’ve shook the ground when it attacked Copperhead!” she said, breaking into sobs at his name.
She might not be wrong, Rustle said.
“Don’t worry yet,” Vince said to both of them. “I’ll go settle up. Finish that if you want it, and we’ll get you cleaned up.”
She nodded through her tears and forced another bite of her burger down. She hadn’t been raised to waste food, even if her heart had been broken. Once the bill was taken care of, Vince waited outside the bathroom for her while she went in and washed up her face and hands and shook out her clothes. She was a little cleaner when she came out but looked ashamed at the mess she had left in the bathroom. She wanted to ask the waitress for a broom to clean it up herself, but Vince steered her outside first.
“She’s going to think I’m awful!” Shay moaned.
“She’s going to leave it for the morning shift and not even care,” Vince said. How many times had he heard the staff at Calico’s bicker about that very thing? “If you work the night shift, you don’t have to clean. At least that was they way they did at home.”
“Oh good,” Shay said. “I’d hate to make her day even worse.”
“Worse than yours?” Vince almost teased. That wasn’t like him. He had shifted into older cousin mode, he realized. He had enough of those himself to recognize it. That was when the chitter sound came out of the dark parking lot. Shay didn’t recognize it, but it made the hair rise on her neck. Something was watching them, she could feel its eyes like hot coals.
“Come on,” Vince said, taking her arm. She went along with him, some thought in the back of her head that sounded a lot like her older sister Trish, wondered what would happen to some dumb country girl who let a man she just met take her away somewhere. If Trish felt the respective vibes from Vince and whatever was out there, though, she would scuttle along with him too.
Vince checked the truck carefully. He made sure there was nothing inside or in the bed. Rustle helped him look, scanning the spirit world for traces of anything dark. It wasn’t close enough for him to nail it down, but it was clearly there. The chitter became a chuckle, became a mocking whisper.
“Where you going, boy? Where are you going?” It slid from out of the dark, not entirely dissimilar to Rustle’s. Skin walkers were supposed to be able to mimic human voices, could they mimic a spirit too? Would there come a time when he didn’t know if it was Old Vincent or Rustle speaking to him. Fear would only make it more powerful though.
“My folks would never have named someone Copperhead,” he said, keeping his voice calm. He directed Shay into the passenger seat and shut the door firmly. She was already buckling up, so he didn’t think she would run. He wondered if she would be different by the time he walked around to the driver side and braced himself for a scare if she was.
There was a face at the window he had just left, leering in at both of them. He didn’t react and Shay was looking at him so she didn’t see it either. He ignored it, getting in and fastening his own seatbelt. Rustle still didn’t say anything. It might not even be there really. It could just be a trick to scare them so it could feed on their fear.
“Where are we going?” Shay asked in a whisper.
“Right now, we’re just going,” Vince said. He started the truck and they pulled out. If there was the squeal of fingernails dragging along the side of the truck as they backed into the main road again, the rattle of the engine kept them from being sure of it. They picked up some speed and the rattling settled.
“What was that?” Shay asked after a while of sitting quietly.
“A nightmare,” Vince said. “Like a witch. We don’t talk about it because the more people that are afraid of it, the stronger it gets.”
“I wasn’t afraid,” Shay said. “I just knew it was there. And that it wasn’t. Well, good.”
“Don’t worry about it either,” Vince said. It was easiest not to worry when you were talking, so he picked up the thread he had started to distract her in the parking lot. “Like I said, at home copperheads are considered evil things. They are descended from an ancient snake spirit with fiery eyes and get up to trouble.”
“They just call him that because he sleeps the same places they do,” Shay said, defensive for her kinsman’s sake. “And that did get him in trouble, I guess. That’s how the nickname started. No one really likes the snake. My second cousin Tanya nails any one of them she catches to the old walnut tree in her yard to make it rain.”
“I’ve heard of that,” Vince admitted. It had worked. Shay was on a roll now.
“If he was really going to be named after something that matched him,” she said. “It would be something like an old hound or a big turtle.”
Vince nodded, not really agreeing, just acknowledging it. In the rear view mirror, something was following them on all fours. It was faster than an animal should’ve been. Shay hadn’t seen it yet. She was still trying to come up with a good animal for Copperhead and maybe her siblings too. There was finally a warning sound from Rustle. Vince just quietly accelerated to put some more distance between them.
He had heard all kinds of stories about being chased by things on dark roads, but nothing about what happened if you were caught. It could be that there wasn’t a story for that because no one had survived that. The good news was that it was a straight stretch and he could pick up as much speed as he wanted on the way. No curves or street lights to slow down for. The thing chasing them got close enough that he could see it in the side mirrors too, but he just pretended to be listening to Shay wonder if Trish was more like a fox or a cat and kept his eyes on the road.
Eventually, it fell away and they were alone again. Shay had stopped talking and Vince found himself grateful that she hadn’t asked what animal she was or even worse, what his might be. He was willing to tell her that his was a goose and let her try to figure out what that meant. She had settled down though. She had to be tired, even if she had slept all the way from Virginia to Missouri in the back of train.
He didn’t know how much time had passed before they saw something else. It was crouched on the shoulder of the road, eating a deer. From a distance, it could’ve been a dog or a coyote. As they got closer, he heard Shay suck in a breath as she saw it too. It wasn’t a dog or a coyote and as they could see it grin through the mask of blood on its face as it watched them.
“Don’t look,” Vince said. Shay obeyed, swiveling her eyes to look at him instead. He kept his eyes on the road and pushed the gas pedal to the floor. It didn’t chase them this time. Once the glow of the tail lights passed it, it was gone. Shay didn’t move until she saw him relax a little. She sank back down to look out the front window again.
“Was that the same thing as before?” she asked.
“Scared yet?”
“I guess,” she said. “The woods at home are full of things that “might” be something.”
“No “might be” about this one,” Vince said. “It’s bad.”
“Ok,” she said. “What do we do now then?”
Vince thought it over. Weariness was beginning to burn in his eyes. This was a situation. It probably wasn’t safe to sleep in the truck, even if they had left Old Vincent behind. He had some limited funds for a hotel room, but it was an awkward thought to check in with a teenage girl he obviously wasn’t related to. She had been very trusting to come right up to him in the restaurant and then just get in his truck with him. She had no way of knowing he would rather cut off his hand than hurt her with it.
It was like her and wanting to clean the bathroom for the waitress, he thought. He knew very well he didn’t mean her any harm, but the clerk at the hotel didn’t. It was embarrassing to be thought so badly of, and in this case, they might call the police. It might get Shay home faster, admittedly, but then her family might think he was a creep too.
“I think we should find somewhere to sleep,” he said aloud. “Let you call home so they won’t be worried sick about you.”
“Yeah,” she agreed. Then, her eyes went wide again. “I didn’t think about that! They might think I got hurt in the earthquake! My Mom will be loaded for bear to find me!”
Vince knew what his aunt would say if it had been him in that situation. It was only going to worse, the longer they put it off. Mercifully, a road sign up ahead told of gas stations and chain motels up ahead. Vince pointed at it.
“If you don’t mind to share with me,” he said. “We’ll get a spot there. I can’t afford two rooms and if we are being followed, it’s best not to be caught alone.”
“Ok,” she said at once. She really wasn’t afraid of him or what he might do, which was kind of nice. She could just be young and naive, but then again, she had been touched by something more powerful than even Rustle knew how to explain. She might be safe from mundane things like strangers with bad intentions.
It was a boring little Days Inn that had seen better days. Vince didn’t want to leave Shay alone in the car in case Old Vincent caught up, which he seemed to do in parking lots, so he motioned her to come with him and she did. If the desk clerk thought they were an odd pair, he didn’t say anything or even look askance. He just agreed that there was non-smoking room with two beds on the third floor and asked them to pay for it.
The room itself was unremarkable too. It was beige and yellow with darker yellow accents. It looked like a color scheme designed to conceal piss stains. It did have two beds though, on either side of a night stand with two lamps. There was a phone there, and she went straight for it. She had to push a weird succession on buttons to be able to call out, but she managed it.
She got her Mom on the first ring and the relief in her face brightened the whole room. He could hear the woman’s voice clearly and she was urgent without being frantic, demanding to know where Shay was and if she was all right and why had she been gone so long and what had happened to her. Those were all valid questions. Shay did her best to answer them. She scrambled her explanation about the train and they both winced at the sound Hazel Whitaker made when she found out her youngest child had ended up in Missouri.
“Mom, what happened to Copperhead?” Shay finally got to ask. “Is he ok? Did that thing kill him?”
There was a long pause after that, and even Vince felt an empathetic little trickle of dread.
“Honey,” Hazel said. “The Sleeper took him.”
“What??” Shay went up a few octaves.
“It reached for him, baby,” Hazel said it like she barely believed it herself. “And took him.”
“With its hand?” Shay squeaked.
“Up out of the ground,” Hazel said. “Took him in its fist and pulled him down. That was the second earthquake. It’s awake now. And it’s moving.”
“Mom.” There was a child’s plea in that word, soft and frightened.
“You just get home,” Hazel said. “That’s it. That’s all you have to worry about. Now. Put your friend on.” Shay quavered, but knew better than to argue. She passed the phone to Vince who braced himself for a battle of wills and said the mildest hello he had.
“If anything,” Hazel said and he had a sudden image of a snarling mother grizzly. Hazel Whitaker wasn’t so much loaded for bear as a bear herself. “Happens to my girl…”
“It will have to go through me first,” Vince said. He had never earned the right to wear a bear claw, but he understood the courage involved. “I don’t understand much of this, but what I do understand is that we’ve been made part of it. If I can’t get her home, I’ll bring her as close as I’m able.”
There was another pause, laden with menace.
“I’ll hold you to that,” she said finally. “There’ll be no safe place above ground or below for anyone who hurts what’s mine.”
“My auntie was the same way,” Vince said. He didn’t know why he was saying this. It was none of her business. He had already said he would do what she wanted. “She protected me all my life. I know how this works.”
“All right,” Hazel said, but there was still a threat there. “All right. Call me again when you get to the next place.”
She hung up and Vince went looking for a shirt Shay could sleep in. He dug out his old Q for Quality t-shirt he had gotten at the work Christmas party. It was worn soft and would reach to her knees. Shay went to shower before she touched anything else. She returned a few shades lighter, in his shirt and with her hair up in a towel.
He didn’t have a toothbrush to lend her and felt a little bad about that. He took a shower too, and when he came out, she was watching the news. It was about the earthquake again, about the property damage and lives lost. There had only even been mild earthquakes there before, barely enough to rattle the windows. Now, the earth had cracked and buckled. Sinkholes had opened up. Whole patches of property had been swallowed up. Power lines were down. Water mains had busted. Wells had been fractured and drained away somewhere under ground.
Shay was clutching her river rock. She was clearly distressed, and Vince was sure that knowing an ancient being was causing it by moving around under the ground didn’t help her peace of mind. Especially since it had carried off her friend or relative or whatever Copperhead was to her. Vince couldn’t remember if she had said he was a cousin or an uncle or what from the way she had described him. As soon as he settled down to sleep, she turned off the tv and hurried under the covers.
“You don’t have to sleep if you don’t feel like it,” he said.
“It’s all I feel like,” she said. “Do you want the tv on?”
“No.” She turned off the tv and he got the light and she settled in with a sigh. As far as he could tell, she was asleep in no time. Vince was just drifting off too when it occurred to him that he hadn’t heard from Rustle since they had left the diner.
They were in Kansas City. Shay couldn’t believe the train had brought her that far in a day. Was it possible that she had slept for more than a day? She didn’t know, but it was upsetting. She instinctively trusted Vince and told him everything that had happened to her. She wasn’t sure if she should tell him about the Sleeper, but did anyway. He didn’t laugh or tell her she was crazy. His brow furrowed but he looked more thoughtful than skeptical.
She let him think it over and attacked the cheeseburger the waitress bought for her. She hadn’t eaten since cereal that morning (if it had even been that morning) and was starving. It wasn’t as good as her dad’s backyard grilled burgers, but it wasn’t half bad either.
Inside Vince’s head, Rustle was confirming all this. He had been there, he said, when Tom Whitaker’s mine team had gone crazy and gone missing. He remembered when they had climbed back out of the sinkhole. He had been safe in young Antonio Mazza’s empty head when Tom had started having conjugal visits at home before going back under the mountain. He had fathered a whole pack of children with his timid little wife and they in turn had been fruitful and multiplied until this latest generation had made it here in front of them.
She didn’t look anything like lanky Old Tom or slender, fluttery Ruthann. She was taller than average as all the Whitakers were, but pretty unremarkable besides that. Her voice had cracked when she told what happened to her mother’s cousin, Copperhead. Luckily the cheeseburger had shown up in time to keep her from being too upset.
“This is important,” Rustle murmured to him. “The Sleeper hasn’t moved in all this time, but now things are happening. Is it waking up? Was whatever chased her another angel, come to put a stop to this nonsense?”
“I don’t know,” Vince said under his breath. Shay heard and looked at him, but correctly decided that he wasn’t talking to her and went back to eating with a vengeance.
“It could be the wild goose call is coming from the Sleeper,” Rustle whispered as if he was afraid of being overheard. “You could be kin to whatever it is.”
Vince was saved from answering by the tremor that went through the whole diner. Shay sputtered with her mouthful, grabbing the table.
“Third one today,” Vince said. She looked bug-eyed, waiting for the ground to shake again. “The first one was the worst, but this one wasn’t too bad.”
“I haven’t felt any of them,” she said. The run through the tunnels and then the long train ride had been so rattling that she must not have noticed them before.
“GranGran always said we were on a fault back home,” she added. “But she was afraid of everything… especially the water. She used to tell all the kids that they could drown in a teacup!” It was meant to be light-hearted, he could tell, but she was upset.
“Where’s home again?” he asked her. If she had said earlier, he hadn’t connected it.
“Garford,” she said. Her expression had a plea in it, but he had to disappoint her.
“That’s where it was first reported,” he said. “She must have been right.”
Shay’s face went completely green. He leaned back in case she threw up. Tears welled up in her eyes again.
“That thing must’ve shook the ground when it attacked Copperhead!” she said, breaking into sobs at his name.
She might not be wrong, Rustle said.
“Don’t worry yet,” Vince said to both of them. “I’ll go settle up. Finish that if you want it, and we’ll get you cleaned up.”
She nodded through her tears and forced another bite of her burger down. She hadn’t been raised to waste food, even if her heart had been broken. Once the bill was taken care of, Vince waited outside the bathroom for her while she went in and washed up her face and hands and shook out her clothes. She was a little cleaner when she came out but looked ashamed at the mess she had left in the bathroom. She wanted to ask the waitress for a broom to clean it up herself, but Vince steered her outside first.
“She’s going to think I’m awful!” Shay moaned.
“She’s going to leave it for the morning shift and not even care,” Vince said. How many times had he heard the staff at Calico’s bicker about that very thing? “If you work the night shift, you don’t have to clean. At least that was they way they did at home.”
“Oh good,” Shay said. “I’d hate to make her day even worse.”
“Worse than yours?” Vince almost teased. That wasn’t like him. He had shifted into older cousin mode, he realized. He had enough of those himself to recognize it. That was when the chitter sound came out of the dark parking lot. Shay didn’t recognize it, but it made the hair rise on her neck. Something was watching them, she could feel its eyes like hot coals.
“Come on,” Vince said, taking her arm. She went along with him, some thought in the back of her head that sounded a lot like her older sister Trish, wondered what would happen to some dumb country girl who let a man she just met take her away somewhere. If Trish felt the respective vibes from Vince and whatever was out there, though, she would scuttle along with him too.
Vince checked the truck carefully. He made sure there was nothing inside or in the bed. Rustle helped him look, scanning the spirit world for traces of anything dark. It wasn’t close enough for him to nail it down, but it was clearly there. The chitter became a chuckle, became a mocking whisper.
“Where you going, boy? Where are you going?” It slid from out of the dark, not entirely dissimilar to Rustle’s. Skin walkers were supposed to be able to mimic human voices, could they mimic a spirit too? Would there come a time when he didn’t know if it was Old Vincent or Rustle speaking to him. Fear would only make it more powerful though.
“My folks would never have named someone Copperhead,” he said, keeping his voice calm. He directed Shay into the passenger seat and shut the door firmly. She was already buckling up, so he didn’t think she would run. He wondered if she would be different by the time he walked around to the driver side and braced himself for a scare if she was.
There was a face at the window he had just left, leering in at both of them. He didn’t react and Shay was looking at him so she didn’t see it either. He ignored it, getting in and fastening his own seatbelt. Rustle still didn’t say anything. It might not even be there really. It could just be a trick to scare them so it could feed on their fear.
“Where are we going?” Shay asked in a whisper.
“Right now, we’re just going,” Vince said. He started the truck and they pulled out. If there was the squeal of fingernails dragging along the side of the truck as they backed into the main road again, the rattle of the engine kept them from being sure of it. They picked up some speed and the rattling settled.
“What was that?” Shay asked after a while of sitting quietly.
“A nightmare,” Vince said. “Like a witch. We don’t talk about it because the more people that are afraid of it, the stronger it gets.”
“I wasn’t afraid,” Shay said. “I just knew it was there. And that it wasn’t. Well, good.”
“Don’t worry about it either,” Vince said. It was easiest not to worry when you were talking, so he picked up the thread he had started to distract her in the parking lot. “Like I said, at home copperheads are considered evil things. They are descended from an ancient snake spirit with fiery eyes and get up to trouble.”
“They just call him that because he sleeps the same places they do,” Shay said, defensive for her kinsman’s sake. “And that did get him in trouble, I guess. That’s how the nickname started. No one really likes the snake. My second cousin Tanya nails any one of them she catches to the old walnut tree in her yard to make it rain.”
“I’ve heard of that,” Vince admitted. It had worked. Shay was on a roll now.
“If he was really going to be named after something that matched him,” she said. “It would be something like an old hound or a big turtle.”
Vince nodded, not really agreeing, just acknowledging it. In the rear view mirror, something was following them on all fours. It was faster than an animal should’ve been. Shay hadn’t seen it yet. She was still trying to come up with a good animal for Copperhead and maybe her siblings too. There was finally a warning sound from Rustle. Vince just quietly accelerated to put some more distance between them.
He had heard all kinds of stories about being chased by things on dark roads, but nothing about what happened if you were caught. It could be that there wasn’t a story for that because no one had survived that. The good news was that it was a straight stretch and he could pick up as much speed as he wanted on the way. No curves or street lights to slow down for. The thing chasing them got close enough that he could see it in the side mirrors too, but he just pretended to be listening to Shay wonder if Trish was more like a fox or a cat and kept his eyes on the road.
Eventually, it fell away and they were alone again. Shay had stopped talking and Vince found himself grateful that she hadn’t asked what animal she was or even worse, what his might be. He was willing to tell her that his was a goose and let her try to figure out what that meant. She had settled down though. She had to be tired, even if she had slept all the way from Virginia to Missouri in the back of train.
He didn’t know how much time had passed before they saw something else. It was crouched on the shoulder of the road, eating a deer. From a distance, it could’ve been a dog or a coyote. As they got closer, he heard Shay suck in a breath as she saw it too. It wasn’t a dog or a coyote and as they could see it grin through the mask of blood on its face as it watched them.
“Don’t look,” Vince said. Shay obeyed, swiveling her eyes to look at him instead. He kept his eyes on the road and pushed the gas pedal to the floor. It didn’t chase them this time. Once the glow of the tail lights passed it, it was gone. Shay didn’t move until she saw him relax a little. She sank back down to look out the front window again.
“Was that the same thing as before?” she asked.
“Scared yet?”
“I guess,” she said. “The woods at home are full of things that “might” be something.”
“No “might be” about this one,” Vince said. “It’s bad.”
“Ok,” she said. “What do we do now then?”
Vince thought it over. Weariness was beginning to burn in his eyes. This was a situation. It probably wasn’t safe to sleep in the truck, even if they had left Old Vincent behind. He had some limited funds for a hotel room, but it was an awkward thought to check in with a teenage girl he obviously wasn’t related to. She had been very trusting to come right up to him in the restaurant and then just get in his truck with him. She had no way of knowing he would rather cut off his hand than hurt her with it.
It was like her and wanting to clean the bathroom for the waitress, he thought. He knew very well he didn’t mean her any harm, but the clerk at the hotel didn’t. It was embarrassing to be thought so badly of, and in this case, they might call the police. It might get Shay home faster, admittedly, but then her family might think he was a creep too.
“I think we should find somewhere to sleep,” he said aloud. “Let you call home so they won’t be worried sick about you.”
“Yeah,” she agreed. Then, her eyes went wide again. “I didn’t think about that! They might think I got hurt in the earthquake! My Mom will be loaded for bear to find me!”
Vince knew what his aunt would say if it had been him in that situation. It was only going to worse, the longer they put it off. Mercifully, a road sign up ahead told of gas stations and chain motels up ahead. Vince pointed at it.
“If you don’t mind to share with me,” he said. “We’ll get a spot there. I can’t afford two rooms and if we are being followed, it’s best not to be caught alone.”
“Ok,” she said at once. She really wasn’t afraid of him or what he might do, which was kind of nice. She could just be young and naive, but then again, she had been touched by something more powerful than even Rustle knew how to explain. She might be safe from mundane things like strangers with bad intentions.
It was a boring little Days Inn that had seen better days. Vince didn’t want to leave Shay alone in the car in case Old Vincent caught up, which he seemed to do in parking lots, so he motioned her to come with him and she did. If the desk clerk thought they were an odd pair, he didn’t say anything or even look askance. He just agreed that there was non-smoking room with two beds on the third floor and asked them to pay for it.
The room itself was unremarkable too. It was beige and yellow with darker yellow accents. It looked like a color scheme designed to conceal piss stains. It did have two beds though, on either side of a night stand with two lamps. There was a phone there, and she went straight for it. She had to push a weird succession on buttons to be able to call out, but she managed it.
She got her Mom on the first ring and the relief in her face brightened the whole room. He could hear the woman’s voice clearly and she was urgent without being frantic, demanding to know where Shay was and if she was all right and why had she been gone so long and what had happened to her. Those were all valid questions. Shay did her best to answer them. She scrambled her explanation about the train and they both winced at the sound Hazel Whitaker made when she found out her youngest child had ended up in Missouri.
“Mom, what happened to Copperhead?” Shay finally got to ask. “Is he ok? Did that thing kill him?”
There was a long pause after that, and even Vince felt an empathetic little trickle of dread.
“Honey,” Hazel said. “The Sleeper took him.”
“What??” Shay went up a few octaves.
“It reached for him, baby,” Hazel said it like she barely believed it herself. “And took him.”
“With its hand?” Shay squeaked.
“Up out of the ground,” Hazel said. “Took him in its fist and pulled him down. That was the second earthquake. It’s awake now. And it’s moving.”
“Mom.” There was a child’s plea in that word, soft and frightened.
“You just get home,” Hazel said. “That’s it. That’s all you have to worry about. Now. Put your friend on.” Shay quavered, but knew better than to argue. She passed the phone to Vince who braced himself for a battle of wills and said the mildest hello he had.
“If anything,” Hazel said and he had a sudden image of a snarling mother grizzly. Hazel Whitaker wasn’t so much loaded for bear as a bear herself. “Happens to my girl…”
“It will have to go through me first,” Vince said. He had never earned the right to wear a bear claw, but he understood the courage involved. “I don’t understand much of this, but what I do understand is that we’ve been made part of it. If I can’t get her home, I’ll bring her as close as I’m able.”
There was another pause, laden with menace.
“I’ll hold you to that,” she said finally. “There’ll be no safe place above ground or below for anyone who hurts what’s mine.”
“My auntie was the same way,” Vince said. He didn’t know why he was saying this. It was none of her business. He had already said he would do what she wanted. “She protected me all my life. I know how this works.”
“All right,” Hazel said, but there was still a threat there. “All right. Call me again when you get to the next place.”
She hung up and Vince went looking for a shirt Shay could sleep in. He dug out his old Q for Quality t-shirt he had gotten at the work Christmas party. It was worn soft and would reach to her knees. Shay went to shower before she touched anything else. She returned a few shades lighter, in his shirt and with her hair up in a towel.
He didn’t have a toothbrush to lend her and felt a little bad about that. He took a shower too, and when he came out, she was watching the news. It was about the earthquake again, about the property damage and lives lost. There had only even been mild earthquakes there before, barely enough to rattle the windows. Now, the earth had cracked and buckled. Sinkholes had opened up. Whole patches of property had been swallowed up. Power lines were down. Water mains had busted. Wells had been fractured and drained away somewhere under ground.
Shay was clutching her river rock. She was clearly distressed, and Vince was sure that knowing an ancient being was causing it by moving around under the ground didn’t help her peace of mind. Especially since it had carried off her friend or relative or whatever Copperhead was to her. Vince couldn’t remember if she had said he was a cousin or an uncle or what from the way she had described him. As soon as he settled down to sleep, she turned off the tv and hurried under the covers.
“You don’t have to sleep if you don’t feel like it,” he said.
“It’s all I feel like,” she said. “Do you want the tv on?”
“No.” She turned off the tv and he got the light and she settled in with a sigh. As far as he could tell, she was asleep in no time. Vince was just drifting off too when it occurred to him that he hadn’t heard from Rustle since they had left the diner.