“Boo!” she shouted at one of these clumps. The moths fluttered their wings, but did not take off. Michaela slapped one side of her face, then the other. The moths were still there.
Casually, Michaela turned and looked down the slope toward the shed and the trailer below. She expected to see herself lying on the ground, wrapped in webs, undeniable evidence that she had disconnected from her body and become a spirit. There was nothing, though, except for the ruins and the faint sounds of Garth Flickinger, treasure-hunting his ass off.
She looked back up the path—it was a path, the glowing footprints said so—and saw a fox sitting thirty or forty yards ahead. Its brush was curled neatly around its paws. It was watching her. When she took a hesitant three steps toward it, the fox trotted further up the path, pausing once to glance over its shoulder. It seemed to be grinning amiably.
This way, m’lady.
Michaela followed. The curious part of her was fully awake now, and she felt more aware, more with it, than she had in days. By the time she’d covered another hundred yards, there were so many moths roosting in the trees that the branches were furry with them. There had to be thousands. Hell, tens of thousands. If they attacked her (this brought a memory of Hitchcock’s film about vengeful birds), she’d be smothered. But Michaela didn’t think that was going to happen. The moths were observers, that was all. Sentinels. Outriders. The fox was the leader. But leading her where?
Her trail-guide brought Michaela up a rise, down a narrow dip, up another hill, and through a scrubby stand of birch and alder. The trunks were patched with that weird whiteness. She rubbed her hands over one of the spots. The tips of her fingers glowed briefly, then faded. Had there been cocoons here? Was this their residue? More Qs without As.
When she looked up from her hand, the fox was gone, but that hum was louder. It no longer sounded like power lines to her. It was stronger and more vital. The earth itself was vibrating beneath her shoes. She walked toward the sound, then stopped, awestruck just as Lila Norcross had been on this same spot a bit more than four days before.
Ahead was a clearing. In the center of it, a gnarled tree of many entwined, russet-colored trunks ascended into the heavens. Ferny, prehistoric leaves lolled from its arms. She could smell their spicy aroma, a little like nutmeg, mostly like nothing she had ever smelled in her life. An aviary’s worth of exotic birds roosted in the high branches, whistling and keening and chattering. At the foot was a peacock as large as a child, its iridescent fan spread for Michaela’s delectation.
I am not seeing this, or if I am, all of the sleeping women are seeing it, too. Because I’m like them now. I fell asleep back by the ruins of that meth shed, and a cocoon is weaving around me even as I admire yonder peacock. I must have overlooked myself somehow, that’s all.
What changed her mind was the white tiger. The fox came first, as if leading it. A red snake hung around the tiger’s neck like barbaric jewelry. The snake flicker-flicked its tongue, tasting the air. She could see shadows waxing and waning in the muscles of the tiger’s flanks as it paced toward her. Its enormous green eyes fixed on hers. The fox broke into a trot, and its muzzle scraped against her shin—cool and slightly damp.
Ten minutes before, Michaela would have said she no longer had it in her to jog, let alone run. Now she turned and fled the way she had come in great bounding leaps, batting branches aside and sending clouds of brown moths whirling into the sky. She stumbled to her knees, got up, and ran on. She didn’t turn around, because she was afraid the tiger would be right behind her, its jaws yawning open to bite her in two at the waist.
She emerged from the woods above the meth shed and saw Garth standing by his Mercedes, holding up a large Baggie filled with what looked like purple jewels. “I am part cosmetic surgeon, part motherfucking drug-sniffing dog!” he cried. “Never doubt it! The sucker was taped to a ceiling panel! We shall . . . Mickey? What’s wrong?”
She turned and looked back. The tiger was gone, but the fox was there, its brush once more curled neatly around its paws. “Do you see that?”
“What? That fox? Sure.” His glee evaporated. “Hey, it didn’t bite you, did it?”
“No, it didn’t bite me. But . . . come with me, Garth.”
“What, into the woods? No thanks. Never a Boy Scout. I only have to look at poison ivy to catch it. Chemistry Club was my thing, ha-ha. No surprise there.”
“You have to come. I mean it. It’s important. I need . . . well . . . verification. You won’t catch poison ivy. There’s a path.”
He came, but without any enthusiasm. She led him past the ruined shed and into the trees. The fox just trotted at first, then sprinted ahead, weaving between the trees until it was lost to view. The moths were also gone, but . . .
“There.” She pointed at one of the tracks. “Do you see that? Please tell me you do.”
“Huh,” Garth said. “I’ll be damned.”
He tucked the precious Baggie of Purple Lightning into his unbuttoned shirt and took a knee, examining the luminous footprint. He used a leaf to touch it gingerly, sniffed the residue, then watched the spots fade.
“Is it that cocoon stuff?” Michaela asked. “It is, isn’t it?”
“It might have been once,” Garth said. “Or possibly an exudation of whatever causes the cocoons. I’m just guessing here, but . . .” He got to his feet. He seemed to have forgotten that they had come out here searching for more dope, and Michaela glimpsed the intelligent, probing physician who occasionally roused himself from the king-sized bed of meth inside Garth’s skull. “Listen, you’ve heard the rumors, right? Maybe when we went downtown for more supplies at the grocery?” (Said supplies—beer, Ruffles potato chips, ramen noodles, and an economy-sized tub of sour cream—had been meager. The Shopwell had been open, but pretty much ransacked.)
“Rumors about the woman,” she said. “Of course.”
Garth said, “Maybe we really do have Typhoid Mary right here in Dooling. I know it seems unlikely, all the reports say Aurora started on the other side of the world, but—”
“I think it’s possible,” Michaela said. All her machinery was working again, and at top speed. The feeling was divine. It might not last long, but while it did, she meant to ride it like one of those mechanical bulls. Yahoo, cowgirl. “And there’s something else. I might have found where she came from. Come on, I’ll show you.”
Ten minutes later, they stood at the edge of the clearing. The fox was gone. Ditto tiger and peacock with fabulous tail. Also ditto exotic birds of many colors. The tree was still there, only . . .
“Well,” Garth said, and she could practically hear his attentiveness dwindling away, air whistling out from a punctured floatation device, “it’s a fine old oak, Mickey, I’ll give you that, but otherwise I see nothing special.”