Invitation Page 23

  It took a full five minutes before I could stand on my own. “I’m okay now.” I turned to Brenda. “When did you draw this?”

  “The day before yesterday. Well, the night before yesterday. I was working late. I was inking a client’s back. I drew that afterward.”

  I processed that for a moment. “You did this as a tattoo first?”

  “That’s how it works sometimes, Cowboy. You know that. I didn’t even know I was doing it until I was done. I figured the client was gonna go ballistic since she came in for a Scottish castle. I lucked out. She was a Goth girl and loved what I did, which is a good thing since tats are impossible to erase.”

  “Some girl out there has this tattooed on her back?” Uncle Bart asked.

  “Yeah. Turns out, it’s not the strangest skin art she has.”

  The professor crossed his arms. He wore a tweed coat with elbow patches. Real scholarly like. I hoped he had a heavier coat. What he was wearing looked good inside but wouldn’t do much outside after dark. “Tank, we’ve been traveling most of the day. Even with a flight to Medford, we still had a long drive out here. Maybe I could bother you to tell me why we’re here.”

  I nodded. “Sure, Professor. First, there’s someone I want you to meet, then I need your permission to let Uncle Bart—I mean, the sheriff—know about us. He’s into this pretty deep, and he’s family.”

  We didn’t have any rules about secrecy, but we didn’t much talk about our gifts and adventures. No one would believe them. I led them back to the cell where Littlefoot was waiting.

  “Everybody, I want you to meet the greatest little girl in the world. This is Littlefoot.”

  “Littlefoot?” Brenda always came with a large stock of sarcasm. “Really? Littlefoot?”

  “You’ll understand when I explain things.” I turned to the little one. “Littlefoot, these are my friends. They’re here to help you.”

  Littlefoot slipped from the edge of the bed where she was sitting and walked forward. She looked at each one, then ten-year-old Daniel pressed through to the front and stepped in front of Littlefoot. They stared at each other for a moment: two silent children, two kids who didn’t fit this world.

  Then the miracle. Littlefoot smiled. I waited for angels to start singing. Daniel smiled, too.

  Then Littlefoot’s eye color turned silver.

  “Um . . .” Andi began.

  “Yes, we saw.” The professor sounded stunned. Another miracle.

  CHAPTER

  9

  It’s All Greek to Me

  11:15 A.M.

  We sat in the break room. Uncle Bart had Millie put a sign on the door telling people not to disturb us. The privacy was appreciated. It took the better part of an hour to fill everyone in on all that had happened. None of my friends seemed stunned. The professor kept his detached skepticism alive, but it was part of his personality and I was used to it. At times he seemed like a swimmer being pounded by the waves but refused to believe there was any such thing as an ocean. We got along. I knew he thought I was a big, dumb jock, but there were days when he seemed less smart than me.

  I told them about the tracks in the snow. Hearing that Littlefoot had been walking in the snow with no shoes made Brenda’s hard crust crack. I saw her look away. Since I had been bawling like a baby in the wee hours of the morning, I wasn’t inclined to judge.

  I even told them of my dream—our dream, ’cause Uncle Bart admitted to having had a similar nightmare. Except in his dream he failed to save Littlefoot. I didn’t think my dream could be worse. Turns out I could have had Uncle Bart’s.

  It took some time to explain our group to my uncle. I told him about Andi’s ability to see patterns in almost everything and make sense of things none of us could see; of Brenda’s ability to see a bit of the future but only through her art; our belief that young Daniel saw people, angels, things that we couldn’t. Of course, I admitted to my sometime-gift of healing.

  “What about the prof, here?” Uncle Bart asked.

  The professor lifted his chin. “I see reason where they see foolishness. I’m their ballast.”

  “Ha,” Brenda said. “I see you more as a dead weight.”

  “And who was it, young lady, who paid for your airline ticket? You’d still be hitchhiking up Interstate 5. It’s a long way from Southern California.”

  Andi took over. “That’s enough, Professor.” Andi was the only one who could handle the man, although he never made it easy.

  “Let me see if I got this right.” Uncle Bart leaned back in his chair. His leather Sam Browne belt squeaked with the movement. “A crazy school in Southern California with a well that reaches to the spiritual world; a house that haunts instead of being haunted; birds dying mid-flight and hitting the ground with their eyes missing—”

  “And other animals too,” Andi said.

  “And that was in Florida.” Uncle Bart scratched his chin. “Where Tank resurrected your dog.” He went from scratching his chin to rubbing his eyes. “All I wanted to do was watch the Rose Bowl.”

  “I know it’s hard to believe, Uncle Bart—”

  “Hard to believe? That ain’t the problem, son. I saw what turned out to be a little girl’s footprints on the snowy roof of a two-story barn. You could tell me Martians landed just outside of town and I’d believe ya. I just gotta process it. That’s all.”

  I looked at Littlefoot. Millie had run to the diner and picked up a couple of milkshakes for the kids. You know, to give them something to do while the big folks talked. Littlefoot took a sip, then did the peanut-butter-dog thing again with her tongue. Daniel took a sip and did the same. It was good to have something to smile about.

  We batted around some of the weirdness involved with Littlefoot, then the professor made a request. “All of this is well and good, but you said you had a document you wanted me to examine.”

  Uncle Bart rose from his chair, then exited the room. The sound of a metal file drawer opening and closing rolled through the open door. My uncle reappeared with the small scroll. “Here ya go, Professor. See what ya make of that. Lord knows I’ve got no idea.”

  The professor opened his mouth to speak, most likely to make a wisecrack about Uncle Bart’s use of “Lord knows,” but a sharp jab from Andi’s elbow changed his mind. The others leaned in to take a look, too.

  “Don’t just sit there, Professor,” Andi said. “Share your thoughts.”

  “He just handed the thing to me. I don’t have any thoughts.”

  That made Brenda laugh.

  Andi pressed her lips into a line. I expected something snide to come out of that mouth. Instead I heard, “We all love the way your mind works, Professor. Share your thinking.”

  Okay, maybe that was snide.

  The professor cut his eyes her way, then turned them back to the document. He rubbed one of the corners like a man feeling the fabric of a fancy suit. “Doesn’t feel like paper, at least the kind we’re used to.” He held it up to the overhead lights, then frowned. “Sheriff, I need a flashlight and a magnifying glass.” He then added, “Please.”

  “I can do that.” Uncle Bart disappeared from the room again and returned a couple minutes later. “This do?” He set a heavy, metal-case police flashlight on the table. It was the kind that could be used as a baton as well as a light source. I knew I’d hate to be hit with one of those. He also set down a magnifying glass, the kind with a rectangular head and a small light.

  “Yes.” The professor first set the flashlight on its base. “Andi, hold this so it doesn’t fall over.” She did. He turned the light on and a spot of illumination appeared on the ceiling. The professor stood and set the paper on the business end of the light so the beam shown through it. Starting with the upper left corner, he moved the paper back and forth over the light, his eyes fixed on it, often bending close as if looking at a tiny bug.

  “Interesting.”

  “What’s interesting?” Brenda asked. Patience wasn’t one of her virtues.

  �
�Hang on . . . Hmm.” The professor repeated his actions. “No watermark.”

  “What’s a watermark?” I asked. I don’t mind appearing ignorant, so I ask a lot of questions.

  “On some papers, especially fine papers, the manufacturer places its watermark. Sometimes you can identify the source of a paper. No help here. Of course, not every paper has such a mark. In fact, I’m not sure this is paper.”

  “Not paper?” Uncle Bart said. “It sure felt like paper to me.”

  “With all due respect, Sheriff, could you tell the difference between typical paper, vellum, and parchment?”

  “Probably not.”

  “It isn’t difficult, really, once you know the difference. Paper is made from plant material; vellum and parchment are made from animal skins.”

  “So that paper is made from an animal?” Uncle Bart said.

  “I doubt it.” The professor sat again and moved the flashlight to the side. He used the magnifying glass to study the document. “No fibers, no sign that it was once an animal.” He leaned back. “I don’t know what to make of the material.”

  “And the writing?” Brenda shifted in her seat. She was getting antsy. When I first met her she was a smoker. She’d been trying to quit, but for people like Brenda, quitting was a long slog up a steep hill.

  “That’s another mystery.” The professor leaned over the paper and put the magnifying glass to work again. “It’s live ink—”

  “What’s live ink?” Brenda snapped. “You screwing with us, Professor?” Yep, she was antsy.

  The professor didn’t snap back. Not that he was a patient man. He wasn’t. He wasn’t a perfect man, either. When we were at Andi’s grandparents’ home in Florida, he admitted to being an alcoholic. I guess alcoholics believe they will always be an alcoholic. Anyway, he was one who no longer drank. I have yet to get the whole story on that. Perhaps he recognized his own symptoms in Brenda.

  He continued to study the images. “It means it was written with ink by hand, not printed on a press or by a computer printer. A real hand wrote with real ink. Live ink.”

  “Does the ink tell you anything?” Uncle Bart asked.

  The professor shook his head. “That’s beyond my education and experience. To get real answers the ink and paper need to be analyzed by experts.” He rubbed his chin. “The writing is a puzzle. At first I thought it was a form of ancient Hebrew. Not too old. Not paleo-Hebrew, something more recent, but I doubt my first assumption. It seems to be based on an early pictograph or logogram—um, characters that are based on pictures. Like Egyptian hieroglyphics. It’s an interesting form of writing but has many shortcomings. Most writing that began as pictures became more alphabetic over time. As language grows, so does the need for ways to communicate through writing. I suspect that’s what we have here.”

  “Can you read it?” Andi asked.

  “Oh my, no. I can’t even identify it. I’ve never seen anything like it.” He passed the paper to Andi. “Do your magic, Andi.”

  She pulled it close, studied it for a few moments. “I can’t tell much. It has forty-two lines, each line has twenty-one characters. Twenty-one, that’s half of forty-two. The space between the lines is even. I can’t see any variation. It’s almost machine-like, which contradicts your idea that it’s handwritten.”

  “Maybe,” the professor said. “Keep going.”

  Andi was a wonder to watch. She saw what no one else could. I once saw her staring at a kitchen floor of fake-marble tile. In a few moments she determined that the tile had been manufactured with six different patterns. She also knew that the tile layer had followed a pattern that kept him from putting identical pieces next to each other. “I could marry a man like that,” she had said.

  That made me a little sad.

  “The kerning—the space between letters—is just as uniform,” she went on. “To be honest, I can’t tell if I’m supposed to read this from left to right, right to left, or up and down.” She kept her eyes on the document. “Okay, there are 882 characters or symbols or whatever they are. There are . . . fourteen different characters each repeating on an average of . . . never mind, that kind of average doesn’t help. One character repeats 126 times—oh, that’s three times forty-two—and one character that repeats only six times. Hmm. Six goes into forty-two seven times.”

  Uncle Bart looked at me. I shrugged.

  “Forgive me for saying so,” Uncle Bart said, “but I’m not sure what to make of all this.”

  The professor answered. “Well, neither do we. Not yet. I suppose it’s like you investigating a crime scene. You don’t start with the answers—you start with evidence. Some of that evidence will be useless, some of it will lead to a conviction. At the time you gather it, though, you have no idea what’s valuable and what’s not.”

  “Okay, I’ll give you that.”

  Someone knocked on the door. It was firm yet somehow polite.

  “Come.” Uncle Bart said.

  Millie poked her head in. “Social services will be here in about ten minutes, Sheriff.”

  “Thanks, Millie.”

  I caught Brenda looking at the children. I wonder how Daniel would respond when they took Littlefoot away.

  “I want to try something.” The professor pulled the paper away from Andi. “I need your help, Tank.”

  “Sure.”

  He picked up a pad of lined paper from a stack on the table. “Mind if I use this, Sheriff?”

  “Help yourself.”

  He rose and rounded the table to where Littlefoot and Daniel sat on the floor, their milkshakes apparently gone. The professor sat on the floor in front of them and offered the first genuine smile I had ever seen him give anyone. “Come sit with me, Tank. I want our new friend to feel safe.”

  I did, lowering myself to the thin carpet that blanketed the floor.

  The professor set the paper facedown on the floor in front of Littlefoot. He turned it several times, then waited. He smiled at her. She didn’t smile back. It seemed those smiles were reserved for Daniel. Littlefoot looked at the blank side of the paper, then at the professor. He motioned for her to take it. He was relaxed and seemed to enjoy interacting with the girl. I had a feeling he had been a good priest.

  We waited a few moments. I wasn’t sure what the professor was up to, but I trusted him. The room grew quiet as a tomb.

  Littlefoot looked at what had been her scroll, then picked it up and turned it around.

  “Well, at least we know which edge is the top of the page.”

  That was clever. And simple, too.

  The professor patted his chest. “James.” He did it again, then wrote his name on the pad. He pointed to the word he had just written, then at himself. Littlefoot watched as if she found the whole thing as interesting as a television show.

  He pointed at me. “Tank.” Then he wrote my name on the pad. “Tank.”

  She blinked a few times. Looked at the paper and then pointed to the first four letters on the first line. “Hel-sa.”

  Her first word. It sounded like music to me.

  The professor laughed and clapped. Littlefoot—I mean Helsa—did the same. Even Daniel looked pleased. The professor held out his hand and she returned the paper. He then gently took her hand in his and gave it a little kiss. Another first. The girl giggled.

  The professor rose and returned to his seat. I did the same.

  “And what did that accomplish?” Brenda asked.

  “Several things.” The professor worked his smartphone. “First, we now know where the top of the document is, something we need to know if we are to decrypt it. We also have sounds we can attach to the first few letters. And . . .” he studied his phone, then raised an eyebrow. “We also know Littlefoot, as Tank likes to call her, is really Helsa. The name sounded familiar. It’s Hebrew. Now, don’t go crazy on this”—he looked at me when he said it—“but it sounded familiar because Hebrew has a similar name that means ‘devoted to God.’”

  Devoted to God. I
liked that.

  CHAPTER

  10

  A Knife to the Soul

  JANUARY 3, 6:30 A.M.

  I was walking through the snow with no shoes on. Just like Littlefoot . . . Helsa. I was alone, trudging against the icy wind. If I came to a fence I would rise above it and gently settle on the other side. If I encountered a building—a farmhouse, barn, any structure—I simply floated over it. It made no sense to walk around when I could sail over with no exertion on my part.

  My feet were cold. Colder than I had ever felt them. Even my nagging, almost-healed toe was numb. Still I moved on to a destination I didn’t know for a reason I couldn’t understand.

  There was the sound of the wind and nothing more.

  At first.

  Then there was another sound. Dark, close, evil. I stopped to look around. Nothing but white fields and my footprints trailing behind me in a straight line. I turned my face to my destination, whatever that was. All I knew was I had to keep going forward.

  The growl startled me.

  The smell unsettled me.

  The presence was similar to . . . to what? To my dream. Was this a dream?

  Something touched my shoulder. I turned. Teeth. Black fur. Black eyes. Rancid breath.

  Heart stopped.

  Breathing seized . . .

  “Hey, boy. Wake up.”

  The hand was still on my shoulder, but my surroundings had changed to something familiar. The snarling had turned into a human voice. Uncle Bart’s.

  “You okay, son? You were thrashing like nobody’s business.”

  I took a deep breath. “Wow. Oh, my aching soul.” I sat up in the bed and swung my feet over the side of the mattress.

  “Another nightmare?” Uncle Bart was already in his uniform.

  “Yeah. I was about to have my face chomped off. I wasn’t looking forward to that.”

  “Ya think?” He studied me a moment. “Good news is, you have the same ugly face.”

  “Hey!”

  “Jus’ razzing you, boy. Nothing like a little laugh to scare away the dark thoughts.”