The Faceless One (15 page)

Jimmy went to the rec room and managed to wrest the computer away from Betty Milton, who played in an Internet bridge game every day from ten to eleven. She liked Jimmy and was only too pleased to do him a favor. She hung around, ostensibly to give him help on accessing the Net, but his manner told her he wanted to be left alone. She quietly excused herself and went to watch the soaps.

There were over twenty pages on Yanut, many cross-referenced with places like Roanoke Island and ships like the
Andrea Doria
.

Unlike those incidents, some of the citizens of Yanut had disappeared, but many were where they should have been, at work or at home.

All those found had been discovered virtually encased in ice. This was true whether they had been in their car, in a home, or an office. Most of the papers chalked it up to a freakishly cold storm, but he knew better. Mic Natook, whom they called Doughboy, ran a small general store with a huge potbelly stove. Many residents complained because Doughboy liked to keep the temperature in his store well above the comfort level. They called him Doughboy because he was “fat and worked in an oven.” There was no way he would have frozen to death in his store, yet that’s where he was found, with three others.

Some of the corpses seemed to have been gnawed on before they had frozen, but the papers chalked this up to wolves or weasels.

Jimmy knew better than this as well.

Kushtaka
.

Evil beings, demonic creatures at home both on water and land. Sometimes they posed as otters, seemingly the most innocuous of animals. But in such forms they traveled the world between life and death, just as they moved between ocean and land.

If he had remained in Yanut, he would have been a victim as well. Frozen next to his neighbors or out on a boat.

The story had created quite a stir, but Jimmy had never heard.

But he knew someone who must have known what happened.

He went back to his room. George hailed him in the hall, but Jimmy kept walking. George scurried after him, and Jimmy held up his hand, never turning to look at his old friend. George backed off immediately. He didn’t say anything, just nodded to himself.

Jimmy washed his face in cold water. Of course, what they termed “cold” here was a relative term, perhaps fifty-five degrees Fahrenheit. Jimmy remembered what it was like to plunge his hands and face into water just above freezing. The feel of it sent sharp needles of pain into your skin. Afterward, drying your face and hands on a rough towel, you felt warm, invigorated, alive.

Now his existence was like the water: tepid.

He picked up the phone, trying to clear his mind of anger. He dialed the number he used so seldom.

A series of clicks, then two rings.

“Dr. Kalmaku’s office, may I help you?”

“This is Thomas’s father. Is he available?”

“Mr. Kalmaku, hi! He’s with a patient, hold on just a minute.”

She put him on hold, and Jimmy sat there. He kept thinking of all the people he had known, their frozen bodies sheathed in ice.

“Dad? Are you all right?”

“Why didn’t you tell me?” His voice was bitter, accusatory. He hadn’t intended to show so much anger, but it spilled out of him, hot and reckless.

“Tell you what? What’s going on?”

“Yanut.”

There was a slight pause.

“Dad, I thought you knew about that. It was on the news for the better part of a week.”

“I don’t watch the news. Too much crap.”

“I know you feel that way. When you didn’t bring it up, I assumed you didn’t want to talk about it. I didn’t want to upset you.”

“You should have told me, Thomas.”

“I’m sorry. Look, I have a patient. May I call you later?”

“Don’t bother. You have no time for the old ways or me. Why should it concern you that so many of our old friends are dead?” He wanted to stop this stream of bitterness, but he couldn’t. There was too much hurt, too much resentment.

“Dad, you know I respect you, but …”

“Respect me so much you stuck me in this shit hole!”

“That shit hole, as you so eloquently put it, has received the AARP’s highest rating. And I think you could be a little more grateful, especially since it’s costing well over three thousand a
month to keep you there.”

“You know nothing, Thomas. You have a college education and a degree and a fancy office, but you know nothing.”

“Dad, I have to go. I’m going to hang up before one of us says something we’ll regret.”

“I am ashamed of you.” It was the worst thing Jimmy could think to say. It cut into him deeply to say such a thing to his only son.

Thomas’s voice grew cold. “Good-bye, Dad.”

The line went dead. Jimmy stared at the phone, wondering if he should call Thomas back. He wasn’t ashamed of him, he was proud. But Thomas had abandoned their life and taken up the white man’s existence with very little struggle.

Rose could have calmed him at a time like this. At least, she could take away the knife from his heart, the wound spilling bile instead of blood.

And she would do it with just a look or a touch of her hand.

God, he missed Rose so much. He missed the bond he and his son had shared when Thomas was just a toddler.

He missed his life.

Jimmy hung up the phone as the first tears spilled down his lined cheeks, running down the front of his blue cotton shirt. He gripped the bedspread on either side of him and cried fiercely but quietly, not wanting anyone to bother him. He wanted to scream, to howl, to vomit up all this pain and loneliness, but you needed to be among people who understood such grief. Here they wanted you to keep things bottled up, neat and tidy. He wanted to run across some vast expanse and cast himself down into snow or grasses, weeping and shrieking. Instead, he squeezed his eyes very tightly, wringing every last tear from his heart.

He flopped back on the bed, feeling drained, exhausted. It felt a little better to have cried, but he still regretted having insulted Thomas.

After a moment, he picked up the phone. He was halfway through dialing Thomas’s office when he stopped. He had been wrong to insult Thomas but correct in his assessment of his son. Thomas had abandoned the old ways, and him.

He thought of Rose, her sweet smile. She would urge him to call. She would remind him of the bonds of family. And if he had talked Thomas into staying in Yanut, then Thomas, his wife, Kate, and Jimmy’s granddaughter, Molly, would all be dead.

He realized his anger at Thomas was about many things, but a lack of belief was something for which he must blame himself. He was the one who had turned away—no one else.

He gripped the bedspread again with his left hand, trying to squeeze out some of his anger. A flash of pain ran up his arm as something bit into his palm.

Alarmed, he lifted his hand to examine it.

Nestled in it was the small obsidian dagger.

Jimmy stared at it. How had it gotten there? He knew full well he had left it in the bentwood box on the dresser. He looked up toward the dresser, and the box was exactly where he left it. He wasn’t prone to fugues or blackouts, so it meant one thing.

Raven was urging him to hurry.

The town of Yanut was dead; there was no one else who could stop The Faceless One. But what could he do? He was an old man. Surely someone from a different village could do it, some shaman or elder.

But he had the talismans. He had been given the charge.

That pitiful small voice rose up, trying to say he was an old man—it was the voice of Golden Summer, and it was the voice of someone who died shitting in diapers, not someone who dared a wolf or bear to take him as he brandished a bone knife. The voice whined within him, wishing to stay warm and well-fed even if the meals were bland and without texture. For a moment he almost listened. He pictured himself throwing the talismans down the toilet, then going to watch TV.

But his eyes were drawn to the closet, where a solitary mitten rested.

Could he ever show his face to Rose if he avoided his destiny and played it safe? And could he live with himself if he became everything this wretched place had tried to force him to be?

He wished more than ever he was somewhere with Rose, even if it meant being frozen in some icy tomb.

He dialed Thomas’s number.

“Dr. Kalmaku’s office.”

“Connie, it’s Thomas’s father. May I speak to him, please?”

“Sure, just a moment, Mr. Kalmaku.” It was evident by her tone that she had heard at least Thomas’s side of the call and that he had been upset.

“Hello,” said Thomas, his voice flat and angry.

“Thomas, I’m sorry. I am not ashamed of you. I was upset at the loss of so many people I knew, of my home.”

“I understand, Dad,” Thomas said, his voice softening. “I’m sorry I didn’t tell you. I guess I was trying to save your feelings.”

“Have I become so frail to you, boy?”

“Not at all! You’re the toughest man I know. I tell Molly about you all the time.”

This surprised Jimmy. Molly was his seven-year-old granddaughter. He hadn’t seen her since she was four. She had seemed afraid of him, at first, but they had gone for a walk, and she had warmed up to him. He was surprised Thomas talked about him.
If I’m such an inspiration
, he
thought,
why am I not living with my family?
But this was not the time for such a question. There was a larger matter to address.

“Thomas, I need a favor.”

“Name it, Dad.”

“I need you to take me to California.”

“What?”

“I need to go to California. The sooner the better.”

“Why do you want to go there?”

“I have something I need to do.”

Thomas was puzzled. “What do you need to do in California?”

What was he going to tell him, that Raven had visited him twice, that he had dreamed of The Faceless One, that he possessed charms from the Shadow-lands? Thomas hadn’t believed the stories of their people when he was a teenager, so why should he believe now? Jimmy thought quickly, then lied to his son though it hurt him to do so.

“One of my friends from Yanut has a nephew in Los Angeles,” he said. “I wish to pay him a visit.” In Tlingit culture, the relationship between uncle and nephew was a particularly important one.

“Whose nephew?”

This would be tricky. Thomas had an excellent memory. He had once shocked Jimmy by naming all the fisherman in the village, along with what boats they used and who had caught the most halibut or salmon in a given year.

“Harry Kaluta. He moved into town sometime after you went away to school.”

“I don’t remember your mentioning him.”

“We had a falling-out. I accused him of flirting with your mother, and we never spoke after that. Your mother told me later I was mistaken, and I want to make it right with his nephew.”

“Can’t you call him, Dad, or write a note?”

“This must be done in person. Please, Thomas, it’s very important to me.”

“All right, Dad. I’ll tell you what. I have a conference in Chicago next week. After I return, all four of us will go. We’ll take you to the nephew’s place, then we’ll take Molly to Disneyland. She’s been clamoring to go since she was four.”

Two weeks. By then it would be too late.

“I need to go right away, Thomas.”

“I’m sorry, Dad. I need to prepare for this conference, and I just can’t get away right now.”

“Could you just send me the plane ticket? I’ll go on my own, no sense in dragging you all
over the place.”

“Dad, I wasn’t sure how safe you were in Yanut. Now I’m supposed to let you go to Los Angeles alone?”

“I’m not some toothless old idiot, Thomas.”

“No, you’re not. But L.A. has gangs and crime and violence.”

Thomas wasn’t going to budge on this. It was time for truth.

“Thomas, I was lying about Harry Kaluta.”

“Oh?”

“I had a vision, son,” he plunged ahead, wanting to get it out without thinking, “
Yéil
 … Raven has told me I must go to Los Angeles to deal with a
kushtaka
.”

There was a long pause on the line. “Oh, Dad,” Thomas said sadly.

He thinks I’m senile
, Jimmy thought.
He doesn’t believe in our stories, and I’m trying to convince him I’m at the center of one of the darkest
.

“Please believe me, Thomas. I’m not crazy. I saw these things and I must go. Now, today.”

“Dad, I’m so sorry I haven’t come to see you more often. I’m going to take care of that oversight, I promise. Please forgive me.”

He’s going to get help for me, maybe move me to an asylum
, Jimmy thought. Once he was imprisoned or drugged, there would be nothing anyone could do. Soon the world would be like Yanut, shrouded in ice.

Or worse.

Thomas had continued talking. Jimmy tried to focus on what he was saying.

“I’m going to have Dr. Yokomizo check on you. We’ll be out to see you this weekend.”

Dr. Yokomizo was a friend of Thomas’s from his days in Seattle. Yokomizo was amiable enough but took a dim view of anything that smacked of fantasy. He would see Jimmy’s tale as a madman’s ravings, a bid for attention or the basis of some con game. Whichever it was, he would probably recommend Jimmy be confined to his room and given a battery of tranquilizers.

He had to leave today.

“Thomas, we have doctors on staff here. There’s no need to send Dr. Yokomizo.”

“All right, I’ll tell you what,” Thomas said, “why don’t we fly out to see you this weekend, anyway? I’ll bet Molly will talk you into that trip to Disneyland.”

“Okay, it would be good to see you. All of you.”

“Please take it easy, Dad.”

“I will, Thomas. I’m sorry I yelled at you.” He tried to sound somewhat infirm, make his son think he was feeble and compliant.

“It’s okay, Dad. I’ll see you Saturday.”

“Okay.”

Thomas hung up. Jimmy felt terrible lying to him, but he had had no choice. Hopefully, he’d be able to rectify this later.

He thought for a moment, then sat down to write a letter. He started to use a lined tablet he and George used to keep score on for cribbage and the like, but it seemed inappropriate. He took the chair to the closet and retrieved the box containing Rose’s mitten. Deeper down was stationery he had bought her when they went to Alberta. It featured a lake surrounded by trees and wildflowers. It had been Rose’s favorite, and when she had run out, he had sent away to the printer in Montreal for as much as they had. The line had been discontinued, but they had found six boxes in a storehouse. He had given it to her on her sixtieth birthday, which was the last they had celebrated together.