Seven Ways to Die Read online

  Inside the cave, a pair of narrow, black eyes followed The Boy’s every move, watched through the cave opening as he skinned the nice, plump rabbit and prepared his dinner, watched and waited as darkness fell and lightning streaked the sky and rain began to pelt the earth, watched and waited as The Boy finished his meal and extinguished his fire.

  The eyes narrowed to mere slits in the flickering shadows as he returned.

  The Boy crawled a little deeper into the cave, away from the acrid smell of the torch. He stretched his blanket out on the dry floor of the cave and made a bundle of the canvas tarp against the wall for a pillow.

  As he settled down, pulling the blanket over him, a bolt of lightning startled him and cast a blue glow through the cave opening.

  He did not see or hear the creature as it coiled on the sand, its head rising above a rock two feet away, its tongue licking the air, its eyes widening.

  The Boy, his ears still ringing from the crack of lightning, was unaware of danger.

  Unaware until he heard the dreadful, dry, terrifying rattle. By then it was too late.

  His mouth dried up and his eyes bulged as the snake streaked out almost to its full length. Its fangs snapped like a trap, puncturing the blanket and The Boy’s leggings and piercing the inside of his left leg an inch above his ankle. It felt like he had been hit with a hammer.

  He screamed, broke into a sweat, pulled his legs up against his chest, and watched terrified as the predator slithered out of the cave.

  His fear was replaced almost immediately by action. He remembered the words of Old Man.

  Do not panic or you will die. Be calm but do not hesitate. Move slow like the possum. But do not waver. Do what you must do before the sleep comes.

  He moved resolutely but in slow motion, got his knife, cut two, short strips from the canvas tarp, pulled up his pants leg and saw the two scarlet fang marks, already beginning to swell. He leaned over, sliced an inch-long slit through the wound, pulled his leg up and bit hard over the cut and sucked the poison from it. He could taste the venom as he spat it out. He tied one strip of canvas an inch or two above the wound, tightened and knotted it, did the same below the swelling. He bit again, sucking the toxic blood into his mouth and spitting it out. He took a deep swig of water, swished it around in his mouth, spat it out. He got his grandma’s reddish ointment from his small bag of possessions and slowly smeared it into the wound. His teeth began to chatter. Pain overwhelmed him.

  Then he lay back and pulled the blanket around him. He was beginning to shake and the pain began to numb his nerves so he began a Nimiipuutimpt chant to himself, slowing the chant, lowering it deep in his throat. He lay still as a sleeping cat and stared at the flickering shadows on the ceiling of the chamber and kept chanting to slow his heartbeat as the room began to tilt and spin and envelope him.

  And he slipped eagerly into the void.

  Δ

  Visions swept through the swirling mist of his fevered mind like the colored shards tumbling in a kaleidoscope, each fragment becoming fleeting instants from the past, nightmares he had forgotten or tried to forget colliding with moments of pure joy:

  Picking huckleberries with his mother under a clear azure sky and waiting at the table while she mixed them with honey, his mouth wet with anticipation.

  Ka-Wan seeing his father, Charley Wildpony, for the first time. How powerful and handsome he was in his Marine uniform, stepping off the bus as he returned from faraway battlefields, a mighty warrior with colored ribbons on his chest, each a testament to his bravery.

  The stink of the hospital in Denver.

  Being swept up and held high and hearing his father’s proud laughter and his deep voice full of pride crying out, “Look at you! Boy, how I’ve waited for this time, young fella.”

  The three of them together hugging each other.

  A shaft of blue sunlight.

  Pa teaching him to catch salmon on the big river.

  Watching him rounding up and breaking wild horses on the plains of Montana’s Big Open.

  Pa vomiting in the bathroom while his Ma tried to comfort him.

  Old Man talking wisdom as they climbed through a canyon in the Bitterroots, all the while pointing out the flowers, the purple buds of shooting stars and the deep scarlet flowers of fairy slippers mingling in the rocks, while a crescent yellow, green and red rainbow arced the sky above them.

  Pa and Old Man talking history around a campfire with their friends from the Crow tribe while a coyote wailed in the distance and the wild horses snorted restlessly in the makeshift corral.

  Another shaft of blue sunlight.

  Pa, his voice sounding old and worn out, telling his tribesmen and their families of battles he had fought while the Orange Death rained down on him and his comrades, killing cactus and scorpions and eventually all living things.

  Virgil Red Cloud, his father’s best friend and the leading wise man of the tribe, speaking Charley Wildpony’s eulogy: “Remember the words of our great Chief Joseph. The earth was created by the assistance of the sun and should be left as it is. We and the earth are of one mind. The land is not ours to destroy and do with as we choose. The one who has the right to dispose of it is the one who created it.”

  Later, sweating in the wistitamo with his father beside him clutching his hand in his own wasted fist, listening to him fighting for one final breath.

  Another shaft of blue sunlight. And darkness.

  Δ

  The Boy awoke. He stared at the roof of the cave. He was soaked to the skin with sweat. He held his hand in front of his face and the swelling was gone. He touched his forehead and it was cool. No fever.

  Then he felt something against his leg and he looked down and his heart jumped.

  He was staring into the eyes of a white wolf. The animal was settled on his haunches beside Ka-Wan’s leg, his rough tongue slowly licking the ointment off the rattlesnake wound. The wolf had torn the tourniquets off his ankle and the bleeding had stopped.

  Ka-Wan felt no fear. He looked straight into the wolf’s golden eyes and stared at him and the wolf stared back and kept licking.

  “Are you a gift from The Creator, Brother Wolf?” he asked. The wolf kept licking.

  The Boy’s mouth was parched. He reached for the canteen, took slow sips, swished the water around and spat it out, then took a deep drink.

  How long had he been in the trance? He thought about the visions conjured by the rattlesnake. Were the blue flashes passages of time? Days? No. He was weak but not that weak.

  Brother wolf finished his licking. He stood up, stretched his legs and shook himself. He loped across the cavern floor, sat near the opening, and looked back at Ka-Wan. Then he put his head back and howled, a single, sustained, note. A few seconds passed and, off in the distance, his song was answered with the same call.

  Talking, Ka-Wan thought. What is Brother Wolf telling me? Was the weyekin working? The wolf hunched down and went outside.

  Follow me, he thought. Brother Wolf is telling me to follow him.

  He struggled to his knees, gathered up his meager belongings and his walking stick and crawled outside the cave.

  Thankfully, a warm day. The sun was high in the sky. Noon or thereabouts. The leaves and trees were still dripping from the rain. Perhaps the snake bite was only a superficial wound. Perhaps his vision had only lasted twelve hours or so. But it had left him weak.

  He rummaged through the blanket and tarp, checked the pot, and found some chunks of rabbit, berries and roots. Still fresh. He devoured them, felt some strength coming back in his legs.

  The wolf stood a dozen yards away, looking back at him. It turned, walked a few steps and looked back. The Boy bundled his belongings in the blanket and draped it over his shoulder. Using his walking stick, he pulled himself to his feet. His legs were trembling from the effort so he waited a minute or two, leaning against the ravine wall, gathering all the strength he could muster before trying a step or two.

  He walked t
o the pool, took off his shirt, and held his head and shoulders under the ice cold waterfall, kneading his fingers through his hair, letting the shower douse his face.

  There, that helped.

  Brother Wolf sat and watched, bemused. He looked up at the sun, then back at The Boy and growled. Not a threatening growl, but stern.

  Follow me.

  And The Boy did. He quickly dried off using the tarp and, leaning on the stick, limped along behind. They went down a slope, followed a ridge for awhile, turned south into the forest again. Brother Wolf stopped, howled the same lovely note. This time the answer was closer. Ka-Wan held his hat so the shadow from the sun fell across his face and looked up.

  Southwest, he figured. The eagle was right. Brother Wolf was leading him out of the wilderness, waiting when he had to stop to give his legs a rest—but not for long – before moving on, forcing him to follow.

  The Boy was growing weaker. Each step was harder than the one before it. Finally he sat down on a fallen tree, his breath coming hard. The wolf growled at him.

  “I’m tired,” he snapped back. The wolf’s ears perked up for a moment, then he turned and kept walking.

  “Well, darn,” Ka-Wan said. Then he remembered one of the many lessons Old Man had taught him.

  Never give up hope. Hope is a test. When you think all is lost, an answer will come to you.

  “Okay, okay, I’m coming,” he yelled to the wolf and struggled back on his feet.

  Occasionally the animal would call again and be answered. Each time, the answer was closer.

  Then they broke out of the trees and he saw the wolf’s brother, sitting on a cliff. They yowled and barked playfully at each other. Brother Wolf turned back to The Boy and then looked across the treetops and the youth felt his breath catch in his throat. He saw a landmark: Three mountain tops close together to the north; three mountains called the Three Sisters.

  He shielded his eyes and peered intently to the south and saw a few wisps of smoke rising lazily out of the trees. He was two, maybe three miles from the reservation.

  “Yeah!” He cried, raising the walking stick and shaking it at the sky. “Thank you, Brother Wolf!”

  But when he turned back his white friend was gone. He thought he saw a white streak, a ghost running through the trees, but he wasn’t sure.

  “I hope we meet again,” he yelled but his words echoed balefully back at him and he felt a moment of deep sadness. He knew in his heart he would never see Brother Wolf again but he also knew they were bound together in their hearts forever.

  Soon he would be leaving this place which he loved and which held such bittersweet memories. Soon he would start another life in another place. But now he was a man. Ka-Wan had made his journey.

  Now Micah Cody was ready to face whatever map the future sketched for him.

  The wind shouldered him down the mountainside toward home.

  2

  Manhattan—2006

  It had once been a church. Now demonically, it had been transformed into a soaring, Gothic danger zone sardonically called Satan’s Sanctuary. Its rood-shaped main hall had been gutted and converted into a sprawling dance floor jammed with more than two hundred rave converts, jumping, twisting, spinning, their fists raised high, pumping the air in rhythm with the thunderous repetition of the band whose drums and bass hammered a mesmerizing beat.

  What had once been an altar was now a stage ringed with fire pots to keep the dancers at bay while the band, a bizarre, tattooed, shirtless, Mohawk-shorn group called The Frisian Freaks, played a wild dirge called “Welcome to Hell,” repeating the frantic theme endlessly, like an old 78 rpm record stuck in a single groove:

  Boom bataboom, thump, thump…boom bataboom, thump, thump…while the voices of the revelers added to the chaos:

  “Yeah, yeahyeah, yeah, yeah…yeah, yeahyeah, yeah, yeah…”

  Torches lined the enormous dance floor sporadically erupting into geysers of flame while strobe lights randomly etched the faces of the bizarre crowd, undulating, hunching, swiveling, jumping, rocking. Pupils fixed or dilated by ecstasy or meth of whatever drug enhanced the mood, the crazed crowd created an epidemic of eccentric frenzy beyond reason or self control. And the blazing strobes briefly revealed an extravagant phenomenon, an accoutre revolution.

  They wore jeans, suspender slacks, mini-skirts, shorts, and combat fatigues; t-shirts, tank tops, sequined brassieres, and thong bikinis; the colors stark Gothic black, the color of the night, punctuated with splashes of yellow, pink, chartreuse, and Halloween orange.

  Bobbing up and down in the throng were bald heads, crew cuts, corn rows, shoulder length ringlets with dyed strips of green, purple or scarlet; grotesque tattoos, weird masks, black lipstick and glitter-bathed cheeks.

  And there were rings. Rings everywhere, piercing everything: nipples, noses, belly buttons, ear lobes, tongues, and regions hidden beyond the eye.

  In this demonic atmosphere where madness was common and attitude was everything, one girl was different.

  It was not her clothing, which was relatively normal, considering her surroundings: a black and white checkered tutu and ballet slippers. But her shoulder-length green hair was curled around a porcelain-delicate face with eyes as innocent as those of a puppy.

  Melinda was indifferent to the advances of both men and women who were attracted to her dancing and her stunning figure.

  She was tall, which added to the allure as she kicked up her long, sinewy legs like a showgirl and twirled on her toes through the crowd, a beautiful young woman absorbed by her own talent. She spun to the edge of the dance floor near the bar and stopped, distracted for a moment by a figure in the flash of a strobe. Not by the girl, naked from the waist up except for a combat helmet on her head, sitting on the shoulders of a man with a bat tattooed on one cheek and his teeth painted black. But beyond them, at a strikingly handsome man dressed in a tuxedo and a black Halloween mask.

  A normal black tuxedo. He was leering at her beneath the mask and then he was gone.

  She dabbed her face with a linen handkerchief and pop! She saw him again, staring through the ravers. Then again, when the torches flared, and she glanced back before the crowd engulfed him.

  What game was he playing now? she wondered. What else in this temple of games?

  She pirouetted back into the wilding throng, spinning through the madhouse, past a girl in a white thong and spiked thigh high boots with an aqua cobra tattooed around her belly button and the guy with black spiked hair wearing only a garish red jock strap. She was obsessed by the man who had glared at her, rising another inch on her toes so she could see over the crowd as she searched for a face in the momentary bursts of light and fire. But to no avail.

  Finally, exhausted, she left the floor and walked on her toes to the bar. As she sat down, she noticed a matchbook pyramided beside her champagne glass. She picked it up and flipped the lid open. On the inside was written: “Ray 555 932 1685.”

  She shivered. She looked around but there was no one else at the bar. A quick perusal of the mob on the dance floor once again proved futile.

  The bartender strolled down from the other end of the bar and took her empty glass.

  “How about another one?” he asked.

  She held up the matchbook. “See who left this by my glass?”

  “Sorry,” he answered. “You know how it is, they come, they go.”

  She looked at her watch for the bartender’s benefit. It was after midnight. She shook her head.

  “Time’s up, Arnie,” she said. “Cinderella has to work tomorrow.”

  “What a shame,” he said, sliding the tab in front of her. She paid up and left a ten dollar tip.

  Δ

  There was a cab at the curb when she left the club and she crawled in and leaned back with a sigh, giving the cabbie an address in the upper sixties on the West Side.

  She was feeling a little giddy from the three champagne cocktails when she entered her apartment which was on the twelft
h floor with a view of the Park. She had left the sliding glass doors open onto her small balcony and a warm breeze fluttered through the curtains. A table lamp formed a discreet pool of light on a desk near the balcony.

  She went into the kitchenette, poured herself a glass of red wine, whipped off the green wig and tossed it over her shoulder, performing a little strip tease as she shagged to the shower. She had a dancer’s figure, lithe and graceful, molded by vigorous training and hard work.

  She showered and strolled naked into the living room, a towel dragging the floor from one hand, sipping her wine with the other as she stood at the opening to the balcony, letting the breeze dry her off.

  She took the matchbook from her purse and looked at the name and phone number, and closed her eyes, briefly thinking about the man in the tux. The son of a bitch, she thought with a smile.

  So he changed his phone number. Wanted her to call him. Well, he could go screw himself.

  The wind briefly wrapped the curtain around her before she brushed it away.

  She went back to her desk and put the matchbook book down.

  Then she noticed that her laptop was on. The screen was lowered but she could see the light from the screen between the cover and the keyboard. She thought she’d hibernated the machine when she’d finished the review.

  She reached over and lifted the screen. There was a letter on the screen which began: “Dear Raymond…”

  And the fear choked her.

  Before she could react she felt a warm breath on the nape of her neck. A plastic bag whished as it snapped over her head.

  The opening was twisted tight.

  The bag became a deadly trap.

  A strong arm pinned both her arms to her sides and lifted her off the floor. Her screams were muffled by the bag, her muscular legs flailing helplessly as she fought for a breath.

  She was frantic, staring out across the Park through the gauzy container. Her attempts to breathe merely sucked the plastic into her mouth and popped it back again.

  Just one breath, she thought.

  But it was denied. The strong arm jerked hard on her abdomen, emptying her lungs.