Maynard also learned about ghosts. As he grew more skilled in the craft, Oman began to introduce him to the spirits that inhabited the small island. Until then he had always imagined ghosts to be no more substantial than a drifting cloud of smoke, something you might have imagined you saw when you were a child but eventually outgrew. He had no idea ghosts could take on a material presence akin to flesh and bone, until he’d met several, including Oman’s great grandfather.
Despite being a smallish man, Oman’s great grandfather projected a power that nearly vibrated the bones of anyone who had the courage to meet his gaze. The sharp, proud angles composing his face were painted in the ash of his ancestors, as was the custom still amongst the witch men, and the whites of his eyes were ruby red due to the concoctions he frequently ingested so he could increase his awareness of the spiritual world around him. Maynard tried talking to the ghost but it only sat there, staring at him until the first hints of sunrise seeped through the wicker roof until the ghost dissolved into a million specks of black mirror.
Oman explained to Maynard that he’d never met his great grandfather in person. The man had lived alone on the other side of the island, although his mother had told Oman the old man had died years before he had been born.
When Oman and his cousins reported seeing the old man in their dreams, some of Oman’s uncles and many tribesmen searched for the old man on the island and demanded he put a stop to it, knowing the violence was soon at hand. They told him they didn’t need his magic anymore. They were tired of living in isolation from the rest of the world. It was better to join now and avoid being slaughtered again like their ancestors. Other tribes were trading with the pale men who came in giant ships, and they wanted a piece of the action.
The old man had listened quietly while tears streamed down his face. In the end, he told them he would not give up his right to find a successor and asked them to leave. Later the same evening while he lay asleep in his hut, several of the men returned and killed him.
Thinking they’d freed the island of tradition that seemed more like a curse than a benefit to the community, they celebrated. But the elders in the tribe took a different view. They warned the men who’d killed Oman’s great grandfather they had made a big mistake and the entire island itself would be in jeopardy. And they were right. Oman’s great grandfather returned and promptly took revenge on those who had killed him.
Like all ghosts, his physical materiality was sometimes fleeting and the only way to avoid long periods of not being able to exert one’s influence was to avoid touching living things.
And this was what drove most ghosts insane.
CHAPTER 60
“You cannot turn your back on your destiny, Robert,” Maynard explained. “It’s not an option.”
Robert stared into the crimson sky above. The spirit of the frozen man leaned over him, his hands pressing sharply into Robert’s chest until his sternum and ribs burned like fire.
“Where is my family?” Robert gasped. It was all he could think about, his only connection to a life that had suddenly become mysterious and frightening. The only reason why he hadn’t given up and wished for a quick death.
“They are alive, Robert. Maybe not for long, but they are alive now.”
“I want to go back to them. I’ve already told you I have no interest in what you’re offering. I have a life and people I love. I don’t want to be like you or anyone else.”
Maynard lifted his hands and backed away. “I think you misunderstand me. I must ensure the powers I possess are transferred to you. Only you can pass on the sacred knowledge. It’s your duty to do so. It has protected you all this time and has given you the strength when you needed it.”
“I never asked for anyone’s help.”
“You know that’s untrue Robert. You’ve always known you could tap into something much deeper inside, a primal darkness that has lain silently within you since the day you were born. For so long you’ve repressed your nature. You’ve been keeping it under lock and key, not exercising it when you could have put it to use.”
Robert gritted his teeth. If he’d been able to look down at the rest of his body he would have expected it to be engulfed in flame.
“Please. If you won’t let me have my family back again just let me die…”
“Don’t disappoint me Robert. If it wasn’t for me watching over you all this time you would have been dead a long time ago.”
Robert’s mind flashed back to Mexico. He’d never known before that he and Will could have pulled off what they did, had never imagined the extreme violence he was capable of. But it wasn’t as if he had a choice in the matter. Either he rescued his father and Uncle Barney or stayed home and did nothing.
Then there was the ghost Will had seen in the abandoned building, the one he’d told Robert about when they’d been driving in his truck that morning. Something had come to protect them from the assassins outside—the men who worked for the dogfighter, drug dealer and kidnapper—the man who dressed in white. They were about to burst inside and fill the Americans’ bodies with holes from their automatic rifles. Instead, the thing sent them back into an alley where they took one another’s lives.
Was it you who drove those men crazy?
Maynard shook his head. He’d been reading Robert’s thoughts.
“No, it was your great grandfather, Jared Horn. He’d made those two men think that the other had the head of a giant rattlesnake. He drove them to complete madness. Your great grandfather was the first to discover me down here, and at the time he was in desperate need of help. In exchange for helping him, he agreed that his great grandsons could one day be summoned by me when the time came for new blood.”
“So this is what it’s all about?” Robert asked. “Making people kill each other so you can give the victor your power?’
Maynard grinned coldly and turned away his eyes.
“That is the tradition. I owe it to my teacher, as he did to his teacher and so on. Now that I’ve completed my task I will be freed from my prison, and not just the prison of ice that has kept my body all these years. My untimely death, of course, was unfortunate for me, just as Jared’s execution by a party of vigilantes had been for him. We’ve both been ghosts for a long time now, waiting for the right moment, knowing all too well how the fever for gold can take over some men’s minds, cause them to do things they’d normally never consider. I knew it on the day the Sheriff’s posse was going to gun me down on this mountain. I knew if I took the gold with me I would be planting the seeds of my eventual rebirth through you.”
“And if I refuse to go along? I will not have the blood of innocents on my hands. I’ll kill myself first.”
Maynard shook his head.
“Your true nature has much more to teach you. It’s too late to go back I’m afraid. The knowledge is now embedded in the very fiber of your being and cannot be removed. I have completed my work here.”
“But you haven’t taught me anything. You’re just a thief and a murderer.”
Maynard laughed and the crimson sky above them turned dark velvet blue as he vaporized into a foul-smelling fog and disappeared.
Robert lay silent, unable to move. There was nothing he could do to save the others who’d come looking for him. They didn’t have a chance in hell. Not against three desperate lunatics armed with rifles.