The next week Vickie drove every dusty road of the tribal lands, knocking on doors, peering through windows, explaining, pleading. Randy sat in her air conditioned car. What could he be thinking, watching his aunt going door to door like this, she wondered. She always parked the car out of earshot so at least he wouldn't hear.
She left a ranch house where a spindly old woman offered her iced tea but no answers. Randy was hungry. She pulled into the quick mart for hot dogs and soda. The clerk chomped her gum and flipped through her magazine, barely glancing up. Vickie paid for the food and sent Randy outside ahead of her.
"Excuse me," she said to the clerk. "Do you mind if I ask you a question?"
"Sure."
"Did you know Eula Sparrow?"
The clerk popped her gum and nodded.
"I was with her when she died," Vickie said.
"Oh."
There was a stack of dreamcatchers on the counter. They were delicate and rainbow hued, gorgeous, screaming for tourists to buy a bit of native culture. $10 each. "No. It was horrible."
"Okay."
"No, it's not okay." She leaned across the counter. Her elbow knocked the display of dreamcatchers. They teetered but stayed upright. "Some thing is stalking me. Eula was helping me when she died. Someone here knows what it is. Someone knows how to stop it. I know they do. But no one will tell me."
The woman popped her gum again. "Lady, even if I believed you, why would anyone help you?"
"What?"
"Think about it. If there really is a spirit after you, and Eula Sparrow died helping you, why would anyone else sacrifice themselves for you?"
They all knew about Yani and what she was. Vickie saw the truth clearly. And they were all content that Yani did not come to claim one of their own. In that moment she understood she was alone, and it sliced her into shreds.
She edged back from the counter and eyed the dreamcatchers. They looked frayed, their colors bleached. She swung her arm and swept the display onto the floor.
Three days passed with no sign of Yani. She could no longer sit in the cabin waiting like a fattened lamb for the evil to come. She was on her own – the lone woman who fled a dead-end life to remake herself was now being unmade. Maybe she couldn't fight, but she could still run.
"Come." She roused her nephew, who sat on the couch lost in a video game.
"Where?"
"We're going on a road trip," she said, with no clue as to where they could go.
They threw together a set of overnight bags and climbed in the Volvo. It was mid afternoon, a sun-dripping late summer day. The blacktop cleaved a path through the ruddy desert as they drove south toward Albuquerque, and then to where? Mexico? Could she really just take Randy out of the country? He had no passport. She quit obsessing over the details and soon lost herself in the freedom that expanded with each passing mile.
"Vickie, I have to go."
"Silly. We are going."
"No. I mean, go."
The thought of stopping terrified her. Minutes equaled miles away from Yani. There was no time to spare. "Okay, but you have to be quick about it."
They pulled into a rest stop five miles down the highway. It was pristine fake adobe with a broad parking lot. A Volkswagen was parked near the bathrooms, and an RV was on the far end, a middle-aged couple walking a black Labrador next to it. Vickie parked away from both.
"Be careful," she called out as Randy walked away. He gave her a careless wave and disappeared.
She leaned against the side of her car, the metal warm on her arm. Even with all the stress in her head she couldn't help but get caught up in the beauty all around her. Such beauty: surely proof of a majestic God. Where, she wondered, was this God, when most needed?
"Nowhere."
The voice came from behind her. She didn't want to turn. "Get out of my head."
"But it's so bleak in there. It makes me feel alive."
Slowly Vickie pivoted. She wanted to see a demon. She wanted to finally see this monstrous thing's true face. Instead she saw Yani, the same girl from that San Francisco coffee shop. She wore a turquoise sundress that hugged her hips and gold bangles that sparkled in the sun. Her face was flawless.
"Why did you kill Eula?"
"She was a nuisance."
"She was getting close, wasn't she?"
"She gave you hope."
“It doesn't matter. I don't care that you killed her. I'll still fight you. With everything I have."
"I know. I love the struggle. It makes the end that much better."
Vickie felt herself shrivel. Hope was an alien land. Yani raised a hand and approached. Vickie backed up. Her heel hit the curb and she tumbled to the ground. Yani crouched over her, holding her hand above her forehead. Vickie knew what was coming – the probing, the rummaging, the tearing apart. She grabbed her throat. Her fingers fell on the pendant with the gray stone. She pulled it close to Yani.
Yani recoiled. "I told you to get rid of that."
Vickie held the pendant out; surely it held some power though she had no clue what it could be. Yani backed away. Vickie climbed to her feet. "Leave me alone."
Yani looked past Vickie toward the bathrooms. "If not you, then there is always another, one almost as sad and hopeless." Vickie turned and saw Randy round the building's corner.
“God no.”
She glanced up at the sky, such a cloudless blue, postcard beautiful. It was wrong. Where were the gray clouds? Where was the rain? Where was the cold and blackness? The forests and fog? Rot and ruin?
A lone wildflower grew beside the highway. It was such a brilliant, red, clutching to life well past the time it should have died away. It was obscene. It was a lie. This whole gorgeous landscape was a lie. The truth was barrenness and death. Finally Vickie saw it for what it was.
"Listen to me, whatever it is you are. Even if I'm dead and I have to claw my way back from heaven or hell or the grave, you won't get him."
"You or the boy. The choice is yours."
Randy bopped along, oblivious to the evil that stalked them. Vickie envied his innocence. She wished she could go back to that cafe in San Francisco. Maybe if she'd stayed with Gavin she –and Randy – would have been spared.
She turned back. Yani was gone.
"Ew, it smells," Randy said. "It's...yuck. Like bad meat."
Vickie kept her face on the rocky horizon. She let her fate wash over her. "I don't smell a thing."
"So where we going?"
Vickie climbed into the car. She didn't bother fastening her seat belt. "The movies. Then back home."
"You mean all this just to go to the movies? Aw, Vickie, you're crazy."