Sight Seeing
By Kristina L. Woodall
Smashwords Edition
Copyright 2011 Kristina L. Woodall
Discover other Titles by Kristina L. Woodall at Smashwords.com
Smashwords Edition, License Notes
This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This ebook may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each recipient. If you’re reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then please return to Smashwords.com and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.
***
CHAPTER ONE
The ground was hot. The heat was dry.
Words from a song Ethan Wilkes didn’t care if he ever knew worked their way through his mind as he let a handful of dusty Colorado soil sift through his fingers onto the ground.
Bone-dry mountains in June was a bad sign.
Or not.
Chuckling, Wilkes grabbed for a nearby bottle of whiskey with one hand, and helped himself to his feet with the other.
Smile fading, he stared down at the pile of wood stacked within the traditional circle of what would appear, under eventual investigation, to have been nothing more than a careless camper’s fire.
Hungry, aware that it was getting way on past lunch time, he twisted the lid off the glass bottle. Tipping it upside down, he jerked the amber liquor out over the wood, around on the dusty ground, and up the base of a nearby wall of lodgepole pine thirsty enough to drink in all the poison he could spare.
After twelve years of working for the California Department of Forestry to snuff flames out, he felt no particular thrill in creating them. But, hell, the money was a lot better on this side of the line.
With two fingers and the practiced ease of a chain smoker, Wilkes worked a small butane lighter out from the hip pocket of his dusty blue jeans and into the palm of his right hand.
Crouching down, he flicked the lighter into life and used its thin blue flame to turn alcohol, wood, and oxygen into fire.
Satisfied with the awakening, he eased himself up and took a slow lumbering step back from the instant flash of heat.
Combing his hand through his salt-and-pepper hair, he slid his gaze through the troops of trees stationed in front of him, then up toward the commanding mountain peaks towering above him, knowing all they could do was watch.
Somewhere about halfway between Copper Mountain and Vail, he could only guess whether it would be one of the Ski Area’s Fire Departments or the United States Forest Service that would come gunning in first to protect and preserve.
Not that it made a damn bit of difference. By the time anyone spotted this one, it would be well on its way to consuming another piece of the White River National Forest, where three out-of-control wildfires were already keeping all available firefighters busy in battle.
Glancing down at his creation, he watched it gulp for air and lick out for food as it seared a path across the carefully placed logs and then hurl itself out toward the dry pines rooted thick and tight inches away.
He studied the growing blaze as it began to blacken a path through the stand of eighty-year-old bark and felt none of the raw sexual pleasure he’d heard about from so many of the fire starters he’d helped put away.
Feeling only hunger, he tossed the empty bottle into the fire and turned his back on the rupturing flames. Never one to take chances, he peeled off the latex gloves and shoved them into his pocket. He would safely dispose of them later, in a county an oblivious world away. In Denver.
Unhurried, knowing the fire would burn its way uphill faster than it would down along the road toward his old Dodge Ram, Wilkes chose Chinese over American for lunch.
A wispy coil of charcoal black smoke reached his emerald green truck at the same time he clunked open the heavy metal door.
Climbing up into the truck’s cab, he turned the key in the ignition and felt the engine jump to life. Releasing the brake and tossing it into gear, he let the truck jolt down the rutted road.
Glancing into his rearview mirror, all he could see now was flickering red eyes darting about the thickening black shroud mushrooming faster than even he had anticipated.
An involuntary shudder flashed through his square frame. Damn it all if he wasn’t the only hungry animal on this mountain.
Maybe a steak would be better.
He turned his eyes back to the road.
Fire away.
***
CHAPTER TWO
The searing eruption of a fiery-hot inferno exploded out from the depths of McKynna Lane’s most inner mind, hurling all that was sane and normal into cubbies and corners of her more conscious mind.
Fire?
Losing the connection to sights and sounds from the present moment, McKynna grabbed hold of her breath and let the flames burn through.
No.
Damn it. Not now.
Familiar with such uninvited, and unwelcome, onslaughts into private inner spaces, McKynna closed her eyes and coerced reason to return to the here and the now.
Pen frozen in mid-air, she took a deep breath and focused on her client.
She had no other choice. The woman had already slipped through the gates of hypnosis McKynna had opened for her, and was edging deeper and deeper down into the timeless dimension of her own subconscious landscape.
Looking for answers that could only be found there.
Looking for McKynna to guide her to those answers.
Struggling for control, McKynna slammed the top of her body back against the black leather office chair. Just to feel her weight shift.
She dug her fingernails into the leather arm rests. Just to know that she could.
God, not a fire.
Where?
No, not now.
Focus, damn it.
McKynna bit down on the thought that it was neither the time nor the place for visions, at least not her own.
She had work to do.
Easing out a slow, even breath, and then taking in another, she opened her eyes and filled her vision with the moist, pale face of Kate, her 36-year-old obese client.
Kate. This moment was all about Kate.
Just about Kate.
“Going deeper and deeper now, to that perfect level for healing,” McKynna pulled out her calm and professional voice, “you can relax more and more with every breath in, and release tension with every breath out.”
Right.
McKynna took another deep breath in, and let another deep breath out, willing the vaulting inferno back to whatever hell it had come from. “Tell me what you’re feeling.”
Kate, fully reclined on a black leather couch, slogged her head from side to side and shrugged.
“Focus on the details around you. Tell me what you are seeing, sensing, or feeling.” McKynna offered the words as a grounding technique; a way to focus Kate on the experience of being in an altered state of being.
Hoping it would bring her back to a normal state of being, McKynna took a few precious seconds to focus on the details of the familiar office space around her: the smooth, polished back of her oak desk; the lightly etched flowers flowing down white lace curtains closed loosely over vanilla blinds; the canvas paintings of vibrant mountains hanging on all four walls; the scent of sun-warmed pine trees drifting in through the slightly open window.
All normal. Safe. Cozy.
It didn’t work.
At least not for McKynna.
Her guard down, the flickering images of fire lunged in and licked her full in the face.
Fire. In trees. Evergreens.
Flames. Out of control.
She jerked herself further upright, forcing the imagery from her mind.
No. Not now.
Tossing out the permissive tone, McKynna grabbed onto the directive tone. “Tell me what you are seeing, sensing, or feeling right now.”
This could be it. The breakthrough session they’d both been waiting for. Disregarding psychic sensibilities she’d rather disown, McKynna latched onto her growing therapeutic skill. A clinical hypnotherapist for three years now, she was developing a good sense of when a client was about to hit the tap root of their pain and shift into a better state of being.
She had a feeling that time was at hand for Kate, and she was not about to let somebody else’s match game gone awry get in Kate’s way.
Somebody else’s damn fire.
Focus, damn it.
Minimal clues. McKynna knew that’s all clients in hypnosis provide. Minimal clues to what they are feeling, thinking, experiencing. A lift of an eyebrow, a twitch of a finger, a clench of a muscle.
She had no time to let her mind toy with anything else.
McKynna forced herself deeper into the moment, rejecting any sight or sound that didn’t come from Kate.
The ticking of the wall clock clanging repetitively into the ensuing silence made it harder and harder for McKynna to fight back the suffocating sense of foreboding.
Something wicked this way comes.
Wrapped in flames.
“Um...”
McKynna snapped her head back, tightened her grip on pen and paper. “Yes?”
“I’m in the kitchen.” The voice was small, unsure.
Putting all extraneous fires out of mind, McKynna grabbed onto the lifeline of duty and jumped into her role as therapist. “You’re in the kitchen...”
“I’m with momma.”
Momma? Kate was a very proper person; a very proper person who referred to the woman who gave birth to her as mother.
“Momma? And what’s momma doing?”
“Cookin’ soup.”
“And what are you doing?”
“Watchin’ from the kitchen door.”
“And how old are you?” The voice McKynna was hearing did not belong to an adult. Not this adult.
Kate smiled proudly. “I’m five.”
“Five? Wow.” McKynna shifted into an appropriate tone for a little one. “Okay, I want you to look down at your feet, at your clothes. What are you wearing?”
There was a long hesitation before the little voice offered, “I’m wearing my bare feet.”
“What else are you wearing?” A growing headache swelled around from the back of McKynna’s head to the center point right between her eyes. Ignoring it as best she could, she shoved her attention through the thickening cloud of the still smoldering flames.
“A dress, just like momma’s, with purple dots.” The little voice was beginning to have a slightly southern accent.
Kate was not from the South.
Not in this lifetime.
It wouldn’t be the first time one of McKynna’s clients traveled back to a life experience not connected to the body they were currently inhabiting in order to find the origin of a lingering trauma. And, ultimately, to find healing.
“What’s going on around you? What are you feeling?”
A frown washed over Kate’s face. A tear spread out from under a closed eyelid and slid down a pale cheek. “I’m hungry.” First tears. The first tears Kate had shed in McKynna’s office and, from what she’d gathered through weeks of therapy, the first tears she’d shed in a long time. Kate, the wife of the right and proper mayor of Rio D’Elena, wasn’t allowed to cry.
At least not in public.
“It’s all right, you can cry. You can cry.” Saying the words, saying any soothing words, McKynna spoke just to let her know that she was there and supporting her. “What are you feeling?”
Kate’s sobbing moved from her head down into her body, where it slammed to a halt. Her body became rigid. "There's no crying now. That's just all the food there is.”
"Who said there's no crying?"
At least it wasn’t her house. The fire.
It was just trees.
Not her mother’s house down in Denver either.
It wasn’t a city fire.
"Momma said. Momma said I’d better just go on to bed now. Only momma and poppa get to eat."
"Poppa’s with you now?” Reigning her focus in to where it should be, McKynna forced herself to lean in toward Kate, hoping the action itself would hone her attention in on the sharpest edge of the current moment.
“Yeah.”
“And why do only momma and poppa get to eat?”
"Because they're bigger than me.”
"And how does that make you feel?"
"Mad. I don’t want to go to bed. I'm hungry." The tears streamed down her face and plopped down onto the couch. "I'm hungry. I want to be big."
McKynna felt the tug of darkness pull hard as the headache filled the space behind her eyes. “You want to be big?”
"Yes, ma'am, big and strong and full of food, because if I’m not, it means...” An angry growl steamed through, "I’m bad. They don't feed the dogs when they’re bad, so I must be bad too when they don’t feed me.”
McKynna waited for the sobbing that began pouring out of the heavyset woman to hit a point where she could breathe without so much work. “Can you tell your momma and poppa how you feel?"
All signs of crying, all signs of life, stopped. "No," a shocked little voice whispered. "Poppa'll beat me good."
Time was heading past the limits of the session as well as McKynna’s ability to stay present within it. And, since some growing up needed to occur in order for Kate to release this trauma, McKynna decided to get right to the heart of the issue.
“Okay, what I want you to do now is feel yourself growing up. Moving through your years, keeping in mind what this momma and poppa said to you and how they treated you, I want you to think about what affect this has had on your life."
Or lives, McKynna thought but didn't say. “As you are maturing now through the years, getting a sense of how you feel about yourself, and what you tell yourself about yourself as a result of what you learned from momma and poppa, I want you to go to your garden."
Kate’s garden existed only in Kate’s inner soil, but McKynna had been a visitor to the garden for so many weeks now she had no difficulty bringing it into her own mind; a mind that could use its own cool breeze.
“Go to your garden, bringing all of this information and new insight with you. Seeing all of the colors of your garden. The wild daffodils and warm red roses. The weeping willows gently dancing in the wind..."
Using all of Kate's descriptors she could remember, McKynna opened the garden up to Kate and whisked her into it. “Are you in your garden?”
Kate nodded.
"Okay, maturing from that point a long time ago, from that little girl standing in the doorway of that kitchen, feeling hungry, watching them eat because they're bigger, all the way to now, knowing how that has affected your life and how you feel about yourself, as well as what you've told yourself about yourself and about food for a long time now...” Get to the point. “Is there something you want to tell momma or poppa?"
Holding her breath, McKynna watched her client and waited, rejecting all stray thoughts.
"Yes," Kate said, her voice much stronger.
"Okay, knowing you are safe and in control here, go ahead and bring momma and poppa to your garden." McKynna paused. About ten seconds. About forever. "Are they here?"
"Yes."
"Okay, start with momma. Tell her how you feel.”
"Why did you treat me like that?” The tears started flowing again. “You called me sweetie pie and honey, but you didn't love me. You didn't nourish me."
Feeling the woman’s anguish, McKynna tried to keep her own emotions in check. She shook her head silently, knowing that clients under hypnosis are totally aware of everything around them; every movement, every noise.
She resisted the urge to reach up and smack herself silly.
Necessary, but not appropriate.
“That’s right. Tell her how you weren't nourished like you needed to be nourished. What has that done to you?"
“It made me feel like food is love and you didn't love me, so you didn't feed me because I was bad. I had to eat to be big and strong. If I was big and strong, then I was good and I was in control. It made me feel that I had to prove I was a good girl and that I deserved to be fed and loved.”
"Right. To be loved.”
Bingo. Love. That’s what it was all about. "Tell her how that has affected your life."
“It’s made me feel worthless. And it’s made me fat and ugly and I don't have to be that way."
"That’s right. You can be the way you choose to be. Happy. Healthy. Comfortable in your own body,” McKynna said. “Go on, tell her everything you've needed and wanted to tell her for a long, long time now."
"She's crying. She says she’s sorry, that she never meant to treat me like that. She was afraid of poppa.”
"Is there something you want to say to poppa?”
"Just that he was wrong. He was wrong. And selfish."
“Tell him that.”
“You were wrong and selfish and you hurt me. You treated me more like one of your dogs than your daughter.” Short pause, “I feel sad for him. He lost out.”
“Tell him that.”
“You lost out. You were selfish and you lost out.” Kate's face crumpled, her body relaxing as she wept. "You didn't love me. You gave me...holes...inside. Holes I've tried to fill with food, with parties, with taking care of the boys."
"And has that worked? Have those things filled the holes?"
"No.”
McKynna leaned back in her chair, easing the cramp blossoming under her shoulderblades. "Okay, just between you and them, I want you finish saying what you need to say to them, and then send them on their way. Just give me a nod when you’re ready to release them, along with all of the weight that goes with them.”
After a few minutes, Kate nodded.
“Okay, I want you to find a place in your garden, a safe place, perhaps by your lake, to sit."
When McKynna got confirmation from Kate that she had found such a place, she continued. "Now, I want you to feel those holes. Inside of you. I want you to search around with that higher sense of wisdom you connected to in our last session and tell me if there is something more perfect you can fill these holes with. Something more appropriate than parties, more appropriate than excess food."
Kate's tears subsided into silence. A silence McKynna allowed to expand without interruption.
“Peace. Peace and acceptance. Acceptance of myself without shame. Love. Love for myself, for who I am.”
"As you are. That’s right. Love. For yourself. For who you are. Right now.” Perfect time for an embedded command. "Can you feel this perfect love, peace, acceptance, like a warm healing light, filling up the holes right now?"
"Yes. Yes, I can,” Kate said slowly, in a lighter state of hypnosis. “And it feels good. I feel full. For the first time in a long time, I feel full. Complete. I am a good person."
"Yes. That's right, you are a good person.”
Taking her time, despite protests from body and mind, McKynna had Kate experience this peacefulness in her entire body and mind. Then, after some post-hypnotic suggestions about healthy, balanced nourishment, she brought her up from hypnosis.
Clicking off the taperecorder and putting paper and pen down, McKynna stood and reached over Kate so she could open the curtains and blinds just enough for them to see the blue Colorado sky flowing into the room.
"Was that a past life?" Kate struggled to sit up.
"What do you think?" As she was taught, McKynna now acted to gauge the client's belief system without imposing her own.
"I don't know. It was so real. It all made so much sense, I mean, the way I've been about food. The way I've felt about everything, but a past life?"
Major headache.
Damned sleepy.
Nothing like a little agony to spice up a late afternoon therapy session.
"Well, there are a couple of ways of looking at this. First, we can say that it was a past life experience. That it was a traumatic piece of your history that has affected you all the way up until the present. Or..."
Kate looked hopeful.
"We can say that it was simply a metaphor."
Kate looked confused.
"Our subconscious is extremely sophisticated, especially in terms of guiding us toward balance and health. Speaking mainly through imagery, it seeks to provide us with answers to our problems. Like in dreams. Our mind provides us with creative, detailed dreams just about every night. And many of these dreams have a message for us, some insight that can help us with a problem or an issue in our lives. Does that make sense?”
At least more sense, McKynna hoped, than the imagery burning at the fringes of her own mind.
Kate nodded. “Yes.”
"Well, hypnotherapy works on the same deep level. We asked your subconscious to go to the root cause of your issue with food. So perhaps it created this scenario in the kitchen with these parental figures as some sort of answer, a lesson. Perhaps showing that you've tried to cope with childhood wounds, or holes as you called them, by filling yourself with food instead of what you've truly needed deep inside. Love.”
"Yeah," Kate said, "I have felt that way.”
Good.
Not good that Kate had hung her quality as a human being on how much food she had in her stomach. Good because McKynna must've been making more sense than she thought.
McKynna unclenched her teeth and smiled. Considering the fierceness of her headache, a blowtorch to the back of the head would've been a reprieve.
"That was so real.” Kate relaxed back into her chair.
Since there was no way of knowing for sure on this plane, McKynna remained silent.
Kate stared in front at the space in front of her.
Knowing the woman had a lot of information to process, McKynna gave her the time. Working through some of her own thoughts and imagery, she stared into the space in front of her, drifting dangerously close to the edge of...
“Wow.”
McKynna jerked forward in her chair. “Wow?”
“Just wow.” Kate focused her attention back on McKynna. “That’s a big space to jump into. Too big. I mean, I could spend this whole life worrying about whether or not I actually lived that life or how else that information came to me, or...” she smiled, making sure she had her therapist’s attention.
She did. “Or?”
“Or, since it works for me, I could just accept the information given to me and use it to my advantage here and now.”
McKynna smiled. Kate would make a good Mayor in her own right. “Yes, that’s right. You could.”
“Well, I think I will. It all just clicked.”
"Sit here a minute, okay? I'll be right back." There was one good way to test how well it clicked. If it didn't work with real temptations, it didn't work.
Standing, McKynna made sure Kate looked comfortable being alone. With this confirmed, she left the room and went down the hallway and into her kitchen.
Having her office in her home was more than just a little convenient.
Opening a cupboard, she sorted through the various sweets she had available and selected a cupcake. Unwrapping it, she grabbed a clean saucer from the dishwasher and placed the cupcake on it.
She turned to take a quick glance out the back door to see if her German Shepherd was staying out of trouble. Her heart leapt from her chest to her throat and a surge of ice rushed through her veins as the fleeting image of a sun-darkened old man with flaming white hair standing just beyond the glass stared through to her.
A rigid jerk backwards and a blink of her eyes, and the image was gone.
Sucking in a breath, she let the warmth calm her heart and unseize her body.
What the…?
Wow. She really did need to get some rest.
Some big time freaking rest.
Wow.
Pulling it together enough to see that Pepper was asleep in the shade of her backyard aspen, McKynna lightened her death grip on the saucer in her hands.
Grateful she hadn’t shattered it with her delusions of old men at back doors, she turned and headed back out of the kitchen.
Creaking her way back down along the hardwood floors toward the office, McKynna caught a flash of her reflection in the oak-trimmed mirror hanging at eye-level between two sets of crammed bookshelves stationed between bathroom and office.
She was happy to see that no one other than herself was staring back at her. She was also happy to note that the reflected image in no way matched the way she felt. Although the fire within her mind was now out, she still felt thoroughly seared in its wake.
Fortunately, she appeared perfectly normal on the outside.
Not a hair out of place.
A reflection of deception. If the mirror could truly see, the picture it presented would be far less in order. Still, McKynna bit her lip as stepped back into her office, the façade was far better than the reality.
At least for Kate’s sake.
Stopping in front of Kate, McKynna placed the cupcake on the table. Sweets were the real test for this woman.
Kate could not resist sugar for the life of her.
Or, was it for the life of a little girl standing in a kitchen doorway somewhere, sometime ago in the South?
Kate eyed the cupcake, but her mind was a million miles away. “She called me sweetie pie and it felt so warm when she did that." She looked up into McKynna's face. "Think that's
why I've been craving sweet things? Because they make me feel warm and loved?"
Good question. McKynna tossed it back at her. "What do you think?"
"Yeah, actually, I do.”
"So, how do you feel about sweet things now?" McKynna motioned to the Twinkie.
"Like I could take it or leave it."
"Excellent!" More enthusiasm than an impartial therapist should show, but too bad. "You can take it or leave it. You have that choice. This isn't about restrictions or diets. It's about choices. How does that make you feel?"
"Good." Kate sighed a contented, lazy sigh. "Really, really good. It’s my choice. I’m in control."
###
Totally out of control.
Teetering on the edge, McKynna rejected her usual after-session routine of letting the dog in, eating something, and shedding fancy clothes for shorts and a t-shirt.
Instead, she went to the nearest viable place, the couch in her office, and crashed. It was all she could do.
Closing her eyes, she felt herself taking the immediate sickening twirling plunge into the hated space between visions and dreams.
Lacking the energy to fight it off any longer, she let the images flow by until she was wrapped tightly within their embrace.
Expecting flames, she instead felt the howling.
Crystal clear.
She could hear them.
Dogs. Barking.
She could see them. Racing toward her.
Three or four of them. Angry. Wild. Dogs.
A white dog was in the lead. Pure white. Muscles rippling under unblemished white fur flowing over a face and body chiseled from solid white granite.
Empty coal black eyes seared into her core as blood black lips curled back over rows of jagged white teeth dropping down like daggers from the gates of Hell.
Numb with the terror, McKynna tried to turn and run inside her mind, but she somehow knew that there was no escape.
She could feel them getting closer and closer, but couldn’t pull her body along any faster.
Unable to resist, she turned to face the dogs at her back.
Leaping up at her, her own screaming ringing through her ears, the white demon snarled and growled.
Unable to fight him off, she could feel the hot teeth slash down into her face and throat.
Frozen inside the terror, the dogs melted into fire.
Erupting flames lunged across the ground and streamed up the trunks of nearby trees. Snarling and twisting out onto branch after branch, they burned closer and closer. To her.
Mesmerized by the color and the passion and the detail, it wasn't until the blackness of the smoke bit close enough to kiss her that she turned and raced toward the edge of the cliff.
Reaching it, she looked down.
At the silver thread of a river.
Far below her feet.
Everything was calm and still as the ground below give way, as worn leather boots and faded jeans plummeted toward the water, as old weathered hands reached out for help they couldn’t reach.
With a flashing clarity she saw the three blue turquoise rocks, one large stone centered in the middle and one smaller stone to each side, shining bright against the dark brown of her wrinkled wrist.
Then no sight eclipsed no sound, and all she felt was the falling.
The falling down into death.
***
CHAPTER THREE
McKynna opened her eyes into the darkness and waited for the phone to ring. "Pepper, get the phone."
Curled up on the floor, the black-and-white German Shepherd lifted her head. Less than a second later, perhaps assuming there was no good reason to resist, she carefully placed it back down again on her paws.
McKynna snorted, "Well, it will be in a minute."
Dusty gray light filtered in through the bedroom window and down onto the hardwood floor, allowing McKynna to see Pepper close her eyes.
The phone rang.
McKynna jerked at the sound, clutching her blue quilted comforter. “Told you,” she hissed at the unconcerned dog.
Something about a phone ringing in the middle of the night, even when she knew it was going to ring, always scared the hell out of McKynna.
Ringing phones at night were always bad news.
She had awakened hours earlier and gone from sleeping on her office couch to sleeping on her bedroom bed. That is, of course, after she let Pepper in so that the dog could go from sleeping on the backyard grass to sleeping on the bedroom floor.
Groggy from too much sleep and too little food, McKynna unclenched her hands from the blanket and tossed it away as she pulled herself out of bed.
Trying to avoid the connection of bare feet to cold wooden floor, she slid from one woven throw rug to the next. With the ease of practice, she made her way out of her bedroom, through the glass French doors, and into the front room.
Flicking on the light, she could see that the identical French doors of her office, down the hallway to her left, were open.
Confirmation that she had indeed been totally out of it when she'd gone from one room to the other. She always closed the office door when she wasn't "in session." It was the only way she could keep work space separate from home space. Something she desperately needed in her off time.
Making a mental note to close the office door, she banged into the oak phone stand on her final carpet ride and grabbed the black phone before it could squawk yet again. "Hey, mom.”
“Hi honey, are you all right?”
“I’m fine,” McKynna frowned into the phone as Pepper toddled in and flopped down at her feet. “What’s up?”
During the day, McKynna loved the full open spaces her home offered: bedroom, office, and bathroom stationed on the left edge of the house, and a large frontroom that, without obstruction, blended into a diningroom until it ran into a creamy white wall that kept it from the kitchen.
At night she preferred walls separating rooms.
Waiting for her mom to speak, she glanced warily into shadows and far corners where the light could barely reach, looking for things she didn’t particularly want to see.
Out of sight, out of mind.
Terrifying appearances by ghosts, specters, and visitors from the other side, as her mother called them, when McKynna was a little girl still traumatized her. Fortunately, they’d gotten bored and stopped coming when all they could get from the little girl was shrieks and tears.
Fortunately, being clairvoyant, clairaudient, and clairsentient seemed to be enough of a cosmic joke to visit upon McKynna in one lifetime, and she’d been allowed by the powers that be to leave the chore of being a Medium to others.
“Well, say something. You’re freaking me out.”
“I,” a sigh wisped through the phone like smoke into McKynna's ear, "just did a reading for you."
"Why?" It was not good news to McKynna when her more formally pronounced psychic mother did an all-too-formal psychic reading.
It usually meant trouble.
Ignoring the question, as she always did when the answer was obvious, Madame Mara said, “I guess when you're ready to tell me what you've seen, you will."
There's no lying to a world-renowned psychic. Or, at least, a psychic well-renowned in her own neighborhood. McKynna gave it a shot anyway. "It's not a problem."
"This has to do with unfinished business. And as long as you continue to ignore it, you will suffer because of it."
"And that'll be sixty dollars please."
Her mother frowned.
McKynna could hear it almost ninety miles away. "Sorry."
"Listen honey, the images come whether you like it or not. You either control them when they come or they control you."
"I am controlling them." As well as anyone could control such nonsense.
"By ignoring them? Is that what you tell your clients? To ignore their intuition? To ignore what they're experiencing?"
"That’s completely different.”
"No, it’s exactly the same. You’re just being stubborn now. I don't know exactly what's going on, but I can see that it's coming and you will have to deal with it one way or another.”
“Easy for you to say.” McKynna’s mother thrived on translating the chaos of visions into definitive answers for strangers paying for psychic answers. McKynna didn’t. “I have to go.”
"When you come down to Denver this weekend, I’ll do a full reading for you. Just this once?"
McKynna let her silence speak for her. The last thing on earth she wanted was to let a deck of cards or a bunch of stones dictate whether or not she should be scared.
She was already scared.
"Did you really find it necessary to call me at three o’clock in the morning just to ask me that?”
"Is it that late?” Martha asked amazed, typically unaware of time. "No wonder I'm so darn tired."
McKynna stifled a chuckle as she studied the new chink in the painted-over brick wall by her bedroom. Darn was the closest thing to a swear word her mother would ever utter.
"I'm going to change the color of the reading room to a nice beige. My angels have told me that they..."
Noting to herself, yet again, that her mother was a total nut, McKynna let the droning words melt together into a soothing chant. Her mother always had the ability to take something completely off the wall and make it sound suburban normal, and right at the moment it felt good to hear the voice.
At least until she realized she was cold; something she hadn't realized until she saw the goose bumps on her arms.
She was cold and tired, and she didn’t want to hear any more about visions, reading rooms, or even angels.
She just wanted to go to bed.
It also didn't help that her bladder decided to issue notice that it needed to be emptied. "I have to go, mom."
"Well, have you lit the new candles I sent..."
"No, I really have to go, mom, okay?"
"Okay, and you tell Lee not to drive to work tomorrow."
"Yeah, I know." She didn't know until that moment that she knew, but she knew that she had to tell Lee, her next door neighbor and good friend, not to drive in the morning. First thing. "Bye. Love you."
After waiting an eternal minute for her mother to say good bye, McKynna slammed the phone down and ran down the hall towards the bathroom.
Ignoring the difference between cold floor and warm rug, she didn't notice until she was almost to the bathroom that Pepper was right on her heels, taking a good look back to see who was on their heels.
"It's okay, nobody there.” McKynna found the appropriate seat and sat down without bothering to turn on the light.
Pepper stopped at her knee and sat down. Flicking her big black nose up into McKynna's face, she gave her owner a sloppy wet kiss.
In return, McKynna started scratching behind Pepper’s right ear. "I don’t need any of this, you know. I mean, I have that protest rally to go to tomorrow and three clients in the afternoon. I’m just way too busy for this crap.”
The dog answered by thumping her back leg up and down like she would, if she could, scratch behind her ear herself.
McKynna obliged. "Right. Just let it go. Focus on what makes sense, not on what doesn’t. We’re going to put those evildoers in their place tomorrow at the rally. They’re not touching one more acre of our forest. Not that greedy little Ski Area. Not nobody. Right?”
Pepper yawned.
“Right. Me too.” Finishing her business in the bathroom, McKynna got up and pulled herself together.
Pushing the dog out of the room and down the hallway, she closed her office door on the way by. "Go on. Move it. Let's get back to bed.”
When they made it to the bedroom door, both hesitated.
Pepper looked back and forth between the front door and McKynna, panting hopefully.
McKynna looked into the bedroom -- at the bed that was there to curl up in, the blankets that were there to snuggle up under, the pillows that were there to dream upon.
An icy chill went down her spine. No, she didn’t need a bed to see the sights, but they did come faster in the space hovering between awake and asleep.
"Outside? Okay, but just for a minute.”
McKynna grabbed Pepper’s metal collar, complete with required dog tags, off the coat rack by the front door where she always left them at bedtime. The sound of things rattling around the house in the middle of the night was not her favorite tune.
Slipping the collar over Pepper’s head, McKynna rubbed her hand under the dog’s chin.
Tail wagging, Pepper panted in a big smile.
"I’m not kidding, just for a minute.”
More wagging and panting.
McKynna grabbed her coat off the hook.
Pepper barked.
"All right already. You want me to catch pneumonia?"
Not very likely, McKynna determined as she opened the solid oak front door and let in a burst of warm, pine-scented summer mountain air.
She opened the screen door and stepped out of harm's way as Pepper shot past her and out onto the front deck.
Feeling the chilly air tease around bare thighs, McKynna grunted as she struggled into her jacket. "Just a sec. I can't just go out in my jammies. I have to do this properly, I am..." she watched Pepper take the deck steps in a jump, then fly around the house toward the backyard, "a therapist and I must conduct myself appropriately at all times," she yelled after the dog.
She looked down at herself. No shoes. Bare legs up to the end of her baby blue nightshirt, well below the waist-length blue cotton jacket she had almost fully wriggled into. “Well, during the day anyway," she muttered.
Stepping out onto the deck, McKynna made her way to the green-and-white double-seater swing. Turning herself around, she sat down under its canopy.
Pushing against the redwood-stained pine deck with her feet, she pulled her long legs up onto the swing and let it carry her back and forth.
Looking down, she noticed that her legs were getting more tanned. Pushing away the thought that it might just be an illusion of darkness, she smiled anyway. It's not like she spent a great deal of time tanning, just enough to wash away the chalky pall of a long Colorado mountain winter.
Still, there was something about a tan that made McKynna feel a little healthier, a little more able to climb mountains in short shorts, a little more likely to attract that elusive mate and, all in all, a little happier.
Of course, she also knew that if she kept it up too long, it would just make her look older and more wrinkled.
Wrinkled.
The sight of her skin, darker than she could ever tan it and older than she would ever want it to be, flashed back through her mind.
Damn, what the hell was that?
“No. No. No.” She shoved the image from her mind.
It shoved back.
She saw the river far below her feet.
She felt the fire at her back.
Felt herself jumping. Dying.
“Shit.” She closed and opened her eyes, forcing the imagery to disappear. Was that how she was going to die? Jumping to her death to save herself from a pack of vicious dogs and a wildfire?
Well, if that were true, at least she’d be a hundred years old at the time. The body was old.
Her body.
It had to be her body. She felt herself inside of it.
Not watching.
In many of her visions, she just watched. Watched other people in terror.
In pain.
In danger.
This time she felt the terror in her heart as she raced from the fire. She felt the muscles in her legs tighten and tense as she jumped. She felt the thickness of darkness wrap around her as she fell.
Shit.
At least clients like Kate just had to go back to a point somewhere along their lifeline, or lifelines, to an experience that caused their pain. They faced it. They experienced it again in the light of adult understanding, and then they let it go.
Freedom.
Her trauma attacked her from any which direction in the time line. Punishing her with things she couldn’t understand or control or change. Punishing her, it often seemed, just for fun.
She looked up at millions of stars scattered from one black mountain peak to the next on the horizon and inhaled the peace such beauty always offered her.
Wasting even two more seconds trying to figure out such nonsense wasn’t going to help her in any way. She saw what she saw. And, eventually, what she saw happened. Somewhere.
Some time.
Great.
Dogs and fire.
Jumping and death.
Just great.
Unfortunately, it wasn’t like she had a choice about wasting time on such things. The visions came whether she beckoned them or not.
Eyes open. Eyes closed. Relentless.
And it wasn’t like she could reason her way around whatever uncontrollable darkness was heading her way.
She’d never been able to do that. Never would be able to.
The image of the wild white dog with the searing black eyes jumped into her mind.
“I don’t think so.” Shaking the dog loose, she forced herself to look up and down the street.
At anything. At everything. Filling her mind with real tangible things she could see without terror or dread.
Pepper shot around the side of the house and up to the edge of the deck. Immediately sensing McKynna’s dark mood, she slammed on her brakes and stared, head lowered, at McKynna’s feet.
"What? You want an engraved invitation? Come on."
Panting into a smile, the dog jumped up the three stairs in one leap and trotted over to the front of the swing.
Putting her legs down, McKynna patted the space next to her. “Up.”
Pepper jumped up and plopped her paws and head down on McKynna's lap, and the rest of her eighty-pound body down on the swing.
Comforted by the familiar furry warmth, McKynna pushed off again, setting the swing to swinging as she looked at the back of the street in front of her.
Right. Normal things.
Like the same cars parked in the same spots, and the same buildings standing in the same lots facing the same strange damn direction.
After many years, McKynna still thought the layout of Rio D'Elena was odd. The front of her block, Coffeepot Road, faced the back of the next block, Lost Dog Road. Or, more specifically, the back of Benson's Big-Mart, the Rio Dee Laundromat, and the High Winds Cafe.
Two blocks back from Lake Malloy.
In fact, all of the blocks in Rio were stacked like rows in an amphitheater facing the pool of water at the heart of Apex County.
Nearly five thousand feet lower in elevation, down in Denver, where she spent most of her time growing up and where everything was much more normal, the front of one block usually faced the front of the next block. All the "back" stuff was hidden away in the middle of the block where decent folks didn't have to spend all of their free time staring at it.
She forced herself to trace out the red-brick pattern of the back of the grocery store in her mind, instead of the curve of the white dog’s nose.
Trying to push the fear away, she instead pushed off harder on the swing.
Much harder.
Unhappy with the jarring movement, Pepper sat up.
"Lay down or get down."
Pepper jumped down onto the deck.
"Fine."
Jerking her attention away from McKynna, the dog stared down the street, nose and ears on sudden alert.
“What?”
Following the dog's gaze, McKynna sensed, before she heard, the wall of wind coming for them.
Collecting energy and force as it surged forward, teasing and taunting, chasing away the gentle breezes in its wake, it set live aspen leaves to chattering and twittering, and fallen leaves to skimming and skipping along the darkened street.
Reaching a plastic bottle that had recently escaped an overflowing trashcan, the wind kicked and prodded it down into the rain gutter.
Tensing, McKynna waited for its arrival. As it twirled up the steps of the deck and moved toward her, she felt the wind's icy fingers skim across her face and dance through her hair.
She shivered as it continued on across her deck, back down into the grass, and then up toward old lady Winnie's house next door.
McKynna felt as cold as the snow from the top of the peaks that had borne this wind.
As cold as ice.
It was coming.
She wasn't sure how or when or even why, but she didn’t need her mother to tell her it was coming.
She knew down deep, and without a doubt, that it most definitely was coming.
Whatever the hell it was.
***
CHAPTER FOUR
Yeah, McKynna reminded herself, she could take a little pride in the fact that she’d planned the rally.
Still, everyone in the world didn’t need to know that.
In fact, no one really needed to know that.
Eyes down, McKynna sauntered up toward the back of the crowd. A crowd gathered together on the freshly paved parking lot in front of the U.S. Forest Service office in Rio D'Elena for the sole purpose of questioning the proposed cancerous spread of the Trenchera Ski Area into the otherwise undisturbed Ute National Forest behind the town, a.k.a., their backyard.
"Yeah, like the Forest Service isn't already in bed with the Ski Area,” snarled a voice from behind her.
A crowd obviously starting to get a little annoyed.
Cool, McKynna smiled. A little angry dissent was just what the therapist ordered. Anything to keep the Trenchera Ski Area Corporation from destroying more land. Untouched land behind her town that was far better off just as it was, wild and free. Public land that every American owned and that certainly didn’t need to be carved up and destroyed in order to keep already bulging bank accounts of a few Ski Area execs from expanding even more.
As if the huge freaking Ski Area already dissecting a large chunk of Apex County wasn’t enough.
Jerks.
“Since the proposed Ski Area expansion is on public land, you all have a say in what happens on that land. And, as I mentioned already, we’re in the very early stages of determining whether or not the expansion behind Rio is even appropriate for that section of the forest.”
McKynna's eyes flew up. The words weren’t that loud or that strong, that threatening or that annoying, but their effect on the center of her spine was unnerving.
Did she know him?
Peering between the backsides of a man and a woman holding hands, she caught a glimpse of a man in green.
Standing alone.
Up front.
Facing the crowd.
Unable to resist the urge, she slithered her way around the couple until she was standing one row closer to the front.
“We will be taking comments officially next week at the Town Hall meeting.”
His voice was clear. Warm.
Familiar.
She moved forward through another batch of people.
“Thursday evening at 7:30.”
Another row forward.
She couldn’t remember ever meeting any Forest Service people. None as clients. None as friends.
Still, she definitely knew this guy.
Definitely.
Giving up moving from one row to the next, she tossed out any lingering resistance and gunned herself all the way through to the front of the crowd.
At least, she consoled herself, being in front would make it harder for people behind her to see her face.
Which was better.
Considering that therapists weren’t supposed to be political.
Therapists were supposed to be above it all.
Neutral. Rational. Professional.
Handsome.
But she definitely didn’t know him.
Standing front and center now, McKynna could not take her eyes off the one and only public servant who had so far ventured out of the ominous double-decker building crafted of red brick and gray river rock.
The man in green.
Tall. Dark wavy hair. Brown eyes.
Yummy.
Staring at him as he sifted through some paperwork, she filtered in what felt good. His looks. The warmer than usual mountain morning sunshine resting on the back of her head and shoulders. The crisp breeze blowing in off Lake Malloy just a few hundred yards behind her.
Letting slide the acrid smell of parking lot tar and the growing hostility emanating from the crowd now behind her, she focused her attention on him.
Not too hard now that she could see him so well.
And he could see her so well.
He looked up from his paperwork and smiled.
Right at her.
She took a step backward, and bumped into a rather large, immovable man who then, ever so gently, bumped her back forward and out of his space.
Nope.
No going back now. She was stuck.
Making the best of it, she narrowed her vision until she could read the polished silver name tag pinned to the man in green’s chest. “J. Ketchan.”
Didn’t ring any bells.
Still, he seemed so familiar.
She moved her eyes from the crisp uniform to his smile-ripened face, and something in the center of her gut told her that she most definitely knew him.
Or should definitely get to know him.
Definitely.
"We appreciate your comments, but there’s still plenty of time to be heard on this subject,” J. Ketchan said, focused solely on McKynna.
Matching her gaze of uncertain recognition, he seemed to be speaking to her directly.
McKynna resisted the urge to nod, in case he wasn't.
Speaking to her. Directly.
She did note, curiously pleased, that he could slide from a frown to a grin in no time flat.
Amazing what blue skies, warm sunshine, and rampant hormones could do for her disposition. Heebie jeebies about dogs and fires aside, it was a beautiful morning and McKynna felt grounded and alert.
And quite interested in a man in green.
"Bull shit," an angry male voice announced from the back of the crowd.
“It’s already a done deal,” another angry voice shouted.
McKynna resisted the urge to look behind her.
Squelching hormones, she stood up straighter.
Right.
Of course.
They were right. Blue skies and white clouds aside, or because of them, she was here for a reason.
Yeah, she probably did know him from somewhere. Mr. J. Ketchan. So what. Standing there behind his government-gray metal folding table and chair, he represented a potential enemy.
From the moment McKynna had discovered Trenchera's greedy plot to ooze out onto another five-thousand acres of the untouched forest behind her town, she had become more and more righteously angry.
To put it mildly.
After stomping around, swearing like it was the only language she knew, and envisioning stuffing appropriate Trenchera big-wigs into tiny little cells for the rest of their inappropriate little lives, McKynna had kicked it into high gear.
She had taken a stand in front of all three present members of the Wednesday night meeting of the local chapter of OneEarth, an environmental group she'd been with for nearly two years, and revealed the impending devastation as well as the need for immediate action.
Immediately all those present in the cramped room in the basement of Rio’s haunted old Town Hall, including the current Chapter President, Martha Hewitt, gave McKynna the go ahead to further study the situation and report back.
McKynna one-upped the ante and, with their avowed support, pledged to plan a rally that would put the word of the proposed expansion out to the people she hoped would care.
The public who owned the forests and the land.
Something the Ski Area would not appreciate at this early stage of the preferred behind-the-scenes political game.
Too bad.
She had succeeded.
She had taken out ads in the newspapers of all three county towns: Rio D'Elena, Ranson, and Trenchera.
She had mailed leaflets to every Post Office Box in Apex County, which was the only way any mail reached the mountain residents.
In the name of OneEarth.
All to the credit of Martha Hewitt, which was the only way it could be if McKynna wanted to remain anonymous in the political dog-fighting arena.
Besides, she really didn't mind that the twiggy thin,
fake-blonde, arrogant socialite, Martha Hewitt, now standing up front next to J. Ketchan, was taking all the credit for the rally.
Especially since the crowd was getting a little cantankerous and Martha now stood dead center in the line of fire.
Especially since two Apex County Sheriff's spotless grey-and-blue cars and one muddy black Rio D'Elena Police car idled sullenly against nearby curbs waiting for, McKynna could only guess, trouble.
"We're just now starting the NEPA process," J. Ketchan stated, shifting his gaze out into the crowd.
"Yes, yes, the NEPA process," Martha said. "Why don't you explain that to everyone?"
"Yeah, why don't you start explaining," a voice from somewhere behind and to the left of McKynna demanded.
"NEPA," J. said, in a much more acceptable tone than Martha's second-grade teacher’s tone, "is the National Environmental Policy Act. Under this act, in this case, we are required to do an Environmental Impact Statement, an EIS, to assess the potential impacts to the environment."
"We’ll tell you what the impact to the environment is going to be," the same voice said. "It's going to carve up more mountains so some frozen idiots can see how fast they can get from the bar at top of the mountain to the bar at the bottom.”
"We will,” J. Ketchan said, not skipping a beat, "be assembling a team of specialists, an Interdisciplinary Team, to study measurable impacts on the environment."
"In English please," a petite well-dressed older woman in peach and cream, standing next to McKynna, asked.
J. Ketchan hesitated for a second, his face expressing his belief that, as far as he could tell, he had been speaking English.
When he began again, he did his best to correct the problem. He spoke slower and with greater emphasis. "The ID team, Botanists, Biologists, Archaeologists, will conduct surveys to determine if there will be significant impacts to recreation opportunities, wildlife, plant life, wetlands, air and visual quality, and cultural resources. Trenchera has prepared a draft Master Development Plan which the Forest Service will evaluate, along with public input, to determine...”
"How about just don't do it," someone offered.
"Well, actually," J. Ketchan replied, “there is usually a No Action alternative which, if selected by the Forest Service, would mean that the status quo will be maintained."
The older woman, the one who wasn't sure of J. Ketchan's ability to speak English, stomped her foot. "Status quo, you mean you will leave it the way God created it."
"Yes, ma'am. That is an alternative to the proposed action."
“That’s public land. How come one private company gets to carve it up for their own personal profit?”
“Currently,” J. Ketchan answered, “public forests in this country are managed to best meet the needs of multiple users.”
“Not that damn many Americans ski, can even afford to ski, even on their own so-called public land.”
“A great deal of land here in the mountains was set aside for that specific potential use. However, as I said, it’s far from a done deal. It is our job now to determine if there’s a need for the proposed expansion and to ensure, if it does occur, that it doesn’t adversely affect the environment.”
A balding, middle-aged man in green hiking shorts, brown hiking boots, and white t-shirt that read, "Hike for Life," put up his hand. "You said these people, your specialists, would be looking for significant impacts on the environment, who gets to decide what is significant?"
McKynna smiled. Good question. She looked J. Ketchan square in the eye and held her gaze firm.
With clients, she did it to engender trust.
With her dog, she did it to show who was boss.
She wasn't sure which was more appropriate under the current circumstances, but she held her gaze firm anyway.
J. Ketchan responded with a direct gaze of his own, directed at her. "Well, there are some measurable standards set by law, for example under the Clean Air and Water Acts." Hesitating, he shifted his gaze back to the crowd. "And the specialists in each field also have their own guidelines."
"You mean their price," the man in the back growled. "And just exactly how much are you guys making off this deal anyway?"
McKynna watched J. Ketchan shift his attention toward the back of the crowd, locking his sights on the man, she assumed, who had just spoken.