The Impossible Coin (The Downwinders Book 2) (3 page)

They were on foot, leaving their
bikes at the mouth of the canyon, following a creek bed. When they started into
the canyon, it seemed easier to walk it than to bring in the bikes – the ground
was rocky and the angle a little too steep in some places. Winn wasn’t sure how
long they had been in the canyon, but it seemed like a long time. It just kept
going.

“There’s no cave here,” Winn said.
“Let’s go back.”

“How do you know?” Brent said,
pressing on. “We’re nowhere near the end of this canyon. It could be just up
ahead.”

“What if someone steals our
bikes?” Winn asked.

“Way out here?” Brent asked.
“There’s no one around.”

“This canyon might go on for
miles,” Winn said. “We gotta stop at some point. Each step we take makes
getting home even longer.”

“Look,” Brent said, stopping and
turning to face his friend. “I’ve given in to you on almost everything on this
treasure hunt. I’m not going to stop looking in this canyon after we’ve just
entered it. We’ve hardly gone into it.”

“What do you mean you’ve given
in?”

“I wanted to map things out, but
you insisted on just winging it. You realize that means we’ll probably waste
time backtracking over places we’ve already been?”

“I don’t like maps, they’re
boring,” Winn said.

Brent turned around and kept
walking. Winn reluctantly followed him. They walked another hundred feet before
Winn spoke again.

“Someone could steal our bikes,
they’re just sitting out there.”

“They’re lying flat on the ground,
no one’s going to see them.”

Brent soldiered on, Winn ten feet
behind him. They wound their way around rocks and shrub. The canyon was a
little cooler than the desert floor, and its sides were now rising high enough
that they cast shade. There was no water in the creek bed they were following.

“I wonder what the forecast was
for today,” Winn said. “I’d hate to get caught in a flash flood in here.”

Brent stopped and turned around
again. “Look, if you want to go, just go. You’re always ditching me anyway.
I’ll look for it on my own. We’ve only been looking for a week, and you’re
always whining about something.”

Winn knew he was becoming less and
less interested in their treasure hunt as the days progressed. The first day
had been fun, and so had the second. But as the feeling of obligation to search
weighed on him, it had become less fun, and now just seemed like another chore
he had to perform. Brent’s dedication to the search had kept him going, but it
was becoming boring.

“We could go to Gale’s house, see
if he’d let us play PS2,” Winn offered.

“I’ll buy a thousand PS2s with the
gold I’m going to find,” Brent said, turning and continuing on.

Winn followed along, knowing that
at some point Brent would have to call it a day and turn around. Winn’s mom
didn’t care where he was or what he was doing, but Brent’s father was insistent
that Brent be home for dinner promptly at 6pm. Winn figured it was at least a
half hour back to the trailer court, so Brent would have to stop soon if he
wanted to make it back in time. He knew Brent didn’t want to piss his father
off.

A cool breeze began to blow down
the canyon, and Winn felt it hit the sweat on his face. The canyon was a nice
place to be, even if their gold search was boring. There were trees here and
there, real trees – not the scraggly kind you saw out on the desert floor. And
things smelled different, thanks to the moving air. The canyon was a little
farther from home than they usually went, but they’d already searched the
closer places, and Brent was insistent that the iron door mine wouldn’t be out
in open desert anyway.

“Winn!” Brent called. “Winn!”

Winn looked up; Brent was twenty
feet ahead of him, standing still, looking at something to his right. Winn
caught up with him and looked. He didn’t see anything.

“What?” Winn asked.

“You don’t see that?” Brent said,
pointing. “The hole? Come on!”

Brent crossed the dry creek bed
and walked up the other side of the canyon, into the rocks. As they got closer,
Winn began to see a shadow distinguish itself as a hole, maybe two and a half
feet wide.

“I knew the canyons were the best
place to look!” Brent said. He knelt down and looked into the hole. Winn joined
him.

“It doesn’t go very far,” Winn
said, seeing rock a few feet inside the opening, and hoping this would bring conclusion
to their exploration for the day.

“That’s not the end of it,” Brent
said. He crawled forward into the hole and called back. “It dips down here a
little bit, and it goes on after that. Come on!”

Winn watched as Brent’s feet
disappeared beyond the dip, and he was gone. He followed him, crawling through
the small opening, and dipping down. The little tunnel continued on for another
ten feet before it widened and was tall enough to stand up in. The light from
the entrance was almost gone, so Winn pulled out a mini mag light Marty had
loaned him for their hunts. He turned it on.

“Wow!” Brent said. They were
standing in a passageway about eight feet around. It continued on ahead of
them. “This might be it! We might have found the iron door mine!”

“I don’t see any iron door,” Winn
said, becoming nervous. Something about the cave bothered him. He wasn’t
exactly sure what it was, but it made his skin crawl.

“It’s probably further in the
mine,” Brent said, pulling his own mag light out of his pocket and proceeding
further into the cave. “Come on!”

They walked another thirty feet
until they came to an enlargement in the tunnel, which formed a room about thirty
feet wide. Brent was scanning the walls for an iron door. Winn noticed a crack
in the back of the room that led deeper. To get through it, they’d have to
slide themselves sideways. The idea of wedging himself into the rock unnerved
him.

“Wow, can you believe this?” Brent
said, glancing around the room, shining his flashlight at the ceiling. “I
wonder why there’s no bats in here.”

“They might be deeper in there,”
Winn said, pointing to the crack. Brent walked over to shine his flashlight
into it.

Winn continued to feel uneasy. It
wasn’t just the claustrophobic feeling welling up inside him. He felt that
there was something else in the room, something he couldn’t see but was there
anyway, moving. He looked down at the floor of the room and saw bones scattered
around.

“I think we should leave,” he said
to Brent.

Brent was craning his neck to see
further down the crack. “This opens up into another tunnel,” Brent said. “Let’s
keep going.”

“No, we should head back,” Winn
said. “You’ve got to get home for dinner. If we leave now, you’ll barely make
it back in time.”

“What time is it?” Brent said,
turning to look at Winn.

Winn checked his watch. “Five
fifteen.”

“Crap,” Brent said. “We’ve got to
come back and go deeper! I want to explore this place!”

Winn felt something in the pit of
his stomach, and he felt a little dizzy. He was afraid he might fall over, so
he sat down on the ground. The air in the room seemed dank and moldy, hard to
breathe. He glanced to his right and saw another animal bone. It looked bright
white in the beam of his mag light.

“Winn?” Brent asked. “What’s
wrong?”

“I feel sick,” he said. “Dizzy.”

“I wonder if there’s something in
the air,” Brent said. “I read that there can be gasses in these mines that can
kill you.”

“Great,” Winn said sarcastically.
He knew it wasn’t a gas. It was something else, something unseen, moving around
them. He closed his eyes. “Just let me rest here for a second, and we’ll
leave.”

“OK,” Brent said, swinging his
flashlight around the room again.

Winn felt the same tug that he
felt when he was at home, in bed, ready to leave his body and enter the River.
He wondered if he’d see what was in the room with them if he did it here.
Brent’s
here, he can watch my body, make sure I’m safe,
he thought. He felt himself
slip into the flow.

The room was suddenly brighter.
Brent had become a dark form without features, and the light of his flashlight
looked more like a shadow now. He turned and saw the opposite wall of the room.
He felt the hair on the back of his neck rise, and he fought an urge to return
to his body and bolt from the room.

There was a person holding the
carcass of an animal – it looked like a mountain lion. The animal’s throat had
been cut, and its blood was spilling onto the floor, dripping over its face.
The person holding the mountain lion was lifting it by the back legs, helping
the blood drain from its throat.

Winn felt himself starting to gag,
and he was about to return to his body, when he thought the person was talking
to him.

Who are you?
he heard, but
the person holding the mountain lion hadn’t turned to look at him. He was still
focused on draining the blood from the animal.

I’m Winn,
he felt himself
responding.

Padre Kino, oh dios,
he
heard from behind. He turned, and saw a figure lying on the ground. It was a
man, dressed in long black robes. The man was afraid. He wasn’t addressing the
man with the animal; he looked more like he was praying. Winn could see a gash
on the man’s leg, freely bleeding.

Protejas tu siervo. Sanes mis
heridas,
the man whispered.

Winn turned back to the figure
holding the mountain lion, knife in hand. It looked like a man, but its features
were hard to make out. As he watched, the figure slowly raised his head, as
though he had heard something. It turned to look at him. Winn knew it had seen
him – not his physical body, but his River body.

He looked angry. Winn felt every
danger warning receptor in his brain fire, and he was scared.

Winn dropped out of the River and
struggled to his feet. “We have to leave here, now!” he said to Brent, and
turned, running back down the passageway that led to the entrance. He could
hear Brent following him, calling after him to wait.

“Come on!” he yelled back at
Brent, not stopping. He reached the dip and dove under it, then scrambled up
and out of the hole, emerging into the canyon. Brent was right behind him.

He stood up and turned around,
looking at the small hole, wondering if the figure he’d seen draining the blood
from the mountain lion was going to follow them out. He was breathing heavily.

“What was that?” Brent said. “You
scared me!”

“There’s something in there,” Winn
said. “I saw it. It saw me.”

“I didn’t see anything,” Brent
said.

“It was killing a mountain lion,”
Winn said, gasping for air. “It was draining its blood onto the floor. It
turned and saw me.”

“There was no one in there with
us,” Brent said. “I didn’t see anyone!”

“It was in the River,” Winn said.

“Oh.”

Winn could sense that Brent was
skeptical.

“I really saw it,” Winn said. “He
was holding a knife. He was going to come after us.”

Brent was a good enough friend
that he didn’t scoff to Winn’s face. “Come on,” Brent said. “I gotta get back
for dinner.”

“You believe me, don’t you?” Winn asked,
following him as they started back down the canyon.

“I don’t know,” Brent said. “Maybe
you just wanted to leave the cave, so you made it up.”

“I didn’t, I swear,” Winn said.

“How would I know?” Brent asked.
“It’s not like I can see it too.”

“I’m not making it up, Brent, I
swear,” Winn said. He slipped the mini mag light back into his pocket, and felt
it stop before it got all the way in. He reached inside his pocket, and pulled
out a nickel. He held it between his fingers.
I’ve been out of money for a
week,
he thought.
Where did this come from?

As he held the nickel, he felt
something funny growing in the pit of his stomach which rapidly expanded in
intensity. He thought maybe he was going to throw up, but he didn’t exactly
feel sick, and there were no convulsions. The feeling spread rapidly to his
arms and legs, making him want to lie down and sleep. He looked at the nickel,
seeing Brent move on in the distance. The feeling rose to his chest and up his
neck, and when it hit his head, he felt like he wanted to scream with joy. He’d
never felt so happy in his entire life. Gradually the feeling began to subside,
leaving him with a calm contentedness he’d never experienced before. He looked
again at the nickel. Whatever had just washed over him, he knew it came from there.

He slipped it back into his pants
pocket and raced to catch up with Brent.

When they reached the trailer
court, Brent said goodbye to Winn, but stopped as soon as he got five feet
away.

“What?” Winn asked.

“Jeanette’s out,” Brent said.

“So what?”

“So, I have to walk right in front
of her,” Brent said. “Half the time she sics her dog after me.”

“Ears?” Winn said. “Ears is so old
he can’t even run. You could walk and still outrun Ears.”

“He’s a nasty dog, and I’m afraid
I’m going to kick him in front of her, and she’ll be even more pissed.”

“She’s harmless,” Winn said. “And
so is Ears.”

“My dad says she used to be a
prostitute, and she got some disease that was never treated properly, and it
went into her brain and that’s why she’s crazy. If she’s crazy, she could
attack me.”

“You’re insane if you believe
that,” Winn said, but not completely discounting the possibility. “You want me
to come with you?”

Brent smiled weakly at him.

“Alright,” Winn said, catching up
with him and walking down the drive, past Winn’s trailer. Jeanette was two more
trailers down, on the left. He could see her sitting on her lawn chair, facing
the road. Winn sensed Brent tensing up as they approached her.

“Hi Jeanette,” Winn said as they
passed. Brent kept his face forward, not wanting to look over at her and
somehow invite her wrath. Winn saw that Ears was sitting quietly at her feet.
Even from this distance, he could hear Ears snorting as he tried to breathe.

 “You boys got any cheese for me
today?” Jeanette said.

“No cheese,” Winn said, looking
from the dog to her. She wore thick glasses that made her eyeballs look very
small. Then he turned to look at Brent, who glanced at him. Seeing Winn’s
smile, he smiled back.

“Don’t you little pricks laugh at
me, I can see you!” Jeanette said. “Get ’em, Ears! Ears! Get ’em!”

Winn watched as Ears lifted his
small head from the ground, looked up at them, and put it back down.

“Like I told you,” Winn whispered
to Brent.

“Don’t you go whispering around me,
I know the dirty things you boys say,” Jeanette said, her voice rising in pitch
and volume. “You both need to learn respect. If you come around here again,
I’ll box your ears.”

“Brent lives over there,” Winn
said, turning to her and pointing down the drive at Brent’s trailer. “We have
to go by here to get to his home.”

“No, you don’t,” Jeanette said,
struggling to rise up out of her chair. Her long brown hair had been
haphazardly pinned to her head, and it made her look crazy, especially when she
stood and the sunlight hit it. “You can go the long way around, and leave me in
peace!”

“We’re not going the long way,”
Winn said. “This is our street too.”

“You’ll go around if you know
what’s good for you! I’ll sic my dog on you!”

“If Ears comes anywhere near me,
I’m gonna kick him!” Brent said, feeling bold with Winn by his side.

Winn turned to him. “No, you’re
not. If you kick him, she’ll call the cops.”

“Oh, don’t hurt my doooog,” she
said, drawing out the word as she finished standing up. She was suddenly near
tears, looking right and left. “Have you seen him? Have you seen my doooog?”

“He’s right there, behind you,”
Winn said, pointing.

“Oh!” she said, turning to see
Ears resting on the ground. She bent over slowly and scooped up the dog. “Go
on, you troublemakers.” She started waddling back to her trailer.

Winn turned back to Brent. “See? She’s
so old, she can’t even remember her dog is right there next to her. And Ears
could care less that we were here. I don’t know what you’re so afraid of.”

“She swears at me sometimes,”
Brent said, walking down the street toward his trailer.

“What does she say?” Winn asked.

“I’m not allowed to repeat it,”
Brent said.

“Come on, tell me,” Winn said,
following him. “Swearing doesn’t bother me.”

Brent looked around to see if anyone
might overhear him. He leaned forward to Winn, and whispered, “She called me a
cocksucker.”

Winn snickered. Brent pulled back
and looked angry.

“What?” Winn said. “It’s funny.”

“Not to me,” Brent said, turning
and continuing down the street.

“She’s really just a crazy old
woman who says funny things,” Winn said, sincerely trying to ease Brent’s
concerns about Jeanette so he could walk past her without being afraid. “You
should just laugh at her, like I do.”

“You think everything is funny,”
Brent said as he reached his trailer. “Some things are serious.”

“Yeah, but not her,” Winn said.

“Same time tomorrow?” Brent said.

“Brent!” came a loud male voice
from the window of his trailer. They both knew it was Brent’s father. “Get in
this house right now!”

Winn saw a panicked look pass over
Brent’s face. Brent handed him the mini mag light he was carrying, and then he
turned and ran to the door of their trailer, waving to Winn as he stepped
inside. Winn looked up at the trailer, and was startled when he could faintly
make out the face of Brent’s father in the open window, staring at him through
the screen. He looked both stern and calm at the same time, standing as still
as a statue.
He’s been looking at me,
Winn thought, and it scared him.
The dark eyes seemed angry. A day of stubble on his face made him look tough
and mean.

“You get on out of here,” the face
said.

Winn turned and ran back toward
his trailer. He checked his watch: it was six-ten. They were late getting home.

Winn knew his mom didn’t care
about him ever being home, but he knew Brent’s father was a stickler about it.
He hoped Brent wouldn’t get grounded.

He ran all the way to his trailer,
and when he found it was locked, he used his key to get in. He immediately
heard the moans from the back of the trailer, and knew his mother was
entertaining someone in her bedroom.

Not wanting to hear more, he
grabbed his CD Walkman and ran back out the door. He decided to climb the back
of the trailer and up into the tree, to lie for a while on the platform up in
the branches. He took care to step lightly as he scaled the back of the
trailer, but he could feel the trailer rocking under him as he climbed, and he knew
his mother was too occupied to notice him, even if he were to be noisy about
it.

Once he pulled himself up and onto
the platform, he kneeled and checked the CD in the Walkman – same disc he’d had
in it for weeks now. He turned it on and put the headphones over his head. He
had a view of the trailer court, and he glanced down to Brent’s trailer,
wondering if he was in trouble for being late. He looked over to Jeanette’s
trailer – she had not come back out yet. She usually spent most of the evening
outside, slowly sipping on a bottle of booze.
She’ll be back out soon enough
,
he thought.

As the spacy guitar strains of the
first song grew louder in his head, he turned to the left and looked down
toward Gale’s trailer. He was sure Gale was inside, playing Resident Evil. Part
of him wanted to go see if Gale would let him play with him, but another part
of him was enjoying being up in the tree, looking down at everything, listening
as the acoustic guitar kicked in, and then the drums. Now he didn’t want to
stop listening, so he sat back off his knees, onto his butt. He looked to the
left again, and saw all the way down to Marty’s trailer. The manicured yard
looked perfect, as always.
I should show the nickel to Marty,
he
thought.

The nickel! He lay down fully on
the plywood and slipped his hand into his pants pocket, past the mini mag
light, and found the coin. He pulled it out, and held it up to his face,
examining it. It looked like a normal nickel, shiny and new. As he held it, he
felt the same feelings he’d felt earlier, starting in his stomach and radiating
out, slowly making him feel happy and calm. When the feelings reached his head,
he almost shouted. He felt himself slip out of his body and into the River,
turning to watch himself holding the coin. It glowed, but still looked like a
nickel. Then an impression came to him; it felt like a voice speaking inside
his head, but he couldn’t tell if it was a man’s voice or a woman’s voice. It
was loud and clear and strong.

Three days.

He slipped back into his body,
felt the edge of the coin pressing into his fingers.

What does
three days
mean?
he wondered.
I definitely need to show this to Marty.

He kept looking at the coin,
waiting for the feeling to come again. It didn’t. He sat up and placed the coin
on the plywood of the platform, watching it carefully. Then he picked it up
again.

The feeling came back, once again
starting in his stomach and radiating out. He let it pass through him, this
time anticipating the overwhelming sense of happiness. He dropped the coin onto
the plywood and picked it back up again, feeling the cycle start over. He laid
back down on the plywood, and repeated the process, picking up the coin for the
feelings to generate, and once they were over, dropping the coin back onto the
plywood. He did it over and over, like an addict.

Then he reached for the coin, and
it was gone.

He sat up, looking around the
platform, searching for the nickel. It wasn’t there. It had disappeared.

He went from a euphoric state to a
state of anxiety in seconds. He searched again, but it was nowhere to be seen.

Maybe it rolled off,
he
thought.
I set it down wrong, on its side, and it rolled. It rolled right
off the platform, and is under the tree somewhere.

He thought about climbing down the
tree, but then remembered how the coin had glowed when he was in the River. He
let himself slip into the flow, and let his body drift below the treehouse and
over the ground just under it. There were grass and weeds at the base of the
tree, and around the other side of the trunk was a fence, the boundary of the
trailer court. He enjoyed the feeling of drifting right through the fence as he
looked for the glow. He couldn’t see it anywhere.

Panic set in. He started over,
scanning the ground carefully, methodically going back and forth, looking at
the grass while hovering just a couple of inches over it. He passed back
through the fence, and kept looking. It wasn’t there.

He searched for several minutes
more before he began to worry about being away from his body. He dropped out of
the flow and found himself back up on the platform, the headphones still on his
head, the music still pounding in his ears, and no nickel anywhere to be seen.

He tried to imagine, given the
slight angle of the platform, where the nickel might have rolled. He climbed
down, carefully scaling the trailer. His mother was still noisily busy inside.
He landed on the ground and walked under the tree, looking this time with his
real eyes. He looked up to the platform, to the edge he thought was the most
likely part of the treehouse for it to have fallen from. He scoured the ground
below it, pulling out weeds and running his fingers through the grass.

It was gone.

He felt horrible, like he’d lost
something even better than Brent’s iron door treasure.
How could I have been
so stupid?
he thought.
The greatest coin in the world, and I lost it!

It was starting to get dark, and
he didn’t feel like climbing back up to the platform, so he walked into the
trailer and turned on the TV, turning it up loud so he didn’t have to hear the
noises coming from the back. He pouted a little, upset with himself over losing
the coin. He had wanted to show it to Brent and Marty. Marty might have even
known what it was. Marty seemed to know about strange things, like the River.

Damnit,
it’s gotta be
out there somewhere,
he thought
. I’ll look again tomorrow. And if I find
it, I won’t be so careless with it next time. I’ll either keep it in my hands,
or in my pocket! Nowhere else!

He used the remote to change the
channel, flipping through stations, looking for something to take his mind off the
lost treasure.