Experience a heart-pumping and thrilling tale of suspense!

  Originally published in THRILLER (2006),

  edited by #1 New York Times bestselling author James Patterson.

  This Thriller Short from bestselling author David Dun combines science with Native American mysticism in his character Kier Wintripp, a member of the Tilok tribe and a spirit walker.

  Kier learns that a friend’s adult grandson disappeared three days ago while exploring the nearby mountains and caves, one of which is a place sacred to the tribe. With Kier’s skills and ancestry, the hope is that he can tap into his grandfather’s spirit walker abilities to find the lost man. But Kier quickly learns that the person he’s seeking has met with an untimely end, and the killer is holding the dead man’s wife hostage.

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  Spirit Walker

  David Dun

  CONTENTS

  Spirit Walker

  DAVID DUN

  Technology and its ills, together with Native American mysticism, contrasts two worlds often at war—science versus back-to-nature values. In his first thriller, Necessary Evil, David Dun spun an action-driven tale of wilderness survival that highlighted this war of the worlds, pitting Kier Wintripp against a ruthless corporate personality using human cloning to achieve medical cures.

  Kier Wintripp is part of the Tilok tribe. Most of Dun’s novels have involved characters from that tribe, which, although fictional, is in many respects based on various factual accounts of Native American life, lore, myth, history and religion. One aspect of Tilok culture is the Talth, a medicine person, part psychologist, part political leader, part judge, an expert on forest-survival arts. The pinnacle of the Talth is propounded by Spirit Walkers. These men come along only once a century and are recognized by their profound intuition concerning the affairs of men and nature. Kier was Dun’s first, and perhaps most striking, Tilok character. A superb woodsman and tracker, a guide to youth, a teacher of the forest arts, he’s also a doctor of veterinary medicine. Science being the ultimate rationalism, in Dun’s novels Kier has many times sought, often unsuccessfully, to find peace in reason.

  This is the story of how he became a Spirit Walker.

  SPIRIT WALKER

  The old people said it was the spirit of a man unloved as a child, roaming the deepest forests of the mountains, but Kier Wintripp didn’t believe in spirits that did the work of psychopaths.

  He stood beneath the big conifers in front of his cabin picking huckleberries as Matty arrived with Jack Mix. A very curious combination. She an old woman, and he a former FBI agent. Matty approached and Kier sensed the tension in her frail body as she gripped his wrists with a grandmother’s love. Mix kept back a respectable few paces.

  “Jake, my grandson, has gone off into the mountains, to the caverns, with Carmen,” Matty said. “They left three days ago before daylight and were returning late the same day.” She stared at her feet. “And there’s another thing.”

  He waited for her to explain.

  “Jake was going to the cliffs, at the top of the caverns.”

  “Below Universe Rock? The sacred place?”

  “It’s wrong. I know.”

  “And they were to return the same day?”

  She nodded. “The next day was my birthday. Jake would never miss his grandmother’s birthday.”

  He knew that was true.

  “You will go?” Matty said, desperation in her voice. “Everyone knows you’re descended from the last Spirit Walker. It’s in you. You can find them.”

  His grandfather had indeed been a Spirit Walker, one of the tribe’s mystics, revered men who came along once in a hundred years. They guided the Talth, advised the tribe, communed with spirits and discerned the hearts of men. Kier intimately knew the forest and taught the young its secrets. He was an ordinary man, half Anglo, half Tilok, but also a veterinarian trained in science, so part of him required the comfort of reason.

  “You’ll go get them,” Matty said again, her voice breaking. “Please.”

  “I’ll go,” Kier assured her. “Spirit Walker or not.”

  “It’s where the ghosts are. Raccoon says he saw a ghost. Robes white as bleached sheets. Jake and Carmen thought maybe Raccoon would be there with the ghosts. That’s why they went.”

  Kier had heard the rumors of ghosts and murder. Fantastical stories that grew under their own weight.

  Mix seemed to be waiting for Matty to leave, but she didn’t. So they walked up on the porch and Kier invited them both to sit. Kier was curious about Mix. He seemed to be hanging around a lot lately. Under the eave, Mix removed his straw hat, revealing cropped brown hair that matched a neat mustache. Mix had made a fine transition from law officer to owner of a local feed store and wildlife photographer, even if he had never quite fit socially with the stranger-shy locals. Like Kier’s wife, Jessie, also an ex-FBI agent, Mix had gladly given up the big city for the backcountry.

  “Some of my friends from the FBI called,” Mix said. “I recommended that they ask for your help. You’re the best forensic tracker around.”

  He caught Mix’s real message. “The FBI isn’t looking for Jake and Carmen. Or ghosts.”

  “You’re right,” Mix replied. “They want to talk to Raccoon. Just yesterday they spoke with me. The couple over in Lassen County a year ago, they never found the girl, and the boy was a cooked pile of meat. That boy’s father was a state senator. Then we had a couple from Humboldt just disappear off the face of the earth. The press is starting to use the words serial killer.”

  “That’s got nothing to do with Raccoon.”

  “Maybe. Maybe not. What can you tell me about him?”

  “We call him Kawa We Ma. A gentle man inside a big body.” He pictured Raccoon as he’d last seen him, wearing a leather flight jacket over deer hide. The man had been born Josiah Morgan, a part-Tilok orphan adopted by the tribe. The nickname came from the port-wine stain on his face that gave him the look of a raccoon’s mask.

  “The tracks the sheriff found, and some other things, were suspicious,” Mix said. “Raccoon disappears for days.”

  “You disappear for days in the woods, too, with your photography.”

  “I come back out. Talk to people. Run a store.”

  “Raccoon talks to the forest,” Kier said. “People don’t understand him, so they fear him. You and I have no idea what it would be like to see a miracle in every blooming flower. Raccoon is a man distracted by miracles. He’s incapable of hurting anyone.”

  “If he isn’t doing anything, then why not track him for them?” Mix asked.

  “Because I don’t want to.”

  Matty faced him. “Raccoon told Carmen that above the caverns, in the cliffs, there’s a cabin with a ghost. Right above Man Jumps.”

  Carmen was Raccoon’s daughter, whom Kier knew the man worshipped. So he believed the information.

  Mix produced a bag of shelled pistachios and offered some. Kier scooped a few, as did Matty. “A cabin would show up on aerial photos,” Mix said.

  Kier shook his head. “It wouldn’t be visible in a cave or hollow. And since it is sacred, no one goes there. Not even rock climbers.”

  “Who would you say Raccoon really cares about?” Mix asked.

  Kier smiled. “That’s a perceptive question for an ex-bureaucrat who sounds like he’s returning to his old ways. My grandfather used to say the difference between a good and an evil man is what he loves. I’m not sure what Raccoon loves, other than Carmen. But, like I said, Raccoon is not a killer.”

  There were more questions, but Kier found that in answering he was repeating himself in a manner he disliked. Finally he said to Mix, “I thought you gave the FBI a flunking grade. Said they didn’t protect the country the way they should. 9/11. The anthrax killer, and all that.”

  “I’ve got my beefs with them, but when it comes to a psychopath, I figure everyone has to pitch in.”

  Kier nodded, as if he understood.

  * * *

  Kissing Jessie and his children goodbye, dispatching hugs all around, and receivi ng the benedictory “be careful,” Kier left for the woods. Three hours later he studied the tracks of Jake and Carmen, which told him a story. From their separation and angle he was certain these two were friends, not a couple. But it was the third set of prints, following theirs, that consumed his attention. They were made by a heavy man in good physical shape. Given the weight, the tireless stride, the smooth of the sole and the way it rounded at the toe, they could have only come from a handmade hide boot. Only a few Tiloks wore them and none were this size, except perhaps for Raccoon and himself.

  The wind molesting the trees made him uneasy. He wondered if the murmur was more of Grandfather’s sense of the presence of another life.

  He allowed his mind to manipulate the puzzle engulfing him. More unease crept through him. Around him rose the towering rock faces of Iron Mountain with its caverns and Man Jumps, a hole in the cliffside. A slow, 360-degree turn brought his senses to high alert. Something man-made, a patch of cloth on the ground, just visible through the trees, caught his attention.

  He inhaled deeply and noticed a strange, meaty smell, something like pot roast.

  Hair rose on his arms.

  He waited, not moving, listening, looking. Then he silently slipped forward and repeated the exercise. Thirty minutes later, after steadily creeping forward, he concluded that no one alive waited for him ahead. The sense taught by his grandfather confounded him. It would not leave him. But he overruled the sensation and entered the camp.

  The first thing he saw was the charred remains of Jake.

  A groan escaped his lips. He tried to divorce from his thoughts the agony that must have been Jake’s last experiences on earth. He searched for signs of Carmen, imagining the terror she’d be feeling. Anger rose in him, forming a familiar determination.

  He studied the fire pit where Jake lay. Given the depth of the ash, the remnants had burned maybe five hours. Probably the killer had watched the campers for a while to savor what was coming. So Kier knew what to do.

  Find the watching spot.

  He backed away from the fire and soaked in the scene. Quickly, he discovered where the killer had waited. Near the stream. And a fishing rod, probably Jake’s, still leaned against a tree. He stared at the prints in the earth. Discernible, but blurred. If he hadn’t seen the same blurs elsewhere in the camp, he would have attributed it to the movements of impatience. If he didn’t know better, he would have said there were two large men making similar tracks.

  Raccoon was here.

  But Kier knew he wasn’t the killer.

  He surveyed the surrounding ground.

  Something small and white caught his gaze. He bent down to examine it. A tiny flake. No. A chip of something. Not really. Much more.

  A piece from a pistachio nut.

  One thought rushed through his mind. Jack Mix.

  He reeled off the possibilities. Mix could have easily made a print that size. He possessed the requisite weight, but to make either he would have been forced to stretch his stride to emulate Raccoon.

  What did this mean?

  He returned to the camp and searched for a sign of struggle or a spot where Carmen might have been tied down, but found nothing. He discovered a blood spatter at the base of the cliff. Fifty feet up the rock wall he spotted a blood smear. He knew what both meant. Jake had tumbled down the cliffs. Then he’d been cooked, like the boy in Lassen County.

  But why?

  To mask something.

  Grandfather’s sense of another life dogged him. But his scientific training reminded him that superstitions achieved nothing. So he circled the camp, searching for an exit track. On the far side lay a tan sheet of paper. He bent down and saw that the sheet was a map. Beneath it laid a Polaroid photo of a woman in her mid-thirties.

  It was Jessie.

  His wife.

  And in her engaging smile he saw the inherent goodness that would incite any killer to want to destroy her. Fear threatened to overwhelm him. The message resonated clear. The killer had known he’d be here and had seized his vulnerability.

  Ignore it.

  He stuffed the picture in his pocket and studied the map. The area depicted was the Wintoon River, with an X marking the location of his cabin. He shuddered, but hesitated. Too obvious.

  Something flashed in the corner of his eye.

  Movement.

  He gazed through the foliage.

  Someone was there.

  He dived into the brush, but a thump knocked him sideways, slamming him into the ground. Crawling on one side, a great river of pain swept down his spine, shoulder and arm. His breath came in gasps. Pain screamed through his mind. A crossbow bolt protruded from his flesh just to the left of his chin. It had traveled upward from behind, piercing his left trapezius muscle between the shoulder and neck, exiting just above the clavicle.

  He struggled to escape the thickets and developed a sort of sliding crawl that enabled him to keep his shoulder rigid. Any movement produced unbearable pain. Finally he slipped into the forest, away from the camp.

  More arrows sliced through the foliage.

  He freed his belt and wrapped it around his hand, forming a leather sheath.

  Reaching above the razor-sharp blades of the arrow, he nestled the leather against the bottom edges, then yanked. The stiff feather fletching ripped through the meat of his trapezius and came away clean. For several minutes he did nothing but hang on to reality and fight nausea. Then his mind started working. He removed some sterile gauze from his backpack and applied it to both wounds.

  The bleeding slowed.

  Thank the Great Spirit.

  He grabbed hold of his emotions, palmed a compact semiautomatic Ruger .22 pistol from his pack and eased twenty feet away.

  The killer was here.

  So he waited.

  But no one came.

  * * *

  Sweating and in pain, Kier finally slipped warily out of the bushes and found tracks exiting the camp. One set of large prints, blurred, and smaller ones—Carmen’s, which showed significant weight on the front of the foot, an indication that the killer might be pulling her. No toe tics, tripping, staggering or the like. She kept up a good stride on a steep incline and the implications were clear. The killer was forcing her deeper into the mountains.

  His injury slowed him, and the notion that he might catch up to them vanished. He found that by keeping his upper body rigid, the muscles in his back bunched and naturally splinted the wound. But the side effect was cramping, and soon muscle spasms forced him to adopt an awkward gait.

  The trail widened.

  He stared down at the prints, but the ground spun from the blood loss. He blinked and steeled his mind, then tried to focus again. Carmen and her captor now walked side by side.

  Clearly, Carmen was now accompanying the killer voluntarily. Without Carmen’s tracks overlapping his, the big tracks became easier to read and they indeed appeared large, like Raccoon’s, but blurred and overlain at times with another track.

  What had his grandfather said?

  Our eyes are guided by our mind. We need both but either can trick us, so we must rely completely on neither. This is why sometimes we must know without thinking and without seeing.

  His mind balked.

  To know was to understand.

  He wanted to argue with the old man, now gone to the land of the dead, but knew that was impossible. He forced the pain from his mind. What was deceiving him? What was he to know?

  Two men, one track.

  But maybe the second man came a day or two later.

  He moved ahead.

  At a fork, a third set of tracks stepped out of Raccoon’s, leaving both men’s tracks unblurred. He kept his balance and fought the shock.

  The killer’s tracks matched his own.

  But they were fresher than the others.

  What was happening?

  He felt like he was living a nightmare. His boot and Raccoon’s boot were nearly the same. Both were made in the traditional Tilok method. Both were large, like back at the camp. Raccoon had apparently come, then later perhaps someone else with a boot perfectly matching. If the killer could copy Raccoon’s boot, he could also copy Kier’s.

  Raccoon was here. But so was Mix.

  He followed tracks that looked like his own for a couple of hundred feet until he hit a dry creek bed. He knew it was a straight shot to Jessie and their cabin two thousand feet below. If the killer traveled by creek it would lead to a falls and a sheer drop, with a treacherous trail. So he eased his wracked body down the rock waterway, through heavy brush, looking for a print. Spasms played through his body while blood loss sapped him.

 

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