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Chapter Twenty-four
"Rescue"
Frank had the helicopter land so he could direct activities from the air search. Not long after they were airborne again, one of the men in the cockpit called out. "I've got one heat signature in the woods at 10 o'clock. It's faint, but I read it clearly."
Strenlich nearly shouted with relief. "Take us to the position and lower us down far enough for me to get out."
The pilot didn't like the idea. "The woods are too dense along that portion of the creek. We'll barely have enough room to clear them. You would have to jump into the creek and go from there on foot."
"Agreed. Let's do it."
They passed the search teams on foot and Strenlich radioed to them that they had a possible location on Tommy. He smiled as he saw them pick up their pace. He glanced around to the grim faces aboard the copter and he paused. The proposed landing spot was apparently much tighter than the pilot had indicated.
Frank braced himself as they slowly lowered over the creek.
"Go now! With these winds, I can only stay a moment."
"Got it. We will rendezvous with you at a place where you can set down safely."
The pilot nodded and Frank leapt from the helicopter, landing in the water ten feet below the departing chopper. The rotors stirred up snow, water, and debris. For a moment, all Frank could do was cover his eyes with both hands.
When things settled down, he headed in the direction of the sighted location only to find Tommy walking out to him. He rushed to the child's side. "Are you okay, Tommy? I'm here to help. We are going to take you to your aunt very soon."
Tommy nodded. The boy was shivering from exposure to the elements, but there was a determined glint to his silver eyes. "But first, take me to Peter," he said simply.
Frank was taken aback by the fact Tommy was talking. Everything he'd heard said Tommy was a mute and barely responsive to the outside world. Strenlich stammered, "You-you don't want to go to your aunt?"
Tommy shook his head. "Peter needs me. We are supposed to stay together no matter
what."
"Okay, if that's what you want, kid, we'll go back to the cave and Peter until we can arrange transport back the cabin."
Tommy nodded and started walking upstream.
Strenlich stood in disbelief for a moment before he hurried to catch up to Tommy.
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Peter began to hallucinate, struggling against Paul's hold as he tried to keep Peter from hurting himself. Peter caught Paul in the right eye with a flailing fist, staggering him for a moment. In that moment, Peter managed to throw off the animal skins and started crawling toward the entrance to the cave.
Paul recovered and scurried after his delirious son. He grasped Peter around the waist and stopped his escape without too much effort, but then Peter became a wild man, whipping his arms around in self-defense. Paul barely managed to miss them this time.
He shouted, "PETER!"
His voice reverberated in the medium-sized cave and it was enough to pull Peter back to reality. His kneeling body fell back to the ground, exhausted and limp. Paul crawled to Peter's head, seeing his face was streamed with sweat and tears.
"I thought George had Tommy," Peter whispered as he gasped for air.
"No, Peter, I just got word that Tommy has been found, safe and sound."
Peter's face lit up with that announcement and he sighed with the release of a great burden. "Thank God. Thank God," Peter repeated as his voice grew weaker.
His body trembled with spent adrenaline. Paul took Peter's head and shoulders into his arms, wrapping them around Peter's chest from the back. He rocked with his son, and rubbed his arms to take away part of the chill.
"I thought Tommy was going to die when he disappeared into the mists," Peter whispered between gasps of air.
"Well, he didn't. And the search teams are still looking for George. All you need to concern yourself with is getting better. How in the hell did you manage to get so banged up?" he asked, but he already knew most of the answers. He just wanted to keep Peter talking or the young man might pass out on him again.
Peter smiled weakly. "It wasn't really that hard to do," he whispered.
"Oh yeah?" Paul questioned. "Well, it looks pretty painful to me."
Peter shook his head. "No, seeing George going after Tommy when all I could do was pass out, that was the worst of it all."
Paul tightened his embrace as he said, "Well, Tommy's safe now. You can relax."
"Yeah, but how much...damage will this do to him?" Peter asked, his expression haunted.
Paul helped Peter move back to the bearskin rug and then covered him again with the other animal skins he'd found inside the cave.
A medic arrived, carrying an armload of equipment as he entered the cave, apparently summoned by Strenlich. Nodding to Paul, he sat down his equipment and began opening plastic-covered items he'd be needing, ready to begin his work.
"How are you doing, bud?" the EMT asked.
Peter shrugged.
"What's your name?" the medic asked as he took Peter's blood pressure and pulse.
"Peter."
"Peter what?"
"Peter Matthew Caine, okay?" he responded gruffly.
"Well, Peter, tell me your symptoms."
Peter sighed and Paul reluctantly released his grip on Peter's hand to allow the medic to work.
Just then, Strenlich walked into the cave with Tommy in his arms. The boy jumped out of Frank's hold and rushed to Peter's side. Tommy ignored everyone but Peter. With great enthusiasm, he showed Peter the carved wolf token.
Peter took the token from him and smiled at it, a symbol of a much more idyllic time. The smile slowly grew to include Tommy, too. He hugged Tommy as tightly as he could with one arm as tears formed in his eyes.
The medic on the other side of Peter said with exasperation, "Can't the reunion be done later? We've got a pretty sick patient here."
Peter flashed him a look of irritation. "In a minute. This boy helped to keep me alive. I would have been dead long ago without his efforts."
The medic frowned and grumbled, "Just stay still for a moment. I've got to start an I.V. and I can't do that with you moving around."
Ignoring the medic, Peter turned his head back to see Tommy's glowing expression. "Did the wolf token keep you safe?" Peter asked, sighing with relief as he held a trembling hand to the child's angelic face.
Tommy shook his head.
"No?" Peter asked, slightly surprised.
"Who then?" he asked cautiously, knowing there was another answer judging by Tommy's serious expression. The boy stared deeply in Peter's eyes. Their unique conduit was established again, and the rest of the world seemed to fade away until there was just Tommy and Peter.
There was a hint of pride in the boy's eyes when he said, "The Spirit of the Forest."
Peter's mouth dropped open. "Tommy, you're talking!"
The medic cursed and pulled Peter back down as he put the end of a stethoscope to Peter's chest. Paul helped hold him down, but was mesmerized by the interactions between the boy and Peter.
"Keep him still," the medic told Paul. "He's lost a lot of blood."
Nodding grimly, Paul answered, "Yes, he has."
"Well, his vitals are low enough to require a second line," the medic said as he moved around to Peter's other arm, silently nudging Tommy aside. "It will also help to manage his fever somewhat. It's so high I'm surprised he hasn't gone into seizures."
All of the conversation going on around them was oblivious to Peter and Tommy.
Tommy scrabbled around to the spot the medic had just vacated and leaned closer to Peter's face, smiling brightly before he started his explanation.
"The Spirit of the Forest healed me, just like he kept you from any more harm, Peter. The Great Spirits saved our lives. We need to make an offering to them in gratitude for honoring their vow."
"That's what the book said to do," Peter whispered as he pulled Tommy into a cautious one-arm embrace. He looked deeply into Tommy's eyes. "You sure you're okay?"
"Hey, hey, watch that I.V. line, buddy," the medic complained.
Peter released Tommy, but moved to take Tommy's hand in his.
Tommy just kept talking to Peter as if they were back at the cabin, sitting in the living room in front of a big fire in the fireplace. "Yes, Peter, I'm really better. The spirit man helped me hide until it was safe."
"The spirit...Oh, man...do you mean George! No, sport, he's-"
"No, not him. George is dead, I know that. I was talking about the Spirit in the Forest guy. The one we read about in my book! He's real, Peter, and he was very nice for a spirit guy. He showed me where to hide and told me not to move til he came back for me. I trusted him. He moved into the mists, and then I could hear George screaming and screaming. After a few minutes, the spirit guy came back to me and told me I was safe and that help was coming for me."
No one said anything, not even the medic as he paused from his work for a moment. It seemed like everyone in the room was worried about the traumatized boy.
"Captain, I think there's something you should see out there," Frank said quietly.
Paul reluctantly left Peter and Tommy in the hands of the medic and a deputy. Frank led him a distance away from the cave and showed him a dead body that was presumed to be the man called George.
"He's dead, sir, but there wasn't a mark on him, nor were there any footprints leading to his body except George's own tracks. Just like the dead hit men we found on Crowfoot's property."
There was a group of the search teams that joined them, obviously unnerved by something. They followed Frank and Paul as they walked back in the direction the teams had just come, following the curves of the creek, and then Frank stopped again.
"This is where Tommy was hiding."
Paul's mouth dropped open because there was only one set of footprints in the snow...One set in the whole area...and they could only be Tommy's tracks because of the tiny footprint. Silently, Paul wondered if Tommy had a hand in George's death.
The boy had perked up when he was with Peter, but could he have been so traumatized by the frightening situation that he unknowingly shifted the blame away from him and said a spirit did the killing. The big hole in Paul's theory was how did the boy do it without leaving a mark on George's body or any footprints in the snow around him.
Paul was silent as they retraced their steps again, trying to reconstruct the murder, but Paul had a strange feeling that they were just spinning their wheels.
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Meanwhile back in the cave, Tommy was telling Peter more about his encounter with 'the Spirit of the Forest'.
"You know, Peter, he didn't even have to talk with his mouth...I 'heard' him in my head."
Peter knew his expression showed how concerned he was becoming for the boy, but Tommy kept talking. Apparently, with the return of his speech, there was no shutting him up, not that Peter would even consider it.
Tommy placed his beloved book into Peter's hands. "He said to tell Aunt Celeste that I do have the heart of the wolf spirit and it is no miracle that I am who I am. The wolf spirit is a part of me...because it's a part of Aunt Celeste, too."
Peter began to explain to Tommy that the book wasn't real, that it just wasn't possible when Paul, Frank, and the others returned white-faced.
Peter tensed at the sight. "Paul, what is it?"
Paul had an expression of utter disbelief. "We saw this huge...creature floating across the small clearing from where we were standing. I thought the man might be a material witness, so we called to him and took off running after him. Suddenly, the being stopped and smiled at us briefly before it disappeared in a sudden cloud of misty fog."
Peter stared at Paul with equal disbelief, still holding Tommy's book in his hands.
Paul continued on, "Then the sound of distant Indian chants and beating drums broke through the silence like a string of cannon blasts. The locals insist they had already secured the area. No one was allowed in or out. And that knowledge has the deputies scared shitless."
Peter sat up a little more. "Why?"
The local sheriff deputies' faces were paler than anyone else's as Paul explained. "Because they knew the local Indians hadn't performed any ceremonial activities in that area for many years. Yet, we could hear them. The chants and the drums."
"Peter, I went to where the man had stopped. There wasn't a single footprint in the snow. Nothing to even show the being had ever been there. Something as large as that would have left some sign."
Tommy simply smiled at Peter as he took the book from Peter's hands and put it back into his jacket pocket. For the first time in a long while, he put a hand to Peter's heart and raised Peter's hand to his heart, doing so with love and caring, as if to show the ache wasn't as strong as it had once been.
He leaned down to Peter and whispered. "It does get better, doesn't it?"
"It sure does, Tommy. It sure does." Peter nodded with a big smile as Tommy hugged him once again. Peter's attention turned back to the others. The legend of the Spirit of the Forest apparently just received new fuel to keep it going for a long while.
Paul rubbed a finger along his chin before he began to issue orders. "Come on, let's get Peter and Tommy into the humvee and back to the cabin. Is he ready to be moved?" Paul asked of the medic at Peter's side.
"As ready as he'll be until we get him to a hospital." The medic's blue eyes met Paul's silently telling him Peter needed to be in the hospital as quickly as possible.
Paul slapped his hands together. "Okay, people, let's get them loaded. Frank, order the helicopter meet us at the cabin."
At least there was something within his power to do, rather than dealing with the worried helplessness he felt over Peter's numerous injuries or the mysterious creature that left no tracks whatsoever in the snow.
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