The Big Dark Sky (8)
She had no fear of doctors or therapists. Yet each time she’d picked up the telephone to make an appointment with John Wong, her physician, misgiving had quickly swelled into a peculiar, urgent dread. She was convinced that if she sought help with this matter, her life as she knew it would change drastically for the worse. She wasn’t a superstitious woman nor one given to irrational fears. Her attitude at first surprised her, then annoyed her, and recently began to worry her as much as the dreams themselves.
Now, as she stared at the computer screen, at the last sentence she’d written almost two weeks earlier, her desk phone rang. Only a few friends knew her cell number; she shared her home number more widely. She had landlines as backup because . . . well, things fell apart. One day your mother was at your side, the next day dead. As reliable as it seemed, the entire cell-phone system was vulnerable to hackers, solar flares, and other disruptions. She had two lines, the second a rollover that ensured she wouldn’t miss a call from an editor or agent while talking on the first. The line-one indicator blinked insistently, but the phone display reported CALLER UNKNOWN.
Robocalls were a problem, though not usually at three o’clock in the morning. She let it go to voice mail, but the caller hung up before leaving a message. Half a minute later, the second line rang. Again, no ID was provided. No message.
Lying to the right of the computer, her cell rang. Although the caller was again unknown, Joanna was intrigued enough to accept. “Hello?”
The woman’s voice sounded vaguely familiar, but it wasn’t that of a close friend. “Jimmy Two Eyes. You remember him?”
“No. Who is this?”
“You were six, and Jimmy Two Eyes was nine.”
“I don’t know him. What do you want?”
“Now that you’ve heard his name, you’ll soon remember.”
“Who is this?”
“I need your help.” Those four words were spoken less as an emotional plea than as a simple statement. The caller sounded as calm as someone taking a survey regarding preferences in laundry detergents, even as she said, “I don’t know who else to turn to. Just you, Jojo.”
When she was a child, Jojo had been the nickname her mother gave her. Whoever the caller might be, this wasn’t Emelia, her mother. The dead did not phone from the Other Side.
This was a century of frauds, fools, hucksters, and hackers. Joanna had dealt with her share of them. She had no patience for deceivers. Yet the weirdness of the call seemed somehow related to the dreams that had recently tormented her. So instead of hanging up, she asked again, “Who is this?”
Still employing a matter-of-fact tone, the caller said, “I am in a dark place, Jojo.”
“And where is that?”
“It’s a mental darkness.”
“Yeah? All right. But where are you calling from?”
“You know.”
“How could I know?”
“You know.”
“I’m not playing this weird game. Tell me who you are or call nine one one.”
“Only you can help me, Jojo.”
Joanna terminated the call. Her hand trembled. The chill with which she’d awakened had returned.
She crossed the room to the corner table and poured more coffee. She stood there, the mug in both hands, sipping the hot brew.
She knew no one named—or nicknamed—Jimmy Two Eyes. But when she whispered the name into the steam rising from her coffee, the chill that disturbed her intensified and rilled down her spine from the base of her skull to her tailbone.
Where are you calling from?
You know.
How could I know?
You know.
With a sudden new insight, she found herself considering the contents of the room, with which she had lived for twelve years. The colorful Navajo rug seemed to float on the pale-gold maple floor, its pattern suggestive of mystical meaning. A decoratively painted colonial trastero stood against one wall, doors open, its shelves laden with folk-art objects: Pueblo pottery; fancy tinwork frames holding black-and-white photos of old Santa Fe; a bulto of the Christ Child carved from cottonwood, covered in fine gesso and painted by Luis Tapia. Fringed Pendleton blankets—with soft beige, red, and blue designs—draped two comfortable leather armchairs.
She hadn’t merely furnished this house; she had curated its contents, as if this were a multiroom installation in a museum. She’d thought she was putting together a version of Santa Fe style reflective of this storied city that she loved. Now she realized that the result was a rustic yet sophisticated decor that could be found to some extent beyond the borders of New Mexico; that in fact it wasn’t uncommon in humble, rural homes as far away as Wyoming and Montana, in those parts of the True West that had not yet succumbed to modernity as fully as the New West beyond the Rockies.
She realized as well, and with greater astonishment, she had surrounded herself with things reminiscent of the furnishings in the native-stone house at Rustling Willows, where she had resided during the first nine years and four months of her life.
Although she’d left the ranch twenty-four years earlier, and though her childhood memories were partly obscured by the dust of time, she found it incredible—inexplicable—that she hadn’t until this moment recognized the influence of Rustling Willows in this home she’d made for herself. It seemed as if she’d subconsciously suppressed her recollections of that place, perhaps as a defense against the emotional pain of the tragedies that had occurred there.