The Dryad's Kiss

by Scott VanKirk

  Dave answered for Gregg. “Gregg, if you want to be me, then now you say, 'Why? I wouldn't have respected him when he was alive either'.” Gregg put it back down before I could get any more upset.

  After that, I fought off sleep while they looked at the rest of the artifacts, but exhaustion finally forced me to admit defeat.

  “I'm beat guys, I'm off to wonderland.”

  Uncle Mark agreed. “Me too guys, time to get some sleep. We're going to be out at the mound at six o’clock tomorrow, and I need you bright, fresh, and eager.”

  Dave's saucer-sized eyes caught my attention. I laughed at him and poked him in the ribs. “Whatsamatter Davey boy? Can't wait that long?”

  “Six o'clock! That just ain't right!”

  “Well if tomorrow is anything like today, come noon, you will be wishing we'd started at five.”

  We filed out and headed down the hall to our respective rooms. Dave turned to me and said, “So, when are we going out to the mound to blow that whistle to see if you turn into a bear?”

  I wanted to lie and say I hadn’t brought it with me, but they could see it hanging around my neck, so I gave them a different fib. “Uh, I don’t know, Dave. I think I was just hallucinating or something about the ghost.”

  “Come on, Mighty, you can’t just chicken out of this. We gotta try it!”

  “I’ll think about it,” I lied again.

  When I crashed that night, the bear was waiting for me. Annoyance sparked through me. “Yeah, yeah, I'm working on it! Now, go away and let me sleep.” Maybe it worked, because I don't remember any other dreams.

  Devil’s Mound

  In a minor miracle, we arrived at the mound around six fifteen the next morning. Jim was the only morning person amongst the teens, and I wouldn't have bet a bent nickel that we would get Dave there before ten.

  There was some discussion as to the path we would take in the excavation. We could either work on the remaining mound, or concentrate on the center first. My adamant vote was for the latter. Happily, everyone else seemed to feel the same way. We all really wanted to see what was in that center.

  Mark gave us all a short lecture on artifact hunting and then we split up and went to work. I wanted to concentrate on the center of the mound. Something important was there. Happily for me, Ricky headed for the center as well. We worked side by side for a while, and I split my attention between the digging and Ricky’s loose tee shirt. I couldn’t help myself. I tried to stop, really I did, but my eyes were being controlled by my libido that day.

  Most of the others finished cleaning up the mess from the excavator and recovered several bones, beads, arrowheads, and bone fragments before they started in on the remains of the hill. All too quickly, the cool of the morning retreated from the onslaught of the sun through the cloud cover and once again, I was digging through mud caused by the sweat dripping off my head.

  A short while later everyone sat in a circle on the ground away from the dig, eating sandwiches, drinking water, and pop. My dad would only hand out the pop after we had drunk a full bottle of water. Everyone was tired from the morning’s work, so there wasn’t much talking. Dave spent the whole time staring in awe at the piece of mica he had found. Carved in the shape of a frog, it was exquisitely beautiful.

  Sandwich in hand, munching contentedly, I wandered over to the remains we had found. Idly, I reached down and picked up a piece of a skull. Instantly, intense and paralyzing fear hit me. I opened my mouth to scream, but nothing came out. After what seemed a protracted battle, I managed to drop the piece, and the fear faded away like a bad dream. What the hell is happening to me? If I were a dung beetle, I would be in heaven because shit kept rolling my way. Could I really be losing it?

  I turned around to say something, but everyone was focused on the car pulling up next to ours.

  Uncle Mark walked out to meet the two people who stepped out of the car. From my position, I couldn’t see them clearly, but they looked rather swarthy. Both wore their long dark hair tied back in a tail—Shawnee or some other Native American tribe, at a guess. One man stood stooped with age while the other walked straight and stiff.

  They had a conversation with my uncle, which involved a lot of gesticulating and pointing. I could only hear their voices sounding angry and emphatic, but couldn’t make out what they discussed.

  Mark finally shook his head and turned back to us. At that point, the younger man ran up, grabbed my uncle by the shoulder, and jerked him around. My uncle spun in place and did something to him. I didn’t see exactly what Mark did, but the younger man went down. Mark said something to him and then again turned back to us. Yup, my uncle had a thing about being threatened all right.

  “Holy crap!” said Gregg. “Did you see that? And here I skeened you had tips, Finn! Now I know where you got them. Must run in the family. Is it just your uncle, or does your dad kick butt like that, too?”

  “Just my uncle, I think.” Then I added, “And, Uncle Mark isn’t actually my blood uncle. I just call him that because he’s been a friend of my dad’s since their college days.”

  “Oh, well, too bad for you.”

  When Mark got within talking distance, my dad said, “What was that about?”

  “Bad news, I’m afraid. It seems like our time has run out. Mr. Hatzer died this morning, and those gentlemen took the opportunity to convince his son to stop the dig.”

  “So, what was with the fisticuffs?” asked my dad as I digested the terrible news.

  “Oh, I told him that I would stop when he got me either a notarized letter from Mr. Hatzer’s son, or he came out himself. Apparently, the son lives in California, and he won’t be arriving here for a couple of days. They told me I had to stop now, but I ended the conversation before the kid was really ready for it to be over. He was trying to make his displeasure known physically, so I put him down.” Uncle Mark said all this in a matter-of-fact manner.

  My dad frowned at Mark in an entirely non matter-of-fact manner. “I’m not sure we shouldn’t just stop, Mark. We talked about this earlier.”

  “You mean about getting experts out here to help?”

  My dad nodded.

  “Well, what those yahoos want is to stop the dig completely, rebury everything we’ve found, and then leave it alone.”

  When I heard this, I panicked. “What? No, we can't do that. We have to finish this! We can't just leave!”

  My dad and Uncle gave me the hairy eyeball. I was too panicked to blush. “We have to stay.”

  “Relax Finn,” said my Uncle. “I’ve spent a lot of time and money on this. I’ll be damned if I stop without seeing what is in that central area.”

  Relief washed over me, and I relaxed.

  Ironically, it turned out later that he actually got that last part about being damned if he stopped exactly backward, but speaking for my friends and me, we felt the same way. Stopping before discovering what was under the rocks would be a crime. And nearly impossible for me.

  Given our new indeterminate deadline, I urged Uncle Mark to move the rocks with the excavator instead of taking the time to move them by hand. To my glee, he agreed. Within an hour or so, my dad had dug out a sizable area of the rock and exposed the black dirt below. We all hopped in and started digging. One particular area drew my attention, so I focused on digging there. As I dug, I frequently found myself pausing and holding my bear whistle. It was almost hot to my touch, and I fancied that it was as eager to get to my goal as I was. In fact, sometimes it seemed like the bear was urging me on and guiding me. It was too monomaniacal to contemplate seriously.

  As I dug deeper, I grew more and more excited and then found the first bone of another exceptionally large skeleton. This one had been interred stretched out on its back. By chance, we had removed the rocks from the area around its torso and head. The skeleton was interesting, but it wasn’t what called to me. I made sure to avoid touching it with my bare hands. Everyone pitched in to clear the bones carefully with hands and picks.

/>   I concentrated on the chest cavity where my quarry lay. I was getting close, and it was something seriously cool.

  My quest consumed me, and at first, I didn’t notice what my uncle found. I was concentrating on one spot now, working with my pick and hands, scooping away the dirt, and hit what I thought was another bone. When I started clearing away around it, though, I discovered that it was a polished, craggy, and jet black piece of wood. This was what had been calling to me. I eagerly dug around it and soon revealed what looked like a petrified root or a short piece of black driftwood.

  It was kinked and gnarled and had fissures running down its length. About an inch in diameter at its widest and about six inches long, it tapered to a sharp point on one end. This was what I had been hunting for. Just looking at it, I couldn’t say what the material was, but from its position within the ribs, it seemed pretty obvious what it had been used for.

  I reached down to pick it up. “Hey, guys, I think I found—”

  Mark’s exclamation of surprise interrupted me before I could add, “the cause of death.”

  “Shit, Jack! Take a look at this!”

  I looked over at what Mark had unearthed about two feet away. The orbital ridge and eye sockets of a huge, deformed skull peeked from the dirt. Several pointed, asymmetrical bone growths sprouted from the ridge of the skull, and one spike was jutting from within one orbital socket where its eye would have been.

  A shock of horror hit me the instant I saw the skull. Suddenly, my dream from the night of my beating came back to me in full Technicolor. My uncle was crouching next to skull of Wendigota. We were disinterring the remains of the demonic creature that had killed so many people.

  Gregg stood up to see what Mark had uncovered. Seeing him standing there, alive, brought back the memory of his death in my dream. He had worn the form of a cougar when I had watched Wendigota crush his spine and toss him aside like a broken toy. The juxtaposition of the two images paralyzed me.

  A warm vibration pulsing up my arm broke my paralysis. It came from the black piece of wood in my hand. I didn’t remember actually picking it up.

  As soon as I realized what happened, I dropped the stick. Heart of Wendigota or not, sticks don’t vibrant and pulse in your hands. The second it left my hand, I felt naked and vulnerable, and the fear of the skull came back twofold. I picked the stick up again, and this time the pulsing warmth spread throughout my body in a few. It actually felt good.

  Like the bear whistle, this seemed to come with its own song. Its voice had similarities to Bear’s, but its rhythm beat slower, deeper, and stronger than Bear’s. The songs of the two artifacts were not meant to be played together. They were both powerful and compelling, but together they were like orange juice and toothpaste, or perhaps listening to The Squags and the Carmina Burana at the same time.

  Everyone else converged on Mark and paid no attention to me as I knelt mesmerized by the black artifact. I held out for a time, but the clash of the two totems became too big for my brain, so I dropped the stick into my pocket, and the jangling, buzzing sensation faded away like an echo.

  When my mind cleared, I became aware of the exclamations of my friends. I pushed myself up from the ground and hesitantly angled around the others to get a view of the skull again. Just seeing it made my stomach lurch so hard, I nearly vomited fear.

  Everyone else seemed disturbed by the grotesque appearance of the skull as well, but just because it was ugly.

  Ricky summed up the dichotomy of our feelings best when she said, “That certainly wasn’t mama’s little darlin.” I would have described it as, “An unholy, black abomination from the abyss that would devour us all.”

  “Yup, somebody beat that boy with an ugly stick,” said Gregg, verifying that there were no other inhabitants on planet Finn.

  “Hard,” added Dave.

  “Elephantiasis?” my dad asked in a more serious tone.

  Mark shrugged. “No idea. I have no clue what elephantiasis really is—not my field. Seems like a good guess, though. We will have to get a doctor to look at it. Whatever happened to him, he was one hurting guy. It looks like that bony growth in the eye socket would have pushed his eye right out.”

  I winced and remembered the bloody socket in my dream. Ouch!

  “Let’s see what the rest of this bad boy looks like.” Mark laid down his pick and reached to pull the skull out of its prison of dirt.

  “No!” I shouted. “Don’t touch it.”

  He stopped. “What’s up, Finn?”

  “I…,” I started to say, but ran out of words. I tried to summon up any sane, reasonable argument for leaving the thing buried, but nothing came. I couldn’t stand the idea of how my uncle and my dad would gawk at me if I told them what I was thinking. Mark’s concerned gaze demanded something from me, so I said, “I just have an awful feeling about that skull. I don’t think you should touch it.”

  He laughed. “It’s spooky looking, I’ll give you that, but it’s well dead, kiddo.” Then, he turned, grabbed the skull, and started working it free with his pick, brush, and fingers.

  After he didn’t disappear in a burst of flame or lose his hand as the thing started eating him, I couldn’t think of anything to say. I watched in fascinated horror as he worked at freeing the skull from the grave that had held it safely immobile for hundreds, perhaps thousands of years.

  Mark finally pulled the skull free. Large enough for an eight-foot-tall man, the huge, twisted, and misshapen skull was grotesque. I could feel the evil of it from where I stood. Several irregular boney spikes grew from the head like a twisted crown of horns accompanied by large bulges of bone appearing randomly all around the skull.

  Mark said to the skull in his hands, “You are one ugly fellow. Into the bag you go. We’ve got a special place for you.” He retreated to the specimen area, placed the skull in a bag, and then put that into a specimen box.

  I tried to relax a little and told myself that in the worst-case scenario, I was insane and suffering from delusions—not faced with something truly evil. The second worst-case scenario was that my dream was real, and only the heart of Wendigota could free the blackness trapped inside the skull, implying that I needed to make sure the two stayed far apart. Upon considering both options, I decided that since they both seemed so unlikely, I merely had an overactive imagination. Yeah, right.

  While Mark put the skull away for safekeeping, my dad said, “Okay, guys. Let’s get the rest of this fellow unburied.”

  Dave trotted about fifteen feet away. “Okay! I’ve got the feet!”

  Gregg snorted at him. “I don’t think he’s quite that big, monkey boy.”

  With a grin plastered to his face, Dave came back. I wondered if either of them caught the irony of Gregg using the same insult that Erik had at Frankies. Of course, Gregg didn’t mean it as an insult, just a geeky Buckaroo Banzai joke.

  I shuddered at the thought of being near the skeleton any longer and retreated to the clearing with my tingling stick. Everyone else dug in to free the rest of the skeleton from its earthly prison.

  A couple of things soon became clear, even from where I stood. The head lay well separated from the shoulders, and the rest of the body had been as proportionately large as the skull. From the shape of his spine and shoulder blades, this fellow’s back had hunched his head forward. Like everything else, the large rib cage had growths and spikes covering their distorted shapes. The vision from my dream of this distorted monster tearing Gregg in two filled my mind and refused to go away.

  I couldn’t stop the sensation of dread as I replayed the creature’s fury and its unnatural vitality. I carried a clear memory of shaman Jeff and his warnings before the battle had started. The black heart of Wendigota was powerful and dangerous and could be used to free the black spirit of Wendigota from its prison.

  I often go over this moment in my mind. I tell myself that there truly hadn’t been anything I could have said to stop them, but deep down, part of me still doesn’t believe
that.

  Instead of just standing and watching, I went over to the cooler and got a bottle of water, then sat down and examined the stick. The thicker end had been whittled or ground down on two sides, flattening it slightly. Two notches marked the sides near the base, making it resemble a spearhead. This had been fashioned for attachment to a spear or some other weapon. I had difficulty reconciling this as the black, beating heart I’d held in my dream hands.

  Of course, I based all this speculation on a dream I had while sitting unconscious and battered in a tree. The parallels between what we had found and what the dream had shown me were terrifying, but a dream couldn’t be trusted too far could it? How much could I rely on it to be accurate? I couldn’t bring myself to part with the stick based upon some silly dream.

  I reclined in the shade, watching Mark take some of the ribs to the trunk of his car as well. He put them in a box with a bunch of foam packing and came back, smiling and brushing the dirt off his hands and clothes. My heart was heavy as I realized nothing I could do would convince him to leave the skull here. I couldn’t put the heart back, either. If it really did have the power to release a monster on the world, then I couldn’t allow someone else to find it or use it.

  Mark noted my long face and started to say something, but at that moment, a police car pulled up behind his. Mark heard the vehicle and turned to see it come to a stop. He cursed to himself as a sheriff got out. The sheriff stood, adjusted his gun-tool belt-what’s-it, and called out to my uncle.

  Mark put on his “talk to the nice bureaucrat” face and went to shake the sheriff’s hand. The younger man from Mark’s previous altercation got out of the car next, sporting a blossoming shiner visible from thirty feet away.

  The three of them stood together and talked for a while. My uncle stood impassively while the younger man gesticulated wildly and shouted. I couldn’t hear much, but it became obvious that the news was not good when Uncle Mark shook his head and walked back toward the dig. He strode past me with the sheriff and his unhappy sidekick in tow. I got up and followed them so I could listen in on the conversation.