The creature fell to the muck soaked ground and wailed.
Diego screamed.
One of the slain began to tremble.
The body jerked and broke apart. The skin peeled away revealing twitching antennae and sharp brownish mandibles, clicking and roaring with an awful rattling voice. Its bulbous red compound eyes glared at Diego. Thorax vibrating and humming like a rattlesnake.
Standing, the insectoid creature swung a claw, slicing Diego’s throat.
Diego cupped his neck, uselessly. The blood poured as if released from some ancient dam. He looked upon the creature, eyes wild with disbelief, and collapsed. Still.
DeSoto blinked, as if awaking from some nightmare. He hoped, for just a moment, nothing that had happened could be real. This was all some dream. He was still on his ship, coasting along the gulf. None of this happened.
If only.
The stone pulsed and vibrated in his hand. By the heat of it, DeSoto dropped the jewel, watching it thump on the dusty, bloody ground. He gazed up at his men, swatting and batting at the fluttering black bodies, clicking and nipping, squeezing between their armor, and biting at their flesh. His gaze came to the massive creature, the large cicada-like thing, coming towards him.
“My Lord, help me,” he whispered.
“Hernando DeSoto…” a voice called to him, but not with ears to listen, but in his head, scratching at the walls of his skull.
“What are you? Demon? Devil?” DeSoto held his sword before him, readied to strike.
“Names with no meaning to Us.”
“Then what are you?”
“Nashirimah.”
“Jesus…”
“Riches. Glory. Nor even your god. You need not.”
“Then what?”
“Us.”
DeSoto readied. The insectoid crawled closer, extending its elongated thin hairy legs, creeping closer and closer. Antennae twitching as if tasting the air. The clicking chorus surrounded him, growing louder and louder as They swarmed the large temple room. Thundering in his head. Burning white behind his eyes. The pain rolled like an angry tide during a full moon. His sword waivered and fell, thudding against the dirt floor.
Clapping his ears to block the horrible song, DeSoto bit his lip, drawing blood. He stumbled, falling backwards. Weighed down by his armor, he hit the ground hard. The insect clicked, cheerfully, delighted perhaps, gleeful maybe at such an easy meal, twitching as it scurried toward him. Hissing. Cheering. Clicking.
“Burn in hell, demon.” DeSoto spat.
The creature seemed to smile, if such a thing were possible. Expanding outward, its mandibles stretched open. Green mucus dribbled down, soiling his cheek. DeSoto glimpsed at the flesh inside its mouth and beheld a toothy worm-like maw rolling in on itself, exposing what wait in store.
DeSoto closed his eyes and screamed.
Chapter 2
The Old Woman in the Woods
Luna
She hadn’t set foot in Mississippi in years and now she’d been here for months. The cabin in the Delta woods held up better than she’d imagined, having never been here since childhood. In her mind, Luna pictured some dilapidated heap of brick and mortar, the shutters rusted dull orange-red and falling off. The wood stained with rot and unrepaired storm damage. The cellar flooded with musky sewer water. Vermin, snakes, insects, life surviving within the two story log cabin, nestled in the oak trees and maple woods and cypress vines and kudzu and left behind wares of some deranged, demented old hag. Just one good storm away from blowing over. Yet, there was none of that. The old woman had managed to maintain the cabin and survive on her own, without the assistance of family or friends. From what Luna could tell, her elderly grandmother had no friends nor family, other than herself. In the months she’d been at the cabin, not a single well-wisher or neighbor had stopped by. Not even a postman. No family calls. Nothing. She was alone, her grandmother. Despite the many framed pictures living in her house. None of those eerily familiar faces came to visit. She was alone with the dark un-inhabitants of the forest. Oh yes, she felt it. Strong, vibrations turning into cerebral screams of some spectral presence scratching at her skull. Shadows dancing within shadows. Dreams, teetering on nightmares, of…? Whatever it was, she could not foresee. Beyond the ancient Delta woods, the world was blocked out and she was held captive, for now. Even her strongest push to catch but a simple glimpse of Bobby Weeks was impossible. In her mind, there was nothing but static. Lost radio singles twinkling out into nowhere.
When Luna pulled back, allowing her mind to fall over the woods themselves, that was an entirely different matter. Here the woods crawled with energy. A dark powerful force the old woman often referred to as spirits. Lost souls, or soul, she wouldn’t say, caught in agony of what was, what never will be. And there was something else here as well. Something older than flags and fathers, older than the trees or rivers. An aged presence, the witnesses of mountains shifting and continents dividing. Her grandmother’s cabin was a bubble caught within an even stranger place.
Luna dressed, not searching long for clothes to wear. It was morning, or as much as she could tell from the thin yellow beams coming in from her bedroom window and the merry chirping of some adolescent blue jay on an outside tree branch. She pulled on her flower-print skirt and pulled over a purple tank top, not entirely fresh but free of that potent stink of sweat and smoke. It had been raining for the last three days. Nonstop. It was nice to see the sun finally coming out to warm the world.
She took the stairs two at a time. Rounding the banister she could smell the bold flavor of coffee coming from the kitchen. Memaw had beaten her to brewing. Probably had been up now for hours. The old woman did not sleep much, or at least not much since Luna had arrived.
“How long have you…?” Luna looked around. No Memaw.
“Memaw?”
Nothing but birds greeted her call.
“Memaw?”
Still no answer.
Walking toward the door, Luna left her mud boots inside. She hated shoes and would rather rinse her feet off later with a garden hose then to feel the restricting confines of those rubber boots.
Outside, the world was as it should be. The sun had peeked at little higher above the tree tops, burning a very jubilant shade of yellow-orange. The woods were buzzing with life; not the stuff of nightmare, but something of renewal carried on the wind like an electric current. Humming with an ageless energy. Spry critters barked and rummaged among the bushes. Birds of various species chirped and drank from rain soaked leaves.
Walking to the edge of the porch, fresh footprints had been made in the mud, leading away from the cabin and into the woods. Luna knew where her grandmother had gone.
The path was still wet, but not as muddied as she’d feared. Her bare feet were cold against the dew drenched ground. The once orange and red leaves now looked brown with rot. Twigs and small branches crunched underfoot. The earthy aroma of damp grass and fresh unspoiled air filled her lungs. Luna paused. Breathing deep this somehow undisturbed place. Even as remote as Hitchcock was from Houston, it was a sad comparison to how far away this place was from modernity. Hitchcock was like that city from that one sci-fi movie with Harrison Ford about replicants and colonies her Pappy used to watch on reruns compared to these ancient Mississippian woods.
Luna started off in a trot, following the path Ronna Blanche had showed her after the first week. The path to the Great Tree. The path to the “Willow of the Woods,” as Memaw had called the gnarled sleeping giant, the alien in the forest, more than once. There was no question, the sleepy willow certainly was a stranger among the maples and cider and kudzu covered pine.
Following the path, the forest seemed to clear naturally away in a large circle around the willow. The thickets of thorns had withered from days past, deadened into almost nothing but hollow stick and wrinkled vine. Around the willow, its twisting branches hung low with bright green mossy looking leaves nearly tickling the ground in a thick curtain.
Majestic seemed to simple a word, to Luna. Ancient only defined half its life. This tree was something else. Older than imagination.
Wise.
Beautiful.
Dangerous.
How old are you? Luna wondered, gazing along the low reaching vines. Decades? Centuries? Longer? Since the beginning? Think of all the people who’ve touched your bark. Found shelter under your locks of green and branch. The souls you’ve encountered and watched as they left, stuck rooted to this place, forever. Oh, what stories could you tell?
Treading barefoot, nearly in a dance, Luna laughed, childlike, as she pondered the mysteries of this elder of the forest. Nearing the trunk, she could hear Ronna nearby, whispering to some unseen guest. A moment later she found her, sitting idly on a blanket, touching tenderly on the large willow trunk. Birds flew away suddenly from the brush yards away. The old woman’s dark-stained wooden cane, the very one she recalled from childhood summer visits, the one that used to hang on the wall in the living room, lay beside her. The cane had always interested her. Thick near the handle and decorated in handmade carvings, drawings of keys without locks and diamonds with odd lettering inside them. A coiled snake etched near the bottom and eyes watched from the empty spaces.
“Memaw? Who are you talking with?” Luna stopped dancing and walked toward her grandmother.
Ronna turned slightly and back to the tree, whispering still.
“We’ll talk later.” Ronna patted the tree lovingly.
“Memaw, what are you doing out here?” Luna reached the edge of the quilt that had been spread upon the ground, stained yellow with age.
“Never mind, child.” Ronna turned away from the willow and poured a drink from a red and silver thermos. The heat wafted off in waves, filling the air with a bold rich aroma. Luna took a sit on the farthest corner of the quilt, looking up at the willow.
“Why do you come out here to drink coffee?” Luna continued to gaze up at the tree, noticing for the first time the flowers blooming on the northernmost branches. A blue-green looking flower with thick oval petals.
“Where else would I?” Ronna slurped from her cup, hands shaking slightly.
Luna looked at her. “The kitchen, for one. Or your porch, I think would be safer.”
Ronna waved her off.
“You’re sick, Memaw. You know that. Why risk coming out here? You could catch a cold.” Luna hated playing the parent. She hated leaving everything in Hitchcock. Family is family, and blood was blood…still…why was she the only one who could look after her? Why keep everyone else away? Or better still, why did everyone stay away? Where was her family?
Ronna closed her eyes, tilting her head to one side, seeming to listen to some silent song, humming along to an unsung lyric.
“You youngins. No communion with nature. No respect for the older powers, of spirits. Too caught up in worldly comforts to sit and listen. God forbid you turn your phones off and let the hustle and bustle be as it be. Modern? Hush. Nothing modern in ignoring everything around you but your own concerns.” Memaw swayed back and forth on the quilt, humming between words, and sipping her coffee. A bird squalled somewhere in the upper reaches of the tree. A blackbird.
Luna laughed quietly. After several months now, she’d gotten used to her grandmother’s straightforwardness.
“Are you calling me a city girl? Memaw, I told you before. I’ve lived in rural Texas all my life. I never go into the city.” Luna started studying her palms.
“Where you live ain’t got nothing to do with how you listen.”
“Okay.”
“Rural? You living rough, huh? Right.”
“I’m not soft.”
“You know pain?”
“You know I do.”
“Yes, Lulu, I know. But the loss of loved ones is a blessing, not a curse.”
“A blessing?”
“You know I’m right. This world is a cruel one, Lulu. You know that better than those sunny good-for-nothing garden club women.”
“How did you—”
“How else?”
“You have no right to look. I don’t look in you.”
Ronna opened her eyes, gazing upon her granddaughter with mock surprise.
“No?” Memaw asked.
“You have no right.” Luna balled her hands in tight fists.
“Right? At least I push. You haven’t even opened your mind but to make some flippant connection with someone you ought not to.”
“How did you—”
“Child, you’re talking in circles.”
Luna glared at Memaw. Slowly her gaze fell to her bare dirty feet.
“So, you know about Bobby?”
“The rougarou? Yes. I know.”
“He’s…different. He’s not a beast. He’s kind.”
Ronna sighed. Scooting along the quilt, she came closer beside her granddaughter. Draping a sagging, withered, but warm and tender, arm across her shoulder, she said, “You need to put that boy out your mind, Lulu. He’s dangerous. You know; I know you know. You’ve seen what he becomes during the full moon. You’ve seen those…devil eyes.”
Luna wiped her eyes. The sting of memory was still very vivid. For a moment, a glimpse of some other place played across her mind. Before her, a brooding sulking form walked past, wearing tattered jeans and a ruined leather jacket. He looked at the moon above him and howled. Below, he stood on the bones and corpses of dozens of slain bodies. Stained in crimson gore. The woods around her reappeared just as quickly as they’d vanished to the waking dream.
Luna gasped and fell into her own sorrow. Weeping bitterly as her grandmother embraced her.
“Hush, baby. Hush. I know. I know. Our gift…can be a curse, as well as a blessing. For good and for evil, if we choose.”
Luna looked at her Memaw, eyes stinging. “What can I do? I’m terrified of this…gift. How can I control it? See the things I want to see?”
Ronna hugged Luna. She looked up at the sky, or perhaps it was the Willow tree. Her mouth moved, but no words came out. A prayer? Maybe.
“Listen, Lulu. You need to get away from your books. There ain’t much in those dusty moldy pages you can’t learn by simply communing with the woods.”
“But those books have been in our family for…ever.”
Ronna reached with her cane and hooked the thermos. Dragging it over, she poured a fresh cup of coffee. Still warm, the heat came off it in rolls of wispy smoke. She took a sip, seeming to think of what to say next.
“Lulu,” she said finally. “I want you to close your eyes.”
“My eyes?”
“Yes. Close them.”
Luna huffed before eventually closing them, smirking a bit as she did.
“Feel the energy. The woods here are very strong. This willow is very strong. Primal. Raw. Ethereal. This you won’t find in no book.”
Primal? Luna wondered. Breathing deep through her nostrils, she tasted the pine and earthy richness of the ground, the buzz of honeybees from somewhere nearby. The sun was standing taller in the sky. Warmth flooded through the natural separations between branch and tree. The summer humidity wasn’t too far away. It would be miserable out here soon.
Primal?
Exhaling, a heavenly beam of sunray broke through the canopy, warming her forehead as she tilted upward, toward the light, filling her closed eyes with a red glow.
Ethereal?
Something flashed.
An image.
Shadows stretching the fabric of time and space. Sucking in the woods into a vortex, a dark and insidious whirlpool.
Another image. A man.
Sound. Siren yawns of some other nightmarish place.
Luna wanted to open her eyes.
God…what is this?
“Let go…let the vision have you, Lulu. It’s okay.” Luna could hear her Memaw whispering from some unseen, unknown place.
Luna obeyed. Reluctantly, she allowed her body to be pulled. A spellbound marionette playing a perfor
mance to the will of some other power. The woods themselves, perhaps. Or maybe something else.
Something else is what terrified her.
More flashes. Pounding against thick dirt. The ground, of something in the ground.
Buried.
More sounds. Screams. Had to be.
Allowing her body to be moved, Luna felt along the ground on all fours. Damp leaves and dirt. Crawling things slithered between her fingers. And something rougher. Cold. Hollow. A bone.
“Chicken.” Luna could hear her grandmother whispering.
Chicken bone? Out here? Why? What for? What purpose?
Another flash.
This one of her books. The rituals and summoning. Chickens were often used during ceremonies. Voodoo practices. Her family heritage.
A ceremony…here?
Again, Luna breathed like some worn husk, grunting through her nostrils. The power pushed her again, farther away from the quilt. The wet leaves clung to her flower print skirt. Her knees caked in mud. And then the power stopped.
This is it. This is the spot.
Sitting up on her knees, Luna turned back toward her Memaw.
“What’s buried here?” she asked.
“What makes you think something’s buried there?” Ronna looked at her hands.
Luna turned back to the black ground. Leaning down, she rested her ear to the forest floor, as if she could hear some secret whisper.
“Something is down here.” Luna caressed the ground.
“Lulu.”
“What is it?”
Memaw looked at the Willow. Breathing shallow breaths.
“Memaw?”
“A story for another day.”
Luna pressed against the ground, closing her eyes.
Another image flashed before her.
An old memory. An echo of what was.
Drums. Pounding. Dancing.
Something from the past.
Something down there.
No…
Out there. Also.
In the woods.
Laughing.
Conceiving (Subdue Book 3) Page 2