Forbidden Ground (Cold Creek)

by Karen Harper

  “There’s better access up the north face of the mountain, but it takes longer to go around. So we might be there in time. Keith said they cut them at least five or six hours ago.”

  “We won’t be able to call for help unless Lacey’s parents let you use the phone that someone cut the wires on just three days ago—if they’ve had it repaired by now. How did Keith sound?”

  “Mad as hell. All this makes me feel he’s my brother as much as Brad is. I’m going to park in the old driveway, where the former farmhouse once stood, to keep my distance. And you’re staying in the truck.”

  “Maybe we’ll see the horses in the field. Then we can drive back to bring Jace up here, because we’ll know the thieves are there again. Please, promise me you’ll be careful.”

  “You, too. Stay put. Stay down.”

  Using only his parking lights, he drove in the old farmhouse driveway. They bounced along, hidden from the field by a line of pine trees. When he turned off the engine, the blackness became a second, solid wall around them.

  “This won’t take long,” he told her. “They’re either here by now or they changed venues. Sit tight and keep the doors locked. I’ll be right back—unless I find them. Then, I swear, I’ll bring them back hog-tied.”

  * * *

  Grant hiked into darkness through the trees with his rifle, a big flashlight and three coils of rope over his shoulder. If the thieves were there, he’d have to make them tie each other up.

  Keeping his flashlight off, he stayed on the edge of the field, just outside the fence. He stumbled in a hole, went down on all fours, grateful he didn’t sprain or break his ankle, but he couldn’t turn on a light until he was sure no one was here. He got up and walked into the fringe of the woodlot near the shed where he and Kate had taken cover when they were under fire.

  No sounds here but that of shifting leaves and a few crickets. Not even lightning bugs, because they seldom came up this high. If the oaks were being hauled up here, surely the thieves would have arrived by now. He was deeply disappointed but relieved he wouldn’t have to use the gun.

  He waited awhile longer, listening, watching, thinking. He, Brad, Todd and Paul—were they thieves, too? The thought tormented him. He was willing to wait all night, but Kate would be worried. So he wouldn’t stumble again, he turned on his flashlight and, keeping the beam low, swept the area with it. Jace had found cartridge shells up here, but from a common make of hunting rifle—not enough evidence to even question anyone.

  The beam of light caught something bright red in the grass. Grant knew instantly what it was. He bent and picked up the wrapper. Clove gum, the kind Lacey always chewed. Her breath had always smelled of its tart, clean aroma. Sometimes he could tell when she was creeping up behind him from the scent. Had she been creeping through these woods from her parents’ place, with Brad, and why? Of course, maybe they’d just walked over here to see the evidence of the sawed-up tree Brad had loved, too.

  Grant jammed the wrapper in his pocket and hurried out of the fringe of dark forest, back toward the truck, keeping the light low again. He pushed his way through the screen of pines right beside the truck. He didn’t see Kate in it!

  He sprinted the last few yards.

  Yes, thank God, for once Kate Lockwood has followed orders. She had scooted down in her seat.

  In general, she had tried to toe his line, hadn’t she? More than anything, she wanted to get inside that mound, yet she’d heeded his wishes. I wanted you to know I care for you, too, she’d said.

  He put his face close to the window glass so she could see it was him, but she was already fumbling with the inside lock. He opened the driver’s-side door, slid the ropes and rifle back onto the floor behind the driver’s seat, then climbed in.

  “No sign of anyone,” he told her as he closed and locked the door. “So maybe that was the thieves who shot at us before, and they’ve switched venues. I hope, at least, they still use the same mill in Wisconsin, but they might be too smart for that. I used to think it was probably some down-and-out local, unemployed good old boy, maybe a truck driver between runs who had the hauling capability, but now I’m not sure. It scares me to think it’s someone I know—someone who has access to big saws and knows how to bring a big tree down right.”

  “Someone from the mill, you mean? Then they would have insider information to let them know when you and Keith aren’t home.”

  He turned sharply to face her. “You mean Brad?”

  “It was just a general question, but I’m learning not to trust people I want to trust, people I thought I could, namely Carson Cantrell.”

  “Good. I know what you mean. It’s nothing definitive, but I found a gum wrapper from the kind of gum Lacey chews all the time.”

  “A strong clove smell? I noticed that from her.”

  “Yeah. But I’m trying not to jump to conclusions just because I found a discarded relic tied to someone.”

  “I hear you—again.”

  “Kate, you didn’t mean that you can’t trust me, did you?”

  “I—I don’t know. Will time tell?”

  Unsure what would be a good comeback, he started the truck. The headlights came on, illuminating part of a big, broken, old painted sign leaning against the pines about fifteen feet straight ahead of them. Against a dark blue background, the white words glared at them in the lights. Treat Yourself To The Best.

  Kate gasped. “That wasn’t there before!”

  “I sure didn’t see it. You didn’t see anyone, did you?”

  “In the pitch-black? No, but some sick joker must have been so close when he put it there. Maybe someone is watching you or me. You’re right. This is someone smart—and it’s personal.”

  He turned the truck around fast, then hit the accelerator to send them bouncing down the old driveway. “I’m tempted to get my rifle and see if someone’s hiding behind that sign. But I don’t want another bullet in the tires up here—or in me.”

  He turned out onto the road so fast they fishtailed. Finally, just before they started down the mountain, he slowed. “The old barn up there used to have a Mail Pouch Tobacco sign,” he told her. “I think that’s part of it. But I can’t remember if it was painted on or nailed on. So, not only is this a wild-goose chase, but we’re the stupid geese.”

  “If not Lacey, still mad at you, maybe Bright Star is harassing us—especially me. He’s bright, all right, but warped, diabolical. And what’s the real message of Treat Yourself To The Best?”

  Grant fought to keep calm, to drive the sharp turns carefully. It was black as pitch up here, and he was grateful they met no one heading up and that in the rearview mirror he saw no vehicle pursuing. As if to assure himself as well as her, he kept talking. “There are lots of Mail Pouch signs in this area. But—hey—I did like that message, even though we seem far off from treating ourselves to the best right now.”

  “Speaking of messages out of the blue—or the dark,” she said, “you’re not afraid, are you, for your own safety, after what happened to Paul and Todd?”

  “You think it’s a message like I’m next, so I might as well live it up now—treat myself to the best?”

  “From the first you thought losing your tree was a personal warning or threat.”

  “It scares me that little brother Brad has everything to gain if I don’t own the mill and the house. I think he’s listening to Lacey too damn much. A man sleeps with a woman, his defenses go down.”

  Kate wondered if that was why Grant had not tried to take her to bed, even when she knew he wanted to. Because then he’d have to give in to her desires, too, and that included not only him, but the mound.

  26

  Kate waited in the house with Velma while Keith, Grant and Jace took flashlights outside to survey the site where the big oaks had been cut. They came back in and slumped at the
kitchen table while Velma put huge dishes of homemade strawberry ice cream in front of each of them.

  “No coffee this late,” she said. “Trees cut or not—police work or not—people need their sleep, or they just crash and burn, and caffeine will get us all wired.”

  Grant glanced Kate’s way. He felt as exhausted as she looked, completely drained physically and emotionally. But he dug into his ice cream.

  “Gabe’s gonna be shocked at what’s happened since he’s been gone,” Jace said. “It’s been a dead end—didn’t mean to word it that way—on Paul Kettering’s death. Todd’s fall, an accident, far as I can tell.”

  Keith nodded and reached over to pat Jace on the back. “Maybe Paul’s was, too, though I hear his wife doesn’t want to accept it. Maybe he just lost it, went berserk for some reason. Then the tree trunk he was carving fell on him.”

  Kate groaned inwardly. She’d meant to stop by Nadine’s tonight to buy that very sculpture, but she would first thing tomorrow. She pictured Paul’s fine carving of the Adena shaman. Carson had claimed that the earrings and the face of that well-known Adena figure and the Toltec face he’d seen in Washington had strong similarities. She needed to check that online tonight, however tired she was.

  Everyone thanked Velma for the ice cream. Jace promised he’d be back first thing in the morning to check for truck tracks and hoof prints. Grant huddled with Keith for a while, evidently consoling him about the trees.

  * * *

  At Grant’s house, they got out of the truck in front of a pitch-black house. “I usually leave lights on,” he said, “but we left in such a rush.” He got his rifle out of the truck and put his other arm around her shoulders as they started to walk in together, but he pulled her to a stop. “What’s that sound?”

  She cocked her head. It was a warm, windy night with leaves rustling, but that hum was not the trees, not an animal sound. “I think it’s far away.”

  “Or maybe just out in back. Weird. Let’s go in, but I won’t turn on a light.”

  They went into the dark house and locked the door behind them. Their eyes adjusted to the dark as they hurried into the living room to peer out the back. Inside, the sound was muted but still there, a hum, a buzz. Singing? Chanting? Gooseflesh popped out on Kate’s arms, and her insides cartwheeled. Out by the mound?

  The mound seemed aglow with wan lights. Moving lights! It flashed through Kate’s mind that maybe Carson had a dig team out there, working at night. On important or dangerous digs, that had been done. But the lights were mostly atop the mound and seemed so otherworldly.

  “What in the...?” Grant said. “And don’t tell me it’s Adena ghosts, though that mound’s haunted me for years.”

  He grabbed his rifle again. With her right behind him, he strode for the back door.

  Chills shot down Kate’s spine. The sound was like a hollow drumbeat. And some sort of wind chimes? Singing, too. She almost, finally, believed in ghosts. That she’d find the shaman Beastmaster dancing atop the mound and the entry shaft open like a throat that had disgorged its dead. No matter what Grant said, whatever the odds or barriers, she had to get in that mound once and for all. Or else she would run screaming through this forest and through life like Grant’s poor grandmother, who’d thought that spirits were after her. Was she—were both she and Grant—losing their minds?

  They started to climb the side of the mound as they had a few days ago to see if gold stars lay atop it. And then she had a premonition of who and what this might be.

  They peered over the top of the mound. Bright Star! Bright Star was dancing with three women—Grace was one—while at least twenty others knelt in a circle around them, all holding candles within paper shields and humming. Muted shadows dipped and danced, too. At first, the two of them just stared aghast as Bright Star’s voice—musical, almost magical—chanted, amid drumbeats and gentle chimes. “Dead goats to deathly shadows, but my sheep won’t go below, for in my light they glow...” On and on, chanting insane words within the rapt circle of people.

  And, despite the loose-fitting gowns of the women, they all looked pregnant. Yes, even Grace looked pregnant, though not many months along.

  Kate glanced at Grant’s profile. Eyes wide, he looked stunned, but he was angry, too. She reached for his arm, but he scrambled up to more level ground and started shouting. “You’re trespassing, Monson. Sorry to interrupt the séance or party, but those candles could light this foliage on fire. I’m going to ask you to leave my land now or else I’ll have you arrested!”

  The sounds halted. Bright Star looked as if he’d been shaken awake or slapped out of a trance. Could this man—all these people—be on drugs? Before Grace and the two other women who had been dancing around him could turn away, Kate glimpsed gold stars on their chests. Bright Star had lied. He always lied, so how deep was he into enslaving these people?

  He came forward, walking unsteadily. For once, he was dressed all in black, more like his people. “Ah,” he said, his voice still holding its singsong quality. “I see you have the woman with you, Mr. Mason. Everyone—” he turned to call behind him “—guard your flames. And you two,” he said, turning back to Grant and Kate, “guard yourselves from evil. You never know when you will join the lost pagan dead. What a good lesson to see the goats like the Adena separated under the soil from the sheep like my flock.”

  “That’s a good way to describe your people,” Kate said. “Sheep. Maybe sheep to the slaughter if they stay with you.”

  “Always the wayward woman. But I will prepare a kingdom for mine own.”

  “On the old grounds of the lunatic asylum, you mean,” Kate countered. “That sounds like your sort of Eden.”

  “Back to the bus, back home!” Bright Star called out. People rose and began to file quietly down off the mound, near where Kate and Grant had climbed up. He turned again to them, leveling a look of pure menace at each of them.

  “I see you have a weapon of war, of destruction in your hands, Mr. Mason, owner of this place of pagan imprisonment. And you, woman, always the soul of a heathen. Death can come like a thief in the night, so beware you don’t join the heathen dead—both of you.”

  When he stalked off, tears streamed down Kate’s face, but she wasn’t crying. She was hysterical with laughter and disbelief. “Back to the bus?” she spit out. “All that pseudo-religious mumbo jumbo to those poor robots—sheep—then back to the bus? And he sees himself as their Messiah. Jesus talked about separating the ungodly goats from his precious sheep. But then, back to the bus...”

  Grant put the rifle down, gave her a little shake and pulled her into his arms. “You’re losing it,” he told her. “But I don’t want to lose you. Kate, we’re both punch-drunk from exhaustion—too much of everything.”

  She locked her arms around his back, pulling him tight to her. “But he’s so unreal, so ridiculous, isn’t he? I feel like Alice in Wonderland and I’m going to wake up soon.”

  “It’s a nightmare, not a dream. And talk about curses—he’s it. Come on. I’ll watch the mound from inside the house, and tomorrow’s another day. We both need some rest.”

  She hated letting him go. Despite the fact that, in a way, he was her worst enemy, he was also her love. They climbed carefully down from the mound, but Kate tugged him back just to take a look at the entry. She wanted to be sure Bright Star’s cult members hadn’t opened up the entry. No, it looked naked but still sealed. That was another reason she had to get inside to do a controlled, scientific dig. She could just see Monson’s maniacs—and that included her cousin Lee and poor, pregnant Grace—coming back here to defile the remains of ancient people’s lives. And hers and Grant’s.

  * * *

  It was a pretty crazy idea, Kate thought late the next morning on her way to Nadine’s house, but what if Bright Star was behind the tree thefts? He had members of his group who did manu
al labor of various kinds, including Lee. If he stored cut-up trees on his piece of property, he had guards watching for strangers day and night. They had some horses and other animals on their grounds. Perhaps he knew Grant would go out looking for Keith’s trees and that would leave the mound available for their—whatever rite that was she and Grant had witnessed last night.

  Talk about nightmares! Last night, falling exhausted in bed while Grant kept watch out the picture window, she had dreamed Grant was dancing with her, watched by the Adena, and then he’d put a Beastmaster mask on his head and led her down, down into the dark depths of the mound.

  Kate hit her fist on the steering wheel as she missed the turn to Nadine’s road up the mountain and had to turn into a driveway, back out and retrace her path. She hadn’t meant to, but she’d slept in this morning. Grant had been gone when she got up, so it was late morning already, and she didn’t feel fully awake. So much was upsetting her. Everything about the mound and precious Adena artifacts, the fact Grant said he didn’t have them and asked her not to talk to Brad about it. And especially what she’d checked online before she collapsed into exhausted sleep last night. The Toltec sculpted head Carson had cited as a possible link did bear some resemblance to the Adena shaman Paul had reproduced on the tree-trunk statue she hoped to buy from Nadine. Again, she’d promised Grant she wouldn’t try to take it with her today but would wait for tonight so he could help her load it in her trunk. She couldn’t wait to put its picture on her website, right next to the Beastmaster’s mask she’d made, though there were only general similarities between those two. So far, she had as good a claim to the Celts as Carson with his Toltec theory.

  She’d called Nadine to say she was coming and saw her looking out a front window, waiting for her. It seemed strange to go in the front door for once, instead of through the side entrance to Paul’s shop.

  “Things are still in a mess, but an organized one,” Nadine told Kate as she ushered her in. Kate could see she’d lost weight. Her jeans were baggy, and she wore one of Paul’s shirts. “My sister’s been staying here, helping me pack things, donate things, mostly get ready to have my nephew list Paul’s remaining works for sale on that eBay website. She’s gone to the grocery store, but I’d love to have you meet her.”