“Is there anything I can do to help you,” Amanda asked softly, “maybe save you some time?”
“Like what, dear?”
“Oh, I don’t know…”
“Exactly,” Diane patted her hand and looked each one of them in the eye before continuing. “Once I’m finished out there, I’ll come inside to get myself ready. I have to pray and do a ritual cleansing of my person before I start the ceremony. I dare not leave anything to chance. Please, do not touch anything in the circle while I’m in here. Not anything. I don’t care if a dust devil knocks everything akimbo. I don’t care if a squirrel runs across the wheel and craps on something in the middle. I can fix those things and you can’t. If you try, I’ll just have to start over. We don’t have the time. Tonight the moon will be at its fullest, which means he will be at his weakest. After tonight, he starts getting stronger. If we fail tonight I don’t think he’ll give us another chance.
“When I come out, I will be dressed in traditional Tsalagi medicine attire. To your eyes I may look like something out of an Old West movie. I expect you to show respect and to not laugh or make comments. I don’t think any of you would, but I have to say it. I’m not worried about my feelings. I’ve become used to ridicule and derision over the years. It’s the distraction. I cannot stress enough that distractions will get us killed.
“I will set up my medicine wheel about thirty feet southwest of the opening. If you plan to observe,” she paused and looked at them all again and saw the resolve in their expressions, “and I truly wish you wouldn’t, but I don’t see any way to stop you short of a bullet. That’s out because I don’t carry a gun, so I want you to all line up about fifty feet south of my medicine wheel.
“At no time are any of you to say or do anything. No matter what happens, stay in your spot and do not move. No matter what you see, stay put. This creature is cunning and powerful. He will pull your darkest fears from deep within you and use them against you. He will twist your most awful secrets, and make you see and hear things that will terrify you. He may make you see me torn apart to get you to rush to my aid and stop what I’m doing. Ignore it. None of it is real. Remember that. It is all illusion. If you give in to it, you are doomed, and you may doom all of us with you. Besides, if I fall, he won’t waste his time with illusion anymore. He will simply kill you all, and there will be nothing you can do about it.”
She took another sip of her coffee and looked at them. “Do you all understand me?”
“Yes.” Fred replied.
“Of course,” Amanda added.
“As you will, Mother.” Betty’s voice suddenly carried a maturity that made them all look at her. She looked back at them, her expression serene.
“I will be calling on Ududu Unalasgi, Grandfather Lightning, his son, Thunder, Gildinehvyi, and Thunder’s dog, Horned Green Beetle. As I say these names, which are unfamiliar to your ears, you may find yourself tempted to laugh. Please don’t. I’m telling them to you now so that you may go somewhere private, if necessary, to work the strangeness from them before tonight.
“If they find me and my prayers worthy, they will come here and help us as they did the first time when Grandfather Red Bear called to them. When they do, they will come in the form of a thunderstorm racing in from the west. Their presence may be frightening. So long as you stay where I tell you to stay you should not be in danger. The fight will mostly be in the area between me and the opening.”
“Fight?” Fred asked as the memory of that Saturday night ran through his mind.
“Yes, Fred, fight.” Diane looked at him, her eyes narrowed. “Did you think we were going to sit down under the garden table and have milk and cookies?”
“Well, no. Of course not. But, if there’s going to be a fight, I don’t think you should face this thing alone.”
“Fred, Fred, Fred. I appreciate your concern but there’s nothing you can do to help me. You are not trained to handle things like this. I’m not even sure I’m trained enough, although I am certain of one thing.”
“What’s that?”
“I’m far more experienced and qualified than you are. You can help me best by staying where I told you to stay. Otherwise, you need to get your ass down to Purdie’s until it’s over.”
She looked around the table. “That goes for all of you. Stay put or go down to Purdie’s. I won’t have time to worry about any of you once the party gets started.”
•
“Looks more like a cross than a wheel,” Fred said as he and Amanda watched Diane from the second floor deck. Below them, the medicine wheel slowly took shape. She carefully and deliberately laid out the black and white stones into wide rectangular arms facing west, north, east, and south. The center was smooth, cleared of everything down to the bare rock.
Amanda leaned closer to Fred. His arm encircled her waist. She hesitated for a second, and then put her arm around him.
“Do you think we’ll make it through the ceremony tonight?” she asked as she looked down at Diane’s bent form.
“I don’t know. She seems to think we will. I don’t know if she’s saying it to reassure us or because she really believes it.”
“I imagine she has to really believe it or her magic, or whatever it is, won’t work.”
“I know she’s worried.” Fred’s arm squeezed a little tighter. She glanced up at his face, but he was looking down at Diane.
“Wouldn’t you be?”
“No, I wouldn’t.”
“You’re kidding, right?”
He looked down at her. “I wouldn’t up here to begin with. If you hadn’t come along I would have been perfectly content to stay drunk down there in Austin untilI died. I think I was trying to die. I just didn’t have the guts to kill myself properly.”
“I don’t believe you.”
“Why is that?”
“When’s the last time you had a nightmare?”
Fred thought for a moment. “Probably three weeks or so. Before we went to Oklahoma, anyway. What’s your point?”
“You needed to do this.” She looked over the roof of the barn to the trees beyond. “I think you knew this wasn’t finished.” She looked back at him. “It was eating at you.”
“So, Doctor Carlyle, is that your diagnosis? And, your recommended treatment is for me to come back to Tennessee and face the monster that killed my friends?”
“Seems to be working, doesn’t it?”
He looked down at her. He’d never noticed before, but her eyes, which he’d thought were blue, actually had flecks of gold and brown and green around the iris. As he leaned in closer, the iris widened just before her eyes closed and their lips met. After the slightest hesitation, her lips pressed back. Their arms tightened about each other. He pulled back and looked directly into her eyes. He saw no hesitation, no doubt in her expression. He took her hand, led her back inside, and across the hallway to his room. The door closed behind them with a soft snick as she flowed into his arms and kissed him with the urgency of long repressed desire.
Unseen by either, Betty Jean stood in the doorway leading to the sitting room outside of Fred’s room. Her eyes were narrowed, her nostrils slightly flared. Her fingernails dug into her palms.
“You have him now,” Betty whispered, “but the moon is full and the night is long. My magicks work best when the Goddess shines brightest.” With that, she turned and slipped quietly down the stairs to her room on the floor below.
CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE
Fred stood in line with Amanda on his left and Betty June on his right. Amanda’s hand clenched his loosely, comfortably. Her thumb lightly caressed his palm. It tickled a bit, but he ignored it. Betty June’s left arm encircled his upper right arm, her hand gently squeezing his bicep.
All of them watched intently. Diane – dressed in buckskin, beads, feathers, and moccasins – danced slowly around the medicine wheel. Strange designs were painted on her face. Multi-colored beads woven into the soft leather tunic and breeches formed geometric patte
rns and fantastic creatures.
A tendril of smoke curled upward from the small fire burning near the center of the medicine wheel. In front of the fire was the bowl she’d laboriously carved from the spruce log and meticulously painted with pigments she’d made herself. Some ingredients she brought with her from Oklahoma; others she’d acquired in the woods on the mountainside.
He looked at the western sky. The sun was an orange ball slipping rapidly towards the horizon. Already the mountains were jagged silhouettes. Above him, the blue sky was deepening to cobalt. The brighter stars appeared in the eastern sky. No matter where he looked he saw no signs of an impending storm. Could Grandfather Lightning appear without storm clouds? Fred was no meteorologist, but he guessed they might be a necessary ingredient.
Diane paused in her dance and reached into her pouch. She tossed a powder onto the fire. Sparks spiraled upward. A moment later a pungent aroma tantalized his nostrils. He tried to identify it. Despite its familiarity the name eluded him.
She raised her arms toward the northern sky and chanted in a now familiar tongue. After listening to it all the way from Oklahoma, Fred recognized the sounds, even if he didn’t know the meanings.
She lowered her arms and renewed her counter-clockwise dance – north to west, west to south, and so on until she faced west once more. She stopped and raised her arms above her head. She pleaded in her native tongue. She lowered her arms and began her dance again. She continued this, stopping and repeating at each cardinal point, until she once more faced north.
Fred looked to the west and blinked. He ran his hand over his eyes and looked again. The sun was appreciably lower on the horizon. Dark clouds boiled up and over the mountains. They tumbled over each other like a litter of black puppies and raced eastward. The storm was coming, and coming fast. Crushing pressure in his hand and arm told him that both women had noticed the approaching tempest.
A moment later darkness covered the ridge. The air grew still. All sound, including Diane’s feverish chanting, seemed dead and flat. It felt as if the rocks, the trees, the buildings, and the people held their collective breath in anticipation.
A faint glow lit up the opening beyond the medicine wheel. It slowly brightened, painting everything in a silvery blue glow. The tip of a tentacle appeared at the edge of the low rock wall that encircled the pit. It moved about, pointing here and there, as if taking the measure of those outside. As Diane’s chanting grew louder and her dance picked up speed, the tentacle withdrew into the darkness below.
•
Betty June held tightly to Fred’s arm and smiled. It was a good night for magick – for all kinds of magick. The Cherokee woman could work her spells and seal the creature in the cave where it belonged. When that was done, Betty had a few spells of her own to work before moonset. In her room she had a poppet and three hat pins. Making it wasn’t hard. She’d been making little dolls pretty much all of her life. This one was special. It was linked to Amanda in the best way possible – through her hair. The silly cow didn’t know anything about protecting herself. Once Betty June had decided she wanted Fred, then it was just a matter of going into the bathroom each morning and pulling the hairs out of Amanda’s brush. It wasn’t long until she had more than enough. She really only needed one strand, but Betty liked to be certain.
Using the hair and certain other things, Betty made her doll behind Fred’s cabin in the light of last night’s full moon. It was a good poppet, too, full of magick and linked tightly by the hair bond.
She had some of Fred’s hair, too, but she had another use for that. Oh, yes. Fred would be hers, body and soul. Just thinking about him made her ache and burn down there. She forced herself to keep her hands away. Instead, she gripped his arm with both hands and pulled it tightly against the swell of her left breast. She felt her nipples harden as the heat between her legs grew. She ignored it. She laid her cheek against his arm and smiled. No, there would be no relieving her heat tonight. She needed the built up energy to power her spell. From the way her body quivered, it was going to be one hell of a spell.
The night fell quickly. She saw the clouds tumble over each other as they raced east. Granny Diane was working up some powerful magick, that was for sure. There was going to be one hell of a storm on the mountain tonight.
The silver blue glow caught her eye. She looked at the wall around the cave. Something stuck its head above the rim and looked around. When it pointed at Betty June, she shivered. A malevolent intelligence looked deeply inside of her. It probed her soul. Relief flooded her as it turned its attention elsewhere. It’s penetrating gaze left her feeling more naked than she thought possible. She felt as if everything she ever wanted, every plan she ever made, and every lust she ever dreamed lay on the ground for everyone to see. She shuddered and looked at Fred and Amanda. They showed no awareness of anything amiss.
•
Amanda felt her knees weaken as a lone male figure walked towards her from the cistern. He paused at the medicine wheel and looked down at it, and then at Diane dancing around it. She either ignored or did not see him. The man shook his head and resumed his stroll towards Amanda. As the figure drew closer, she squeezed her eyes tightly shut. Her bladder felt distended, full of hot fluid.
“You can’t be here,” she whispered.
The figure stopped. It tilted its head to one side. “But, I am here.”
“You’re dead. We buried you.”
The man moved his hands over his body. “Don’t feel like I’m dead, Mandy.”
“Don’t you call me that.”
“I’ve always called you that, Honey. You know that.”
“Only my father ever called me that,” her breathing grew faster. She swiped at the back of her head as if brushing away a bothersome insect.
“That won’t make it go away,” the figure stepped closer. It was dressed as her father was the last time she saw him. “You need to listen to it. Let the music fill you. Let it soothe you. Let it take away your pain.”
Suddenly she was sixteen, again. Her father sat on the tall chrome and red vinyl kitchen stool he loved so much because it was higher than a chair and perfect for working at his bench. Amanda sat in a molded plastic lawn chair, watching as he slowly and carefully cleaned the parts to his rifle laid out on the cloth cover before him. The smell of gun oil filled her nostrils. She would always associate that aroma with him long after he was gone. That was later, however, in a time yet to be. This was now.
“Why can’t you stay home for Thanksgiving, Daddy?” Her voice wasn’t quite a whine – her daddy hated whining – but the sadness made it quiver. “Other kids’ fathers stay home with their families.”
He looked at her. She expected anger. Instead, she saw a sadness deeper than her own. “I promised. I gave my word to Fred and Dave and Peete and Charlie. I never go back on my word. You know that.”
She sighed. “I know. Someday all you might have is your word so you’d best make sure it’s good. You tell us that all the time.”
“It’s true, though, Mandy.” He placed a gentle hand on her shoulder. “If it means anything, I think this will be my last trip.”
“Why do you think that?” Suddenly, for no reason, she felt a chill as goose flesh made her skin bump up.
“Partly because I’m getting tired of it and partly because I’m tired of being away from my family over the holiday.”
She jumped up and threw her arms around her father’s waist and buried her face in his chest. She felt his strong limbs encircle her.
She looked up. Gone was the garage. Gone was the bench. She stared in horror as her father’s face melted away. She tried to pull free, but it held her fast. She tried to scream, but something covered her mouth. The last thing she heard as it pulled her into the pit was the manic screeling of fiddle music.
•
“You cannot defeat me, Diane Raven Feather,” the young brave said as he stepped from the walled pit. He walked slowly towards her. “Not this time. The old ways a
re long gone. You are a woman, less than the dust beneath Red Bear’s moccasins.”
Diane ignored the man and continued her dance. She heard Grandfather Thunder draw closer. In the distance she saw his son, Lightning, as his rising anger flashed across the sky. A hound’s deep baying echoed through the hills. She resisted the urge to redouble her efforts. Haste would hinder. She must maintain the cadence of her ritual.
Something flashed by at the edge of her peripheral vision. One of his tentacles was coiled around Amanda’s waist as it pulled her towards the opening. Diane dared not stop. She had to shut it out of her mind lest it cause her to misstep.
“You give her to me so easily? How weak you are. You don’t even try to save the girl.”
The creature’s laugh grated in Diane’s brain, but she pushed on. She focused on the dance, on the chant, on bringing the grandfathers closer.
“Will you let me have another, then? The man, perhaps? No. I sense something there. I think I shall take the other female. Perhaps a threesome is in order. Would you care to join us and make it a full orgy, Diane? Or, are you too old and dried up?”
Horror welled up inside her at the idea of this thing taking both women but she pushed it away. She could cry later. This thing must be put down. Now. Tonight. She did her best to shut out Betty June’s scream as she continued the ritual.
•
“What’re you fixin’ t’ do there, June Bug?” Truly asked the wide-eyed girl. “What’s that you got hidden in yore apron pocket?”
“N-nothin’,” Betty covered the pocket with both hands. “J-jest a poppet, tha’s all.”
“J-jest a poppet, eh? So what was you plannin’ t’do with j-jest a poppet?”
“N-nothin’, ma’m.” Betty June was thirteen, again. Truly stood before her filling the narrow doorframe. Betty stood near the table. Her hands cradled the wax figure behind her. She’d tried to make it look like Billy Joe Trusdell from the other side of the ridge. Instead, it looked like a shiny, gray finger with tumors sprouting on either side.
Black Stump Ridge Page 25