Folding up the map, Millie spoke, "I hate to leave here, but it has access to hunting and fishing. There is no direct road to it, and it has pre-existing buildings that will be easy for us to re-enforce. There is likely a well close by, and it is on high ground. But it is going to be miserable in the humidity and heat."
"I think you might be surprised, remember back in the day there wasn't AC - things were built to ensure people didn't die of heatstroke. I think if we start now, we can get most of our comforts moved. And the location should be easy to defend. And hey, if we take the river, it is close enough to return here as needed. Not to mention by boat, it is not that far to the farm. So, we have two places we can easily get stuff from to fix the place up nice."
Millie perked up and asked, "Hermit, does that include the solar supplies you were using at Papa Doc's?"
Running a tan hand through his blonde hair, Hermit smiled, "Yup. And the livestock."
In the past week, Erika had gone from hopeful to resigned that Ransom would not be showing up to rescue her - that she was on her own. She tried not to let on, but everyone was looking to her for direction and she was feeling the strain. She had been looked after all her life - whether it was by her doting father or by someone she was dating, or even her friends. She was not sure what to do, so right now, she was strictly following the instructions Ransom left her in preparation for their leaving.
Every night before she went to bed and every morning when she got up, she turned on the ham radio to the designated channel to listen for him, and tonight would be no different. Excusing herself, she made her way up to bed, and once again, she was met with radio silence. The other operator channels were buzzing with news about the changes. People were bugging out to their farms, hunting camps, and getting away from the city. Many wild conspiracy theories were speculating the virus had escaped from a lab, was sent by the Russians, or that it was something from outer space.
Erika did not know what to think, but one thing was for sure - the weirdness had worsened starting the night they had been at Papa Doc's for that crazy ritual. Her current goal was to get phase two of Ransom's plan in place and for that to happen they needed to leave and set up a base camp. But that was not the only reason she wanted to leave here. The shadow wolf was back. She and Gretel walked every morning before the others got up, and they had seen tracks. It had not been so bold as to venture up around the cabin again. Not since she zapped it.
Glancing at her hand she was relieved it had healed nicely, but she had not had a chance to puzzle through why it had been hurt to begin with. Once they got a camp set up, she hoped that she would get a chance to talk with Hermit and Millie about it. So far timing had not been right, and it just sounded crazy.
She felt that once they were somewhere safe, she could discern the rest. She wished Wren were there - she could always trust her to decipher through the tangle of emotions and feelings that clouded her ability to read others' thoughts and intentions. As she fell asleep, she wondered if Wren was okay, and whose body that was out at Papa Doc's. It was too short for Preacher, too tall for Devonne.
✽✽✽
Dreamtime
Erika walked through the dense forest following the sound of the dogs barking. Mist weaved through the forest floor, and she got turned around no longer sure where the dogs were, the barking sounding like it was coming from all around her, making it impossible to pinpoint the direction. The mists seemed like dragon’s breath, and she thought she had a glimpse of a ghostly Wren sitting weaving a large tapestry, she tried to call out, but the black wolf was suddenly between them. In the distance, she heard Ransom calling her name. She tried to turn into a raven, but her wings would not carry her. She tried to run and jump, run, and jump until she found herself on the edge of a steep cliff. The wolf was on her heels, and she had nowhere to go, turning to get a running start, she was surprised to see the man Felix standing there. He was dressed in the hood and tunic of a huntsman. Gone from his face was the appearance of youthful arrogance, and his eyes… His eyes glowed the amber of the wolf's. "Erika," he seemed to whisper, reaching out like a lover to trace her face. Terror engulfed her, and she turned to run but found herself falling. His arm snaked out and caught her, bringing her to rest on the side of the cliff. The tiger appeared then, and in a blink, the man Felix was gone and, in his place, the giant black wolf. The tiger and the wolf circled one another until the tiger stood between her and the black beast. The amber eyes lingering on hers a moment too long. The wolf leaped in the mists giving her one last look.
Crying, Erika wrapped her arms around the big tiger, crying into its soft fur. It was there, she fell back to sleep.
Chapter 19
July 7, 2020
Erika overslept the next morning, reluctant to get up when she could still smell Ransom in the room around her. Dressing in an olive-green halter top, button-up pair of faded jeans, a long-sleeved pine camouflage shirt, and her snake boots, Erika went downstairs. She discovered Hermit, Tanna, and Millie had already gone and come back with a swamp boat they had ‘procured,’ from a nearby storage facility.
"So, you stole it," she asked flatly, trying not to laugh.
"Liberated," Hermit told her a twinkle in his blue eyes. He was thriving in this pandemic hellscape, she thought with a wry smile. She was not going to complain too much. The boat was larger than Ransom's beat to hell and back johnboat. Between the two boats, they had enough room to transport a good bit of their supplies and still have room for one of the footlockers Ransom had left marked on the map for her. It had been fitted out with a deer rifle and a .22 for hunting, a pistol and ammo for all three and a hunting knife, a couple of headlamps, a solar cell phone charger, and details on how to skin a deer, squirrel, and fish. There were even well-thumbed copies of the Fox Fire series.
Hermit steered the swamp boat with Hansel sitting at Tanna's feet. The copper-haired woman had healed up nicely, and while there was still bruising on her throat and she spoke with a whisper, her sense of humor had returned, and there was now a twinkle in her once hollow looking eyes. In the johnboat, Millie sat in a shared seat with the ever-alert Gretel.
Social media and local news were reporting violence escalating on a massive scale. In Chimneyville, people were dying, not just due to the virus but from rage. Normally good Christian folks had lost their minds and were angry over the riots, looting, social distancing, mask-wearing, schools starting back, school delays, the upcoming elections. You name it - people were upset, and sadly, killings and outright murder were becoming commonplace. Times were crazy. It was like the world was on fire, and all anyone could do was watch it burn.
As they glided down the river, Millie asked Erika, "You ever think maybe we unleashed something that night of the ritual?"
Her stormy grey-green eyes focused off in the distance, Erika weighed her words before answering, "Yeah, I reckon so."
"Can we fix it?"
"Honestly, I don't know." Stealing a glance at Millie, the black-haired girl added hesitantly, "I think something bad happened that night, and our memories have been altered. I have looked at the ritual notes, but I can't figure out what happened to me." She took a deep breath, afraid to tell Millie what she really thought, "I don't know what or why, but that night combined with the soul jars and my blacking out an entire week. It just does not follow a pattern. When would I ever leave my mom and the fur kids alone like that without checking in? When would I ever take off and not tell someone?" Seeing Millie was really listening to her and not dismissing her claims, Erika took a deep breath and continued, "I think it is weird that our inner circle is dispersed." She gave a short laugh, "I mean obviously Hermit, you and I are together, but we weren't supposed to be."
Wiping the sweat off her brow, she turned to give Millie her full attention, "Hermit was out of town, I went missing and presumed dead, and you… Well, if we hadn't come back, where would that have left you, Millie?"
Staring into the water, a fierce look in her eyes, Millie wh
ispered, "Alone."
"Yep… No one has heard from the Professor, Roxi, Velvet, Becca, or even Wren, and that is not like any of them not to be in touch, especially under these circumstances. No emails, no texts. And think about this… Have you stopped once to contact them? I have thought about it a hundred times, but I never seem to actually do it."
"But if we have been bewitched, Erika, why can we talk about it now?" Millie asked, her eyes big as the realization was sinking in.
"I don't know. It could be because we are caught in an in-between place. We are not in the water on this boat, but we are on it, we are not floating in the air, but we are not on land. We aren't on land, but we are caught between it."
Millie rubbed herself as though she was suddenly freezing despite the temperature being in the low 90's. "What are we going to do about it?"
Hansel started barking madly, but it was Tanna's scream that cut Erika's answer off. She and Millie looked in where Tanna's outstretched arm was pointing, and Gretel began to bristle and growl. There was a broad ripple in the water. Large as in the size of a large boat wake large. Hermit had stopped the airboat, and the silence of the river was deafening. "Gator?" Millie called out to the other boat. Tanna and Hermit exchanged looks, and he looked from her to the wake in the water. "Let's get out of here!" He yelled back at the girls in the boat behind him. Erika started the johnboat and pulled up alongside the airboat. "What was it?"
"Big ass snake, let us get out of here. Something like that could get the dogs easy," Hermit told her, mopping his brow with his hand.
"That big," she asked incredulously, both her and Millie peering down frightfully at the murky brown water.
"Yeah, I only saw the head, but it was huge, looked like an alligator. Tanna got a better look. I think it might be an anaconda someone released," he said, waving them past.
Something large bumped the johnboat's bottom, causing Erika to gasp and quickly shove Gretel into the bottom of the boat between Millie's legs.
"I don't like this," Millie breathed as the boat shook. Erika hurriedly tried to crank the boat, but her nerves were getting the better of her. The boat was bumped again, causing the hair on the back of her neck to stand up.
"There!" Millie and Hermit cried simultaneously as the snake's large head poked out of the water close to the boat.
Erika pulled the boat motor's start with renewed effort, and the engine started with a launch as they took off down the river. Turning around, she saw what had to be at least 16 feet of a water snake zip off in the opposite direction. Glancing at the airboat, Erika saw Tanna raise the rifle to shoot at the great snake, and Hermit stopped her, shaking his head as he geared up and drove after her and Millie. "Ever the woodsman," she said to herself, thinking how she did not know it would offend her if Tanna had killed the monstrous serpent. As they powered the boats upriver, the landscape looked thicker and more jungle and less pine belt-ish, and she thought how quickly it seemed to have grown up. When Ransom took her duck hunting, it seemed different. Dark shapes seemed to be moving in the woods along the river. "Utgard," she muttered, in Old Norse, the "corrupted" land, the home of wildness, chaos, and nonconformity. She felt her third eye tingle, as a chill went up her spine.
The rest of the ride upriver was quiet. No one mentioned the Jurassic feeling of the woods though they all noticed it. They were all on edge. Of course, it had not helped when Hermit pointed out the massive mudslides along the riverbank where large alligators were coming in and out. He wanted to familiarize the girls with warning signs of the ancient river monsters, but that was not making anyone feel better about their decision to live in the swamps. By the time they had traveled the back channels to the forgotten ruins of what had been Mount Pleasant Plantation, each was lost in their own thoughts. Bald cypress trees with trunks so large the four of them could not hold hands around it and have them touch grew like great behemoths out of the dark waters. Cypress knees rose out of the water creating an obstacle for navigating the boat, so Erika and Millie had to jump into the water to pull the boat through the shallow waterway right up to the derelict columns slowly sinking in the dark brown pools. Where the large plantation owner's house had once stood - now there were only ruins. The path to the relic vanished now taken back by time and the waters of the swamp and the memory of cotton and slaves.
The golden haze of daylight began to fade to dusk while the blanket of tie-dyed purples and coral and pinks painted the clear sky over the river. A crescent moon was starting to rise in the east as the foursome cautiously picked their way through the shadows and underbrush as they cut a path from the river. The two dogs were running off-leash, investigating the path ahead, but Erika and the others would not let them go too far before they called them back. Too clearly, they remembered the size of the snake they had seen in the river hours earlier.
Fireflies were beginning to dot the woods as they made their approach to an overgrown clearing. There in the center stood the derelict remains of long-forgotten slave quarters. Goosepimples ran down Erika's arms. It was a haunted place, thick with an air of sadness and despair. Left behind by time and rot, the remnants of a giant, cast-iron cauldron sat in the middle of four shacks. One of the bricks and mortar dogtrot style cabins was still standing solid while the others lost to time and the elements.
Hermit explained that each side of the building would have held 6 to 12 slaves, separated by sex. Or if the owner had been kind, a slave may have lived with their families. He tested the floorboards of the standing cabin and found the building sturdy. Inside, the group was surprised to discover bunkhouse style beds built into the walls. The wood floor was soft and spongy in spots but nothing that they could not reinforce. As it was, it was still sturdy enough to support their combined weight. The air in the cabin was oppressive enough that Tanna commented on it. Agreeing, Millie dug through her backpack and produced a bundle of sage, some tobacco leaf, and a lone candle. Seeing Tanna's puzzled look, Erika explained as she took the cap off and undid her ponytail, "She is smudging our sleeping quarters."
Shaking her long black hair loose, she added, "It's to drive out any negativity or unhappy spirits hanging around who might want to harm us. The ceremony will cleanse the space so the spirits can find peace. It lets them know that we mean them no harm by praying for an end to the pain, suffering, and loss that they knew in life. The candle will light a pathway to the loved ones and friends they were separated from in life." Combing her fingers through her hair absentmindedly, the grey-green eyes had a far off and distant look to them, "When Millie is done, she will pinch the tobacco, say a final prayer, and sprinkle the tobacco as a gift for the spirits to pick up and carry with them on their way."
"Does it work?"
"Only the dead really know," Erika answered playfully before admitting, "I hope so. We do not need any trouble. And hey, at the least, it is a way of honoring their lives, and the injustice dealt them." Walking to the door, she whistled for Hansel and Gretel, who were exploring the wood line.
A loud knock broke the night's silence, causing the group to stop setting up camp and look at one another in surprise. The sound echoed throughout the field and surrounding darkness.
"What was that?" a bewildered Millie asked Hermit.
Looking up from where he was unstacking the supplies he had carried in from the boat, he shrugged. "Probably just a branch hung up in a tree and banging against it from the wind."
The girls had no reason not to accept this answer and went back to work setting up the small quarters to make it more comfortable when a second knock came from the camp's opposite side. It was not until the two dogs came running inside, hackles raised and whining that Erika got concerned. Walking to the window, she peered out into the now dark woods. She was about to say something when a third knock came from behind the building. That got everyone's attention. Hermit got his flashlight and was about to go outside to investigate, but Erika stopped him. "Help me put a tarp over the windows and doors first. If someone is out there, it
will make it more difficult for them to see what we are doing."
"Good thinking sis," he told her, moving to help her duct tape the tarps over the windows. It did not let in much air, but it added a thin sense of security. Once they finished, Erika left them to it and went out to stand in the breezeway of the dogtrot building. Quietly and deliberately, she moved to the opposing wall's shadows so she could scan the wood line.
She was pleased with the location and looked forward to investigating it in the light of the day. From where she stood in the shadows, she could just make out a figure blacker than the darkness surrounding it as it moved to slide from tree to tree. She quickly shifted her focus to see more clearly into the darkness. She could not be sure but whatever it was appeared to be following the trail they had made coming up from the riverbank. She could not shake the feeling she was being watched and crept back along the building's side to the doorway. Once back inside with the others, she was relieved to see they had agreed that all four of them would sleep on this side of the dogtrot for the time being. She let go of a sigh of relief, happy to share a bunk with Tanna. It had worried her that the newcomer might object to Hermit sleeping with them, but with the forest's sounds closing in on them, she seemed to agree there was safety in numbers. Rubbing her third eye, Erika felt a weird tingling as though a headache was coming on only instead of her temples hurting - the pain seemed centered in her forehead.
A loud pop sounded as something ricocheted off the roof and rolled down. "What was that!" Millie exclaimed, jumping up and looking to the ceiling.
Laughing, Hermit told her, "Calm down, it's probably just an acorn or a pecan falling out of the trees onto the old roof." Erika could see by the candlelight that the laughter did not quite reach his eyes. She studied the man as he ran his hand through his short blonde hair, something she knew he did when he was nervous. Walking to the window, he pulled back the tarp and looked out the window.
Tapestry of Worlds : Part One - The White Raven Awakens Page 12