by Rod Redux
Raj laughed.
“That’s not all. We were filming with the good Sony camera up on the second floor, and the battery just went dead.”
“Are you kidding?”
“Nope.”
Big Dan had scowled down at the HD camera as they poked through one of the upstairs bedrooms. Raj had seen his puzzled expression and asked him, “What’s the matter, big guy?”
“It’s dead,” he’d answered bluntly.
“Dead?”
“Dead. Battery just went from seventy percent to zero in less than three minutes.”
Of course, Robert Forester had wanted to know what that meant, so Raj had explained, “It’s been our experience that batteries tend to go dead for no reason when there is genuine paranormal activity going on in a home. Our theory is that the preternatural entity-- or entities-- use the energy from the batteries in an attempt to manifest physical phenomena.”
“In layman’s terms,” Forester said with a nervous grin.
“Some ghost just sucked the juice out of the battery,” Little Dan said.
Forester looked from Little Dan to Raj with alarm, “What usually happens after that?”
“I wouldn’t worry,” Raj tried to sooth him. “We might hear some tapping or it might use the energy it stole to knock a lamp over, but that’s generally the extent of what these lingering spirits can do. The worst thing we’ve experienced is some growling and once Allen felt his leg start to burn and some welts raised up on his calf like something had scratched him. You can relax. It’s not like in the movies where chairs start flying through the air.”
“It can be pretty scary though,” Little Dan said. He flopped onto a chair to rest his feet, waving a hand absently at the puff of dust that billowed out of it.
Raj eyed the chair nervously. He wouldn’t have been surprised if the chair collapsed under Little Dan’s weight, despite how small the man was. Little Dan had a penchant for destroying property. He never did it on purpose. He was just careless. With their luck, it would be a priceless heirloom, too. Little Dan had once knocked a painting off the wall of a historic New England home, cracking its two hundred year old frame. The cameraman’s accident had cost their production company almost three grand. The producers had wanted to fire Little Dan over that blunder. Raj had barely saved the guy’s job.
He just hoped Dan Stein didn’t wreck any of the furniture here. All the original furnishings were still present in the home, draped under white sheets like strange squat ghosts. It was hard to believe that no one had disturbed the home in the eighty years since it had last been occupied. Impossible, really. Yet no one had robbed the place. No one had vandalized it. Souvenir hunters had not broken in to steal a treasure from the infamous haunted house. But for the smell and signs of abandonment, the Forester Home was in pristine condition.
So far.
“I got growled at once in a basement, and I just about crapped down both legs.” Little Dan shuddered. “I hate basements.”
He shifted his weight and the chair groaned beneath him.
“But they can’t physically harm you,” Raj reassured their host. “They can work on your mind. Make you feel like you’re going crazy or scare you out of your wits, but only if you open yourself to their influence. Only if you let them do it to you.”
Despite the drained battery, nothing unusual had happened on the second floor, no strange tappings or half-heard utterances, no falling picture frames or odd breezes. And all the antiques had survived Little Dan’s visit. Shortly after, Allen had called, and all four men had returned to the first floor.
As Raj walked outside to speak with Allen, the remaining three had made themselves at home in the parlor, which was just off the foyer. The Dans and their host had stripped all the sheets from the furniture and turned on every working light fixture until the sitting room looked almost cozy, despite the ugly red wallpaper and overwrought furnishings. All the scene needed was a fire crackling in the hearth to make it complete.
The men seemed to be acclimating to the house’s dense atmosphere, Raj had noted. For some reason it made him think of how frogs will sit in a pan of boiling water, so long as the temperature is raised slowly. He had shivered as he crossed the porch, and he knew it wasn’t from the night’s chill.
“Say again?” Raj said, snapping from his reverie.
“I said it all sounds great,” Allen reiterated. “We’re packed here and rearing to go. We’ll be catching a 7:30 flight to Nashville. Should be there shortly after noon, so long as there are no delays. Oh, and I talked to Francis a few minutes ago. He said he should arrive there just about the same time as us. He’s driving up from—“
BEEP-BEEP!
“You have a call coming in,” Allen said.
Raj took the phone from his ear to look at the screen, then said, “Yes, it’s Jane. I should take her call, Al. She’s probably having trouble finding the turnoff. It’s really hard to see from the main road.”
“I’ll let you go then. I was just calling to check on you guys. Be careful out there, Raj. And try not to scare off all the ghosts.”
Raj chuckled. “We’ll do our best.”
“Later, bro.”
“Good night, Allen.”
Raj switched to Jane’s call and, still smiling, put the phone back to his ear. “Hello?”
Jane’s voice issued from the cell phone, loud but extremely garbled. “Raj? Oh thank--! I—the road… Raj--?”
Alarmed by the fear in Jane’s voice, Raj replied, “Jane? Jane, I can’t understand you. Try to talk slowly so I can—“
“—Aj?” Crackling, then, “—Get me?”
“Jane?”
There was a loud burst of static, then Jane’s voice broke through, high-pitched with fear: “Oh, God--! Raj, come get me! Please!”
She sounded childlike in her terror.
“Where are you, Jane?” Raj cried, his heart cramping inside his chest.
But the call had cut off.
NO SIGNAL.
The words popped up on Raj’s cell phone screen in a rounded red bubble.
“Damn!” Raj hissed, tapping the screen to call Jane back.
Beep-beep!
NO SIGNAL.
“Damn!”
Checking his pockets for keys, Raj turned to jump in the SUV. He hesitated with the driver’s side door open, glanced toward the Forester House. He couldn’t just go tearing off and leave the rest of his team inside. Not… here! Raj shoved his cell phone in his shirt pocket and pelted through the high grass toward the front door.
Jane was in some kind of trouble!
His Jane!
Interval
Traweek
1
Tanka woke to a silent dawn, his body complaining at the awkward positions he’d been forced to sleep in during the night. The stillness of the forest reminded him of the hush that came with heavy snow, and his thoughts turned back to the events of the night before: the frightening motions of the treetops, as if something large and unseen had raced through them like an evil wind, his confrontation with whatever foul spirit haunted these cursed woods, and the sense that it had appraised him, and then, for reasons he could not fathom, had chosen to spare his life rather than take it.
Tanka’s flesh broke out in a rash of tiny bumps at the memories that came rushing back to him. He had never believed in spirits before, had laughed at the superstitions of his mother and father, the gods his brothers believed in, but what else could that unseen presence have been? He’d once told his brother Oy’he that he did not believe in anything that he could not see or touch or smell, but last night he had discovered senses hitherto unknown to him.
He had felt that unseen entity, touched it with a sensory organ that seemed housed both in his skull and the pit of his stomach.
Perhaps it was his soul, and it had stretched out an invisible limb to stroke the watcher in the trees, to explore its shape, its hidden nature. If that was true, his spirit had found the touch of the unseen thing a
lien beyond compare. He had sensed the workings of its mind... and found them incomprehensible.
He knew the creature could have killed him if it wanted. He had felt its power as he cowered in its gaze, its malevolence… and yet it had spared him.
Why?
Tanka did not know. The only thing he was sure of, now that light had returned to the world, was that he must retreat from this haunted woodland. To be murdered at his brother’s hand would be a far better fate than what awaited him here in the forest of the Dreaming People… when night came again.
2
Thinking these things, Tanka eased himself down from the boughs he had slept upon.
The noise of his descent echoed through the silent forest, the crackle of branches, the scrape of his flesh against the bark, his wheezy grunts. He winced at the sounds, which seemed terribly loud in the howling silence of the woodland.
Daylight wavered on the horizon, pink and gleaming like the coals of a fire. The forest should deafening with the clamor of birds, the croak of frogs and the buzzing of all the little insects, yet all was still.
Tanka dropped to the ground, brushed bark and moist leaves from his hair.
His legs and back burned from the exertion. If his wife Muoie were still alive, she would have laughed at him, told him he was too old for such nonsense.
Climbing in trees…!
It surprised him how bitterly he missed his wife. She had nagged him constantly, and could never be deceived, but she had always seen to his comforts. She was mindful that his belly never went empty, and she had always been properly respectful of him in public, as a woman should be. She had scorned him when they were in private. Oh, yes! The woman sharpened her tongue like Tanka sharpened his knives, but she had been a good wife.
Damn you, Muoie! Tanka thought. And damn you, Anatissa!
In a sudden paroxysm of fury, Tanka damned all women-- for making a fool of him, a fool for the warm pleasures between their thighs, the softness of their lips, the comfort of their breasts. He damned his brother. He damned the fates.
Scrubbing his face, hands trembling, he put the glowing horizon to his left and began to trudge down the hill.
Weak from hunger and exhaustion, he listed as he walked. He scanned the ground as he retreated from the haunted woods, looking for a stone or some other object which might serve him as a weapon, just in case he chanced upon Oy’he.
“You are my brother, Oy’he!” Tanka called out. “But cross my path and I will kill you all the same!”
His voice cracked as he yelled, his throat parched, his knees threatening to buckle with each step.
He wondered if Oy’he was rising even now to his pursuit, honor-bound to kill his brother for the death of his beloved Anatissa. Tanka had fled to the Onemara highlands to escape his vengeful brother, and now he was fleeing the shunned woodland-- straight into his brother’s murderous embrace!
Let him try! Tanka thought grimly. The blood we share will not stay my hand from spilling his!
Tanka had killed many men in his life-- when his people made war with neighboring tribes, when they raided the villages of their enemies for wives or slaves to work the fields. He had even killed a couple of his own tribesmen, always over women, but only when he was forced to do it. He was a practical man, and if it was kill or be killed, he was not the sort to shrink from violent actions.
Even if it was his brother’s blood he was forced to spill.
Even if his brother’s cause was just.
Tanka spied a hatchet-shaped stone, one that would fit nicely in his palm. It looked just heavy enough to cleave open Oy’he’s skull… if the need arose.
Pleased, Tanka squatted to collect the stone, but the ground slid out from under him like a slippery peel. He groaned as he toppled forward onto his hands and knees.
He caught himself before he fell on his face, but he was too weak to do anything but kneel there on the ground for a while, breathing raggedly. His thoughts swam, waning fuzzy and distant, before he returned to himself. He blinked his eyes to clear the gray spots from his vision, then pressed his lips together and gathered the last of his reserves.
Breathing heavily, Tanka pried the stone from the ground with his fingertips, then stumbled to his feet. He stood swaying, staring up at the lightening sky, wet tendrils of hair clinging to his sweaty face.
If Oy’he had chanced upon him right at that moment, Tanka would have been scarce able to defend himself, let alone kill his honor-bound sibling.
“I must find food and water or I am lost,” Tanka panted.
Squeezing the stone in his fist, he forced himself to continue forward.
At the base of the next hill, he came across a narrow rill of water and dropped to his knees to drink. He slurped greedily, then rolled onto his back with a gasp, his stomach sloshing. Better. He burped with satisfaction, then, surveying the forest around him, saw mushrooms growing at the base of a nearby tree. They were small but there were many, and he knew by their shape and coloring that they were edible.
Not only edible, quite tasty in his opinion. Muoie had often used them in her recipes.
Hunger burning in his guts, Tanka crawled to the tree on his hands and knees and began to claw the mushrooms from the crumbling earth. He stuffed them into his mouth with greedy grunts, hardly pausing to chew them, his cheeks distended. Little white grubs, uncovered by his scrabbling fingers, writhed in the dirt, and he ate those too.
He rested for a while, his belly straining, then clambered to his feet and continued on.
The food and drink quickly nourished him. He could feel strength flowing through the inner channels of his body, spreading out from his belly to each of his extremities. He skirted a thicket that was too dense and thorny to wade through. Later, he had to double back when he came upon a cliff that was too steep to safely descend.
He stopped to drink again at high sun, and frowned when he realized the water was flowing in the wrong direction. The small rivulet was racing toward him, opposite the direction he was walking. It should have been flowing alongside him.
He stood and looked around. Was he traveling in the wrong direction?
With the sun directly overhead, he could not be sure.
Uneasy, Tanka checked the moss growing on some of the trees nearby, but the moss did not seem to favor any particular side.
Like the stillness of the forest, it was an unnatural thing.
“Do not doubt yourself now,” he murmured. “You are walking in the correct direction. Soon you will be free of this evil wilderness.”
Still, he was disturbed.
Ahet, the voice of caution in his mind, counseled: Do not be so sure of yourself, Tanka! You are never so wrong as when you are sure of yourself! Do you never learn your lessons?
Quiet! he stilled the voice. Now is not the time for doubt! Night comes soon, and it would not be fit to let the darkness catch me here again!
Tanka remembered the dreadful spirit he had confronted in the treetops last night. His belly tied itself into knots at the memory.
No… not fit at all!
Pushing his uneasiness aside, he continued on.
He trudged uphill and back down, again and again, cursing the terrain, his exhaustion, his bad luck. He fell once in his tiredness and rolled all the way down a rocky scree, bruising his limbs and banging his head on a stone hard enough to split open his flesh.
He clambered back to his feet, dizzy and in pain. He wiped the blood away with his hand. He looked to the sky to check the time, to see how much nearer night had come, and he loosed a cry of despair to the purpling heavens.
The westering sun was to his right.
He had been walking the wrong direction. He had traveled deeper into the forest!
Tanka dropped to his knees, still crying out to the heavens, and let anguish sweep his thoughts away.
3
Tanka felt a sharp pain in the meaty part of his hip. Pesky fly, he thought, and he brushed at it with his hand, trying to shoo t
he hungry insect away. As he mumbled a curse into the dirt, damning the fly to whatever hell awaited biting insects, the darkness began to recede from his mind. He shifted his body, turning his eyes away from the light, hoping to drift back into the void, where there was no fear, no sorrow or regret.
The sharp pain came again-- this time in his ribs-- and his eyelids fluttered open. He blinked at dry earth and pebbles, and a little further on, his hand. Sight preceded memory. Despair gripped his heart.
He remembered the thing in the trees, the westering sun. He had gotten lost in the woodland. Night would soon be upon him!
Pain stabbed into his back, digging and twisting into his flesh. With an angry grunt, Tanka heaved himself over.
A bony old man, thin as a bundle of sticks, scurried away with a fearful whimper.
“Ah! Who are you?” Tanka demanded.
The old creature whined, brandishing a sharp pointed stick in Tanka’s direction. The little spear looked as thin and frail as the old man’s limbs, hardly a threat.
He was tempted to take the old man’s stick and beat him with it.
Let him hold it if it gives him comfort, Tanka thought.
But who was he? Was the old man Onemara, or an exile like Tanka himself? Perhaps the ancient one could lead Tanka to the village of the Dreaming People, save him from a second fearsome night in these blighted woods! If not the village of the Onemara, then perhaps some other place of refuge.
Tanka sat up wearily. The old man retreated a little further. Hoping to keep the old man from fleeing, Tanka smiled and showed his open hands.
“Do you speak Poha?” Tanka asked.
The old man crouched, eyeing Tanka suspiciously. He was like a piece of dry jerky, bone and sinew, little else. He started to reach out, then jerked his hand back. His eyes glinted in their sunken sockets like small animals cowering in two dark burrows.
The old man had long straight hair, white as new fallen snow, and bushy white eyebrows that were so long they fell over his eyes a little. His ribs jutted out, as did the bones of his hips and knuckles, making him look like an ancient and gnarled tree. His leggings and breechclout were ragged and filthy.