As he kept his silent count, he thought about why someone was chasing and trying to kill them.
It was always a possibility that they could have ventured onto someone’s property. Landowners in Alaska were notorious for shooting first and asking questions later. At the clearing where they had made camp, Trent had noticed where some sand had been scooped away recently, so it was also possible they had ventured onto someone’s gold claim. A miner would definitely defend his claim against poachers.
Those were the two most reasonable explanations he could come up with as they continued through the trees. Trent looked up, but the evergreen canopy above was so thick above them, that he still couldn’t see the position of the sun.
His mind settled back to deducing the identity of their pursuer. His thoughts moved from the more logical to the more improbable.
The last time he had been here, he hadn’t made any friends, other than Christina. He had done what he had to in order to survive that night, and that meant that he had killed when he had to. Christina had assured him that the town would cover up what had happened—that they themselves had done so much worse while living under their curse. But maybe a relative of one of the people he had accidentally killed was after them. That was a possibility, and thinking about it dredged up unwanted memories from his night in Whittier a month and half ago—images of running from people who looked human on the outside, but who had turned into raw animals underneath their skin.
As he tried to suppress his horrifying memories, he suddenly broke free of the dense forest as they all found themselves standing at the sandy edge of a stream. It was impossible to tell if it was the same stream where they had made camp the night before, but it felt familiar.
Without turning back, the Shaman beckoned them to follow him across the stream. Trent started to follow, still bringing up the rear, but when he looked at the undergrowth on the opposite bank, he saw the distinctive humps of two grizzly bears moving through the trees. Their huge forms lumbered along, and Trent stopped. Zana froze as well, but Christina continued on, following the Shaman without hesitation.
The Shaman stopped and turned around in mid-stream. Trent could finally see the front of the man they had been following for the last half hour. He wore a mask made of wood that had been carved into the shape of a wolf’s head and he wore a chest plate made of bones. Despite the Shaman’s ominous appearance, Trent could sense that the man meant them no harm.
The Shaman said something in his native tongue that Trent couldn’t understand at first. The man repeated what he said, but this time in English—his voice muffled by the mask he still wore.
“Do not fear.”
With that, the Shaman turned around and started walking across the stream again. Trent looked at Zana, and the two of them followed. Although Trent proceeded with caution, and kept an eye on the bears, he was not afraid.
When their group made it to the other side, there was no clearing—just more underbrush. Trent helped Zana up and then hopped up onto the land himself. He looked back across the stream to see if anyone was following. There was nothing that his eyes could see, but he sensed a presence—something evil that had not yet crossed the water. Something evil—and familiar.
Trent turned away and continued after the others. As soon as he entered the forest, he noted that the trees were farther apart from one another and were easier to walk through, but the air maintained the same ethereal quality as the ghostly forest they had just left behind. He heard shuffling from his left and saw a giant grizzly, not more than ten feet away from him, as it paralleled their movement.
Christina looked back at Trent as she continued walking.
“They’re here to protect us,” she said quietly—something that Trent’s instincts had already told him.
Just as he was about to respond to Christina, they found themselves in a clearing about twenty yards in diameter that was surrounded by a thick wall of trees on all sides.
The Shaman walked over to a fallen log and sat down, pulling off his mask and breathing deeply of the crisp, clean air. His face was sweaty and his long hair was tousled and matted to his forehead. If Trent had encountered him on the street of a city or alone in the wilderness without knowing who or what he was, he might have been wary of the man. But when the Shaman smiled, Trent saw pure joy in his eyes and wrinkles that hinted at how old he probably was.
More than appearing younger than he should have, the Shaman also exuded the health of a much younger man. From the wiry muscles in his bare legs, Trent guessed that the Shaman could out-hike or run Trent on any given day.
The Shaman looked at Trent and then at Zana.
When he noticed the wound on her arm, he frowned and stood up with surprising agility.
“I will heal her first,” he said, as he moved forward and offered his hand to Zana. “Then, we will speak.”
Chapter 33
AS A MENTALIST, Trent had seen and studied all manner of people claiming to have supernatural powers. He had debunked mediums who spoke with the dead. He’d done the same for faith healers, even though their flocks had been angrier with him than they’d been with their false healer.
This was Trent’s first time, however, watching a native Shaman at work. He had read about witch doctors using tricks to fool members of their tribe into believing that they had powers beyond mortal ken. He had seen evil spirits being plucked from a possessed man’s stomach that had turned out to be nothing more than animal entrails, blood, and sleight of hand.
In all his travels, he had yet to see an authentic healer cure anyone of anything, but given Zana’s wound, and the lack of options, he knelt a few feet away from Zana and gave the old man some space in which to work.
The Shaman placed his wooden wolf mask on his face again, and immediately his demeanor changed from being a gentle old man to being a dark wielder of ancient magic. He began softly, chanting something in his native tongue, then reached to his side and grabbed a small container made of bone and the size and shape of a hockey puck.
The man opened the container and scooped out two finger’s full of a brown substance that looked like over-ripe bananas and smelled like manure. Trent leaned in to get a closer look at the substance as the Shaman rubbed it on Zana’s wound, while continuing his chant. At first, she winced, but almost as if she were being lulled by the man’s rhythmic words, she turned silent and appeared to be in less and less pain with each passing second.
The Shaman continued to rub the salve into Zana’s wound, and slowly, in front of Trent’s eyes, her wound began to close.
Trent inched himself still closer, but there was no mistaking what he was seeing. He was familiar with plenty of acts that looked as if they shouldn’t be possible, but this was the most incredible feat he had ever witnessed in person. They were in the middle of the forest, at the edge of a stream, with no props, and Zana’s very real wound was really closing.
On instinct, Trent’s mind raced, trying to figure out ways that the Shaman could be faking what was happening, but he couldn’t. The wound was healing as the substance was blending in with the color of her skin.
All he could theorize was that the Shaman had knowledge of some special substance found only in the wilds of Alaska. The concept wasn’t unheard of. Many medicinal plants had been discovered in rain forests and other places where modern science had never before looked. But modern science knew of nothing that could heal a wound in the manner he was observing.
The Shaman shook slightly as he continued his chant and rubbed Zana’s arm harder until finally, he stopped, and all was silent.
Zana opened her eyes and gently felt her arm, as the Shaman slowly released it.
“How did you do that?” she asked, her eyes open wide in disbelief.
Instead of answering her, the Shaman bolted with unnatural speed across the clearing on all fours as if he were running like a wild animal.
When Trent stood up, the Shaman turned to face him, like a wild animal ready to pounce. The w
ooden mask seemed to come alive and almost snarl at Trent.
The Shaman’s body trembled, and his eyes rolled into the back of his head, before he fell forward and stayed still—breathing hard—recovering. Finally, he stood to his full height—as his movements changed from that of an animal to that of a man, once again.
Christina walked over to the Shaman and helped him back to the log, where he sat down and removed his wooden mask. This same man who had just sped across the clearing with inhuman speed was now barely able to sit down on his own.
“His name is Otsioza,” Christina said. “He’s very old and powerful. If anyone can help you with your problem, he can, but first he has to rest.”
Zana reached over and touched the old man on his shoulder.
“Thank you for helping me. I’m sorry—it looks like it hurt so much.”
The Shaman looked up at her, still breathing heavily, and grinned.
“I will be fine soon. My animal spirit protects me as well.”
Zana turned to Trent.
“He’s right. I can see one attached to him.”
The Shaman squinted his eyes and looked up at Trent.
“Now, I understand why you are here. You have returned his spirit to us. The rest of the animals have been weak without him.”
Zana examined the Shaman more closely.
“The spirit attached to Trent is darker than yours,” she said.
The Shaman glanced at the ground then back at Zana with a sad smile.
“That is because the spirit attached to your friend has chosen to become a weapon of vengeance and to wander the in-between world until its work is done. Its form is dark because of its dark mission.”
“How do you know all of this?” Trent said.
The Shaman’s words flowed gently, and his sentences had a smooth rhythm to them.
“The spirit that possesses you is that of the great bear, Ka’a.”
The Shaman bowed his head slowly, then raised his eyes and looked back and forth between Trent and the two women. He looked sad, and the lines in his face seemed to mark his age again.
“I know about Ka’a, and I know about his mission, because I am the one who killed him.”
Chapter 34
“IT WAS LONG ago,” the Shaman said. “As far back as three average lifetimes. The town of Whittier did not exist. It was known then as the valley that meets the great waters. The land was full of animals and life. Wolves, moose, bears. Then the white people came and began killing them, at first for food, then for sport, and then…for other reasons.
“The Dena’ina were the people. They were my people, and no matter what any of us said, we were afraid of the whites. In my culture, we believed that each white person held the soul of a dead person.”
“Why would you believe that?” Trent asked.
The Shaman spit out a dry laugh.
“White people are not…they were not people to us. We believed that the ghosts they held inside them made their skin pale. I did not believe it, but we were taught this by the shaman of our tribe.
“I believed instead that the white men were mentally ill and that they were not one with the world around them. Instead, they always seemed to fight the environment—tried to change it. When the military saw the valley that touched the water, they said that they wanted it to help them with a war against a race of people that lived very far away.”
“The Japanese,” Trent said.
“That is what they called them, but I believed that the Japanese existed only in the their imaginations—a part of their mental sickness.”
“When the military men tried to take the valley, our people left and did not fight. They wished to avoid contact with the walking dead men, but the animals stayed and tried to defend their home. The men had their guns, but for every bear or wolf that was shot down, the animals took out at least one of the soldiers—sometimes even more.”
The Shaman looked down. A dark cloud seemed to pass over his face.
“Before I was a Shaman, I was a hunter for my tribe—the best one known to my people. I believed that I could do anything. My ego knew no bounds. Even now, I am ashamed to speak this out loud, but the soldiers offered to pay me a fortune if I would help them drive the animals away or kill them. I wanted so many things for my wife and my son, and I thought the soldiers’ money would give them a better life, so I accepted.
“At first, I tried to scare the animals away with sacred noises and with smoke that would make them think the valley was on fire, but more animals arrived and there was more death on both sides. Then the soldiers brought in more men to start building the tunnels beneath the city I saw an opportunity to prepare a trap. I used one of the tunnels to lure the wolves and the bears. I chanted to them in my people’s tongue and told them that they would be safe—that I was there to help them. They heard my words, and they all came at once into the tunnel. But when they did, they were locked inside and slaughtered by the white men’s bullets.”
Trent saw the Shaman’s eyes tear up.
“I was a young man, but I have no excuse for what I did. I felt the pain of the sacred wolves, moose, bears, and the rest of the animals as they were destroyed without mercy. As I listened to their cries, I knew I had committed an evil that could not be repaired.
“But that was not my greatest sin. My son was with me and saw the horror I caused. I tried to shield his eyes as the bullets tore into the helpless creatures, but he pulled my hand away and watched in morbid fascination.
“All of the animals were dead, and their blood flooded the tunnel, but one of them would not die, no matter how many times it was shot. To put it out of its misery, I used my bow and placed an arrow of silver between its eyes, sending the mighty grizzly, Ka’a, finally to the other side.
“I looked down in shame but saw my son gazing up at me in admiration. I was ashamed for him to have me as his father and for the lesson I had taught him that day.
“I could not take back what had been done, but I told the soldiers that they had to bury the animals in the earth of the mountain to make sure their spirits would not return. They did not believe in our ways, but their commander was a cautious man and agreed to do as I directed.”
“He did not know that only by fire or water could the animal spirits re-enter the cycle of life as the soul of a new creature. Buried in the earth, they would be caught between worlds until their remains were set free.”
Zana looked like she was trying to piece everything together from the Shaman’s tale.
“You deliberately kept the animals from moving on to their next lives, so they could have a chance to take revenge on the soldiers.”
“It started on the next full moon, when one of the few animals that had been caught in my trap attacked three of the soldiers. The animal was killed, but not before drawing blood from the white men and opening a path for other animal spirits to enter. Those three men became possessed and turned into walking animals. They attacked more soldiers and drew blood from them as well. When the next full moon came, the spirits that had been waiting, dormant for the month, took over and turned the soldiers into savage animals. The commander was forced to murder his own men in an attempt to control the outbreak.
“I watched all of this with my son, knowing all along that I would one day have to pay for my role in their injustice as well. But I did not expect what happened next. The commander was cautious, as I’ve said, but he was also a military man in his heart. Where I saw only horror, he saw the potential of creating a soldier that would be stronger and faster and harder to kill than any other. He began to capture the men who were infected and to put them in cages. By doing so, he slowly began to contain the madness I had started.
“Eventually, the military base was built with its massive barracks and its web of connecting underground tunnels. The commander kept me around to advise him, although I only told him half-truths at best. He sent for men who wore white coats and who brought with them strange metal tools and electronic machines
to use on the possessed men. But no matter what they tried, they could not control when the soldiers became possessed and imbued with animal speed and strength. And what the white man cannot control, he destroys.”
“That’s when the soldiers pulled out of Whittier and sold it to Alaska?”
The Shaman nodded.
“It’s just like the Elder told us,” Christina said.
At the sound of the Elder’s name, the Shaman stiffened. Trent saw the truth in the old man’s eyes and felt it in his heart.
“The Elder couldn’t have been your son,” Trent said. “He was an old man when he died a couple of months ago. That would make you…”
“Older than your people believe is possible,” the Shaman said.
“That would be a miracle,” Zana said.
“Not a miracle. A duty, perhaps. Certainly, a curse,” the Shaman said. “After the soldiers left, my wife left me and took my son with her. To fill my emptiness and to save my own soul, I became a Shaman, and vowed to watch over the souls of the animals until their revenge was completed.”
“But, all the soldiers and the commander were gone,” Zana said.
The Shaman grinned darkly.
“Physical distance is nothing in the spirit world. If you were to track the soldiers and their officers, you would find that some were lucky enough to have been taken by disease or old age, but that most died very unsettling deaths.”
“And the last one that had to die was the Elder—your son,” Trent said. “So the curse is over?”
“The townspeople didn’t change during the last full moon,” Christina added. “The spirits left them alone for the first time in years.”
“I hoped that the curse would end with the death of my son,” the Shaman said, hanging his head low. “But Ka’a is still active, which must mean there are others who still deserving of vengeance.”
The Whittier Trilogy Page 46