The Whittier Trilogy

by Michael W. Layne

  Trent sat down next to the Shaman.

  On his first night in Whittier, he caused the death of the Shaman’s son, the man known only to him before as, the Elder.

  And in Las Vegas, the spirit of Ka’a had possessed Trent and led the sociopath known as the Hunter to his near-death.

  Trent turned to the Shaman.

  “Your son, the Elder…did he also have a son?”

  The Shaman nodded, with a defeated, tired expression.

  “Yes, but my grandson left this town with his mother, when he was a child, to live in another state. I only saw him once after that, when he returned as a young man to live with my son for a while. I watched him hunt a moose once. It was his first kill, and my son blooded him as is our tradition. My grandson showed great promise as a hunter, but he carried the same darkness as his father. I watched them both from inside these woods, but I could never bring myself to let them know that I was still alive, watching over the very animal spirits that yearned for my son’s blood.”

  “You don’t know where your grandson moved to, do you?” Trent asked.

  “I have only heard of the place, but I was told it was a great city in the middle of a barren desert.”

  Zana walked over to Trent and held his arm.

  “Do you think the Hunter was…”

  Trent nodded. There was no other way to tell the old man but to be as straightforward as possible.

  “Otsioza, I am truly sorry, but I have to tell you that your grandson is dead as well.”

  The Shaman held his face in his hands and cried as Trent, Zana, and Christina bowed their heads and stared at the snow-covered ground.

  Chapter 35

  “MY GRANDSON would have been a full grown man by now,” the Shaman eventually managed to say. “Did he have children as well?”

  Zana looked at Trent, then at the Shaman.

  “None that I knew of,” she said. “But I couldn’t say for sure.”

  The Shaman was quiet again before looking up and forcing a sad smile in Trent’s direction.

  “Did Ka’a guide your hand?”

  Trent nodded, and the Shaman let out a heavy exhale.

  “Then my grandson must have been a bad man as well.”

  Silence.

  “He was,” Trent said, quietly.

  “Ka’a would not have taken his vengeance on someone who had no direct part in the slaughter, unless the child was also evil. I am the reason he is dead. Ka’a wants our entire bloodline destroyed.”

  “We all start with the sins of our parents,” Trent said, “but we’re free to make our own decisions in life. And your grandson made some bad choices, all on his own.”

  More silence.

  After a minute, the Shaman slowly nodded his head, as if he had just reached a conclusion.

  “There is still at least one person who must pay for his part in the slaughter.”

  Trent raised his eyebrows.

  Trent stared at the old man and tried to clear his mind. He felt a rumbling in his chest—a stabbing at his temples—and a quickly passing sense of revulsion that could only have come from the spirit lurking in the dark corners of his mind.

  “I don’t think Ka’a likes you, but if he wanted you dead, he’d be fighting right now to take over my mind and rip you to pieces. And he’s not doing that.”

  The Shaman breathed in deeply and exhaled slowly.

  “I can tell you’re a good man—that you’ve paid your price,” Trent said. “There must be another way.”

  “There is only one price for what I did, and I have not yet settled my debt. But when it is my time to go, I will know—and it is not yet that time. There is still someone else who must pay, before it is my time, but I do not know who that is. There may even be more than one. Perhaps some of the descendants of the soldiers are as evil as my own offspring. I will not know until they are all gone.”

  “Isn’t there any other way for this to end?” Zana asked.

  The Shaman sighed.

  “I yearn to cross over and to start a new life where I will have a chance to not make the same mistakes I have made in this one.”

  “He can’t use me to kill you or anyone else if his spirit isn’t inside me. That’s why I came here in the first place. I want him gone. I want my life back.”

  The Shaman’s face turned deadly serious.

  “Ka’a will leave when he is ready. Not beforehand. He has chosen you.”

  “He can choose someone else. If he doesn’t, I’ll stop traveling. I’ll lock myself up every time there’s a full moon. He can stay inside me all he wants, but he won’t get a chance to kill anyone.”

  Christina stepped forward.

  “Could you perform an exorcism, Otsioza?”

  The Shaman stared at Trent before speaking.

  “I will have to think on this matter,” the Shaman said, before standing up, walking across the clearing, and disappearing into the woods.

  Trent turned to Christina.

  “Where the hell did he just go?” he said.

  “He meditates by walking. He’ll be back. I understand why you want to be free of Ka’a, but Otsioza has spent almost three lifetimes to get to this point where his task is almost complete. If he helps you, Ka’a will have to find someone else to possess—someone who may not be as…capable as you.”

  He almost lashed out at Christina, saying that none of this would have happened if she hadn’t bitten him in the first place. But he controlled his words.

  “That’s entirely his problem,” he said. “I didn’t ask for this.”

  Christina’s pretty face hardened, as if she could read Trent’s mind.

  “I know you blame me for all of this. I told you already that I couldn’t resist. When it got too…”

  She lowered her voice to a whisper as she stepped in closer to him.

  “I already told you. When it got too intense, I lost control. I literally could not resist. You of all people should realize how powerless you become when there’s a spirit inside you.”

  Trent took a deep breath and turned away. He walked over to Zana and touched her hand.

  “Are you doing all right?”

  She looked up and threw a fake smile at Trent, but he could tell that she was busy processing something in her mind.

  “I know you don’t want Ka’a’s spirit inside you any more, but I think you should let it stay and help it avenge what happened here. It wouldn’t be forever, and…”

  Trent shook his head.

  “Aside from not wanting to do that, it’s also illegal to kill people even if pissed off spirits of dead bears happen to think that it’s okay. I don’t want to spend the rest of my life in jail or in some nut house, performing card tricks for drooling patients in straitjackets.”

  Zana looked to where the Shaman had entered the woods.

  She spoke in a soft, reverent tone.

  “It would be a noble act to help Ka’a balance the scales of justice.”

  Trent released Zana’s hand and felt his face turn red.

  “Becoming a vigilante isn’t what I would call noble, Zana. I agree that his cause is just, but I’m not the guy to help him with it. Someone is, somewhere—but it’s not me. That’s why we came back here in the first place, to get rid of all this. Remember?”

  Zana stepped back—the first time he had ever seen her do so. He looked over to Christina whose eyebrows were slightly raised. She was surprised by his reaction as well.

  “I’m sorry,” he mumbled. “I’m just a little frustrated.”

  He was frustrated, but at the base of his anger was fear—not of what the animal inside him would make him do, but of the fact that he was gradually losing control over his mind. He had dedicated his entire life to mastering his mental and physical functions, and the thought of being used at the whim of something other than his own internal logic terrified him.

  An hour of silence went by with no sign of the Shaman, and Trent considered leaving more than once—but he was convin
ced now that his only hope of ridding himself of his burden was here with the Shaman.

  Just as he was about to suggest that they go looking for the old man, the Shaman emerged from the trees surrounding the clearing.

  Trent watched him as he approached. His mask was off, and Trent could see the sadness in his face.

  “I will try this thing you desire,” the Shaman said. “But for it to work, I will need something special for the ceremony.”

  “Tell me what you need, and I’ll get it right now,” Trent said.

  The Shaman nodded.

  “In order to exorcise Ka’a’s spirit, we will need a piece of his last corporeal body.”

  “How do you propose we do that?” Trent asked, his voice showing his frustration once again.

  “Do you remember when I told you that I told the soldiers to bury the remains of the animals in the ground on the side of the mountain?”

  Trent nodded for the Shaman to continue.

  “All these years, I’ve been guarding their final resting place. When I heard that my son, the man you called the Elder, was dead, I thought that my task of guarding the bones was at last near its end. I unearthed the bone pit, preparing to tend to their remains properly as my last duty on this earth.”

  “You want me to search through the skeletons of a thousand animals until we find a piece of Ka’a’s bones? How will I even know if I’ve found the right skeleton?”

  “Ka’a will react in the presence of his past form. You will know. There is no other way.”

  Christina interrupted their conversation with a stern face.

  “I think you’re both forgetting that someone tried to kill us, and that he’s probably still out there. If we go traipsing through the forest, we’re likely to run into him again.”

  The Shaman shook his head.

  “Whoever or whatever is out there is evil. I can feel its presence wandering through my shrouded forest. But no one but me knows the pathway that leads to the pit where the bones of the animals are buried. For now, we are safe.”

  Chapter 36

  MANEUVERING the ethereal forest was less daunting than the first time they had traveled through it.

  Trent was prepared for the seemingly endless turns that made him feel like he was tracking back on himself, while in reality, they continued to propel him forward to whatever destination the Shaman desired. This time at least, his legs told him that no matter which way their path twisted, it always led uphill.

  After thirty minutes of hiking through the snow-covered forest, the Shaman slowed down, and he became meticulous as he picked his way through the low hanging branches of the trees, almost as if he were opening an intricate lock that no one but him could see. Soon, the ground leveled out and they emerged at the lip of a large hole, thirty feet in diameter and ten feet deep, dug into the forest floor, with mounds of dirt stacked up along its perimeter.

  Inside the hole were piles and piles of intertwined bare white bones that looked as if they had been thrown in with no regard to the animals they once were.

  Christina inched her way up to the edge of the pit and looked down on the mass grave.

  “These are the bones of the animals that have been possessing us every month.”

  The Shaman nodded.

  “And Ka’a? His bones are in there as well?” Trent said.

  “Yes,” the Shaman said, his voice filled with shame. “They are all here, just as they were when the soldiers put them here so many years ago.”

  Zana leaned away from the pit—fear in her eyes.

  “There’re more than just bones down there,” she said. “Everywhere I look, I see spirits. Some are floating just above the bones. Others are intertwined and mingled in with them, like an angry cancer of blackness.”

  The Shaman looked over the side of the pit.

  “They’ve been waiting a long time to re-enter the cycle of life.”

  “The black shapes are starting to move,” Zana said. “They look agitated, like a hornet’s nest that someone just kicked.”

  “Maybe they’re reacting to me, or at least to Ka’a’s spirit,” Trent said.

  The Shaman shook his head.

  “They feel the same evil that I sensed from the man who shot Zana,” the Shaman said.

  Trent turned to look at the Shaman. He had said they were safe from whoever was hunting them, but Trent felt a sense of danger looming nearby. He wanted to get Ka’a’s bones as fast as possible and then get out of there.

  Trent looked at Zana and then at Christina, before lowering himself into the pit. He cautiously set his foot on top of a stack of bones. There was no way to avoid walking on them, and they made brittle snapping sounds as he started to slowly walk through them.

  “Be careful,” Zana said. “You’re standing knee-deep in angry spirits.”

  Trent looked back up to her.

  “This doesn’t feel right, stepping on them like this.”

  The Shaman’s face was set in a grim expression.

  “The dead have no use for their remains. Focus on finding Ka’a’s bones.”

  Trent closed his eyes, trying to release the dark spirit in his mind enough to help him find the bones of the once mighty grizzly.

  He focused intensely on the brooding cloud in his head and the way it undulated and pulsed as he picked his way through the bones.

  As he approached a large skeleton near the center of the pit, the darkness inside him began to throb—at first gently, but with more intensity as Trent got closer.

  By the time he was standing right above the skeleton, he was struggling to contain Ka’a’s spirit and to keep it stuffed away so that he could carry on with his mission. The skeleton was so large that it looked almost unreal, and he thought that it must have belonged to the largest bear he had ever heard of or even seen in photographs.

  He reached out a tentative hand and touched the ribs of the gigantic creature. The dark cloud in his mind clenched down on him like a giant’s hand pinching an exposed nerve.

  Trent screamed in pain, for only a second, then caught his breath. His forehead was sweating, despite the cold. He turned around and looked back to the Shaman.

  “I found him,” he said through gritted teeth, as he struggled to keep the spirit of Ka’a from completely taking over his body and mind.

  The Shaman opened his mouth to speak, but before he could say a word, a crossbow arrow burst forth from his chest. The old man staggered, then crumpled to the ground, out of Trent’s line of vision.

  As Trent crouched down, he saw Christina and Zana rushed to help the fallen Shaman.

  Now all three of them were out of sight, and Trent’s mind raced. The Shaman had said that they were safe while in these woods, yet someone had tracked them, found them, and had most likely just killed the one person who could help Trent rid himself of Ka’a’s dark spirit.

  He realized too late that Ka’a’s violent upheaval was not in reaction to finding the bones of his former body, but was instead because the spirit had sensed the approaching evil that had followed them through the Shaman’s forest.

  With Trent’s mind distracted, Ka’a gained more of a foothold in his mind.

  He could feel the creature inside of him straining to get out, to find whoever was hunting them, and to stop them, permanently.

  “Not yet,” he said, through gritted teeth.

  He began counting the bones around him as fast as he could and performing random calculations in his head using the numbers he came up. The more he engaged his logical mind, the farther he was able to push back Ka’a’s darkness.

  He looked up again to the top of the pit and saw Christina.

  “He’s alive, but we can’t see who shot him.”

  “Is he still conscious? Can he lead you back to the clearing?”

  Christina’s head disappeared behind the lip of the pit for a few seconds before she and Zana reappeared.

  “I think so, but he won’t be conscious much longer.”

  “Then g
o!” Trent said. “I’ll think of something and meet you back there.”

  Zana stared at him, seemingly unable to speak. Neither of the women moved.

  Trent’s breathing was labored, and every word he spoke took more energy away from his effort to hold back the beast inside. He had to know Zana and Christina were safe before he released the spirit of Ka’a.

  “I’m not going to leave you,” Zana said.

  “You have to. I’ll make sure whoever shot the Shaman doesn’t follow you. Trust me.”

  “You don’t even have a weapon,” Christina said.

  Trent grinned darkly.

  “I’m about to become a weapon. Now go.”

  Trent watched as the two women vanished beyond the horizon line of the pit’s edge. He closed his eyes and focused on the dark spirit of Ka’a. With a sense of relief, he stopped fighting the spirit’s dark pull. He invited Ka’a to take control, to unleash his vengeance on whoever was hunting them.

  He opened himself willingly.

  But nothing happened. Instead, Trent felt a sudden lightness as Ka’a’s dark spirit left him. The ancient spirit had abandoned him.

  He realized that he was free of the curse he had been trying to escape, at the same time that he heard movement up where Zana and Christina had recently stood.

  When he looked up to see who or what had made the noise, he saw the Hunter, standing at the edge of the pit, with his crossbow aimed directly at him.

  Somehow, the Hunter had survived the vicious onslaught in the tunnels of Las Vegas. He had lived through the ordeal, and had tracked Trent and Zana back to Whittier. The man’s face was swollen and disfigured, and Trent was repulsed and yet satisfied that at least the Hunter’s exterior now reflected his true monstrous nature.

  The Hunter lowered his crossbow slightly and glared at Trent, his scarred face set in a dark grin.

  “We’ve come a long way to find you, Walker, and it’s finally time for some payback.”

  Chapter 37