Annie patted his cheek with a tender hand, knowing she could not give in. “Don’t you know your mama won’t let anyone hurt you, any more than your daddy would?”
Tobi climbed down and began to help Cal maneuver Granny into the wheelchair, even as he fretted in silence. Despite their efforts, the old woman refused to be wheeled inside and raised an unholy ruckus. Yet she had stayed at that very house during Civil War days, when doctoring the pickers’ children with whooping cough in the winter and malaria in the summer. It had been then that the house had belonged to Cyrus and Lucinda. All that now remained for Granny was a premonition of evil as sharp as the winter wind in her brittle bones.
Annie gave in to her grandmother for the sake of harmony. “Rachel, park her on the back porch and wrap her in the quilt. Stay right with her. She’s ornery today.”
“Ain't no different than any other day,” came Rachel’’s quick retort. “The ol’ heifer won’t behave. Praise the Lord if Mr. Higgins finds Cyrus’ bones, and y’all get him buried proper. Maybe then she’ll be Miss Sunshine again.”
“How do you know about the search?”
“I overheard Mr. McCann and Mr. Hennessy talking, of course. I’m neither deaf nor dumb. Not only that…from what words I can understand, Minna believes a spirit is wandering around in this house. If you ask me, we oughtn't to be here.”
“I’ll remind you that this is my daughter’s home now. As long as she and Nathan are happy here, we have no say...unless we see a clear danger.”
With the boys’ help, Annie scrubbed the floors and polished the silverware for the welcome home supper. Crow begrudgingly made a fire in the downstairs fireplace and opened the windows to the fresh crisp air. Even as he did, he groused under his breath about the “invasion of the McCanns” into his domain. Annie decided he needed a talking-to from her new son-in-law. Until Nathan or Jesse and Buck arrived, it was Annie’s lot to deal with the openly hostile caretaker. She had to wonder why Jonathan Bonney had hired the man, unless for the purpose of scaring away all the people he had detested—especially the McCanns. She had heard it said that Jonathan had loathed those he classified as “Unionists”. The Civil War had never really ended. It remained alive and well on Diablo Road.
Because Jesse and Crow had the run-in, Jesse had known how the visit would go. “Wait until I can drive you out there,” he had insisted the night before. “You need a man there with you. What kind of husband would I be to let you go alone?”
Annie had bristled with a reignited spark of independence. “What kind of woman would I be if I lived my life like a timid little mouse? Have you forgotten when you met me? I was waiting tables and dealing with lumberjacks and backwoodsmen...not to mention the railroad men. Rest assured, I can handle Elias Crow.”
Yet now, on that bleak morning, she wondered if Jesse had been right. Sometimes, she longed for her father Jerod’s wisdom. It had been to him and his village she had always escaped when her spirit was weak, and she wished to be there now, instead of where she stood. Something about the house sent chills up the back of her neck. The euphoria of the wedding there had evaporated like rain drops on a hot tin roof.
She drew out her old spunk and did what needed doing. It was time to prepare supper, and so she slid two stuffed hens into the oven and put dried field peas on to simmer. Her daughter deserved a proper welcome, and despite all, she would see her have it.
***
Late afternoon, Katie and Nathan came roaring up in the Buick Roadster. As the automobile careened up the driveway, Katie leaned out, holding onto her hat and whooping with delight. Annie threw down her apron and rushed out to greet the newlyweds, who looked unfazed by the drive from New Orleans. “Mama! I couldn't wait to see you. I missed you and Daddy. Where is he?”
“I expect he’ll be here before dark. He’s been preoccupied with business at the mill nowadays.”
Nate ran around and opened the door for his bride and began handing bags and packages to Tobi and Cal who peeked into each, looking for treasures. While everyone hugged and talked at the same time, Tobi ferreted out the New Orleans taffy and gobbled several pieces while no one was looking. The treats seemed to give him an almost magical awareness of every small sound and movement. It seemed he could hear and feel the house breathing, as air rushed in and out of the open windows.
After everyone went inside, Tobi felt an overpowering urge to revisit the cemetery out back, as if guided by an unseen hand. The cemetery was blanketed in a low lying haze that seemed to ebb and flow in all directions. Beyond the white picket fence, a brisk wind skittered leaves across the graves and moaned through the pines like a grief stricken lover. Yet the hazy mist would not lift.
Fear rose in his throat, as he sensed a presence creeping between the headstones, watching him, slinking behind him. Suddenly came a low rumbling that intensified into a high pitched howl that made his blood run cold.
With pulse racing, he ran toward the back porch. There, his mother, seemingly unaware of what had occurred, was watching for him. He focused on his mother’s face in the effort not to look back over his shoulder. Yet, just for a split second, he looked—long enough to see the cloudy outline of a huge canine, of a species he had never seen. It was staring directly at him with wild, intelligent eyes. Then it disappeared. When it left, the fog that had surrounded it dissipated, and the wind died. By the time he reached the porch, he was shaking and tongue-tied. Annie grabbed him and held him. “What happened, Tobias? Take a minute to catch your breath.”
“Now Isn’t he a sight?” droned Rachel. “That boy scrambled out of there like a hen-house fox with a hiney full o’ buckshot. He’s always on the run from something!”
When finally Tobi spoke, his words tumbled together in a breathless cascade. “There was an animal like a dog or a coyote back there in the cemetery. It was watching me and circling me. Then it disappeared, like a bad dream.”
Minna’s head came up and her eyes sparked. In her mind, she had been given a renewal of spirit from the Divine One. As clear as the saints’ gospel, she managed two syllables. “Tah...sha!”
“What did she say?” Tobi asked.
“She said ‘Tahsha’. That’s the Caddoan word for wolf. Long ago, a she-wolf protected me when I was a helpless baby, and for many years, it watched over me and those I loved. But we have not seen her for along time. I’ll tell you the rest of it, one of these days.” The minute the words came of of Annie’s mouth, she knew she never would.
Rachel drew herself up and folded her arms. “I didn’t see nothing, and the porch ain’t that far away. The boy's not right in the head. Takes after his great grandma there.” She tapped her finger against her forehead and rolled her eyes.
“I’ll have you know my son is as right as rain.” Annie’s voice shook with indignation. “There is nothing wrong with my son.”
“Then how do you explain what he just said, unless you believe in that tripe too?”
Annie knew the truth. She knew that no matter how she fought it and denied it, that sixth sense she had inherited, and passed on to her son, would never leave. The wild spirit of the wolf had marked her when she was born and now had come to either save her or reclaim her.
Even with all the drama surrounding her, Annie was a practical woman. There was supper to be cooked. Feeling flustered, she ordered Tobi to go no farther than the front porch where she could check on him. She brought in Granny who now came willingly, due to the return of what she perceived as their spiritual protector. The old woman seemed content in the warmth of a kitchen filled with the aromas of sage, baked bread and pine oil. She watched Katie stirring the pots at the stove, while Nate distracted her by planting little kisses at the nape of her neck. Her cheeks flushed crimson from something more than the heat of the kitchen. Annie shifted her line of vision, embarrassed at the raw, if subtle, display of passion. She remembered how it could be.
Neither was the affection between the newlyweds lost on Granny as she awaited her early supper. Anni
e raised her eyebrows at her grandmother in a look of triumph, as if to say See, they’ll be happy here after all. How could they not be happy anywhere?
Minna ignored Annie’s look, as she ignored most things that didn’t suit her opinion. From her wheelchair, she peered around at the house, seemingly seeing down to its bones: through to the timbers, and under the floorboards. “House...cleansing…Jerod,” she said.
Annie sighed and pulled the bread from the oven. “I promise to fetch Papa soon. He can perform the rites as the newly appointed Shaman, but for now we're stuck in this house. It’s only one night, Granny. We'll get through it.”
Minna gave a small shrug. “Tahsha...comes.”
Tobi, like any other eight year old boy, was quick to get over a scare. He tried his best to stay on the porch, but then he spotted a mound of raked leaves. He couldn't resist. As could be expected, he dove into them in blissful abandon. Within that warm shelter he peeked out to see a pair of badly scuffed brogans. Next thing he knew, two arms reached in, pulled him up, and roughly held him. He found himself looking up at his one and only enemy, Elias Crow.
“Listen here, kid. Quit making things up about seeing a critter prowling in the graveyard. That whiny nurse told me all about it. Mr. Jonathan Bonney lived with whatever is here, and he didn't believe in disrupting things. He had his reasons, and that ain't nobody’s business. Stop talking about what you think you see and hear. You don’t know the half of it. I’m the one who knows this house, as if's my own.”
As if words alone had not conveyed the message, Crow pulled a knife from his back pocket and brandished it within two inches of Tobi’s cherubic face. “I’ll be watching and listening when you least expect it, so don't go snooping around and running your mouth to your mama and daddy. This house holds its secrets. So do I, and so will you.”
“Why do you hate me so much? What did I do to you?”
“For one thing, I can’t stand nosy kids, especially McCann kids. If I had my way, there’d be none in this house, no matter who it once belonged to. Doesn’t give y’all a right to go poking into what ain't your business. Fact is, y’all are chomping at the bit for Nathan Bonney to fire me.”
“Let go of me! My daddy will be here any minute.”
“Yeah, I met your papa. He’s a big man, but I ain’t scared of him. Remember now. If you don't stop running your mouth, I’ll kidnap you, cut out your heart and feed it to the buzzards, while it’s still warm and quivering in my hands.”
Tobi scrambled into the house to hide in any nook or cranny, any place out of sight of his tormenter. He found his way up to the dark and dusty attic, and a door that was usually latched, opened at his touch. Inside, away from the dormer windows, he could almost imagine someone living there amidst all the old discarded furnishings. He took a deep breath and stumbled about in the dim light, making his way to a window that looked down on the gravel driveway. There he could watch for his daddy, and when he came, everything would be okay.
Within minutes, a sliver of light fell across the floor as the door opened. Then came footsteps. A lantern cast a distorted and over-sized silhouette against the wall, causing Tobi to scoot behind a stack of boxes, where he squeezed his eyes shut against impending doom.
That’s when he heard Crow’s voice speaking to someone on the opposite side: “You can't stay here much longer, you know. I gotta figure things out. Be quiet and stay put until I do. Now, I have to latch you back in.”
Oh no...not me too, Tobi told himself. He had no intention of being locked in with whomever was there. Clamoring from his hiding place, he overturned a stack of boxes, causing Crow to turn his head, but in a stroke of luck, it was the sightless side. But within a second, Crow tuned enough to see him, just as the tires on Jesse’s Model T crunched across the gravel below. Tobi ran downstairs, out the front door and into Jesse’s arms. Buck laughed merrily and ruffled Tobi’s mop of hair. “Now there’s a boy who sure loves his papa.”
Above them in the attic, a single evil eye looked down upon the scene with contempt.
That night the McCanns were under one roof for the first time in weeks. Granny Minna had been fed early, and Rachel had put her to bed before dozing off in the chair beside her. The chatter downstairs was especially cheerful—as if to dissipate the gloomy mist that emanated from the walls and crept along the edges of the floor. None of them had ever seen such a thing inside a house. They finally dismissed the phenomenon as trapped steam from the kitchen stove escaping the many nooks and cracks.
The conversation grew lively at the dining table, when Katie turned to the subject of New Orleans—its culture and exotic people and spicy food. Nate brought up the subject of the tarot card reader whom he described at length. “...and then this fellow claimed he had a vision of a deep blue circle with a man’s bones in the center...as if that would have any meaning for us. Now what do you suppose that could be?”
Cal glanced sidelong at Tobi and gave him a nudge under the table.
Tobi turned pale. “May I please be excused?”
“Aw, here we go again,” Buck sighed. “Excuse the boy, and pass the peas.”
Instead, Jesse focused on the question at hand. “Maybe it was no vision at all. Maybe what the man saw was a dream. I've never placed much stock in psychics.”
“Don’t be so quick to dismiss them,” Annie said. “I suspect I’ve inherited a bit of that ability myself. It’s just that I've shut it out, so I can live a normal life. I see the deep blue circle as a pond or body of water of some sort.”
Buck dropped a chicken leg on his plate. “You mean like Blue Hole?”
“Well...I wouldn’t know. I guess it could be.”
Cal ‘s eyes darted to the curious faces around the table, and Tobi bolted from his chair. “May I please be excused?”
Buck’s eyes narrowed as he studied his godson’s expression. When the old man spoke, his tone was as gentle as he could manage, given his natural gruffness. “First, you need to speak up, boy. You’ll feel much better for it. Now what more is it you’re hiding from your mama and daddy? Did you not finish telling them something the other day?”
Cal was quick to intervene in his urgent need to protect himself. “The kid’s not hiding nothing. Leave him alone.”
“Fair enough, but watch your tongue. Now would you please pass the peas?” Buck asked again.
The time had come, just as Tobi knew it would. He took a deep breath and plunged in. “I need to tell you something, Daddy. We stopped at Blue Hole when we got lost on Founders' Day. There was this skeleton and shotgun at the bottom. I know we weren't supposed to be there but….”
“I can't believe I heard you right. A skeleton? A shot gun? That place is off limits. Calvin, you were supposed to look after your brother, and Tobias, are you saying you went in the water?”
Cal hung his head. He couldn’t let his brother take the rap. “It was me,” he mumbled.
“What?”
“It was me I said! I was the one who went to the bottom. It was me who saw the skeleton. Somebody had been tied down the body with bricks, and it was in some kind of old fashioned night clothes, and beside it was a rusty shotgun with initials on the stock...but I couldn’t get close enough to see real good. I couldn’t hold my breath any longer.”
Gentle Katie began to shed tears over a tragedy that might have been, and Nate placed his arm around her and squeezed her shoulder.
Jesse struggled to maintain composure, and Annie looked as if she had come undone. She said not a word but grabbed Buck’s plate and slung heaping spoons of peas over it, until it was running over. “Enough talk for now,” she said. “No more about this incident until we get home. This is supposed to be a happy welcome home supper. Now will you all just eat-even if it kills you.”
Jesse's anger dissipated, and he smiled at her unintended irony. “I hope you boys have learned your lesson. I do need to know more about these remains, so we can bring up whatever is left. We’ll need to see if there’s a way to make id
entification. But now is not the time to discuss it.”
He then raised a glass of sweet tea. “Here’s a toast to peace and prosperity for our newly-weds.”
Please God...give them peace, Annie prayed silently.
Exhausted, the family went to bed around ten o'clock, but rest was short lived. They were awakened by a mysterious noise traveling along the upstairs hallway, past the bedroom doors—a whispery swishing sound and then soft moaning, followed by the swishing sound again. It grew growing louder and came nearer. Then came a heart thumping, relentless Boom, Boom! on each bedroom door, underneath whose portals crept an insidious mist that swelled into a thick cloud. It seemed to swallow the entire house. Again there was the soft swishing, but this time, it was followed by crying. Then, again came the ear splitting pounding on the walls of every room, upstairs and down. An overpowering scent of gardenias filled the hallway and was gone in a moment.
Everyone in the house came wide awake and terrified. The shrill sound of Tobi’s scream came from the boys’ room down the hall. Annie grabbed her robe, and Jesse fumbled through the haze for his revolver. “Stay here!,” he shouted and attempted to push her back into the room. She fought him, until he released her. “I’m going with you to get my boy! Don’t tell me I can’t.”
Jesse relented, and they rushed out together into the dark and fog filled hallway, just as Buck came hopping out in his night shirt, joined by Katie and Nate. Katie asked the question to which no one had an answer: “What in the world has invaded my home?”
Jesse and Annie had felt their way along the walls to get to the boys and had returned, keeping them both close. “I didn't hear nothing, and I didn't see nothing! Honest I didn’t.” Tobi babbled, despite the certainty that he couldn’t have missed it. All he could think of was Crow’s knife poised at his throat.
A wide eyed Rachel came stumbling out of the bedroom she shared with Granny. “I told you we oughtn't to be here,” she whimpered. “I can’t see my hand in front of my face, and all that noise gave me an attack of nerves.” She fumbled into the pocket of her robe and pulled out a bottle of something she called “nerve tonic” and turned it up, until Jesse took it from her. “Keep your wits about you! Get back in the room with Granny, and lock the door,” he told her.
House on Diablo Road: Resurrection Day (The McCann Family Saga Book 3) Page 11