by Oak, B. B.
Rather than ride around aimlessly, which is neither my way nor Henry’s, we settled on going to the Indian burial ground to see if the bones and artifacts we had reinterred had not been disturbed. There has been no sign of Dr. Lamb or Solomon Wiley for two weeks, since my swamp nightmare, real or imagined.
At first sight all appeared to be well at the burial ground. The knoll was again a peaceful place. Until we let the children out of the carryall, that was, for Henry encouraged them to run and shout as much as they pleased. Meanwhile, he and I walked through the snow-matted brown grass, observing the humble stone markers on the ancient graves.
We went up to the enormous boulder that loomed over the grave in which Wiley had found the skull and ax. But there was no grave beside the boulder now. Henry studied the ground, then got down on one knee and studied it more closely.
“There looks to be disturbed earth under the boulder,” he said. “I can just see the edge of it.”
He stood and looked from the boulder to a juniper standing close to it, backed up a rod or so and regarded one and then the other again.
“When we were here last I remember there was a good yard’s distance between the boulder and that juniper,” he said. “And now there is only a foot.”
Did not doubt him. His surveyor’s eye measures everything and recalls each calculation. Even so, what he was saying seemed unreasonable. “The boulder moved?” I said.
“It does not seem likely that it moved itself. Someone moved it.”
I smiled. “That does not seem likely either.”
“Even so, it has been moved.”
“Well, here is my theory,” I said. “The tree moved.”
Henry, usually inclined to return a jest for a jest, remained most serious. “Someone moved the boulder over the grave, Adam. How it was done I do not know. But I do know it was done. And now whoever or whatever is buried in the grave cannot be disturbed.”
“But that is scientifically impossible.”
“Science does not embody all that men know, Adam. The Universe is wider than our views of it.”
Could not argue with him on that score. Began to walk around the boulder and stopped dead in my tracks. “Henry, come over here.”
“What is it?” he asked, looking at my stunned countenance rather than at what I was pointing up at. But then he followed my eyes upward to near the top of the boulder. “The quartz ax! Can it be?”
“It sure looks like it.”
“I would like a closer look,” Henry said. “Let me stand on your shoulders, Adam.” I clasped my palms together for his foothold, and up he went. “It is!” he called down to me. “It has a black blaze running through it!”
“Are you sure?”
He jumped down in front of me and formed a step with his hands. “Go look for yourself.”
So up I went to stand on Henry’s shoulders. It was the same ax all right, so deeply implanted in the boulder that I could not budge it. “But where’s the skull?” I asked when back on the ground.
“In the grave beneath the boulder, I wager,” Henry replied. “With Witiku. Or I could say with Dr. Lamb, for he and Witiku are one and the same creature. And when this creature was a mortal Indian centuries ago, he witnessed the ax now embedded in the boulder being smashed into his brother’s skull. Methinks that same skull now comforts the vampyre known as Witiku as he lies in his cold sanctuary underground. There is nothing left for him in this world, and he cannot go on to the next one.”
“It all seems so absurd, Henry!”
He smiled at me. “Yet so wonderful. Now let us leave all this behind us and spend the first day of the year with the people we most love.”
He called to the children, and they came running to him. He picked up young Eddy and swung him up to sit on his shoulders, and we all strolled back to the carryall singing “Auld Lang Syne.”
KENSINGTON BOOKS are published by
Kensington Publishing Corp.
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New York, NY 10018
Copyright © 2014 by B. B. Oak
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any means without the prior written consent of the Publisher, excepting brief quotes used in reviews.
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ISBN: 978-0-7582-9025-0
ISBN-13: 978-0-7582-9025-0
ISBN-10: 0-7582-9025-X
First Kensington Trade Paperback Printing: November 2014