"She's been talking! She caves under pressure. She's got about as much backbone as an earthworm." Eve taunted.
"Yeah." Eden added. "That's probably how the reverend found out about our little meeting in the woods to begin with! It wasn't us, and it couldn't have been you." She gave a pointed look at the shy one, then faced The Shadow again. "We all know his niece here is so scared of him that she wouldn't dare let anything slip about our ceremony."
The Shadow and the shy one exchanged a quick glance. The twins still had no idea that the man who had stumbled upon them in the woods that night was, in fact, Reverend Peters. The Shadow thought it was best to keep them ignorant. She could use the information to control both the shy one and Jelly.
"Well, you better hope that he doesn't find out anything else about it!" The Shadow rounded on Jelly, pretending to believe the twins' accusation. "So far he only knows about the dancing, and we are going to make sure it stays that way."
"But, but…he saw someone naked!" Jelly stammered. "He thinks we were partying and doing drugs! We cannot let him think that about us, girls! I mean, even if we weren't using that night, if he gets the police involved and they dig deeper… Isn't it better to come clean now rather than risk worse later?" She looked from one girl to another but kept her eyes downcast as she faced The Shadow. "You'll go to jail." She added in a breathless whisper.
"Oh, we'll all go to jail," The Shadow threatened.
"But I have never taken drugs! You can't prove I have!" Jelly protested.
"Listen to me very carefully, sluts." The Shadow's tiny, quiet voice was more menacing than if she had yelled at them in fury. "Nothing happened that night. We danced, we sang – and nothing more. We were collecting leaves for our botany final, and that is it!" She surveyed the group looking in turn at each girl for a second.
"I know where each of you lives. If you breathe one word about this, I will hunt you down and make you sorry. Don't forget that I saw my own mother die right in front of my eyes, and I have no qualms about making you pay the same gruesome price if you defy me!"
The four girls shuddered and went completely silent. All thoughts of complaining vanished instantly. The image of her hunting them down and hurting them was a frightening one indeed. Her bullying tactics terrified them.
The Shadow left them in stunned silence. She laughed to herself. The twins' eyes had bulged at her pronouncement. They had been expecting her to threaten them with the secrets she knew about their drug use and other illicit activities, but an outright threat of physical violence? She had surprised them. They would say nothing. And if they did, she knew exactly how to make them sorry.
CHAPTER ELEVEN
DISTURBING DISCOVERIES
Throughout the following week of school, Ellie's peppy attitude slipped more than she admitted. She was pushed to her limit by having to teach all new classes all day long. The preparations, lesson plans, department meetings, faculty meetings, parent meetings, and grading drained her. The burden felt heavier than teaching in the city where everything had been convenient, if not easy. It was all part of the tremendous upheaval her family had undertaken.
The move had been Julien's idea to begin with, but Ellie couldn't place the blame entirely on his shoulders; she had gotten caught up in his vision of living a simple country life. And, to be fair, the house and the land were beautiful. She was enjoying living in a restored farmhouse. She loved tending to her little herb garden. Everything had been wonderful, in fact, until school started.
On top of her difficulties at work, for the first time in her life Ellie had no social outlet – no friends to entertain with her only slightly-exaggerated stories of school in Stusa. Despite her colleagues, her students, her farmhouse, her herb garden, and her beautiful family, Ellie was lonely. She turned to her blog followers for comfort, but they were no replacement for flesh and blood friends.
It wasn't that people in Stusa weren't friendly. They seemed genuinely interested in Ellie, but only during work hours. After that, they tended to their own families. Everyone had comfortable, easy groups of friends they'd known since birth, families that had been there since before the Civil War. Their social calendars were full of small-town life: family birthday parties, Sunday lunches, pee wee football. There was no room for a newcomer like Ellie.
Since making friends had been much more difficult than she'd imagined, Ellie decided to make a little more headway with the one person in Stusa who seemed willing to extend the hand of friendship. Zyla, the red-haired, fresh-faced history teacher, had an avid interest in seeing the old building Ellie and Julien had purchased and were renovating for Julien's studio. Now that they had finished up at the farmhouse, she and Julien spent time working on the studio. They had made good progress. Having no social life had that benefit.
When Zyla introduced herself to Ellie during pre-planning, she'd mentioned her interest in old buildings and that she'd never been inside Julien's studio, known locally as The Jewel. Ellie invited her over for tea and a tour. As they explored the old building, they talked. Ellie summoned up her courage and confided in her newfound acquaintance.
She confessed, "You know, Zyla, I'm having a hard time getting to know people here, and I haven't adjusted to the feeling of being a stranger."
Zyla put her hand on Ellie's forearm. She stopped walking and said, "Don't worry, Ellie. It takes time to crack the social scene here, such as it is. You have to understand that people here have known each other since before they were born, and they're not as open to new ideas as you are."
Zyla turned to face Ellie, "Give them a chance. You'll get to know us all too well – and probably sooner than you'd like. Before you know it, you'll be telling me how students and parents alike are over-sharing."
Zyla gave Ellie's arm a friendly squeeze, and they continued to navigate around the scraps of building materials. Ellie saw evidence of the progress Julien and his newly hired assistant, Taiteja Jenssen, were making. One of the freshly painted rooms held boxes of cameras, lenses, and equipment. Ellie could see Zyla eyeing the box marked Tai.
"Julien invited his new assistant, Tai, to help get the studio ready." Ellie explained. "Sometimes she watches the girls for us, too."
Tai was of Swedish descent – blonde, buxom and beautiful – an exceedingly attractive combination. A lesser woman might worry about her husband's choice of assistants, and sometimes Ellie felt pricks of panic, but she was determined to keep an open mind if only because Tai was a walking contradiction.
Tai looked the part of a flaming floozy but claimed to be more of a vestal virgin. Her only hobby was photography. Tai dreamed of leaving Stusa in search of a bigger future. She'd be good for the studio; at the very least, she ought to bring in a bit of male clientele. She attracted attention but seemed to be embarrassed by it; there was hardly a boy in school who could keep his eyes off her.
Tai rarely dated. She was cautious, confused about how to handle the boys that followed her around like little puppies. Ellie overheard Tai talking to a friend, lamenting her curvy figure and the unwanted attention it brought. Tai complained about people judging her and jumping to wanton conclusions. If she weren't so attractive, Ellie probably would have felt sorry for her.
Zyla accepted Ellie's explanation with a silent nod and began filling Ellie in on some of the local history as they walked around the old building. They were discussing the fire that had destroyed much of the structure years earlier when suddenly Zyla stopped and looked at Ellie with a mischievous twinkle in her eye.
"You know, Ellie, there are some strange stories that accompany this old building. It has quite the checkered past. When I was a child, my great grandmother used to tell me the stories at bedtime as a morality tale; I was kind of a handful growing up. Anyway, would you like to hear them, or would it change your perception of the place? Are you superstitious at all?"
Ellie laughed in response. "Superstitious? Me? If I were the superstitious type, I would never have married into a Caribbean family. They hav
e quite the reputation for Vodou, Santería, and Espiritismo. If all that can't scare me away, I doubt your bedtime stories can. So, spill already! What's up with this old place?"
"Yeah," Zyla chuckled to herself as she replied. "You and your family are pretty exotic for this little town. Give us time, Ellie. Give us time." She smiled again, then shook her head and continued.
"Well, the story goes like this. In the early 1600s, settlers from up North grew tired of battling the harsh, cold winters and headed south in search of rich farmland and milder temperatures. They loaded their wagons and wound up here in Stusa. Our small community was formed.
"Per custom, the settlers built their church first, they were Puritans by and large, and then began working on homesteads. The local American Indian tribes were friendly enough, and some even married into the largely European community. Fast forward to the end of that century, and Stusa had a railway stop, several churches, a small schoolhouse, a tavern and inn, and some wealthy landowners. The farmers prospered from the land and the climate, and their descendants built large Georgian-style plantation homes. You can still see a few of them today. Have you ever been to Farrington Farms?"
"No" Ellie replied. "I'd love to see it! But what does all this have to do with our studio?" Ellie was beginning to get the feeling that she wasn't going to like Zyla's answer.
"Patience my dear," Zyla replied. "You've got to know the background to get the feel for the stories." Zyla paused, took a breath and continued her theatrical delivery. "Imagine a time of horses and carriages, ladies in floor-length dresses, petticoats and bustles, wealthy farmers, debutante balls, and, sadly, slaves."
Ellie gave a small sigh. "It's the same in the Caribbean – anything beautiful has the stain of slavery on it!" Ellie turned back to face Zyla as a horrible idea took hold. "Zyla, please, please, please tell me that this building did not have anything to do with slavery! If you tell me there were slave auctions here, I'll burn the place down to the ground myself!"
Zyla looked at Ellie again and paused before saying carefully, "Before I answer you, Ellie, remember this - when one studies history, one learns to accept the good with the bad. We live in an imperfect world, and most beautiful things are indeed tainted with some type of blood and savagery. Think about the ancient ruins of Rome."
She hesitated and then continued gently. "Or what about that diamond on your hand? Who mined it? Do you think it was a young, white businessman in South Africa? What about the pearls I've seen you wear to school? Who do you think had to risk his life to free-dive down to retrieve the oysters? The owner of DeBeers? Tom Shane himself?
Ellie looked away, not from Zyla, but from the awful realization. Ellie had never considered her jewelry to be part of anything nefarious.
"Yes," Zyla continued. "Slavery is an awful blight on our history, on the history of the world. But should we discard jewels and burn historical buildings?"
"Okay, Zyla. I see your point, but what does it have to do with The Jewel?"
"Ellie," Zyla said calmly. "You and I aren't responsible for what happened. You and I are responsible to it - to make sure it never happens again."
Ellie paused. "Well said. Can I quote you on that?" Ellie ran her hands through her hair. "But I still don't want to hear that our studio was in associated with slavery. Tell me the truth. Now. I have to know."
"Oh, your conscience can rest easy on that mark. The studio never had anything to do with slavery. The story starts with a settler who moved here from Salem with his daughter and his niece. He had lost his home during the ravages of the witch trials, and like so many others, wanted a fresh start.
"His niece, Beah, had a bloody background. Her mother and father were murdered by American Indians as she slept between them. When Beah awoke to the sounds of struggle, the attackers saw she was just a child and let her live. Beah was taken in by her uncle. They stayed in Salem throughout the Witch Trials, when the uncle decided they'd had enough. They ended up in Stusa. The moved here to find peace. Based on what we know about the Witch Trials, they must have arrived in Stusa sometime after 1692, around the start of the 1700s.
"After the move, Beah grew into a beautiful young woman. One of the scouts of a nearby tribe noticed her and began following her each day as she gathered herbs from the forest boundary between his tribe and her town. One day, Beah returned home from collecting dandelion leaves and claimed the young scout had attacked and raped her.
"Townspeople were not too keen to get involved in another conflict between settlers and natives. Most people looked the other way, although there were some aggressive rabble-rousers of the town who were ready to lynch the young American Indian solely on Beah's accusations. Sure enough, a few months later Beah's belly began to swell, and it became obvious that she had been involved with someone.
"Beah's uncle wasn't convinced of her story of rape. She had come to him with somewhat of a blighted past. Besides having seen her parents murdered, she had been a participant in the witch trials and apparently had given testimony against several townswomen - but only those who happened to have handsome, young husbands."
"Wow," Ellie interrupted with titled head and pinched eyebrows. "The Jewel has ties to the Salem Witch Trials, too." Ellie mumbled.
"Sort of," Zyla responded. "The story says that Beah gave testimony at the trials. Anyway, Beah's uncle suspected that she was having a dalliance with Bo, the town gambler, a handsome rogue who owned this very building. He was part American Indian himself and had his ancestor's weakness for firewater. He held monthly poker games here, even though they were expressly forbidden by the church and community.
"With rumors still running rampant, nine months passed, and Beah gave birth to a brown-skinned, dark-haired little girl. The church, her adoptive family, and the town didn't know what to do with Beah or her baby. No one wanted to get into a skirmish with the American Indians, with whom they'd enjoyed lukewarm relationships, but it was obvious that the baby was of mixed heritage.
"By this time, Beah's uncle had kicked her out of the house, and she had moved in with Bo out of desperation. She waited tables for him and assisted during his weekly poker games in return for room and board for herself and her daughter, Abea. She was shunned by many, pitied by all. A woman scorned and judged without a trial, and without a hope in the world.
"A few years passed. Abea grew to be a young beauty like her mother. One night when Abea was around ten years old, the young scout accused of rape - now a full-grown man - came to the poker hall seeking a quick way to make money for his ailing father. Since the tribe's local shaman had not been able to cure him, the scout was trying to earn money to pay the town's doctor for western medicine.
"When Beah saw the scout, she turned as pale as milk. She didn't say anything, but she refused to approach his table. When Bo realized who the scout was, he insisted that Beah serve the man a whisky, on the house, to bury the bad feelings once and for all. Beah obediently went to the bar to get the drink, still silent and pale. Once behind the bar, she leaned down to get a glass…and came up shooting.
"She shot Bo, the scout, and every man seated at the poker table. The only person to escape her gunfire was the jailer who happened to be passing by and heard the commotion. He rushed in to find Beah with a smoking gun in her hand just as she was shouting for Abea to grab their things and run. The jailer was so surprised to see the carnage around him that he stood there, mouth agape, while Beah and her daughter fled the scene, never to be seen again."
She paused and looked at Ellie expectantly. "Pretty dramatic, huh?"
Ellie's own face paled as she heard the tale. "You mean to tell me," Ellie stammered, "that at least four men were murdered right here in this very room?"
Zyla cocked her head and studied Ellie. "Was I right to tell you, Ellie? You said you wanted to know. You are not responsible for what happened here. Remember, we just agreed that every item of beauty has its stain of sin."
Ellie swallowed hard. She'd have to look at it through the l
ens of history. After all, it must have happened almost three hundred years ago.
"Well," Ellie said, shakily at first and then with more confidence. "I'm sure the fire purged any remains of the living or dead. No wonder the former owner didn't give us details about its past. He didn't want to spook me."
Comprehension dawned. "And only outsiders like my husband and me would be ignorant of the story. Now I see why he gave us such a great price. Wow. I feel kind of duped."
"It's his loss," Zyla responded. "You and Julien are taking a distant tragedy and turning it into a modern success! Your work will breathe life into this town. This place will become beautiful once more. You will erase the sins of her past."
"You think so?" Ellie asked. When Zyla nodded, Ellie added, "But whose sins? There seem to be many guilty players in that convoluted story of yours. A girl sees her parents murdered, is raised by her uncle, testifies in court at the Salem Witch Trials, moves to the middle of nowhere, gets raped by a young man who probably reminds her of her mother's murderer, shacks up with the town's saloon owner, and winds up killing a group of poker players? And how, pray tell, was your grandmother using that tale to keep you in line?"
"Well," said Zyla. "The story says that when the scout's father heard what happened to his son, his dying wish was for the shaman to curse Beah and her daughter. The shaman complied, and the curse maintained that Beah and Abea would be doomed to roam the earth, never truly belonging to any community; they would constantly seek power and affection, but neither they nor their descendants would ever find their hearts' desire.
"And this kept you in line how?" Ellie asked.
"Well, my gran-gran used to say that if I wasn't obedient, I would end up like Beah – husbandless, with a child, roaming the earth looking for comfort and a place to belong."
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