Cait felt like a leper as she sat alone by the fire, eating her protein bar. The others were off in the woods, trying to summon the very entity she knew was with her.
“Louina?” Jamie called, his deep voice resonating through the woods. “If you can hear me, give me a sign.”
While it was a common phrase, for some reason tonight it bothered her.
She mocked him silently as she pulled her wrapper down lower.
Suddenly, a scream rang out.
Cait shot to her feet and listened carefully to see who it was and where they were. Her heart pounded in her ears.
“Brandon!” Anne shouted, her voice echoing through the woods.
Cait ran toward them as fast as she could.
By the time she found them, Brandon was on his back with a twig poking all the way through his arm.
“He said he wanted a cut...”
She jerked around, trying to pinpoint the voice that had spoken loud and clear. “Did you hear that?” she asked the others.
“All I hear is Brandon whining like a bitch. Suck it up already, dude. Damn. You keep that up and I’m buying you a bra.”
“Fuck you!” he snarled at Jamie. “Let me stab you with a stick and see how you feel. You the bitch. Asshole!”
“Boys!” Cait moved to stand between them. “What happened?”
“I don’t know.” Brandon hissed as Anne tried to see the wound. “I was walking, going over the thermal scan when all of a sudden, I stumbled and fell into a tree. Next thing I knew... this!” He held it up for her to see.
Cringing, Cait averted her eyes from the grisly wound. “We need to get him to the hospital.”
“Not on your life,” Brandon snarled. “I’ll be all right.”
“I take it back. You’re not a bitch. You’re insane. Look at the wound. I hate to agree with Cait ‘cause I doubt there’s a hospital anywhere near here, but you need help.”
“It’s a flesh wound.”
Cait shook her head. “Anne, you should have never let him watch Monty Python.”
“I should have never left him alone to go to the bathroom.” Anne growled at him. “They’re right. You need to see a doctor. You could get rabies or something.”
Yeah, ‘cause rabid trees were a huge problem here in Alabama.
Cait barely caught herself before she laughed. Anne hated to be laughed at.
“I’m not leaving till I find that treasure.”
Greed, pride, and stupidity. The three most fatal traits any human could possess.
A sudden wind swept around them. This time, she wasn’t the only one who heard the laughter it carried.
“What was that?” Jamie asked.
“Louina.”
“Would you stop with that shit?” Brandon snapped through gritted teeth. “You’re really getting on my nerves.”
And they were getting on hers.
Fine. Whatever. She wasn’t going to argue anymore. It was their life. His wound. Who was she to keep him safe when he obviously had no interest in it?
Arms akimbo, Jamie sighed. “What do you think are the odds that, assuming Cait’s right, Louina’s husband has the gold in his grave that just happens to be in the cemetery? Didn’t most of the Native Americans in this area convert over to Baptists?”
Cait shook her head. “He won’t be there.”
“What makes you say that?”
“If it was that easy to find, it would have been found.”
“Yeah, good point. Square one sucks.” Jamie glanced back to Brandon. “You sure about the doctor?”
“Positive.”
“All right. I’m heading back out. Cait? You coming?”
“You can’t go alone.” She followed as he switched his flashlight on and went back to his EMF detector and air ion counter.
“You want to take this?” He held his full spectrum camcorder out to her.
“Sure.” She opened it and turned it back on so that she could see the world through the scope of the small screen.
After few minutes, he paused. “Do you really believe any of the bullshit you’ve been spewing?”
“You know me, James. Have I ever spewed bullshit on site?”
“Nah. That’s what has me worried.” He narrowed his gaze at her. “Did I ever tell you that my great-grandmother was Cherokee.”
“No, you didn’t.”
He nodded. “She died when I was six, but I still remember her, and something she’d always say keeps echoing in my head.”
“What?”
“Listen, or your tongue will keep you deaf.”
Cait was about to compliment her wisdom when she glanced down at the screen.
Holy Mother...
Gasping, she dropped the camera and jumped back.
“What?” Jamie turned around to see if there was something near them.
Terrified and shaking, Cait couldn’t speak. She couldn’t get the image out of her mind. She gestured to the camera.
With a stern frown, Jamie picked it up and ran the frames back. Even in the darkness, she knew the moment he saw what had stolen her tongue.
He turned stark white.
Right before he’d spoken about his Cherokee great-grandmother, a huge... something with fangs that appeared to be a ball of frenetic energy had been about to pounce on him. Soulless eyes of black had stared down as its mouth opened to devour him.
Then the moment he’d repeated the quote, it had pulled back and vanished.
Eyes wide, he gulped. “We have to leave.”
She nodded, because she still couldn’t speak.
Jamie took her arm gently and led her through the woods back to where they’d left Anne and Brandon.
They were already gone.
Jamie growled in frustration. “Brandon!” he called out. “Anne?”
Only silence answered them.
“All who dwell here will pay...” Louina’s voice was more insistent now. “But I hurt those I should not have cursed.”
Cait flinched as she saw an image of Elizabeth as an old woman in a stark hand-built cabin. Her gray hair was pulled back into a bun as she lit a candle and placed it in the window while she whispered a Creek prayer.
Oh, Great Father Spirit, whose voice I hear in the wind-
Whose breath gives life to all the world and with whom I have tried to walk beside throughout my days.
Hear me. I need your strength and wisdom.
Let me walk in beauty, and make my eyes ever behold the glorious sunset you have provided.
Make my hands respect the things you have made and my ears sharp to hear your voice even when it’s nothing more than a faint whisper.
Make me wise so that I may understand the things you have taught my people. And why you have taken things from me that have given me pain.
Help me to remain calm and strong in the face of all that comes at me. Against my enemies and those out to do me harm.
Let me learn the lessons you have hidden in every leaf and rock. In the joy of the stream. In the light of the moon and sun.
Help me seek pure thoughts and act with the intention of helping others and never myself.
Help me find compassion without empathy overwhelming me.
I seek strength, not to be greater than my brother, but to fight my greatest enemy...
Myself.
Make me always ready to come to you with clean hands and straight eyes. So that when my life fades, as the fading sunset, my spirit may come to you without shame.
And most of all, Great-Grandfather, keep my sons safe and warm wherever they may be.
Elizabeth leaned over and kissed the old photographs of two young men in calvary uniforms that she had sitting in the window beside the candle she lit every night—just in case they finally found their way home. It was a ritual she’d practiced every single night for the last fifty-two years. Since the war had ended and her boys had failed to return home to tend their crops.
She refused to believe them dead. Just as she refused to die and let her sister’s curse harm the town where they had both been born.
Her heart aching, Elizabeth pulled the last two brittle letters from her pocket that her boys had written to her and sat down at the table. Old age had taken her sight so that she could no longer read the words, not even with her spectacles. But it didn’t matter. She’d long ago committed their words to her heart.
I dream only of returning home to marry Anabelle. Give her my best, Mother. Soon I will see you both again.
R.
He’d only been nineteen when he’d left her home with his older brother, John, when they’d been conscripted to fight a war that had nothing to do with them. Eighteen months older, John had sworn he would watch over Robby and return him home.
“On my life, Ecke. I’ll bring him back whole and hale.”
And I will watch for you every day, and every night I will light a candle to help guide you both to my door.
Tears swam in her eyes, but they didn’t fall. She was stronger than that.
Instead, she reached for the old hand carved horn her father had given to her when she’d been a child. “Take this, Lizzie. Should anyone come to our door while your brothers and I are in the field, sound it loud to let us know and then hide with your mother and sisters until we can get to you.”
So much had changed.
To this day, she didn’t regret marrying her husband. She had loved her John more than anything. But he’d left her far too soon. She’d laid him to rest on a cold February morning when Robbie was barely seven. Since her brothers had been forced to leave along with her sister Lou, she’d raised the boys on her own, along with her daughter Mary.
There is no death, only a change of worlds...
Soon she would change. She could feel the Great Spirit with her more and more.
Do not grieve for that which is past or for that which you cannot prevent.
“I will see you again soon, my sons.” And she would be with her Johns...
Cait flinched as she felt Louina’s pain.
You must live your life from beginning to end. No one can do it for you. But be careful when you seek to destroy another. For it is your soul that will be consumed, and you are the one who will cry. Never allow anger and hatred to poison you.
“I am poison...”
Those words echoed in Cait’s head as she followed Jamie in his quest to locate their friends.
“Maybe they went to the hospital, after all.” That was her hope until they reached the tents they’d pitched earlier.
Tents that were now shredded and lying strewn across the ground.
Jamie ran ahead, then pulled up short. With a curse, he turned and caught her before she could get too close.
“You don’t want to know.”
“W-what?”
His gaze haunted, he tightened his arms around her. “Trust me, Cait. You don’t want to see them. We have to call the authorities.”
Tears welled in her eyes. “Anne?”
He shook his head. “It looks like an animal attack of some kind.”
“Why!”
“I don’t know.”
But her question wasn’t for Jamie. It was for Louina.
Words spoken in anger have strong power and they cannot be undone. For those who are lucky, they can be forgiven in time. But for others...
It is always our own words and deeds than condemn us. Never the ill intent or wishes of our enemies.
Do not dabble with what you don’t understand. There are some doors that are blown from their hinges when they are opened. Doors that will never again be sealed.
“Welcome to my hell.”
They both jerked at the voice beside them.
There in the darkness stood Louina. Her gray hair fanned out around her shoulders. Her old calico dress was faded against her white apron.
“My sister protects you. For that you should give thanks. Now, go and never come here again.”
But it wasn’t that simple.
“I won’t leave and allow you to continue hurting others.”
Louina laughed. “You can’t stop me.”
For the first time in her life, Cait understood the part of her bloodline that had always been mysterious and undefined. She was the great-great-granddaughter of Elizabeth.
It all came together in her mind at once. Her grandmother had told her the story of Elizabeth, who’d died when her cabin caught fire while she was sleeping. Something had knocked the candle that she lit for her sons from her window.
“You killed her!” Cait accused.
“She wanted to die. She was tired and it was time.”
But that wasn’t true, and she knew it. Yes, Elizabeth had been tired. She’d been almost a hundred and ten years old. Yet she’d been so determined to keep her sister’s curse at bay that she’d refused Death every time it tried to claim her.
Until Louina had intervened.
In that moment, she felt a connection to Elizabeth. One she embraced.
Jamie released her. “What are you doing?”
Cait looked down to see the glow that enveloped her. Warm and sweet, it smelled like sunshine.
It was Elizabeth.
She embraced her like a warm hug.
“This ends, Louina. As you said, you are the poison that must be purged.”
Shrieking, Louina ran for her.
True to her heritage, Cait stood her ground. She would not back down. Not in this.
Louina’s spirit slammed into her with enough force to knock her down. She groaned as pain filled her.
Even so, she stood up and closed her eyes. “You will not defeat me. It is time for you to rest. You have not shown respect to those who dwell on this earth.”
“They didn’t show it to me!”
“And you allowed them to drive you away from the Great Spirit who loves us all. To do things you knew weren’t right.”
“They spat in my face.”
“You returned their hatred with more.” Cait reached her hand out to Louina. “Like Elizabeth, you’re tired. Nothing is more draining than to keep the fires of hatred burning.”
“You will not fight me?”
Cait shook her head at her great-grandaunt. “I want to comfort you. It’s time to let go, Lou. Release the hatred.” And then she heard Elizabeth in her ear, telling her what to say. “Remember the words of Crazy Horse. Upon suffering beyond suffering, the Red Nation shall rise again, and it shall be a blessing for a sick world. A world filled with broken promises, selfishness and separations. A world longing for light again. I See a time of Seven Generations when all the colors of mankind will gather under the Sacred Tree of Life and the whole Earth will become one circle again. In that day, there will be those among the Lakota who will carry knowledge and understanding of unity among all living things and the young white ones will come to those of my people and ask for this wisdom. I salute the light within your eyes where the whole Universe dwells. For when you are at that center within you and I am that place within me, we shall be one."
Louina pulled back as she heard those words. “We are one,” she repeated.
Elizabeth pulled away from Cait and held her hand out to Louina. “I have missed my sister.”
“I have missed mine.”
Jamie placed his hands on Cait’s shoulders. “Are you all right?”
She wasn’t sure. “Did you see any of that?”
“Yes, but I’m going to deny it if you ever ask me that in public.”
Tears filled her eyes as she remembered Anne and Brandon. “Why did we come this weekend?”
“We came for greed. You came to help a friend.”
Suddenly, a low moan sounded.
“Call for help,” Jamie said as he released her and ran back to their camp.
She dialed 911, hoping it would pick up.
“Anne’s still breathing.” Jamie pulled his jacket off and draped it over her.
“What about Brandon?”
He went to check while the phone rang.
“It’s faint, but yeah... I think he’s alive too.”
Cait prayed for a miracle she hoped would be granted.