Chapter Twenty-Five
The Binding
Salome Pour Devenir was dividing her attention between the storm clouds hovering overhead and the commotion in front of the black walnut. She and Cleveland had met several months earlier with Evenfall acting as an intermediary. He wondered if she was aware her surname was French for “to become.” He suspected not. She was the one who chose this special place and more surprisingly, the act they needed to commit. She had possession of an ancient, leather bound, Menominee text. She educated him about the Miskenupik followers who preceded them by centuries, and promised to help him tap into their power. All she asked in return was ownership of one of his three cards. He agreed up front but had no intention of keeping his promise. The diminutive paintings were far too valuable.
Salome wore a black leather jacket and faded blue jeans that windy day. She weighed less than one hundred and thirty pounds at the time and had a figure Cleveland found alluring. She was of Oneida blood, with high cheekbones and mahogany eyes. Her smile was both sincere and seductive, and her voice spoke of dark things. She was an empty vessel waiting to soak up power. She approached the prisoner and checked the nylon rope to make sure it was tight enough. It was.
Evenfall was clearly uncomfortable with these proceedings. She had arranged the introduction of Cleveland and Salome and had therefore set this day in motion. But now she had second thoughts. Kidnapping! She had never in her most wretched dreams imagined that she would take part in an abduction. Or a sacrifice. What a terrifying yet empowering line she had crossed. She looked at the victim with pity but then grimaced with disgust. She taught herself long ago that one was either a victim or a victimizer. Never again would she play the victim. She turned her back on the prisoner, bound neck and torso to the sinister tree, and focused her attention on the sky overhead.
The sun was beginning its descent somewhere west of the dim forest, where gray – barked trees grew to improbable heights. The wind caused branches adorned with burnt orange and gold to moan. The woods smelled of dark, fertile earth. Salome turned her nose toward the creek and breathed in its mineral scent. There was something else too. Decay... Something died here recently, and the pungent smell wafted along the westerly breeze.
Soon all natural light would be extinguished. The group rendezvoused along the south bank of Black Creek, whose waters ran through Dark Woods into the bay. The creek was several hundred yards wide and fractured the otherwise unchecked growth of ancient wood. This was one of few places in the forest where sunlight penetrated. Tendrils of shadow moved like probing fingers to seek out and strangle the weak light. The Broken Path, Salome thought. It was a gateway between worlds, allowing the dead access to the living.
Ignoring the prisoner, she focused on the black walnut. It was an ancient tree, one whose split trunk and extended branches cast ominous shadows over the first French explorers to walk the cursed forest in the seventeenth century. The tree secreted a toxic juglone from its roots to kill off competing vegetation. A bulbous growth the size of a human head sat above a split trunk such that the tree resembled a man with burly, deeply furrowed gray arms reaching toward the rush of water. Leaves of gold descended one hundred and fifty feet from its topmost branches.
Salome looked up at the autumnal confetti and then closed her eyes in contemplation. “This is a special place,” she spoke aloud, “a magic place. A node.” The bole of the tree was carved with secret runes.
The wet breeze set Evenfall’s skin to gooseflesh. She shuddered. She wore an oilskin coat of chestnut brown and zipped it up to her throat and then thrust her fists into the deep pockets. The day was becoming so cold. Fucking Wisconsin! She would have left the God-forsaken north woods long ago had it not been for the Kesemanetow and Miskenupik. This forest was the center of power. She could feel the energy surrounding her. Fuck the cold.
Evenfall and Salome had crossed paths before, each drawn to the other through their mutual interest in the dark arts. Umbra’s painting caused a longing for more. More knowledge, more power. She knew Salome felt the same.
Yet this was all wrong. Sacrifice. She shuddered anew.
Umbra approached his victim with a mixture of pride and excitement. He bent down upon one knee and untied the woman’s blindfold. There was just enough light in the forest to see her features. He almost gasped in shock. She looked so old, so haggard. A furrowed brow and black hair salted with as much gray. Her breasts hung at midabdomen, the red cotton shirt now soaked with sweat. The woman’s eyes were black disks of fear. “Do you remember me?” he asked.
Mrs. Canalize stared into her abductor’s eyes and said nothing. She seemed not to recognize him at all, which angered Cleveland. After all, she was the one who had set his wheel of fate in motion and brought him to this place and time. How dare she not remember!
“I was the doctor who took care of Deadra,” he whispered. Her eyes flashed with recognition, and she let out a weak moan. No, it was more of a whimper, the kind a frightened dog might make. Cleveland smiled. “Yes,” he told her. He stroked her cheek with false compassion and whispered into her ear. “I have never forgotten you.”
Umbra untied the victim’s gag with patience and care and then bade her speak. “You may scream if you like,” he informed her quite casually, “but your screams will not be answered.” Canalize’s neck was tightly bound to the walnut, and she could not move her head without scraping her neck raw.
“You are deep within the confines of Dark Woods,” he informed her. “The wind will lift your voice and carry it deeper into the forest. There is no creature in the woods who will share your pain or give you their pity.”
Canalize said nothing. She was on the verge of shock-induced catatonia, which was fine by him. He had gotten the response he wanted and was ready to proceed.
He drew his card from his breast pocket and turned to face the running water. The honey color of his leather looked outdoorsy, he reflected, and seemed a perfect choice for the day. His jeans were black denim, and his Frye boots had been buffed and polished for this occasion. The sun descended below the cloud line and was probably just now touching the bay. Somewhere beyond their sight a vibrant path of fire was set to life. “It begins,” he told his audience.
Cleveland had risked more than had the witnesses to fulfill his portion of this secret ritual. The two woman had only to follow him into the forest. He was the one who drugged and then kidnapped Canalize. The task was surprisingly easy and quite a bit of fun but still ... The other two might not go to jail for their participation.
Cleveland called Mrs. Canalize the week prior and used a lawyer’s slick tones to convince her that there was money to be had from the death of her daughter at Grace Station. He convinced her to meet him at the Bay Beach Amusement Park that morning. From his perspective the location was purely practical, no sentiment for childhood involved. The waters of Dark Creek passed just north of the park. Once he drugged Canalize, he reasoned, he would place her on a rubber raft and pull her through the creek to the black walnut.
The Ketamine and Versed he procured from an old friend who dropped out of medical school to become a veterinarian. Vets, it turned out, had an easy time “borrowing” their clinic’s medications for recreational purposes. Mrs. Canalize did not recognize him when she pulled her car next to his in the otherwise empty lot. She had not fully exited her car when he drove the hypodermic syringe through her coffee stained, cotton sweatshirt into her left deltoid. She screamed in shock and pain, but the park would not open for several hours, and no one heard the racket. She was completely flaccid several minutes later.
Umbra slung the victim over his shoulder and carried her limp body to the northern edge of the parking lot, toward the creek. He placed her in a Zodiac raft that he had secured earlier that morning. The comatose woman became virtually weightless when placed within the rubber raft. Umbra waded through the waist-deep water and pulled the raft with a nylon rope. The creek lost width but gained depth as he waded deeper into Dark Woods. To his left the picturesque shorefront homes seemed to glisten under the clean light of the morning sun. To his right the children’s amusement park was overshadowed by the industrial markings of the city. Mountains of coal loomed ominously, and towering smoke stacks belched gray filth into the blue sky.
The Broken Path, Cleve thought. He chuckled to himself when he pictured the city developers building the children’s park right on top of the Path. Didn’t they sense it? His laughter became darker.
The creek eventually ran under the main road, and Cleve pulled the comatose woman until they arrived at the meeting place. He was the first to arrive and had plenty of time to change into the warm clothing and boots he had cleverly packed in a dry bag earlier that day.
The two women arrived well after Umbra tethered the woman tightly to the tree’s craggy bark. He needed to inject her two more times with the intramuscular sedative to keep her pliant and calm. When they arrived the sun was past its midday height and the shadows of the forest had grown violet. The two seemed in shock to witness the spectacle before them. He really did it, they must have thought to themselves. This realization made Cleve angry. They planned this very day right down to the kidnapping and location, but he took all the risks. He would reap the most rewards.
Salome began the proceedings by reading something formal and dramatic from her black book. Cleve figured that she had made the whole thing up. She probably just wanted to inject herself into the importance of this ritual. He knew that the real magic lay within his breast pocket. That is where he secured the Miskenupik. The precious painting had stayed safe within the confines of the dry bag and now he would put it to work.
Without quite knowing why, Cleve ran his hands along the tree’s runes. The staves spoke to him. Guided him. He removed the ancient parchment from his breast pocket and held it up to the captive. The device side featured a slaughtered wolf whose throat had been cut. Scarlet drops of blood shone like macabre stars upon the painting’s blue background. Cleve shoved the card in his prisoner’s face. He saw her dark eyes dilate. Does she see the pattern? Does she know the angel means not to save the little children? A moment passed and then two. Yes. She sees it now.
Canalize’s breathing became rapid and shallow. She struggled against her binding’s tightness but succeeded only in scraping her flesh against the rough bark. She screamed in fear, and then howled, but there were no sympathetic ears. Cleve became filled with something powerful and timeless. A rush of ancient power. The explosive energy released from the separation of soul from soul.
The monstrous Pillar began to awaken. It groaned and creaked like the mast of a great ship caught in a tempest. Its two burly limbs rose higher into the air causing a mass of gold foliage to rain down upon them. The twisted limbs rose higher still and then wrapped themselves around the bound victim. They squeezed her bloodlessly into the great trunk, absorbing every atom of her being, until she became part of the furrowed bark, part of the black wood. The woman struggled and screamed, but the insentient branches cannibalized her until she could scream no more. Then without fanfare or warning the tree lifted its branches, regaining its former position, leaving no trace of Canalize, not even a fragment of clothing or a blood stained leaf.
Evenfall was the first to break the awestruck silence. She felt no rush of power or vengeful glee. In fact she sympathized with the victim. She winced at the bone-crunching sounds and tried in vain to block out the bloodcurdling screams. Just for a moment she seemed ready to charge the tree and hack at its monstrous limbs to free the poor woman. Then something life-changing happened. It spoke to her. Not in words, but in vivid pictures. It showed her images from her own mind, images of rape and betrayal. It showed her beatings she had suffered, and it showed her the world as she knew it was, divided into victims and victimizers.
It reminded her that she would never again belong to the world of victims. She held her ground and allowed the beast to do its job. When the work was done and the woman stopped screaming, she saw an image of the tree’s great roots as they violated the earth. The image was of poisonous sap. The black and tarry juglone, she now understood, would change the composition of her paint. Each new brushstroke might transform her art into Miskenupik. With the right sacrifice, of course...
“I need a shovel to dig up some roots,” she said to no one in particular.
Salome was on the verge of tears and moved mechanically to assist Evenfall. They had no shovel and would have to settle for fingers and sharp stone. She was dumbfounded by that which she had just witnessed. The stories from her black book were real. The magic existed here, just as she had read. She had been witness to it.
Something else stewed, however, something ruinous and toxic like a trace of raw sewage in clean water. A power that would not belong to her. The tree bestowed upon Umbra the power to bind souls. Upon Evenfall it granted knowledge of dark and powerful things. As for her? The tree spoke to her as well, and the image was unjust. She would get nothing. She would have to take by force that which she wanted. She was shown one image. A black-cloaked man who stared at the setting sun with melancholy. Fire Walker, he was called. He had what she wanted. She would take it from him. She dug into the rocky soil with bloody fingers, helping the woman harvest the oily roots.
Umbra breathed deeply the foul Dark Woods air. His soul ached to absorb the maddening torrent of power. He listened to the ancient wood, to the angel of death, whose Miskenupik image would forever be his. The caustic angel whispered, its voice full of greed and malice. It now spoke to Cleve alone.
The Path of Tyranny was his to open, if he so chose, and unlimited power would fill his veins for eternity.
Four souls to eclipse the sun,
Four souls to darken days.
One soul to lead them out, to lead them all astray.