Earth Angel (The Kamlyn Paige Novels) (5 page)

“I found some very interesting information.”

Her voice was now calm and collected. That was how
I always knew the mystery was over. Instead of being excited and raring to go,
Cara would be quiet and peaceful. She went on to tell me the story of our ghost
woman.

“A long time ago, there was a Native American
reservation in the old town of Kettle Falls, where a young woman named Adoette
lived with her family and tribe,” she began, flipping through the pages of her
research.

I could tell right away this was going to be a
lengthy story. I settled back onto the bed and put the phone on speaker as I
tried to toss bits of popcorn into the air and catch them in my mouth. When you
live in cheap motels, constantly traveling, you find simple ways to amuse
yourself. I caught every single piece on the first try.

“Through the middle of the reservation ran the
Columbia River, roaring with life and full of salmon and other tasty fish,
which was the tribe’s main source of food. In 1940, city planners decided to
build the Grand Coulee Dam, but in doing so they would flood the town of Kettle
Falls.”

“But there’s still a town of Kettle Falls…” I
responded in confusion.

I could practically hear Cara rolling her eyes at
my naïve response. She continued as if she hadn’t heard me.

“All the citizens agreed that building the dam and
moving the town closer to the railroads would be better for its up and coming
industries,” she said, heaving a sigh of frustration at the end of her
sentence.

I didn’t have the best common sense. Whenever I
asked questions that most would know the answer to, it drove Cara crazy. She
also hated when I interrupted the delivery of her research, even though she was
the queen of interruption.

“The reservation, however, was dead set against the
move. Building a dam would cut off their necessary supply of food and destroy their
homes. Some of the younger tribe members, including Adoette, decided to travel
to neighboring towns to see if they could find support to stop the building of
the dam.”

I thought about the young woman I’d seen by the
bridge. Her tears were starting to make sense to me now. I knew how this story
ended.

“They planned their journey with enough time to
return before construction began, but growing impatient, the city planners
decided to start building early. The elders of the reservation stubbornly
refused to leave their homes and were given two choices, stay or leave, but
either way the dam would be built,” Cara read on without emotion.

To her it was just a gathering of historical facts,
but to someone who had come face to face with the young woman it happened to,
it was a tragedy. How could they let the Native Americans on the reservation
die like that? I’d read somewhere that drowning is the worst possible way to
die. The feeling of suffocation is supposed to be unbearable. I shuddered at
the thought.

“When Adoette and the others returned, they found
their reservation was gone. Their homes and families had been washed away with
everything they had ever known. Having to start new, Adoette built a small
cabin in the woods next to her former home, which is now Roosevelt Lake, and
remained there alone.”

There was a hole in the story I thought as I stood
up from the bed and paced the room. Why would Adoette’s ghost be taking revenge
now, after seventy years?

“Do you know who the city planners were?” Cara
asked, knowing full well I had no clue. “Three men by the names of Richard
Baker, Daniel Jones, and Jonathan Weston Sr. Richard Baker was the man you saw
in the old picture at the Baker’s home and Daniel Jones was the man who died
last night.”

The pieces were starting to fall into place. I
still wasn’t sure why the spirit had returned so late for her revenge, but
there was one thing I
was
sure about and that was how to get rid of her.
I stopped pacing the room and stared at a dark stain on the carpet, looking
past it rather than at it as I realized I had more to do than find Adoette, and
I had to hurry.

“John Weston is the name of the guy who sat with me
in the diner,” I said, more to myself than to Cara.

Without hesitation, I hung up the phone and rushed
to my truck.

“I am a visitor here. I am not
permanent.”

- Postal Service

Speeding down the dark winding road, I screeched to
a halt in front of a rundown ranch style house next to the diner. I burst into
the unlocked home and saw John in the kitchen…across from him stood Adoette.
She had her hand placed over his chest as he gasped for air, water pouring from
his mouth. Hearing my entrance, she turned to look at me. Her piercing silver
eyes were filled with rage and pure hatred. She smiled and cocked her head to
the side, like a coyote spotting new prey to rip apart. On instinct, I pulled
the gun from inside my jacket and fired a shot straight through her head,
causing her to disappear and John to fall to his knees. He coughed up the last
bit of water he was choking on as he tried to catch his breath.

“What the hell was that?” he gasped as I helped him
stand up.

“I don’t have time to explain. She’ll be back.” I
grabbed a giant box of salt from one of the shelves and shoved it at him. “Take
this, form a circle around yourself and don’t move. She can’t cross it.”

I turned quickly and ran from the house, leaving
John in fear and utter confusion. I drove as fast as my old, beat up truck
could to the lakefront where I first saw Adoette. When I came to a squealing
stop, I jumped out and grabbed the gallon of gasoline I always kept in the bed
of my truck. Luckily, I had just used some of it on a previous case so the can
wasn’t too heavy.  I ran to the lake bridges and looked around for a clue to
which direction I should go when I noticed a small dirt trail leading back into
the woods. Somehow sure that the trail would lead me to Adoette’s remains, I
followed it.

After what seemed like miles of running, I came
upon a small one room log cabin. It was hidden among the tall moss covered
trees, overtaken with the green parasites as well. I walked up to one of the
glassless windows to take a look inside with my flashlight. It was very simple;
a fireplace in one corner for cooking, some old pots for storage and on the
wall across from me was a cot. Lying on the cot was an old woman. I flashed my
light across her face to see if she was sleeping, but the woman lay there still
and unresponsive. I walked over to the warped, rotted door and pushed it open
slowly. The floor was covered in dirt and leaves instead of floorboards. Damp
like the outside forest, it gave slightly when I walked on it.

“Hello?” I asked loudly, trying one last time to
see if the woman was still alive, but she was silent.

I nudged her a couple times as a final attempt, but
there was no doubt about it; the woman was dead. I used the rest of my gasoline
carrier and my entire pouch of salt to cover her body. Normally when I burned
remains they were bones or a possession of the deceased. I had never burned a
body that was still intact before. It made me feel uneasy. This woman couldn’t
have died more than a few days ago, which explained why her spirit returned to
seek revenge then. It saddened me to think about the fact that she would never
receive a proper burial. There would be no tombstone for loved ones to visit
and mourn, nothing left behind for proof of her existence. But as unnerved as I
was, I knew it had to be done. John’s life depended on it.

Just as I lit the match to throw onto the old
woman’s corpse, I heard the door behind me slowly creak open. I spun around to
see Adoette’s ghost standing there, rage pouring from her unearthly eyes. I
could hear a faint growling sound as she huffed. Without warning, she let out a
shrill warrior cry as she rushed forward. I dropped the match without
hesitation and saw the orange and red flames engulf the physical body in front
of me. Stopping in her tracks, the young spirit of the woman stared at me, her
face stricken with fear. As she looked down at her body, she let out a horrifying
scream and burst into flames as well. The heat from the flames rushed past me,
warming my cheeks and turning them bright red. Just as quickly as she caught
fire, she was gone. The job was done. I ran from the cabin sparing no time
before my only exit was blocked. The cabin was swallowed quickly in a blaze of
fire behind me as I rushed back to the truck.

Immediately when I got back to the motel, I
gathered my belongings so I could leave town as soon as possible. I had called
the fire department while driving to report smoke rising in the woods. I was
sure there would be an investigation and it was better to be safe than sorry.
It was always the antisocial stranger passing through who was the first to be
questioned and in my case, their suspicions would be right. While tossing my
belongings into my duffel bag I heard a rhythmic knock on my door. I cracked it
open without undoing the chain to see who was coming to see me at such a late
hour…fully prepared to see a swarm of FBI agents on the other side.

“Hello there, mystery woman,” John said, giving me
a cocky grin as he leaned against the door frame.

Even though I had just seen him not more than an
hour ago, he looked different to me. He was wearing a dark green button-down
shirt which he had left open to show the fitted t-shirt he wore underneath. His
jeans were clean and they hugged his body in all the right places. Instead of
wearing his usual worn out ball cap, his short brown hair was styled with
mouse.

“You caught me. Did you get all dressed up just to
stalk me in the middle of the night?” I asked, smiling back as I undid the
chain and stepped aside to invite him in.

I took a deep breath as he walked past me to sit on
the windowsill. He smelled of rugged, outdoorsy cologne that made me weak in
the knees. I remembered from biology class that scent was known to trigger
memories better than any of our other senses and right then I was taken back to
high school with Rob. Suddenly, I was very aware of how frumpy I looked. My long
hair was in dire need of a brushing. I was positive I felt twigs stuck in it as
I ran my fingers through, trying to smooth out the tangles. I had on a plain t-shirt
and my favorite jeans, and while they did show off my figure, the rips and
fading were anything but intentional.

“So, what the hell happened?” he asked, still
smiling at me and folding his arms.

I knew I should have gone back to John’s after
putting Adoette’s spirit to rest, but I had never been good at saying goodbye.
I was glad he wasn’t mad at me for trying to skip town without explaining.
Something told me this wasn’t the first time someone had done that to him. We
didn’t know each other all that well, but saying goodbye to him felt like I
would be saying goodbye to any possibility of having a normal life with someone.
As I continued to pack, I asked him how he knew when to leave the circle of
salt I’d told him to make.

“Well, one minute she was sitting across from me,
dangerously close and smiling like a madwoman, and then the next she was gone.
Shortly after she left, the lights came back on. I figured if she came back,
the lights flickering again would tip me off.”

I was very impressed by how well he was handling
the whole situation. Most people were complete basket cases after their first
ghost encounter. John filled me in on the details of what happened at the house
after I left and I explained, in very little detail, what I do and the story
behind Adoette and his grandfather. Normally, when I tried to explain the
paranormal to people they looked at me as if I were crazy no matter what horror
they had just witnessed. John just gazed at me, continuing to give me his
crooked grin.

“So, you’re like some badass ghost hunter?”

“Uh, sure. Something like that,” I chuckled in
response.

No one had ever described my job so perfectly
before. I looked at John, unable to stop myself from blushing as I smiled. He
was different from all the other victims I’d helped over the past year. He knew
about my job and didn’t run away screaming. That had to count for something.

“I guess I really came to say thanks, then,” he
said, looking into my eyes as he stood up from the windowsill.

He walked over to me slowly and put his hands on my
waist. Gently, he rested his forehead against mine.

“Are you sure you have to go?” he whispered while
closing his eyes and holding onto me tighter.

I wished desperately I could stay and live a simple
life with John. We had just met, but he reminded me so much of the life I could
have had; a quiet life in a small town with a nice guy and a white picket
fence. As much as I wanted to, though, I couldn’t give up the hunt now.

“I have to find something that took someone very
special from me, but maybe when I’m done…” I trailed off, averting my gaze down
to my feet.

I wasn’t sure how to finish that sentence. John raised
my face with the light touch of his finger to look into his eyes.

“I knew there was something special about you the
minute we met. You’ll always have evil to hunt and people to save because
that’s what you do…you save lives.”

He smiled at me and gave me a small, soft kiss on
my cheek. I closed my eyes and savored the moment. I knew it would be a long
time before I had another one like that again.

“Bye, Miss Page,” he said under his breath, looking
at the ground instead of me.

Without another word, he left the room and got into
his truck. It was the first time I was sorry to leave somewhere in a long time.
My eyes stung with tears. I blinked a few times to fight them back, but one
escaped and rolled down my cheek. I gave a deep sigh as I closed the motel door
behind me. Tossing my duffel bag and backpack into the bed of my truck, I
watched John pull out of the parking lot and drive out of sight. As I put the
key in the ignition and heard the engine roar to life, I decided to just drive
wherever the roads took me while I waited for Cara to call with my next job.
After all, everyone needed a vacation once in a while.