Once Upon a Haunted Moon (The Keeper Saga) (16 page)

Chapter Twenty
Ella

The Village

April 30, 1782

Moons upon moons had passed. Ella kept vigil over Old Mother each day, watching as the old woman grew older and more feeble with each sunset. She knew her time would come soon, and though she loved her like a mother and would miss her greatly, she worried more about the effect it would have on her people. Who would they turn to? Who would they trust when she was gone? Old Mother had always been the foundation that kept them together. Never was a decision made without her wisdom. Ella feared what the future would hold for the village when that time came.

She was thinking about that future one morning as she helped Old Mother sit down by the fire.

The old woman’s body was feeble, but her mind was as keen and sharp as it ever had been, “White Wolf not worry about what time has not brought to her. When time comes, then White Wolf worry,” she said solemnly, staring at her through her white eyes.

“I can’t help it,” Ella said quietly, eyes filling with tears, “What will happen to us when you are gone?”

“Life move on. Just as there was one before Old Mother to show the people their way, there will be one after,” she said wisely, hand reaching out to pat Ella’s arm in comfort, “It is way of life. When one leave, another come take place.”

Ella didn’t say anything for fear she would only cry. She stayed silent, watching the contents in the pot warm on the fire.

“White Wolf has magic and kindness in her heart. When time come, White Wolf find courage in her heart to lead the people,” Old Mother predicted, “Time come soon. Old Mother ready when Great Spirit say come. White Wolf will lead. People will trust and follow White Wolf.”

Old Mother’s prediction weighed heavy in Ella’s heart. She knew they would trust her. They already did. Since she heard the thoughts of The Wolf, her magic grew stronger. She had even more visions, more and more frequently, each showing her small bits of a possible future. Each vision she told to Old Mother, who warned or instructed the people to prepare. Though it had been Old Mother who led them, they knew the words came from White Wolf. They named her Seer, their wise woman, and regarded her with great, yet wary respect.

The last vision had been the hardest to bear witness to. It was the only one she hadn’t told to Old Mother. She didn’t need to. Old Mother already knew — she welcomed the end of her life.

Two more days passed, and Ella stayed closer than ever, watching Old Mother’s spirit start to fade. She didn’t even leave Old Mother at night to sit with The Wolf when the nightmares came. Instead, she curled up beside the old woman’s pallet on the floor, should she be needed through the night.

On the last day, she woke, and knew the time had come. Old Mother wouldn’t rise, no matter how hard Ella urged her to get up. Her breathing had gone shallow and her blind eyes remained closed. Ella did the only thing left she that she could do.

She sat and held her hand.

And waited.

Chapter Twenty-One
Brian

I’m used to nightmares. Especially here lately. But on this night, I awoke in a cold sweat. I couldn’t remember what the nightmare had even been about, but I knew it was worse than dreams I normally had.

I think it was the awful scent that had permeated the room. I took a deep breath and almost gagged. Yeah, that had to have been what had woken me up.

Groaning, I rolled out of my warm bed and flung open the closet door. It wasn’t a surprise when I saw the lid on the bowl had popped open. There wasn’t a bit of doubt of what had made my room smell like a rotting tomb.

I pulled the bowl out and did the knee-on-the-lid trick again, hoping for the same result I had achieved the first time.

It didn’t work. The rim of the bowl had busted from the strain I put on it earlier.

I looked at the clock. 5AM. I was stuck with the book for at least a few more hours. I grabbed a garbage bag and stuffed the book and the bowl in it as far as it would go and tied a knot in it, hoping that would help.

My mom still hadn’t made it home from work, but I didn’t worry too much. Her job kept her out a lot. For living in a small town, it seemed to keep pretty busy. I personally thought it was because of the magical stuff that happened — but who knows. It really didn’t help that there were only three law enforcement officers for the whole county. My mom, one other deputy, and Adam’s dad…the sheriff.

I peeked out the living room window and saw a sheet of ice on the hood of my truck. Odds were in my favor that we wouldn’t be having school, so I knew I had a better chance of getting someone else to play “book guard.”

I sat, flipping aimlessly through the channels on the television, when my mom showed up a couple of hours later.

“You look warm,” I grinned at her as she pulled off her coat, ice falling from her shoulders.

“Nice to see you, too, smart aleck,” she rolled her eyes, but smiled, as she unclipped the belt that held her gun to her side, “It’s rough out there. Bad enough that everyone seems to forget not to drive on ice…wrecks all over the place…then we get calls about animals showing up in people’s yards acting strangely.”

Uh-oh,
I thought,
that zombie deer has shown up in town somewhere…

“What happened?” I asked, hoping she didn’t think I knew more than she did.

“Mr. McCray called in. He was worried about some track he found when he went out to get his paper a couple hours ago. I went and checked it out. It looked like a bear and a deer had wandered in circles through his garden like they were lost.”

“Maybe they were just hungry?” I made a hopeful suggestion.

“John McCray only has his prize azaleas in that garden. They’d have to be pretty hungry, but I don’t think that was it. His neighbor across the road had a huge vegetable garden this year, plus he keeps bees, too, but the animals never wandered that direction at all. There was something wrong with them, so I called animal control in to take a look.” She gave me a pointed look as if to say “don’t let your wolf or the others go running around in town,” then she headed into the kitchen where I heard her open a cabinet and start fixing herself a cup of hot tea.

She came back a few minutes later, fingers wrapped around her favorite mug.

“The sheriff went on a call up at the Harmons’s last night. Brenda was very upset,” she said offhandedly, deliberately not looking at me as she settled in her favorite chair. I cringed. I knew this form of talk. She was preparing to interrogate me.

All I managed to say was a small, “Oh.”

“Wouldn’t happen to know anything about that, would you?” She raised her eyes and they locked onto me like brown laser beams. Even though she had just worked a full shift and half of another without a break she was still sharp, and I was the one caught in her crosshairs.

I caved. There wasn’t any point of even trying to lie to her. She’d know as soon as I opened my mouth.

“I think the Lakota guys may have had something to do with it. I saw Rune flirting with Tori, so maybe he knows something. Nikki and I went out looking for them but we didn’t have any luck.” Hey, it was the truth — maybe not all of it — but enough that it would hopefully satisfy her. I didn’t want to explain why there was a book of human skin in our house. She’d send it off for DNA testing to see who it was, and then I’d be in big trouble.

She watched me for a minute, waiting to see if I was going to add anything else.

“Evan is very worried about Adam,” she said.

Well, that’s understandable,
I thought wryly. Adam was his son, he should be worried. After all, I wasn’t all that close to him, but even I was worried. It didn’t look good for him. I didn’t think Nikki was going to be able to take it for much longer if we didn’t find him soon.

That thought must have shown on my face, because my mom gave me a sympathetic look and said, “Nikki is very lucky to have you for her friend.”

I shifted in my chair, though I managed to grumble, “Yeah, I guess.”

Noticing that she had embarrassed me, she grinned, while trying to pretend to turn her complete attention to what tea she had left in her cup. She drained it, and then took the empty mug back into the kitchen, calling over her shoulder, “I’m heading for the shower. I’m still on call, but I’m going to try to get a little bit of sleep later, after I cook up some stuff for the PTA meeting. I doubt we’ll have it, though. School’s been called off on account of the ice. You be careful if you go anywhere.”

I got the hint immediately. She wasn’t worried about ice or school or PTA meetings. She knew there were strange things happening that couldn’t be explained, and she knew I was familiar with what a lot of them were. She was warning me to be safe and not end up missing the way Adam and Tori had.

“Okay,” I called out, hoping I sounded happy and care-free. A few minutes later, I heard the shower turn on. I looked at the clock; it was almost 8:00 a.m. Nikki should be up; maybe she’d like “The Book of Skin” back.

I grabbed the trash bag out of the closet, jumping when I accidentally bumped into my mom in the hallway. She must have taken the fastest shower in the history of the world.

“What’s in there?” she asked, crinkling up her nose, “It stinks.”

“Just cleaning out my room!” I hurried around her, setting the bag by the front door so I could grab my coat, “I’m going to go to Nikki’s and hang out with her for a while.”

“Okay.”

I listened as she headed to the kitchen, plundering through the cabinets, slamming the doors, obviously in search of something. I heard her muttering, “…glad he’s cleaning his room…if it smells that bad in there, he needs to clean more often…why can I never find anything I am looking for in here…”

I slipped on my shoes as she shut the last cabinet. I slipped out the door just in time when I heard her yell, “Brian, have you seen my big yellow bowl?”

***

“Did you bring it?” Nikki answered the door before I could knock. She must have known I was coming. She spotted the black, plastic bag in my hands and grabbed it, “Geez, Brian. I gave it to you so it would stay intact and you stick it in a trash bag?”

“A trash bag
and
a bowl if you’re going to get all technical about it,” I grumbled, “I had to do something. That book reeks. Where are Emily and your mom? They’ll agree with me when they get a whiff of that thing.”

“Mom’s gone to work. Em stayed the night at a friend’s house, there’s no one here to agree with you,” Nikki said, carefully taking the bowl out, rolling her eyes as she looked at my earliest attempt at containing the book, “I’m surprised you didn’t vacuum seal it like a pot roast and throw it in the freezer.”

“I didn’t have enough plastic or I would have. Besides, I like to eat what comes out of that freezer,” I retorted, crossing my arms over my chest.

She set the book down (no worse for wear from being squished and bagged) in the middle of the coffee table, and then settled on the floor beside it to inspect it more closely.

“So what happened when you got home last night?” I prodded.

“I was greeted by Adam’s father who had been called there by my very upset mother. I finally got Mom calmed down, then, after I was sentenced to an eternity of grounding, I managed to get the sheriff over to the side, and I filled him in on everything.” Nikki stared at the book. It was pretty obvious I wasn’t going to get many more details, she was preoccupied.

I went over and sat down beside her in the floor, trying to remember to breathe through my mouth instead of my nose.

Nikki traced her fingers along the three talons of the claw. It twitched slightly, as if it had awakened.

“Did you see that!” she squeaked.

I grinned, at least something had happened. We were making progress. “Try it again.”

She put her hand out, hovering just above the book, and traced three of her fingers very lightly from the center of the book, down the talons to the sharp claw.

It jerked against the table, then the claw relaxed and straightened, turning loose of its grip.

We jumped when the book did, and now the two of us were plastered against the back of the couch, crammed against each other as we watched the book come alive.

It lifted up on its spine, then opened into the dead center, and went still. We exchanged looks, and decided to sit up at the same time.

Efflehurt the Bog Elf had written a very strange book, indeed.

Spidery handwriting described the attributes of something called “Water Beings” on the page the book had opened to. A sketch on the opposite page showed a tiny, pixie-like creature with hair that waved upwards in a point. The Water Being was described as pure, whole magic, fearless defenders of creeks, rivers, and lakes.

“These are some of the good guys, but this isn’t what we’re looking for,” Nikki said, voice shaking with excitement, “Let’s flip through some more and see if we can find Wynter or Zue!”

She flipped to the next page, and a sketch of a big, hairy creature stared out at us with beady little eyes.

“Sasquatch. We already know about Chewy and Little It. Keep going,” I said.

She flipped another page and looked at a wolf howling at the drawing of the moon above him. Nikki grinned, “We know this one, too.”

“Yep, that’s who we’re looking for, Efflehurt,” I murmured, as she flipped one more page and Wynter’s wide eyes stared out at us from the yellowed paper.

Chapter Twenty-Two
Ella

The Village

July 7, 1782

Old Mother’s spirit had passed, and true to her prediction, the people came to Ella for guidance. It started with Running Wolf, coming to sit with her by the fire. It was the first time he came to her, and she knew from the frown etched on his face that something weighed heavy on his mind.

“White Wolf know ways of white man,” he said slowly, tracing a finger around the rim of a bowl of stew. He didn’t meet her eyes.

“Yes,” Ella said quietly, “Long ago. When I was a child.”