Forbidden Ground (Cold Creek #2)(80)
“If not Lacey, still mad at you, maybe Bright Star is harassing us—especially me. He’s bright, all right, but warped, diabolical. And what’s the real message of Treat Yourself To The Best?”
Grant fought to keep calm, to drive the sharp turns carefully. It was black as pitch up here, and he was grateful they met no one heading up and that in the rearview mirror he saw no vehicle pursuing. As if to assure himself as well as her, he kept talking. “There are lots of Mail Pouch signs in this area. But—hey—I did like that message, even though we seem far off from treating ourselves to the best right now.”
“Speaking of messages out of the blue—or the dark,” she said, “you’re not afraid, are you, for your own safety, after what happened to Paul and Todd?”
“You think it’s a message like I’m next, so I might as well live it up now—treat myself to the best?”
“From the first you thought losing your tree was a personal warning or threat.”
“It scares me that little brother Brad has everything to gain if I don’t own the mill and the house. I think he’s listening to Lacey too damn much. A man sleeps with a woman, his defenses go down.”
Kate wondered if that was why Grant had not tried to take her to bed, even when she knew he wanted to. Because then he’d have to give in to her desires, too, and that included not only him, but the mound.
26
Kate waited in the house with Velma while Keith, Grant and Jace took flashlights outside to survey the site where the big oaks had been cut. They came back in and slumped at the kitchen table while Velma put huge dishes of homemade strawberry ice cream in front of each of them.
“No coffee this late,” she said. “Trees cut or not—police work or not—people need their sleep, or they just crash and burn, and caffeine will get us all wired.”
Grant glanced Kate’s way. He felt as exhausted as she looked, completely drained physically and emotionally. But he dug into his ice cream.
“Gabe’s gonna be shocked at what’s happened since he’s been gone,” Jace said. “It’s been a dead end—didn’t mean to word it that way—on Paul Kettering’s death. Todd’s fall, an accident, far as I can tell.”
Keith nodded and reached over to pat Jace on the back. “Maybe Paul’s was, too, though I hear his wife doesn’t want to accept it. Maybe he just lost it, went berserk for some reason. Then the tree trunk he was carving fell on him.”
Kate groaned inwardly. She’d meant to stop by Nadine’s tonight to buy that very sculpture, but she would first thing tomorrow. She pictured Paul’s fine carving of the Adena shaman. Carson had claimed that the earrings and the face of that well-known Adena figure and the Toltec face he’d seen in Washington had strong similarities. She needed to check that online tonight, however tired she was.
Everyone thanked Velma for the ice cream. Jace promised he’d be back first thing in the morning to check for truck tracks and hoof prints. Grant huddled with Keith for a while, evidently consoling him about the trees.
*
At Grant’s house, they got out of the truck in front of a pitch-black house. “I usually leave lights on,” he said, “but we left in such a rush.” He got his rifle out of the truck and put his other arm around her shoulders as they started to walk in together, but he pulled her to a stop. “What’s that sound?”
She cocked her head. It was a warm, windy night with leaves rustling, but that hum was not the trees, not an animal sound. “I think it’s far away.”
“Or maybe just out in back. Weird. Let’s go in, but I won’t turn on a light.”
They went into the dark house and locked the door behind them. Their eyes adjusted to the dark as they hurried into the living room to peer out the back. Inside, the sound was muted but still there, a hum, a buzz. Singing? Chanting? Gooseflesh popped out on Kate’s arms, and her insides cartwheeled. Out by the mound?
The mound seemed aglow with wan lights. Moving lights! It flashed through Kate’s mind that maybe Carson had a dig team out there, working at night. On important or dangerous digs, that had been done. But the lights were mostly atop the mound and seemed so otherworldly.
“What in the...?” Grant said. “And don’t tell me it’s Adena ghosts, though that mound’s haunted me for years.”
He grabbed his rifle again. With her right behind him, he strode for the back door.
Chills shot down Kate’s spine. The sound was like a hollow drumbeat. And some sort of wind chimes? Singing, too. She almost, finally, believed in ghosts. That she’d find the shaman Beastmaster dancing atop the mound and the entry shaft open like a throat that had disgorged its dead. No matter what Grant said, whatever the odds or barriers, she had to get in that mound once and for all. Or else she would run screaming through this forest and through life like Grant’s poor grandmother, who’d thought that spirits were after her. Was she—were both she and Grant—losing their minds?
They started to climb the side of the mound as they had a few days ago to see if gold stars lay atop it. And then she had a premonition of who and what this might be.
They peered over the top of the mound. Bright Star! Bright Star was dancing with three women—Grace was one—while at least twenty others knelt in a circle around them, all holding candles within paper shields and humming. Muted shadows dipped and danced, too. At first, the two of them just stared aghast as Bright Star’s voice—musical, almost magical—chanted, amid drumbeats and gentle chimes. “Dead goats to deathly shadows, but my sheep won’t go below, for in my light they glow...” On and on, chanting insane words within the rapt circle of people.