Chapter 12

Chapter 12 of 56 · 12-minute read

Virgil tightens his grip around his cane and leans hard onto it. He rocks back and forth as he studies the woods.

I shake my head. “I don’t see anything.”

Or do I? Just a shadow moving through the woods, a spot of fog from the nearby swamp.

These young pines are tall enough now that their canopy blocks out the sun, and the sunlight filters in through the feathery tops of the trees. The branches below have died from lack of sunlight and left a thick carpet of pine straw on the forest floor. A few ferns and ground cover weeds had taken root in the tiny pockets of soil near them. It looks oddly like some kind of dark enchanted forest, and definitely a haunted one. These trees aren’t part of the swamp itself or even the woods I remember from childhood. Fifteen or so years ago, Shelby convinced our parents to make use of some of the farmland that wasn’t being cultivated by returning it to his natural state—timber. Shelby had overseen the planting when he was home from one of his many deployments and wanted to spend some time with our mom and dad. With Mama, at least. He had the pines professionally planted in straight rows, and they still have a few years before they can be harvested. They’re planted in swatches like this all over the farm, but since my dad’s health failed and Shelby’s military career ascended to new heights, no one’s been around to check on them.

“Do you think these woods are haunted?” Virgil asks.

The forest is eerily quiet, like a television that’s been muted. The only sign of life is a dog barking in the distance, perhaps as far away as town. Virgil takes a tentative step forward. There is a whisper of pine needles under his feet and then a crackle as he steps onto straw covering half-hidden limbs.

I, on the other hand, don’t move. The air is heavy with the rich scent of pinesap. And… and the faint smell of cigarette smoke that reminds me of Bobby.

“Why?” I fire back. “Are you afraid of ghosts?”

It’s an earnest question. I’m not teasing, not in the least.

“No.” He draws out the word. “Are you?”

Once again, we stand only a few feet apart, blinking at each other. After everything I’ve been through? Avatars and servitors and dark messengers sent by jealous witches?

“Not remotely. Am I afraid of the living? That’s another matter.”

His gaze follows mine into the shadowy woods. “You think your cousins are cutting through the swamp to visit your mom? I haven’t seen them out this way. They tend to stick closer to the main roads.”

I don’t sense them here, certainly not like I did back closer to the house. No rivers of energy that resemble theirs. Not even a trickle.

Part of me can still sense my own energy from my childhood. Normally I can’t see or even feel my own energy, but my old self was so different from now that it’s easy enough to detect. I’ve been to Gettysburg and the Alamo and to other places where tragedy and intense emotion were absorbed by the ground itself, where the land still proclaims the fallen so loudly that I cannot escape the nausea when I visit. This place is like that now. Except it isn’t fallen soldiers but my own energy that I sense.

I can still see the faint purple energy where I had trudged back toward the house after the night I’d spent crouched in the bough of a tree and trying to make myself small and unnoticeable. A deer rifle slung over one shoulder and an axe in her other hand, my mom found me wandering toward home at daybreak.

I’m told I was in a stupor and unable to speak for days. Daddy was more concerned about why Bobby had abandoned me than the fact that his revered and wealthy older brother had left a child alone in a dangerous swamp, but I wasn’t talking and Mama told him I was too traumatized to remember. It wasn’t until years later while watching the black and white movie from 1954, “Creature from the Black Lagoon,” at a college film festival that I fully remembered.

But the swamp remembered. Still does. I left behind an intense purple energy wave, augmented by my trauma, and even here in this patch of pines where only pastureland had once sprawled, my energy still cries out.

Virgil has been here too. His electric blue energy trails are fresh, but they all follow the same path we did and stop at the treeline. Not once does his life force enter this straw-laden forest.

But there’s another energy here too. Pale pink. Slightly muddled. Faint, but numerous trails. Mama. How many times has she been here? And for what? She’s never once mentioned to me these visits to the swamp. Not once.

Something crashes into the tree canopies above us, and Virgil and I both step away from the treeline at the same instance. One of the dead pine limbs high above snaps and drops in front of our feet.

Virgil turns to me and grins. “Pteromyini.” He points skyward. “The pteromyini are dangerous swamp creatures.”

“Terror what?” I follow his gaze. I don’t recognize the scientific name.

A large squirrel with flaps of skin between his front and rear legs and small, beady eyes stares down at us and barks.

Virgil laughs. “It wasn’t a ghost or your cousins. Just a flying squirrel.” He winks. “Pteromyini.”

Slowly, a smirk spreads across my face. I haven’t seen the brown-gray flying squirrels in decades, and only in this region of Georgia. When Shelby and I were growing up, we used to watch them play in the trees. We convinced ourselves easily that they had wings instead of skin to help them glide from tree to tree.

Silence morphs into a steady chorus as otherwise unnoticeable as the soft knock of blood in our veins. The noises of woods and swamp are indistinguishable from silence until awareness gives them voice and attention amplifies it. Suddenly I can’t not hear it.

I feel sick to my stomach. “You hear that?”

He listens for a moment, then shakes his head. “Peace and quiet? What am I listening for?”

“Southern pine beetles.”

We scowl up at the three trees nearest us. One’s evergreen needles have started to droop and dull. Another is barren of any needles at all, and the bark is loose, missing in patches. The song of infestation squawnks away in the closest green tree that, by appearances, is healthy. Lamentably, it’s too late. By the time the beetles can be heard in a pine, it’s too late to save it, and by the time the song has ceased in one tree, they’ve discreetly found a new food source. The tree didn’t die and become food—the beetles killed it. And the rest of the timber stands a good chance of infestation if the other trees aren’t removed.

Virgil rests his cane against the noisy tree and rummages through his denim pockets, extracting an antique but sharp pocketknife. He begins to pick at the bark, and with one firm yank, a large chunk bigger than my two hands topples down to a tuft of grass at the base of the tree. The inside of the bark lands face-up, S-shaped galleries eaten into the inner bark.

“Hmmm. I need to run back to the ATV to get a plastic bag from my pack. I need something to put a sample in. I’ll take it into the county agriculture office on Monday morning and talk to him about getting someone out here to cut and remove the infested trees. We’ll have to cut a buffer to protect the other trees. Your mom will lose a few nearly mature pines, but overall, her investment will be preserved. I don’t want you or your mom to have to worry about it. I’ll get it taken care of for you.”

“Thanks,” I murmur. This whole area is the last place I want to spend more time than necessary. It reeks of decay, though not the smell of it. “What do you need from the four-wheeler? I’ll run back for you.” I catch my bottom lip between my teeth as I study his cane. It’s in my nature to be helpful. Before he can answer, I’ve already pivoted in the direction we came.

“No!” Momentary panic shines in his blue eyes, then just as quickly disappears. “I’ll go. I, um, I know right where it is. Here, you take my cane in case you get attacked by flying squirrels.”

He’s half-teasing, but I see through his defenses. To distract me further, he points at a red-headed woodpecker in the distance—probably waiting for us to leave so it can feast on bark beetles. Instead, I raise my eyebrows and study the stag-headed rod in his grip.

“I don’t need my cane to run. It’s weird, I know. My cane helps me when I need something to lean on, but I can still run, even if I do run like an uncoordinated kid now.” He jabs the cane in my direction, gesturing for me to take it from him.

To my surprise, I don’t get flashbacks or visions when I touch it. It’s a beautifully carved piece, but suddenly nothing more than a sturdy walking stick with some discreet sigils at about nine inches, eighteen inches, twenty-seven inches, all below the Antlered God’s image at the top. If there was magick in the staff, I can’t feel it now.

I snicker over my shoulder as Virgil half-runs back down the field road. A pleasant memory of him warms me. Yes, he runs like an uncoordinated kid, but he can’t blame that on his combat injuries. He always ran that way. Especially as an uncoordinated kid.

With a broad, beaming smile, I turn back to the dark forest, cane in hand. The squirrel has jumped—flown?—somewhere else and is nowhere to be seen. As I watch, the woodpecker’s vibrant red plumes disappear into the distance. The beetles gnaw nearby, hidden under pine bark. A crow takes flight overhead, casting a shadow that glides along the ground before soaring past me and landing on the nearest fence post. It eyes me curiously, tilting its head as though trying to decipher my intentions.

The Morrigan. Is the bird here as a messenger or an observer? I always associate crows and ravens with the Goddess I’m bound to, and when I see them in Nature, they are usually there as reminders that the Old Gods watch over me.

Especially here. This tract of land may not be worth anything more than holding the earth together, as Daddy used to say, but this is where I pleaded silently with every possible guardian angel or Bible story protector to save me, and then, surrendering, I’d called upon the Old Gods and They’d answered. The Morrigan had stood over me, and later that night, She had kissed my forehead as I nestled in the arms of a big oak above the dangers below. They had claimed me that night, the Old Gods, but had given me half my adulthood to make my way back to Them, all in good time.

I begin to move forward again, twirling the cane as I stride into the woods. I step over a patch of brambles, still barefoot, onto the soft straw carpet of the forest floor. Inside Nature’s cathedral, it’s quiet but peaceful. The straw floor absorbs the normal forest noises, even the chant of bark beetles at its edge. As the trees grow taller and nearer to maturity, the lower limbs above me will all die and fall, and eventually the sun will reach the forest floor, giving light to new underbrush.

For now, it’s all straw and dead limbs arching overhead between the floor and the height of the forest canopy. After I’ve walked over coarse grass and dirt clods, the straw feels good to the soles of my feet. In fact, everything in this ghostly forest feels good. The land spirits here are loving, even though I’ve never before stepped foot inside this tabernacle of planted timber. The last time I was here, I had been a twelve-year-old girl hauling a tent and camping supplies from the trunk of Uncle Bobby’s car across what had then been an open pasture along the edge of the old woods and deeper into the cypress and mayhaw swamp.

Overhead, two squirrels bark from the dead branches. They seem to argue with each other before jumping to another branch and then another tree, and then out of sight. The corridors of timber stretch as far as I can see. I clutch the cane in my fist. As long as I stick to the open corridors between the trees, Virgil should be able to find me easily.

“Lauren?”

I spin around, the straw catching in my bare toes.

“Virgil?” I answer.

I squint toward the beginning of the corridor, toward the edge of the treeline that opens out over the pastures dotted with oaks, and over the flimsy fence row, dilapidated and falling where Virgil left the four-wheeler. He wouldn’t leave me here, would he? It’s an easy walk back to my mom’s, even barefoot. As an adult. Less so for a twelve-year-old. But what I remember of Virgil as a kid and what he seems to be now isn’t the kind of person who would abandon his companion, for any reason, ever.

“Lauren?”

I whirl in the other direction. A man’s voice, caught in the breeze that stirs the upper canopy.

“Virgil?” I call out, twirling the cane nervously.

He doesn’t answer.

“Lauren?” More distant this time and not as clear.

Did Virgil get lost coming back to find me and think I’d headed to the swamp?

“Virgil?” I call out. I cup my hands around my mouth. “Virgil! Over here. Follow the sound of my voice.”

Or, if he’s a very talented witch, he could simply follow my energy. I don’t see any of his life force here. I don’t see any energy anywhere except for a very pale trail between the edge of the planted pines and the edge of the oak, cypress, and hawthorn trees.

“Lauren!”

I tiptoe my way through the straw as it turns to briars at the edge of the planted forest and then to open grass and pasture that gives way to sprawling grandmother oaks and shadows. From here, I can smell the swamp beyond, the earthy wetness of the path leading deeper into the gloom, the musty smell of rot.

“Lauren.”

Oh, shit. Virgil’s come back to find me and gone in the wrong direction? I should have stayed closer to his line of sight. But I’d been so certain that he’d simply look down the corridor where we’d been standing and see me in the recesses.

A grayish-black trail of fog meanders through the trees ahead of me as I brace myself and head toward the swamp. The vapor looms as if waiting for me, then merges with the shadows ahead, almost like it’s part of the swamp’s dimness itself. I don’t recognize the energy signature. It doesn’t belong to my cousins. Nor to Virgil or presumably Dixon.

But the pale pink energy I saw earlier swirls in ribbons around the trees and through predestined pathways that disappear into the shade of the old woods. The trail isn’t just energy that skilled witches can see but undeniably physical scars on the land. Someone—most likely my mom and her pink aura—has been here many times in wheeled vehicles. No. Not merely the four-wheeler or what might have been a wheelbarrow, but the old farm truck that doesn’t run anymore, the one Virgil suggested last night he could either fix or sell for us.

I clutch Virgil’s stag-headed cane tightly. Why would my mom bring the truck back here? What was she hauling—repeatedly—to the old woods and down toward the swamp?

A few things come to mind, and all of them make me shudder.

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