Keepers Of The Gate

by E. Denise Billups

  Jayson’s face explodes with shock. “She hung the dreamcatcher on the wall?”

  “It sounds impossible, but we left it on the pillow, and no one had access to my room.”

  “That must have been terrifying.”

  “Yes, but she damn near drowned me in her fear.”

  “Drowned? What do you mean?”

  “She opened her mouth as if screaming, and my mouth and nostrils flooded with phantom water. I was drowning. The choking stopped as soon as she vanished. I stared at the waving dreamcatcher, thinking she was still in the room, but she wasn’t. Then I had an epiphany. The puddles and Mom’s fall were because of the ghost. Mom saw her, too.”

  “Well, your ghost may explain everything… Wait, you assumed she was a ghost. If she wasn’t, what was she?”

  “After today’s chilling events and years of hearing about Grams’ experiences, I believe the past and present converged. It sounds crazy-ass impossible, but it’s the best explanation so far.”

  “I believe you, Twyla. Before Skylar’s fall, Mystik behaved as if she’d sensed a presence in the room and that happened minutes before Skylar’s fall. It smacked of paranormal.”

  “Mystik… You’re right,” Twyla says, recalling she’d hissed twice, when she walked toward the bed and when Mom fell. Mystik gazed from door to bed as if someone had entered the room. The specter was there the entire time.

  Jayson touches his face, recalling the cool touch rousing him from sleep. “Before the dreamcatcher fell off the wall, a hand stroked my brow and cheek. It wasn’t the dreamcatcher’s feathers, as you thought, but a smooth finger stroke,” Jayson says.

  “Hmm,” Twyla mumbles, recalling the sweat she wiped from Jayson’s cheek. It was the woman’s wet hand, not sweat. “The ghost touched you… maybe she finds you as handsome as I do,” Twyla says with a wry smile, wondering why the girl stroked his cheek? Twyla stares hard at Jayson, remembering Grams’ words again. The right people and stars align. “There’s more to my crazy morning.”

  “I’m listening,” Jayson says, ripping the crusty edge from the fry bread and dipping it in the soup before taking a bite while directing a curious gaze at Twyla.

  As Jayson devours the bread and soup, she imagines Grams slapping his hand as he tore the bread. Poor etiquette mortified her. But influenced by Jayson’s mess-hall manners, decorum flies out the window. She tears a chunk instead of slicing the bread with a knife, dipping it into crimson broth followed by a wolfish bite and a slurp of soup. With a hard index finger and thumb twist, Twyla opens the Pellegrino cap, guzzles the effervescent water straight from the bottle, and slides it to Jayson.

  Jayson raises the bottle and takes a gulp, sensing Twyla's reticence. He wipes his hand on the linen napkin, lifts her foot to his thigh with a massage that always soothes her worries.

  Twyla sighs. “Aww, your hands will put me to sleep,” she says, closing her eyes as Jayson’s fingers knead from arch to toe.

  “What else happened?” Jayson asks.

  “A vortex devoured the corridor on the main floor. It scared the crap out of me, but now I understand what it was,” she says, putting everything she’d learned from Cristal and the trunk into perspective.

  Jayson stops kneading. “What do you mean devoured?”

  “It morphed, altered into a longhouse.”

  “Two thin lines form between Jayson’s brows, a look he gets when he’s worried or absorbed. But she expected awe, fascination, not pensiveness. He releases her foot and grabs a chunk of cornbread, examining it in thought before taking a large bite. His swollen cheeks hollow as his throat swells with an audible swallow.

  His silence makes her wonder if he’s in disbelief or astonished. Twyla takes another sip of Pellegrino, afraid she revealed too much for him to digest, although he claims to be a believer.

  “This occurred after the ghost in your bedroom?” Jayson asks.

  “Uh-huh. Mystik escaped into the kitchen, and I went looking for her. That’s when I stumbled into the morphing hallway. Then I remembered it happened when I was a child. I forgot or time eroded the memory. Tessa found me huddled in a closet crying that night. She said, ‘They’re not real and can’t harm you.’”

  “What did you see?”

  “A dim longhouse developed and every detail, bunk beds, firepits, timber walls straight through the aisle to an opening displaying a moonlit night. Then, out of nowhere, a Revolutionary War soldier emerged.” Twyla touches her core, recalling the numb sensation. “His icy blade touched my skin.”

  Jayson lifts and places Twyla’s foot to the floor and leans in closer. “I believe you,” he says. “I couldn’t tell you last night, but when I walked into the house, I felt I’d been here before, that I’m supposed to be here,” he says, with narrowed eyes. “This house has many layers, spheres, for lack of a better word. But that’s the impression I got in the grand foyer last night. Have you ever sensed that?”

  Twyla’s amazed he’d sensed in such a brief time what her ancestors learnt over years. Perhaps she’s right. He’s the reincarnation of an Iroquois who lived on this property before the war. “Yes, just now in the kitchen. A few minutes ago, I was standing in a colonial kitchen with women talking around me. Then they vanished. The vision happened so fast.”

  “So you weren’t daydreaming. And the dizzy spell in the Grand Hall, another vision?”

  Twyla nods and lowers her gaze, recalling the shot fired from the rifle at Jayson. The vision vanished before the bullet struck. Did it miss him? Regardless, she won’t tell him about the vision. “I’m not sure what I saw, it was a flash I didn’t grasp,” she says. “Cristal Whelan shared mind-blowing information Tessa divulged a year ago. I was in disbelief and curious to uncover Tessa’s secret in the trunk. So I made my way to the storage room and opened it.”

  “You found the courage.”

  Twyla nods and leans forward in the chair. “Jase, you won’t believe what I discovered.”

  His nickname on her tongue rouses a smile. He touches the small beauty mole above her mouth and runs his finger across her full, plum-colored lips. “Family secrets?”

  “And more.”

  The beguiling alchemy of her brown eyes sparkles as they had on their first meeting and as they do when she’s curious. There’s a light beneath her hazel browns he can’t define, maybe her soul, which captured his heart. “I figured, from what you told me about the key, your Grams kept a special secret locked away.”

  “It’s special for sure.” Twyla pushes the chair back and takes his hand. “I need to show you what she drew,” she says, pulling him from the chair toward the cellar door.

  22

  Tactical Maps

  Lights flicker in the storage room a brief second before Twilight darkens. Twyla gasps, springing from the red Victorian settee. Despite everything she’s seen today, childhood fears persist in murky corners of the basement. She glances toward Grams’ trunk, expecting age-old demons to arise in the tenebrous space. Snow mounds blanket the windows from top to bottom, blocking daylight from the cellar. The whirr of electronics, the subtle kettle from the boiler, and sweep of water through every pipe halts across the silent home. Braced for rattles, clangs, or any sound, storm noise assures her the blizzard, not paranormal forces, snuffed the electricity. Through vertical slits of the sliding door, the basement emerges coal black.

  “We’ve lost power.”

  “Or your dark void sucked us in,” Jayson teases.

  “Ha-ha, you’re hilarious, my shadowy fiancée. But I imagine your feet planted on the floorboards and your tush off the sofa if that were true,” she says with a low chuckle, peering at his dark image on the settee.

  Above, footsteps rush across the main floor.

  “Charlie’s heading to the backup generator.”

  “Darn, I was looking forward to using those colonial betty lamps on the sideboard.”

  “Why?” Twyla asks.

  “I’m in an inky room filled with antiques and the w
oman I love, which calls for good-old-fashioned lamplight.”

  “Hmm, with the right person and illumination, this room has romantic potential, though I doubt those ancient lanterns work.”

  “They should with kerosene and a match, unless they’re damaged.”

  “Sorry, no oil, but I recall seeing matches and candles.” She grabs the rack, careful not to bump into fragile items as she moves toward the sideboard. “Grams kept assorted light and candle accessories in the cabinet. I can’t imagine life with mere fire and candlelight at night. Colonials must have dreaded evenings,” she says, opening the top drawer.

  “Hmm, I’m sure they entertained themselves. In fact, a fun pastime just popped into my head,” he says in a husky, suggestive tone.

  “You’re so wicked. Colonial times weren’t romantic but a difficult era for many,” she says, feeling around in the drawer and finding the palm-size flashlight. She flips the power switch on and off with a jiggle. “Battery’s dead,” she mumbles, putting the flashlight back in the drawer and sifting through the rest of the contents. “Found it,” she exclaims, pulling a match from the box and striking the match head four times till it sparks.

  Removing a long-stemmed candle from the drawer, she ignites the wick and inserts it in a 200-year-old pewter lantern. In the flickering glow the betty lamps emerge. Lanterns once used inside Mercy and William Dox’s dim cabin, a feeble flame to see each other at night.

  Just as she moves back to the sofa, the electricity powers back on, illuminating the place with artificial light. To feed Jayson’s appeal, she keeps the candle lit. “We have a wee taste of colonial ambiance,” she says, placing the candle on the leather ottoman.

  “Unbelievable…” Jayson mutters, absorbed in Tessa’s sketches, mirroring the same astonished expression she had hours ago.

  Twyla picks up the longbow and flint-head arrow she had been holding moments before the lights darkened. Again, the speedy arrow hisses in her mind, evoking the forest’s sweet, mossy fragrance, shafts of light through trees, the discordant rhythm of wildlife, and vigor in her soul. Who was the man who aroused deep emotions beside her? She sensed he was a hunter, too.

  “Without an ounce of doubt, it’s me in the picture,” Jayson states, eyes fixed on Tessa’s sketches. He traces the white discoloration crossing his left eyebrow. “She even captured my birthmark.”

  “When we first met, I assumed it was a childhood scar.”

  “As Mom always says, ‘I came from her womb with a silver staff.’”

  “It reminds me of a river parting a black forest, Seneca Lake winding through hills.”

  Jayson chuckles and rubs the silvery line. “To me, it’s just a split in my brow.” He studies the sketches again. “These are incredible,” he exclaims for the fifth time in the 30 minutes since he opened Tessa’s portfolio. “Did she draw them from photos? Can you imagine her time-traveling with the camera, snapping pictures of past lives? No, strike that. Natives have killed people for such sorcery. Maybe the sketches are just from her imagination but, as you said, she’s never seen me and couldn’t have drawn this from memory.”

  “If the Iroquois deemed the ruins mystical, why not accept Grams’ magic camera? So you believe she time-traveled?”

  Jayson shrugs his shoulders. “It’s a far-fetched assumption. But given the ruins beneath the property, anything’s possible. So, unless we prove otherwise, I presume your Grams had first-hand access to history via travel or second-hand knowledge through records,” he says, picking up the art-déco camera. “If Tessa time-traveled, she was a resourceful woman to return from Iroquois territory unscathed.”

  “One of the most intelligent women in my life.”

  “I wonder why she sketched only one picture of the Iroquois village and several of the colonial farmstead.”

  Twyla’s brows furrow. “I thought about that, too… Hmm,” she murmurs with a wry expression, “I can’t believe we’re having a conversation about time travel. I’m not sure I even believe it’s possible. But if, and that’s a big if, Grams traveled to Iroquois territory with a camera, natives might have perceived it witchery or sorcery. But Grams was too wise to take a modern device through time. And her recollection was excellent enough to sketch from memory.”

  Jayson stares in thought at the trunk. “Maybe she spent more time on the farmstead during her travels,” he says, scratching his temple and turning his gaze to the journals. “Twinkles, we’re making outrageous assumptions, but I do believe Tessa experienced something inconceivable to most people, or she was psychic. Instead of speculating, Tessa’s journals might enlighten us, don’t you think?”

  “Tessa wrote four entries at 17, and one at 50. Look,” she says, displaying the ragged journal. “She tore out the middle pages. Why destroy years of writing?” Folded inside the journal, a faded sketch of the cabin, wagons, and two men standing beside their horses fall into her lap. Captain William Dox and Mingin’s names lie at the bottom of the sketch.

  “Another sketch of the farmstead?” Jayson asks.

  Twyla nods her head, immersed in the images.

  Jayson puts the camera on the sofa and takes the journal from her hand. “1959 and 1992, that’s extensive time travel if she traveled between those years,” Jayson says, running his fingers along the torn edges. “I assume she destroyed the pages because she didn’t want to leave a record behind for others to find.”

  “Or an individual or family member with access to her journals eradicated tales of time travel.”

  “True,” Jayson says.

  Twyla rises from the sofa, moves toward the entrance, and bolts the door. Reflectively, she strolls back toward the settee. “Often, when Papa Ian hushed Grams’ incessant ancestral prattle, she’d throw Ian a defiant glance, and a sharp silence split the air,” she says with a chuckle. “But the lingering secret Grams wanted to divulge never left her lips.” Twyla slides backward into Jayson’s arm, pondering Grams’ expression. “Ian might have destroyed the pages to protect Grams’ reputation and prevent speculation of lunacy.”

  “Then why not destroy the entire journal?”

  She shrugs and takes the diary from Jayson’s hand. “Good question.”

  Jayson removes several maps of the Finger Lakes region from the Geneva Historical Society folder and looks closer at the year, 1779. “Do you know what these are?”

  Twyla turns her head around and gazes at his hand. “Maps of Western New York.”

  “That’s obvious at first glance, but look at the marks,” he says with a rise in his low-pitched voice. “It’s not only a map but also a strategic plot of Sullivan’s Expedition. The markers show where the brigade started and ended their fiery destruction of Iroquois villages. Tessa circled Kanadasaga, Geneva’s name before settlers renamed the town. She had an interest in the American Revolution?”

  “Ha! No, obsessed with Sullivan’s Expedition. She schooled me at a young age on George Washington’s heartless eradication of the Iroquois Six Nations.”

  “These maps are tactical diagrams of Sullivan’s route. She circled Genesee, New York, and scribbled the date September 13, 1779. Hmm… If my memory’s correct, that’s when the infamous Boyd-Parker ambush occurred. Chief Joseph Brant and his Iroquois troop captured Lieutenant Boyd and Sergeant Parker for interrogation and massacred them afterward. The killings were savage. I’ve visited the monument in Cuylerville’s commemorative park only once or twice. You ever visit the tribute?” Jayson asks.

  Twyla sits upright and sighs. “I’ve seen the Torture Tree. The Seneca Tribe’s savagery was frightful. But before their capture, Boyd and his men scalped and killed a few Indians with equal brutality. It’s horrible what men do to one another. So evil.”

  “There are two wolves inside us. One is evil, the other good. The wolf that wins is the one you feed. That’s an old Cherokee proverb. The struggle between good and evil, light and darkness, war and peace are eternal. Often, men feed the evil wolf – war.”

  “Deganawidah,�
� Twyla murmurs.

  “You mean the Great Law of Peace?” Jayson asks.

  “Yes. Grams said Iroquois leader Joseph Brant and John Butler ignored Deganawidah. If they’d remained neutral and not joined forces with British Loyalists, Sullivan’s Expedition might not have been the undoing of the Iroquois Confederacy. She despised war’s brutality and admired Seneca Wolf Clan leader, Red Jacket’s, pacifist ideals until he conceded and formed an alliance with the Tories. I’ve learned more from my well-read Grams than history books.”

  Brant…

  Twyla raises her fingers to her lips, eyes fastened on the steamer trunk ahead, recalling a conversation she’d overheard on her 10th birthday. The memory is as vivid as the August day Grams and Papa Ian’s troubled tones resounded from a copse of trees. She’d drifted toward their voices, near the gated enclosure hidden behind the maple and dogwood tree, a forbidden place with a “Do Not Enter” sign. Grams often told her never to travel beyond the fence. “It’s protected grounds, a tribute to their ancestors. Only Old and Young George gain access to tend the plot.”

  That late afternoon, Grams wavered on the footbridge, uncertain which way to turn. “I need to go back and warn Pilan and Sagoyewatha. Thayendanegea, Brant’s plan won’t work. I have to go back,” Grams asserted. Papa Ian rushed toward a tearful Tessa, seized her hand, and coaxed her from the crossing. “Leave it alone, Tessa. What happened is history, done, and meant to be.” Papa Ian pulled her arm, and Grams slumped her head in his chest as he guided her off the bridge with muffled sobs.

  Their figures wound up and into the wooded hillock. Twyla waited until they topped the stairs before moving. She gazed at the scene as dusk fell in enchanting blues, reds, and purple hues. At the opposite end of the footbridge, two dogwood trees glowed animate. Mesmerized, she wandered toward the traverse. The air stilled. Bluebirds and insects ceased their chatter. On the east and west border of the footbridge, two Native American stone warriors stood guard with bows and arrows aimed in opposite directions.