“How does this look?”
“It looks like you have two books hidden under your shirt.”
“Really?”
“Yes. You have obviously never stolen anything before.”
“You said we weren’t stealing these books; we were only borrowing them.”
“I say borrowing, the police will say stealing.”
“Worried that the books beneath her shirt were noticeable, Ssabra looked around the room for a mirror. But there was none to be found. “What should I do?”
“Try sucking in your stomach, and bend over a little so your shirt is not so tight.”
She did as the chief suggested, bending over and sucking in her stomach.
Tolomato laughed. “Aieee. You are quite a sight. Now you look like an old person trying to steal two books.”
“This isn’t funny,” she snapped, angry.
“It is to me,” he chuckled. “You should see how you look.”
“Will you quit laughing and help out?”
“I have already helped you, but I will be happy to break something else if you like.”
“No. No. Not that. I mean help me to get out of here without getting caught.”
“I will do my best.”
Uncomfortable with her new position, she straightened up a little. “Where is the custodian now?”
“He is still busy.”
“Good. Is there anyone else around?”
“No. Not now.”
“Then I think I had better get out of here while I can.”
“That would be a good idea,” laughed the chief.
Doing a quick double-check to make sure the books would not slip down her shorts as she moved, Ssabra stepped toward the doorway. She opened the door and peeked out to make sure no one was around, then left the library and hurried through the church. She tried to move quietly, but her footsteps sounded excessively loud. She was certain someone would intercept her before she could reach the front doors.
But no one tried to stop her as she made her way toward the front of the church. The custodian was apparently still busy, and she wondered what Tolomato had caused to break. Reaching the front of the church, she yanked open one of the heavy wooden doors and stepped outside. Pulling the door closed behind her, she hurried off down the sidewalk, trying to put as much distance as possible between her and the custodian. She expected someone to call after her, but the only voice she heard as she hurried away from the crime scene was Tolomato’s, and he was laughing at her.
Chapter 25
Ssabra kept looking back over her shoulder as she made her way down the sidewalk, terrified the church custodian was going to discover her theft and come racing after her. Crossing the street, she hurried past the Casa Monica Hotel to where she had parked her car.
Once past the hotel, she paused to look around again. Satisfied that no one was watching, she reached a hand under her shirt and removed the two books. Now she could walk faster, without having to worry about the books slipping. She also didn’t have to worry about getting perspiration on them, a definite concern because she was sweating with fear.
“Much better,” she whispered to herself. She almost expected Tolomato to make a reply, but the Indian spirit was silent. Or maybe he was gone, taking off somewhere and leaving her holding the bag. Or in her case, holding the books.
She reached her car without incident, and without being stopped. Unlocking the driver’s door and sliding in behind the wheel, she hid the books under the seat and started the engine. A few seconds later she drove out of the lot and headed for home.
The young woman felt a little like Jessie James as she sped along the narrow streets of the old city, and she kept glancing into the rearview mirror to see if a posse was pursuing her. Luckily, no posse gave chase. Nor did any police cars come screaming up behind her with sirens blaring. As a matter of fact, it was a rather uneventful drive back to her apartment. Still, that didn’t relieve the butterflies in her stomach. She had never stolen anything, other than an occasional piece of candy as a child, and she did not like the sensation of being one of the bad guys. No, the life of crime was definitely not for her.
Arriving back at Cypress Pointe, she parked the car and hurried up the stairs to her apartment. It was only when she was finally inside, with the door double-locked behind her, did she start to calm down a little.
“Well, young lady. What does the book say?”
Ssabra nearly screamed at the sound of Tolomato’s voice. She spun around, angry at being startled.
“Damnit, will you stop doing that.”
“Doing what?” he asked innocently.
“Popping in unannounced, scaring me half to death.”
“But we are not in your bedroom, or in the bathroom. You said--”
“I don’t care what I said. Just quit doing it.”
“Oh, I see. Perhaps this would be better.” He made a coughing sound. “Ladies and gentlemen, please make ready. Tolomato, chief of the Guales, is about to make his appearance.” With those words the chief slowly materialized in the center of the living room. He was watching her with a crooked smile on his face, his head cocked to one side.
“You’re a regular comedian.” She set the books down on the kitchen counter and grabbed her coffee cup. “You really should be in show business.”
Tolomato just laughed.
“I’ll look at the books in just a minute, after I make a cup of instant coffee. My nerves are shot.”
“Make one for me too.”
“You want a cup of coffee?”
The spirit nodded.
“But you can’t...oh yeah, I forgot. You like to smell things.”
“Make it black, and strong.”
“Got it.” Ssabra took another cup out of the cabinet, and made two cups of instant coffee. She watched with amusement as Tolomato appeared to sit down on the couch. She wondered if he was really sitting on the couch, or hovering over it. Maybe he was just projecting the image of sitting on the furniture. She didn’t know a lot about ghosts, so she wasn’t sure if they could sit like normal people.
“What have I gotten myself into?”
“What was that?” He turned to look at her.
“Nothing. I was just talking to myself.” She set both cups down on the living room table, sliding the cup of black coffee over to where he was sitting.
The Indian looked at her for a moment, then nodded. “Crazy people often talk to themselves.”
She coughed. “I am not crazy.”
“Sure you are,” he laughed. “It is the middle of the day, and you are having coffee with a spirit. And you are wondering if I am sitting on your sofa, or hovering above it.”
Ssabra was shocked. “You can read my thoughts?”
“Thoughts and words are the same to me. There is no difference between the two. As I told you before--”
“Please, don’t start explaining things again. You are giving me a headache.”
“You have too many headaches for someone so young. Maybe you should see a doctor. The medicine man of my village would have put leeches on your ears to stop your headache. You should try that.”
She laughed, nearly spilling her coffee. “That’s a great idea. I think I’ll rush out and buy some leech earrings.”
“Do it later,” he said, very serious. “Now we must read the books.”
“Okay, you win. Let’s look at the books.” Ssabra decided the best way to do it was to place the books side by side on the coffee table, and attempt to go through them at the same time. She was concerned that the English translation of the journal might be abridged, and some of the priest’s original notes might have been left out--especially if anything had been written about the Shirus. She didn’t know where the Catholic Church stood when it came to talk about monsters and ancient gods. There were also several pages of hand-drawn maps and illustrations in the old journal that didn’t appear in the translation.
Pushing her coffee cup back out of the way, she open
ed the journal of Father Sebastian Diaz. She also opened the English translation of the journal, which was written by a university professor named John Willis. According to the books, Father Diaz had lived in St. Augustine during the early 1600s, and he was very much involved with the Indian tribes in the area.
“Did you know him?” Ssabra asked, turning to Tolomato.
He shrugged. “Maybe. All priests look alike to me.”
“But when were you born?”
“In the summer.”
“No. I mean what year?”
Again the Indian shrugged. “I do not know. Our calendars were different than yours. Our years were listed by major events, not by numbers.”
Turning her attention back to the books, Ssabra continued reading the translation. She referred back to the original as she went along, looking for similar words, names, or dates. It was a tedious process, for the original journal was handwritten in Spanish and the script was old and faded, making it very difficult to read. Still, she could pick out enough key words and phrases to let her know that nothing had been left out when the journal was translated.
The first fifty pages of the journal were about Father Sebastian Diaz’s arrival in the New World. He spoke of the long voyage he had taken from his native Seville, and the terrible journey across the Atlantic ocean. He wrote how the crew and passengers aboard the tiny wooden ship had faced rough seas, and suffered from sickness. The food and water had been foul, and they had existed mostly on rum and salt pork. Several people had died during the journey, and Father Diaz had been responsible for receiving their last confessions and sending their spirits on to God.
After a stop in Cuba, the priest had arrived in the New World on April 15, 1602. His first impressions of America were not good, describing St. Augustine as a miserable little hamlet infested with vice, savages, and mosquitoes. He was dismayed to find that most of the town resembled the neighboring Indian villages, with houses made of wood and palm frond roofs. He compared St. Augustine with peasant squalor, unlike the beautiful city of Seville he had left behind.
Still, despite his dismay at the living conditions, Father Diaz was anxious to get started with his work. He was to bring the word of God to the New World, attempting to save the souls of the local heathens. If they had souls, and if they could be saved.
Many of the Indian tribes living in Florida at that time were still untouched when it came to the religious teachings of the Old World. There had been some progress made in the conversion of the local tribes, and a few missions had already been established, but Florida was a vast uneasily traveled wilderness, so the going had been slow. Not only did the priest, and those who traveled with him, have to worry about making their way through thick forests and dense swampland, where infectious mosquitoes, poisonous snakes, and alligators, awaited around every turn, they also had to be wary of the various warlike tribes that dotted the landscape. Many a Spaniard had ended up with body parts hanging as trophies on village walls.
Father Diaz had first traveled north to the Jacksonville area, establishing a tiny mission on the coast. He had stayed there for almost four years before returning to St. Augustine, working with the Indians living in the surrounding wilderness.
The relationship between the priests and natives could be called shaky at best. The Indians wanted to trade with the Spanish, in order to obtain metal tools and other items. Some even allowed themselves to be baptized into the new religion, hoping to become better friends with the white man. There were also a few Spanish men who took Indian women as wives, but this was not a common practice.
For the most part, however, the Indians were looked upon by the Spanish as little more than slaves or cattle, something to be claimed with the land and forced into servitude for the Crown. Father Diaz had accompanied several military expeditions into the interior of Florida, and he wrote openly about the cruelty of the Spanish soldiers. He told how he was witness to the rape and murder of native women, and how he had watched entire villages burned to the ground.
Unlike the priest, the soldiers had no interest whatsoever in saving the souls of the indigenous peoples. Instead, they were looking for gold, wealth to increase the storerooms of the Crown. The Indians who weren’t killed outright by the soldiers were often forced into slavery. They became the workers in the fields, and the laborers to build St. Augustine into a real city.
Despite what he wrote in his journal, Father Diaz never protested aloud the incidents of cruelty that he saw. Instead, he stood silently by, watching as helpless natives were put to death and forced into servitude. After all, the military was in charge, and it would be foolish to stand up against such power. Even God might not be able to come to his aid in the middle of a hostile wilderness.
Ssabra was halfway through the journal before coming upon what she was looking for. It seemed Father Sebastian Diaz was one of the few priests who had actually taken the time to learn the customs and folklore of the native tribes. He had even written down some of their legends, concerned the stories might be lost once the Indians converted to Christianity.
The priest described the native practice of lighting a new council fire each year in the village, and then carrying a flame from that fire to light the smaller cooking fires in each household. The term he wrote in his journal was Tacachale, which, in the native tongue, meant to light a new fire. It was a ceremony of rebirth, with a cleansing fire giving life to a new year while the ashes of the old year were swept away.
He wrote about the superstitions of the various tribes living around St. Augustine, and he also described their creation myths. Some of the natives believed their people had originally descended from the heavens, while others were absolutely certain their ancestors had climbed up from the underworld through a tiny hole in the ground. Some even claimed that the world rested on the back of a giant turtle.
Father Diaz was obviously amused by the stories he gathered in his journal, but he did not try to edit or ridicule them. Instead he recorded each story as it was told to him, adding his personal comments and thoughts at the end. Ssabra was just skimming through one of the last legends, when she came upon the word “Shiru”.
“Bingo,” she said, backing up to reread the page.
“What is it?” asked Tolomato.
“I think I have something here. I just came upon the word ‘Shiru’.”
“What does it say?”
“Shhh...give me a minute. I’m still reading.”
She reread the page, and then went on to the next. According to what was written in the journal, the Indian tribes living along the east coast believed that dark gods walked the earth, and these gods, called Shirus, often mated with humans in order to ensure that their blood line continued on in the world of the living. The Indians feared these living gods, and would put to death any child with characteristics that led them to believe it was born of human and Shiru.
When the Spaniards first arrived in the area, the natives were terrified of the stories about Jesus Christ. The Bible said Jesus was born of God and woman, so the Indians believed him to be one of the dark ones. They would often run away and hide when the priests recited aloud a prayer, terrified the white men were calling upon a Shiru to visit.
Father Diaz was apparently fascinated by the Shiru legends, and had devoted several pages in his journal to the subject. He had talked with the natives of different tribes, finding out that they all had similar stories about the Shirus. They also all feared the monsters.
The priest also wrote about a hideously deformed child being born in a neighboring Indian village, said to be an offspring of a Shiru. The villagers were terrified of the child and wanted to put it to death, but Father Diaz managed to hide it for several years. The Indians eventually found out where the child was hidden, killing it one night while the priest was asleep.
The Indians wanted to cut up the murdered child’s body, for they believed its bones were magical and could be used as weapons against the dark gods, but the priest took the body and buri
ed it in a secret plot. Father Diaz hinted in his journal that the burial plot of the deformed child was somewhere in old St. Augustine, marked by a small stone bearing a Spanish cross.
The last few pages of the journal contained several crude drawings made by the priest, showing what the Shiru offspring looked like. The images were frightful, showing a child with an oversized head and multiple arms, like a mad cross between a human baby and an octopus.
“Good lord.” She glanced up to see if Tolomato could see the illustration, but the Indian was no longer visible.
“Hey, where did you go?”
“I am still here,” he replied.
“I wish you would stop doing that, popping in and out all the time.”
“It is quite difficult for me to make myself visible to your untrained eyes. I tire easily.”
“I thought spirits didn’t get tired.”
“You will think otherwise when you get on this side.”
“Can you see the drawing?”
“Yes. It may be an offspring. I do not know. I have never seen one before.”
Ssabra pointed to the opposite page. “Look at this. It’s an old map of St. Augustine. The details aren’t the best, but the X marks where Father Diaz buried the offspring.
“The natives living back then believed the bones of an offspring could be used as a weapon against the dark ones. They had experience in fighting Shirus, and probably knew what they were talking about. If we can find the remains, we can make arrows, or even a spear. We might be able to stop the Shiru before it can kill again.”
“Then we should start looking.”
“I agree. Just give me a minute to--”
She was suddenly interrupted by the ringing of her doorbell. The sound was unexpected and nearly caused her to jump. “Who could that be?”
“You have company.”
“You think?” Ssabra asked, sarcastically. Getting up, she made her way to the door, looking out the peephole to see who it was. At first she didn’t recognize the man standing on the other side of the door, because his face was in profile to her, but then he turned back around to ring the doorbell a second time. It was Detective Jack Colvin.
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