The hollow reeked from the closed in smell and the tang of his sweat left by so many nights spent sleeping here. He’d grown used to the stink. He’d crammed it with armfuls of summer grass to soften and sweeten his sleep. The grass packed down and rotted underneath. It badly needed freshening, yet stink and all the tree was still infinitely preferable to spending the nights in the cabin while Duvall slept with his mother.
And now even this lofty sanctuary had been broken by the rutting little goat man and the woman who should be with her crippled husband. Cord’s hatred hardened as he watched them. His resolve coiled like a snake within his belly. He would kill Duvall some day. He was certain of it, yet as he listened to the gasping and the grunting and the slap-slap-slap of flesh upon flesh, he felt something else harden.
He stared down at the woman’s heaving body, twisting like a fresh speared trout, fiercely impaled upon Duvall’s shaft. Since he’d first seen her he’d often entertained dreams of doing just such a thing to the white woman. Why not? Her man seemed not much good for anything at all.
His mouth dropped unconsciously. His nostrils flared and his breath husked in the back of his throat as he watched. He supposed his mother still thought she needed Duvall for this thing they did together. Even Cord had to admit the man had always provided for the family. Many of the white man’s ways eased the hardship of their life.
His mother had pined for want of a man after his father left them. He’d been too young to see to her needs. Now he was older and he could see to every last one of them. It was something that grew within men who lived too long with only one woman.
He took himself in hand, moving gently, feeling the friction mounting, staring at the scene below him, until his breath grew labored, coming in hot little gasps like a man upon his death bed, until his seed spent itself, shooting down into the pitchy bowels of the mighty jack pine.
4
In the darkness of the cabin Lucas tossed in dreams of his time on the ship. The deck felt hard and rough against Lucas’s bare cheek. He tried to raise himself to stand but his legs betrayed him.
He twisted his head and rolled to stare upwards into a starless, sea-bound sky. The main mast towered over him, barren of all rigging and adornment, save for the massive cross spar that spanned the width of the ship. He saw a figure clinging to the spar, two small legs straddling the shaft of the cross spar as if it were a massive hobby horse.
A young boy. He could see him clearly now.
Was it Peter?
He called to the boy but the child couldn’t hear over the roaring of the wind. The boy stared downwards, his face broken in abject terror.
Lucas saw Duvall, capering below with his heavy axe held stiffly within his grip. Its whirling weight carried him in great circles about the mast. Duvall was naked and in the darkness looked more pagan than ever.
The axe struck the mast, slapping against the quivering wood. The young boy screamed a high-pitched, womanish scream and the spar broke free from its mounting, sending spurts of thick white sap springing outwards like a bird in flight. Lucas’s screamed with the boy. He tried to run but his leg wouldn’t move. The spar fell across his good leg and the memory of pain shot throughout his frame. The boy’s limp form flopped like a horrid rag doll upon his out stretched body; the taste of the cold, dead flesh felt hot and sweet within his mouth.
He awoke within the cabin, sprawled upon the floor beneath one of the blankets Duvall gave him. His face was buried deep within the cross hatching of the pine boughs scattered upon the floor. His hot spunk lay fresh born beneath him, soaking and sticky upon the branches and the thirsty dirt, clinging to his flesh like a bad memory. His mouth was heavy and rank with the taste of moldering soil and the sticky sweet resin of the pine.
Chapter Nine
May died slowly, withering like a dead leaf.
The oncoming summer heat left nothing of spring save a few dampened memories. The succubus visited Lucas every third night since the final rainstorm. He felt a deep burning shame at his body’s betrayal. He had yet to redeem himself sexually with Tamsen although she’d made several efforts.
She tried so passionately that he thought this might be her way of reassuring him of his manhood. He supposed he ought to be grateful for the gesture. Perhaps there might be some long term healing that would come from her constant steady urging but whatever the reason, the effort tasted of deceit and pity.
She was tired of him. He couldn’t blame her. The impotence left him weary and confused. Tamsen tried but couldn’t help. She often felt the need of a walk in the cool night air after an hour of her grimly trying to stimulate him.
2
It took a very long time for Cord’s real father to die.
He’d been on a dreamwalk and simply hadn’t come back. The people said he was dead. The boy knew better. Shamans didn’t die. His mother feared something had caught him on the other side and would not let go.
Cord knew better.
For a long time after his father was gone, his father’s body sat in the little tent he used for such journeys. Its heart beat and it continued to breathe. The people of the village refused to tend to its needs. Jezebel kept care of the body for as long as she could. She cooked for it but it wouldn’t swallow the food she pressed against its lips.
Sometimes she made a broth. Cord would pry his father’s lips open as she poured the liquid in, only the body never swallowed. The broth stayed inside the mouth and rotted and after a time made a bad smell.
The elders of the tribe told her to bury the body beneath boulders or to cast it into the woods for the animals to eat. She refused to listen. Each night she sat and called the corpse by his name, hoping the spirit would follow the sound of her voice back into its rightful body.
Other nights she stripped herself and pressed her naked body against its cold flesh, caressing its shriveled testicles, hoping she might entice the spirit back from dreamland. Her effort proved fruitless. The body rotted and the lungs collapsed. The heart beat like a ragged drum left too long in the rain, slower and slower and slower.
The man was not coming back.
Cord’s mother stopped calling her husband’s name for fear that she might call up something darker than her husband’s lost spirit. Then the elders came and asked her to bury her husband’s carcass.
This time she obeyed.
She placed the body beneath the rocks so the crows and coyote could not chew at his bones. She didn’t want to hear his voice in the cawing of the crow or the coyote howl. She put rocks over the body as another precaution. If an evil spirit found the still-living body it would be trapped by the weight of the rocks and unable to walk among her people and do harm.
She still heard him calling from his grave, especially when her blood flowed. Perhaps some of her sanity slipped away with the monthly flow, as the old men often said. Perhaps the blood weakened the walls that separated the real world from the dreamland. Whatever the reason, Cord’s mother regularly demanded to go to him and raise him up from his rocky prison with the turning of the moon.
The elders feared her mad or in touch with some evil spirit that had taken residence within the decayed husk of the shaman. They feared she would bring him back. They shunned her and when a white man came searching for a woman, the elders were happy to give him Cord’s mother.
That man had been Duvall.
Cord’s mother demanded Duvall take Cord with them. They left the village, came to this valley and had been here ever since.
This was the real reason for the boy’s vigils. He fasted and prayed like his father because he believed one night his real father would call to him and Cord would cross over. That is why he spent most nights in the forest, asleep in the tree. He felt close to his real father up here.
Tonight was no different. The spirit felt strong within his bones as he approached the tree. Surely he could expect some sort of contact. He nodded in sharp certainty.
Tonight he would reach the dreamlands.
; A dead robin hung upon the tree, impaled upon a sharpened branch. He knew who’d put it there. There had been many nights when, completely unbeknownst to Duvall, Cord sat in the tree and watched the man’s dirty little rituals.
He yanked the bird’s carcass free and cast it into the bush.
Then he climbed upwards along a long-familiar route.
3
Jezebel’s time was near. She kept a stout knife with her. Her breath ran like a rabbit. Her pains came and went like waves upon water. Duvall stood too close for her liking. He danced like a man unearthing a secret hidden treasure.
“It will be soon,” he said, kneading his hands together like a child awaiting a gift.
She didn’t speak.
“I will go and make it ready,” he said.
He turned to leave.
“You will not have my baby,” Jezebel said.
Duvall turned back.
“You will not give it to your tree,” Jezebel said.
Duvall’s eyes slit like a snake’s. She cursed herself for not biting her tongue. It would have been wiser to wait. There would be a fight and she wasn’t looking forward to it. Her hand found the knife hidden beneath her skirt. She took comfort in the sharpness of its blade.
“You will not have my baby,” she repeated. “I’m old. This may be my last child. I will not let you take it.”
His eyes flattened, hard as river stone.
“The child isn’t yours to keep. It never was. None of them were, no more than the corn belongs to the field.”
She let him see her knife, raised and ready. He looked at the knife like he’d never seen one before. She waited. He grabbed at it. She slashed his hand, carving a shallow crescent moon into the open palm. The wound neatly crossed the older mark the crow had left. He drew his hand away and swore in a thick incoherent patois.
Now she was afraid. She’d never struck him before. She’d sworn to, promised to, but never actually struck. He squeezed a tight fist, milking blood from his fist. He hissed like an injured tea kettle, smiling tightly as if the pain were an enjoyable sensation.
Then he turned and strode out the door.
She heaved a sigh of relief but kept the knife out and ready.
In an instant he was back with his axe.
“Stay back,” she warned, her voice breaking with fear.
He snarled and swung the axe, catching the blade of the knife. It made a clear ringing sound and fell from her hand. She screamed but her scream was cut off. He came in low with a second backhanded swing, bringing the handle of the axe squarely across her swollen stomach. She leaned into the blow, trying to catch it with her body, trying to save the baby.
“It isn’t yours,” he said. He struck again. “It never was.”
And again.
“It-belongs-dead!”
He beat her into the dirt. She lay there, vainly trying to protect her stomach from further blows; heaving and shuddering in a series of convulsions. It was to be a bad birth. Her water broke and pooled, soaking into the dirt floor.
“The child shall be born dead,” Duvall said.
And after a short time, the child was.
The child and everything else that followed.
4
Tamsen stared out from the cabin door, waiting and wishing for Lucas to come home. It was dark and moonless. Maybe he had lost himself in wandering. Maybe Duvall was out there and had something to do with his late return.
She shuddered, partly from the night chill but mostly out of fear.
A pine knot popped in the fireplace. It startled her from her thoughts. Her gaze strayed about the room, falling upon a makeshift peg set high above the hearth. There hung Lucas’s hat.
Blast that man. He would catch his death. She gently removed the hat from the peg. She held it out, cradled in both hands, just far enough to catch the scent of her man’s distinct aroma. She stood vigil by the door, sitting upon Lucas’s bench, her back resting against the comfortless cabin walls.
She gazed into the darkness. She’d stay up all night, if need be. She would tell him tonight. She wouldn’t put it off another day. He’d return soon enough. She could fight her weariness a little longer.
But in time she yielded to sleep. She remained sleeping throughout the shouting of the men and the burning phantom glimmer of the unnatural dawn that shortly arose.
5
“I’ll make the preparations,” Duvall repeated.
He slammed the door behind him as he left. She lay on the dirt floor, feeling what was left of her child’s life pushing from between her legs.
The child came out, and the other things followed it. The things that were not quite human. She was sure they were dead as well. To be certain she wrung their necks, one by one, tossing their remains into the corner of the cabin. He could have them. She cared not. All that she cared for was the child. Duvall would not have this one.
When the birthing spasms were finished she couldn’t bring herself to cut the cord. She wrapped the small dead body in a dirty blanket, holding the stilled child close to her breast in a parody of nursing. She opened the door and stumbled outside.
Out back she found the rock, beneath which she’d hidden the salt. She’d planned to give it all to the white woman but that had changed. When the white woman went over to Duvall, she planned to give it to the white woman’s husband.
Now hers was the greater need.
She half dragged, half carried the sack inside. She paused at the doorway to stare nervously into the valley. There was no sign of his coming. Good. That left her time to do what needed to be done.
She lifted the blanket to take one last look at the child’s tiny body. It had been a boy. A gift most fathers would be proud to receive. She took her knife and opened the tiny belly. It took several attempts. Her hand faltered from fear and compassion. She steeled herself, forced herself to think of the future. The fate Duvall planned for the child was far more fearful than simple evisceration.
She filled the child with salt, packing it tightly as if it were some sort of ham she was trying to preserve. As she packed the baby she gulped great handfuls of the gritty white stuff. She clenched her teeth and moaned, fighting back her body’s attempts to sick the salt back up.
“Salt,” she said to the child and to herself. “For purification.”
Then she went to the fire and kicked out a burning log. The dry boughs upon the cabin’s earth floor caught easily, as did her dress. She slapped at the fire instinctively and then laughed at her foolishness.
“Fire,” she reminded herself. “Fire is the cleanser.”
She forced her hands to be still. She forced herself to concentrate on clinging to the child’s remains. The flames mounted higher. As an afterthought she slipped the great bar across the door, sealing herself and her dead child safely within the inferno.
The heat built. She closed her eyes and saw her husband staring across at her from within his sweat lodge.
“I am coming,” she said.
She clutched the pitiful little bundle tighter and stood in the center of the cabin, waiting for the roof to cave in but the flames caught her first.
She tried not to scream but in the end there was no helping it.
6
Lucas found his way down to the devil tree. He was only half aware why he was going there. He wasn’t surprised to see Duvall there, before him. He watched from the shadows, fascinated as the man shuffled around the tree in a dance of sorts; chanting a monotonous lyric, in a language Lucas failed to recognize.
Indian, perhaps?
No. This was something far older than Indian.
The tree swayed to the monotonous rhythm. A fierce wind flared up, catching and bending the smaller bushes. The monstrous tree leaned in the other direction.
Lucas blinked his eyes fiercely. It was no illusion.
“The devil’s surely busy tonight,” he whispered.
Strangely he thought he could see a boy perched atop the pine tree.
Was it a dream?
“Father, father,” the figure shouted, dancing in counter rhythm to the rocking of the tree, pointing frantically towards the east. Both Duvall and Lucas whirled to see a great false dawn blazing high on the distant horizon from the direction of Duvall’s cabin.
“Mother….”
The boy screamed like a banshee birthed between devil and howl. The tree heaved once, flinging the boy to the ground. Duvall saw none of this. He was running for the cabin as fast as his feet would bear him. Lucas ran to the tree and knelt by the fallen boy.
“Father?”
“Be still my son,” Lucas whispered.
How easily the word came to his lips.
The boy’s eyes closed. His final breath bubbled through a slow stream of blood, the color of angry wine. Something had broken inside that could never be healed. Lucas raised the boy’s head, heedless of the blood seeping from mouth and ear. He felt the gory clot at the base of the boy’s skull.
He squeezed once at the soft wet tangle in the cup of his hands, like cheese curds, wet and lumpy, and then the boy was gone. Lucas held the body closely, as though he might coax life back into the shattered frame.
Blood, he thought.
The tree wants blood.
“Drink your fill.”
He kissed the boy’s mouth, tasting the wasted life mixing with the slow salty wine of the blood. The blood spilled from the boy’s broken head, trailed down Lucas’s hands and soaked into the thirsty loam.
Lucas didn’t hear the distant musket blast. He didn’t see the roots crawling like sluggish cobras across the earth or if he did he blamed the vision on the deceitful fog of his tear filled eyes.
7
Duvall ran, his heart pounding in his chest, his breath ragged and torn with curses. When he reached the cabin the flames had all but swallowed it up.
He seized the axe from the woodpile where he’d dropped it after using it so brutally upon Jezebel. He swung the axe at the burning door, feeling the charred timber giving way, the heat slapping at him like the flaccid blast from an opened oven.
On the second swing the roof gave way.
He heard her screaming his name over the blaze’s roar. It was madness, of course. There was no way anything could survive such an inferno. He dropped the axe. He stood there, feeling the heat of the raging flames and the ashy taste of defeat.
Devil Tree Page 9
