by Karen Harper
* * *
It was time, Grant thought, to come clean with Kate, at least about some things. Maybe leveling with her about his grandmother would make her realize she had to back off about the mound. After all, Kate had already been “haunted” by thinking she saw the Beastmaster stalking her. At the least, he could explain what he’d said about ghosts, which he’d put her off about last night. She’d let up, probably because they were both so devastated and exhausted.
He didn’t want her to think he’d meant there was a curse on Paul and Todd, because she’d try to find out why, keep digging at him since he wouldn’t let her dig in the mound. He didn’t believe in ghosts or a curse. A fatal crushed skull and a freak accident that could have meant another crushed skull were catastrophes for sure. But even if some of the corpses they’d taken things from in the tomb had their skulls crushed, it was just a scary coincidence. Besides, wouldn’t such a crazy theory of ghostly revenge mean Brad or he was next? For sure he had to explain some things to Kate—and to himself.
The two of them took the McCollum kids to McDonald’s for Happy Meals, and then he drove them all to the playground on the grounds of the long-deserted Falls County Mental Hospital, which had started life in the 1880s as the Cold Creek Lunatic Asylum. A wealthy businessman who’d been born in Cold Creek had left money in his will for an amazing array of swings, slides and jungle gyms for the disadvantaged children in the area. No way were they going anywhere near the woods today. They all needed open spaces.
“The derelict buildings here give Gabe fits,” he told Kate as they pulled into the playground area. “They have Do Not Enter signs, but some people think the old places are haunted and go ghost hunting. Vandals hang out here. Graffiti’s everywhere. We need another benefactor to restore some of the old buildings for youth retreats or artists’ studios, something. An artists’ retreat was Paul’s idea. And, I hate to bring this up, but Bright Star’s put up a lot of money to buy some of the acreage to expand and further segregate his Hear Ye flock, move them all here.”
“An old mental institution sounds like a great place for him and anyone who trusts him, including my cousin Lee and his wife. I’ll have to find another way to spy on that cult or pry Grace loose to talk to her.”
“Bright Star was turned down at first but made a case, claiming prejudice against religion, so a state-senator friend of mine told me.”
Kate just shook her head, and for once, Grant marveled, she didn’t have anything to say.
They pushed the kids on the swings and watched them come down twisting slides and crawl through wooden tunnels. “Our best hardwoods,” Grant told her. After that the boys wanted to roll down a small hill that was close to the old asylum cemetery. A mound and a cemetery seemed the perfect setup for what he wanted to tell Kate.
Waiting for the right moment, he sat on a bench next to her while little Andy slept with his head in her lap, and his two older brothers ran endlessly up the hill, then rolled down. Again, Grant was struck by how good she was with these kids, how natural. Kate the clever, ever the professional Professor Lockwood, looking like a young wife and mother. Kate, who had assured him just by looking at the hill that it wasn’t an Adena mound.
“You asked about my grandmother the other day,” he said, his eyes on Jason and Aaron. Shades of him with his friends in their very young days, he thought.
“Yes,” she said. They didn’t bother to keep their voices down, since the oldest two were whooping up a storm, and Andy hadn’t budged. “I can see why you don’t know much about her since she died so young.”
Where to start? “She died here,” he said in a rush.
“Here? What do you mean?”
“Here at the asylum—the mental hospital. Kate, the look you saw in her eyes in that photo in the guest room—she was what we’d call schizophrenic today. She heard and saw things that weren’t there.”
“Poor woman. Like what?”
“Like what she called Indians coming out of the mound to kill her.”
Kate gasped and jerked so hard that Andy stirred. She soothed him. “Delusional about your mound—so close behind her house?”
“Right. The thing was, she had a great-grandmother who was massacred with her family by Indians, the historic ones in these parts. I think that played on her fears.”
“So, Grant, did your grandfather ever enter the mound to assure her there was nothing to be afraid of? And was there?”
That sure as hell wasn’t the path he wanted this revelation to take. “Look, Kate, all I know about this is what I overheard as a kid. Her so-called insanity wasn’t exactly a big topic of family conversation at the dinner table, let alone with friends, but you asked about her earlier, and I wanted you to know.”
“Can you tell me more of what you do know?”
“She was admitted to the asylum in the early 1970s, but the care here didn’t seem to help her. She had electroshock treatment, and it might have made her worse. In 1974, she broke away from a nurse, ran down a third-floor hall and threw herself over the banister, down the staircase to her death. Broken neck...” His voice caught. “Broken skull, too. I guess my grandfather and dad finally got the caretaker to admit that she was screaming that the savages were after her again. That’s about all I know. She just couldn’t shut the mound out of her mind—and that really did her in. She obsessed about it, and that wasn’t healthy for her.”
Kate narrowed her eyes at him. “Why didn’t your grandfather move away with her, away from the mound?”
“He did once, moved in with the Custer family, but it didn’t help, and he didn’t have the ability or money to move her farther away. He needed to stay close to the mill or it would have gone under.”
“So she went under. You know, it’s tragic what people used to call insane. Female patients were often committed in the old days for things like postpartum depression or menopause problems—even epilepsy. She isn’t buried here in the cemetery, is she?”
“No. She’s in the Mason family plot with Grandpa and my parents not far from where we buried Paul. But I just want you to know the fact that she was haunted by the mound is another reason I want it left intact, untouched—kind of like, in her memory.”
“I can’t help but wonder if she would have been better off if it was opened and relics or Adena skeletons—if they are there—were taken away.”
“Let’s take these three home to their grandparents and get a report on how Todd’s doing today. I also want to find out if Jace has learned anything after getting the climbing harness back from the hospital. It could have been faulty somehow. The man climbs enough that it could have frayed.”
Damn, he hoped that was the case, Grant admitted to himself. Because despite Brad’s novice climbing abilities and the fact he was shaken to be left hanging in the tree alone, he had a big motive for hurting Todd. And Todd’s shout from the tree ordered Brad not to grab at him....
“Grant, I’m glad you told me about Ada. Of course, her fears could have been linked to the tragedy that befell her own ancestor. I’m so sorry she felt haunted and paid a big price for that. In a way—a more sane way—they haunt me, too,” she admitted.
Kate carried Andy while Grant corralled the other two boys, and they headed back to his car. He wasn’t sure Kate had gotten the message not to get too involved with Mason Mound, but Kate was Kate and always managed to turn things back on him. He didn’t believe in ghosts, but damned if he’d tell her how the mound obsessed him, too, but in a different way. He couldn’t let her in there, however much she was working her way into his life and heart.
Even more sobering than that, if an outsider knew the four of them had stolen priceless artifacts from the ancient dead, Grant feared he might be next on someone’s hit list.
17
“Hi, darling,” Carson said the moment Kate answered her phone. “I got your message and sent a grad assista
nt over to the library archives to comb old records for any mention of Mason Mound, but no go.”
Disappointed, she exhaled hard. It seemed so long ago she’d been his grad assistant, doing his bidding. At least now, he was doing hers—or was it still the other way around?
It was Sunday afternoon, and she’d been changing clothes after church when Carson called. Wearing only her bra and panties, she paced in the bedroom as Carson went on and on about his ideas for a speech he’d been asked to give in California. Now and then, she interjected with pleasantries but her thoughts were elsewhere.
Only she and Grant were in the house, and he’d said he was going to fix them a quick lunch. Brad had attended church, sitting in the back with Lacey and her parents, then had driven off somewhere with her. She’d even picked him up at the house and honked for him to come out like some teenager.
When Carson called, Kate had been staring at the photo of Grant’s grandparents, Hiram and Ada Mason, wishing she could crawl into that picture and go back in time to talk to them. Poor Ada. Kate really empathized with her seeing visions. Her memory of the Beastmaster she thought she’d seen out that smeared garage window was still vivid. Sometimes in the middle of the night, it came at her like flashbacks lit by a flickering strobe. Like Ada, Kate felt haunted.
She cleared her throat and told Carson her search-the-archives idea was just another stab in the dark. “It’s how I feel I’m operating around here. I’d love to have a crew tackling the Mason Mound entrance right now.”
“Kate, for heaven’s sake, you’re living with the man who owns and controls it. When he’s not around, walk out there, check it out. Especially if it was entered in the last century, and you found the side facing an old water source, you can figure out where the entrance is. Even a little excavation could tell you if it’s a horizontal entry shaft, which will make things much easier for us. Meanwhile, if someone made a solo entrance years ago and covered it up, you could, too. If it was dug out once, another entry should be a piece of cake.”
“Carson, no way! Grant trusts me. He’s helped me, taken me in.”
“Evidently, taken you in in more ways than one. We’re talking the universal knowledge and preservation of human experience here.”
He began to talk about his work again, saying he’d send her a copy of an article he’d published about Etruscan tombs in Italy, that she should read it and “take it to heart.”
She sighed as her thoughts drifted again. Carson...Italy...everything but Grant and Cold Creek seemed so far away. She was pretty sure the Mason Mound entry lay behind those hawthorn bushes, which looked either old or ill. They seemed to be dying, so she wouldn’t feel too bad about cutting them back some. Since she hadn’t noted any others of those spiny trees in the area, could Hiram Mason have planted them there, either to assure poor Ada the mound was sealed—or to make sure no one else entered it after he did? But if she cut her way through them, or asked to dig them out, Grant could tell her to keep away for sure.
Either he was just plain ignorant of the fact his grandfather had entered the mound—and he was not an ignorant man—or he was lying to her, trying anything to keep her from getting into what must be a burial chamber. But she’d been so certain he cared for her. Was that just an act to sway and control her? And was it only because he’d promised his father or grandfather that the dead should stay dead, or was he hiding something else?
“So what are your plans today?” Carson finally asked something that brought her back to reality.
“We just got back from church. With Paul Kettering’s funeral this week, I feel like I’ve been living there.”
“Church again. Really? Am I talking to the cosmopolitan, world-traveler, hard-driving, work-on-Sunday Professor Kathryn Lockwood?”
That annoyed her. In the church service, Pastor Snell had led a lovely prayer for Todd’s full recovery, which they now knew would take months, maybe longer with casts, a wheelchair, pain and rehab, but at least he was alive and his brain hadn’t been damaged. And Kate felt good that she’d helped Amber by calling a friend who lived near campus in Columbus and would let Amber stay with her while Todd was hospitalized nearby so she didn’t have to drive back and forth or pay for a place to live there. More of Todd and Amber’s relatives had come in to help with the boys, though Kate was surprised to find herself missing Jason, Aaron and Andy. But if she tried to explain that to Carson—or even to herself...
Carson’s words cut through her agonizing. “Look, back to business. I’d love to have you excavating that mound, too, but it will happen one way or the other.”
“What do you mean by that?”
“I’ll find the right senator to get a bill passed to allow the betterment of human knowledge over private-property rights—something to bring pressure to bear on Grant Mason. The Adenas have slept there for centuries, so they can wait for us a little while longer, but I’m relying on you to get us in ASAP. Get Grant to let you at least do a solo entry, if not with all the crew and equipment. Toward that goal, how’s it going?”
“Complicated.”
“By feelings? His, I hope, and not yours.”
She couldn’t figure out what to say. What did she feel for Grant, for this town, for her new friends here, for those darling McCollum boys? Carson plunged on. “Oh, by the way, I have your faux Beastmaster mask to return to you, now that my best grad assistant’s made a copy, so I’ll drive down this evening. Dinner? Maybe with you and Grant to chat about the mound?”
She hesitated. “I want the mask back, but—”
“Don’t want me back?”
“I didn’t say that. Grant and I are helping out with the kids of a friend of his who took a bad fall from a high tree.”
“When the mill’s loggers were cutting it down? Or something like that old tree of Grant’s you mentioned that was taken?”
“Oh, did I tell you about that? No, this guy climbs for a hobby and was up high giving Brad Mason a climbing lesson. He fell—Todd, not Brad—was gravely injured and is now in OSU Hospital, as a matter of fact.”
“That’s terrible. So you’re babysitting kids? Ha, that’s a good one.”
“It isn’t, not the way you mean. I helped raise my younger sisters, you know. But yes, it is a good thing to do.”
“All right, if I’m persona non grata there for now, I’ll send my grad student Kaitlyn Blake down with it late tomorrow—and with a copy of my latest article. But I hope you can find a space soon on your backwoods calendar for your mentor—who wants to be much more to you. But, Kate, I’m trusting you to get us into that mound, get yourself into that mound at the very least. If it’s complicated, you’re good at finding your way through the maze. Call me for an update when you can see the—sorry for putting it this way—the forest for the trees.”
“I hear you, Professor.”
But the truth was, for the first time in the twelve years she’d known Carson Cantrell, she was going to do things—though things he wanted—her way.
* * *
The minute Kate joined Grant in the kitchen for lunch, he had news for her. “I think I’ve got a lead on how you can check on Grace Lockwood and what she might have meant by drawing a star on her chest when you saw her in Bright Star’s inner sanctum.”
Despite the fact the weather was gloomy and threatened rain, they were planning a ride up Shadow Mountain to search for the team of draft horses there—and who owned them and why in such a rocky, gravelly area. But her stomach flip-flopped to hear he had a lead on how to get to Grace.
“Tell me. Can we go today?”
“Not so fast. On the Sabbath, you just try to talk to a Hear Ye convert about anything but what Bright Star’s preaching. No, Keith Simons, who works for me at the mill, may be our missing link.”
“The big guy who also doubles as your bodyguard when needed?”
�
��The same. He’s become a friend.” He put the plate of bread, cold cuts and cheese on the table where the two of them sat across from each other. “I remembered he told me last week he’s having a fence repaired on his property, and your cousin Lee’s doing the work. So if you dropped in around lunchtime tomorrow—with me—at the Simons place, maybe you could talk to Lee at least, find out about what Grace was trying to say.”
“Great, though I’d rather talk to Grace. Lee seems to be really closed up, whereas she— I don’t know. Is he working there without another Hear Ye member? I’d want to talk to him alone. Can you set it up for tomorrow?”
“Whoa! We’ll have to play it partly by ear, but I’ll call Keith, and we’ll see.”
“And please tell his wife I’ll bring lunch from somewhere uptown. She shouldn’t have to feed us over this. Isn’t Keith the brother of the police dispatcher Gabe used to date? Tess told me Gabe arrested one of their brothers, a guy who worked for you.”
“True, but despite his siblings’ hating Gabe’s guts and evidently blaming me, too, Keith’s been my right-hand man after Todd. Keith stuck with me loyally when Jonas was sent to prison and Ned, another brother, quit the mill. Keith may seem like a man of few words, but the guy’s ambitious and sees everything. If I have Brad fill in for Todd—and it looks like I’ll have to do that—Keith will be a big help to him. As for his wife, Velma, in true Appalachian style, I’m sure she won’t take to guests bringing their own vittles, so you’d better just take her a present afterward—not right then if we go there for lunch. Speaking of which, eat up right now. So much has happened I haven’t been able to track my tree any more than you’ve been able to get to Grace alone, so let’s hustle here.”
He winked at her, which made her spirits soar. Despite all he and they had been through, Grant had a solid core of strength that emanated from him. Like a tall tree with deep roots, one, hopefully, that could not be cut down as two of his best friends had been.
* * *
On the half-hour drive up Shadow Mountain, Grant and Kate discussed Todd’s accident again. As upsetting as that was, Grant thought, it was better than the topic of his wanting to keep Mason Mound untouched.
