The Journal of Edwin Hale (Silver Thorn Book 1)

by Gene Baker

  Still, there is no vocal or physical response.

  “Okay, then . . . call me if you need something from in town.” Then, while shaking his head in exasperation at Harley’s silence, Cody turned and walked out of the door.

  “I didn’t raise you to be so rude to people, much less one that I truly believe would take a bullet for you,” Nikki said sternly as she came over to sit on the bottom step of the stairs. “What’s up with you this morning?”

  “I’ll apologize to Cody later. I’ve got a lot on my mind right now.”

  “She speaks! Do you mind me asking what weighs so heavy on you that everyone else and their feelings have to take a back seat?”

  “Gaielos put me through the mind mill last night and right now, I am so tired that my bones hurt.”

  Sighing deeply as she pushed her fists into her temples, Nikki grumbled.

  “Damn it to Hell! Why can’t that bastard find someone else to make miserable?”

  Harley looked, without turning on her aura vision, with painful understanding at her mother.

  “The Shadows need me and I need them.”

  “What for?” Nikki asked, struggling to hold back her tears.

  “I wasn’t told exactly, but I was given some clues.”

  “For instance?”

  Harley placed both of her hands, palms down, on the shiny wood floor she sat on.

  “It all started right here. Remember that hanged woman I told you about that I saw out at the Blue Light?”

  “Yes, I do.”

  “Her name was Alejandra. Right here, under this floor, was her house, which was little more than a hut really. She lived there with her newborn son. Not only was he the product of rape, he was also terribly deformed. No one wanted them, especially the baby’s father, who was the son of the governor. So, to remove them and any claim Alejandra might have had to the wealthy man’s estate, she was accused of witchcraft and that she had laid with the Devil. Alejandra was dragged from her home and forced to watch while her house was burned to the ground with her baby inside, screaming in his crib. After that, the woman was taken to where the Blue Light Cemetery is today and hung.”

  “Oh my Lord! You were told this?”

  “Gaielos shows me these things and just narrates it all.”

  “That just makes me hate that fucker even more for doing that to my little girl!”

  Harley did not need an aura to know that her mother was going into a rage. Nikki hated the F- word. She didn’t say it, and didn’t allow it to be said around her. The girl slid herself over to her mother’s side and laid her head in Nikki Baldwin’s lap.

  “It’s okay, Mom.”

  A violent shudder went through Nikki from her head to her toes. As she placed her hands on the fluffy pile of bright red hair, she noticed a large rectangular shape on the floor propped against the opposite wall. Through the tattered and dirty sheet covering it, she could see there was some sort of painting in a gilt frame.

  “What’s that over there?”

  Harley didn’t lift her head to see what her mother was asking about.

  “Not now. It can wait until later.”

  “Is it another of Gaielos’s clues?”

  “Not now, please.”

  “You know, that it is going to eat me alive until I know what it is, so you may as well tell me.”

  With a grunt, Harley hesitantly rose up and walked across the foyer.

  “I was led to go back into the attic where I found this. It would be best if you stay seated.”

  “Crap! Now you really have me both scared and curious.”

  “It is a family portrait of Gerald Hale, his wife Faye, and their kids, Edgel and Marie.”

  Nikki took a few seconds after the unveiling to try and see the image of a young Edgel Hale. As Harley turned around and set herself on the floor next to the picture, Nikki felt like she had been gut punched by what she saw. Marie Hale stood next to her older brother. Her heart-shaped face was surrounded by long auburn curls. Her eyes matched the brilliant green crystal in the silver pendant dangling around her dainty neck.

  Cody Taylor’s world changed radically the day that he met Harley Baldwin and her mom, Nikki. It was a completely 180 degree turn from where he had been heading. He was eating regular and healthy food, and had even acquired a new set of clothes to replace the hand-me-down rags he had previously worn. It also was arranged for him to get new glasses with which to see his new world better.

  Cody had a special place in his heart for the bicycle that he was riding, however, and hadn’t wanted to trade it in for a new one. Despite the rust, duct tape, and dents, it had been his magic carpet, jet fighter, and only real friend for so long that he couldn’t imagine his life without it. Lately, he couldn’t imagine his life without Harley in it either. Every time he looked her way, he felt his heart literally beat faster. Every night, he would awake several times to look across the RV and see if the curtains had been disturbed on Harley’s bunk. He didn’t want her to go wandering off again, at least not without him. Subsequently, Cody had been thrilled to learn that Harley would be turning thirteen soon. He became determined to make it an extra special occasion for them both. He had enlisted his great-grandmother’s help in deciding what to get for the girl’s present. Together, they had settled on the aquamarine and sterling silver tennis bracelet he had found online.

  “You are lucky, Mister Taylor,” Nikki had said when Cody asked her permission to get the gift. “If she had been born a few days later, her birthstone would have been a diamond!”

  Odette had lent him a few dollars to make up the cost difference, and today was the day it would arrive in her mailbox. That was the real reason he was going over to Mee Mee’s house after school. He was deep in the daydream of how the newly minted teenager would react to her opening the small gift box. However, daydreams could be dangerous, as Cody Taylor suddenly found out.

  10

  February 10, 1954

  I finally talked Penny into leaving a letter to Mr. Howard. She saw him outside going into his shed. She tapped on the window and he saw her. I also made a valentine for him to give to Merrilee.

  Edwin pressed his ear to the hole in the attic floor, the closet door below purposely kept slightly ajar so he could hear what his father was saying to his sister. He was literally painfully biting his tongue to keep from joining in.

  “Edwin’s internment should be temporary. It is not that he is being punished for striking me as much as it is to toughen him up and eliminate any weakness his mother instilled in him. I am preparing him for the hard, cold job of taking over the business.”

  “Where did my mother really go?” Penny asked with more than a touch of defiance to her voice.

  “She is gone far away and will never be allowed to return and contaminate my children with her lunatic ideas!” Edgel responded in an angered, hate-filled voice.

  “What is between you and Edwin is something for you two to deal with. Is it okay, in the meantime, for me to hang on to Mother’s memory of her kindness and goodness?”

  Edgel harrumphed loudly.

  “You need to concentrate your future on being a good and supportive wife to whomever I choose to be your husband! After all, if Edwin doesn’t come around to the reality of his life, your spouse will have to take his place.”

  ***

  “Slow down, ladies!” Sheriff Donnelly shouted as Harley and Nikki burst through the Emergency Room doors. “He swerved just in time to avoid a head-on collision. He did, however, get clipped by the truck’s side view mirror. Now he’s the poster child for why you should wear a helmet when riding a bicycle.”

  “Oh my God!” Nikki exhaled. “Is he going to be all right?”

  Just as the Sheriff started to reply, Odette stepped from behind a curtain in a nearby treatment room.

  “He lost a lot of blood and took some stitches, but he’s expected to make a full recovery,” she said weakly.

  Mrs. Taylor barely had enough time to step asid
e before Harley ran past her and into the small room. Harley acted on pure impulse. Her father had said the stone that hung from her neck had a reputation of possessing healing powers, but she couldn’t have imagined anything like this. As soon as she put her hands on Cody’s bandaged head, the gem started glowing. She was conscious just long enough to see the bruises start to fade and the swelling recede.

  “What are we doing here?” Harley asked Cody, who was busy sweeping away a pile of leaves with his hands. He couldn’t answer the question of course, because at this point in his life, she did not exist yet. The whirling roulette wheel of Cody’s memories had slowed and the marble of Harley’s awareness had fallen on this particular one. She could be nothing more than an unseen observer of history. Like the events described in Edwin Hale’s journal that were becoming more and more vivid, she could not interact.

  The hole that Harley followed her friend down was where the side wall of the root cellar had collapsed with age. Then a spark from the disposable lighter wheel ignited hissing butane, and the interior ahead could be dimly seen. Cody stood up and passed the small flame onto the wick of a half-melted candle in a makeshift sconce to his right. When the entirety of the cellar became revealed by the retreating darkness, the sight reminded Harley of Edwin’s attic. It was a terrible place of pain and sadness. Here and there, tree roots had found entrance through fractures and crevices in the walls. A thin stream of water trickled out of a copper pipe and into a bent and rusty metal tub where Cody washed his hands and face. Cody set himself down on a worn and moldy mattress in an upright fetal position and cried. His suffering, however, wasn’t the only sound that Harley heard. From the direction of a narrow nook with a row of shelves and a large wooden crate in it, she heard whispers and quiet pleadings. She glanced at Cody, who was apparently oblivious to the sounds, before moving in their direction.

  Among the rusted and web covered gardening implements on the shelves were broken Mason jars with a thin, brown film on the inside. The box on the floor beneath had “Titus Funerary Supplies” burned into its top. As she tried to discern what was being said, Harley heard a much more distinct and familiar voice coming from behind her.

  “What do your eyes say to you? Concentrate on those clues first,” Gaielos said. “In this realm, at least for now, what you see is much more important.”

  Turning in the direction of the newly arrived companion on her mental trip, Harley saw a tall man with long blonde hair and pale, almost luminescent skin. Definitely not the being she expected to see. Then he looked up and the red-hot embers that accounted for eyes confirmed the Shadow Lord’s identity. He smiled and answered her unasked question.

  “Again, in this place of visions and dreams, things will look different from what you are most familiar with.”

  “Okay, then. How will I know who and what to trust as being real or not?” Harley nervously asked.

  “The word ‘trust’ is not one I would use in this situation. ‘Believe’ is the most appropriate here.”

  “Shit! Do you ever speak in anything but circles?”

  “Even the Lord of Shadows has those that I must account too. I just cannot drop everything into your lap. As I told you before, I can only do and say what I am allowed.”

  Gaielos ticked his head in Cody’s direction and continued.

  “As you might remember telling your mother . . . ore must be put through heat and pressure to yield usable metal. Certain metals, such as copper, make excellent conductors of electricity. Then imagine that the so-called supernatural world is like an enormous battery. Human will and emotions are the poles on this power source. When contacted by a conductor, the energy flows through these conduits to do work in the natural world. Some humans are like copper and are, therefore, better conduits than others.”

  As Harley huffed her frustration and turned to again train her attention on the objects she had been studying, Gaielos spoke.

  “Open your emotions. Make yourself vulnerable. Once you break down those walls you will come to know everything you need to lead you down the next path in your life.”

  Hellish nightmares reached into her thoughts and tore Harley’s psyche apart. The desperate pleadings of prey as it hoped to tender a predator’s merciless heart, but finding only pain instead took her breath away. She wanted to scream for it to stop, but couldn’t vocalize and instead, it knotted in her stomach.

  Suddenly, it was as if a warm, honeysuckle-scented wave flowed over her and washed away her fears. The piteous wailings of the murdered dead were replaced by the sound of her grandmother, Mom Ball, singing.

  “Yes, she is, my little sweet patater. Little sweet patater is what this baby is.”

  It had the same effect on her now that it did when a 6-year-old Harley was rocked to sleep in those loving arms. She was gently taken up out of Hell and into a world of peace and happiness. It was as close as the living can possibly get to Heaven.

  11

  April 14, 1954

  Merrilee came to visit today for my birthday. She said she was sorry that she could not see me more often. Mister Grant sent a small cake and some buttermilk with her. She was outside in the top of the tree sitting on it like she was a bird. She asked to come in and I told her she could. She told me she could not share any of the cake or milk because of her condition. We talked for a couple of hours until Bobby came up to see who I was talking to. I am in LOVE with her! She is pretty, smart, tells good jokes and sure can move fast! She was gone outside before I could turn around to talk to tell Bobby to go to hell. He laughed. I herd Merrilee laugh from outside. She was already standing on the ground. I HATE Bobby! Right before he came up Merrilee was hugging me and telling me she was sad for me. She said she would visit me every time she was able to.

  Edwin looked up from the calendar he was holding when he heard a soft tapping outside the open attic window. Emitting a deep sigh, he saw that it was only a leaf trapped in a spider’s web moving in the breeze created by the hot air leaving his prison.

  “Happy birthday, Edwin Andrew Hale,” he said sadly to himself as he tossed the thin ream of paper onto the floor next to him.

  “I was just getting ready to say that myself!” Merrilee said as she moved out of the shadows and assumed a squatting position on a tree branch seemingly too small to hold her weight. “Can I come in?”

  “Most certainly you can come in, Miss Merrilee! If I had known you were going to show up tonight, I would have had some champagne sent up from the wine cellar.”

  Giggling softly, the girl smiled.

  “Well then, cake and milk will just have to do for now.” Handing off the celebratory treats to Edwin, the teenager slipped effortlessly off the branch she was on and through the open window. Edwin Hale looked like he desperately needed to be hugged, and Merrilee quickly, but gently, did so. Even with her lightest touch, the miserable boy winced and partially pulled away when the raised welts on his back were touched. Merrilee‘s eyes opened wide and, with her left hand still on his shoulder, she pulled Eddie’s side towards her.

  “Let me see!” she whispered when there was resistance.

  “Naw, it’s okay.”

  “It is not okay! Let me see!”

  Hesitantly, Edwin did as he was told to do. He cringed as the back of his shirt pulled away a scab.

  “Don’t do it that way!” the girl virtually shouted as she moved to place herself behind Hale. “Unbutton it from the front and I’ll lift it off.”

  “Are you trying to see me naked?” Edwin joked almost inaudibly.

  Merrilee forced a smile.

  “I wouldn’t ask you to take off your clothes if that was what I wanted. I would just rip them off of you!”

  “I really believe you would do that, Miss Anderson!”

  The shock of the dreadful belt buckle shaped injuries when she lifted the shirt away silenced any playful return Merrilee wanted to make. Instead, what Edwin heard was a frightening, deep, almost male-sounding voice.

  “Who did this to y
ou?”

  An ice-cold hand pressed against the side of his cheek to prevent Hale from turning around to see what had entered the room behind him.

  “Are you okay, Merrilee?”

  The sweet, lilting voice, tinged with a Mississippi Delta accent responded.

  “I’m alright, Eddie. Please answer the question.”

  “I think you know who did it,” Hale said as he emitted an anguished sigh. “Penny said she’s been hearing Mother’s voice coming from behind the door Father had Bobby put a lock on, so I was trying to pick it to see what’s going on in there and got caught.”

  After what seemed to be a painful minute of a palpable silence, Merrilee lifted up and spoke softly into the ear framed by chocolate colored curls.

  “I have a salve that should help ease the pain and heal it. Do you want me to do that?”

  “You have something like that with you?”

  “When you have my condition, you have to be prepared for just about anything.”

  “Will it hurt like iodine?”

  “Don’t be such a sissy! Yes or no?”

  “Yeah, sure.”

  Edwin felt the gashes tingling as Merrilee took a single finger and applied the thick, dark, almost black fluid oozing from where she had bitten her palm.

  ***

  “Hey, girl,” Cody whispered as Harley awakened with a start. “You must have been having a heck of a bad dream. Your teeth were grinding so hard I thought you were going to break every single one of them out of your head!”

  “Uh-huh,” a seemingly stunned Harley acknowledged.

  “You okay?”

  “I didn’t get much sleep last night. I’ll be all right.” It was then that Harley noticed her hand was still on Cody’s bandaged head and she quickly took it back to her lap. “What is going to happen now?”