“My father and brother’s murder case remains unsolved. I’ve spent the last three years waiting for the black-eyed kids to return so I could prove my mother’s not insane. Right now, you’re the only chance I have.”
“You’re hunting them?”
Spencer pulls his hat down around his ears a little further then jams his hands into his coat pockets “I hadn’t thought of it that way, but I suppose that’s one way to look at it.”
“And we’re the bait you’ve been waiting for,” I say accusingly.
“Hey, don’t forget, you came to me,” he says angrily.
“You guys, stop it,” Jeremy says from behind us. I nearly forgot he was back there. “We need each other right now. You shouldn’t fight.”
“I’m not fighting,” I say. “I just don’t want to be part of some ghost hunter’s tackle box.”
Spencer snaps back. “And I’d rather not go to jail helping some crazy kids hide from the police.”
Jeremy stops and plants his feet. “Shut up, you guys!”
Spencer and I stop and turn to face my little brother, whose posture appears to be that of someone who has mounted a soap box.
“We all have something to lose,” Jeremy says. “Abby, if you’re afraid of being used as bait, run away now. But where are you going to go? Who’s going to believe we’re being hunted by black-eyed kids much less offer to help us? Spencer, if you don’t want to go to jail, leave us here and go call the police right now. By the end of the night we’ll either be in jail or dead, and your mom will still be locked in the mental hospital, probably forever. We can either help each other or go our own ways, but I’m not going through all of this listening to you two fight the whole time. Now grow up or shut up!”
…says the youngest of the three of us.
We stand in a silent small triangle, our eyes shifting back and forth to one another.
“Fine,” Spencer says, implying he’s willing to lay down arms. He looks at me expectantly.
I roll my eyes. “Fine.”
“Now shake hands,” Jeremy says.
I turn away, back toward the general direction of where we were heading. “Don’t push it, Jeremy.”
“She can be kind of bull-headed,” I hear Jeremy say to Spencer as I walk away.
“I’ve noticed.”
“Let’s go already!” I call over my shoulder to the two boys.
Despite the fact there are more leaves on the ground than the trees, we soon find ourselves walking in more shade than sunlight. In addition to the towering pines which hold their needles through the winter, the branches of the ancient oaks surrounding us cast crooked, spindly shadows in all directions. The mood around us drops like the blade of a guillotine, and fall’s last few remnants of red, orange, and yellow turn to gray in the shadows. The morning appears to fade to night.
“This way,” Spencer says, and he leads us out across the cemetery lawn toward the bluff.
Minutes later, with the waves of Lake Michigan rolling beyond the bluff on the other side of the cemetery’s eastern fence, we stumble upon an unremarkable knoll rising out of an unexceptional clearing.
Spencer says, “This is it.”
“This is what?” I ask.
“This is where Mount Herod’s Tyburn Tree was.”
I don’t know what I was expecting; there are no fallen timbers, no coiled rope, no worn paths, no evidence whatsoever of the “justice” Mount Herod’s patriarchs once dispensed here. If a Tyburn Tree stood here, the cemetery has long forgotten it, and the ground itself has buried its ugly past.
“How do you know?” Jeremy asks.
“There.” Spencer points across the knoll to a level circular patch of dirt about fifty paces toward the bluff. In the center stands a primitive gray stone, tall and narrow and topped with a blunt, weathered peak.
My stomach sinks instinctively, and I approach the stone cautiously for a closer look. The soft cushion of the grass gives way to hard, packed earth beneath my feet when I enter the patch of dirt.
The obelisk stands roughly a foot higher than the height of an adult man, perhaps seven feet or slightly taller. If it marks a grave, it contains no inscription whatsoever.
I circle around, examining it further.
The stone’s surface is pocked and rutted and washed in streaks of black ash and white scale. It stands somewhat crooked yet somehow proudly, as if unaware or unashamed of its ugliness. The wind or the earth or the stone itself seems to moan, and I know I’m seeing something horrible.
Despite the dread building within me, I reach out and place my palms flat against the cold, damp stone. Its weight seems to transfer to me, running up my arms and into my spine, communicating with me, warning me, telling me it’s rooted and immovable. Powerful. From nowhere at all, two words slither into my mind, and I say them aloud, barely conscious of my own speech. “Oswulf’s Stone.”
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
“IT CAN’T BE. That’s impossible.” Jeremy says. “It was in England. How’d it get here?”
Spencer walks up the gentle grade to the top of the knoll. “William Herod was the son of a British soldier who came to America to fight the French and Indian War,” he says. “Back then, soldiers traveled with their families. William’s father and two of his brothers were killed in the war. By the time the American Revolution began, William was old enough to enlist but too disillusioned by the death of his father and brothers to fight for either side.
“Instead, he wandered west, here to the Great Lakes, where he stumbled into the fur trade. Eventually, he built a small settlement along these bluffs. He named it after himself, calling it Mount Herod. He built a port and began exporting beaver pelts to Europe. The ships would sail across the Great Lakes, transport the pelts to barges on the Saint Lawrence, and eventually sail on to Quebec, where they’d transfer their cargo to bigger ships for the trip across the Atlantic Ocean to Europe.”
Spencer speaks with the knowledge of an encyclopedia. The only other person I’ve ever known to do that is my brother. “At some point during this history lesson, you’re going to tell us how the stone got here, right?” I ask.
Spencer shows me his crooked smile again. “I’m getting there. William Herod got rich, but the fur trade was a cut-throat business—literally. Theft, vandalism, even the murder of his employees were constant issues. Competitors plucked away at his success pelt by pelt, dollar by dollar. As a boy growing up near London, he had witnessed the effectiveness of the Tyburn Tree for maintaining order, and up here in what was the Northwest Territory, there was no justice system, so William Herod built a personal Tyburn Tree right here atop this bluff overlooking Lake Michigan. He declared himself judge, jury, and executioner. Frenchmen and Indians—the people his father fought against in the war—were his favorites to hang. He’d hang their entire families, revenge for the deaths of his father and brothers. Word spread about William Herod’s Tyburn Tree, and few dared to cross him. Those who did paid the highest penalty, very publicly.”
Spencer stares out over the bluff at Lake Michigan, then he turns and points north. “When his wife died, he built her a massive monument to the north overlooking the lake. Years later when he died himself, he was placed in the monument with her. He left the family business to his only living son, Benjamin Herod.”
“Did Benjamin hang people too?” Jeremy asks.
Spencer shrugs. “Early on, Benjamin continued to use the Tyburn Tree just like his father, but he eventually grew the business into mining and shipping, and as the population in the territory grew with it, the government began to take notice. Benjamin lost the ability to freely dish out his own justice, and under the growing threat of discovery, he had the Tyburn Tree torn down. Like any good businessman, he armed himself with lawyers and politicians instead. The Chokecherry Bluff Tyburn Tree became the Chokecherry Bluff Cemetery. It was an obvious and easy transition given the amount of bodies that were buried nearby. Benjamin eventually sold the business and left his net worth to his
children.”
“Something tells me that’s not the end of the story,” I say.
Spencer shakes his head. “Benjamin Herod had three children, two boys and a girl. The girl married and became a worldtraveller, ending up in Morocco or some place like that. The oldest boy died of cholera and is buried here in the cemetery near his parents and grandparents. But his youngest boy, Solomon, remained in Mount Herod for the remainder of his life. With nothing to do but count the money from his inheritance, he became kind of an eccentric. Above all other things, he was fascinated by the Tyburn Tree he saw his father tear down, and he eventually traveled to the spot of the original Tyburn Tree in England. Unfortunately for Solomon, the London Tyburn Tree was long gone. But while he was there, he developed a fascination with a mysterious local monolith which many people in London had grown to fear and despise.”
Spencer descends the knoll, slowly approaching me and Oswulf’s Stone. “Back in England, no one in London knew or could remember what Oswulf’s Stone marked, but that didn’t stop Solomon from digging into its past. He became obsessed with it and eventually hunted down an anthropologist who told him the Tyburn Tree was built at Tyburn out of ‘tradition.’ He told Solomon that Tyburn Village had a dark history of human sacrifice dating back 4,000 years. That’s when Solomon really went off the deep end and plunged into London’s occult underground. He met with self-proclaimed mediums and witches and pagan priests, took part in their rituals, worshipped in their black masses. The priests told him that an unnamed pagan clan dropped the stone into place at Tyburn to mark an unholy location of human sacrifice.
“Originally, it was just an ordinary rock, but eventually that changed, the priests told Solomon. Every soul which left this world at Tyburn did so within the presence of the stone. The air at Tyburn became saturated with emotions. Fear, despair, anger…horror. The stone absorbed them all.”
I look at Oswulf’s Stone, and I feel a sense of pity for it, as if it were a victim of abuse, as if it had a personality or a spirit. But I shake off the feeling, because it is, after all, just a stone.
Spencer joins me in the dirt circle surrounding Oswulf’s Stone. He looks it up and down much the same way he looked me up and down the first time we met. “At some point in the Middle Ages, the Anglo-Saxons gave the stone a name. Due to its pagan roots, they believed the stone belonged to a predator of God, who they named Oswulf, and they named the monolith Oswulf’s Stone.”
Spencer sighs and starts to circle clockwise around the dirt patch. “In the end, it probably didn’t matter what they called it, because once it had a name—an identity just like man himself—it adopted all the emotions which had been imprinted upon it for thousands of years, and in doing so found a thread of consciousness on which it began to pull. Eventually Oswulf’s Stone unraveled a type of existence. It’s not an existence you and I could ever understand, but the fact is,” Spencer jabs a finger at Oswulf’s Stone, “that stone subsists, and it communes.”
Jeremy approaches from my right and steps up to Oswulf’s Stone for the first time. He examines the stone closely, his face inches from its surface. I am now wary of the stone. It, or at least Spencer’s story regarding it, frightens me.
“Not so close, Jeremy,” I say.
“Huh? Oh, OK.” Jeremy takes a step back and, like Spencer, begins to circle Oswulf’s Stone as he scrutinizes every inch of it. The two boys move like clockwork around Oswulf’s Stone, like planets orbiting a star.
“Although it’s not at all dangerous as it stands here by itself, Oswulf’s Stone communes with things we don’t know exist,” Spencer says. “The supernatural, the paranormal, the mystical and the unnatural, it summons all of it.”
Now entirely creeped out, I step away from Oswulf’s Stone out onto the cemetery’s lawn and plant myself at the border of the dirt patch. A knowledge passes through me which tells me I’m within the presence of true wickedness, wickedness which has somehow embedded itself within Oswulf’s Stone like a dark spirit.
I recall Jeremy’s original question, and I remind Spencer, “You still haven’t told us how it got here.”
“Eventually, Solomon returned to Mount Herod, without Oswulf’s Stone of course, but not without his obsession for it. It was bad enough for Solomon when the queen ordered the stone buried, but when he heard through a journal article that she’d given the order to have it dug up and destroyed, the thought of losing Oswulf’s Stone forever was too much for him. He used his wealth, his influence, and his London connections to bring the stone here to Mount Herod by way of the very same shipping lanes his grandfather and father used to transport beaver pelts to Europe.
“Whether he bought it or stole it, we’ll probably never know, and it really doesn’t matter. In London, the stone simply went missing. To the people of London and the queen, all that mattered was Oswulf’s Stone was finally gone.
“The journey from England probably took several months. Once it arrived, Solomon convinced Mount Herod’s common council to place it here in the cemetery as a public monument. Of course, the council had no idea what it was or where it came from. All they knew was the wealthy and influential grandson of the city’s founder wanted a two-ton sandstone obelisk placed in the cemetery near this knoll. It was, on the surface, a harmless request requiring only a couple strong draft horses and a dozen men, so they approved a resolution to do it.”
Spencer stops pacing. When he stops, so does Jeremy, as if the two boys were connected by a spoke on a wheel.
Staring at the stone, Spencer says, “Now Oswulf’s Stone stands as a profane idol to the legacy of the Herod family’s cruelty and to thousands of murders since nearly the beginning of time. And along with Oswulf’s Stone comes every horror that once terrified medieval London and its surrounding villages. All once thought to be folklore is now reality, right here in Mount Herod.”
“Stop,” I say. I point accusingly at Oswulf’s Stone. “Do you mean to tell me that thing is alive?”
“Not alive,” Spencer says. “Aware.”
I am astounded at what I’m hearing. Had I not seen what I’ve seen over the past week, I’d cast off all this as nonsense, a fable for the naive. But standing here in the cemetery with no better explanation for the outrageous and terrifying events plaguing my life, I accept what I’ve heard as the truth.
“And the black-eyed kids?” Jeremy asks. “Who are they?”
“Its protectors,” Spencer says, “a type of dark entity Oswulf’s Stone summons whenever it feels threatened.”
“Protectors?” I repeat. “Who are they protecting Oswulf’s Stone from, Jeremy and me? We didn’t even know it existed an hour ago.”
“Oswulf’s Stone’s awareness exists outside of time,” Spencer says. “It’s not what you’ve done which poses a threat to Oswulf’s Stone. It’s what you’ll do.”
Jeremy says, “Predestination?”
“More like probability,” Spencer says.
It’s all becoming too much. I place my fingertips on my temples as I try to comprehend this nearly-ridiculous conversation. “It sees the future?” I ask.
“It knows the possibilities,” Spencer clarifies.
“And the difference is…”
“Predestination is inescapable. Possibilities are weighted by odds, and Oswulf’s Stone will do everything it can to tip the odds in its favor.”
Jeremy slumps his shoulders. “Including murder.”
“Especially murder.”
CHAPTER NINETEEN
MY STUCCO HOME in Southern California is now someone else’s dream; a stone in the cemetery has said so. Destined to either destroy or be destroyed by a possessed rock, I sit in the cemetery’s garden shed with my thirteen-year-old brother, who is picking his nose in the corner and thinks I don’t know.
We are homeless, hungry, hunted, and the primary persons of interest in a double homicide, but at least we are no longer alone.
After he finished telling Jeremy and me about Oswulf’s Stone, Spencer took us back
to wait in the relative warmth of the shed while he went to get us some blankets and more food, as well as a copy of an ancient poem which could save our lives.
During the walk back across the cemetery to the shed, Spencer revealed to Jeremy and me how he uncovered the mystery of Oswulf’s Stone.
“My mother never stopped insisting two black-eyed children committed the murders of my father and brother,” Spencer said, his voice impressively steady. “No one believed her, of course.” He went on to tell Jeremy and me how he hadn’t seen the black-eyed kids himself because he had hid under his bed. Survivor syndrome, he said, still plagues him even though everyone—from his counselors to his uncle and even his mother—has told him his feelings of guilt are irrational.
Spencer said very little more about that night. He kept the worst details to himself and skipped directly to the weeks and months which followed.
His mother, Katrina, was the only witness. Although initially a suspect, Katrina wasn’t under suspicion very long due, in part, to the injuries she’d received during the attack. The doctors determined she had post traumatic stress disorder and the trauma had suppressed her real memories.
The doctors tried to treat Katrina’s PTSD so the investigators could determine who the actual murderers were, but she came unglued during treatment. Spencer was placed in the custody of his mother’s brother, a Jesuit priest and Saint Thomas University professor named Father Carl Parris. When the judge decided Katrina had to be admitted for psychiatric care, Father Carl used his university and judicial connections to place Katrina in Saint Thomas Psychiatric Hospital in order to keep her close to Spencer. She went in three years ago.
“I see her once or twice a week,” Spencer said. “Usually on Saturdays. My uncle and I will visit her later today.”
Spencer went on to say his life fell apart following the hospitalization of his mother. Despite the fact the authorities cleared Katrina of the murders, rumors spread across Mount Herod. Adults, who love idle talk, insisted she’d gone mad and was guilty of the murders no matter what the police said. Children, anxious for a more sensational account, proliferated the black-eyed kids’ legend throughout schoolyards and even floated the idea Spencer himself may have committed the murders.
Curse of the Black-Eyed Kids (Mount Herod Legends Book 2) Page 17
