I show the phone to James. “You think she knows?”
“Doubt it.” We turn on the television and Concordia lights up the screen, a forest quartered off with caution tape, and I turn up the volume.
“They must have found a body.” James leans in, studying the screen intently. “That’s on the border of town about fifteen minutes away.”
A woman takes over the screen, Gretchen MacAfee, and both James and I share a dissatisfied growl. A redhead stands next to her bundled in a navy wool coat. Frost lies over the ground, washing the earth in a patina of innocence.
“Three murders, three days, all of them involving the very same type of weapon.” She holds up a hatchet and I catch my breath. “Heather Evans was a recently widowed mother of two who had turned her kids into foster care over a year ago because of the crushing weight of her loss.” The woman standing next to her nods.
“Oh my God.” Heather was a widow. Her children abandoned to some crappy state run system.
The redhead nods in agreement. “Authorities claim she had given them up to pursue a relationship with a woman. She was off to pursue love. It’s just so twisted. As a mother, I really can’t wrap my head around that one.”
A woman. Was I that woman? Oh my God, I was that woman.
Gretchen smirks. “And the librarian. Nora Stewart. How is that connected? Nora was a Black Stone Indian. Only a very small remnant is left from that tribe.”
My blood runs cold. Nora, the librarian. “She wanted to speak with me.” The words come from me numb.
“Who did?” James rattles my hand as if trying to pull me from my trance. “Heather or the librarian?”
“Both.”
The redhead tsks into her mic. “Such a senseless tragedy unfolding here. They are such a small remnant. Of course, rumors have persisted for years regarding the curse of the tribe.”
A single tear rolls down my face without my permission. “That’s Reagan’s tribe,” I whisper.
“What?” James looks straight ahead at the screen in disbelief.
The camera pans back to the woods, to the caution tape glowing like the surface of the sun, citrine in an ashen world, and it’s jarring.
Gretchen steps into the scene. “And young Hailey Oden.”
James grips my hand. The room grows icy.
“My God.” Can’t breathe.
Gretchen shakes her head at the scene. “To have the child ripped from your womb and left to die in the woods, naked and alone. I’m sorry to say this, but it’s obvious we have a very disturbed psychopath on the loose.” She looks directly into the camera. “I’m telling you right now, citizens of Concordia, of Saginaw County, of all of Idaho, be vigilant. Watch yourselves. Walk in pairs. Lock your doors and windows because there is a brutal serial killer out there, roaming freely, unafraid, undeterred to take human life whenever they deem.” She raises the hatchet in her hand and the ax head gleams like a nuclear flash. “And this is their weapon of choice.” The camera pans down to a bloodied hatchet on the ground, but it’s not the blood still covering the blade that takes the breath right out of me. It’s the picture of an eye carved into the handle.
“You see that?” James rumbles over my shoulder.
“Yes.” But I wish I didn’t.
My fingers fumble with my phone as I head to the Internet to do hasty research on the Black Stone Indians. I have looked only a handful of times to my detriment. Too afraid James would catch me, and here I am doing it with his supervision.
“Right there.” He points to an article, fifth one down in the search engine.
“The Curse of the Black Stone People.” My body thumps with fear.
We click over and start reading at a breakneck pace.
I scroll to the bottom until I hit pay dirt. “Legend has it the Chachnoaw Indians, a weak and paltry band nearly destroyed by yellow fever, looked to the Black Stone for mercy and tribe integration to sustain their people and stave off starvation. But legend insists that the chief of the Black Stones turned them away. Before the small weak tribe could leave Black Stone land, the chief took the only surviving daughter of Chachnoaw royalty, a little girl of six, and slit her throat for all to see. The Chachnoaw were greatly distressed as they had promised her late parents, their chief and priestess, they would raise their daughter and plant a son in her one day to carry on the royal lineage.” I swallow hard, trying to understand how anyone can be so cruel.
“The curse.” James runs his finger lower over the screen. “The self-appointed leaders of the Chachnoaw decided to fight to the death for the honor that was lost of their warrior princess. Every single Chachnoaw died that afternoon. Before the last one perished, while he struggled with the breath in his lungs, he swore that the Chachnoaw spirit warriors would forever avenge the blood of their people. Anyone with Black Stone lineage would die a horrible death—the curse initiating on their sixth birthday.” He looks up at me. Reagan is six. “They would allow the tribe to thrive in order to bring sorrow to each and every generation forever more. In an attempt to seal their honor, each death is to come purely from their vengeance, unadulterated by worldly disorder. They believe in a fair fight. A good one.” His finger floats down farther. “The spirit warriors would come back in the form of the little girl who was brutally slaughtered.” James and I go rigid as I land my finger on the final sentence.
“And that is what became known as the curse of Otaktay—the killer of many.”
A scream comes from upstairs followed by a heavy thud as James and I fly up swift as ghosts.
The door to Reagan’s room is off the hinges and we find Reagan shivering in the middle of the room.
“Where is she?” I twist in a panic.
James gives me a hard shove and sends me flying as a metal blade slices the air next to me, embedding itself into the floor.
Ota appears, larger, her hair expanded and matted as if she just underwent an electrocution. A horrid scream expels from her throat, shrill and horrifically loud, as she plucks the blade right out of its newfound resting place.
I snatch Reagan into my arms and dive into the corner, shielding her body with my own.
James dives over Ota—the creature, the beast—his hands wrap themselves around her neck and it’s as if all of time stands still, the story of our lives rewriting itself in this one homicidal moment. I try to memorize it, the way her fragile neck grows ever so thinner, the convincing way her eyes bulge, her tongue splayed out, pink and fat. James grunts as he puts some muscle behind the effort.
We were good people, my husband and I. We had everything you could ask for—successful careers, a stunning home with the requisite, yet clichéd, white picket fence, a precious daughter to call our own. We had secrets, my husband and I. Not many, so few, all of them lethal.
I watch as James clasps his hands tighter around the girl’s bird-like neck, squeezing hard until her flesh goes white—so hard you can see his bones bulge severely, stretching thin the skin at his knuckles.
We were good people, James and I.
It was true until it wasn’t.
In an instant, his body bucks off her as he crashes against the table.
“James!” I extend my hand in an effort to reach him.
“Get out!” he roars so loud, I can’t tell if he’s talking to me or the demon swirling between us.
Ota stands in the center of the room, her features morphing to something far more masculine. Her mouth grows unnaturally wide and Reagan screams, burying her face in my thigh.