A battered pickup with Texas plates rolls down an old logging road just over the Arkansas line. It turns onto an unmarked path and disappears into the forest for several miles before pulling up to the foot of a small rise deep in the backcountry of the Ouachita National Forest. There is a slight rustling sound as the undergrowth parts and an old man comes forward to greet them. He places both hands on the shoulders of his son and they touch foreheads in a prolonged embrace. No words are spoken. As they part and beckon her forward, the entire family watches in near ecstasy from the darkness. They have waited generations for this moment. Soon, there will be feasting and chanting, ancestral rage tempered, if only briefly, by immeasurable joy. The waiting is over.
October, 2015
Durant, Oklahoma
Moira sniffs at the door.
“Lyndee, Sweetie, what are you doing in there all this time?”
Learning to be patient
“You should get outside for a while, Honey, try to make some new friends.”
All in good time
Moira reaches for the doorknob, but hesitates. Worrying about your daughter’s health is natural, being frightened of her is something else entirely. Lyndee has always been big for her age, but in the last few months she has outgrown everyone, including her mother. She has become withdrawn, even reclusive, and her skin seems to be even more opaque than usual. Of course, Moira closed her ears to all that crazy talk back in Texas. Shit, she told herself, pets go missing all the time, and no one was going to say things like that about her Lyndee Lee.
Moving in with Granny hadn’t helped much; it was too close to home and the trouble just seemed to follow them. Sure, it was a bit surprising when the same thing started happening around Granny’s place, but Moira just couldn’t take any more of those damn Texans, with their self-righteous attitudes and mob mentality. Thank the Lord, her friend Lula Perkins over in Durant was able to put them up for a while until Moira could find something permanent. She’s also decided to go ahead and schedule a CAT Scan for Lyndee. The doctors suspected some sort of genetic disorder and had been bugging her about it for ages, but Moira had always been terrified of what they would find. She still was.
“Christ!”, she says out loud while cracking her first cold one of the day, “She’s only ten years old; how could those assholes even think such things?”
Moira Robbins was born and raised in Limestone, Texas, about thirty miles from the Oklahoma border. Tending bar, waiting tables and wrestling cowboys since high school she’d pretty much given up on ever having a family of her own, until Lyndee Lee came along. The fact that her baby was ‘special’ had never really bothered Moira at all. The fact that Lyndee never spoke became less of an issue as over the years Moira learned to hear her daughter in different ways.
She’d convinced herself long ago that the father was Bennie, one of her regulars at the bar, and had worked very hard to put that other one out of her mind. It was all pretty much of a blur anyway. She thought at the time he might have been one of those Osage bucks that worked up at the casino, but drunk as she was the guy could have been from Mars for all she knew. The smell of him, however, has stayed with her to this very day.
“No!” Moira scolds herself for letting that creep back into her thoughts, cracks another cold one and slaps a peebeejay on the table.
“C’mon, Honey, lunch is ready.”
Lyndee reins in her wandering mind and takes a moment to get herself back into character. She is pleased with this new location. The house she grew up in, way out on the edge of town, had been perfect; a place where she was free to do most anything. Lacking experience, however, she had failed to take the necessary precautions. Moving to Granny’s had been unsatisfactory; there were too many people living nearby and Granny was always watching her. But this new place was working out nicely. Lula was busy most of the time and seldom came down to the basement. And Lyndee had learned her lesson well, only going out at night and keeping her collection far out in the woods behind the house. She smiles to herself on the way to the kitchen. He would be coming soon, she could feel it.
Meanwhile, back in Limestone, Granny is just sitting down to a nice bowl of hot soup when the boards on the back porch start to creak. Now who could that be, she wonders.
_________________________
(one week later, a knock at the door)
“Moira Robbins?
“Yes?”
A sheriff’s department vehicle is parked out front of Lula Perkins’ place; two deputies introduce themselves.
“Deputy Billy Ray Grimes, Bryan County Sheriff’s Office, this is Deputy Barman. Ma’am, you are related to Mrs. Lorna Robbins, is that right?”
“She’s my mother, has something happened? What’s happened?”
“May we come in?”
Lyndee comes up the basement stairs and opens the door a crack. Barman, the female deputy, is looking at Moira from behind mounds of black eyeliner; looking at her with that contrived na hullo empathy that Lyndee has seen so many times before. Both deputies take a seat on Lula’s sofa.
“Ma’am,”, says Deputy Grimes, “have you spoken to your mother recently?”
“A week ago, maybe two. Please tell me what’s wrong; has she been hurt?”
“Well, we hope not.”, Grimes continues, “It seems one of her neighbors called on her last Thursday; found the door open, some food on the table….”
Moira lifts her hand to her mouth, “Oh my God, no!”
“Wait a minute now, hear me out. The neighbors also report seeing a suspicious man near the house; big guy, maybe an Indian. Any idea who that mighta been?”
Moira stands abruptly and begins to pace, “Jesus! No! Are they searching for her? Maybe she…”
“Yes Ma’am, there is a search operation in progress but…”
Grimes hesitates and the deputies share a look.
Moira stops, turns and gets a shiver up her spine, “But what?”
“Sheriff Hollie, over in Grayson County, has some questions about all those animals out in the shed.”
The tiny hairs on Moira’s neck stand up, “Animals?”
“Of course,”, explains Grimes, “he’s got no jurisdiction over here is why he asked us to come talk to you about it.”
“What animals?”, screams Moira, starting to lose her equilibrium, “That shed’s been empty for years! What the hell are you people talking about?”
“Calm down now, Ma’am.”, says Barman, “Sheriff says they been there a right good while, back from when you and the girl was livin there. Now, you must know somethin about them.”
Moira sits down hard and feels the blood draining from her head. A thousand thoughts cut through her brain like razors. She closes her eyes as tight as she can. No, no, no…
“Says one has already been identified as belonging to a neighbor, from the collar, the bodies being pretty much decomposed and all. The rest were mostly rabbits and such.”
Moira feels herself slipping away, no control, she was going to faint.
“Hung up on hooks is the odd part.”, adds Deputy Barman, “Sheriff says each of ‘em was wrapped in somethin with a tube coming down to a bottle like thing, like they was catchin the drippins. This don’t mean nuthin to you?”
Moira hits the floor, all 230 pounds of her, out cold.
Grimes and Barman look at each other again then down to Moira Robbins.
“Seems like maybe it meant somethin to her after all.”, says Barman with a chuckle, “Damn, you smell that?”
“Jesus!”, Deputy Grimes reaches for his weapon as a huge shadow appears in the doorway. Deputy Barman stands up, but is struck immediately. As Barman falls to her knees, another blow catches Grimes just below the right elbow, shattering bone and sending the handgun harmlessly across the room. A huge pair of hands reach down and twist the deputy’s neck farther than it was ever intended to go. This action is then repeated on the female deputy. Lyndee steps into the room and looks down at Moira who is just starting to come around, then looks up.
There is a slight pause before Lyndee understands and swiftly wrings Moira’s neck with an audible snap. They carry the bodies to the door, scan the area then load them into the bed of an old pickup recently borrowed from one of Granny’s neighbors back in Limestone. They drive directly into the woods to Lyndee’s collecting area, take the bodies out, lay them on the ground and strip off the clothing. This is Lyndee’s first time with a large animal, but she takes one of the deer knives and splits Moira from anus to breast bone like she’d been doing it all her life. He nods his approval while doing the same with the other two. The bodies are then gutted and cleaned up as well as possible before being loaded back into the truck. Lyndee puts the remainder of her collection in with them, ties down the tarpaulin cover and they head east, toward Arkansas and home.
______________________________
“Potassium, nitrogen, cadaverine; all the usual byproducts of putrefaction. Thing is, amino acids are present as well, along with several enzymes and hormones that are usually broken down during decay. Truth is…”
“Truth is, Doc, I don’t understand one goddam word a this shit. All I want to know is what the hell we are dealing with here?”
Doctor J. T. Jamison, Grayson County Coroner, is trying to explain to the Sheriff of Limestone, Buford Hollie, about the fluid residue found in Lorna Robbins’ shed.
“It seems,”, the doctor continues,”, the process of decomposition was sped up somehow, so that these acids and enzymes didn’t have time to break down. I’m talking adrenalin, somatotropin, estrogen; fully viable active enzymes, not to mention intact amino acids. The result, besides having the most god-awful smell I have ever encountered, is a nutrient-rich fluid, apparently collected in those beakers…for what purpose I cannot imagine.”
“Nutrient?”, asks Sheriff Hollie, “You mean like food?”
“Well, fuel for cells, yes. Decomposition is often referred to as self-digestion; that is, with food, water and oxygen no longer being supplied, the body in effect begins to eat itself.”
“Christ on a cross, JT!”
“Sorry. Anyway, when individual cells decay, they burst and release their remaining fuel. And when you add these enzymes and luteinizing hormones, particularly from the rabbits, well, the resultant concoction would be more like a really potent fertilizer.”
“Godammit, people say the girl took the animals, that she was some kinda freak. Now her grandma’s gone missin. What is this, voodoo or somethin?”
“Well, that would be out of my…”
Sheriff Hollie’s assistant, Louise Pena, calls from the outer office.
“Sheriff Loomis on line two.”
Bill Loomis is the sheriff of Bryan County, Oklahoma, which includes the town of Durant. The voice on the other end sounds shaky; Sheriff Loomis is clearly finding it difficult to speak.
“Two a my deputies are dead. We found their vehicle at the Perkins place, horrible mess in the woods nearby. Looks like they were mutilated by goddam maniacs, Buford; no bodies, just clothes and innards. I just can’t understand this world anymore, Buford; just can’t.”
“Jesus, I’m sorry as hell, Bill. The Robbins woman too? And the girl?”
“Appears so; they’re tryin to sort out the innards now, but say it’s got to be from at least three people, maybe four.”
“Christ almighty. We got anything at all to work with?”
“Some tire tracks, pickup most likely. I been lookin at this business over in Arkansas. Lotta disappearances the last few years.”, Sheriff Loomis pauses to catch his breath, “Too many, mostly hunters. Don’t know if there’s a connection or not.”
There’s another long pause, then…
“Buford. I got a really bad feelin about this.”
Sheriff Hollie puts the phone down and stares at the wall for a minute.
“It’s a murder case now, JT. Slaughtered like cattle. Listen, dig into this shit with the animals for me; I need to get some kinda idea what the hell was going on out there.”
Doc Jamison nods and heads back to his lab. First, he would do a more detailed analysis on the residue. Then, for the first time in his career, he would perform a full blown autopsy on a rabbit. Knowing how the animals were killed might help. Lingering uneasily in the back of his mind, however, is that word: voodoo.
Sheriff Hollie reads through the witness statements again from the Lorna Robbins case file. Some of her neighbors had reported seeing a strange man in the area; they all described the man as ‘big’. One said he had strange skin, another said he looked like a shape shifter, another an alien. He shakes his head, swears to himself, and begins going through the cold case database from Arkansas. It will be nearly dawn before the oldest one in the bunch grabs his attention.
“Was back in ’95. Pretty big story; even got picked up by a couple a those tabloids back east.”
Buford has awakened Dottie Baker, night shift deputy in the Waldron, Arkansas, Sheriff’s Office. After a minor explosion of profanity, she says she remembers the case quite well, almost as if it was yesterday.
“It was Bessie, used to ply her trade up at the old Paradise Hotel before it was shut down. Told the sheriff this guy never paid, never said shit, just took her. Said she thought she was imaginin the whole thing, bein somewhat intoxicated and all. Said that he acted like a child, this big fella, like he’d never been with a woman before. Said she wasn’t even sure he was human, and a course that’s when all the fuss started.”
Hollie thinks about that for a bit.
“You remember any similar reports around the same time?”
“Hell, once it hit the papers ladies were comin outa the woodwork sayin they’d been with him, even a couple down your way as I recall, but nothin ever come of it. Sheriff, last ten years or so I ain’t heard doodly squat about this story. Then, couple weeks back, folks on the rez suddenly started gettin all stirred up about this shit again. Now you come along in the middle a the night; what the hell’s goin on?”
“Sheriff?”
____________________________
“Their necks were snapped, all of them; wrung like chickens.”
Doc Jamison, up all night himself, walks in explaining to Sheriff Hollie what had happened to the animals.
“They were field dressed, disemboweled, sealed in plastic wrap and hung up to drain off into those bottles. Basically, they were fermenting.”
“Why?”, screams Hollie.
“I’m comin to that. Turns out the fluid contains very high levels of somatotropin, that’s a growth hormone, plus an enzyme I’ve never even seen before; had to call Little Rock to find out what it was. Carboxytetra … hell I can’t even pronounce it. Supposedly, it promotes growth in specific areas of the brain stem and thalamus and is normally only present during the embryonic and early fetal…”
“JT…”
“I know, I know. Bottom line, it is remotely possible that this concoction could be used as some kind of supplement to promote growth and enhance specific brain functions.”
“The kid was drinkin this shit, that what you’re tellin me?”
“No, of course not; it would be toxic if taken internally. But listen, it more likely has to do with a ritual of some kind.”
“Voodoo.”
“I know this is hard for you, but just hear me out, okay? Now, you know many of the Osage and Choctaw around here still believe in the old ways. And you know how some of them still place their dead up on those pyres; put the bodies up right next to the house.”
“I’ve seen that; smelled it too.”
“Well, I’ve been talking to Louise about it and apparently they used to have bone pickers in the tribe…”
“Wait a minute, did you just say bone pickers?”
“Bone pickers. They grew their nails real long and sharp so they could scrape the bones clean and purify them for burial. They were high up in the tribe in the old days, almost sacred. So, what would happen, the body would sit up on the pyre and dry out slowly over time, as long as six months, and the stuff that would leach out of the body, which was thought to be part of the dead person’s spirit, would be captured in these special bowls.”
“No offense to our Native American neighbors, but this is bullshit”
“Hush now, let me finish. Apparently this tradition originated during the time of the Niukonska. And, get this, according to legend, the bone pickers would suck on the dried flesh from the body, like jerky, and then paint themselves with the drippings in order to become one with death.”
Sheriff Hollie smiles, stands and slowly picks up the files from his desk.
“JT,”, he says calmly while walking toward the outer office, “you’re gonna be one with death if you don’t knock off this bone picker horseshit. We got four dead dammit, and I don’t want any more. Listen, there may be a connection to these cases over in Arkansas, one in particular. I’ll check that out. Meantime, you get your head on straight and find me somethin solid to work with.”
Louise Pena, raised on the reservation, meets Sheriff Hollie at the door and looks him in the eye.
“You should listen.”
“Excuse me?”
“Maybe it’s none of my business,”, she says quietly, “but you should listen to Dr. Jamison. There is much talk in the Nations; they say they are coming out…”
“Louise, I don’t mean to be rude,” the Sheriff interrupts,”, but you’re right, this is white folks business and we’ll handle it. Now, please, let’s all get back to the real world, shall we?”
_______________________
The mound is about 80 feet across and rises slowly to a height of no more than 12 to 15 feet. The old growth forest continues unbroken above and around the rise, which stretches over 400 feet in length. Even so, from as little as twenty yards away it is nearly invisible. To the family it is known as the Earth Womb, the garden from which new life will flow. There are at least fifty such mounds in the Ouachita alone, and hundreds more scattered throughout this region of the Middle Waters. Inside this particular mound, the darkness is broken by tiny filaments of light sneaking in through hundreds of pencil sized vent holes. The longhouse provides living quarters for over two hundred, along with a curing room, ritual chamber, birthing chamber and nursery. A hot spring directly below the mound provides water, as well as natural heat in the winter. On either side of the curing room are two sets of beams, resembling those used for drying tobacco. The trees for construction of the longhouse, mostly short leaf pine and red oak, had been cut down and dragged from several different locations far from the mound in order to maintain the integrity of the forest. In the oral history of the Choctaw, many are said to have fled to these sites during the forced migrations of 1831, and have been living and reproducing in near total isolation ever since. They are known in Choctaw legend as the shadow people.
As her brothers, sisters and cousins come streaming from the mound, Lyndee gathers them closer and speaks to them in the silent language of the Niukonska:
Once, there were millions of buffalo and no Europeans. Then, there were millions of Europeans and no buffalo. Now, the great circle of life shall turn in upon itself once again.
The fresh bodies are hung in the drying area, joining dozens of others, both animal and human. Lyndee, now known by her tribal name, unpronounceable in any spoken language, is led along with her sisters to the ritual chamber where they are prepared to receive their brothers. As soon as the ritual wrapping is complete and the sacred bowls are placed, the feasting and mating begins, and will continue for many days. By early Spring the nursery is alive with activity. The younglings are born with all of their instincts fully developed, hunting small mammals on their own and mating among themselves within weeks. By Summer they have outgrown the longhouse and expanded their territory, and their diet, far beyond the confines of the Ouachita. The waiting is over.
2:24am, Tuesday, June 12, 2016
Waldron, Arkansas
Mrs. Wilson smells it first and wakes her husband. They look at each other, faces twisted by the stench, before rushing to the back bedroom where they find the children sleeping, safe and sound. Mrs. Wilson stays with the children while Mr. Wilson turns on the hallway light, covers his nose and mouth and walks slowly toward the living room. He imagines finding Santa dead and decomposing in the chimney, giving rise to a nervous laugh just as he catches a glimpse of the first one.
It’s just a reflection, he thinks; something there but not there. Mr. Wilson is transfixed for a moment, cocking his head first one way then the other, squinting and trying to focus when the second one appears. They seem to drift toward him, vague and dreamlike, their steps so light as to be utterly soundless. Despite his terror, and the overwhelming stench, he finds them oddly beautiful.
Mrs. Wilson hears a short scream, then nothing. Stifling her own scream, she reaches for the phone and calls for help. The children stir for a moment then drift mercifully back to sleep.
“Sheriff’s office, this is Dottie.”
Dottie Baker is awakened again and is starting to get angry. Waldron is always dead on week nights, that’s why she took this shift. Now she’s had three calls in twenty minutes.
“Yes ma’am; horrible smell, someone in the house. Now, calm down and tell me your address please.”
Weird noises.
“Ma’am?”
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