Forsaken - An American Sasquatch Tale (2 page)

“I’m sorry baby, I made a mistake,” Sarah said, “but I promise we’ll be safe if you do everything I tell you.”

Liberty nodded, still muffled by her mother’s hand. Her ear felt damp from the warm breath and she shivered. Sarah held her daughter tighter, rocked her a little and smoothed her hair, which had fallen out of the braids. For a moment Liberty felt like a baby in Sarah’s arms. She surrendered and let herself be comforted.

A shout ended the moment of peace. Liberty glanced up, then looked at her mother, noticing mud streaked down Sarah’s cheeks like war paint. She held her breath, tried her hardest to make herself invisible, and waited motionless. The man called out again. Would they ever give up?

“Ray, you see anything over there?”

“Nah. I’m going back to camp to get the dog. Keep your ears open ‘til I get back.”

“Don’t be stupid. By the time you return they’ll be long gone.”

“Lucy’s a good tracker,” the Ray person said. “She’ll pick ‘em up before they get too far.”

Sarah stared down at her and Liberty didn’t recognize the expression. Her eyes looked fierce, almost feral the way they flicked from Liberty, to the surface, and then back again. For the first time that night, Liberty questioned their safe escape.

The hunters walked as they talked, their voices getting quieter as they left, but the one called Ray said, “You get a gander at the smaller one? What color you think it was?”

They walked out of earshot, but he meant her. Where Sarah was larger and a sable, Liberty’s straight, symmetrically-colored human hair, became a short coat, alternating between stripes and swirls as a Sasquatch. She felt a tickle, a spider or a worm on her toes and on instinct started to kick at the dirt, not even stopping when her heel connected with something hard. Sarah grabbed her by the arms.

“Stop it,” she whispered, a sound as gruff as the hunters. “You want them to find us?”

Liberty couldn’t help it, she hated when stuff crawled on her. A weakness, especially in a home underground—where every creepy element in the world happened to live. Liberty did her best to look apologetic and winced as she rubbed her heel. It throbbed. Inspiration hit. She dug at the floor and discovered what felt like a large stone encased in the soil.

“Look,” she said, started to clear the dirt around it. “Feel here. It’s a rock and I think it’s big enough. You could use it to save us.”

Sarah peered at the half-buried stone and then up at the opening. “There isn’t time. Close your eyes.”

“What? Why?” Liberty asked, even though she already knew. ‘Close your eyes, I’m going to change’ hung unspoken between them. Liberty clung to Sarah’s legs in desperation.

“Shh.” Sarah untangled Liberty’s arms and placed her hands on her cheeks, forced reluctant eyes upward to hers. “Listen to me and shut them right now.”

Liberty shook her head no.

“Do it, or don’t. But I have to go now, before they get back. You’re going to stay here. ”

An unfamiliar urgency filled her mother’s voice, and because Liberty thought it would please her, she did it.

“You stay hidden until your father comes to get you, no exceptions. Understand?”

“I will.” Liberty said. Sarah would go to Proem and would send Liberty’s father back to rescue her. It made sense. He was a hundred times stronger than her mother was.

“And Liberty?”

“Yes?”

“No matter what anyone else says to you, the white auras are real. You can trust them.”

“Uh—” Liberty peeked open an eye and watched her mother start to climb.

“Don’t forget,” Sarah said when she neared the lip.

Liberty squeezed her eyes shut again. The white auras? Everyone knew there was no such thing. But before she had a chance to question it, Sarah had lifted herself out of the pit. Liberty heard leaves crunching and counted Sarah’s steps until she couldn’t detect them anymore.

She decided she’d been tricked. Like the first time she’d gotten hiccups, they’d lingered the whole day until out of the blue her mother told her to think of someone who was talking about her. The words caught her off guard and by the time she’d thought of everyone in the cavern who might indeed be talking about her, the hiccups had vanished. Another diversion.

Liberty opened her eyes. Digging and kicking at the dirt, Liberty tried her hardest to unearth the rock. If the men happened upon her before her father made it back, she hoped to be strong enough to use it to defend herself. She continued to excavate, pausing every few seconds to listen, until the men approach again.

“Ray!” the other one shouted, “It’s over here!”

A crash in the woods, like a tree had fallen in the distance, and then footfalls thundered to the right of the dugout. She maneuvered, trying to get a good angle to see up above. See anything at all. A moment later, pounding steps came from the opposite direction. Had they turned back? A man’s voice hollered out, “Which way did they go? Sam?”

Sam. Now she knew the names of both the men who had caused her mother to leave.

“Left! Left! Off the trail,” Sam answered.

“I’ll head ‘em off this way,” Ray said.

She stood on tiptoes and glimpsed a beam of light as it bobbed and bounced off the spruce. Heard the men’s excited voices as they talked over each other. And the unmistakable sound of gunshots and a brief wail. She dropped down to her knees and in a frenzy, pulled the rock free.

“Whoa! Did you see that? I hit it,” the Sam person called out. “Point your light over here.”

They couldn’t have been more than fifty paces away. How far had her mother gotten? Liberty refused to accept the cry had come from Sarah because she’d gone for help minutes ago. She couldn’t be the ‘it’ they’d hit. Liberty picked the rock up, balanced it in her hands near her small shoulders, and prepared to heave it toward anyone who looked into the pit.

The footsteps stopped. The air was still and the woods grew silent. Liberty waited, finally peered up at the opening, curiosity getting the best of her. “Holy shit, man. Oh man,” Ray said.

Liberty didn’t understand, but the terror in his voice was clear. His fear fed hers. She put the rock down, sat on top of it, and hugged her knees.

“I swear to God, brother, that isn’t what I shot at.”

“How the hell did she get out here?”

She. The word resonated in Liberty’s head.

Sam started to whimper and babble nonsense.

“Knock it off, dumbass. We gotta hold our shit together,” Ray said.

Liberty heard a grunt. It sounded like one of them fell.

“What the hell you do that for?”

Ray ignored Sam’s question. “You drop anything out here?”

After a few seconds, “I don’t think so. Why?”

“You better
know
so, because we’re going back to camp, packing our crap up, and getting out of here. We ain’t coming back because you realized you lost your fucking hat full of hair samples in these woods,” Ray’s voice grew louder.

“So we’re just gonna leave?”

“You wanna stick around, pray or something?”

“I just thought—”

“You think whatever you want. I’m going to the truck.”

Leaves crunched and Sam hollered, “Ray! Wait up, Ray, I’m coming.”

Their voices reached Liberty as they walked, but she didn’t listen. She continued to sway back and forth inside the pit, knowing two things for sure.

One, her mother’s body lay out there in the woods.

Two, she was dead.

* * *

She didn’t know how long she’d lain there, but early dawn hinted the night had passed. When her father finally came, he found her in the shadows of a black cherry tree, curled up on a bed of blood-soaked leaves next to Sarah’s dead, human body. Death had broken the curse. It always did.

He touched Liberty's shoulder, tried to pull a little. Nothing moved her. He let out a deep growl and yanked her arm. She let go, kicking him in the leg on instinct. He turned and raised a fist to her. Unable to communicate in words, it was common for the Sasquatch to lash out physically, but she didn’t care. She flinched, but an image of her mother appeared in her mind, and she didn’t cower an inch.

They stared at one another for a long moment, her pale green eyes into his dark brown, as she willed him to do it. Grief filled her, but frustration had, too. She hated him then. He’d allowed the others to mock his wife. Her mother. Hadn’t protected Sarah against the taunts and ridicule. And now he’d arrived too late and looked no different than when he showed up late for dinner. Liberty met his gaze with indifference, like he’d looked at Sarah. He lowered his hand slowly, not striking her.

Liberty watched as her father, bending down, lifted Sarah up over his shoulder and started off. Her mother looked so small and pale, like a child. Liberty hurried to his side so she could hold Sarah’s hand, maybe offer some comfort to her in a spiritual way.

When they reached the dugout, he lowered Sarah into it and stood still a moment, looking at his wife. Liberty studied his aura, but it remained a guarded dark gray. What did he feel? Was it pity? Relief? She didn’t believe it could be love the way he handled her like a deer carcass. Unable to bring herself to assist in the ceremony, she sat nearby and watched as her father filled in the hole.

With every push of soil Liberty said goodbye to a memory. Push--Sarah’s laugh. The hollow thump of dirt as it landed on the body--gone was the mischief in her mother’s eyes. Another--Sarah’s hands in her hair. All the things Liberty cherished were gone, one excruciating thud at a time.

After
a while
, she imagined when he could no longer see skin, her father stood, gathering bundles of twigs and in the pit they went. Boughs of pine on top of the twigs, and Sarah’s big dreams for her children were gone. As he neared the top he added large rocks, followed by a last layer of soil. In the end, the only thing left for Liberty to add were the lessons Sarah had taught her, and those she wanted to keep. Intertwined so completely within herself, burying one of those would be like gouging out an eye or cutting off a limb.

And self-mutilation would make her unstable.

Once he tamped the ground a few times, satisfied with his work, her father moved to the base of the hemlock tree and stripped the bark in three places. A signal to end the ceremony. Without another glance at his daughter or the grave, he started back toward Proem. She got up to trail behind, but stopped and traced the tree’s fresh wounds. No name. No heart. Just the strikes. The tree, once a symbol of safety, became Sarah Fleming’s grave marker.

* * *

The following weeks and months, Liberty caught snips of the colonists’ conversations. A few were affected by her loss, offered tears and wordless hugs in sympathy. Others relaxed and let down their guard, feeling somehow safer with her gone.

But the majority agreed a mother’s instinct was a distraction. It compromised the skills needed to survive. The poor thing may have been able to bustle more effectively if she hadn’t had her daughter with her.

She stayed until she reached the age of pardon, twenty-one, which her father granted without argument.

And soon she saw the white auras.

Chapter One

Present Day.

The seasons in northern Pennsylvania fluctuated between raging hot and bitter cold, but the cavern in Montgomery Woods stayed comfortable all year long.

Well, comfortable unless you were petite, like Liberty’s sister-in-law, Katie, then your toes turned into tiny snowdrops after walking around on the limestone longer than five minutes.

Liberty handed Katie a pair of fuzzy socks she’d retrieved from her chamber. “These should help.”

Katie took them, and nodded, looking at her with a pair of almond shaped eyes that tipped up at the corners. Liberty had decided long ago they looked feline, though all the cats she’d met were much less aloof. At most, her thanks was the straight pin smile Katie offered.

Fair enough. Katie still hadn’t forgiven her and Liberty still didn’t care.

“Anything else I can get you?”

“No thanks, the socks are enough.”

Liberty grit her teeth, turned away, and crossed the room to sit next to her husband, Nathaniel. They locked eyes. He winked, patting the cushion next to him, pleased with her cordial behavior. She shrugged. It was a small gesture, all things considered.

Gathered in the largest of the five chambers of the cavern, the sitting room, they sat on furniture Nathaniel had constructed from scraps of pressure-treated wood. Liberty thieved as little as possible, so she thanked Mother Nature for the cushions, having been retrieved after a windstorm.

She noticed Adrian had entered their unofficial meeting, and found a seat at her small desk near the doorway. The lanterns in the sitting chamber softly lit the center of the space, but Adrian sat on the edge, in the shadows. She imagined if she lived in a real house, she’d place her desk in a corner. Then he could sit facing it for eternity.

“So, Gabe,” Nathaniel said, hands laced together and elbows propped on his knees like a man without a care in the world, “out with it, already. What’s the big news?”

Katie and her husband, Gabriel, had arrived the previous night with their son, Adrian, in tow. The spontaneous visit unsettled Liberty, and with a sick anticipation gnawing in her stomach, she’d tossed and turned, unable to sleep at all.

“Yes,” Liberty said, hoping for something benign like a baby announcement, though doubtful with Katie as big as a willow branch. “Please share.”

“Well actually, Nathaniel.” Gabriel made it a point to direct his words to her husband. “Cutler sent us with a message for you.”

Liberty stared at the smiling couple, kept a straight face, and didn’t bat an eyelash. Cutler, her sister Patience’s mate, had a message for
Liberty’s.
She could tell this news was fantastic already.

“Cutler?” Nathaniel repeated, not bothering to hide his surprise.

Katie nodded and grabbed Gabriel’s hand, a genuine grin plastered on her face. “Yes, it’s very exciting.”