Francesca of Lost Nation (21 page)

Chapter 30

A Hint of Old Times

T

he blow-up between Francesca and me only served to prove for the umpteen-millionth time how strong our love for each other was. However, after all that had happened, even we couldn’t heal overnight. We communicated a bit more, and she didn’t waste as much energy avoiding me, but we both still felt uneasy.

Then, a
thunderstorm moved into Lost Nation. You could see the Great Wall of threatening clouds and squiggles of lightning stretching for miles across the horizon.

Francesca adored
thunderstorms.

I was currying
Miss Blossom. She had a habit of rolling her head and snorting in pure pleasure whenever I rubbed a particularly delicious spot on her belly. Babe had climbed up on a stack of canvas bags, and Miss Blossom nuzzled her occasionally while I worked. I couldn’t remember the last time I’d felt so peaceful.

When Francesca stuck her head through the double doors of the barn, she asked the obvious. “Do you hear that delicious rumbling?”

“Yep,” I answered. “It sounds like a big blow. Is there a tornado watch?”

“No and none expected. Just a lovely, lovely thunder and lightning extravaganza! You hungry, child?”

But of course.

Over chicken salad sandwiches crispy with diced celery and apple pieces, Francesca said, “You know, this was supposed to be a summer full of adventure.”

“And?” I asked expectantly.

“Summer isn’t over yet.”

I looked into her face then and saw the glimmer of a twinkle. “What’s up?” I asked.

“I think we should venture out into the gale and try to find the dancing tribe of Lost Nation up on Thunder Ridge.”

“There’s a storm brewing. Besides, we don’t even know where Thunder Ridge is.”

“Where’s your adventurous spirit? This is the
perfect day to do some archaeological sleuthing.”

She was right as rain.

We were careful to take flashlights and slickers, a bag of cookies, a thermos of water, a jug of cider and a rope. Francesca actually considered a shotgun but decided it would probably only get in the way of our exploration. She did pack her pistol, which she tucked in the pocket of her trousers. With Babe on the bench seat of the truck between us, we drove off toward the foothills east of Lost Nation.

It was a gorgeous drive. The day was chiaroscuro, alternating between sunshine and shadow — the clouds billowing closer and then retreating. We followed Thunder Ridge Road south for forty-odd minutes and eventually came to a bend in the pavement with a dirt access forking off to the right.

“I seem to recall this road,” Francesca said, gesturing. “I think Grandpap and I explored it once a long time ago. There was a deserted farmhouse.” She paused and frowned. “No. How could I forget? It was such a tragedy. The little girl died of a burst appendix, and a short while later, the family was burned out of their home. I think it was some type of cooking accident. That’s right. Eisly, Eisner … something like that. They disappeared after that. Hadn’t they been to
Indiana and come back?”

I could feel a tickling sensation at the back of my mind.

Francesca rolled her neck from side to side, loosening the tension that always seemed to hover there these days. “They homesteaded this place, a man and wife and a ten-year-old girl.” She looked at me then. “Well, still game?”

The dash of fear in my stomach felt spooky but fun, like the sensations you get from riding on a tilt-a-whirl or watching a
Dracula movie.

“You bet. This’ll be swell.”

It was a good thing Daddyboys was such a whiz-bang mechanic, because our old truck got quite a bruising on that dirt road. It was little more than a cow path in some places. You could tell where the floods had swept whole sections away.

There were several other forks in the “road,” and we made a series of turns that dead-ended. The storm was still looming in the east, and the soft echo of thunder came in waves. Each time we turned left or right, she reminded me, “You’d best mark down that last turn, Sarah.”

Francesca was organized. It wasn’t something she waved in your face, though. Unless you knew what to look for, you might not even notice it. She didn’t have a neurosis about neatness and iron the sheets or anything. But her soul was on the tidy side, and she was good at planning ahead. For example, she’d insisted we bring along pencil and paper with the rest of our survival gear. I was supposed to use them to draw a rough map so that we could find our way out of the maze of dirt roads we’d be negotiating. She had instructed me to a line and mark the mileage to the first turn. Then, I had to write out which way we went and whether or not we came to a dead end.

When she had first brought this wacky scheme up, I’d shaken my head and said, “I can't do this.” How I had sat and stared at the spiral notebook paper on my lap!

“Don't be ridiculous, child. Your ancestors navigated oceans, scaled mountains and cleared trails out of dense forest to get to
Iowa. I feel confident you’ll be able to help me navigate from Home Farm to Thunder Ridge and back.”

There’s a much longer ancestral speech Francesca could have chosen to make. She could have mentioned raging flash floods, snow drifts seven feet high, hostile natives and unbearable loneliness. When she trotted out the edited version, I took it as a signal that our relationship was truly on the mend.

“Right,” I muttered and bit my lip in concentration.

The terrain changed as the path underneath us began to slope upward. The trees grew closer together, and you could hear the wind hissing through tightly bunched
branches. 

We negotiated another right turn, and the roadbed leveled out.

“I don’t think this is the way,” I ventured, carefully marking “right turn.” I could feel a new tickle of worry in the pit of my stomach.

“There’s a pond around here somewhere,” Francesca said. “At least, there used to be. Keep a lookout on your side.”

We never did come to that pond, but we did stumble across the burned-out shack. It had once been a three-roomer, made of rough-hewn mismatched wood. The foundation had shifted with time, and the blackened south wall, which was all that still stood, aside from the rock chimney, had a definite tilt to it.

There was something about that place that made the skin crawl up the back of my legs. It gave me a feeling of dread mixed with a sense of loss. It may have been because you could see right through the few boards left intact or the way they creaked as they swayed back and forth or the sight of Babe’s hackles rising along her neck — but all of a sudden, I didn’t want to be there.

“Maybe we shouldn’t investigate too closely,” I said hopefully.

Francesca looked hypnotized. She put her hand to her temple as if trying to push some idea forward.

“What is it?” I asked.

“There is something ...” she began.

Now, my neck was tingling.

“ ... something here. No. Someone.”

“Who is it?” I whispered.

Her hand slipped to the place where her throat met her chest. “There’s a flood of painful memories washing over me,” she said, squinting with concentration.

“Do you think there are ghosts?”

That’s when we heard a clicking noise from somewhere behind us. As I whipped my head around, my heart leapt into my throat. But it was only a ground squirrel chattering curses at us from a nearby tree.

Francesca started to laugh. She couldn’t stop laughing, and that made me laugh. Soon, we had a case of the giggles. Our stomachs hurt from so much laughing that all of a sudden I had to pee.

“I have to whiz,” I said between gasps of air.

Francesca reached into the pocket of her windbreaker and fished out a few pieces of tissue. She advised, “Try the Sunoco filling station over there. I hear it’s air-conditioned,” which of course set us off again.

A good spell of howling laughter will go a long way to ease even the most nerve-wracked mood. By the time I was back in the truck and we were on our way, our visit to the burned-out homestead was fading fast.

As for Francesca and me, it felt just like old times.

Chapter 31

The Past Uncovered

I

n the distance, the storm again began inching in our direction. As the wind shifted, that tempest so full of threat and light made its way across the sky, while underneath us, the winding roadway narrowed and inclined ever more steeply.

Babe lay dozing with her head in my lap. Francesca’s fingertips tapped the steering wheel in time to the radio offerings of one of the Dorsey brothers. I could never tell those two bands apart, even as an adult. The melody was softly swinging in that elegant way the big bands had in those years. I began to nod my head in the same rhythm.

After innumerable wrong turns, we finally came to the end of the road. The view was breathtaking, with the expanse of Iowa farmland beneath us washed in misty grayness. To the west, hints of sunshine shone down through the curtain of clouds, as though the hand of God was reaching out from the heavens. There was some odd power in the day.

Francesca’s mood had shifted dramatically. At first, there had been mischief in her eyes … a sliver of wicked curiosity. Now, there was only that same pensive watchfulness I had come to recognize in her behavior of late. Her eyes flickered across the horizon; then, she slowed the truck down and pointed.

“Do you see something there?” she asked.

I noticed a dark space secluded behind a strand of strangled scrub. She parked and set the emergency brake.

Spread out below, the buildings of Lost Nation were already lit against the early gloom. I could just identify Main Street and the grade school.

Babe broke the somber mood by vaulting out of the car and squatting. Then, she stood and waited for the first set of orders.

We walked to the natural opening in the rock wall, which proved to be the mouth of a cave. At that exact moment, the rain started to fall in teasing spurts. The storm was just over our shoulders now, and the thunderclaps grew louder every minute.

Francesca had checked both flashlights’ batteries before leaving the house, and their beams sprang to life at our touch. I was slight enough to wiggle my way through the tightly spaced bushes guarding the entrance and enter the darkness without stopping or stooping. Francesca, at five-foot-seven, had to bend down and wriggle her way inside, squatting like catcher
Yogi Berra.

Francesca observed, “You’d think these bushes were placed here on purpose. They’re like a wall. For keeping someone out? Or keeping someone or something in?”

God, it had never occurred to me before that moment; something might be IN THERE! I stopped dead.

“What is it?” Francesca asked, blowing a spider web out of her face.
I was glad I hadn’t disturbed it ... I hate spiders.

“Do you really think there’s something in here?”

“We’ll never know if we don’t push on.”

She pushed on, and I had no choice but to follow, though my heart was pounding in my ears.

Even with our Eveready battery torches, it took a while for our eyes to adjust. Thankfully, Babe was not in a wandering mood. In fact, she was so close to my side, I could feel her breath through my pant-legs.

When we finally got our bearings, we had arrived in a kind of rounded rock chamber smelling of long-dead-animal bones. I’d smelled some not-so-ancient ones on the farm, and I could tell. In a weird way, the familiarity of that nose-wrinkling odor was comforting.

In the distance, the sound of dripping water echoed so that it was difficult to tell from which direction it came. We made our way down one side of the rock face, which was crusty with mineral deposits and bat droppings.

A possum walked over my grave.

Babe and I followed my grandmother into the deepening gloom relieved only by our two small points of light. We could now barely detect the thunder that churned outside. It sounded like ghostly drums, muted by time.

There was a thick layer of dust over everything. The spider webs were huge, intricate and menacing, glistening obscenely in the light from our lamps. It was a scene straight from a nightmare.

The pathway narrowed gradually until we were both making forward progress on our hands and knees. There was still plenty of room to maneuver, which was comforting, because the mere idea of becoming wedged in that place was terrifying. I was not claustrophobic before that afternoon. But since then, I’ve never entered a room after nightfall or even reached into an unlit closet without experiencing a nanosecond of the unforgettable sensation ... something untoward was closing in on me.

Former baseball pitching great
Satchel Paige once set down a number of rules for living. Among them was this: “Don't look back. Something may be gaining on you.”

“Oh, my God ...” whispered Francesca.

She was crawling directly in front of me. By craning my head to the right, I could see she’d got to an area of the passageway that broadened again. She waved her light around in the darkness in front of her for a moment, then stood upright.

We’d come to a second cavern, this one the size of a high school auditorium. The plink of water drops was much more distinct.

“Aaaagggh!” I screamed.

A figure sprang up to our left. Babe started to howl. Francesca gasped.

“Wait!” she cried, holding my arm firmly.

She passed her light across what looked to be an ancient mural carved into the wall. It was a cave painting — immense, full of savage grace, primitive and luminous.

“Holy cow,” I breathed out.

We carefully made our way around the perimeter of the rock wall until we stood at the center of the drawing. Its majesty was
unimaginable in that dark place. It appeared out of nowhere, like a miracle, totally captivating us.

I turned to Francesca and asked if she had known these images were here.

A muffled thunderclap answered before she did.

“No,” she responded. There was wonder in her voice as she delicately traced her fingertips along the carvings. “I have read every newspaper and magazine article I could get my hands on regarding the history of Lost Nation, and I never
ever heard tell of such a thing.”

The intricate etchings told the story of a victory in heated battle by one tribe over another. The engagement took place over an entire day, and many were lost on both sides. Some of the figures were prostrate with grieving. Some were on horseback in the thick of the
fray. The children from the surviving tribe, it seemed, had been hidden away in this very cave.

The shapes were crude, but there was a power about them, an energy.
 

“It looks like an entire people disappeared from the face of the earth in this battle.”

“Maybe that’s why they call it ‘Lost Nation.’”

Francesca was struck by the idea.

“History says that our forefathers took their anglicized name for this town straight from an Indian term. I wonder ... if this has something to do with Tom Blackfeather’s mythology about this area.”

It was about that time that I noticed something on the cave floor. I trained my light on it, but I still couldn’t make out what it was. I moved closer and squatted. I poked the flashlight around and made a terrible discovery: a pair of trousers, one shirt, two thin blankets. Someone was living in this place.

Suddenly, Babe began to growl. Within the space of a heartbeat, four things happened.

“Francesca! Someone has been here!”

We heard a noise like a footfall. Francesca doused her light at the same moment she put her hand carefully about the dog’s muzzle.

“Ssshh.”

In a second, we were in total blackness, with only the sounds of distant thunder and dripping water for company. Francesca knelt and again blew softly on Babe’s nose.

“Ssshh,” she cautioned, more softly this time.

We heard another footfall. It was louder, unmistakable, thanks to the acoustics of the stone.

I could feel Babe trembling with some terrible emotion. Was it fear? Or loathing?

“I know you two are in there.”

It was a dry, hoarse voice. I had only heard it once before, and I wasn’t about to forget it. It belonged to the Scarecrow.

Francesca placed one finger across my mouth in a plea for silence, something she didn’t have to do twice. I was sure the frightening intruder could hear my heart pounding against my ribs. I placed my hand against my chest in a vain attempt to quiet down the throbbing there.

The Scarecrow’s voice had drifted in to us from somewhere near the mouth of the cave. He hadn’t yet come to the crawlspace. I wondered how familiar he was with the layout.

“You can’t hide from me in there forever,” he menaced. “In a way,” he went on, “having you stumble across my little refuge makes my life a lot easier. You will never leave this place.”

A thousand questions flew through my mind in the space of five seconds. Before I could form any of them, Francesca bent down and whispered gently and slowly into my ear.

In answer, I shook my head firmly, NO.

She gripped my wrist with her fingers and twisted my arm around to my back, pushing my body away from hers in the process. I cupped my hands around Francesca’s ear. “I will not leave you,” I breathed.

It was little more than a sigh.

Her grip grew stronger ... became vise-like. She was hurting me. I bit my lip to keep from crying out.

“You can’t get away from me, you know,” called the raspy voice with maddening reasonableness. “I’ve been watching you. Waiting for you. I never dreamed you’d come to me. You belong to me now.”

We heard a sandpaper cough. Nearer, nearer.

“Since you can connect me to this place ... I’ll have to take some action. I find the idea somewhat intriguing. Perhaps that will be some consolation.”

Nearer, nearer.

Francesca grabbed me by the ears and whirled my head around. She whispered, urgently and oh-so-softly, that I would have to go for help. Then, in an instant, she had Babe’s bandanna off the dog’s neck and tied it loosely around her snout. “No growling. Stay. Stay, girl,” she whispered.

As Francesca inched her way around the edge of the rock wall behind us, she reached into her pocket for her pistol. I heard a soft click as she opened it.

“Damn. No bullets,” she sighed, just audibly.

I stood there for a moment and screwed up my courage. I realized that I was going to have to slip by him somehow. My legs felt like jelly, and I prayed for the strength and courage to do as my grandmother asked.

It was up to me now, whether we lived or died.