Poisoned Soil: A Supernatural Thriller (17 page)

“Every man for himself!” Hal shouted in the midst of a moonshine-fueled dream of his own that jolted Ozzie awake from his nightmare.

Ozzie jumped up on the porch and looked around, not knowing for a moment where he was. He ran inside the cabin next to Hal, trembling, and crawled under Hal’s bed. Before coming to Hal’s, he had never had nightmares. Now, horrific nightmares came nightly.

Shaking uncontrollably under Hal’s bed, Ozzie peered out the door hoping, praying to not see the men, the coyotes, and the swirling storm that he saw in his nightmares. He thought of his mother, alone, and his father murdered. The feelings tortured him, his love for his mother pulling him back to her, his fear of his enemies keeping him close to Hal. And he thought of Hal, who lived the life that Ozzie wanted. If only Isabella could be with him. But she wasn’t, and Ozzie was scared for her. He closed his eyes tightly and cried himself to sleep.

Chapter 14

As the flowers in her secret garden glistened in the morning dew, Angelica regretted giving into her body’s midnight craving and feeding it pork ribs. She knew that eating pork late at night was associated with bad dreams and poor sleep, but she devoured the ribs anyway, feeling sinfully gluttonous in the moment but unable or unwilling to refrain.
Baby’s hungry
, she had said.

She slept miserably, tossing and turning and unable to stay asleep. It was hard enough sleeping with her belly bulging more each day, and she needed some rest. Morning couldn’t come soon enough for Angelica, as she had hardly been able to wait to come to her secret garden, the one place that always gave her peace and comfort. Now, she gingerly fingered the branches of Nancy’s Tree as she walked to a hammock that joined twin crabapple trees. She sat on the hammock and threw her legs up with more difficulty than the month before. Angelica pushed off, using one of the overhanging branches, causing the hammock to sway.

The garden was hauntingly quiet, the air not breathing, the birds not singing. Her eyes were too heavy to stay awake and contemplate the quiet. She needed rest and the hammock quickly soothed her into a deep sleep and she began to dream.

A drop of rain fell from the heavens and kissed Angelica’s arm. Then another. She smiled at God’s gift of rain and studied the drop curiously. The raindrop was as black as a cave’s deepest secret. She touched the black drop and felt her skin rise, mushrooming into a searing black blister that spread along her arm before bursting and covering her in pus. In the dream, she searched the sky for answers, but instead of seeing God she saw a dark, swirling storm approach from the south. She peered closely at the menacing cloud and saw its shape contort into the shape of Blake’s face. He frowned at Angelica and spewed his black rain over her secret garden. The toxic rain stripped everything it touched as fur, feather, leaves, and flesh melted from trees and drained into the soil.

Suddenly, Angelica found herself floating on a branch high in Nancy’s Tree. As she reached to pick a ripe fig, its sweet scent faded, replaced by a putrid smell of rotten meat that gagged her. The figs began to rot and turn black as they fell from the dying tree with a splattering thud. Angelica tasted blood and wiped her lip to see blood coming out of her mouth. She looked to the ground and watched the blood wash down her legs, over her feet, drip from her toes, and plunge into the soil, as if the soil was pulling the blood from her. Her eyes grew wide with fear as she hugged her abdomen, realizing she was bleeding from between her legs.

“No!” Angelica screamed herself awake in her hammock.

***

Ozzie could hardly wait for sunrise. He crawled out from under Hal’s bed and greeted the cool October air, the early morning sun casting long shadows over Hal’s camp. The light was Ozzie’s friend, a blanket of protection, he felt, from the horror of his dreams. Walking downstream, Ozzie wandered aimlessly in the safety of the light. After walking for an hour he stopped by the stream to think.

A thin fog had risen from the night’s rain to cover the forest floor. Through the fog Ozzie saw a lush clearing at the point where the stream curved. He walked to it through the fog with trepidation and prayed there were no coyotes in the fog! Remembering the coyotes quickened Ozzie’s pace. He ran into the clearing and stopped, able to see well around him.

Ozzie stared at all the trees, the flowers, and the plants. He had lived his whole life where there was little to eat. Now, he stood in the most beautiful place he had ever imagined, and the fog made him feel as if he were dreaming again. He found himself surrounded by food. Plants came from the ground, mushrooms grew on logs and food had fallen from the trees. He looked up at the first fig tree he had ever seen and was entranced. He dropped his head to see a ground littered deep with figs. They were overripe but it didn’t matter. As Ozzie ate, he grinned and squeezed as many sweet figs as he could into his mouth. He lost himself in a trance as he filled his belly with the most delicious fruit he had ever tasted. A fruit that he figured must surely be forbidden.

“No!”

Ozzie snapped out of his trance as he heard a violent scream from a woman. He squinted through the fog to the other side of the garden. A woman shot straight up from a hammock and scared Ozzie back up the stream toward Hal’s camp.

***

Angelica looked over her body and touched her arms to make sure there were no blisters. She felt her abdomen carefully. Realizing it felt precisely how it should, she breathed a sigh of relief and wiped sweat from her forehead. She threw her feet off the hammock, put her head in her hands, and cried. The tears ran like a summer downpour, there was no stopping them. She was horrified.
What did I dream? What does it mean? Is something wrong with my baby?

The thoughts raced through Angelica’s mind as the tears streamed down her cheeks.
Why was Blake there? Why was he creating the suffering?
Angelia closed her eyes and calmed herself as she allowed rational thoughts to overtake irrational tears. She felt her abdomen again and held her breath. She waited. The baby moved, ever so slightly, but she was sure. She exhaled.
He’s fine
, she thought, as she rose to inspect her garden.

Since she had fallen asleep, the fog had descended on the garden, making it feel as if her Garden of Eden was indeed in heaven. She walked along the perimeter of her medicinal herb garden, inspecting the valerian, comfrey, feverfew and the St. John’s wort. She rubbed her legs against her culinary herbs, releasing a bouquet of mint, oregano, rosemary and thyme into the fog to be lifted to the birds, to God. Angelica inspected the echinacea and the poke, the two plants she used most often in the tinctures she made to keep her immune system strong. She hoped that the benefits of nature’s medicines would wash through her Cherokee blood and accrue to her son, although she had suspended taking the poke, due to its toxicity, the minute she found out she was pregnant. Bending slightly, she picked a few medicinal herbs and tucked them beside the crystals in the deerskin pouch that she wore at all times.

She walked to Nancy’s Tree, captivated by the glistening foliage that hung from her branches. Nancy was growing into a beautiful young woman already. Angelica allowed her eyes to drop from the branches to the ground to take in the sea of fallen fruit, fruit that...had been almost completely eaten since she had walked by an hour before! Every single one, dozens of fallen figs, now mostly eaten, devoured.

He had been quiet, sneaky, whoever this fruit thief was. Angelica studied clues on the ground as closely as her Cherokee ancestors had two centuries before when tracking game over the same land. Her eyes focused on a small area of disturbed soil where Ozzie had dug in to race away when Angelica’s scream scared him. She surveyed the spot and saw the prints where her intruder had run off up the stream. She smiled again.
A child of the forest, Nancy!
She thought to herself.
I hope he comes back!

With the soft, morning light filtering through the branches, Angelica started down the trail to her house as she realized she should make coffee and breakfast for Blake. The house was clean, as it almost always was, but she wanted to straighten up a bit before Rose came by later in the morning to drop off the girls. After breakfast with Blake she would come back and sit in the corner of the garden and knit yet
another
baby sweater. The thought of keeping Rose’s girls, of her baby that just kicked, of her new friend in the garden, these happy thoughts of others to care for and nurture lifted Angelica up the trail and washed away her nightmare. She was calm and at peace once again, other than a gnawing feeling below her level of consciousness that she couldn’t put her finger on. Something to do with her baby, with Blake, with death.

Chapter 15

Ozzie ran halfway back to Hal’s, slowing only when he was sure he was away from that screaming woman. Hal had befriended Ozzie, taken care of him, but every other person Ozzie met had chased him. He wanted to get back to the safety of Hal’s camp.

Continuing along the stream, he approached Hal’s cabin. The smell of the morning campfire, coffee, and bacon wafted downstream, telling Ozzie that Hal was up well before he got there. Hal was cooking eggs and venison bacon over the campfire as he saw Ozzie roll into the south end of the camp.

“Top of the morning to you there, Oz!”

Rex crawled under a fallen oak tree to hide from the sun and catch up on some sleep. It was good to be home, Ozzie thought. He wanted to tell Hal all about the figs, about his adventure, but before he could open his mouth he saw something that stopped him cold.

She walked out from behind the cabin and stood there, next to Hal, and stared at Ozzie. She didn’t move. Ozzie didn’t move. “We got a visitor, Oz,” Hal announced. “I reckon you might know her.”

Ozzie didn’t know her, but he had seen her. Once, somewhere. She had wavy hair the color of a gingerbread cookie that trailed off over her shoulders, down her back. Her eyes were loving, carefree, and brown, her long and slender face was dirty, like she had been playing outside. Her nose was a little long, but not as long as Ozzie’s, so who was he to talk about that. Yes, she was beautiful.

Her name was Tammy. Ozzie knew this immediately by looking at the prison tag she wore that spelled her name. “TAMMY,” just as his own tag spelled his name, “OZZIE.” She must have escaped too, have been in a neighboring camp, but he had never seen her. Or had he?

Tammy made the first move, walking around Hal and the fire and up to Ozzie. Ozzie took one step back, stopped. She was a little older than Ozzie and more mature, having not been protected by a mother since her mother had died a long time ago. Tammy lived only with her brothers and sisters at the end of the cul-de-sac, far away from Ozzie. She had only seen him once, on the day he escaped.

“I’m sorry about what they did to your father,” she said, hoping to ease into the relationship with Ozzie.

Ozzie was startled. The mention of his father brought back the memories of what happened, memories the moonshine had been scrubbing away that had become like a long ago dream. Now they came to the forefront again, presented real and true before him. But it wasn’t just the mention of his father that startled him. She spoke to him in the language he understood, that he had learned from his Spanish ancestors. Ozzie hadn’t spoken to anyone, hadn’t understood anyone since his mother told him to run, to flee. He didn’t know how to respond, what to say. Tammy sensed this and dropped her eyes from his, hoping to not intimidate him. Ozzie’s heart was racing with fear, with excitement, with passion. With feelings he had never felt before. He calmed himself the best he could before uttering his first words to her.

“You have red hair.” Ozzie reached out to grab the words he blurted, the foolish words that made no sense.

Tammy smiled. It was perfect. “Why yes, I do, Ozzie,” she said, at ease as if she had not a care in the world. “Thanks for noticing!” Her ease calmed Ozzie and made him feel comfortable.

“Thanks,” he said, “I mean for saying that about my dad. Do you know what happened to them, after I left? To my brother and mother?”

“No. I left just after you did. When you ran away, the men turned the fence off and chased after you. My brothers and sisters screamed when I did it, but I just ran right through the fence out into the woods. It was as if you freed me, Ozzie. I’ve been wandering around on my own all this time now, just finding this place this morning. I followed the smell of the campfire.”

Hal saw Ozzie and Tammy talking quietly, moving closer together, and it made him happy. His life had been hollow and meaningless for years, having no more flavor than a stale rice cake. With Ozzie and now Tammy, there was life here. There was fun, meaning. Community. He didn’t realize how much he wanted...needed the companionship of others. Hal smiled and flipped the eggs as his three hens hunted for bugs.

Tammy walked over to the stream. Ozzie followed and joined her, walking by her side. Tammy walked into the creek, feeling the cool stream rush by her legs. “Don’t you just love it out here?” Tammy asked as she washed her face in the stream. “You can do whatever you want, eat whatever you want, go wherever you want.”

“I suppose so,” Ozzie answered, his indifference surprising him. He did love it out here, only...he loved it at Hal’s.