Poisoned Soil: A Supernatural Thriller Read online

  She had no choice in the matter, she had to cope with the loss, but the worst feeling was how incomplete she felt. She had failed to do the one and only thing that nature asked of her: successfully reproduce. That realization, piled atop the remorse and the physical and emotional trauma, was overpowering. And then, Angelica did the hardest thing she’d ever had to do. She went home to have her miscarriage. Alone. She added the feelings of isolation and loneliness to her stew of haunting emotions.

  The doctor had offered her something for the pain that he assured her would come. Something called DI-GESIC. Angelica refused. She didn’t want to hide from the pain. She wanted to feel the pain, to not hide from the suffering.

  She would regret that choice.

  At first it was like a bad period. Just some spotting blood and a few minor chunks of tissue resembling torn bits and pieces of chicken liver. Was that all there was to it? All there was of Nancy? A few chunks of bloody tissue? Angelica didn’t know what she was looking at, what to look for. How large could it be? Hadn’t the doctor said the fetus starts shrinking immediately after death?

  Death. The word slowly reverberated in Angelica’s mind, admonishing her, denying her, haunting her. D-E-A-T-H. She just couldn’t get her mind around the surreal nightmare she was living.

  When she awoke the next day there was no bleeding, a sign that Angelica took that the event was over. She remembered everything about that day and remembered nothing about that day, as if she stood outside a snow globe of misery. She saw herself on the inside, curled up on the sofa, then standing over Nancy’s crib twirling a mobile, singing softly to a baby that wasn’t there. She did all these things, remembered them all, and remembered none.

  The cycle began anew on day three with more bleeding and cramps, stronger than on the first day, but tolerable. The modest pain brought Angelica back to the moment, to the reality of her loss. But there had been no loss yet, she told herself.

  Nancy is still inside me, isn’t she? Maybe the doctor was wrong! Maybe Nancy is fine, just quiet!

  From her deerskin pouch, Angelica removed a small, six-sided divining crystal that her grandmother had taught her to use. She prayed for insight and healing the way her Cherokee ancestors had. The fact that there were no symptoms on day four stoked Angelica’s confidence, giving her false hope.

  On day five, she lamented turning down the painkillers as it felt like (she assumed) she was in labor. She staggered to the medicine cabinet, desperately grabbing for something, anything. She fumbled with the childproof lock on an Ibuprofen bottle and emptied four tablets into her palm, but it was too late for it to help. Angelica fell to the cold hard bathroom floor, and for ninety minutes endured constant pain. No cycle of contraction and relief; only contraction. No one with her to help her, to comfort her, to tell her it would all be all right. She prayed that God was with her, but if he was, why had he allowed this to happen in the first place?

  And suddenly it happened.

  An explosive discharge as Angelica struggled to her feet to get to the toilet, instinct driving her there. With blood dripping out of her, she finally passed the large chunk she had feared. As she did, the pain subsided just enough for her to catch her breath and wipe the sweat from her forehead. She burst into tears, uncontrollable sobbing, needing to see what had just dropped out of her, but afraid to look. If it was Nancy, if she really WAS dead, then it was over. It can’t be over...it can’t be, Angelica had thought. She buried her head in her hands and allowed herself to cry for several moments before doing what she had to do for her daughter. Finally, she rose, turned around and tried to compose herself. Trembling, she overcame the fear and allowed her eyes to drop.

  And there it was. An umbilical cord, clearly visible, wrapped around a thick, translucent sac. Inside the sac was Nancy. Tiny, precious, oh so precious, little Nancy, only an inch long. The doctor had told Angelica it was too early to determine the gender, but Angelica knew. It was a girl, and she had named her after Nancy Ward, one of the most respected of all Cherokee women. Now she would have to bury her, having never spoken to her. Having never kissed her. Having never nursed her.

  Angelica burst out crying again, screaming hysterically and pounding her fists against the wall before sliding down in the corner of the bathroom. She wrapped her arms around her knees and wept loudly for no one to hear, immersed in her suffering.

  At first she had no idea what to do with Nancy’s remains. How could she know? She carefully gathered them, placed them in a Ziploc bag and put them in the freezer until she could sort it out. This had infuriated her husband Blake when he called home from an overnight hauling job to Savannah. One that just couldn’t wait, Angelica thought, leaving me to carry this burden alone.

  She said nothing more to Blake about it. Instead, she simply went to the hollow, empty nursery, sat down in the rocker and began to sew a tiny cloth bag from a yard of printed fabric she had purchased in Clayton. The fabric was intended to become Nancy’s first Easter dress. Instead, Angelica would place Nancy in the bag, bury her and plant a fig tree to remember her. A tree that Angelica would nurture and protect from the grip of winter with a blanket so that it would flourish and have the life that Nancy was denied.

  Family, friends, everyone offered sympathy. They were so sorry for her loss. They said they knew what she must be going through. They really said that! And then everyone said the thing that troubled her most of all. The thing they all are trained to say from the time they begin Sunday school, the thing that she too had believed all her life but in that moment, had begun to doubt.

  “God has a plan.” Or, “God works in mysterious ways.” Those were the two empirical statements that her Baptist brethren would close with, saving them as trump cards in troubling times when no other words could console, explain or comfort. God has a plan. Yep, conversation over. Can’t question that one...God has a plan.

  “What plan?” Angelica recalled screaming at the time. “WHAT PLAN?”

  Angelica was as much a believer as anyone, rarely missing a Sunday in the Sandy Creek Baptist Church off Warwoman Road. She was baptized there when she was a child for goodness sake! Reading the scripture, believing the scripture, consoling others in times of grief, hugging them and whispering comforting thoughts like, “He’s in a better place” or “God has a plan.” Oh, how she regretted saying that now. Did that really comfort anyone? God answers your prayer, gives you the gift of life within you, a baby, a child, and then rescinds the offer once you’ve bonded? Why? So you can pass some ridiculous test that He has for you? Angelica began to stew, partly at the maddening thoughts that ran through her mind, but mainly for allowing herself to remotely question God. At the time of the miscarriage, those emotions threatened to overwhelm her if she gave them the slightest opening. But she was spiritual, a believer in God and, at heart, eternally hopeful. No, she refused to question God’s will.

  Two years had now passed, and she came here to tell Nancy that she was five-months pregnant and that a brother was on the way. Oh God, please let it be true, she prayed silently, as she knelt to work a new raised garden bed she had built a few feet from Nancy’s Tree. Angelica plowed her hands into the rich black soil that she had been nurturing since spring with grass clippings and last winter’s leaf cover. She let the soil sift through her fingers, approving of its tilth as she reached for a bag of bone meal, holding it in her lap so that she could see the label. “Black Rock Organic Bone Meal,” she mouthed softly. One perk from Blake’s work, she thought; free, organic bone meal. Pulling the string, she opened the bag and closed her eyes as she worked it into the soil with her bare hands. She rocked her head from side to side in the gentle breeze, relishing the opportunity to nurture and care for the soil.

  “There we go, Nancy, all done,” Angelica whispered. “I’ll have asparagus planted in here before the end of the September, well before the first frost.” Angelica rose from the raised bed and looked over her secret garden, a place of peace, love, hope and solitude for her, but it was
solitude that she didn’t want. Blake had never even stepped into the garden and wanted no part of it once she told him of her plans for Nancy. He kept his distance from her secret garden and increasingly, from her.

  She didn’t know what he was going through or why, but it was obvious that Blake was changing. Every day he seemed a little more distant, a little angrier. At what, she wasn’t quite sure. They had been married for eight years, and like many marriages, the first year was the best, when Blake was so grateful for the love and support Angelica provided just after his injury and car accident.

  One blessing from the accident, if you could call it that, was that the settlement from the accident helped them to pay cash for their home and to start married life without debt. Blake stayed home recovering from his injuries and unable to work dependably for three years. Once he was able to work, he was forced to find something that didn’t require him to exert himself. Even sitting more than a few hours in one position became excruciating for him so he spent another few years just doing odd jobs. As time went on, he became more anxious about what his identity would be.

  Then, God had shown the way, Angelica believed, when a local winery on Lake Burton with struggling sales asked Blake to use his football ‘name’ to market and deliver their wine to restaurants in Athens, Savannah, and even Atlanta. Blake did have some connections, mainly with restaurant owners in Athens, and figured he could use them to start a small business. He contacted other wineries and farmers in the area and began selling to restaurants for a fifteen percent commission on all sales. The restaurants were happy, as were the wineries and farmers, but Blake wasn’t.

  “Chump change,” he told Angelica. “This ain’t money.”

  “We don’t need much money, ”Angelica told him. “The house and land are paid off, and I can grow and preserve most of the food we need. ”

  “What about money for vacations?” Blake responded. “Health care? Savings? Did you think of that?”

  “We’ll be saving money, sweetie,” Angelica replied softly. “I can make a lot of the other household items we need. Soaps, shampoos, lard, medicines. My grandmother taught me how to do all of that. We can live a simple life and raise a family, the way our Cherokee ancestors did for generations.”

  “Hmm,” Blake snorted. “Yeah, well, look where that got them.”

  Angelica longed for nothing more than her husband and a child to hold and care for, to share her life with. She had dreamed that now she would finally be blessed with the child and that it would bring Blake back to her, but he seemed to want more.

  “We need some real money, Angelica. I ain’t gonna be running through the woods with a spear chasing deer! Maybe we won’t be rich, but we can’t live on nothing neither. And so far that’s what I’m making on these deliveries. Nothing.”

  Blake thought the deliveries were beneath him at first, Angelica recalled, but after the first month that changed. Something inspired him. He became so enthused, even ecstatic. It was right after he began selling to Nick Vegas at The Federal. Angelica thought it must have made Blake feel important selling to such a celebrity. She liked that; she wanted her man to feel important. But lately his enthusiasm had turned into stress. As Angelica watched Blake struggle with his identity, she felt that she had to give him some space. Her father had been a devout Baptist, and Angelica remembered the lessons from the book of Timothy concerning the role of man and woman in the household. Timothy 2:12 said, I do not permit a woman to teach or to exercise authority over a man; rather, she is to remain quiet.

  Angelica knew how to be patient. She could be quiet. She knew that when the baby came, Blake would come back and be the husband she needed. The father that her baby needed. As Angelica stepped away from the raised bed, she felt a tiny kick in her left side, burst a huge smile, and began back down to the trail to the house.

  Chapter 4

  As the shot that killed his father rang through the forest, Ozzie’s first thought was that the truck had backfired. But the truck wasn’t moving or even running, and the men stood over his father who lay motionless on the ground. Paralyzed by fear, his entire body trembled as even his eyes were too afraid to blink. He stared through the dense brush at his father, saying to himself, Get up dad. Get up!

  Ozzie flicked his eyes to Isabella, held captive in a caged area where she was forced to look at Eduardo and watch the men. Being careful not to look in Ozzie’s direction, she fixed her eyes on Felipe, who had been startled awake by the ruckus and stood in his shack. Eduardo’s bloody body lay in the mud between him and Isabella. With Isabella restrained, the men walked cautiously over to Eduardo.

  “Make sure he’s good and dead,” the tallest one, Jesse, said to another young man wearing a Bass Pro Shop camo cap. “You know how them troublemakers in those horror movies always look like they’re dead but they ain’t. So go on now, and make sure!”

  Shane removed his Bass Pro Shop cap and wiped his brow. He returned the cap to his head and walked to Eduardo, leaned in close, and placed the end of the rifle barrel to his back. He shoved the tip into him, poking him in several spots and stopped when he was satisfied that Eduardo wasn’t a horror flick Houdini. Shane tried to hide his sigh of relief as he stepped back.

  “This un’s deader than a deep fried turkey,” Shane pronounced. “Now what?”

  Jesse looked at Isabella, seeing the fear in her eyes, but she was of no concern at the moment. She waited helplessly to see what would happen next, praying that the worst was over. What could be worse than what happened to Eduardo? She wondered.

  “Well,” Jesse said in a language that neither Isabella, Felipe, nor Ozzie could understand, “Let’s just haul his ass out of here.” Shane and the other fellow, Terry, each grabbed two of Eduardo’s limbs and strained to lift him, while Jesse returned Isabella to her quarters at gunpoint before tossing his phone in the truck.

  “Good God, he’s heavy!” Terry said.

  A tumultuous crash from behind startled them. Shane dropped Eduardo’s deadweight against Isabella’s cage, causing Terry to lose his grip. Eduardo’s eyes were still open, his face pressed against the cage inches from Isabella as his body splayed prone in the mud.

  “Shit!” Jesse exclaimed as he turned and saw Felipe barreling at the three of them, his eyes deranged and his intentions clear. Felipe’s momentum slammed his body into Terry and pummeled him into the ground. Wild with uncontrollable rage, Felipe tore into Terry with all he had, looking to inflict pain on his taller adversary. Jesse and Shane, momentarily shell-shocked, stood by dumbfounded. Jesse came to his senses, ran and grabbed a 2x4 leaning against the shack, and slammed Felipe in the head, but not before he had bitten half of Terry’s ear off.

  “OH GOD!” Terry exclaimed, realizing at once that he could only fully hear his scream from one ear. “Jesus Fucking Christ, what happened? What the fuck happened to my ear?”

  Jesse leaned down to look at Terry’s ear. “Holy crap,” he said, as he wiped the blood from Terry’s ear on his jacket sleeve. “Looks like Mike Tyson done got a hold of you!”

  Felipe rolled on the ground, dazed and moaning. Terry moved his bloody hand around the right side of his head and felt his ear in disbelief. “He bit my right ear off. Damn it, kill that sumbitch too!”

  “NO!” Jesse barked. “Blake said what we’re here to do. He wants that big un killed and that’s it. For now.”

  “But he bit my ear off!”

  Jesse thought for a moment. “Well...I s’pose we ought to learn him some manners then.”

  Felipe was helpless and barely on the verge of consciousness as Shane and Jesse rolled him face up. Jesse straddled him and looked at Terry while Shane helped hold Felipe in check. “Hand me your Bowie knife,” Jesse said to Terry.

  Terry had one hand to his ear, covered in blood. Ashamed of how much squealing he had done, he calmed himself enough to hand his knife to Jesse, who took the knife, flipped it upside down and held it in a hammer grip with the steely tip facing down. Without hesitation,
Jesse put the tip of the knife on Felipe’s forehead immediately over his left eye and drew a diagonal slit to the underside of his right eye. Felipe screamed in agony and tried to bolt upright.

  “Hold him,” Jesse commanded to Shane before returning his attention to Felipe. “I ain’t done with you yet, boy.” He then put the knife above the right eye and drew a diagonal slit to the underside of the left eye, forming a gruesome, bloody X right between Felipe’s eyes. Blood spurted out onto Jesse’s hands and blue jacket.

  “Let that be a reminder to you, you black sumbitch. You tussle with any of us again I’ll put a bullet right there,” Jesse said as he touched the tip of the knife to the wound’s intersection between Felipe’s eyes. Felipe panted, his eyes were wide with fear. He was terrified to keep them open but even more afraid to close them. Isabella paced with disbelief inside the cage, not knowing what to do. Eduardo’s dead eyes staring at her from her feet, Felipe beaten, screaming and tortured and poor Oz...

  No! Isabella thought to herself as she saw Ozzie move. Panic had spurred him out of hiding, now standing out in the open fifty yards away, looking straight at the captors. Please Ozzie, PLEASE, don’t move!

  Ozzie looked around and shuffled his feet clumsily the way someone would do with two left feet. He was unsure of what was happening or what he should do. The Monsters, Ozzie thought. They ARE monsters! They’re trying to eat us just like they said they would!

  Isabella shrieked as loud as she could and rammed the cage violently, doing anything to get the men’s attention off of Ozzie. Her maternal force knocked some of the fence clips off and partially dislodged the top of the cage. Jesse got to his feet, grabbed his 2 x 4, walloped the side of the cage, and drove Isabella back. Ozzie couldn’t stand his mother being attacked, so he charged forward ten yards before fear stopped him cold.

  With the shock of the bite subsided somewhat Terry said, “Looks like the little ’un wants some too. I’ll teach him a lesson myself.”