The Backwoods

(II)

Wilfrud and Ethel Hild were the clan’s dowsers. But it wasn’t water they sought; nor did they hold any forked branches for divining rods.

They’d shed their handmade clothes—for nakedness better solicited the spirits of the Earth—and stood now as pale stick figures painted ghostly white by the moon. Wilfrud’s gut looked sucked-in beneath the ribs, Ethel’s breasts losing some plumpness. Divining required a three-day fast, and they’d been divining a lot lately—hence the emaciation. Their eyes looked huge in thin faces—huge in the trance they put upon themselves.

“A minute or two more,” Everd Stanherd intoned from the side. “It takes time for the ashes to reach their blood.”

Wilfrud and Ethel had been dowsers since early childhood, and now, fifty years later, they’d honed their skills—which some would call sorceries—to expertise.

No, no forked branches. Instead they’d slit the belly of a newborn snake, eviscerated it, and then burned its threadlike innards in a brass censer, along with dried coneflower petals, sweetbriar oil, and some fabric from one of the girls’ tops—something well-worn and close to the heart.

The others watched from moonlit trees as Wilfrud and Ethel then ate the ashes out of the censer to begin the trance. Some wore stone pendants about their necks, while others wore lao pouches, and still more wore crude crosses fashioned from animal bones or dried vine cuttings. They all looked on silently in their inexplicable faith.

They walked nude through the woods. The others followed. No one spoke.

A while later, they stopped in a small clearing near , the river and pointed down.

Everd was the sawon, the keeper of the clan’s heritage—and its magic. His voice croaked in the dark, his wife, Marthe, beside him. “Dig here, men. You can see the upturned earth.”

It was obviously a makeshift grave they all surrounded now. The younger men quickly wielded their shovels, routed and emptied the sad mound. Their women watched from the trees, some sobbing. It didn’t take long before the pallid body was hauled out.

Marthe clutched her husband’s arm and burst into tears. The monster didn’t even kill her first, Everd thought, shielding his wife’s eyes. The young girl’s fingers were locked in an upward clench. She’d been trying to unearth herself when she’d finally smothered. A monster, yes, a monster. The wheat bands around both death-white thighs confirmed what she’d been doing. Another one had gone astray, prostituting herself for extra money instead of living by the clean, honest way of the clan. And Cynabelle’s dead. Another one dead. Murdered by that monster.

“At least it’ll stop now.” Wilfrud’s sorrowful words crept through the dark. “Now that you’ve taken care of the soulless bastard.”

“I pray so, my friend.”

They hadn’t found all of the others who’d gone missing over the past few months, and perhaps Chief Sutter was right in his suggestion that they’d simply left town for a chance at a better life. But not all of them. The dowsers had found four others buried like this. The men murdered, and women raped and murdered. Everd would not leave them to graves like this. They’d rebury them on clan land, in earth consecrated by Everd himself.

“I pray so,” he repeated, “but I fear not.”

“I won’t hear it, Everd!” Ethel nearly cried out at the remark. She was coming out of the trance. “Dwayne’s dead now. He hated us, but now he’s dead! There’s no reason for more of us to wind up”—she shivered when she looked at poor Cindy’s body—"like this.”

“We fear there is, dear.” Marthe spoke up in her smoke-light voice. “It’s that Felps man. Everd has foreseen this.”

The sawon nodded. They all paused in a moment of silence as the others lifted Cindy’s body and began to take it back to the property. “He wants this land, so he’s having us killed. People are doing this for him, for money.”

“For what purpose? Miss Judy would never sell the land out from under us.”

“She would if we weren’t here. She would if we all left. If more of us continue to disappear, if more of us are found murdered, then our people will get scared. And they will leave.”

No one argued with that.

“We must tell the constable.”

“That violates our own laws, and he wouldn’t do much to help us anyway. I haven’t even let on to Chief Sutter what I know. I let him believe that I think the missing ones left on their own accord. We take care of our own, Wilfrud; it’s our law, and it has been since longer than we can conceive. We will never go to outsiders. We will always take care of our own.”

At least Wilfrud seemed satisfied with what he said next. “And we can thank heaven and earth that you took care of Dwayne. . . .”