Forbidden Ground (16 page)

“I don’t usually watch him climb,” Amber whispered to Kate as the men started winching themselves up separate ropes with the help of ascenders. “At least he’s been doing this for years without a hitch. He says it’s a whole new world up there, but I’ve just never—never needed that. And now with the kids, no way, however sure-footed he is up there. Grant, I didn’t know Brad was such a risk-taker.”

“You’d be surprised, especially lately,” he said, keeping his voice down and his eyes up.

“Besides drinking? You mean Lacey?” Amber asked.

“Yeah, she’s a risk, but he’s welcome to her. You know about that?”

“Saw them uptown together. Todd told me that he was afraid Brad was after his job, but Brad assured him he isn’t, that the two of them kind of made up for bad feelings.”

Kate thought Grant looked relieved.

Amber cried out in a loud voice. “Okay, boys, look at Daddy go!” The two youngest clapped and cheered.

“Just like I drawed you in the tree, Daddy!” Aaron shouted and ran to the tree.

Grant shifted Andy into Amber’s arms and retrieved Aaron. “Let’s just watch Daddy from over here,” he said and tugged the boy away.

“But I can’t see him.”

Todd, then Brad, had disappeared into the foliage of the tree. Between branches, they appeared again, sometimes standing on them, sometimes—with Brad following Todd’s lead—slightly swinging out from the main trunk with their feet on it, then back in again. “Woo-hoo!” Brad’s triumphant cry came down to them.

At least this was something Brad could feel good about, Kate thought. He’d finally got something over his big bro, too—literally—high above them all.

Looking up, she felt almost dizzy. She held her breath. Maybe she’d just let Todd climb a tree above Bright Star’s commune. It didn’t scare her to go underground in small, tight places, but this... She found a new admiration for Brad, despite how she knew Grant was more logical, more like her. After all, there was nothing wrong with caution—up to a point. But when you wanted something so bad, onward you went.

Her neck started to hurt from looking up. Like Amber and Grant, she shifted her position to watch the climbers. They were very high. In that moment she made two decisions. It might be exhilarating, but she was not going to climb a tree, even to spy on Bright Star. She was going to get even closer to Grant. She’d convince him to let her help search for his own big tree, starting with checking on some draft horses up on Shadow Mountain. But meanwhile, she had to find out why he kept putting her off about Mason Mound—and somehow get inside it.

* * *

In a way, watching like this, hearing Brad cheer in exultation, Grant wished he’d climbed with them, but that was Todd’s realm, like art had been Paul’s. He’d encouraged Brad to do this only because he was hoping he’d find some new strength, a sort of victory, to pull him back from too much booze. And yeah, maybe give him something to do besides lust after Todd’s job and Lacey, no matter what Amber had said about him and Todd mending fences. Brad was welcome to Lacey, except Grant didn’t want her around if they got serious. All he needed was Brad being converted to a tree hugger, turning against the family business generations before them had built.

“Changed my mind about trying that,” Kate told him. The wind blew her hair; her cheeks looked flushed. At this moment—most moments—she was so beautiful, so desirable.

“Good,” he told her. “We agree on that, so what’s next?”

She smiled, but it looked forced to him. She’d seemed a bit wary of him today, almost cool.

A shout came from above.

He heard Todd’s voice. “What in the...? Hang on, hang on! No, not to me! Your rope—the branch...”

Branches snapped, cracked. Very high in the tree, limbs and leaves shuddered and shook. Amber screamed. Grant rushed toward the tree as a body bounced off high branches, hurtling downward.

16

A
mber screamed again. Kate threw her arms around her as they both stood transfixed. Grant lunged toward the tree as limbs snapped. Another shout came from above. Brad? He must have fallen.

It seemed an eternity before they saw him—not Brad but Todd—crashing into the branches, clutching at them, bending them. But the last twenty feet were a free fall. Grant ran forward as Todd hit the ground. The two youngest boys started to wail. Kate grabbed them, turned them away while Jason shouted, “Dad! Dad!”

Grant reached Todd first, Amber right behind. He had not fallen headfirst, but sideways.

From above, Brad’s panicked voice called out. “Is he all right?”

No one answered him. “He’s breathing,” Grant said to Amber.

“Oh, dear God, don’t let him die. How could he fall? Not Todd!”

“We don’t dare move him. Kate! Take Amber’s phone and the boys. Go back to the house and call 911 as soon as you get a signal. Tell them we need a chopper. They should land in the grassy field southwest of Pleasant Drive, and I’ll meet them there. Amber. Amber! Give Kate your phone.”

Jason ran forward and wrapped his arms around his mother’s neck where she crouched beside Todd.

“Jason, listen to me,” Grant told the boy. “You have to go with Kate and your brothers to get help for your dad. We’ll stay with him. I’m depending on you.”

Her face streaming tears, looking stunned, Amber thrust her phone at Kate. “Come on, Jason,” Kate cried. “I need your help. Come on, right now.”

Sobbing, the boy let go of his mother and turned toward Kate. “Take Aaron’s hand and try to keep up,” she told him, fighting her own tears. “I’ll carry Andy. We have to get your daddy an airplane to take him to the hospital so they can fix him.”

“Is his legs broke?” Aaron asked.

She scooped up Andy. “The doctors will take care of him.”

Kate stretched her strides, juggling the child and the phone until it stopped searching and took her 911 call. She put Andy down and spoke over his crying. She told the dispatcher what Grant had said, gave Todd’s name and address, explained what had happened, gave them her name and Grant’s. “In the field southwest of their house,” she repeated. “And maybe for a flight to Columbus, not just Chillicothe.”

She collapsed on the grass with the three boys huddled to her, all crying, while she tried to cuddle them and tell them everything would be all right. But would it? She could not believe it was Todd who’d fallen and not Brad. How could it have happened? And now would Brad get what he wanted at the mill if Todd was too badly hurt to return to work—or never did?

* * *

“If you can’t come down safely,” Grant bellowed up at Brad, “just hang on until the volunteer fire department gets here. 911 always sends them, too.”

“But is he going to be okay?”

“He’s unconscious, looks bad, so just hang on.”

“I swear, I don’t know what happened! I don’t like it up here alone.”

Amber hovered over Todd, but Grant kept her from moving him. Who knew what bones could be broken? Grant’s eyes stung with unshed tears. His friend looked crumpled. His legs for sure must be broken, maybe his back, however skillfully he’d managed to turn himself so he didn’t fall headfirst. But he was unconscious and had a huge bruise rising on his forehead. If it wasn’t his imagination, Grant saw Todd move his left foot about an inch from the grotesque position it was in.

Time stretched into eternity. Jace Miller arrived, jogging, his equipment bouncing on his duty belt.

“Got the 911. Saw Kate and the kids on the way in. Can’t believe it,” he said, bending over them, out of breath. “Not Todd from a tree. I’ll have to look at the ropes, his gear. See what happened.”

“Brad was with him,” Grant said. “He’s still up there, so we’ll need help to get him down.”

“At least he can tell us what happened.”

“He says he doesn’t know.”

What he’d been trying to ignore hit Grant hard. Had someone—surely not Brad—tampered with Todd’s gear? He was always so careful. It would take a while to get that harness off him to examine. It would probably go with him to the hospital, where they’d have to cut it off anyway.

While Jace shouted up to Brad, Grant kept his hand on Amber’s shoulder where they knelt next to Todd. She was shaking; tears dropped off her chin onto her clasped hands as she kept murmuring prayers.

The minute they heard the chopper, Grant took off running to bring them in from the field. He saw Kate and the boys huddled halfway to the house. In the midst of his panic and fear, an errant thought hit him—she looked like a mother comforting her kids.

He raced into the field, waving his arms. A huge wash of wind rippled the grass and ripped at his hair and clothes. The helicopter set down. Two medics jumped out with a portable stretcher and a med bag. Before the rotors stopped, they ran with Grant toward Todd’s favorite tree.

* * *

Hours later, still shaken, Kate and Grant slumped at Todd and Amber’s kitchen table. It was dark outside, after nine. Amber’s parents had arrived, put the boys to bed and would stay the night. Kate and Grant had promised to take the three kids for a while tomorrow to allow the grandparents to drive into Columbus, where Todd had been taken to the Ohio State University Hospital. He was alive—for now. That was all they knew until Amber phoned.

Kate clenched her hands in her lap while Grant got up and paced around the kitchen table. Amber was talking so loud, sounded so frenzied, that Kate could hear her. She recalled how Amber had told her she’d be a basket case if anything ever happened to Todd as it had to Paul. Grant’s second close friend to experience tragedy. She prayed Gabe was safe with Tess on their honeymoon.

“Broken ribs...both shoulders...both femurs...” Kate could hear Amber telling Grant. “Spinal cord...not sure but they’re doing MRIs and CT scans before surgery...internal injuries. Grant, I just can’t believe he fell, not Tarzan Todd. Did Brad get down okay?”

“The volunteer fire guys went up partway and talked him down. Can I help you there? Do you want some company to get through the night?”

“It won’t do any good here now. Maybe later. Oh, if you could help my parents with the boys tomorrow, because Mom hasn’t been well, and it takes both of them. They’re going to come here, bring me some things.”

“Listen, you have to take care of yourself so you can take care of Todd while he recovers. And yes, Kate and I already planned to take the boys for a while, no problem.”

“I don’t know how we’ll make it without his salary.”

“That’s the least of your worries. He has company insurance, not only for injuries on the job but off. He’ll get his salary—sick leave, too. Don’t worry.”

“So I guess—I guess Brad can cover for him,” Amber said.

Kate saw Grant’s head jerk, as if he’d been so focused on Todd’s injuries that he hadn’t thought of how Brad would benefit. But Amber was still talking.

“Thank Kate for me. Oh, meant to say, the E.R. doctor said it’s a miracle Todd managed to turn himself in the air. You know, falling that far, it’s almost always headfirst. Thank God his skull didn’t get smashed, too.”

Like Paul’s,
Kate thought. Surely, the two tragedies couldn’t be related.

Grant leaned back against the kitchen counter as his gaze met her wide stare. He must know she could hear because she gasped and covered her mouth with both hands.

But it was Grant, who had been so strong through all this, who collapsed in a chair and looked agonized. He didn’t even say goodbye, and Amber hung up before Kate could take the phone from his trembling hands.

“Like their ghosts are after us,” he whispered to himself, before he jumped up and went into the bathroom down the hall. He closed the door but she could still hear a single, sharp sob.

* * *

It was time, Grant thought, to come clean with Kate, at least about some things. Maybe leveling with her about his grandmother would make her realize she had to back off about the mound. After all, Kate had already been “haunted” by thinking she saw the Beastmaster stalking her. At the least, he could explain what he’d said about ghosts, which he’d put her off about last night. She’d let up, probably because they were both so devastated and exhausted.

He didn’t want her to think he’d meant there was a curse on Paul and Todd, because she’d try to find out why, keep digging at him since he wouldn’t let her dig in the mound. He didn’t believe in ghosts or a curse. A fatal crushed skull and a freak accident that could have meant another crushed skull were catastrophes for sure. But even if some of the corpses they’d taken things from in the tomb had their skulls crushed, it was just a scary coincidence. Besides, wouldn’t such a crazy theory of ghostly revenge mean Brad or he was next? For sure he had to explain some things to Kate—and to himself.

The two of them took the McCollum kids to McDonald’s for Happy Meals, and then he drove them all to the playground on the grounds of the long-deserted Falls County Mental Hospital, which had started life in the 1880s as the Cold Creek Lunatic Asylum. A wealthy businessman who’d been born in Cold Creek had left money in his will for an amazing array of swings, slides and jungle gyms for the disadvantaged children in the area. No way were they going anywhere near the woods today. They all needed open spaces.

“The derelict buildings here give Gabe fits,” he told Kate as they pulled into the playground area. “They have Do Not Enter signs, but some people think the old places are haunted and go ghost hunting. Vandals hang out here. Graffiti’s everywhere. We need another benefactor to restore some of the old buildings for youth retreats or artists’ studios, something. An artists’ retreat was Paul’s idea. And, I hate to bring this up, but Bright Star’s put up a lot of money to buy some of the acreage to expand and further segregate his Hear Ye flock, move them all here.”

“An old mental institution sounds like a great place for him and anyone who trusts him, including my cousin Lee and his wife. I’ll have to find another way to spy on that cult or pry Grace loose to talk to her.”

“Bright Star was turned down at first but made a case, claiming prejudice against religion, so a state-senator friend of mine told me.”

Kate just shook her head, and for once, Grant marveled, she didn’t have anything to say.

They pushed the kids on the swings and watched them come down twisting slides and crawl through wooden tunnels. “Our best hardwoods,” Grant told her. After that the boys wanted to roll down a small hill that was close to the old asylum cemetery. A mound and a cemetery seemed the perfect setup for what he wanted to tell Kate.

Waiting for the right moment, he sat on a bench next to her while little Andy slept with his head in her lap, and his two older brothers ran endlessly up the hill, then rolled down. Again, Grant was struck by how good she was with these kids, how natural. Kate the clever, ever the professional Professor Lockwood, looking like a young wife and mother. Kate, who had assured him just by looking at the hill that it wasn’t an Adena mound.

“You asked about my grandmother the other day,” he said, his eyes on Jason and Aaron. Shades of him with his friends in their very young days, he thought.

“Yes,” she said. They didn’t bother to keep their voices down, since the oldest two were whooping up a storm, and Andy hadn’t budged. “I can see why you don’t know much about her since she died so young.”

Where to start?
“She died here,” he said in a rush.

“Here? What do you mean?”

“Here at the asylum—the mental hospital. Kate, the look you saw in her eyes in that photo in the guest room—she was what we’d call schizophrenic today. She heard and saw things that weren’t there.”

“Poor woman. Like what?”

“Like what she called Indians coming out of the mound to kill her.”

Kate gasped and jerked so hard that Andy stirred. She soothed him. “Delusional about your mound—so close behind her house?”

“Right. The thing was, she had a great-grandmother who was massacred with her family by Indians, the historic ones in these parts. I think that played on her fears.”

“So, Grant, did your grandfather ever enter the mound to assure her there was nothing to be afraid of? And was there?”

That sure as hell wasn’t the path he wanted this revelation to take. “Look, Kate, all I know about this is what I overheard as a kid. Her so-called insanity wasn’t exactly a big topic of family conversation at the dinner table, let alone with friends, but you asked about her earlier, and I wanted you to know.”

“Can you tell me more of what you do know?”

“She was admitted to the asylum in the early 1970s, but the care here didn’t seem to help her. She had electroshock treatment, and it might have made her worse. In 1974, she broke away from a nurse, ran down a third-floor hall and threw herself over the banister, down the staircase to her death. Broken neck...” His voice caught. “Broken skull, too. I guess my grandfather and dad finally got the caretaker to admit that she was screaming that the savages were after her again. That’s about all I know. She just couldn’t shut the mound out of her mind—and that really did her in. She obsessed about it, and that wasn’t healthy for her.”

Kate narrowed her eyes at him. “Why didn’t your grandfather move away with her, away from the mound?”

“He did once, moved in with the Custer family, but it didn’t help, and he didn’t have the ability or money to move her farther away. He needed to stay close to the mill or it would have gone under.”

“So
she
went under. You know, it’s tragic what people used to call insane. Female patients were often committed in the old days for things like postpartum depression or menopause problems—even epilepsy. She isn’t buried here in the cemetery, is she?”

“No. She’s in the Mason family plot with Grandpa and my parents not far from where we buried Paul. But I just want you to know the fact that she was haunted by the mound is another reason I want it left intact, untouched—kind of like, in her memory.”

“I can’t help but wonder if she would have been better off if it was opened and relics or Adena skeletons—if they are there—were taken away.”