The Ghost of Blackfeet Nation Read online

  “Ow,” she muttered beneath her breath.

  She grabbed her phone and climbed to her feet—something that was getting harder and harder to do with each passing year.

  Her hands were covered in dirt and splinters from the old wooden floors. She glanced around to see what could have caused her to trip. There were no cords—the camera ran on a battery. Finding nothing, she went to the bathroom down the hall to wash her hands and to remove the splinters. She was removing the last of them when the bathroom door suddenly slammed shut.

  “Sue?” Ellen called, wondering how her friend could be in the hallway without Ellen having heard the old floorboards creak.

  When Sue didn’t reply, Ellen attempted to open the door, but it wouldn’t budge. She turned the lock on the knob, but it did no good. She pushed the lock the other way and still had no luck. Then Ellen threw her body against the door, to no avail.

  “Sue?” she called again, this time with a hint of panic in her voice. “Sue? Can you hear me?”

  When Sue didn’t reply, Ellen took out her phone with the intent of calling her friend but found she had no cell service.

  “Just great,” she muttered. Then, at the top of her voice, she shrieked, “Sue!”

  She heard her friend call out from below, “What’s wrong?”

  “I’m stuck inside the bathroom! Can you help me, please?”

  “I was hoping to avoid the stairs, Ellen! Did you try the lock?”

  Beneath her breath, Ellen muttered, “Unbelievable.” Aloud she said, “I hadn’t thought of that!”

  “Are you still stuck then?”

  “Sue! I’m locked in. Get up here! Now!”

  “Okay, okay! Hold your horses!”

  Ellen fumed and tapped her foot impatiently while she listened to the sound of the rickety steps beneath Sue’s weight. Ellen glanced in the cracked mirror above the sink and had a shock when she saw Weeping Wall reflected there.

  Finally, the doorknob rattled.

  “See what I mean?” Ellen said. “It’s not locked, but it won’t open.”

  The knob rattled again.

  “Sue, I don’t think that’s doing any good. We may need to call someone. Do you have any cell phone service?”

  The knob rattled again, and this time the door burst open.

  Relieved, Ellen stepped from the hallway only to find it empty.

  “Sue?”

  “I said hold your horses! I’m coming!” Sue called from the first floor.

  The hair on the back of Ellen’s neck stood on end as a chill ran down her spine. She quickly made her way to the stairs and met Sue on the ground-floor landing.

  “Oh, good,” Sue said. “I didn’t need this after all.”

  She held up an old wire coat hanger that she had twisted apart.

  “I thought I’d have to pick the lock, but you got out on your own. How?”

  Ellen could barely breathe as she recounted what had happened.

  “Oh, boy,” Sue said. “We’ve got our work cut out for us, don’t we? Let’s hurry up and make our circle of protection.”

  Ellen found the cannister of salt in her bag and began pouring it in a wide circle around them and the two metal chairs they’d brought into the main room from the kitchen. As with the upstairs, the bulbs in the light fixtures overhead were dead, save for the fluorescent tube in the kitchen, which, together with the moonlight pouring in from the front windows, afforded enough light to see by, though just barely.

  “We should have asked Tom to come,” Ellen said as she poured.

  Sue lit candles at each of the cardinal points along their circle. “Heavens no. He would have spoiled all the fun.”

  “What were we thinking? Two old women alone in an old house full of evil and, apparently, without cell phone service.”

  “Old women? Speak for yourself. And surely Tanya would come out and check on us if we didn’t return to our rooms tonight.”

  Ellen rolled her eyes. “I’m sure. The only one of the three of us who falls asleep before nine PM will notice if we don’t make it back.”

  Sue inspected her phone. “You’re right about having no service. I guess that’s something we should have checked earlier.”

  “You think?”

  “Are you saying we should quit?” Sue asked. “Pack everything back up into the rental and give up?”

  Ellen sighed. “No. We’ve come this far. We may as well keep going.”

  “It’s a good thing I brought along the cherry pie and cinnamon rolls,” Sue said with a laugh. “We can always stress-eat our way through the night.”

  Ellen’s feelings of panic eased up a bit as Sue continued to laugh.

  “We can do this,” Ellen said—more to herself than to Sue.

  “Of course, we can.” Sue sat in one of the two metal chairs, cautiously at first, to make sure it would hold. When it did, she asked, “Ready?”

  Ellen glanced around the room. The bakery boxes and bottled water lay on the floor at Sue’s feet. One of the full-spectrum cameras stood near the front of the house directed at them. There was another in the kitchen and a third in the master bedroom, in addition to the one upstairs. Ellen couldn’t remember if she had turned on the upstairs camera but wasn’t about to leave the circle now.

  “You plugged in the electromagnetic pump?” Ellen asked.

  “Don’t worry,” Sue said. “My phone has died enough times during these investigations to help me to remember to do that.”

  “What about the motion detectors?” Ellen asked.

  “All on and ready to go.”

  Ellen grabbed a handheld EMF detector from the bag near her feet as she sat in the chair opposite Sue with the boxed bakery goods on the floor between them. “What kind of initial readings did you get?”

  “The EMF detector went crazy in just about every room downstairs, especially around that ghastly buffalo fur. But the temperature was consistent, at seventy degrees. Did you get anything upstairs?”

  “No, but that’s okay. Let’s get started.”

  “Oh, spirits of the other,” Sue stopped short—probably remembering what the chief had said about the spirits dwelling in this realm. “Ahem. Oh, spirits, if you can hear me, please know that we come in peace. We’re here to help you to find peace, if we can. Please look for the light of our candles and follow the smells of our baked goods. Draw energy from our electromagnetic pump. If anyone can hear me, please use that energy to give us a sign, like a knock or something.”

  Ellen glanced around the room, not expecting anything to happen, since it usually took a while for the spirits to be coaxed into cooperating. She was utterly shocked when there came, not one, but a flood of knocks all over the house, as if multiple spirits were knocking on every square inch of the walls, ceilings, and floors!

  Sue looked at her with frightened eyes.

  The flames on two of the candles went out.

  Ellen clutched the gris gris bag that hung from a leather strap around her neck and whispered, “What have we gotten ourselves into?”

  With quivering lips and wide eyes, Sue said, “Thank you, spirits. We receive your sign with gratitude. You can stop now.”

  The knocks did not cease.

  “Oh, boy,” Ellen muttered.

  “Dear spirits,” Sue began, over the horrendous and terrifying knocking. “We’d like to talk with you, if you’d allow it. If you are willing to talk with us, please knock once for no and two for yes.”

  The knocking ceased.

  Ellen sighed with relief.

  Sue took a deep breath and repeated, “If you’re willing to talk with us, please knock once for no and two for yes.”

  One loud knock resounded through the abandoned house from somewhere upstairs.

  “That seems pretty clear,” Ellen said. “She, or they, don’t want to talk to us.”

  Sue frowned. “Why don’t we try the Ouija Board? Maybe we’ll have better luck.”

  Ellen’s hands were trembling as she pulled the
board and planchette from the duffle bag at her feet. Then she scooted her chair closer to Sue’s, so that their knees touched, and she lay the board across their knees before setting the plastic planchette on the center of it. She and Sue lightly placed their fingertips on the planchette. Sue’s fingers were trembling, too.

  “Let me try,” Ellen whispered.

  Sue nodded.

  “If anyone is here, and if you wish to communicate with us, please use this board to give us your message.” Ellen moved the planchette around as she said, “To answer yes, move the indicator this way. For no, move it here. You can also use these letters and numbers to spell things out.”

  Without Ellen having to say more, the planchette began to move, apparently of its own accord.

  Quickly, the planchette moved to M-I-N-A-T-S-I-P-O-Y-I-T.

  Then it came to a stop.

  Sue tried to pronounce it. “Minatsipoyit? Is that your name?”

  The indicator flew across the board to S-A-A.

  Ellen looked up at Sue with bent brows, but before she could say anything, the planchette moved again, to the same letters as before: M-I-N-A-T-S-I-P-O-Y-I-T.

  “Let’s assume that’s her—or his—name,” Ellen said. Then she added, “Thank you, Minatsipoyit. Could you please use the planchette to tell us the year of your birth?”

  Once again, the planchette quickly glided over the board, so fast, that both women found it hard to keep their fingertips on it, as it spelled: M-I-N-A-T-S-I-P-O-Y-I-T.

  “This isn’t getting us anywhere,” Sue whispered. “Maybe the spirit can’t speak English.”

  “I have an idea.” Ellen set the Ouija board aside and rummaged through her duffle bag for her sketch pad and pencil. She’d been wanting to try something new ever since the horned owl, or the spirit possessing it, had channeled her to draw the Boulder City Hospital with the X beneath the mesquite trees. Ellen had watched Miss Margaret Myrtle work in a similar way during their investigation in Tulsa.

  “Show me.” Ellen gently traced the pencil back and forth over the paper. She closed her eyes, and, again, she said, “Show me.”

  Ellen tried to open her mind to any spirits wishing to channel her. She softly traced her pencil back and forth across the paper, waiting for someone to take over.

  After a few minutes of silence—save for the soft scratch of her lead on paper—Sue said, “Um, Ellen. You might want to open your eyes.”

  Ellen looked at her sketch pad but was disappointed to find nothing more than a series of horizontal lines.

  She glanced up at Sue, who was holding very still and looking over Ellen’s shoulder.

  Ellen turned her head and gasped. Floating in the air behind her at eye level were two rusty nails, a rock the size of a lemon, a bent spoon, a broken brick, and the wire coat hanger Sue had untwisted earlier.

  “What the heck?” Ellen muttered.

  “While you were drawing, they flew like lightning from different parts of the house toward the back of your head and stopped when they reached the circle of protection.”

  Ellen’s mouth went dry at the realization that something hostile had tried to attack her.

  “What do we do now?” Ellen asked Sue.

  “I can tell you what we don’t do. We don’t leave this circle until help arrives.”

  “What help?” Ellen said. “Tanya won’t come. Not until the morning, anyway, when we don’t show up for breakfast.”

  “I’m not about to leave this circle, Ellen. Are you?”

  Ellen glanced back again at the objects hanging ominously in midair on the outskirts of their circle.

  “We could make a run for it—leave all the equipment and make a beeline for the rental car.”

  “Very funny. You know I can’t run.”

  Ellen climbed to her feet with the intent of persuading Sue to leave, but when the floating objects flew around the circle of protection and tried, once again, to attack her, she sat back down.

  “I suppose we can wait a little while longer, at least until the spirit calms down.”

  Chapter Seven: Lost

  Ellen was startled by the sound of a car door slamming shut. She blinked against the sunlight flooding in through the front windows and discovered she’d fallen asleep on the floor in Talks to Buffalo Lodge between her duffle bag and the boxes of baked goods. The objects that had been floating in the air all night lay strewn on the floor outside the circle of protection. The flames on the last remaining candles had burned out. Sue snored in the metal chair with her chin on her chest.

  “Sue? Ellen?”

  “Tanya?” Ellen shouted. She heard a car driving away. “Tanya? Are you out there?”

  “Yes. It’s me!” Tanya cried. “Are you guys okay?”

  Tanya pushed open the front door, and more of the morning light flooded the room.

  Ellen flinched when the objects that had previously been floating lifted into the air before flying across the room at lightning speed toward Tanya.

  “Run!” Ellen screamed.

  With a shriek, Tanya disappeared from the doorway.

  “What?” Sue shouted as she opened her eyes. “What’s happening?”

  “Tanya?” Ellen shouted. “Are you okay?”

  “What’s going on?” Sue asked again.

  “Tanya came for us, but the ghost attacked her with those same things it hurled at me last night.”

  “Is Tanya alright?”

  “I don’t know. Should we leave the circle and find out?”

  Sue rubbed her eyes. “Well, she could be bleeding to death.”

  “I’ll go,” Ellen offered. “You stay, just in case it’s not safe.”

  “Well, if you insist.”

  Ellen stood up and crept to the edge of their circle of protection. Her heart raced as she prepared to run. She took a deep breath and sprinted as quickly as she could through the front door.

  Once outside, she glanced around for Tanya and found her sitting in the front passenger’s seat of the rental car with her hands over her face. The window beside her was broken. The front left tire had a rusty nail stuck into it.

  Ellen ran across the dirt and patches of tall grass to the car. “Tanya?”

  She lifted her face. “Let’s get the heck out of here. Where’s Sue?”

  “I’ll go get her. You wait here.”

  Ellen sprinted across the yard and through the front door, where an old book smacked her in the head before crashing to the floor.

  “Hurry!” she cried to Sue, ignoring the pain on her forehead.

  Sue scooped up the bakery boxes and bottled water.

  “Leave those!” Ellen said. “Just come on!”

  Without taking Ellen’s advice, Sue carried the boxes and bottles as she floundered from the circle, uttering a low, “Ahhhh,” of terror. Then she scrambled through the door with Ellen.

  Ellen climbed behind the wheel as Sue clamored into the back. But when Ellen pushed the button on the ignition, nothing happened.

  “Why isn’t is starting?” Ellen shouted anxiously.

  “Do you have the key up there?” Sue asked. “It has to be close, or the button won’t work.”

  “Yes, it’s in my pocket.” Ellen dug it out and tried the button again.

  Nothing. She tried again and again and still…nothing.

  “Do you think the ghost drained the battery?” Tanya asked.

  “Oh, God.” Ellen folded her arms over the steering wheel and dropped her head with frustration.

  “I should have asked the shuttle driver to wait,” Tanya said. “He had other passengers to drop off, and I wasn’t thinking.”

  “You couldn’t have known,” Ellen said.

  “Do you have cell service, Tanya?” Sue asked from the back before she guzzled down some water.

  Tanya took out her phone. “No bars.” She tapped at her phone. “No. No service. Damn!”

  “We’re only a couple of miles away from the nearest house,” Ellen said. “Sue, you can wait here, if yo
u want, while Tanya and I go for help.”

  “Why don’t you stay with me, Ellen, and let Tanya go for help?”

  “I don’t want to go by myself,” Tanya said.

  “Well, I don’t want to wait here by myself. You stay with me and let Ellen go.”

  “There’s no way I’m staying here,” Tanya said.

  “Come with us,” Ellen said to Sue.

  Sue pushed her dark bangs from her eyes. “I’ll just slow you down, but I guess there’s little choice.”

  The three set off toward the main road. They each carried a water bottle, and Tanya had her purse. Sue and Ellen had abandoned theirs at the house, but they each had their phones, even if they were dead. Tanya kept checking hers for service.

  The canopy created by the thick trees lining the dirt road blocked much of the sunlight, making it appear later than it really was. Ellen was grateful for the shade and for the cool breeze. In San Antonio, it was probably in the late nineties; but here, it felt like it was sixty degrees.

  “So, what happened last night?” Tanya asked. “Why didn’t you come back to the lodge?”

  Ellen recounted what had happened, with a few interjections from Sue. The two of them huffed and puffed, despite their slow pace. Only Tanya seemed able to breathe properly.

  “Minatsipoyit?’ Tanya repeated, when they’d finished their story. “I wonder what that means.”

  “I suppose we can ask one of the members of the tribe,” Sue said.

  They trudged along in silence. The dirt road seemed to stretch on forever.

  After a while, Ellen said, “Didn’t it seem as if the spirit wanted us out of there?”

  Sue laughed. “That’s an understatement.”

  “Then why drain our car battery?” Ellen asked. “Why not make it easier for us to get away?”

  “Because the ghost is pure evil,” Tanya replied. “Don’t try to use logic to understand pure evil.”