Forbidden Ground. Karen Harper

years.

      He flopped back on his big bed, fingers linked under his head, and waited until it was pitch-black outside before he opened the curtains again. He couldn’t stand that bare patch of sky where the tree had been, but you might know a full moon was sitting right above the break in the leafy canopy where the branches used to cradle the tree house. More than anything, that tree had been a monument to his deceased parents and the grandfather he had loved.

      Brad had never quite seen it that way, but sometimes Grant thought Brad didn’t have a sentimental bone in his body. Not if he could even mention selling his part of their secret bargain on the black market or anywhere else. It had been only a boyhood oath that had bound the four of them, but they’d cut their fingers and mingled blood, so hadn’t that meant something? Not to Brad, evidently. At least he wasn’t home tonight, probably uptown drinking, or picking up a hottie from the upscale Lake Azure area.

      Suddenly, he had to see the artifact he always thought of as simply the mask to make sure it was safe. He didn’t like to look at it, because it often triggered nightmares of what they’d done, what they’d vowed to hide.

      He got up, stuck his feet in his flip-flops and padded out into the dark house, through the big living room, into the kitchen, where he opened the door to the basement.

      He’d enjoyed remodeling most of the lower space with oak paneling, thinking he’d have kids someday who could play down here in bad weather. But, of course, he’d planned they’d play in the tree house, too, when it was nice outside. Times changed. Circumstances changed, sometimes for the best, but lately for the worst. Brad’s failure had rattled Grant, and he knew Paul Kettering wasn’t really making a living lately, either. Paul’s wife, Nadine, had been pushing him to sell more art, change his “vision,” as Paul always called it, and now that Nadine had medical needs, he was afraid Paul would do something as desperate as Brad might. He’d like to help both of them out, but he was cutting profits close at the mill and had a big staff there to keep employed. And Kate ordering a carving wouldn’t solve Paul’s financial problems.

      He clicked on the basement light and, closing the door behind him at the top of the stairs, in case Brad came back, went down the steps. The basement had a Ping-Pong table, a pool table and a dartboard—all hardly ever used anymore except at the yearly party for employees, which always ended up outside around the fire pit anyway.

      His pulse picked up as he went over to the hutch that held his and Brad’s high-school sports trophies and his college soccer ones. He slid the piece of furniture out of the way. He carefully lifted the five oak panels that he’d left unattached from the wall behind. Taking the flashlight and old ice hook from the cabinet, he knelt and examined the lowest row of cement blocks the panels usually hid. He stuck the ice hook in the crack around three loose blocks and slowly slid them out.

      He put his face to the floor to peer into the niche he’d made there years ago before he went west to the lumber camps. The three-foot square, black metal box was still there, dusty, lonely but for spiders, which skittered away. Grant slid it out and brushed it off.

      The key was in a small magnetic box on the bottom of the furnace, so he felt for that, getting his arm dusty to the elbow. He went back into the game room and turned the key in the lock of the box. Holding his breath as if something would spring at him, he lifted the lid and looked down at the crumpled tissue paper inside.

      It rustled as he unwrapped the mask. It stared up at him with blank eye sockets through which some ancient man—a shaman, as Kate had said—must have gazed. The fierce face was made from some sort of glazed leather studded with thin mica chips that made it glitter in the light. It still had a few of its terrible teeth—probably from some predator like a wolf. And from its skull base—Grant was pretty sure that was human—were attached with stone pins the antlers of a centuries-old, long-dead stag. Reddish-brown coloring of some kind still clung faintly to the bony points, just like the memories of finding it among the crushed skulls clung to him.

      * * *

      “I appreciate your arranging this,” Kate told Grant Sunday afternoon as he drove them in his black pickup truck along the rising, twisting trail to Paul’s home and art studio.

      “Sure. He’ll appreciate the sketch you’ve made of the two masks.”

      “I think they were chieftain or shaman masks. Did I use the word masks before to describe them?”

      “I don’t remember. Your drawing just suggested masks, that’s all.”

      “Those two ancient effigies are key to my thesis and what I’d like carved on a tree trunk for my office or home, when I finally settle down in one spot. The antlered one is Celtic, and, of course, the one you’ve no doubt seen before is the effigy face from the famous Adena pipe found in a mound near Chillicothe. I’d love to link either the Celtic mask to the Adena or vice versa. You’ve seen the Adena pipe figure before?”

      “Right. You know, the only deer-antler information that’s made the news lately has to do with banned deer-antler spray some athletes have been using as a performance-enhancing drug. Pro golfers and football players. Like I said, it’s forbidden, so they can get fined and suspended for using it.”

      “No kidding? I’ll have to remember that. I read a paper recently that the Celts and Druids probably believed there was some magic power in deer antlers. It makes sense they would think so—power in the pointed weapons of a swift, virile animal.”

      But Kate thought that Grant was as good as Tess at shifting subjects. He’d seemed really nervous when he saw her sketch of the Beastmaster, and here they were, talking about American sports.

      “Wow, this is a long way up here,” she observed as they made yet another turn on the narrow, two-lane road with no berms.

      “That’s why we’re in my truck instead of my car. Believe it or not, there’s another back way up the other side of the mountain, too. It isn’t really a mountain but just one of the largest Appalachian foothills. There’s a Boy Scout camp up higher than where the Ketterings live.”

      “Well, when the snow falls or it’s icy, they must just become hermits.”

      He pulled into a gravel parking area before an A-frame building that reminded Kate of a château. “Built with wood from the mill,” Grant said. “Hardwood outside, knotty pine inside. He’s here—that’s his pickup, but Nadine’s four wheel is gone. He said she had to go into Chillicothe for a doctor’s appointment, so she spent last night with her sister who lives there.”

      “Maybe it’s just as well she’s not here,” Kate said as she got out before Grant could come around to open the door for her. “I have a feeling she’s really nervous about his art being able to support them. I’m willing to pay his price and even advertise for him, but nervous people make me nervous in turn.”

      She glanced sideways at Grant’s profile. He didn’t pause or flinch at that. She must be reading too much into his behavior. He was still just shaken by the loss of his special tree.

      Grant led the way up the flagstone path. “He said to come in the side door. Then we’ll go down to his work area. He’s very protective of his shop,” he said.

      “How did he start to carve such unique things?”

      “You’ll have to ask him. I’d say God-given talent inspired by life experiences—a great reader, that guy. Even loved fairy tales, which most boys don’t.”

      Grant rang the bell, then knocked. When he knocked again harder, the door swung open. “He must have left it open for us. Yo! Paul!” he called out. “We’re here!”

      But once inside, they gasped in unison. The kitchen was a mess, drawers pulled out and dumped, cupboards standing open.

      “Something’s wrong,” Grant whispered. “Stay here.”

      But she went right behind him into the living room, which had also been tossed. “Thieves?” she whispered, her heart pounding.

      “Go back