Seed of Evil by Greig Beck (smart books to read TXT) 📗

shrug. “But our little town of Eldon never made an appearance until 1882 and is a relative newcomer to the landscape. It’s said that it was the old stories that apparently stopped a lot of people from settling out here.” Samantha turned.

“Stories?” Mitch asked.

“Yes,” she declared, but then, “well, maybe legends is a better word. In those days, superstitions and belief made a huge difference to what people did and didn’t do.”

“What sort of legends?” Mitch asked, intrigued.

“Well, though Eldon is a young town, and Missouri is only just on 400 years old, its history is far, far older.” She half-turned. “Well beyond our history.”

She led him into the back of the museum and switched on some lights. “There were seven ancient tribes in the area of what is now called Missouri: The Chickasaw tribe, the Illini, Ioway, Missouria, the Osage, Otoe, and the Quapaw tribe.”

She stopped before a large case that held what looked like several statues. “And these are some of the mysteries of the area. The history of the Black River area of Missouri goes back to the Paleo-Indians, the ancient peoples of the Americas who were present at the end of the last ice age. They camped and hunted along the Ozark River, perhaps as long as 14,000 years ago.”

“Wow, that is old.” Mitch blew air between his lips. “I never knew.” He craned forward. “And they made these?”

His brows came together as he looked at a group of strange-looking statues upon a raised dais.

“We believe so, but we don’t exactly know how. Or even where the unique material came from.” She briefly turned to him. “It’s petrified wood, but from no tree anyone can identify.” She peered in at the statues. “It’s been dated to around 10,000 BC—that’s 12,000 years old.”

Mitch stared. The statues were intertwined with roots and slightly eroded now, but the detail was still unbelievable. There were several men, women, and even a child. Their fingers and even hair could be picked out. But it was their faces that were the aspect that pinned Mitch’s attention—they wore ghastly expressions of pain or terror. Or perhaps torment.

He recognized them. “You know, I think I’ve seen something like these before. Down near the old Angel Mine, there looked to be very weather-beaten versions of these out front at the mine’s mouth.”

She tilted her head. “Why would you go there?”

“Um, well…” He gave her a lopsided grin. “I don’t know; I was just exploring, I guess.”

“I don’t think it’s safe. My mother…” She stopped. “I’ve never been out there…and never will,” she added. “Might be similar, but I doubt it. Probably just some weird geology that had been sand-blasted, or an old tree stump fashioned by some of our harsh summer gusts.”

“Yeah, maybe.” Mitch looked back at the agonized faces. “Not exactly uplifting images.”

“No, not at all. And the conundrum is that the first American Native Indians who lived around these parts led a Stone Age lifestyle, meaning they only had stone tools and weapons. So, it’s still a mystery how they even worked the stone-like material, or what they were meant to represent with their, um, extreme visages. The one thing all the local tribes had in common was the name of a powerful god: Adotte Sakima—the tree god.”

“Adotte Sakima.” He tested the words as he continued to stare, and the more he did the more unsettled he became by the statues. They were tiny perfections that were beyond anything he’d seen before, especially from an artist that created them so many millennia ago.

One of the men had a slightly balding pate, the woman had an adornment through her earlobe and a small lump like a mole on her lip, and the child’s tiny hand was curled as if it was holding something that might have once been a toy.

Mitch hadn’t seen that level of sculpting complexity even on statues from the ancient Romans, and perhaps only from sculpting masters like Michelangelo.

But the horrifying expressions? He didn’t get it. “What could generate such fear?” he breathed out.

“Men only fear God and the Devil,” she replied softly.

“Maybe the tree god was their devil, huh?” He glanced at her and then back to the statues. “When and where were they discovered?”

“Just after the town was settled,” Samantha replied. “They were found deep below the ground in some limestone caverns. We can only assume the first people must have taken them down there.”

“Why?” he asked.

She shrugged. “No one really knows. But there was one man, a Native American, from the Otoe people—Johnson Nightbird—who was the closest thing we had to an expert and helped us set up the display.”

Mitch straightened. “I’d love to talk to him. Is he still around?”

She bobbed her head. “I don’t even know if he’s still alive, as he must be 80 by now. If he is, he’d be over in Red Rock, Oklahoma.”

Mitch nodded. “Might have to look him up one day.” He checked his watch. And then smiled broadly. “Thank you, Samantha, you’ve been very informative and entertaining; I think I’ve learned a lot.”

His eyes flicked back to the statues.

“See you at the cookout,” she chimed.

He pulled his eyes away. “Hope so.” He headed out the door, glad for the fresh air and sunshine.

Without a doubt, those things unsettled him more than they should have. They say soldiers have an intuition and an inbuilt radar for danger—and for some reason, his radar was flashing right now.

CHAPTER 07

The send-off for Old Ben Wainright was an afternoon cookout at Mayor Keith Melnick’s large house just on the outskirts of town. Mitch was looking forward to the formal goodbye for Ben, but really, his main interest was talking to Karen again—there was something about the spunky vice mayor that turned his head.

He stepped out of the shower, toweled himself down, and then used his fingers to brush his hair. He stood just looking at his reflection for several moments and thought he still looked passable.

He worked out and was in good shape