I wonder if she felt
safer inside the thin-walled tent. She reminded me of a confused child with a blanket
over her head, believing it would protect her from the ravages of the dreaded boogeyman.
More than likely, there was nothing inside the cluttered closet or in the
blackness under her bed in her Claiborne apartment. But out here, atop Kill
Devil Hill, the boogeyman was very much real.
Her fellow folklore classmate,
Abby Armitage, was more of a trooper. She sat on the other side of the campfire,
her back against the gritty trunk of a thin pine, and stared into the dancing
flames. She looked very tired, circling the drain towards sleep.
The unexplained
noises and unnerving coyote howls that had upset Corwin so badly had died down
over the past hour. The unknown thing was still out there. Every few minutes, I
would hear its furtive movements in the forbidden woods about a hundred yards
from where we sat. If the women heard these faint, eerie noises, they gave no
sign.
I pulled out my antique
pipe and leather tobacco pouch and prepared another smoke. Armitage perked up
at this, and she watched me intently across the hot flames and rising smoke. I
ignited the wad of pungent tobacco with my faithful Zippo, puffed a few times
and exhaled a great cloud of gray smoke into the night air.
“Did you know that
the Piachi Indians considered tobacco to be a powerful and sacred substance?”
she asked.
The sound of her
elfin female voice seemed too loud amidst the low crackle of the fire. I took
another draw on the stem of my pipe and exhaled smoke into the endless night
sky. “Is that right?”
She nodded. “They
used it in ceremonies, rituals, prayers, peace talks, all kinds of stuff,” she
said. “They used that and many other types of narco-stimulants or psychotropics.
Medicine men thought tobacco was so mind-altering that it helped them bridge
the gap between our world and the eldritch spirit world.”
I clamped my pipe
between my teeth, picked up a thin pine stick and stirred the fire’s coals.
“They may have been on to something,” I said. “Too bad it didn’t stop yellow
fever.”
She smiled, a flash
of white teeth. “They had all sorts of beliefs about tobacco,” she continued.
“Some thought these sacred, shamanistic substances could invoke nature spirits
or that they could appease natural forces by casting tobacco into a fire or
running water. They also thought that it affected their dreams and allowed them
to perform supernatural feats.”
Her words carried
the tone of someone accustomed to the safe interior of a classroom or lecture
hall. No doubt she was a good student who took her esoteric studies seriously.
It was also evident that she was more tough-minded than most women. The enigmatic,
bestial sounds that reduced her friend to blubbering fear had only steeled
Armitage.
I took another deep
draw on my pipe and realized how sleepy I’d gotten, sitting by the fire and
listening to the young woman’s voice. I stood and stretched. Woodsmoke scent lifted
off my clothes and filled my nostrils like so much October brimstone.
I gathered up an
armful of wood and dropped it on the dying fire. The temperature had dropped,
and I gathered my green field jacket around me. When I retook my seat, a glance
across the fire told me that Armitage had fallen asleep in the warmth of the
fire.
Inside my jacket
pocket, my hand fell on my old World War II compass. On a whim, I pulled it out
and flipped open its brass cover. In the light of the fire, I could see the red
needle inside spin slowly in a confused attempt to find magnetic north.
It was around this
time that my eyelids grew disturbingly heavy.
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