Blake pretended to be interested, but was already confused. “What’s it for?” he asked.

Angelica smiled. “Oh you’d be surprised what I can use it for,” she said. “Our Cherokee ancestors relied on these for a great many things, but this morning I used it to harness healing energies.”

“Why?” Blake asked. “Heal what, who?” Angelica looked at Blake sternly and placed the palm of her hand against his chest. As she touched his heart she closed her eyes and spoke. “I feel,” she said, “trouble brewing around me, Blake. And I will summon the help I need to repel it and protect the innocent and those I love.” She opened her eyes slowly and pulled her hand from Blake’s chest. Blake stood motionless, as if he had survived a spell.

“Uh...listen,” he said, shaking his head in awe of Angelica, “I have one more thing I have to do to clean up this mess I’ve made. I have to take the farm truck and go now, but I’ll be back for dinner with you and the girls.” He leaned and kissed her on the forehead and began walking down the path. As he did, he turned to see Angelica standing in the middle of the circle, facing south with her arms held wide and her head tilted back. It reminded Blake of a human crucifix.

Hidden in the bushes thirty yards behind Angelica stood Ozzie, who had found his way down to the secret garden for reasons that were beyond him. He stood and watched the man and woman speak in twisted tongues, but the man had gone now and Ozzie began to wander. At the other end of the path Blake got into the F100 to ascend the mountain one last time.

Boom! Pow! Belch!

Ozzie stopped suddenly as he heard the monster cry, every hair on his back standing erect. Without hesitation, he spun around and sprinted in that direction. Blake gave the truck gas and ground the gears as he put it into reverse and took off down the driveway. Ozzie bolted out of the bushes and ran straight past Angelica, chasing his monster down the winding path.

Chapter 29

Ozzie burst onto the front lawn just as Blake turned left from the driveway onto Hale Ridge and began driving up the narrow road. As he heard the sound of the truck climb the road and turn left, Ozzie took a shortcut through the woods to intercept the monster.

Blake disappeared around a curve a half-mile above his driveway just as the sheriff appeared around a curve a quarter mile below his driveway. Lonnie turned into Blake’s drive and parked next to Blake’s 2010 F-150. Lonnie got out and knocked on the door. No answer. He knocked again. When there was no answer he walked around the house, but found no one. He looked at his watch: 11:10 a.m. Lonnie walked to the front door and took out his pen. He wrote the following note and left it pinned in the kitchen door.

“Angelica, please call my office ASAP. Sheriff Lonnie Jacobs.”

He started walking back to his car. A mile up Hale Ridge, Blake turned left on an abandoned logging road. As he did, the old F100 backfired loudly. Ozzie heard the sound from only a quarter mile away and increased his pace, running through thickets with ease.

In Blake’s driveway, Lonnie stopped at his car door as he heard the faint backfire from up the mountain. Normally it would probably not have registered with him, but it sounded like an old farm truck. He thought about the old farm truck he had seen in the Facebook picture less than an hour before. Lonnie got in his car, and instead of turning right on Hale Ridge to return to Clayton, he turned left to climb toward Rabun Bald.

Blake’s F100 moaned and groaned up the bumpy logging road. The left turn that Blake had made decreased the distance between the truck and Ozzie, allowing Ozzie to close rapidly. Blake made a quick right off the logging road onto a makeshift road that was barely visible to him and probably not noticeable to others. He ground the gears and began the final half-mile climb that would take him to a series of paddocks and curing sheds. As he drove along the bumpy road, if he could call it that, he took a moment to contrast it with the beautiful tranquility of the garden path to Eden that Angelica had created at the same time Blake had made this sloppy, sorry path to hell.

Lonnie drove slowly north along Hale Ridge, not sure what he was trolling for. He rode with the window down, but heard only the sound of gravel under his tires. In the woods the F100 spurted and stopped a quarter mile short of its destination. Blake turned the key. The motor whined, but didn’t turn over. He tried again, but he knew the truck was finished. Sort of a fitting end, he figured, for the truck to breath its final breath on the mountainside where all of his own troubles began.

He grabbed his long hunting knife, got out, and began walking the final quarter mile.

Lonnie came around a curve and stopped where an old logging road veered off to the left. He shut off his SUV and listened. He got out and stood, listening closely for any sound. The forest was quiet, not even the rustling of a squirrel or the song of a bird to accompany him. He looked back at his watch and saw that it was 11:22. “Shoot, I’ll barely make it to the high school,” he said to himself. He got in his SUV, used the logging road to turn around and headed back down the mountain, making a mental note to return.

Ozzie bolted across the logging road and onto the other side. He could no longer hear the monster, but he could smell its breath. And he could smell man. But there was something else he could smell. Something faint, but very familiar. He could smell his mother.

***

The woods surrounding Isabella were silent. As Blake approached, she lay there in the mud, not rising for food, water, or shelter. For two days she had stared into the woods but hadn’t seen the woods. She reflected on her life. Eduardo, so strong and vibrant, was with her, as was Felipe and Ozzie, both babies and both from her first and only litter. Felipe was the oldest, born a full four minutes before the younger Ozzie, and Felipe never let him forget it. Now they were all gone and Isabella was left alone, imprisoned. She knew her fate and just wanted it to all be over at that point.

Blake cut the power to the fence for the final time and walked to Isabella’s paddock. She was a big sow. Would have made some great hams, Blake thought, as he took in her prodigious size. He would have preferred to shoot her, but couldn’t risk a loud noise given all the attention surrounding him. She had to be dispatched quietly and then left to die and rot, morphing back into the soil and taking with her the final breaths of Blake’s sins.

With his electric prod in hand, Blake walked behind Isabella, who lay still. He stuck her in the rump, the shock proving too much for Isabella to resist and forcing her to her feet. Still, she gave no resistance. With no difficulty he walked her into the entrance cage and used a half sheet of plywood to push her against the side. She slumped quietly and looked out through the open gate, already seeming as lifeless as a living creature could be. She had no desire to run, flee or live.

Ozzie approached the widening entrance of the cul-de-sac just as Blake slammed the board against his mother. He stopped just long enough to see Blake extract a long, steely knife from his side. The blade reflected the midday sun brightly into Ozzie’s eyes, kindling a series of horrific memories. Memories that had always haunted and paralyzed Ozzie, but now, they fueled his rage. He pawed the ground and grunted a deep, menacing sound. Isabella tensed her body. Her eyes rose as she saw Ozzie, the mirage, charging from thirty yards away.

Blake felt Isabella’s tension and turned to the sound crashing through the brush. His eyes and mouth opened wide, and so terrified was he by Ozzie’s size and speed that the knife slipped from his quivering hands. Isabella, with all the strength a mother can muster, leaned against the plywood and pushed Blake back against the other side of the cage, momentarily pinning him with plywood. Trapped against the inside of the cage, Blake froze at the sight of the gleaming tusks on the wild boar that now blocked his exit. Every hair on Ozzie’s body bristled and stood erect like an enormous cornered porcupine. But he was no porcupine. He was 350 pounds of solid muscle and tusk, deadlier and more menacing than any defensive end that had ever pummeled Blake into the turf.