In the Arms of Stone Angels

chapter six


The Shawano jail was ten times scarier than I had remembered it. Or maybe being back here—like a three-sixty déjà vu—made it worse. The cell stank like piss and the walls were smeared with black. My little box had a dirty stainless steel sink and a toilet that hung on the wall in the open. I’d have to be totally desperate to use it. Another prisoner at the end of the row was snoring real loud, making a gross throaty noise that sounded like he’d stop breathing any second, if I could only be so lucky.

I sat in the dark on my bunk, dressed in an orange jumpsuit that was so big on me that I had to roll up the sleeves and pant legs. And when the bars closed in on me, my sudden claustrophobia was the icing on my pity cake. I felt sick. And from the stares I had gotten from the cops in booking, I must have looked like shit.

Jade and Derek had totally screwed me over—and I’d never seen it coming.

“Yeah, Chloe. Nice party.”

I didn’t want to cry, but I did.

The only good thing about how I’d been found was that Deputy Tate had been the first cop on the scene. He didn’t say much. And he’d been quick to cover me with a blanket, but I couldn’t look him in the eye. After he’d cut me a break at the cemetery on my first night in Shawano, I felt like I’d let him down. And with me riding in the back of his patrol car, in my own little cage, he kept eyeing the rearview mirror. It was hard to miss the worry in his eyes, but he never said anything. Guess that was okay. I didn’t feel like talking anyway.

Jade and Derek and the others were counting on me being humiliated, so I’d keep my mouth shut. And I had to admit that telling the truth would be way worse. I would have been better off making up something less degrading that didn’t make me sound so frickin’ stupid. Everything they’d done had been intended to intimidate me. And it had worked.

Even if I wanted to report what really happened, no one would believe me. I’d look like the whack job that came to town looking for a fight. And I had picked up where I’d left off. A real loser. Not even my own mother would believe me after Jade and Derek lined up witnesses to back any story they wanted. I’d be outnumbered.

“So what else is new?” I mumbled as I wiped tears off my cheeks.

What happened came at me in cruel flashes that I’d never forget. Derek’s buddies hauled me off to a bedroom and poured liquor down my throat until I threw up. And when they stripped off my clothes, I was terrified. I’d never been so scared in my life. I thought they would take turns raping me, but that didn’t happen. Once they saw the razor scars I’d cut into my arms and thighs, that gave Jade an idea. When she came back into the room, she had a razor and asked Derek to hold me down. I screamed and struggled to get free, but I wasn’t strong enough.

Jade cut off my hair. She hacked at it until it was shredded. After she’d done her worst, Derek punched me in the face. I didn’t remember much after that, except the laughter as they paraded me through the party. After that, some guys shoved me into a truck and dumped me in the middle of nowhere—without any clothes—their idea of a joke.

Until tonight, only my mom had ever seen me naked.

I ran my trembling fingers through what was left of my hair and I cried harder. I was so royally screwed. And I had a bad feeling that I hadn’t seen the worst. I shut my eyes and leaned my head against the cinder block wall. The darkness swallowed me whole and I welcomed it. I desperately wanted to turn the clock back, but since I couldn’t do that, I pictured one of the last times I felt safe and at peace.

Thinking about White Bird had become a Band-Aid to my soul.



Being down by the creek was always special, but after the sun went down, that was when magic took over. White Bird felt it, too. I saw it in his dark eyes.

Nightfall was special for both of us.

The moon shed its luster and dappled the swirling creek water with pure glitter. And the sound of the water trickling over stones became music to my ears. I saw the world with different eyes back then. And I felt absolutely everything. The cool night air blew through my hair and the darkness was a welcoming embrace that I’d grown to love.

And White Bird had opened my eyes to all of it.

One memory in particular took shape in my mind. His voice had come to me first, as if he’d whispered in my ear to get me to remember it. It made my ear tickle and I smiled. I should have felt the cut on my lip, but I didn’t.

White Bird had wanted so desperately to belong to the Euchee that he’d listened to the elders of the tribe and read everything he could at the library on his people. But when he discovered how important the language of signs was to them, he devoured anything he could on the subject. He felt a mystical connection to the earth and to the universe and to the tribal ancestors who had come before.

The study of signs had become like a religion to him. And one night he shared his thoughts with me after we’d hiked a trail along the creek and we sat staring up at the full moon. There wasn’t a cloud in the sky and the moon looked huge. And everything was dusted in a powdery blue, including us.

We sat on a large boulder, back-to-back, staring up into the starry heavens. The warmth of his skin came through his shirt and I swear I felt his heart beating in time with mine. And his voice resonated through his chest and into me like an undeniable charge of electricity.

Pure magic.

“The ancient tribes used to read signs in everything,” he told me. “But man became a great skeptic. And science and technology demanded proof. Having faith wasn’t good enough anymore. And reading signs became nothing but superstition.”

I loved listening to him talk. His voice had become a melody I couldn’t shake, but that night he sounded more serious. He wanted me to understand something very important to him.

“But, Brenna, I believe there is only a thin veil that separates the mystical world from the reality we think we see. We only have to open our minds to the possibility. If we accept that dreams can be interpreted for signs to guide us, why would our waking hours be so different?”

“What are you saying?” I asked and turned toward him. “You sound like a fortune cookie.”

He smiled and brushed a strand of hair from my eyes. And when he did, a sprinkle of the moon reflected in his eyes and glistened off his long dark hair. The moon’s bluish haze colored his hair like the sheen on a raven’s wing.

“I’m serious, Brenna. The universe is whispering to us. And we gotta keep our hearts and minds open to hear it.” He touched my cheek. “I feel this connection most when I’m here with you, especially in this place. I want to know if you feel it, too.”

Looking into his eyes, I could believe anything. And I wanted to believe as he believed—as deeply as he felt it—but I wasn’t sure that I had it in me. I didn’t feel smart enough. And why would the universe speak to me? I was just a kid.

Being at the creek with him had made me different. I knew it and felt it in my heart, but how much of that was me being a girl in love?

“Yes. Being here with you, it’s special for me, too.” I hadn’t exactly lied. And my answer made him smile. That was all that mattered to me.

“This may sound weird coming from a kid without a family, but I want…” He struggled to find the right words. “I want you to be part of my tribe, Brenna. There’s a connection between us that I never want to lose. It would mean a lot to me if you’d…think about it.”

It took a moment for what he said to sink in. But once it did, I remembered how I felt. I wanted to cry. He had such a simple way of talking. And nobody had ever touched my heart the way he did. He had no idea how much his simple request had moved me.

Me? He wanted me to be a part of his adopted family. Me, the weird kid who never fit anywhere.

“Think about it? I’d be—” I struggled for my own words “—honored.”

His smile broke my heart. I knew how much family and being connected to another human being meant to him. He wanted to belong. And I knew exactly how he felt.

“I never told you before, but on the day we met, I knew you were coming,” he said. “A raven came to me in a dream and told me. I had been waiting that day…for you.”

I melted when he told me that. I pictured him waiting for me like we were two lovers destined to meet and it made me feel even more special. But later—after I had learned that in Celtic, my name meant “Little Raven”—his words always gave me goose bumps.

White Bird slipped his hand into mine and said, “When my parents died, I was so angry. I got into fights all the time. Guess I was mad that they left me without anyone to take care of me, but I just didn’t understand.”

“Understand what?”

A rumble of thunder sounded in the distance. Something wasn’t right. In my memory of what happened between us that night, I hadn’t remembered a storm coming, but now I heard it distinctly.

A sudden headache gripped me. I didn’t remember that happening, either. My memory of White Bird rolled on in my head. The same yet different. And he pretended not to notice the sound of the storm. That wasn’t like him.

“After someone dies, they become connected to all living things,” he explained. “Because the past merges with the present. Wouldn’t that be amazing if that could happen? Many religions have this concept of the all-knowing soul. Do you believe this is possible?”

I remembered thinking that maybe he was hinting that he knew about dead people, too, but I wanted to hear what he’d say first before I blurted out the weird shit I’d seen. I had been working my way up to telling him about all of it, but a part of me was afraid he’d think I was an idiot.

I felt my headache getting worse as I played my part in the memory, telling him the same thing I did that night. I was straddling a line with one foot in the present and the other…only God knew where.

“Well, yeah. I’d like to think that when I die, that something of me will live on.” Like a strange out-of-body experience, I forced the same grin I had that night. I saw myself doing it. I was there…and yet not. “And I sure would like to be smarter if that happens. Know stuff, you know?”

“Exactly.” He laughed. “But I think if we open our minds to the universe showing us signs, we don’t have to die to awaken that part of our soul. Why wait to get smarter? Why not open our minds to the possibility now?”

He didn’t expect an answer. It was like he was exploring the idea for himself and using me as his sounding board. And he never pressured me to believe what he did. White Bird put his arm around me and kissed me in the moonlight. In my true memory of that night, I had never felt so safe and at peace. I was connected to him, to the stars, to the moon and even to the frog that croaked in the distance.

In that instant, I did believe.

But the menacing thunder reminded me something had changed. Things weren’t as they should have been. And the ache in my head made me grimace in pain. What was happening to me? Now even White Bird felt it. He stared at me in sudden panic.

Something wasn’t right and he felt it, too.

Lightning tore across the night sky over our heads and the distant thunder I had heard before, now rumbled beneath us like the earth was splitting apart. Everything shook like an earthquake. Only this time, it wasn’t just in my imagination. White Bird felt it. Our connection to the universe and to each other ended in a terrifying rush. He yelled something at me that I couldn’t hear. His lips were moving but nothing came out until seconds later.

“Brenna, help me. I need you. Now!” White Bird grabbed my arm and shook me. “Wake up.”

I gasped and stared into his desperate eyes, but the instant I did, his face split in two.

“What’s happening?” he cried out. “No! Don’t let this happen. Not now.”

An intense light emerged from inside him, blinding me. It shot through his eyes, his mouth and through his gaping skull, but he didn’t scream. His body went slack and he dissolved into tiny windblown fragments that swirled and dropped into the shadows as if he’d been only a fleeting thought that I couldn’t quite grasp. The moon had vanished and the sounds of the creek and the forest fizzled away as if none of it had happened.

White Bird’s voice had reached out to me through a cherished memory and made me doubt whether I was awake or asleep—or something far worse.

“Don’t go. Stay with me,” I pleaded to no one. And I reached out and felt nothing.

This time, my eyes opened wide as if it had been for the first time and I felt my heart slamming against my ribs. I sat and glared into total darkness. It took time to see shapes, enough for me to know where I was.

The Shawano jail.

White Bird begging for my help? That wasn’t how I recalled that night by the creek. In a strange twilight—caught between my awareness and a dreamworld—he had called out to me and begged for my help. Had I only dreamed it? Was it one of my nightmares?

Or had the moment been real?

“Oh, my God. What’s happening to me?”

Reality was slipping through my fingers like shifting sand and I didn’t know how to stop it. I ran a hand through my shredded hair and saw the bars of the jail around me. That part of my reality hadn’t been a dream, but the bizarre mix of my actual memories of White Bird and my waking nightmare had been so real that I still felt his touch on my arm.

My skin prickled as if a roach had crawled across my skin. And the hair on my neck shifted like someone had touched me in the dark.

“Where are you? Please…talk to me again. I’m here.” I called out to him and peered through the darkness, half expecting him to step out of the shadows like the dead did when they showed themselves to me, but when that didn’t happen, I was more depressed than I’d ever been.

“I’m losing it. I’m really losing it.”

My guilt could have instigated the whole thing, but why did it feel so real? I couldn’t shake the feeling that I was missing something. And why had I chosen that particular moment in time? At first I thought that memory had been random, but what if it hadn’t been?

What if White Bird was sending me a message…from wherever he was?

And if the past and the present had collided, could I trust those memories? Were they real or cries for help from him? I wanted to believe that I could help him and that he had reached out to me, but maybe that was my guilt talking. And when I thought about my own sanity, schizophrenia could make all of this seem real.

And I wouldn’t know the difference.

Before I got my mind wrapped around that little hellish ambiguity, a loud buzzer blared down the hall and made me jump. The harsh sound of a door opening jolted me into the here and now. And with the steady rhythm of footsteps echoing outside lockup, I knew round two was about to begin. I felt as if I had gotten shoved into the deep end of an icy pool when I wasn’t ready. I hated what my life had become. And there was no end to the torment.

Maybe I didn’t deserve to be happy.

A shadow appeared outside my bars. A man in uniform. And with a jangle of keys, the jailer opened my cell. As much as I’d wished for him to release me, I knew Sheriff Logan wouldn’t make it that easy.

“Sheriff wants to see you.”

Of course he did. Why not?

I gritted my teeth and wished I were anywhere but here. With other prisoners sleeping, the hallway to the holding cells was dark. The only light came from the small wire-meshed window on the door I would walk through. I wanted to stay on this side of the darkness, but that wouldn’t be an option.

I had crossed back into Sheriff Logan’s world. And that man knew how to twist the knife.

Twenty Minutes Later

At the end of his shift, Deputy Will Tate had stayed to finish his report on the 911 call involving sixteen-year-old Brenna Nash. Will was writing his report at his desk while he kept an eye fixed on the locked glass door that led to a small reception area outside booking. That lobby was the public entrance to the sheriff’s office. The girl’s mother would show any minute. And since he’d spoken to the woman on the phone, he wanted to be the one to escort her through the drill of visiting her daughter.

Kate Nash had sounded frantic on the phone. It couldn’t be easy being a single parent, especially after what happened two years ago. He’d only glanced at the Heather Madsen murder book, but he’d spent more time reading the interrogation notes of Brenna and her involvement with the case. After reading the file, Will wasn’t sure what to make of the kid. He had liked the girl he’d met at the cemetery the other night. She’d been respectful with an acceptable dose of sass that made her interesting.

But the sheriff had painted a very different picture of the girl. And the notes in the murder case that had pertained to Brenna had backed up the sheriff’s side of the story. Yet contrary to what Will had seen tonight—the drinking, the fighting and the silent treatment—his gut instinct told him Brenna wasn’t some demon hell-bent on the single-handed ruination of Shawano.

The kid didn’t strike him as a bad seed, but he didn’t know enough about her to argue with the sheriff.

Hearing a commotion from the lobby, Will looked up to see a woman peering through the glass door and calling out to the jailer in booking, “Where’s my daughter? I want to see Brenna Nash. Deputy Tate called me.”

Will was up on his feet and heading toward the glass door before the woman could sink her teeth into the young officer behind the counter. Outside it had started to rain and the woman hadn’t bothered to bring an umbrella or wear a raincoat. Her hair was wet and her clothes were spotted with rain, but she didn’t seem to notice. From the look in her eyes, her only concern was for her daughter.

“Mrs. Nash?” he asked. After she nodded, he introduced himself. “My name is Deputy Will Tate. I was the one who called.”

He ushered her through the locked door and to his desk.

“Can I get you some coffee?” he asked as he pulled out a chair for her to sit. “And I can get you paper towels to dry off, too.”

“No, I just want to see my daughter.” The woman sat and leaned an elbow on his desk, not taking her eyes off him.

“Yes, ma’am. We’ll get to that.”

Wearing jeans and a crimson Oklahoma Sooners T-shirt, Kate Nash was tall and slender with shoulder-length sandy blond hair. Will knew he hadn’t caught her at her best, not so early in the morning after a night of worry over her daughter, and after being doused with rain, as well. But her dark eyes had a way of staring a hole through a man. And he’d bet that the lines around her eyes and mouth tipped the scale toward good humor rather than a nasty disposition. She looked like a strong woman with big problems on her shoulders.

“What happened?” she asked. “Can you tell me anything?”

“We got a 911 call about a girl wandering down Highway 12, near the old Thompson ranch at Booker Road. I was first responder.” He cleared his throat, trying to figure out how to tell her what he’d found. A mother had a right to know.

“When I found her, your daughter didn’t have any clothes on, ma’am. She says she wasn’t raped but she refused to let one of our female officers take a rape kit on her. And her blood alcohol level was above the legal limit. She’d been drinking and she had a pretty good shiner and a cut lip. Someone had beaten her up.”

Will was thankful he’d gotten to the girl before the rain had hit. Being caught in an Oklahoma downpour would have made things much worse for the poor kid.

“Oh, my God.” The woman gasped with a hand over her mouth. Her eyes were already watery and red, like she’d been up half the night crying. “She was supposed to be at a party. I dropped her off at Chloe Seaver’s house. I didn’t know Chloe’s parents weren’t there. I swear I never would have let her go if I had known.” She bit her lower lip. “This can’t be happening.”

“Sheriff Logan is taking her statement now.”

“No, he can’t do that. Not without me being there.” She clenched her jaw and glared at him. “You tell the sheriff that we’re not having a repeat performance of two years ago. If my daughter needs a lawyer, she’s getting one. You tell him that. He’ll know what I’m talking about.”

“You act as if your daughter’s behavior is someone else’s fault,” a voice bellowed from a hallway that led to the jail.

When Will looked up, he saw Sheriff Logan standing across the room and the man didn’t look happy to see Kate Nash.

“You and me are gonna have a talk, Kate. My office. Now.”

The sheriff would have intimidated a lesser woman. And Will had seen plenty of men cower at his overbearing nature. Sheriff Logan acted like a father figure to everyone he met. Being sheriff had put the man in the awkward position of feeling like the moral compass to the community.

But Kate Nash didn’t back down. And she didn’t hesitate to get out of her chair and march down to the sheriff’s office. If Will had the power to reinvent himself as the proverbial “fly on the wall,” now would have been the time to do it. After Brenna’s mother disappeared around the corner, Will got back to his paperwork, but kept one eye on the Sheriff’s office.

Even though it was too early for July 4th, Will had a pretty good notion he’d have a front row seat for the fireworks.