In the Arms of Stone Angels

chapter eight


Next Morning

I slept in after my late night and Mom did the same. After a pancake breakfast with an ice-cream chaser, my mother focused on my hair. I knew there wouldn’t be much she could do, so I kept my expectations low. She sat me at the kitchen table with a towel draped on my shoulders. After she wet down what was left of my hair, she snipped at the longer strands. I saw blond hairs drop to the floor and I held my breath until I realized she couldn’t exactly screw it up. Anything would be an improvement.

When Mom was done, she took a step back and grinned. If she had a more perverse sense of humor, her smile might have been a bad sign.

“Pretty good, if I do say so myself. I always knew you had beautiful cheekbones. You got ’em from your grandmother.” She tweaked my hair with her fingers and handed me a mirror.

“If this whole real estate thing doesn’t work out, maybe I can open a hair salon.”

“I can’t look.” Visions of Britney still haunted me.

“Trust me, Bren.” She grabbed the mirror from my lap and shoved it in my face.

My jaw dropped when I stared at my reflection. I’d never seen me with short hair before. My eyes looked huge and my neck was long. I had the haircut of a boy, but I looked more like a girl than I ever thought was possible, if you didn’t count the bruises and cut lip. And with the length gone, Mom had added body and thickness to my normally thin hair. It was scrunched like I’d run my fingers through it. And even though Jade hadn’t left me any bangs, Mom had spiked what I had and made the most of it. I looked like a rebellious elf with a serious attitude.

I couldn’t help it. I smiled.

“If I had known you would look this cute with short hair, I would have crept into your bedroom at night with the shears.” Mom grinned as she swept hair off the kitchen floor.

“Okay, now you’re just plain scaring me,” I said. I flashed to shades of Psycho.

“I’m not done. Stay right there.”

After Mom tossed hair into the trash, she raced upstairs. I heard her rummaging through her bedroom and I gave serious thought to finding a suitable hiding place. But in minutes, she was back. And she had a zippered bag filled with cosmetics. “Makeover time.”

I rolled my eyes and raised a hand in objection.

“Oh, no. No, no, no.” I shook my head and stood to leave, but Mom shoved me back down.

“Humor me. You can always wash it off. And covering up those bruises might keep people from asking what happened. I’m sure you’d appreciate that.”

I’d given Mom an inch and she’d stretched it into a country mile. My mother was determined to play dress up. And I was her Barbie.

Two Days Later

After Mom made me look more presentable, so I wouldn’t scare off little kids or stray cats, I kept a low profile and helped her with Grams’s house over the next couple of days. I needed time to heal—both inside and out. The neighbors still spied on us through their miniblinds. And although I’d spotted Derek and his jerk-off buddies parked down the street, they never got any closer.

Except for Mom buying me a new cell phone to replace the one I’d lost at Chloe’s party, nothing really happened. And yet I couldn’t shake the feeling that would change. Those two days felt like the quiet before the storm.

I was edgy, waiting for the next crisis. Despite the fact that things looked quiet on the surface, there was an undeniable twist in my gut. I believed those feelings had a lot to do with White Bird. I quit daydreaming about him and our past together, mostly because I was afraid of triggering something I couldn’t stop.

But at night, he came to me in my dreams.

My nightmares got worse. It would only be a matter of time before I had to do something. The day I had touched White Bird at Red Cliffs had triggered something dark that I didn’t understand. I had no idea if it was inside me or if it came from him. And with each passing day that I ignored what was happening, things got worse.

I really had no choice.

“The yard looks beautiful, Bren. You’ve done a great job, honey.” Wearing a bandanna and apron, Mom took a break from her cleaning and brought me a cold Pepsi. She smiled as she looked over the backyard. “The place was really overgrown, but you’ve made a big difference.”

I was sweaty and had a layer of dirt up my arms, but it felt good to work in Grams’s garden.

“Yeah, but it could use color. Flowers would be nice.”

“Good idea. You feel like making a nursery run with me? We both could use a break.”

It surprised me that Mom wanted to come along to pick out flowers. I thought she’d give me the car keys and let me run the errand alone, but when that didn’t happen, I had to scramble for plan B.

“I don’t know much about flowers. The whole annual/perennial thing confuses me, but I’ll plant whatever you buy. How’s that?”

“Okay. I’ll just change.” She turned to head back into the house.

“Hey, Mom? Would you mind if I went to the library instead? I’d like to check my email. I’m sure Dana has sent me stuff. And maybe I can find some books to read.” I wiped sweat off my forehead. “I’ve got my bike. And the library isn’t far.”

Mom cocked her head with a questioning look on her face as she squinted into the late-afternoon sun, but what parent would turn down a kid for wanting to read? She shrugged her okay and I put away my garden tools and cleaned up, too.

I hadn’t lied about wanting to get to the library, but it had nothing to do with checking my email. Sorry, Dana.

Shawano Public Library

With my bike, it had been easy to ditch Derek in the street. He never saw me leave. I went around the block and checked. The only gratifying thing about me having to ditch him was that I knew he’d be in his car baking in the Oklahoma heat while I was at the library.

When I got to the library, I noticed it hadn’t changed much, except for a new coat of paint in the entry. The computers were in the same location and the help desk was just as I’d remembered it. Mom used to bring me when I was a kid. I loved the smell of books. And finding my own quiet corner to read was one of my favorite things to do.

Today, it wouldn’t be like that. I hadn’t come for fun.

Two years ago, the murder of Heather Madsen had been covered in the local papers for months. It had happened during the summer after our freshman year in high school. The violence had shocked the whole community. It was all anyone talked about. And since I had been part of the sheriff’s investigation, I’d missed the coverage and had been completely in the dark. At the time, that suited me fine. All I wanted to do was curl up and forget it ever happened.

And even though I had no desire to remember that terrible day now, I had to do it for White Bird’s sake. I was the only one who cared what happened to him. It had to start with me. And jogging my memory with newspaper articles at the library was the only way I could do that in secret.

When I first dug through the digital archives of the newspaper, I glanced over my shoulder. I felt someone watching me and I had a hard time shaking the creepy feeling. After a while, I got totally into my search and read every word on Heather’s death and forgot about my hinky vibe.

I found it ironic that, according to the newspaper, I was the only witness to her murder, yet I knew the least about it. I’d blocked the trauma from my memory even though flashes of the horror seeped into my brain when I least expected it. I’d see the color red and always remembered the blood. Or I’d hear a fly and I’d flash to White Bird sitting under the bridge at Cry Baby Creek, mumbling and chanting in a daze. That’s how my mind worked.

The tiniest thing set off a chain reaction of horrible images. Yet I couldn’t replay the mental video of what happened that day from start to finish, no matter how hard I tried. The pieces didn’t fit and I had unaccountable gaps. I only remembered what I’d told Sheriff Logan. I went to that scary old bridge looking for the ghost woman and her dead baby. The urban legend had drawn plenty of kids over the decades. It was a rite of passage in Shawano and everybody had done it at least once. That part of my story hadn’t surprised Sheriff Logan.

The haunted bridge was on my way home after I’d spent the night in the cemetery. I hadn’t told the sheriff how often I made that trek back then. And maybe he sensed I wasn’t telling the truth or hiding something. I wanted it to sound gutsy and cool that I’d gone to that bridge on my own—instead of creepy and serial killerish that I was a regular. That morning, I’d heard White Bird’s voice carrying on the wind in the gray of morning, just before dawn. And I’d raced to find him. The shock of seeing him over Heather’s body stole my breath away. And my heart has never been the same since. Never.

That’s why I had to read everything I could on what happened that day. I had to fill in the gaps so I could understand. I wasn’t sure if any of my research would help White Bird—or me—but I had to do it, even if it made my nightmares worse.

According to the paper, Heather Madsen had been stabbed over a dozen times. And people had speculated that her death had been a crime of passion. That was hard to read. I felt the sting of tears coming and fought it. My head told me White Bird loved me. He wouldn’t have hurt me like that, but there was an insecure voice inside me that was hard to ignore. Heather was pretty. I wasn’t. People envied her, but shunned me like I was diseased. Even with all my self-doubts, I still found it hard to accept White Bird would betray me, especially with someone that shallow.

And to compound my misery, I saw countless photos of Heather, the beautiful. The newspaper used a school photo for her obituary. She looked gorgeously perfect and she smiled real sweet, but the brunette with long dark hair and green eyes was anything but kindhearted. And nasty Jade had stepped into Heather’s shoes for one good reason—they fit.

From the corner of my eye, I glimpsed someone moving between the books and that creepy feeling raised the hair on my neck. When I looked up from the monitor, a familiar pair of green eyes stared at me through a bookshelf. Heather glared back, wicked and smirking. She eased down the aisle with her body masked by books, but her movement wasn’t normal. She looked like she was…floating.

“Oh, God,” I whispered.

I stifled my gasp with a hand. And when an older woman looked up from her book, I shot her a shaky smile until she lost interest. I narrowed my eyes at Heather and wanted her to go away, but her lips curved into an eerie grin. In broad daylight, her cruel expression sent chills scurrying across my skin and I had no idea why she’d come.

One second, she was in the book stacks. And the next, she was standing across from my table, staring down at me, messing with my head. Even though she creeped me out, I did my best to ignore her. Seeing the dead came with a price. I had to get used to their humor.

I had always felt sorry for Heather. And with her being dead, that went double. But I didn’t put her on a pedestal. She wasn’t a nice girl. And being dead hadn’t improved her disposition. Alive, the brunette cheerleader took great pleasure in badgering losers like me. She needed to feel superior. But I knew she had to be really desperate to follow me here.

Heather wouldn’t be caught dead in a library.

I did my best to ignore the dead girl roaming the aisles in silence, but one good thing came of it. No matter how disturbing it was for Heather to stare at me while I read about her brutal killing, I was glad she made the effort to show up.

Seeing her had triggered my faulty memory.

Two Years Ago

A week before Heather died, White Bird had been secretive. I’d show up at his shelter by the creek and he wouldn’t be there. And when he finally showed, he never told me where he’d been. It wasn’t like him to keep things from me. And his reluctance to talk about it hurt me even more. I thought he didn’t want to see me anymore and maybe he was letting me down easy by avoiding me. Anytime something bad happened to me, I always assumed it was my fault. That’s how my brain was wired—then and now—but White Bird didn’t know that.

And I didn’t exactly come right out and tell him, either.

I took the easy way out. I asked him why he wasn’t coming to the creek anymore. I was hoping his answer would be simple, but I knew when he gazed at me with a sad look in his eyes that wouldn’t be the case.

“I won’t lie to you, so please…don’t ask me again,” he had said. “Just give me space, okay?”

I wouldn’t let it go. I couldn’t. He meant too much to me. We argued and I said terrible things. After that, I spent more time in the cemetery at night and avoided the creek. All the good memories we had together were spoiled. I felt lost and I spent hours thinking over what I had done to ruin it.

After I had confronted him, he stopped showing up at his shelter. I had made him a peace offering—a special friendship bracelet that I had woven for him out of embroidery thread and beads—but when I went to the creek to find him, he wasn’t there. I hung it on a branch near his fort and left.

And I never saw him again—not until that day.

That’s why I ran to him when I heard his voice. I couldn’t believe my ears. I thought I was dreaming. I ran along the dry creek bed, tearing through the brush to see him…and talk to him…and touch him.

But that never happened.

I was the only one who had seen him there. A part of me still wanted to run to him, but something held me back. Something terrifying. White Bird was ranting like a madman. He wasn’t the gentle boy I knew who had healed a bird with a broken wing. He wasn’t the boy who wanted a family badly enough that he had asked me to be part of his tribe. I saw a man that day, covered in blood and holding a knife in his hand.

And the smell of blood and the never-ending buzz of those damned flies hit me like a sledgehammer, but that wasn’t nearly as bad as seeing Heather staring at me with her dead eyes. Her mouth was gaped open and fear had frozen on her face like a death mask. Seeing her like that, I had to do something.

I reached for my phone and made the call that would change my life. Heather wouldn’t be the only victim that day.

Shawano Public Library

It took me a long while to recover from that dark flash of memory, triggered by Heather and all the news articles I had read. Cold sweats had given me a chill. And I hadn’t realized that I’d been crying. I wiped the tears off my cheeks and looked for Heather. I really wanted to see her, like even seeing her dead would make that horror go away.

But she was gone. And that left me feeling hollow inside.

I had never considered her a friend, but no one deserved to die like that. I took a deep breath to clear my head. And to get out of the dumps, I kept reading and found a strange article published almost a month after Heather’s death. It grabbed my attention even though it was on the back page—because it showed White Bird’s booking photo.

I stared at that photo for a long time, looking for any hint of the boy I knew. His eyes were half-shut. And with his messed-up long hair, he looked like a drugged-out homeless guy. If I didn’t know better, I would’ve sworn the photo wasn’t of my friend.

And yet it was.

In the article, a reporter had written a short piece on a local theft that had been linked to White Bird. Joe “Spirit Walker” Sunne was a Shaman and Euchee tribal elder. He claimed that he’d been robbed a week before the murder. His burglary report would barely hit the papers on a slow news day, but after the police ran fingerprints taken from the scene, a hit came back on White Bird. According to the paper, the police had solid proof that he had stolen tools from Sunne.

I got angry when I read this. White Bird stealing? That made no sense. But the weirdest part was that I could reject the idea that he could steal, yet when it came to killing Heather, I had serious doubts about his innocence. I couldn’t get past seeing him over her body and holding that knife. The gory image had horrified me. It still did. It had branded my psyche. And I couldn’t shake that sight, not enough to keep an open mind.

What kind of a friend was I?

I scribbled Sunne’s name in my spiral notebook. And I looked him up in the online White Pages and printed off directions on how to find him. It couldn’t have been a coincidence that Joe Sunne was a revered member of the Euchee tribe. White Bird wouldn’t have stolen from the man unless it had been for a very good reason—or a very big misunderstanding.

And I had to know which.

I had a hunch that talking to the man face-to-face was the next step I’d come to the library to find. I had to piece together a puzzle that had been a long time in the making and resurfaced on the day I touched White Bird at the hospital. Those days that White Bird had kept secret from me—the week before Heather was killed—were a good place to start.

Next Afternoon

I hadn’t seen Derek all day. Even though I had no idea what it meant for him to be missing in action, I hoped that he’d gotten bored with watching me over the past several days with nothing happening. He could have learned not to be so obvious or gotten smarter about keeping an eye on me, but that idea made me laugh. Using the words learned and smarter to describe Derek sounded like a ridiculous waste of my valuable worry time.

Still, I had to admit that not knowing where he was made me tense. I thought about telling Mom about him stalking me, but that would only stir things up with the sheriff. And I liked the peace and quiet. I needed it.

With Mom keeping me real busy, that helped get my mind off my stalker. She had painters coming the next day and had me clearing space for them to work. We moved furniture away from the walls and covered things with sheets to protect the important stuff from paint splatter.

But the hardest thing we had to do didn’t require muscle.

By late afternoon, Mom was clearing the last boxes of my grandmother’s clothes. By the end of the week, not much of Grams would remain. And with everything I had on my mind, I made room for more sorrow in my heart. The pain of losing my grandmother gripped me hard.

When Mom told me what she had planned, I helped her get everything done even though I hated it. I got real quiet. I knew the day would come when closets had to be cleaned and clutter had to be tossed, but boxing up a lifetime of memories was hard to do.

And until today, I’d been so wrapped up in myself that I’d forgotten how hard this would be on Mom, finally saying goodbye to her mother. I found her alone in my grandmother’s bedroom sitting on the bed. And from the reflection in the mirror, I saw she was crying as she looked into a box. I turned to leave and creaked down the hall. Being really sad wasn’t exactly a team sport, but Mom heard me.

“Brenna, you got a minute?”

“Yeah, I was just…” I came back to the bedroom and sat next to her. “What’s up?”

“I saved some things for you. If you don’t want them, let me know.”

Mom had set aside the best stuff for me. I had my own box and everything. My grandmother’s costume jewelry was in a shiny onyx jewelry case that opened into tiered velvet drawers. And every piece I picked up reminded me of playing dress up with Grams on rainy Sunday afternoons or stolen hours when she had spent time with only me.

“And I picked out her funkiest clothes. You can sew them into something new, with your special touch. I think Grams would love that.” Mom ran a hand through my short hair. “I’m sure of it.”

Grams had been into real drama when she was younger. And her taste in clothes showed it. She had great hats, stylish vintage evening jackets, and belts and scarves that looked glittery and magical. Of all the things Mom could have given me to lift my spirits, I wouldn’t have asked for anything better. She’d boxed up the best of Grams—and she’d given it all to me.

“I don’t know what to say.” I felt my eyes water as I stared into the box. “Thanks, Mom.”

She kissed me on the forehead and smiled.

“I’ll help you load the boxes for Goodwill. You mind dropping them off? I’ll get you the address.” Mom got her purse and handed me the car keys. “And if you feel like it, you want to pick up a pizza?”

“Yeah, sure.” I nodded.

I’d have my freedom and Mom’s car again. Although that should have made me happy, it didn’t. Sneaking behind her back to see the Euchee Shaman felt wrong, especially after what she’d done for me today, but I really had to do it.

I was scared to face a man who could shed light on White Bird’s secrets. My friend had been up to something that he couldn’t tell me and he’d needed tools to do it. And by week’s end, he would be charged with a vicious murder. I had to know what he had been up to.

Yet even though Joe Sunne might have answers for me, I wasn’t sure they’d be something I’d want to hear.

Outskirts of Shawano

After I dropped off the boxes of Grams’s life at Goodwill, I checked out the internet directions to the home of Joe Sunne. I figured pizza could wait. Even though I liked it best cold, Mom didn’t. I could pick it up on my way home. When I got to the address I had listed for Joe Sunne, I couldn’t drive up to the place. I don’t know what I expected to find—maybe more suburbia like Grams’s hood—but the man didn’t live in an old Victorian with neighbors close by.

He lived on the fringes of town where the houses were more like ranches with barbed wire instead of cyclone fences and dirt roads replaced asphalt. I saw a house hidden by trees in the distance, but I wanted to be sure. House numbers weren’t exactly posted on imaginary curbs.

Here I stood out, me and my little Subaru. I’d have no place to hide once I drove onto the man’s land. I clutched the steering wheel tight as I sat parked on the road outside his property.

“Oh, White Bird. How did you find this guy?” I muttered. “And what kind of stuff were you into with him?”



The dusty gravel road I was on led to a few turnoffs behind fences. I put the car into Reverse and checked out a stand of mailboxes behind me. When I saw “Sunne” written on one, I figured I’d come to the right place, but what I hadn’t counted on was driving smack into the middle of Deliverance country. Hell, I even heard banjo music in my head—that’s how edgy I was. I stared out the windshield at the turnoff for Joe Sunne and ran my tongue over my cut lip.

“What are you gonna do, Bren?” I whispered and gripped the steering wheel with sweaty palms.

It didn’t take long to decide that I’d driven too far and taken too much risk to chicken out now. I turned onto the drive marked Private—No Trespassing and drove in. Ruts in the road jostled the Subaru and tossed me around, forcing me to grip the wheel hard to keep the car from getting stuck.

I drove by a crop of plants near a creek. The earth was mounded in rows, bordered by tall cedars. Dusk had brought shadows, making it hard to see, but I felt more than a bad case of nerves. I sensed the draw from a world not my own, like when I stepped foot into a graveyard. Spirits of the dead who cross my path leave their mark. Sometimes I hear or feel the dark breeze from the other side, a sign they’ve crossed a portal between their world and mine. And when I feel their presence, my skin tingles and my senses go on hyperalert like I had just downed mass quantities of Red Bull.

That’s what I felt now. I didn’t have to see the dead to know they hung out with Joe Sunne.

When I rounded the last turn, I came to a small wood-framed house with a tin roof. It looked dark and ominous with the dying sun behind it. Spears of bright orange filtered through the dense trees and made it hard to see details in the deepening shadows.

An open garage to the right sheltered an old blue truck with the hood up. When I spotted greasy rags and tools nearby, I figured someone had been working on the engine. Clay pots, plastic jugs and rusted metal buckets littered the front of the house. They hung off the walls and were piled near a wooden rain barrel like they were worth something. And tons of glass jars were stacked under the overhang, but they weren’t empty. Someone had a thing for collecting roots, tree bark, leaves and other weird stuff I didn’t want to know about. Real Voodoo Hoodoo.

Stray cats darted into the scrub brush as I drove closer. I was already on edge, but when I almost hit one of them, I skidded to a stop. I sat gripping the wheel, reconsidering what I would do next when I saw something familiar. Joe Sunne had a medicine wheel. An elaborate pattern of stones, shaped into a large wheel, was positioned on the ground near the front of his house. White Bird had a smaller, less-complicated version near his shelter in the woods and he’d told me about it.

Feeling a connection to White Bird, I got out of the car to get a better look at the medicine wheel. That’s why I missed him. When I looked toward the house, I gasped. A man sat stone still—staring at me.

Dressed in jeans and a black T-shirt with a worn cowboy hat on his head, he sat on a cluttered front porch. He was tilted back on a wooden chair with his dusty boots on a railing. And he glared at me without flinching. He reminded me of a cougar eyeing prey on the National Geographic channel.

He watched me with keen eyes that looked black as coal. His long hair was worn loose and had gray streaks in it. And I was close enough to see age lines cut deep into the dark skin of his face, but something more bothered me about the man.

I swear to God, Joe “Spirit Walker” Sunne—Shaman to the Euchee tribe—looked like he’d been expecting me.