Wolfwood Forest: Search for a fourteen-month-old boy who disappears from his playpen in the yard. Massacre Island: Search for the rape and killer of teenager Lisa Surette.
Excerpt
Olsegon
Wolfwood Forest
. . . The pressure in her breast reminded her of Rusty’s feeding time. What could have happened? She could not hear Mark’s footsteps rustle the ground, anymore. His
light became a sprinkle of fireflies in the brushwood. She heard Les holler Rusty’s name several times. Her fear of Wolfwood Forest had evaporated. She held a single
thought—find her child. The well being of her baby encased her emotions. She would traverse burning coal in bare feet to rescue her son. Amber scraped her shoulder on
a large trunk, ripped her dress, and scathed the skin. A branch caught her hair. She stepped in moist moss, soaked her feet, and tripped over a log. Did she fall on
something alive? It slid away. She got up, moved forward. The desperate mother kicked dead vines to clear the way, fought off ferns, and separated weeds as tall as her.
No sounds other than her heavy breathing, pounding heart, and her rummage of bushes in the space she wandered. She emerged at the north edge of the forest, faced a
spread of stone silhouettes, some wide, others tall, and many small ones. Statues and crosses mounted on top of cement blocks. She stood stiff then dropped to the
ground. She leaned her back against a head stone, rested her arms on her knees, slumped her head, spent. She could not hold the tears. She heard a noise to the left and
saw a light. “Is that you, Mark?” . . . .
________________________________________________________________________________________
. . . “Keep your heads down!” warned the Sergeant. “These guys are playing for keeps.”
Skilled in combat tactics, the young soldiers’ minds had not been prepared for the human carnage at hand. In training, Mark and two other draftees bonded. Became a
team and close friends. At nineteen, Eddy Smith enlisted. “We’re going to kick their butts,” he had said. Pete Jones, twenty-one, more pensive, also felt he served a grand,
honorable mission to free the world from evil.
The three youths dropped on the sand, looked around. Many men did not get up. They lay dead or wounded.
“Let’s go guys,” Mark shouted above the barrage of gunfire.
They stood, bent forward, dashed four yards, and then dropped. Eddy, last one to hit the ground, head blown, splattered blood on Mark’s face. Eddy’s wide eyes stared.
“Jesus! Eddy got hit.”
Bodies strewed the beach. Among the rattle of bullets, moans, gargles, muttering names of wives, children, others shouted, “Mom, Mom….”
“Bastards!” Pete said. “I’m going to get you.” He stood, charged toward the enemy.
“Stay down!” Mark tried to grab him.
“You son-of-a-bitches,” Pete said, ran, shooting, screamed like a mad man.
Five bullets hit him before he fell. Mark kept still and gazed at the horror on the scarlet sand. Men vomited blood while they held their guts, agonized in pain. The sound,
smell, and sight of death branded Mark. A vision of his mother, father, Amber flashed. Would he survive? Would his parents know what happened to him, if he died?
Would he be buried in Olsegon?
He lifted his head. Germans pointed guns. Four came on the beach. A Canadian soldier got on his knees, held his chest. A shot cut him down. He did not move. In front, a
comrade rolled in pain. An enemy combatant drove a bayonet in his chest. The dead Canadian’s arms slapped the sand. With his foot on the dead soldier’s torso, the killer
pulled his spear out. The corpse lay like a cross.
Mark and the rest of the men could not continue fighting. Machine gun fire trapped them. They had no choice but to surrender.
Above the beach a voice bellowed, “Those who can stand, get up!”
Mark pushed himself up and looked around. More men lay on the sand than stood. A Canadian soldier close to the grass, where a row of Germans guarded the beach,
could not get off his knees. The German leader nodded. A soldier obeyed the command, fired. The Canadian fell like a log.
Mark estimated twenty-five comrades pillared the shore. The captors stripped the Canadians of their gears and supplies.
“Form a line here,” the German voice commanded. He pointed at the grass. The enemy spread into two groups, one on each side of the prisoners.
“Let’s go. No talking. Stay two feet from each other. Face forward. Move!”
“Where are we going,” Mark said.
A rifle butt rammed his back. He stumbled forward.
“Stay in line. Move!” the voice said.
Mark, the third in the line, could not see how many Germans guarded them. He saw two, one on each side, by the first Canadian in front. He did not know if any injured
prisoners marched. Mark felt strong. The blow between his shoulder blades throbbed
Black woolen clouds rolled across the sky. A drizzle began. Soon, mud sucked on their boots. The Germans put on rubber ponchos. Sprinkle transformed into a million
small spigots. The wind rose, and shot liquid pellets into the marching captives’ faces.
Before they entered Dieppe, the Germans halted the march. The English speaking Saxon hollered, “You piss, shit in bush, to the right. Anyone tries to escape, we shoot.”
While Mark relieved himself, a tall skinny prisoner stood by him, said, “I can’t go on. I’m hit in the right calf. I think it got the bone.” He stumbled. Mark reached to help.
A German shouted, “Get in line.”
“This man’s hurt.”
“In line. Quick!” The German came closer. Jabbed his bayonet at Mark. He heard the skinny comrade fall, then a shot.
Mark froze.
“Move!”
He felt the tip of a sword in his back.
. . . .
_______________________________________________________________________________________
Massacre Island
. . . He turned on Cape Road, down hill, then up and around to the Mi’kmag community on the Cape that extended in the Tusket River and embraced a bay. A light shown
through a window of Ol’ Eagle’s, small, unpainted house. Mark parked, shut off the engine, tapped burnt tobacco out of his pipe, and put it in his breast pocket. He
stepped out, at the door he knocked. He heard squeaks like someone pushing on a chair’s armrests. Footsteps approached the door. It opened.
“Come in, Mark. I expected you.”
The sheriff climbed one step, then another, and stood next to the old Indian, inside. Mark took his hat off, held it in his hand. He entered a combination kitchen-living area.
“Sit down, Mark.” The Mi’kmag patriarch said while he lowered himself in a rocker and pointed at a cushioned chair in front of him.
The sheriff sat.
On a side table next to the old man’s right, a book laid open, glasses on top. A wall bookcase stood at the far end of the room. Books and papers on every shelf, space
above the volumes stuffed, left no room for more material. A lit paraffin lamp on the kitchen table flickered shadows. A door from the kitchen area to another part of the
house, Mark assumed went to a bedroom.
“Mark, you’ve got a bad situation on your hands. The town is in an uproar.”
“Mr. Eagle, is there ever been a brutal incidence in Olsegon, such as this, that you can remember?”
“Well—I’m not going to say no. I know you’ve heard about that young girl murdered in Wolfwood Forest, years ago. The killer never found.”
“Yes, I have.”
“No one can say that the killer is not still among us.” Ol’ Eagle kept his hands in front, fingers intertwined on his stomach, looked at the floor. His dark face, at times,
glowed as the lamp flame shimmered.
“Another incidence, before WWII, Billie Digue, Amber’s friend, thirteen was raped. She’s not sure of the attacker,” Mark said.
“I didn’t know that.” The Mi’kmag lifted his face at Mark.
“She told Amber once when they were teenagers, and said that she didn’t want to talk about it, ever.”
“You’re going to have to confront the town and that island, find out who that man is, if you want to calm the citizens. One perceived evil shows its face, Massacre Island,
the other wears a mask, the town. As I said at the café, I know a little about the island. When I was thirteen, my father dropped me there, with only a knife, for five nights
and days. It was my passage to manhood.”
“What did you see?”
“Early one morning, dusk, the fog veiled the islands, my father landed me on the channel shore. The ocean side rose straight upward, no way I could have climbed. Where
he dropped me, the terrain had a steep ledge slope to the top of the cliff. That did not make it easy for me. The mist, like still rain, hung, clutched the islands. Upward,
trees, like tall lean, stiff soldiers stood among
underbrush of vines, thorns, ferns, and green wet moss that grew on, and in the cracks of the granite.”
Ol’ Eagle paused, rubbed his eyes. He turned his face toward the bookcase. “It was terrifying. At an age when you sit on the fence of fantasy and reality, imagined that
anything is possible, what confronted me touched every recess of my young mind. My goal was to survive for five days and nights on my own with only a four-inch blade
knife.”
The flame in the lamp on the kitchen table began to dwindle.
“The wick is getting shorter,” the Mi’kmag said. He stood, limbered in the kitchen area. At the table, he leaned. One hand on the linoleum top and the other adjusted the
wick up. His age seemed to show more in the late hours of the night. He came and sat, again.
“If I go, as you said, I may have to, what should I be prepared for? Would you come with me?” The sheriff pulled his pipe out, stuffed tobacco in the cup, and lit it.
“Be prepared to have a tough time reaching the top.” The old Indian took a deep breath. “Yes, I’ll accompany you. I want to see the place again. The place where I became
a man, a warrior of life.”
“Who do you think is on Massacre Island?” Mark knew he didn’t know, but hoped the old Indian could offer a hint.
“Don’t know. No one lived there when I was a young man. Reports started only during the war, your war. Several fishermen who said they saw the man are reputable
folks. I tend to believe them.”
“Me, too.” Mark sucked on the stem of his pipe, let out a smoke stream.
“You know, it’s possible that the man seen on Massacre Island could have committed the crime. Men get lonely for female companionship. It’s our nature.”
“Why kill?” Mark said.
Read more about Olsegon, a Nova Scotia two-mystery novel and Bill Boudreau HERE.
Copyright 2008 Bill Boudreau. All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, recording or otherwise, without the prior written permission of the author.
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