Serpent Mound - 6. Arrows of the Mind

Bernie reported to Gary’s office and sat on the couch, just as he had done every weekday for the last month since arriving at the Academy. He had been nervous for the first week, not sure what Gary was going to try to make him talk about, but he soon found the hour spent each day in the Headmaster’s office to be casual and relaxing.

It seemed that Gary had been working backwards through his life. In their first session, he just wanted to talk about Walter and the Children’s Services program that he was in before coming to the Academy. Over the course of the last month, they’d talked about foster parents, various schools, teachers that he got along with well, and the ones he didn’t care for. Occasionally, the discussion would naturally lead to the white mist and some sort of accident that Bernie was always blamed for. Gary assured him that he believed that the white mist was real, and that Bernie wouldn’t be blamed for any accidents that occurred on the campus, but that he was to report any sightings of it immediately. Other than the first day at the pond, Bernie had not seen the mist at all, which was itself a bit unusual.

Today, Gary congratulated Bernie on completing his first month at the Academy.

“All of your teachers tell me that you’re doing very well!” Gary said, looking at a paper detailing Bernie’s status report. “You’re a completely different person than the one who was flunking every class before coming here, aren’t you?”

“This has been one of the best months of my life,” Bernie replied, trying to contain his emotions and excitement. “The teachers are nice, the lessons are fun, and you and the Staff Sergeant have made me feel like a person who matters instead of a burden that you’re forced to deal with.”

“And you seem to have made friends as well,” Gary commented next.

“Yeah!” Bernie said, letting his excitement show this time. “Everywhere else I went I was always the ‘new kid’ and got teased and picked on. I grew up having to fight with everyone just to get an ounce of respect from the other kids, but that always caused problems with the foster parents and teachers. Since this is a military-style school, I was prepared for crazy hazing to occur here to be accepted by everyone, but that didn’t happen. At my very first breakfast, guys were calling me over to sit with them and they talked to me like they were excited to have a new Cadet, not like I was some kind of enemy they had to keep out of their group.”

“You came into the Academy as a Junior,” Gary replied, “Which is not customary, and what you’re seeing are the effects of the first two years of our program on your peers. We teach our boys to be good men first and foremost, and teasing and hazing somebody new is not a part of that program. You’re close friends with Joe, aren’t you?”

“Yeah,” Bernie replied, “Joe and George are probably my best friends, but Manny and Peter are really good friends too. The four of them were a group even before I got here, and they sort of adopted me.”

“That’s good,” Gary replied. “Joe in particular will be a very good influence on you. He had a lot of trouble at home before he agreed to come here to the Academy and turn his life around.”

“So, what do you want to talk about today, sir?” Gary said, changing the subject. “I think I’ve told you about all my old foster parents and teachers by now, and I didn’t really have any good friends before coming here.”

“Today,” Gary replied, “I wanted to see if we can break through your defensive shell a bit and tap into some of your memories of your life before they found you in Gatlinburg.”

“Gary,” Bernie began, “I really like you, a lot, and I wish I could talk about that with you, but I’m going to be completely honest, for the first time in… ever. I made a promise that I wouldn’t tell anybody about what happened to me before Gatlinburg.”

“But you do remember,” Gary pressed. “You were only four or five, but you do remember what happened, and you weren’t just wandering the woods alone like you’ve always said.”

“No, sir,” Bernie replied with a trembling sigh. He had been holding this secret inside of himself for so long. “I do remember. There were people and a village, but they were somehow bad, and they had bad plans for me. There was one good man, and I called him Papa, but he wasn’t my father. Papa made a big sacrifice to free me from the village before the bad things could happen. I’m pretty sure he was punished for that.”

“How do you know that Papa was punished?” Gary asked. “This was all twelve years ago, and you never saw him again, did you?”

“No sir, I think I know because of the dreams I have about the village now,” Bernie said.

“Dreams?” Gary asked, “How long have the dreams been going on?”

“Since my first night here,” Bernie replied. “I didn’t want to say anything about them because I promised Papa that I wouldn’t talk about the village with anyone, but I’ve already sort of broken that promise a little bit now.”

“What harm could come from talking about it,” Gary asked, “Especially after all this time?”

“Because it isn’t over yet,” Bernie replied, “They’re still looking for me. The woman who is the leader of the village… she tells me in my dreams that if I say her name out loud, that she will be able to find me and that she will send People to come and take me back.”

“Bernie,” Gary said next, “I’m going to ask you a very personal question.”

“Okay,” Bernie said, “Just don’t make me say her name.”

“No, I won’t,” Gary replied, “I want you to tell me… Is the village where this woman lives the place where you received that brand on your hip in the shape of a bear?”

Bernie blushed and unconsciously moved his hand to cover over that spot on his hip.

“Will you at least tell me that much?” Gary asked.

“Yes sir,” Bernie finally replied. “I was only four and I had just arrived at the village from the place where I lived with my real parents. There were four of us, and we were taken to the… effigy mounds.”

“Describe the effigy mounds for me, Bernie,” Gary said in a calm soothing voice.

“There were five mounds in the shape of animals,” Bernie said, his eyes going a bit glassy as he sought the memory in his mind. “Wolf, panther, boar, bear. The fifth was a snake, and it wound and twisted around the other four animals. The snake’s head ended up right in the middle, at the top of the mountain.”

“Were the woman and your Papa there?” Gary asked, probing further into the boy’s memory.

“Yes,” Bernie replied, “And there were two others, another man and a woman. Each of them had a child with them.”

“There were three other children there with you?” Gary asked, trying to remain calm and not let the agitation show in his voice.

“Yes,” Bernie said, his eyes completely glazed now almost as if he were in a trance as he submerged himself in the memory of that day. “They woke us up before dawn and took us to the mounds. I remember that I had to pee, and Papa took me to the outhouse first, so we were the last ones to get to the top of the mountain and the mounds.”

“What happened when you got to the mounds?” Gary asked, continuing to speak in a soothing voice.

“They put us each in the middle of one of the animal mounds except for the snake,” Bernie said, “Then they took all of our clothes off so that we were naked. When the sun rose above the horizon, the woman began to chant, and the animal shapes became real and pinned us to the ground. I was on the bear mound and the bear pinned me and touched me on my hip with his paw. It burned and burned. I screamed and cried, and I heard the other kids screaming too, but the bear wouldn’t let me up or stop burning my skin. When the sun was completely above the horizon the chanting stopped, and the animals disappeared, but we each had the mark of the gods on us. The girls got the wolf and the panther, the other boy got the boar, and I got the bear.”

“Do you know why you got the bear?” Gary asked. He already knew the most likely reason but wanted to see how much the boy knew about were-creatures and kindred.

“No, sir,” the boy replied, “But the lady always referred to Papa as being a bear, and then in my dreams when she shows him to me, he’s a grizzly bear, but somehow I know that it’s him. He tries to talk to me, but it just comes out as grunts and growls and roars. She keeps him inside a cave with iron bars over the entrance, and he looks too skinny for a bear, and his fur is kind of patchy.”

“These dreams seem very realistic,” Gary commented.

“Oh, they are sir,” Bernie said. “It’s almost like I’m sitting there in the bear mound or in the village again, except that I never get to see Papa as himself, he’s always a bear in the dream.”

“What does the woman say to you in the dream?” Gary asked.

“Mostly she’s just telling me to say her name,” Bernie replied, “I remember her name, but I promised Papa that I wouldn’t talk about her. She tells me that if I say her name out loud, she will know where I am and then they will come and get me. I’m not going to say it, sir, so don’t even bother to ask.”

“Understood,” Gary said, “If I had a scary woman threatening that she was going to come and get me, I wouldn’t say her name either.”

“The other stuff in the dream doesn’t make a much sense,” Bernie continued, “But it’s always the same every night. She shows me the skinny bear in the cave that I know is Papa, and she tells me that they’re keeping him alive because there must be a bear in order to keep the ‘balance’ in the village. But she says that my ‘new protectors’ are bears too, and that if I bring those other bears to the village, she will turn them and make them a part of the village, and then she’ll set Papa free.”

“Interesting,” Gary replied, after absorbing that information. “I know you’ve seen the white mist once on your first day, but have you seen any bears protecting the Academy?”

“Not that I know of, sir,” Bernie replied. “I mean, you and the Staff Sergeant and all the rest of the teachers and staff are big, hairy, gay guys, and I know that in the gay culture, you’re sometimes called ‘bears’, but I haven’t seen any actual real-life bears running around the campus since I’ve been here.”

“Let’s break it down,” Gary said. “You’re positive that the woman in your dream is the same woman from the village where you were taken when you were four years old?”

“Yes, sir,” Bernie replied.

“And in real-life, not in your dream, you were taken as a child to an effigy mound, and some kind of entity manifested itself as a bear and branded you and three other children?”

“Yes sir, but there were four entities altogether, a wolf, a panther, a boar, and a bear. Each of us got a different animal brand based on the animal mound we were on. I was on the bear mound and got the bear entity.”

“And after this,” Gary asked next, “You were taken care of in real-life by a big, bearded man who kept you until you were five and then he set you free?”

“I had been in the village for a year,” Bernie explained, “And then one night he woke me up after midnight and carried me through the woods. He told me that Ri… that the woman’s intentions for me were bad and that he was taking me to Gatlinburg to live among the humans again.”

“Wait, wait…” Gary interrupted, “He actually said that he was taking you to live among the ‘humans’ meaning that he and the rest of the village were not human?”

“I remember him saying that specifically,” Bernie replied with a confused expression on his face, “But it’s funny that I never really thought about the implication of those words till just now. If they weren’t human, what were they?”

“That,” Gary said, “Is the sixty-four-thousand-dollar question.”

Bernie nodded but didn’t respond.

“Okay Bernie,” Gary said, “Our time today is almost up, but I do have one more question about your dream.”

“Yes, sir,” Bernie replied with a worried expression, “I’ve already told you this much, I guess I can spill my guts just a little more.”

“When you were telling me just now about how you got that bear-shaped mark on you, you described it, perhaps subconsciously, as ‘the mark of the gods.’ Did the woman or your Papa or anyone else in the village ever tell you the name of these gods?”

Bernie nodded but made no effort to speak.

“Are you afraid to say their name out loud, Bernie?”

The boy nodded, and a tear ran down his cheek as he looked back up at his Headmaster.

“Then don’t say it, Bernie,” Gary replied, “Ever. If I give you a piece of paper and a pen right now, could you write it down for me instead? The woman can’t hear you saying it if you write it down, and I promise I won’t say it either.”

Bernie sat for a few seconds, thinking about this, and finally he nodded his head without speaking. Gary handed him paper and a pen, and the boy took a deep breath and then scribbled down two words quickly. He folded the paper in half so that he didn’t have to look at what he had written and handed it back to Gary.

“Thank you, Bernie,” Gary replied. “I want you to know that I believe every word you’ve told me today, and that I have friends who are experts in dealing with this sort of thing. I’m going to show them the name you’ve written here, and they will tell me what we can do to fight and beat them. If there’s a way to break whatever hold that woman or her gods have on you, we’re going to find it.”

“Gary…?” Bernie began to ask.

“Yes, what is it? You can ask me anything.”

“When you find out how to fight it, can we save my Papa too?”

After spitting out this request, Bernie burst into tears.

Gary sat next to the boy and gave him a hug. Bernie pressed his tear-stained face into his headmaster’s chest, and it reminded him of the night his Papa carried him away from the village.

“If there’s any way at all to save you both,” Gary replied, “It’s going to be my duty to make it happen.”

****

A few hours later Gary and Bill sat at the computer, conferenced in with Gunnar, Thomas, Axel and Matthias.

“Okay bears,” Gary said to the assembled crew, “Normally, it would not be best practice to go sharing the personal things that my Cadets tell me in our counselling sessions but given the nature of our last conversation regarding this bear kindred young man, and the general dangerousness of the situation, I’m left without much choice.”

Gary related the information that Bernie had told him about the village, the effigy mounds, the entities that branded the children, the woman who seemed in charge of it all, and the boy’s Papa, who was most likely imprisoned in a cave for setting the boy free.

“Why did it take you a month to get this information?” Matthias raged, “Thor’s Armpit! I would have dragged it out of him on day one!”

“Because that wouldn’t have worked, you old grouch,” Gary replied. “The boy made a promise to his Papa never to speak of these things so that the woman could never use that against him to track him down. I wasn’t going to get him to break that kind of promise on day one. It took a month of getting him to trust me just as closely as he trusts his Papa to tell me as much as he did.”

“Papa!” Axel scolded Matthias, “Child psychology is clearly not your area of expertise. But your knowledge of whatever crazy gods would want to brand children is invaluable. I’m sure that Gary has some additional clues to tell us what we need to know.”

Matthias grumbled something about a smack upside the head working better and faster than child psychology, but mostly held his tongue.

“Thank you, Councilmember Axel,” Gary continued. “Essentially, we know the following… There are five minor gods involved, each dwelling within an effigy mound and taking on the form of the bear, wolf, panther, boar, and serpent. Four children were ‘given’ to the bear, wolf, panther, and boar gods thirteen years ago, and each child was physically marked by one of those gods. This village has a single werebear among their population, and despite the fact that he freed the boy from whatever they have planned for the other three, the rest of the villagers are keeping him imprisoned but alive in order to maintain ‘balance’.”

“It sounds to me,” Gunnar interjected, “That the rest of these people may also be were-kind, but they’re all wolf, panther and boar. They would have to have at least one bear in order to have one follower for the bear-god and balance the followers of the other three.”

“That sounds like a pretty valid guess,” Thomas said, “And would explain why the woman in the boy’s dream wants him to bring more bears. She must be hoping that she can brainwash some of us into joining their little mountain cult.”

“I wouldn’t be surprised if the woman in the dream was wolf,” Axel replied, “I know from experience that they can get really wrapped up in some wacko cults.”

“How is she able to affect the boy’s dreams like this,” Bill asked, “He says that he’s had the same general dream each night for a month!”

“That would be the fucking wights again,” Matthias said, “If this wolf female is the high priestess for this group, the gods must allow her to control their wights, and she can send them into the boy’s head while he sleeps to dictate his dreams. She must be very determined to get him back.”

“The other thing we know,” Gary said, “Is that the boy is absolutely convinced that if he dares to speak the name of the woman or the name of these gods, that they will immediately be able to pinpoint his location and will come to take him away. Given what we know about the wights, I’m inclined to believe him.”

“So that’s all of the new information you have, then?” Matthias asked.

“No, I was still able to get him to divulge the name of the gods who are behind this,” Gary said with a grin, “But I assured him that their name would not be spoken aloud. He wrote the name on a piece of paper. I’m going to hold this paper up for the camera. Whatever you do after reading it, do not utter the name aloud. Understood?”

All the bears nodded their heads, and Matthias gave a sincere, “Aye” in response.

Gary unfolded the slip of paper and held it up in front of the camera. On the white page, two words were written in black ink:

Tuath Dé

“Ah, holy fucking shitballs!” Matthias exclaimed. “It would have to be the tribe of gods!”

“What do you know about them, Papa?” Axel inquired.

“There were originally dozens of them in the tribe, along with a variety of fairy-folk and the like. They peaked with the Druids, and for a time, ruled Scotland and Ireland. They were not powerful enough to create a race of were-creatures of their own, so they have been trying to usurp hapless lycans to become their followers ever since.

“I assumed that they had completely died out millennia ago, but it appears that a few were able to get some lycans to do their bidding after all. Wolf, panther, boar, bear… It is not a coincidence that these are four of the five beings remaining of the tribe. They’ve each corrupted a small band of followers. Just one poor fucking werebear in the whole bunch! What a miserable life he must have had. He probably hasn’t even gotten laid in two thousand years or more.”

“The boy has asked if there was any way his Papa could be rescued from the villagers,” Gary said. “I gave him my word that I would do everything in my power.”

Matthias snorted.

“Just because this bear finally came to his senses, doesn’t mean that he should be off the hook for the atrocities of the past,” Matthias said, “A decade sealed in a cave is a slap on the wrist if he has truly been collaborating with the tribe for thousands of years. At least now I know where the wights came from!”

“What do you mean, old bear?” Axel raged, nearly losing his temper, “What atrocities do you think this boy’s Papa has done?”

“Not think!” Matthias yelled back, “Know! There is only one way these trifling gods could have survived those eons with only a handful of worshippers. They are feeding on the souls of the children! The boy is bear kindred and was given to and marked by the bear-god. If there are three other children, I’d bet my lucky right ballock that they are boar, panther, and wolf kindred as well! Once those children turn eighteen, they will be ‘ripe’ and in a ceremony on a specified date, probably an equinox or solstice, the gods will rise from their beds within the earth and spit out the remains of the previous children that they’ve been feasting upon for the last hundred years. Those poor remains will join the ranks of the wight slaves serving the tribe and their she-wolf bitch, and they will take the four new sacrifices who bear the marks they were given when they were but four years old. After they have claimed their new offerings, they will return to the earth and feed upon their souls… slowly, agonizingly, for the next century, until it is time to find four new kindred children and repeat the process all over again.

“So,” Gunnar said, “You are saying that they have been sacrificing kindred children to these… demons every hundred years for thousands of years?”

“Aye,” Matthias replied. “So, even though this Papa bear of yours finally came to his senses and rescued this particular boy, he still has the blood of hundreds of children on his paws.”

“What happens if they don’t get their new batch of children on time?” Bill asked.

“Well then,” Matthias said, “They will rise and walk the earth, scorching and killing all in their path. Since the Serpent doesn’t receive a sacrifice of its own, I assume that the other four are in thrall to it and supply it with some of their own power. This Serpent, if unleashed upon the world, is going to be a bitch to kill, but kill it we must!”

“Matthias,” Gunnar said, “This is all incredible and difficult to grasp, but I trust in your knowledge and wisdom. What should we do now?”

“For now,” Matthias replied, “We plan, and we wait. When the boy reaches his eighteenth birthday, the desperation of the cult will reach a peak, and he will find himself powerfully drawn back to this village once again. When that time comes, we set our trap. We already have the perfect bait; we just need to set the spring.”

“What bait do we have?” Axel asked.

“The bait is simple, Cub,” Matthias said. “We just have the boy speak the wolf-bitch’s name and we let them come to us.”