Keepers Of The Gate

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Keepers Of The Gate - book excerpt

Chapter One

Present Day Geneva, New York

George steps from the small cottage, gazes into the dark heavens, blowing tobacco smoke into the crisp night air. He glances over the yard with fumes fogging his vision, squinting beyond the ancient pipe wedged between his lips toward Twilight Ends, the grand Victorian bed-and-breakfast on the hillock. Before Twilight’s inception, he’d assumed his rank as caretaker, protector, the chosen sentinel of the property and of the Newhouse family. A role his ancestors undertook and one he’ll shoulder until his time dawns and a successor takes his place.

He strolls toward the firepit bordering the cottage and lingers over the warm blaze, listening to nightfall hum across the revered grounds. Tightening and relaxing his jaws, drawing rapid puffs, he lifts his head, releasing pungent whorls toward the starry constellation. George removes the pipe from his lips, assumes a worshipful stance, and recites to the heavens, “May all I say and all I do be in harmony with the Creator within me. Creator beyond me. Creator around me.” He taps the calabash over the fire and, as his ashy offering to the Great Spirit whirls above the flames, he begins his nightly ritual.

A silver canister glints in his hand as he packs more tobacco in the bowl. He pats his jacket, slips a box of matches from the inner pocket and ignites the bitter weed. When he faces the sentinel bench resting against the stone cottage, a boom detonates from Seneca Lake. Gazing at black water mirroring the bright moon, he mumbles, “Right on time.”

A shudder escapes a thicket of trees flanking the property. Dogwood blossoms scatter white everywhither among sugar maples and evergreen pines rustling, swaying sideways, not from Geha’s breath but a primordial force George forever guards. He narrows his keen vision on a spot his ancestors protected as he’s done most of his life, seizing the developing outline within the obscure flora passage.

A second boom sounds from the lake.

“Orenda, the Great Spirit speaks on cue,” he utters as if to his trusty pipe, turning his gaze inside the parting timber. He senses her presence on the second-floor balcony, where she watches the switch most evenings. He turns and nods at the matriarch of Twilight Ends, leaning into the ornate balustrade, a long-standing queen. She returns his nod with a quick head dip, a brief recognition before they both glimpse the emerging silhouette.

George wanders ahead through the sculpted yew garden with a steady stride toward a youthful, robust figure exiting the bent trees, admiring the man he once was sauntering across the lawn. A leather jacket hides the advancing sentinel’s tribal smock, deerskin leggings, and breechcloth. Parallel sparks split the dark. Future and past coalesce as young and old approach with identical grins and pipes, moving in opposite directions.

“Little squaw is visiting tonight. Watch out for her,” Old George murmurs, aware the night sentinel’s fealty is steadfast as his own.

Young George chuckles. “I got this, wise one,” he states in a hearty though similar voice.

“Dëjíhnyadade:gë’ hagëhjih. We’ll meet again, George,” they say in unison.

The night sentinel steps toward the cottage. The day sentinel moves toward the thicket. A strong pressure extracts and frees a gust of air, parting evergreen pines and sugar maple wings, engulfing Old George.

* * *

Heading into the sentry cottage, Young George finds a change of clothes where they always wait in the small bathroom off the kitchen. He lifts the buckskin top over his splendid torso, baring brownish-black plumage tattooed across his chest. Eagle wings expand and contract above his sculpted abs as he undoes the breechcloth and strips deerskin tights from his firm hips. On his upper left arm, a wolf howls under a bright moon, his manitou, sentinel spiritual guardian of the night. An eagle soars above a leaping wolf on his chiseled right calf, two spiritual guides, channeling him on a sentinel’s journey.

George throws on present-day clothes – T-shirt, jeans, crewneck sweater, and a cap to cover a patch of hair atop his shaved head. He slips out of moccasins into tough leather boots, recalling his sister’s hardworking hands weaving in and out, stitching sinew through deerskin moccasins for warriors before the war. Before Conotocaurius, “Town Destroyer” uprooted their lives. It’s hard to believe war ever sullied the ground in this modern age, carpeted green, sculptured in foreign yew, graced with a palatial home. He’s never forgotten the spilled blood, the scorched terrain, his people’s cries and the burning flesh of elders too weak to run. Evidence time has eroded.

With virulence, he recalls two bullets taking the breath of his brave brother and sister, Pilan and Teka. Before he could secure them through the gate, toward the healing waters, the soldier appeared and struck them dead. George howled with rage, arching his bow with smoldering eyes, firing all his arrows, hitting the swift-dodging soldier's side and arm. The wounded man discharged his gun, blasting a gouge in the maple tree. George raced toward the sacred grounds with the injured soldier on his heels.

Just as he entered the sacred doorway, the soldier fired a bullet through his heart. When George fell back, immortal hands seized and sucked him into the forbidden gate, a dark passage as old as his people, a blazing asteroid forged through time. He died that night. His soul resurrected with an immortal breath, an invisible force no man can see, but he perceived. Over time, two brother dogwood trees grew, marking the gate's entrance.

George rubs the ruby scar tattooed with wings over his heart. A mortal wound immortal energy healed as he leapt inside the forbidden gate the blazing eve of Sullivan’s Crusade long ago, farther than the constellation. Yet, in this place, time-bound souls he’d sworn to protect exist.

In the mirror, he catches the image of a 21st-century man, his native heritage disguised beneath modern American clothing. Throwing the skeleton key around his neck, he leaves the cottage, chewing over the irony of his chosen name in this place, George, the name of the Six Nations’ destroyer.

“I am Sagoyewatha, keeper of the gate,” he affirms toward the timeless lake ahead.

The moment he enters the night, his spiritual guide tugs at his soul, his inner wolf gnawing at his gut, a sensation he never ignores. Striding wide up the hillock toward Twilight Ends, he fixes his scotopic vision on the sacred, two-foot stone foundation that imbues the home with mysterious energy. Stones his ancestors revered and feared. A recurrent tremble stirs beneath the ground, a reminder of his mission in this place.

Seldom does he check the home’s interior before his watch begins, but instincts spur him on to the porch and the skeleton key through the door lock. Inside the silent home, he pauses beneath the high archway when feet descend the main stairs with a low scuffle. The steps of Teresa and Ian Newhouse’s granddaughter, Twyla, an occasional sleepwalker.

Several times, he’d caught her roaming the backyard, strolling around and back inside without a bump or stumble. Twice she’d slipped his notice, wandering half a mile to the cemetery. The next morning, Old George discovered her asleep on a grave, the resting place of his brother warrior, Mingin (Gray Wolf). It wasn’t a coincidence she’d happened on that spot. The second time, he’d found her standing near the thicket of trees, staring at the old maple tree for several minutes before her legs revived, returning her to Twilight. Since that visit, he’s more vigilant during her overnight stays. His greatest fear is that she’ll wander through the immortal gate he guards.

The curly-haired one stumbles into the grand hall, wavy tresses sleep-disheveled. He senses her ability to fathom the spiral bend of life’s energy, unlike the straight-haired sentinels whose power flow as uniform water, an arrow from the source. One day, she will be a great sentinel, if she chooses.

Sightless with sleep, tugged by the home’s vibrations, the girl stops in the corridor, staring at but not seeing him in the doorway, only what she follows through the cellar door. He wonders what Twilight Ends is showing her tonight.