The Cursed Blood
was waiting at home when the buss rolled up to my house, no angry parents waiting at the garage door. It was like the Twilight Zone or something as I sat there in a daze in the car on the way to the store. I was happy and just thinking maybe Mr. Varsity Jacket was too embarrassed to make a stink and rat me out for pummeling him.I remember fantasizing that perhaps him and his thuggish crew would even leave me alone for a while. I wasn’t naive enough, even in my wildest dreams, to hope they would suddenly respect and befriend me and that I’d suddenly live the popular life of a cool kid sitting in the back of class, with high fives and cheer leaders lining up to date me. I even felt a warm worm of hope squiggling about that perchance. If I was very, very lucky, school life would finally start to get a bit better for me.
I was starting to feel good about things as we pulled into the AMES parking lot. I’d stood up for myself for once and now I was going to get a costume and later, dinner. Then I had the whole weekend to live it up before having to march back on the bus and face the possible music of another week of school. I even began trying to put together what to tell Billy when he came over the next day after lunch.
It was the same old parent kid song and dance you likely deal with now every October at the store, going I would imagine, something like this: kid wants this, points and gets excited, parent says it’s too expensive or inappropriate, kid throws tantrum or argues. Repeat process.
It had been about an hour, I think. Both our tummies must have been growling and we were both secretly looking forward to the battle’s end so we could cash out and get to dinner. Which that night I remember quite clearly was going to be pizza at good old red-roofed Pizza Hut.
Just the thought of pepperoni and breadsticks was nearly mouthwateringly good enough for me to almost surrender to the clearance rack costume Mom had pointed out.
Well, almost.
If there was ever one thing I was uniquely gifted at, it was arguing when I’ve set my mind to something. So on it went until Mom surrendered the fight to a werewolf getup with a fury rubbery mask. Off we went, strategically weaving our obnoxiously squeaky wheeled shopping cart about the long way to avoid me noticing the toy isles as Mom kept me distracted and handled so masterfully that we almost made it past the seasonal candy display without me noticing.
Lucky me that I love candy corn and Mom was already tired enough to not want to deal with me. So, we left through the big glass doors with a crinkly plastic bag full of treats and my costume, holding hands and jabbering back and forth on the way to our wood paneled station wagon.
I don’t remember what we were talking about as we wove our way through a maze of tall, festively decorated light posts, rather large puddles, abandoned shopping carts, and parked cars, but I think it had something to do with school.
What I do remember is seeing another family laughing and loading up a big Volkswagen Bus. Nothing odd about that except they all had white hair and pointed ears. I stopped dead so suddenly that my mother all but tripped over me. Yeah, I know, it’s October and all so it could have been a family on their way to an early party in those weird, annoyingly matching theme costumes, right?
No. Definitely not.
I remember dropping my hard-fought-for bag into a puddle and staring as an impossibly pale little girl with crystalline, almost prismatic, shiny eyes gave me a pointy toothed smile and waved at me as her father buckled her into a car seat. Her older sister, maybe a year or so my senior was ignoring everyone as she settled into her seat and began fishing through her bag for a magazine.
Her father patted the little one on the head, planted a kiss on her cheek, then stopped as she pointed my way with a sharp looking nailed finger and giggled as he tried to get her to accept a sippy cup.
He turned and squinted at us with his own glitteringly crystalline eyes. His friendly smile drained from his face as it went impossibly paler, and he hurried in an obvious panic to help his very pregnant wife into her seat, exchanging a hushed, panicked conversation with her in a language I didn’t understand that honestly sounded like gibberish with a lot of hissing.
He shut her door, hurried back to the driver’s side, spared me a look one would expect of a deer caught in the headlights. He hopped in, slammed the door, and they sped off with a screech of rubber tires on wet pavement.
My mother looked sharply from the blue and silver VW bus to me, and the look on her face was something I’d never forget. Somewhere between terror and pride that left her shaking with tears in her eyes, she stared down at me like she was afraid it was the last time she would ever get to look at me. Which sadly wasn’t far from the truth.
Everything changed after that.
Chapter One
A boy, a dog, and new beginnings…
Have you ever heard of the Adirondack Mountains? The “Park” (we prefer the more accurate term “the preserve”) was designated as a national historic monument in 1962. It has a much richer and more colorful history than most people are aware of. WELL before future Presidents of the United States, world leaders, and the super-rich started vacationing and building magnificent, opulent, and super exclusive great camps here.
It’s said that the earliest written name for it is “Rontak” back in 1929 by a very misguided and confused French missionary Mr. Lafitau. He defined it as tree