The Going Back Portal Read online

  Just as I was about to speak, a man’s voice shouted in the distance causing us both to tense. She lifted a shawl folded beside her, tossing it to me, gesturing for me to cover myself with it.

  “If you don’t come out, I’m coming in!” the man thundered.

  She raised her hand warning me to be silent. It took a great deal of effort for her to rise from the blanket and step outside, still holding the baby protectively in her arms. A severe limp caused her to rock from side to side. Nana was right – one of her legs was shorter than the other. Much shorter.

  Her words were too soft for me to make out, but his reply was not.

  “You gonna do your wifely duty, you understand me? I’m tired of you hiding in that damn shack.”

  She replied with a calm voice.

  “One more night!” he said. “You better be back in my bed tomorrow night, y’hear? You’re my squaw and don’t you forget it.” There was grumbling as he walked away.

  She waited a moment before re-entering the hut, holding her hand up again, cautioning me to hold my tongue. She spoke gently to the baby in a language I didn’t understand.

  Lowering herself slowly onto the blanket, she observed me for a moment before speaking, her voice low.

  “You must leave. It is not safe.”

  She spoke precisely, as though she were a foreigner who learned English in a classroom. But there was no trace of an accent. Her manner was that of a young woman wise beyond her years.

  “Are you Forest Water?” I whispered.

  She nodded, a hint of surprise in her expression.

  “Was that your husband?” I said.

  Her answer was a tired sigh.

  “Were you visited by a white-haired woman a few minutes ago?”

  “I warned Old Grandmother to stay away. You must also.”

  “But…”

  She laid the baby on the blanket, got to her feet and pushed a narrow door open at the back of the hut where I’d first entered. She slipped outside, returning with a fig in her hand.

  “You must eat this and travel through the doorway,” she said, placing it in my hand.

  “I have so many questions.”

  She locked eyes with me as though trying to look into my soul. Having apparently come to a decision, she squatted beside the blanket, folding it back to reveal a layer of pine straw. Scraping the pine straw aside exposed the lid of a large metal box. She lifted the heavy lid and pulled out a leather pouch. From the pouch, she withdrew a book, opened it and ripped a handful of blank pages from the back. She stuffed the loose pages back inside the pouch, returned it to the box, closed the lid and covered it with the pine straw and blanket. Then she handed me the book.

  “You must go,” she whispered, eyes blazing.

  “But…”

  She gestured for me to put the fig in my mouth as she tugged the shawl from my shoulders.

  I reluctantly placed the fruit between my teeth and passed through the small doorway.

  Dizziness overwhelmed me as the buzzing in my ears returned, momentarily blocking out all other sound. I found myself standing in the clearing, the fig half-chewed in my mouth. I whirled around to discover the hut no longer existed. My muscles felt as though I’d run a marathon. Not willing to trust my wobbly legs, I remained motionless, dazed by what had just happened.

  There were two possibilities – the figs contained some kind of psychedelic substance, causing me to have the same hallucination Nana had, possibly by virtue of power of suggestion. Or I had traveled back in time. Which was so freaky that my skin tingled. In my business, skepticism was ingrained. I wasn’t easily taken in by a ruse. What I thought had happened could not possibly be the truth.

  I looked all around the clearing for the young woman who called herself Forest Water. Then, to be sure the shack didn’t still exist, I walked back and forth over the spot where it had been. There was nothing there.

  Then I remembered the book. It was solid in my hands, the brown leather smooth to the touch. The book was real. The place was real. And as much as the rational part of my brain rebelled against the idea, I knew I had somehow visited the past.

  Suddenly impatient to know the story of the mysterious dark-haired beauty, I made my way to a large rock on the riverbank. I untied the strap holding the book closed and opened it with care. So many words, perhaps written with a fountain pen or a quill, the letters sometimes puddled with excess ink, sometimes as thin as a strand of hair. The ink was black, the paper a cream color and rough to the touch. But the words were not in English. I had no idea what language or alphabet I was looking at. Some of the letters were familiar, but many looked like Arabic or Greek.

  Carefully flipping the pages, I discovered the entire book was written in this foreign language. Completely inaccessible to me. I had to talk with Nana.

  When I reached the cottage, she was sitting in her aqua armchair, Gracie in her lap, Jeannette seated across from her on the couch. They were having cinnamon muffins and a cup of tea. On the surface, it was a peaceful scene, but the air in the room was charged.

  I fixed myself a cup and took a seat at the other end of the sofa from Jeannette. I tried to act casual but it was a challenge.

  “So, Nana, tell me more about your neighbors.”

  “We’ve got to find a way to help her.”

  “Tell me about your first visit,” I said, sipping my tea.

  She stroked Gracie’s fur as she talked.

  “I’ve been having dreams about my grandmother lately. In the dreams she’s trying to tell me something as she cooks figs like she did when I was a little girl. I can almost smell them cooking, the dreams are that vivid. It made me wish I could make some preserves like she used to make. So I walked down to the river to see if those old fig trees might still bear fruit after all these years. And sure enough, there were some ripe ones. I ate one, then another. I was on my third fig when I found myself inside a little wooden shed. I heard a woman singing and followed the sound through a door and around a house to the riverbank. There was this pretty black-haired girl washing clothes in the river with a chubby baby in a strange baby carrier leaning against a tree. I think I spooked her because the girl looked at me like I was a ghost.”

  Nana paused, her features pinched in concentration.

  “I told her I was picking figs, holding up my little basket, and I said I hoped that was okay. Then it occurred to me I should introduce myself. I told her my name was Edie and she said her name was Forest Water. I said ‘what a lovely name.’ And she told me her baby’s Cherokee name was Butterfly. I was excited to find out they were Cherokee Indians. She let me kiss the baby on her soft cheek. And then she led me back to the hut. Once we were inside, she opened a small back door, giving me a fig to eat as I left.”

  Nana stared into space, a faraway look in her eyes.

  “And then you visited again this morning?” I said.

  “It was awful.”

  “You said there was a man.”

  “A terrible man. He yelled at her and slapped her across the face! Knocked her to the ground!” She looked from me to Jeannette. “Then he spotted me and yelled ugly things, told me to get off his property. I wanted to help, but Forest Water called out for me to leave. I should’ve given him what for! I’m so ashamed.”

  She hugged Gracie close.

  “I don’t think there was anything you could’ve done,” I said.

  “I should’ve tried.”

  I crossed the room to give her a hug. “Everything’s going to be all right.”

  I was bluffing. My experience as a producer for an investigative news team had prepared me for many things. This wasn’t one of them.

  “We’ve got to help her,” she insisted. “We have to call the police!”

  She had no clue she’d traveled to the past. She assumed those people were some poor neighbors without modern conveniences.

  “Don’t worry,” I said. “I’ll get in touch with someone.”

  “What’s that book
you’ve got?” Jeannette asked, obviously trying to distract her.

  “I found it in a box by the river.”

  “What kind of book is it?” said Nana.

  “Not sure yet. It’s written in a foreign language. I’m taking it back to Atlanta so an expert can help me figure it out.”

  No way I was telling them I met Forest Water too. Or that I heard her husband threaten her. Or that she gave me the book. Jeannette would think Nana wasn’t the only one suffering delusions.

  Pulling my phone out, it only took a moment to find what I was looking for. It came back to me as I read. A man named Sequoyah created a Cherokee alphabet back in the early 1800s. Looking at a few examples, I was convinced the mysterious book was written using the Cherokee Syllabary. Now all I had to do was find someone to translate it.

  3

  I was slammed all week with a story the Channel Seven Watchdog Team was working on. We got a phone tip from a teenage girl about her high school drama teacher. She claimed the guy offered her and a girlfriend private acting tutorials for twenty bucks, then spiked their drinks with something that knocked them out before having sex with them.

  After running it by the station lawyers, I did preliminary phone interviews, then Mallory did on-camera interviews. We shot the girls in silhouette, their faces in shadow, disguising their voices. It was left up to me to do an on-camera interview with a psychologist who specialized in sexual predators and domestic violence.

  Tawdry is the word that came to mind. To be honest, I found it hard to believe, even when the girls showed us the lurid video snippets they said the guy texted them. I couldn’t help but think they’d hooked up with a boy at school who was now humiliating them for fun. How could they fall for a porno ruse like that? I mean, coaching them – with a camera recording it all – on how to do a nude sex scene so they could learn how to audition for movies? Please!

  The honchos decided we would go undercover to get our own video, along with proof he was drugging the girls. Mallory insisted it would have to be me, not her.

  “Even if he doesn’t watch our newscasts, my face is plastered on billboards all over the city,” she argued. “He’d recognize me right away.”

  Which was true. She was our station’s star investigative reporter. Then again, I wasn’t exactly the ideal candidate either.

  “I’m twenty-nine years old, Mallory. Pretty sure I can’t pass for a teenager.”

  “You don’t look that old. Not most of the time anyway.”

  I gave her a look. But I had to admit even if the teacher didn’t know who Mallory was, the odds of her passing for a high school girl were slim to none. Besides being smart and tenacious, she was a striking black woman with a capital W.

  “Once we get you dolled up with the right clothes and make-up,” she said, “he won’t know the difference.”

  When I went into TV news, I never guessed one of the occupational hazards would be playing dress-ups while impersonating a teenager.

  But that’s exactly what I did Tuesday evening at a makeshift theater with about thirty folding chairs. That’s where Ed Hobbs was directing a play so bad, having my teeth cleaned would’ve been more fun. Dressed in black leggings, a bare-shouldered top, a dishwater blonde wig with bangs and a hidden camera in my Boho glasses, it’s possible I might’ve fooled the casual observer. I hung around afterwards, pretending to be a starry-eyed high schooler desperate to break into the movies.

  Ed Hobbs looked like the kind of teddy bear next-door neighbor you’d trust to feed your cat while you were out of town. Pushing forty, pale and soft around the edges like a guy who spent too much time playing video games, he seemed to believe me when I said a girlfriend told me she’d heard about his one-on-one training. He said, as luck would have it, he had a cancellation the following night.

  When I showed up at his house the next evening wearing the wig and spy glasses and a shorts outfit Mallory chose for me, my hidden camera was already recording. Hobbs had a polite, business-like manner, which made me wonder again if our teenage sources might be stretching the truth.

  “So, you want to break into film?” he said, guiding me to a large bedroom.

  It smelled like a freshly cleaned motel room. There was a queen-sized bed, a small couch, a lamp table, two cameras mounted on tripods, directional track lighting hanging from the ceiling and black curtains over the windows.

  “Yeah,” I said, deciding short answers might be best so I wouldn’t give myself away.

  “I happen to know auditions will be announced in a couple of weeks for several parts in an indie movie shooting here soon. They’ll want you to do a bedroom scene where the guy seduces the girl. Have you ever done a scene like that?”

  Which made me giggle at the ridiculousness of the whole set-up. Could be, our informants were on the up and up.

  “It’s normal to be nervous,” he said, his voice all soothing and fatherly. “I’ve got just the thing to help you relax.” He opened the closet door to reveal a small refrigerator. “Let’s see, I’ve got beer, wine, and bottled mojitos and margaritas.”

  “A margarita maybe?”

  “Coming right up!”

  With his back to me, he opened a bottle and filled a red plastic party cup, delivering it with a big smile. When he returned to the fridge to get himself a beer, I poured some of my drink into an empty water bottle hidden in my purse. Then I took a tiny sip so my breath would smell right.

  After chugging half his beer, he proceeded to pull the covers down on the bed, then fiddled with the cameras.

  I strolled toward the sofa, surreptitiously pouring more of the margarita into my bottle.

  “Okay,” he said. “I think we’re ready. Cameras are rolling. Did you bring the twenty dollars?”

  Rather than speak, I slid the crisp bill from my pocket and set it on the table.

  “Thanks,” he said. “You can leave your purse there too.”

  I zipped it as I set it down and moved tentatively toward the bed, holding my half-empty cup, aware his cameras had recorded me forking over the money. Smart. He videotaped every girl paying him for his services.

  “Finish your drink,” he said. “Then we’ll get started. We’ll watch the footage afterwards and I’ll give you pointers on how to improve your performance.”

  I gave him a deer in the headlights stare, keeping the hidden camera in my glasses trained on him.

  “Believe me, you’ll feel much more relaxed and unselfconscious once you’ve finished your margarita,” he said. “Bottoms up!”

  I lifted the cup to my mouth and pretended to drink.

  “It’s best to remove all your clothes since that’s what they’ll want you to do at the audition,” he said. “You’ll need to feel comfortable doing the scene undressed.”

  He sounded almost like a nurse giving you directions before the doctor comes in to examine you, never using the words nude or naked.

  “I think I’d rather keep my clothes on,” I said.

  “I have to tell you, a lot of the girls who complete my tutorial thank me for my thoroughness. They say it really helps them relax when they get to those auditions. And, believe me, there’s plenty of competition. Beautiful girls willing to show their stuff, willing to get into character.” He downed the rest of his beer.

  Slick. That’s what he was. Slick.

  “Actually,” I said, “I’m not feeling too good.”

  “You’ll feel better once you lie down.” He patted the bed reassuringly. “We’ll go slow.”

  Hurrying to the table, I set my drink down and retrieved my purse. “I’ve gotta go.”

  I rushed down the hallway, across the living room and bounded out the front door. Racing across the lawn, I climbed into my car and locked the doors as I cranked the engine. In my haste to get away from Mr. Sleaze, I actually peeled a wheel.

  Mallory was disappointed I didn’t crawl into bed with him so we could have that video for our report too.

  “Easy for you to say,” I replied,
not wanting to admit I was scared to death all alone with a professional pervert.

  “I know all about predators,” she replied. “My sister was married to one. And they’ve got to be stopped. Which is why I wanted as much video as possible.”

  She eased off once we learned the drink he fixed me contained a strong dose of a popular date-rape drug that would’ve knocked me out for sure. That, plus the footage of him handing me the drink and encouraging me to empty my cup before joining him on the bed was enough, along with the video from the girls and their interviews. Before we asked Hobbs to talk with us on camera, the lawyers would have to do their thing.

  ~

  When Saturday finally arrived, I met with Dr. Eric Murray, an Associate Professor of History at the University of Georgia with a specialty in Southeastern Indians, and more specifically, Cherokee Indians.

  I found a number of translation services when I searched online but wanted a more personal touch. Someone I could speak with face to face. I didn’t like the idea of sending the book – or even the scanned pages – off to some anonymous translator. The mysterious black-haired Forest Water entrusted me with what I assumed was her story. I wasn’t about to betray her faith in me. So, after reading several of Dr. Murray’s blog posts on the Cherokee and sampling two of his books, I thought he might be a good choice. Especially since he seemed to actually care about the Cherokee.

  We agreed to meet at Jittery Joe’s coffee shop just off the UGA campus. I got there first and, after ordering coffee and a Danish, laid claim to a small table by the front window. As I settled in, a man in black spandex bicycle shorts and a form-fitting iridescent yellow and blue jersey breezed through the door, looking straight at me.

  “Ms. Spears, I’m Eric Murray,” he said, extending his hand.

  “How did you…?”

  “Found your picture online.”

  “You must be an accomplished Googler. So much for maintaining my anonymity.”

  I avoided being on camera in my job, which helped when I needed to be incognito, as with the unpleasant story we were currently working on. Sometimes my voice could be heard asking questions or there might be a shot of me from behind, but the station made a point of keeping my face off the air. I even used a picture of my tabby cat as my profile picture on social media and made sure my privacy settings were as tight as possible.