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  Keepers Of The Gate

  Twilight Ends Book 1

  E. Denise Billups

  Contents

  Indian Names

  Map of Iroquois Confederacy

  Map of Sullivan Expedition’s Route 1779

  Dramatis Personae

  Prologue

  1. Keepers Of The Gate

  2. Twyla’s Fright

  3. Cristal’s Promise

  4. Skylar’s Foreboding

  5. Ghostly Relics

  6. Phantom Smoke

  7. Tekakwitha

  8. Sleepwalking Again

  9. Sleeping Soul Walks With Spirits

  10. Watery Trail

  11. Call Me Dante

  12. The Dreamcatcher

  13. Tekakwitha

  14. The Corridor

  15. Confronting Mr. Dox

  16. Silverware and Winter Florals

  17. Cristal’s Revelation

  18. The Steamer Trunk

  19. Tessa’s Portfolio

  20. The Balsam Fir

  21. Soup and Secrets

  22. Tactical Maps

  23. Tessa’s Journal

  24. Two Bodies, One Soul

  25. Past Lives

  26. Mercy Dox

  27. Murder?

  28. Harrison’s Plan

  29. Hidden In Shadows

  30. Stop Her

  31. Unknown Destination

  32. Mingin

  33. Wolf Clan Longhouse

  Dear reader

  Acknowledgments

  About the Author

  More from the Author

  Copyright © 2020 by E. Denise Billups

  Layout design and Copyright (C) 2021 by Next Chapter

  Published 2021 by Shadow City – A Next Chapter Imprint

  Edited by Terry Hughes

  Cover art by CoverMint

  Twilight Ends is paranormal historical fiction. Apart from some well-known actual people, events, and locales that are part of this narrative, all names, characters, businesses, organizations, places, events, and incidents are either a product of this author’s imagination or are in all cases – used fictitiously. Any resemblance to current events, locales or to living persons is entirely coincidental.

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without the author’s permission.

  Indian Names

  Ye say they all have passed away,

  That noble race and brave,

  That their light canoes have vanished

  From off the crested wave;

  That 'mid the forest where they roamed

  There rings no hunter’s shout;

  But their name is on your waters,

  Ye may not wash it out.

  Ye say their cone-like cabins

  That clustered o'er the vale,

  Have fled like withered leaves

  Before the autumn’s gale;

  But their memory liveth on your hills,

  Their baptism on your shore;

  Your everlasting rivers speak

  Their dialect of yore.

  Lydia Huntley Sigourney

  Map of Iroquois Confederacy

  Map of Sullivan Expedition’s Route 1779

  Dramatis Personae

  Kanadasaga: Seneca Tribe Wolf Clan – 1779

  Jawanda Newhouse – Wolf Clan Mother, Billy’s Wife

  Billy Newhouse – Wolf Clan Sachem, Jawanda’s Husband

  Tekakwitha (Teka) – Wolf Clan Warrior, Jawanda and Billy’s Daughter

  Pilan – Wolf Clan Warrior, Teka’s Husband

  Garrentha –Wolf Clan, Jawanda and Billy’s Daughter, Teka’s Sister

  Sagoyewatha – Wolf Clan Warrior

  Kane Dox, Mingin (AKA Gray Wolf) – Adopted son of the Wolf Clan

  Postwar Colonial Village of Geneva, New York

  Captain William Dox – Revolutionary War Soldier, Postwar Owner of Seneca Property

  Mercy Dox – British Settler, Wife of Captain William Dox.

  Present-day Geneva, New York, Twilight Ends B&B

  Teresa (Tessa) Newhouse – Wife of Ian Newhouse and Owner of Twilight Ends B&B

  Ian Blackfoot Newhouse – Tessa’s Husband and Owner of Twilight Ends B&B

  Skylar Ferguson Newhouse – Tessa and Ian’s Daughter, Wife of Charlie Ferguson

  Charlie Ferguson – Skylar’s Husband

  Twyla Newhouse – Skylar and Charlie’s Daughter

  Jayson Sundown – Twyla’s Fiancée

  Cristal Whelan – Wife of Dante Whelan and Newhouse Family Friend

  Dante Whelan – Husband of Cristal Whelan and Newhouse Family Friend

  Old George – Caretaker of Twilight Ends

  Young George – Caretaker of Twilight Ends

  Prologue

  September 1779

  Kanadasga (Geneva, New York)

  Seneca Lake’s basin shifts, spewing Tekakwitha’s roaring rage from its liquid mouth. She wakes from her watery grave to relive a death she’d died one warm September morn when Sullivan’s Expedition torched and destroyed everything her family owned and loved. Thunderous hooves sound with her waking, repeating past injustices against an unsuspecting sleeping village.

  Inside Teka’s smoke-filled longhouse, she relives the chaos of a frightened family of 50 woken by whooping soldiers and a blazing fire. Unable to escape through the smoldering back door, her sisters, brothers, and elders crowd through a single egress and scatter into the dark, dense woodlands with nothing but the clothes they’d slept.

  She watches her husband, Pilan, brave and determined to save as many as he can, racing about, waking the sleeping, pulling the feeble through the door before the fiery roof crumbles around them, and flames consume timber walls. When he pushes her toward the exit, his wrathful brown eyes hold hers as if for the last time. “It can’t be!”

  “Teka, get to our tree. Wait for me there,” he says, gasping for air and rushing back inside for others.

  Into the murky dawn, Teka flees for the thousandth time, away from the devil’s steed, through a thicket of trees where she’d gathered kindling, picked berries and dug up roots and shoots many times. Beyond the great wahda’, she and her sisters tapped sap every sugar moon. Toward the big water, their men trapped trout for many years. Her people wade barefoot into the ganyodae’ shallow stream, pile into canoes, and escape upstream or by foot through the deep woods. She waits under the sugar maple, a tree where Pilan carved a sacred eagle, a sacrosanct place immortals guard, the place they first kissed.

  “I won’t… I can’t leave without him.”

  Hidden, she watches the fiery backdrop blacken the village. Rampant flames, stoked by autumn winds, incinerate 30 longhouses, spread across scorched grounds, blaze through fences, devouring Deohako the “three sisters” – maize, beans, and squash – and the abundant fruit orchards beyond. Charred wood, burnt corn, berries, apples, stored venison and trout mingle, scenting the air, overwhelming the scorched terrain. Oak, maple, and birch trees crackle under raging fire. Stags, wolves, and owls retreat from brilliant orange skies, howling danger. Enraged clansmen yell alarm, securing their women and children away from deafening hooves as soldiers savage and torch everything they love.

  Teka foresaw this day in a dream. She should have spoken of it to her elders, warned them to leave the encampment sooner. Now she shivers and weeps with remorse at devastation the soldiers unleash against her people. When tribes abandoned nearby Queanettquaga and Chequaga, her people made plans to escape further north to Niagara, away from their cherished home on the hill beside the lake. They should have left days ago whe
n rumors spread of Sullivan’s men’s attack against British loyalists and the Iroquois tribe who sided with them. Now it’s too late.

  Through the trees, she searches the fiery scene for her family, praying they’ve escaped, but fear feeble elders met with a fiery fate. No matter what, she’ll wait for Pilan until the soldiers depart or day breaks.

  When thistle crackles nearby, she hides behind the tree, fearing soldiers have discovered her when movement rustles a few feet away. Then she hears Pilan whisper, “Teka.”

  “Pilan,” she calls, stepping from behind the tree, noticing a soldier he’s bludgeoned at his feet and a tomahawk dangling from his hand. A bullet splits dawn, hitting her husband, piercing and ripping through his chest. “No! Pilan!” A second bullet misses Teka as she drops beside Pilan, bleeding on the ground. “Pilan, get up. Please, please, we can make it to the lake. You can’t leave me. Please get up!”

  His fingers clutch the choker around her neck, a gift she’d worn at their wedding just three moons ago. Spluttering blood and choking on his words, he whispers, “I’ll see you again, my Teka. Now, desë:had:t, run, go, leave me,” he says with his final breath.

  “Dëjihnyadade: gë’… I’ll see you again, my love.”

  Jerking her head around with the sound of approaching men, the choker catches and unravels in Pilan’s lifeless fingers, slipping into his limp palm as she rises and races toward the water’s edge.

  A gunshot echoes in the air. The instant immobilizing pain drops her to her knees. Her eyes linger on the harvest moon descending west and September’s Indian sun rising east over verdant mountaintops. Images of her homeland that she’ll never view again with corporeal eyes. Death is near, but she welcomes it, knowing she’ll join Pilan in the afterlife. The lake roars in sync with her last ragged breath. The earth shakes as she sinks into a watery grave.

  Now, her unearthly eyes see what human sight cannot. An unnatural force forever imbues the land her people lived, claiming and trapping aggrieved souls in this place of recurrent deaths. An ending she’ll relive a thousand times. When Seneca Lake roars at dawn and the earth trembles, she’ll wake, and watch Sullivan’s men destroy her people’s land. And, once more, without end, she’ll wait for her beloved Pilan and for her people to reclaim their land.

  Twilight Ends called to me in death, pulled me through its immortal womb.

  A soul neither here nor there,

  Christened with my people’s blood, Seneca’s eternal water,

  Keeper of the Western Door.

  I exist to protect, guard this sacred land,

  a sentinel of the immortal gate.

  Keepers Of The Gate

  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.