Page 27 of A Curse On Black Lake (Black Lake Gothic Cowboys #1)

Chapter twenty-one

Eliana

“Is that the last one?” Killian asks.

I hum and open it. One of my favorite smells wafts into my nose, and I take a deep breath. There’s nothing like the smell of an old book.

“I love that smell,” Killian says quietly.

I smile at him. “I do too. Something about history smells good.”

He chuckles. “Even if it’s about death.”

“Isn’t everything?” I ask him.

He stares at me, and normally anyone that looks at me that hard makes me want to shrink into myself so they don’t look too closely. But I don’t with him.

Instead, I lift my chin.

“It’s about both,” he says, reaching towards me. “If it was only about death, then there would be no point for this,” he says and taps on my heart.

“Then why does it feel like death is always surrounding us?” I ask him.

“It’s Black Lake — it does surround us.”

Accepting his answer, I open the cover, and a brief whiff of peppermint fills my nose as Killian pulls the chair out for me to sit down while he stands next to me.

I carefully turn each page, terrified I’ll mess it up.

Though I’m not sure who I would give it to.

I don’t have children to pass these things down to.

Yet another disappointment. But Grams never said a word about legacy.

She was confident a man would come along and I would be able to continue the Greer name.

She never seemed to be concerned about it, as if she knew he would come.

I’m nearly thirty now. Maybe she should have been.

Shaking myself out of my thoughts, I turn each page. Old remedies and tinctures that Grandma Lily wrote. Some we still use today. Others we now know can be a little too poisonous or aren’t worth the work it takes to grow the plants. People had different ailments back then.

I turn the page, and I shouldn’t be surprised that it’s there. But I am. Only this time there is significant information about the flower because Grandma Lily was the first to name it.

June 17, 1859

This is the Monitio Flos De Letum, the Flower of Death.

It sprung not hours after Jasper Radcliffe was murdered in front of our eyes.

Upon study, it appears to yield no medicinal value.

Nor does it offer much ornamental. I studied it that day.

But what surprised me is how quickly it died.

I don’t know that I have ever seen a plant die so quickly.

Especially one in this area of the world.

It is here and gone for such a short time, it would seem that it is somehow connected to the death that this land has experienced.

I can neither confirm nor deny the correlation, but more explanation, if any, will be in my separate journal, so as not to fill this space with useless observations.

“Do you know where her other journal is?” Killian asks me.

I look around at all the books and journals, most unnamed or unlabeled. The ones we’ve been looking through are our main recipes, growing techniques, and important notes. The Greer family journals, on the other hand, are hard to pull together.

“Honestly, I’m not sure. Some are personal. Others are for other observations and notes about growing, like Grandma Lily said.”

“Since they’re personal, is this something you want my help with?” Killian asks.

I smile again. He seems to make me do that a lot. “Thank you for being so considerate, but we’re talking about journals over a hundred years old. I can’t imagine there’s any big family secret in them that would matter at this point.”

“Fair enough. But how will we know it’s a journal?”

I shrug and look at the stacks and stacks of books. “I guess we have a lot of reading to do, but we only need to find Grandma Lily’s. Hopefully, everyone has their name in them.”

As Killian and I go around the room looking for this mysterious journal that might provide insight into this flower, I try to ignore the fact that this room has changed now because I’ve been in it.

I’ve left it untouched since she died because it was Grams’s space. It doesn’t matter that I spent a lot of time in here. It felt wrong for me to go in after she died, and change even a page or the way a pencil was angled on the desk.

It’s only a room. I know that. But it’s another piece of Grams that’s gone now.

It’s out of necessity, but how many more things that were so completely her, fall away?

Will I forget them? Will she end up like my parents in my mind?

I can barely picture them now. I have a photo, but it’s hard for me to look at even to this day.

“Eliana?” Killian calls.

“Hmm,” I say, turning to face him.

“Are you okay?” he asks with worry all over his face. “I know this was your Gram’s space. This can wait. I can leave if you want me to, if you want to be alone right now.”

I shake my head and press my palm to my chest. “No, it’s okay. We need this information.”

“I can wait,” he states, setting a leather-bound journal down.

My body moves before I can tell myself no. We’ve been touching a lot today, and in such few hours I find myself craving it. I’m afraid this craving may turn into an addiction if I’m not careful.

I grab his hand. “Thank you for today, I —” I stop, struggling for words. My chest flutters, and I push the words out. “I’m glad I have you as a friend.”

Something flashes in his eyes, and he squeezes my hand back. “Maybe the it was this,” he says.

I blink a few times, realizing he’s talking about what Grams told me on her deathbed.

“Yeah,” I rasp. “Maybe.”

I drop his hand and we keep looking, as I organize the space, cleaning it up as we go. Killian helps me put books on the higher shelves that I can’t reach. Eventually, we end up on one last stack of books and journals. The leather looks old, almost dried out, and I know it’s the one.

Sliding it from the bottom of the pile carefully because it looks like it’s well worn, and used heavily. “Did you find it?” Killian asks.

“I think so,” I say, opening the cover.

Lily Jane Greer 1859 is written in a beautiful scrawl.

I turn the page, and it’s dated the first of January, 1859. I flip through, finding June first. I scan the page. Most of it is normal, day to day things, nothing to note. Then I find June 17th.

I don’t know that writing this down will make the situation any better, but he deserves to be remembered. What happened should be recorded if for the sake of a reminder to us all.

Jasper Radcliffe was killed in cold blood by Casandra Jameson’s father, Conrad. He is the mayor, the richest man in Black Lake, and the leader of this town.

Sheriff Sawyer hardly batted an eye. Many of us tried to stop it. Cassandra, even in her state, threw herself in front of Jasper, but he begged her to step away. Let him bear the brunt of the consequences so that she and his future child would not have to.

Cassandra held him in her arms as he took his last breath, and it tore me apart to watch her anguish.

Normally, I would never quote a curse from anyone.

They have a tendency to dig claws into those that repeat them.

But I believe it is worth the risk. I must pass this information down because I believe it has taken hold of the people of Black Lake.

I sensed the shift the moment Cassandra said the words.

It is as if we cannot escape death despite its natural occurrence.

It is as if death has come here to make its home. God help us.

I curse this land you have spilled blood on. For generations, you will see death and blood. You will pay for what you have done!

Lily goes on to explain the details of what happened, and the Spirits go wild within me. As if they are reacting to something I was meant to find. Yes, Lily is a great-grandmother, but it feels like more. It feels like a door, long shut, is cracking open, but I am the one who has to push it wide.

We buried him at their favorite place, next to Black Lake.

Nine months later she bore a son, Jasper Radcliffe, his father’s namesake. Cassandra was disinherited by her family. She took on the name Radcliffe as she would have, had he been alive. Jasper’s family name will carry on, and I know that he would be proud of her.

She left not a month after giving birth to the babe.

Even after she left, strange things began to occur.

Famine, more unexplained death, children unable to make into this world, flooding that destroyed crops, the lake turned black as night, strange that the town is named after a man Thomas Black, and then it turned that color.

People have been bitten by snakes full of venom, and few survived.

Ghosts and spirits seen in the dead of night.

We are told not to interact with them, but I see them, and I know I’m not the only one.

I do not know that there is an end in sight for all of this death. And if anyone reads this long after I’m gone. It’s likely because the curse still holds to this land.

There may be no lifting the curse for the people of Black Lake to flourish.

But I have to believe that love, the thing that started all of this, is what will end it.

I have no proof, but I believe it will have to be from the blood of a Radcliffe.

As the Radcliffe line has left this place, I fear this story will become an old one in Black Lake, and death in this most unnatural of ways, the most unexplainable of reasons, will never unclench its terrible claws here.

Killian is silent next to me as he reads along with me.

When I finish the last line, I look up at him, and his jaw ticks.

“If this curse thing is true, then it would explain a lot. But I don’t know how it connects to the woman I found on my land,” he says.

He sighs and runs his hand through his hair again.

“I guess it explains the curse the Spirits mentioned.” He pauses, and I can see the gears turning in his head.

“Is it possible the perp would know this information?”