Nightmares in the Northwest

Secret of the Cathanow

Emily met Katie in the Blue Jay the day after Halloween. It was rather quiet the day after, everyone was already hung over from drinking Halloween Night. There were some people talking here and there, but it was not much. Many people just were there to play pool. Emily spoke with Katie at a table, to ask her about the stone tablet.

"Katie, my girl." Emily said to Katie in an upbeat and peppy tone. "What do you know about the stone tablet?"

"Well, the stone tablet is located in an underground cavern underneath the Cathanow Casino known as the Five Arrows." Katie recalled. The casino owner said that it's located in a secret passageway."

"Well why don't we stop sitting around here and check it out!" Emily replied. Katie led Emily out to her motorcycle and sidecar.

"Get in the sidecar, we're going to the casino!" Katie told Emily. Emily got in the sidecar, and they drove off to the casino.

"Yea!" Emily cheered with her hair waving in the wind. "This is so cool!"

"If you think this is cool, wait till you see the casino." Katie told Emily. She stopped the bike at the casino parking lot and walked in with Emily. At the door was the owner, dressed in an eye-catching bright green suit with a bright green tie.

"Hello, I am the owner, Nicholas Green Pheasant." The man with the braided gray ponytail and shaved gray beard announced, politely greeting the two women while he smiled his friendly smile. "Funny seeing a white woman here, since the white devils destroyed our great empire."

"Hold on, the Cathanow were an empire?" Emily was shocked.

"They were." Nicholas began to retell the tale of the glory days of the Cathanow civilization. "The Cathanow were a legendary warrior civilization. They were agricultural, but began to domesticate the horse, using it for plowing, farming, and riding into battle. Everything was with the horse. They built huge temples and pyramids, with the most notable being Novetal, a pyramid so tall it rivaled the Mayan pyramid Tikal."

"This seems rather informative." Emily commented.

"I am not done." Nicholas continued. "Their empire spanned the Hoh Rainforest, what is now Hurricane Ridge, and had to skirmish with the Jironga for control of Mount Rainier, but the Jironga Mountain guards were too strong, so they could not hold to the mountain territory. When the Spanish and the British came to the Oregon Territory, they wiped out the Jironga and the Cathanow territories, clearing out much of their empires until the US Army finished them off and established the Cathanow and Jironga Reservations."

"That must have been heartbreaking to lose all that land." Emily felt sympathetic for the Cathanow. "I know what it is like to lose just one person, but a whole civilization must be traumatizing."

"I understand now." Emily said to the owner. Nicholas pulled a knife at Emily.

"However, you are descended from those white devils, so I cannot let you in here!" Emily gasped.

"What can I do to get you to trust me?" Emily pleaded.

"I know of just the thing." The owner had an idea. "There are these degenerative teenagers that cheat at slot machines by making fake quarters so they can steal my money. Find them and bring me them so they can be punished!"

"Sounds easy enough." Emily agreed. Katie and Emily looked around the casino, investigating the slot machines. There was one man that was playing a Pharoah's Quest slot machine and lost.

"Dang it, I lost again!" The man said. Emily and Katie moved on. There was a blonde woman playing a Deal or No Deal slot machine, but she got a ticket for 4 dollars.

"Well, that's something, I guess." She said to herself. A young, stylish and pretty short black-haired lady was playing a Taylor Swift slot machine and got a jackpot.

"WOOOW!" She cheered, waving her arms in the air. "I am so buying my husband dinner after this!" Her silver hoop earrings jiggled during her celebration. Emily and Katie finally got to the slot machine where some teens in black hoodies, red ball caps and gold chains started inserting cardboard quarters into the slot machines. When a teen in a red 13 jersey started to insert a cardboard quarter in a slot machine, Emily used telekinesis to flick it out of his hand.

"Nice try cheating, loser!" Emily snapped.

"What are you doing?" The teen replied. "We were going to have the most dope score ever!" A teen in a red W hat butted in.

"We were totally gonna earn some big greens without paying shit!" Emily used her powers to choke the teen with the W hat.

"Emily, knock it off!" Katie warned Emily. "Control your anger!"

"Here's how it works." Emily lectured the teen gang. "You are going to face the consequences for your actions, or you will swear not to make fake change and cheat again." Katie began using her mind control.

"You will never use fake change again, you will never steal, you will go home and rethink your actions." Katie persuaded the teens.

"We will never use fake change again, we won't steal, and we will go home and rethink our actions." The teens said while under Katie's mind control.

"Forget it, this crime business ain't worth it!" One of the teenagers admitted. "Let's go home and play Fortnite." All the other teenagers agreed, leaving the casino. Katie and Emily came back to Nicholas.

"Did you catch those teenagers?" Nicholas asked.

"We did, and I used my mind control to make them swear to never steal again, ending their lives of crime." Katie admitted.

"Mind control?" Nicholas was shocked. "You have...superpowers?"

"Yes, we both do." Katie replied.

"It's just as the prophecy predicted!" Nicholas could not believe that the ancient prophecy was coming true. "Hold on one minute." He pulled a lever at his desk, causing a glass box of Cathanow artifacts to swing forward, revealing a secret passageway. Emily and Katie took the secret passageway, went down the stairs and found the stone tablet at an altar of some sort. It hung over two wooden totem poles with eagle heads, and a wooden box with the Cathanow emblem, an eight-pointed sun and five arrows on it. They looked at the tablet, looking at the heroes envisioned in the tablet.

"They kind of look like me, Al, you, Gloria and Sara." Emily reacted, seeing an illustration of the four beams of light with one huge beam in the center.

"It says when the four beams of light hit north, south, east and west, the final beam will activate when the five heroes sacrifice their auras. When the five heroes sacrifice their auras, the sole leader will swallow God and become invincible." Katie read. Emily took a photo of the tablet with her phone.

"We have to inform the mayor about this!" After Emily and Katie exited the altar, Emily got a call from Sara.

"Emily, you got to listen here." Sara told Emily. "I am sick of dealing with you and Gloria all the time, so I moved out of Mistdale."

"Where do you live?" Emily asked.

"Rockhopper, in an abandoned WW2 bunker, the only place in Rockhopper where the loan payment is cheap."

"Rockhopper is a vampire hotspot, because vampires love to suck the blood of rich people, so they can steal their money and live nice and luxurious, taking over their lives." Emily warned Sara.

"I know, and I love it here." Sara answered. "All I want is to be treated like I mean something. I brought you here and you just ignore me, and you didn't give me a fair slice of your law firm!"

"I will call you back later." Emily hung up the phone.

"What was that about?" Katie asked.

"It was my sister." Emily answered. "She seems to be in tune with the vampires, but I want to know if she's connected to the mayor."

"I'll go with you to Rockhopper, and I say this as a friend." Katie replied. Katie and Emily got back on the motorcycle, bound for Rockhopper.