Strange Folk, page 15
In the cold light of morning, it was hard for her to believe that she had relied on folk magic to bring a murderer, with a clear grudge against her family, to justice. This place had gotten inside of her, and she’d started to believe they might have some power in this fucked-up world. She had lost her goddamn mind.
She was so distracted that she didn’t hear the truck pull up. Belva got out and came toward the house with her dress splattered in blood. Lee rushed to meet her.
“Morning.”
“What happened? Are you okay?”
“Yeah, why?” Lee pointed at her dress, and Belva looked down at it. “Oh, that’s nothing. You know Debbie’s daughter, the teacher? She had her baby about an hour ago. Both are healthy.”
“Oh. That’s nice.” Lee thought back to the night before. “When did you leave?”
“I got the call right after you went to bed.” Belva looked completely drained. She was unsteady on her feet, and Lee caught her as she stumbled. Belva gripped Lee’s hand tightly as she led her carefully into the house.
Kimmie was passed out on the couch with her mouth open, and she didn’t stir as they came in. Lee helped Belva ease into an armchair. As she fixed her a hot cup of coffee and a biscuit with dandelion jelly, Belva watched her.
“I was proud of you for joining last night.”
Lee didn’t want to argue with her while she was weak. She nodded and gave her a perfunctory smile. “Do you think it worked?”
“It was strong. I could feel it.”
Lee nodded and didn’t press further. She wouldn’t allow this type of magical thinking to guide her decisions any longer. She needed to know that her children and the rest of the family were safe. They couldn’t live here without that certainty, and she couldn’t leave knowing that Belva and the rest were in danger.
Belva coughed jaggedly into her hand. “Hey, I want to give you something.” She gestured toward a small baggie on the counter as another coughing fit came on, and Lee handed it to her.
Belva opened it and pulled out a black-streaked gold necklace with a large round locket dappled with age spots. Her hands shook slightly as she held it up to Lee. “This was Granny Pallie’s. It ain’t worth nothing, but it’s got history. I want you to have it. It’s usually passed down to the next in line who’s got the gift. You’re ready for it now.” Belva smiled weakly at Lee, and though Lee was sure she hadn’t inherited any gift, she couldn’t help but take it from her. She slipped it over her head and hid it beneath her sweater.
“Thank you, Grandma Mama. It’s beautiful. I’ll keep it close.”
Belva patted her hand and leaned back against the chair with her eyes closed.
Lee shook Kimmie’s shoulder until she started showing signs of life. She leaned over and whispered in her ear, “Meet me in the back room. I need to talk to you.” Then Lee went to find Billy, who’d crashed in some corner of the house.
When they were all in the back room, Lee shut the door and turned to them. “Kimmie, I noticed TJ wearing a purple blazer two nights ago. Do you remember seeing that?” Lee couldn’t be sure if it’d been real or not given her state at the time.
Kimmie wiped the crust from her eyes and scowled. “Why?”
“That blazer belonged to Mr. Hall. I want to turn TJ in to the police, but I need real evidence. They won’t believe half of what I have to tell them.”
Kimmie exhaled. “I told you, he didn’t kill Joe Hall. And even if he did, we don’t do cops around here. We can take care of our own problems.”
“She’s right, Lee,” Billy interjected.
“I know you don’t want to believe it, but he killed him. And he threatened our family. I can’t just let that go. And I can’t rely on some folk ritual to take care of it. This is my only option. Please. Help me protect our family.”
Kimmie took a rolled cigarette from behind her ear and lit it. She smoked for a bit, staring off into space. “I don’t remember a purple coat.”
“Bullshit.” She tried to catch Kimmie’s eye. “We have to go up there and check. Maybe there will be other evidence. The police will have to take it seriously.”
“Have you lost your mind? TJ will shoot you on sight.”
Billy put a hand on Lee’s shoulder. “Listen to her. If you wanna bring the law down on him, there’s a charm we could work. All we need is a bit of police station dirt, some snuff, a sprinkle of pepper. Kimmie can bury it on the property.”
“Like hell I will—”
“I told you I can’t count on folk magic to take care of this. We need to do something real. We can’t just stand by and wait for a handful of dirt to take care of our problems.”
Billy went to say something but decided against it, shaking his head.
Lee turned back to Kimmie. “Do you know when the property might be empty today?”
Kimmie was quiet a beat as she blew smoke into the sunshine through the window screen. “You ain’t letting this go, huh?”
Lee nodded. “I can’t.”
Kimmie exhaled loudly. “There’s a flea market in Franklin City. Everyone’s going. They’ll probably leave in the afternoon and come back late.”
Lee went to speak, but Kimmie cut her off. “To be crystal fucking clear, we are not going there on some mission to bring my brother to the law.” She pointed at Lee. “You are gonna see there’s no blazer, and then you’re gonna leave it alone.”
Lee agreed and turned back to Billy, “Will you come with us?” She didn’t want to go up there without reinforcements.
He eyed her. “I assume we ain’t telling Mama about this.”
“She wouldn’t understand. She thinks she’s taken care of it. And she’s not feeling well. I don’t want to worry her.”
He put his hands on his hips and shook his head again. “All right.”
* * *
The sun was sinking toward the ridge by the time they made it to the property.
It looked different in the light, but it was no less sinister. The sunshine imbued the uncut grass and the flowering weeds with a stark, frenzied quality, and the silence that buzzed around the trailer and the various storage sheds seemed sentient. Lee felt the prickle of being stalked at a close distance.
“Are you sure no one’s here?”
Kimmie gave her a look and didn’t respond.
Lee shook off the feeling as she opened the flimsy metal door to the trailer and stepped inside. Kimmie led them to TJ’s bedroom where the traces of him—designer clothes with the tags still on, small bottles of expensive skincare, a stack of books with titles like How to Give Zero Fucks and Get Rich—gave off thick fumes of his presence. Her hands shook and her body tingled as they searched through his closet, his drawers, and under his bed, but there was no sign of the purple blazer. There were, however, a lot of guns. Lee’s pulse quickened at the sight of their gleaming barrels. Billy tsked when he saw one leaned against the corner of the closet. “Boy needs to get a safe.”
They continued on to Missy’s room in the new addition jutting off the end. The room was meticulously decorated in purples and greens, and there was a brand-new MacBook resting on the desk. As they rifled through every drawer and shoebox, Lee thought of a time not long ago when Meredith had slept in a room like this, and Lee had felt closer to her than anyone she’d ever known. Now Meredith refused to talk to Lee about anything, and sometimes she felt like a stranger.
They found no trace of Mr. Hall—not a single handwritten note or signed gift. No purple blazer. Nothing they could use.
They went back out into the hall, where Kimmie stood with her arms folded. “That prove it for you? There ain’t nothing here.”
Lee shook her head. “I’d like to check outside.”
There were storage sheds all over the property, so they split up and rooted through them as the sun descended further. Lee’s shed was pitch black inside, and she had to pull out her phone light. The dirty plastic dog bowls and rusted farm equipment pocked with spider sacs were horror-tinged in the heavy silence; at any moment, TJ and his boys could come roaring up the driveway.
They met back up in the darkness just out of range of the trailer’s automatic lights.
“Where else can we look? We haven’t found any moonshine or anything illegal. There’s got to be another place where he keeps things.”
“And if we go there and you see all the stuff and no blazer, that will be the end of it? I mean it, the end.”
Lee hesitated, and then nodded. “Yes.”
Kimmie scanned up the ridge. “He’s got a little place up there where they make the moonshine. That’s where he keeps most of the drugs and other shit. I can show you the way, but it’ll be darker than a dog’s asshole with no moon.”
Billy pointed to his headlamp. “We can use this.”
* * *
They were like coal miners making their way through a narrow passage. The light from the headlamp made the dark around them more absolute, becoming flat and impenetrable on either side. The only evidence of creatures around them was the buzz of their wings and the scrape of their limbs against the brush. Lee might have been more terrified were it not for Billy’s tall, wide figure in front of her, guiding her deeper into the woods. A burly beacon in the dark.
Her mind wandered to the night of the party when she’d led Otis into the trees. She imagined his arm materializing out of the darkness and pulling her into it. He would lay her down on a bed of pine needles and slowly unbutton her dress and unhook the front clasp of her bra, exposing her to the elements. He would gently stroke her front, starting at her neck and making his way down. She would lay there shivering until he took off his clothes and used his body’s heat to warm the length of her.
A hoarse scream came from somewhere in front of them, and Billy stopped. Lee froze. The scream came again and again, the short repetition of it mad and desperate. She whispered as softly as she could. “Billy, is someone hurt?” But he didn’t respond or turn around.
She cautiously joined him and Kimmie at the front, and she saw a bobcat in Billy’s lamp light, staring them down as a humanlike wail came from the cat’s mouth.
Billy moved slowly toward the animal with his arm outstretched as Lee pleaded for him to come back. When he reached it and offered his hand up to smell, the animal froze with its teeth bared. Lee imagined it mauling him and then moving on to her.
But then the animal rubbed its cheek against his palm like a housecat, and Lee heard a low rumbling. The creature was purring. He gave it love for a few minutes until the cat got tired of it and loped out of sight.
He let out a breath and chuckled low to himself. “She was just lonely.”
They kept on walking for a little while before Billy stopped once again. Lee figured they’d finally reached the place, and she came up beside them to look.
It took her a moment to make sense of the pale man lying contorted in the leaves. There were freckles sprinkled over his cheeks and across his collarbone like a faun’s speckles. An imprint of a flower was burned into his bicep with the petals ridged in pink.
Even in cold, stiff death, TJ still had that animal magnetism.
Kimmie crouched down and placed a small hand on his chest. Lee reached out to console her, but she pulled violently away and stood up. She paced and ran her fingers through her hair as her face contorted with fury.
Kimmie walked over to the body again and gazed down for a while as if she was memorizing its lines. Then she took off running into the woods, the small figure of her swallowed up by the trees.
A howl came up in the distance like an animal wounded, alone, keening for her pack.
SEVENTEEN
They hung in the cold, fluorescent limbo of three a.m. in the police station waiting room.
Lee was bent over in her chair with her face in her hands, attempting to find darkness in them. She wished to lose consciousness, if only for a few minutes. Her mouth was sore for a drink.
They had questioned Lee and Billy first, and then Kimmie, after they’d found her curled up in TJ’s bed. Lee had tried to be as vague as possible, though she wasn’t sure she’d pulled it off. They had nothing to hide, and yet, there was much that could be misinterpreted. She thought of Belva coming home that morning with blood streaked down her front. Lee had been so sure that TJ was responsible for the murder. Now she wasn’t sure what to believe.
The sheriff seemed to know quite a bit about what was done and who had been at the gathering the night before, and Lee assumed one of Belva’s ladies had talked.
They had also found what looked like a hex bag on TJ. Billy tried to explain that it was probably one TJ made himself to ward off the police. He had one just like it on him at that very moment; never left home without it. But this seemed to only confirm their suspicion that it was the work of their family.
Billy paced the room; they’d taken Belva to question an hour before, and they were still back there. An officer walked by, and Billy blocked his path.
“What’s taking so long?”
“We’ll bring her to you when we’re done.” The man tried to move around him, but Billy stepped forward and allowed himself to expand. He could be a large man when he wanted to be.
“What exactly do y’all think happened?”
“I’m not at liberty to discuss the case with you, sir.”
“Look, we were happy to help y’all out, but I know my rights. She ain’t answering any more questions without a lawyer.”
“Sir, she ain’t a minor. She’s the one who got to ask for a lawyer. I’ll bring her back to you when we’re done.”
Billy’s hands curled into fists, and the air charged around them. The officer paled and began to back away slowly with his hand poised above his gun.
Lee knew Billy to be gentle and empathetic to the point of supernatural, but he was also a creature of the mountains with his own rules for how to live. He would protect himself and his family no matter the cost.
Kimmie’s voice came from the corner where she’d sat silently since they arrived. “Calm yourself, Billy. We don’t want no trouble.”
Billy lowered his shoulders and backed away a few steps.
“If you can’t control yourself, sir, I’m gonna have to lock you up,” said the officer.
“Don’t push it, Tyler.” Kimmie’s voice was rough and lifeless. Lee had never seen her like this, even when things were bad when they were kids. She went over to try to comfort her, but Kimmie pushed her hard, and she fell back onto the linoleum.
“Don’t fucking touch me. It’s cause of you that we’re here, and my own brother is dead.” She spit on the floor near Lee’s hand.
“I didn’t have anything to do with his death.”
“Then who was it, huh?”
Kimmie stared into her eyes, and Lee saw the hurt she usually kept hidden. “I was happy when you came back. I thought maybe it could be like when we were kids again. But I wish you’d stayed away. Everything’s gone to shit.”
Something inside Lee tightened painfully.
Kimmie stalked up to the officer at the desk. “Can I go?”
“Yes, the detective on the case will call you when there’s an update.”
“Fantastic.” She left the room without looking at Lee.
They continued to wait, until a commotion came from the back room where they were holding Belva. Billy looked toward it and then back at Lee. Without speaking, she stood up, and they rushed toward it, ignoring the calls to stop from the officer.
Belva was sprawled on the floor of the interrogation room with her eyes roving in their sockets. Lee knelt down and held her gaze, and she’d never seen such raw helplessness. Belva tried to speak, but her mouth slanted and no sound came out. The left half of her face was melting down as if her features might slide off onto the government linoleum.
An officer pulled Lee away and started taking Belva’s vitals. Lee tried to maintain eye contact to let her know she was still there, but then Belva’s eyelids drooped, and she lost consciousness. It was excruciating to watch the slow movements of the procedure as Lee imagined Belva’s mind dissolving inside her skull, each glorious thread of her becoming syrup.
More officers came in with a stretcher and loaded her onto it. Lee tried to keep one hand on Belva as they rushed her out the front door, but they pulled ahead of her, and she was left running after them into the parking lot.
* * *
Belva was a deflated, gray-skinned stranger in the hospital bed. Lee had never seen her in an environment so removed from nature, and she worried the tangle of wires and machines might be the opposite of what she needed. But there was no alternative. If they took her off the machines, she could die.
Belva didn’t seem like the type who could die. If anything, Lee imagined her disappearing into the woods one day to become one of the trees.
Luann sat in a chair next to the bed, holding Belva’s limp, waxy hand and reciting Bible verses under her breath. When Meredith had seen Belva in the hospital bed, she’d taken on the same vacant expression she’d had after finding Mr. Hall, and Cliff had gotten upset and embarrassed, so Billy had taken them back to the cabin. Lee wanted to be with them, but she couldn’t leave Belva. She and Billy would switch shifts in a few hours.
Dreama leaned against the window holding a Styrofoam cup of coffee. “Lee, look at this.” She pointed out the window where Lee saw birds of different kinds perched on the windowsill and peering into the glass, as if trying to find a way in. When she got closer, she saw more lining the roofline and hovering just outside. Hundreds of them.
Lee stepped away from the glass and started pacing. “Where is the doctor? It’s been hours. Shouldn’t they be doing something?”
Dreama reached out and tried to steady her. “Hey. Look at me. She has the best doctor in this place. I made sure of it. He’ll be here soon, and we’ll know more. Until then, just try to stay calm.”
Dreama had been an authoritative, grounding presence since she arrived, and Lee was grateful she’d come, despite her problems with Belva.
