Strange Folk, page 17
Mom put down the trays and snatched the album out of her hands. “Yes.” She set it down on another pile and picked up a box cutter. Meredith watched as she opened a new box and started pulling out empty Coke bottles and lining them up on a chest of drawers.
“Fine. I’m going back to bed.”
She didn’t respond.
* * *
In the morning, Meredith and Cliff sat down to an elaborate breakfast of cinnamon rolls, sausage, and some kind of frittata. She begged her mother to sit down for a moment and eat with them, and she begrudgingly obliged. As Mom sat there, no longer in motion, she visibly sank. She stared at the food absentmindedly but didn’t take a bite.
“Why don’t we go to the pumpkin patch today? Tiffany said everyone goes this time of year.” Meredith could hear the forced cheer in her voice.
When Mom didn’t respond, Meredith caught Cliff’s eye across the room and gestured for him to back her up. He nodded and said “Mom, the pumpkin patch sounds really fun. I want to go” in a voice sweetened with corn syrup. Meredith gave him a look, convinced that Mom would call bullshit, but instead she looked up from the food and smiled weakly.
“All right, if that’s what you want.”
* * *
Meredith stroked the smooth ridges of the pumpkin and grabbed hold of its spongy stalk, feeling it give slightly in her fist. She turned it over and found the other side had rotted right through. A spider crawled out of it as if the mold was taking animal form.
She rolled it away and stood up to survey the barren hills dotted with orange and parched green. Without trees to shade her, the sun was metallic in its intensity.
Cliff called to her from down the hill, and she made her way over to him. Mom stood a few feet away looking dazedly out over the farm to some distant point, and she didn’t respond to Cliff’s calls.
“What a fine specimen.” Meredith fingered the pumpkin’s stalk still rooted to the earth. “Doesn’t look like they’ve cut her loose yet.”
Cliff gently nudged her shoulder aside. “I’ll take care of it.” He pulled the knife that Billy gave him from his pocket and carefully cut the stem.
Meredith corralled Mom, and they carried the pumpkin to a truck idling nearby with a flatbed trailer stacked with hay bales and covered on all sides by bright orange banners advertising Home Depot. Every other bale was spray-painted orange, and it tinged the goat-shitted farm air with sweet chemical fumes. The driver, who looked about fourteen, turned the truck on, and EDM blasted from the sound system, sending a rumble through the bales. They winced at the sun as they rambled slowly through the rows of pumpkins back to the festival grounds.
Her mom perked up briefly as they searched for kettle corn in the food stall area, but they found nothing but tents selling TGI Friday’s boneless wings and Red Robin cheeseburgers with onion straws poking out of the sides like claws. People stared at them from the food lines and picnic tables, some with unabashed fear and others with a curiosity reserved for car crashes. When they sat down at one of the tables, the small family next to them quickly got up and moved to another table.
As they sat eating popcorn shrimp, a man in a farmer costume came up to Cliff and handed him a smiling yellow Walmart balloon. Meredith compared this man with his painfully blue overalls, inexplicable neck scarf, and hole-worn hat with the actual farmers that sat chewing at the tables around them.
“To be honest, I was expecting something more… quaint. Some of the aesthetic choices have harshed the pastoral vibes.” Meredith grimaced at her mom from across the table as she dipped a shrimp into a creamy orange sauce.
“It wasn’t like this when I was a kid. We would get apple cider and kettle corn and Mama would give me a quarter for the ‘world’s largest cow’ tent. There was something about enormous animals that spoke to me.”
Meredith raised an eyebrow. “That sounds like animal abuse.”
“You’re probably right.” Mom deflated again, and Meredith regretted her sarcasm. She searched around the festival for an appealing activity. “Look, Cliff, they have a corn maze.”
He contemplated its entrance to their left. Stretched across a wall of bales at the front was a banner advertising “Conway Development” with a close-up picture of Dreama and her husband flashing veneers and subtle spray tans.
Cliff’s eyes lit up. “Will you guys go with me?”
“Sure.” Meredith looked at her mom, whose gaze had unfocused again. “Mom?”
“What?”
“Will you do the corn maze with us?”
She looked over at the wall of corn. “Oh. That’s okay, honey. I’m a little tired. Text me when you get out.”
Meredith and Cliff declined the paper map offered at the front entrance showing the maze in the shape of a black cat, convinced it would be cheating. At first, they took it at a wild run and allowed themselves to get lost. She missed being with Cliff like this; they used to spend hours playing make-believe together, but now everything had to be so real all the time. Meredith inhaled the sweet hay fumes, forgetting the weight of the last few days, and just let go.
When they’d penetrated deep into the maze and found themselves all alone, they decided it was time to make their way back. Cliff wanted to use their “powers” to find the way, so they both closed their eyes and tried to focus on the land beneath them, listening for where they should go. Meredith wasn’t sure this was how it worked, but it was fun regardless. She hadn’t tried to use her gift since the night she hurt Redbud.
As she half-heartedly attempted to connect with the land, she heard Cliff gasp, and she opened her eyes. He was staring at something behind her with the look he had after a night terror, when he still felt the demon in the room. A chill swept down her neck and back, and she shivered in the autumn heat.
Before she could turn around, the world shifted to black.
TWENTY
LEE
Lee bought a triple of hot honey whiskey from the Wild Turkey stand and prayed for it to send her to a warm place where she could pretend to be alive and well for her kids.
She hadn’t felt like this since the first untethered months of college. She’d wandered from dorm to hall to library, afraid she might float away. She’d heard it described as a heaviness, but for her, it was a weightlessness that made her nearly immaterial, a state so close to nonexistence that she could almost feel its relief. The only things that saved her were the hours of classes and schoolwork.
As the liquor filled her with a warm, tethering weight, she roamed and observed the people going from booth to booth.
Is the killer here?
She wished they had gone somewhere more quiet and uncrowded, but there was a comfort in the presence of so many witnesses, even if they were the gawking, judgmental kind.
She heard her name being called and saw Dreama waving to her.
“Hey, how is she doing?”
“No change.”
“Her brain is still healing. I’m sure she’ll come out of it.”
Lee’s chest seized at the image of Belva’s brain dissolved to syrup, and another wave rolled over her. She wanted to think of the Belva she’d known, and not the one lying in the hospital bed. “Do you remember when she used to bring us to the festival?”
Dreama smiled. “Yeah, she’d make us volunteer for the kettle corn booth with her. I still have burns from that thing.” She held up her forearm and showed Lee a faded pink slash.
“But then Mama and Aunt Ruby would come at night, and we’d do the corn maze.” Redbud and Ruby Jo became children again when they entered the maze, running through its narrow corridors in the dark and shrieking whenever they came upon some other lost soul. She and Dreama always held hands so they wouldn’t be scared. It had been one of Lee’s favorite times of the year, like a holiday that came right before Halloween.
Dreama gave Lee a genuine smile, and she caught a glimpse of the girl she’d once known. “Yeah, I remember.”
Suddenly a wail came from the direction of the maze that filled Lee’s body with adrenaline. Cliff.
By the time she and Dreama got to the entrance, a crowd had formed with some of the parents looking frantic but doing nothing. Another wail came. This time with a ripple in it that was pure horror.
Fuck this.
Lee charged into the maze and ran in the direction of the screams. The paths had emptied so that Lee was alone as she raced through its turns, sweating and crying out every time she hit a dead-end. The penetrating sun had dimmed to an evening intensity that revealed every aspect of the narrow passages in flat, terrifying detail. A few times she felt something, not behind her, but beside or above her, looming just out of sight.
She heard heavy breathing behind a wall of corn and pushed the thick stalks aside, forcing her way through and scraping her arms. She stumbled over something on the other side and came to her knees in the next row. It was the small body of Cliff curled against the maze wall and breathing heavily. She spoke low into his ear, and he looked up to verify her identity with his knife blade clutched in his small hand. He reached out for her and buried his face against her collarbone.
They breathed together for a while until he’d calmed.
“Where’s Meredith?” Lee asked.
He looked up at her, stricken. “Something took her.”
Lee’s breath caught. “What do you mean?”
“It took her.”
“It?”
“The thing I warned you about.”
“What thing?”
“I see it everywhere. I don’t know what it is. It’s like, a shadow.”
The shadow again. She had never seen Cliff so preoccupied with one image—first, the night they arrived. Then, the night of Mr. Hall’s murder, at the stadium, and now here. She took a deep breath. “Where’d it take her?”
Cliff grimaced like he might cry. “I didn’t see. I don’t know. Just away.”
“Okay. Let’s check to see if she’s at the front, and if she’s not there, we’ll look for her.”
He nodded, and they quickly exited the maze with a discarded map.
The spectators had grown in number at the entrance. As Lee and Cliff made their way through the crowd, they took a few steps back and gawked, as if seeing them confirmed all their suspicions about the Buck family. Lee searched their faces for Meredith’s, but she didn’t see her.
Lee took out her phone and called her. No answer. Lee texted her, attempting not to sound too frantic if it turned out she’d allowed paranoia to take over her judgment. She could almost imagine Meredith talking to Tiffany by the photobooth and rolling her eyes at her mother’s hysteria. But this vision seemed made of a fool’s sunshine. The sun had dipped behind the mountains in the distance; they were in the shadows.
* * *
The night sky rolled in waves made by hundreds of small roving flashlight beams.
All around her, people were attempting to find her daughter.
Lee was standing in the middle of it, shaking. It felt like she was having a seizure in slow motion, her mind stuck on an image of Meredith disappearing into the woods with the hunched, greasy shadow of a man.
The sheriff waved his hand in her face again and gave her a concerned but frustrated look. “Opaline. Stay with me. We gotta get through these questions.”
He asked her about every move Meredith had made at the festival, her mental state, the situation at home.
“We’ll search as long as the volunteers and my officers last.”
She could tell by his expression that he thought any sort of manual search was futile. This was a performance the whole town was taking part in. When people disappeared, it was because someone wanted them to stay hidden.
Lee found Billy and Cliff sitting on a log off to the side. She crouched down in front of Cliff, who sat with his arms folded in a tight knot across his chest. He had been shy with the sheriff and vague in his answers. He knew something had taken Meredith, but he couldn’t give a description.
“Iff. I know you’re scared. I’m scared, too. But I need your help. I need you to tell me what you saw in the maze.”
“I didn’t see his face.”
“So it’s a him now?”
“I guess. The sheriff said it was probably a him.”
“Do you remember anything else about him? Face, hair, clothes, height?”
He took a deep breath and looked her in the eye. “I didn’t see his face. Or hair. Or clothes. I think he was tall—”
“That’s all you noticed?” He had fear in his eyes, and she realized she was clutching his arms too hard. She released them, revealing red marks on his skin.
He fought back tears. “I wish I could tell you. He was like a shadow. I couldn’t see anything.”
“And you saw him take Meredith?”
“No. He sorta appeared in front of us. He was just standing there. And then I felt really cold and I blacked out. I don’t remember anything until you found me. But I know he took her.” The tears began to fall. “You don’t believe me.”
Lee reached out and pulled him into her. She whispered “I believe you, I believe you” into his ear as he continued to sob.
He pulled away again and looked up at her. “Mom, I can’t feel her. Or see her. It’s like she’s really gone.” He started to cry again, and Lee’s stomach dropped. She told herself it didn’t mean anything; he was just upset.
When he’d quieted down, she gestured Billy off to the side where she could keep Cliff in sight.
“I need you to take him home with you.”
“Okay. You coming later? I got plenty of room.”
“No. I have to figure out what’s going on so I can find Meredith.”
Lee watched Cliff sitting on the log. A night breeze ruffled the curled ends of his hair as he fought to keep a calm, smooth face.
“Don’t let Cliff go to school. Or anywhere. Just keep him at your cabin. Can you do that? Can you take off work?”
“Yeah, I can do that. It’s no problem. We’ll lay low.”
“Thanks.” She took a deep breath. “Is it possible Belva killed TJ? Could this be retribution for his death?”
“There’s no way in hell.”
“But what if they think she did?”
“No one connected to TJ has the sense to pull something off like this.”
Lee looked back at the maze where the flashlights still strobed. She thought of how much Redbud had wanted to see Meredith, and the relationship they’d struck up behind her back. “What if Mama took her? Maybe she had help from someone.” Kidnapping sounded extreme even for Redbud, but she couldn’t rule it out.
Billy shook his head. “Red wouldn’t do that.”
“Either way, she was at that gathering at TJ’s. She might know something. Do you know where she is?” When Lee went back four days ago to check on her mother, she was already gone. The nurse told her they’d realized she was a dope fiend and cut her off. They’d tried to get her into a detox center, but she’d checked out instead.
“She’s at home.”
“How is she doing?”
“Not good. She’s on day four of detox.”
Lee nodded. She’d seen it before, and it wasn’t pretty. “Take care of my boy for me?”
“I will. Go see Red.”
TWENTY-ONE
The land around the old white house felt like a different country. The trees had been cleared out for crops decades ago, and now it stood in a dry expanse, the night wind gusting uninhibited against her front.
Even after twenty years, she still felt exposed here.
The screen door lay propped against the side of the house, creating an open maw at the front. The main door, a cracked version of Belva’s blue, was ajar. She knocked against it and called out so as not to startle anyone. Her mother had once split open a possum’s head with a frying pan when it came through the cat flap uninvited.
No one answered, so she pushed the door in and walked inside.
It was dark except for a new hole in the roof that allowed moonlight to pour through to the cratered and molded floorboards beneath. It still smelled like the gunpowder sting of cigarettes. The living room was filled with stained mattresses on the floor, and the walls that had once been white were a pale yellow and streaked with different stains. On one wall, an enormous black flower was burned into the plaster.
She flipped the light switch on the wall. Nothing happened.
Belva had inherited this house from an uncle, and when Redbud and Hank had a baby and got married, she gave it to them. But she’d never put it in their name. It was the only thing Redbud couldn’t sell for drugs, and so she’d hung on to it all these years.
Lee’s old bedroom was nearly empty except for a pile of papers and books in the corner. They were the only pieces of her childhood her mom and her friends hadn’t taken. Things that weren’t of value to anyone but Lee. Stacks of her high school essays, the word-processed pages now torn and smudged. Envelopes of college acceptances and her SAT results and financial aid information. At the bottom of all this paper that had meant so much to her was a black leather book. She opened it and found her name written in her own childish handwriting. It was filled with blank pages.
Lee found her mother’s door closed. No one answered her knock, but she could feel her presence behind the door like a child hiding under a bed.
The room was bare except for a large mattress lying on the floor against the wall. Redbud was laid out on the bed under a yellow polyester coverlet with her thin hair fanned out from her face on a single pillow. She radiated the feverish, sweaty saintliness of the newly sober, illuminated by the moonlight coming through the bald window above her head.
“Mama.”
“Hey, baby,” she croaked.
“Where is Meredith?”
“How would I know? You’re her mama.” Redbud picked up a pack of cigarettes from the floor and sat up against the wall, trying to light one with a shaking hand.
Lee slapped it out of her fist, and the lighter went skidding across the floorboards. “Look at me. Meredith is missing, and I think you know where she is. So you better fucking tell me right now. I don’t want any of your bullshit.”
