Strange Folk, page 19
She took out her pocketknife and dug its blade into her palm. She squeezed her hand over the dirt mound and blood streamed down into it. She felt no pain. Only the sear of power gliding through her.
Redbud’s speech became a chant, and the rest joined in, flinging the words into the fire so that it jerked and smoked.
“I want to cut Hank’s whore out of my life. I want to cut Hank’s whore out of my life.”
Eventually, their voices began to slow, and then the hum finally died with one resounding amen. They fell back into the dirt, laughing hysterically, sweat-dewed, like women who have finally, gloriously come.
In the thick of their joy, Redbud noticed what seemed like a shadow lurking just outside the group. Though it had no discernible face, it was inexplicably familiar. It seemed to be studying her.
She scanned the faces of those around her, but no one registered its presence. The shadow moved fluidly through the gathering, giving them chills as it sliced a path between them. When it brushed against Redbud, a cold like snowmelt took the breath from her lungs.
At the edge of the clearing, the shadow looked back at Redbud once again before disappearing into the dark.
It did not feel like a farewell.
The group was giddy and starving as they filed into the cabin, and they dove into the meats and casseroles and cobblers without decorum. Luann lugged in a large jug filled with hard apple cider and filled any glass thrust her way. They leaned shoulder to shoulder and put their arms around one another with the unabashed familiarity of children. Once they were stuffed, they cleaned the backyard and cabin together, as one organism.
Redbud and Beverly were the last to leave. As they thanked Billy for letting them use his place, Redbud suddenly felt faint. She leaned against the front railing and tried to steady herself, but the world blurred and tilted further. Billy helped her to Beverly’s car, and she collapsed onto the seat and lost consciousness.
* * *
The next morning, Redbud woke to a knock at the door. Beverly must have brought her inside and put her to bed. She got up unsteadily, threw on her old robe, and went to the door, expecting to see Belva with Opaline in tow.
It was the sheriff, Billy, and Belva. No Opaline. They told her to sit down.
The bridge out by Bell’s Fork had collapsed that morning. There’d been a whole line of cars backed up from the train crossing, waiting for it to pass. They found both Hank and her sister Ruby Jo in the water. They were in the same car.
The news detonated inside Redbud like a nuclear bomb. Everything suspended in time as ash. She saw the shadow from the ritual before her, moving off into the night to perform its mission of cutting Hank’s mistress out of her life. Ruby Jo.
The guilt of it couldn’t be felt then; it only whistled through her like a poisonous gas hovering over land that had already been obliterated. There was nothing for it to attack. But there would be, once the shock wore off.
Belva’s thick arms encircled her, and Redbud recoiled. Here was the woman from whom she’d learned all of this. This evil gift that sent the man she loved and her own sister to their deaths.
She would never let that happen to Opaline. She would grow up without this curse.
Redbud asked Belva to leave her house and never come back, but Belva was undeterred; she thought it was only the grief talking. She did not know of the vow Redbud had just made to herself and her daughter. Opaline would avoid obliteration. She would be able to choose her path.
* * *
That night, after Redbud was certain everyone was asleep, she took the red suitcase and walked to the fire pit away from the house. Billy had built a fire that evening, and there was still a hint of pink in the coals. She poked it a bit, and the coals began to glow more fiercely. She took the black book out of the suitcase and tore a sheet out of the back, balled it up, and watched it catch fire. She placed one palm on the cover of the book and felt all that it contained.
When she was ready, she set it in front of the fire and pushed it into the flames.
TWENTY-THREE
LEE
Lee returned to herself.
At first, all she could feel was the warm thumb on her pulse, but then the bare room rose up around her, and there was her mother’s older, ashen face, studying her closely. Lee tried to speak, but she didn’t have the words. Part of her was still caught in that memory and unable to process what she just witnessed.
“Lee, can you hear me?”
Lee strained to speak again, but nothing came out. She nodded her head.
“Good. Don’t force it. It’ll take you a moment to straighten out.” Redbud helped Lee sit up so that she was leaning against the wall next to her. “I know it don’t mean anything now, but I never meant for anyone to get hurt. I thought the hex would run the lady out of town, and things would go back to normal.” She scratched at her arms. “Did you see the shadow at the gathering?”
Lee nodded.
“It made that bridge collapse so that Hank and his mistress would get killed.” Her voice cracked, and she struggled to continue. “Ruby Jo. He was sleeping with my own sister, and I had no idea. I didn’t even know Ruby Jo could make a love charm. It was awful of them, but I never wanted anyone to die.” Her face crumpled.
“That thing is still out there somewhere. It’s been tormenting me since the day I made it. It takes my desires and twists them until they bleed.”
Lee looked at her, bewildered.
“Ever since that night at Billy’s cabin, when I want something real bad, it’ll happen in the most terrible way.”
Lee saw Cliff in front of her, telling her about the figure he saw in their bedroom the night the bat got in, and out the window the night of Mr. Hall’s murder, and in the woods at the edge of the stadium. Telling her in the dusky light of the maze that a shadow had taken Meredith.
Lee finally found her voice. “You wanted Meredith for yourself.”
“Yes.”
“And TJ?”
“I wanted to get clean so bad. But while he was around, it was hard. He’s been the only one who will sell to me for a while. I owe a lot of money to people.”
“And Mr. Hall?”
“TJ told me about him getting caught at a party with his niece. I was scared for Meredith.” She seemed like she wanted to say more, but she stopped.
“And?”
“And I wanted to hurt Belva for keeping me from y’all. Make you scared of her. I think that’s why it dumped the body in her woods.”
“Does Belva know you made the bridge collapse? Does she know about the shadow?”
“She knows that I abused the work and that something ugly came out of it. But we’ve never talked about it. I didn’t give her the chance. If she had been there that night, maybe things would have been different. I was real full of myself back then. Didn’t even give an offering to the spirits. I performed it in secret, because I knew she would have stopped me. The work didn’t fit the crime. No one was there to guide the power, and it got all twisted.” She looked off to the side, contemplating another life, then shook it off. “It don’t matter now. Can’t change the past. I kept you away from her and all that power, so you would never make the same mistakes.”
Lee put her hand over her mother’s frail and shaking one.
“I wanted to die after Hank and Ruby Jo did. The guilt was in every part of me. I imagined vomiting myself up and leaving nothing behind. The only time I didn’t feel that way was on my pain pills—”
“I know the rest.” Lee pulled her hand away and attempted to assimilate this information into her new reality, overriding every memory. But she didn’t have time to process this now. Her daughter was in danger. “You have to help me find Meredith. Where would this thing take her?”
“I—I have no idea.”
Lee took her mother roughly by the shoulders. “Think. Fucking think about it for a second. Where?”
Redbud’s eyes shone with tears. It was a defense mechanism she had used often when Lee was a kid and she forced her to take responsibility. “I’m sorry… I don’t know…”
“That’s not good enough!” Lee hit the bed with her fist. “Can’t you use magic?”
Redbud’s voice was shaky as she said, “I tried a few years back. There was this doctor who was still prescribing pain pills even though we knew they were dangerous by then. I wanted him to feel the real pain, the shit caused by this stuff.” Her eyes dried as she recounted the memory.
“The next week, his teenage daughter died of an accidental overdose. Her first time.” She gripped Lee’s wrists hard. “I knew it was the shadow. I had to find it before it hurt more people. I checked into a treatment center with my last credit card. When I was clean, I wrote my first spell in years, calling the bastard back to me so I could get rid of him. I convinced some of the women in my group therapy to meet me out back one night. I stole some matches and built a little fire and told the girls what to do. I said the spell, but the power didn’t come, and the shadow didn’t either.” She looked at her hands. “I can’t do it no more.”
Lee stood up and paced the room. “But you were in a rehab with junkies who’d never done magic before. Of course it didn’t work. We just need to do it the right way.”
“You’re not listening. I’m telling you: I can’t.”
Lee had forgotten how fatalist this version of her mother could be. “What if we re-created the exact spell you performed to create it?”
“Honey, I don’t remember most of the words, and my book is gone. What you saw is all I have.”
Lee recalled the way the words were muffled by the hum in the memory. “But I need you to do this. We have to find her. Why can’t you just get your shit together and figure it out?”
“I’m sorry. I wish I could.”
“Fine. I’ll figure it out. Show me again.” Lee thrust her hand out. Redbud stared at it, then shakily pressed her thumb to her wrist.
* * *
There was an unfamiliar car in the driveway when Lee pulled up to Belva’s cabin around three a.m. A faceless, shiny rental with out-of-state plates and tinted windows that she strained to peer through in the darkness. She sat in her car as the oxygen depleted and wondered what she should do. Then the door opened, and she saw how thoroughly fucked she was.
Cooper stood in front of her car with his hands in his pockets, and she took a moment to look him over with inches of steel between them. When she’d asked the police to inform him about Meredith, she knew his arrival was inevitable. But it was still jarring to see him.
She got out and walked to the cabin without acknowledging him, and he followed her.
“Lee. What the fuck.”
“Can I help you?”
He closed the gap quickly, getting just close enough that he could reach out and grab her if he wanted to.
“Don’t fuck with me, Lee. My daughter is missing, and I demand to know what is going on.”
The fear of what he thought of her that had at first excited her, and then made her feel trapped and worthless, began to worm its way inside of her again. But this time it only emboldened her. Without sleep or food, her system now ran on pure fear. She shoveled it into her furnace, and the flames licked higher.
“Ask the police.”
“I just came from the station, and they clearly have no idea what they’re doing.”
Lee exhaled and looked out over the night-covered mountains, contemplating her next move. Their arguments had always been exercises in strategy; some days, they had been her only mental stimulation. She flipped through the possibilities in her mind and landed on the bare truth. “There is a shadow creature loose in the mountains, and we think it snatched her in the corn maze. If you’ll leave me alone, I can figure out how to get her back.” She turned toward the house, and he lunged at her, wrenching her arm back so that she was facing him.
“You are a fucking freak. The biggest regret of my life is letting our children anywhere near you. You’ve screwed them up and turned them against me, and now my daughter is probably lying in a ditch somewhere.”
Lee pulled her arm out of his grasp. “I don’t have to listen to you anymore.”
He continued to charge ahead, refusing to acknowledge her words. “Where’s Cliff? I want to talk to him about what he saw.”
“He saw a shadow monster. And he’s at my uncle’s cabin, where he’ll be safe.”
“I’m not going to let my son stay with some redneck Trumper in the middle of the woods where another hillbilly psychopath can kidnap him. Give me the address. I’m taking him to my hotel in Cradleburg.”
“I don’t have to do what you say.”
“I have a lawyer filing with the court right now for custody. And I hired a private investigator to find Meredith.”
“You’ll take my children over my cold, dead body. Now get off my property.” She left him standing in the driveway as she went into the house and locked the door. She leaned back against it and sank to the floor. There were footsteps on the old porch floorboards and then hard bangs on the door that she could feel through the wood against her skull. She left her head there, closing her eyes to feel the pain all the way to her teeth. Then, the banging stopped. She heard a car start, and then the motor sound receded into the distance.
The adrenaline dissipated, and she was left shaking in a cold sweat. She sat against the door and looked around at the empty house. In this new solitude, she could behave with a brazenness that she hadn’t known since she was a child, left alone for hours or days while her mom was elsewhere. Even in the long stretches she’d spent alone in her life with Cooper, she’d always felt him watching her. She crawled over to her suitcase, unearthed the moonshine jar from beneath her clothes, and took a few shaky sips on the floor.
When she’d descended to that warm place, she took out the notes she’d made in her empty black book. It was a list of every detail her mother remembered from the ritual. The jar had been filled with an assortment of plants, dried scotch bonnet, powdered spider, a single bullet. She pondered if one of Ruby Jo’s hairs would be essential to the mixture. She wasn’t sure how she would procure one. There were also fragments of phrases that would need to be made into a spell somehow. She felt perched at the beginning of a new subject in school, a feeling she used to love. But this was different than history or philosophy; she couldn’t discern how the pieces fit together. Her inability to understand it made her sick.
* * *
She walked the rows of the garden, looking for each plant she’d watched her mother pluck. That part of her memory was more clear, and she felt somewhat confident she could re-create the herbal mixture from the jar as long as the plants were still there.
The alternating heat waves and cold snaps had left the plants drooping and weary. Lee imagined the garden withering to a dry tangle without Belva to care for it. A fresh wave of grief washed over her, and she could feel the shaking coming back. Her body wasn’t large enough to hold the panic over her daughter and the grief for her grandmother. She needed to focus on her mission; it would somehow save them all.
She found the sinister gray plant coiled up close to the ground like a snake waiting to strike. It looked like it hadn’t been tended to in years, but it had somehow persisted of its own will. When she snapped a stalk with the garden shears, a strawberry oil dripped from the stump.
And then there was Belva’s black book. It was her only source of information about writing spells with Belva in limbo and her mother of no use. She needed it to finish the spell, but after an hour of searching, she still hadn’t found it.
Lee closed her eyes and tried to remember that day from her own perspective, now forever altered by her mother’s memory. Belva’s black book had been on the counter along with Lee’s new one when her mother dropped her off.
Belva had run through a history of the Buck bloodline, stretching back to the Cherokee who lived in these mountains and discovered the power of the land in its plants and trees, creating rituals to honor and harness it. The Scotch-Irish arrived, and then Africans were kidnapped and brought here against their will, and they came with their own beliefs and rituals and they had babies together, and the traditions mingled, becoming folk medicine and charms. While some Cherokee still lived in the mountains, most were forcibly driven out in the genocide perpetrated by the government. Belva said they had lost a direct connection to these ancestral cultures, but they lived on in what they practiced.
Their descendants became healers, delivering babies and alleviating pain and disease. And in the late hours, when something was out of balance in the community and couldn’t be fixed by daylight, the Bucks and their friends would meet in the trees and perform rituals under the moon.
Lee was the newest member of this line. She would inherit everything Belva and Redbud knew, and she would grow up to be powerful like her mother.
Belva then flipped through her black book and showed Lee that you could take inspiration from anywhere to craft a recipe—what she called a spell. There were diary entries and poems she’d written when she first fell in love with Leroy, and she’d used them to create a love recipe.
They went outside to her hives, and Lee watched as Belva whispered her love charm to the bees as she tended to them. The bees’ buzz softened and synchronized until it was like a full-throated sigh enveloping Lee. At Belva’s urging, she reached out and swept her finger across a raw, dripping honeycomb and licked it. She had yet to be in love, so all she tasted was her grandmother’s first: a young Leroy walking toward her in waist-high grass with sunshine brightening his outline. Belva explained that these love-drunk bees fed only on the blossoms of her garden, passing the land’s energy back and forth between them. It was the secret to the strength of her potions.
Then they came back inside, and it was time to make dinner. They cleaned up all the plant clippings, Lee put her new book by the front door so she wouldn’t forget it, and… Belva showed her how to create a hiding place for her book so that it would be safe.
