Strange Folk, page 9
Belva put one hand up and brought the other to her chest. “I swear.”
“Y’all weren’t doing some ritual or something on the man and things got out of hand?”
“We don’t do rituals on bodies, Randy. Get your head on straight.”
He snorted and stood up. “Well, all right. That’ll do it for now. I’ll need the names of every person who was at your so-called sing-along.”
“Whatever you need, Sheriff.” Belva stood and shook his hand confidently, but when he turned away, her body slackened, and Luann reached out for her, lowering her to the couch.
Lee followed the sheriff out and stopped him outside the house. “Was he murdered?” she asked.
He looked a bit taken aback. “I can’t share the details of an active investigation. You have anything else you want to tell me?”
“No. I told you everything. I just wanted to know. He was my favorite teacher growing up.”
The sheriff softened. “Off the record, there’s no evidence on the body that he was killed. But we need to do an autopsy. Right now, it looks like the life was clean sucked out of him.”
* * *
After the police cleared out, Belva put on soup beans and baked a cornbread. They all ate their dinner in different corners of the house.
When Belva left hers on the counter and went out to the woods with a lantern, Lee wanted to stop her, but Luann told her to let her go. She would be safe.
Meredith still refused to eat anything despite Lee’s best efforts, and instead remained lying on her bed and looking up at the ceiling as she listened to music.
Billy was showing Cliff how to tie flies for fishing at the kitchen table. Cliff stroked the piles of bright feathers, the spools of iridescent string, and the pieces of yellow and orange foam. Lee sat down at the table with them and started scratching the inside of Cliff’s arm the way he liked it. She’d been so focused on herself since they came to Craw Valley. It was comforting to come back to this space with him.
Cliff looked up at her. “Are you okay? I can see the cloud again.”
A few weeks before they left California, Cliff told her he could see a thick cloud hovering around her. It was only then that she became fully aware of how unhappy she was in that house and in the life Cooper had built around them. It had become a part of the atmosphere she inhaled, so that she couldn’t see or feel it. But once she did, it couldn’t be ignored. This was the magic of her strange little boy.
“I’m okay. It’s been a hard day. How are you? Are you okay?”
He considered this question for a moment and spoke low so that only she and Billy could hear it. “I saw something last night after Meredith left—out there.” He pointed out the window to the woods slowly darkening.
Her stomach dropped. “What was it?”
“I don’t know. But I could tell something was moving between the trees. I got really cold when I saw it.” Cliff’s shoulders shook, and the shiver rippled through Lee as well. When pressed, he didn’t say more.
After Cliff went to bed, Lee waited on the porch for Belva to return. She’d snuck more of the liquor from the oil can, careful not to take too much for fear that the real owner would notice. She knew by now that you only needed one drink before you were blurring boundaries.
As it trickled down through her insides, her thoughts became small droplets packed with sediment, dripping one after the other, until they became stalactites.
She saw Mr. Hall’s pale, bloated body resting on ash. A brand on his thigh of the same flower she’d seen on the bottle of moonshine Otis shared with her at the bonfire. This body, this man, was a stranger to her, and she didn’t mourn him.
Rather, she thought of the man who had been like a father to her for a brief time. A bookish father who lent her novels outside of the curriculum and passed along his refined taste. A supportive father who edited every one of her college essays until they were gleaming with insight. Her own father had been a mere figment at her periphery even when he was alive, and so she mourned the death of this figment that had meant something to her when she really needed it.
It was getting late, and Belva still hadn’t come back. Luann might have thought Belva was indestructible, but Lee had seen her brittleness. She went to the spot where she saw Belva enter the woods and moved toward a flicker of light she spotted up the slant of the mountain.
She wished she’d taken her phone with her as she trudged through the thick underbrush. Her body tensed at every small sound, and she got so spooked that she considered turning around.
Eventually the trees parted on a small clearing with a cluster of weathered gravestones and wooden crosses rising up from the ground. Belva leaned against one of the stones with the lantern flickering next to her and a biscuit and a cup of coffee sitting untouched in the grass.
Lee crouched to lean against the stone next to it, but Belva’s voice came quick and harsh out of the low light. “Don’t sit there. You don’t wanna get involved with her.”
Lee studied the stone but could only make out a few shallow lines blurring at the edges. “Who was she?”
“My daddy’s sister. Mean as a snake.”
Lee shifted and leaned against the other side of Belva’s stone.
The clearing was situated so that the trees fell away before them, revealing the valley below. A few lights twinkled, but otherwise it was blue and purple with shadow.
Belva took out her pipe, and lit it and Lee let her take a few puffs in silence. The smoke was different this time—thick, cloying, sweet, like a freshly laundered blanket pressed firmly against her nose and mouth. Lee found it hard to form words, though she’d been stewing over what she would say all evening.
Belva spoke first. “We had nothing to do with that man’s death. We chanted to keep him from doing harm. Take away his sexual impulses. That’s it. This is not our doing.”
Lee’s words came slowly. “I don’t know what to believe. On one hand, I know it’s impossible, and on the other, it’s a pretty profound coincidence.”
“Honey, you overestimate me. I still have the touch when it comes to healing because that’s always been my gift. But I can’t cast like I used to. I wasn’t even sure it would work last night. Like I told you, we don’t have the type of energy we need. Not enough youngins.”
“Then how do you explain this?”
Belva put her hand on the stone, and her gaze unfocused.
“I knew something bad was coming. At first all I saw was you coming home, and there was a brightness to that. Then the strawberries bloomed outta season. I saw something else would come after and bring suffering, like a shadow to your arrival.”
Lee stood up and crossed her arms, looming over Belva. “I can’t use that type of information to make decisions for my kids. What I need to know is whether there is a killer in the woods.”
“This ain’t no TV killer.” Belva took a deep drag on her pipe and exhaled, enveloping Lee in another thick cloud. “I’ve been talking with Granny Pallie out here, and she never heard of such a thing happening before. But she agrees it’s from our world. Something from the land, like an angry spirit.”
“Who?”
Belva patted the stone. “You know, your great-great-granny Pallie.”
“You can speak to her?”
“Not like this”—she gestured between Lee and herself—“us talking right now. But if I come out here and open myself up, usually I can find her. We can sort of send pictures and feelings back and forth, and it feels like talking. She helps me when I don’t understand something.” She smiled. “It still happens, even when you’re older than dirt like me. I’ve never had much of a talent for the sight beyond a few dreams here and there. And I know how to read the signs in nature. But Pallie was a true seer.”
Lee considered all of this. It was hard to parse what was real and what wasn’t in this place. But she couldn’t deny the reality of a cold body lying in the woods. “It looked like there was a symbol of a flower burned into Mr. Hall’s skin. I saw the same symbol on a bottle of moonshine at the party two nights ago. Does that mean anything to you?”
Belva exhaled roughly. “Sounds like a coincidence. I doubt it’s got anything to do with his death.”
Lee could tell something was amiss. “Are you sure? It feels like it means something—”
Belva cut her off. “I’m sure.”
Lee wanted to press further, but it seemed futile. “So you think something is out there that could hurt us?”
“I’m certain of that.”
“Cliff said he saw something moving through the trees last night.”
“Did he say anything else?”
Lee shook her head.
“Well, whatever it is, I’ll keep y’all safe. The house is protected. Our people who built it a hundred years ago used logs from the woods and put protection on them. Mixed yarrow into the concrete, stuff like that. And I’ll add a few extras.”
“What about when we’re not in the house?”
“I’ll make protections for you and the kids. This is nothing we can’t handle.”
Lee thought she saw doubt flicker across Belva’s face in the lantern light. She couldn’t rely on folk charms to keep her children safe. She needed to find out who was behind this, and she had a feeling it was connected to the black flower.
She looked out at the wall of trees at the edge of the clearing, forcing herself to stare hard without looking away, imagining a creature loping out of it with such speed that it would devour her before she had the chance to run.
But only darkness stared back at her.
TEN
On her lunch break the next day, Lee pulled up to the neon sign of the dollar store.
The principal had gotten on the announcements in first period and mentioned the untimely death of one of their beloved teachers without going into detail. Students were urged to visit the counseling office if they needed help processing the news. Lee was impressed with the way the school seemed to be acknowledging mental health these days. Her guidance counselor had been an older woman known for her religious conviction and quick judgments.
All through the morning, she’d felt the stares, and her students had behaved suspiciously well and answered her questions in courteous and complete sentences. She wondered if they’d gotten swept up in the rumors and truly thought she was capable of using her evil magic on them. If only they knew how powerless she felt.
Chili ran down her wrists as she took big, juicy bites of her Sonic cheeseburger and studied the store’s entrance. When she was little and they were both in a bad mood, Mama would drive them to the dollar store, and they’d pick out the weirdest, most frivolous crap they could find. Their money problems bore down on them at all times, in every purchase at Walmart, every butter sandwich, every sip of Diet Rite. But in these spontaneous visits, money was no longer a construct and life was pure fucking whimsy.
Kimmie worked as a cashier there, and Lee wanted to ask her about the black flower. She’d been drinking from one of the flower-stamped jars at the party, and Lee thought she must know something.
When she was done with her burger, Lee went in and asked at the front if Kimmie was working. They told her she’d quit that morning. Lee wasn’t surprised. Kimmie didn’t have a consistent phone number, so she would have to reach her another way, maybe later at the cabin if she stopped by to visit Belva.
Lee still had a bit of time, so she took the store row by row, feeling grit under her heels. That morning before school, Belva had salt-and-peppered the soles of their shoes and forced them to give her clippings of their hair, toenails, and warm jars of pee for something she couldn’t imagine. She’d wanted to protest, but she saw the calm that settled over Meredith and Cliff when Belva gave them each a bundle of God knows what wrapped in discount catalog paper and tied with red string for hanging around their necks under their clothes. So she’d gone along with it, though she’d refused to eat the tiny blue robin eggs Belva fried up. She had her limits.
The smell of candied pineapple hit her hard as she passed a whole section of the same small, bright yellow candle marked TROPICAL PARADISE, offering transcendence in a plastic jar. Then there were the watered-down cleaning supplies, the pregnancy tests, the weed-detection kits. A young woman passed her wearing a tight hot-pink T-shirt with WI-FI QUEEN across the front.
The real romance was in the candy aisle. She took her time browsing the row, looking for the fruits filled with sugar powder that were her favorite as a kid. Her mother always bought her a sleeve for her birthday and served them in a bowl like fruit salad at breakfast. She gathered a basketful for Meredith and Cliff: candy necklaces like tangy chalk, Pop Rocks, bubble gum shredded to imitate tobacco chew. She willed herself not to think about the mounting balance on her credit card. Her sub paycheck would barely cover gas. But that wasn’t the type of thing you considered within the walls of the dollar store.
When she was called to the checkout, she stopped short of the conveyor belt. The cashier was shriveled and cratered underneath the slick blue nylon of her store vest. When she saw Lee, she nearly smiled, but she kept her mouth closed, no doubt hiding a row of mangled teeth. Lee felt her heart begin to pound. Unsure of what she should do, she kept moving forward and stacked the bags of candy on the belt. She watched the woman as she scanned them and touched keys on a pad. Her signature black hair was thin and stringy, hanging limply against her skull where it used to froth around her head in a cloud—Lee had always found her in stores by her hair. Her skin was sallow and pocked where it used to be russet and smooth. Her eyes were dull. Dirty.
She finally made eye contact with Lee. “That’ll be seven fifty.”
“Mama.”
“Hey, baby. Thought maybe you didn’t recognize me.” She smiled again with her lips pressed tightly in a crooked line.
“Of course I did.”
“I heard you were in town. Billy told me.”
“Just for a little while.” Lee wanted to ask her how she was doing, but she didn’t want to hear the old lies.
“I tried to come see you, but Mama told me to stay away. From my own daughter and my own grandchildren.” She spat.
“I don’t think it’s a good idea. Not while you’re using.”
Redbud took Lee by the wrist and pulled her close. “I got the right to see my own kin, Opaline. You can’t keep them from me.” She had that look of dry electricity about her, like a current running through parched terrain.
Lee became aware of the shoppers waiting behind her, their impatience filling the air like a vapor. This was hardly the arena for a woman to confront her mother after a twenty-year absence. “I have to get back to school. I’m filling in as a teacher right now.”
“Left your husband, huh? He cheat on you?”
Lee’s chest tightened, but she didn’t respond.
“Sounds about right.” She let go of Lee’s wrist. “All right. Get on now.” Her eyes glazed over as she bagged the candy and gave her the receipt. She motioned for the next customer, and it was as if she’d forgotten Lee was ever there.
Lee walked out of the store, but she barely registered her movements. Her skin radiated white heat, and she couldn’t feel her limbs. She got in the car and closed her eyes, waiting for the feeling to pass.
In telling her husband and children that her mother was dead, Redbud had experienced a kind of death in the story Lee told herself about her life. She had held a funeral for her in her mind, and she had let go of all the pain.
But now her mother had risen from the dead, bringing the old emotions back with her.
The last time she’d talked to her was a few weeks after she had Meredith. She remembered standing in the middle of the spotless nursery and speaking low into her phone while she rocked Meredith in a sling against her chest. Redbud had called in a panic, said they turned off her heat and a near-apocalyptic ice storm was coming. Lee could hear the performance in it. Before the drugs, her mother wasn’t the type to fluster. She never felt the need to act out her emotions for anyone.
Lee didn’t have her grad school stipend any longer. They were now relying on Cooper’s trust fund, and she would have had to reveal things about her background she wasn’t willing to share. She was starting this brand-new grown-up life with her brand-new baby, and her mother’s problems didn’t have a place in it. She told her she was sorry, and the next day she got a new phone number.
Redbud had somehow stayed alive through the overdoses and the stints in jail, all reported by Billy in emails that came every few years. But Lee couldn’t get over the erosion of her, as if the grains of her were wearing away.
Lee had left her mother alone, and this was what happened. The heavy, stinking guilt traveled from her chest to her stomach, and she thought she might be sick. She rolled down the window and inhaled the fresh air.
She had made the right choice. Redbud had told her to leave and never come back. But if she’d stayed, could she have helped her? If she hadn’t cut her off, could she have done something? She had been living in luxury for decades while her mother suffered, poor and alone in this place.
Lee leaned her head back against the headrest and tried to banish the thoughts.
She’d protected herself and her children, and she would continue to do so no matter how much guilt she felt.
* * *
When Lee and the kids pulled up at home after school, she asked Cliff to go inside without them. She turned to Meredith in the front seat and stroked her arm.
“How are you doing, honey?”
Meredith pulled out of reach. “Fine.”
“Do you want to talk about Mr. Hall? I’m struggling with it, too. You don’t have to process it alone.”
Meredith exhaled sharply. “Ha. So now you want to share?”
Things had been tense with her daughter, and she’d tried to give her space. But she didn’t expect such disdain. “What is that supposed to mean?”
“I know you’ve been lying to me, Mom. You’ve been lying to Cliff and me our whole lives. Why should I tell you anything? Why should I trust you?” Her face was reddening, and a few tears escaped down her cheeks.
