Ghost Wood Song

by Erica Waters

  The fiddle lies against the green velvet, its bow clipped into the top of the case, as quiet as if it’s just been lying there forgotten all this time. As if its music hasn’t been chasing me through forests and lakes, drawing me and drowning me, threatening all I am.

  I pull it out of the case like it’s a newborn baby I might drop, fragile and dangerous at once. I lay the fiddle in my lap and stare down at it. Daddy’s fiddle. Not lost, not dark. The wood still gleams, and the strings aren’t rusted. It looks exactly like it did the last time Daddy put it away. After all this time, it’s whole and bright and beautiful.

  Do the strings remember the last notes he played? Is the music still trapped inside the wood?

  After so long underground, the fiddle’s strings should be loose and out of tune. But when I touch the A string with one finger, it gives out a single, soft note. A shiver runs up my arm.

  Someone says my name, startling me. It must have been Orlando. I get up and listen at the bathroom door, to see if he’ll call again.

  Shady Grove, the voice says, light as a breeze drifting through a window. My little love. It’s a man’s voice, but not Orlando’s.

  It’s a voice as familiar to me as the fiddle in my hands. A voice with the timbre of a Johnny Cash album dipped in honey.

  “Daddy?” I whisper, disbelief and longing at war in my chest.

  His words pour out, from a source I can’t see, can’t find. Shady Grove, don’t you forget what I taught you. Ghosts aren’t all gentle and innocent. Some of them have got murder and vengeance on their minds, and some are so bitter they’ll try to pull you back down to hell with them. Don’t you go playing that fiddle until you’re ready, baby. And I can tell you right now, you’re not ready.

  Daddy.

  There’s a long pause filled with the rustle of a pine-scented breeze. Be careful, Shady Grove. I miss you and I love you.

  Before I can speak, the voice is gone, the room is still. A swoop of grief goes through me.

  Then Honey lets out one long, terrified shriek from our room on the other side of the wall. I drop the fiddle in its case and scramble out of the bathroom.

  When I flip on the lights in our room, she’s sitting up in bed, her eyes open and staring, her mouth open in a never-ending scream.

  I rush to her and take her in my arms, sitting down on the bed. “Shh, Honey girl. Shh, I’m here,” I say, but she goes on screaming.

  Orlando comes thundering down the hallway and peers in. “What’s wrong?” he yells, eyes darting around the room, looking for an intruder.

  “I don’t know.” I turn Honey so she’s facing me, and she keeps screaming, right into my face, her eyes open and staring.

  “Oh my God,” Orlando yells. “Get out now, get out.”

  I leap to my feet and race for the door with Honey in my arms. Orlando slams it behind us. The moment the door shuts, Honey stops screaming.

  “What was it?”

  “Wasps,” Orlando says. “A bunch of them. There must be a wasp nest in the room somewhere.”

  Honey’s quiet now but shaking in my arms, her eyes still staring straight ahead. There’s a growing red welt on one of her cheeks. “I want Jesse,” she whimpers.

  Orlando touches her face with gentle fingers. “Looks like one of them got her. Is she allergic?”

  “I don’t think so.”

  “Check her for more stings,” he orders, leading us to the living room.

  The rest of Honey’s body is unmarked. Her eyes have cleared.

  “You okay, Honey girl?”

  She nods, but her bottom lip trembles. “Bad dream. I want Jesse,” she says again, wringing my heart.

  “Jesse’s on a trip, remember?” That’s all we could think to tell Honey—that Jesse was traveling. “But I’m here. You had a bad dream?” I ask, my voice gentle. Honey’s always having vivid dreams that she struggles to put into words. Her vocabulary hasn’t caught up with her imagination.

  She nods. “Bugs. Lots of bugs with wings.” She whimpers.

  Orlando’s brow scrunches together.

  “And dark. It was dark,” she says, her voice tinged with hysteria. I hold her close to my chest until she seems calm, and then I sit next to her on the couch. She slumps against me with her thumb in her mouth, exhausted.

  Now that Honey’s calm, Orlando’s worried expression is turning to curiosity. “I’m going to go take a look,” he says, slipping down the hall.

  “Orlando, be careful,” I call.

  I hear the bedroom door creak open, and then silence. “Huh,” Orlando finally says.

  “What?”

  “They’re all dead.”

  I jump off the couch and join him in the room. There are dozens of dead wasps scattered over the carpet. Orlando lifts one carefully into his palm and studies it. “It’s an eastern yellow jacket,” he says. “I don’t understand what happened. Wasps don’t just fall dead out of the air.”

  “Is there a nest in here?”

  Orlando runs his hands along the walls and gazes up at the ceiling. “No, not that I can see. It could be inside the wall, I guess. You guys should get it checked before you sleep in here again.” He puts his ear to each wall and listens for a long time. “The natural history museum in Gainesville had an exhibit on Florida wasps. Yellow jackets are really, really aggressive, and their nests can be huge.”

  My skin tingles like the wasps are buzzing over my arms. I felt the same thing a few weeks ago but couldn’t place the sensation. But now I know what my skin remembers.

  “Do you mind if I take these home?” Orlando asks, going back to the living room with dead wasps cupped in his palms. “I want to study them a bit more.”

  “Fine,” I say. Sarah would make a sarcastic comment now, but my mind’s not on Orlando—I’m thinking of something that happened in the weeks before Daddy died. I kept dreaming about wasps, and finally one night the wasps came out of my dream and chased me from my bed. I ran downstairs to get Daddy, who was playing his fiddle, and when he went upstairs, all the wasps were dead.

  Later, I decided the wasps had already been in my room and that’s why I dreamed about them, like when you need to pee at night and dream you can’t find a bathroom. I figured I’d still been dreaming when I ran downstairs.

  But now I know, it must have been the fiddle. The fiddle must have brought the wasps, and the music gave them life. It doesn’t make sense, but they came when Daddy played, and then when I plucked a single note they appeared for Honey.

  I shudder. This means Jesse wasn’t overreacting, and neither was Aunt Ena. I can’t believe I didn’t realize it before.

  What else can the fiddle bring?

  I gaze at my little sister’s bed.

  I did this, with one flick of the fiddle’s strings.

  I rush to the bathroom and lock the fiddle in its case. I slide it under my bed, slam my bedroom door, and hurry to the living room to take my sister up in my arms. I hold her close and feel our hearts beating together. “They won’t hurt you again,” I promise, but Aunt Ena’s words ring in my ears. Sometimes the people who love us most do us hurt.

  “Wait, why are you all muddy and wet?” Orlando asks once Honey wriggles her way out of my arms. He cocks his head at me, taking in my bedraggled appearance and the fear in my eyes. “What’s going on?”

  How do you tell your best friend you just dug up your dead father’s fiddle in a thunderstorm? You don’t. Especially if your best friend is a science-loving agnostic. Orlando doesn’t like to talk about the supernatural. His grandma is very superstitious, but he has tried hard to distance himself from anything science can’t explain.

  “I took out the trash, and fell in a puddle,” I say. “I’ll go change.” I leave the room before he can ask more questions, but I feel his eyes follow me down the hallway. There’s another pair of eyes on me, keener than Orlando’s, seeing deeper than he ever will, but I don’t know whose they are.

  I hope they’re Daddy’s, but I don’t think so. Not
anymore.

  Because I know that was Daddy’s voice in the bathroom, and he came to warn me. I might not listen to Jesse or Aunt Ena, but I have to listen to him. He said there were spirits who would drag me down to hell. He said I wasn’t ready to face them.

  The same spirit who led me to a rattlesnake, who tried to drown me in the lake, who sent wasps to sting my baby sister—he’s the one who’s watching. He’s the one who’s been playing Daddy’s fiddle. Who’s been playing me.

  If I let him, he’ll take all I have.

  Fifteen

  I don’t pull the fiddle out again all weekend. I want to—my fingers itch for the strings—but I leave it where it is, no matter how desperately it calls to me. No matter how badly I want to prove Jesse’s innocence. I ignore Aunt Ena’s phone calls, and on Saturday morning, I drop her groceries on the front porch so I won’t have to see her. I don’t tell anyone about the fiddle or the wasps. I try not to think about Jim’s ghost or Jesse in his cell. Daddy said I wasn’t ready—and he was right.

  But by Sunday evening I can’t stand it anymore. I can’t keep anything fixed in my mind except that velvet-lined case underneath my bed. My desire to play the fiddle has turned from want to need. I know it’s dangerous and I know I should put it back in the ground it came from, but all I want is to hear it sing. The craving thrums through me, stronger than my desire to kiss Sarah, stronger than the urge to wrap my body around Cedar’s.

  I pace my tiny bedroom, back and forth, back and forth, my mind wavering with my steps. What did my daddy mean when he said I’m not ready? That I’m not strong enough? That I’m too weak to rule such a powerful instrument? Or that I’m not ready for what will come when I play?

  All the answers I need lie just underneath the fiddle’s strings, waiting to be released. But more than that, some part of me that has been sleeping all these years is awake now, and it’s greedy for the fiddle’s music.

  But if it’s a dark spirit doing all this, if it’s something Daddy doesn’t want for me after all, I have to resist, don’t I? I can’t put others in danger to satisfy my own cravings, my own needs. I have to think of Honey.

  I leave my room in a rush, before I do something stupid. Before I give in to the dark spirit trying to drag me down with him. I’m halfway down the hallway when someone knocks on the front door. I didn’t hear anyone pull up outside, and it’s just Honey and me at home.

  Mama doesn’t like me to answer the door to strangers when she’s at work, but when I glance out the hallway window, Frank’s truck is parked out front. A crash of conflicting emotions hits me—anger, annoyance, worry, but underneath all that there’s the old familiarity of Frank. Solid, dependable, everyday Frank. So I take a breath and pull open the front door.

  I have to crane my neck to meet his eyes, he’s so tall. Frank gives me a grim smile, and I step back to let him in. Honey jumps up from her coloring book with a squeal. “Uncle Frank!” She launches herself into his legs, and he bends down and lifts her, drawing her close to his chest.

  Honey wraps her arms around Frank’s neck and squeezes tight.

  “Hey, sweetheart,” Frank croons into her hair. The knot of worry in my belly loosens.

  “Your mama here?” Frank asks me.

  “She’s at work. She’s had to pick up extra shifts since . . .” I don’t know how to finish the sentence without bringing up Jim.

  Frank nods and squeezes his eyes shut. He puts Honey down and goes to sit at the kitchen table. Honey follows him and crawls into his lap. She must be missing Jim more than I realized.

  “I came by to apologize,” Frank says, rubbing a hand over his face. His wedding band flashes in the light. He looks down at it and sighs. “I shouldn’t have said what I did at the funeral. I was angry and looking for people to blame.” He meets my eyes. “I’m sorry. Will you tell your mama that for me?”

  “I will,” I say, taking the chair adjacent to him.

  “Are y’all doing all right?” Frank asks.

  I nod. “Honey is confused and sad sometimes, and it’s been hard on Mama. But we’re getting by.”

  “If you all need anything, anything at all, you know you can call me, right?” Frank says. He gives Honey a hug, and she burrows into him.

  “All right,” I say, softening toward him. “Thank you.” Maybe Frank really does regret what he said to Mama, maybe he’s even sorry for how quick he was to blame Jesse for Jim’s death.

  “I’d hate to think the way I acted at Jim’s funeral made y’all think I don’t care about you,” Frank says carefully.

  Now I have to ask. “Does that mean you don’t think Jesse—”

  Frank shakes his head. “No, I still do. I know it was him. But your mama didn’t deserve how I acted at the funeral. It’s not her fault.”

  “Why are you so sure it was him?” I ask, my temper flaring.

  But Frank doesn’t notice my anger. He runs his fingers absently over Honey’s hair. “Jim and Jesse were a time bomb, just waiting to go off. I saw it every day at work, Shady.”

  I clench my jaw. “I just don’t believe my brother could do something like that.”

  “I used to feel that way about Jim, too,” Frank says, his voice quiet. “I used to think better of him. Before he started drinking and carousing. But after he showed his true colors one too many times, I had to accept who he was.”

  “Jim wasn’t that bad,” I say. I don’t know why I suddenly feel the need to defend him.

  Frank smiles sadly. “There’s a lot you don’t know, Shady. You’re too young and sweet to know half of what’s in men’s hearts.”

  “I might not have known Jim as well as you did, but I know Jesse. He’s innocent. And that’s going to come to light, one way or another.”

  Frank sighs. “You’re a good sister. But soon you’re going to find out—”

  My stomach tightens. “What? Did something new happen? What do you know?” I lean forward in my chair, squeezing my hands so hard it hurts.

  “You shouldn’t have to hear about this,” Frank says.

  “Just tell me.”

  Frank picks Honey off his lap. “Go draw me one of those pretty pictures, baby,” he tells her.

  Once Honey’s out of earshot, Frank leans toward me. The anger in his eyes is still there, sharp and true, but there’s something more now, too—regret and heartache. “There was a man from the power company working on the electrical lines. He had pulled up near the construction site just as Jesse was running out the front of the house where they found Jim. He came forward to the police this morning.”

  “So?” I say, even though the knot in my stomach is so tight I can hardly breathe.

  “So, he saw that Jesse had blood on his hands. The man thought it was just paint, but looking back, he realized it was blood.”

  I push my chair back and spring to my feet. “No. No, he was wrong. Or he’s lying. Jesse would never—” A sob crawls up my throat.

  “I’m sorry, sweetheart.” Frank stands and puts a hand on my shoulder, but I shake it off.

  “Please go,” I say, looking toward the front door. “I’ve got to get dinner ready for Honey. It’s her bedtime soon.”

  Frank sighs and walks past me. “I really tried to do right by Jim, you know? He made it almost impossible, but I really tried. Some people are just determined to tie their own noose.”

  “Sure,” I say. “See you later.” I close the door behind him. Maybe I should have been kinder, but all I can think about is Jesse with blood on his hands. Jesse with another damning piece of evidence hanging over his head. And it’s yet another person saying I’m wrong to believe Jesse, yet another voice trying to break down my confidence in my brother.

  The moment Mama gets home and goes to her room to change, I snatch the fiddle from underneath the bed, tuck it under my arm, and march into the woods, far, far away from the trailer.

  That will keep Honey safe. Or at least I need to believe that it will because I’ve got to play this fiddle, not for my ow
n sake or any evil spirit’s. For Jesse. For my brother.

  Daddy didn’t say I couldn’t ever play the fiddle. He said I shouldn’t play it until I’m ready. But what if Jesse doesn’t have that long? This is the only way I have to help him. I open the clasps and lift the lid, sucking in my breath when the wood gleams in the fading light.

  Gingerly, gingerly, I lift it from the case and bring it up to my chest. With a racing heart and trembling fingers, I tune the instrument, thinking how Daddy’s were the last hands to turn these pegs, his fingers the last to hold this bow.

  And then the instrument is ready and waiting for me to play. It’s not too late—I could still put it back in the case and close the clasps. But instead, I take a deep breath and draw the bow across the strings.

  The notes pour out like a dark-brown river, carrying a drowned girl away. My breath catches in my chest. I’m playing “The Twa Sisters” exactly the way Daddy played it, as if I carry every ounce of the drowned sister’s fear and shock, every ounce of the killer’s shame. It’s beautiful and haunting, exactly how it’s meant to be.

  I am tensed for wasps or worse, but I make it through the whole song. The music fades into the forest, and nothing happens. The cicadas pick up where my fiddle left off, the sun goes down, and no ghosts appear. Daddy didn’t raise a spirit every time he played either. There must be some secret to it, a secret I’ll learn soon. A secret I have to learn.

  My cell phone dings in my pocket, and it’s a text from Sarah. Orlando must have been working his peace-making magic on her.

  Band practice soon? You can invite Cedar and Rose.

  I can’t imagine what it cost her to send this text, to let me have the band I want when it’s bound to be painful for her. Her history with Rose is bad enough, but now with me and Cedar . . . This is the most selfless thing Sarah’s ever done for me. Maybe for most people it wouldn’t be a big deal, but it’s a huge thing for Sarah, giving ground like this. I blink away the tears that try to start in my eyes. I can’t let myself go weak now. Not when there’s this much at stake.