Ghost Wood Song

by Erica Waters

  All that matters is learning to play Daddy’s fiddle—to play it for what it’s made for, to use it to raise Jim’s ghost. No matter how dangerous, no matter what it costs.

  Maybe with my band’s help, I can learn to make the fiddle do my bidding. Maybe if I love it enough, play it enough, I can burn the darkness right out of it. And then I’ll set Jesse free.

  I get to Sarah’s early, and Orlando’s Honda is already in the driveway. Sarah’s black Lab, Trouble, jumps all over me when I let myself in.

  “You are a terrible guard dog,” I tell her. She keeps licking my hands.

  “Shady?” Sarah calls from the kitchen, and I find her pouring bags of chips and pretzels into serving bowls like a hostess, which makes me laugh. Orlando’s sitting on a stool beside her shoveling the food into his mouth as fast as she can get it into the bowls.

  “What?” Sarah knits her eyebrows.

  “Nothing,” I say, eyeing her. We still haven’t talked about the day she saw Cedar and me together. I think she’s choosing to pretend it never happened, just like our own kiss.

  But I’m not being particularly forthcoming either. I know I shouldn’t be bringing everyone here without telling them what my fiddle is, what it does. But if I tell them, they might not want to help me. And Sarah might reject me once and for all. Might decide that my family and I are too much, too strange, too complicated to fit into her world.

  Besides, this isn’t a haunted house or a forest filled with ghosts. It’s an ordinary house in suburbia, and I’ve never felt a spirit here. It’s a safe place—far from all the ghosts I know. Sure, some ghosts can travel, but I need to believe that the dark spirit won’t follow me here. That there’s somewhere I’m safe from him. A place I can learn to use Daddy’s fiddle, to master it, before I go looking for ghosts to raise.

  The thought of Jesse and that witness who said there was blood on Jesse’s hands, that’s enough to push my guilt and misgivings away. I have to use the fiddle, no matter the risks.

  The doorbell sounds, pulling me from my thoughts, and I go answer it. Cedar’s standing at the door with Kenneth and Rose.

  “This is my sister, Rose,” Cedar says unnecessarily.

  “Hey, I’m Shady. Sarah’s in the kitchen.”

  Then Rose does that thing girls do where they flit their eyes from your shoes to your hair, sizing you up, or judging your outfit or whatever. Her mouth tightens, so I guess she’s not impressed, but she says, “Nice to meet you.” Kenneth winks at me as he comes inside. I didn’t know he was coming, but after our jam at the springs, I’m not surprised Cedar invited him.

  When I lead them into the kitchen, Orlando’s eyes catch on Rose and stay there a minute. Then he seems to realize he’s staring, and he waves both hands awkwardly. “Hey,” he says shyly. “I’m Orlando Ortiz.” Sarah barely glances up from the bowls of food.

  Introductions go around, everyone nervous and jittery, feeling each other out. Sarah sticks close to Orlando, and gets a weird look on her face every time Rose glances her way. An awful, achy jealousy fills me, and I know it’s wrong, but I’m tempted to flaunt my new relationship with Cedar, just to get a rise out of Sarah.

  But then Rose settles her eyes on me again, appraising. “So you’re the one whose brother killed Kenneth’s dad.”

  Kenneth’s mouth drops open, and Cedar swears under his breath. “I’m sorry, Shady,” Cedar says. “She’s—”

  “That’s okay,” I say, even though everyone is standing around wide-eyed and gaping. “My brother was arrested for Jim’s murder, but he didn’t do it.” That’s why I’m here. That’s what this is all for—to get to the truth. I have to hold on to this goal.

  Rose cocks her head, disbelieving.

  “Even Kenneth doesn’t think so,” I say. He looks at me uncertainly but doesn’t say anything. Jim’s death is probably the only thing Kenneth has never been able to make into a joke. He’s barely mentioned Jim since that day at the springs.

  “Leave her alone, Rose,” Sarah says, and Rose flashes her a glare, which makes Orlando step closer to Sarah. A flash of triumph fills my chest, followed by doubt. Has Sarah confided in Orlando? Does he know what she feels for Rose, what she feels for me?

  God, this petty jealousy is stupid, considering everything else that’s on the line. This is the band I’ve wanted for so long; this band could help me become the musician I’ve always wanted to be. And maybe if I’m finally good enough, the ghosts will follow my playing. If I’m good enough, I can control the fiddle’s power. I can bring Jim back long enough to save Jesse. Not tonight, but soon.

  “Forget it. Let’s just play.” I’ve got to pull us all together or this band will fall apart before we’ve even played a note. I reach for Daddy’s fiddle case, ignoring the creep of fear that makes my fingertips tingle. “Where should we set up?”

  Sarah points wordlessly to the living room.

  Everyone sits down and starts pulling out instruments, eyeing each other warily.

  “Nice guitar,” Cedar says to Orlando. “You been playing long?”

  “Like seven or eight years. I played Cuban country with my abuelo and tíos in Miami.” Orlando looks down shyly at his Gibson. You can tell he loves it by the way he holds it, how his fingers caress the wood. His love for his family is wound in its strings, just like my fear and hopes are strung through my daddy’s fiddle.

  While everyone tunes their instruments, I survey our new band. There’s my fiddle, Sarah’s and Rose’s banjos, Orlando’s and Kenneth’s guitars, and Cedar’s mandolin. Not bad.

  “It would be good to have an upright bass,” Cedar says, “but this will do for now. Should we start with something simple?” He tries to look innocent, but everyone knows what he means. He doesn’t think we’re up to snuff. Bluegrass musicians usually start learning their instruments before they can walk, and it makes them think of anyone else as a beginner. Typical Southern macho shit. But Orlando’s mouth curves into an amused smile, and Kenneth tells Cedar where he can shove that mandolin of his. Everyone laughs and the tension breaks.

  “We should play some Gillian Welch,” Sarah says.

  Cedar whips his head around. “That’s not even bluegrass. It’s folk.”

  “So?” Sarah bristles.

  “Rose and I play bluegrass.”

  Sarah scoffs. “This is what’s wrong with bluegrass players. You’re too traditional. That’s why bluegrass is going to die out one of these days.”

  “I don’t see any point in starting a bluegrass band if we’re not even going to play bluegrass,” Cedar says, shaking his head.

  They both look at me, expecting me to resolve the argument. I open my mouth and close it again. “Well, what if—”

  Rose interrupts. “Cedar, you’re such a fucking purist. Stop acting like you’re Bill Monroe.” Kenneth supports her with a dramatic “mm-hmm” like a Southern grandma.

  “I’m a bluegrass player,” Cedar says stubbornly. “I didn’t come here to play ‘Wagon Wheel’ or whatever other nonsense people are always trying to bring into bluegrass.”

  Sarah shoots me an angry look, probably thinking this is a dig at her on my behalf. Orlando clears his throat nervously.

  “Look, I’m not trying to be an asshole,” Cedar says, “but I play bluegrass mandolin. I thought that’s why you invited me. If you want to play something else, you’ll need to find yourself another mandolin player.”

  “How about we focus on bluegrass tonight? See how we sound together?” I say, giving Sarah a pleading look. “We can argue about this more later.”

  “Fine,” Sarah says, glaring at Cedar. He nods, ignoring her.

  “How about ‘I’ll Fly Away’?” I suggest, relieved. “It’s an easy song everyone knows.” I turn to Sarah. “You want to get us going?” This was my idea, but I’ve never played with so many people. I’m hesitant to take the lead, especially with Daddy’s fiddle in my hands.

  “All right,” she says. “Key of G?”

  “Throw us so
me taters,” Cedar says. Sarah rolls her eyes at the bluegrass jargon, but picks out the first four notes.

  And then we’re playing. It’s jumbled-sounding at first, everyone trying to learn each other’s rhythms, but soon it smooths out. Orlando’s providing a good rhythm on guitar and singing baritone, a perfect complement to Cedar’s higher tenor voice. Rose adds her voice, a rich, deep alto. Her banjo’s quiet since it’s open-backed, but it’s a nice contrast with Sarah’s noisier one. Even Kenneth holds his own.

  My fiddle blends perfectly with the other instruments, lending the song a longing quality I’ve never managed before. Sarah and Orlando keep darting me surprised looks. I must sound different even to them.

  This is my first taste of belonging to a real band, and already I love it. I think it must be impossible to feel lonely while playing music with other people, the way your minds and hearts and bodies all sync up, bound by the music you’re building together. It feels like I’m soaking up everyone else’s talent and passion and pouring it into my fiddle. This is everything I’d hoped it would be. My fear of this fiddle and all it can bring fades away into the back of my mind.

  When we finish the song, I turn to Cedar, carried by the music into a more lighthearted mood. “Well, are we good enough for a busy guy like you to stick around for? Everyone know their way around an instrument to your satisfaction?”

  Cedar ducks his head in a show of bashfulness, but his eyes tell me he’s not the least bit cowed. “Y’all’ll do,” he says, smiling, and Orlando barely contains a laugh, probably at Cedar’s unapologetic drawl. But Sarah only glares at Cedar, while Rose eyes her uncertainly. This is a strange and tangled sort of band we’re forming, but it’s working.

  Cedar leads us into “Bury Me Beneath the Willow.” We play it a few times until everyone’s got the hang of it, and then move on to “I Am Weary.” Cedar and Rose do most of the singing, but Orlando sings too, and I sing during parts where I’m chopping the rhythm instead of playing. Sarah clearly has no intention of ever singing a word in this band. But she looks like she’s having a good time, despite all her former protests about boring traditional music.

  When we finish playing through “I Am Weary” for the third time, Kenneth says, “Are there any bluegrass songs that aren’t about dying?” and everyone laughs. You’d think all these songs about death would remind him of his dad, but if they are, he’s not showing it. Maybe he’s just determined to be cheerful.

  “I know one,” Cedar says, and he launches into “Shady Grove” with a flirty smile. Sarah’s eyes go wide and she looks at me worriedly, but I shrug one shoulder and start playing. It was bound to happen, and after the shock of hearing it the first time, I’m ready to start enjoying the song that gave me my name again. And I’m ready to play it with Daddy’s fiddle.

  When he sings the line “A kiss from little Shady Grove is sweet as brandy wine,” Cedar quirks his eyebrows at me, and something inside me loosens, like my grief for Daddy’s been caked against my ribs, but this song’s breaking it apart.

  I am never going to be able to hear or play this song without hearing Daddy’s voice in it. Every lyric is written on my heart in his handwriting. Every note carries a memory of him. As we play, I close my eyes and let the memories wash over me—Daddy singing me awake with this song, his hands brushing my hair. Daddy climbing into his truck, waving at me from the window. Daddy’s coffin being lowered into the ground, his voice buried by six feet of earth.

  I let my fiddle fly, losing myself in its frantic wails. As I pick up speed, everyone else does too, as if they’re drawn into my energy. We get faster and faster, till we’re playing quicker than I’ve ever heard anyone play this song. My fingers should be cramping up, but I feel almost detached from my body, lost in the music. I close my eyes and all I can hear is music, until that hearing becomes feeling, and the music is deep inside me, pulsing like waves. If I open my eyes, I’m convinced I’ll look down to see a yawning ocean.

  Cedar has stopped singing because my fiddle’s too loud to sing over, so it’s just the instruments now, the frantic pinging of the mandolin, the howling of my fiddle, two banjos twanging for all they’re worth, and Kenneth’s desperate attempt to keep up. The only instrument I don’t hear is Orlando’s guitar. When I open my eyes, he’s staring wide-eyed and shocked at something behind me.

  I swivel my whole body to look so I can keep playing, and as I do, I see a woman standing at the door, her dark hair tousled, her eyes long-lashed and brown like Sarah’s. I recognize her from the framed picture Sarah keeps by her bed. It’s her mother.

  Her dead mother. A flash of feeling goes through me—fear and regret and joy and hope all in one.

  “Sarah,” I manage to croak, but I don’t stop playing. She looks up at me, not noticing her mom. “Behind me,” I say, stepping out of her line of sight.

  When Sarah sees her mother, her mouth falls open and she drops her banjo. The carpet muffles its thud, but Cedar and Rose startle and stop playing. I don’t stop moving my bow partly because I don’t want to and partly because I can’t. I’m locked in this song.

  “Mom?” Sarah says, rising slowly off the couch. She pulls each of the picks from her fingers, leaving a trail of them on the carpet. She crosses the room, stopping a few feet from her mother. The two of them stare at each other, their faces so full of emotion it’s hard to look right at them.

  Finally, Sarah reaches out to touch her mother’s cheek, and I can imagine what she feels when her skin meets her mother’s, that tingly cold I felt the night the old man’s ghost came to my bedroom.

  “But you’re dead,” she says, though my fiddle nearly drowns out her voice.

  Cedar puts a hand on my shoulder, and I know he means for me to stop playing, but if I do, Sarah might not get to hear her mother’s response. I change songs, playing as softly as I can. Cedar looks at me questioningly, but when I shake my head, he leaves it be.

  “I’m so sorry I left you,” the ghost says, her eyes luminous and haunted.

  “Why’d you go?” Sarah asks, hugging herself, and there’s this desperate note in her voice, like it’s a question she’s asked a hundred times before.

  Her mother searches her eyes, like she’s deciding whether she’s brave enough to tell the truth, or whether Sarah’s strong enough to hear it.

  “I was so sad,” she says. “So sad. Everything was too hard. Taking care of you was hard. Getting out of bed was hard.”

  Sarah backs away a few steps, and her mother moves forward, filling the space. Her hands go to Sarah’s cheeks, and to my surprise, Sarah doesn’t flinch. “I loved you so much,” the woman says. “You were the most perfect little girl, and I didn’t deserve you, not one single inch of you. You needed better than I could give you. I thought I was doing the right thing, leaving you.”

  “I missed you so much,” Sarah says. “I still do.”

  “Can you forgive me?”

  Sarah nods, her eyes filling with tears.

  The ghost pulls her into a hug so fierce I can almost feel it. Then the woman looks over Sarah’s shoulder and locks her eyes on me, her face imploring. She wants me to let her go.

  Something snaps in me, like a rubber band stretched too tight. I stop playing, and the moment I take my bow from the strings, I drop to the floor and into darkness.

  There are things in the darkness. Dark, angry, hungry things. I can’t see them, but they flit around me, all wings and want. I don’t know what they are, but I bet Miss Patty would call them devils.

  I try to move, but I’m paralyzed, numb. The wind from the devils’ wings brushes my face.

  I gaze up into inky blackness, terror rising in me like a flooded river. This isn’t a dream. I know without a doubt I’m inside the shadow man, chained up in the festering blackness of his heart.

  A scream rips from my throat, a pulse of energy hurtling into the darkness.

  And when my scream hits it, the darkness breaks, shattering like a mirror, letting the light in. The devi
ls cry and wail, bursting into puffs of ash.

  But I don’t stop screaming until I feel the carpet of Sarah’s living room underneath me, until the electric light turns my closed eyelids red.

  And then there are hands on me, rough hands on my arms and my shoulders, shaking me.

  “Shady,” Cedar says, over and over. “Shady, Shady, Shady.”

  I open my eyes and gaze up into his face. His mouth is open and he’s breathing heavy, his nostrils flaring. He’s so afraid.

  “Shady,” he says again, but this time it’s a statement and not a plea. “Shady.”

  When I sit up, the room spins and I’m afraid I’m going to drop back into the darkness. But Cedar holds on to my shoulders, and then my head, like he’s trying to make the room go still for me.

  “You all right?” he asks, his voice shaky.

  “Yeah.”

  “What happened?”

  I meet his eyes again. Blink and then look away, passing a hand over my face. “I guess I passed out.”

  “Cut the crap, Shady,” Rose says from the couch. She doesn’t look scared or worried like Cedar; she looks mad. She looks like a tiny pirate who wants to rip out my heart and feed it to the sea.

  “What?” I ask, my voice hoarse, not quite meeting her eyes.

  Rose gestures angrily at Sarah, who’s kneeling on the ground a few feet away, weeping into her hands. Orlando is kneeling beside Sarah, rubbing her back. I remember her mother’s ghost, and the thought chases away the shadow man from my mind. I’ve never seen Sarah cry before.

  I push off the ground and go to her. “Sarah, are you okay?”

  She looks up at me, tears running down her cheeks, and opens her mouth to speak, but only a sob comes out. And then she throws herself into my arms, nearly knocking me over. She wraps her arms around my neck, pulling me into her. She lays her head on my shoulder and cries, just like Honey has done a thousand times.

  I hold her close, running my hand over her hair. My thumb brushes her ear and the cloud-shaped birthmark behind it. All I’ve longed for is to be this close to Sarah, to hold her in my arms, but this isn’t how I wanted it to happen. I hate to be the reason she needs comforting.