by Alex Bledsoe
“‘Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence,’” Veronica said.
“Exactly. And we don’t have that, for either ghosts or fairies.”
While Justin tried to absorb all this, Veronica said, “But you believe, if that movie was filmed in a place where there are stories of people descended from fairies, that she might be a real fairy?”
“I don’t ‘believe’ anything. That conclusion is, frankly, ridiculous. But then, what else would a fairy tale be?”
“So what should we do?” Justin asked.
“I don’t know what you mean.”
“Well, I mean, we’ve got this film, and—”
“Justin’s considering making it the topic of his thesis,” Veronica said.
“I can answer for myself,” he deadpanned to her.
“Yes, but it’s so much faster if I do it.”
Dr. Tully laughed. “You two are adorable. And that’s a fantastic idea.”
“You think so?” Justin asked.
“Oh, yeah. If you can find out the history of that movie, and in the process tie it in to Cloud County and the Tufa, that’ll be fascinating.” She sighed wistfully. “I wish I could see the movie.”
“Me, too,” Veronica said. “Thanks for your time, Tanna.”
“Of course. And a pleasure to meet you, Justin. I hope to hear you play sometime as well.”
“Exactly what have you told her about me?” Justin asked Veronica.
“Only good things, I promise,” Dr. Tully said. “But Justin?”
“Yes?”
“A word of advice. You may already know this, and I apologize if I sound pedantic, but … remember, the Tufa are real people. They have jobs, and families, and lives, just like you do. They exist, just like you do. And they’ll no doubt read whatever you say about them. Keep that in mind.”
Justin gazed into those blank blue eyes, and for a moment thought he saw tiny swirling points of light, like fireflies. Then she blinked and it was gone. “I will. Thank you.”
“Justin, I need to talk to Dr. Tully for a minute alone,” Veronica said. “I’ll catch up with you downstairs.”
* * *
When they were alone and the door had closed, Veronica said to Dr. Tully, “Would you do a tarot reading for me?”
“I’ve got a class in fifteen minutes.”
“Not a full reading, then. Just a three-card past-present-future.”
“Why?”
“Just to settle my mind.”
“You know a tarot reading doesn’t really predict the future, it’s—”
“‘A meditation tool best used as a way to understand your own subconscious, or that of the person you might do a reading for.’ I know, I did read your book. But please. Seriously.”
Dr. Tully thought a moment, then nodded. She took a wooden box from a desk drawer, opened it and spread a soft cloth on top of her desk blotter. Then she pulled out her tarot deck.
It was a standard Rider-Waite-Smith deck, worn with years of use, which Dr. Tully had brailled herself so that her fingers could read it. She shuffled them once and handed them to Veronica, who also shuffled and then cut the deck three times. Dr. Tully took back the cards, sat still and quiet for a moment, then placed the first three cards in a row on the cloth.
The first card was a two of wands. Veronica frowned; it represented travel combined with study or work, and she had no plans to go anywhere. Was she about to be offered a chance to pursue her studies somewhere else? Maybe even abroad?
The center card was the High Priestess. As a card from the major arcana, the ones with names as well as numbers, this carried a lot of symbolic weight. She smiled a little; in her own readings it often came up as the one that represented her, and in its second position, it told her that she would be an important part of the trip.
The third card was the five of cups, but it was upside down, or “reversed,” as the guides called it. In that position it meant acceptance, moving on, and forgiveness.
That made her pause. What would she need to forgive? Or be forgiven for?
Dr. Tully ran her fingertips over the cards, reading them. “Interesting. Does it answer your question?”
“I’m not sure,” Veronica said honestly.
“I assume it has something to do with Justin’s mystery.”
Veronica looked up. “Why would you say that?”
“Because you sounded more excited than he was about it.”
Veronica was glad Tanna couldn’t see the blush on her cheeks. “Okay, you got me. I am excited. I saw that film, and it really put its hooks in me.”
“What about it affected you so strongly?”
She thought a moment. “The implication.”
“The idea that ‘this is real,’ like Doc said?”
“Yes. Doc was many things, but he wasn’t gullible. He wouldn’t be taken in by a prank.”
“That’s true. But what if the label means something else? What if you’re taking literally what he only meant as a metaphor?”
“Do you believe in fairies?” Veronica asked.
She chuckled. “I believe in possibility. I act based on facts.”
“I’ll try to remember that.”
“Oh, and one more thing.”
“What?”
“Turn the lights out when you leave. Have to save money where we can, if we want to keep the university open.”
* * *
Justin waited on the first floor when she came out of the stairwell. “Why is it,” he asked, “that my advisors look like old manuscripts with legs, and yours look like her?”
“You study the past, hot stuff. I study the future.”
4
“Now why are you up?” Veronica said through a yawn as she raised her head from the pillow. The clock read 1:16 A.M. “You used to sleep like a rock after sex. I’d ask if I was doing something wrong, but I know it can’t be that.” When he ignored her joke, she said in a drawl, “Breaker one nine, this is Sexy Mama calling Space Cadet, what’s your twenty? Come back.”
Justin sat at the table, the only light coming from his laptop screen. “Oh, hi. Sorry. Steve sent me the file of that movie. I’ve been rewatching it.”
Veronica sat up and pulled on a T-shirt. “Justin, it’s after midnight. Again.” She got out of bed and came over to him.
“Before you say anything, just look at this.” He scooted over so she could have half of the chair. “Remember the part where she changes into a fairy?”
“Yes.”
“Okay, it goes out of focus right when she changes, right? Watch.” He played the moment for her. “So I just assumed that they’d gone blurry to hide the costume change. But look.”
He played it again, and paused in the middle.
Veronica yawned and shook her head to clear it. “It’s nearly one thirty in the morning, Justin, what am I supposed to be seeing?”
“Right here. This is a tree in the foreground. The out-of-focus bit doesn’t affect it. And look at the guy.”
He pointed to the figure of “Litt.” The blurry effect did not change his outline, either. He stayed sharp.
“And?” Veronica prompted.
“And, this blurry effect comes from the girl. It’s not a camera trick. It’s like … the air is rippling from some kind of power surge, created by—”
“Her really turning into a fairy? Justin, can we talk about this tomorrow?”
But Justin was already hyped with excitement. “Do you know what glamour is?”
“My freshman roommate read it like the Bible.”
“Not the magazine. It’s a power that fairies have to make people see what they want them to see.”
“Yes, I know, I was being facetious.”
“Can’t you be satisfied with being Hispanic?”
She lightly smacked the back of his head. “You’re about to be satisfied with your right hand, smart guy. So you think that’s a fairy putting on her glamour?”
“Or taking it off.”
<
br /> Veronica wanted to go back to sleep, but the thought took hold in her brain and wouldn’t let go. “Run it for me again,” she said quietly.
He started the video, and she quickly reached up to pause it. The image captured the woman in mid-hover as she drifted from vertical to horizontal.
“Okay, they had stage-flying rigs back then,” she said, more to herself than Justin. “They did Peter Pan onstage, right? So this isn’t impossible.”
“They had those rigs,” Justin agreed, “but where is it? Where is it attached to her? She’s barely wearing a sheet, for God’s sake. And how could she change position like that? Wires have to go in a straight line, and the wings are so big, they cross any path the wires might take.”
“I don’t suppose they put it in during post?” she said dryly.
“Back then, I think ‘post’ consisted of rewinding the film.”
She reached past him to the touch pad and scanned the video backward and forward, looking for a telltale moment of clunkiness that would assure her she watched something manufactured, a trick done with mechanics and perspective.
Justin stretched and yawned. “Well, I’ve had it for tonight. I’m going to bed.” She heard him hit the mattress with a loud, limp thump. But now she was wide awake, scanning the video back and forth, looking for some clue that she was seeing a story, and not a fact.
* * *
The next morning found Justin and Veronica at a library study table nestled in a corner, with printouts of old newspapers scattered around them. Justin looked down at the few notes he’d made. “That’s not a lot of information.”
“How,” Veronica said, “can such a major disaster be almost entirely forgotten? It’s almost like somebody’s come along and deliberately erased it. Did they have the NSA back then?”
With no luck researching the film itself, and the fairy aspect being questionable at best, they’d decided to look for news about the lost coal town of Sadieville. The Nashville Tennessean had a small story that mentioned the Sadieville disaster, noting its “extreme” loss of life, with a death toll of “over 400.” It told of the permanent departure of the Prudence Coal and Coke Company from the area. But that was it; none of the scattered small local papers that might also have covered it still survived, and the news apparently didn’t register even as close as Cincinnati or Atlanta. No books on coal mining history mentioned it.
Justin recalled the many, many detailed accounts they’d found for other disasters, like the Monongah mining disaster in 1907. It was repeatedly cited as the worst in American history, and that only cost 367 lives. So how could such an event as the Sadieville disaster happen and not make a ripple in history?
Just as disturbing to Justin, though, were the pictures of living miners going about their jobs back in the days before unions, or even basic safety regulations. Their white faces were smeared as black as their lungs with coal dust, a disturbingly similar look to old minstrel performers. But these dead-eyed, slumped-over miners had not chosen to blacken their skin. Their lives had done it to them.
He felt a jolt of entitlement at those thoughts. His father was a lawyer, and his mother a fund-raiser for various charities. He’d never done physical work that wasn’t his choice; his time working at McDonald’s, and for a groundskeeping firm, had been intended to build “character,” not support a family. He’d never wondered about where his next meal was coming from or whether he’d have a place to sleep if he lost that job. He certainly never recalled his parents coming home physically beaten down by just getting through the day, with the mixture of defiance and defeat he saw in these photographs.
He flipped through the pages until he found a photograph of African-American coal miners. Three of them stood in a line, gazing at the camera with grim, sullen expressions. One had a pickax across his shoulders. The ironic thing was that their natural skin didn’t look much different from that of the white miners darkened by coal dust. Were the mines some kind of great equalizer?
Then he read the caption: Black workers were brought in as strikebreakers when miners attempted to unionize. So even in holes hundreds of feet underground, when the environment itself was colorblind, there remained a color bar. Not only were miners in general treated as little more than pieces of machinery to be replaced when worn out, but black miners were doubly expendable: either killed while working, or fired when the strike was resolved.
“We need to find out where this town was,” Justin said. “I mean, exactly where it was. It’s got to be on maps, doesn’t it?” He pounded the keys as he typed search terms into his laptop.
“Are you all right?” Veronica asked.
“I’m fine,” he muttered without looking up.
She knew that when he got in this sort of mood, all she could do was let him ride it out. Besides, all the pictures of coal, rocks, and mines had given her an idea. “I’ll be back in a little while,” she said as she stood.
* * *
In one of the geography department’s empty classrooms, Veronica unrolled the big topographical map on the teacher’s desk.
This particular map was marked Department of the Interior U.S. Geological Survey. It was yellow with age and smelled of must and mold, two scents she now recognized instantly thanks to Doc. The two rubber bands that held it rolled up had snapped the instant she pulled on them. But luckily the image was still clear and sharp. She used her phone, keys, and two books to hold down the corners.
It showed the entire state of Tennessee. The date in the legend read 1915.
“Aren’t you in the wrong building, Ms. Lopez?” a new voice said. She looked up and saw Ryan, an undergrad she’d taught in her Intro to Psych class the previous semester.
“Hey, Ryan,” she said. “I didn’t know you were a geography major.”
“Minor. Major’s in business.”
She gestured at the desk. “I needed to check something on one of the old topographical maps.”
He looked over her shoulder. “This map’s from a hundred years ago. What are you looking for?”
“A town that fell into a hole.”
“Really?”
“So they say. It was a mining town, and the caves beneath it collapsed. If any map showed the town before it vanished, it would be this one.”
She moved to the eastern end of the state, and found the list of counties. She located Cloud, which was so tiny it took her three times scanning the area to spot it. Within it, only one town was marked.
“So you’re looking for this Needsville?” Ryan asked, pointing out the dot.
“No, the one I want is called Sadieville. But I don’t see another town in the county.”
Ryan put down his backpack and leaned close over the map beside her. “What about this?” he said, indicating a dot a short distance from Needsville. There had once been something printed beside it, but it looked like the name had been erased or scraped away.
“Is that meant to be a town?” Veronica asked.
“I think so.”
“Why would they erase the name?”
“You said it fell into a hole. Maybe it was easier to do this than redraw the whole map for one tiny town. What was the name of this town again?”
“Sadieville.”
“Does that look like ‘V-I-L-L-E’?”
The scratch or erasure was imperfect, and tiny fragments of those letters could be pieced together. But she knew from her psych classes that it could also be apophenia, the term for seeing patterns where none existed.
He pointed out a hashed line that ran past the unidentified dot. “Then this makes sense. That’s a railroad. You couldn’t have a coal town without railroad access back then, or even now, for that matter.”
She grinned at him. “You sure came by at the right time, Ryan. I’d have been looking over this thing for hours.” Then she picked up her phone and made several photographs of the map, showing the relationship to Needsville, a town called Unicorn, and several other small communities.
* * *
Veronica opened her laptop and called up an online map of Needsville. Google Maps, which had no trace of Sadieville, had no trouble finding the other Cloud County town. She used the images of the old map from her phone to locate the approximate position of Sadieville, then switched to a satellite view and zoomed in.
At first it showed only treetops. She scanned them methodically, looking for any indication of the former town peeking out. There was nothing: not a foundation, not a street, not even a sign of the railroad. In the century since the disaster, the mountains had apparently consumed every last trace.
She rubbed her already tired eyes and took a deep breath. This was ridiculous. Even if she found it, it wouldn’t prove that the film was real, only that they’d used a real town’s name in an old movie.
“All right, Veronica,” she said softly to herself. “You have ten minutes, and that’s it. If you don’t find it by then, you’ll give up and get back to your real life.”
“Were you talking to me?” a girl said from a nearby book stack.
“No, myself. Sorry.”
“Don’t worry about it. I’ve had tests that made me talk to myself, too.”
Veronica returned to her computer screen and began a systematic review of the area that once, if the map was right (and if her interpretation of the map was right), contained Sadieville. She zoomed in and still saw nothing but treetops and small clearings. Each time she thought she’d spotted something man-made, it turned out to be a false alarm.
Then a small gray patch with two visible, regular edges caught her eye. She clicked for more zoom, but she was at maximum. Was it a bridge? Was it the concrete remains of the covered bridge they’d seen in the movie?
She carefully noted the GPS coordinates of the thing, then incrementally zoomed out. She saw nothing else. But the more she looked at the partially visible gray area, the more certain she became.