Needless to say, it was her favorite place on the entire expanse of her father’s rural property. The rest of the land was so dark and overgrown with woods and thicket that Jenny felt uncomfortable playing there. The forest seemed gloomy and full of hidden dangers. Sometimes she would see the animals that her father warned her never to bother—the snow-white birds and critters that sat on tree limbs and within tangled undergrowth, watching her silently with curious, pink eyes. And sometimes she would feel other eyes on her, too. Dark and brooding eyes, boring into her back and making her skin crawl with gooseflesh. But when she turned around to see who was following her, there was only the closely grown trees with black patches of shadow in between.
It was on a hot summer day a few days past her twelfth birthday when Jenny discovered that her secret hiding place was not the safe haven she thought it was, but a potentially dangerous place to wander. A place much more dangerous than the dark forests and the bramble thickets that she had avoided most of her childhood.
Reading was one of the few pleasurable pastimes allowed her. After doing her daily chores, Jenny would grab a book and head for the white-flowered pathway. Her father let her check out books from the bookmobile that passed through Tucker’s Mill monthly but, strangely enough, would not allow books that had illustrations. It had been difficult finding classics such as The Wizard of Oz and Anne of Green Gables that had no pictures in them.
The book she was reading that summer day was Alice in Wonderland. It had been impossible to find a volume of Alice without illustrations. The clothbound cover boasted a colorful rendering of the long-suffering White Rabbit. She had gone against her father’s wishes and checked out the book anyway, only daring to read it in the privacy of her secret place.
Jenny was sitting on a boulder in the warm sunshine. She was just getting into the story when a noise drew her attention. It was a dry, crackling sound like cellophane being crinkled loudly. She lowered the open book from her freckled face and stared in surprise at what stood in the pathway before her.
It was the White Rabbit. A living duplicate of the illustration on the front of the book. It stood three feet tall and was pure-white, possessing the same bright pink eyes as the creatures who sometimes watched her in the woods. The hare stood on its hind legs and was dressed in a distinguished English coat and weskit, both as white as the petals of the flowers along the pathway. It also held a very large pocket watch in its right paw; a watch as soft and pink as the flesh of its twitching nose. It glanced at the timepiece every few seconds, as if it were in a big hurry to get somewhere.
Jenny sat there, feeling faint and dizzy. She watched it, expecting it to proclaim that it was late, just as the Rabbit did in the book she was reading. But it said nothing. It merely stood there, its pink eyes shifting from her to the watch, and then back again.
She found the courage to stand. That seemed to frighten the hare. It slipped the watch into its vest pocket, the fleshy pink chain swaying to and fro, and scampered up the path toward the top of Pale Dove Mountain. Jenny’s curiosity conquered her fear and she ran after it. The giant rabbit hopped up the rocky trail, looking back every so often. Jenny followed at a distance, taking the pathway farther than she ever had before. The higher she climbed, the fewer flowers she saw along the path. Instead, wicked thorns and thistle choked the way, closing in like plants that were alive and ravenous.
When she reached the very top of the mountain, she was surprised to find a cave at the end of the pathway. The entrance was set within a wall of solid stone and peaked like the door of some primitive cathedral. And at the dark opening stood the White Rabbit. It checked its pink watch once again, then stepped into the shadows beyond and disappeared.
Jenny approached the entrance, feeling like young Alice about to enter the hole that would plunge her into a topsy-turvy Wonderland full of talking animals, insane royalty, and potions that altered the body’s size. But before she could set foot inside the cave, she detected movement from within. She retreated a few steps, thinking that perhaps Wonderland was coming out to visit her.
Instead, it was more like a Mad Hatter from hell who emerged from the dark shadows and regarded her with a fury that made her freeze in her tracks.
“Papa?” she whispered softly.
But it wasn’t her Papa. It looked like Papa. It wore the same clothes and had the same face as Papa, but there were differences. Horrifying differences. The flannel shirt, overalls, and shapeless felt hat of her father were not the faded colors she was accustomed to, but shiny black, like the dry scaly skin of a king snake. And the rugged face held the sour expression of Fletcher Brice, but the skin and hair were both ghastly gray in color.
The eyes were the worst part. At first, Jenny was sure there were none. It almost looked as though they had been gouged out, leaving only dark sockets. They were there…it was just that they were black in hue. Like large black marbles, the man’s eyes glared at her with an intensity that could have never been matched by her father.
“You’re not Papa,” she finally uttered, taking another step backward.
Then the man started slowly toward her and his mouth opened. And from his throat came a harsh imitation of Papa’s voice. “Didn’t I tell you to feed them chickens?”
The question was so unexpected that Jenny nearly laughed out loud. “What did you say?”
The bogus Papa kept coming. “And slop them hogs?” She could see that he held something in his hand. It was the heavy leather strop that Papa used for sharpening his shaving razor…and giving whippings.
Jenny began to back down the pathway, her urge to laugh completely gone now.
“And milk the cow?” continued the dark man. “Didn’t I tell you to do them chores before you could go out and play?” He lashed out with the razor strop. It hit a thick stand of pink-headed thistle, slicing through the thorny stalks as if it were a machete doing the damage rather than a length of blunt leather.
“Yes sir,” she muttered. She felt the wet heat of tears welling in her eyes.
“Where’s your dadblamed mind, girl?” He swung the strop angrily. It glanced off a boulder at the side of the path, sending a cloud of dust and stone chips into the air.
“I don’t know…” she sobbed. She wanted to turn and run down the mountainside as fast as she could, but knew she didn’t dare. She could imagine that brutal strop whistling toward her bare legs and severing them at the knees.
“I give you chores to do and you get your mind on other things and the critters go hungry and the cow gets cramped ’cause it ain’t been milked.” The man continued toward her, swinging the strop, littering the pathway with chopped weeds and splintered rock. “I reckon only a good whupping will set you straight!”
A pressing sense of déjà vu gripped the girl. She had lived this confrontation once before in the fall of the previous year. Her father had caught her reading Black Beauty when she should have been doing her morning chores. That scolding had resulted in a whipping that had left a lasting impression on her.
Looking at the horrid imitation of Papa, Jenny knew that it was happening all over again. Except, that in this case, the impression left could very well end up being a fatal one.
“Feed them chickens,” droned the creature, moving quicker. “Slop them hogs…milk that cow…”
“Go away!” she whimpered. “Leave me alone!”
“Give you chores to do…critters go hungry…a good whupping…will set you straight…”
“Stop it! Do you hear me? Stop it!”
The strop flashed closer; a knife-edged bullwhip, yearning for flesh and the screams of punishment. Then strong hands closed upon Jenny’s shoulders and she nearly collapsed. Through her tears she saw Papa—her real Papa. He stood behind her, rawboned and tanned, looking like a softer mirror image of the dreadful thing that had pursued her.
“Are you okay, Jenny?” he asked. His voice trembled a bit and his face held an expression that she had never seen there before. Jenny would later deter
mine that it was raw fear her father had shown at that moment.
“I guess so,” she wept. “But who is it, Papa? What is it?”
Papa ignored her question. He merely stared at the thing that possessed his face, clothes, and shaving strop. “You ain’t got no cause to go bothering her,” he told it flatly.
The being stopped in midstride and regarded Papa with growing confusion. “Brice?”
“Yes, it’s me,” replied her father. “And this is my daughter, Jenny. She’s a good girl. She wouldn’t do you or your kind no harm. I assure you that.”
“But…gotta set her straight…give her a good whupping…”
“Maybe. But that’s my job. You ain’t got no call to be scaring this young’un. If she bothered one of them, she didn’t mean to. I promise that it won’t happen again.”
“You promise, Brice?” The gray face eased, losing its anger and growing blank in expression. “She’ll bother no more?”
“You have my word.”
It stared suspiciously at the man and his child for a moment longer. Then it turned and marched back through the entrance of the mountain cave.
And was never seen by Jennifer Brice again.
Jenny woke and sat up in bed. She shivered uncontrollably, bathed in the sweat of her nightmare. The dream always had that effect on her. She climbed out of bed and poked her toes into her slippers. Then she walked to the kitchen to brew herself a pot of herbal tea.
A cup of hot tea and half a valium always did wonders for getting her back to sleep. Before coming to the city, she had suffered the remainder of the night after reliving the dream. She would toss and turn and stare into the darkness of her bedroom if she didn’t have the proper medication to calm her nerves.
She put on the water to boil and sat at the kitchen table to wait. She occupied her time thinking of what had happened after her father had rescued her from the thing on the pathway. They had walked back down the mountain together, quietly, each immersed in their own thoughts. Her father didn’t whip her or utter a single scolding word.
During their walk home, she had asked him only one question. “Who was that?”
And he had provided only one answer. “You know who it was.”
Yes, she supposed she had known who it had been all along. The boogeyman that every Tennessee mountain family frightened their children with, the shadowy being that protected Pale Dove Mountain and everything that lived there…and didn’t care what it did to get the job done.
The Dark’Un.
She had always believed it to be a tall tale or an Indian superstition, something created centuries before to encourage small children not to wander far from the homestead. But seeing was believing, and Jenny Brice had seen the Dark’Un. She was convinced of that.
Jenny left the kitchen and went to the hallway closet. She sorted through a stack of unfinished canvases until she came to one at the very back. She removed it and set it against the door. It was a painting that no one had ever seen before, not even Erica, and Jenny intended on keeping it that way. Unlike the paintings in her exhibit, with their muted hues and surrealistic images, this one was dominated by somber grays and great strokes of pitch blackness. It was the most disturbing picture she had ever done, for it had been inspired by the nightmare she had just experienced. It depicted a dark opening in a wall of granite and, within that shadowy entranceway stood an equally dark creature. A lanky mountain farmer with the gray flesh of a dead man and a black razor strop in his hand.
The teapot whistled, causing her to nearly jump out of her skin. She hastily put the dark painting back in the closet and went to the kitchen. As she filled a cup with hot water and dropped in an herbal teabag, she couldn’t shake the worried feeling she had awakened with. The sensation of dread had nothing to do with herself, but with her father. For some reason she had a nagging feeling that he was in trouble. Fletcher Brice was a gruff and uncompromising man and she hated him a little for that. But he was also a caring man beneath the hardness, a man who loved his family without the pretense of showing his true feelings. Jenny couldn’t help but love him, despite his shortcomings. Besides, he was getting on in years. Maybe he had fallen up there on the mountain and broken his hip, or had a heat stroke while hoeing his vegetable garden.
She sipped her tea for a while, hoping that the feeling of disaster would pass, but it didn’t. If anything, the premonition grew stronger. Before she was halfway finished with her tea, she was dialing a number that she hadn’t used in years—the number of the only person in Tucker’s Mill who had a handle on all the latest gossip and knew exactly how everyone in town was doing.
“Hello?” came a woman s sleepy voice. “Compton’s Boardinghouse.”
“Miss Mable?” asked Jenny. “Is that you?”
The elderly woman seemed to perk up immediately. “Lordy Mercy! Is that Jenny Brice I hear? Its well after three in the morning, gal. How’s everything going in Elvis Land?”
“Just fine. I’m sorry I dragged you out of bed, but I’ve got this bad feeling about Papa I can’t seem to shake. Do you know how he’s doing?”
“He’s as ornery as ever, the last I heard,” said Miss Mable. “Sheriff Mayo drove up the mountain day before yesterday looking for that no-account Dwight Lovell and he stopped by your papa’s place for a spell. Gart said he was as chipper as a barrel full of badgers. So don’t you go worrying none about him, girl. He’s getting along just fine.”
“Well, that’s all I needed to know, Miss Mable. I’m sorry I woke you.”
“Aw, I wasn’t having much luck tonight anyhow. Gart’s snoring sounds like a damned chainsaw. Sounds like its cutting right through the wall over my bed.” Miss Mable changed the subject like a driver shifting gears. “So, when are we gonna be seeing you again, dear? Glory be, it’s been nearly two years since you visited last. Don’t them city folks believe in giving you a vacation every now and then?”
“I’ve just been busy, that’s all. Things are starting to look up for me. In fact, I’ll be flying to New York City in a few days for an exhibit of my paintings and then—”
Miss Mable cut her off with all the tact of a first-class busybody. “Oh, that’s very nice, dear. I suppose a woman must try the career thing these days. You know, just to get it out of her system before she decides to settle down and raise a family.”
“Yes, ma’am,” replied Jenny with a grimace. She began to regret having made the call, especially to a talker like Mable Compton. “Well, Miss Mable, I’m afraid I’ve got to go. Long distance and all.”
“Lord yes! The phone rates are simply outrageous these days. You take care of yourself, you hear?”
“I will. And next time you see Papa in town, will you please tell him that I called?” She paused, then added, “And that I love him, too?”
“I surely will, Jenny. You come down and see us when you can.”
“I’ll try. Good-bye.”
“Bye-bye.”
Jenny hung up the phone, feeling exhausted, as if she had been talking for five hours rather than five minutes. Miss Mable could still talk the ears off a wooden Indian, even at three o’clock in the morning.
She drank the rest of her tea, which had turned cold, and took the amber vial of pills down from the kitchen shelf. She decided to take a whole valium instead of a half. Despite what Miss Mable had told her, Jenny still felt the bothersome sensation of dread, even more so now than before.
She thought of the nightmarish painting hidden in the back of her closet. It’s the Dark’Un, isn’t it? she thought to herself as she swallowed the little blue pill and trudged back to bed. It’s going to do something to harm Papa.
But she knew that wasn’t it. Jenny still recalled how the dark being had reacted when her father confronted it. Not with anger, but with respect. No, she was almost certain that Fletcher Brice had nothing to fear from the Dark’Un.
However, she did have a feeling that some other danger was about to threaten the peace of Pale Dove Mountain. And althoug
h she didn’t know it at that moment, it was one that she had crossed paths with only a few nights before.
Chapter Seven
Glen Tucker stood behind the store counter and waited for Dale to come bursting through the front door. He had seen the Mountain View school bus pass the market after letting the children out in front of the Presbyterian Church. Then it had turned around in the gravel lot of the Amoco station and headed north out of Tucker’s Mill for home. You could almost set your watch by the driver’s punctuality: 3:25 on the dot, Monday through Friday. And you could usually count on Dale to show up at the store three or four minutes later, ready for an afterschool snack of Pepsi and barbecue Fritos.
That was, unless he decided to stop and visit his mother.
Glen went on about his business, waiting on Shep Hall, who was comparing the price of his chicken feed to that of the co-op in Knoxville. And there were three strangers who drove into town with a fiberglass canoe lashed to the top of their Land Rover. They browsed through the store’s modest sporting goods department for a while, then bought rods, reels, and some lures and live bait for fishing. They said they were in the mountains for a few days of fishing and boating on the Little River. Before leaving, the oldest of the three asked if there was a hotel in town. Glen recommended Compton’s Boardinghouse, knowing that Miss Mable would welcome the business so early in the season.
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