In a Dark Season

by Vicki Lane

  Did Cousin Randall come to them as he came to you, angry and shaking his cane, sputtering and choking as he tried to speak? Choking as you are choking now. Take it away, away.

  Who stands at my bed foot, whispering in a terrible voice, Let justice be done? Oh, wake Duncan with thy knocking! Wake! Wake!

  “Wake up, Nola. You’re having a nightmare, I do believe.”

  The fingers grasped her shoulders, shaking her, breaking her, waking her. Nola Barrett moaned and struck out with all her feeble strength.

  They flitted in and out, changing, always changing. One offered her juice, too sweet, too sweet, Kool-Aid, aidez moi, no, NO, not the pill, willy nilly, the pill will make me nil, will I, nil I, I will be nil.

  “Do you hear me, Nola? Open your mouth. I want you to swallow this down right now and stop this nonsense.”

  Non sense, I am making non sense. No, I will not gulp, gullible gull though I seem. No pill, no pill, the pill will make me nil.

  Fingers pried at her lips, held her nose, pulled at her chin, forcing her mouth open. No, not again, I say no, not again.

  “Goddammit, you bit me, you fucking bitch!”

  The savage pinch on her inner arm stung and throbbed, but the brutal hands released her jaw.

  “Is Nola actin’ ornery agin?” Another voice in the room, and a blob of pink and orange appeared in Nola’s limited field of vision. It was accompanied by the acrid whiff of cigarette smoke that had become all too familiar.

  “She’s a little agitated, but I think she’ll quiet down pretty quick now. I’m just going to wash my hands and then I’ve got to get out of here.”

  Water running, gurgling in the sink, water splashing. Rubber-soled shoes squeaking over the linoleum and out the door. The fat pink-and-orange blob sank into the chair by the bed. There was a click and the rush of canned laughter.

  “Let’s watch us some TV, Nola sweetie. You want the rest of your nice juice? No? Well, I’ll just finish it up then.”

  Summoning all her strength, Nola Barrett turned in her bed to face the wall, opened her mouth, and silently spat the white tablet from her mouth. Her trembling hand scrabbled its way unsteadily over the pillow till her fingers touched the sticky object. Concentrating all her will on the disobedient fingers that seemed to belong to someone else, Nola began to push the pill slowly, inexorably toward the edge of the mattress.

  Phillip’s eyes narrowed. The thin figure climbing into the truck parked below the old stand was familiar. As was the purple jacket and the dark red hair. And the big fella at the wheel must be the boyfriend Lizabeth mentioned, Rocky or some such name. Wonder what they’re up to?

  The truck was parked near the foot of the road leading up to the old house and almost in front of the brick building inhabited by the man the Goodweather girls had called the Troll. Phillip brought his car to a stop on the shoulder of the road at a discreet distance and pulled a map from the pocket on the door, unfolding it almost to its full extent and holding it up to cover most of his face.

  I’m just another lost tourist. A little out of season but those two aren’t paying me any mind. Looks kinda like they’re having an argument.

  The driver was facing straight ahead, shoulders hunched, both hands gripping the steering wheel of the idling truck, while the thin young woman was turned in her seat to face him. Her hands darted and gesticulated. The driver sat unmoving as the silent tirade grew to a climax. At last the young woman’s hands dropped out of sight and Phillip saw her abruptly turn away. For a moment the occupants of the truck were frozen in their respective poses, then the driver stirred, exhaust poured from the rear of the truck, and it pulled out into the empty road, made a slow U-turn, and chugged away toward Dewell Hill.

  From over the top of his map, Phillip could see that Nola Barrett’s niece was still staring out her window, her pale features set in an angry scowl. On the rear window of the truck cab a white decal showed a plump kneeling cherub and the words Our Angel—Little Ricky—2004–2006.

  The truck had just labored round the hairpin curve above the old stand and out of sight when Blaine’s cruiser appeared. Hastily Phillip refolded the map into an approximation of its previous size. He started his car and slowly followed the sheriff up the road to the old house.

  Only a litter of twigs and small branches remained of the tree that had blocked the road on the day of Nola Barrett’s suicide attempt. The two vehicles jolted over the ruts and pulled to a stop at the side of the forbidding building. Phillip cut his ignition and, seeing that his friend was pulling on heavy gloves, tugged his watch cap down around his ears before he climbed out of his car.

  “I’d be interested to know who sawed up that tree,” Mackenzie Blaine said, emerging from his car.

  “Probably someone looking for firewood, don’t you reckon?” Phillip shivered and looked up at the old house, trying to imagine its towering chimneys plumed with smoke. In its usual fickle fashion, the weather had moderated. The recent snow had vanished and the temperatures were moderate forties and fifties. Still, it was chilly, up on this hill above the river.

  “Could be. They certainly hauled it all away.” The sheriff pointed to a confusion of heavy-treaded tracks. “But there’d be no need to come all the way up to the house if what they wanted was just the firewood.”

  “Well, hell, Mac, maybe they were just curious about this old place. Lizabeth says there’re all kind of stories about it—not just Nola jumping or the old man getting murdered, but going way back—”

  Blaine waved a dismissive hand. “I know, I know, the drovers’ gold, the Union gold, the Confederate gold—why is it that people always want to believe in buried treasure? C’mon, Hawk, let’s take a little tour of this gracious home.”

  At the padlocked back door, Blaine yanked off one glove and reached into his pocket to produce a key, from which dangled a yellowed tag. “Miss Barrett had the place locked up after old Revis’s death. She had a key and the sheriff’s office got one—in case of emergencies.

  “Of course,” he said, removing the padlock and pushing open the back door, stepping carefully on the rotting steps as he did so, “this key was accessible to anyone in the office at one time or another—there could be copies all over the place.”

  The pale light of the bleak winter day struggled through the filthy windowpanes to produce a wintry twilight. A rusting gas range and an open-doored, empty refrigerator, both heavily coated in dust, made clear the nature of the room.

  “Through here’s what used to be the barroom—back when Revis was running this place like a kind of private club for anyone willing to pay a couple of bucks to join for a night.”

  The big space boasted a motley collection of chairs and tables, many overturned, a battered pool table, and a crudely constructed counter on which sat a lone shot glass beside two empty beer bottles. A magnificent fieldstone fireplace dominated the end wall, its wide opening boarded over. On the stone hearth squatted a malevolent-looking wood heater made from an oil drum.

  “The other end of the house is the same—another big fireplace. That was where the old man mostly lived. It was the family quarters even back when this was a real inn. This would have been where the customers ate—and likely the cooking was done in the fireplace. The kitchen we came through would have been a later addition.”

  “This is an amazing building, Mac.” Phillip looked from the wide-planked floor to the massive logs that formed the walls. “Why the hell hasn’t someone—”

  “Miss Nola refused to talk about this place after the old man died. Locked it up and, far as anyone knows, never set foot in it again…until she came back here to try to kill herself.”

  The sheriff moved to a door on the inner wall. “Back here’s a kind of hall with stairs to the second floor. Of course, there’s the outside stairs too. And on the other side of the hall is Revis’s living quarters. We’ll have a look at it later. You can see from the inside how it was put together—what they call a dogtrot plan. Basically, it’s two log
rectangles with an open area between them covered over by one roof. Then at some point the open area got closed in.”

  The central hallway was thick with shadows and Mackenzie switched on a high-beam flashlight he pulled from his jacket pocket. “Watch your head going up those stairs. Low clearance.”

  At the top of the stairs, they found themselves in a narrow hallway running the length of the house. As Mackenzie shone the flashlight down the hall, Phillip could see doors on either side and, at the end, another boarded-up fireplace. The sheriff swung his light around to reveal an identical scene on the other side of where they stood.

  “Six rooms on this side and six on the other—so this is where the paying customers slept.” Phillip pushed open the nearest door, which squealed in protest.

  A stained and sagging mattress on a metal frame, a straight-back chair, and a table with a chipped and rusting white enamel basin crammed the tiny space. Any storage needs were met by a row of nails along the unpainted wood of the inner walls. A kerosene lamp, its oil long ago evaporated to an amber stain on the glass reservoir, stood on the broad windowsill, completing the bare necessities offered by the cheerless room.

  “Not strong on amenities but I guess the drovers didn’t mind—this would have—”

  “Drovers? Hawk, back when this was a drovers’ inn, this upstairs was nothing but two big open rooms. The drovers rolled up in their blankets and slept as close to the fireplaces as they could get.”

  Phillip could see a smile playing about his friend’s face as he continued.

  “These partitions came a good bit later. And this wasn’t any tourist court, good buddy.” Mackenzie snorted. “Probably another reason Miss Nola didn’t like to talk about it. For years and years this place was pretty much a whorehouse.”

  The Drovers’ Road VII

  Driving Hogs

  I confess, said the Professor, to an overweening curiosity. What did you, a simple—I beg your pardon, an inexperienced country lad, think of Mr. Patton’s fine hotel and its languid denizens? In those far-off and golden days when I was still in funds, I spent a month among the lotus-eaters at that hostelry, attempting to ingratiate myself with a wealthy widow.

  At first, she was entranced with me, hung on my least syllable. But her meddling friends intervened. When I think that but for the calumnies of others, I might now be consort to Mrs. Rupert Radnor of Philadelphia and a valued member of Main Line society…But, alas! ’Twas not to be. The slings and arrows of outrageous fortune have brought me low, marking me as the prospective bridegroom of Miss Nettie Mae Nobody of Nowhere, North Carolina.

  The Professor blew his nose loudly into a once white handkerchief, then waved a hand at his cell mate. Forgive my bitter garrulity, Lydy. Tell me your impressions of Warm Springs.

  As usual, the young man had waited philosophically for the mostly incomprehensible soliloquy to end, seizing on those few words that had meaning for him and paying no more attention to the rest than he did to the maudlin singing issuing from the neighboring cell. When the Professor had carefully folded his handkerchief and resumed an attentive attitude, Lydy took up his account.

  Well, sir, the folks at the ho-tel hired me on to help with the horses and mules they kept for folks to ride. And I hadn’t been there much more’n a week when the head man told me I was to be a groom and ride out with the rich folks when they went the next morning to see the sunrise from the top of Rich Mountain. Them furriners was a sight on earth. They changed their clothes three and four times a day. And oncet or twicet a day they would waller in them great marble tubs, a-hopin to git cured of everwhat hit was that ailed them. I tell you, Professor, they was as idle a gang of folks as ever I seen.

  I will say for them that they was free with their money but, still and all, I was right happy when it came time for the droves to commence. As the air begun to cool and the leaves to turn, the rich folks packed their fancy clothes into great trunks and piled into the coaches so as to be out of there afore the roads was full of critters and the dust they raised and the droppins they left fouling ever inch of the way.

  They kept us fellers busy there at the hotel for another few weeks as they had to have everything just so afore closing for the winter. But soon as my job there was done, I hired on with a great drove of hogs bound for Greenville, South Carolina.

  Forgive me the solecism, but might I inquire as to your remuneration? Your salary?

  The Professor’s question was met with a blank stare and he amended his query.

  I meant to ask, what was your pay for this grueling journey?

  Lydy’s face brightened. Well, sir, hit was thirteen dollars and found—meanin that the owner paid fer our meals at the stands. Hit was easy money, to my way of thinkin. Hogs is clever critters. They take some humorin but once they was on the road, they would move along at a right smart pace without offerin to stray. We had great long whips that we cracked right often to keep the beastes from loaferin but they weren’t much else to do most of the time.

  They was a friendly, talksome feller named Shelton, took it upon hisself to walk near me and tell me all manner of things. He’d gone with many a drive and knowed the road well. And one of the first things he showed me, not a mile upriver of Warm Springs, was the place where a drownded man had been found some months afore.

  Hit was a young feller, Shelton told me, and the spring floods had beat him about on the rocks of the river so bad that hit took a time afore anyone could put a name to him. They had laid him out in a shed a good ways from the tavern but when the weather begun to turn warm, the innkeeper said he would have to go in the ground as an unknown fer he’d not keep much longer. A man who had stayed at Gudger’s Stand allowed as how he thought from the hair on the corpus’s head that hit could be the Ramsey boy who had worked for Ol’ Luce and was said to be courtin his daughter.

  One of the other fellers who was trampin along nearby ups and says, Naw, I heared hit was Ol’ Luce’s wife that boy was ruttin atter. Shitfire, that black-eyed piece’d make a preacher lay down the Book iffen he could lay—

  But just then we come to a side-ford, where the mountain reaches down to the water so steep and rocky that the road has to run through the shallows. Hit took all the hollerin and whip-crackin we could do to push them hogs through the water and back onto the road oncet hit took up on land again. The river is fearsome strong and swift. Iffen a hog loses his footin in the side-ford or makes for the deeper water, he can be caught up by the ragin current afore you can hardly spit.

  Keep them beastes close, hollered the boss. I’ll not have another lost in Sill’s Slough.

  When we had got through the side-ford and the hogs was back in the muck of the road, Shelton sidled up to me. You ever heared of the Dakwa, boy?

  There never was a man liked to talk as much as ol’ Shelton. Lydy caught himself and cast a sly look at his cell mate. Reckon you and him might be kin, Professor?

  And what is this Dakwa? the Professor asked, ignoring the gibe.

  Shelton said that hit was some kindly of great fish that the Cherokees talked of. Hit was supposed to live under a big rock there at Sill’s Slough and hit would grab a man or a beast and suck hit under.

  Last year, said Shelton, when we struck that side-ford they was a big old spotted hog got into the deep waters. That hog struck out for the other shore, swimmin like one thing and then all to oncet he commenced to whirl around in the water, a-squealin and sputterin like maybe something was bitin on him.

  And then ol’ Shelton he pointed back at a place in midstream where the water seemed to run kindly contrary around some jaggety rocks. Hit was right there that hog went under, says he, and, though we waited and watched for the better part of an hour, hit never did come back up. Reckon hit was the Dakwa what et that hog.

  The Professor waved aside the tale of the river monster. A fable, Lydy, a story to amaze and entertain children. Press on. I would hear of your return to Gudger’s Stand.

  Well, sir, first I must tell you of the pl
ace we stayed that night. Hit was at the Flores Stand we put up and there I come to learn of the Melungeons. The Melungeons and Mariah of the Flowers.

  Chapter 22

  Troll Trove

  Saturday, December 23

  So you ladies are interested in my honored forebear, the man who drew this map? If you like, I can show you an article he penned for Harper’s New Monthly Magazine in 1858.”

  With a courtly flourish, Blake motioned them to a sagging leather couch that bore the scratch marks of countless cats. He moved to a low bookcase, ran a finger lightly along the spines of the books on the top shelf, and pulled out a tall leather-bound volume.

  The Troll, as Elizabeth persisted in thinking of him, had not appeared surprised to find the three Goodweather women at his door but, on being shown the copy of the map, had even invited them into the old store building that was his home to see the original and to answer their questions. He had immediately recognized Laurel, asking what she was currently working on, and, though his breath was redolent of alcohol, his manner was impeccable.

  Elizabeth had dismissed her previous suspicions and, resolving to learn what she could from this odd individual, followed her girls through the door of what had once been Wakeman’s Mercantile & Supply. We’ll chat about the map and whoever it is Blake’s named after and then I’ll try to get the conversation around to the bones in the silo and whatever it was that went on down here eleven years ago.

  Beyond the door lay a large, high-ceilinged space, evidently the main living quarters of the Troll. A curious room, Elizabeth thought. Something between an old-time general store, an artist’s loft, and a museum. With touches of Grandmother’s living room.

  Deep shelves lined the walls, but the assorted merchandise of a general store had been replaced, for the most part, by books and storage boxes. A gaunt yellow cat reclined languidly on a high shelf near the woodstove, while a pair of white-pawed tabbies shared a dilapidated basket tucked between stacks of paperbacks. Two glass-fronted display cabinets heaped with antique tools and farm implements formed a divider between the front two-thirds of the long room and the kitchen area at the back. If, as seemed likely, there had been counters, they had been removed to allow for the motley assortment of furniture.