Mothman's Curse

by Christine Hayes

  “Yeah. It’s just been a really bad day.”

  I let her wrap me in a hug, suddenly more grateful for the attention than I could say. “Poor little duckling.” She clicked her tongue. “Your dad should never have taken you and your brother out there. That whole place is cursed.”

  I pulled away. “Cursed?”

  Her eyes widened. Her lips folded shut. I’d never seen anyone backpedal so quickly. “Well, you know what I mean. With the landslide and everything.”

  “Who says it’s cursed?”

  “You know how people talk. It’s nothing. Some things are best forgotten.”

  “Aunt Barb.” I pinned her with a pleading look. She couldn’t keep a secret to herself to save her own life, and I knew even just a nudge in the right direction would get her talking. “I could use a good story. To take my mind off this morning.” Okay, so that made me feel as crummy as a crust of bread, but if she had information we needed, then it had to be done.

  “Well, you know about Point Pleasant and the collapsed bridge. How folks saw the flying moth man before the bridge disaster? It was all over the news back then. They even made a movie about it.”

  Mothman again. I shuddered. “But after Point Pleasant he disappeared, right? The Mothman?”

  “Mothman, yes, that’s what they called him. And that’s what they want you to think.”

  “Who?”

  “The government.”

  Uh-oh. There was a good chance this was less about actual, useful information and more about Aunt Barb’s love for conspiracy theories.

  She paused to add a few dashes of salt to the soup, then sprinkled some into her hand and tossed it over her shoulder.

  “So the government…?” I prompted.

  “Oh yes. Mothman appeared in Clark as well, but the government covered it up to keep people from disturbing the site.”

  My mind filtered furiously, trying to salvage any kernels of truth from what was likely a forty-year-old piece of gossip.

  Was it possible? Did people in Clark really see Mothman? Momma and Aunt Barb grew up in northern Kentucky, so the landslide would have been on Aunt Barb’s radar. Whether her information was based on memory or hand-me-down rumors was another story.

  “Who saw him? How did they cover it up?”

  “Hmmm? Oh, I think many of the people who saw him were killed in that terrible landslide. But the stories still got out, thanks to survivors like Eva.”

  “Who?”

  She paused again to dip a spoon into the soup and take a cautious sip. “Mmm. More garlic, I think.”

  I gritted my teeth to cage my impatience. To women like Aunt Barb, stories were to be savored, like soup, seasoned to perfection, sampled, and stretched out to make them last.

  “Eva. My hairdresser. She was a housekeeper for Mr. Goodrich. Worked there some twenty-five years before she was suddenly let go. She’s told me a story or two.”

  I blinked. Someone who’d worked right there in the house? It was like a Christmas present, all done up with a fancy bow. “What did she say about Mothman?”

  “Oh, goodness knows if it’s true.”

  “But?”

  She paused and studied my face, suddenly aware perhaps of how loose her tongue had become. But I must have passed her test, maybe even got promoted to gossip-in-training. I was almost thirteen, after all.

  “Mothman appeared in that very house, more than once.”

  “Before the landslide, or after?”

  “Both. That’s the first thing I thought of when I heard about your daddy. Of course that’s just stories, just tales passed around.” She gave a nervous laugh.

  “Right. Of course.”

  Both, my mind screamed at me.

  She shooed me out of the kitchen, conversation over. “Go and get your brothers, now.”

  Could Mothman really be tied up in all this somehow? No, I thought. No way. Things were already complicated enough. Aunt Barb loved a good story. She’d heard a juicy piece of gossip about the Goodrich place and couldn’t help but pass it on.

  It was tough to concentrate on eating after that, but it helped that the soup tasted like heaven itself. I savored the feel of it warming me from the inside, and tried for just those few seconds not to think about anything else.

  “Do we have to go to school tomorrow?” Mason asked.

  “Gracious, I don’t know,” Aunt Barb said. “I think you could miss a day for the sake of visiting your daddy.”

  “But when is he coming home?” Mason said.

  “In a few days, dumpling.”

  I could tell by the way he fidgeted in his chair that Fox wanted to talk about the papers from the safe. He’d been stuck playing with Mason all afternoon.

  After we cleaned up the kitchen, Aunt Barb sat at the table with Mason making get-well cards for Dad. Fox and I went upstairs.

  We got settled on the floor of my room with the box between us and sorted through the papers one by one. There were contracts, receipts, ledgers—even a few cards and letters from John to his wife and vice versa.

  About halfway through the box, I found something strange. “Fox, look at this.”

  It was a piece of lined notebook paper with a series of numbers and the words SAVE THEM printed in neat block letters.

  “What do you think it means? Is that a safe combination?” I said.

  “Hmm. Measurements, maybe? Could be a date. Or a time.”

  “Could it be an address? Or some kind of code?”

  “Truth is, it could be just about anything,” Fox said with a shrug.

  “I guess you’re right.” I set the paper aside and kept looking, but it turned out to be the only interesting thing in the box.

  “Should we take one more look around the storeroom?” I said.

  “Yeah, good idea.” He rubbed a hand over his face. I realized he actually looked less than his usual pressed and polished self.

  We stashed the notebook page in the lockbox and put the rest of the papers in Dad’s office. Then we stopped at Mason’s room to say good-night. Aunt Barb had already tucked him in, his hair still damp and sweet-smelling from the shower.

  He sat up as soon as he saw us. “Where are you going? Does it have anything to do with the g-h-o-s-t?”

  I shushed him. “What makes you think we’re going anywhere?”

  “Because everything exciting happens after I’m in bed.”

  “We’re just going out to the storeroom,” Fox said. You’re not missing anything. I promise.”

  “It’s not fair. Why do you get to stay up later than me? I want to come, too.”

  I shook my head. “Not this time.”

  Mason stuck out his lower lip, watching our faces to see if we changed our minds. When he saw we weren’t about to budge, he shrugged, closed his eyes, and said, “Okay. Good night.”

  Downstairs, we found Aunt Barb sitting on the couch watching TV and knitting. We told her I had lost a ring in the storeroom and we wanted to go look for it. Her brows scrunched together. “It’s getting late. And it’s awfully chilly out there.”

  “We won’t be long,” I promised. “Please? It’s my favorite ring. I just have to find it.” I tried out a less obvious version of Mason’s pout.

  Fox jingled Dad’s spare keys in his coat pocket.

  “Make it quick, then,” she said. “And take a flashlight.”

  Fox held up his other hand. “Done.”

  In the storeroom, we got right to work digging through dresser drawers and boxes, inside books and between the pages of magazines.

  I couldn’t say just what we were looking for. As we searched, I casually mentioned Aunt Barb’s story placing Mothman at the Goodrich house—just to hear Fox say how crazy it was, how it wasn’t worth another thought.

  “And you didn’t say anything to her about Mothman first?” he asked.

  “No. Aunt Barb’s the one who brought it up. But it’s just a coincidence. Right? Just a piece of gossip she heard somewhere.”

&nbs
p; He chewed his lip, a nervous habit he never displayed in public. “Just … keep an eye out for anything to do with moths or Mothman,” he said. “Just in case.”

  I remembered the moth shadow box and grabbed it straightaway, even though it still made me squirm. Fox scrounged up an encyclopedia of insects and a book about the disaster in Point Pleasant. I found a few books on the paranormal and two small journals tucked inside a wooden tool chest.

  Our time was running short when movement caught the corner of my eye. An old console TV had flickered to life. I looked again to make sure I wasn’t seeing things. Sure enough, static filled the screen, growing brighter by the second. I walked over for a closer look and found the power cord dangling out the back.

  It wasn’t plugged in.

  Fox came up beside me, peering at the phantom set through narrowed eyes. We both jumped when a second TV joined the first, this one a portable black-and-white, a writhing square of light in the cavernous room.

  Goose bumps crept up my arms. The temperature dropped, as if we’d wandered into a sudden snowstorm.

  The static built, rising from an angry hiss to a harsh crush of sound.

  Radios switched on one by one, their dials flying back and forth through the stations: the twang of banjos, a swell of opera, a weather report, a thumping hip-hop rhythm, a sportscaster calling the highlights of a basketball game. Sounds mixed and clashed, an agony of noise, pierced by screeches, and moans, and a thousand desperate pleas.

  We stood there trembling, cowering, as items lifted from the tables of their own accord, hovering in the air for a few seconds before beginning a slow orbit around the room. The furniture and other oversize pieces followed, looming several feet over our heads. My knees buckled. I sprawled on the concrete floor as objects swirled faster and faster around us.

  “Save them.”

  It was a man’s voice, low and distorted, amplified all through the space from every radio in the room.

  The voice persisted, loud enough to carry over the chaos: “Save them. Save them.”

  Fox pulled me to my feet. The now-familiar image of John Goodrich stared out from the TVs, drifting above us in the cloud of merchandise. Goodrich repeated only the two words—“Save them”—before the image flickered and started again, a ghostly loop.

  I clutched Fox’s arm to steady us both. He clutched back, an anchor in a terrifying sea.

  Objects swirled faster still. A few flew dangerously close to our heads, so we ducked under the nearest table. The air grew bitterly cold. Our panicked breaths fogged the air. My sobs and Fox’s shouts of fear added to the commotion.

  “Savethemsavethemsavethemsavethemsavethem.”

  “Save who?” I screamed back, hands pressed to my ears. “We don’t know what you want!”

  A light shattered high above, then another and another, glass raining down around us. The room was pitched into blackness. Only the blue-gray light from the televisions remained. Then even that winked out.

  Everything went still. We waited. Fox switched on the flashlight and inched his arm out from under the table to shine it around. The room looked normal. Every item was back in its proper place, just as before.

  A breath shuddered out of me. Fox sat on the floor, knees drawn up, a death grip on the flashlight. I felt wobbly and weak. I crawled closer to Fox and we sat, gulping down air. The darkness felt alive, like it could reach out with cold, cruel fingers and drag us away.

  As the minutes passed, I started to wonder whether Aunt Barb had heard the commotion when high-pitched screams reached our ears, long and panicked, barely pausing for air in between. Not Aunt Barb.

  Mason.

  We ran, glass crunching beneath our feet, Fox’s flashlight bobbing in front of us to point the way.

  We barreled outside, across the lawn, through the front door, and up the stairs. We found Mason on the floor of his room, curled in a ball, hands clamped over his ears, screaming. Aunt Barb knelt beside him, hands hovering, but she didn’t touch him. The pieces of two dismantled Polaroid cameras lay scattered around him in a messy circle.

  I knelt across from Aunt Barb and placed a gentle hand on Mason’s shoulder. “Mason. Mason, honey.” He jerked away and started up a rocking motion, back and forth, back and forth. I felt like joining him. Instead, I wrapped both arms around him and gathered him into my lap. I rubbed his back, smoothed his hair. “Mason. It’s over. We’re here. It’s over.” Of course I had no idea what he’d seen, but I could guess it was something close to our episode in the storeroom. I made soft shushing noises, again and again, until the screams gave way to quiet gasps and sobs.

  Aunt Barb looked close to tears, too, her face pale and blank. “I should call your daddy.”

  “No, it’s okay,” Fox said. “We don’t want to bother him while he’s recovering.” He nodded at Mason. “Do you know what set him off?”

  She wrung her hands, her plump fingers worrying back and forth in nervous circles. “No. I was downstairs when he just started screaming. Has he done this before? Since … your momma passed?”

  “No,” Fox and I said together. Mason had cried plenty of times since Momma died, had even thrown the occasional tantrum, but nothing like this.

  We needed some time alone to find out what he’d seen. “Aunt Barb, maybe you could bring him some of your famous hot chocolate?”

  “Of course. Mason, I’ll be right back, sugar beet.”

  He sat up as soon as she left, face flushed and splotchy, his breathing jolted by the occasional hiccup, but he stayed nestled in the crook of my arm. “The pieces were floating.”

  Fox picked up a piece of camera and examined it. “All around the room, right?”

  Mason nodded.

  “You weren’t supposed to touch these.”

  “I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have done it. I just wanted to see what was inside.”

  “Then what happened?” Fox said.

  He sniffed. “I heard a voice from my Batman radio. You told me not to say anything about the man in the pictures, and I thought this might be a secret, too, so I didn’t tell Aunt Barb.”

  Fox ruffled Mason’s hair. “You did great, kiddo. Do you remember what the voice said?”

  Mason’s lower lip jutted out. His eyes filled with new tears.

  “The same thing happened to us just now, in the storeroom,” I told him. “But nobody got hurt. It was just a lot of noise meant to get our attention, okay?”

  “Dad got hurt,” he said. Images of Dad at the bottom of those stairs, his leg twisted, flashed through my mind. “That was an accident,” I said, mostly to convince myself.

  “Save them.”

  “What?” I said.

  “The voice said, ‘Save them.’ I thought it meant that you were in trouble, that you’d get hurt like Dad did.”

  “Oh, honey.” I was fumbling for something else reassuring to say when a piece of camera—a faceplate—rattled and bounced on the floor. Mason clutched me tighter. All three of us scooted backward.

  The camera spit out a photograph. A beat of silence followed. Then the camera rattled and spit out another one, then another. Soon the pictures were coming faster and faster, a small pile quickly building on the carpet with no end in sight. Mason broke free of me and scrambled onto his bed, whimpering. Fox hesitated for only a moment. Then he grabbed Mason’s trash can, scooped up all the photos and the pieces of both cameras, and slammed them into the metal can with a satisfying clunk. He took the can and left the room, passing Aunt Barb on her way in.

  “How are you feeling, sweet potato?” she asked Mason, who stood on his bed, wedged into the corner where two walls met. Cautiously, she held out a mug, the steam rising like Fox’s and my breaths had back in the storeroom. Now that Fox had carted off the cameras, Mason started to calm down. I got him to sit cross-legged on the bed. He accepted the mug and took long, careful sips as Aunt Barb sat beside him, looking much calmer herself.

  “I think I’ll, um…” I pointed out the open door. “Get re
ady for bed?”

  Aunt Barb nodded.

  “He must have fallen asleep, had a bad dream,” I offered. “He’s probably worried about Dad.”

  “I’m sure that’s it.”

  “Okay, then. Good night.”

  “Night, Josie.”

  Fox came to the doorway while I was brushing my teeth. “I threw it all out,” he told me. “It’s in the Dumpster behind the auction building.”

  “Okay.”

  “And I locked everything up. The only thing that’s noticeable is that all the bulbs blew in the storeroom. Hopefully Uncle Bill will think it was just a power surge.”

  “What about the shadow box and the books we found?”

  “They’re still there. I don’t want them.”

  “So that’s it? We’re done with Goodrich?”

  His jaw worked. “He went after our little brother, Josie. You don’t want to be done, after everything that’s happened today?”

  “I want to be. But do you really think Goodrich is done with us?”

  Fox was silent for too long. And that was answer enough.

  6

  After another restless night, I found Mason and Fox at the breakfast table with bowls of cold cereal in front of them. They seemed tired but less rattled than the night before, eating in their usual reckless hurry so they could have seconds and thirds. I grabbed a piece of toast from a plate on the counter. “Where’s Aunt Barb?”

  “Packing a few things Dad wanted,” Fox said. “We’re going to the hospital as soon as she’s ready.”

  My heart did a tiny flip inside my chest. “We get to see him? That’s great!”

  “And no school,” Mason added.

  I sighed in relief. “Good.”

  I noticed a huge basket on the table, packed with homemade cinnamon bread, oatmeal chocolate chip cookies, raspberry jam, and several puzzle books.

  “She baked,” Fox said.

  “I see that.”

  Aunt Barb cooked when under stress. I wondered how late she’d stayed up—or how long she’d been awake. The kitchen still smelled like brown sugar and cinnamon. My stomach rumbled. “She leave any for us?”

  He gestured to a tray of cookies cooling beside the stove. I abandoned my toast and took a cookie instead.