High Lonesome Sound

by Jaye Wells

Intrigued by the mysterious incantations and recipes, she’d taken the book with her back to her room and spent a pleasant hour thumbing through the pages. It made her feel closer to her mama, and Granny, too.

  Everything had changed when she came upon a spell for making a man do your bidding. According to the book, the best way to control a man was to make him love you. The process of accomplishing that feat was laid out in detail.

  She made the decision without admitting it to herself. But in the back of her mind, she could still see the look on Peter’s face when she’d asked him to help her. It had been a mixture of suspicion and worry. Not a good sign. She’d made him promise not to answer right then, but to think it over.

  But as she sat on her bed, in her lonely attic room, she could easily imagine him sitting alone in his cabin wondering how he was going to let her down easily. She had a little money saved up, but if he rejected her, she would never leave. It would be too easy to convince herself then that her place was with her family regardless of what that would mean for her own future. Her mama had taught her too well the importance of duty, and without Peter to give her an excuse to ignore everything she’d been taught, she’d surrender. She just knew it.

  Her first sin that night was sneaking into Reverend Peale’s shed. It was situated at the back of his yard. She knew it well because she and Mama used to help take care of his garden. Judging from the cobwebs sealing the building like a tomb and the weedy garden trying to swallow the shed whole, no one else had stepped in to take over those chores after Mama died. She liked Reverend Peale, and stealing was wrong, but Granny’s book had been specific that the trowel needed to belong to a man of God.

  The tall trees blocked the moon’s view of her progress as she climbed the hill toward the cemetery. The darkness tried to swallow her lantern’s light. Taking it from Daddy’s workshop hadn’t been a sin because she planned to put it back where she’d found it before he realized it was gone. If he even bothered to return home in the next day or so, he’d never notice it missing before she put it back. Near as she could tell he hadn’t used it since the time he went to help Mr. Jessup rescue a coonhound that had gotten its paw caught in a bear trap the previous October.

  She stopped near the small metal archway leading into the cemetery and tried to remember if the dog had survived that time. Chances were good it hadn’t. Mr. Jessup shot his dogs with such shocking regularity that the acts couldn’t be described as merciful, even though they usually followed some sort of traumatic injury to the animals. Ruby thought if the man had any mercy he’d have gathered up those damned bear traps so his hounds couldn’t stumble into them anymore. For that matter, he should forget about hunting bears altogether.

  The spell book had said the rites were supposed to be done with a clear head and a true heart. She took three more breaths, sucking in the moist, cool air and breathing out warm puffs that were visible in the lantern’s yellow glow.

  Beyond the metal archway a path cut through the tombstones. The mourners at Jack’s funeral had upset the white pebble paths that hadn’t been cleaned up since last Decoration Day. The messy paths and pine needles that carpeted the cemetery gave it an abandoned appearance, like the graveyard of a ghost town. Ruby turned left down a row that led away from the cemetery’s most recent graves.

  Her conscience warned her that Mama wouldn’t have approved of what she was doing. Would Jack say anything? She didn’t know, but she avoided looking in the direction of the mound of fresh dirt behind her.

  She checked the time. Her watch had a pink crystal chip over the twelve and a black, fake-leather strap. Mama had given it to Ruby for her seventeenth birthday. The timepiece told Ruby it was already quarter till midnight. She needed to hurry or miss her chance. As she lowered her wrist, the Nashville bracelet slid down her arm and clinked against the watch.

  On the eastern border of the cemetery, a large statue of an angel stood over Jeremiah Moon’s grave. The angel’s left side was dotted with soft green moss, while the right side, which faced west, was decorated with gold-colored lichen. The effect made the angel appear as if her one face was made up of the halves of two separate faces. Like that god she read about in the book on mythology at Granny’s house as a girl.

  Ruby snorted. Wouldn’t the people of town be shocked to hear her comparing their sacred angel to a pagan god? Did that count as another sin? And if so, shouldn’t it bother her more?

  Behind her, the presence of the particular grave she wanted to forget pressed against her back like a cold hand.

  She dropped to her knees in front of the statue and set the lantern by the angel’s feet. The stolen trowel came out of her backpack. She held it up to the light, wondering why it mattered that it came from the reverend. But knowing the hows and whys of magic wasn’t her job. That was Granny’s business, and if her book said it needed to be Reverend Peale’s who was she to argue?

  Next, she removed a copy of Devil’s Due. The shipment of Peter’s books had arrived that morning at the library. Since Sarah Jane was all torn up over Jack, Mrs. Fry had asked Ruby to stop by the library to collect the mail and make sure everything was locked up. She’d logged in all the copies into the system—except the one she’d put in her bag. She supposed that counted as a sin, too, but at that point it was getting hard to keep track.

  The book had Peter’s picture on the back. He looked younger in the photo and his eyes squinted less. She wondered what had happened to him between the shot being taken and his arrival in town.

  She touched her lips with her finger and lay the kiss on his face because it seemed like something she should do. Then she lay the book face up in the pool of light beneath the lantern. Then, using the reverend’s trowel, she dug a shallow hole and placed Peter’s book inside. She removed her bracelet and set it beside the book. She buried them together using the dirt, and then, after a deep breath, she raised the trowel into the air one last time and plunged it into the earth beside the book’s grave.

  Closing her eyes, she recited the words she’d memorized from the book. “Guardian of the cemetery, heed me,” she whispered, adding “please” after a moment. “Make him think of only me.”

  Opening her eyes again, she rose and looked around. According to the book of spells, if the ceremony worked correctly, the shadow of her desired mate should appear.

  She held her breath and stared hard as can be into the darkness. She stared so hard that little circles of light appeared on the corners of her vision. She blinked once, twice. The circles remained, but no shadows appeared.

  She licked her lips and closed her eyes to block out the hovering orbs. “Guardian of the cemetery, show me my love. Please!”

  In her mind’s eye, she imagined the silhouette of Peter West as if that could conjure his shadow. When she opened her eyes again, the glowing orbs hadn’t gone away—they’d multiplied. But she didn’t care about the lights. She was too busy being disappointed by the lack of shadow to be scared or excited by some stupid lightning bugs.

  Muttering to herself, she knelt and removed Granny’s spell book from her sack. She knelt down next to the lantern to see the words written on the correct page. “If the shadow of your love appears to the north, there will be great passion. A southern appearance means the union is possible but will require much labor. To the west, you’ll be friends. To the east, he will be your enemy forever.”

  “But what about no shadow?” she asked the book, as if it would respond.

  Before she could read the rest of the page, movement captured her attention. Believing her shadow had finally appeared, she looked up. Her breath dropped to the bottom of her lungs. She rose despite the cold shock spreading through her limbs. The orbs had multiplied and flew around the center of the cemetery in a cyclone of light. She stumbled back.

  Her shoulder touched stone. Something gave way. A breath passed, followed by a loud crunch. The orbs dispersed like flying sparks.

  Oxygen rushed in and out of Ruby’s open mouth. Her heart thudded like
the knock of an unwelcomed guest against her ribs. She blinked a few times to be sure the lights were truly gone. The air was dark once more, and a few small rays of relief seeped between the lingering shadows of confusion and the echo of fear.

  She cleared her throat and the noise was unnaturally loud in the dark and empty cemetery. She looked down. The lantern lay dark on the ground. Her foot must have kicked it. She lifted it and clicked the button a few times, but nothing happened.

  Only then did the thought occur to her: It was too early for lightning bugs.

  She’d come to the cemetery looking for a shadow, but all she’d found was light. She looked around for the spell book. She wanted to tear it up with her hands. She wanted to burn it. She wanted to destroy it for making her believe she was capable of magic.

  Something to her left caught her attention. Something was different. A void that had not existed a few moments before.

  Grey chunks of stone littered the ground. The angel’s two faces were divided and two sightless eyes stared up at the moon. Ruby gasped.

  Worries about lights and shadows dissolved. If Deacon Fry or any of the other church elders found out she’d destroyed the beloved angel of Moon Hollow, she’d never live down the shame. It was bad enough to be the daughter of the woman who’d died too young and the old-before-his-time man who was trying to kill himself. To be both a thief and a vandal of sacred ground? It was too scandalous.

  And what if Peter West found out why she’d gone to the cemetery in the first place? No man could fall in love with such a desperate and silly girl. He’d never agree to help her leave now.

  She’d destroyed everything.

  She grabbed the trowel out of the ground and picked up the spell book, which lay beside the rubble of the destroyed angel.

  “Oh, God—Jesus, please forgive me,” she whispered. With shaking hands she shoved the book into her bag of sin and snatched the lantern off the ground.

  As she ran from the cemetery, she felt as if she’d forgotten something important, but she’d worry about that later when she wasn’t busy running from her mistakes.

  31

  The Invitation

  Peter

  That night, Peter sat on the porch again. The darkness emanating from the surrounding woods pressed against the meager pools of light spilling from the cabin’s windows. He’d sat there every night since he’d arrived, but it had taken him a while to realize it was not the yearning night that scared him. It was the loneliness.

  No matter how often he had tried to make friends with the night sounds, his brain wasn’t having it. Without the stimulation of lights and sounds to distract it, the bully in his head went looking for trouble. First, it created ridiculous monsters out of shadows. Then, after he was able to logic away the specters, the bully searched for real horrors in the steamer trunks hidden in the back of his brain, and then the cold hands of memory squeezed his throat.

  The solitary darkness of his childhood bedroom rose around him. Huddling under his covers with a pillow over his head. Angry voices stabbing through the walls. The crash of glass and the crack of a palm slapping flesh always preceded the brittle sound of his mother’s tears. His small heart pounded in his chest, in his ears, in the dark, alone.

  He didn’t remember the first time he distracted himself by making up a story. Later, he would try to recall those first tales but all the characters he created swirled and dipped through his head like exuberant ghosts distracting him from those early attempts.

  No, he didn’t remember that first story, but he knew it had been his salvation. His friends who’d come from “complicated” families like his found solace first in rebellion and then in drugs or an addiction to anger. They’d call him the lucky one.

  But they didn’t know that at some point his savior had evolved into his master. His imagination morphed into a dictator that prevented him from ever experiencing full contact with reality or ever truly engaging with people. This ruler told him that people couldn’t be trusted because they couldn’t be controlled.

  He coughed and spat on the warped boards.

  He should be writing. The press of memories was a warning sign. His bully was telling him it was time. Even though he’d written a couple of pitiful pages that morning, he had six months’ worth of bile to vent.

  At some point, after he’d given up imagining dragons and wizards in the dark and had traded them for fantasies about the girls in his English lit classes, long after he’d written his first trunk novel and then another, he’d learned to control the bully by writing as much as possible. The epiphany had hit him while doing research on ancient medical practices he’d been doing for a book about a doctor-cum-serial killer who tortured his victims using arcane medical procedures. For thousands of years it was believed that the human body was made up of four humors: sanguine, choleric, melancholic, and phlegmatic. It was believed that an imbalance of the humors led to disease, and the best cure was to bleed the patient to purge the bad humors.

  Untapped creative energy was like that. It collected inside the body like yellow bile that turned a person restless and edgy. If the energy didn’t find release, it would turn against its host and transform into the necrotic black bile of melancholy. A lot of writers he knew turned to pharmaceuticals to tame that energy, but Peter never saw his black moods as psychological malfunctions. Instead, he’d learned that the only cure was the ritualized bloodletting of laying prose on the page.

  Even now, the yellow tentacles were squirming up the back of his throat and around the base of his brain. If he didn’t get some serious word count soon, the bile would blacken and turn against him.

  He rose from his chair, intent on finding paper and his favorite fountain pen. Getting something down—anything—was better than nothing. Refusing to write because it wouldn’t be brilliant was like forgoing the temporary relief of his own hand because it wasn't as good as sex with an actual woman.

  Before he could pull his pen and notebook from his satchel in the kitchen, tires crunched on the gravel drive out front. He glanced at the clock on his cell phone. He couldn’t think of any of Moon Hollow’s citizens he’d want to see after midnight.

  A few moments later, a knock sounded at the door and as he walked to answer it, he saw Deacon Fry through the window. A panic sizzled in his stomach. Had Jessup found out what he and Ruby had been up to that afternoon?

  “Mr. West?” The voice was muffled by the door, but the authority in the deacon’s voice was clear.

  He blew out a deep breath and opened up because he wasn’t a coward. “Deacon,” he said, “you’re up late.”

  He hadn’t seen the deacon since his first day in town at church, and the changes were remarkable. Dark circles weighed down the skin under his eyes and the wrinkles on the sides of his mouth were deeper, as if he’d spent a lot of time frowning recently.

  “Sorry to disturb you at this hour, but I presumed you keep late hours on account of your writing.”

  Deacon Fry wasn’t wrong, so Peter didn’t correct him, but it was presumptuous as hell to show up like this. “What can I help you with?” He didn’t invite him inside.

  The deacon smiled tightly, as if the effort cost him. “I apologize that I was not there for our meeting the other morning, but I assume you’ve heard about the trouble we had at the mines that day.”

  “The funeral was today?”

  “Terrible business.”

  “I’m sorry.”

  “Thank you.” The deacon motioned to the chairs on the porch. “May we sit?” He’d obviously figured out an invitation inside wasn’t coming.

  Peter dipped his head to accept the compromise and stepped out, closing the door behind him. Naturally, his guest took the rocking chair, which left Peter to take the creaky metal folding chair.

  Deacon Fry began rocking as if settling in for a nice long chat. Peter suddenly wished he’d thought to pour himself some bourbon first.

  “Are you a man of belief, Mr. West?”

  A
s far as opening salvos went, it was quite effective. “I suppose everyone believes in something, Deacon Fry.”

  “What’s your something?”

  “What’s your point?”

  The deacon’s lips twitched. “Today I helped bury a boy who should have had a long life. Lot of people would see that as an excuse to question their faith. It’s understandable, I suppose. It’s hard to remain faithful when bad things happen to good people. But for men like me, faith doesn’t make tragedy more complicated—it simplifies things.”

  Peter leaned forward with his elbows on his knees. “How so?”

  When he realized Peter wasn’t mocking him, he leaned back with his hands folded across his middle. “Life is a lot easier if you accept that you’re not in control.”

  A startled laugh escape Peter’s mouth before he could stop it. “You do realize that you are both the head of Moon Hollow’s only church and its mayor, right? This little theocracy you have here is all about control.”

  The deacon’s expression hardened. “Being a leader isn’t about controlling people. I’m doing the Lord’s work.”

  “Sure,” Peter said. “The Lord’s work.”

  “Do you have something you’d like to say to me, Mr. West?”

  “The more important question is, what did you come here to say to me?”

  The deacon rocked a bit, looking out into the night. His expression wasn’t angry; it was thoughtful. Peter had baited him, and he’d expected a fight in return, but he had no idea what to do with this pensive version of Deacon Fry.

  “I’m afraid we’ve gotten off on the wrong foot.”

  “Why don’t you tell me what the right foot was supposed to look like?”

  “Mr. West, I have come to mend fences, but you insist on continuing to bait me. Why is that?”

  “Are you aware that Earl Sharps threatened me with arrest yesterday if I didn’t agree to stay away from the funeral today?”

  His expression didn’t change but he did slow down his rocking for a moment. “I regret that Earl took it that far. I simply asked him to inform you that it might be best if you allowed the people of this town to mourn our loss without outside influences.”