High Lonesome Sound

by Jaye Wells

  Home. This was her home. Often it was a dysfunctional home. Sometimes it was a painful one. But laughter also lived in this home, and joy. She didn’t need to leave Moon Hollow to find herself. She just needed to allow herself to be at home here.

  The air shifted. She suddenly felt that something was coming over the mountain. It flew through and around the trees, it danced across the river, and it dove off the ridges. It collected energy as it traveled, like a gathering storm. Because it felt right, she lifted her arms above her head to welcome it.

  When it arrived, it plowed into her like a wall of sound. Her heart churned, trying to absorb all the music. It filled her head and her mouth and her chest. It packed into her arms and legs. It distended her belly.

  The intensity frightened her. A million voices all sang at once, the notes slippery like eels so she couldn’t use any of them to anchor herself.

  But then, a single thread of music shone inside her brighter than the rest. The sound was so pure and clear that she knew instantly it could only have come from one place. She mentally plucked the chords from where they had wrapped around her stomach and redirected it to her heart.

  The instant the melody entered the chambers, her eyes popped open.

  The area was silent, and no one moved, not even the haints.

  With the notes of the song echoing inside her, she finally smiled. This wasn’t the mountain’s song or granny’s song. It was Ruby’s song.

  She turned her back on the undead and looked up at the crooked steeple. Thunder rolled across the mountain and wind whipped through the hollows.

  “What are you doing?” Jack’s voice demanded behind her.

  She braced her feet and let loose her song.

  The words manifested as lightning from her lips. Branches of pure energy spread out and found the unwelcome visitors. Their screams were drowned out by the thunder crashing overhead.

  She held the note until her eyes rolled back in her head and she saw images of the mountain carrying back through years and decades and centuries. She saw primordial forests and ancient waters and stones that carried the secrets of the ages.

  “No!” The sound of the demon Jack screaming broke through the static of energy and the killer melody thrumming in her blood. “You broke the pact. You will pay.”

  A voice inside her whispered, “Mountain owes no debts.”

  70

  The Arrival

  Peter

  He’d seen many uncanny things that day. Things he’d never be able to put into words if he managed to survive the night. But as he watched Ruby stand her ground in front of a demon, he realized he’d never witnessed true power until that moment.

  And that was before she started singing her lightning song.

  The instant the bolts escaped her, the air became blindingly bright and the smell of ozone nearly overpowering. He dove to the ground with Edna and Lettie, Bunk and Earl Sharps. The bear scrambled under the truck.

  Lying on the church steps, Peter peeked through the arms covering his head to watch the show.

  Ruby’s hair stood in a halo around her head as the force of her energy crackled through the air. The words of the song hurt his ears, but it made his chest expand and tears come to his eyes at the same time. It was at once both the most beautiful and terrifying thing he’d ever witnessed.

  “No!” The demon screamed. Its body distorted from that of Jack Thompson into something bent and twisted and horned. It raised its head to the sky and roared. But the lightning’s power didn’t let up. It cooked him even as he raged.

  The air pressure dropped so low that Peter had trouble hearing and breathing properly. But he kept watching because he needed to see it end. One by one the corpses exploded. The older ones—the skeletons—went first, followed by the more recent dead. When Rose Barrett’s corpse finally immolated, she screamed Ruby’s name.

  Demon Jack was last. Chords of lightning whipped around his body. The sound of his agony sang the unbearable melody to Ruby’s killing song. Finally, her voice reached a deafening crescendo. The demon’s blackened corpse exploded.

  Unlike the others, his body hadn’t burned to ash, but had hardened into black glass that fractured into brittle shards.

  Ruby collapsed to the ground. Her clothes were gone, and her hair and skin smoldered. Angry red lines covered her skin in a branching pattern, as if the lighting branded her.

  Peter ran to her and knelt next to her smoking body. He tried to figure out how he could help, but touching her was out of the question.

  “What can I do?”

  Smoke escaped her mouth when she tried to speak. She ran her tongue over her blistered lips. “Be … here.”

  Her body spasmed. Peter cursed helplessly. “I’m here, Ruby. I’m here.”

  She tried to smile, but before the expression could manifest, she passed out. Overhead, thunder rolled and rain poured from the cloudless sky.

  Peter looked up and let the rain wash over him. A sound caught his attention and he looked through the pouring water to see a small bundle of brown fur emerge from under the truck. The bear rose on its small hind legs and raised its muzzle to the sky. This time when it cried, the sound wasn’t sad—it was triumphant.

  71

  Return With The Elixir

  Peter

  Screams still woke him at night, and whispers haunted him during the day. He tried to keep busy, but the memories always found him.

  He’d lost a lot of weight. His blazer hung off him, like a boy wearing his father’s clothes. When he could stand to look in the mirror, the planes of his face reminded him of ridges of scorched earth.

  He splashed water on his face and used the tail of his shirt to dry off. The before Peter would have been careful to tuck in the shirt. He would have sprung for a new blazer—one that fit— but the after him didn’t care. After a man had looked into the face of evil, it was hard to muster concern for trivial matters anymore.

  He exited the Wicked Ink bathroom. An employee stood in the dark little hallway waiting for him.

  “Mr. West? I was hoping you wouldn’t mind signing some stock after the talk.”

  He recognized the kid as the one who’d worked the coffee stand the last time he’d been there. The day when Renee’s news had sent him off like Quixote to chase windmills in the mountains. Unfortunately for the kid, he’d found his patience for pleasantries had died around the same time he realized that demons were real. “Sorry but I won’t be staying that long.”

  The kid’s face fell. “Okay, maybe some other time.”

  He didn’t bother telling the guy there wouldn’t be a next time. Once he sent off the manuscript he’d spent the last two years writing, he was retiring from writing for good. He simply nodded and eased past the kid to go join the audience.

  “Mr. West?”

  Peter turned with his eyebrows up.

  “For what it’s worth, I think it’s pretty cool you showed up for her signing, considering what she said about you.”

  He chuckled more at himself than the kid. “If I hadn’t wanted her to write about it, I shouldn’t have done those things.” With that, he left the slack-jawed kid behind and took his place at the back of the signing area.

  Renee was already at the front of the room talking. She hadn’t seen him come in because the crowd was standing-room-only.

  She looked tired. Not a good sign. According to her website, this was the first stop in what would be a twenty-city signing tour. The book had come out the day before—six months later than the original release date after they’d had to push it back due to some writer’s block—and he’d bet the two hundred bucks left in his bank account that she’d been up all night refreshing her sales rank.

  A woman in the third row was asking a question. “You must be so proud of all the support your book is getting from other women who’ve survived tough divorces?”

  Renee’s smile was tight. “I’m happy anyone is reading the book,” she said. “Writing is a tough, solitary en
deavor. It’s incredibly gratifying to know your words are helping other people.”

  Another hand shot up, this time from a woman standing very close to Peter. Renee called on her. He didn’t bother trying to hide, and he knew the second she spotted him. Her eyes shot to him and then away and then back again. He didn’t smirk or wave. He just stood there.

  “Has your ex read the book yet?” the oblivious woman asked, sounding giddy.

  Renee shifted uneasily. He tipped his chin and smiled at her. “Uh,” she said, “I think he has.”

  “Well? What did he think?”

  Renee was still watching him. All around, people had begun whispering as they recognized him, but the woman who’d asked the question was still clueless. “Was he mad?” she demanded. “I bet he was mad.”

  Peter looked at the woman who’d suffered under his ego for more than a decade, shook his head, and mouthed “no.” A shocked laughed escaped Renee. Now people in the audience were really catching on. Some even pulled out their phones to grab pictures.

  “You know,” Renee said to the woman in the audience, “something tells me he’s okay with it.”

  Peter put his fingers to his lips and saluted her before he turned and walked out of the store.

  He got into his shitty car and looked at the box covered in brown paper. Before he’d left his apartment that night, he’d printed the whole thing out and wrapped it up. It had taken a dozen stamps to make enough postage. It reminded him of the early days of writing when he had to send manuscripts to publishers and they required that writers include pre-stamped envelopes to pay the postage for the rejection letter they’d inevitably send.

  Things had changed so much since he’d sent his last unsolicited manuscript. Everything was digital now. Anyone with a word processor and an email program could call themselves a novelist. Hell, maybe it was better that way. Who was to say one story was more valuable than another anyway?

  He patted the package. He hadn’t included a return envelope in this package because there would be no response required. He’d finally written a story just because it needed writing.

  72

  The Circle Unbroken

  Ruby

  Bear was crying for her breakfast.

  “Hold on, you big baby,” Ruby mumbled through layers of pillows and blankets.

  She hauled her legs over the side of the bed. A hiss escaped her mouth as her toes made contact with the frigid floorboards. She considered climbing back under the covers, but Bear’s bellyaching would soon wake up the girls, and then, they too would be crying for their food.

  Besides, she had work to do. Yesterday she’d seen the brilliant green shoots of the season’s first ramps on the hillside. In the next few days, the crocuses would join them. Warmer weather wouldn’t be far behind. Hard to believe it already had been two years since the spring no one talked about.

  Downstairs, she added a new log to the potbelly stove in the living room. Then, shuffling in her slippers, she entered the heart of the home. The kitchen looked almost exactly as it had two years earlier when she’d moved in. She’d only added three items to the room since then.

  The first thing was a small radio that she listened to while she cooked. She’d been methodically making her way through all of the recipes in the journals Granny had left behind, and found that listening to CDs of old Appalachian ballads helped her connect better to the work. Now that the mountain sang to her all the time, she found herself seeking out music everywhere she went. She’d even found an old dulcimer in a spare closet, and practiced it on the front porch when the nights weren’t too cold. She must be getting pretty good, too, because the night birds had been showing up to sing along.

  The second item she’d added was her mama’s embroidered hand towels. Besides her clothes and the girls’ personal items, the towels were pretty much the only things she’d saved before selling her daddy’s house. The money that had been left after paying off Daddy’s debts had gone into an account for Sissy and Jinny’s schooling.

  The third item she’d added was the framed photograph of Granny Maypearl she’d found a couple years earlier in the attic. The mischievous smile on Granny’s face was so perfect it always caused a catch in Ruby’s throat. Every time she passed it going in or out of the kitchen, she touched the frame. It had become such an automatic response that now even the girls had picked up the habit. She liked to think Granny, wherever she was, appreciated the acknowledgment.

  While the kettle heated up, she pulled the container of frozen berries from the icebox. Bear had shown up a couple weeks earlier. She’d been emaciated from hibernation, but she’d brought back three rambunctious cubs—two males and a female. Ruby didn’t mind the extra mouths to feed one bit, especially since she knew once Bear and the cubs regained enough weight, they’d go deeper into the woods and she’d only see them every few weeks. Ruby wasn’t surprised to see Bear be such a good mama. She made sure to spend a good bit of each day training the cubs to hunt and survive in the woods, and, while she allowed Ruby and the kids to touch them, she was careful not to spend too much time with them so the cubs wouldn’t lose all fear of humans.

  Through the window, she spied the four dark shapes—one large and three smaller—lingering on the edge of the woods near her outbuilding. Bear had excellent manners and wouldn’t come closer until Ruby stepped onto the porch and invited them to come eat. Still, she saw Ruby moving around in the kitchen and stood on her back legs to extend a good morning growl.

  Ruby smiled and shook her head as she poured the hot water over the tea bag in her favorite mug. That morning called for Granny’s favorite, rose hip tea. She bent over the steaming mug and inhaled the tart red scent.

  Before she could gather everything and take it out on the porch, Jinny came into the kitchen. She wore her sister’s hand-me-down flannel pajamas, which were blue and decorated with moons and stars. Her hair looked like someone had rubbed it with a balloon, and she yawned so big that her jaw cracked. Ruby laughed. “Morning, Sleeping Beauty.”

  “Can I help you feed them?”

  “Sure.” Ruby held out an arm to welcome the girl in for a hug. That was something they’d never done before, but over the last couple of years, a delicate sort of loving had blossomed between all the girls. Maybe it was living in Granny’s house that did it, or maybe they simply had more space to love in their hearts now that their days weren’t spent being so afraid. Either way, Ruby loved each of them in their own way. Sissy wanted little to do with mountain music or root work. She preferred more domestic arts, and took after their mama with her delicate hand for embroidery. She even made clothes for the three of them, which was a good thing since neither Ruby nor Jinny could sew a stitch.

  She couldn’t help but think of her love for Jinny as a more personal sort of love. Hard not to love her, when she reminded Ruby so much of Granny—and of herself. The girl loved to spend hours in the stone shed helping Ruby concoct tinctures and soaps to sell at the farmers’ markets and county fairs. Ruby didn’t go to these fairs herself, of course. But Edna had agreed to take a cut of the profits in exchange for running the booths and selling to the customers. Ruby could have done it herself, of course, but she wasn’t sure anyone would buy anything if they knew they’d been made by the Witch of Moon Hollow, as people in the region had taken to calling her.

  Ruby had even caught Jinny out by the creek at night surrounded by fireflies as she stared up the mountainside with her head cocked, like she was listening to someone whisper in her ear. Ruby had been careful about pressing her for details about what she heard. She knew from experience that the mountain sometimes shared very personal things, and it would be angry if it felt that confidence was betrayed.

  Eventually, Sissy would run off with a boy, and then it would just be Jinny and Ruby up on that ridge. She hoped by then she’d know enough to properly train Jinny. She knew better than to wait too long. Granny thought she’d had plenty of time, too, and look what happened.

  “Ru
by?” Jinny prompted.

  Outside, Bear whined loud enough to communicate that she wasn’t happy with the delay. Ruby grabbed the container and handed it to her sister.

  “Of course you can help,” she said. “Just remember, if you’re not careful, Curly will steal all the food before Mo or Mary get any.”

  Ruby went to open the door, but Jinny made a sound that had her turning around. “What’s wrong?”

  “I forgot to tell you. Reverend David came by yesterday and dropped something off for you.”

  Ruby’s cheeks immediately heated at the mention of the town’s newest reverend. He’d arrived the previous fall to take over at Christ the Redeemer.

  “You’re blushing!” Jinny said.

  “No, I’m not.” She tried to look stern, but failed miserably. “What did he leave?”

  Jinny shoved the container at Ruby and ran out of the room. Ruby sighed and set the berries on the counter. Bear could wait if Reverend David was involved. She and the girls attended services every Sunday, and Jinny and Sissy always loved to tease her on the way home about how the young reverend kept stealing glances at Ruby. The way she saw it, there weren’t too many people in the pews to look at anymore, but she still felt a secret thrill every time she caught him looking.

  After the event, Sarah Jane and Sharon had moved away to live with some family down in Florida, and Nell Thompson had to be put in the state mental hospital so she couldn’t hurt herself or anyone else when she started ranting about the demon who appeared in the shape of her son, Jack. Lots of people stayed, but those that did weren’t too keen on going back to the church, even after Reverend David ordered a proper cross to be installed on the roof. Now, it looked as if nothing terrible had ever happened in Moon Hollow, but a pretty cross couldn’t protect them from real evil.