“They’re going to need attention,” Kaye told Dr. Patterson, the closest thing she had to a medical person in charge besides herself. “They need to be checked over right away and then provided with long-term care. A doctor, a dentist, maybe a nutritionist, and definitely counseling.”
“This is Gully,” Dr. Patterson interrupted, without being rude. “We don’t really have any of those things. Well, just a dentist, you know. How about we let them go home and rest?”
“Their homes aren’t safe,” Judge said.
“He’s right,” said Kaye. “Those houses in Slope are not fit to live in.”
Dr. Patterson was undeterred. “Well then, how about we get them into the motel and feed them a nice dinner? Let them get some showers and a nap?” She looked to Sheriff Lila, who nodded. This treatment, she understood.
Kaye’s instinct was to argue; her instinct was always to bring in medical opinions within the sterility of a hospital. Things in hospitals made sense, and were more organized, and came with test results. But yes, honestly, a shower and some clean clothes, the chance to really rest, that was probably as good a treatment as any other in the short term.
Greg checked with Kaye. “So, are we good to go? Crisis seems to be over?”
“Yes,” said Kaye. “I think we’ve done all we can.”
“Doctor, Sheriff,” said Greg, “We’re going to leave these people in your care. We have to get back up the mountain and find out what happened to our friends.” He motioned to the Othernaturals to join him at the car, and they did, Judge toting Vladimir’s crate. Greg summarized their situation grimly. “We haven’t heard anything from Rosemary or Drew since we were at breakfast; they’re not returning texts and their phones are going straight to voicemail. All these workers seem to think Cloda Baker has been holding them captive in mind-slavery for months and Elton is missing but probably, I’m willing to bet, heading for his Nana Cloda’s house. I’m worried that something godawful weird has happened, because godawful weird things are always happening to us.”
Kaye glanced at Elton’s tall truck with the huge wheels, felt pulled, almost dared, by the ostentatious machine. One quick check inside and she saw what he had hoped - in his daze under the curse, Elton had simply been leaving the keys in the ignition.
“I’ll bring the truck along.” She offered. She saw at once that each of her friends was about to protest for some reason, and she headed them off. “We might need the extra vehicle, and if anything, the roads are going to be worse than they were yesterday. That thing looks like it was made for mountaineering. Who’s riding with me?”
“Oh, I am,” said Stefan.
*****
Sally was the only one of the group who was sorry to see the clouds go. She loved sunshine, truly, but she also loved doughnuts and she couldn’t just go stuffing her face in a box of Krispy Kreems every time she felt hungry. The days-long storm had given her a freedom she wasn’t accustomed to. Of course, she had to remember that her freedom came with the possible price tag of a deadly mudslide. Here they went up the mountain again, and though visibility was much better, the roads were still awful, and the Mercedes spun and growled as it worked its way upward. Kaye and Stefan had all but left them behind, roaring up the mountain road with the monster-truck’s huge tires leaving wakes of mud twenty feet high. Sally herself would have been scared to death to get behind the wheel of that thing - assuming she could manage to climb into the driver’s seat at all.
They went first to Slope, and the three of them, Judge, Sally and Greg, gasped simultaneously when they saw that the town had been all but flattened. Of the seven houses, only Ardelia’s and the hubcap house remained standing, and even those didn’t look safe enough for the bats in their attics. The debris that had littered the yards was scattered even more haphazardly, the light objects hurled into an embankment at the tree line and the heavier ones scooted several feet through the mud, tearing gouges in the wet ground. The Othernaturals van and their truck still sat on the edge of Ardelia’s yard where they’d been parked, observers to the destruction of relentless, pounding rain. The little brick post office stood steadfast in its spot.
Out of their respective vehicles, Stefan and Greg went into Ardelia’s house to see if anyone was home, but were quickly back outside again, shaking their heads, with bags slung over their arms. Sally recognized a few of the bags - Rosemary’s red set, and the faded Royals backpack that Andrew often carried, but Stefan also had a cardboard box and a paper sack. They began pushing these things into the luggage compartment of the Mercedes.
Greg said, “Nobody’s home. We found Andrew’s phone on the table, that’s all.” Greg held up the phone in question. “The power is out, her roof is leaking in twenty places at least, and some of her windows are broken.”
Stefan said, “I know Fletcher doesn’t like people touching his stuff, but in this case, I’m hoping he’ll forgive me. Things are getting ruined in there, with the water that’s leaking in. I also grabbed what looked like a photo album and a couple of other things I thought Ardelia might not want to get wet.”
“Oh Stefan, that was sweet,” Sally said.
“Hey, I helped,” said Greg.
Stefan shrugged. “I hope we got it right. Brentley can’t function in there, so he couldn’t help us find the woman’s most valued possessions. So we had to guess. And we’re guys.”
Greg hustled things along, gesturing for Stefan to rejoin Kaye in the monster truck. “We shouldn’t waste any more time. I hate thinking that Rosemary or Drew might need us, and we’re not there. And Ardelia can get her stuff later. When she comes home. Right? So let’s head to Cloda’s.”
They backed away from the remains of Slope and headed up the mountain road. Sally wanted to ask aloud if anyone else was truly worried about Rosemary and Drew, or if they, like her, were simply banking on Rosemary’s seemingly endless stream of luck. Saying anything out loud felt risky, and she hated to give voice to her fears. So she kept quiet under her sunhat, Greg concentrated on driving, and Judge tenderly fussed with his cat.
If anything, the trip up the mountain was worse than the day before, because while the had finally stopped and visibility much improved, the road was destroyed, a river of mud and sludge, and was now littered with forest debris blown there by the windstorm, which made it rather hard to tell exactly what was road and what was scantily-covered ditch. Greg followed the huge ruts that the monster truck made as it ground on ahead of them. Nerves were tight. Nobody knew what to expect when they got to the top of the mountain.
“It’s going to be fine,” Sally said, not realizing that she was speaking aloud.
Judge whistled softly. “Look at the trees,” he said. The trees appeared to have been beaten senseless, their more delicate branches torn to shreds. The amount of debris on the ground grew worse the higher they got.
“Was it a tornado?” Greg asked of no one, and no one answered him.
They saw the goats first, milling about in the mud, the babies jumping in puddles. Sally wondered what the goats were doing so far from Cloda’s house. Then, she saw the monster truck had been pulled to the side of the road, and Stefan and Kaye were out of it, bending close to a big pile of debris and mud. Why had they stopped here? It was then that Sally understood: Cloda’s house was gone. What remained was a colorful slide of rubble from the house’s former location to the lip of the cliff. Sally’s heart skipped. The very idea that her friends might have been part of that destruction, whisked off the edge of the mountain, made her feel faint.
But then she saw Kaye and Stefan were interacting with the pile of debris, and Sally realized that three strange, filthy shapes, all slumped together in a weary bundle, were people, almost unrecognizable beneath their ragged clothing and the head-to-toe mud. The smallest of the three was topped with an unexpected flash of bright magenta hair beneath all the muck.
“Omigod that’s Rosemary!” Sally cried, throwing open the door before Greg had fully stopped.
Judge
tumbled out behind her, shouting, “Oh my God, that’s blood!” Judge was referring to the tallest of the three filthy people, who turned out to be Drew. Half of the mess covering him was distinctively red. Sally couldn’t tell where it was coming from. Still, the little bit of his face that wasn’t muddy appeared awfully pale and his eyes showed strain. She halted in front of them, finally recognizing that the figure in between them was Ardelia, who looked quite possibly dead.
“What happened?” Sally wailed. She didn’t know what upset her more - the blood or the mud.
“It’s my fault,” said Ardelia, making Sally jump - just a bit. “I never knew that wishing something could really make it so. I didn’t mean to hurt nobody.” She turned her eyes to each of the younger people, one at a time, as if mystified to find all of them here. “When the folk in Slope stopped talking, when all they did was work and work, I was glad for it. I was so ashamed of what they’d found out. I let it go on, didn’t do nothing to help, and for that I need to answer to Jesus. But then when you’uns was coming, I thought maybe if a storm came that was bad enough, you wouldn’t be able to get to us, or you’d go away without trying.”
“You must have been awfully surprised when the storm actually came,” Stefan said warily. He was not happy to see Rosemary and Drew in such rough shape, either.
Ardelia sighed. “I thought Jesus was answering my prayers.”
Sally realized that Elton and Cloda were standing across the summit from them. Dwarfed by her grandson, Cloda was identifiable only by the glint of gold sequins glittering beneath the streaks of mud on her scrawny figure. Their conversation was soft and Sally could not make it out, but the aura around Cloda was a sick, simmering red anger, and the taste was poison. She wanted to go over there and say something, throw an accusation or lay down a judgment or at least express their triumph over this business. All things considered, though, she wanted more to stay here with her friends, and let Cloda Baker chew on her own lack of importance. Sally turned back to Rosemary and smiled. “We got some excellent footage.”
“So did I,” sighed Rosemary.
“I need to heal that arm,” said Kaye, referring to an injury on Drew’s forearm that was too gory for Sally to look at. “Like, right now.”
“In a minute,” Drew replied. He peered at Cloda and Elton, who had their heads together. “I think we should probably get out of here.” A sideways glance at Ardelia, and he added, “You come with us, Miss Ardelia. We’ll take care of you.”
“Right you are! Everyone in the car!” Rosemary was on her feet, swaying slightly, nevertheless mustering up some cheer for the sake of her team. Rosemary would stay positive during the zombie apocalypse, Sally was certain. Rosemary’s eyes sparkled in her filthy face as she commented, “So, we’ve had an eventful morning. How about you all?”
Chapter Fourteen
Othernaturals Season 6, Episode 5
Gully, Missouri; June 2015
They had a stroke of luck in the motel situation. Gully Town Hall elected to house the Eyeteeth Mountain Rocking Chair factory workers in a chain motel closer to the highway, Rosemary assumed, because it was cheaper by the night and the rooms more plentiful. It was not quite the height of tourist season yet. Therefore the Othernaturals were not forced to share a motel with people who had just come out from under an evil spell and were itching for someone on whom to focus their ire.
Rosemary learned this from Sheriff Lila, who came to visit much later that day, past seven p.m. That the sheriff had just finished the hardest day of her law enforcement career was clear. Her well-maintained and well-sprayed hairdo had gone quite limp, and her uniform was still badly stained from that morning’s emergency at the factory. Rosemary had seen the footage of the Sheriff’s interview with Sally and Judge from just that morning, and that crisply dressed and amply manicured woman seemed like another creature entirely.
The Sheriff spoke with Rosemary and Greg alone in Joey Baker’s hotel lobby.
“There’s a cover story,” Sheriff Lila was saying, in between long swallows of Joey Baker’s rather excellent brewed coffee. “Agh, I shouldn’t drink this - I haven’t eaten since breakfast. It’s just going to make my stomach hurt worse than it already does.”
“A cover story?” prompted Rosemary.
Sheriff Lila resumed, both with her coffee and her account. “It’s spreading around that there was a chemical contamination at the factory that made the workers sick. I didn’t tell anybody to say that. I don’t know who started it. But I’ve heard it half a dozen times already - folk explaining why they haven’t been around, haven’t been returning phone calls for months.”
Rosemary had her own coffee, wrapped her hands around the mug because she was having trouble staying warm, even now that she was finally clean and dry, her bumps, bruises and scrapes healed by Kaye’s miraculous hands. Her body had decided that, healed or not, she was going to suffer some after-effects of that morning’s treacherous hike, so she was cold through and through. Maybe she was catching something.
She watched the Sheriff’s darting eyes and recognized the look. Here was a person who believed in the supernatural - well, the othernatural, as Rosemary liked to call it - and who could proudly rattle off half a dozen ghost stories of the local town, but who hadn’t seen the really inexplicable in action until that very day. And now that Sheriff Lila had seen it first-hand, she was eager to put it back in its box. The othernatural was uncomfortable, unpredictable; it had teeth. Yet when it was spoken aloud, it sounded crazy. Or worse: silly. An evil spell, really?
“That happens all the time,” Greg told the Sheriff. “We’ve been around for a few of these. There’s always a cover story. Chemical contaminations, bad drugs, or just outright group hysteria. One time, it actually turned out to be true. That was in Red Sybil, where they thought there was a coven of devil-worshippers in the woods, but it turned out . . . oh, never mind, you look like you’ve heard enough stories for today. Cover-stories have their benefits, especially when people with your job have to start writing up the reports.”
Sheriff Lila groaned and rolled her eyes. “That can wait for tomorrow. I must say I’m glad to know you’uns will be getting out of town in the morning. Probably for the best. One last thing, then.” She stood and took a deep breath. “I hear tell that Ardelia Baker is here with you. I need to speak with her before I go.”
*****
They led the sheriff to Ardelia’s room, knocked on the door. Ardelia’s voice answered right away but asked them to wait a moment while she “got decent,” so they stood in the cool night air of the motel’s parking lot until finally the door opened. Rosemary was practically shivering by then.
Here was Ardelia, wearing Rosemary’s robe, a t-shirt she’d borrowed from Greg and a pair of rolled-up sweatpants Stefan had donated. The fact that they’d managed to find enough clothes to dress this extra person was a small miracle, for none of them had much of anything left to wear that was clean or dry. Right now, Joey Baker’s personal washing machine was in use to get them all a clean pair of socks and underwear, just to get them home tomorrow. A couple hours before, industrious Stefan had purchased eight new “St. Francois Mountains” souvenir t-shirts from the town square’s gift shop so they’d each have a clean shirt to wear.
“How are you, Ardelia?” asked Sheriff Lila, in a tone that suggested she didn’t want an answer. “May we come in?” In went the sheriff, without waiting for a response. Rosemary and Greg followed, curious, a little protective of their guest.
“How are my chickies?” was Ardelia’s only question.
“The coop was knocked over in the storm,” said Sheriff Lila. “Roof came off of it then, but the chickens all stayed huddled up inside. They seem all right, a bit ruffled. Tina Jardarow volunteered to gather’em up for you, take them to her daddy’s place over in Barryhill.”
“Why’s that - why they gotta go to Barryhill?”
“Ardelia.” The Sheriff’s face hardened then. “I want you to leave. It’s fo
r your own good. To tell you honestly, I ain’t sure it’s safe for you anymore. What’s more, your house is ruined, the storm tore it up good.”
“I lived here all my life,” Ardelia said.
“Sheriff,” said Greg, “You can’t . . . can you just order people out of town?”
“Young man, mind your business,” the Sheriff told him, politely enough. “Fact is, I think it’s time that all the Eyeteeth Bakers just move along and find themselves another mountain. We’re about done with it all here.”
Rosemary asked, “Where are Cloda and Elton, then?”
Sheriff Lila answered, “At Elton’s place, for tonight anyway. And tomorrow, yeah, they are heading out and you’re to go with them, Ardelia. Cloda says your family has people up near Vichy, so tomorrow morning you all are going to head that way and see about—”
“You won’t never get Cloda off that mountaintop,” argued Ardelia. Her expression was that of a child who had just been informed of the real truth behind the Tooth Fairy.
“She’s off it right now, Ardelia. Her house is blown down.”
“What about the factory!”
“The factory is done. You think anybody’s going to set foot in that place again?”
“I can’t!” Ardelia’s eyes widened in real distress. “I won’t! I ain’t going anywhere with them two!”
“That as may be,” countered the Sheriff. “But you ain’t staying here, either. Honest to God, if what folks are saying is true, you’ve been doing a lot of harm. If there was a way, I might just try and see you was prosecuted for it.”
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