Wisp of a Thing

24

He didn’t know what to expect. The idea of Bliss’s “home” conjured up so many different images. Would she live in a dilapidated mountain shack next to an outhouse? Or a haunted, gabled mansion with only a single light burning in one high bedroom window? Maybe it would be a trailer, like Doyle and Berklee, or just a cave with a witch’s cauldron hung over the fire at the entrance.

A narrow wooden bridge that did not inspire confidence appeared on the gravel road ahead of them. He slowed and crept onto it. Beneath it, he saw a shimmering creek whose depth he couldn’t judge in the darkness.

“You don’t have to go so slow,” Bliss said, “it’ll hold.”

The car lurched slightly as one of the bridge planks shifted, accompanied by a loud clattering sound. “Ever seen Sorcerer?” Rob said, his hands tight on the wheel.

“I wrote a song about this bridge once,” she said. “‘The Cider Branch Special.’ That creek is called Cider Branch, and when a car comes over at normal speed, you can hear the bridge rattle all the way down to the house. Lets you know you’ll be having company in about five minutes.”

Evidently, the bridge was accurate, for five minutes later, the headlights illuminated a mailbox with OVERBAY spelled in reflective stickers. Lack of space forced the final Y beneath the rest of the word.

The moonlit view that greeted him was breathtaking. The driveway led into a small valley, with a lake in the center. At the water’s edge, with a back patio perfect for fishing, rose a narrow two-story house with big arched windows. He couldn’t make out its color in the dark.

The gravel driveway widened into a parking area beside the house. From this spot, wooden steps led down to the water. Bliss got out and walked to the side door, where a security light snapped on as it sensed her movement. She searched her ring for the right key. By the time she found it, every bug in the valley swarmed around the light.

“Nice little piece of land,” Rob said, impressed. “I bet it’s gorgeous during the day.”

“It’s been in the family for a long time. We used to farm down there—” She gestured toward the opposite side of the lake. “—but I decided to let it grow back up. I’m not much of a farmer, and I enjoy woods more than fields.”

In the moonlight reflecting off the lake, he saw the ripples of something big moving just below the surface. “You got an alligator in your pond?”

“Maybe,” Bliss said as she opened the door. She swatted at the bugs as they tried to enter her house. “I sure wouldn’t go swimming in it.”

He couldn’t tell if she was kidding, so he followed her inside. A tiny harp identical to the one on his motel room door chimed its little tune.

The kitchen looked like any country kitchen: dishes in the drain rack, little iron trivets hanging on the wall, hand-stitched hotpads piled next to the stove. Homemade magnets covered the front of the refrigerator, tiny country people painted on wooden silhouettes. All held crude little musical instruments.

“You live here alone?” he asked.

She nodded. “I put the last stitch in a quilt when I was sixteen. If a single girl does that, it’s supposed to curse her to never marry. So far it’s been true, and when I see some of the marriages around me, it doesn’t feel like a curse.”

“And you don’t have any other family? Well, besides Curnen?”

“No. A train hit Mom and Dad one night on their way home.”

“Wow. I’m sorry.” He almost mentioned that Doyle claimed no knowledge of Curnen, but decided to keep it to himself.

A big covered pot sat on the stove. The burner wasn’t lit beneath it, but there was a smell he couldn’t quite identify. He asked, “What are you cooking?”

“Groundhog,” she answered as she looped her key ring on a hook by the door. “But it’s not cooking yet, it’s just marinating.”

“Groundhog?”

“Sure. Ran over it yesterday.”

“It’s road kill?”

She laughed. “It was fresh, I promise. I threw it in the truck and brought it straight home. Skinned it, cleaned it, and now I’ve let it soak overnight in warm salt water. Tomorrow I’ll start it boiling.”

“You boil it?”

“Yeah. You open all the windows, boil it for twenty minutes, then throw the water out. You do that twice more, then you bake it.”

“Why do you open the windows?”

“You ever smelled boiling groundhog?”

Before he could answer, she lifted the lid and peered inside. An eye-watering odor filled the room. Rob gagged and stepped around the divider wall into the dark living room. He groped along the wall until he found the light switch. If it smelled that bad just soaking, he sure didn’t want to be around for the boiling. He fought down his gorge, then said, “I’ll just wait in here until you finish with that.”

“Okay,” she answered, and he heard the scrape of a spoon inside the big pot.

He browsed slowly around the room. Photographs, old musical instruments, and odd symbolic knickknacks covered the living room’s walls. There was no television or computer. One shelf of an old, heavy bookcase held a slender upright line of vinyl records pinned between heavy bookends. Rob glanced at the records, then looked again. They were thinner than normal albums, and their blank paper sleeves had faded yellow with time.

He pulled one out and slid it into his hand, careful to touch it only on the edges. The plastic surface was wrinkled in places, making the grooves look like terrain readouts on radar. The disks themselves were bare black plastic, and only dates were written on the sleeves: 5/23/68, 8/4/70, and so forth.

He heard the lid clang down on the noxious groundhog, and called out, “Hey, Bliss, what are these? Home demos?”

“Do you always just pick things up without asking?” she said as she joined him.

“Just wondered what kind of albums you’d have. My curiosity took over. I’m sorry.”

She took the record from him. “When my dad was in Vietnam, Grandpa and some of his brothers recorded some music, then took it over to Asheville to a place that could make them into records. It was fairly inexpensive, which I guess is why they’re so thin and wobbly. They’d mail them to him, and he told me the only record player they had was a cheap plastic one with a burned-up motor that he had to spin by hand.” She tilted the disk so the light struck its surface. “See how some of the grooves are almost gone? He played them so much, he plumb wore ’em out.”

“You should get them transferred to digital.”

She smiled patronizingly. “That would defeat the point, wouldn’t it?” Reverently she returned the record to its place, then turned out the lights.

He followed her back into the kitchen and noticed a piece of blue glass on the windowsill behind the sink. “You trying to keep Curnen away?”

“It keeps away more than just her.”

“Like what?”

“Other things that live in the woods that you wouldn’t want in your house. Would you like a drink?” she asked as she opened the refrigerator.

“Sure.” She handed him a beer, and took one for herself.

He popped the tab and was about to drink when he caught himself. “Wait a minute. If I drink this, will I end up ‘under your spell’?”

She did not smile. “You think I’d do that to you?”

“I’m asking.”

She took the beer from his hand and put them both down in the sink. “Never mind. This isn’t really a social visit, is it?” She looked up at him, her expression grim. “Do you remember how I told you the Tufas were descended from fairies? That the real Tufas still have fairy blood, and all the things that go with it?”

He nodded. Hearing it spoken so simply, in a normal kitchen, made it sound even weirder.

“Well, I have a bunch of it,” Bliss continued. “A bunch of Tufa blood, a bunch of Tufa magic. And I’m a First Daughter, just like my mom and my grandmother. The first girl child in the family. That’s why I’m considered… well… a leader.”

“Really.” He tried for a neutral tone, but the skepticism seeped out.

Her eyes flashed. “I’m not joking with you, Rob.”

“I didn’t say you were. But it is hard to accept.”

“Try living it,” she snapped. “I have to exist in the mundane world, you know, not in some storybook. Knowing who and what I am, and having to keep it secret all my life, ain’t very damn easy. I brought you here to convince you that you could get hurt if you stay and keep asking questions. And the only way to do that is to also persuade you I’m telling the truth.”

He backed up a step. “If you try to poke that spot on the back of my head again, I won’t take it real well.”

“I promise I won’t do that. But I want to show you something else I hope will help you believe.”

She led him through the small dining room to a corner doorway almost hidden by an enormous china cabinet. She unlocked the door with a big, old-fashioned key. It opened with only a slight creak. An overhead bulb illuminated a steep flight of wooden stairs.

At the ninth stair, the steps changed from wood to stone. Nine more steps, and they reached the hard-packed dirt floor.

They stood at one end of a minelike tunnel that stretched ahead of them into the darkness. Shelves lining the walls held old books, strange musical instruments, and odd objects d’art that Rob couldn’t identify. Bliss threw another switch, and a hanging fixture at the far end of the tunnel revealed another door.

Rob followed her toward the second light. After a few steps, he risked a look behind him and saw the bottom of the steps much farther away than it should have been. He felt vaguely nauseated at this disorientation; he turned to her and whispered, “I think we’ve gone far enough, nobody’ll find my body here.”

“Yeah, it’s a little weird the first time,” she said without looking. “But it’ll pass.”

Again he looked back. Now there was nothing but darkness behind them, and the light ahead did not seem to be getting any closer. He felt the presence of the earth above him, millions of tons of house and valley floor that could collapse and crush them at any moment. “Have I mentioned my family history of claustrophobic insanity?”

She said nothing. He glanced back a third time, and when he faced forward again, the door was suddenly right in front of them. He looked back again, and this time he saw cellar steps just as they should be, thirty feet away down a low-ceilinged corridor. Had he not been with Bliss, he would’ve fled screaming from the sheer freakiness. “This part of that Tufa magic you were talking about?” he asked.

“Beats anything ADT has to offer for security,” she said. She unlocked the door, braced one foot against the wall, and slowly pulled it open. It scraped loudly across the floor.

She led Rob into a small, musty room. The air here was cooler and drier than in the tunnel. The shaft of light through the open door fell on an oil lamp atop a small table. She took a match from the box beside it, lit the wick, and adjusted it for maximum light.

The room reminded Rob of an elevator shaft. The floor was a twelve-foot square paved with smooth flat stones, while the rock walls receded into darkness far above. A tapestry, six feet wide and at least fifteen feet long, hung from the unseen ceiling.

The cloth radiated both antiquity and, oddly, sanctity. Rob felt sure it would crumble in his fingers if he dared touch it, but the atmosphere of reverence was too great to seriously contemplate such an idea.

As the light played across its surface, the colors and images woven into the fabric seemed to move and flow. “Look familiar?” Bliss asked.

He nodded. “It’s the same as that painting at the library. The Fairy Fellers’ Master-Stroke.”

“Not exactly. Look closer.”

He did, and finally saw what she meant.

The tapestry depicted the same scene, but from the opposite perspective. Here the axman’s face was plain, as were those of a whole new crowd of people behind him—including a young man in Victorian garb hunched over a sketchpad. The old couple with their odd wheelbarrow device, prominent in the background of the painting, dominated the tapestry’s foreground. It was as if two snapshots had been taken of the same moment from two different angles. “Okay, that’s weird,” he said. “Explain it to me.”

“I can’t.”

“That’s not the best way to convince me of something.”

“There simply is no real-world explanation. This tapestry is older than anyone can remember. I don’t even know how it’s stayed in one piece this long. What I do know is that it’s been kept in my family for generations, and part of my role in the Tufa community is to protect it. Just like my mother did, and my grandmother, and so on.”

He pointed to the artist diligently working at his sketchpad. “Is that supposed to be the guy who did the painting I saw at Cricket? The one who went insane?”

“Can you think of another explanation?”

He indicated the girl with the rapturous expression. “And that’s your sister, Curnen?”

“Yes,” she said with certainty.

“Somebody stitched her into a tapestry before she was born?”

She took a deep breath before saying, “Time doesn’t work the same for everybody.”

“I need more than a fancy beach towel to convince me of that, Bliss.”

“Keep looking at it.”

Rob was about to reply, when he noticed something so obvious, he couldn’t believe he’d missed it before. The axman in the tapestry also had a familiar face, and when he looked more closely, he saw that each hand wrapped six fingers around the ax handle. “Is that… Rockhouse Hicks?”

“Yes.”

“Really?”

“Yes.”

He tried to cover his shock. Cavalierly, he said, “I suppose there’s a story behind it?”

“There’s always a story.” She reached out and gently touched the fabric, tracing the edge of the axman’s blade with her fingertip. “This man was the queen’s forester, which was a title as well as a job. He organized the forest so that only the right trees were cut, and had absolute control over the people and animals that lived in it. But he wasn’t the brightest thing in the woods, so he made a stupid bet that he could split a hickory nut in half with one stroke of his mighty ax. The queen, who adored gambling, got wind of it and came to watch, and this threw him off. He failed, and as a result, he was banished from the kingdom, and the forest.”

“And this happened when?” Rob asked.

“Before we came here. Before the people of the forest followed the forester to this new land. Ironically, although he couldn’t split one damn hickory nut, he managed to split the Tufa in two.”

“And nobody’s noticed that he’s been around for hundreds of years?”

“Oh, that kind of magic’s not hard at all. It’s the same thing that makes people not see the cemetery behind the fire station. People notice what they want to. The people who stay in Needsville know to leave Rockhouse alone. The people who leave town forget about him. Visitors just think he’s colorful. So he just goes on, piddle-assing with his music and being a bastard to everyone.”

Rob pointed at the figure of Curnen. “So why is your sister there?”

With no emotion, she said, “Haven’t you figured that out? I thought the six fingers would make it obvious. My sister is also his daughter.”

The full meaning of this worked its way through his brain. He looked into her grim, unsmiling face. “Your mom was Rockhouse’s sister?”

“Yes.”

“And… so his musical career was ruined because he got caught with Curnen? His daughter, who is also his niece?…”

“Yes, it’s just… Chinatown,” she said wryly. Then she stared at him in surprise. “Wait, you know about his career?”

“Is it a secret?”

“It’s very old news.”

“That’s the nice thing about the Internet. All news is current.” He didn’t want to bring Howell into it if he didn’t have to.

She took a moment to collect herself. “Well, as for Curnen destroying his chance to be a star, yes, but no. He did get caught with her. But his career was ruined because he broke Tufa rules and tried to permanently leave Cloud County. That’s hard for a Tufa to do. You’ve heard of Bronwyn Hyatt, haven’t you? She joined the army to get away, but she ended up right back here, and quite a bit the worse for wear. The powers we worship and follow used the events of the war to bring her back, and they did the same thing to Rockhouse.”

He studied the faces of Rockhouse and Curnen; there could be no mistake, it was them, but that story explained nothing, not least of which how the girl had stayed young while Rockhouse aged normally. “Rockhouse’s fall happened almost sixty years ago.”

“Yeah.”

“And all this is possible because ‘time doesn’t work the same for everybody’?”

“Yes, yet again.” She reached up and brushed the tapestry so lightly, it didn’t visibly move; only the slight puff of dust that rose from it said she’d even made contact. “Rockhouse led our people across the ocean to the west, and they settled here. But eventually other people began to arrive, the first human settlers, and as our folk and theirs began to mix, he got restless. He saw that the Tufa were losing their identity and becoming more like these newcomers. So he decided we should all only breed with each other, to keep the Tufa bloodlines pure, and with a lot of persuasion and manipulation, he managed to get my mother pregnant with Curnen.”

“How did your father take that?”

“It wasn’t pretty. But as you can imagine, Rockhouse’s whole save-the-tribe-through-incest program never really caught on. Most of the Tufa just ignored him and went on their way, blending in and falling in love with whoever they wanted.”

“What did Rockhouse do then?”

“At heart he’s a petulant child. He just said ‘screw it,’ and struck out on his own. Picked up a banjo, a pair of cowboy boots, and some songs. Took Curnen and her boyfriend, Brushy Dale, with him. Brushy was his guitar player, and Curnen sang backup. They did all right for a while. The night winds will let us leave, as long as our intentions are pure. But once the winds realized he never intended to return, they made sure he had no choice. They used his own proclivities to disgrace him.” She paused. “When Brushy Dale learned what Rockhouse had done to Curnen, he pulled a knife and threatened to kill him, in front of a bunch of other people backstage at the Opry. That’s how everyone found out.”

“Where is Brushy now?”

“No one knows. Well, maybe Curnen, but she can’t say. He never came back to Needsville, and Rockhouse swears he left him in Nashville.”

“You don’t believe it?”

“Not for a fucking moment. I think Rockhouse cursed Brushy just like he did Curnen. I don’t know exactly what he did to Brushy, but he cursed her to become a wisp of a thing, a ghost that’s never actually died. She’s fought it, but he’s strong, especially when he wants to hurt someone. Fewer and fewer people remember her, and when the last leaf falls from the Widow’s Tree this year, she’ll be lost entirely.”

Rob nodded, but said nothing. What was there to say? This was so much to absorb, it left him speechless. The lump on his head tingled and itched, distracting him as well. But he finally said, “I have a story for you now. I wasn’t going to tell you, because I thought it sounded ridiculous, but after what you’ve told me…”

Like her, he reached up and gently touched the fabric. He heard a sharp intake of her breath, but she didn’t try to stop him. He lightly tapped the face on the fabric, making the tapestry ripple. “This was the guy who told me about the magic song that night in Atlanta. Rockhouse Hicks. As he looked on his old album covers. I didn’t recognize him the way he is now, old and with a beard. But it was him.” He turned to Bliss and smiled without any amusement at all. “I’ll believe your fairy tale if you’ll believe mine.”

Bliss stared at him. “That’s not possible.”

“That’s a little pot–kettle, don’t you think?”

“No, that’s not what I mean. He couldn’t have been there. He can’t leave.”

“He’s chained to this spot?” Rob asked, wondering if she’d recognize the song title.

“Yes. So you didn’t see him. You saw a haint. An apparition.”

“A ghost?”

“No, not a ghost. He’s not dead, it wasn’t his spirit.”

“Then what was it?”

She waved her hands in front of her face. “Stop badgering me, let me think.”

He returned his attention to the tapestry. Now that he understood its secrets, he saw lots of other familiar faces: Peggy Goins and her husband, Marshall, were there; the portly MC from the barn dance; even Stoney Hicks. Or was he just projecting onto these stylized visages?

“We need to go,” Bliss said abruptly. She took his elbow and pulled him out of the chamber, pausing to lock the door behind them. She was silent until they reached her kitchen.

“What happens now?” Rob asked.

“I don’t know. Nothing else tonight. Just go back to the motel and wait. I’ll catch a ride in the morning and pick up my truck.”

“I don’t want to—”

“Just do it!” she exclaimed, and glared at him. “Jesus fucking Christ, can’t you let something go for one night? I’ll get in touch with you tomorrow and we’ll figure out what to do, okay?”

He stared at her, his own anger rising. “Okay. Thanks for the interesting evening.”

“You’re welcome,” she snapped back.

A wave of utter weariness hit Rob as he opened his car door. His shoulders ached, his eye throbbed, and his stitches itched maddeningly. He wanted nothing more than to be asleep in his own apartment back in Kansas City, with the old box fan providing white noise.

His eye was drawn to movement on the lake. Something like an upside-down canoe momentarily broke the surface, and ripples outlined by moonlight spread from it. That made sense, he thought; a place where fairies played fiddles probably would have a monster in every pond.

He shook his head and was about to climb into the car when he looked up. Curnen perched on the top of the car, hunched down on all fours, her face level with his.

“Yah!” he cried, startled. He had neither heard her nor felt the car shift under her weight. She immediately put her finger to her lips. Rob glanced back at the house, but the lights stayed off and Bliss did not emerge.

Curnen wore the same tattered dress, and her hair was matted with leaves. In the moonlight, her eyes appeared all pupil, with no visible white. Her fingers tapped softly and impatiently on the car’s roof.

He swallowed hard and whispered, “Hi. Don’t take this personally, I like you and everything, but under the circumstances, I really don’t want to get in the middle of things between you and your sister.” Or you and your father, he thought but didn’t say.

Curnen scooted forward until he thought she’d fall onto him, but she maintained her balance. Then she began to hum. Rob recognized it at once: “Wrought Iron Fences.”

She made a scribbling motion with her hand, as if she were writing something on a piece of paper. She stopped, and gestured to indicate the bottom of the imaginary page. Then she mimed cutting off that section. She cocked her head and waited for him to respond.

His eyes opened wide. He looked back at the house to make sure Bliss wasn’t watching, then whispered urgently, “You know where I can find the final verse?”

She nodded.

“Where?”

She jumped off the car onto the gravel. Her feet crunched no louder than a squirrel’s might. Then she took his hand and gently tugged, indicating that he should follow her into the woods.

He recalled the last time she’d dragged him through the forest. “I’ve heard some weird stuff about you, Curnen. You promise this isn’t a trick?”

Curnen stepped close and looked into his eyes. He saw the resemblance to Bliss now, in the line of her jaw and the way her eyes suddenly locked on his. Curnen’s gaze was different, though, and not in the way he expected. Bliss had mystery in her eyes; Curnen’s were wide open and innocent.

Or, damn it, was that a trick as well? Part of the Tufa’s so-called enchantment?

Curnen nodded once, seriously. So now it was up to him; did he trust her, or not? “Please don’t lie to me, Curnen,” he said softly, with all the honesty he could summon.

She made an X sign over her heart with one long finger.

“Then what the hell,” he muttered, and let her pull him across the yard toward the dark trees.