Wisp of a Thing

25

The forest felt more like a jungle, deep and overpowering. Once they were far enough away that Rob could no longer see Bliss’s house behind them, Curnen tightened her grip and yanked him along as she’d done before. He ran blind, unable to guess what direction they traveled, worried only about keeping up with her. She was silent as a viper; he made more noise than Metallica.

After several minutes, they abruptly stopped. Winded, he leaned against the nearest tree and waited until he caught his breath. The cool air made him shiver, even though the exertion drenched him in sweat. He tried to recall what he’d learned of hypothermia. Curnen stood very still, her eyes on something up in the trees.

He followed her gaze, but saw nothing in the shadowy branches. He recalled the strange shape in the lake, and wondered what other bizarre nocturnal creatures might roam these woods. “What is it?” he asked softly.

Suddenly an owl’s high, trilling wooooooo came from the branches above them. He recognized the sound, yet a shiver still ran up his damp, bruised spine. Curnen ripped a foot-long strip of cloth from the hem of her ragged dress and frantically tied it into a row of knots. The owl hooted once more, and Curnen threw the knotted cloth in its direction. She made a series of quick rapid hand gestures, and in the silence Rob heard the heavy wingbeats as the owl flew away.

He couldn’t see her face, but her body visibly relaxed. He thought owls were considered good luck and signs of wisdom; evidently to her, though, they carried a darker meaning.

She took his hand and again pulled him after her. They emerged from the woods onto an untilled field, nestled in a narrow stretch of flat ground. Old plowed furrows were now overgrown with weeds and saplings. To their right, the moon illuminated a small cabin; smoke rose from the chimney, and lights blazed in every room. A small satellite dish was clamped to one corner of the roof, and a weed-choked, skeletal tractor filled the side yard. Several cars and trucks were parked in the dirt driveway.

Their path took them toward the house, and Curnen slowed as they neared it. Rob heard voices inside, and thought this might be their destination. Then Curnen yanked him to the ground and slapped a hand over his mouth. She pointed.

The door opened with the protest of wood against wood. Rob heard the sounds of wailing and weeping from inside. A man’s voice called out, “For God’s sake, Viney, shut up. The dead can’t sleep when their kinfolk holler too loud.”

“You won’t burn that feather crown we found in his pillow, will you, now?” a woman sobbed. “The devil’ll get him for sure.”

Another woman stood silhouetted in the door, a plate of food in her hands. “Feather crown ain’t from the devil, Viney, it’s from the Christian Lord. You got it backwards, you ain’t never had it right.” She placed the plate on the ground and stepped back inside. The door closed and audibly locked.

Rob looked questioningly at Curnen. She pointed.

A shambling figure emerged from the trees. At this distance, it looked approximately human, but moved in a slow, foot-sliding manner. It reminded Rob of all those zombie films he’d watched as a teen. The figure went straight to the shack, picked up the plate of food, and disappeared back into the forest.

Curnen, obviously relieved that they weren’t noticed, pulled him along much more slowly this time. They reached a small clearing that sheltered another tiny graveyard. Unlike the Swett family plot, this one was completely neglected; the iron fence had fallen in places, and weeds hid all but the tops of any tombstones that hadn’t fallen or crumbled to pieces. Incongruously, a fresh pile of dirt indicated a new, open grave. Curnen guided him around the edge of the clearing, toward the narrow trail opening he saw on the opposite side.

His pants snagged on a briar bush growing beside one of the old grave markers. He stopped to free it, and muttered “Dammit!” when he felt the thorns tear his fingers.

“You must be a Yankee,” a voice said from the darkness.

They both froze. Except for the slight wind, everything was silent, until the voice spoke again, right behind them. “That’s a green briar that’s snagged you. They grow over Yankee graves. Wild roses grow from the Johnny Rebs.”

Rob’s heart thundered as he freed his pants leg and turned. The hunched, shambling figure they’d seen earlier watched them, holding the plate left outside the cabin. The smell of dry, rotted fabric filled the air. Rob could not make out his face, but his eyes twinkled in the darkness.

“That you, Curnen?” the figure said. Curnen nodded. “And who’re you?” he asked Rob. “You a Yankee or a damn Yankee?”

“What’s the difference?” His voice sounded higher and shakier than he’d hoped.

“Yankees come to visit. Damn Yankees come to stay.”

“I’m her friend,” he said, and nodded at Curnen.

“Dangerous hobby,” the figure replied.

Curnen made an inarticulate warning noise.

The figure did not seem intimidated. “Be careful, little missy. If I don’t eat your sins, nobody will.”

“Eat her what?” Rob asked. This guy gave him a serious case of the creeps.

“People die, I eat their sin.” He held up the plate. “Last meal. Left beside the body to soak up everything wrong they done. I eat it so they don’t take it with ’em.” He waved what looked like a biscuit at Curnen. “She’s likely to die in the woods, no one to tend her, sit up with her, bury her. I’m the only one who might find her.” Then he pointed at Rob. “You run around with her too much, you’re likely to end up the same way.”

“I’ll be all right,” he said with a conviction he didn’t entirely feel.

He shrugged. “Your life. She’s carrying a curse, you know.”

“I don’t believe in curses.”

Rob’s eyes could just make out the man’s big, full-toothed Tufa grin. “Curse don’t care if you believe in it or not. Do you know what she is?”

Curnen stepped between the two men and growled again.

“She’s a wisp, friend.” The figure illustrated the word with a blowing noise. “Most of her ain’t even there no more. She’ll be all gone soon.”

He turned, walked to the open grave, and sat on the mound of dirt. He sighed and shook his head. “Look at this. Time was, no one would’ve left a grave open overnight. They would’ve been afraid of the bad luck. Now, nobody remembers all them old ways. Nobody cares. Pretty soon, they’ll forget I’m out here just like they have your girlfriend there.” He continued to eat. “Then I’ll be in a mess, huh?”

Curnen snarled in the man’s direction. Then she pulled Rob after her, back into the woods. Rob looked back over his shoulder, and caught one last glimpse of the sin eater. He sat on the pile of grave dirt, shaking his head and laughing to himself.

Low branches forced them to scurry along in a crouch. The bruise across Rob’s shoulders tingled and throbbed. Curnen had less trouble, but in a few places had to stop and wait for Rob to get through a particularly narrow passage. She showed no impatience with him, though, and helped as much as she could.

They slid down a hillside to the bank of a small creek. The water sparkled in the moonlight, and Curnen knelt to drink. She picked up two small, smooth river stones and pressed one of them into his free hand. Then she led him along the edge of the creek until they reached a line of rocks that formed a footbridge across the water. She crossed nimbly, and waited for his considerably slower passage.

The high bank arched over their heads, and they walked under it until they found a gully they could climb. At the top, a vaguely man-shaped boulder jutted from the ground like a sentry standing watch over the creek. The moonlight didn’t reach it, but Rob thought he saw many lines of runelike scratches along its surface.

The moonlight did touch Curnen’s face. She gazed at the rock, and tears silently poured down her cheeks, cutting through the dirt. Her lips trembled with emotion.

“Are you all right?” Rob asked, touching her shoulder the same way he’d touched Bliss’s.

Curnen nodded at the rock, then clasped her hands together and put them over her heart. Then she held up her left hand, made a circle with the thumb and forefinger of her right hand and slid it over her ring finger. Or what he assumed was her ring finger, since she had the extra digit.

Rob remembered the story of Rockhouse’s fall. “That’s Brushy Dale’s grave?”

She shook her head, hard. She touched her heart, then pointed at the rock.

Rob realized what she meant. “That’s… Brushy?”

She nodded. Her face contorted with sorrow.

He put his arms around her without even deciding to do it. She shuddered against him just as Bliss had done in the Catamount Corner lobby. He stared at the rock, seeing its humanlike shape even more clearly now. Surely not, he thought. Rockhouse couldn’t turn someone to stone. He wasn’t some fucking Medusa… was he?

At last Curnen pulled away and wiped her face. She took a couple of deep breaths, then held up her stone and took it to the boulder. At the base were many small piles of similar rocks. She kissed the one in her hand, knelt, and placed it reverently on the ground. She motioned for him to do the same. He was about to do so when movement caught his eye. He looked up and almost yelled.

Up the slope from the boulder, silhouetted against the night sky on a ridge, stood a deer. No, he corrected himself— a stag, and a gigantic one at that. Two large, wiry dogs accompanied it. Suddenly Curnen howled beside him, and he almost dropped his rock. A moment later, the dogs cried in response, and he realized they were coyotes.

She nudged him and indicated the rock in his hand. Quickly he put it next to hers. When he looked back, the stag king and his coyote courtiers had vanished into the night. He hoped that meant it was okay to travel through their forest.

They moved laterally along the ridge until it opened into a wide and well-marked trail. Curnen scurried ahead up the slope, and although it was easier, Rob still couldn’t keep up. At last he saw her waiting beside a lone tree in the middle of a small clearing.

It took him a moment to realize where they were. This was the base of the Widow’s Tree, the enormous tree that could be seen from just about anywhere in the valley. As he waited to catch his breath again, he saw that the bark was scarred up to a height of about ten feet with names and dates.

“Wow,” he said when he could manage the words, “how long has this been going on?”

By way of answer, Curnen took his hand and pressed it against one carved name. He traced the B, then the R, and realized who it must be. And he also understood that if the name was here, it meant more than he’d initially thought.

“Brushy wasn’t just your boyfriend, he was your husband, wasn’t he?”

She nodded.

He had to swallow past the lump of emotion in his own throat before he could speak. “I’m really sorry.”

She stepped close, stood on tiptoe, and kissed him on the cheek. She turned away, then impulsively kissed him a second time, on the mouth. It left tingles when she withdrew.

Curnen pulled him around the tree and up the hill. The ground rose sharply until Rob had to release Curnen’s hand and pull himself from tree trunk to tree trunk up the slope. His arms, legs, and spine screamed in protest, especially the hot bruise across his back. Curnen stayed just ahead of him, nimbly crawling on all fours. She glanced back often to check his progress, evidently unaware of or uninterested in the agony she put him through.

He stopped for a momentary rest, and when he looked up, he saw her just ahead, stretched out on her belly behind a log. He fell next to her, and again she put her hand over his mouth to quiet him.

He angrily slapped it away as he tried to catch his breath. Between the pain and exhaustion, his lungs could barely expand. “Goddammit, Curnen,” he wheezed, “if you don’t—”

She kissed him, then quickly touched his lips with a single finger while he was still startled. Her urgency was plain. He nodded, gasping, and waited until his breathing returned to normal. This kiss also left a tingle.

Little patches of foxfire glowed on the decaying log sheltering them. Curnen put a finger to her own lips and pointed ahead of them. He carefully rose to look.

A saggy, decrepit dwelling squatted on the side of the hill, its back wall buried in the earth. “House” was far too dignified a term for it, since he could see even in silhouette that boards had sprung loose from the sides and most of the windows lacked glass. Smoke curled from the chimney, blotting out the stars as it rose straight into the sky, and dim illumination came from oil lamps placed on the windowsills. Between the boards he saw the flickering light of the fireplace within.

He heard low, thick voices and the occasional loud, metal plink. Several figures sat on the porch, watching a pair of men in the yard. They all seemed able to see by nothing but moonlight. Some of them were enormous, round people, and others seemed thin and almost skeletal. The bigger ones were women, he realized; this must be the brood that had produced Tiffany Gwinn.

“Five points,” a man’s voice said after one loud plink. “That’s fifteen.”

Another plink. “That’s ten, you mean.”

“Dang it,” the first voice muttered.

Something beeped musically. “Will you put that dang thing away?” one of the men in the yard complained. “I can’t concentrate on tossin’ these washers.”

“I’m gonna beat this level,” a boy’s voice said, distracted.

“All you do all day is play them video games,” said a voice Rob recognized as Tiffany Gwinn.

“It helps my ADD.” He pronounced it “Aye-Dee-Dee.”

“I’ll pay attention to your deficit,” Tiffany snapped as the boy fled into the house.

Rob dug his fingers into the soil. For the first time since he’d arrived in Needsville, he felt real, bone-deep terror. Less than a hundred feet away was an entire clan of people who would no doubt be quite happy to make sure he never left this mountain alive, and his only ally was a girl who was either inbred, cursed, or both. Had this been Curnen’s plan all along?

But Curnen made no move to give them away, and pointed to a spot farther along the slope beside the cabin. In the moonlight, he couldn’t resolve the scene into anything that made sense. Half a dozen structures resembling low doghouses, complete with peaked and shingled roofs, were scattered irregularly among taller objects poking at odd angles from the ground. Was it debris from the house? Discarded auto parts or farming equipment? A kennel?

Then the tall objects resolved into tombstones, and the small, low sheds appeared to be shelters covering certain graves.

If the final verse had also been chiseled as an epitaph on one of those markers, there wasn’t nearly enough light to see it, especially if the letters had been weathered away. Also, there was no way to reach the graveyard without being seen by the people on the porch. And the flash from his phone would surely be noticed.

He slid back down next to Curnen. “So the last verse is in that graveyard?” he whispered.

She nodded.

He wished the girl’s eyes were more normal; their opaque blackness unnerved him. “They’ll see us if we try to go to the graveyard right now. We’ll have to wait until they go inside.”

She reached to his face and touched her fingertips to his cheek. In the moonlight her expression was so tender, it made something ache deep inside him. She leaned toward him, but he gently pulled her hand away. “Not now, Curnen, okay? We’ll talk about this later.”

Her expression turned eloquently sad, and he felt like a jerk. Whatever the reality, she clearly believed in the curse, and behaved accordingly. All she wanted from him was basic human kindness. And like everyone else, he was denying her.

“I’m sorry,” Rob said gently. “Look, you know I’m your friend, right? Do you have any other friends?”

She shook her head.

“See? Then I’ll be your friend, and that makes me special, okay?”

She tilted her head a little. If she tried, would she be able to make him feel as aroused as she had in the clearing? Or was her ability to manipulate him shattered now that he knew its source?

He shivered. The night was cool, and sweat soaked his clothes. Curnen silently piled leaves around them, forming a crude nest. Then she lay down beside him and scooted as close as she dared.

A guitar rang out from the Gwinn cabin. Someone yelled, “Awright, now,” and began to clap along. Feet stomped on the porch, the thud accompanied by an occasional cracking sound.

Rob smiled as he recognized the song, although he never imagined it played so harshly. He pulled Curnen close, and she nestled against him. He wondered if anyone had ever treated her like this before, or if everyone, including her own family, was either scared or desirous of her?

As loud as he dared, he sang to her:

By the time he reached the second verse, he could tell by her breathing that she was asleep.