Chapter Six
Six
Lo holds my hand as we climb the narrow attic stairs together. When we step into my bedroom, his shoulders immediately relax and his breathing evens out. “It smells like you in here,” he says, and I can’t help but laugh.
“What do I smell like?”
“Desdemona roses and lavender tea.” He closes his eyes. “And night jasmine.”
I roll my eyes and we settle on the purple rug to lean back against my bed. The window air conditioner kicks on and a soft tinkling sound moves through the room. We glance up toward a homemade wind chime that hangs from a hook in the ceiling. It’s made from nine skeleton keys tied to a piece of yellow yarn. Lo gave it to me a few years back, about the time the shadows started tormenting him. The keys lock the bad spirits out , he told me. So you’ll be safe from the things that follow me.
“Did I ever tell you I found each one of those keys?” he asks me, and I shake my head. “Some of ’em up in the hills. Some of ’em down here in town. Even found one in your yard, out by the sidewalk. That’s extra good luck. Took me years to gather ’em all. You have to find ’em wild or they don’t work.”
Lo points up toward the dangling charm. “It’s a Witch’s Ladder. Count the knots. See? By knot of one, the spell’s begun. By knot of two, the magic comes true. By knot of three, so it shall be. By knot of four, this power is stored. By knot of five, my will shall drive. By knot of six, this spell I fix. By knot of seven, the future I leaven. By knot of eight, my will be fate. By knot of nine, what is done is mine.” He smiles. “That’s called the Magic of Nine.”
Granny Pearl is a folk healer. She’s been doing it her whole life, and she taught the spells and hill magic to Lo’s mama, and then eventually to Lo.
And he took to it like a fish to water.
Even today town folks will make the long walk up to their cabin for a special charm or a potion. Something to bring them luck. Or love. Maybe a little bag to fight off cancer or a candle ritual to save a marriage.
They’ll lie about it, Lucifer’s Creek residents, and say they don’t believe in the old ways. They’ll laugh at the hill people. At Granny Pearl and Lo especially. They’ll look down their noses and carry on and act like they’re too good for those silly superstitions. But most of them still keep those little silver bells on a green ribbon over their shop door. And when someone’s sick, or in love, the desperate still come calling at the old Wilder place when the sun sinks low, and they’ll happily fork over a couple of dollars for a little bag or a mason jar filled with just the right ingredients.
Not me, though.
I know nothing in life is magical. Everything has an explanation.
And most of the explanations aren’t very nice.
Lo’s glancing around the room again. I can feel his fear ticking up, and it makes me furious at his shadow stalkers. Lo shouldn’t ever be afraid when he’s with me.
Suddenly I have an idea.
“Hey,” I tell him. “Wanna go to the office? For old time’s sake?”
“Yeah.” He nods. “That sounds good.”
When we were little, we used to pretend we were architects running a business out of my closet. We’d push back my dresses and sweaters and winter coats to spread our paper and pencils on the wooden floor so we could draw dream castles and twisting skyscrapers for rich, imaginary clients.
We called it our office, and we kept hanging out there sometimes, even after we stopped playing architect, because what we really wanted was a private place. Somewhere we could be together, just the two of us. Safe. Hidden. And happy.
It’s been years since we crawled into the closet together, but it sounds so nice right now.
I push myself up off the floor and move toward the opposite wall. Lo follows me, but he stops halfway across the room to study himself in my cracked full-length mirror. I wonder if he sees the way his collarbones stick out or how hollow his eyes have become.
He looks like he’s been away two decades instead of two months.
“Come on,” I tell him, and I take his hand and tug him toward the open closet door. I push back the clothes and jerk the string to turn on the light. Then we step inside and I pull the door closed before the two of us settle on the floor together.
Lo’s almost smiling. “God,” he says. “I forgot how it feels, being in here.” He reaches up to touch a soft pink sweater I haven’t worn in years. I’m sure it’s way too small for me now. “It’s like being inside a cocoon.” He looks at me. “Or a time machine.”
“Good memories,” I say.
He nudges me with his shoulder. “All my best memories are of you, Dovie.”
I’m sitting crisscross on the floor and Lo scooches down to put his head in my lap. He pulls his knees to his chest and hugs them tight, but he doesn’t seem afraid anymore.
The closet is tiny. Spare and neat. Brightly lit by the bare bulb on the ceiling. There’s only enough room for the two of us.
Definitely no place for ghosts to hide. Or spirits.
No shadows.
So no shadow people.
“Promise me you’ll be my best friend forever,” he says, and he sounds so much like a little kid. So much like his old self.
“I will if you’ll let me,” I promise. It’s quiet for a few seconds. Just the sound of us breathing together. Finally I ask, “Where the hell have you been, Lo?” Close to sixty days straight of me missing him the way I’d miss oxygen if somebody suddenly told me I wasn’t allowed to breathe anymore.
He rolls onto his back so he’s looking up at me. I’m stroking his hair now. Raking my fingers through waves that never quite become curls. Lo doesn’t know who his daddy is, but I wonder if he has hair like his. Thick and soft and the color of warm molasses.
“I was in Fayetteville,” he says, and it’s such an obvious answer that I have an urge to smack my forehead. “Walked the first part of the way, then hitchhiked the rest.” Fifteen miles down the old logging road to Rogers. Then just thirty-five miles down the highway to Fayetteville. So close, and still a world away from Lucifer’s Creek. “Slept in an alley the first couple of weeks. Behind the newspaper office. Almost starved to death.” I cringe and run my hands over his stick-like arms and his bony shoulders. “But then I met a woman who runs a folk healing shop, and she let me come work for her a couple of hours a day. Brought me bread and soup. Let me sleep in the back room of the store, even.”
It’s weird to think about all those people down in Fayetteville—big-city people, by our standards—and there, in the middle of them, an old-time mountain folk healer. Just like Lo and Granny Pearl.
“But the shadow spirits.” Lo hesitates. “They wouldn’t turn loose of me. Tracked me all the way to Fayetteville. Sometimes, in the middle of the day, when I was sellin’ charms and herbs to customers, I’d hear a knockin’ on the glass, and I’d look up to see those black shapes peerin’ in the window at me. Watchin’ me from the street.”
“Lo,” I start. I’ve got to be cautious, choose my words wisely. He’s comfortable now. Feeling safe. And I don’t want to wreck that. “Are you sure that the shadow people are—”
“Real?” Lo sits up to look at me and his soft eyes are so full of hurt. “I’m not a liar, Dovie.”
“No.” I reach out and put a hand on his knee. “I know that. But maybe—” I see his spine stiffen.
“And I’m not crazy either.”
“No,” I tell him again. “I just think sometimes people—”
“See things that aren’t real?”
“Sometimes people need a little help,” I finish. “That’s all.”
Lo’s life hasn’t been easy. Never knowing his daddy, then losing his mama before his first birthday. Living up in that ramshackle cabin with no electricity or running water. Granny Pearl filling his head with stories about Ozark mountain magic. Then having a whole slew of dead hikers turn up in the hills around him.
It might be enough to make anyone question what’s real.
Lo sighs and reaches up to push back a winter coat that’s dangling over his head.
“These are some of the oldest hills in the world, Dovie. The ground we walk on every day—you and me—is ancient. Some of these mountains have been here five hundred million years or more.”
“I know that, Lo, but—”
“And our kind of magic—mountain magic—good magic—flows from nature. The trees and plants and roots and rocks. Flowers. The rivers and streams. That’s what Granny Pearl taught me.” Lo’s dark eyes are lit up with fire from the inside. His face is flushed, and his words are hushed but urgent. He’s in his element and he looks more like himself than I’ve seen him look in ages. I know that’s because he’s talking about what he loves best, and even if I don’t buy a word of it, I’d let him talk forever on the subject just to see that spark in his eyes again.
“The older the land,” he goes on, “the longer that magic has been simmerin’ and brewin’. Bubblin’ below the surface. In every crack and crevice of every rock. In the dirt and in the water. Feedin’ all the wild things and then pullin’ in their life force when they die, gettin’ stronger and more powerful. Like tea left to steep. That’s what makes these mountains so special.” He leans in close. “It’s time, Dovie. That’s the secret to Ozarks magic.”
That makes me smile because I figure maybe time is the secret to our magic, too. Mine and Lo’s. We’ve known each other an awful lot of years. Every single breath of our lives we’ve breathed together. A bond like that has deep power. Even I can believe in that kind of magic.
Something in his expression changes, and Lo suddenly seems a hundred miles away. The change in him hits so hard and so fast it leaves me unnerved and off balance. If I were to reach out to touch him now, I wouldn’t quite be able to lay my hands on him. The distance between us has grown too wide. “But these are dark hills, too. Full of hidden places. And there are things that walk the forests. Spirits and demons, and worse, that get stronger with every passing year.”
“Those are just stories.” I don’t want to be dismissive, but I don’t want to encourage his fear, either. “Hill folk have always told tall tal—”
“Some stories get told ’cause they’re true, Dovie.” He looks at me for a second, then cocks his head to one side, like he’s thinking. “You want me to list all the places around here with dark names?” He ticks them off on his fingers. “Devil’s Den. Devil’s Backbone. Devil’s Kitchen. Devil’s Racetrack. Devil’s Well. Devil’s Rock Pile. Devil’s Half-Acre. Devil’s Promenade. Want me to go on?” He pauses. “Lucifer’s goddamn Creek? You think that’s all a coincidence?” He shakes his head. “You’re smarter than that, Dovie. I know you are.”
Lo isn’t religious, at least not like most folks around here are. The majority of Lucifer’s Creek residents would call themselves Baptists or Methodists. Maybe there’s a Presbyterian or two. But they all meet up Sundays at Lucifer’s Creek Community Church to worship the same God, because it’s the only game in town.
I don’t believe in anything. Not God. And not the devil. No matter what he’s got named after him.
But Lo is the most spiritual person I know. His belief system is wide and sprawling, somehow it makes room for everything from Jesus to angels and demons to root magic and water witches to trickster fairies that dart among the river stones.
And ghosts. Of course. All the things that haunt us.
That haunt him.
Lo believes in heaven, but he also believes hell is a real, actual place. Like Utah is. So the idea of heaven never gives him much peace. Not with hell just a stone’s throw away. And that always seems like such a rip-off to me. Why have any belief at all if there’s no comfort in it?
“What makes you so sure these shadows you see are the dead hikers?” I ask him. “Why would they be after you like that?”
“I told you. They want me to find out who’s doin’ the killing around here. So I can put a stop to it.” Lo’s watching me with so much focus now, burning a hole in me with those intense eyes of his. “If I can do that, maybe they’ll leave me alone. And if I can’t, I’m not gonna last much longer.”
“But why you?” None of this makes any sense. “How are you gonna figure it out on your own?”
“I’m not.” He scoots a little closer to me, so we’re sitting knee-to-knee. Then he wraps his long, slender fingers around mine. Gentle, but strong. Just that little bit of his skin against mine, and I know I’d die to keep him safe, even from his own darkness. “You gotta help me, Dovie.” He squeezes my hand hard. “Please?”
“Yeah,” I tell him, and I reach out to run a hand through his hair. Whatever demons he’s got to face down, real or imaginary, I’ll be right beside him. “Of course, Lo. You know I’ll help you.” He leans into my touch and goose bumps break out across the tops of my thighs.
“I need you, Dovie. So much.” His words feel heavy in the closeness of the closet. I don’t just hear them. I feel the weight of them, too. I shiver as they slide down my throat and settle in the pit of my stomach, and then I whisper them back.
“I need you, too.”
Because Lo is so much more than just my best friend.
He’s the only thing in this world that could almost make me believe in magic again.