When the Bones Sing

Chapter Nine

Nine

I down the last of my water and head toward the front porch. As soon as I get close enough for her to grab, I’m wrapped in a hug that seems much bigger than the tiny woman should be able to manage.

She pulls back to look me over and pat me on the cheek. Granny Pearl’s face is lined with wrinkles so deep they remind me of the washed-out gulleys along the edges of country roads, and a few wispy white curls peek out from under a straw hat that’s definitely seen better days. She’s missing a couple of teeth, and her dress with faded blue flowers is missing some buttons. A rusted safety pin holds it closed at the top. But her eyes are bright and sharp. “Lowan!” she sings. “You got some mighty pretty company out here!”

I roll my eyes as I look down at myself. Dust from the road sticks to my legs and the tops of my shoulders are turning red from the scorching sun. I’m covered with chigger bites and dripping with sweat. My black hair hangs in limp, wet strings that cling to my face.

But Pearl always tells me I’m beautiful. And I tell her she is too.

She grabs my hand and pulls me inside the cabin, and I’m instantly absorbed into the dark coolness of it, like we’re ducking into a cave.

The first thing that hits me is the smell. It’s my favorite part about coming here, that scent that’s soaked into the wood. Rich and musky and dark with spices you can’t quite name but mixed with the perfume of lilacs and lavender and roses and a hundred other beautiful things. There’s a hint of wood smoke. Pine and cedar. And burned sage. Ripe fruit and homemade bread. Brewed coffee. And something that reminds me of the way it smells right after it rains on a summer day.

When I’m a hundred years old and I’ve forgotten most of the stuff I ever knew, I bet I’ll still be able to recall the smell of Granny Pearl’s cabin. It smells like these hills.

It smells like Lo.

Pearl moves a stack of books to make a spot for me on a bench made from wood that’s been polished smooth as glass from years of sitting, then she crosses to a big silver bucket by the window and uses a dipper to refill my bottle with cool, sweet well water. Before she hands it back to me, she drops in a couple of plump raspberries and a slice of lemon.

I look around the main room that serves as a parlor and kitchen. A wash basin stands along the wall under the window and an ancient wood cooking stove crouches in one corner, but a heavy table takes up most of the space. Its scarred surface is covered with all kinds of drying herbs and flowers and plants. They’re scattered everywhere. Some are tied together in bunches with string. Others are pressed under heavy books of poetry. Even more lie drying on the windowsills or hang in bundles from the ceiling overhead, along with copper kettles and pots of varying sizes.

Some of the plants I know the names of—like Solomon’s seal and witch hazel—but most of them I don’t recognize, despite years and years of Lo’s patient tutoring.

More books with yellowing paper are open on the table, their dog-eared pages fluttering in the little bit of a breeze that sneaks in through the open window. Roots and bits of bark are chopped and waiting in tiny bowls, and pink flower petals are sprinkled around like someone was in the middle of making a colorful salad. At least fifty mysterious mason jars line the tall shelves along one wall, all of them filled with meticulously gathered and sorted ingredients for Pearl and Lo’s healing work. Acorns and juniper berries. Dried mosses and mushrooms and midnight-black mud from Lucifer’s Creek.

I can barely remember coming here with my mother when I was little. We’d gather up jars and ingredients to take home. Ancient remedies and concoctions to brew up on our modern gas stove down in town. Daddy would sigh and shake his head, but I’d clap as she’d stir the bubbling pots, reciting beautiful spells like Shakespearean sonnets.

Then, after she left, I spent years pocketing herbs and bark when nobody was looking. Casually leafing through spell books looking for just the right words to bring Mama home.

But my words never sounded like Shakespeare. They sounded silly and pointless, and it wasn’t long before I gave up. At one point, though, I thought this must be the most magical place in the world, and when I sit in this room now, part of me wishes I could still believe it.

The window is small and overhung by the porch and the huge trees, so even during the day, they keep the candles burning in here, and it gives the whole place a cozy glow.

A back door leads to a washroom and an outhouse, and tucked off to the sides of the main room are a tiny bedroom for Lo and one for Granny Pearl.

The door to the room on the right creaks open, and Lo comes out with a book in his hand. His hair is messy, and his eyes are bloodshot enough to make me wonder if he slept at all last night. He grins when he sees me, though, and it lights up the whole cabin brighter than the three-story windows of Moonlight Crag Lodge.

Lo slides in next to me on the bench and picks up a purple bloom. “Coneflower.” He tucks it behind my ear and gives me an approving smile. “It suits you. With your dark hair.” I watch him stretch out a long arm to reach across the table and snag a handful of blueberries. Granny Pearl giggles and swats at his hand. He offers me a few of the juicy berries before he pops the rest in his mouth. “They called it Promise Flower in the old days. For friendship and loyalty.”

“For love, too,” Nana adds, and I feel my cheeks go pink. Lots of people expected Lo and me to get together like that when we got older, but it’s never been that way between us. We’ve always been best friends.

“I would’ve been here earlier,” I tell them, “but I got slowed down comin’ out of town.” I reach up to adjust the flower in my hair. “Brother Turley was holding forth on the church steps. Had everyone all worked up.”

Granny Pearl stops mashing boiled roots in a pot and huffs. “That man thinks the sun comes up just to hear him crow.” She chuckles a little at her own joke. “You say a prayer for the preacher man, tonight, Dovie Lovie,” Granny Pearl tells me. “He’s one of God’s wild creatures.”

She’s tearing up petals now, probably for tea. If I asked her about the flower they came from, she could tell me every bit of botanical information about it. And I know she means it about the prayer, too.

For Granny Pearl and Lo, there’s no distinction at all between science and religion and magic. They’re all branches of the same tree. Boil them down together to make your own brew and flavor it with whatever else you want to believe in.

That’s the way they see it.

“You wanna take a walk?” Lo asks me when Pearl wanders back to the stove. “I could use a little air.”

Even though I’m still sweating from my hike up here, there’s something in his eyes that tells me to say yes, so I do. I down the rest of my water before it has a chance to get warm, then I refill the bottle again and the two of us head out onto the wide front porch.

As we’re leaving I hear Granny Pearl singing to herself in that high, sweet voice. The same old mountain song I found Nana singing last night in the moonlight.

I will tell you a story of a pretty white rose,

It is true but oh how sad,

Of a poor, young woman whose heart was pure as gold,

But cruel she was treated by her lad.

It tugs on my memory again, and it makes me shiver. Like bone music. Lo notices and nudges me with his shoulder. “Somebody walkin’ over your grave, Dovie?”

We step off the porch into the shade of the big old trees that surround the cabin, and I follow Lo down a little slope. We’re heading deeper into the woods, and the forest creeps closer and closer, blocking out more and more of the sunlight until all that’s left is shadow.

The ground is uneven and steeper now, so we don’t talk much. We’re focused on our footing. Once I slip on some leaves and he reaches back without a word to take my hand. Even after I regain my balance, neither one of us lets go.

We finally make it to the bottom of the deep ravine, and I look back over my shoulder at the cabin. I barely see it through the trees.

And suddenly I know where we’re going.

Lo leads me straight to the spot, and when we step out into the small clearing, I hate seeing the bright yellow crime scene tape around the excavated grave site. Without it, the place would be beautiful—peaceful—with the tall pines encircling us like weeping mourners and those wild violets growing in the rock like an Ozark casket spray.

But that neon crime scene tape makes it ugly.

Lo settles on the ground right outside the tape and I sit down beside him. We’re quiet for a few seconds, and it feels like a purposeful moment of silence. Like this is some kind of memorial service.

And I guess it is.

“Rest in peace, Riley Alden,” Lo says, and the words have the weight of a prayer. He turns to look at me. “I’m glad you found him, Dovie. I knew you would.”

“How’d you know the spot?” I ask, and he reaches over to pick up a stick. He’s writing Riley’s name in the damp ground, leaving proof that the easy-smiling boy from Tulsa existed.

“Sheriff brought me down and showed me when he came to see me that next mornin’. Asked if me or Granny Pearl had any idea how the body got here.” Lo shrugs. “But it’s too far from the cabin for us to be much help.”

I dig Riley’s newspaper photo out of my pocket and hand it to Lo. He studies it for a few long seconds. When he hands the photo back to me, his hands are shaking. “I’m gonna try to remember him like that,” he tells me.

“Me too,” I say, still staring at the newspaper clipping. I can’t seem to put it back in my pocket. Those eyes have a chokehold on me.

“Do you think he was scared?” Lo asks. “Do you think he knew he was dying?”

“I don’t know. I hope not.”

“I wonder about that a lot,” he says. “I wonder that about all of them.”

Now I’m wondering, too, and I’m wondering why those questions never occurred to me before. About Riley, or any of the others that came before him.

I sense a change in Lo’s breathing. I see him staring into the trees, and I notice the way he’s inched closer to me.

“They found me, Dovie,” he whispers. “We need to go.” Lo scrambles to his feet. “They weren’t here a second ago.” He turns in a slow circle. “But they’re everywhere now.” His voice is hoarse. “Behind every tree. All around us.” Lo winces like he’s in pain. His eyes are darting back and forth.

“It’s okay, Lo,” I promise as I get to my feet beside him. I don’t bother to tell him there’s nothing there. That I don’t see anything. It won’t make him feel any better. “I’m here, too. I’m right here with you. Okay?” He reaches for my hand, and I take his and squeeze hard so he can feel how real I am. “You don’t have to be afraid of them. Not when we’re together.”

“Can I come home with you?” he asks me. “Just for a little bit?”

“Sure,” I tell him. “You know you can.” I turn around and look back up the hill toward the cabin. It’s a super-steep and rocky climb, and I figure it’ll probably be easier to cut through the woods and take the Aux-Arc Trail back downhill to town. So I start to move in that direction.

As we’re about to step out of the little clearing and into the thick of the trees, I pause to bend down and pick a few of the violets growing wild in the crack of the big rock. Then I duck under the crime scene tape and lay them on the spot where I wrapped my fingers around Riley Alden’s bones and pulled him out of the ground.

“I wanted something pretty to mark the spot,” I tell Lo. It’s silly, probably. But it feels important. “To show where I found him in the soil here.”

“In the dirt,” Lo tells me, and I guess I look confused, because he explains. “Soil is full of life, but dirt is empty of it. That’s the difference.” He shrugs. “That’s what Granny Pearl always says.”

We fight our way through the vines and brambles toward the trail. It’s easier in the daytime than it was in the dead of night with Sheriff and Deputy Jonah, but we’re still cut up and bleeding when we finally step out onto the AAT. We probably should have hauled ourselves back up the side of the ravine and taken the old dirt road home.

And now thunder is starting to rumble.

At least it’s downhill all the way from here to Lucifer’s Creek, so it won’t take us long to cover the ground, and worrying about the storm seems to have taken Lo’s mind off his ghosts.

We’re about halfway to town when we meet two hikers coming up. Actually, we hear them laughing and singing before we ever see them, but then two women come around a bend into view. They’re probably in their early thirties, with identical blond ponytails and matching pink baseball caps. Their names are embroidered on the front. Candy and Hannah .

They look up to offer us a friendly greeting, and I recognize them as the two women I noticed in town yesterday, soaking their feet in the creek.

We’re just about to pass each other when the thunder comes again. Sharp and angry this time.

All four of us jump.

“Dammit,” Candy tells Lo and me with a worried glance at the ominous black clouds that have rolled in out of nowhere. “It wasn’t supposed to storm today.”

“Maybe we should just head back to town,” Hannah says. She’s twisting her hair around one finger. “I know we’ve only got one night, but I have a bad feeling about this.”

“Never fear, sister dear.” Candy stops to dig a couple of ponchos out of her bag. “I came prepared.”

The two women struggle to get their ponchos on over their huge backpacks, then they look up at the sky again.

“There’s a Forest Service lean-to shelter not far from here,” Lo offers. “If you keep moving up the trail. Maybe another mile.”

“It’s not big,” I say, “but there’s room for the two of you. And it’ll keep you dry if you can make it before the rain sets in.”

“It should pass pretty quick,” Lowan tells them. “Mountain thunderstorms pop up outta nowhere this time of year, but they don’t last long.”

Candy and Hannah look relieved. They tell us thank you, and Candy nudges Hannah in the ribs. She digs a business card out of her pocket and hands it to me. It has a little thank-you poem printed on the front and there’s a tiny gold angel pinned to it.

“We had them made up for our trail angels,” Candy explains.

“We didn’t really do anything,” I protest, and I try to hand the card back, but Hannah won’t take it.

“Even a little kindness is a kindness,” she insists.

“That’s sweet,” I tell her. “Thank you.” I stick the card with the angel pin in my pocket and we wish them luck before Lo and I continue on down the trail.

We’ve only gone a few feet when Lo stops and looks back at the women who are hurrying as fast as they can in the opposite direction. “Hey!” he shouts, and Candy and Hannah pause to look over their shoulders. “Y’all stick together. Okay? Don’t let the other one out of your sight, even for a minute.” The women look at each other nervously.

“Are there bears?” Hannah asks. She’s peering into the trees now. “Sorry if that’s a stupid question.”

Candy looks a little embarrassed. “We’re kind of beginners,” she admits. “This is our first overnight hike.”

“You can’t be too careful in the woods,” I say. “Just stay close to each other, and you’ll be safe.”

The ladies nod and shout their thank-yous again, and then they vanish around another bend.

“I hope they listen,” Lo says.

“At least we tried,” I say, but I can’t help thinking we should have tried harder.

It gets darker and darker as we scurry down the trail, but the storm holds off almost long enough for us to make it home. We’ve just stepped out of the woods and onto Mud Street when the downpour comes so sudden it’s like someone split the sky wide open with a knife. We’re soaked to the bone almost before we even realize it’s raining.

“Come on!” Lo shouts as a violent streak of lightning shoots across the gray sky. He grabs my hand and pulls me toward the closest building, the Lucifer’s Creek Community Church.

We huddle together at the top of the wide stone steps where Brother Turley stood just a few hours ago, and we press ourselves back against the double doors. There’s just enough of an overhang to keep us out of the rain. I think about Candy and Hannah, and I hope they made it to the shelter without getting drenched.

I also hope I wasn’t lying when I said they’d be safe out there.

There’s a mighty rumble of thunder, and then another sound. Something I can barely make out over the pouring rain.

“That’s the Howler, Dovie,” Lo whispers in my ear. “Can you hear it?” He slips his arm around my shoulders and pulls me close to him. “Please tell me you can hear it.” His heart is pounding so hard that I’m afraid it’s about to bust through his ribs and leap right out of his chest. I imagine myself trying to grab hold of it while it flops around in the storm.

“Yeah,” I tell him. “I can hear it.” I look through the dark and the rain at the neat sidewalks and the bright shop windows of Lucifer’s Creek. My daddy’s stained glass gallery is just across the street. “But we’re safe here.” Lo shudders hard. I feel the tremor move up his whole body. “Look at me,” I say, and I take his chin and tilt it down so I can see his eyes and he can see mine. “We’re together and we’re safe. I promise.”

That strange howl comes again. Maybe it’s even fainter this time. Farther away. I can’t really tell.

And it keeps getting darker.

It seems so strange to have dusk during the day, but that’s what this sudden blackness feels like. Like night has settled way too early on Lucifer’s Creek.

“Don’t make promises like that, Dovie.” Lo shakes his head. “You’re not safe. None of us are safe.” He looks at me with wild eyes that scare me more than any phantom noise carried by the wind. “Not when the Ozark Howler is on the prowl.”