Chapter Twenty-One
Twenty-One
I stare at Nana for a second. “What do you mean?”
“White roses were Lucy’s favorite,” she tells me. Nana’s gone back to her trimming and pruning work. I’m almost hypnotized watching her fingers move. “It’s a little message. Somethin’ to let us know she’s still here.”
I’m so confused. “Are you saying she’s here for real?”
Nana gives her head a sad shake. “Here in spirit.”
“You think she’s dead?”
“She’s been gone a long time, Dovie girl.”
“Wait.” I feel like I’m trying to walk through quicksand. “You mean gone like gone ? Or gone like dead ?”
“Lucy passed on years ago. A mama’s heart knows.”
“I don’t understand.” I can’t tell if I’m more confused or angry now. “Why haven’t you ever told me that before?”
“I wasn’t certain before. I only suspected it.” Nana plucks a damaged flower from the bush and looks at it for a second before she lets it fall to the ground. “And now I know.” She studies the bit of pink lying at her feet, like she wishes she could put it back where she found it.
All my life I’ve been told my mama took off. Now suddenly Daddy’s telling me he doesn’t know if she ever really left town and Nana’s telling me she’s dead.
I’m too exhausted and too close to falling apart to have this conversation right now. I don’t know what to believe anymore, but I do know someone left a white rose on Claire’s grave last night, and then one here in our yard, too. I refuse to believe we’re being visited by the ghost of a woman who’s never been anything other than a ghost to me, so that leaves the drowned preacher as a suspect. I’m trying to work out if Turley had time to leave both flowers. It’s the only answer I can come up with.
But I don’t understand what he was trying to accomplish.
Nana’s gone back to singing, and I can’t stand to hear that song, so I head into the house and straight to the shower. When I’ve scrubbed myself clean, I crawl into bed and hope for oblivion to come and claim me.
I sleep all day, until Nana yells up the stairs to ask me if I want dinner. I pull on clothes and stumble in to sit at the table and force down chicken and mashed potatoes. Daddy’s at the gallery, and that white rose is still tucked into Nana’s braid, but she doesn’t say another word about it.
I have questions I want to ask—need to ask—about my mama, but my mind is so full of the meeting Lo and I have planned with Xander Alden tonight that I can’t even think. My brain is fuzzy from sleeping all day and confused from waking up at supper time, and there’s too much of last night left swirling around in my head. So I settle for eating in silence and staring at that white rose in Nana’s braid as she stands at the sink washing dishes.
As soon as I get some food in my stomach, I grab a flashlight and set out for the trail. It’s not quite dark yet, but the sun is low and I stick to the shadows as I move along Mud Street. I’m not looking for a fight with any of Turley’s flock tonight.
I reach the dividing line between town and woods at the exact moment the sky reaches the dividing line between day and night. Daddy’s gallery on one side of the street. The preacher-less church on the other.
The last of the light dying on the hills.
Dark falling fast behind me.
I look up toward Moonlight Crag Lodge sitting high on its mountain perch. I figure those huge glass windows see everything that happens down here in the valley, and I wonder if they know who has been killing hikers in these hills. The sight of Ira’s lodge eases my mind a little. It’s such a familiar glow in the distance. Like a second orbiting moon. It’s the one thing that seems normal around here lately. A literal bright spot in the blackness. Kind of like Ira himself.
When I’ve soaked up all the light I can, I take a breath, just like I’m jumping into a cold swimming pool, then I click on my flashlight and step onto the Aux-Arc Trail.
I’m immediately enveloped by trees. It’s like someone has draped a hot, wet blanket over my head. It’s hard to see. Harder to breathe.
The ground is soaked from the storm that blew through last night. I’m dodging deep puddles and mud holes, trying to stay clear of the worst of it. The water is running high and fast in the places where the trail crosses Lucifer’s Creek, but nothing like it was at that spot on the dirt road where Lo almost lost his life.
Where Turley did lose his.
It seems to take forever to drag myself up the trail, but finally I come to the place where I broke off into the woods to find Riley. A strip of yellow Sheriff’s Department tape tied around a scraggly pine tree marks the spot. It should only be another half mile or so up to the trail shelter where Lo, Xander, and I agreed to meet.
It takes me longer than it should to slog that distance uphill in the mud and the dark, and by the time I make it to the little three-sided lean-to, someone is already there. I see the glow of their flashlight when I come around the last bend. For just a second, I hesitate. It could be anybody up there waiting for me.
Anybody except Brother Turley, I guess. He’s probably down at the funeral home in Rogers by now.
Fear slithers through my veins like a snake.
I don’t like feeling afraid. These are my hills. I’ve been walking these woods by myself since I was a little girl. Nana used to tell me that the Ozarks were my backyard, and that’s how I’ve always thought of these mountains.
I refuse to be afraid in my own backyard.
I stop for a second to catch my breath so I can “hello the house.” It’s an Ozarks custom left over from the old days, when you were likely to get shot walking up to someone’s cabin unannounced. “Hey!” I shout. “It’s Dove Warner! Who’s up there?”
The light up at the shelter zigzags in the dark, like someone is trying to find me in its beam. “Dove? It’s me! Xan!”
“Yeah!” I shout back. “Coming!”
The trail shelter is basically an empty log cabin that only has three walls, so it’s open on one side. It sits up off the ground a couple of feet, and when I get close enough to light him up with my flashlight, I see Xander Alden sitting on the steps eating a granola bar. I climb up to sit beside him.
The shelter smells like warm, damp wood, and Xander smells like campfire smoke. He’s wearing the same faded jeans and muddy cowboy boots as last night, but he’s traded his gray T-shirt for a red plaid button-up that makes him look like the love interest in a rodeo movie.
“Hungry?” He offers me a bite, but I shake my head. “I wasn’t sure you’d actually come.”
“We said we would, didn’t we?” It strikes me as weird that Lo isn’t here yet. We said just after dark, and it’s not like him to be late. “You can believe something if we tell it to you.”
“Okay,” he says. “Fair enough.” Xander finishes off the granola bar and shoves the wrapper in his pocket.
It’s quiet for a second. Neither one of us has any idea what to say. Finally I ask, “So Riley was your brother?”
“Yeah,” Xander says. “I’m seventeen, and he was twenty-one.” He tips his head back to look up at the sky. “Jesus. It’s so weird to say was .” He stops and bites at his bottom lip so hard I’m afraid he’ll draw blood. “Riley was going to be a senior at the University of Tulsa this year. Everything was just starting to open up for him, you know?”
“That sucks,” I tell him. “I’m really sorry.”
“Yeah.” Xander is looking up at the way the moonlight is shining through the tops of the trees. “You ever miss someone so much it gives you a physical pain?”
“Yeah,” I tell him.
I’m thinking of my mom, how the ache of wanting her is as much a part of every day as getting dressed or brushing my teeth. How it never goes away, not even when I’m laughing or having a good time. It’s always there, like a stone in my pocket. Some days it’s a pebble. Some days it’s a big rock. Tonight it feels as huge as this mountain we’re sitting on.
And now I don’t even know if she’s alive or dead.
Maybe it doesn’t matter, though. When you get right down to it, gone is gone.
“I could tell you’d lost someone,” Xander says. “I saw it in your eyes last night, when I was talking about Riley.” He gives me a little smile, and it reminds me of his lost brother in that newspaper photo. I never knew Riley Alden, but in that moment, I miss him.
All of a sudden, I feel like a fraud. “Listen, Xander,” I start. “I need you to understand somethin’.”
“Call me Xan,” he says. “That’s what my friends call me.”
I don’t bother telling him we’re not friends yet, or that I’m not really looking to make a new friend. We just need to get to the bottom of what’s going on here so these killings will stop. Then he can go back to his family with some peace of mind and Lo can get on with his life and nobody else will have to die.
That’s it. That’s all I care about.
“The thing is, I’m not magic. And I’m not a witch. I wanna be honest with you about that. I don’t have any special way of knowing what happened to Riley. Not any more than you do.”
Xan arches one eyebrow. “That’s not what I heard.”
“Who the hell have you been talkin’ to?” I ask him, and I’m fully aware of how exasperated I sound. Xan just shrugs. “Come on. If you want help from me, I want truth from you.”
“Okay,” he sighs. “That deputy told me. He said you could hear the bones of the dead talking to you.”
“Deputy Jonah?” Xan nods and I roll my eyes. “He’s an idiot. You can’t listen to a thing he says.”
“Okay. So maybe he’s an idiot.” Xan’s jaw tightens. “But he’s the only one in town who’s told me shit. The sheriff said there wasn’t any information. Told me to go on home and let them handle it. Except they aren’t handling it, as far as I can tell. They’re sitting on their asses, like they did when he was missing.” Xan’s voice is stretched and sharp, like a barbed-wire fence strung tight. “Nobody else in town has said anything useful. But that Deputy Jonah pulled me aside and told me about you. ‘Talk to Dove Warner. She’s the human cadaver dog of Lucifer’s Creek.’ Those were his exact words.”
“So you figured you’d stalk me first?”
“Yeah. Sorry about that.” Xan sighs and his shoulders slump, then he reaches up to push his sweat-damp hair out of his face. “But that deputy basically said you were a witch—and I don’t really believe in that stuff—like at all—but I wanted to know who I was getting involved with. You know? For all I knew, you were part of some hillbilly death cult.”
“Jesus,” I mutter, and I roll my eyes so hard I can almost see the inside of my skull.
“What about your friend? Is he a witch?”
“Lo’s a mountain healer. Yarb doctors, they used to call them. They use local plants to cure people.”
“No shit?” Xan is studying me, maybe trying to figure out if I’m telling him the truth. “That’s kind of cool.”
“He and his granny practice hill magic, too. Power doctors, they used to call those people, the ones that cured with potions and charms and spells.”
And where the hell is Lo? I’m starting to get worried about him.
It’s quiet for a few seconds, except for the hooting of an owl, and I reach down to flick away a spider that’s climbing up my shin.
“So, Dove Warner who is not a witch, can you really hear bones talking to you? Is that part true? Because Jonah seemed pretty damn sure about that.”
“They don’t talk to me,” I tell him. “I call it singing, but really it’s a kind of a tug, a sort of vibration that leads me to where they are. But it’s not magic. It’s just a talent the women in my family have. Like how some people have a knack for learning foreign languages or some people can hear a song once, then sit down and play it on the piano with no sheet music.”
He laughs out loud at that. “I know plenty of people who speak Spanish or play an instrument.” Xan is wiping his sweaty palms on his shorts. “But I don’t know anyone who can find buried bones.”
“Divining,” I explain. “That’s the term for it. It means to find something using intuition, or some kind of second sight. Most times, people do it with fresh groundwater. If you need a well dug or something, a diviner can tell you the exact spot to dig. People call ’em water witches, or at least they did in the old days, but it’s not really witching. It’s just a skill some people have.”
Xan looks more than a little skeptical, and I don’t blame him, but I’m also kind of pissed. I’m not used to having to explain myself to strangers.
“How many bodies have you found out here?” he asks. “Besides Riley.” I can tell he thinks the answer is going to be maybe two or three.
“Thirty-seven total,” I tell him. “Starting when I was four years old. But twenty-four of those have been in just the last three years or so, since the hikers started disappearing.”
Xan’s mouth falls open and he stares at me. “Twenty-four hikers murdered in the last three years?” I nod. “Jesus Christ!” He explodes up off the steps. “What the fuck? Why isn’t anybody doing anything? Why are they still letting people come out here?” He shines his light right in my face, and I have to throw up my hands to keep from being blinded. “Goddammit! Riley wouldn’t have come out here if he’d known that! None of them would’ve!”
He’s right, of course. We’re laying a trap for the hikers that make their way down the AAT. We let them stop in town for waffles and an evening of bluegrass music at Donny Blue’s, and hopefully they drop some cash shopping for folk art and antiques on Mud Street, then we send them marching out into the woods, knowing full well that some of them won’t make it home.
But who cares, we’ve already charged their credit cards, right?
It’s like a lifeguard knowing there’s a great white swimming right offshore, but not bothering to warn people to stay out of the water because if the swimmers stop coming, he’s out of a job.
“I’m sorry, Xan. For what happened to Riley. I’m really, really sorry.” He sinks back down to sit on the steps beside me like all his bones have dissolved, and I hear him breathing in uneven gulps. Then all of a sudden he’s sobbing. Huge, wracking sobs that make him cough and choke. Like Lightning wailing for his lost twin. I don’t have any idea what to do, so I keep my eyes on the ground and stay quiet until he’s still again.
“My brother was a good guy,” he sputters. “A really good guy.” His head is in his hands, and he’s wiping at his nose. I have this urge to put my arm around him or something. “He didn’t deserve whatever happened to him.”
I remember Lo telling me how the sheriff said Riley was gutted—split all the way up the middle—his insides spilled out on the ground.
Nobody deserves that.
I hope Xan never has to know that detail.
“I thought you were his ghost,” I admit. “I mean, not really. But kind of. I’d seen Riley’s picture in the paper, and then there you were outside my window and hiding in the trees.” I should stop, because I feel like I’m rambling. But I keep talking. “You look so much like him. You know?”
“If somebody hurt me, Riley would never stop trying to find them. Never.” Xan takes a deep, shaky breath. “I know that for damn sure.”
“Then we won’t give up either.” I put my hand on his arm. “We all need this to end.”
Xan takes his hand and lays it over mine. His skin is warm and soft. Definitely alive. His blue eyes flash in the blackness. I can’t believe I didn’t realize he was real.
“Can you show me where you found him?” His voice is soft and low, thick with tears and ragged with grief, flavored with that Oklahoma twang. “I need to see the spot myself.”
“Yeah. I can do that. It’s not far from here. We can go now if you want to.”
“What about your friend? Wasn’t he going to meet us here?”
“Something must have come up,” I say. “Lo’s never late like this.”
Worry creeps back in. Maybe he’s sick. Or maybe Granny Pearl is. Or maybe something happened to him on the way home this morning. He was so worked up. I’m kicking myself. I should never have let him out of my sight. I’ll have to go up to the cabin first thing tomorrow to check on him. I’m not gonna rest easy until I know he’s all right.
Xan and I stand up to start down the trail, but my flashlight beam catches something shiny lying on the shelter floor. I bend down to scoop it up, and it’s a little gold angel pin.
“What’s that?” Xan asks, and I hold it up to the light so he can see.
“A trail angel,” I tell him. “Hannah Nelby had a bunch of ’em. She and her sister were giving them out to people they met on their hike. It proves they stopped here that day, before they made camp up the trail somewhere.”
We scour the shelter looking for any clues, but there are no other signs of Hannah, so I stick the little angel in my pocket and pick our way down the trail in silence until we get to the place where we need to step off into the woods. “This is it,” I say, and I see Riley swallow hard when he notices that yellow Sheriff’s Department tape tied around the skinny pine tree as a marker. “Through here.” I’m searching for the best path in, trying to find the spot where Sheriff hacked through the tangle the other night.
Xan touches my shoulder. “I want to go by myself, if that’s okay.” He looks apologetic. “No offense.”
“It’s gonna be hard movin’ through the woods,” I warn him. “You’re gonna get all cut up.”
“I don’t care about that.”
“Okay.” I point into the trees and tell him how to get to the clearing. “There’s a big rock there. I found Riley around on the other side of that boulder.” I pause, trying to figure out what else to say. “It’s real pretty there. Pine trees all circled around. And there are wild violets growing.”
“Thanks, Dove. That means a lot.”
“Let’s meet up again tomorrow afternoon,” I say. “Come on down to my house. Knock on the door this time. Don’t hide in the trees.” Xan tilts his head to the side and grins, and in that moment he looks so much like that picture of his brother that it just about kills me. “I’ll come up and get Lo first thing in the morning. Take him back down to town with me. Maybe with the three of us there, we can come up with a real plan.”
“I don’t know what’s wrong with me.” He gives his head a little shake. “I shouldn’t leave you out here by yourself. I’ll walk you home and come back.”
“It’s fine,” I tell him. “I’ve been walking this trail my whole life, and it’s a quick hike back to town. Besides, the locals have always been safe here.”
Xan gives me a funny look. “That’s weird, don’t you think? No locals murdered. Just the hikers.” He pauses like he’s waiting for me to catch on. “Gotta be somebody local doing the killing. Right?”
“Yeah,” I tell him. “Probably.” I think we’d all pretty much figured that out already, whether we’ve wanted to admit it or not. The angel of death roaming these hills is one of our own. It may not have been Brother Turley, but odds are, when we pull that mask off, it’s gonna reveal a familiar face.
Xan and I stand there for a few seconds. It’s awkward saying goodbye to someone you’ve barely learned how to say hello to.
“Goodnight, Dove the not-witch,” Xan finally tells me. “I’ll see you tomorrow.”
“I’ll see you tomorrow, Xan the not-ghost.”
He gives me a tiny smile before he pushes into the woods, and I start down the trail toward Lucifer’s Creek.
I’m getting close to town when I hear something moving through the brush off to one side. I stop, and the sounds stops too. But as soon as I start moving, it starts up again. Something is out there following me. Something big.
I pick up my pace a little. I can see the shop windows of Mud Street glowing at the end of the trail now, so I know I’m almost home.
Almost safe.
That’s when a shape steps out of the trees right in front of me . I scream and drop my flashlight. Something reaches for me, and I take a huge step back. But then I catch the reflection of moonlight on salt-and-pepper hair.
“Dovie? Is that you?”
“Daddy?” I bend down to grab my flashlight and shine it toward the shape that’s blocking the path. I see the beard that goes with the hair, so I know for sure it’s him. “What are you doing out here?”
“Walking,” he says. “I finally finished Ira’s Howler tonight. Needed to stretch my legs.”
“In the woods? In the dark?”
“Yeah,” he answers. “In the woods. In the dark. Same as you.” He clicks on his own flashlight and gives me a good looking-over. “Come on.” Daddy puts a hand on my shoulder and steers me down the trail toward town. “Let’s go home, Bird. It ain’t safe out here.”
“I’m not scared,” I tell him.
Daddy stops walking to pin me down with his eyes, and he squeezes my shoulder tight enough to make me wince. “Well, you should be,” he warns me, and he scans the shadowy woods beyond the reach of our flashlight beams. “Everyone in Lucifer’s Creek should be afraid of the dark.”