Chapter 19
“Our company’s vision has always been to bring safety and security to our world in the wake of a supernatural surge, and today, we stand as a beacon of progress in our industry.
By taking on the responsibility of managing and mitigating the impact of these creatures, we have reaffirmed our commitment to the communities we serve. ”
Company Memo from Drew Harlowe, Entity CEO
The road to Mercyhill was well-paved, with clear signage and mile markers along the road.
About an hour in, however, the pavement began to run out.
Fractured concrete turned to gravel, and Alexys’s cell phone lost signal completely.
The radio bounced between whatever stations she could find that weren’t full of static until she finally found one that could withstand the winding mountain passes.
The melody of guitars and harmonicas filled the car.
The sun had just crested over the mountains and lit the world in brilliant shades of marigold.
Giant cedar trees towered overhead, and there wasn’t another car on the road for miles.
She felt like she was on an endless concrete serpent cutting through an ocean of greens.
Alexys wanted to take in the scenery as much as she could, she’d never been this deep in the Appalachians, and her focus was firmly divided between the winding road and the printed maps.
The mountains were a deadly kind of beautiful.
Alexys had been lucky to get the rental car, since the reservation was under Nic’s name.
But she explained the mix-up and offered up her sweetest, most Southern smile, and the man happily obliged.
Dyre would be furious when he found out.
Fortunately, he’d not catch up to her now, and they were fresh out of rentals today.
Mercyhill was the sort of town where there was more gravy than biscuits, more cows than people, and more broken taillights than working stoplights.
Alexys wasn’t even sure it fully qualified as a town considering she almost drove right through it, twice, without noticing.
There was a gas station with a singular gas pump, a convenience store that more closely resembled a shed, and a church that could probably seat a hundred people if it tried its best.
When Natalie joked about the town having a population of 50 (if that!), she might not have been too far off.
Alexys had to admit that she did feel bad for abandoning Nic. But the idea came to her in the moment, and she reminded herself of how he’d basically led Elliot on the hunt for the Hollow Walker and crashed her trip.
It softened the blow a bit.
A few missed calls and ignored texts later, Alexys was certain he’d be headed back to HQ. He couldn’t very well traverse after her on foot, could he? And now he’d lost too much time. Time, that for Elliot, was far too precious.
Everything she needed was in her backpack.
Alexys had a map of Mercyhill, all of the case notes, and far more personal experience with Elliot than Nic could ever hope to have.
She didn’t need him. It was probably misguided hubris, but she felt pleasantly optimistic as she pulled into the town’s only convenience store.
This whole town had proven to be a total cellular dead zone, so her best bet for finding Elliot was going to be the old-fashioned way: ask everyone and anyone if they’d seen a lanky guy hunting monsters.
A small bell chimed over the door as she walked it, and the smell of wax candles, cigars, and freshly carved wood immediately filled her nose.
The shop was a cramped maze of fresh produce and shelves of knick-knacks.
The ammo placed next to the milk fridge gave her pause, but not nearly as much as the concerningly large selection of rat poison.
By the time she made it to the counter, Alexys had almost forgot what she came for.
She felt some strange compulsion to buy some rat poison just to fit in.
The cashier greeted her with a crooked smile surrounded by freckles. His faded nametag read Bo. “Afternoon, ma’am. Can I help ya find anything?”
Alexys returned his smile. “Actually, Bo,” she said, “I was hoping you might help me find a friend of mine.”
His smile faded a bit. “Not too many folk up this way, but I can do my best.”
“His name’s Elliot.” The immediate look of recognition on his face filled Alexys with hope. Thank God I haven’t driven two hours for nothing, she thought. “He was supposed to meet me yesterday, but it turns out he came up this way early. Did you speak to him? Any idea where he might have gone?”
“Yes, ma’am, that’s an easy one.” There was a bit of laughter in his voice. “He was askin’ all kinds of odd questions,” he added. “Asked about any granny witches up the holler.”
Her jaw dropped open at Elliot’s lack of tact, but Alexys immediately shut it. He’d certainly left an impression everywhere he’d been.
Entity didn’t place too much emphasis on secrecy, but they were still supposed to conduct themselves with some level of discretion.
The question about granny witches was so out of left field that she couldn’t begin to guess how it connected to the Hollow Walker.
The little voice in the back of her mind suggested Nic would have been able to make the connection, but she silenced it.
“I told him the only one we got is Nanny Opal up in Mossen Holler.” Bo shrugged like this was the most normal piece of information to share, and that granny witches were a staple in all Southern towns. “She doesn’t like outsiders very much, but he seemed like an alright sort.”
“How long ago was that?” Alexys pulled out her notepad to jot everything down.
She confirmed that Bo was actually talking about Mossen Hollow before writing it down, and she patted herself on the back for beginning to adapt to the local accents.
“And can you give me the same directions you gave him?”
“It was just the other mornin’, ma’am. Pure early for someone new to show up, so it really started my day off with a fun story for everyone else that stopped in.” He stepped out from behind the counter and led her through the store. “It’s pure easy to get to Nanny Opal’s place from here.”
He pointed down the road out of town and said, “Alls you do is head down that road there until it turns to dirt, then you take a left up the holler toward Old Man Tom’s trailer.
It’s the rusty blue one with the bridge out front.
Once you see that, you hang a right up Mossen Holler, and she’s the last house at the end of the road. If you hit the lake, you went too far.”
Alexys was writing down his instructions, but her brows rose higher and higher as he spoke until she finally quit writing altogether and stared at him. How in the hell was she supposed to know Old Man Tom? And that was supposed to be “real easy?”
“Is that exactly what you told Elliot?” she asked.
“Oh sure,” Bo said, clearly not hearing the sharp bite of incredulity in her voice. His smile was light-hearted, his freckled cheeks dimpled. “Those are the best I can give you since there’s no real street signs or fancy things like that up thataway.”
Of course there weren’t.
Silently cursing her luck, Alexys wrote down the rest of his directions and had him double-check that she got everything right.
Out of the kindness of his heart, Bo even drew her a map that looked just as confusing as the directions it came with and not nearly as helpful as the ones that had gotten her to Mercyhill.
After thanking Bo for his time and buying a few necessities for the trip, Alexys got back into her car and sighed.
If Elliot drove up into the mountains with nothing but his optimism and Bo’s instructions, he was most definitely lost. The guy could barely remember how to email her documents let alone find a witch’s house in the Appalachian wilderness.
He probably didn’t even know how to function without his phone GPS.
Not that Alexys was much better. She was already stressed by the promise of following such vague directions to some mountain witch’s home. The trip was beginning to feel like a messed-up retelling of Hansel and Gretel, and she didn’t have nearly enough breadcrumbs.