Chapter 33
SIX MONTHS LEFT
Home is a fickle thing for a demon child; it’s always changing.
A few months ago, we returned to Nashville for a show at the Opry. I’d been touring for most of the year, and I was looking forward to coming home to my city.
I remember driving through downtown with the window down, passing the Ryman. I’d been back many times, and it was the closest thing I had to a church.
But it’d been a few years since the final show there, when the Opry moved to the new complex out by the highway, and as I got closer, I saw the old theater looked abandoned. It was cracked and sagging with age, like a great uncle left to rot in a nursing home.
A deep wrong settled over me as we turned left onto Broadway, and I searched for something else to ground me.
The street had changed over the last few years, with many of the old honky-tonks replaced by adult bookstores and nightclubs where music wasn’t the main draw.
As I passed open doorways, I saw people with their heads down on bars and laid up in the booths like corpses.
The air smelled like dirty crotch and sewer sludge, and the light seemed to dim, the color filtering through a different lens.
Something had happened to Nashville. It was going bad at the root.
At the show that night, I shook off the dread and went out onstage like I always did—I can perform half dead with one eye closed if I have to. It was the Opry, after all. Even in the flashy new theater, it still felt like my church.
Usually when I play, my mind turns off, and whatever song I’m singing flows through me. But that night, right in the middle of my set, I heard a new song slowly crawl into my mind with a spider’s delicate steps. At first it was faint.
Then the music grew louder, the melody underneath it dissonant and unsettling. Then lyrics emerged, rising to the surface of the sound.
They told the story of a woman, and the many ways she might die.
Electricity streams through the microphone pressed to her lips, melting their red onto the metal and filling her insides with sparks.
A stage light drops from the ceiling, crushing her head in a single blow.
The song said these deaths weren’t chance. No “tragic accidents.” They had happened because he willed it so.
I stared out at the audience in terror. If I opened my mouth, I knew I would sing this new song. I could feel it threatening to come up and out like bile.
I noticed a streak of pure white amid the muted tones of the audience, slowly snaking its way from the back of the theater toward the stage. It crawled on its hands and knees.
As it got closer, I saw that it was not a person, but a white dog. That white dog with the bloodstained jaws from my dream. Or was it a dog? It was a dog, and not a dog.
I couldn’t breathe. I couldn’t get enough air. My hands and feet evaporated, then my arms, my legs, my head, and finally, my chest, with the tree at its center, pulsing with that terrible music.
Next thing I remember was waking up in a hospital bed. Hess and a man in a white coat hovered over me. The doctor said I’d likely collapsed from exhaustion and dehydration, but they were still running tests.
I was so relieved when he finally went away, and it was just Hess and me. I was so scared of what was coming. I needed her now.
I’d been trying to stay in motion the last few years, growing to mythic size and constantly traveling from place to place, so that he wouldn’t be able to catch me.
But I was never going to get away.
And I didn’t want to face it alone. I needed someone to understand what was really happening before it took over.
I said to Hess, “I have to tell you something.”
Hess scooted closer and took my hand. “What is it?”
“My birthday is coming up. I’m gonna be 33.”
She smiled and exhaled. “I know how old you are, Lou. Do you want to plan something special? Maybe a trip so you can relax? Anywhere you want to go.”
“No. Listen to me.”
“I am listening. It doesn’t have to be a trip. Whatever you want.”
“That’s not what I’m talking about. I’m turning 33.” I took a deep breath, steeling myself. “And I’m scared about the curse. I’m scared something is going to happen. I’ve got this terrible feeling—”
Hess patted my hand, cutting me off. “Oh, Lou. I didn’t know you still believed in all that. I know it must be hard after what happened with your mother. But you are not going to die. I promise you. Nothing bad is going to happen.”
“But I can hear it—”
She cut me off again.
“It’s just the exhaustion. The doctor said it himself.
What you need is a break. I’ll talk to the tour manager about suspending your dates until you get better.
I know you think you can just stay up for days on end and work yourself to the bone, but even you need rest, my love.
It’ll all be okay. I promise.” She kissed my knuckles and then laid them back down.
My heart sank.
I don’t know why I thought she’d believe me this time. Maybe because it wasn’t just a scary story anymore—it was real, and it was happening to me.
But I knew then that she wouldn’t be able to help me. This was beyond her, and it always would be.
We’d built this new reality together, this little life.
But I could feel them starting to separate.
Her in one world, me in another, the boundary like the edge of a storm: on one side, sunshine, on the other, billowing clouds and lightning thrashing through the air.
The low rumble of thunder telling stories of how I might die.
After the doc officially diagnosed me with exhaustion, they canceled the last stops on the tour. It really burned my britches for people to think that I couldn’t perform because I was too tired.
But I’m afraid to tell anyone else what is really happening. They might lock me up somewhere, and then I really wouldn’t be able to escape. I can’t trust anyone. Not anymore.
Lou has become a costume like Belle. When I have to, I put on a Lou who can sit in the living room with her family and not feel the presence of something dangerous in her periphery, waiting.
But with the tour canceled and me on doctor’s orders to relax, things are often still and quiet, and there is nothing to block out the voice. I spend most of my time in bed pretending to rest while I grit my teeth against the songs that continue to fill my head every night:
Someone leaves the stove on, and the house slowly fills with gas as we suffocate in our sleep.
An errant ember jumps from the fireplace and sets the floorboards on fire, spreading from fabric to wood until the entire house is engulfed in flames and we die in our beds, reduced to piles of ash.
I imagine them finding my wigs, somehow still intact and blazing platinum in the dark rubble—the only sign that Belle Powers ever walked the earth.
I have died a thousand times. My body feels each one, the damage piling up so that I feel more like a corpse and less like a person each day.
My night songs have always been a bit sideways. That’s what makes them night songs. It’s why I love ’em.
But these are something different. It feels like my mind has been tuned to a different station, like someone new has taken over the broadcast from that golden place.
I’ve never in my life wanted music to stop entering my mind. I’ve gone to great lengths to try to get it back when I’ve lost it.
But now, I wish it would stop. Because I know it’s him.
I always imagined he’d show up for me one day, and that’d be the end. One tragic accident I didn’t see coming, and whoosh, I’d be gone.
But it won’t be that easy.
Papa loved to preach about the devil in church, even more than he liked to talk about God. I remember him leering from the pulpit, warning us that the devil could take many forms. A serpent. A man. A lover.
Sometimes he was only a voice, whispering in your ear.
And other times, he could enter you. Take over your body and mind.
I can feel him now like a swarm of bugs, burrowing into my skin and gradually eating me from the inside out.
I won’t be taken by the curse. I will become it.
But I refuse to just sit here like some idjit standing on the train tracks, waiting for the train to hit them.
I have to do everything I can to stop it, no matter the cost. If not for me then for you, angel.
You and I will go back to the source, and I will lift this curse come hell or high water.
Rhea, that is my promise to you.