Chapter 3
CHAPTER 3
CALLIOPE
My sudden panic in the woods doesn’t keep me from going back out there. At the time, my skin prickled with the sensation of being watched, but by the time I made it back to the safety of my cabin, my thoughts were more rational. It was probably just an animal. The forest isn’t quiet, I know that. My anxiety got the best of me again, that’s all. The memory of calling out like my imagined serial killer in the woods might reply makes me roll my eyes at myself.
Other than that one moment, it’s been a great week. Making so many types of donuts for Lucky’s Diner turns out to be more complicated than I expected but after my third shift ends on Saturday morning, I think I have the hang of everything. The recipes are always there if I need them, but I’ve learned sticking to the schedule that Silver showed me is most important. That way a lot of other work can be done while certain doughs are proofing, and no time is wasted.
The diner closes at nine—the same time my shift starts—so there are no customers, but the grill cook, Gary, stays until eleven to help close up. They have a young guy, Ethan, who comes in when he leaves. He’s responsible for prepping all the produce, making sandwiches for premade box lunches, refilling, restocking, and some nighttime cleaning.
Working alongside Silver and sometimes Misty—who I’ll be filling in for occasionally since she’s juggling a job and being a single mom to a newborn—is enjoyable. A speaker sits on one of the shelves and we take turns choosing the music. With the restaurant empty, it’s a very laidback atmosphere no matter who else is working at the time. Mona and Silver are both happy to have me stay on, and I’m added to the schedule for the next week.
I may still look for a volunteer opportunity since the job is only three nights a week, but for now, I’m happy to spend my time exploring the woods, catching up on books I’ve been meaning to read, and discovering some new hobbies.
Being in the woods has made me eager to learn more about the nature around me. I want to know the names of the trees and which birds are singing so beautifully every day.
Sunday turns out to be rainy, and rather than stay indoors, I drive to a big home improvement store in the next town to buy some bird feeders. It took a little research for me to learn exactly what kind of bird seed to get and which feeders work with the different types, but they had a huge selection to choose from. I’m lured in by a pretty birdbath made of sea glass that must go home with me, along with a couple of lawn chairs, and a small portable firepit.
It's pouring down and lightning streaks across the sky when I get home so everything gets left in the car while I make a mad dash for the house. I roll a joint, grab myself a glass of iced tea, and sit out on the porch.
I’m surprised to find a voicemail on my phone from the private investigator I hired a few weeks ago. I didn’t expect to hear from him on a weekend, but maybe PI’s don’t keep business hours. It’s not a field I’m very familiar with. I wish I didn’t have to be now.
Dread fills my chest while I stare at the screen. Less than a minute duration. It must not be big news. Probably just a request to call back. If I don’t check it now, I’ll think about it all night. My finger trembles a little as I press play.
“Ms. Barnes, I just wanted to let you know that I received your payment, and my partner has started looking into your missing person’s case. It may take a few weeks for us to have an update, but you’re welcome to check in with us any time or contact me if you remember any further information that may help. Thank you.”
No news but not bad news is a relief. With a sigh, I light the joint and sit back in my chair.
The storm has passed, leaving a steady rain in its wake. It’s a lovely sound. Drawing the smoke into my lungs, I relax, letting the feeling wash over me while darkness paints the landscape. A vague memory surfaces of how my dad used to refer to the pitch dark as country dark. At the time, I didn’t think anything about it, but it makes sense now. Especially with the cloud cover and no moon.
The rain lets up about an hour later, and mosquitos start to recognize me as an all you can eat buffet. As I get up to go inside, a light catches my eye across the driveway. Arlow stands in the open doorway of his barn, the backlight displaying him as a long shadow. He leans against one side, and I wonder what he’s doing.
That familiar eerie feeling of being watched creeps in again. Is he watching me while I look at him? Surely not. It’s too dark over here for him to even make out that a person is on the porch, isn’t it? I couldn’t see him if it weren’t for the light coming from inside the barn.
A snorting laugh leaps out of me when I realize if anyone should feel watched right now, it’s him. It’s time to take my high ass to bed.
I fall into a satisfying routine over the next week. My bird feeders are all set up and filled. It only takes a day for the birds to locate it, and my mornings—or afternoons if I worked the night before—are spent watching them while I have coffee on my back deck. After running any errands that need to be done, I hike down the trail again.
My time in the woods has become my favorite part of the day. Sometimes I take a book or a notebook to journal. Sometimes I sit and watch the water flow past, or hunt for pretty rocks while I listen to the birds. I’m sure my routine would bore the hell out of some people, but I’m loving every second of the peaceful lazy days.
In the evenings, I read, listen to music, and sometimes take a walk along the road while it’s still light out. From the road, the graveyard doesn’t seem as scary during the daylight, but the charred remains of the church that’s visible through the tree line has an ominous feel. Only a few feet of two walls stand, intersecting, a black scar against the blue background of the sky.
I’m not interested in walking down the road today. I’ve had the urge to bake lately and with all those fresh peaches available, a cobbler sounds like just the thing. I have to work tonight, so there isn’t time to bake right now, but I can go get the peaches and make it tomorrow.
Usually, my walks in the woods are leisurely, but this time my strides are quick and purposeful. It doesn’t take me long to follow the trail back to the bridge and over into the orchard. The edginess I’ve been feeling fades. The calming influence of the woods is in full effect. Wandering through the trees, I pause here and there to pick the healthiest looking fruit, humming a song that’s been stuck in my head.
My hand is halfway to plucking another when I catch a slight movement out of the corner of my eye. Expecting to see a branch bobbing in the wind or maybe a bird, I glance over. It takes me half a second to register the tall looming figure, and my entire body jerks like I stepped on a live wire.
A man steps out from under the tree.
Instead of the scream that almost made it up my throat, his name escapes in a whisper. “Arlow.” It must’ve been audible because his eyes widen on a blink. “Silver told me your name,” I explain quickly. “She’s the owner of the cabin. I’m living there. Renting it. Just for a year.” I’m rambling while he stares at me like I’m an unfamiliar bug. It would be intimidating even if he wasn’t towering over me like a skyscraper. “I’m Calliope Barnes…um…Calli.”
“I didn’t mean to scare you.” His voice is soft and deep, almost rattly, but I’m so struck by his appearance when he steps into the sunlight, I barely register the sound of it.
Silver said he had a unique look, and he does look different. He has the most interesting face with an angular quality that sharpens his jaw and chin. His dark scruff and moustache are segmented by a pure white stripe that dyes a streak through both.
“You didn’t scare me.” Hardly believable considering my shaky voice. “I was just…getting some peaches.”
Another step toward him lets me study his face, despite my fear. It’s not the first time I’ve seen vitiligo, but on his tanned skin, it’s stunning. His right eye is ringed with white, and ivory lashes flutter together like delicate feathers when he blinks. Another patch of pale skin arcs over his left eye. It continues down to draw a white line in the hair of his eyebrow, cutting through it diagonally. His dark lashes on that side are interspersed with a few snowy hairs as well. His impressive height, broad shoulders, lean build, and long limbs add to his unconventional combination of characteristics.
Gorgeous . That’s the word that whispers in my head at the sight of him. “What are you doing out here?” I ask. It comes out sounding accusatory, but he startled me and attractive or not, this is the same man who spends his nights in a graveyard.
“Catching a fruit poacher, apparently.” His tone isn’t cold, but his words drop ice into my stomach.
Didn’t Silver say a fence marked the boundaries? Or was that only on one side? “This is your orchard?” I put a few more feet of space between us until something soft underfoot makes me stumble. A sickly sweet smell fills the air, and scraps stick to my shoe when I lift my foot off a rotting peach.
He nods and the corner of his mouth twitches up into an almost grin.
“Shit! I’m sorry. Silver didn’t mention an orchard and I should’ve known to ask before I assumed…I didn’t know I crossed onto your property.” The sun is setting fast, and my anxiety ramps up. I’m alone in the woods with a man who just caught me trespassing and stealing.
“It’s all right,” he begins, in the same soft tone, but I’m already dumping my bag of peaches out and backing away. “You don’t have to do that.”
“Sorry,” I repeat. “It won’t happen again.” Whatever he says is lost in the wind over my ears as I turn and run back to the path. With legs as long as his, I have no chance of outrunning him if he pursues me. I’m back across the footbridge and onto what I hope is my side of the property before I look back. Nothing waits behind me but the darkening forest.
There’s no sign of him when I come out of the trail behind my cabin. Of course there isn’t. Because he wasn’t some psycho chasing me through the woods, to what? Murder me for taking his peaches? The surprise on his face when I dumped them out, he must think I’m an idiot. Whatever, I won’t be going back onto his property.
I’m lost in my thoughts as I cross my yard, but the sight of my cabin jerks me back to reality and stops me in my tracks.
The front door stands open. Wide open.
From my vantage point in my front yard, I can see it move slightly, opening wider. I’m frozen in place, my blood racing through my veins. Someone is in my cabin. Fumbling my phone from my pocket, I grip it tightly, ready to call the police. There’s no one visible in the doorway and as I watch, the wind picks up, and the door swings all the way back, bumping the wall.
Did I forget to lock the door and the wind blew it open? It’s hard to think back to whether I turned the lock when my heart is beating in my ears. If that’s what happened, I don’t want to call for help. I haven’t had to deal with police here but my experience with cops in the past tells me they’re likely to be annoyed and not take any future calls from me seriously if it’s a false alarm. I couldn’t get them to believe me when I really was in danger before.
A slow scan of my surroundings doesn’t reveal anything. No strange cars or anyone in sight. In any other situation, I’d probably ask a neighbor to investigate with me, or to at least keep an eye and make sure nothing happens. Somehow, grabbing creepy graveyard guy minutes after getting caught stealing his peaches doesn’t sound like a good idea. Either I go in by myself or call for help.
Evening shadows begin to flow across the ground. If I’m going to do this, it needs to be now, before dark. There’s a knife and pepper spray in my car. Keeping an eye on the cabin door, I retrieve them from the glove box. I’m not going in totally alone if I can help it. I send a quick text to Silver.
Me
Are you busy? Can I call for a second?
Silver and I are becoming friends, but I haven’t had a reason to call her in the two weeks I’ve been living here. Instead of texting back, she calls within a few seconds.
“Hey, is everything okay?”
“Yeah, I mean…I think so. This is going to sound weird, but I was out in the woods and when I came back my front door was open. It doesn’t look like anyone is around. I think I may have left it unlocked and the wind blew it open. But would you mind staying on the phone with me while I go in and look around, just in case?”
A moment of silence greets me before she replies. “Are you sure you should do that? You can call the cops and have them check it out. Or I can ask Gary or one of the guys to come.”
“No, don’t bother anyone. It’s probably fine. I just thought I’d be extra safe.”
“All right, yeah, but put me on speaker and if I hear anything, I’m calling for help, you crazy ass. Do you have a gun on you?”
“You’re on speaker, and I don’t own a gun. I have a knife and pepper spray.”
“Well if anyone is there, cut and season their ass before asking any questions, you hear me?”
“Absolutely. Okay, I’m going inside.” My demeanor might be confident, but my entire body trembles. Small hesitant steps carry me across the yard.
“Do you see anyone inside?” Silver asks in a hushed voice.
“I just made it to the porch.”
“Well, come on, the suspense is awful.”
Giggles seize me despite my fear. “I’m going.” The door is still open as far as possible, and I pull it toward me a tiny bit so I can peek through the crack between the hinges. Nobody is waiting behind it to grab me.
My living room is empty, and I can see into the kitchen as well. “So far so good. My TV is here, and my laptop is sitting on the coffee table. I don’t think I’ve been robbed. I’m going to check the other rooms.”
“Stay ready just in case,” she warns.
I’m grateful I left my shower curtain open and don’t have to suffer that terrifying moment of whipping it aside hoping not to see an axe murderer. It only takes a peek into my little bathroom to see it’s not occupied.
One more room to go. My bedroom door is open. Everything appears to be how I left it and I start to relax a little.
“Nobody in the bathroom or bedroom, but I’m going to check under the bed and the closet.” My closet door is ajar. Keeping a clear path between me and the bedroom door, I reach, yank it open, and jump back like a lion might be waiting to pounce on me. Nothing but my clothes and boxes.
Retreating back, I bend down on one knee to look under the bed. “Oh shit.”
“What? What happened?” Silver cries.
“There’s a huge spider under my bed.”
“Bitch, are you trying to give me a heart attack?”
“I’m sorry.” Relieved laughter pours out of me. “There’s no one here. And it doesn’t look like anything is missing.”
“Thank goodness. I can’t believe you went in. I’m over here about to pee myself on your behalf.”
“Everything’s fine. Sorry I had to drag you into it, but I didn’t know who else to call.”
“Don’t be silly. You can call me anytime. We’re friends. Just don’t tell my mom I let you go in alone or we’ll never hear the end of it. And get yourself a gun, for fuck’s sake.” Someone calls her name in the background, and she adds, “I have to go.”
“See you at work. Thanks girl.”
Once we hang up, the silence around me feels thick, probably because my adrenaline is still high. An inspection of the front door shows me the latch doesn’t catch well. If it’s unlocked, you barely have to press on it to swing it open.
Finally, I relax. I’m confident it was only the wind because who breaks into a place, doesn’t take anything or touch anything? I’m glad I didn’t call the police and I’m grateful for Silver because today would’ve been far more terrifying without her. It’s good to know I have a friend here.
I’m not due at work for another hour, but I’m too keyed up to sit here. The urge to look over at Arlow’s is too strong to resist as I get into my car, but there’s no one in sight.
A stop at the grocery store for some fruit and other cobbler ingredients kills some time before work. The peaches don’t look nearly as appetizing as the fresh ones so apples will have to do.
Silver is filling in for Misty who was supposed to work tonight and I’m glad to have her company. “Everything still cool?” she asks, dropping her voice a little too late as her mother walks by. It takes me a second to realize she’s asking about my cabin door being open. The second time I had the life scared out of me in the last few hours.
Mona glances over at us in time to see me nod. Before she can question what we’re talking about, I ask her, “Do you know where the property line runs between the cabin and the neighbor beside the graveyard? Like once you get back to the creek?”
“There aren’t any markers out there as far as I know, but the little bridge is his and everything to the west of it.” She looks at me over her glasses. “Has he been behind your place? If he’s giving you trouble…” Her expression finishes the implied threat and brings a smile to my face. This woman takes no shit.
“No, if anyone has a complaint, it’s him. I wandered into his peach orchard and sort of helped myself.”
“I definitely don’t own an orchard,” Mona says with a chuckle, pulling out her phone.
“In my defense, the trees were nearly bursting with fruit, some of it rotting, and the grass was long. I thought it was abandoned to grow wild.”
“He probably won’t notice any missing then,” Silver says, emptying a mixer.
“Catching me in his orchard with a bag full to make a cobbler may have given me away.”
Both of them stop what they’re doing to stare at me. “Was he angry?” Silver asks.
“No. He said it was all right.”
“So, you met him?”
“If throwing the peaches at his feet and running off counts as meeting, then yes.” Laughter fills the fragrant kitchen. “I panicked! It was getting dark, and he stepped out of the woods like Slenderman. I almost peed myself.”
“Sounds like something you’d do,” Mona says, glancing at her daughter.
“You wouldn’t catch me out in the forest alone anywhere near dark.”
It worries me that my words sounded mean. “I’m not insulting him. He’s not bad looking or scary, really, but it was like he appeared out of the trees.”
Silver passes me the shaker of sugar and cinnamon when I gesture toward it. “I wonder if that’s why he keeps to himself. Because he freaks people out. The skin condition that affects his face probably doesn’t help.”
“Vitiligo. It’s just an absence of pigmentation in areas. One of my childhood friends had spots on her hands and a beautiful white streak through her hair.”
“One of my cousins was born with a white patch in the front of her dark hair. Her kids were born with it too, right in the same spot,” Mona says. “I was jealous of it as a kid. I wanted to bleach mine to match.”
“I know Mamaw was not having that,” Silver snorts, and the conversation steers away from my mysterious, graveyard dwelling neighbor.
The night of hanging out and laughing with Silver helps me shake off all the remaining uneasiness of the past day. By the time I clock out, I’m looking forward to getting some sleep then doing some baking.
Driving the winding road to my cabin at night is still something I’m getting used to. At four a.m. the darkness swallows my car, narrowing the world to a few feet of pavement. The trees cast distorted shadows in the thin moonlight, as if they’re bending over to watch the road beneath them. It’s not frightening, but it feels a little claustrophobic, like going through a tunnel.
My headlights illuminate something sitting on the porch when I park in front of my cabin. Is that a cooler? I learned quickly not to leave the porch light on unless I want to fight through bugs so big they could carry me off, not to mention a thousand moths.
Instead, I use my phone’s flashlight to investigate. Why is there a cooler on my porch?
A glance around reveals nothing but the distant light in one of Arlow’s windows. Did he leave this here? Oh god, what if it’s grave robbed body parts? Or some kind of serial killer offering? The thought raises the hair on my nape. My instinct is to leave it and get my ass in the house until it’s light out, but my curiosity won’t let me.
My hand trembles a tiny bit as I unlatch the lid and throw it open.
It’s full of peaches.
The giggle I let out sounds loud in the pre-dawn silence. I’m so ridiculous. I really need to cut down on watching crime documentaries. A note sits on top of the peaches, and after dragging the cooler inside, I unfold it.
I apologize if I scared you. You’re welcome to explore and loot my peach trees.
-Arlow
Well, now I feel like an asshole.
Stripping off my clothes to shower, I consider making him a pie or cobbler in return while I’m baking today. It’d be a nice thing to do. To say thank you and I’m sorry for running away like you intended to use my skin to make a lampshade.
I typically enjoy the sunrise with a cup of tea on my porch after work, but today my eyes are struggling to stay open so it’s time to go to bed. The sky is beginning to lighten in the east by the time I’m curled up under my covers.
The last thing that flashes through my mind is Arlow’s face. Those feathery white lashes.