Blood Creek Witch Read online

She tilted her head back, eyebrows raised to an exaggerated height. “Why? Are you doin’ something behind my back that ought to embarrass me? If you are, you’ll have to try harder, because the only soul in this room who is paying me any mind at all is you.”

  He shook his head emphatically, and grinned in spite of himself. “I’ve just never danced before.”

  “You’re doing better than them. They ain’t … they aren’t even trying.”

  After two more songs, they introduced themselves, sat down, and talked. Then they danced some more. Then talked some more.

  Debbie explained she’d spent the last year in a tiny town called Davidson, but originally, she came from an even tinier one called “Blood Creek.”

  “What’s in Blood Creek?” he asked.

  “Nothing,” she answered. “I got relatives there, but that’s Blood Creek for you. Everyone there is related to everyone else if you go back three or four generations.”

  “That sounds, um, cozy.”

  “It ain’t. Isn’t. Sorry.”

  “Don’t apologize.”

  “I’m not apologizing to you. I’m apologizing to myself. Folks won’t take you seriously if you sound like a hillbilly. I intend to become a nurse. So I’m working on my accent.”

  “That sounds fantastic. I think you’d make a great nurse.”

  “How do you know? You just met me!”

  He smiled and shrugged, thinking fast. “You sound like you have a great bedside manner.”

  She smiled back. “I been… I’ve been… studying while I went to community college and working to save money for school. So what about you, Sean? You said you were a senior, but you are only eighteen?”

  “I graduated from high school early.”

  “You must be really smart.”

  “Just really desperate to get out of the house. My home life sucked.”

  “But you are graduating from college early, too? What are you going to do next?”

  “I don’t know.”

  She narrowed her eyes, as if trying to read his forehead. “Why are you in such a hurry to graduate if you don’t know what you are going to do after this?”

  “Inertia, maybe.”

  The music picked up, and they danced some more. Near midnight, Debbie said she had to leave. Sean volunteered to walk her home, but she politely turned him down. “I live off-campus with my aunt. She’s coming to pick me up.” Debbie looked off in the distance, and her shoulders slumped. She turned back to Sean. “Would you mind waiting with me down by the parking lot? It won’t be but a few more minutes.”

  “Sure. I mean, no, I wouldn’t mind.” They walked together down to the curb.

  She’d grown quiet on their way down. Expecting her to leave at any moment, Sean gathered his courage and asked, “Can I call you?”

  She nodded. “I’d like that. Do you have a pen?”

  He produced one. She wrote on the palm of his hand. “I think this is the number,” she said. “I just got moved in last week. So easy to forget.” She looked at him guiltily.

  “You don’t have your own cell?”

  She hesitated, then said, “Oh, yeah, them… those personal phones? Yeah, we didn’t have them at Blood Creek. It’s really out in the sticks. I told you, I’m a hillbilly.”

  “No reception there?”

  “No. We…” She glanced over her shoulder at the busy parking lot. “Oh, my aunt’s here! Call me!” She kissed him on the cheek. As she walked away, she said, “Find me.”

  He wanted to say something cool, or witty, or even functional, but it came out, “Sure, call, bye, nice…” She was already gone, and he hadn’t even seen which car she got into. He concentrated on the numbers written on his palm. His sweat threatened to turn them into smudgy blotches. He copied the number into his phone’s directory while it was still mostly legible, but he wasn’t sure he’d read all the numbers right.

  He called the next day, but the number belonged to a nail salon. He couldn’t remember Debbie’s last name. He spent weeks obsessively looking for her, even lurking in freshman Biology classes and the Health Science Center to see if he could find her. He knew he should just chalk it up to a missed opportunity and move on, but he’d always been embarrassed about his age and hadn’t really hit it off with anyone before, especially not with a girl as attractive as Debbie.

  He was smitten, but Debbie had disappeared.

  He finally found her again at another on-campus party on Halloween night. Sean hadn’t worn a costume. Debbie had drawn cat-whiskers on her face and had blackened the tip of her nose. Homemade cloth cat-ears poked out from her hair ribbon. Their eyes met, and she immediately beamed at him and waved. They met along an unoccupied stretch of wall, where Sean started apologizing.

  “I tried to call you, and look for you. I’m so sorry. I must have put your number in my phone wrong and—”

  She stopped him by holding her finger against his lips. “It’s okay. I might have given you the wrong number. I’m an idiot.”

  “Then I couldn’t remember your last name. I’m the idiot.”

  “Arnot.”

  “Yes, I am.”

  She stared at him with a confused expression, and then laughed. “That stupid joke. No, that’s my last name. Debra Ann Arnot.”

  He felt himself blush. “I’ll never forget it, now.”

  “You’d better not. Are you here with anyone?”

  “No. You?”

  She shrugged. “Sure, I can be here with you.”

  They stayed together the rest of the party. Later in the evening, Blake spotted them, and wobbled over with a beer in his hand. “Hey Sean. Nice,” he said while staring at Debbie’s chest. “Is this that girl you been obsessin’ over all semester? You’re right. She really is hot.” The alcohol gave Blake even less tact than normal.

  Debbie’s expression grew cold, almost fearful. Sean stepped forward between the two, clapping his roommate on the shoulder. “Okay, Blake, this is Debbie. Debbie, this is my jerk of a roommate, Blake. He’ll apologize when he’s sober. Right Blake?”

  “Huh? Oh, yeah, sure. For what?”

  “Bye, Blake!”

  “Wait a second, man! I wanna get a picture! You want proof that you aren’t a loser, right?” Blake held up his phone, but seemed to have trouble remembering how to work the camera.

  Debbie’s expression thawed enough to smile. Sean put his arm around her waist, and her smile brightened. Sean still wore a goofy, pleased grin when he turned toward Blake and the light flashed.

  Blake studied the screen for a moment and raised his fist in the air. “Hah-hah! You guys look cute. You two get lucky tonight, okay?” He waved, turned, and took several tries to put his phone back into his pocket.

  Sean kept his arm around Debbie’s waist, and led her outside where they joined several other couples escaping the noise and crowds inside the Lair. The air was crisp, but not yet cold, as they stood on the steps overlooking the green. “I’m sorry about that. Blake’s actually an okay guy until he gets a couple of beers in him.”

  She nodded. “I’ll be fine.”

  Sean shook his head. “Actually, I’m lying. He’s kind of a douche all of the time. The beers just accentuate that part of his personality.”

  She grinned, and then cocked her head to the side. “Have you really been obsessing over me all semester?”

  “I went a little crazy trying to find you.”

  “That’s the sweetest thing anyone’s ever done for me.”

  She tugged at his jacket and tilted her head up. He leaned forward, but he didn’t know what to do next. Then they were kissing. Sean didn’t quite know where to put his nose, or if he was expected to do anything else. Then he didn’t care. When she pulled away, Debbie giggled.

  Sean covered his mouth self-consciously. “I’m sorry, did I do it wrong?”

  Debbie laughed even louder. “No, I’m sorry. You’ve got a black streak on your cheek from my makeup.”

  Sean laughed, too. “It’s ok
ay. I needed a costume anyway.”

  They kissed again. She shivered, and Sean gave her his jacket. This time, he walked her home. They talked the whole way, and Sean didn’t mind that the temperature had turned chilly. When she took his hand, he felt warm all over.

  As they reached her street, she stopped and turned to him. “Sean, I want you to know this was one of the best nights I’ve ever had.”

  “Me, too. I’m so glad I found you again. You are like no one I’ve ever met.”

  She sniffed. The welling liquid in her deep brown eyes reflected the streetlights.

  “Hey, what’s wrong, Debbie?”

  She shook her head, wiping an eye. “Nothing. I’m happy. I want you to know that right now, I’m happy.”

  “I don’t understand.”

  “You will. I have to say goodnight here, though.”

  “Why? You don’t want me to see your house?”

  “Not tonight. It’s a bad night.” She stared past him, down the street. “It’s always a bad night. Come by during the day.” She began to take off his jacket.

  He shook his head. “No, keep it. It’ll give me an excuse to visit tomorrow and pick it up.”

  Her eyes twinkled, and she kissed him one more time. “Okay. My aunt’s house is number 1321. Find me. Promise!”

  “You’d better believe it!”

  She smiled one last time, wiped her eyes, and then hurried away. Sean walked home. He was cold, but happier than he ever remembered being. He hardly slept, replaying every bit of their conversation in his head.

  The next day, he visited 1321 Sycamore Street. The address belonged to a drug store. Inexplicably, the manager had found Sean’s jacket folded on the counter that morning. He told Sean the commercial buildings had gone up in the 1990s, so if there’d ever been a house numbered 1321, it had been torn down decades ago. Nobody there had heard of a Debra Ann Arnot.

  Back at the apartment, Blake was still hung over from the party. He managed a bleary-eyed smile when Sean walked in. “Dude, are you just getting in?” he asked. “Did you get lucky with that hot cat-girl?”

  Sean stared at him. “Do you remember her?”

  “I don’t remember too much, but yeah, I remember her. Did I take her picture?” He fished out his phone and fiddled with it for a minute, then showed Sean the photograph. It was blurry, but it was real.

  Armed with her full name and her picture from Blake’s phone, Sean scoured the Internet for Debbie. Arnot was a popular name in West Virginia, but there weren’t many Debras, Debbies, or Deborahs by that name. As far as he could tell, Blood Creek didn’t exist. He couldn’t find out much about Davidson, either. Had it all been a lie? He gave up a dozen times, only to return a few minutes later with another idea of how to search for her.

  By late afternoon, he found her. The black-and-white scanned newspaper image showed a fuzzy picture of Debbie in a floral skirt and white blouse, exactly as he’d seen her at the back-to-school party. The accompanying article described how eighteen-year-old Debra Ann Arnot had been murdered by drunken local men on Halloween night, in 1974. Every once in a while, the story continued, her ghost could be seen wandering the streets or university campus in Morgantown, West Virginia, especially on Halloween night.

  He'd fallen in love with a girl who had been dead long before he had been born.

  Hattie Rose was four years older than Jenny’s mother, and stood exactly Jenny’s height. Not much red remained in her shoulder-length hair, and her sun-soaked skin was darker and more weathered than Patricia’s pale complexion. However, Jenny couldn’t deny the family resemblance. Under normal circumstances, she’d have been overjoyed to finally meet a relative.

  Instead, it all came out in tears when Hattie arrived. Hattie comforted her, made the arrangements for the funeral, helped Jenny sort through their things, and handled legal arrangements. Above all, she was strong for Jenny.

  For a few days, Jenny almost resented her aunt—a stranger calmly taking care of her parents’ business. Then late one night, Jenny went to bed early, but she was unable to sleep. She heard her aunt’s muffled sobs as Hattie went through Jenny’s parent’s things in the next room. Jenny felt infinitely closer to her aunt, but afterwards couldn’t bring herself to share as much of her pain with Hattie for fear of increasing her aunt’s burden.

  Few guests came to the funeral. Jenny hardly knew anyone to invite. Patricia and James Morgan had lived their lives the way they had taught Jenny: inconspicuously and unnoticed.

  Jenny received her wish to stay in Naperville until the end of the school year, but felt wracked with guilt over it. Hattie filled out the paperwork to become her legal guardian, and they lived in her family’s apartment for six weeks. Jenny never answered Eric’s texts. She never returned to her jiu jitsu class. She never told anyone at school what had happened, but somehow word got around. Where she’d once been ignored by everyone, she was now the subject of stares and whispers, or worse, a sudden politeness. She wasn’t invisible anymore.

  She finished the school year on autopilot. She offered little opinion on what they should save, sell, or store of her parents’ things. They packed the remnants of Jenny’s life into the back of Hattie’s pickup truck, and on the morning after the last day of school they began the long drive to Maple Bend, West Virginia.

  They drove almost non-stop and arrived late that night. Jenny snoozed through the latter part of the trip, and didn’t fully awaken until well after Hattie had left I-79, driving along an unlit road that didn’t seem wide enough for two full lanes. The summer sky blazed with stars, blotted out on either side by dark, low mountains.

  They stopped for gas and groceries at a place called, “Dyl’s Super Stop.” They were the only customers in the shop. A mounted flat-screen TV played The Late Show with Stephen Colbert, which the lone, overweight employee in his early 20s watched from behind a counter with bored indifference. Aside from a refrigerated section selling live fishing bait, there wasn’t much difference between this convenience store and any Jenny had visited in the Chicago area.

  After returning to the truck, they drove up switchback roads. The black woods all but engulfed them. Jenny clutched at her seatbelt as Hattie navigated through a tunnel of light created by the high-beams. The twisty journey over ancient, cracked pavement seemed to last half the night. The lighted windows of occasional houses winked on and off through the thick trees.

  Shortly after midnight, they arrived. Hattie shut off the engine, and the night filled with the sounds of insects.

  “Crickets?” Jenny asked. The chorus of insect sounds didn’t resemble the familiar little chirps she’d heard on summer nights in the suburbs.

  “Mostly, yep. Jessabelle tells me the cicadas are in season right now, so it might get pretty loud during the day.”

  They opened the doors and got out of the truck. “So what do cicadas sound like?” Jenny asked.

  Hattie scanned the darkness, and took a deep breath. “Not like crickets,” she answered. “Now, I apologize, I didn’t really have time to set up your bedroom, so it’s still part of a library.”

  Hattie’s home was a mobile home with a concrete porch and foundation. Hattie opened the door for Jenny, and even warmer air rolled out, carrying unfamiliar, faintly herbal smells. “There’s an AC unit in the window of your room. I’ll turn it on for you now so your room will be cool once we’re done moving stuff in.”

  This would be her home now. Jenny had learned to adapt as she was forced to move throughout her life. Until now, she’d always relocated to almost interchangeable suburban sprawls, filled with people who seemed, on the surface, just like her family. The haunted, alien backwoods of West Virginia left her grasping for anything familiar. It felt like a camping trip, deep in the mountains outside of the cell-phone coverage, where the nearest real grocery store required a terrifying trip through switchbacks.

  At least she had family. Getting back to anything resembling “normal” might be impossible, but she could adapt. Once she
settled down into the new situation, she could become part of the background. That was the one thing she could do well.

  The next day, Maple Bend had a funeral for one of its own. The deceased woman, Grace Alls, had only a few relatives outside of Maple Bend, but much of Maple Bend was related to her, or at least knew her.

  Jenny got ready as well. Hattie tilted her head to the side as Jenny came out in her Sunday dress. “You don’t need to go,” Hattie said. “You didn’t know Grace.”

  “Is it bad if I go with you?”

  “No, no, of course not.”

  “But a lot of people in town will be there.”

  Hattie nodded. Jenny couldn’t quite sort out her feelings. She could almost hear her mother’s voice telling her to be where the crowd was, and get lost in it. Mostly, she felt so lost within the town, within Hattie’s home, even within the library-turned-bedroom that she didn’t want to be left alone yet.

  Shortly before ten, they walked down to the church together. The heat of the day was already building. The cicadas, true to Hattie’s word, droned in a constant song, rising and falling with precise timing. Sweat began to trickle down Jenny’s back before they were halfway to the church, making her dread what kind of smell she might give off before getting there.

  The church was a large, but otherwise unassuming, white building along the only road into town, next door to a small house and a graveyard. One grave stood wide open, dark with freshly-dug earth. Only when they reached the steps to the church entrance could they hear the sound of an antique electric organ over the cicada drone.

  The old window-set air conditioners whirred and creaked, unable to keep up with the June swelter and all the body heat generated in the chapel. Some people in one of the back rows scooted over to give Jenny and her aunt a tight-fitting place to sit. Hattie sang the congregation’s warbling hymn from memory. Jenny sat in silence, hoping no one would notice her failure to join in the unfamiliar song. Fortunately, few paid her any attention.

  The hymn concluded, and the preacher gave a lengthy prayer that sounded more like a sermon to Jenny’s ears. After a staggered chorus of “amens,” the preacher began the eulogy for the deceased. His words faded in her mind, replaced by the memory of the eulogy at her parent’s funeral. One of her father’s coworkers delivered the address—someone she’d never met, but she’d heard his name mentioned around the dinner table a couple of times. The feeling was obviously mutual, as the man knew almost nothing about them. Words like, “Good neighbors,” “private,” and “seemed nice,” tore at her. Didn’t anyone else know that her mom’s love of Phil Collins’ music bordered on obsessive, or that her dad loved to play chess, and he always played it with her on Sunday nights after the dishes were done?