Blood Creek Witch Page 4

  Sean awoke in a sweat in the tiny hotel room. For a moment, his nightmare persisted, Debbie fleeing her faceless attackers. Her momentary shadow passed across the neon light, bleeding through the slats of the window blinds. Sean’s feelings of panic and powerlessness bled away as his consciousness reasserted itself.

  He fumbled for the light switch, and got up to get himself a drink of water to replace the gallons he’d surely sweat from the dream and the over-warm blankets. After consuming two clear plastic cups of faintly off-tasting tap water, he checked his phone. The glowing screen displayed the time—4:30 in the morning—and announced he’d received a text message from his stepsister and two voice messages from his father. He deleted his father’s messages without listening to them. He already knew what they said.

  “Sorry, Dad,” he said aloud to his face in the mirror. “I’m eighteen and graduated from college. I fulfilled grandpa’s requirements. I didn’t do it for the money. I didn’t do it for you. I did it to get away from you, and I’m not going back.”

  It sounded a lot more confident and grown-up in his head. But the voice he heard and the image of himself in the mirror were those of a kid. A geeky, gawky kid. Three days without shaving left him with little more than peach fuzz and a few straggly blond whiskers on his chin.

  His stepsister Lacy’s text didn’t surprise him. “Dad’s gone full paranoia. Don’t talk to him until you’ve talked to me. Love you!”

  He half-smiled at the message, and texted back. “No worries. Not going to talk to him at all. Love you too!” Lacy was five years older than him, and they’d grown up living together every other weekend and half of the yearly holidays.

  Seconds later, the phone rang. It was Lacy. He answered and said, “Don’t tell me you’ve been up all night waiting for my text!”

  She laughed. “I got up early. Like you, apparently. Dad realized you are hitchhiking across West Virginia, but he doesn’t know why. He’s been bugging us to find out if we knew anything. Whatever you do, don’t tell him about your ghost.”

  “Why would I? Do you believe me, Lacy?”

  She hesitated, but only a bit. “Do I believe in ghosts? I don’t know. But I believe you. What happened to you happened, and I totally understand you wanting to see this through.”

  “Dad wouldn’t give me the benefit of that doubt.”

  “No. What’s more, he’s talking about hiring a PI to track you down and provide proof of your ‘mental instability.’ I think he’s trying to make a case that he should be the custodian of your grandpa’s trust fund.”

  “Hah! Yeah, I know what he’d do with the stipend.” Grandpa’s fund had taken care of Sean’s schooling, and would pay him a reasonable stipend every month for the rest of his life. Sean never voiced it aloud, but he believed his father married his mother because of grandpa’s money. Grandpa loved his only daughter more than the world, but when the doctors had diagnosed her with terminal cancer, no amount of money could save her.

  “My roommate is a paralegal, and doesn’t think he’d have a leg to stand on, but don’t give him the slightest ammunition. You’ve escaped! Just enjoy it! Be safe, and go find yourself. Or that girl, or whatever works for you. I love you!”

  “I love you too.”

  Sean ended the call and sighed. His father constantly talked about him returning to live at home once he graduated. The confrontation was coming. Sean knew he’d win, but at what cost? At least he could put it off for a few more days while he searched for a town the Internet didn’t believe existed.

  He took a shower, shaved, and packed yesterday’s clothes into his industrial-strength hiking pack. He checked out of the hotel, and crossed the street to the little waffle shop, the only one of the three restaurants he’d counted on his way into town yesterday that wasn’t a fast food place.

  The restaurant smelled of fresh coffee and stale grease. He gave his order to a woman who looked badly in need of some fresh coffee herself. All the tables were empty, so he chose one in the corner. He pulled out his phone and began, once again, to search for the location of Debra Arnot’s home town of Blood Creek. He took notes on a pad of paper, as many places in this part of the world had spotty or nonexistent cell service. He scrolled far down the search, trying to dig out real information behind a wall of scathing reviews of a movie by that name, past the handful of entries that had previously caught his attention and proved fruitless, and deeper into entries that had something to do with blood or creeks but not with the two of them together.

  He found nothing new to write on his pad. His quest might have finally arrived at an unsuccessful end. He tapped the notebook with the end of his pen, as if it might magically produce the clue he needed.

  The door to the restaurant opened with the dull thunk of a bell long overdue for replacement, and a thin man in a white suit entered. He appeared to be in his early sixties, and stood a couple of inches shorter than the waitress. His steel-and-soot wreath of hair surrounding his bald pate prevented him from looking too much like Colonel Sanders in his white suit and black string tie. He took a seat at the table next to Sean’s. The sleepy waitress approached the table, and he ordered eggs and bacon with a thick drawl, and began looking over the newspaper he’d brought with him.

  The waitress came back with Sean’s breakfast. The waffles on his plate were cooked from an off-the-shelf mix, but the eggs were probably laid by a neighbor’s chicken. Sean thanked her, and then on a whim asked, “Hey, have you ever heard of a town called Blood Creek?”

  She looked at him in confusion and shook her head. “Ain’t heard of no place like that near here, sorry.”

  “Thanks anyway.”

  She nodded and went back behind the counter.

  “I know that place,” the man in the white suit said in his rich accent. “But it hasn’t been called that in a long while.”

  “Really?” Sean suppressed his excitement as he rolled his pen around in his fingers. The older man had a creepy vibe. He probably didn’t know anything, just wanted to talk. “What’s it called now?”

  The man at the other table sighed. “Well, that comes with a small story. Price of admission, but it’s quiet on the road. My name is Tad, by the way.”

  “I’m Sean. I’m a student at UWV.” Sean realized after he said it that it he’d lied. He’d graduated almost a month ago. Technically, he was now an unemployed drifter. The thought amused him.

  The waitress brought Tad his coffee. He accepted it without looking at the woman, and sipped without blowing on it first. If the drink was too hot, he didn’t show it. “Well, Sean from UWV, look up a place called Maple Bend. The locals used to call it Blood Creek. I’ve heard it was because of the minerals in the creek, copper or somesuch. But the name might have some other connotations, too, considering the history.”

  “Why did they change the name?”

  “Some developers in the 1980s expected a highway to go in near there, and spent a lot of money buying property and building a few houses, and getting it officially renamed Maple Bend. They thought it’d be a more palatable name than Blood Creek, I s’pose. The proposed highway didn’t go in, though, and they lost a lot of money. One of them even committed suicide, or so I hear.”

  Sean only half-listened to the man’s explanation as he wolfed down his food. More than anything else, he wanted to pull up information on the town on his phone, but that would be rude. As Tad paused, Sean swallowed a mouthful of half-chewed waffle and asked, “Are you sure it’s Maple Bend? I thought I saw that on the map. It’s not far from here, is it?”

  “Yes, it’s Maple Bend, and no, it’s not far. I have been there a couple of times. About thirty miles northwest of here, as the crow flies. I met a girl I was fond of there, once. But that was a long time ago.”

  Sean shoved the last bites of egg into his mouth and washed them down with his orange juice. “Thanks for the information,” he said. “Hey, can I buy your breakfast or anything?”

  The older man happily accepted. “Far be
it for me to turn down such a kind offer. I’d give you a ride to Maple Bend myself, but I am heading in the other direction.”

  Sean paid for the meals and left the restaurant, beginning his long trek of walking and hitchhiking. He could afford to rent a car, but the companies wouldn’t rent to anyone under twenty-one.

  As he reached the edge of town, unsuccessfully trying to thumb a ride from the two cars he’d encountered in the early dawn, Sean wondered how the old man had known he had needed a ride.

  Many hours and long uphill hikes later, Sean came to the conclusion nobody ever went to Maple Bend. Assuming he was on the right road. It would have been hard to choose the wrong one, as there weren’t many ways out of Branton, the nearest community that could loosely be termed a town. Only two vehicles had gone by in the last half-hour, dodging the potholes in the crumbling switchback road, and both had been driving in the other direction.

  Far beyond the road, mobile homes perched on thin ledges on the side of the mountain, barely visible through the trees, accessed by impossibly steep dirt trails. Beyond those, Sean saw little sign of human existence. Occasionally the bones of a roadkill animal or a bottle with a label bleached white peeked out from the weeds at the side of the road. Down one ravine, plants grew around the hulk of an ancient truck, victim of a too-fast turn along the switchbacks at least a decade earlier. That, or someone had decided to save themselves a tow to the junkyard.

  The sun inched closer to the treetops blanketing the western mountains. Darkness came early in the tree-shrouded valleys or “hollers” as the locals called them. There were no street lights along the crumbling road. At least the cicadas had quieted as the ambient light grew dim.

  Sean came around a switchback. Debbie waited for him in the distance. A wind caught her dress as she stood to the side of the road in the deep shadow of two elms. He blinked and squinted, telling himself that his obsession over the dead woman was driving him crazy. No matter how he tried to process it, the figure was still there. Incredulous, he drew closer to get a better look.

  He was wrong. A piece of old fabric had gotten stuck on a sapling. The shadows and leaves had given it a vaguely human shape. The gloom, a gentle breeze, and his imagination had done the rest. Maybe his father was right, and he was going crazy. While hiking and getting a tour of the beautiful Appalachian country was no doubt great for his physical health, he wasn’t sure about his mental well-being. The smart move would be to go out to the west coast or some other place far from West Virginia or his home in Ohio, find a real job and a girlfriend, and forget all about Debbie and his last year of school. For the thousandth time, he asked himself why he was obsessed over this long-dead girl. His answer always came in the form of a memory he had started to doubt—her voice pleading, “Find me.”

  The sky darkened as he continued along the road, a sign that real dusk was approaching now that the sun was hidden behind the mountaintops. It was the furthest he’d hiked in one day since starting his expedition. He’d expected to hitchhike most of the way and get there by mid-afternoon, but he’d had no such luck. His flashlight and LED camping lantern, which he’d never needed yet on this trip, were buried deep in his backpack. If he stopped now to dig them out, he wasn’t sure he’d regain his momentum.

  All along the hillsides, lights flicked on in previously unseen windows. He pushed himself another quarter mile, fighting on two fronts between fatigue and mosquitoes. He had half a bottle of mosquito repellent in his backpack, too. One way or another, he’d have to stop soon.

  Somewhere below him, a pair of lights flickered as they moved through the trees. The strobing lights whipped around a turn and emerged on the road behind him. He hopped over to the side of the road where he hoped he’d be visible, yet safe, and stuck out his thumb.

  The red SUV slowed and stopped exactly in front of him. The passenger-side window slid down smoothly, and a mocha-skinned, dark-haired woman in her mid-thirties peered through it. “Are you lost?”

  “I hope not. I’m trying to get to Maple Bend. That’s up this road, isn’t it?”

  “Up and over, yes.” The automatic lock popped open. “Get in.”

  Sean got into the car before considering how quickly she had been driving a moment ago. With more urgency than he’d intended to show, he grabbed the seatbelt and buckled in.

  “My name is Evelyn Rodriguez. I live in Maple Bend.” Her rich, sultry voice held no trace of a local accent.

  “I’m Sean Williams. I’m a… student.” The lie sounded less alarming than the complicated truth. “Are you originally from here?”

  She shook her head and started driving—too fast. “Not even close. I’m from Los Angeles, originally. I’ve only been in Maple Bend for a little over two months.”

  “Why did you move here?”

  “I wanted to get away from it all?” She made it sound like a question.

  Sean felt himself pushed toward the door by the force of the next turn. He stared down at the ravine three feet from his window, without any kind of safety rail. The image of the disintegrating old truck at the bottom of a similar ravine flashed into his mind. Had anyone been in the truck when it fell? Evelyn straightened her turn and asked, “So what about you? What brings you here?”

  “I’m visiting relatives of a friend.”

  “Will you be staying with them?”

  “They don’t know I’m coming yet. Are there any hotels in Maple Bend?”

  She laughed. “No, not even close. You’re the first visitor to town since I moved in. I’ll tell you what. I’ve got plenty of room in my house. I can be a bed-and-breakfast for you until you get things sorted out.”

  Unsure of what to make of the offer, Sean mulled it over. He hadn’t thought about where he’d spend the night, which embarrassed him. “Um, thanks, Ms. Rodriguez. How much will I owe you?”

  “No charge. It will be nice to have someone else around. I’m a city girl, and I’m still getting used to the peace and quiet. Oh, and call me Evelyn. This is a first-name-basis kind of place. Who are you looking for, by the way?”

  “Caleb and Liesel Arnot.”

  “I don’t recognize the names, but that’s not surprising. I am the one person in Maple Bend who doesn’t know everyone else.”

  At a hairpin turn in the opposite direction, the seatbelt dug into his shoulder. Sean expected to hear the squeal of tires, but they held firm. Evelyn giggled, a barely audible sound almost like a cackle. The car hit a bump in the broken pavement as she straightened out. She corrected effortlessly. Sean played it cool, even grinning in spite of thoughts of what the headlines might read when they were both found dead in the wreckage halfway down a mountain.

  Four minutes and eighteen seconds later, they turned off onto a road in even worse repair that spanned perhaps a lane and a half. Evelyn finally slowed. They drove through a tunnel of trees, emerging in a slightly less thick area of mountain wood. To the right of the road stood a small church with a stubby gravel parking lot sufficient for a dozen vehicles, on the other side stood a double-wide trailer on a concrete foundation with a soda machine out front and a hand-painted sign that read, “Hap’s.”

  “Welcome to downtown Maple Bend,” Evelyn announced with mock enthusiasm.

  Hattie’s explanation didn’t help Jenny’s understanding much. “Jenny, you come from a long line of witches. The Sight is one of those things we all have to one degree or another. Some of us can see ghosts, auras, enchantments, stuff like that. It usually runs through the women in the family, but not all equally.” Hattie looked at Jenny’s face, probably noting the incredulous expression, and Hattie stood. “Would you like some iced tea? I made it this morning.”

  Jenny nodded from the chair, feeling numb. Either she was crazy, or her aunt was. The third option made no sense.

  Aside from a change from carpet to linoleum, no clear boundary existed between the living room, kitchen, and dining room in the mobile home. Hattie pulled a glass pitcher from the refrigerator and removed the plastic wrap
acting as a lid. She filled two glasses and replaced the pitcher. Jenny caught a glimpse of the inside of the refrigerator, largely empty but for the things they had picked up in town the night before, and a few Mason jars filled with liquid and plant pieces stored on the bottom shelves.

  Hattie sat down with two tall glasses of tea. Jenny took the offered glass and sipped at it, hoping that the presence of something real and ordinary would ground her. It didn’t do much good. She had a million questions, but couldn’t form the words to even ask one.

  Hattie started talking. “Folks come to me looking for the usual stuff: potions, poultices, charms. Stuff to help them be successful at their job, dispel bad luck, heal from sickness, find love, that kind of thing. I guess I have a reputation that extends a ways. Granny witches aren’t as common as they were when I was a little girl.”

  “Granny witch?”

  “Just a term. Folks, usually women, especially the older and wiser, who can cast blessings and spells and make magical brews and charms.”

  “I don’t believe in any of that,” Jenny said, shaking her head. “It’s just superstition.”

  “Is it? Tell me, what kind of person believes such things?”

  Jenny wisely kept her mouth shut. Hattie turned the corner of her mouth up and continued. “Would it surprise you to know that I have a bachelor’s degree in agricultural science? I was halfway to my MBA when…” She hesitated a beat too long before saying, “When things happened.”

  “What kind of things?”

  “Just things. Our family can be complicated sometimes.”

  “Our family?” Jenny grew alert at the words. “Are there others still… um, around?”

  “Not so many now. I’m still not used to Amy being gone. Patricia, I suppose. Your mama. Now it’s down to you, me, and your cousin Jessabelle. You should probably meet her soon.”

  “I have a cousin?” Jenny couldn’t explain why her heart soared for the first time in weeks, but to her ears, Hattie might as well have said she had a long-lost sister. Nothing in the world mattered as much as meeting this cousin.