Chapter 2 – Chap 2

Regardless of the fact that Jessica’s disappearance had been ruled mundane, and of her own volition, her family decided to hold a memorial service. I’d gone to school with Jessica’s older siblings, Janet and Jonathan. They were twins, born the same year that I was, and when I’d first met them we’d been friends. We grew apart when we were in our late teen years, but I was uncertain of why, and they wouldn’t tell me.

I was told that when I was sixteen I’d been in the car with my parents when my father lost control of the vehicle, and we went over a steep embankment. My Aunt Sela said that we hit a large tree, I was ejected, and my parents were killed. I have no memory of the accident, and my knowledge of my life picks up on my twenty-first birthday. I often wonder what I was like through the end of my high school days, into my early adulthood. Whatever may have happened, I felt it would be good to see Janet and Jonathan, even though the circumstance wasn’t a good one.

As soon as I entered the funeral home’s chapel I realized that whatever had caused them to dislike me in high school was still in play. Janet’s look was cold, and Jonathan seemed disgusted at the sight of me. Still, I thought optimistically, maybe it’s not me, and they’re just feeling whatever way because of their sister being gone. I made my way over to say hello, realizing instantly that my optimism was idiocy in disguise.

“What makes you think that you’re welcome here?” Janet spat, crossing her arms over her chest.

“I just thought I’d come and pay my respects,” I said, keeping my voice even, though I was alarmed at the venom in her tone.

Jonathan scoffed, narrowing his eyes at me. “Save it, Frame…As if you really care. You’re just here to gawk like the rest of them, and worse still, this is your fault.”

That was a step too far. “Excuse me?” I hadn’t seen or spoken to Jessica, except for once, five years before, when we’d run into each other at Walmart. How could they stand there accusing me of being the cause of her disappearance? I wasn’t gonna have them going around, slandering my name. “You should be careful what you say about people, Jon.”

“Is that a threat?” Janet asked, pursing her lips.

“Hell, no, it’s not a threat,” I said with a glare. “Are you insane? Look, I’ll leave—”

“Good! You should leave! Jessi was obsessed with finding out what happened to you in high school. She really liked you, and couldn’t fathom that you were just a freak of nature. It ended up taking her away from us,” Jonathan said, tears of sorrow and anger standing in his eyes. “This is your fault, Danny, even if you didn’t do this on purpose.”

I was stunned into silence for a moment. “’A freak of nature’? I was in an accident, Jon. It was totally beyond my control. No one is more sorry than me that I don’t remember what happened, or those few years after, but I hardly think it’s fair to blame me for some fixation Jessica had. There’s nothing to it. All that I do remember is that when I was finally able to retain information, you two disliked me. That’s the long and short of it.”

“You don’t even know the truth. You’re not just some victim,” Janet said, poking a finger into my sternum.

Jonathan raised his hand, drawing his twin away from me. “I think it’s high time you left, now, Daniel.” Janet set her jaw, glaring back at me as Jonathan led her away.

“I’m sorry for your loss!” I called to them, standing still for just a moment more before turning on my heel to make a brisk exit from the building. “Sorry for your loss of intelligence, and your souls…” I noticed people watching me as I left, but I didn’t look up at them. I was too angry, and extremely embarrassed. How dare they blame me for something so serious as their sister’s death? It didn’t make any sense.

I managed to get outside without any further incident, and I was almost to my car, when my cell phone started ringing. I could see it lighting up, shifting around in the cup holder where I’d left it. I’m not the kind of person that’s easily distracted by my cell phone, but I’d thought that it would be more respectful just to leave it in the car for the time that I would be in the memorial service, having no idea that would end up only being six minutes.

I hesitated to open my car door to answer the call. There was some sense of unease staying my hand, but I shook it off. I hurried to open the door, sitting down in the driver’s seat before I grabbed the phone to answer it. “Hello?”

“Daniel? It’s Amy,” the voice said, though I knew who she was as soon as she spoke. Amy Friss was a friend of mine that I’d met after high school. She and her boyfriend, Will Leister, were actually from a town over, but they’d met our mutual friend, James Blake, and they’d become part of our friend group. “Listen, I know that you said you were goin’ to that Jessica girl’s funeral, but—”

“Yeah, well turns out that I’m not welcome here. It’s a long story. I’m just leaving now.” A few people walking into the building glared at me out of the corners of their eyes, and I climbed into my car the rest of the way, slamming the door shut. Damned judgmental town folk. “What’s up, Ames?”

“You remember James’ cousin, Robert? Weird guy—into all the monster stuff?” she asked.

“McGowan. Yeah, I remember him. He told me he caught a UFO on video, but his cell phone camera didn’t pick it up right. He also told Will that there was no such thing as dark matter,” I said, recalling how hard I’d laughed at the stunned look on Will’s face as he insisted that dark matter and anti-matter weren’t the same thing, and Robert whole-heartedly refuted it.

“Well…they found him dead this mornin’. James is really shaken up. Can you head to his house?” she asked.

Instantly I felt bad for my remarks about how weird Robert could be. “Wow, that’s horrible. Yeah, I can head right over there,” I said, turning the key in the ignition, then switching the phone to speaker. “Do we know what happened?”

I heard Amy take in a deep breath. “All that I know right now is that it was enough to make James’ mom drink for the first time in thirty years.”

“Holy shit. Well, I’m on my way. I should be there in about ten minutes,” I told her, turning onto the main road that ran through town.

“Pick up a six-pack of beer on the way, Danny. You might need it,” she said before the call disconnected.

I glanced down to my phone in the cup holder, then let out a sigh of my own. “Just another day in paradise.”

+

There were three other cars in the driveway when I pulled up to James’ house. One was James’ SUV and the second was a truck that belonged to our friend Keith Moreno. His presence wasn’t a surprise, as he and James had been best friends since they were young. The third vehicle had a UAB football bumper sticker, and I guessed that Will and Amy must have come over together in her car. I parked and got the six pack out of the back seat, letting myself into the house. No one ever knocked at James’, we all just simply came and went. James considered us family, and family doesn’t have to knock.

The eat-in kitchen was empty, save for a few cases of beer on the table, and some empty bottles. I could hear voices coming from the sun porch, but it sounded like they were coming back inside, so I sat at the table to wait. A moment passed before they slowly trickled in through the living room, all holding mugs of beer. Without a word Will nodded to me, turned to the china cabinet built into the wall, handing a matching mug to me. “You’re gonna need beer.”

“What happened?” I asked, as they settled around the table, and James hung his head. I met eyes with Will and Keith trying to get a gauge on the situation, and their expressions were both grim. I cracked a beer open, pouring it into the mug, and James seemed to be waiting for me to take a sip of the alcohol before he spoke.

“Robert had been sayin’ for a while that he thought someone was gettin’ in his house at night. I’d thought he was just not sleepin’ enough, you know? Workin’ too late, gettin’ up too early…Maybe he was losin’ it,” James said, his accent thicker than it normally was because of the beer he’d been drinking.

“He wasn’t crazy, he just liked scary stuff, and it got into his head sometimes You know, he was the only person we knew who went huntin’ for the spooky things,” Keith said, shaking his head.

James scoffed, looking pointedly at Keith. “Robby never was all there upstairs. Always chasin’ after some sort of weird stuff like he didn’t have any sense. Goin’ in those abandoned buildin’s and stuff—always talkin’ about death and ghosts…Hell, just a couple weeks ago he tried to get me to go out campin’ up on Penny Ann Mountain with him and some of his friends—chasin’ some freakin’ ghost story! Maybe he did disembowel himself.”

“I’m sorry. He disemboweled himself?” Without considering it, I said the first thing that popped into my mind. “I wouldn’t have had the guts to do that—” I bit back the rest of what I was going to say. I should have learned a long time ago to keep my big mouth shut. I looked around the table wide-eyed, hoping that I didn’t just cause a meltdown.

After a moment of looking at me in shock James laughed in a manic fashion, and we all joined in nervously, but when that faded we were back to somber silence. “Rob was a good guy, though,” Keith said after a minute.

“He was…Wait—” My brain snagged on something James had said. “Did you say that Robert and some friends went up to Penny Ann Mountain?”

“Yeah. He said somethin’ about goin’ up to our grandparents old home site to camp out there and go ghost huntin’ in the hollers. Mainly, they were lookin’ into Dead Man’s Holler. I told him there was no way I was messin’ with that. What about it?”

“Wasn’t he friends with Jessica Hayward?” I asked, narrowing my eyes. James’ brow furrowed in thought, then his eyebrows shot up. “Yeah. As a matter of fact, she was the only girl that he mentioned was goin’ with him.” I chewed on my lip, turning my gaze to the tabletop. “So…That’s Jessica and now Robert—both mysteriously dead or missing, and they both were up on Penny Ann recently.” “That’s got to be a coincidence. My grandparents lived up on the ridge for years, and nothin’ big ever happened to them.” James sighed, shaking his head. “Penny Ann is an evil little girl, but she stays on her mountain.”

“What ‘s evil about her, James?” Amy asked warily.

“I’ve never told you about Penny Ann Mountain?” The light seemed to come back into James’ eyes a little bit. Even though he thought Robert took the paranormal stuff too far, James still loved a good ghost story. “Back in the 1830’s miners were movin’ into this area and settin’ up with their families on the mountain. Penny Ann’s family was just like all those others. Well, on their way up one of the steep trails on the mountain, one of their wagon wheels hit a rock, and Penny Ann was thrown from the back of the cart. She fell, and either broke her neck, or hit her head. In any case, it killed her. She was just about five years old?” James drew in a breath through his teeth. “Shame when kids get hurt and stuff.”

“That’s awful,” Will said, frowning.

“It’s sad, yeah, but then things got weird. People started seein’ her all over the mountain, but she wasn’t right. Like, she wasn’t a sweet little girl, who was just lookin’ for her folks. People saw her just before a landslide at the quarry, and then before a branch of the mine caved in, trappin’ some guys. Then she’d been seen leadin’ a little boy off into one of the hollers, and they found him dead from exposure four weeks later, just inside the tree line where they’d already looked. Penny Ann is just evil. It wasn’t long after that people started talkin’, sayin’ that her mama had thrown her off’a that wagon because she was possessed.”

Amy’s eyes were wide as saucers. “Jesus.”

“No, the other guy,” James quipped. He may have been grieving, but his wits were still about him.

Will shot James a dark look. “Hardy har.”

“Not too long after the cave-in, the mine and the quarry closed. The official story was that there was poisonous gas through the whole thing, and so it was just uninhabitable, but people say that it’s because of Penny Ann. The quarry was flooded, and now only guys from the hunter’s lodge and teenagers go out there…And Robert and Jessica. Don’t know if his other friends went or if they chickened out, like they always did when he asked ’em to do stuff like that.”

I tilted my head, trying to make sense of it all. “They know all those old stories. What were they trying to find out there? Death?”

“They damn well found it,” Keith said with a frown.

“Why is where we live like a horror movie?” Amy asked, finishing her beer.

“Because we’re from the south. Our culture is steeped in witchcraft, witch hunts, ritual murders, slavery, and mysticism. We inherited it, and we’ll keep inheritin’ it. Curses? Hauntings? It’s practically in our DNA,” Keith said. “We can’t escape it.”

I frowned as I pointed a finger in Keith’s direction. “Even with that optimistic view, I don’t think that it’s just our heritage. There’s something wrong with this town,” I insisted. “I feel like we could leave Blackwoods Bend, and we’d live relatively normal lives.”

“We’ll never find out, because which one of us is bright enough to get the fuck outta Dodge?” Keith asked, looking around at all of us. “Right. Nobody at this table. Welp, I think I’m gonna head to the house.”

“Yeah, we should probably go, too. You ought to try to get some rest James,” Will said, standing to his feet, shaking hands with James as Amy grabbed her coat.

“Yeah,” James said, running a hand into his hair, rising to stand, himself.

“I know I just got here, but I can go if you want me to,” I said, zipping the front of my jacket as I rose to follow the others to the back door.

James turned to me, squeezing his eyes shut briefly. “I think I ought to get some sleep. If I can.”

“Okay,” I said with a nod, agreeing with that notion.

James followed us out onto the small back porch, lighting a cigarette. He’d gone a little pale, looking like he might puke. He raised a shaky hand, rubbing the back of it against the corner of his mouth. “Hey, Danny,” he called, his tone anxious. “Do you think it was somethin’…Not real? Not really real?”

I tried not to let my hesitance to answer show through in my voice, but I know that I didn’t do a great job of it. “If something could do that to Robert, then I’d say that it was plenty real enough, James. Whether he did it to himself, or someone or something else did…He’s still dead from it. So, yeah.”

“That’s what I’m afraid of,” James said, looking around nervously. He tossed his cigarette down onto the driveway, rushing back inside the house before shutting the door quickly.

A cold breeze picked up as he shut off the porch light, and I shuddered involuntarily. I climbed into the driver’s seat of my car in a hurry, feeling a sense of dread settling on my shoulders. It was high time I got back to my own locked home. I took a shortcut from James’ house to mine that night, simply because the air felt charged, and I didn’t like it. It was the same feeling that I always got right before a tornado was spotted near our town. There was a shift in atmospheric pressure, and a sort of anxiety, yet there wasn’t a storm system anywhere near us.

The autumn sky was clear and moonless, and I tried to tell myself that it was just the extra darkness of the night that had me creeped out. I would find, in hindsight, that the downfall to my shortcut was that I had to pass by poor, dead, eviscerated Robert’s house to get back to my home. Call it morbid curiosity, but I couldn’t keep myself from slowing down just a little to gawk at the house as I went by, wondering again to myself just how this could have happened.

I don’t know what I expected to see, or rather what I expected not to see, but every light in the house was on. It seemed pretty odd, but then I considered that his family might have left them on from being there earlier in the day. Suddenly a shadow passed by the living room window—a really, really, big shadow, that moved from the direction of Robert’s room towards the front door.

Now, the thing about shadows is that a mouse can cast a huge shape, depending on its relative distance from the light. I get that; I’ve made shadow puppets, too. There was nothing ordinary about this shadow. It passed in a breath, and as crazy as it sounds, in my memory there was a noise accompanying it. There’s no possible way that I could have heard anything from inside that house thirty yards away, in my car.

In my mind, though, there’s a sound like a needle on a record, in the second before a new song starts—a staticky, scratch-pop of sonic anticipation.

I don’t remember punching the gas, or quite how I got home after that. It was one of those moments in driving when autopilot takes over, and your brain goes to another place while muscle memory steers you in the right direction. I pulled into my driveway, realizing that the usual ten-minute drive from James’ place to my house had only taken six minutes. I flew into my house, slamming the door, locking myself inside. I resisted the urge to run into my room, and jump onto my bed, like a little kid avoiding the monster underneath the bed-skirt. I was a grown-up, and I needed to pull myself together. I repeated that like a mantra, and as the night went on I calmed down just a little bit, shaking off some of that awake-after-a-nightmare feeling.