Chapter Twenty-Eight

 

Roman

 

Bitsy looked distracted when she got back to the house. She walked directly into the kitchen and put down three heavy-looking objects she carried under her arms.

“What are those?” I asked, coming into the room with the baby in my arms.

“Fruitcakes,” she said.

“Oh. I thought that they looked a bit festively wrapped for bricks. Why do you have fruitcakes?”

Bitsy looked at me as if she was struggling to process something, then shook her head, squeezing her eyes closed briefly.

“Um, it’s kind of a long story. How’s the baby? Was she good?”

She came toward me and scooped Lorelei out of my arms and onto her hip. The baby gurgled her happiness and gave her mother a kiss. Bitsy smiled at her, seemingly lost in enjoying a few seconds with her daughter.

“She’s good. She got tired of walking around in circles so we’ve been working on the Itsy-Bitsy Spider. I figured that one was appropriate for her to know.”

She laughed and nodded.

“And one that I have been actively avoiding since she was born,” she said. “But I guess I can’t really deprive my child of a childhood song so quintessential that even Mr. Non-Baby himself knows it.”

“I’m not Non-Baby,” I argued. “I just never really interacted with a lot of them. But I was one myself once and Nia was one and I spent some time with her when she was. I remember some of the stuff.”

“The greatest hits.”

“Something like that. So, did you find anything out at the post office?”

She shook her head.

“Only that Coy is stubborn as an old mule ox but he can be fooled by a toy.”

“What do you mean?”

She shook her head.

“Again. Long story. He doesn’t know who sent the letter. It was mailed from somewhere. So, I don’t know what to do now.”

She looked sad and I took another step toward her.

“What’s wrong?” I asked.

She shook her head and shrugged slightly.

“I don’t know. I guess it sounds silly, but I was starting to feel optimistic about this whole thing. Your stories were total disasters, just like I thought they would be, but that letter. Something about it is so intriguing. I thought that it might be the perfect basis for the haunt. Now, even that’s over.”

“It doesn’t have to be,” I told her. “All you did was go to the post office to find out if Coy knew the person who sent it. You’re going to give up that easily?”

“I don’t know what else I’m supposed to do,” Bitsy said, sounding defensive.

“I just didn’t imagine you as the type of person who would just throw in the towel without even putting any effort into it. If you think that that letter is going to make the haunt what it should be, then you need to find out what it’s all about.”

“Me?” she asked. “I’m supposed to do this all by myself? You’re the one who came up with this big idea, and then you’re just going to throw me out on a limb all by myself and make me figure it all out?”

“I didn’t say that. If you want my help, I’m glad to give it to you. You’re the one who didn’t ask for my help or for what I thought that you should do. You just rushed off to the post office.”

“Well, what do you think we should do?” Bitsy asked.

“You said that your family has been here for a really long time.”

“Even before the Hollow itself.”

“So maybe what this McAllister guy is talking about is something that happened a long time ago.” I hesitated before I asked my next question, not wanting to offend her, but honestly not knowing. “Is there a library around here?”

“A library?” she asked.

“Yeah. Somewhere where we can look up the farm. Look at property records, deeds, birth records, death records…those types of things.”

“What you probably want is the courthouse. That’s where those kinds of records would be. That and we can use my computer.”

“No library? I mean, the courthouse might have records and things, but they are unlikely to have newspapers and other things that would be useful.”

Bitsy looked to the side.

“Well…”

 

Half an hour later we were walking up the front steps of a house on the other side of the Hollow. Lorelei was sleeping in Bitsy’s arms and I was carrying far more belongings and accessories than I could ever imagine a little baby would need.

“What are we doing?” I asked. “I thought we were going to the library.”

Bitsy rang the doorbell and made a hushing sound. I couldn’t tell if she was hushing me or the baby, but I went ahead and went silent anyway. A few seconds later an ancient woman came to the door and opened it. She peered out through the ornate storm door at us.

“Hi, there, Bitsy,” she said.

“Hi, Miss Daisy Pearl. We’re here for the library.”

“Well, come on in, then,” the elderly woman said, unlocking the storm door and pushing it out of the way so that we could go inside. “I’ll take that pretty little one off your hands while you’re doing your research. Just bring everything right into the parlor.”

I followed Bitsy into the house and was immediately caught by the warm, nostalgic smell of cookies baking. It was one of those smells that always made me feel like a little boy, a disarming feeling that wasn’t always welcome. When I felt that way, all I wanted to do was sit down with a glass of cold milk and a pile of cookies and pretend that nothing else existed in the world, remembering a time when I could hide from the stress and chaos in my life in the warmth and fragrance of my grandmother’s kitchen. While there were times when I loved the way that this felt, there were also times when it kept me from feeling as powerful as I needed to be to take on some of the things that I faced each day.

I lowered the bags and folded playpen that I carried to the worn but well-loved rug in the middle of the parlor and turned to watch Bitsy hand Lorelei off to Miss Daisy Pearl. The baby didn’t even stir and the elderly woman settled into a rocking chair next to the window, seamlessly moving into a smooth glide as she stared down into Lorelei’s sweet face.

“Come on,” Bitsy said.

“Where are we going?” I asked as I crossed the room toward her.

“The library,” she said. “Didn’t you say that’s where we would find the most information?”

I felt confused, but I followed her back through the foyer and toward the kitchen. The smell got stronger and I saw cooling racks lined with perfect little rows of cookies filling the counters and table. I resisted the urge to grab one and followed Bitsy toward a door tucked in the back corner of the room. She opened it and used a chain hanging from the ceiling to turn on a single bulb positioned over a narrow flight of bare wooden steps leading down.

“Are we researching the story to turn into the haunt, or are you bringing me down here to make one?” I asked.

Bitsy glared at me over her shoulder and started down the stairs. Though I had only been partway joking, I followed her through the door and down the first few steps.

“Close the door,” she called up.

Oh, perfect. So, no one can hear my screams. Maybe I should just go ahead and tell her.

I closed the door and continued down the stairs. When I reached the bottom, I was surprised to see not the damp, dingy basement filled with old onions and disintegrating cans of food that I was expecting, but rather a clean if grey room lined with bookshelves. Three tables were in the center of the room and a fourth was positioned against the stone wall beneath a narrow window to the far side. A rug that likely started its life upstairs in the parlor and made its way down here when the one upstairs was acquired got a second chance cushioning a cluster of aged, but comfortable-looking chairs in one corner. It looked, for all rights, like a tiny library.

“The Whiskey Hollow Library?” I asked as I approached Bitsy.

She looked around and nodded.

“Miss Daisy Pearl’s family has been acting as historians for the Hollow since the beginning. They’ve gathered up books from yard sales and when people have died, and they’ve kept up with the Hollow and everyone in it as best as they can.”

I was impressed. I never would have imagined anything like this would have existed in this unassuming little house, or even in the Hollow in general, and I felt a hint of guilt at the assumptions that I was so quick to make.

This was working out even better than I hoped it would.

I walked up to the table where she was standing and looked down at the book she had already pulled out.

“What’s this?” I asked.

“Whiskey Hollow’s answer to the census. Miss Daisy Pearl’s family has been writing down the names of everyone who lives here since the beginning. Look.”

She pointed at the last page where “Lorelei Galloway” had been written alongside her birthdate. There were only two names beneath hers. One was a baby born just weeks before, the other, a man a few years younger than me, both with the same last name. I felt a pang in my heart, and looked at Bitsy again.

“So, if Steven McAllister lives here, he should be recorded in here.”

“That’s what I’m thinking.”

“There are thousands of names written in here. How are we going to find him?”

Bitsy let out a sigh.

“We start reading.”

We sat down beside each other and opened the book to the first page. Here it recorded the names of Bitsy’s family, the “natives” of the area, and those who established the Hollow. We scanned down the list of names, trying to find any McAllisters. Every few seconds I glanced over at Bitsy, watching as she stared intently at the book in front of her. She was deeply engrossed in reading through the names, finally dedicated to the idea of the haunt and to how we were going to bring her family’s farm back from the brink.

We. Together.

We had been reading through the pages for over an hour when we reached the final page and her fingertips lingered on Lorelei’s name again. Bitsy let out an exasperated sigh and dropped back in the chair.

“Nothing,” she said. “There is nobody by the name of Steven McAllister listed in here at all. There isn’t even a McAllister family. None. Who could this guy be?”

She rested her elbow on the table and ran her hand back through her hair, staring down at the pages of the book as if the name that we were looking for was going to spontaneously appear on the paper.

“Well, let’s go back to the beginning. What do we know about this guy?”

“That he likes to be mysterious and has really nice handwriting, but I think that that is of more interest to his third grade teacher than it is to us.”

“But what else?”

She glared at me and I suddenly felt like the aforementioned third grade teacher.

“What do you mean what else? That’s all. He literally didn’t tell us anything in the letter. Just to look into the history of the land.”

As she said that, she suddenly perked up. Her back straightened and her hand fell away from her head to the surface of the table.

“What?” I said. “What is it?”

“The history,” she said. “The history. Not the people. Not what it is now, but the history of the land where the farm is now.”

“I don’t think I’m following you.”

She jumped up from her seat and rushed to one of the nearby bookshelves. Her fingertips grazed over the spines of the aging books as she read through the titles, finally pausing on one and pulling it down off of the shelf. She brought it over to the table and pushed aside the record to open this book in its place.

“What’s this?” I asked.

“The first volume of the history of the Hollow that Miss Daisy Pearl’s family put together,” she told me as she opened the heavy red leather-bound cover. “They talked to the people who were here when they got here.”

“Your family.”

“Yes and no. My family was here on the farm, but there was also a man who lived in a tiny house on the back corner of the lot. I can’t believe I didn’t even think about him before. His father sold the land to my family with the understanding that his only son would be allowed to stay on the land for the rest of his life. I remember my grandparents talking about him when I was younger. They used to talk about how strange he was. He would keep to himself even though they always tried to involve him. He almost never left the house. He never had anyone to visit him and didn’t seem to associate with anyone. When he died, they didn’t even know for almost two months.”

“How did they find out?”

“My great-grandmother wanted to bring him some cookies for Christmas. When she went to the house, he didn’t answer and she noticed that the curtains were pulled tight, but that they looked dusty. She tried all of the doors, but they wouldn’t open. Finally, she had my great-grandfather break down the door and they found him. He was sitting in the living room with a half-carved jack o’ lantern on his lap.”

“He died on Halloween.”

Bitsy nodded.

“When the coroner examined him, they couldn’t find any real cause of his death. They finally decided that something scared him so badly his heart gave out.”

“He was scared to death?” I asked. “On Halloween?”

Holy shit. I didn’t see that one coming.

“That was the story that they told me.”

“But I’ve never noticed another house on the property.”

“It’s way back. Far on the other side. Back beyond the pumpkin patches and the little peach orchard. I was never allowed to go back there. My grandmother used to say that the land where it sat was cursed. That they couldn’t even…”

Her voice trailed off as she stared down at the book.

“Couldn’t even what?”

“Couldn’t even keep a body in it.”

She pointed at the book again and I followed her finger to where it rested on a newspaper clipping. It was from before the days of the Holler Holler and had the name of a nearby town.

“Grave moved for third time.” I read the headline. “What is it talking about?”

Bitsy’s eyes scanned over the article and then came up to me. There was a hint of a smile on her lips.

“The man’s grave was moved twice after being partially dug-up and the headstone damaged. It happened on the same date both times.”

“Let me guess,” I said.

Bitsy nodded.

“Halloween.”

I let out a breath. I had the feeling like I was getting in over my head. This was turning out to be much more involved than I ever would have thought that it was going to be.

“So, the grave had to be moved again. Was it messed with again after that?”

“There aren’t any other articles about it. I wonder where the grave is.”

“I think I might know.”

I stood up and pushed the chair back into place under the table. Bitsy looked up at me questioningly.

“How?” she asked.

“Just come with me.”

She looked unsure, but she stood and carefully put the book back into place on the shelf. Miss Daisy Pearl was standing in the kitchen when we got to the top of the stairs. She glanced over her shoulder at us as she shifted fresh cookies from a baking sheet onto a cooling rack set on the table. The cookies that had previously been occupying that cooling rack were now stacked pristinely on a plate on the edge of the counter.

“Help yourself to some cookies,” she said and I wondered if she could see my mouth watering.

“Thank you for keeping an eye on Lorelei,” Bitsy said as she took a cookie from the plate.

“Did you find what you needed down there?”

“Not quite,” she said. “But we found a start. We’ll probably be back in a while. Would that be OK?”

“Of course, it would. If you’re going to be coming back, why don’t you leave the little one with me? She’s sleeping so peacefully and I wouldn’t want to disturb her.”

“Are you sure that’s alright?”

“I’d love to have her. If she wakes up, we’ll talk about all the great mysteries of life. I’ll let her in on my secrets for how to cheat at poker.”

“Well, just make sure you tell her she’s not allowed to hustle her mama.”

Bitsy crossed through the parlor to kiss the baby where she lay in the playpen and then we headed out of the house. When we got back to the farm, I told her not to park in the usual spot in front of the house, but to continue on toward the smaller home I had been staying in since getting to the Hollow. She looked at me strangely, but followed the overgrown drive along the edge of the property toward the house.

“Go ahead and stop up here.”

She stopped next to my car and we climbed out. Though the weather was still warm, she shivered slightly and wrapped her arms around herself. I could only imagine that it was the memories of the place that were settling in around her that were causing the chill. I wanted to take her into my arms and comfort her, to reassure her and ease the emotions that she was feeling. She turned away from the house, putting her back to all the years that she had spent there, and looked at me.

“What now?”

“Come with me.”

I walked around the back of the house where I had gone a few days before during an early morning jog and led her across the back corner of the farm. The further we walked, the closer she got to me, seeming to close the space between us like she was seeking protection from something.

“Would that path work alright?” she asked.

“For what?”

“If we did a hayride.”

I felt a little spark within me and smiled at her.

“I thought we were going to take advantage of the mowed cornfield.”

“Well…can we do both? Maybe it starts with a hayride and then that drops them off at the corn maze?”

Though she sounded like she was talking to keep herself distracted, I could hear the beginning of excitement in her voice. She was starting to see this as more than just an abstract idea, and that was exactly what I had hoped would happen.

“That would be amazing. We would have to make sure that they come by here, though.”

I gestured ahead of us and Bitsy followed my finger to the patch of high grass I had found during my jog. The very top of a grey stone was visible in the pale green blades. She looked up at me sharply and I nodded. Bitsy walked away from my side cautiously, approaching the stone slowly. When she got to it, she crouched down and reached forward to move the blades of grass out of the way. I could see her hands shaking and I walked up to her side, crouching down next to her so I could see the stone.

“It’s him,” she said, her voice reduced to a whisper. “Look. Steven McAllister.”

Even though I already knew that that was the name that I would see on the stone, I felt a flutter in my chest seeing it etched there again.

“There he is.”

I could feel her trembling beside me and I almost felt as though an eerie chill was settling into the air around us. I was starting to turn toward her when the sound of a sudden explosion made her cry out and jump into my arms.