Chapter Twenty-Two – Faith

 

I glanced back to where Sam was informally interviewing old Eb Shook as he leaned back against the side of the beat-up Chevy work truck. The thing looked about as old as Eb, but not nearly as reliable.

I turned my attention back to the structure that I’d spotted off in the distance earlier, an old two or three story mansion that seemed to be peeking its rickety head up beyond the tops of the pines. It looked to be a sizable structure, too. Even at almost a mile, it was distinct and visible despite the forest of conifers growing up around it.

Something about the place just didn’t sit right with me. Or, it seemed, with the world around it. Like even the sun, when it shone down on this strip of the earth, somehow went around the building, avoided it. Like there was a black spot on the land, and that blackened spot was surrounded and hidden by the tall piney forests of East Texas.

“What’s that out there?” I asked Ike, my voice trembling a little as the words left my mouth.

“That old house?” he asked, pointing out to where I was looking. “That’s the Tanchovsky place. Been there forever.”

“Whoa, what? There were way too many consonants in that.”

He chuckled a little and smiled, which for him might as well have been a boisterous belly laugh. “Old Polish family who moved here a bit before our people. Right around, maybe just before, the Civil War.”

“Your grandmother, she was Polish, right?”

“She was.”

“Your family know theirs?”

His eye twitched a little, and he sniffed the air. “No. Not really. They always kept themselves apart from the rest. Eventually, the family just died out. Man from Garrison bought them out, for their land, I reckon, as maybe a hunting lease, but settled off in town rather than rebuilding the house.”

Garrison was a little town just up the road. Smaller than Potterswell by a few thousand, population-wise. In all my months living in the area, I still hadn’t ever seen any reason to go out there. Veronica had, once, I think. But, honestly, there just didn’t seem to be any need to travel there. It was too out of the way, and there were no shops or stores you just had to go to. Everything you needed, you could normally find inside Potterswell.

“Ever been out there before?”

A little frown tugged at the corner of his lips, and I caught the way his eyes glanced over towards the elder Shook. Ike was well into his forties, clearly, but he was still checking to make sure his father couldn’t hear him.

“Once,” he conceded. “With my brother, who’s since passed.”

“What happened?” I asked. “If you don’t mind my asking?”

“Nothing,” he said quickly. “Just, you know, a creepy old building. Falling down around itself, that’s all. No ghosts or goblins or ghoulies, if that’s what you’re thinking.”

I laughed a little, my voice still shaky-sounding in my ears. “No, that’s not exactly what I was thinking. What’s out there?”

“Like I said, pretty much just an old building. Old, rusty farm equipment. Windows and doors were all boarded up, so we didn’t go inside.”

“Did it feel…”

“Weird?” he finished for me, nodding. “Yup.” He chuckled a little. “Standing outside that place, it was like taking a midnight stroll through a cemetery. Closest thing I could think of. Felt like we were being watched, or something.”

I shivered a little as I turned back to look at the old house, at the way just the peak of its roof reached up through the trees. “Creepy.”

“Think that’s bad?” Ike said, his voice lower than before. “Sometimes, when I come out to shoo the cattle into the next pasture, or just to catch a smoke, I swear I can see a light down there. Not every night, mind you. But some nights. You can see it in the top window, burning bright against the trees. Ain’t no one lived there in nearly a hundred years, neither. Saw some out there the other night, too, night of us losing the hog.”

Another chill down my spine.

“Well, Jesus, Ike. You could write a horror novel.”

He gave me a wry smile. “Sorry, I prefer romance.”

“Ready, Faith?” Sam asked as he came walking up from the pickup. “Eb says he can give us a ride back down to my car.”

“Sure,” I said, turning away from the old house off in the distance. Even with my back to it, I felt a strange urge to turn and look back at it. Like a thread attached to the back of my head, or to my perception, at which the building was tugging and tugging.

Together, Ike and I fell into line with him, and we all headed back over to the pickup. Sam and Ike hopped up into the back and settled down among the bales of hay, while I climbed into the pickup’s cab with Eb, the shotgun Ike had brought up to the pasture riding in the rifle rack across the back window. As he started up the old engine and pulled us around, though, my eyes stayed focused on the old Tanchovsky house.

Something about that place just seemed to call to me, to whisper my name like a Siren’s song across the distance, both physical and temporal. Like I belonged there. Or, maybe, like it contained what we were searching for. Really searching for.

As we turned away from it, I found it in the side mirror. A quickly fading spot nestled inside the trees.

“You keep looking out at that old house,” Eb said as he drove the pickup along the rutted road that led back down to the house, snapping me out of my intent focus on the old manor’s reflection. “Ike tell you about it, or something?”

I pinched my lips tightly. “Yeah. We spoke a little about it.”

“He tell you about going out there when he was a kid?”

I glanced over, and Eb gave me a little smile that barely reached his eyes.

“Don’t tell him I knew about him going out there,” Eb said when I didn’t at first reply. “Told him and his brother to stay away from it, same as I’m telling you. Most people don’t even know it’s out there, I don’t think, not unless they go looking for it first.”

“What do you mean?”

“I mean, most people don’t even mention it to other people. How long you lived around here, again?”

“Just a few months,” I admitted.

“Well, most people don’t talk about it. One of the oldest buildings still standing in the county, but it ain’t got no historical marker. Daughters of the Confederacy don’t wanna touch it, even. Or the Texas Historical Society.”

“Why not?”

He shrugged as he slowed at the gate, with its metal cattle guard embedded in the soil, and slowly took the hump. “No idea. Just, most people don’t go near it. Place as scary as that, you’d think there’d be kids from the high school out there on Friday nights after the big game, seniors trying to get their girls all riled up and ready to, well, you know. But nothing. Not even back when I was in school, before kids had this so-called World Wide Web to keep us entertained.”

I laughed a little, if only because he was right enough that he was almost giving me the creeps. What high school boy didn’t want his girlfriend scared and excited, after all?

“But they never come out here.”

“I wonder why,” I mused as we pulled to a stop next to Sam’s Camaro.

“Because,” Eb said as he put the pickup into park and turned to look at me with those deep, serious eyes of his, “that place is evil. True evil, Ms. Riley. Ain’t no two ways about it.”

I swallowed hard as I returned his gaze, my lower lip trembling, my hand shaking as I reached down for the door handle. I nodded slowly as my fingers wrapped around the reassuringly cold metal of the handle, twisting it up to open the door. “I’ll remember that, Mr. Shook,” I said as I went to climb out.

“You do that, Ms. Riley. You be careful out there now, you hear?”

“I will,” I said as I hopped down from the passenger seat.

Off to my left, Sam vaulted over the bed of the pickup, landed lightly on his feet.

“You okay?” he asked as he got a look at me.

“Yeah,” I said, blinking my eyes and shaking my head. “Just talking to Eb here about the old house on the next property over.”

“Old house?” Sam asked as Ike came around.

“All right, y’all,” the younger Shook said as he came around, breaking Sam’s line of conversation, “we need to get moving now. Still got a sight more to do before lunch.”

“Yeah,” Sam said, extending his hand, “completely understand. Thank you again for your time, Mr. Shook.”

“Don’t mention it,” Ike replied as they shook hands. “Hope you were able to get something useful out of us.”

“More than you know,” Sam said with a nod. “Believe me.”

Ike joined his father in the pickup, and the two men headed off on their way, this time in the opposite direction from where they’d come from. Probably down to another pasture, to see to another group of cattle or pigs as they grazed and slopped their way through life.

“Ready?” Sam asked as we watched them follow the road down around one of the barns and disappear from sight.

Together we stood there, side by side in the farmhouse yard. The wind blew softly, knocking the antlers with their weird inscriptions together, sending a hollow clattering out over the surrounding land.

“Yeah,” I finally said. “I think so.”

We piled into his Camaro, and he went to start it up.

“Where to now?” I asked.

“Well,” he said, “I was thinking of grabbing a bite to eat. “That little diner by the coroner’s? Or someplace else?”

“Well,” I said, “Ike mentioned there’s a town just up the road, Garrison. I’ve never been there, but I’m sure there’s a place open for lunch. Probably a lot closer than driving all the way into Potterswell.”

As if on cue, I heard his stomach rumble like an earthquake. “Sounds good,” he said, smiling a little. “Afterwards, we can head back to Potterswell and finally get into the library. You can help me get some of that research done that I’ve been hoping for a chance to work on.”

I blinked slowly, turning to face him as I brushed a long lock of hair back behind my ear. “Wait a second.”

“What?”

“Are you just drafting me into helping you, now?” I asked with a smile. “Is that what I just heard, Mr. Sam Fitzgerald?”

“Well, you wanted to help, didn’t you?” he asked with a sheepish smile.

I laughed. “Just, give a girl some warning before you do a complete one-eighty, okay? Might give me some whiplash here.”

He grinned, shook his head. He reached down, grabbed the shift knob, and went to shift the Camaro into reverse. He paused for a moment, though. “Almost forgot,” he said.

“What’s up?” I asked as he sat back in the seat and began to fidget with something at the back of his neck. “Everything okay?”

“Yeah,” he said as he drew a necklace out from beneath the front of his shirt, a ceramic representation of a hand holding up all its fingers, with a silver eye emblazoned on the palm. “Here,” he said, offering it to me, “I want you to wear this for a while. At least, you know, until this is over.”

I laughed, waving him off dismissively. “What? Magical talismans now?”

His eyes squinted just barely, almost immeasurably. If I hadn’t been seated less than a yard from him, I wouldn’t have noticed. It looked like hurt. Like I’d somehow found his pride and kicked it while it was down.

“Know what?” I said, nodding. I turned away from him and drew my hair up off my shoulders, baring my neck to him. “Sure. Sure, I’ll wear it. Put it on for me?”

“Uh, sure,” he said as he reached around and let the necklace drop, the ceramic hand-shaped disc dropping onto my breasts. “It’s called the Hand of Fatima. It’s an old, old charm, going all the way back hundreds of years. The people of north Africa and Spain used it to ward away evil spirits and curses.” He brought the leather thong it hung from around behind my neck, and began to tie it. His fingers brushed over my skin, leaving trails of unexpected heat behind. Not heat like standing in front of an oven, but heat like you were snuggling up in front of a fire on a cold winter night.

I found myself leaning back, relaxing a little under his touch. “Where’d you get it?” I asked as he finished tying the knot.

“A friend of mine while I was on a trip in Morocco. Said it was good luck.” He finished the knot, tucking the leather’s string knot down into the back of my shirt. “There, all done.”

“Is it?” I asked, pouting a little as I dropped my hair back down and reached up to hold the little ceramic disc in my hand. “Good luck, I mean? Really?”

“I think so,” he said, the smile coming through in his voice. “Yeah, I really do. It’ll, you know, protect you.”

I cleared my throat as I continued to stare down into the upside down eye of the disc. It didn’t look like much, even if the small weight in my hand seemed much more consequential than it appeared. “Sam, is it…is this because of my dream I had this morning?”

“No,” he said. “Come on, that was just a dream.”

I looked him right in the eye as he spoke, but I could tell he wasn’t telling me the truth. At least, not the whole truth. I just let it go, though. After all, I was finally not having to shoehorn myself into the pursuit of whatever this thing was. If I pushed things further, maybe he’d just end up driving me straight back to my and Veronica’s place. And then where would I be?

Besides, I wasn’t going to lie, I was still enjoying spending time with him. Riding around in his cool car. Doing, I dunno, reporter things that, honestly, didn’t seem much like anything they’d teach in journalism schools.

“Ready?” he asked.

“Sure am,” I said. “Let’s get some lunch.”