Chapter Twenty-Six – Faith

 

Any car would have had to take that back road slowly, but Sam’s seemed to crawl through molasses as he cursed with every jerk of the steering wheel. Every time one of the front wheels would catch a rut, he’d have to manhandle it back into place.

And the whole time, there was the scraping of the tree limbs down the sides of his car.

“I’m so sorry, Sam,” I said, grimacing as the Camaro’s antenna whipped back and forth from having snagged a limb.

“Not your fault no one ever pruned these damn trees,” he growled, just before cussing again as a limb screeched down the driver’s side.

“Do you want me to pay for it?”

“Honestly,” he said, “this is more important than any paint job. We’ve gotta go where this leads.”

Time and distance seemed confused, irrelevant, as we bounced and jolted our way down the road, like everything was stretched out far longer than it should have been. And, as we drew closer and closer to the end of the road, the feeling in my gut seemed to grow stronger, making me more queasy.

But, despite the ill feeling in the pit of my stomach, the desire to see what was around the next corner just seemed to increase the farther we drove.

“Don’t worry,” I said as another limb streaked down the side of the Camaro, “we’re almost there.”

“What makes you say that?”

“I don’t know,” I replied, being one hundred percent completely honest. “I really don’t.”

He gave me a long, sideways look, as if he were concerned about me, before swearing again as the steering wheel was nearly wrenched from his hand.

Whatever that feeling was inside me, though, it was telling me that we were close. Close to something big. Bigger than me, or Sam, or anyone or any single thing.

Finally, as if in a dream, we made one last turn, and broke through the overgrown tumult of the piney forest. One moment the trees were there, and the next we were driving out into an open stretch of land covered in grass that reached up past the windows of Sam’s car on all sides.

And, rising above the sea of waving, shimmering green and yellow, were the peaks of the house I’d first seen from Eb Shook’s ranch. It was no more than a hundred feet from the car, its six crumbling chimneys reaching up to the sky like broken fingers of some long dead creature, its roof stripped of shingles, its siding unpainted and falling off.

“There it is,” Sam said as he angled his head down to get a better view of the structure.

I swallowed hard and reminded myself to breathe as we continued to draw closer. I stuck my head down like he had, turned to the side and hovering just above the dash, as I peered up at the grand structure.

I pictured it in dazzling white, like a plantation home out of Gone with the Wind. It must have been beautiful and statuesque as it towered above the great pine trees that sprouted up all around it.

And then I remembered the slaves who had been here at one point, and a frown began to tug down the corners of my lips. Where had they lived? Somewhere out closer to the fields? Surely their cabins hadn’t been as stunning as this building once had been.

We continued down the road, following it as it snaked through the high grass. The drive had begun to even out, the ruts seeming to fade away the closer we went to the tumbledown mansion. It was still dirt, of course, but Sam was finally able to take both hands off the steering wheel. And, as we followed the road around its every twist and turn, we drew closer and closer to the building, to this decrepit tomb from history.

I swallowed again, my mouth suddenly watering at the back, near my throat.

I don’t know if it was just for reassurance, or if I needed to somehow be reminded that I’d been the one who’d pressed for us to come here. I reached over, unconsciously, grabbed Sam’s hand, and slipped my fingers through his. The warmth and roughness of his hard, callused hands seemed to snap me back into reality.

We took one last final turn, and the road seemed to straighten itself out. Dead ahead of us, glaring down with its boarded-up and broken windows, was the two story plantation mansion, its windows like a multitude of dead eyes that bore down on us.

I whimpered a little, despite myself, as the car suddenly began to feel very warm.

No, scratch that. It wasn’t the car that was warm. Instead, it was my chest. A little circle of warmth, right where the medallion Sam had earlier given me pressed into the skin just above my breasts.

“Here we are,” Sam said, pulling the car to a stop about forty feet from the front entrance. He turned off the engine, leaving us both in the ticking silence as we stared up at the beast of a building. If I hadn’t known better, I would have sworn this was where they’d filmed some of the Texas Chainsaw movies.

I peered around at our surroundings, taking in the whole thing. It dawned on me as I examined everything.

“See that?” I asked Sam as I looked out the window at the car, at the way the grass seemed to spread out over the land in all directions until it reached the house.

“See what?” he asked.

“The grass. It stops at the yard. Like nothing wants to grow here.”

He laughed, a seemingly uneasy sound. “Come on,” he said. “That’s just ridiculous, and you know it. Why would the grass not grow up to the house? Because it’s scared of it?”

Chagrined, I suddenly felt like hiding my face. Yeah, he was probably right. There were a thousand different reasons why the grass had probably stopped growing around the foundation of the building. Just because I didn’t know the answer, that didn’t mean it wasn’t true.

“Ready?” he asked, putting his hand on the door handle.

I swallowed the saliva in my mouth, the slight nausea in the pit of my stomach not getting any better. “Yeah,” I lied.

“Let’s go see what’s what, then,” he said, opening the door and climbing out of the car.

I followed suit, my boots sinking into the grave-like dirt.

“Hear that?” he asked as we shut the doors and began to approach the building.

“Hear what?” I asked, a slight tremble to my voice, a tremble I certainly didn’t mean to be there.

“Exactly. Come on.”

Side by side, we approached the building in near lockstep. He was close enough to me that I could almost feel the warmth rolling off of him. Between it and the queer warmth coming from the little medallion around my neck, I began to sweat.

We walked up to the house, stopping in front of the big porch that stretched all the way across the front. By today’s standards, it wasn’t a massive house. Far from it. But, from the number of chimneys lining the roof, and how wide it was, it was still larger than average. Together, Sam and I looked up at the building, and the building seemed to look right back. It was like we were in a dreamscape, a place beyond our own world. A place where your concerns didn’t matter. Your concerns about bills, about making student loan payments, about what your career was going to be, or the meaning of life, or whether children were a good idea at this age with all the crap happening in the world, or whether or not you were even really ready for a serious romantic relationship—those just seemed like passing fanciful notions that didn’t have any weight or gravity.

“I’m going to look around, see if I can’t find a way to get inside,” Sam said, head still cocked back as he stared up into the house. “I want to see what’s in there.”

My heart began to race as I shook my head. I didn’t want to go inside. Not at all. What had driven me to come out here had just been curiosity, a certainty that some little secret piece of the puzzle was hidden away down here. Maybe it had been the way Ike had spoken about the place, with that note of terrified reverence? I didn’t know, but I’d felt a little bit of joy the moment the quarter had landed tails up.

Now, though?

Now, going inside was the worst thing I could imagine. But, as I stood there, the medallion around my neck threatening to burn a hole in my chest with every single passing second, the only thing I could imagine that was even worse would be to stand out here, all alone, while Sam rummaged around inside without me.

Maybe it was curiosity still? That I just wanted to be part of the partnership, to see what we could find together? Or, maybe, it was just fear of the unknown. A fear of what might be lurking out here. Because if it could stand to live near this place, I didn’t want to meet it, even during the brightest of days like today.

“Are you sure?” I asked, my voice still shaking like a leaf.

“Yeah,” he said, nodding. “I’m sure. You’re right. If this place isn’t connected to what’s going on, I’ll eat my hat.”

“You don’t own a hat, though.”

“I’ll buy one, then.”

My chest felt tight as I swallowed, a sweat breaking out on my brow. Damn that necklace. Whatever it was made out of was reacting to something in the air, or my skin was reacting to it. Suddenly, it felt itchy, irritatingly so. Like ants were crawling across my skin around the area. Not biting, or stinging, just walking all around it.

“Stay here,” he said. “I’ll shout when I find a way in.”

Before I could object, he was already off at a fast pace.

“Wait,” I croaked, my throat dry and scratchy despite the saliva in my mouth.

He just kept walking, his eyes still glued to the windows of the second floor. It was like he didn’t even hear me.

I almost ran after him, but quickly realized how silly that was.

I mean, this was just a house. An old, falling down, ramshackle building that had just been abandoned and had fallen apart. Just because it looked creepy and weird, that didn’t mean it was evil or something bad would happen.

Right?

But, still, the medallion, the little ceramic hand with the eye in the center of it in silver, continued to burn and irritate my skin. I knew that Sam wanted me to keep wearing it, and that he’d said it would protect me. But, Jesus, this thing was getting uncomfortable. I didn’t know what they’d used when they made this thing, but my skin clearly didn’t like it.

Of course, I didn’t necessarily want him to see me take off the piece of jewelry. Clearly, it was special to him. And, honestly, it had been a nice gesture on his part to give me the good luck charm.

As soon as he was out of sight around the corner of the house, I reached up to the back of my neck and untied the little knot binding the offending object to me. As the tie came undone, I slithered it out from beneath my shirt.

I breathed a sigh of relief. A long, exhausted-sounding sigh of relief as I shook my head a little bit and looked around the place, a sense of curiosity and wonder taking over my being as I stuffed the little necklace away in my back pocket. I looked around as I tried to remember what I’d been so scared of before, idly rubbing at the spot where Sam’s lucky amulet had been lying against my skin.

“Hey!” Sam called from around the house. “Faith! Come on, I found a way in!”

I don’t know if it was just the way the sun shone down, lighting up the bleached and weathered features of the tired old mansion, or how the boards over the windows seemed to be slanted in an almost coquettish way, but I couldn’t stop the grin that sprouted on my face.

All I could think of was how wonderful it was that I was going to have an opportunity to explore such a place. And who better to go delving into this veritable treasure trove with, than the man of my dreams?

I set off toward the corner of the house where I’d heard him call from. “On my way!” I yelled back, that smile still plastered on my face like a loon’s.

As I headed off around the corner to join Sam, I never thought once about what might await us inside. Because, had I known, I don’t know if I ever would have followed after him.