Alex Bledsoe: Wisp of a Thing

He was pretty sure his tone was neutral, but she still glared at him with all the fury her weakened state allowed. “I’ve had the flu, you know. I can’t keep anything down.”

“Except whiskey,” he said, then instantly regretted it.

She threw the aspirin bottle at him. “Don’t mess with me this early in the morning, Doyle!”

He flinched a little as it bounced off his chest. At least the bottle was still closed. The sadness that had grown in him for years kept any anger at bay. “Sorry,” he mumbled. “I’m going to get dressed. I got to pick up Dad and get to work.”

“I’m sorry, too,” Berklee said quietly, standing over the sink. Her hair obscured her face.

As Doyle pulled on his coveralls, he fought the overpowering sense of helplessness. His wife, whom he dearly loved, had been spiraling downward since he’d known her, but he always thought his steady affection could somehow forestall it. Now, though, as anything does in a whirlpool, she was moving faster as she neared the center. If something didn’t change, and change soon, she would be lost to him down that great cosmic drain that swallowed wayward souls like hers.

In the distance, a coyote howled its final cry before sliding into its burrow for the day.

And something howled back.

High in the mountains that overlooked Needsville, Bliss Overbay stood on her deck and looked down the hill at her lake. Mist rose from the surface of the water. In the shadow of her big house, the night’s chill remained, and she cinched her robe tight against it. She sipped her tea and considered again the images left over from her dreams.

Music.

Being held in a stranger’s arms, his lips about to touch hers.

A hand clawing up from a grave.

And a final confrontation between two people who, should they ever fight, would irrevocably change everything, no matter who won. One wore a white dress splattered with blood.

She finished her tea and glanced at the leaves at the bottom of the cup. They bore out the sense of impending transformation she’d gotten from the dream. She thought about calling some of the other First Daughters of the Tufa, to see if they’d experienced anything similar. Perhaps Mandalay had a different interpretation. But her own ability had never failed her, and she had no reason to doubt it now.

Bliss closed her eyes, weary from the knowledge she alone had been chosen to bear. For an instant, something big and dark broke the surface of the lake, disturbing the insects swarming there. Then, like Bliss’s dream, except for the ripples it was gone.

A cool breeze touched her. From the forested slopes, a distant coyote howl broke the dawn silence. It startled the birds into life, and they burst from the treetops and sailed overhead. A moment later, another cry—closer but definitely not a coyote—sounded in answer to the first one.

Then she went back inside, to shower and get ready for work.

Rob Quillen tried to check the map on his iPhone and still watch the road as it hugged the landscape’s rolling contours. The morning mist that surrounded him left no more than ten yards of visibility. Clingy clouds like these gave the Smoky Mountains their name, but they made it a bastard for strangers to navigate. Modern roads blasted their way straight through annoying hills, but this path was older than Rob could imagine, and protected in ways he’d never believe. Even the state DOT could only pave it, not alter it.

Suddenly he emerged into a clear spot bathed in bright sunlight. To the right loomed a big rectangular sign halfway up the hillside. At the instant he looked away from the road to squint at the words, a gust of wind blew leaves in front of his car, obscuring something that dashed across the pavement. He slammed on the brakes and steered hard to the right.

His car stopped with a thump as one front tire dropped into the shallow ditch. He turned off the engine and jumped out, but saw no sign of the animal. It must have been an animal, he told himself, despite the fact that what he glimpsed seemed upright and flesh colored. After all, why would a mostly naked human being, wearing what looked like a ragged orange dress, run across the road in front of him and then vanish?

Once his heart stopped thundering, he again looked up at the sign. In big, friendly calligraphy it read, Welcome to Cloud County, Tennessee . Crudely painted mockingbirds flew in the corners. Beneath this was the line that he’s squinted at: YE CAN DO NO HARM WHILE YE BE HERE. It must, he reasoned, be some obscure Bible verse used as a civic motto. He took a quick photo with his iPhone.

Wearily he returned to his car, slid into the driver’s seat, shut the door, and turned the key.

Nothing happened.

Closing his eyes, he tried again. Nothing, except the faintest series of clicks.

“No, no, no,” he whispered, and pressed his forehead against the steering wheel. He should’ve insisted on the Jeep he’d reserved and not accepted the four-door sedan the rental agent pressed on him, especially one that was bright red. Everyone knew red cars were bad luck.

He opened the glove compartment, found the rental agreement paperwork, then took out his phone again. There was no signal.

All of this should have worried him. After all, no one really knew where he was. Instead, though, he accepted it with weary resignation. Like everything else in his life, none of this seemed real. Nothing had, since Anna died.

We’re so sorry, Rob. Everyone pitched in to sign this card. Now, we need you to sign this waiver….

With no warning, that awful image came to him again: the moment just before her plane hit the ground. He saw the look of terror as Anna realized what was about to happen, and the way the ground rushed up through the window beside her. He heard her helpless final scream. None of that had any basis in fact, of course; no one would ever know what truly happened during the plane’s final minutes. “Mechanical failure,” the official report said. But Rob was a songwriter, and so was blessed—or in this case, cursed—with a vivid imagination. And he knew Anna very, very well.

And yet, here he was at the border of Cloud County, the one place he might find the solace he sought. The man in the sequined jacket had been certain: Here among the Tufa, he could find the way to heal his broken heart. Here he could find, carved in stone, the song.

He opened the trunk and pulled out his guitar. He knew he’d eventually have to deal with the mundane aspects of car repair, but for now, he sat on the fender and began to play, sad minor chords that sounded like thin tendrils of the agony inside him.

After a few moments, his fingers froze in mid-chord. He definitely felt watched.

He saw no sign of people, and mentally ran through the list of large animals in his guidebook. Neither coyote nor deer would attack an adult, even a solitary one, it promised. But a bear, now that was a scary thought. Had his car stalled near a hidden den with a cub? Was he about to be slashed open and devoured by five hundred pounds of black-furred maternal fury? Careful to make no sudden moves, he placed his guitar back in its case and slowly closed the trunk.

Then he spotted his watcher.

A boy about ten years old stood where the road curved at the bottom of the hill. He had straight black hair and dark skin, and wore jeans and a faded T-shirt. Even at this distance, Rob could tell the eyes were fixed on him.

Rob laughed with relief and waved. “Hi.”

The boy said nothing.

Rob gestured at his car. “She broke down on me. Am I anywhere close to Needsville? I know this is Cloud County, but it’s hard to tell distance from my map. Those straight lines don’t go up and down like the real roads do around here.”