Alex Bledsoe - Wisp of a Thing

“You won’t find her, Rob. Nobody will, not the police, not her husband, no one.”

“Is she dead?”

“No, but she doesn’t want to be found. She wouldn’t leave if she could.”

“If that’s the case, then there shouldn’t be any problem with her telling me that herself, should there?”

“No, but like I said, she won’t talk to you. You won’t be able to find her.”

His eyes narrowed. “Maybe you’re right. But guess what I did find today?”

“What?”

He sang the first verse of “The Fate of the Tyrant Fae” with a haunting, minor-key melody that insinuated itself into his head even as he sang.

If he’d drawn a knife and held it to her throat, he doubted she could’ve looked more frightened. “Where the hell did you hear that?” she gasped, and looked around the deserted street to see if anyone overheard. “Have you sung that for anyone else?”

“Why? Would it bring down the wrath of Rockhouse on me?” He made no effort to hide his irritation.

“You went to Cricket, didn’t you?” she said, but her tone made it clear she wasn’t really asking. “You saw the poem in the back of The Secret Commonwealth. And you saw the painting.”

He said nothing. He wanted to tell her about Rockhouse’s spectral appearance in Atlanta, and how it spawned this whole chain of events, but suddenly he didn’t trust her.

Finally she said, “I’m guessing there’s no chance you’ll promise me to never sing that song again, anywhere, ever, is there?”

“Not without a better reason that the ones you’ve been giving out.”

Finally she said, “Okay,” and took a deep breath. “I need to tell you more, then. So you’ll understand and believe me and never sing that song again because you know what will happen.”

“So tell me, then.”

“Not here. We need to go to my place.”

“And why is that?”

“Because I have something there that will convince you.”

“Will this ‘thing’ help me find Stella Kizer?” he said, knowing he didn’t sound nearly as harsh as he wanted.

“Yes.”

He thought it over. It could be another trap, one more deadly than a couple of hillbillies with baseball bats. But he’d learn nothing sitting in his motel room. Bliss was really his only link to the Tufa society, so he had no choice.

He gestured at his car. “My chariot awaits.”

He didn’t know what to expect. The idea of Bliss’s “home” conjured up so many different images. Would she live in a dilapidated mountain shack next to an outhouse? Or a haunted, gabled mansion with only a single light burning in one high bedroom window? Maybe it would be a trailer, like Doyle and Berklee, or just a cave with a witch’s cauldron hung over the fire at the entrance.

A narrow wooden bridge that did not inspire confidence appeared on the gravel road ahead of them. He slowed and crept onto it. Beneath it, he saw a shimmering creek whose depth he couldn’t judge in the darkness.

“You don’t have to go so slow,” Bliss said, “it’ll hold.”

The car lurched slightly as one of the bridge planks shifted, accompanied by a loud clattering sound. “Ever seen Sorcerer? ” Rob said, his hands tight on the wheel.

“I wrote a song about this bridge once,” she said. “‘The Cider Branch Special.’ That creek is called Cider Branch, and when a car comes over at normal speed, you can hear the bridge rattle all the way down to the house. Lets you know you’ll be having company in about five minutes.”

Evidently, the bridge was accurate, for five minutes later, the headlights illuminated a mailbox with OVERBAY spelled in reflective stickers. Lack of space forced the final Y beneath the rest of the word.

The moonlit view that greeted him was breathtaking. The driveway led into a small valley, with a lake in the center. At the water’s edge, with a back patio perfect for fishing, rose a narrow two-story house with big arched windows. He couldn’t make out its color in the dark.

The gravel driveway widened into a parking area beside the house. From this spot, wooden steps led down to the water. Bliss got out and walked to the side door, where a security light snapped on as it sensed her movement. She searched her ring for the right key. By the time she found it, every bug in the valley swarmed around the light.

“Nice little piece of land,” Rob said, impressed. “I bet it’s gorgeous during the day.”

“It’s been in the family for a long time. We used to farm down there—” She gestured toward the opposite side of the lake. “—but I decided to let it grow back up. I’m not much of a farmer, and I enjoy woods more than fields.”

In the moonlight reflecting off the lake, he saw the ripples of something big moving just below the surface. “You got an alligator in your pond?”

“Maybe,” Bliss said as she opened the door. She swatted at the bugs as they tried to enter her house. “I sure wouldn’t go swimming in it.”

He couldn’t tell if she was kidding, so he followed her inside. A tiny harp identical to the one on his motel room door chimed its little tune.

The kitchen looked like any country kitchen: dishes in the drain rack, little iron trivets hanging on the wall, hand-stitched hotpads piled next to the stove. Homemade magnets covered the front of the refrigerator, tiny country people painted on wooden silhouettes. All held crude little musical instruments.

“You live here alone?” he asked.

She nodded. “I put the last stitch in a quilt when I was sixteen. If a single girl does that, it’s supposed to curse her to never marry. So far it’s been true, and when I see some of the marriages around me, it doesn’t feel like a curse.”

“And you don’t have any other family? Well, besides Curnen?”

“No. A train hit Mom and Dad one night on their way home.”

“Wow. I’m sorry.” He almost mentioned that Doyle claimed no knowledge of Curnen, but decided to keep it to himself.

A big covered pot sat on the stove. The burner wasn’t lit beneath it, but there was a smell he couldn’t quite identify. He asked, “What are you cooking?”

“Groundhog,” she answered as she looped her key ring on a hook by the door. “But it’s not cooking yet, it’s just marinating.”

“Groundhog?”

“Sure. Ran over it yesterday.”

“It’s road kill ?”

She laughed. “It was fresh, I promise. I threw it in the truck and brought it straight home. Skinned it, cleaned it, and now I’ve let it soak overnight in warm salt water. Tomorrow I’ll start it boiling.”

“You boil it?”

“Yeah. You open all the windows, boil it for twenty minutes, then throw the water out. You do that twice more, then you bake it.”

“Why do you open the windows?”

“You ever smelled boiling groundhog?”

Before he could answer, she lifted the lid and peered inside. An eye-watering odor filled the room. Rob gagged and stepped around the divider wall into the dark living room. He groped along the wall until he found the light switch. If it smelled that bad just soaking, he sure didn’t want to be around for the boiling. He fought down his gorge, then said, “I’ll just wait in here until you finish with that.”

“Okay,” she answered, and he heard the scrape of a spoon inside the big pot.

He browsed slowly around the room. Photographs, old musical instruments, and odd symbolic knickknacks covered the living room’s walls. There was no television or computer. One shelf of an old, heavy bookcase held a slender upright line of vinyl records pinned between heavy bookends. Rob glanced at the records, then looked again. They were thinner than normal albums, and their blank paper sleeves had faded yellow with time.