Page 112 of Night Songs

The witch sucked her teeth. “You go to a crossroads at midnight and think about what you want to tell him.”

“That’s it?”

“That’s it. People like to add all these bells and whistles, but the devil don’t make it hard. He’s always looking for new friends.”

38rhea

2010

TWO DAYS LEFT

A few hours later, we drove out to the place the witch had told us about, where the road intersected with another in a cross. She said no one took this route anymore, since they built the highway to the east.

I stared out the window at the dense forest, and I imagined somewhere, sometime, Belle was among these very trees, waiting for the devil to come and strike a new deal.

I imagined each of us putting a palm up to the time barrier between us, unable to touch but comforted knowing the other was there, gripped by the same fear.

We pulled to a stop on the shoulder beneath the dense canopy. The clock on the dash said 11:00. One hour until midnight. We sat with the windows rolled up and the air dying in the car.

“What are you going to do if he comes?” Hess asked.

I’d been wondering the same thing. First, I would plead for mercy. But if that didn’t work, what did I have to give? What could I trade for my life? I had not inherited the ability to sing—only the curse attached to it. Perhaps that was something to discuss. If I had not been given the talent, then why should I suffer the punishment? That was the essence of the deal, and he had not held up his end of the bargain.

“I’m still working it out,” I answered.

Hess turned her head and gazed out the window. “Being here is so…” She trailed off. “I feel like I understand Lou better now, experiencing it. I used to get kind of annoyed when she teased me for being a rich city girl, as if she was so different—sometimes it felt like she oversold her bit about being a ‘hillbilly.’?” I turned toward her, and she put up her hands. “Her word, not mine.” She looked back out the window. “But we really did come from completely different worlds.”

I knew what she meant—it had been one thing to immerse myself in the research of these mountains and the curse, but it was an entirely different experience to be here, at the source. Even my time hiking the AT hadn’t prepared me for it. I thought back to Clayton’s memory of Craw Valley as a strange town that many in the area avoided. There was certainly something about the place that made my mind tingle—not exactly in a bad way, but not in a good way, either.

“I keep thinking about what Enoch said,” Hess continued, “about Lou’s mother and her grandmother taking their own lives.” She stopped, weighing whether she wanted to continue. “I always wondered if maybe Lou had done that, too.”

I looked over at Hess, surprised by her honesty. “You don’t think she was high when the plane went down?”

She furrowed her brow and kept looking out the window. “Well, it could have been both. There’s a fine line there. But the truth is, I thought a lot of things when she first died. I wondered if it was drugs, or if she did it on purpose, or if it was truly an accident. In my wildest moments, I wondered if someone had tampered with her plane and it had been some sort of elaborate murder.” Her eyes unfocused, lost to another time. “But eventually, I had to admit to myself that I didn’t know. And the not knowing… that was more painful than any explanation could have been.” She pressed her lips together. “So I guess that’s my real answer. I still have no idea.”

There was something comforting in her honesty. Even if Hess couldnever understand what I was going through, I could meet her in this space of unknowing.

Her phone suddenly vibrated in the cupholder. “It’s Tima. She’s probably just checking on us.” She accepted the call, and I opened the door and stepped out.

Insects buzzed in the sweltering evening, and electricity hummed in the air, though I couldn’t see any power lines among the treetops. I wandered around the dark undergrowth, feeling vibrations coming up from the ground as well. Where it felt the strongest, I lay down in the grass.

I stared up at the starlit sky through a gap in the trees, and I felt my body shrink under its expanse. I held my hands up and saw that they were a few sizes smaller than normal, the fingers glowing childlike in the dark.

I glanced over at the black car gleaming like new in the moonlight. Where Hess once sat, the window was now empty.

The thick foliage gradually receded from the road, taming itself, reversing its encroachment.

I fished in my pocket for my phone, but I found I was now wearing a dress, and my only way of telling time was a thin gold wristwatch I had never seen before.

Something was happening. Something new. My body wasn’t evaporating this time, so much as changing, the sensations familiar but with a tinge of weirdness, like being in a stranger’s body. I knew what it was to be in a body, but not inthisbody…

The tiny clock face read one minute to midnight.

Soon, it would be time.

She imagined her great-great-grandmother lying in the same dirt and looking up at the sky, wishing with all her being for beauty that she didn’t have to pay for, for something no one could take away from her. Oh, to make music with her own body. She couldn’t imagine anything more divine.

Could she blame her for making such a deal?