The Witch of Tin Mountain(11)

“Sister,” he coaxes, “what is your name?”

“Val . . . Valerie Doherty,” she stammers like a schoolgirl. “I sure am pleased to make your acquaintance, Reverend.” It takes everything in me not to roll my eyes.

“Valerie.” His voice slithers over every syllable. I can see the goosepimples come up on Aunt Val’s skin. He takes hold of her hand, his fingers splaying over her skinny wrist. “I have a message for you, sister. The Lord sees fit to bless you. An unexpected calling will fall upon you soon. A calling that will bring prosperity, and much abundance.”

Aunt Val gasps. Her arm starts quivering. “Praise Jesus! I can feel the power!”

I just bet she can. Hogwash. Every bit of it.

The tent echoes with a chorus of hallelujahs. Aunt Val lets loose of the preacher’s hand. Tears spring to her eyes. She’s still shaking as Bellflower goes back to the front of the tent, opening his arms wide. “Come forward, brothers and sisters. Pray with me and receive your own blessing from the Lord.”

The townsfolk start rising from their chairs, drawn forward by Josiah Bellflower’s velvet promises. An excited murmuring flows through the tent like a wave. One by one, Bellflower places his hand on their foreheads as he speaks in tongues over them. There ain’t a single message or Bible verse being preached—just a never-ending carnival line of needy, desperate people, dropping coins into the offering bucket so Josiah Bellflower might touch them. People I’ve helped Granny cure. With every plunk of a quarter or a silver dollar into Bellflower’s tin pail, I think of how lean our own pockets are gonna be if he stays the whole summer revival season. When you can pay ten cents for a healing miracle, who needs our kind of mountain medicine?

Still, I can’t fault people for wanting to believe in something bigger than poverty and sickness, even though I suspect Bellflower’s promises are just as empty as our cupboards.

Calvina and her mama are last in line. Bellflower reaches out and covers the neat coil of gray braids atop Ma Watterson’s head with his hand. At his touch, her legs start trembling. I spring to my feet. This damned fool ain’t gonna push an old lady to the ground and claim it’s God. I rush to her side, ready to help Calvina catch her if her knees buckle.

As he closes his eyes to pray over her, his thin lips muttering low, I take a step closer. There’s something funny about him—unnatural. Up this close, there’s a brutality to his rangy good looks. My skin crawls. As if he can feel my eyes on him, Bellflower turns to me, his pupils widening until they swallow up the inky brown around them.

A low hum starts in my ears and reverberates all through me. My head pings with sudden pain and the light in the tent flickers like a candle. The congregants’ voices fade to silence. Where Josiah Bellflower should be, I can see only spinning shadows—a writhing blackness with nothing human at its heart. I ain’t never had a real vision, only dreams, but I think I’m having one right now. Granny was right. There’s more to Josiah Bellflower than a Holy Roller preacher who likes big words. Fear crawls over me like a scorpion. I panic, clawing my way back to the real world and away from this darkness.

My head pounds in time with my heartbeat, sickening my stomach. Lands. Is this how Granny feels when she has her spells?

“Praised be the Lord!”

Calvina’s shout nearly deafens me. I blink, once, twice. Shake my head. My mouth drops open. Ma Watterson is dancing. She’s kicking so hard the hem of her dress flies up over her knees.

Josiah Bellflower is staring at me, an amused expression on his face, his eyes glimmering. He smiles wickedly, and in that smile is a thousand promises. None of them the good kind.





FOUR

DEIRDRE





1881




Deirdre trudged through the underbrush, the moon lighting her path with silver. She was sore between her legs, the wet, warm trickle of Robbie’s seed running down her thigh. Their joining had been exciting, but hasty and not at all the romantic tryst she had imagined. Just when things started feeling good, he’d finished with three sharp thrusts, then left her with a kiss and a promise in Charlie Ray’s peach orchard, throbbing with the want of something she didn’t have a name for.

Ingrid had lied. It hadn’t been as good as scratching an itch. Not at all.

Mama’s words haunted her. She should have waited—made him take vows before giving herself to him, like Mama had admonished. But what good would it do to nurse regret now?

Things would get better once they married. They’d have to.

It was fixing to cut loose a storm. Thunder crackled in the distance, and the first few drops of rain splashed across Deirdre’s cheeks. She hurried through the orchard and into Sutter’s holler. The old homestead was down here, somewhere. The place where Pa grew up. Deirdre had seen it only once, when she was very little, and even by then the shake roof was throwing its shingles and the porch boards had buckled from years of neglect.

Don’t ever go down the holler alone, Deirdre, Pa had warned. There’s a reason we don’t live there no more. It’s a haunted place.

Deirdre shoved aside the memory of Pa’s warning.

The holler was a shortcut—the fastest way home.

It was rough going down the edges of the gully, with the rain beating hard. Her boots slipped against wet pine needles, and she fell on her rump once, then again. When she finally reached the bottom, she stopped to catch her breath, the bluff curving above her like the edges of a bowl. A locust tree stood in the middle of the clearing, its gnarled, thorny branches purple black against the evergreens. A sharp wind rustled its leaves. Just beyond the tree, she could make out the shadowed roofline of Pa’s old homestead. She stopped, still as a stone. A wan light flickered through the doorway of the ruined cabin. Was somebody squatting in the old homeplace?