True Believer (6 page)

“Has anyone ever checked into why the cemetery seems to be sinking?”

“I’m not certain, but I’m almost positive that someone has. A lot of powerful folks had ancestors buried in the cemetery, and the last thing they wanted was their grandpa’s tomb being broken up. I’m sure they wanted an explanation, and I’ve heard stories that some folks from Raleigh came to find out what was happening.”

“You mean the students from Duke?”

“Oh, no, not them, honey. They were just kids, and they were here last year. No, I’m talking way back. Maybe around the time the damage first started.”

“But you don’t know what they learned.”

“No. Sorry.” She paused, and her eyes took on a mischievous gleam. “But I think I have a pretty good idea.”

Jeremy raised his eyebrows. “And that is?”

“Water,” she said simply.

“Water?”

“I’m a diviner, remember. I know where water is. And I’ll tell you straight up that that land is sinking because of the water underneath it. I know it for a fact.”

“I see,” Jeremy said.

Doris laughed. “You’re so cute, Mr. Marsh. Did you know that your face gets all serious-looking when someone tells you something you don’t want to believe?”

“No. No one’s ever told me that.”

“Well, it does. And I think it’s darling. My mom would have had a field day with you. You’re so easy to read.”

“So what am I thinking?”

Doris hesitated. “Well, like I said, my gifts are different than my mother’s. She could read you like a book. And besides, I don’t want to scare you.”

“Go ahead. Scare me.”

“All right,” she said. She took a long look at him. “Think of something I couldn’t possibly know. And remember, my gift isn’t reading minds. I just get . . . hints now and then, and only if they’re really strong feelings.”

“All right,” Jeremy said, playing along. “You do realize, however, that you’re hedging yourself here.”

“Oh, hush, now.” Doris reached for his hands. “Let me hold these, okay?”

Jeremy nodded. “Sure.”

“Now think of something personal I couldn’t possibly know.”

“Okay.”

She squeezed his hand. “Seriously. Right now you’re just playing with me.”

“Fine,” he said, “I’ll think of something.”

Jeremy closed his eyes. He thought of the reason Maria had finally left him, and for a long moment, Doris said nothing at all. Instead, she simply looked at him, as if trying to get him to say something.

He’d been through this before. Countless times. He knew enough to say nothing, and when she remained silent, he knew he had her. She suddenly jerked—unsurprising, Jeremy thought, since it went with the show—and immediately afterward, released his hands.

Jeremy opened his eyes and looked at her.

“And?”

Doris was looking at him strangely. “Nothing,” she said.

“Ah,” Jeremy added, “I guess it’s not in the cards today, huh?”

“Like I said, I’m a diviner.” She smiled, almost as if in apology. “But I can definitely say that you’re not pregnant.”

He chuckled. “I’d have to say that you’re right about that.”

She smiled at him before glancing toward the table. She brought her eyes up again. “I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have done what I did. It was inappropriate.”

“No big deal,” he said, meaning it.

“No,” she insisted. She met his eyes and reached for his hand again. She squeezed it softly. “I’m very sorry.”

Jeremy wasn’t quite sure how to react when she took his hand again, but he was struck by the compassion in her expression.

And Jeremy had the unnerving feeling that she had guessed more about his personal history than she could possibly know.

Psychic abilities, premonitions, and intuition are simply a product of the interplay among experience, common sense, and accumulated knowledge. Most people greatly underestimate the amount of information they learn in a lifetime, and the human brain is able to instantly correlate the information in a way that no other species—or machine—is capable of doing.

The brain, however, learns to discard the vast majority of information it receives, since, for obvious reasons, it’s not critical to remember everything. Of course, some people have better memories than others, a fact that often displays itself in testing scenarios, and the ability to train memories is well documented. But even the worst of students remember 99.99 percent of everything they come across in life. Yet, it’s that 0.01 percent that most frequently distinguishes one person from the next. For some people, it manifests itself in the ability to memorize trivia, or excel as doctors, or accurately interpret financial data as a hedge-fund billionaire. For other people, it’s an ability to read others, and those people—with an innate ability to draw on memories, common sense, and experience and to codify it quickly and accurately—manifest an ability that strikes others as being supernatural.

But what Doris did was . . . beyond that somehow, Jeremy thought. She knew. Or at least, that was Jeremy’s first inclination, until he retreated to the logical explanation of what had happened.

And, in fact, nothing had really happened, he reminded himself. Doris hadn’t said anything; it was simply the way she looked at him that made him think she understood those unknowable things. And that belief was coming from him, not from Doris.

Science held the real answers, but even so, she seemed like a nice person. And if she believed in her abilities, so what? To her, it probably did seem supernatural.

Again, she seemed to read him almost immediately.

“Well, I suppose I just confirmed that I’m nuts, huh?”

“No, not really,” Jeremy said.

She reached for her sandwich. “Well, anyway, since we’re supposed to be enjoying this fine meal, maybe it’s better if we just visited for a while. Is there anything I can tell you?”

“Tell me about the town of Boone Creek,” he said.

“Like what?”

“Oh, anything, really. I figure that since I’m going to be here for a few days, I might as well know a little about the place.”

They spent the next half hour discussing . . . well, not much of anything as far as Jeremy was concerned. Even more than Tully, Doris seemed to know everything that was going on in town. Not because of her supposed abilities—and she admitted as much— but because information passed through small towns like prune juice through an infant.

Doris talked almost nonstop. He learned who was seeing whom, who was hard to work with and why, and the fact that the minister at the local Pentecostal Church was having an affair with one of his parishioners. Most important, according to Doris, at least, was that if his car happened to break down, he should never call Trevor’s Towing, since Trevor would probably be drunk, no matter what time of day.

“The man is a menace on the roads,” Doris declared. “Everyone knows it, but because his father is the sheriff, no one ever does anything about it. But then, I suppose you shouldn’t be surprised. Sheriff Wanner has his own problems, what with his gambling debts.”

“Ah,” Jeremy said in response, as if he were up on all the goings-on in town. “Makes sense.”

For a moment, neither of them said anything. In the lull, he glanced at his watch.

“I suppose you need to be going,” Doris said.

He reached for the recorder and shut it off before sliding it back into his jacket. “Probably. I wanted to swing by the library before it closes to see what it has to offer.”

“Well, lunch was on me. It’s not often that we have a famous visitor come by.”

“A brief appearance on Primetime doesn’t make a person famous.”

“I know that. But I was talking about your column.”

“You’ve read it?”

“Every month. My husband, bless his heart, used to tinker in the garage and he loved the magazine. And after he passed, I just didn’t have the heart to cancel the subscription. I sort of picked up where he left off. You’re a pretty smart fellow.”

“Thanks,” he said.

She stood from the table and began leading him from the restaurant. The remaining patrons, only a few now, looked up to watch them. It went without saying that they’d heard every word, and as soon as Jeremy and Doris had stepped outside, they began to murmur among themselves. This, everyone immediately decided, was exciting stuff.

“Did she say he’d been on television?” one asked.

“I think I’ve seen him on one of those talk shows.”

“He’s definitely not a doctor,” added another. “I heard him talking about a magazine article.”

“Wonder how Doris knows him. Did you happen to catch that?”

“Well, he seemed nice enough.”

“I just think he’s plain old dreamy,” offered Rachel.

Meanwhile, Jeremy and Doris paused on the porch, unaware of the stir they’d caused inside.

“I assume you’re staying at Greenleaf?” Doris inquired. When Jeremy nodded, she went on. “Do you know where they are? They’re kind of out in the backcountry.”

“I have a map,” Jeremy said, trying to sound as if he’d been prepared all along. “I’m sure I can find it. But how about directions to the library?”

“Sure,” Doris said, “that’s just around the corner.” She motioned up the road. “Do you see the brick building there? The one with the blue awnings?”

Jeremy nodded.

“Take a left and go through the next stop sign. At the first street after the stop sign, turn right. The library’s on the corner just up the way. It’s a big white building. Used to be the Middleton House, which belonged to Horace Middleton, before the county bought it.”

“They didn’t build a new library?”

“It’s a small town, Mr. Marsh, and besides, it’s plenty big. You’ll see.”

Jeremy held out his hand. “Thank you. You’ve been great. And lunch was delicious.”

“I do my best.”

“Would you mind if I come back with more questions? You seem to have a pretty good handle on things.”

“Anytime you want to talk, you just come by. I’m always available. But I will ask that you don’t write anything that makes us look like a bunch of bumpkins. A lot of people—me included— love this place.”

“All I write is the truth.”

“I know,” she said. “That’s why I contacted you. You have a trustworthy face, and I’m sure you’ll put the legend to bed once and for all in the way it should be done.”

Jeremy raised his eyebrows. “You don’t think there are ghosts out at Cedar Creek?”

“Oh, heavens no. I know there’s no spirits there. I’ve been saying that for years, but no one listens to me.”

Jeremy looked at her curiously. “Then why did you ask me to come down?”

“Because people don’t know what’s going on, and they’ll keep believing until they find an explanation. You see, ever since that article in the paper about the people from Duke, the mayor has been promoting the idea like crazy, and strangers have been coming from all over hoping to see the lights. To be honest, it’s causing a lot of problems—the place is already crumbling and the damage is getting worse.”

She trailed off for a moment before continuing. “Of course, the sheriff won’t do anything about the teenagers who hang out there or the strangers who traipse through without a thought in their heads. He and the mayor are hunting buddies, and besides, nearly everyone around here except me thinks that promoting the ghosts is a good idea. Ever since the textile mill and the mine closed, the town’s been drying up, and I think they think of this idea as some sort of salvation.”

Jeremy glanced toward his car, then back to Doris again, thinking about what she’d just said. It made perfect sense, but . . .

“You do realize that you’re changing your story from what you wrote in the letter.”

“No,” she said, “I’m not. All I said was that there were mysterious lights in the cemetery that were credited to an old legend, that most people think ghosts are involved, and that the kids from Duke couldn’t figure out what the lights really were. All that’s true. Read the letter again if you don’t believe me. I don’t lie, Mr. Marsh. I may not be perfect, but I don’t lie.”

“So why do you want me to discredit the story?”

“Because it’s not right,” she said easily, as if the answer was common sense. “People always traipsing through, tourists coming down to camp out—it’s just not very respectful for the departed, even if the cemetery is abandoned. The folks buried out there deserve to rest in peace. And combining it with something worthy like the Historic Homes Tour is just plain old wrong. But I’m a voice in the wilderness these days.”

Jeremy thought about what she’d said as he pushed his hands into his pockets. “Can I be frank?” he asked.

She nodded, and Jeremy shifted from one foot to the other. “If you believe your mom was a psychic, and that you can divine water and the sex of babies, it just seems . . .”