Under the Skin (27 page)
Authors: Vicki Lane
Which was, of course, what I intended to do. Phillip. He would know the quickest way to get things rolling. If I couldn’t get him, I’d call the local police. But I had a feeling it would take a while to get their attention—and could already hear them telling me that they couldn’t file a missing person report when an adult had been missing for less than an hour.
I was ushered behind the front desk by the manager who was still tapping away at her BlackBerry and frowning at whatever message she was or wasn’t receiving. She pointed out the phone and mashed the button for an outside line, then moved a bit away—almost but not quite out of earshot. This was undoubtedly looking like a publicity disaster in the making for the spa and I sympathized with her.
Nonetheless, I wiped my oily hands on the fluffy robe and reached for the phone. I had just punched in the first three digits when the front door of the spa flew open to reveal a wild-eyed, sweating Joss.
“Have you found her?” he gasped and bent over, hands on his knees, struggling to catch his breath. The bandage on his head had slipped and was almost covering one eye, giving him the look of a demented pirate. “Nigel had a message …”
I put the phone down.
“Joss, how did you know Gloria was missing? What does Nigel have to do—”
He waved off my questions. “Later, just tell me, is she missing?”
“Yes, but—”
“Is there a cellar or some sort of underground storage around here?” This was addressed to the manager, who had dropped her BlackBerry and was staring openmouthed at Joss. “Nigel said underground. In a box of some sort.”
A chill ran over me. The dream I’d had back in the treatment room, the dream of waking in the tomb, buried alive—I reached out and grabbed the manager’s arm.
“Please, just tell us—is there a place like that?”
She looked at me as if I were as crazed as Joss appeared to be. “The spa was built over part of the old hotel’s basement. But we don’t use it at all. It’s too damp part of the year for storage and they only put stairs to it because there’s some equipment from the old bathhouse rotting away down there. The owners think they’ll eventually haul it out and use it for a display of some kind. But—”
“Please, just show us the stairs—
now.
” I was begging—and yanking none too gently at her arm.
“Okay, but I sure don’t see …” Shaking her head at the strangeness of this whole affair, the manager led Joss and me back down the hall and into a large storage room at the rear of the building. I noticed that Joss’s slight limp had become more pronounced, due, I assumed, to his having run all the way over from the inn.
“The door’s behind that supply cart.” The manager pointed to a tall, multishelved affair on wheels. Stacks of towels and robes, as well as paper supplies and trays of various bottles and jars obscured whatever was behind the cart but as Joss pushed it aside, a wide white-painted plywood door was revealed.
“But this door is always locked—only the owners have keys.” The puzzled manager pointed at the cheap padlock hanging open from the hasp. “I don’t understand …”
“She’s down there—just like Nigel said!” Joss snatched off the lock. The flimsy door opened easily and a dank earthy smell oozed out into the room along with an unseasonal chill.
The stairs that led down into the gloom were of recent construction, I was happy to see. Unpainted treated lumber, dusty but sturdy.
“Wait.” I grabbed Joss by the shoulder. “We’re going to need some light. And we need to stay off of
that
.”
There in the dust of the top steps I could see footprints—going down
and
, I was happy to note, coming up. While the manager was fetching some flashlights, I slid a tray of tiny brown bottles off the supply cart. One by one I placed the bottles on a nearby table, then turned the empty tray upside down and set it gently over one of the clearer prints.
“Let’s just be careful not to step on the tray, all right, Joss? It could be important.” As I spoke, I couldn’t help glancing down at his shoes: pretty much standard running shoes, the kind that would have a characteristic tread. The prints on the stair, I thought, had been made by a shoe with a smoother sole—but a shoe of the same size.
As we waited for the flashlights, it occurred to me that the robe I had belted around my naked self was not exactly the best garb for descending steep stairs and exploring a long-unused cellar. It also occurred to me that it would be nice to have my gun.
With a word to Joss, I hurried back to the little room where I’d left my clothes. Throwing off the robe, I pulled on jeans and shirt over my exceedingly wellhydrated body. I didn’t bother with underwear but
shoved my feet into my sneakers, grabbed the little snub-nosed revolver out of my shoulder bag, and clipped its holster to my waistband. The loose shirt would cover it and I would be happier knowing that it was there, even if the leaver of the footprints was long gone. And that made me think of the laundry truck one of the therapists had mentioned.
As I came through the door to the hallway, I almost collided with the manager, who was hurrying back to the storage room.
“These are all I could find.” She thrust two flashlights at me—one, a Maglite, heavy and black—of the type cops carry—and a smaller headlamp contraption with a maze of elastic bands. “Listen, I’ve got people checking in at the desk I have to deal with. I can’t imagine you’re going to find anything down in that old cellar but you might as well have a look. Swan and Kimberly are searching the grounds for Mrs. Hawkins and I’ll call the Mountain Magnolia to see if, for some reason, she went back over there.”
Mrs. Hawkins. I’d forgotten about Gloria’s alias and something must have shown on my face for the manager put her head on one side. “Tell me, Ms. Goodweather, is your sister mentally unstable? Because if—”
Just then a bell rang up front and with a hasty warning to be careful on the stairs, she hurried back to the reception area.
Though my clothing change had taken less than five minutes, Joss was almost frantic. He had gone partway down the stairs but, realizing that he really couldn’t see anything, had been forced to wait. He reached out and grabbed the Maglite from my hands.
“I called her name but didn’t get any response. Maybe …”
But the maybes were too many and too unpleasant to
contemplate. He turned back to make a hurried descent into the old cellar.
Okay
, I thought, hesitating before following him,
is this one of those Too Stupid to Live scenarios? Down into the dark basement with this admittedly strange young man in search of my sister—
My sister. Those two words trumped the hesitation and the better judgment. If she was down there, I wanted to be part of the search. And, as the slightly uncomfortable lump at my waist reminded me, I was armed. Possibly even dangerous.
Pulling the headlamp onto my head, I realized what a stroke of luck it was that both my hands would be free for my gun. I took it from the holster and, holding it pointed carefully skyward, started down the steps.
Below me I could see the beam of Joss’s light, dodging crazily around, illuminating a series of brick pillars, assorted barrels and boxes, and more dusty spiderwebs than seemed possible.
“Joss? How big is this place? Have—”
“There’s another room back here.” His voice sounded nearby but I could no longer see the beam of his flashlight, just a dim glow beyond another row of pillars. “Look down. You can see kind of a trail in the dust. That’s what I’m following. If she’s here …”
He was right. The floor was hard compacted clay but it was overlain with a thick layer of dust, just like all those boxes and barrels on either side of me. Keeping my headlamp trained on the trail, just barely discernible as a slight disturbance in the dust, I moved toward the pale light of the room beyond, then slowed to examine my surroundings for any traces of recent disturbance.
The ceiling was plywood subflooring laid atop new treated-timber joists. I could hear the muffled sound of footsteps coming and going above me, as well as the rush of water in the PVC pipe just above my head. That
was today’s world, up there. Down here was from another age. The brick pillars and arches, upon which had rested the grand old hotel, now supported nothing. The framework of the new building floated a foot or more above them, resting on a few utilitarian-looking concrete block columns—ugly behemoths but far stronger than the elegant brick.
As I moved deeper into the cellar, boxes and barrels gave way to strange machinelike things ranged on either side of this path in the dust. Draped in spiderwebs, they looked like medieval instruments of torture but I suspected they were nothing more than a previous century’s Bowflexes and StairMasters. A clutch of dumbbells heaped to one side confirmed this suspicion.
A scurrying sound behind me made me whirl around, just in time to see a rat’s bare tail disappearing under a stack of penitential-looking stools, and I shivered involuntarily.
“Over here!”
There was a thump and a clatter in the area ahead and I came around a corner just in time to see Joss lift the lid on an odd slant-topped box. The beam of his flashlight jittered on the ceiling and not until I was at his side could I see what was in the box.
At first it looked like nothing more than a pile of dirty towels but as Joss held the lid open wide, I saw that it was a body, wrapped in one of the thermal blankets, a baglike thing on its head. One limp hand was exposed, its fingers filthy but the elegant French manicure still recognizable.
Gloria. My sister.
Amarantha
Cripple Tree Holler~May 15, 1887
Miss Cochrane come, like she had said she would, just after dinnertime on Sunday. She was astride one of the hotel hacks, and no one with her, which let me know that she must be a good rider and a powerful good talker too, as Mr. Jameson who runs the stable mostly don’t let ladies take out his nags on their own
.
I was setting in my loom out at the end of the porch, working at a coverlid, but when I heard the clip-clop of hooves, I stood up and moved to a mule-ear chair and let on to be doing nothing. There’s some folks mightily offended at the notion of weaving or any kind of work of a Sunday—I doubt that Miss Cochrane is like that but still …
As the long nose of the sorrel mare peeped around the big laurel bush where the trail comes in front of my cabin, I stood and threw up my hand. “Howdy,” says I. “Light and come in the house.”
When she gets down from the tall mare, I see that she has on a skirt that is divided in two—like britches but so loose that it looks like a skirt when she stands still. And it don’t come down but to the top of her pretty high-polished boots and I think that in a rig like that, a woman could do herself justice atop a horse. I never kept nare horse—just a mule for plowing and cultivating—
and when I
have
rode, it’s been astride and hanging on to the gears. Those fine ladies at the hotel, with their long skirts dragging as they try to stick on to one of them sidesaddles, have a time of it on our steep mountain trails
.
“You see I found you, Amarantha,” Miss Cochrane hollers as she hitches her mount to the post under the big beeches. “Your directions were perfect!”
“Come up and set,” I say, setting out a chair for her
.
She comes up the steps, them little sparrow eyes taking in everything, from the loom to the mule shoe above the door and the old boot I have nailed up to give the jenny wrens a place to make their nestes
.
“Tell me what you’re weaving here,” she says, putting her head to one side. “And did you spin the wool yourself? I saw some sheep down in the meadow on the way up here.”
I told her that I had my granny’s old spinning wheel and I liked to spin of a winter. And I do, for spinning is one of those things that frees up your mind to where you can step to the other side and take a look. Oh, I’ve learned many a thing whilst I was a-spinning
.
She leans over the web and studies the half-finished coverlid, then she catches sight of my draft that is embroidered on a piece of homespun and hanging from the crosspiece of the loom
.
“What’s this?” says she, looking more like a little bird than ever, and I tell her it is the rule I follow to make this pattern. “It tells me when to tromp,” says I and then nothing will do but that I sit myself back in the loom and weave a piece to show her the way of it
.
The pattern that I am making is called Wheels of Time and it has a white chain and white and indigo-dyed filling. Miss Cochrane marvels over it for a piece then asks was I making it to sell and I say, no, it’s for my bed
.
I wait to see will she try to buy it offen me like furriners generally does but she just nods and say that was she to make such a pretty thing, she’d not be wanting to part with it neither
.
“What other sorts of things do you weave?” she asks me and I tell her about making jeans cloth and linsey and show her that my dress is of my own weaving
.
I can see her eyes going to the door and I know that she is wishful of seeing the inside of my house. She don’t want to ask but her face shows that she is eat up with wanting to know how I live
.
“Would you like to see some more of my weaving?” I ask her. “There is a red and green coverlid on my bed and I have some other—”
“Oh, could I, Amarantha?” says she, clasping her hands together at her breast. “I’d love to see it.”
So we make for the door and she is about to step through when she catches sight of the mule shoe that sets above the doorframe
.
“I’ve seen that done before,” says she. “Is the horseshoe for good luck?”
“I reckon—it’s been there all my life. The old people always did that—they said the open end must be up, to keep the luck from running out.”
She studies it some more, them sharp eyes of hern taking it all in. “I wonder,” she asks, “why they didn’t use a shiny new one? This one’s all rusted and worn so thin … wouldn’t a brand-new one be better luck?”
“No, a new one ain’t no use at all. The shoe’s a charm to keep off mean witches of a night—the old folks used to say that a witch couldn’t pass under the iron shoe unless she first went and traced every step that shoe had taken. And if she couldn’t do it before morning light, it’d be to do all over again the next night. So folks just naturally wanted an old worn-out shoe—one that had taken many a step.”
She looks at me like she wants to ask another question. But instead she nods and steps into the house
.
It ain’t but the one big room and a loft upstairs. My bedstead is over in the corner and she makes for it at once
.
“Oh, how perfectly lovely! Did you make this coverlet too?”
“It was my granny wove this one. She was a powerful weaver—it was her learned me how and it’s her drafts I follow. Them drafts was writ on paper and all faded and nigh falling to pieces, which is when I decided to embroider them onto homespun so’s they’d last my time.”
“Does this pattern have a name?” she asks and I see that she is taking everything in and storing each word away
.
“Granny called this one Bonaparte’s March—he was some king or such over the water, who lost a war.”
She wants to know about the dyes I use and how long it takes to spin the wool for a coverlid and all manner of things. Then she begins to look about the room
.
There ain’t much to see. No fine furniture, just what could be made by a man with an ax and a drawknife. A table and a pair of benches, three mule-ear chairs, and a stool. There’s a big wooden chest where I keep my blankets and such, a corner cupboard for my few plates and bowls, and a dry sink. I figure that it must appear mean and low to her, after all the fancy fixings at the hotel, but she is looking all round and smiling as though she likes what she is seeing
.
“I’ve never been inside a real log cabin,” she says, wondering like. “How old is your house?”
I study on that for a time. “I couldn’t rightly say,” I tell her at last. “My people come into this country a good while back—not so long after the War for Independence. At one time, they owned a right smart of land
but most of it went, one way or t’other. I have the heart of it though. They’s been a house on this piece of land as long as anyone can remember, though the first several burned down. The chimbley is the same though—you see there on that flat rock where the old people marked the date.”
She steps up close to the fireplace and runs a finger over the numbers. “1787!” says she, just a-marveling. “Your people have been here a hundred years—that’s astonishing! Nowadays people move around so much—why, even my own family—”
And she falls silent and I can feel the dark unhappiness in her heart as she looks back to those times. Then she gives a little shake
.
“And you live here all by yourself and you’re not afraid?” she asks
.
“Not a bit of it,” I tell her. “I’m on good terms with all my neighbors—two- and four-legged alike.”
She stands there staring into the cold ashes of the fireplace. There is something more she wants to say but she is having trouble getting it out so I ask will she take a sup of buttermilk or water. She asks for water and I step out to the springhouse to get some with the chill yet on it. When I come back in, she is looking at my charm papers that are tacked there on the log wall above the fireboard
.
“I was just noticing all these names and dates,” she begins and her face goes pink. “I’m terribly nosy—it seems I was born so.”
It kindly tickles me to see her so bashful and I think to fun her a bit
.
“Read ’em off,” says I, “and tell me what you make of it.”
She stands on tiptoe to peer at them and reads off, “Lovie Whiteside, August 4, ’86, February 21, ’87; Belle
Johnston, July 26, ’86, April 3, ’87; Omie May Gentry, August 9, ’86, May 3, ’87; Harce Clyborn, September 5, ’86, April 17, ’87; Benjamin Franklin Freeman, August 18, ’86—”
She breaks off. “I don’t see … Are these babies who died … or …”
I take pity on her and, instead of the made-up story I was fixing to tell, I say, “Them’s all babies what are cutting their first teeth. Folks around here set a powerful store on me charming away the toothache. They bring their little uns round everwhen the first tooth breaks the gum. And I write down its name and the day it was borned and the day the first tooth showed. Then I pin up the paper above the fireboard for a charm. When all the teeth are in, I burn the paper—that’s all they is to it.”
Her head goes on its side again and she grins at me. “So you
are
a witch, like they said at the hotel. But if that’s so, how do you get past the horseshoe?”
We go back out and set on the front porch and I explain that it’s there just for bad witches, ones that tries to harm folks—the kind the Injuns called Raven Mocker. Of course, they must have had them over the water too, in England and Scotland and Ireland where most of the old people’s folks come from for it was them knowed about the horseshoe
.
Miss Cochrane is a quizzy somebody, sure enough, but with such a winning way to her that I find myself telling her all manner of things that I usual don’t speak of. I tell her that most folks are like to call me a witchy-woman not a witch. And that there is water witches, who can find water with a forky stick; that my charms and such were passed down from my grandpap—who was a seventh son just as I am a seventh daughter
.
“It weren’t till I first begun to bleed that I got the powers,” I told her, amazed to find myself speaking so
free, but this Miss Cochrane has such a way to her that I believe she is something of a witchy-woman herself
.
We talk along like we was old friends and I find myself thinking that had my little girl lived, she’d be nigh the age of Miss Cochrane and the old wound tears open yet again. My mind wanders off in the land of might-have-been and I lose track of what Miss Cochrane is saying. Something about a woman at the hotel grieving for a lost child but that only turns my thoughts inward all the more until I hear the words, “… They are preying on these poor grieving mothers and it’s not right. I need your help, Amarantha! Will you help me to show them for what they are?”
AN APPALACHIAN WITCH
By Nellie Bly
They call her a “witchy-woman” but their hushed tones hold more of respect than of fear. This is no hunched, black-clad, broomstick-riding beldam of myth nor yet the Bard’s cauldron-stirring hag. Potions she may brew, but rather than “eye of newt and tongue of dog,” these healing brews are composed from wholesome wild herbs, gathered in careful observance of ancient practice by herself from the meadows and woodlands about her cabin.
I found her at her loom, weaving a web of beauty in indigo and white, and her first words were a welcoming “Come in the house!”
This house, her ancestral home, built of mighty chestnut logs, is a Phoenix raised on the ashes of its predecessors; only the carefully laid stone chimney remains from previous incarnations. And on the face of one of the largest stones in that chimney, graven by some rough tool, the date “1787” gives notice of the witchy-woman’s century-old heritage in these verdant mountains.
The mountain folk are kindly to strangers, but wary of sharing their secrets—and none more than the witch. Yet when, after some conversation, I proved harmless, this good creature consented to answer my importunate questions and to tell me something of her craft.
This witchy-woman is the local healer—able to charm away a wart or a boil, to soothe a toothache or an aching heart. She has cures for colicky babies and is held in high repute as a “thrash doctor,” able to cure an infant of thrush by blowing in its mouth.
She speaks of the “little people” and relates how she leaves out a saucer of milk for them every evening—or a crust of cornbread if the cow should happen to be dry. But whether these are the little people—the fairies, brownies, pookas, or leprechauns—of the Old Country or the little
people (Yunwi Tsunsdi) of Cherokee lore, she could not say.
The witchy-woman is an adept of the Old World practice of divination through examination of the surface of a bowl of liquid—“scrying” is the learned term but our Appalachian witch is ignorant of the word. She will “take a look” or “git a knowin’ ”—and in that look, she has been known to see past and future.
“Simpleminded superstition!” the city-bred, college-educated will exclaim. But when one speaks with this woman, her native dignity and wise, far-seeing gaze are such that … (cont. on page 12)