by Blaire Edens
The Witch of Roan Mountain
By Blaire Edens
Published by
Hot Penny Press
Weaverville, NC 28787
The Witch of Roan Mountain by Blaire Edens
Copyright 2015 Blaire Edens
www.blaireedens.com
All rights reserved, including the right to reproduce this book or portions thereof in any form whatsoever. This book is a work of fiction. Any references to historical events, real people or real places are used fictionally. Other names, characters, places and events are products of the author’s imagination, and any resemblance to actual events, places or persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.
Cover designed by Lori Parker, Contagious Covers
Formatted by Erin Hayes
BOOKS BY BLAIRE EDENS
Wild About Rachel
An Officer and a Mermaid
TABLE OF CONTENTS
BOOKS BY BLAIRE EDENS
TABLE OF CONTENTS
CHAPTER ONE
CHAPTER TWO
CHAPTER THREE
CHAPTER FOUR
CHAPTER FIVE
CHAPTER SIX
CHAPTER SEVEN
CHAPTER EIGHT
CHAPTER NINE
EPILOGUE
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
“Where we love is home - home that our feet may leave, but not our hearts.”
Oliver Wendell Holmes
CHAPTER ONE
If I’d known what was going to happen, I wouldn’t have worn my best dress.
Jenks had bought in it Asheville with some of the money he’d made selling White Oak baskets. To me, the dress was the color of the sky in November when the air is as crisp as an apple. He said it was the color of Delphiniums, the flower my mother named me for because she saw them through the wavy glass of the cabin window on the day I was born.
“Delphine,” he’d say. “Why, that dress is very color of your eyes, every bit as blue, but not nearly as pretty.”
The way he looked at me made me feel as shiny and brilliant as a diamond. He always made me believe I was the most beautiful woman in the world, even with my hand the way it was.
The best part of the dress was that it had sleeves that flared out like a bell at the end and if you didn’t look very closely, you’d never notice that my hand looked more like a claw than a hand. The garment hid the worst part of me and brought attention to the best part of me.
I wore the dress the last time I went to see him. I’d wanted to look pretty, so I fixed my hair the way he liked it, piled on top of my head with just a few curls around my face, and I used the last of the lipstick I had. After today, I wouldn’t have any use for it anyway.
My husband was already dead and the love of my life was about to be.
Of course I didn’t know that. Not then.
I had a few candles left and I stuck them in the candelabra Mama had brought from Charleston. Mama was a Charleston lady before she met Daddy, and he brought her here to these mountains. It was the only fine thing she’d brought with her and I treasured it. The metal was cold and heavy in my hand and a shiver ran up my spine.
I’d latched the door of the cabin and walked down the road. The moon was barely a sliver and gave very little light. I prayed that a wind wouldn’t blow my candles out. Up here, there is always wind. I walked as slowly as I could, keeping to the shadows beside the road.
I wasn’t scared. There was no reason to be. After all, I grew up in these mountains and sometimes I felt as old they were. The bears were generally quiet this time of year and they usually kept to themselves anyway. I worried more about the people in town than I ever worried about wild animals.
The people in this town were much scarier than wild animals and much meaner. I knew that first-hand.
******
Late September 2015
Maeve McMahan took a sip of her coffee and looked out across the yard. Only twenty feet from the edge of the porch, there was a huge drop-off, easily two or three hundred feet. Beyond that there was nothing but the Blue Ridge Mountains. This early, the mountains were hidden in the blue mist that gave them their name. Maeve was wrapped in a tattered cotton quilt that smelled like it had just come off the clothesline. Even though it was only late September, up here, nearly five thousand feet above sea level, the air always stayed cool. Already some of the trees were turning into the brilliant golds and oranges of autumn.
“Where you at?” Her granny’s voice called from inside the cabin. Maeve heard the shuffle of her feet coming across the hardwood floors the screened door. It opened with a creak and her grandmother came out onto the porch. “Never known you to get up this early without a bucket of cold water dumped over your head.”
Maeve smiled. It was wonderful to be here, in these mountains that were her home, with her granny. It had been too long. Way too long.
“I slept so well last night. I woke up at sunrise and couldn’t go back to sleep.”
Atlanta with all his brick and glass and asphalt seemed a million miles away. Maeve took a deep breath and savored the aroma of the coffee mixed with the smell of the smoke coming from the chimney. There was nothing but the sounds of song birds and the occasional scurry of a squirrel. She’d forgotten how much she loved this porch, this view, this feeling of being exactly where she belonged.
“Want breakfast?” Even though Granny was well into her eighties, she hadn’t slowed down much since Maeve was a teenager. She still cooked on a wood stove, raised a huge garden and canned and preserved most of the vegetables herself. On her eightieth birthday, she’d finally conceded and allowed on of the teenage boys from the church to chop her firewood. “I lit the stove.”
“I’m okay. I might just have a yogurt.”
Granny shook her head. “That’s ridiculous. A body needs a solid breakfast and you’re too skinny by half.”
Maeve smiled. “Okay, Granny. You win. Two eggs over easy and some sausage?”
“That’s more like it,” the older woman said, placing her hand on Maeve’s shoulder. “I’m so glad you’re home. It just ain’t been the same without you.”
Maeve placed her hand on top of her granny’s. “Me, too.”
The old woman’s eyes, still a deep green, the color of new growth in the spring, looked over Maeve. “You should’ve come home a long time ago. This is where you belong. These mountains are as much a part of you as your fingerprint.”
After a hearty breakfast that probably had at least two thousand calories, Maeve dressed in blue jeans and a T-shirt. She tied an old sweatshirt she’d had since college around her waist. She tucked a few things in her backpack, a remnant from her years at Avery High, and walked into the kitchen.
“I’m going for a hike. I think it might help me clear my head,” she told Granny. She plugged her cell phone into the socket above the counter. “I don’t know why I even charge the stupid thing. I haven’t had signal since Burnsville.”
“Life was better before those silly things anyway.”
Maeve shrugged. “You’re probably right.”
“I am right.” Granny stopped stirring the huge pot on the stove and turned to Maeve. “When you get back, we’ll have fresh jelly. Apple and pear, your favorite. I’ll bake some fresh biscuits. It can be our supper.” The old woman had a gleam in her eye that took twenty years off her age.
The smells coming from the large stock pot took Maeve back to the autumns of her childhood and even though a hike sounded terrific, it was going to be hard to leave that delicious scent behind. “I can stay and help you.”
Granny shook her head. “Maybe tomorrow. You need some time in the sun, child. You’re as pale as a ghost.”
*****
Campbell Hyatt had the best job in the world. Most days, anyway.
As he pulled out of the lot behind the sheriff’s department, he hoped this was going to be one of them. He’d barely made it to the highway when his radio crackled to life.
This high in the remote mountains, cell phone service was hit or miss, so the department still used an old analog system.
“Go ahead, dispatch,” he said into the microphone.
“You need to go up to Granny Holcombe’s. She’s fallen and may need some assistance.”
“10-4. I’m en route.”
He executed a perfect U-turn and hit the gas on the Dodge Charger. With lights blaring, he maneuvered the switchbacks Jane’s Bald Road with ease. He hoped Granny was okay. In Avery County, she was not only a legend but a surrogate grandmother to dozens of people. Even though she was as old as Methuselah, she lived alone and kept the old ways.
It must have been a bad fall if she’d actually called.
In a county as remote as Avery, there was a lot of overlap when it came to emergency services. He was sure the ambulance was en route but it could take a long time for EMTs to get up to the top of the mountain where Granny Holcolmbe lived. He had to assume he was on his own.
The house was in a small clearing at the top of the road. An old cabin built at least a hundred years ago, it was so weathered that it looked like a natural part of the landscape. He stopped the car a few feet from the back door and hopped out.
There were no other vehicles in the yard. He breathed a sigh of relief. He’d heard that Maeve was back in town but he didn’t want to see her. That girl only came home when she had no other choice.
That was the problem with her.
“Granny,” he called through the screen. “It’s me, Campbell Hyatt.”
He knew the old woman well enough to know that he’d better announce himself. She might be hurt but that might not prevent her from meeting him with a 12 gauge. One thing eight years in law enforcement had taught him was that a hurt bear was still a bear.
“Granny,” he called again after receiving no answer the first time. “It’s Campbell. I’m coming in the back door.”
He heard a moan coming from inside and quickened his step.
Granny was lying flat on the kitchen floor, her leg bent at an unnatural angle. He bent down and took her hand in his. “You’re going to be okay, Granny. We’re going to get you some help, okay?”
She nodded weakly and he noticed tears welling up in the corner of her eyes.
Campbell had known the woman all of his life and this was the first time he’d ever seen fear in her face. “It’s not that bad, Granny. You’ve just got a little break. Doc can fix you right up.”
“Will I have to go to Asheville?” she asked. He heard the dread in her voice.
“We’ll see what the doc says. I don’t want to move you until the ambulance gets here. It might make the pain even worse.” He sat down on the floor beside, never dropping her hand. “Want me to talk or want me to be quiet?”
“Talk,” she whispered. “Tell me the story of the time your daddy tried to sneak his pony into the house with him.”
No one loved a story as much as Granny and she never grew tired of hearing the same ones over and over. She was childlike in that way.
Campbell began, “Well, when my daddy was about seven years old...”
*****
Maeve decided to start with an easy hike. It had been years since she’d roamed these mountains and the gym work-outs she’d done in Atlanta didn’t even come close to getting her into the shape she was in when she lived here. The Roan Mountain Gardens trail was just what she needed. Easy and quickly rewarding. She tossed her things in the passenger seat of the Volvo and drove down Jane’s Bald Road.
She turned at Carver’s Gap and followed the winding road up toward the gardens. After stopping at the kiosk, paying the usage fee and putting the hang tag on her rear-view mirror, she steered her Volvo sedan into a parking spot. The parking lot was empty. Too early for the fall foliage peak and too late for the summer riot of Rhodendrons, Maeve had the place to herself. She grabbed her water bottle and a small daypack from the trunk and headed toward the paved trail that led to one of the best views anywhere.
Because it was still early, most of the boreal forest leading to the overlook patio was still shrouded in mist. Maeve took her time winding through the moss-covered trees, savoring the rich earthy smell of the soils and the beautiful, vibrant greens of the plants. As she walked, the fog began to lift and disperse, allowing the sun’s light to penetrate through the trees in watery stripes.
She had no idea why she’d stayed away so long.
It was eerie being alone up here. Even though she’d been on this path dozens of times, this was the first time she’d been by herself.
In high school, it had been one of her favorite places. She and Campbell used to come up here and picnic. Kiss. Make love. She smiled at the memory.
Campbell Hyatt. Her first love.
He was still in town. A sheriff’s deputy. Single, no kids. Granny kept up with him and Maeve suspected that the old woman still fostered dreams that Maeve would come to her senses and marry Campbell.
It was too late for that. By a decade.
Campbell would always be a small-town boy. He’d never leave Avery County. The place, with its towering green mountains and ice-cold streams, was as much as part of him as the blood running through his veins.
Maeve got out of the county as soon as she had a chance. Undergraduate degree at Clemson University and then law school at Wake Forest. As soon as she’d graduated, she was off to Atlanta to work for one of the best criminal law firms in the South.
She’d planned to stay with Palmer, Norris, Howard for the rest of her career.
Until she’d let her ethics get in the way.
She had blown a big case. A case she could’ve won, should’ve won. But she just couldn’t compromise her principles.
Now she was back where she started. Avery County, North Carolina. No job, no plan. No direction. But she wouldn’t be here for long. It was too small, too confining.
Maeve took a deep breath and tried, for the thousandth time, to relax. Chill. To not think about the Juris Doctor she’d worked so hard to get only to piss away less than ten years later.
She rounded the corner and the view cleared her mind instantly.
Spreading out in front of her were the green folds of mountains and the crisp tucks of valleys for as far as she could see. Some of the trees, especially the ones high on the ridges, were beginning to turn yellow. Fall was on its way and would light these mountains aflame with color.
She sat down on a bench and pulled her water bottle and a granola bar from her daypack.
Maeve heard the woman before she saw her. A childhood spent in the woods had given her sharp ears. There was no mistaking the soft footsteps on the fallen leaves coming toward the bench as those of a woman.
When she looked up, she was shocked.
Staring back at her was the one woman she ever expected to see.
*****
I’d known that she was coming. I’d felt it in the wind, the trees, the change of the seasons. We were tied together, she and I, and she was the only one who might be able to help me. I’d prayed for her to hurry.
Even dead women pray. Probably more than the living ones.
The woman on the bench was small, tiny. Fragile. More like a teenager than a woman. Long blond hair pulled back off her oval-shaped face. The most remarkable thing about her was the way her blue eyes were as sharp as icicles.
It worried me. I’d waited a long time for her to come home and now, looking at her from behind the trunk of a balsam tree, I wasn’t sure she was going to be able to help me.
She wasn’t like her granny. Where her granny was mostly gristle and vinegar, this girl was cotton and clouds. I was terrifie
d that I’d wasted all my energy to get up here just to find I’d been wrong.
I wasn’t sure she’d even be able to see me. Not at first. It might take her awhile to believe I was real. Well, mostly real.
I eased out so that I was standing on the pathway. She turned immediately. I put all my energy into making myself visible. It felt strange. I’d spent so many years hiding and now I was trying to do the opposite. I bit my lip and concentrated as hard as I could.
Her eyebrows went up.
She saw me.
That fast.
Maybe I was right in waiting for her. She had the gift.
“I’m Delphine,” I said. It took all the energy I had to mutter two words. Back when I’d been alive, I could talk all day without flagging an inch but now it was exhausting.
The woman nodded. “I know who you are.”
“Help,” I muttered. “Need help.”
And then I faded into nothing.
*****
By the time the ambulance transported Granny Holcolmbe to the Avery County hospital in Newland, it was nearly noon. Her leg was broken and her sugar was a little high, but she was in otherwise great health.
It was time to track down Maeve. Campbell hoped back into the cruiser.
Shit.
It wasn’t the first time he’d had to chase down Maeve but Lord willing, it would be the last.
When that girl left Avery County, she’d taken most of his heart with her. Campbell had never loved anyone the way he loved her. Never before and never since. He would’ve been happy to live the rest of his life without seeing her face again.
Granny insisted on telling him everything about Maeve’s life in Atlanta. Hot shot attorney, big salary, important friends. Out of respect to Granny, he pretended to care. And maybe, deep down, he did care a little. But not much.
He turned his Charger onto the paved road and drove toward Carver’s Gap Road. If the girl who’d come home was anything like the girl who’d left, she’d go to Roan Mountain first. When he got to the turn, he flipped on the lights and tore up the gravel road past the turn-off to the old Cloudland Hotel and straight up to the parking lot at Rhododendron Gardens.
