Ghost on Black Mountain

by Ann Hite

  “Why didn’t you marry her?”

  His face turned trouble. “She came up missing.”

  A prickle went down my neck. “What happened?”

  “They found her two weeks later, dead.” He took a deep breath as if the whole scene still lived in him. “I was the last to see her alive. I walked her home from a church social and left her at the top of her drive. I should have walked her to her door, but she shooed me off. Henry James could get upset if I was late coming home.” He leaned on the maul. “By the time they found Patty, well, it wasn’t pretty. Animals got ahold of her.” He looked away.

  “How horrible.”

  “Could have been a bear that killed her. They will do that if they’re caught off guard. But I don’t think so.” Then he looked me dead in the eyes. “Sometimes you just know something but you don’t have no proof.”

  A thickening in my breath made it hard to speak. “You think it was Hobbs?”

  He looked at me with a wiry smile. “If I could have proved it, I would have killed him myself.”

  I looked at my feet. I didn’t want to know this about Hobbs.

  “Did you ever think, Rose, you didn’t really know him at all?” Jack hoisted the maul over his head and split the log in half.

  Searching for Hobbs’s money became serious. I wanted Hobbs’s treasure. Then I could live anywhere and do anything. So, one morning bright and early I decided to go snoop around the hayloft. I dug through the hay like some kind of fool.

  “What are you doing?”

  I jumped a foot. “Good Lord, Jack!” I fell back into the hay and laughed harder than I had in the months since I came.

  “What you digging for, Rose?” He wore a half smile.

  For a minute I thought of lying, but my new life deserved better than that. “I’m looking for money.”

  “Ah, Hobbs’s loot. You must have been talking to our good ladies on the mountain. Before you came, I had to run kids off from up here all the time.” He laughed.

  “It’s not funny. I want to find that money so I can do what I want for the rest of my life.”

  “You don’t have to leave here, Rose. I’ll help.”

  His words sat on my shoulders. We were quiet. I was afraid to look him in the eye for fear I’d see pity.

  “Now, don’t go getting mad cause I offered to help you.”

  This made me warm in a silly way. “I’m trying to make it on my own. You’ve done way too much.”

  “You let me decide that.” He held out his hand. “Get out of the hay, Rose. You make too pretty of a picture there.” His cheeks were pink.

  I took his hand and allowed him to pull me out of the hay.

  Forty-one

  September, with the last of the summer heat, rolled in with no signs of cooler weather. I woke one morning in our quiet little bedroom. The sun was bright. The river churned, and even though I couldn’t see the water the sound seemed to fill the space in my mind. I closed my eyes and melted into its music. What would happen if I followed the river up the mountain? I needed to clear my mind. I’d been spending too much time with Jack beginning most of my thoughts.

  “Mama, what you doing?” Lonnie’s curls fell over his forehead, making me think of Hobbs in the morning.

  “We should get out of this house and go on an adventure.”

  Lonnie sat up and clapped his little hands together.

  “Come on. We’ll follow the river up the mountain. I hear there is a waterfall somewhere.”

  “Yes, yes.” He jumped up and down on the bed.

  The sweet sound of my own laughter surprised me. I was healing. I was moving past the tethered places inside me. “Breakfast first.”

  * * *

  Lonnie ran ahead of me. The wind was blowing, keeping the heat of the day away. The red bee balm dotted the sides of the road. The bell tower of the church hung in the sky ahead, a simple, quiet plainness. The river was to our right. The banks were covered with smooth moss-coated rocks.

  As Lonnie and I followed the path the river grew louder. Lonnie would run to the water and dip his feet in, throwing rocks. I stood still, allowing my many thoughts to disappear. We moved at our own speed. The trail forked. One snaked through a thicket of trees. The other was steep, climbing higher up the mountain. I was pulled to the lower path. Sunlight sprinkled the packed dirt. A cluster of monarch butterflies sat on the edge of a mud puddle. They appeared connected, their wings opening and closing at different times like a silent orchestra.

  Lonnie smiled at me. Open and close. He ran right up to them but they continued to work their wings. Then I walked closer, and they burst into a graceful, gliding flight around our heads, like a magnificent dream. My heart opened with the dance they performed in the air. My boy whooped and stomped but still these beautiful creatures fluttered around in no hurry. One landed on my chest, opening and closing its wings, so delicate it looked like paper. Slowly each butterfly moved into the forest until only my guest was left.

  “She likes you, Mama.” Lonnie watched in awe.

  “It seems so.”

  “Touch her, Mama,” Lonnie begged.

  I ran my finger close to her feet. She hopped on in one flutter. I held her close to his face, and just as I went to touch her wings, she took to the air. Twice around our heads and then into the woods. The sound of the water moved around us, a melody running through me. Life was right there waiting in the same place it had always been, waiting for me to catch up, to see my new way, new road, a butterfly in flight.

  “Mama, look.” Lonnie’s words were almost lost to me.

  The water tumbling over the sheer rock cliff stopped me in my tracks. If there really was a God, He was right there in the water, the rocks, the butterflies, and the forest, not in a church with a bunch of people. At the foot of the waterfall, before it took off as a river, was a pool surrounded by rocks. Then I noticed an opening behind the wall of water.

  “Come on, Lonnie.” I took his hand, and we picked our way over the rocks until we stood under the cool wet overhang. The waterfall fell in front of us. A cool spray hit our faces.

  Lonnie smiled, holding out his hand, touching the water, splashing it back on us. “We’re the waterfall.”

  And we were the water. I closed my eyes and allowed my wings to emerge, cracking open my tough skin. I slid off my shoes. The water was so cold I couldn’t catch my breath. The wind blew through the tops of the trees and I shivered. Hobbs stood on the bank, watching. Everything went dark. Lights, truck lights, crashed through small trees, settling with a loud hissing sound into a good-size tree trunk. I wrapped my arms around my waist. The vision disappeared.

  “What’s wrong, Mama?”

  “I’m fine, sweetie.”

  “You look scared.”

  “No.” I stepped out of the water onto soft moss. “We’d better get home.”

  “I like it here.”

  “Yes, we’ll have to come back,” I said, shivering to the bone.

  When we reached the road, I took the opposite direction. I saw the back end of a truck pointing down the embankment about fifty feet away. I’d have known that truck anywhere. “Hobbs.”

  “That’s my friend’s name. He said you knew him.” Lonnie smiled.

  I pulled the door open. Nothing; not even his smell. Then I saw a ring, a wide wedding band, on the floorboard. It was hers. She drove the truck up here. She killed him. I clinched the ring in my hand so tight it left a print on my palm. All our actions travel a road that comes home to us at some point. His fate had been in this delicate girl’s hands. I didn’t know how I knew all this, but I knew it. I put the ring in my dress pocket and cried the first tears since Hobbs died, a baptism in grief.

  Forty-two

  Jack was backing up his truck when he saw us walking into the yard. “You okay?”

  “We went to the waterfall. We got to stand inside of it.” Lonnie danced around. “Mama caught a butterfly.”

  Jack smiled. “Well, it sounds like you had a
good walk.”

  I touched the ring in my pocket. “What do you know about Nellie, Jack?” The sadness still came in waves.

  “Hey, Lonnie, go get us some of those cookies your mama made yesterday.”

  Lonnie smiled. “Okay.” He ran off into the house.

  “I should have told you about the truck.”

  “Aunt Ida told me when I first came here.” I fought the tears away.

  He rushed ahead of me. “We couldn’t get the truck out. I tried.”

  “You probably were the only one.” I slid the ring on and off my finger inside my pocket. “I know you hated Hobbs, but he was the father of my son and he was the man I loved. It hurts to see that truck hugging that tree, clean, except …”

  He nodded. “Except what, Rose?”

  I pulled the ring out of my pocket and shoved it at him. “This, this ring was on the floorboard of the truck.”

  His eyes got big but he wiped the look off his face quick as a flash. He took the ring in his fingers.

  “Do you know who it belonged to?” I knew. It was a trinket from one of Hobbs’s poker games with me sitting right there beside him. Before Christmas. He had promised to give it back to the man. He promised.

  “I think so.” At least Jack wasn’t a liar.

  “It belonged to Nellie. It had to belong to her because I was with Hobbs when he won it in a poker game. He gave it to her probably for Christmas.” I spat the words at him as if he was the one who caused all the trouble.

  “I’m sorry,” he whispered.

  “She was the one in the truck! She drove it off the road!” I was screaming the words.

  He stepped forward. “You don’t know that.”

  “I do! Why would the ring be in there? She would have kept it.”

  In my heart, I knew if I turned to the hollow tree, the shadow would be right there, waiting for Jack’s response.

  He shrugged.

  Lonnie burst from the house with a plate of cookies, allowing a few to slide off onto the ground.

  “Just forget it, Jack.”

  “Don’t.” The one word was a warning. “Let it go, Rose, before it swallows you up.”

  My anger served no purpose pointed at him. “Maybe.”

  “I know.”

  He had given thought to Nellie being the one. He’d been through it over and over in his mind.

  Jack took a handful of cookies.

  “Lord, you love sweets better than anyone.” I tried to laugh.

  “I got a big favor to ask of you.” Jack spoke around the cookies.

  “What?”

  “The kids have got it in their heads to have a Halloween carnival. They want to have it at your house with a big bonfire, games, and food. They’re afraid you’ll say no.”

  How could I? I wanted to belong to that mountain so bad. “Sounds like fun. Of course we’ll have a carnival. But why do they want to have it here?” But I knew even before he opened his mouth.

  “They think it is haunted.”

  I laughed. “Well, they’re probably right.”

  Jack smiled.

  “You have to stay for supper. Lonnie will be disappointed if you don’t. I’ll send a plate home to Aunt Ida.” She never left the house now.

  “You don’t have to twist my arm. I’ll stay. We can talk about the games we’ll have at the carnival.”

  When was the last time I played a game? I couldn’t remember. “I always wanted to play bobbing for apples.”

  “Then we have to add that one to the list. How about I be the pumpkin carver? The whole mountain will come. Well, except for the good pastor. He refuses to have anything to do with the devil’s night, as he calls it.” Jack laughed.

  Pastor Dobbins was a real stick-in-the-mud. Watching paint peel on the side of a house was more interesting than listening to his sermons. That’s why I didn’t bother to go to church; that and I didn’t know what I thought of God. Oh, I believed, but He played favorites. This left the rest of us on our own to make the biggest messes out of our lives.

  “We’ll have a party, a Halloween carnival.”

  “Yes we will.” Jack smiled. He was becoming a trusted friend.

  Forty-three

  Halloween came and the whole mountain was set for the big party. Right before sundown, I went into the woods to get some pretty leaves—orange was my favorite—to decorate the tables. A little girl stood on the other side of the creek. She wore only a slip, the frilly old kind that touched the ground.

  “What are you doing out here in the woods dressed like that?”

  “I come here all the time.” She was pale, sickly looking.

  “You need to come with me. I’ll get you home.”

  She smiled. “I’d be happy if I could.” In her hair were tiny rosebuds attached to pale pink ribbons. I thought it odd she’d have fresh roses in October.

  “I know your mother would hate it if I left you here alone. What’s your name?”

  “Katleen Morgan. You’re going to have a big party?”

  “Yes. I think I met your brother, Tyler.”

  She giggled. “Couldn’t be. You’re going to make him mad.”

  “Your brother?” The child was talking in riddles.

  “No.” She stepped toward the creek and stopped. “A question will be answered and a riddle will form.”

  “Come with me so I can take you home.” The girl must have been touched in the head.

  “Can’t.”

  “The weather is turning cold and it’s almost dark. You can’t walk around in what you’re wearing, especially in the woods.”

  “I don’t like the dark.”

  “Well, come over here and let’s go. Be careful not to wet your slip.”

  “You’ll make him mad.”

  “You’re not making sense.”

  The little girl giggled again.

  “Rose, are you out here?” Jack called from the edge of the woods.

  I turned. “I’m here by the creek. I’ve found a little girl.” I looked back but the girl was gone.

  Jack made his way through the trees and undergrowth to where I stood. “Did you say you found a little girl?”

  “Yes.”

  He looked around.

  “I know. She was right there.” I pointed across the creek. “I’m not crazy. She was wearing a slip.”

  “Folks say the whole mountain is haunted, and that it takes all sorts of forms.” He smiled.

  “I’m not joking. That child is going to freeze to death or get lost or eaten by a bear.”

  “I ain’t heard of no one being eaten by a bear in a long time. Did she give you a name?”

  “Katleen Morgan.”

  Jack thought a minute like he was going down a list of people living on the mountain. “Never heard of her, and I know pretty much everyone up here.”

  “Maybe she’s visiting.”

  “Don’t get many visitors and no one has company right now.”

  “I’m not crazy, and what happens up here that everyone doesn’t know about?”

  He laughed. “You ain’t crazy. And not too much happens that doesn’t get passed around. There’s no little girl visiting right now.” He took my arm and led me out of the woods. “We’re going to have us some fun tonight, Miss Rose. Are you ready?”

  I looked over my shoulder but no one was there.

  Forty-four

  The party began with a rush of kids trying to do everything at one time. The yard was full. The fire blazed, providing lots of light. We had paper lanterns and the half moon hung in the sky. Lonnie followed the big boys around like a shadow, but they didn’t seem to mind. He was a strange little fellow who spent most of his time alone and happy about it. Maybe he wasn’t different. Maybe all little boys liked playing by themselves. Jack stayed close and part of me liked this, even though I knew we were just friends.

  I looked after the bobbing-for-apples game. The night air was nippy, but our guests didn’t seem to care the water was ice-cold. My mind w
as on my frozen hands, which were so painful I almost didn’t notice a ruckus coming from the woods. The noises blended in with the party’s commotion, but the second burst of loud voices brought a sharp hush to the crowd, as if everyone noticed at once something wasn’t right. My first thought went to Lonnie. I strained to see around the people.

  “Look here! Look here!” It was one of the teenage boys. I moved toward him.

  Jack touched my arm and nodded. “He’s right there in the thick of the excitement. Them boys are stirring up some ghost story or another. It’s Halloween.”

  My whole body turned fluid with relief. “What do they think they’re doing? I was scared to death.”

  “Ah, they’re boys. Don’t have no brains to speak of.” Jack smiled and moved toward the one talking so fast he was hard to understand. “What’s all the excitement about, Charles Ray?”

  “Jack, look what we found in the hollow tree, right inside that hole. Look. We ain’t playing no gags. This is real.”

  “What’s …” When Jack stopped speaking I moved to get a better look.

  A bony face perched in Charles Ray’s hand. What kind of joke was this?

  “I want to hold it.” Lonnie reached for the horrible treasure.

  I crossed the distance between us. “You don’t touch it, young man.” I grabbed his arm.

  A skull with big vacant eyes stared out at me. Hobbs’s features formed over the bone. I looked to see if anyone noticed, but they didn’t. When I looked back, it was into the empty eyes of the skull, but I knew what I had seen.

  “Who you think it belongs to?” Oshie Connor shouted at Jack, as if the noise of the crowd still existed.

  It was Hobbs, of course, the father of my son.

  “It’s my friend.” Lonnie spoke as if his answer was normal. “He’s always out there by the tree.”