Ghost on Black Mountain

by Ann Hite

  “I’m sorry.”

  He shrugged and righted the car. “I’m going home. The whole town has a big party at our house the Saturday before Halloween. It’s kind of a tradition with my mom and dad. You want to come and meet my family?”

  “Sure.” We had crossed some invisible line.

  “It’s all too crazy,” he hooted.

  The weekend came and I didn’t bother to tell Mama and Daddy about my plan to go with Lonnie. Mama’s letters always mentioned Anthony, and I couldn’t stand the thought of answering her list of questions.

  Lonnie and I set out early Saturday morning. Lonnie grabbed his guitar and threw it in the back of his car. He smelled of whiskey.

  “Now remember, moms will be moms, but mine is a piece of work. She’s crazy overprotective. My dad’s a little easier.”

  “I thought you said—”

  “My stepdad.”

  I got into the passenger side.

  “You want to smoke? You’ll want to be high before you meet my parents.”

  I shook my head. “I’m not going to smoke for a while. It’s messing with my music.”

  He threw his head back and laughed. “You’re so damn dedicated. The folks will love you. Dad will be looking for me to give you a ring or something. Maybe even our ghost will appear for you. We have the most famous ghost story in North Carolina.”

  I ignored how fast he was taking the curves. “I know a pretty good story too.”

  “Ours is the best. See, ours is about my daddy’s death and his wife, who more than likely killed him before she killed herself.”

  I got a chill. “Your mother is alive.”

  “Yeah.” He looked over at me, taking another curve fast.

  “Do you want me to drive?”

  “I’m fine.”

  “So who is the woman your father was married to? You got me all turned around.”

  He grinned. “My mama never married my daddy. She married his stepbrother. How’s that for family history?”

  “Wow.”

  “People wonder why I have problems.” He sounded angry. “They all say I’m turning out to be just like my real father, the great almighty Hobbs Pritchard. He’s the villain of Black Mountain, the man who drove Nellie Pritchard to murder and then to throw herself off the mountain.”

  I thought of Maw Maw’s fingers gripped around my wrist. How could my story be mixed up with Lonnie’s father?

  “You’re awful quiet.”

  A chill walked right through my hair.

  Fifty-four

  Lonnie’s mother was friendly enough. Her dark hair curled around her face in the universal mom hairdo of the sixties. But she had the most beautiful eyes. The view in front of the simple house stopped me in my tracks. Layers and layers of mountains as far as I could see reminded me of waves in the ocean. All I needed was the smell of salt and I’d be home.

  “Pretty, huh?” Lonnie whispered. He hugged his mother. “This is Iona Harbor. She comes from the coast of Georgia. Her music is beautiful.” He pulled me close. “I told her we have ghosts lurking around.”

  Mrs. Allen smiled and slapped him with a dish towel. “Lonnie, don’t scare her away.” She looked at me. “Don’t you listen to him. He’s the only person around this house who ever saw a ghost.”

  As we walked into the front room, my vision blurred, but the feeling was gone in an instant. A fire burned in the fireplace, and I had a hard time taking my stare away from the flames. I held out my hand. “It’s nice to meet you, Mrs. Allen, and he didn’t scare me.”

  “It’s a pleasure, honey.” She winked her approval at Lonnie and took my hand. “You found one with manners. Your dad is down at Aunt Ida’s old house. We finally rented it out.”

  “Why don’t he just sell the place?” Lonnie leaned his guitar case against a chair.

  “We thought you might want to live there when you finish school.”

  “No way. I’ve told you guys over and over I’m not coming back to this mountain to live.”

  “Well, you never know, Lonnie. People do change their minds.”

  A truck pulled into the drive. A tall man with graying hair emerged. He smiled when he saw Lonnie’s convertible.

  “There’s Dad now.” He held out his hand for me to follow him.

  “He’ll be so tickled you brought a friend,” Mrs. Allen called after us.

  Lonnie pulled me out the door.

  “Dad.”

  Lonnie’s dad smiled and stopped in place when he saw me. A small frown worked at his mouth. He struggled on whether to like me or not.

  “This is Iona Harbor. She’s from down on the coast of Georgia. Her daddy’s a preacher. Go figure. I’m dating a preacher’s daughter.”

  Mr. Allen held out his hand. His face slowly became calm. “I thought you looked like someone I used to know. My eyes are getting bad.” He laughed. “You can call me Jack.”

  No way. I couldn’t call him anything but Mr. Allen.

  “Over here is Mom’s flower garden.” Lonnie was proud.

  Fall flowers—chrysanthemums and a few daisies—were blooming. “It’s beautiful.” A wave of familiarity washed over me and then was gone, as if I had stood in that very spot before.

  “My wife loves her garden.” Mr. Allen looked at his son with undisguised love.

  “So where will the party be held?” I looked around the yard.

  “Out here. We’ll help set up the games—bobbing for apples, pumpkin carving—and the teenagers always have a haunted house in the barn. We even tell ghost stories around the bonfire.” Lonnie pointed to a fire pit loaded with wood.

  “My family is so boring compared to yours.”

  “You know, Lonnie, I’m glad you came home for Halloween.” Mr. Allen patted Lonnie on the shoulder.

  “This is a great place,” I said.

  Lonnie’s face hardened. “This place has its dark corners.”

  Mr. Allen took off his hat. “Lonnie, we have a lot to do. I’ll meet you in the barn.” He walked away.

  Lonnie watched him. “Dad doesn’t like me talking about the past.”

  The night promised to be fun as the yard began to fill with guests. The decorations and the sight of Lonnie goofing off with some of the other guys put me into the partying spirit.

  Mr. Allen stuck a match to the wood and a whoosh of flames shot into the air. The party began. The black oily smoke spiraled up as the heat wafted toward me. I found a chair as Lonnie ran off to work in the haunted house. Mr. Allen carved intricate patterns on pumpkins for the little ones, while Mrs. Allen ran the apple-bobbing game. The more I watched, the more I knew I should be a part of this family. I watched the flames leaping into the air for a while before I noticed a man leaning against a big tree. His arms were folded across his chest and his head was cocked to one side. He watched me as if he knew me. A puff of smoke made my eyes water. I rubbed them and looked. The man was gone.

  A loud commotion came from the barn. A crowd of boys burst out of the door. Lonnie’s mom looked up from where she sat. A young boy ran from the crowd.

  “I saw him! I saw him!”

  “Who?” Mrs. Allen asked in a calm voice.

  “Hobbs Pritchard. I know it was him. He was standing in the corner of the barn grinning; then his face turned into a skull.” The boy looked to be around ten.

  “Don’t be silly. That story is old and it’s losing its punch,” one of the other adults said.

  “But I did see him.”

  I felt sure the boy saw something.

  Lonnie came walking into the firelight. He was quiet.

  “Are you finished so soon?” I asked him.

  “I don’t have the stomach for it this year.”

  “What’s wrong?” I tried to get a reading on him.

  “Nothing to worry about.” He put his arm around me. “Let’s go walk in the woods.”

  I thought of the man. “No, thanks. I saw this creepy man over there by that tree.” I pointed.

  His gr
ip turned tight. “What did he look like?”

  “Just a man. It was how he looked at me that bothered me so much.”

  “Iona saw Hobbs too.” His words silenced the crowd, and everyone turned to stare at me. “Iona doesn’t even know the whole story.” He raised his arm in salute to me.

  All of a sudden I just wanted to go back to school and leave that awful place. The crowd was watching me as if I had something important to say.

  “I saw a man by that tree.”

  The people began to whisper.

  “That’s enough of this talk. Iona is our guest. There are no ghosts.” Mr. Allen moved toward me. “I think we should have some fun.”

  Slowly everyone went back to what they had been doing before the scare.

  I pulled Lonnie’s arm. “Let’s go to the house.”

  Lonnie grinned and shrugged.

  The house was warm and bright. “Have you been drinking?”

  Lonnie laughed. “A little, but I know what I saw, Iona. I’m not crazy.”

  “Why don’t you go sleep it off?”

  He came close. “Why don’t you go with me?”

  “Stop. This is your parents’ house.”

  He pulled back. “Yeah, all three of them.” He stared at the stairs. “I want to go back to school. Let’s go. Will you drive?”

  “It’s late. What will your parents think?”

  “We won’t tell them. I just want out of here, Iona.”

  He reminded me of a lost little boy.

  His car was parked close to the road to make room for the guests. No one noticed us leave. “I don’t understand why you just don’t tell them good-bye, Lonnie. I feel bad about that.”

  “They’ll make a big deal, Iona. I don’t want a big deal.”

  Lonnie lit a joint as I maneuvered the mountain road.

  “Did you get your guitar?”

  “No. I don’t give a damn. I’ll get Mom to send it. I’m not going back, ever.”

  “What happened?” I realized he was a lot more shaken up than he let on. “Is it what I said about seeing the man?”

  “You saw my real father, Hobbs Pritchard.”

  “That’s the name of the man in the story Mama used to tell me.”

  “Then she must have been on this mountain, because there was only one Hobbs.”

  I shook the thought of Mama being on this mountain out of my mind. “What did you see, Lonnie?”

  “I saw him, Hobbs. I saw him in the barn. He was sitting on a bale of hay up in the loft. That little boy saw him too. Hobbs grinned at me and said, ‘It won’t be long, son.’”

  “Long for what, Lonnie?” My voice cracked as I caught a sideways glance at him. At that moment a man stepped into the road. He seemed caught in the headlights. He wore little round spectacles, an old-fashioned suit, and a funny little driving hat. He never flinched as I slammed on the brakes.

  “Whoa there, now,” Lonnie yelled.

  Part Six

  Annie Harbor

  Fifty-five

  Mama passed away in her sleep on October 25, 1958, at the nursing home in Savannah nineteen years after giving up everything she owned to find me and finally succeed in saving me from myself. With her death, my life as a daughter was over. I was an orphan. Mama was my one and only shining star. She kept me on track when no one else could. My mama was made of much tougher stuff than me.

  The makings for a roast beef sandwich was scattered across the kitchen counter when the phone rang.

  “Hello.”

  “Mrs. Harbor?”

  “Yes.”

  “This is Louise Mars from Pellem Rest Home. Mrs. Clay passed away quietly just an hour or so ago. The nurse on duty found her when she came to bring her medicine.”

  No words would come out of my mouth.

  “Mrs. Harbor, did you hear me?”

  “Yes. Thank you.” That’s all I said, thank you. Thank you my mama has died. I replaced the receiver in the cradle while the woman was still talking. No one was home. I picked up the phone again and dialed Iona’s number. I waited as the girl who answered went to track her down. She returned out of breath only to tell me my daughter was off with her boyfriend for the weekend.

  “How can that be? He’s here in Savannah.”

  “I’m sorry, that’s all I know. She’s gone for the weekend.” Click, and the girl was gone.

  The house vibrated with silence. Mama was dead. No longer did she have to fight to keep all my lies straight in a mind moving in and out of reality. All my silly secrets. Were they worth the sacrifice of having her die alone?

  Mama came rolling into Darien two days after me. From behind the windshield of her old truck, she smiled at me like she’d won a contest. “You said I’d be living here too, Nellie.”

  I placed my finger on her lips. “I’m Annie Tucker now. You can never tell anyone who I really am. I’ll be lost if you do.”

  “You done killed him.” The sentence hung between us like a heavy thundercloud.

  “I got us a place close to the river.” We didn’t bring up the subject again.

  I met Harold two weeks later and things between us moved fast. Of course Mama had another warning for me, and just like with Hobbs, I didn’t listen.

  “You can’t let that man—him being a preacher—not know your whole story. You can’t let him think this baby is his. It will end in disaster.”

  Not once had I mentioned I was pregnant. I married Harold two weeks later, in spite of his own mother’s misgivings.

  My plan was to once again live happily ever after. Mama fell harder for my husband than I ever did. Don’t get me wrong. I loved Harold Harbor until the day he died. But Hobbs had stolen something precious from deep inside my soul. There wasn’t a shred of trust or belief in the common good of humans left. And without those things, a soul gets old and tired even when she is young. Without those things, I couldn’t use good judgment. Without those things, I thought I would never be in control of my own life again.

  Harold insisted Mama move in with us, and that’s the best gift he ever gave me. I never planned to let her out of my sight again. My new life fit me like an expensive dress. Mama called me Annie without a problem. Nellie had died. Sometimes I thought of making her a gravestone and placing it next to Daddy in the graveyard out by the church.

  Mama’s eyes nearly popped out of her head when she saw the house where we would live. “We’re here just like you said. Your daddy must be grinning.”

  “It’s a safe place. No one will ever look for me here.”

  She nodded. “I pray every night you have a girl. I don’t want to be reminded of that man ever again.”

  “Don’t talk like that, Mama. This baby will be Harold’s. He’s a good man. It deserves one good parent.”

  “Never forget you did what you had to do, nothing more. You’re not bad.”

  I didn’t tell her how I planned the murder of my husband, how it was a wisp of a thought on some of those empty days. In the first weeks of my second marriage, I got up in the dead of the night and sat at the kitchen table. In those long hours before the sun came up over the marsh, I thought of ways I could have left Hobbs without killing him. There were plenty. Funny how hindsight is so clear and perfect.

  Iona was born on a cold day right before Thanksgiving. Everyone was amazed at how healthy she was to be born two months early. Harold was all over himself to have a girl. He never paid a bit of attention to anyone who did raise an eyebrow. He trusted me and I never felt guilty.

  “Look at her, Annie. She looks just like you. She’s our angel.” He smiled at me.

  And I knew this to be totally true.

  Iona and Mama were my life. Harold loved us all. It didn’t matter that sometimes I couldn’t stand for him to touch me. I moved past the feeling quick enough. Somehow I got the idea in my head I had to pay for what I did to Hobbs. That payment came in the form of losing our son to crib death, and that’s all I have to say about that part of our life. I paid a high price
for my deed.

  So there I stood in my living room, searching for Iona. I needed my only child. My heart was broken. After trying to call Iona three more times and making every girl in her dorm house mad, I called Harold. He came straight home from his office at church.

  “We should move her body to the funeral home.” Harold stood in the kitchen with one hand on my shoulder. He had turned gray around the temples and new lines had formed around his eyes. What would I do if I didn’t have him? He was my safety net, my one sure thing. But I held back like I always did.

  “Yes. I’m still looking for Iona. I’ve called her dorm house so much the girls hang up on me.” I smiled weakly. “How can she be off with Anthony?”

  “Maybe the girl got her wires crossed. Iona’s good about talking to us. She would have called us if Anthony was visiting.” He patted my shoulder.

  “I hope she’s okay.”

  “She’s a grown woman, Annie.”

  “She’s not grown, Harold.”

  He laughed in his quiet way. “Yes, she grew up without you even seeing her.”

  He was right.

  Harold gave me a big hug. “Do you want to go see your mother?”

  I took a deep breath. “I want to wait for Iona to call.” I pictured Mama in that bed in the tiny room of the nursing home. She never had to go there. I made her so I could cover my tracks, my lie from so long ago. When would the past quit following me?

  That night, after Harold was snoring, I went down to the kitchen table. Every time I closed my eyes, I saw Mama. Poor Mama. Where was Iona? Why hadn’t she called? The clock ticked in the front room, tick, tick, tick. The moon was big in the sky, and that February night in 1939 played out in my mind. I learned to just go with the pictures because they weren’t going away. Those terrible choices set Annie’s life in motion. The long-ago flames still parched my heart.

  The phone made me jump. “Hello?” The clock showed two in the morning.

  “I’m calling the parents of Iona Harbor.” The voice was clean and crisp, professional.

  “This is her mother. What’s wrong?” Because I knew something was wrong. Finally I would pay the price for my sin.