The Drowned Forest

by Kristopher Reisz

  “Mmhmm.” Her eyes widen suddenly and she says, “Hey, we’re going to go see a band later tonight. Want to come with us?”

  “Oh, no. Thanks, but I—”

  “Band called the Herpes Sponges. Sure you don’t want to come?”

  “Uh, yeah.” That’s what I called LeighAnn yesterday. My face burns from the memory. My throat tightens. But she says it calmly, a rushed, half-remembered thing. Maybe it’s a coincidence. Maybe God is just reminding—

  “Kinda ticks me off, actually. I was going to start a band called the Herpes Sponges. Or, you know, name my first child Herpes Sponge. Herpes Sponge Cassell. It’s more of a girl’s name, but it could work for a boy, don’t you think?”

  I stare hard at the floor.

  “Well? What do you think?”

  “I … I don’t know.”

  Is she going to kick me out? Holly, where do I go now?

  “You think I’m trashy, fine. I’ll still take care of your runaway butt. But don’t ever treat me like I’m stupid.”

  I nod, trying to cough up some chalk-dry apology. Then LeighAnn’s expression suddenly brightens again. “And if you can walk the dogs sometime today, that’d be a major help. Leashes are above the dryer. See you.” She turns and walks off. The front door opens and bangs shut.

  My hands tremble with relief. Or guilt. Or both. LeighAnn could have kicked me out—she had a right to—but some spark of grace kept her from dumping me out on the street. Holly, I have to remember that. I hug the clothes LeighAnn loaned me. No matter what else I think about her, about these people, I have to remember that.

  Outside, dawn hangs over the backyards like blue chiffon. The air remains night-cool and damp, but it’ll heat up soon. I go change into the clothes LeighAnn lent me. It feels good pulling on clean things. Right away, I’m sorry for acting stupid and stubborn last night and not asking to borrow something.

  I unwrap the bandages from my arm. Scabs and bruises mark where you scratched me, Holly. One sickly pale flower has grown under the bandage, curled flat against my skin. I prod at the silk thread of a stem. Part of my soul stretches into the flower. I can sense the delicious cool against the leaves. I taste the drop of musky sweetness hidden at the center of squashed petals. I pinch the flower’s base and yank. The blood on the roots is bright red. Smearing on more antibiotic ointment, re-wrapping my arm, I toss the little flower in the trash.

  I want to go home. My parents have probably been up all night worrying about me, praying, waiting for me to call. I wish I could at least text them so they’d know I’m okay. Stratofortress has a landline phone hanging on the kitchen wall. I could call Mom and Dad, just tell them I love them. But the police might trace the call. They’d come get me, and Mom and Dad wouldn’t let me out of their sight afterward.

  I can’t go home. It doesn’t matter how lonely I feel. It doesn’t matter how much it hurts Mom and Dad. I can’t go home until I know you’re safe. I force the idea away, deciding to distract myself by nosing around Stratofortress’s house.

  The flyers lining the hallway are from lots of different bands and venues—Calamity Jane in Birmingham, the Suicide Kings and Tom Waits in Nashville, a ton of shows at the UNA student center. There’s only a few flyers from Stratofortress’s own gigs. They’re all for local shows at the Brick or the Bandito Burrito. Stratofortress is usually an opening act, and on one flyer, they’re listed as Stradivarius.

  I look around the rest of the house. In LeighAnn and Max’s bedroom, a thick layer of clothes and sound equipment covers the floor. A marijuana pipe sits on the dresser, ribbons of purple running through its clear glass body. Ultimate Steve doesn’t have a bed, just a mattress on the floor. A Jolly Roger hangs across the window for a curtain. A hole in the ceiling exposes the roof joists like two-by-four ribs, and a pot on the floor catches dripping water.

  I want to go home, Holly.

  No, no, it doesn’t matter. I have to push the idea out of my head.

  Back in the kitchen, I pour myself some coffee. The bitter black crud scalds my tongue, but at least it’ll keep me awake. I check out the fridge. Almost no food, but there is half a case of beer.

  Seriously, LeighAnn? You seriously want to be this particular rock ’n’ roll cliché? I’m a home-schooled Jesus dork, and even I know how lame this is.

  I shut the refrigerator door. They’re letting me stay here. Remember that, remember that.

  I heat up some ravioli for breakfast. Rinsing my bowl, I balance it on the stack of dishes already in the sink and start to walk away. But I can help out some while I’m here. Filling the sink with hot water, I wash the dishes. I need a butter knife to scrape away the crusty food and dead mosquito-eaters.

  Tyler should be up by now. I wonder if Bo told his parents everything. I pace and worry, but I’ll just have to wait until Tyler gets in touch with me. A sliding glass door leads from the kitchen to the back patio. I step out to see what kind of dogs LeighAnn has.

  She has happy dogs! They scramble out of their doghouse and come greet me, nails clicking on the bare concrete patio. I let them sniff my hand and check their tags to see their names. Hobbit has some golden retriever in him. Cookie is black and white and looks like a furry pig. I find the leashes, and we head up the street of dingy houses.

  We pass two blocks from church, but I can’t go there. Somebody would see me and tell. But I can’t wait anymore, either. As soon as we return to Stratofortress’s house, I call Tyler.

  He answers halfway through the second ring. “Hello?”

  “Hey, it’s me. Is everything okay?”

  “Yeah, pretty much. What about you?”

  “Pretty much. So, did Bo tell your parents anything?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Well? What happened?”

  Tyler’s voice drops to a whisper. “I’m not in trouble, but I can’t really talk about it on the phone.”

  “Then come over here so we can talk.”

  “I can’t right now. I have to get to school. And my folks are still suspicious.”

  “Well, make up some excuse or something. We have to figure out what to do, Tyler.”

  “I’ll come over later today.”

  “Whatever.” I slam the phone back onto the hook. Scowling and too anxious to sit still, I decide to clean some more. I wash my dirty clothes from last night, sweep the floors, and empty the ashtrays on the porch. It burns off excess energy, which makes me feel in control, and I start thinking about stuff I can do without Tyler, like maybe checking the library for any stories about ghosts around Wilson Lake. By lunchtime, I have a choice between tackling the bathroom or going to the library.

  Grabbing my twenty-dollar bill, I step outside and start walking.

  Twenty dollars, Holly. That’s all I’ve got. At the Shop-Rite, I walk in and buy the number one thing: a toothbrush. With that stuffed in my front pocket, I head to the library. The sun’s rays scrape at the back of my neck. I pick at my chapped bottom lip until I taste blood. One change of borrowed clothes. No phone. Seventeen dollars and twenty-one cents. How long can I live on this? A couple days? A week?

  But hey, I’m at least one toothbrush better off than I was last night, right?

  The public library doesn’t have anything about local ghosts except that kids’ book 13 Alabama Ghosts and Jeffery. Remember scaring ourselves silly reading that, Holly?

  With nothing much else to do, I walk to the University of North Alabama campus and check out their library. Students are typing at the computers and sifting through shelves of old journals. They camp out in their study carrels with notebooks, drinks, and fast-food bags. Half of them have their shoes kicked off.

  I can’t find anything useful in the computer database, so I ask at the reference desk. It takes the librarian twenty minutes of scrounging in the back, but he returns with two bulging manila envelopes.

  From
1986 to 1989, a professor named Harry Frazier did interviews about magic and witchcraft with country people all around the Tennessee Valley. The envelopes are labeled 2 (of 6) and 3 (of 6), and one has Folklore Book KEEP!!! scrawled across it in blue ink. Maybe Frazier was planning on writing a history of the valley or something. Inside, there’s one audio cassette marked Witherspoon #3 and a bunch of paper transcripts.

  HF: Tell me about hot foot powder.

  DW: Hot foot powder is what you sprinkle into a footprint if you don’t want somebody coming around anymore. See, as they’re leaving, you sprinkle their footprint in the dirt with the powder and mix it up real good, and then they’ll never come back. It turns people restless if they try, can’t get settled or feel comfortable.

  HF: How is it made?

  DW: A root-worker will get some river mud they dry out and grind up fine. The river, that’s where the power comes from. Other ingredients get the person bothered real bad, like poison sumac or hot pepper.

  HF: Do you know of anybody using hot foot powder?

  DW: Sure, more than I could name. It’s real common if, like, a girl has a boy who keeps hanging around and won’t leave her alone. She’ll get some hot foot powder to get rid of him. And I know two women who used it to drive off their husbands. One because he beat her real bad. The other, she just had another man.

  The transcripts were typed on a typewriter, and sometimes there’s just the pink carbon copy. Hunching over until my shoulders ache, ignoring my growling hunger, I read about weather signs, recipes for medicines and charms, and how to know if a witch has cursed your cow. Then one interview turns toward bogeymen and ghosts.

  HF: Have you heard of Tommy Mud-and-Sticks?

  MP: Yes sir, he was a spirit trapped in the river. Everybody down in the holler knew about Tommy Mud-and-Sticks, knew to run if they heard him crying.

  HF: So he’s a ghost? A dead spirit?

  MP: Yes sir, he was drowned by his brother.

  HF: Can you tell me the story?

  MP: As best as I know, Tommy was married to a girl named Sharon, but she had an eye for his brother too. So one day, Tommy and his brother went hunting, and the brother knocked Tommy in the head and drowned him in the river. He told everybody it was an accident, and everybody believed him at first. But then Tommy came back. He cried out how his brother attacked him and that he had to find his wife. As soon as they got wind of that, Tommy’s brother and Sharon ran off. Nobody knows where. But Tommy still came out of the river some nights, crying for Sharon. Especially if any blonde woman went down to the riverbank. Tommy might think she’s his Sharon and drag her into the river with him. He didn’t understand it’d been years since his Sharon ran off.

  HF: How did he get the name “Mud-and-Sticks”?

  MP: Well, sir, he was dead and rotting on the river bottom. I’m sorry, I don’t know how to put it any nicer than that. So he made a new body out of mud, twigs, weeds all tangled together, stuff like that. Like his spirit, inside a body made of clay. There might have been a tooth in there that was still his, maybe some bones or some hair, maybe not even that.

  As I read, my heart starts thumping. He dragged them into the river? Or maybe he made them rot away, and when they couldn’t find a body, people figured he’d dragged them off. Or maybe the details just got confused in the retelling. But the rest is too close to be an accident.

  That’s all there is, though. Dr. Frazier doesn’t ask how to get rid of Tommy Mud-and-Sticks or how to protect yourself from him. Instead he starts asking about a creature named Rawhead. It doesn’t seem like he takes any of it seriously, thinking they’re just spooky stories. I flip back to the beginning of the interview, where Dr. Frazier wrote a few paragraphs about the person he was talking to.

  Mattie Peake’s family had a small farm in Lauderdale County, Alabama. This farm lay within the impoundment of Wilson Dam. The subject was eight years old in 1924, when work on the dam was completed and the area was flooded. Her family was removed to a farm in Belle Mina, in Morgan County, Alabama, an action for which the subject still harbors resentment to this day. The Belle Mina community saw the resettlement of multiple families from the Wilson Dam impoundment, which led to the preservation of old superstitions and beliefs. For a time, Belle Mina was known as the place to go for root-worker “medicines” or hexes. The subject states she learned root-work chiefly from her grandfather, who lived with the family and often enlisted her help gathering plants and mixing medicines.

  The subject completed the eighth grade and can read and write competently. After getting married, she moved to Decatur, Alabama, where her husband supervised a warehouse in the Decatur Harbor until his retirement two years ago. The couple have four adult children. The subject is well-regarded in the community, often called “Auntie Peake.” She still mixes up medicines in her kitchen, prays over people who come to her for help, and claims to know if somebody is under a witch’s hex or not. She does not charge for these services, as is the nearly universal custom among root-workers interviewed.

  I skim through the rest of the transcripts, but neither Auntie Peake nor Tommy Mud-and-Sticks is mentioned again. I go back up to the reference desk. “Excuse me, hey. These envelopes are marked two and three of six. Don’t you have the others?”

  The librarian shakes his head. “That’s all I could find, sorry. Dr. Frazier died maybe ten years back, and they threw out most of the stuff in his office. I really don’t know why these two were catalogued at all.”

  We’re so close to an answer, my stomach feels tight and the back of my neck prickles. I beg him to look again. He does, but comes back five minutes later shaking his head some more. I want to throw the transcripts at him, Holly.

  At least the librarian finds an old cassette player so I can listen to the Witherspoon tape. It hardly matters, though—the tape has deteriorated. No matter how much I fiddle with the buttons and spindles, the voices are half lost in a hiss of static.

  “ … a powerful root-worker. He mostly worked Godly magic, but if somebody crossed him or his, he knew a hex … ” “ … dug into the Indian mound and found it. Looked like a regular piece of quartz, but with colors inside like an oil slick. But if he looked through it and … ” “ … nesting in your roof will protect your house from lightning, but if the swallows ever abandon their nests, it means somebody in the house is going to … ” “ … kept like a pet. Except when I was little, sometimes I’d come over, and it’d be walking on its hind legs or sitting in the rocker like a person. I was too young to know that wasn’t natural … ”

  The rest is murmuring voices, like people talking in their sleep. I strain to listen, but it’s hopeless. Muscles in my back and arms tighten down with frustration. I want to scream. It takes physical effort to keep from smashing my fist against the tape player. Instead, I take everything back to the reference desk and thank the librarian for his help. As I leave, I feel lost and mad. I want to kick something. I want to curl up on the sidewalk and sob and give up.

  Back at Stratofortress’s house, I grab the mail out of the beat-up mailbox. Turns out Max’s full name is Osgood Maxwell. Weird. I play with LeighAnn’s dogs, barefoot in the backyard, spiny grass poking my soles. When I hear the rumble of Tyler’s truck out front, I rush around and let him through the front gate. “So? What did Bo tell your parents?”

  “Everything. All about the ring, you running away.”

  “Son of a biscuit!” Leading him back around to the backyard, I ask, “Well? Did they freak?”

  “Yeah. They got scared when I didn’t answer my phone last night, but I told them I was jamming with Ultimate and didn’t hear it.”

  “They bought that?”

  “Sure.” He shrugs. “Same thing happened last week.”

  “So what about the ring and all that?”

  “I, uh … I sort of put it all on you. Said I never really thought it was from Holly, but you were freakin
g out, and I was just sort of humoring you.”

  “Great. Thanks.”

  “It was the only thing I could think of. Sorry.”

  I throw a stick for the dogs. Hobbit ignores it, lying down in a hole he’s dug. Cookie runs after the stick but won’t bring it back. He gnaws off the bark, leaving a jagged pale tip that looks like bone. Your bones are still in the drowned forest, mixed with the black mud. Your pa-paw’s bones are down there too, I guess, if you left him any bones after you were done with him. I remember how he stopped fighting when you embraced him, just quit, and my stomach suddenly hurts. I ask, “So what about Mr. Alton?”

  “There’s nothing in the newspaper. The houseboat sunk. Nobody even realizes he’s missing yet.”

  “So what do we do?”

  Tyler shrugs again. “What can we do? You’ve got to stay out of sight, so we can’t go to the police. And even if we did, they wouldn’t believe us. Or worse, they’ll decide we’d murdered him.”

  “You’re horrible.” I grab the stick from Cookie and throw it again.

  “Jane … ”

  “He was Holly’s grandpa, Tyler. And you just want to do nothing? He was a human being.” But Tyler’s right; there’s nothing we can do. Holly, we’ve messed everything up so bad and can’t fix it. It’s just easier to dump on Tyler than admit this.

  He says, “You want to do right by Mr. Alton? Then we finish what he started. We find a way to put Holly’s soul to rest.”

  I nod. “Maybe you’re right.”

  “So … any ideas on how to do that?”

  “Not any good ones, but I did go to the library today.” I tell him about Tommy Mud-and-Sticks and Auntie Peake. He gets excited, just like I did. Then I have to give him the bad news. “She was an old woman when she did that interview back in the eighties. She might be dead by now, and even if she isn’t, we don’t have a phone number or anything. All we know is she lived in Decatur.”