Dylan held the door open, then followed me into the library. It was a place I knew well. Anytime I got off work early or didn’t want to be home with Mama, I came here. At least when a coworker could drop me off and Hunter could pick me up. I still didn’t have a driver’s license on account of we couldn’t afford a car, so getting a license didn’t make much sense. And since the accident, I didn’t think getting behind the wheel of a car sounded like a very good idea anyway.
Dylan hopped on a computer and pulled up a Texas historical database.
“What are we looking for?” I sat beside him in a nicked wooden chair that made my butt hurt.
“I only went back ten years in my research before we went out to photograph the tree. We need to look at local records, further back.” His fingers flew over the keys like someone who was used to typing at lightning speed. I guess Dylan wasn’t a stranger to the library either or at least not to doing research.
I peered over his shoulder at the words in the search bar: tree Harland car accidents death
A shiver crawled over me like a giant roach at night. Lord only knows what we’d find with that combo.
A few articles popped up in the library’s online archives. Dylan read and I skimmed the headlines over his shoulder.
“Two Local Teens Killed, Two Injured.” It was the article about us, our four junior-year photos staring back at me. I remembered the day we took those pictures. It was the same day Hunter first said he wanted to marry me just as soon as we graduated. A swell of grief lodged itself in my throat, and I ripped my eyes away from the screen. I’d wanted to marry Hunter. I’d wanted to marry him more than anything in the world. That day had been one of the happiest in my life. How crazy that they used those pictures to memorialize the worst one.
I remember telling Mama that me and Hunter were going to get married one day. She was drunk, of course, and told me I was stupid. She’d said we were too young and didn’t know a damn thing. I’d dropped it then, and decided to keep any plans I had for leaving between me and Hunter. I knew we were young. Maybe even too young. But if we’d gotten married, then we could’ve gotten out of this stupid town together. We’d have had each other. Now he was gone.
Sure, I knew I could still leave Harland on my own, but I’d never even consider doing it without Hunter. It’d take more work and a lot more saving, but if I wanted any chance at a life, I’d have to leave. Still, without Hunter, I didn’t know if life was even worth living. I shut my eyes, willing myself not to cry. This was not the time or the place. My nostrils burned and I wiped my eyes with the back of my hand, trying to think of something else. Maybe I’d think of Mama. Thinking of her didn’t make me cry; it made me mad.
I sure as hell didn’t want to end up like her—a drunk in a broken-down trailer with smoke-stained clothes and no future. I let out a long sigh. I didn’t know what I was going to do. I suppose I needed to focus on first things first—and that was figuring out why Keisha and Hunter were still here—so I didn’t end up taking their spirits with me if I ever did get out of this godforsaken place.
Dylan’s eyes were glued to the glowing screen. His fingers tapped the keys, and I watched the article dates moving further and further back in time. This was going to take a while.
After several minutes, he stopped on an article from 1928. “Look at this. It’s when they named it the Devil’s Tree. People around here thought it was haunted even back then.”
I scanned the article, but it didn’t really say much more than that. “Yeah. But haunted by what?”
“That’s what we’ve got to find out.” He nodded toward the screen and read aloud from another article:
A Caucasian woman, Agatha Archer, who lived near Harland, was found dead on September 23, 1926. Miss Archer, aged 22 at the time of her death, was found hanged on the large oak that stood near her home. There was suspicion of murder, but the police ruled Miss Archer’s death as a suicide.
Holy crap. “That poor woman. Why would they have suspected anything other than suicide? Were white people ever lynched?”
“I don’t know. Seems like it would’ve been a suicide.” Dylan typed a few words into the search bar. Several links popped up, and Dylan skimmed them.
“Hey, look at this. It’s an article in the Montgomery Advertiser from 2017 about lynching.” He pointed at the screen.
Lynching is the unjustified setting aside of judicial due process for mob vengeance. Mob violence in the form of lynching brings law into contempt. President Reagan once stated: “without law, there can be no freedom, only chaos and disorder. And without freedom, law is but a cynical veneer for injustice and oppression.” Lynching is, by definition and by its nature, lawless.
Hovering over Dylan’s shoulder, I skimmed the rest of the article:
While some whites were lynched for murder or stealing cattle, there is another important reason many were lynched. Many whites were lynched for helping blacks or being anti-lynching . . . Ninety percent of whites were lynched in nine states mostly in a swath from Montana to Nebraska, Oklahoma, Arkansas and Texas.
I finished reading and shook my head. “Wow. I had no idea.”
“Me either,” said Dylan, which was surprising on account of Dylan usually seemed to know most things. “But if it wasn’t a suicide and she really was lynched, then maybe that’s why she’s still here. The tree really could be haunted.”
I pushed off a shiver and leaned back in my chair.
“We need to find out more about the tree to see if any other events have happened there. Maybe other accidents related to the area.” Dylan typed in a couple more keywords and scanned the links. “Look.” Dylan pointed to a new article that had popped up on the screen. “Here’s another one. A black truck reportedly ran someone off the road right by the Devil’s Tree. The other driver was killed in the crash, the passenger survived. But they never found evidence of the truck.”
The hairs on my arms and the back of my neck stood up. “A black truck? What year?”
“It was 1927. The year after she died.” Dylan’s voice sounded hollow and soft and made me tremble.
I tried to shake off the creepiness factor with some common sense. “Did they even have pickup trucks back then?”
Dylan finished reading the article and clicked the print button. “Yep. The Ford Model T Runabout came out in 1925. It was replaced by a Model A in 1928.”
“And you know this how?” The amount of random knowledge rattling around in Dylan’s brain amazed me sometimes.
He shrugged. “Hunt-er” he gave me a quick glance, then went back to scrolling through articles while he talked “loved trucks. I learned a lot going to car shows with him.”
Hunter had loved his cars and trucks, that’s for sure. But I didn’t know they actually learned anything going to all those car shows. “So a truck ran someone off the road back in 1927. Other folks have seen phantom pickups out that way. I wonder if 1927 was the first time?” I gulped down spiders of fear that tickled my throat. “Was it the same truck that chased us?” My voice came out as a whisper. “And if it was, then what does a truck chasing people have to do with Agatha and the tree?”
“I have no idea, but—”
A nearby wail broke my concentration, making me and Dylan jump, colliding into each other. His skin was soft and warm and comforting. I pulled away from him, and doing my best to ignore him, I looked for the source of the wailing.
A little girl, no more than five, looking totally lost, stood between two nearby bookshelves. Tears streamed down her face, pasting her glossy black hair to her little rosy cheeks.
Boy, did I know how she felt. Alone. Scared. Lost.
Pulling myself out of my own funk, I set my bag beside Dylan, walked over and knelt down in front of her. “Hey there, sweetie, what’s the matter?”
Sniffing, she tried to control her tears. “I—I want my mama. I can’t find her.”
“I know how that feels.” I smiled and reached out my hand to her. “Let me help you.”
She hesitated, but only for a second. Her little hand was sticky in mine—from sweat or a morning sweet I wasn’t sure—but that didn’t matter. I curled my fingers around hers and walked her over to the librarian’s desk, glad there was someone I could actually help.
“What’s the matter, darlin’? Lost your mommy?” the librarian asked.
She sucked yellowish snot into her nose and nodded her head, ponytail flopping. “Uh-huh.”
Just as the librarian was about to make a circuit around the library, a frantic-looking woman came rushing out of the romance section. “Lola? Lola!” Her eyes tracked to the little girl and she headed straight for us.
“Mama.” Lola pried her hand from mine and launched herself at the woman.
“Oh, thank God, Lola.” The woman pulled the girl to her in a massive hug. I smiled, remembering when my mama used to hug me like that.
The teary-eyed woman looked at me. “Thank you.”
I gave her a little smile, happy I could do something useful, then turned back to find Dylan leaning against the table, watching me. A strange mix of emotions flashed over his face: sadness, tenderness, love?
I frowned and walked back over to him. “What?”
He shook his head, a little grin still stuck on his face. “There’s more to you than people see, Kaitlyn. Even Hunter didn’t see it all.”
Really? I didn’t know Dylan had been looking. Maybe Keisha was right to be jealous. I swallowed back the ball of why-did-Hunter-have-to-die pain forming in my throat. I didn’t want another guy knowing me. Not that well. Not like that.
“You read too much into things.” I sounded way more bitter than I felt, but I didn’t want Dylan thinking he could get too close. “I’m just a trailer park girl.” The old feelings of my hopeless loser life flooded over me. Never mind my great grades and the possible scholarships my teachers said I’d get. None of that seemed to matter now.
Dylan frowned. “Just because your father ran off and you live in a trailer doesn’t mean that’s where you’ll be forever.”
“That’s easy for you to say. Your daddy owns more than half the town.”
He looked me straight in the eye. “Not everything is easy for me, Kaitlyn.”
“Like Keisha?” I growled. I felt bad for being mean, but Dylan had everything so easy. “I’m sure it took a lot of guts to date a black girl just to piss off your daddy.”
He grunted out a sigh, and a sort of defeated, disgusted look took over his face. “I didn’t date Keisha to piss off my dad. I wouldn’t do that to Keisha or anyone. I really cared about her.”
“Then why did you date her? She was my best friend until you came along.” Wow. That sounded bitter. Well, maybe it was. When Keisha started dating Dylan, my best friend had all but disappeared. She was too busy with “her man.”
“II didn’t mean to hurt your friendship . . . I dated her because she was nice and smart. I liked that she didn’t care that my parents had money. I liked that she didn’t care that your mom didn’t. Or that Hunter’s parents drank too much. She liked us for who we were. Not for what we had or didn’t have.”
That was a knife in the chest. He was right. That’s what I’d liked—no, loved—about Keisha, too. She’d really been able to see the good in people and nothing else mattered—not color, not money, not grades.
He took his glasses off, rubbed the bridge of his nose, then looked at me. “So, no. I didn’t date her to piss off you or my dad or anyone else. I dated her because she really liked me for who I am. Maybe I listened to my father’s racist slurs or took a few slaps one too many times on account of Keisha’s color, but I knew we’d get away . . .” He shrugged. “Or I thought we would. Before the accident . . . Anyway, I don’t care what he says about you, either. And I’m not going to ditch you because of his elitist BS.”
I never knew people could be so hateful just because someone was black. Keisha was my best, oldest friend. And her parents were good people. I was beginning to think Keisha’s life hadn’t been quite as easy as I thought it’d been. Or Dylan’s either.
I crossed my arms over my chest and studied his face. I’d never seen Dylan without his glasses. His eyes were clear and kind and honest. Sweet even. It was like I was seeing him for the first time. Really seeing him. Like Tobey Maguire in Spider Man—he looked sort of dorky with his glasses, but after he got bit by the spider and took them off . . . well, he was hot. I swallowed, my eyes traveling over Dylan’s face. He had stubble. I didn’t even know Dylan shaved, not that I’d ever thought about it. But sure enough, there was a little bit of stubble growing in, making his jaw look strong and angular. His lips full and soft.
I yanked myself away from thinking of Dylan’s lips. That was so not gonna happen. “So, you think it’s Agatha Archer keeping people at that tree?”
“I don’t know, but we’re going to find out.”
“And how are we gonna do that?”
Dylan grabbed a couple articles off the library printer. “We’re going back to the tree, but this time we’re going to take the Ouija board with us.”
Hands firmly on the wheel and eyes on the road, Dylan kept to the speed limit on the old gravel road that led us to the Devil’s Tree.
Nausea wormed its way up my throat with every bump of the road. And it wasn’t car sickness. It was something in my gut warning me. Warning me I was headed for trouble. I was terrified and freaked out and heartsick. I couldn’t believe I was going along with this. We were actually going to use the Ouija board again—never mind Father Alvarez’s warnings or what happened last time—and try to contact the spirit of a dead woman? At the Devil’s Tree? Oh. My. God. “You’re three gallons of crazy in a two-gallon bucket, Dylan Anderson, you know that, right?”
Dylan gave me a sideways glance and smiled. He actually smiled.
I reached right over and slapped his leg—hard.
“Ow.” He scowled and his fingers gripped the steering wheel tighter.
Good. He should be scowling.
“What else do you suggest we do, Kaitlyn? I couldn’t find any more articles on the tree or why they’re trapped there. Until our accident, nothing had been written about it since Old Joe died four years ago. That’s why I went out there in the first place: to find new information and write an article for the paper.”
“Yeah. A lot of help that did any of us,” I snapped, fiddling with the little tag at the edge of my messenger bag. Boy, was I being mean. But the last thing I wanted was to end up dead.
A look of guilt washed over Dylan’s face and he bit his lower lip. “I didn’t mean for this to happen, Kaitlyn. None of it. But I can’t change the past. All I can do is try to shape the future. And if we want to set Hunter and Keisha free and stop them from haunting us, then we have to find out if the woman who died there is behind it. And if she is, why exactly she’s chasing and killing people.”
We drove in silence after that. What more was there to say about a wronged soul striking out at the living? We pulled up to the tree around noon. My stomach lurched at the sight of it and gave a soft rumble. I couldn’t remember the last time I ate, but there was no way I was having anything to eat until after this Dylan-sanctioned ritual was behind us.
The place didn’t look nearly as scary in the daytime. The tree was still twisted and gnarled and dark, but there were no freaky winds or black pickup trucks.
We climbed out of the car and I followed Dylan toward the old oak. A rusty chain still hung from one of its branches, and the trunk was still wrapped in chain link. There were no new hack marks far as I could tell. After what’d happened to us and Old Joe, I doubted anyone would try to touch it let alone cut it down again anytime soon.
I looked up at the tree’s thick branches and wondered which one Agatha Archer had been hanged from. I shivered. Having the life choked out of you didn’t seem like a pleasant way to die.
“Okay. Let’s set it up here.” Dylan pulled the Ouija board from his backpack and opened it on a patch of dried grass a couple feet from the base of the tree.
Stuffing my hand in an outer pocket of my bag, I squeezed the crucifix Father Alvarez had given me. It poked into my hand, but I squeezed harder, praying to God I wasn’t gonna need it.
Dylan sat cross-legged in front of the Ouija board, placed his fingers lightly on the planchette, and looked up at me expectantly. “Come on, Kaitlyn. This is why we came here. I can’t do it by myself.”
I huffed, pulled the bag off from around my shoulder, and sat down opposite him. “Fine, but if this doesn’t bring us a single step closer to sending Keisha and Hunter on their way, then I’m done with using this thing.” I gestured to the board with my chin, but placed my fingers lightly on the pointer.
Dylan focused on the Ouija board and took a deep breath. Shoot, for a smart boy he was really getting into this. “I’m calling out to the spirit of Agatha Archer. Miss Archer, if you’re still here, Kaitlyn and I want to talk with you.”
I noted his politeness. I supposed that was a good thing. He’d said it would be different this time. That we’d be respectful, quiet. That it would help keep us safe. I remembered what Father Alvarez said about Ouija boards and unleashing spirits. Unfriendly spirits. Yeah, Ms. Archer wasn’t likely to be my new bestie.
As if in response to my thoughts about Agatha, the sky grew suddenly dark and a breeze picked up, rustling the branches overhead.
We waited.
But there were no sounds. No voices. There weren’t even any normal outdoor sounds. No birds, no squirrels, no frogs. Nothing but the whispering breeze and rustling branches.
The breeze mingled with the hungry silence like it was waiting to gobble us up.
Fingers still on the pointer, I felt the air grow cool like winter was coming. My breath caught in my throat and my belly took a dip. It was either fear or something was coming.
“Agatha Archer,” Dylan’s voice cracked, then steadied into a slight quiver. “We know you died here. We know you were killed at this tree. If your spirit remains, please talk to us. We want to know what really happened to you.”
The pointer started twitching then.
We both stared at the Ouija board. “Is that you, Ms. Archer?”
The planchette moved slowly at first, circling from yes to no, then over the alphabet. It slid over to me, then back to the letters. It moved from H to U to N to T to E to R.
“Hunter,” I gasped, fresh tears springing into my eyes. “Hunter, are you okay? I miss you. I”
The pointer began moving again. Faster.
G – O.
N – O – W.
S – H – E – S.
C – O – M – I – N – G.
G – O.
N – O – W.
G – O.
N – O – W.
G – O.
N – O – W.
The message repeated itself over and over again.
Tears streaming, I tried to pry my hands from the pointer, but it was like an invisible force kept my fingers in place. “Who’s doing this?”
“Keisha,” Dylan called out. “If you can hear me, don’t hurt Kaitlyn. We want to help you. You and Hunter both.”
Suddenly the planchette stopped and an icy cold dread filled the air, settling into the pit of my stomach.
The pointer began moving again, and the temperature dropped until our breaths came out in ghostly puffs.
T – O – O.
L – A – T – E.
“Who is this?” Dylan demanded, sounding more angry than afraid. “Why did you chase us? Why are Keisha and Hunter trapped here?”
A rumble of thunder crashed overhead, and the sky darkened further. A blinding pain, like a jolt of electricity, shot up my arms, and I tried to yank my hands free of the planchette. But they were held in place. I couldn’t scream. Couldn’t move. Couldn’t run.
Dylan jerked backward, his teeth jarring against each other so hard I could hear his jaw crack. His eyes rolled back in his head, looking like boiled eggs streaked with bluish veins, and a low, hissing voice escaped from his throat. Something wicked was here. Something evil.
“Who dares disturb my grave?” The voice coming from Dylan was fierce and mean and female.
I felt the blood drain out of my face and race through my veins. This wasn’t happening. It couldn’t be.
The egg-like white eyes rolled toward me, darting around my face. And for a moment—just for a moment—I swear I saw the face of an angry woman looking back at me. “What do you want, girl?” she hissed through Dylan’s lips.
Holy crap. Dylan was possessed by a dead woman.
“Agatha Archer?” I squeaked, barely able to breathe I was so scared.
“Yes,” she seethed, the word slippery and sharp at the same time.
“We just want to help our friends.” My voice was low and weak and full of fear.
“You and your friends should not have come here. You should not have soiled my grave. They now belong to Alastor.”
“Alastor?”
A hoarse cackle burst from Dylan’s mouth. “Alastor will have his sacrifice.”
“Sacrifice?” What on earth was she talking about? I tried to grab for the crucifix in my messenger bag, but my fingers were still plastered to the planchette.
The voice cackled again, making Dylan’s mouth contort into a leer. “Every witch has her secrets.”
As soon as the last syllable escaped his lips, Dylan’s eyes rolled back in his head and he collapsed to the ground.