SARAH SAT ACROSS THE RICKETY table from her great-grandmother, picking at a bowl of crayfish stew and listening to a lecture. She guessed it was a lecture. With Ervina, you didn’t always know if she was talking to you, at you, or just conjuring in your presence.
Sarah would prefer either of the first two. She was an educated woman, knew intellectually that the gift actually had some credence, but only among primitive peoples. She also knew it shouldn’t give her the heebie-jeebies. But here she was, sitting with the gooseflesh broken out on her arms, her neck hair standing on end, and half-expecting the crayfish to crawl back in their shells and scuttle away.
“Would you just say what you mean?” Sarah said.
“You forget how to listen, girl, up there with all those folks not like us.”
Sarah squelched the impulse to remind her great-grandmother that those folks were Sarah’s folks now.
“And don’t you give me that look neither.”
“Sorry,” Sarah said, deciding it was better to apologize than ask what look she was talking about.
“I don’t want you takin’ no money from that man.”
“What man?”
“Ned’s boy.”
“Cabot, III? Why not? He has it; why shouldn’t he share it?”
“Ain’t his journey. Ain’t yours neither.”
Sarah grinned. “Don’t you worry none. He’s not my type.”
“That man ain’t ready for real love, and when he is it won’t be with you.”
“Thank God for that.”
Ervina slowly narrowed one eye.
Sarah quickly held up her hand—just in case. “Fine. I’ll be nice. I’ll leave him alone, but Nana,” she said, reverting back to her childhood nickname for the old woman, “I got nothing to work with here. No fans in the summer, no heat for the winter. No supplies, not one piece of working equipment. You know I’d never take anything from some condescending jackass who’d expect us to fall at his feet and let him tell us what to do.
“But The Third doesn’t give a—hoot—about this town or the people in it. I figure a onetime “contribution” in Ned Reynolds’s memory isn’t going to mean anything. He’ll be gone, and I can do something to help these kids while I’m here. I’ll be gone soon enough, and nobody’s out there looking for my replacement.”
Ervina spit on the floor.
Okay, Sarah had made her mad. Now she was in for it.
“You know I wouldn’t take any money with strings attached, from no one who would put demands on the center. But this guy will be gone by Monday. He’ll forget about us before he’s gone five miles. Though, to his credit, I think he was genuinely fond of his uncle.”
“You tryin’ too hard, girl.”
“You’re kidding, right? How do you think I got through Columbia and landed a professorship there? By being a simperin’ Southern belle?”
Ervina chuckled; shook her head. “You leave young Cabot be. You promise me, you hear?”
“Just one little check?”
“Nuff of your sass, girl. You think you know so much; you gonna mess up everything.”
“Okay, fine. With my luck, The Third would get it in his head to drive up from Atlanta every Friday just to count the pieces of paper we used during the week. Just because he’s The Third.”
Ervina shook her head. “You stop listening to here so much.” Ervina pointed to her head. “And start listenin’ here.” She pointed to the hollow below her breast.
“My pancreas?”
“You so smart. Finish your soup.”
CAB NEVER MADE it to his fancy dinner, but he did discover what might be the best barbecue on the Carolina coast.
He was feeling satisfied, exhilarated, tired, content, and intent on not worrying about what tomorrow would bring. Because he knew tomorrow would bring him home. Atlanta. He had a life waiting there, and a fiancée anyone would be envious of. A great apartment, friends . . . so why was a part of him so reluctant to leave Stargazey Point?
He had good memories of the place, sure, but they were largely centered around his uncle. There was nothing for him here now. Wouldn’t even warrant a visit really.
He was fond of Beau and Hadley. But their lives would go on without giving him a second thought.
He should probably just leave tonight. Except that he’d halfway accepted Beau’s invitation to Sunday lunch. And he didn’t want it to look like he was sneaking out of town without saying good-bye.
It’s not like anyone who mattered will be there.
Bailey had been dead wrong about that. They did matter, and they mattered even more now that he’d come back.
The streets were dark as he drove back into town. It was fall, and the few tourists they’d had had returned to their everyday lives. The locals had gone home to bed to get ready for church or whatever they did on Sundays.
Flora’s was closed and dark; Bethanne had turned off the Inn lights though she’d left the porch light on again. Cab parked in his parking place across from the Inn and trotted up the steps.
A rocking chair creaked just as Cab reached the porch. He turned to see who it was, sitting there in the dark. Part of him instinctively stiffened, his reflexes on the alert, though he didn’t really think someone would mug him on the porch of the Stargazey Inn. Then again . . .
“You.” The voice sounded sepulchral in the shadows.
A chill crept up Cab’s neck, followed quickly by annoyance. Ervina. It had to be; no one else had her flair for the dramatic or could sound like the voice of doom.
He peered into the shadows of the porch. Made out the diminutive figure in the rocking chair. “What about me?”
“First thing tomorrow, you go out Moss Hollow Road.”
“Why?”
The rocker squeaked again. “Take the left fork ’til you come to the bottle tree and turn in at that path. You’ll see a house. You ask for Abraham.”
She rocked forward and pushed to her feet.
“Who is Abraham? Is he real? Or some metaphorical symbol that I don’t get?”
“Huh. He’s real enough.”
Ervina went down the steps to the street and slowly walked away.
“Wait. Moss Hollow Road? How do I get there? What’s a bottle tree?”
“Huh.”
“You better not be sending me on some wild-goose chase.”
He could hear her mumbling to herself.
“Ask for Abraham.”
BY EIGHT O’CLOCK the next morning, Cab was drinking a cup of Penny’s coffee and driving west out of town. Penny had given him directions to Moss Hollow Road and a Danish.
The pastry sat on the passenger’s seat. Cab wasn’t hungry. His stomach was churning, but his brain needed the caffeine. He hadn’t slept well after Ervina’s crazy talk about Abraham. He warred with himself, half-believing, half-hoping there was something that Abraham could make clear and chiding himself for falling victim to her manipulations.
So far, he just saw mudflats and marshland, a few abandoned fishing shacks. It occurred to him he should have filled the gas tank before he left Stargazey Point. There was not a soul in sight. He wouldn’t put it past Ervina to send him to the back of beyond just to teach him a lesson. Though he wasn’t clear on what that lesson could possibly be.
When he was a boy, he heard talk about Ervina, but he’d never seen her that he could remember. If he had been a local boy, he might have joined the other boys doing nothing all day but getting into mischief. He might have gone with them to spy on the old woman to see if she really was a voodoo witch.
But Ned kept him busy and working on the carousel. Looking back on it, Cab wondered why he hadn’t resented being sent here to work. It was hard, sometimes boring, work, waiting for the crowds to come, playing the calliope music over and over again, summer after summer.
At night, when everyone had gone home and the music was quiet, Ned would bring out the store of soft, dry rags, and they’d rub those animals down until they shone, clean away the smudges left by sticky fingers, the spilled soda, the muddy footprints. It was a long day, and it didn’t end with the lights and the music, but Cab fell into bed each night feeling happy.
Ned’s lacked all the physical comforts of his father and stepmother’s house, the air-conditioning, the television, the mall. It also lacked the coldness. Stargazey Point had bugs and heat and hard work. But it was a magic place. A place where Cab knew he belonged. Where he was wanted. Where Ned welcomed him each year like he’d never left. Stargazey Point was more than a summer vacation. To Cab, it was a haven and home.
Moss Hollow Road was paved, more or less, though the sides had crumbled, and there were places that had worn down to the dirt beneath. The surrounding countryside finally changed to low-lying fields and trees. And Cab began to breathe easier now that he was on firmer ground, at least literally if not figuratively.
He almost missed the fork and had to back the Range Rover up to make the turn. He immediately entered a canopy of old trees, oak maybe. Still no sign of a house of any kind. He put his coffee cup in the console holder, slowed down, and leaned forward, looking for a “bottle” tree.
Half a mile later, the tarmac ran out, and the Rover bumped slowly over a dirt road, flanked by dense trees and undergrowth. Cab began to get that prickly feeling again.
Up ahead, he saw a glint of blue; he slowed even more. It was set back in a cleared place by the road. An old bush about eight feet high, devoid of leaves but covered with bottles. They sheathed the tips of some branches and hung from others. Every one of them was blue, the deep cobalt blue that was used for painting window frames and doors, porch ceilings and anywhere else spirits might enter.
Of course, more of Ervina’s hoodoo. Nonetheless, Cab stopped alongside the tree, unrolled the window, and heard the slight singing of the bottles as a breeze wafted over them. It was an eerie sound. He eased the SUV forward until he saw the turnoff.
It was hardly more than a path. The kind of path that might lead to a still, or a meth lab, a perfect place for a man to be shot for trespassing and his body never found. But he didn’t really think Ervina would send him to his death. He made the turn.
And was immediately surrounded by scrub brush. He couldn’t have turned around it he wanted to, and he didn’t relish trying to back out. He would go another half mile, and if he didn’t find a house with Abraham in it, he’d figure out how to get out and back to the main road.
You’re crazy to trust that old woman. She could be totally off her rocker. And no one but Ervina knew where he was going except for Penny, who gave him directions to Moss Hollow Road. And she didn’t know which fork he had taken.
The path narrowed, and he rattled and bounced down the narrow lane, dodging branches and vines, trying to keep the Land Rover’s paint unmarred.
It came up out of nowhere, the patch of dirt, the shotgun shack.
And the shotgun.
Cab saw the barrel sticking out of a minute opening of the front door. The door opened wider, and a huge black dog bounded out, teeth showing and growling like a fiend from hell.
Cab shut the car windows.
The dog skidded to a stop, braced on all fours and looking hungry.
“So help me, Ervina, if I get my throat mauled because of your sense of theatre, I’ll come back to haunt you.”
Someone stepped out on the porch. It was an old man, a really old man. With white hair and a white beard. No flowing robe, just a pair of overalls made for a much larger man. Or maybe the larger man who had worn them before he’d shrunk to this shriveled old skeleton.
The old man started down the two steps of the shack, the shotgun pointed vaguely in the direction of the SUV. It seemed to take forever for him to complete the steps, then he limped slowly across the yard toward Cab. He stopped to say something to the dog, who sat obediently, tongue lolling.
Which didn’t mean he wouldn’t jump up and attack at the merest provocation.
The old guy finally made it close enough to the car to poke the shotgun in the air several times, which Cab took to mean, roll down his window.
He rolled it down enough to converse.
“What you want?”
“I’m looking for someone named Abraham.”
“What you want with him?”
“Ervina sent me.”
The old man cocked his head; hard eyes glinted out of dark, ashy skin.
“Are you Abraham?”
“Are you Ned’s boy?”
Cab nodded. And waited while those flinty eyes studied his face.
“You’re him.” He lowered the shotgun. Jerked his head for Cab to get out of the SUV.
“What about your dog?”
“He won’t hurt’cha now.”
Hardly a comforting promise.
“Come on, now, I don’t got all day.”
What could he possibly have to do today, or any other day, Cab wondered. But he slowly got out of the car, his eyes flitting from the dog to the shotgun and back again.
Abraham grinned. The man was missing most of his teeth. He was really old, and it looked like he lived alone out here in the woods. What a hell of a way to live.
As soon as Cab shut the car door, Abraham turned and began to walk around the side of the house. The dog got up and walked by his side, casting occasional looks over his shoulder to Cab.
Cab followed them, wondering where the hell Abraham was taking him and what he planned to do with him once he had him there.
Behind the house was some kind of building that was half-covered with kudzu. A quiet hum like swarming bees came from it.
Abraham propped the shotgun against the heap. Pulled a heavy ring of keys out of his overall pockets. Looked back at Cab, then yanked at the vine. It came away with a ripping sound to reveal a corrugated shed with a thick, metal door.
Cab’s blood began to race, half with anticipation, half with what could only be called fear.
Abraham unlocked the door. The dog whined and tried to push past him.
Cab was getting a really bad feeling about this. He was sure he could take the old man, but the dog was something else.
“Thaddeus, you go on back to the house now.”
The dog stopped pawing at the door but stood his ground.
“Go on now.” Abraham nudged the dog with his foot.
The dog slunk away.
Abraham waited until he was at a distance, then looked around like he expected someone to be watching. Cab looked, too. Didn’t see a thing.
The old man opened the door, flicked a switch, and lights blinked, then slowly began to glow. He stepped aside and motioned Cab in. Cab didn’t move. No way was he going in there and risk the old man’s locking him in for some nefarious purpose that he didn’t understand. Damn Ervina. Why hadn’t she told him what he was supposed to do here?
“After you.”
Abraham grinned at him and stepped inside.
Cab reluctantly followed.