Mothman's Curse (6 page)

I huddled in a corner with Mitch's coat over me, trying to stay out of the way, trying to process what had happened.

Mitch said unsettling things into the phone: fractured leg, shock, likely concussion. When I was little, I used to think it would be great to break a bone so you wouldn't have to go to school. Everyone would bring you presents and feel bad for you and sign your cast.

Then, when I was eight, I broke my collarbone. I missed the school Halloween party
and
trick-or-treating. I had to wear a weird brace thing under my clothes, so no one could even sign it; it just made me look lumpy. The pain kept me awake at night, and when I felt bad for bothering my parents again and again, I just lay there and cried.

I wondered if it was the same for grown-ups. Would Dad cry if the pain got too bad, if there was no one around to see? He cried at Momma's funeral, but that was a different kind of hurt. After three years, it had become a sort of distant ache, but every once in a while it flared back up, fierce and blinding, like a broken bone. For Mason and me, a good cry usually helped us ride out the worst of it, but Dad and Fox preferred working, planning, problem solving—anything to deflect that staggering pain.

Eventually, Fox came and sat down beside me.

“You okay?” I said, hoping to regain some credibility as the big sister.

He swallowed. “Yeah. You?”

“I guess so. Hey, Fox?”

“Yeah?”

“Last night I saw red eyes outside my window.” I kept my voice low so Mitch wouldn't overhear. “I thought maybe it was a bird or a bat or something. But now I'm not so sure.”

Fox stared at me.

“And just now, Dad said he saw…”

“I know,” Fox said. “I heard.”

I took a deep breath. One of us had to come out and say it. “Okay, so for starters, we have the ghost of John Goodrich popping up in those photographs. Agreed?”

He nodded.

“And Dad and I saw red eyes in two different places. One of them
indoors
.”

Another nod.

I spotted a dead fly curled up against the baseboard near my feet. An impossible, terrifying idea teased at the edge of my thoughts.

“So you think they're related?” he prompted.

I didn't answer right away. Like most kids in Athens, we wore our ghostly reputation as a badge of honor. We scared each other silly trying to top the whoppers the last kid told about whispers in the woods or an angry spirit in the rafters. But I could think of only one local legend with red eyes: Mothman.

Mothman was the triple threat of scary stories: real eyewitnesses, a grotesque inhuman creature, and a bona fide disaster where people lost their lives. Forty-six victims died that awful day nearly fifty years ago, their cars plunging into the Ohio River when the Silver Bridge gave way. In the months leading up to the disaster, witnesses around town were menaced by a strange creature—part man, part moth. No one knew for sure whether Mothman caused the collapse or tried to warn people away, but either way he was nothing to take lightly.

“Josie? What is it?”

“Dad said ‘he.' ‘
He
flew right at me with those red, red eyes.'”

“So?”

“So who do you know of around here that flies and has red eyes?”

I saw the moment he understood. “Mothman?” he said. “The thing from Point Pleasant?”

“Why not?” I said, forgetting to whisper.

“What does he have to do with anything?”

“How am I supposed to know?”

Mitch glanced over at the sound of our raised voices. I pressed my lips together and offered a halfhearted wave until he turned away again.

Fox leaned in and muttered, “I'm still having a hard time with the whole ghost thing, okay? Now we're gonna throw Mothman into the mix?”

“I didn't throw him in there.”

“You brought him up.” He crossed his arms, as if he considered the matter closed.

I sighed.

We stared at nothing for a while.

“Do you think Dad ever got the safe open?” Fox asked.

I blinked. “I'm not sure.”

He glanced at Mitch, who was still making calls, then glided up the stairs. I stood at the bottom and waited. Fox didn't have to go farther than the landing at the top. He knelt and started gathering something—papers, it looked like. “Josie, come and help me,” he whisper-called.

I crept up the stairs one at a time, wondering if those red eyes were still in the house somewhere.

“Faster,” he hissed.

I made it to the top and found that Dad had spilled a shoe box full of papers. Fox was shoveling them back into the box as fast as he could scoop them up. “These must be from the safe. Help me make sure I don't miss anything.”

I knelt and started feeling around the dingy carpet. My hand skimmed something sharp, and a glint of gold caught my eye. It was an old-fashioned stickpin. Worried Fox might try to claim it for himself, I slipped it into my pocket before he could see.

“Kids?” Mitch called.

“Coming!” Fox said. “Just getting Dad's things for him.”

We met Mitch at the bottom of the stairs.

“Come on, I'll take you home,” Mitch said. He eyed the shoe box. “You find something up there?”

“Just some of my dad's papers,” Fox said.

Mitch reached for the box. “Why don't you let me hang on to those for you? Just until your dad gets home.”

Fox clung to the box. “That's okay. I've got it.”

“Can't we go to the hospital to see Dad?” I asked.

“He might be in surgery for a little while. Your family will bring you over when they say it's okay.”

“Surgery?” I said. My heart stuttered. “But he just broke his leg.”

“Looked like a bad break. Sometimes they have to put pins in to keep it stable.”

He sounded so matter-of-fact, but what did he know? Dad could have died on the way to the hospital. He could die during surgery. On TV there were always “complications.”
We should have gone with him to the hospital
, I thought.
We should be with him, not here with some stranger. Why are they acting so calm?
Fox seemed more worried about his box of papers than he was about Dad. I glared at the both of them, shoved Mitch's coat at him, and stormed outside. Was it still morning? I felt as if a hundred years had passed.

I knew from when we lost Momma that sometimes
scared
and
angry
got tangled up with each other. I tried not to let the anger win out, but I couldn't seem to shut it off. We'd already had more than our share of heartache. It wasn't fair.

I stopped short in the driveway, unsure if we were taking Dad's truck or Mitch's much older compact.

“We'll take my car,” Mitch said. “Your uncle said he would come for the truck later on.”

It hit me that Mitch considered this an accident, something unlucky but easily explained. Fresh resentment flared. How could he not see that something terrible was taking hold of our family?

 

5

Uncle Bill had already left for the hospital by the time we made it home. Mason met us at the front door, eyes fearful. I hugged him close and told him not to worry, but still he looked to Fox for reassurance. Fox handed me the box of papers from the safe, then hustled Mason off to play video games, shrugging an apology at me. Aunt Barb tried to fuss over me, but I just wanted to be alone. I locked myself in my room and took out the pin I'd found.

It was a woman's stickpin, 14 karat gold. I'd seen similar pins that were a hundred years old or more. But what caught my attention was the fact that the face of the pin, no bigger than a dime, contained a preserved moth under glass.

I held the pin close to my face and breathed on it to fog the glass. I wiped it clean on my shirt, then held it in my palm and stared at it. You could still see the moth's tiny antennae, its furry body, the veins in its paper-thin wings. What kind of person would own such a spooky piece of jewelry on purpose? I turned it over and over, examining every inch, mesmerized.

Finally I put the pin aside and started paging through the journals from the storeroom. They were as boring as ever. My thoughts kept wandering back to Dad, hurt and alone at the hospital except for introverted Uncle Bill. Still, I kept at it until the light outside my window dimmed. The sun was going down. My stomach rumbled and I realized I'd missed lunch. Had there been any news? Why hadn't Aunt Barb been up to let me know? I let myself picture the worst outcome possible. My heart clenched, missing Momma for the millionth time, and now Dad, too.

I placed the pin in my lockbox, squared my shoulders, and went downstairs. Aunt Barb was stirring something on the stove. It smelled amazing.

“Hi, honey. You okay?”

She wouldn't be cooking if something had happened to Dad, would she? I was almost too afraid to ask. “Any news?”

“Your dad's surgery went just fine. He's resting tonight. Tomorrow I'll take you all over to see him.”

I felt light-headed with relief. “That's great. Wow, okay. That's really great.”

“I tried knocking on your door earlier to tell you, but you didn't answer. I thought maybe you fell asleep.”

“Oh.” I didn't remember anyone knocking.

“Anyhow, potato soup for dinner. Tell the boys to wash up, okay?”

“Sure.”

“Josie, you sure you're all right? You look awfully pale.”

“Yeah. It's just been a really bad day.”

I let her wrap me in a hug, suddenly more grateful for the attention than I could say. “Poor little duckling.” She clicked her tongue. “Your dad should never have taken you and your brother out there. That whole place is cursed.”

I pulled away. “Cursed?”

Her eyes widened. Her lips folded shut. I'd never seen anyone backpedal so quickly. “Well, you know what I mean. With the landslide and everything.”

“Who says it's cursed?”

“You know how people talk. It's nothing. Some things are best forgotten.”

“Aunt Barb.” I pinned her with a pleading look. She couldn't keep a secret to herself to save her own life, and I knew even just a nudge in the right direction would get her talking. “I could use a good story. To take my mind off this morning.” Okay, so that made me feel as crummy as a crust of bread, but if she had information we needed, then it had to be done.

“Well, you know about Point Pleasant and the collapsed bridge. How folks saw the flying moth man before the bridge disaster? It was all over the news back then. They even made a movie about it.”

Mothman again. I shuddered. “But after Point Pleasant he disappeared, right? The Mothman?”

“Mothman, yes, that's what they called him. And that's what
they
want you to think.”

“Who?”

“The government.”

Uh-oh.
There was a good chance this was less about actual, useful information and more about Aunt Barb's love for conspiracy theories.

She paused to add a few dashes of salt to the soup, then sprinkled some into her hand and tossed it over her shoulder.

“So the government…?” I prompted.

“Oh yes. Mothman appeared in Clark as well, but the government covered it up to keep people from disturbing the site.”

My mind filtered furiously, trying to salvage any kernels of truth from what was likely a forty-year-old piece of gossip.

Was it possible? Did people in Clark really see Mothman? Momma and Aunt Barb grew up in northern Kentucky, so the landslide would have been on Aunt Barb's radar. Whether her information was based on memory or hand-me-down rumors was another story.

“Who saw him? How did they cover it up?”

“Hmmm? Oh, I think many of the people who saw him were killed in that terrible landslide. But the stories still got out, thanks to survivors like Eva.”

“Who?”

She paused again to dip a spoon into the soup and take a cautious sip. “Mmm. More garlic, I think.”

I gritted my teeth to cage my impatience. To women like Aunt Barb, stories were to be savored, like soup, seasoned to perfection, sampled, and stretched out to make them last.

“Eva. My hairdresser. She was a housekeeper for Mr. Goodrich. Worked there some twenty-five years before she was suddenly let go. She's told me a story or two.”

I blinked. Someone who'd worked right there in the house? It was like a Christmas present, all done up with a fancy bow. “What did she say about Mothman?”

“Oh, goodness knows if it's true.”

“But?”

She paused and studied my face, suddenly aware perhaps of how loose her tongue had become. But I must have passed her test, maybe even got promoted to gossip-in-training. I was almost thirteen, after all.

“Mothman appeared in that very house, more than once.”

“Before the landslide, or after?”

“Both. That's the first thing I thought of when I heard about your daddy. Of course that's just stories, just tales passed around.” She gave a nervous laugh.