The Story Keeper (5 page)

Mitch blew through tightened lips, the airstream whistling around the end of her pen. “Okay, I like that. Make sure you read the proposal ASAP and get back to me with any more thoughts.”

“Of course.”

“I want you to repeat that whole thing in pub board on Monday.” Mitch scribbled furiously in her notebook, and then the meeting went on. Before we dispersed, the pitch plan was as slick as a newborn kitten, and I had a half-hour break in which to check out Mitch’s proposal before a late lunch with an agent who was shopping a couple of projects around, looking for interest.

Even so, as I sat down to speed-read Mitch’s project, the words calling to me most were the ones hidden in my desk. Locked in the darkness,
The Story Keeper
beckoned, seeming to have an understanding of its power.

It whispered unrelentingly as the day continued, presenting one sidetrack and then another
 
—Mitch’s proposal, the agent meeting, phone calls, a consult with Hillary. Meanwhile, Rand and Sarra flickered through my thoughts like leaf shadows against a window, parting, then thickening, then parting again, stealing my attention.

By the end of the day, the temptation was so strong I could barely focus. A last-minute mini meeting to go through Mitch’s proposal for the war bride story felt more like torture than a
chance to bond with my new boss. The meeting ended at five fifteen, and I returned to my office, a musty remembered scent teasing my senses as I walked through the door.

I was underneath the cabin again, hidden with that young girl, listening to the conversations of dangerous men. But there was a memory intertwined also. One I hadn’t uncovered until now
 
—the feeling of hiding, hearing, then running for freedom, my bare feet landing in rock and sticker brush, brambles and branches tearing at my clothes and my skin, soft moss and the glitter of mica flakes among stones catching the last of the sunlight.

The surface of the desk faded away, and I saw thin, bare legs beneath the hem of a rose-colored dress, old scars healing while new wounds bled into the cool water of Honey Creek.

What day was that memory tied to? Perhaps the morning I’d learned that my mother was gone? Was that it? Hard to say. So much of the time that included my mother I’d either given up freely or had strangled out of me. When she left, we’d been warned never to speak of her again.

Something else tripped a memory too. That long, strange word that Rand Champlain had pondered.

Melungeon.

The recalling was sudden and oddly clear, a misted mirror swept clean by the palm of a hand.

You run off in them woods again when you got chores to do, Jennia Beth, I’ll let the Melungeons come ’n’ git’cha.
My grandmother’s voice ground out a warning, a wooden spoon shaking in her hand. I knew what the spoon was for. Not for whipping up something tasty, but for dealing out a whipping.
Them Melungeons’ll come after ya in the night. You can thank it that I been prayin’ ’em away. Come round after dark, lookin’ for the bad uns,
like yer mama. Take yer soul off to the devil, you don’t walk in the good way, girl. You hear me talkin’ at’cha?

“I hate you, you witch.” The words came aloud, in the voice of a woman. The voice of
now
. I would never have said them then.

Like Rand Champlain in the story, I’d thought that the Melungeons were a made-up thing, like the black-eyed children who came to you seeking help, their faces hidden in their cloaks until you agreed to let them in. Only then did you see that there were no eyes, just hollows of darkness where the eyes should be. If the Melungeons didn’t spirit us off into the woods and steal our souls, Momaw Leena promised, the black-eyed children would. We were none of us worthy of salvation because our mama wasn’t worthy.

I hadn’t thought about that in years, hadn’t allowed Momaw Leena and her meanness into my life
 
—not even long enough to consider how incredibly wrong it was to heap misery on kids who were already struggling to survive. Whose mother had gone missing and whose father demanded that even his smallest commands be scurried after, or else.

Slipping into my desk chair, I opened the computer, typed the word into Google.

Melungeon.

One stroke of the key and there were hundreds of links to choose from. Unlike Rand Champlain, I had endless information at my fingertips almost instantly.

. . . a term traditionally used to describe one of several tri-racial isolate groups in the Southeastern US. Historically, Melungeons were considered a dangerous oddity due to their isolative natures and peculiar . . .

. . . “Myth or Genetic Mystery: DNA Study Chases Melungeon
Origins.” For generations, diverse and sometimes-outlandish stories have been told about the dark-skinned, blue-eyed Indians of the Appalachian . . .

. . . comprise a group of mixed-race people originating from the Cumberland Gap region. Melungeons were thought to be offspring of intermarriage between shipwrecked Portugese or Turkish sailors, escaped slaves, and native populations. . . .

. . . or from the Afro-Portuguese word
melungo
, meaning “shipmate.” But in reality, no one has the faintest notion of where the name came from or what Melungeons’ cultural origins might have been. . . .

. . . Melungeon populations, who migrated from western North Carolina to the mountains of eastern Tennessee and southern Virginia to escape the persecution of incoming populations. Deemed . . .

. . . possibly descendants of the ill-fated Lost Colonists, left on Roanoke Island in 1585. The first English and French to later explore North Carolina’s mountains reported blue-eyed Indians, living in houses. The Melungeons . . .

. . . and folks left them be, because they were queer and devil-fired, witchy. If a man was fool enough to go into Melungeon country and come back without getting shot, he was sure to later wizen away or get some ailment nobody could . . .

Even from my cave-like space at the far reaches of the hall, as I clicked through pages, wildly taking in a frenzy of information, I sensed the day ending and evening settling. Sounds pressed through
 
—doors closing, arms swishing into jacket sleeves, backpacks and laptop cases zipping, the faint hum of passing conversations about weekend plans.

My favorite intern stopped by. Andrew, the sweet but flirty one. “Friday night. Fiction team is headed down to Blockers to grab a drink, peruse some happy hour goodies, and watch the
Knicks game. Good way to get to know people. Wanna come? You can join the dog pile, even though you’re not fiction.”

The dog pile image made me laugh. Aside from a cute face and baby-blue eyes, this kid had a wry sense of humor about the publishing world. In the lunchroom one day, as we waited for microwave meals to heat, he’d shared his impression of editorial team meetings as great big sessions of
Does this manuscript make me look fat?

I liked Andrew, but
 
—I was afraid
 
—not in the way he wanted me to. He was a small-town Iowa boy, all alone in the big city now. The first thing a displaced small-town kid usually does is desperately try to create an instant family, emphasis on
desperately
. I’d learned that the hard way after coming here.

“Too much work to do, but thanks for asking.”

“All work and no play . . .”

“If you haven’t figured out by now that I really
am
a dull girl, I might as well let you in on the secret.”

Andrew offered that sweet smile his mama back home undoubtedly loved and missed. She was probably horrified that her boy had taken off to pursue his dreams far away. She probably called him every night to make sure he was eating okay, to ask if he’d
met anyone
yet. Andrew had all the hallmarks of a kid well loved and carefully raised. Well supported by an adoring family.

For a moment, I was a little jealous. I wished he were ten, maybe twelve, years older
 
—still single for whatever reason and looking for just the right girl to take home to his wonderful family. Silly, of course. But even when you love everything else about your life, sometimes there’s a part of you that still wrestles with the instinctive desire for home and hearth and family bonds that don’t feel more like family bondage.

“Next week maybe.” I shouldn’t have said it. It was wrong to encourage him.

“Cool.” He hesitated in the doorway as if there was something more he wanted to talk about. “Well, have a good weekend, anyway. See you Monday.”

“See you Monday, Andrew. Thanks for helping me settle in. I appreciate it.”

“No problem. Anytime. Totally.” The kid was going to have to learn to quit using words like
cool
and
totally
if he wanted to be taken seriously in this business. Bless his little heart.

After he was gone, I debated either digging into the Google research some more or packing things up and taking my work home with me, where I wouldn’t have to look over my shoulder as I opened
The Story Keeper
again.

A floor machine came on somewhere down the hall and made the decision for me. A belt squealed high and long as the brushes rotated. Maybe it was
The Story Keeper
that brought the association to mind, but it sounded like a baby pig being grabbed by the foot and dragged from its mother to become suckling pork.

I packed everything in the rolling briefcase I had learned to carry on weekends when the transport load was heavier, then stood for a moment considering the risk of actually taking the forbidden bit of manuscript home.

You could probably sneak over to Slush Mountain and return it now. Almost everyone’s gone. . . .

But I knew I wouldn’t. Even before I unlocked the desk drawer and took out the envelope, I was already slipping back to the world of Sarra and Rand. Stepping into the Blue Ridge
 
—not into the places the tourists love, but the dirt roads and backwater settlements and hidden valleys where civilization had been far
away at the turn of the twentieth century when Rand Champlain traveled there, and in some cases still was.

On the way out, I passed Russell and the massive floor polisher. He’d stopped the thing and was looking underneath the hood now.

“Loose belt,” I said.

Russell glanced up, surprised. “Believe dat’s it, all righ’.” He paused to eyeball me a moment. “Goin’ home earlier dis evenin’?”

“Yes, I am.” I wondered if anyone else, like George Vida, or possibly Mitch, would notice that I wasn’t the last one leaving the editorial halls tonight. After the screwup in this morning’s meeting, it would’ve been smart to be seen hanging around, but right now, playing it safe was the farthest thing from my mind. “Got something I have to do.”

Chapter 5

M
y apartment was shadowy and dim, quiet except for the sound of Friday snoring in his makeshift doggy bed. Friday was a holdover from the era of Brian and me. We’d found him stuck in a Dumpster while walking back from dinner one evening, a skinny and scruffy Chihuahua mix, wary of people.

It had been Brian’s idea to take the dog back to my apartment, keep it a week or so and put up flyers in case someone was looking. Having grown up in nice neighborhoods, Brian had a perspective that was sweetly innocent about some things. It never occurred to him that people would throw out a living creature on purpose.

“You should take him to your place,” I’d protested as we stood at the end of the alley trying to decide what to do next. “He likes you better than he likes me.”

“Oh yeah, that’s obvious.” Brian had the animal in a defensive
choke hold. With its ears tucked against its head, bug eyes, and sharp, pointed teeth, it looked like something from
Alien
. “I don’t have time to take care of a dog, Jen.”

“Like
I
do?” Sometimes Brian forgot we worked at the same place. His department was sales; mine was editorial. We both had careers that demanded a lot of our time. We’d been dating on the down-low off and on for a year and a half
 
—on the down-low because the company had a no-fraternization policy, off and on because we couldn’t seem to figure out whether our relationship was going anywhere or where it could go.

The dog whipped its head, biting air in a pint-size show of bravado. I couldn’t help it. I laughed. “Good thing it’s not a pit bull.”

The argument ended where all of our arguments ended: with me giving in. Brian managed to calm the dog, and the two of them gave me puppy eyes side by side, and I couldn’t say no. “Okay, but just until next Friday.”

Almost three years of
next Fridays
, and one final breakup, had come and gone since then. The dog lasted longer than the relationship and the job did.

I wasn’t even sure why I hadn’t gotten rid of Friday. Maybe because, with his personality and looks, I figured he wouldn’t find a home. Maybe just because he was low maintenance and really wasn’t hurting anything here. The space went mostly unused anyway, and I could pay the kids down the hall a few bucks to walk him. Their mom was single and they needed the money.

He yawned and rolled a look my way as I parked my briefcase by the small, two-person table that served mostly as a desk, then set the rest of my things on the kitchen counter, which also served mostly as a desk.

“Beat anybody up in the dog park today?” Friday was known
for threatening animals four times his size. The little girls who walked him thought it was funny.

He rose and stretched one leg at a time, then circle-sniffed and plopped down again with his rear facing my way and his nose pointing toward the empty butter tub that served as a food dish. As usual, he was an expert, if not tactful, communicator.

“Great to see you too, Friday. Tough day at work?”

He didn’t answer of course, but I helped him with his end of the conversation. “Oh, not so bad, Jen. Sat in the windowsill. Held down the sofa awhile. Drained the water dish dry. Made a few more enemies at the dog park. Normal day.”

He yawned, sighed, then sneezed in a way that said,
Puh-lease, that is so yesterday. Get a new routine, Jen Gibbs.

It seemed like, if you were going to pay a dog’s bills, he ought to at least wag or something, but with Friday, you had to use your imagination. “My day? Well, thank you for asking. It was interesting. Good and bad. I botched an editorial team meeting, but something really curious did happen. Bizarre, actually. What do you make of this?”

Leaning over my briefcase, I unzipped the front flap and extracted the old envelope. “It just showed up on my desk out of nowhere. First thing this morning. And based on the postmark date, about the only place this could’ve come from is . . . Slush Mountain.”

When I looked, Friday was sitting up in his bed, watching me. His gaze moved then, focused over my shoulder as if he’d seen something there. He growled, and a cold sensation feathered my skin.

Was someone in here? I wheeled around to check, surveying
the open-concept studio. Nobody. Nothing out of the ordinary, other than Friday’s behavior.

“Stop that.” I flipped on the overhead light. The bulbs flickered and threatened to fail, creating a creepy moment of déjà vu.

Just as suddenly, everything was normal again. The lights came on. Friday flopped over on his side. A siren wailed on the street below. I looked down at the envelope. With the fluorescent glow overhead, I could almost make out the rest of the postmark.

I moved to the center of the room, held it closer to the light, squinted.

Two letters:
NC.
This story wasn’t only set somewhere in the Blue Ridge; it had been written there. In North Carolina. The home state I’d long ago left behind.

The cold feeling washed over me again
 
—a brew of fear, fascination, and uncertainty. How could all of this be coincidence? Who’d left this thing on my desk, and with what intention?