Page 3 of The Witch’s Orchard

TWO

T HE SUN IS SETTING by the time I pull onto the main (and only) drag of Quartz Creek, North Carolina.

It’s a little run-down mountain town like a lot of other little run-down mountain towns where enterprise and lack of internet have drained away most of the population over eighteen and under forty.

There’s a couple of boarded-up storefronts on Main Street but there’s also a pharmacy, a hair salon, and an apparently flourishing funeral parlor with a sign out front that says to ask inside about specials.

I follow the directions on my phone through the other side of town and onto a gravel road under a canopy of orange, scarlet, and yellow.

The brilliant smudge of saffron in the sky beyond the mountains sets the trees alight and I smile at the sight in spite of myself.

I’d just about forgotten how beautiful Appalachia is in the fall.

Just about gotten far enough away in miles and years from that other, younger Annie in that other run-down, beautiful place to let myself forget.

“Almost there, Honey,” I say, patting Honey’s steering wheel.

Honey growls. She’s tired. So am I.

Honey is an old lady now and since she came into my life, after I left the Air Force six years before, I’ve done my best to take care of her, just as she takes care of me.

“Almost there,” I say again, reassuring her. Or myself.

I turn in at a wooden sign that says, “Crow Caw Cabin.”

The light on the porch of the little A-frame cabin shines bright.

The roof is black and a crow is perched at the top.

He’s so still that, at first, I think he’s sculptural.

Some kind of interesting weather vane. But then he tilts his head this way and that, staring at me.

He flutters his wings and blinks, then takes flight and folds himself into the gathering dark.

I park, turn off the car, listen as Honey’s straight six finally sputters and quits. I fight with the trunk for a minute before it lurches open and reveals two Air Force duffels of dirty laundry and a brown paper bag filled with peanut butter, bread, bananas, and beer. The four main food groups.

I load everything inside the cozy cabin and have a look around.

The place is a symphony in wood. Wood walls, wood floors, wood-framed sofa.

The bedroom at the end of the cabin boasts an antique-looking double bed stacked with quilts.

The little utilitarian bathroom features a shower stall that’s actually bigger than the teensy closet bathroom in my apartment.

Back in the kitchen, I grin when I open the fridge to find yet more beer, sandwich supplies, a gallon of whole milk, a carton of eggs, and thick bacon.

“Someone’s been shopping,” I say, grabbing a dark stout and popping the top with a bottle opener carved in the shape of a fish that sticks to the fridge.

I unload half of one of the duffels into the washing machine with plenty of Max’s store-brand detergent before heading back into the living room, where I discover a basketful of muffins, cookies, and banana bread with a note on stationery from Shiloh’s Sweet Treats that says, “Thanks for helping out. Call if you need anything—Shiloh Evers.”

Shiloh, I think, is probably the one who did all the shopping in addition to the baking, and I wonder about her relationship to Max as I grab a ginger cookie.

I bite into it with a snap, then pick up my old rucksack and plop onto the sofa, pull out Max’s casebook, and open it up along with a brand-new gas station–procured spiral-bound notebook and pen.

I flip through the pictures and land on a photo of a white farmhouse with a wraparound porch and black shingle roof.

There’s a knock at the door. I look toward my rucksack where my gun sits in its locked hard case and remind myself I haven’t pissed off anyone in Quartz Creek enough (yet) to dig it out and load it. Instead, I jump up and open the door to find Max Andrews.

“You’re a little later than I thought,” he says. “Everything okay?”

“Yeah.” I push the door all the way open and he comes inside. “When you drive a fifty-year-old car, a six-hour drive sometimes takes eight hours. It’s its own kind of time travel.”

“Oh. Okay.” He glances out at my ancient Datsun, then back to me. I expect him to tell me how beautiful Honey is and what a wonderful machine she must be, a carriage fit for a king.

“I, um… I tried to kind of stock the place. Well, Shiloh did most of it. But if you need anything, let me know.”

Then again, not everyone can appreciate Honey’s unique specialness.

“I think I’m good,” I say. “I’ve got my poking stick all sharpened up.”

“Your…”

“For the hornet’s nest we talked about.”

“Oh.”

I take a drink of my beer, watch Max put his hands in his pockets and take them back out.

“The house I passed on my way in,” I say. “It’s the house you grew up in, right? You and your dad still live there?”

His gaze shifts away from me, out the door and east, toward the white farmhouse.

“Yeah,” he says. He opens his mouth to say something else but then just says again, “Yeah.”

Can’t have this conversation all by myself so I say, “Tell me what happened after your sister was taken. You were eight, right?”

“Yeah,” he says. Then, there’s a long pause before he starts again.

“Things got really rocky for my folks after that. My dad used to be a biology teacher at the high school. My mom was a farm girl, I guess. This was her land, originally, her family’s land.

She rented out some of the fields to local farmers.

But she kept the land closest to the house for us.

She had a vegetable garden, flower beds.

She kept chickens, an old pony, and a couple goats in the barn. ”

“Oh,” I say. “Cool. So… your dad wasn’t home that day.”

“No,” Max says. “He was at school. It was summer but he was doing some kind of in-service teacher training thing.”

“And you said you had a piano lesson that morning? What was the name of your piano teacher?”

“Oh. It’s Mrs. Drake. Deena Drake. She doesn’t live too far from here.”

“Okay, I need her information if you have it.”

“Okay,” he says. “I’ll text it to you.”

“So, you said your dad is a trucker now? But he used to be a teacher?”

“Oh… right… after Molly—” He stops and takes a deep breath. “Well, after she was taken, he… had a hard time being around. He took the trucking job because it paid well and we still got insurance and stuff. He’s been doing it ever since.”

“And your mom—”

“My mom shot herself three years after Molly was taken. I was eleven.”

My mouth snaps shut. I hadn’t had time to scour the databases for background before I left.

I knew I’d end up stopping at least once to give Honey a drink of oil and then again to let her cool down.

I’d just packed up and got on the road. But I should’ve expected this.

I’d seen the damage that befalls a family when they lose a child.

And the death of Max’s mom correlated only too well with when he started keeping the casebook.

“I’m sorry,” I say, and mean it. I get up and get Max a glass of water, if for no other reason than to give him a break.

“Thanks,” he says, and takes a long drink.

I feel like he’s probably malnourished and some latent mountain woman instinct makes me want to hand him a peanut butter sandwich and watch while he eats it.

“I’m sorry,” I say again. As if I can’t say it enough.

“It’s been a long time,” he says eventually. “But that’s part of why I had to… to look for someone to help me. I could never have solved it on my own.”

And I probably can’t either.

Outside, there’s a scream. Long and loud and hoarse.

“The hell was that?” I ask.

He tilts his head toward the door.

“It’s the crows,” he says.

The noise screeches again. Low at first and then high and strained and throaty. I shudder—can’t help myself.

I say, “What? No, that doesn’t sound like a crow. Do crows even call at night?”

The scream comes again. Shorter this time. Sharper.

“The ones here do,” he says. “Out in the forest there’s this big rock formation that’s some kind of natural amplifier. The crows found it a long time ago and they go out there and…”

“Raise hell?”

He breathes out a half laugh, half sigh, nods.

“There’s a story. It’s in the book but…”

“What?”

“It’s just an old legend. And… probably illegible. I wrote it down when I was a kid.”

“Okay. Tell it to me.”

“It’s just a story,” he says.

“Tell it to me,” I repeat, and hold his gaze so he knows I won’t be budged.

He takes a deep breath. The door is still cracked and the crows are still screaming and a cool fall wind blows in and rattles a framed print above the TV.

I hadn’t noticed it before. A monochrome field of corn sways in the breeze and, above it, a swirling spiral of crows fades into the stormy sky.

It’s masterfully done, and I think briefly that I should know the artist but no name comes to mind.

“There was an ancient witch who lived on the mountain,” Max says, pulling my attention back to the moment.

“That’s what the stories say. An old woman who lived here—in a house in the middle of an enchanted apple grove—when the town was first formed.

She had two beautiful daughters and men from the town started coming around, offering to marry the girls. ”

“And the witch did not approve.”

“No. She wanted to protect them. She turned her first daughter into a bluebird and her second into a robin and she put them in a golden cage. Every day she sang to them, and they kept her company just like always. And the witch was happy. But one day, when she opened the door to feed them, they flew away. She turned herself into a crow so that she could catch up with them, fly with them, and keep them. Forever.”

Max looks straight ahead, seeming to have forgotten that I’m even there. As if he’s just talking to himself, he keeps going.