This is Down in the Holler, a serial speculative mystery novella featuring Judith Temple, psychic detective.
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← In Episode VII: The Interrogation, Judith attempted to learn more about former sheriff Rock Mitchell and stumbled into a bitter confrontation.
Judith’s shoulders were tight as a coiled spring, her fists clenched, and her crusty eyes strained with lack of sleep when she barreled through the door of the sheriff’s office.
Tim Morrissey sat behind his desk, an open file in front of him and the warm, cozy scent of fresh coffee filling the small office. “This is getting to be a habit of yours,” he said, “showing up here first thing in the morning to demand stuff.”
He looked up with the hint of a smile, but it dropped away at the sight of Judith’s face. “What’s wrong? Something happen?”
Judith winced. She hated when people could read her so easily, when her body language betrayed her. Another piece of her armor gone, lost to this language that everyone else seemed to speak fluently but which she had to study and analyze just to grasp at its meaning.
Judith eased herself into the chair on the opposite side of Tim’s desk. “I learned something.”
“Is this about Rock Mitchell? Or Cindy?”
Judith sucked in a small breath of air, a flush of heat coursing through her and settling in a guilty ball in her stomach. She hadn’t even thought about Rock, about Cindy wailing beneath the fluorescent lights of a parking lot. Not since last night when she’d peeled off the road, daring Autumn, with her bloody, dirt-smeared body and her dead-eyed stare, to make everything clear. “You heard about that?”
“It’s a small county. Just like the sheriff’s office and motel, the only ambulance is in McFerrin.”
“So they did call an ambulance,” Judith said, biting her lip and stabbing her palm with her fingernails. It helped, sometimes, when the world was tilted, spinning slowly and relentlessly out of control, to have a sharp point of pain, a distraction under her control. “Is she –?”
“I haven’t heard.”
Judith shifted in her seat. “It’s not about Cindy. Or Rock.”
Silent and inscrutable, Tim watched her, waiting.
The words Judith had rehearsed in the small, dark hours of the morning in her motel room, and again as she sat in her car in the parking lot, dropped from her mind like sidewalk chalk sprayed by a gush of water. She glanced around the quiet office. “Where’s Cathy?”
Tim’s faint smile returned. “Did you forget what day it is?”
“It’s Saturday.”
“Yeah.”
“Oh.” Judith stared at her hands, at the nails she’d spent years training herself not to chew, now gnawed down to the nubs. “I forgot.”
“You forgot?”
“I forgot that most people don’t come to work on Saturday,” Judith said. Then, before she could second guess or over-analyze the words, she forced them out. “I saw Granger Combs. In a vision. I saw him pull the knife out of Autumn the night she died.”
Tim’s eyes dropped to the file on his desk, and gravity seemed to tug a little harder on him as he exhaled a faint sigh, a grim chuckle. “Wouldn’t you know.”
Judith waited, but Tim did not elaborate.
Lack of sleep and the unrelenting knot in her stomach poked at her, prickling her skin. “Please explain. I’m not in the mood and have not had enough sleep to interpret cryptic remarks.”
“You want some coffee?” Tim pushed back his chair and strode to a small coffee maker and mini-fridge sitting on a rickety table in the corner.
“I suppose so. Thank you.” Judith sank back against the stiff wooden back of the chair.
While Tim pulled two mugs out of a cabinet and poured the coffee, Judith’s thoughts derailed from the case, from Granger and Rock and Cindy and the eerie interference that seemed to be emanating from Cindy in a way Judith couldn’t explain, to the muddled niceties of coffee. She’d already said thank you; would she have to thank Tim again when he handed her the coffee? Would two thank you’s be excessive? How did the vast majority of people seem to stride through the act of thanking someone for coffee without any visible signs of distress? Why couldn’t she just thank a human being for coffee like a normal person? Like Constance.
Dragging her thoughts away from questions to which she had no answer, Judith fixed her eyes on Tim. “Are you going to explain yourself?” she said.
“I need some coffee first.” Tim returned with two sloshing mugs in his hands and a container of creamer balanced precariously under his chin.
Handing Judith a mug, brown drips of overflowed coffee slipping down the sides, he sat, sipped his coffee, and took a breath. “I came in this morning to read up more on Granger. I dug through some old files, found everything I could on him –”
“Why?”
“Gut instinct. It was like an itch I had to scratch, just couldn’t rest until I found out more about him. I think he’s bad news.”
“You’re saying you just happen to be here on a Saturday morning, digging through old files about Granger Combs at the same time that I come to talk to you about him? But your ‘gut instinct’ is somehow irreproachable, whereas what I do is questionable at best?”
Far from getting any kind of rise out of him, Tim only chuckled. “Hey, I’ve been impressed by your accuracy so far. But I don’t charge people money for my gut instinct.”
“Yes, you do. You’re doing it right now. But for you, the taxpayers are paying the bills.”
“It’s a tiny fraction of my job, at most. The vast majority of my job these days is paperwork.” He made a vague, hapless gesture toward his desk and clunky computer.
He glanced down at the file again, and his smile faded. “I think maybe you oughta take a look at this. But – just to warn you – it’s not good.”
“There was a fire.”
Tim’s eyes, suddenly flinty, sprang to her face.
“His father set it,” Judith said. “The house was blue. Granger survived, but his mother didn’t.”
Tim sat back in his chair and passed a hand over his mouth.
“And –” Judith hesitated, the words brutal and ugly on her tongue. “His mother was pregnant.”
Tim let out a breath. “I didn’t know that. I’ll have to check the death certificate.”
“She was.”
“I’m not saying I don’t believe you. But I still have to check.” Tim passed the file to Judith. “You wanna take a look?”
Without even summoning the energy to suggest that she do a psychic reading of the file, Judith took it and flipped it open.
“I can give you the summary,” Tim said, leaning back in his seat, nursing his coffee. “Dad went to prison after the fire, got himself killed in a prison fight at some point during the next few years. Granger got passed around to different foster homes. About the time he was in middle school, he found a family that stuck, somewhat. An older couple who took three or four foster kids at a time, mostly for the money from the state. He stayed with them until he graduated high school and moved out. Now he fixes cars and sells Oxy.”
The knot in Judith’s stomach began to pulsate, heat roiling like the steam of a teapot, straining for release. “This is exactly why people accuse law enforcement of tunnel vision.”
Tim blinked. “What?”
“He had a traumatic childhood, and when you need a suspect, that’s all you see. You don’t think to look at other angles.”
“You said you had some vision where you saw Granger pulling a knife out of Autumn.”
“Pulling a knife out,” Judith said. “I don’t know who put it in.”
Tim stared at her, his coffee forgotten. “Are you saying that you claim to have seen a vision of Granger Combs pulling a knife out of Autumn, and you still think he’s innocent?”
“My visions give fragments of the truth, often colored by other people’s perceptions, or even my own. They rarely tell the full story. But if I’m looking for something specific during my readings, I almost always find it if it’s there. When I did a psychic reading on Granger, I didn’t get a single hint of Autumn’s murder.”
“A psychic reading? Have you met the guy? He’s nobody’s fool. He can be friendly when he wants to be – and some people think he’s decent-looking, I guess – but he’s not someone you should trust.”
“It seems to me that you’re not being very objective about Granger Combs as a suspect,” Judith said. “What does his appearance have to do with anything?”
Tim cleared his throat. “Nothing. But if you think Granger supposedly pulled a knife out of a dying woman and then concealed that fact for twenty years, he’s at least guilty of obstruction of justice.”
“Yes, but obstruction of justice isn’t murder.”
“You’re just going to ignore the fact that he’s a convicted felon who sells drugs to addicts all up and down this county?”
“Unless that fact is relevant to this case,” Judith said, her jaw tight, “then yes, I am.”
Tim pushed back his chair and stood, striding to the small window with its cheap white vinyl blinds. He pulled off his hat and ran an agitated hand through his hair. Then, staring out the window, a ruminative frown passed like a cloud over his face.
Judith squeezed her hands together in her lap. In the diner, back when she’d done her reading of Granger, she hadn’t felt any of the leeching darkness that murder would leave in a person’s psyche. He was a talkative, bacon-burger-eating open book. There had been nothing at all like murder in him.
Turning, Tim fixed a weighty, thoughtful gaze on Judith. “At eighteen, if I had come upon my dying, murdered girlfriend, I would’ve tried to get help. I would’ve called the sheriff as soon as I could. And I would’ve left the knife in, because any idiot with the slightest knowledge of wounds would know that pulling it out could kill her.” He took a long, deep breath and pulled his hat back onto his head, covering up his now-messy hair, which caused an unexpected sensation somewhere in the vicinity of Judith’s chest that felt strangely similar to disappointment. “But a kid with Granger’s history – you’re right. His first instinct might have been to run.”
Judith cocked her head, a sudden nagging realization poking into her memories.
“What is it?” Tim said.
There he was again, interpreting her facial expressions and making suppositions about her state of mind. It was quite annoying. But, pushing aside her irritation at her own transparency, Judith reached into her purse and pulled out her notebook. She flipped through it, scanning the visions she’d recorded over the past week.
The knot in Judith’s stomach tightened, and her lethargic mind began to buzz with the certainty that she was missing a crucial piece of a solvable puzzle. She looked up at Tim.
“I just remembered something,” she said. “I never completed a reading on Granger.”
The rhythmic squeak of a twisting wrench guided Judith through Fix ‘Em Roy’s garage to where Granger bent over the open hood of a dented pickup truck.
At the sound of her footstep, he glanced over his shoulder. “Psychic lady! You’re back.”
“It’s Judith,” she said. “I’d like to do another reading on you. If you have a minute.”
Granger straightened and turned around, leaning against the hood of the car. Engine oil spattered his coveralls and the sleeves of the shirt that poked out over his arms, but his body moved with the casual, athletic grace of a person unafraid to take up space.
A flutter of envy flitted through Judith. Never in her life had she taken up space with such unabashed ease. Her presence was an intrusion, an awkward ornament hung crookedly in a space not designed for her.
“Thought you already did that,” Granger said.
“I never completed it. You were quite talkative that morning, and it disrupted my process.”
Granger chuckled. “Sorry ‘bout that. Me and my mouth. Can’t do nothin’ ‘bout it. Lotsa people’ve tried over the years.”
Granger, leaning over Autumn in her dying moments, pulling a knife from her bleeding stomach – Judith quashed the memory, shoving it down. There must be some reason, some other explanation. Not Granger, not this man in front of her, lackadaisical and grinning and covered in engine oil. “If you could go about your work, or whatever would help you to stay distracted and quiet, I’ll just do my reading and be on my way.”
“Why you wanna do that now? Thought you figured out Rock Mitchell was the guy?”
“Who told you that?”
“It’s a small town. News travels real quick out here, ’specially when there’s an ambulance involved.”
Judith took a breath, trying to loosen the lingering tightness in her chest. “I do suspect Rock Mitchell. I don’t think he has been sufficiently investigated by law enforcement. But I saw something, something involving you, and I want to finish my reading so that I can know what really happened.”
“What d’you mean you saw something?”
Shifting her weight between her feet, Judith pressed her fingernails harder into her palm, until the little stab of pain took the edge off her emotional discomfort. Words floundered on her tongue, until, in a gush, she pushed out the bare truth. “I know you were with Autumn when she died.”
Granger didn’t blink, but his body went taut as a wire.
Judith’s fingertips went numb, and she couldn’t uncurl her hands from the tight fists she’d made. She lowered her voice to disguise its shaking. “I want to hear your side of the story. Did you find her and then cover up her death? Tell me what happened.”
“What d’you mean you know I was with her?” Granger’s expression didn’t move, his voice flat. “What – you saw me or somethin’? In one of your visions or whatever you call ’em?”
“Yes. I saw you when – Well, never mind. You tell me what you remember. If I know the truth, then I can start to get to the bottom of what really happened to Autumn that night.”
Granger’s shoulders crumpled, and a sheen rose in his eyes.
Judith bit her lip. Not tears again.
“Look, I –” Granger faltered, his voice breaking. “I don’t remember much about that night, really. We were doin’ some hard stuff, stuff we shouldn’ta been doin’, and it messed with my head. I get these flashes sometimes, of Autumn –” Granger pinched the bridge of his nose and squeezed his eyes shut.
Judith stared at her shoes, suddenly acutely aware that she had nothing to do with her ungainly hands and that one of her socks had folded itself under her pinky toe inside her tennis shoe.
Granger took a shaky breath. “But I always thought it was a bad dream, like maybe I was just imagining – You didn’t tell the sheriff, did you? He’ll be on me just like the others, and I don’t remember nothin’. I won’t be no help in clearin’ my name. What did you see, in your vision thing?”
“Why don’t you let me do a reading,” Judith said, trying to modulate her voice. Constance had a way of smoothing her tone, lowering her volume, in a way that calmed a room and brought high emotions back into check. With the right words, the right tone, surely Judith could do it too. “Maybe I can fill in those gaps in your memory. Your subconscious might have retained more of those memories than your conscious mind.”
“Look, you just came in here while I’m supposed to be workin’ and told me you think I saw my girlfriend die in the woods twenty years ago. I ain’t in no state of mind for no psychic reading.”
“I’m just trying to piece together this puzzle. With a little more information, I could help clear your name, and then no one could accuse you of this crime again.”
Granger scoffed. “You been in this town a week now, and you still think I could live here without people whisperin’ behind my back? That ain’t how Salt Fork works.”
“If someone else is arrested, tried in a court of law, and found guilty, why would anyone still suspect you?”
With a bitter chuckle, Granger shook his head. “I dunno if you’re a true believer in them lawyers and judges, or just don’t know nothin’ ’bout the real world, but Salt Fork decided a long time ago that I’m guilty.”
“Just let me do a reading, and –”
“I ain’t doin’ no readin’ right now.”
At the vehemence in his voice, Judith drew back.
“Look,” he said, the tears returning, “maybe after work. Just not right now. I’m right in the middle of fixin’ up this truck, and my brain’s all over the place, with you bringin’ all this up again. Later. Come by later. But lemme get back to work.”
“This is my last full day in Salt Fork, Granger. I’m running very short on time.”
“I don’t want you pokin’ and proddin’ around in my brain right now. If you rootin’ around in my head ends up givin’ me nightmares of Autumn dyin’ out in them woods, I don’t think I can take it.”
“I’ve never had a client experience nightmares as a direct result of one of my readings. I won’t say there’s a zero percent chance of it happening, because that would be intellectually dishonest, but I can safely say that it is extremely unlikely.”
“Not now.” Granger crossed his arms. “Come back later, like I said.”
Frustration crept into Judith, tightening her already tense body. “What makes you so resistant to a psychic reading?”
“Do I gotta explain myself to you again?” Granger turned back to the car and took up the wrench once more. Then, shoulders sagging, he turned around again, and a trickle flowed from one of his eyes, rolling down his cheek as he sniffed and wiped it away with his sleeve. “Later. I ain’t in no state to do this now.”
Judith’s fingertips began to tingle again. She frowned, pressing her lips together. “I’ll come back at five.”
Judith turned to leave, making her way through the small garage stuffed with rust-spotted cars and dented fenders. An insistent prickling sensation tugged at her, needling her skin, and she steeled herself to catch a glimpse of dead-eyed Autumn lurking in the shadows. But Autumn didn’t appear, the dim corners of the shop empty aside from old, clunky cars.
Emerging into the chilly light of early spring, Judith stepped aside from the door of the garage and stood with her back against the concrete blocks of the building. She needed to be close, as close as she could without Granger seeing her.
Judith closed her eyes, reaching out, focusing her mind on Granger, emptying it of all else, making space for impressions to wash over her.
For a few moments, she saw nothing, felt nothing except the faint warmth of the sun straining against the cold air. Then, like a wave rushing up a beach, it came.
A flicker, like a stuttering film reel. Faint images, muffled sounds – flames licking peeling wallpaper, screams, the crash of a door bursting open and the crushing force of smoke-scented arms.
The relentless wish – that the fire had taken him too. He was meant to die, the poisoned spawn of a hateful man.
Then, the images changed.
Pine needles, soft and silent underfoot. Dark hair, shimmering with moonlight.
Roiling, overpowering fear, rising with relentless tidal power –
The poisoned spawn of a hateful man –
Moonlight, flashing on metal
Autumn’s eyes, widening, panicking
The wet slice of sharp metal into flesh –
Again
Again
Again
The poisoned spawn of a hateful man –
“What’re you still doin’ here?”
Judith opened her eyes, ice cascading through her body.
Granger stood beside her on the sidewalk.
Judith forced the horror from her face – closed her mouth, blinked her eyes, struggled for control – but she knew she was too late.
Granger’s eyes flicked down the length of her, over her clenched fists and feet rooted to the ground, and back up, over her face drained of color and eyes no longer seeing innocence in his.
His face didn’t move, but it changed. The teary sheen in his eyes was gone, evaporated to a calculated, razor-edged leer, his smile hardening in place. Still as marble, but suddenly tilted, broken, off-kilter – a veil slipping away.
“I asked you what you’re still doin’ here.”
Judith, her throat frozen, her words trapped and inaccessible, backed up toward her car, parked along the side of the empty road.
“It ain’t real, ya know.” Granger stepped toward her, his arms still crossed.
Had he always been this big, dwarfing her like a lone tree beside a mountain?
“Your visions, your readings, whatever you call ’em. They ain’t real. And ain’t no sheriff or judge or jury ever gonna listen to you.”
A black SUV rumbled along the road, splitting the silence, and Judith darted to her car, unlocking and clambering in – quickly, while there were witnesses.
Locking the door, she threw it into drive, her thudding heartbeat drowning out all other sounds as she peeled away. She accelerated down the street, not knowing whether she was driving into Salt Fork or out of it.
In the rearview mirror, the black SUV had parked on the side of the street, and Granger stood on the sidewalk, arms crossed, eyes following her until she rounded a curve and disappeared among the trees.
Judith’s body thrummed with a swirling, congealed jumble of terror and certainty.
Granger – it was Granger, all along.
Granger, chatty and personable, throwing his arm around Melissa. Granger, teary with regret and shame, lamenting how he didn’t mourn Autumn as he should.
Granger, the broken, lonely boy whose own father had tried to kill him.
As the mountains sped by in a rush of brown and the first hints of fresh spring green, Judith’s heartbeat began to slow, and her ears caught the buzz of her phone ringing.
Judith pulled onto the shoulder of the country road and snatched her phone with shaking hands. “Hello?”
Anna May’s voice was brittle as ice over a puddle. “We need to talk.”
“I know who killed Autumn –”
“Yeah, you made sure everybody in town knows what you think. And you don’t got no proof for any of it, do you?”
“It wasn’t Rock. I was –” Judith’s throat clenched. “I was wrong.”
“Well, that’s great. That fixes everything. You got my mama sent to the hospital, you know that?”
“I didn’t know Cindy was going to be there.”
“Thank the Lord it wasn’t a heart attack, or I would’ve sued you for everything you’ve got.”
The unconcealed venom in Anna May’s voice was palpable, and Judith’s thoughts glitched. She spewed out the first words that came to mind. “I don’t think you would have sufficient grounds for a lawsuit.”
“It was a panic attack, thanks for asking. A panic attack you caused. She kicked Rock outta the house, and he’s sleeping on his friend’s couch. He’s a mess. He didn’t go to work today, and he’s never missed a day of work in his life. And my mama hasn’t left her bed.” Anna May’s volume dropped, and dread jolted through Judith – somehow, the quiet was sharper, more violent. “You. You’re tearing my family apart. You get out of Salt Fork today, and don’t you ever let me hear from you again.”
The phone clicked and went silent.
Judith’s hands were chilled, her fingers curling into fists. Her lips were numb with cold, the center of her body radiating heat.
No, she couldn’t stop – not now. Not when she knew –
Her hands shook, her vision blurring as she struggled to navigate her phone.
A text message dinged, the name Timothy Morrissey (Sheriff) emblazoned across her phone.
Everything okay? it said.
With sudden, numb clarity, Judith recognized the black SUV. An unmarked sheriff’s vehicle.
Tim hadn’t let her come alone after all. But the realization neither surprised nor comforted her as she ignored the text, blinked to clear her vision, and struggled through the contacts of her phone.
Holding the phone to her ear, Judith gasped to steady her breath, but her lungs hitched, squeezing, throttling.
“Hello-ooo!” A voice sang on the other end. “I’m in the middle of cookie baking, so if I – no no, honey, just a little bit of salt, let Mommy do it – so if I scream and the line goes dead, it’s probably because there’s flour all over the floor. But how are you?”
Judith, her eyes burning – why were they burning? – tried to speak, but no sound escaped her tight throat.
Constance’s voice lost its sing-songy tone, suddenly serious. “Judith? What’s wrong?”
Judith didn’t cry. She didn’t cry. Other people cried, and she hated it, but she didn’t cry.
But her eyes were burning and there was salty water on her face and her chest was heaving, and all of her words were swallowed by the sobs that shook her shoulders.
Thank you for reading! If you enjoyed this installment of Down in the Holler, please let me know with a like, comment, or restack!
→ Keep reading! Episode IX: The Goodbye
← Read Episode VII: The Interrogation
Down in the Holler Table of Contents
If you have any questions about the story behind Down in the Holler, the inspirations behind the mystery, or the writing process, please let me know with a comment or DM! I’m considering putting together a story-behind-the-story Q&A once Down in the Holler wraps up in early July, and I would love to know what questions would be most interesting to you!
That moment Granger turned rang out like a snapping violin string. Absolutely terrifying. I felt my own stomach knot up, thinking Judith was about to get taken. A great cliffhanger too.
Bridget, I'll say it again, I'm really enjoying this. This is one of those stories that I just don't want to end, and I force myself to read slower at the end of every episode. - Jim