Down in the Holler: The Poem
Episode VI
This is Down in the Holler, a serial speculative mystery novella featuring Judith Temple, psychic detective.
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← In Episode V: The Red Herring, Judith investigated a lead that turned out to be more than it seemed.
Mist leeches through the mountains like a living thing, pouring down undulating hills and shrouding the wet-leafed ground, darkened by the clustered trees.
Soft, hungry dirt opens its black mouth, flecked white with blind, clammy, wriggling creatures.
Down, down, far down into the press of the earth.
The open maw closes, and the soil piles, heavy and musty and thick.
Claustrophobic and suffocating, pushing down, down, to the ancient, long-dead leaves heated and hardened beneath the surface of the earth.
Water and soil and writhing worms and coal, deep and dark and heavy.
The last clinging breath pressing out, the blackness crushing down –
The last clinging breath pressed out.
Judith sat up in bed, gasping for air. Cold sweat covered her skin, soaking her tangled sheets.
Frantically kicking off her blankets, Judith fought to breathe through the crushing weight on her chest.
In through her nose, out through her mouth – she sucked in air, struggling to regulate her ragged breaths. The pressure on her lungs slowly faded, until it disappeared as though it had never existed. With shaking hands, she reached to her bedside table and grasped her notebook.
She wrote the date, her usually neat handwriting an untidy, wobbling scrawl. Then she stared at the white page, with its straight black lines waiting to record her data. Clean and sanitized, input and output, data and analysis.
Judith laid the notebook down on the blanket, keeping it a safe distance from the motley motel comforter that she left folded at the foot of her bed. Slipping out of bed, she moved to the window, where the first grey hint of morning budded over the mountains.
As she watched, the beginning tendrils of sunlight crept over the soft, rolling mountains, and her breathing slowed, her heartbeat returning to a steady rhythm. Judith was not easily moved by beauty. A dazzling sunset or a lush, sprawling valley overlook she could acknowledge without the urge to take a second glance. But, as the last frigid clutches of her nightmare receded, something about the dark trees cloaking the mountain and the soft light that rose like a secret over the ridgeline poked beneath her brittle armor.
She watched the sun and the trees and the mountains and the first stirrings of the town outside her window, and a warm tightness built up within her.
Her eyes were wet. Which was ridiculous. It was a sunrise. The sun rose every morning. And the streets of McFerrin were cracked, the sidewalks were grimy, and the truck that rolled by was rusty and noisy.
Judith sniffed and snatched her notebook and pen from the bed.
Dirt
Coal
Buried alive
“May I use your copier?” Judith said as she opened the door to the sheriff’s office, the bell jingling over her head.
“Hello to you too,” Tim said, leaning back in his chair. “You’ll have to talk to Cathy about the copier. It’s her temperamental child.”
Cathy looked at him over her glasses. “You have no reason to be scared of that machine, young man.”
“It’s the spawn of Satan,” Tim said in a stage-whisper.
“It works just fine if you treat it right.” Cathy adjusted her glasses and returned her gaze to the stack of paperwork in front of her.
Judith turned to Cathy. “May I use your copier? Please.”
“We’re not a print shop.”
“It’s evidence,” Judith said. “A handwriting sample from Autumn Hanson. I’d like a copy for myself.”
“You got one?” Tim stood from his desk and moved to look over Judith’s shoulder.
“Anna May looked through some of Autumn’s things and brought it to me. I’m not exactly welcome in the Mitchell house at the moment.”
“You don’t say,” Cathy said under her breath.
Tim held out his hands for the water stained manila folder full of yellowed, wrinkled papers that Judith held in her arms. “Have you read these yet?”
“I haven’t even opened the file,” Judith said. “I’m going to get an impression from it before I read it, to prevent bias.”
“Oh, that’s right.” Tim handed the file back. “Why don’t you do your thing first, and then I’ll make a copy.”
Judith chose to ignore the faint skepticism in Tim’s voice and took a chair in the corner. She sat with the folder on her lap and closed her eyes.
Blocking out the scrape of Tim’s chair on the floor and Cathy’s pointed throat-clearing, Judith focused on the papers, whatever their contents might be, and the young woman who wrote them.
Without the strange interference she’d experienced at the Mitchell house, images of Autumn came in a tumble.
Autumn at the small, dingy county high school, dodging out a side door and wandering toward the parking lot.
Autumn, her dark hair tumbling in mussed waves down her back, laughing in a blurry crowd, drawing eyes to her with thoughtless ease.
Autumn in her bedroom, messy with strewn clothes, staring at a sheet of paper, biting her lip, fiddling with the hem of her shirt.
Judith opened her eyes.
A deep undercurrent of wrongness flowed through the visions, an unsettled anxiety, a desire for flight and freedom. Claustrophobia, a heavy weight pressing down.
Opening the file, Judith leafed through the faded, water-splotched pages. Scribbled notes to friends. Half-completed school assignments. An unsent letter to an aunt in Michigan.
And a poem.
Judith pulled the paper, torn from a spiralbound notebook, from the folder.
Tiny
Two line surprise
Happy, sad, good, or bad?
Little feet, little hands and heart
Inside
As she read the words, Judith saw Autumn again, biting her lip and worrying the hem of her shirt, pen clutched in her hand.
Judith’s eyes flew to Tim, who looked up from his computer.
“What is it?” he said.
Judith stood, crossed the small room, and handed the poem to Tim. Head cocked, he read it. And read it again, his forehead creasing.
“What do you think of this?” Judith said.
“As a poem?” The levity of Tim’s words died in the hollow tone of his voice. “From a poetic standpoint it’s pretty basic.”
“I’m not interested in it from a poetic standpoint,” Judith said. “But, in Autumn’s defense, I don’t think being county sheriff qualifies you to judge poetic merit.”
“Probably not. But, in my defense, I’ve read a fair amount of good poetry.”
“You?” Judith raised her eyebrows.
“Guess you don’t quite have me figured out yet, Miss Temple,” Tim said. Then his smile faded. Slowly, he set the paper down on his desk, his face weary. “But if you’re thinking what I bet you are, I’d say you’re probably right.”
Standing, he handed the poem and the rest of the folder to Cathy. “Could you make a copy for Judith, please? We need to get this to Lexington.”
Sunset Holler Boutique was a desperate island of color struggling against the grey sidewalks and crumbling bricks of Salt Fork. Judith pushed through the door into a swirl of pinks and purples and mustard yellows hanging on racks and draped over headless mannequins, a country music station blaring through small mounted speakers.
Anna May stood at the counter stacking a pyramid of t-shirts rolled into soft cylinders, and at the sound of the opening door, she turned with a bright smile. “Welcome! Lookin’ for any –” Her eyes met Judith’s, and her smile faltered. “Oh – you, um – everything okay?”
Judith held out a copy of Autumn’s poem. “Have you seen this before?”
Frowning, Anna May took it. “This from the folder? I didn’t read through everything. Just checked a few things to make sure they were Autumn’s and then brought it over to you. I didn’t want Rock and my mom to see and get all upset. Is this a poem?”
Anna May went silent, her eyes flying through the words again. Her wide, friendly face paled to a sickly white.
Inside her shoes, Judith curled and uncurled her toes. She should wait, though questions burned within her. Constance would know a delicate way to ask. She would know how to smooth over the sadness with easy words and how to use a gentle voice to soften the hard words. But those were not Judith’s strengths.
Judith cleared her throat. “Was Autumn pregnant?”
Anna May heaved a stifled sob, and Judith balled her hands into fists, stabbing her palms with her fingernails. Not this again. Why did everyone in this godforsaken town have to cry?
Suddenly, a chill crept up Judith’s skin, the hair rising on her arms. Judith raised her eyes, and the cold turned to ice picks that rolled down her spine, freezing her in place.
Behind Anna May, beside the dressing room in a back corner of the shop, was Autumn, her dark hair slick and scraggly, her cheeks pale and dirty, her stomach glistening with blood.
Judith forced herself to breathe through the crushing weight that suddenly pressed again on her lungs.
“I had no idea,” Anna May whispered through tears.
Judith watched the unmoving apparition and her dead-eyed stare.
“She never told me.” Anna May shoved the paper back at Judith. “Why didn’t she tell me?”
The paper fluttered toward the floor, and Judith snatched it. When her eyes darted back toward the dressing room, Autumn was gone.
Judith took a trembling breath to steady her voice. “I don’t think she had enough time.”
In a haze, Judith drove to Sloan’s Service Station at the very edge of town, the first building to welcome eastbound drivers out of the woods and into Salt Fork.
If Anna May hadn’t known about a pregnancy, then maybe someone else had.
In the old convenience store built of dirty white siding and pockmarked concrete, Melissa stood behind the counter, surrounded by magazines, candy bars, and cigarettes.
She turned her face, paler than it had been the previous day, to the door as Judith entered. “You leavin’ town or just need gas?”
“I came to talk to you.” Scooting past teetering racks of junk food and knick-knacks, Judith made her way to the counter. Even without focusing her awareness, she sensed Melissa’s secret, billowing from her in waves of excitement and anxiety.
Perhaps, twenty years ago, Autumn had been pregnant. But today Melissa definitely was. And Judith was not going to break Constance’s rule by mentioning it before Melissa said something. She’d learned that lesson years ago.
Judith stifled a sigh. She hated secrets, nasty, festering wounds rotting below the surface of ordinary people, and yet her abilities made her privy to everyone’s secrets. “I think Autumn may have learned some important news shortly before her death.”
Melissa picked with her fingernail at a stack of lottery tickets. “Yeah?”
“The kind of news someone might share with a friend.”
“Autumn shared personal stuff when she felt like it, but she didn’t always feel like it.”
Judith sniffed in frustration. So much for beating around the bush. “Was Autumn pregnant shortly before she died?”
Melissa’s shoulders stiffened. “I don’t know what would make you think that.”
“She wrote about it.”
“Well, if she wrote about it, why’re you askin’ me?”
“I’m trying to corroborate it,” Judith said. “Do you know if she was pregnant?”
Melissa’s lips tightened, and her gaze shifted around the empty store. She narrowed her eyes at Judith as though deliberating. “She never told me nothin’ about it one way or the other. But one day a few weeks before she vanished, we were hangin’ out here –”
“Does this store belong to your family?” Judith said, suddenly remembering Melissa’s last name.
“It’s my daddy’s gas station, yeah. Only one in Salt Fork. But anyway, me and Autumn, we were hangin’ out here, and I saw her swipe a pregnancy test, one of those real cheap ones. Never saw what she did with it, and she never talked to me about it. I just remember seein’ her slip it into her pocket, thinkin’ nobody saw her.”
“Who would she have told about a pregnancy?”
“Probably nobody. She could be real secretive about stuff. Wouldn’t talk to Rock or her mama for sure, and she didn’t like to get Anna May caught up in her messes.”
“What do you think she would’ve done if she had been pregnant?”
Melissa opened and slammed the cash register without touching the money inside, then opened and slammed it again. “Run off to Virginia to get it taken care of, probably.”
A dark, angry heat emanated from Melissa like a force field, and Judith instinctively shrunk back.
Judith watched in silence as Melissa snatched a wet rag and began to scour the mottled vinyl countertop.
“You and Autumn were friends,” Judith said at last. “Weren’t you?”
“We didn’t braid each other’s hair and talk about boys, if that’s what you mean.”
“Then what did you do?”
Melissa scrubbed harder at the counter. “Autumn was fun, okay? She was cool, and people thought she was pretty, and she acted like she didn’t care what people thought of her. We hung out because Salt Fork’s a small town and we didn’t have a lot of options. But she was real closed off. Didn’t tell me nothin’ that was real, except for the same stuff she was willin’ to tell everyone else.”
“When did you and Granger…” Judith trailed off.
“Get together? ’Bout a year later. He was real broke up about Autumn. But we been together ever since.” Melissa strode to a glass case along one wall and pulled out a donut. “You want one?”
Judith shook her head. Melissa shrugged and took a tentative bite of a plain glazed donut. As she chewed, her face turned a shade of green, and with a grimace she set the nibbled donut on the counter.
“But the thing with Autumn was,” Melissa said, “it was always about Autumn. Everything. She always had to be in the limelight, and if she wasn’t, then she’d go wanderin’ off somewhere until people started lookin’ for her. Pullin’ those kinda stunts didn’t work for most girls. Certainly didn’t work for me – I tried a coupla times, and nobody even noticed I was gone. But she pulled it off. Got everybody’s attention, got them thinkin’ about her again. Everything was always about her. Even Granger. They’d break up, get back together, break up, get back together, break up – but the second he started makin’ eyes at anybody else – boom, there she was gettin’ him back again.”
“Stewart had a crush on her, didn’t he?”
“Every boy in Salt Fork did, and half the boys in the rest of the county.”
A foul, prickling question slithered into Judith’s thoughts, sickening her stomach. She hesitated, but it roiled within her, trying to force its way out. “If Autumn was pregnant…who was – Would Granger have been the father, or is there any chance it –” Judith paused again, grasping for words. “Could the baby possibly have been her stepfather’s? Rock’s?”
Melissa gasped. “What?”
“It’s awful, I know. Just –”
“I mean, I don’t think he ever – They fought all the time, but I never woulda suspected that. But anything’s possible, I guess. Did you see that in one of your vision things?”
“No.” Judith moved toward the door, her face flushed. “No, I’m just trying to think of other angles. Don’t spread it around, please, that I asked about that. I’m just trying to be thorough.”
Melissa nodded, her eyes glassy, as Judith pushed back through the door.
Judith escaped to her car once again and sped out of the parking lot, back toward Salt Fork’s main street.
She needed to think. And she needed to see Rock, to do a reading on him without the interference at the Mitchell house.
Driving through the strip of buildings and tumbledown houses that made up Salt Fork, Judith steadied her breath and tried to organize her thoughts. As soon as she had a few minutes of quiet, she’d have to take some time to write out a list of suspects, motives, and the readings she’d gotten. Granger, Stewart, Melissa, the horde of unidentified people from the party the night of Autumn’s disappearance, and Rock – all of them were suspicious. And yet it was the angry, door-slamming former sheriff, who nobody had been brave or motivated enough to investigate until now, who loomed in Judith’s mind. If she could just see him outside of that strange house, if she could just do a reading on him, what kind of turmoil and darkness would she find?
Judith’s fingertips began to tingle. Her skin went suddenly cold, colder than the chilly air, and she turned her gaze, drawn as if by gravity, to a narrow gap between two run-down buildings.
There in the shadows stood Autumn, with her dark, tangled hair and her piercing, dead-eyed stare and her seeping, bloody wound.
Judith’s stomach roiled, her hands clenching the steering wheel.
“I’m trying,” she whispered. “I’m trying, Autumn.”
The apparition’s eyes followed Judith’s as the car moved past.
Judith’s car gave a bone-jolting bounce as it hit a deep pothole, and a sudden movement on the street caught her eye. Just outside Fix ‘Em Roy’s repair shop, Granger leaned against a dark red pickup truck. A cigarette in one hand, he smiled and waved at her.
Judith glanced back into the alley on the other side, but Autumn was gone. The tingling in her fingers lingered, the prickling of pins and needles.
Raising one hand in a quick greeting, Judith pressed on the gas, speeding away from Granger and his casual grin, away from Autumn and the serrated ferocity of her stare, away from the quiet town with a black, twisted secret at its center.
If her online sleuthing from this morning was correct, it was nearly time for Rock’s shift as a security guard at the coal mine to end.
Judith drove out of Salt Fork and into the woods, winding through the dark curves of the hills and the thick trees, their first tentative buds just starting to peek out into the brisk air. Following the road up into the mountains, she drove toward the Pine Gap Coal Company and Rock Mitchell.
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 VII: The Interrogation
Real great suspense. I like how it's getting really hot and rife in suspicions. But part of me has an inkling that there comes a twist somewhere. Another great chapter Bridget.
It works! Gave me some Bad Cree vibes. Those are the best vibes.