November Mourns

Read Online November Mourns by Tom Piccirilli - Free Book Online

Book: November Mourns by Tom Piccirilli Read Free Book Online
Authors: Tom Piccirilli
Tags: Fiction, Thrillers, Suspense fiction, Horror, Brothers and sisters, Sisters
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Which hills?”
    “To Gospel Trail. The gorge.”
    With a surge of panicky strength, she snapped her arm away and broke free. “Hell no, I’d never go out that way.”
    The vehemence surprised him. “Why?”
    “You know the talk.”
    “No, I don’t.”
    “Yeah you do.”
    Shad was getting the feeling that he’d somehow missed an important facet to the county and was only now getting around to it. “Not really. Tell me what they say.”
    Glide appeared embarrassed by her outburst, humbled enough to actually dip her chin and blush. The rosy flush of her cheeks was authentic enough to tug at his guts.
    She put on a moderately enticing girlish act, as if trying to throw him off the scent of her anxiety. There was a taunt in her eyes as well, the kind that made crazed lonely men run for shotguns to battle one another, and he knew better than to put his hand on her now.
    “M’am gives tell that there’s wraiths out that way. The suicides can’t sleep. Hiding in the deadwood and brambles just waiting to catch folk. The land’s got a taint to it, she warns everybody. I’m not saying I believe that, but if you ever heard my M’am going on about spirits, you’d give ’em considerable thought.”
    “You’re right,” he admitted.
    M’am Luvell, Glide’s great-grandmother, was a hex woman the superstitious kin of the hollow respected and feared. They brought their sick children to her, their cows that didn’t give enough milk. The pumpkin heads and the kids with flippers. They came for love potions and charms to ward off the evil eye. They carried their chickens and their terror, and she would feed on it. All of it. Shad sort of liked the lady.
    “Her mama was thrown into the chasm when M’am was a missy. Diptheria, I think. Or cholera. She watched it happen. She says the wraiths came out of the rocks and spent the afternoon with her, playing with her at first, then chasing and chewing on her legs.”
    After Shad’s mother died, Pa went to M’am Luvell for a tonic to take his nightmares away—moon wasn’t strong enough anymore. She’d taught him how to play chess.
    “I’d like to see her,” Shad said.
    “Go right on,” Glide told him, aiming her tits to show him the way. “It’s not my place to stop anyone. Nor to urge ’em on, neither.”
    Venn squirmed beneath the hay for a moment, whimpered, and lay still again.
     

     
    BULLFROGS ROARED IN THE POND AND THE WIRE grass appeared alive, agitated as it knifed into the breeze. Shad moved to the nearest shanty and stood at the ramshackle pineboard door. He reached out to knock and the walls groaned in protest, tilting horribly. The years of humidity, rain, and moss bleeding into the wood had rotted it to tissue paper. He tapped with his index finger and hoped the splintering door wouldn’t fall off its hinges.
    M’am’s voice, low and almost dangerous, but filled with a quaint mischief, called out through the thick spaces between the slats. “Come on inside now, Shad Jenkins. Don’t you worry none ’bout my home. It’ll last long enough to serve me my remaining years, rest your mind on that.”
    He was still giving too much of himself away. He walked in and instantly felt as if he’d stepped into a pagan place of worship. A hallowed arena where the blood never finished soaking into the earth. Some areas had an innate sense of sanctuary about them. Another person’s belief could wrap around your throat as tightly as your own.
    M’am Luvell sat huddled on a small seat suited for a child, smoking a pipe. She nodded at him, eyes closed. Her dwarf’s body was hidden beneath afghans and oversized sweaters, except for the stubby fingers with yellow cracked nails, wrapped around her pipe. Some of the folk in Moon Run Hollow carved their own from corncobs or hickory, but hers was store-bought and expensive. It gave the hex woman another element of contradiction.
    Even so, he was a little surprised to realize she was smoking marijuana. The sweet stink

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