Seven Turns: A Ghost Story/A Love Story

Cally drove into Woodley first so she could drop the mail off at the collection box outside the post office. The gray stone building next to the pizza shop was easily the largest building in town, and seemed far too large for a small-town post office, but she remembered the Captain had told her it used to be the courthouse and the scene of many hangings. She looked up at the dark windows of the upper stories, but didn’t see any swaying figures or anyone peering down from the windows. The old church across the parking lot behind it looked far more atmospheric. She thought it might be a good idea to ask someone about both buildings later. Andi at the Bean Garden would probably know some good stories about them.

She didn’t head west out of town, the way she’d arrived on that first night. Instead she turned the way Ben had gone, through the residential district back toward Vale House, and then right, as he had done, on Gardens Road. It might or might not have been a shorter way to get there, but what mattered to Cally at the moment was that it would be a more pleasant drive than the interstate. Also, it made her smile to think of the little tour Ben had given her of the area. Driving south down Gardens Road, she paused for a moment in front of the Yellow House that the Captain had said he’d grown up in. It looked sad and empty, its porch steps crumbling, and the big, round attic window full of cobwebs.

Cally wound down her window when she got to the open road outside of town. It felt good to be back behind the wheel again. The sound of boxes rattling in the back seat was still irritating, though. She considered taking Ian up on his offer to find her a place to store them temporarily inside Vale House.

She crossed the little bridge over the creek, and the road swung right, just as she remembered. After that, though, her memory seemed to fail her. Things did not look quite the same, in the daylight. The road entered a wood, as she recalled, but it did not resemble the dense, mature forest she remembered. Instead it seemed to be a rather thin and scrubby wood, probably re-growth over an abandoned cotton or tobacco field. Dilapidated tin buildings could be glimpsed between the trunks. “I guess darkness lends enchantment to the view,” she mused.

Then, quite suddenly, it seemed to her, the trees came to an end. A stop sign brought her to a halt at the side of a four-lane highway. She definitely had no memory of that from the night before. She glanced in the rear-view mirror, wondering if she had missed a fork in the road somewhere, but she was sure there had been nothing like that, and she had not yet crossed any of the other little bridges she remembered, either.

She looked up and down the highway before her, watching cars and tractor trailers roaring by every few seconds. The volume of trucks made her certain this must be I-85. She knew Blackthorn lay south of Woodley, just off the interstate; she had turned around on its exit ramps at least three times, that first night. What she didn’t understand was how she could have arrived here the way she had come. How could she have become lost on a simple two-lane blacktop road in broad daylight?

The only thing for it, she figured, was to go ahead and follow the highway in to Blackthorn. Shrugging, she crossed the four lanes and turned southward, hoping she was right. Almost immediately, she began to see signs stating the exit to Blackthorn lay just ahead.

Turning off the highway at the Blackthorn exit, she sighed with relief. Then she frowned with dismay. The town itself also seemed quite different in the daylight. Instead of a somewhat busier main street than the one in Woodley, she encountered a busy gridwork of four lane surface streets lined with retail parks and big-box stores. Blackthorn was stark and noisy, with traffic roaring by everywhere. None of the roads appeared to be the charming downtown street where The Fountain had been, or even the kind of road on which a nice little burger joint like that could thrive.

However, the pharmacy to which Doc had called in the prescription did have a large, brightly colored sign, and Cally was able to keep it in sight and steer her way to it without having to stop and consult her phone’s GPS.

She went in and gave Bethany’s information at the pharmacy desk, and the young lady behind the counter smiled at her. “All ready to go,” she said, “including the doctor’s orders for a pink heart drawn on the label.” She pointed to it and grinned. “Love is the best medicine!”

“We all love Bethany,” Cally said, signing the log book to verify her receipt of the drugs. “Can you tell me the best way to get back to Woodley?”

“Just get back on I-85 and go north. It’s to the east, on the right side of the highway,” she said. “I’ve never been there, myself, but some girls from there went to my school. They say there’s a haunted mansion there. Is it true?”

“It is definitely an interesting town,” said Cally, “though a little hard to find.” She decided to give her GPS another chance, and typed the address of Vale House into her phone before she got back into her car. The GPS neatly instructed her through all the turns back to the interstate ramp, and Cally relaxed. Then the little metallic voice in the phone announced cheerfully that the GPS signal had been lost.

“Of course it has,” she told it. She had, like most people, occasionally had an urge to throw her phone out the window, but it had never been this strong before.

She had at least learned better than to watch for signs to Woodley along this road. Instead she kept one eye on the verge, watching for the appearance of a nondescript little country road heading east. She was sure she would pass it just as she spotted it and would have to turn around, but at least it was a sunny day and she was much less likely to miss it all together. “I wonder what is the opposite of nondescript?” she thought as she passed a couple of descript roads, complete with exit signs and gas stations, which she knew could not be the one for which she was watching.

After five or six miles, she knew she must have missed it. The little nondescript road she was looking for, the one she had so recently used to reach the interstate from Woodley, had only been a little over two miles north of the Blackthorn exit. She was sure she remembered this clearly. Or maybe it had been a more descript road than she’d noticed at the time. She was growing frustrated, and began muttering curses. “And Bethany will need her medicine soon,” she realized. She beat the steering wheel with the heel of her hand and began scouting for a place to turn around.

Just ahead, standing in the tall weeds at the side of the road, a slender figure stood waving to her, its long red hair blowing in the wind. With a dizzy sense of déjà vu, Cally slowed down and pulled off the road next to a young woman dressed in a white sundress. The girl put her head inside the passenger window and said “Hi!”

“Errin. What the hell?”

Errin let herself into the car and sat down. “This is the second time I’ve had to come fetch you,” she said, dropping the cell phone into the cup-holder and putting her seat belt on.

Cally couldn’t move. “What is going on?” she demanded. “And don’t you dare tell me it’s a long story!”

“Okay,” Errin promised. “Just go that way. I’ll show you. Everyone has been telling you Woodley is hard to find.”

“I see that now,” said Cally. She put the car in gear slowly, though she was not sure she should be driving at all, feeling as she was at the moment.

Letting a line of trucks go past, she re-entered the highway, crossing to the left lane in hope of finding a place to make a U-turn. But Errin said, “No, no,” and pointed through the windshield, indicating that Cally should just keep going straight ahead. “Just watch,” the girl said, hunching forward and staring through the windshield at the road.

“Are you sure we aren’t halfway to Virginia by now?” Cally asked.

“No. Just watch.” She pointed. “Watch the side of the road. Watch! Use your eyes.”

Cally watched the road’s edge as closely as she dared, but all she saw was that if she stared too long, the white line started to look wavy and double. She blinked to make her eyes focus again.

“There! No! Aw, you almost had it!” Errin shook her curls. “You’re going to have to learn how to do this yourself,” she said. “I won’t be able to come help you every time. Now watch.” She demonstrated by redoubling her stare at the road’s edge.

Cally didn’t like the way the white line seemed to double in her vision if she looked at it too long, but Errin encouraged her with praise every time it happened, so she decided to just regard it as an interesting ocular phenomenon. It began to look almost as if another highway lay on top of the original one, about six inches above it and translucent.

“Now you’re getting it!” Errin encouraged.

“Sure,” Cally muttered. “Just as long as I stay on the right one.

“Exactly!”

Ahead, the illusory road seemed to be veering off to the right. Cally concentrated on staying on the real one.

“No, go with it!” Errin reached over and grabbed the wheel, jerking it to the right.

“Errin!” Cally shouted and jerked the car back into her control. “Don’t ever do that!”

Errin sat back in her seat and crossed her arms, sullenly silent.

“I’m sorry I yelled at you,” said Cally. “But that is a very dangerous thing to do. I am betting you don’t have your driver’s license yet, do you?”

“No,” she said. “But I know how to get places.” She let out a snort of breath.

“Okay. I’m sorry,” Cally said. “I think I know what you were trying to show me. It just scared me, is all.” It still did.

“Okay, then, let’s try again!” Her buoyant enthusiasm returned as if it had never been gone. She sat up and resumed staring at the road.

“Don’t I have to turn around now though?” Errin did not reply but merely continued to stare out the windshield. Cally resigned herself. She looked at the white line again until it appeared to double. As the two white lines began to separate, the illusory road curved further and further away from the real one.

“Good, good!” said Errin. She pointed toward where the mirage version of I-85 ran parallel to them, gradually curving away to the right, shimmering across the weedy fields. “Follow that one!”

Cally did not want to do any such thing, but she braced herself. She just hoped her poor car would survive the jarring it was going to get when she drove off the road. She followed Errin’s pointing finger and steered away to the right. The wheels hummed smoothly over the pavement. There was no jarring. In fact, silence fell as the roaring of the trucks on I-85 faded away. She was no longer driving on I-85 or even a mirage of it. This was a quiet, nondescript little two-lane country blacktop, winding away eastward through fields and little clumps of forest. The interstate was not visible any longer in the rear view mirror.

“You did it! You did it!” Errin praised her as if she were a child who had caught a ball for the first time. “Now you don’t need me anymore. You can do it yourself next time.”

“I don’t think I ever want to do that again. Ever!” Cally relaxed into her seat, but her hands were shaking on the wheel. She glanced at the girl in the passenger seat. “Errin, you said you were sent to fetch me. Who sent you?”

“Oh, you know. Emerald. You know her.”

“I thought I did,” said Cally. She took a deep breath and tried to calm her shaking hands. “Are you a ghost, too, Errin?”

“What is it with you people thinking everything is a ghost?” She reached over and pinched Cally’s arm. “I am not a ghost!”

“Ow! Errin! Don’t ever grab the steering wheel, and don’t ever pinch the driver!”

Errin laughed. The road curved to the left, and Cally recognized the little bridge over the stream ahead. “There you are, see?” Errin said. “Harmony Creek.”

“So it is.” Cally drove over it and saw the southern edge of Woodley rising ahead. She could make out the houses of Gardens Road and the fence along the meadow. “So what are you, then, Errin, if you’re not a ghost?”

Errin’s green eyes danced with mischief as Cally followed Gardens Road along the fence. Slowing down when she came to the crossroads, Cally drove across Main Street and between the pineapple-decorated gateposts into the grounds of Vale House. Two of the horses, the black one and the white one, saw them approaching and ran to the fence to greet them. Errin leaned across the seat so close Cally could count the freckles splashed across her nose. “I’m a unicorn,” she laughed. “A uuuuuunicooooorrrrn!”

“You sound like Mia Farrow in that movie,” Cally told her. She pulled the car into her Joan-approved parking space and got out into the sunshine. She didn’t bother turning around to say goodbye to Errin. She knew she was already gone.