Something In The Water.... Jule McBride
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the doorbell, Jeb had heard a branch break. Wolves in the woods, he’d thought, then leaves had rustled, and Jeb had realized, someone—or something—was pushing aside the underbrush, moving toward him, steadily.
That’s when Sam Anderson—Sam was short for Samantha—had swung open the heavy front door so swiftly that it had snapped backward on its groaning hinges; the heavy brass demon-head knocker clanked and wind ruffled a white apron Sam had worn over a long black dress. She was Granny Anderson’s daughter and Ariel’s mother. “What are you doing out there, Jeb Pass? Why, you’d better come in. It’s colder than a witch’s—” Chuckling, she’d cut off her speech and scrutinized him through devilish eyes.
Spinning around, he’d run all the way down witches mountain, sure that whatever he’d heard chasing him was huge and hairy, with claws that could shred him to pieces. Of course, that had been years ago. Way back in seventh grade.
“In the winter, all they do is read books from the library,” Marsh was saying.
“Giblets is the only one they ever talk to. Miss Gibbet,” Jeb corrected. Elsinore Gibbet, the librarian, was well past sixty and as scrawny as a chicken, with extra skin under her chin and a chirpy voice that had inspired local kids to call her Chicken Giblets. Jeb continued, “At the library, she showed me a history book that says weird stuff’s always gone on in Bliss, Pappy. Starting in the 1700s—”
“After Matilda came to town,” Marsh put in.
“They say there started to be periods of time when…”
“Something goes…well, buggy,” Pappy suggested.
Jeb nodded. “And because of it, Miss Gibbet said people used to come from all over the place, just to swim in Spice Spring.”
“From as far away as China,” continued Marsh.
“Especially during summers like this one,” Pappy added. “When the water’s been chilled by a series of cold snaps, then the weather heats up again. And during such a summer, when the sun, moon and stars align just right, they say a dip in Spice Spring can change your life. Especially your love life.”
Jeb thought of Michelle and felt his cheeks warm.
Pappy went on. “At the end of the summer, folks used to come here from bigger towns to bottle the water. And of course, they’d head up the hill, to the Andersons’, for medicinal teas.”
Jeb thought of the mysterious book of tea recipes said to have been handed down by Matilda. According to rumor, the book had a cloth cover and pages so yellow and brittle that it had to be kept in a safe in the witches’ root cellar.
As every kid in Bliss knew, the Anderson women had taken to hiding from the public and wearing black. Except for the youngest one, Ariel. When she’d kissed the witch house and tearoom goodbye and roared out of Bliss on her Harley Davidson motorcycle eleven years ago, she’d been wearing red fishnets, a tight leather miniskirt and a top that had looked more like fancy underwear. Jeb had only been five years old, but it was the sort of moment no one ever forgot.
Later, he’d heard all the hot gossip about the sexy things she’d done with Studs Underwood, years before he’d gotten elected sheriff. Even now, Jeb’s face colored, since some of the local guys could get pretty descriptive when it came to tales of Ariel.
“When the moon’s just right and the stars align,” Marsh began again. “And they make teas with water from Spice Spring…is that when you get cured from whatever’s bothering you?”
“Not so much illnesses,” said Pappy. “But matters of the heart. You know, sadness. Loneliness. That sort of thing. At least, that’s what I always heard. And of course, those women make love potions.” Pappy raised a bony finger. “But don’t you start getting ideas about stealing that book of theirs. Attempts have never been successful.”
“I’d hate to get the widows mad,” admitted Marsh.
“I remember,” Pappy continued, “just a couple years back, the sheriff got called up to the tearoom. Somebody had taken a hatchet to the root-cellar door, tied a rope around the safe and tried to drag it up the steps.”
“Guess they couldn’t get it open,” Marsh offered.
“I heard about that,” said Jeb. “It took three men to haul it back downstairs.” He followed his grandfather’s gaze over the water. The source of the spring was deeper than Jeb and his buddies could dive, although they’d spent summers trying. Once, Jeb had gotten close enough to feel the heat bubbling from beneath; it was as if a hole had opened onto the earth’s fiery core.
The spring’s source was directly under the mountain on which Terror House was perched. It was as if the spring itself had given rise to the steep, conical, lushly vegetated hill, as well as the house that sat on top, like a dark cherry. It was weird, Jeb thought, how the spring, rather than coal, had become the town’s black gold. That, and the visitors summering there.
“At least the Core Coal Company didn’t wind up strip-mining here,” Jeb said.
Pappy nodded his agreement. “If they’d done that, you wouldn’t see a spot of green left in these hills.”
Jeb had been studying that piece of town lore, so he knew that, in the late seventies, when the economy had been at its worst, the Lyons family had begun to buy land, promising to develop the area as a summer resort. Later, everyone had found that the consortium they’d belonged to was actually planning to strip-mine, which would have left the hills barren. Without vegetation to filter rainwater, the crystal spring would have been destroyed.
Jeb sighed. None of that had happened, thankfully. Eli Saltwell, now a crotchety old recluse pushing ninety, had uncovered the plot and told everybody in town. So, Bliss had become a summer resort, but one run by locals, not the consortium. It didn’t have the promised fancy hotels, but then, most people felt that was just as well, since out-of-towners came anyway.
In another week, after the Harvest Festival, the summer visitors would be gone, though. Michelle would be gone. Jeb’s heart squeezed in a way that was both unwelcome and unfamiliar. He’d give anything to kiss her once. Maybe even slip his hand under her shirt and cup a breast. His throat tightened as he imagined her sweet pink lips parting, asking for more….
Pappy’s voice drew him from the reverie, and before Jeb could concentrate on the words, he was conscious once more of the thick, dark blanket of air around him, and of the red-yellow glow of logs crackling on the fire, not to mention the pup tent and his unrolled sleeping bag. He heard the hoot of an owl, the whine of crickets, and then stared up at the impossibly yellow globe of a full moon hanging in the sky, bisected by the turret.
It was pure magic.
“It really is one of those special years,” Pappy mused. “We’ve had a series of early cold snaps, and now summer’s back in the air. Once—I guess it was way back in 1790—not long after Matilda arrived, they say we had this kind of strange weather. Unpredictable. Cold then hot, with a few electrical storms thrown in for good measure. They say, for about a week, everything in Bliss…”
Jeb and Marsh scooted on the log, as if to get closer to Pappy. “What?” Jeb said.
“Went silent,” Pappy continued. “A woman named Nellie White was supposed to travel to see her mama over in Buchanan, but never went, as she’d promised. And they say Archibald Evans, the blacksmith, didn’t get out of Bliss to shoe some horses, even though he had an appointment. The local paper—it was only one sheet long in those days—wasn’t delivered the way it was on most Fridays.”
Pappy paused. “They say it happened again, not long after that, too, back in 1806.”
“I heard a train came through. They’d built the tracks by then,” said Marsh. “But it didn’t leave the station for a week, and the conductor would never say why.”
“And in 1865, right?” added Jeb, his voice quickening. “That’s what Gib—uh, Miss Gibbet—told me and