When Cally woke, the sun was just coming over the tops of the trees at the far end of the street. Her seat belt was digging into her cheek where her head had fallen against it. She rubbed her face with both hands and looked into the rear-view mirror. The seat belt had left a long crease in her cheek, and her hair, long and unruly at the best of times, stood out around her head like a cloud of windblown straw.
Digging in her purse for a comb, she took stock of her surroundings in the morning light. Her own car was one of only three she could see parked on the entire street. The street itself was no more than four or five blocks long. She could see from where she sat that it disappeared into a tunnel of trees at both ends. A wide storefront on the opposite side of the street displayed hand-lettered signs in its windows, advertising fertilizer and chicken feed and “Free Firewood!” which was stacked unclaimed on the loading dock. On her own side of the street, many of the storefronts appeared to be completely vacant, but the sign in the news store window had been flipped to “Open.” Cally hoped this meant she would finally be able to find someone to give her some information.
Stepping out of the car and pausing to arch her aching back, she could see movement inside the news store. Most important, she could smell coffee. She walked to the door and tugged on the wooden handle. It didn’t budge; she tried pushing. She looked again to make sure the sign really did say “Open.” It did. She gave another tug and stepped back, peering inside. There she saw a man with a broom in the back of the store, holding up one hand in a “wait a minute” gesture as he ran toward her. He gave the bottom of the door a solid kick, and it shuddered open. Smiling broadly, he leaned out and held the door open for her. “It sticks!” he apologized.
“Thank you,” Cally said, squeezing in past him. He had a generous, warm smile behind a graying brown mustache and beard, and his eyes were a most unusual shade of china blue.
“I really need to get around to fixing it,” he said in a soft-edged southern accent.
Cally turned her eyes from his blue gaze and looked around the dim interior. “That coffee smells good. Is it for sale?”
“Help yourself,” barked an older woman from behind the counter on the far side of the shop. She jerked her head toward the coffee maker on the counter, but didn’t lift her eyes from the newspaper she was reading. Cally walked toward the counter, scanning the racks of snacks and candy, looking for something semi-healthy to press into service as breakfast.
Her footsteps echoed in the quiet interior, which was lit only by the sunlight coming in through the windows. She felt as though she had stepped backward in time about fifty years. The floor was made of wood. Cally hadn’t seen that in a long time. Almost everything in the store – the shelves, the sales counter, even the register – was old-fashioned and made mainly of wood. And really could stand a good dusting, too, she noted. The man who had let her in returned to the back of the store and resumed sweeping, stirring up more dust.
She selected a granola bar that was probably ninety percent sugar but looked to at least contain real oats, and set it on the counter while she poured coffee into a white foam cup. A revolving wire rack of paperback books stood next to the counter. Cally turned it slowly, looking for the same thing she always looked for when she saw a display of books. She found it, too: a thick volume with a picture on the cover of a tall gothic revival house which someone had apparently thought would look good painted in shades of dark gray and black, backlit against a moonrise sky. Only one window in a top story was lit. An attractive young woman, one pale hand clutching a cloak to her otherwise mostly exposed bosom, was fleeing from the house toward the viewer, her voluminous hair and equally voluminous skirts flying as ragged clouds scudded across a gibbous moon. Escape the Haunted Heart was the title, printed across the stormy sky in a loud font, with the byline, “Callaghan McCarthy,” in smaller letters beneath it.
Stolen from its rightful place, this narrative is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.
Her fingers left smudges in the dust on the cover when she took it from the rack and regarded it. A second copy lay behind it. For all that the paperback had collected plenty of dust, it appeared to have been read, possibly more than once. The cover was bent back, and the edges of the pages were foxed. As Cally put the book back, she noticed most of the books in the rack were in the same condition.
“It’s good. I’ve read it,” said the man who had opened the door. “Take it if you want it.” He smiled beautifully at her.
“No thanks,” she said. “I wrote it.” She put the book back in its slot and turned to pay for her improvised breakfast.
“I’ve read all of them,” he was saying. “People just read them and put them back. But this really is one of the best. I’m not just saying that to flatter you.
“I’m Ben Dawes,” he added. “Pleased to meet you, Callaghan McCarthy.”
Cally turned to the counter and opened her wallet, hoping he wasn’t “her biggest fan” despite his lovely blue-eyed smile. She didn’t feel awake enough to deal with the Inevitable Question which always followed declarations of Biggest Fanhood.
“No charge for the coffee,” said the old woman as she moved from her paper to the register without looking up. Her accent was thick and edgy, and Cally had to concentrate to understand her.
“I have a stupid question, “ she said, pulling out bills to pay for the granola bar.
“Well, I might charge you for that.”
Cally hesitated. The woman sounded serious. She looked serious, with her black-framed glasses and black-streaked white hair pulled back into a tight bun. Behind her, Cally heard Ben clear his throat, and the old woman gave a perfunctory little chuckle to assure them she’d only been kidding. Cally continued. “Where, exactly, am I?”
The woman’s fingers were cool and bony as she pressed change into Cally’s hand. “You’re exactly where you were trying to go,” she said. “The name of this town is Woodley, at the moment. It has had other names. And this is Main Street, in case you can’t tell. If you turn around and head back the way you came, you’ll get back to I-85 in about two miles.”
“Oh!” Cally breathed a sigh of relief, her shoulders unclenching for the first time in at least twenty four hours. “Then I actually am exactly where I was trying to go.”
“That’s what I said.” The old woman finally raised her eyes and looked at Cally. Cally did not find this new attention at all reassuring. The woman’s gaze was sharp and critical, though her eyes were the same shade of blue as Ben’s. She looked like she was trying to think of some biting remark to make about people who are “not from around here.” Then suddenly she smiled. Actually, she laughed. “So,” she said gleefully, “Do you believe in ghosts?”