November Mourns by Tom Piccirilli

I think. I’m not really sure.”
    “Who lives over that way?”
    “A few of the bottom hill families on the other side of the gorge. They stick to themselves, hardly ever come down into town. The Taskers. The Johansens. And the Gabriels too, as I recall. They have their own community, sort of an extended village up there near the briar woods. They’re snake handlers, way I hear tell.”
    “I don’t know any of them.”
    “I’ve met a couple and run into them now and again, but they keep their church goings-on to themselves. No phone among the bunch of them. Never cause any trouble. Red Sublett and his brood dwell nearby there, but he’s not a part of their camp. He’s got nine kids now. No wonder he looks half-dead when he comes in for supplies.”
    Shad thought of Red’s wife, Lottie, hangdog and toothless, and he had to control a shudder from going through him. “Goddamn, he only had five when I went in.”
    “He got himself a set of premature quadruplets last year. All of them with club feet and stunted legs, and none with the correct amount of fingers. That Lottie, she’s pushing them out too damn fast.”
    Shad didn’t say aloud what they both already knew, that Red and Lottie were siblings though they usually denied it, but not always. Doing whatever they wanted to do, not out of love or even a fundamental need, but simply because of proximity. What a foolish reason to visit sins upon your babies.
    He thought of Tandy Mae’s children, who were Megan’s deformed half brothers and half sisters, and so, somehow related to him by the narrow channels of blood.
    “My grandfather used to tell me these hills were haunted,” Dave told him.
    The woods thickened with ash and birch and more slash pine, the land wild with sprawled logs and lightning-struck trunks clotted with weeds. Tangled briars, rosebay, Catawba, and rhododendron and dogwood knotted in mad, awkward patterns. Shad sighted areas of bark scarred with bullet holes and buckshot. There were flashes of light winking in the brush, reflections from beer cans and broken jugs of moon.
    “Maybe they are,” Shad said. It was true, at least for today. Megan, or something, wanted his pledge.
    So now they were down to it. The milieu fluctuated a little, Dave taking full control again without having to do a damn thing.
    “I don’t want you to cause any trouble out this way, Shad Jenkins.”
    “I don’t intend to.”
    “You’re a god-awful liar.”
    “I have to find out what happened to her.”
    “That’s my job.” Voice firm, putting some bite into it. “Leave this to me.”
    It was Dave Fox’s way of saying, no matter what the official report might read, that he would never give up on the case, he’d work it until the truth finally broke free.
    “Let’s go up there for a few minutes.”
    “Where?”
    “Top of Jonah Ridge,” Shad said.
    “The hell for?”
    “I want to take a look.”
    Dave pulled a face that only cops knew how to make—like he was dealing with a wiseass brat and ready to visit great injury upon that kid any second. But he obliged, willing to give Shad just a little more slack.
    They walked back to the patrol car and drove up the Gospel Trail. The expanse broke into numerous dirt paths leading into the thickets and scrub tilting away from the rise. A split-rail fence had been put up to keep people from wandering off the edge.
    The Chatalaha had, by its scouring violence, formed one of the most rugged chasms for hundreds of miles in any direction. The steep walls of the gorge enclosed the river for almost fifteen miles, clear up to Poverhoe. On the other side of the ravine, the terrain grew extremely steep and rugged, covered by a dense hardwood forest.
    They got out. Dave Fox showed no sign of tension, but Shad sensed he was getting antsy, wasting so much time talking, driving around, being idle, catering to a civilian. Shad did his best to ignore it.
    The fence was weak and he could see black mold growing in the middle of