The plain blue road sign said “Newbrook”, but the mosaic of brown woods and fields continued. Then they passed a few widely-set houses, and were suddenly in the center of the town.
Dana looked around as they passed a low-slung motel set back in the trees, a small apartment block, a bank. At a T-intersection marked by a stoplight was an IGA, a dollar store, and a shuttered pizzeria. Past the light on 41 was a beer store and a medical clinic, then a few more houses on narrow strips of lawn.
Josh pulled into the driveway of one faded ranch house and turned off the engine. He sat for a moment, then reached over and squeezed Dana’s hand.
“Are you ready for this?” he asked.
Dana watched the impassive front of the house. The porch was decorated for Halloween, with corn stalks and fat yellow gourds, and what looked like a goat’s skull hanging on the door with a tufted beard on its jaw. She glanced away, up at the clean blue sky.
“Sure,” she said.
As they climbed from the car and stretched, a young woman came out and stood on the porch, waiting for them to climb the steps to reach her.
“Hey, Claire, you look good,” Josh said. “This is Dana.” He nudged her forward.
“It’s nice to meet you,” Dana said, and held out her hand. Claire hesitated before she took it, as if making up her mind.
“Claire and I used to play back in the swamp behind the airport when we were little,” Josh said.
“Airport’s been gone a long time. No one wants to fly in or out of here any more,” Claire said, looking past Dana with moony grey eyes. “Nursing home is out there now. But there’s still Airport Road, and swamp.”
Dana looked from Josh to Claire for any other details, but Claire kept her eyes on Josh, and Josh looked up at the curtained windows.
“You’re just in time for winter,” Claire said. “Year’s almost done. And Dad, well.”
“Worse?” Josh said.
“It’s chilly out here. Let’s go in” Claire said, and ushered Dana and Josh into the entryway.
“Dad’s in there,” she said, gesturing toward the living room.
Dana followed the line of Claire’s outstretched arm to where a man slumped in a rocking chair beside the television set. His face was slack, and moist, without any expression. A blanket spread across his misshapen legs looked spotted and damp, almost moldy, and his feet jutted out at broken angles from beneath the stained cloth.
“Hi, Joe,” Josh said.
Dana took Josh’s hand. “Can he hear us?” she asked him softly.
“Maybe,” Claire said. She herded them out of the room again.
“Our family originally came up from Massachusetts, after the witch trials,” she whispered, leaning close to Dana’s cheek. Dana held still. Josh looked disgusted, but Claire ignored him. “We bred like flies. Now the whole province is full of Masons and Mason cousins. And they say there’s a weakness in the blood.”
Claire straightened and raised her voice. “A weakness that lingers. So I’m surprised you came back, Josh, after your mother got away.”
He looked over her shoulder to where Joe drowsed. “You knew I would,” he said.
“What’s with Claire?” Dana asked him as she put her clothes into the dresser.
“She’s always been a little off,” Josh said. “But she’s okay. I mean she’s friendly, but she will say strange things at times. You just have to ignore it.”
“Did you tell her my family is from Massachusetts, too?”
“No,” he said.
Dana closed the drawer and stuffed her bag under the bed.
“What did she mean about your mother, and you coming back?”
Josh sighed. “Family stuff she still follows. The end of October, all Samhain and Halloween stuff, ending summer and letting winter in. My mother left it behind and never came back. Uncle Joe held that grudge a long time.”
Dana watched him.
“She makes you nervous,” she said.
“Yeah,” he said. “Sometimes.”
He made sure the door was fully closed.
“Family can do that to you,” he said.
Dana woke before Josh did, and padded out of their room in search of coffee. The quiet in the house was broken only by cars passing on the highway.
She went into the cold, bright kitchen and looked around. The coffeemaker had been set up already. She turned it on and leaned against the counter while she waited for the carafe to fill.
Hung above the door was a dark wooden figure. She thought it might be some rustic crucifix. She reached up and took it down from its hook and found it wasn’t a cross after all. It was a damp clump of woody roots about the size of her hand, still spotted with clots of dirt, wound to form a loose nest. Two straight sticks stuck up at angles from the top of it.
Claire came out of her room, and saw Dana standing there holding it.
“The Mother Root,” she said, strolling into the kitchen. “The Lord of the Woods.”
“Is it for good luck?” Dana asked.
Claire smiled and moved past her. “Sure,” she said. “Something like that.”
In the afternoon Josh and Claire went out together. Dana stayed behind, not sure if she had wanted to. She drifted around the house, avoiding the living room where Joe sat in his slow decay. He disturbed her, not for his infirmity but because she had a primitive feeling that his helplessness was a lie.
At last she slipped on her coat, and headed out the kitchen door and around to the front of the house. The car was gone. She followed the road, kicking rocks along the pavement for a few hundred yards until the asphalt sidewalk began. The slanting sun fell over her head and back, driving her shadow ahead of her. There were a few people about, mainly going in and out of the supermarket driveway.
She reached the intersection in front of the IGA, and crossed the road to the wooden barn that was Davey’s Variety Store. The front was decorated with pumpkins and faded plastic masks, and a bin of bundled firewood. She went in. It was warmer inside than she expected, and smelled of lumber.
Behind the counter, a man Dana assumed was Davey sat reading a magazine, an oxygen tank clicking beside him. His skin was pale, almost grey, and his hair clung damply to his forehead. He did not look well. He glanced up at her as she came in then looked back down.
She checked out the bandanas and sunglasses and fishing supplies, the leftover beach toys from the summer trade and the bin of old DVDs for sale. The store was deeper than she had thought it was, with rooms separated by arched doorways. She kept poking. In the back, past the bookshelves loaded with used paperbacks and the pegboard displays of toiletries and children’s clothing was a door labeled “Private”.
Dana looked toward the register, but shelves blocked her view. The only sound in the place came from a radio set on a shelf somewhere toward the front.
Curious, Dana turned the knob, and was surprised to find the door unlocked. She opened it to find a narrow hall and a staircase to an upper floor. Layers of footprints smeared the treads in dust. At the top of the stairs was another door, poorly fitted in its frame. Light slipped out in slices along its edges. She climbed toward it, drawn by the yellow light.
The door opened silently when she tried it. She stood for a long time on the threshold, taking in the contents of the room.
A pile of dry vines and flaking grey mud leaned in a tangle against the far wall, crowned with a small, unnervingly female figure. Dana stepped quietly across the room, plucked the figure from its nest, turned it in her hands.
It was carved of a greasy white stone, about ten inches tall, with rows of heavy breasts like animal teats, and a grossly swollen belly. The face was a swirl of scratches, and from the forehead two horns curved up in a semicircle. The figure’s back and lower half were a mass of looping tendrils.