“Careful, girl,” he warns, and we return to working in silence.
6
JACE
Sunlight streams through my window, assaulting my eyelids with yet another morning. I eventually relent, opening my eyes to a cloud of fur and a rough tongue running up my cheek. “Brig!” I shout, laughing as I push him off me. “What a wake-up call, buddy.”
Mama laughs from the doorway, loud enough for me to hear but with a hint of trepidation, like she’s worried I won’t care for her to join in on our joke. My heart pinches thinking about the constant undertones of hurt in her actions. I wish I could mend the raw wound between us, but I’m too afraid doing so will only rip out the stitches instead of fading them. “I thought you could use a friendly face,” she offers quietly, barely above a whisper.
She’s not wrong, and I appreciate her effort. I ruffle Brig’s ears, sitting up and blinking several times to adjust my eyes to the morning light. “Thanks,” I reply, turning my head to her. I attempt to smile, but the corners of my mouth barely curve as I wait for what she’s actually woken me up for.
“Breakfast is ready,” she says, giving me her own half-smile before turning to walk back to the kitchen. I take a deep breath, stretching my arms above my head. I inhale; the comforting smell of bacon and fresh biscuits fills my nose. My stomachrumbles, eager to remind me how much I used to love breakfast foods. Easing myself out of bed, I promise myself I’ll try to enjoy today, starting with this meal. The moment is short-lived.
Pop’s stern voice booms down the hall. I don’t need to see him to know he’s sitting at the kitchen table, staring at a newspaper. I can’t hear his exact words, but he’s no doubt grumbling about the price of this or that. My mama is likely already back to standing in front of the stove, facing away from him as she adds in murmurs of agreement and the occasional “Yes, dear.”
As I emerge from the hallway, his voice quiets. I mask the hurt on my face and lean against the wall, taking in the exact image I had just pictured. Pop sets down the newspaper and curls his lips inward, forming a line that crosses his otherwise expressionless face. His eyebrows raise almost to his hairline, lips parting to speak. He must rethink whatever he was about to say, because they close again. An artificial warmth slides over him instead. “Mornin’, Jace. Nice of ya to join us.”
“How could I miss it?” I reply, an unnatural pep to my voice. “Ya know, with all the pleasant company.” My mama clears her throat in warning, glancing over her shoulder to eye me. I quickly shut my trap before I earn both of us a rant about respect and how I can be just alittlemore grateful.
In desperate need of caffeine, I pour a cup of coffee before taking a seat at the table. My pop picks his paper back up, pretending to be immersed in it once more. I shift uneasily in the chair, searching for the right words to fill the ocean of silence between us. Pop casually turns the page, peering over the flimsy paper he’s struggling to keep upright. Bacon crackles in the pan, and my stomach rumbles again.
“It’s gonna be a rough winter this year,” he grumbles, finding his words before I do. “You needa help yer mama today. There’s still alotta work to be done, and we’re runnin’ out of daylight.”He doesn’t wait for my response before folding the paper and pushing back his chair. The noise of wood squeaking across the linoleum floor rings through the small room. My jaw clenches, but I remain silent as I watch him walk out the back door. The screen door slams behind him, and Mama lets out a long sigh.
“That went well,” my mama groans, coming to sit next to me. Her face looks tired as she stares into her coffee cup. “He’s right, honey. Go ahead and eat, and then we’ll get to it.”
I fill my plate, ravenous from barely touching dinner last night. Eyes larger than my stomach, I dish up more than I know will sit comfortably in my belly. Halfway through my pile of bacon, Mama starts talking again. I’m only half listening, hearing every other word between bites until she mentions Aunt Tally’s name. She’s not technically my aunt, a second or third cousin maybe, but it doesn’t matter. She’s been my auntie since the day I was born. “Auntie called?” I ask, mouth still full of half-chewed breakfast.
“Jace Landry! Didn’t I raise you right?” she scolds. That’s debatable, but I don’t want to argue. “Don’t talk with your mouth full, but yes, she did. Haven’t you been listenin’ to a word I said?”
I move my head around in a noncommittal way, neither confirming nor denying her suspicion. I wipe my mouth on a nearby napkin and swallow the large lump of food too quickly. It uncomfortably slides down my throat as I blurt out another question past it. “What’d she have’ta say?”
“Well, if you’d be listenin’ at all, Jace,” she retorts, saying my name pointedly. “Tally said another sheriff’s deputy has wound up dead. Bless it! That’s the fifth one in the last year. They say that Gibson family cursed them all.”
“What does the Gibson family have to do with it? Aren’t Elias and…and Cyrus the only ones left?” Cyrus’ name sits heavy on my tongue. It’s the first time I’ve said it out loud in months, andI quickly shovel another forkful of food into my mouth like I can push it away.
We may have left Devil’s Nest eleven years ago, but my mama still needs her small-town gossip like she needs air. I take one last bite before putting my fork down and settling in, turning my full attention toward her and her newest piece of gossip. Dramatically, I curl one hand under my chin and stare at her with purposely wide eyes.Here we go.
“They say,” she starts enthusiastically, lowering her voice like someone might overhear, “all the deputies were there when Elias’s niece… Well, you know the rest.” She means when his niece, Mattie, charged at them with nothing but a pocket knife, and they lit her up like the Fourth of July.
“Karma’s a bitch, I suppose,” I chuckle, leaning back to avoid Mama’s hand as she swats at me. I laugh again, louder, but her vexing gaze deals the damage her hand couldn’t.
“Jace Anne!” she exclaims, narrowing her eyes and throwing one hand over her chest like I’ve committed a cardinal sin. Steam is ready to pour from her nose with each melodramatic huff, but she quickly composes herself. “I swear. I don’t know what’s gotten into….” She trails off, looking away from me as she remembers exactly what’s gotten into me. She doesn’t want to mention it and possibly pour salt into a wound, one she thinks should have long healed by now. Though how she thought she’d tiptoe through any story involving the Gibsons without mentioninghimis beyond me. Her cheeks flush pink, eyes watering. Before her tears can pool, she blinks them away.
“I still don’t know what Mattie has to do with it?” I mumble, trying to ease the sudden tension in the room by forcing the story along. “They think she’s comin’ back from the grave to take ‘em back with her?”
“It’s just strange, is all,” she huffs, standing and dusting off the apron covering her long, powder blue dress. “Devil’s Nesthas every right to still be sour over the Gibsons. The poison Ezra left behind still runs through the veins of that town.”
“It’s not like Ezra led a cult or anything,” I jeer, picking at the remaining biscuit on my plate. “A buncha people definitely didn’t flee town after his mysterious death.” The sarcasm is strong with me today, but the upset on my mama’s face turns my humor into guilt. I hang my head, staring at my plate regretfully.
“We left to give you a better life, Jace,” she scolds, her voice wavering. “To let you get away from all thoserumors. Just look at what happened to Mattie.”
“I know,” I whisper, picking up my fork absentmindedly and twirling it between my fingers. I don’t look up from the table until I hear her footsteps retreating from the kitchen. Guilt sinks heavy in my gut, and I push the plate away, no longer hungry. I quietly clean up the dishes and the leftovers, chastising myself the entire time. If it weren’t for Tally letting the whole story slip once at a family dinner, I wouldn’t have known much about my family’s supposed involvement in the cult formerly residing in my hometown. I was seventeen when we moved, pissed off we were leaving right before my last year of high school. Back then, I didn’t understand why my folks would uproot my entire life when I’d be free of it all in a year anyway.
I know they did what they thought was best, but part of me still blames my pop for being involved in the first place. He’s never confirmed his part in the Revelators, but Tally more than hinted he was one of them, though she didn’t know how much he knew about what they were really up to. She said a lot of the men in town went to the meetings, but not everyone uprooted after Ezra’s death.
Tally came up to visit once, right after we settled in. I was still young enough to be naive about the world but old enough to know my parents’ stories weren’t adding up. After one too many gin and tonics at dinner, Tally told me all about the Revelators.She explained how my mama sobbed when she found out what the group actually was and how she begged Pop to leave it. It was only after Ezra Gibson died that they felt safe enough to distance themselves and try to start again somewhere new.
The name ‘Revelators’ meant little to me at first, beyond remembering a group of men Pop would sometimes meet with. A quick internet search only pulled up a few sub-threads on a forum website, each post more outlandish than the last. I figured it couldn’t possibly be true; all the stories were straight out of a horror movie. There were tales of missing women and children, monsters in the woods, rituals involving human sacrifices. I snuck in a call to Tally to confirm everything I read. She reluctantly agreed that several women and children had gone missing during that time, but the cases were never connected to the cult. She said little about the other stories, though, just chuckled and said a lot of odd things happened before Ezra wound up dead. Honestly, some of the online theories were so wild, who’d believe any of it?
