The Amulet. Joanna Wayne

out. They use a lot of big words and keep wanting to try a lot of drugs, but they don’t know the mountains the way I do.”

      Maizie’s voice dropped a decibel or two and her hand shook as she lifted an egg from the grill and slid it onto a waiting plate.

      “What do you know about the mountains that frightens you so?” Carrie asked.

      “You don’t want to know.”

      The eeriness of the conversation was making the hairs on the back of Carrie’s neck raise, but she did want to know. Not that she was superstitious or actually believed the mountains were inhabited by ghosts, but she needed to understand these people the way Rich did. It was important to the investigation. “What could happen to a man in the mountains?”

      “Not just to a man. It can happen to anybody. Ask Selma Billings. She can tell you, ’cept she don’t like to talk about it.”

      “Doesn’t like to talk about what?”

      Finally Maizie looked up from the eggs and met Carrie’s gaze. Her wrinkled flesh had grown pale, and her eyes had taken on a guarded look, as if there were secrets behind them that she couldn’t let escape. “Just don’t get trapped up there when the mist is thick.”

      The temperature of Carrie’s blood seemed to drop a degree or two.

      “So this is where you got off to,” Rich said, joining them in the kitchen.

      For once, Carrie was glad to see him. “I just wanted to offer my compliments to the chef.”

      “It’s just breakfast,” Maizie said. “Anyone can cook an egg.” She cracked a couple more onto the hot grill.

      It was clear the discussion of the mist was over. Just as well. The whole idea of a man going hunting in the mountains and coming back a zombie was freaky. Really freaky.

      But like Rich said, there was probably a medical explanation for Tom’s condition, and it would have nothing to do with the mist.

      They said goodbye and left the back way. Carrie slid into the front seat of the car, but her mind was stuck on the conversation with Maizie. She reached to the backseat and picked up the list of names Rich had shown her earlier. Selma Billings was near the bottom.

      “I say we start the day’s questioning with Selma Billings,” she said.

      Rich scowled. “Exactly what did Maizie tell you when the two of you were alone in the kitchen?”

      “That I shouldn’t get trapped in the mist. What happened to Selma Billings that she won’t talk about?”

      “Don’t know. She doesn’t talk about it.”

      “Don’t brush me off, Rich. I don’t believe in ghost tales any more than you do, but I need to know what we’re up against with the locals.”

      “It’s an old Indian legend.” He pulled into the driveway of a gray clapboard house with a black mixed breed cur curled up on the front porch. The dog perked up, then uncurled and came loping toward them.

      Rich jumped out of the car and greeted the dog like they were old pals, scratching him behind the ears while the dog’s tail wagged like mad. The dog ate it up. Surprise. Who’d have thought dogs would like him?

      “Yeah. Good to see you, too, Jackson,” Rich said, still walking toward the house.

      She got out of the car and followed Rich and the dog up the narrow walkway. Obviously they were at his grandparents’ house. She wasn’t sure why they’d stopped, but before they left she planned to hear the details of the Indian legend and find out why Maizie was convinced the mountains had supernatural powers.

      Chapter Three

      Rich’s grandparents’ house possessed a warmth that seemed to seep from the painted walls and the worn rugs themselves. The furniture was heavy and over-stuffed, made for settling into with a good book or a mug of hot chocolate. The coffee and end tables were knotty pine, possibly homemade.

      It was different than the foster home where she’d grown up. Most of the furniture in the house had been off limits. She was pretty much ignored except when the social worker came to call. Then everything was rosy.

      Rich took off his jacket and tossed it on top of a stack of newspapers on the coffee table. “Make yourself comfortable. I won’t be but a few minutes. I need to check on a couple of things while I’m here.”

      “It looks as if your grandparents just stepped out for a few hours,” Carrie said, running her fingers across the carvings on the back of a wooden rocker before draping her own jacket across the beautiful wood.

      “In their mind they have,” Rich said. “They think they’re coming back as soon as Gramps gets his strength back from his last heart attack. It’s the only way they’d agree to leave the place.”

      “Hello, Jackson,” she said, bending to pet the dog who was nosing her leg and sniffing her fingertips. “You like the smell of Maizie’s cooking, don’t you, boy?”

      Jackson licked her hand in answer.

      “Don’t they allow pets in the home where your grandparents are?”

      “No, but even if pets were allowed, they wouldn’t have taken Jackson.”

      “They can’t just leave him out here by himself.”

      “He’s not by himself. He’s got the mountains and the neighbors.”

      “But he’s grieving for your grandparents.”

      “Missing someone doesn’t kill you. Being thrown into an environment where you can’t run free might.” He walked away, leaving her standing by the brick hearth and an enormous fireplace that still held the smell of wood smoke. On the opposite wall, three windows looked out on the mountains.

      Haunted mountains where a man could go hunting and come back without his mind. She stared into the distance for a while, trying to make sense of Maizie’s story. Finally, she gave up and went in search of Rich. She found him in the kitchen, replacing a bulb in the overhead light fixture.

      She started to question the need for replacing bulbs in a house where no one lived, but decided what Rich did in his grandparents’ house wasn’t her concern. She rested her hands on the back of a kitchen chair. “Tell me more about the Indian legend.”

      He finished changing the bulb and climbed down from the chair he’d been standing on. “It’s just a bunch of nonsense.”

      “Like what?”

      “It has variations. Which one do you want?”

      “Let’s start with the variation Maizie believes, the one she thinks robbed Tom of his reasoning abilities.”

      Rich opened the freezer section of the refrigerator, took out the old ice and dumped it in the sink. Once that was done, he straddled one of the kitchen chairs. “Basic legend is that the dead sometimes got trapped in the mist and their spirits can’t break away from the mountains.”

      “Why would it trap them?”

      “That’s the part that varies according to who’s telling the story. Some think it’s a form of punishment. Some say the undead are warriors left to guard the land. Some believe it was because they had some task that was still unfinished and they can’t be released until they fulfill their obligation.”

      “That’s downright creepy.” But she could see where they got that idea. The mist had seemed almost alive the other night when she and Rich had hiked to the ravine. “Do they believe all the ghosts are Indians?”

      He exhaled slowly, and she got the distinct impression that it bothered him to talk about this. She didn’t know why. It wasn’t as if she was going to jump on the ghost bandwagon.

      “Some folks think that when the original Fernhaven Hotel burned to the ground