Chapter Text
The next morning, Sam got up, got his day started, and tried to ignore the fact that he didn’t have any texts from Andrew. It was a rare day off work, and he had some stuff he could get done around the house if he could focus. It took him about 30 minutes of wandering from room to room, standing and staring at shit for a minute, and moving on to the next without doing anything for it to kick in that focusing was in fact not going to happen. Fuck it, he was going to worry about Andrew until he saw him again, after whatever nebulous rough day he’d had the day before. He hopped in the car and headed toward Nashville.
About halfway through the drive, a text finally came through from Andrew.
I’m fine. going to reach out to some people on my list.
Well, it was good to know Blur was alive enough to say that he was fine, but that wasn’t a state he’d ever seen the other man in, so he wouldn’t be be quick to believe it. He dropped his phone back into the cupholder between the seats and kept driving. He climbed out of the WRX into a blistering summer day, somehow hotter on the little tree-lined street than back in the hills. He parked out front, assuming he’d be leaving again shortly, and strode across the yard with long steps. As he opened the front door, he heard the microwave going off in the kitchen, which told him where to look.
“Hey, princess, you here?” He called out, out of politeness and on the off-chance he’d caught Riley instead. A weird scuffle drew him toward the kitchen. As he rounded the corner into the room, dingy but clean as always, he watched Andrew pull his phone out of his mouth. His eyes caught on a string of spit that stretched between his mouth and the screen for an impossible moment. Blur’s body language was furtive, and a little more energetic than he was used to. As ever, Sam had about a million and one questions, but he knew any answers would just create more.
“Hey.” Andrew said, with a little of the stiff awkwardness Sam had come to expect. Sam just grinned and raised an eyebrow at him.
“It’s your house, so I’m not judging. Perfectly good table right there to put your phone on though, just saying.” Blur didn’t dignify that with a response, instead picking up one of the chicken wings he’d just pulled from the microwave.
“I texted you.” It seemed like Andrew was starting to understand him some as well. He had texted Sam, probably because he remembered the last time he hadn’t checked in when Sam expected, Sam just showed up. Like he had today. He knew Riley was tired of his mother hen behavior, but he’d gotten too used to dealing with people who were allergic to their damn phones.
“I was already heading over. What’s the plan? I’m off work, at your disposal all afternoon.”
“I set up an interview with the last people Eddie was supposed to talk to. You coming?”
Sam could admit to being intrigued. He reached over and pulled a post-it note from Blur’s hand, scanning the address. His second gig gave him a passing familiarity with most of the towns and zip codes in the Eastern half of the state, and in the case of this specific address, that was useful. It would be an hour out, maybe two, well past his usual range, but nothing he couldn’t handle on a summer afternoon.
“That’s a hell of a drive, huh. But yeah, sure, why not.”
“Now?” Blur’s perpetual inability to summon politeness should not be endearing, but somehow it was. This was clearly a man who had no practice asking for help, though Sam wasn’t sure if that was a factor of the privilege he’d grown up with or the way Ed had run his life. The fact that Andrew was finally asking him for help at all instead of stonewalling him and Riley was still new and warming, so Sam would put up with the asshole way he did it. Besides, he’d get food out of it.
“Bring those,” Sam said with a gesture to the box of wings, then spun on his heel to head back out to the car. Andrew followed without a word, pausing briefly to juggle the wings and his keys to lock the front door of the little house. They settled into the WRX in companionable silence, and Sam got them onto the road and headed in the vague direction of the address. He wouldn’t need specifics for some time yet, and ignoring the GPS made it easier to eat the wings Andrew shared with him.
They spent a quiet hour on the highway, both plowing through the box of wings and sitting with their own thoughts. Sam was starting to wonder if Andrew ate at all without supervision, so it was a struggle not to watch Andrew eat now, just to make sure he was actually doing it. However, the movements of his fingers and mouth as he cleaned the sauce and grease off of them might kill him them both if he wasn’t careful. He did his best to keep his eyes on the road and just glanced over occasionally to try to read Blur’s mood in the set of his muscles.
He finally pulled up his phone and set the GPS app on their destination. The path was similar to the route out to the state park, but then it was another half hour on a winding backroad, heavily forested on either side, with the barest cutouts for gravel driveways. He cursed as he registered the McCormick mailbox whipping by as he wound around a blind curve. If he didn’t know his car as well as he did, the abrupt stop and short reverse drive might have been unwise, but the WRX was an extension of himself in so many ways.
The silence held a moment longer as they sat in the car, surveying the double-wide trailer that practically oozed domestic tranquility. It had a tan painted deck, yellow window trim, and honest to god planters full of lush flowers on the stoop. A single big tree shaded the whole house, standing out in the otherwise cleared patch of land. After a long minute of examination, Sam pull himself out of the car, and Andrew followed, finally speaking up.
“All I told them is I was a friend of Eddie’s, that he’d died, and that I still wanted to come talk to them about shit. These people were supposed to be his next interview, but he put them off for some reason—found something else, I guess.” Sam sat with the information for a moment and nodded.
“I hear you,” Sam said as they mounted the steps. He pulled on his best good ol’ boy smile and hoped it was appropriate for the occasion because he hadn’t actually asked anything about the people they were out here to see.
The doorbell pinged, audible from the porch, and a woman’s voice hollered, “Just a minute!”
The woman who showed up was a punch to the gut, but he tried his best to hide it. She opened the front door but left the glass storm door shut between them. She was in her seventies at minimum, her white hair styled in a cloud of tight curls around her face that was plump, and tan, and reminded him so much of his Mamaw it made his stomach hurt for a moment. Applique flamingos dotted the breast pocket of her pink shirt. There was a softness about her that wasn’t quite like his Mamaw, but so much of the rest was the very same. In his own distress, it took Sam a moment, standing behind Andrew, to realize the other man wasn’t going to speak.
“Hi, ma’am,” Sam said politely.
This got Andrew going. “I called this afternoon.”
With a nod and a smile, she opened the storm door and gestured them inside. “You boys are here to get the good gossip, huh?” Sam did his best to stay present in the conversation while also taking in the little trailer. This place was another divergence from his Mamaw, smaller and brighter than her home that he still lived in and cared for. He and Andrew were led to a couch hardly big enough to be called that, and they sat together. Sam felt too tall and gangly for the little den, and he had to fight a slide into a younger self.
Linda McCormick planted on hand on her hip to look them up and down. “Y’all want something to drink?”
Andrew answered quickly, “I’m good.”
Sam, on the other hand, felt another long habit of Southern politeness slip out. “Yeah, please.”
“All right, let me get Rob too,” she said, stepping into another room. “Hey hon, those boys who called are here!”
A sliding door opened and closed in the other room, then a man walked into the room, wiping his hands on a pair of jean shorts. He had a similar air to Mrs. McCormick, age sitting easily on him along with sun and happiness. Luckily Rob didn’t hit any of the same sour notes of grief that his wife had, mostly because Sam had never known his grandfather.
“Hey there,” the man said. “Was out picking tomatoes, we got too many growing this summer to keep up with.”
Lisa stuck her head around the corner back into the den, and called them into the dining room instead.
“Yes, ma’am,” Sam said, and headed that way. He wondered quietly if Andrew would find his voice to continue the conversation, but waited it out to see how it would go. They settled at the table across from the old couple, and Lisa handed Sam a glass of iced tea. He hadn’t been entirely sure whether to expect tea or lemonade when she’d offered drinks, but he hadn’t been feeling too picky about it either. The first sip was beautifully cool and sweet and another sense memory of his youth.
“What relation are you to that young man from before, again?” Lisa asked, apparently offering Andrew the support he needed to move forward. Sam was interested in the answer as well.
“Eddie and I grew up together, he was my best friend.” Andrew said. “There was an accident and I’m following up on some things he meant to do, before he passed.” Sam nudged Andrew, boot-tip to ankle, under the table.
Rob answered first. “I’m damn sorry to hear that, with as young as y’all are.” He sounded like he meant it, too. “You in school too?”
Andrew answered. “Yeah.”
“And what about you, son?” This was directed at Sam. Ah, the endless curiosity of the elderly. At least he was used to it.
“I’m a mechanic, sir.” He said simply. “Also a friend of Ed’s.”
“My name’s Andrew. And this is Sam.” Sam wanted to rub his forehead and groan, realizing only now that Andrew hadn’t introduced them. He wondered if he’d even given the woman his name on the phone.
“Oh, hell, I remember that face now. You and the Fulton boy were the ones that got in trouble out in the woods back there, weren’t you?” Lisa said, and Sam’s eyes locked on her immediately. “He said he was curious about his family, and we’ve been here for years, my mama and her mama before that.” Sam wracked his brain, trying to think what he’d heard about this situation, if anything. Ed had maybe mentioned something about an accident in the woods, or Riley had? Definitely related to their spooky shit, but also classic backwoods boy behavior.
“So I guess you’re here about the curse too, then.” Sam felt a large bell sound in the back of his mind, feeling like something big might be revealed.
He had to ask first. “Curse?”
“The Fulton curse,” Lisa said. “It’s a grim subject, though, considering your friend’s accident.”
Andrew’s voice was a little frantic and not quite believable when he answered. “No, I want to hear.”
Rob cut in, apparently to provide context on Ed’s involvement. “He asked us to meet a little while back, but then he rescheduled. I think he had some detail or another he wanted to chase down before he interviewed us.”
“There’s a couple different versions of the story,” Lisa said. “I heard it from my mama, who must’ve heard it from someone else, and so on. But I guess it’s too backwoods for people to be putting in books.”
“What’s the curse about then?” Andrew was suddenly intense and focused, quite the change from the vagueness that he’d been hovering in since Sam got to the house on Capitol.
Lisa McCormick settled into the cadence of a well-practiced storyteller. “Well, it’s more or less what you’d expect, but it’s a good story. Legend has it that the second son of James Fulton fell head over heels for a delicate girl from up north he met when he was at schooling. So against the family’s judgment, given he had prospects down here, he marries the girl and brings her home to the estate his daddy built.” She gestured out past the slope of their back yard, toward the thick woods behind the house.
“What happens to the wife?” Sam asked, finally relaxing a little as he got more interested in the story.
“Good question. She was delicate, like I said, and she got sick from the trip. And they’re only your age, might as well be babies. The second son puts her up in that big plantation and gets her all the best care money can buy, but she doesn’t get better. She catches fevers and won’t eat, and she wastes down to skin and bones.”
“The Fultons had a plantation?” Andrew cut in, sounding more surprised than Sam would have expected. Hadn’t he grown up with Ed, didn’t he know where all of that fucking money came from? Ed had never actually said it, hadn’t brought up the word “plantation”, but Sam knew the ins and outs of most of this part of the state, and he’d actually paid attention in Kentucky History in high school. Besides, a family from Kentucky didn’t get the kind of money Ed had constantly thrown around through any other means.
“Of course!” Lisa answers. “I bet the old house is still standing out there, but you wouldn’t know it. The ones that came back after the war moved to the opposite end of their land and built fresh.”
Sam was genuinely fascinated at this point, and wanted her to keep going. “Sounds like something out of a book already”
“What happened next? After she got sick?” Andrew prompted.
“This is where it gets interesting. The second son loves this girl so much he decides to step onto an unholy path. Now the story varies, but in the one my mama told me, he makes a deal. He takes his youngest sister, goes out to a crossroad on the property past the witching hour, and he waits until some evil comes to him. He looks that evil square in the face and offers it his sister in return for his wife.”
The old woman was clearly delighted by being able to tell this old spooky story to a new and receptive audience. She’d called it grim, but she’d also called it the good gossip, and it was clear which side of that coin she was feeling in the midst of the tale.
Sam knew the role of an audience member well, and he was feeling some of that same morbid delight himself. “He kills his sister,” he said.
“Of course he does,” Rob spoke up at last.
“Naturally,” Lisa agreed. “He slashes her throat and she bleeds out onto the crossroads. Right where they put the marker of the estate, if you’re feeling symbolic. It’s old land anyway, land that’s had people doing their deeds on it for a long time before the Fultons decided to own it. So he sheds her blood, then he opens his wrist and gives it some of his, and he makes a deal that if he can have power over his wife’s death, he’ll keep giving the land more.”
Sam felt Andrew go still beside him, perfectly frozen. The tension in his body skyrocketed, and Sam couldn’t be sure he was breathing. This all felt like just another ghost story to him, just another wives’ tale of the back woods, but something in it had spooked Andrew like a cornered rabbit. He thought briefly about what he knew of Riley’s touch of the sight, and how he’d spoken about Ed and Andrew’s problem as something else entirely. He remembered wrestling with Andrew on the roots of the big white tree, coming up with inexplicable mud and blood on his hands.
Rob jumped in to share the next part of the story, both McCormick’s apparently oblivious to the shift around the two young men. “The wife lives. He blames the sister’s murder on another man. But the land’s alive, after that, because his sacrifice woke up whatever thing had been sleeping there.”
“And deals with the devil aren’t ever equal, which is where the curse comes in.” Lisa continued. Clearly, the two had been telling stories together for decades, perfecting the trade-offs and landing the right beats together. When Sam glanced over, Andrew was still frozen, eyes far away from the two people in front of them. Sam had to think fast and decided on his usual tricks to bring him back, shifting his booted foot to step on top of Andrew’s sneaker. He pressed down firmly but slowly, grinding his heel into Andrew’s toes. He almost let up when Andrew startled, blinking himself back to reality, but he didn’t trust that he’d stay.
“Oh are you all right?” Lisa asked, appearing genuinely concerned.
Andrew shook himself lightly, and clearly took a deep breath or two before answering. “Sorry, cold chill.” Mostly a lie, Sam knew, but a good one for a ghost story.
Mrs. McCormick seemed to buy it at least, because she continued with the tale.
“The important part is that the deal doesn’t miracle-cure his wife. Instead, he gets some sort of terrible gift to manipulate death itself, and it drives him mad. His brothers end up locking him up in the big house along with his wife, who ain’t right either. They grow and die together. The brothers raise their children as their own. It was a scandal and a shame to the whole bunch of them.” The intonation had a clear note of an unspoken the end, mixed with an eerie some say you can still hear…
Sam spoke first. “Damn, that’s wild.” He definitely put a little more emphasis into his own tone than he felt, rolling out the all-American charm. Sure, the story was wild, was definitely one for the campfire and a children’s book or two. But even as he spoke to her, most of his focus was on applying a precise pressure to the top of Andrew’s foot. Keeping Andrew grounded was something he was developing a skill for, and it was a help he was glad to offer. Sam could feel the other man’s need to bolt down to his own bones, but he wouldn’t let either of them be that impolite. He continued, “that story hit all the notes I’d want and then some.”
“Thanks hon.” Lisa answered, sounding genuinely pleased at the praise. Her next lines had the feel of an epilogue, wrapping up the details after the curtain falls. “Lot of Fultons follow after that, but— The line’s cursed with death. Almost all of ‘em died in the Civil War, and the handful that built the estate up after, kept it going, they had the worst luck. The story has it that even those who don’t try to wrangle the curse, like the second son who brought it on them, it wrangles them in the end regardless. The land’s hungry, and it gets its due, one way or another.”
The words send a small chill down Sam’s spine, but his reaction is nothing compared to Andrew’s full body shudder. It apparently hit the limit of Andrew’s tolerance for discomfort because he immediately spoke to get them out of there.
“Thank you. He’s right, that’s a hell of a story.” Andrew said, voice rushed and a little breathless. “Hey, don’t you have to get to work?” Sam knew an SOS when he heard one, so he gave the only answer he could.
“Yeah, probably got to get going.”
The McCormick’s seemed a little shocked at the abrupt shift, but if there was anything an old couple like this would respect, it was punctuality and work ethic. “Was that useful?” Lisa asked. She gathered up the glasses to bustle them over to the sink, while Rob stayed seated at the table with them. “I hope it wasn’t too upsetting.”
Oh yes ma’am, clearly it had been too upsetting, even if Sam didn’t have any clue why. Still, Andrew managed to fake a little interest, so Sam fought for it too.
“No, no, it’s real interesting.”
Sam followed with, “I’m from around here, I’m surprised I hadn’t heard it before.” He and Andrew seemed to be developing some of that same practiced cadence, friends who effortlessly followed each others’ thoughts.
“I might reach out again.” Andrew said, even as he was clearly aching to escape. Sam absolutely did not think Andrew would ever speak to these people again if he could do anything to avoid it.
“Of course, please do.” Lisa answered, not entirely oblivious to Andrew’s distress, but clearly not terribly upset about the reaction either. Andrew didn’t quite turn to run, but it was only just short of that. Sam mouthed a few bland pleasantries, thanked the McCormick’s for the help and the tea, and hustled Andrew out the door. Andrew was clearly operating on muscle memory alone as they both got settled into the WRX, but it failed him as he tried to buckle the seatbelt.
Sam watched, baffled and concerned, for a long moment as Andrew struggled with the buckle. Andrew was hyperventilating, sounding like nothing so much as a blown horse. Eventually Sam rapped Andrew’s knuckles to get him to let go of the seatbelt, then buckled it for him. He reached over to grab the base of Andrew’s skull and squeezed it lightly. His palm was centered on the back of Andrew’s head, thumb tucked under one ear and finger tips stretch up to near the crown of his head. The feel of nearly-fresh stubble itched in that Velcro way he was so familiar with on himself. Sam didn’t understand what was wrong, didn’t really know what to do, but he had found over and over that touch was one of the few things that really got Andrew’s attention, for better or worse.
“Hush, dude, you’re good.” Sam said quietly, using his startled animal voice on Andrew for not the first or last time. “It’s done.”
Andrew whispered back, eyes still stuck in a thousand yard stare. “What the fuck.”
“Why are you so freaked?” Sam asked, the question tugging at him fiercely.
“Get me out of here.”
Those were instructions he could follow. He reluctantly let go of Andrew’s head because he needed that hand for the gear shift and got them off the property. He was tempted to gun it, his heart rate speeding up with Andrew’s obvious panic, but one of them had to stay a little sane. Andrew’s reaction kept Sam spooked, and that made him a little irritable, the feeling growing as the silence stretched between them as Sam pointed them back toward home.
Sam thought over the story, the tale of a cursed family line, Andrew the heir of that fortune, the brother and son in everything but blood. Andrew and Ed’s spooky shit, whatever put those circles under his eyes and made him wake up lying on top of dead deer in the middle of the woods. Sure, something was clearly fucking wrong here, but a curse? Curses weren’t fucking real.
After a long silence, anything but empty, Andrew spoke again.
“His parents died in a wreck, you know that? Slid right off the road head-on into a tree. Happened on the property.”
Ah, a coincidence dragged up by a convincing ghost story. Not unusual, even if this level of fright was strange. “It’s just another story, Andrew”
Andrew didn’t answer, instead pulling out his phone and spending some time typing seriously. Sam focused on the road and let the miles pass.
Andrew’s phone rang
“Hey.”
An unintelligible answer on the other end of the line.
“With your cousin, running down and interview from that list of names. What is it?”
Riley, then. Sam shot a look at Andrew, curious and wary. Wariness grew when Andrew angled his body away, seemingly looking for privacy in the very tight space of the front seat. Sam couldn’t hear any of Riley’s words, but he could hear his cousin’s animated tone. The one he recognized as academic excitement.
“Maybe that’s the breakthrough he told people about. Did he find the monograph?”
A slightly longer answer this time.
“Yeah, more of his shit going missing fits in with the rest.”
Another pause.
“See if you can find another copy of that monograph, and I guess we’ll find out.”
A moment later, the call ended and Andrew seemed to sort of melt against the window of the WRX. The terror tensions slipped out of his muscles and it wasn’t long before he was clearly doing something like napping. Sam sighed. He turned on the radio then spun the volume down to barely audible, just enough noise to keep him awake and give his brain something to do. Unfortunately, the quiet solitude also gave him plenty of time to stew over that phone call. His worry for Riley and annoyance with Andrew and irritation from the secondhand fear had over an hour to cook in the back of his brain as he finished the drive back to his own house.