Chapter Text
Smokey Mtn Foothills, Tennessee. Summer 2017
The rain pounded against the old church’s overhang, falling down in dense sheets. The humidity was thick, curling through the air and suffocating anything in reach. It was almost unbearable for anyone who wasn’t used to Tennessee’s flash thunderstorms in the summer.
You sat quietly on the old wooden bench, skimming your foot against the slick water coating the rotting porch. It was a routine at this point, following the residuals of things other people couldn’t see. It was all the same: harvesting, cleansing, returning energy back to the land. It had been like this since you were young, holding the weight of solving the problems others couldn’t fix. A labor that shouldn’t be necessary, but was.
The latest entity wasn’t any different from the ones you’d faced in the past. A nasty amalgamation of religious trauma and guilt leeching from a church abandoned decades ago. It had quoted scripture the entire fight, muttering threats of damnation wrapped in a pretty bow of
verses from Revelations.
As the rain settled into a drizzle, you gathered your weathered scythe and slid it into the strap along your back. You didn’t look back as you followed the worn path closer to your truck settled at the bottom of the hill, the slope slick with red mud and pools of rain water.
“Revelations 21:8. But the cowardly, unbelieving, abominable, murderers, sexually immoral, sorcerers, idolaters, and all liars shall have their part in the lake which burns with fire and brimstone, which is the second death.”
You repeated it like a quiet prayer.
By the time you reached the truck the rain had fully stopped, only leaving behind the suffocating humidity. Your truck wasn’t anything special. It was just a shitty, dark blue Dodge stick shift that looked like it had survived multiple wars. However, taking into consideration how it was a hand-me down from your older brothers, it probably had. You pulled your scythe from its resting place along you back and tossed it into the bed, before climbing into the cab. You pulled off the gravel drive, headed towards the main road.
Cursed spirits here in Appalachia were different from those elsewhere. They still fed off negative emotion from humans, they were just…different. The negative emotions leaking from Appalachians came from isolation, generational poverty, religious guilt, land disputes, and God knows what else. They was heavier, older, and it tended to sink into the land. The spirits formed differently, latching onto old folklore. They manifested into things that looked like animals or ghosts, but didn’t seem exactly right. The aura from the spirits used to keep you up at night, and now they were just nuisances.
Your truck rattled down the road as bluegrass played softly over the radio, drowning out whatever leftover thoughts you had from the fight. You could tell things were shifting. The spirits were growing bolder and hungrier, it was starting to get annoying.
By the time you got home, the gray sky had darkened and fireflies dotted the yard in front of your house. The house was quiet and small, raised flower beds scattering the property. The beds were exploding with color and humming with cursed energy. The inside of the house wasn’t any different: pots lining windowsills, hanging plants and herbs dangling from the ceiling, notebooks and textbooks covering every flat surface. It was a complete disaster, but it was your completely organized disaster.
You poked at a wilted pothos, “Well you bless your heart, you just look like someone put raisins in the potato salad.”
You dug a single finger into the soil and let a small stream of cursed energy leak into it. The small pothos immediately responded to the spike of energy, almost like it was vibrating.
“There you go! You just needed a little lovin’, didn’t ya.”
The pothos did not respond. You did not care.
This was how your routine worked: harvesting curses, cleansing the land, ignoring the existential dread, and talking to your plants like they were your roommates. It was comfortable, it was the same, but at the same time it was almost lonely. You remembered a time when it wasn’t like this. When there were other people who knew what you dealt with, but that was a lifetime ago.