True Believer

"I'm not really that hungry."

Rachel approached with two cups of coffee.

"Well, just to let you know . . . if I'm going to tell a story, I like to do it over a good meal. And I tend to take my time."

Jeremy surrendered. "The chicken pesto sandwich sounds fine."

Doris smiled. "Could you bring us a couple of the Albemarles, Rachel?"

"Sure," Rachel answered. She looked him over with an appreciative eye. "By the way, who's your friend? Haven't seen him around here before."

"This is Jeremy Marsh," Doris answered. "He's a famous journalist here to write a story about our fair town."

"Really?" Rachel said, looking interested.

"Yes," Jeremy answered.

"Oh, thank goodness," Rachel said with a wink. "For a second, I thought you'd just come from a funeral."

Jeremy blinked as Rachel moved away.

Doris laughed at his expression. "Tully stopped in after you swung by for directions," she explained. "I guess he figured I might have had something to do with you coming down, and he wanted to make sure. So anyway, he rehashed the entire conversation, and Rachel probably couldn't resist. We all thought his comment was a hoot."

"Ah," Jeremy said.

Doris leaned forward. "I'll bet he talked your ear off."

"A little."

"He was always a talker. He'd talk to a shoe box if no one else was around, and I swear I don't know how his wife, Bonnie, put up with it for so long. But twelve years ago, she went deaf, and so now he talks to customers. It's all a person can do to get out of there in less time it takes ice cubes to melt in winter. I even had to shoo him out of here today after he came by. Can't get a speck of work done if he's around."

Jeremy reached for his coffee. "His wife went deaf?"

"I think the Good Lord realized she'd sacrificed enough. Bless her heart."

Jeremy laughed before taking a sip. "So why would he think you were the one who contacted me?"

"Every time something unusual happens, I'm always to blame. Comes with the territory, I guess, being the town psychic and all."

Jeremy simply looked at her and Doris smiled.

"I take it you don't believe in psychics," she remarked.

"No, not really," Jeremy admitted.

Doris tugged at her apron. "Well, for the most part, I don't, either. Most of them are kooks. But some people do have the gift."

"Then . . . you can read my mind?"

"No, nothing like that," Doris said, shaking her head. "At least most of the time, anyway. I have a pretty good intuition about people, but reading minds was more my mom's thing. No one could hide a thing from her. She even knew what I planned on buying her for her birthdays, which took a lot of the fun out of it. But my gift is different. I'm a diviner. And I can also tell what sex a baby's going to be before it's born."

"I see."

Doris looked him over. "You don't believe me."

"Well, let's just say you are a diviner. That means you can find water and tell me where I should dig a well."

"Of course."

"And if I asked you to do a test, with scientific controls, under strict supervision . . ."

"You could even be the one to supervise me, and if you had to rig me up like a Christmas tree to make sure I wasn't cheating, I'd have no problem with that."

"I see," Jeremy said, thinking of Uri Geller. Geller had been so confident of his powers of telekinesis that he'd gone on British television in 1973, where he'd appeared before scientists and a studio audience. When he balanced a spoon on his finger, both sides began to curve downward before the stupefied observers. Only later did it come out that he'd bent the spoon over and over before the show, producing metal fatigue.

Doris seemed to know just what he was thinking.

"Tell you what . . . you can test me anytime, in any way you'd like. But that's not why you came. You want to hear about the ghosts, right?"

"Sure," Jeremy said, relieved to get straight into it. "Do you mind if I record this?"

"Not at all."

Jeremy reached into his jacket pocket and retrieved the small recorder. He set it between them and pressed the appropriate buttons. Doris took a sip of coffee before beginning.

"Okay, the story goes back to the 1890s or thereabouts. Back then, this town was still segregated, and most of the Negroes lived out in a place called Watts Landing. There's nothing left of the village these days because of Hazel, but back then--"

"Excuse me . . . Hazel?"

"The hurricane? Nineteen fifty-four. Hit the coast near the South Carolina border. It pretty much put most of Boone Creek underwater, and what was left of Watts Landing was washed away."

"Oh, right. Sorry. Go ahead."

"Anyway, like I was saying, you won't find the village now, but back near the turn of the century, I guess about three hundred people lived there. Most of them were descended from the slaves that had come up from South Carolina during the War of Northern Aggression, or what you Yankees call the Civil War."

She winked and Jeremy smiled.

"So Union Pacific came through to set the railroad lines, which, of course, was supposed to turn this place into a big cosmopolitan area. Or so they promised. And the line they proposed ran right through the Negro cemetery. Now, the leader of that town was a woman named Hettie Doubilet. She was from the Caribbean--I don't know which island--but when she found out that they were supposed to dig up all the bodies and transfer them to another place, she got upset and tried to get the county to do something to have the route changed. But the folks that ran the county wouldn't consider it. Wouldn't even grant her the opportunity to make her case."

At that moment, Rachel arrived with the sandwiches. She set both plates on the table.

"Try it," Doris said. "You're skin and bones, anyway."

Jeremy reached for his sandwich and took a bite. He raised his eyebrows and Doris smiled.

"Better than anything you can find in New York, isn't it?"

"Without a doubt. My compliments to the chef."

She looked at him almost coquettishly. "You are a charmer, Mr. Marsh," she said, and Jeremy was struck by the thought that in her youth, she must have broken a few hearts. She went on with her story, as if she'd never stopped.

"Back then, a lot of folks were racist. Some of them still are, but they're in the minority now. Being from the North, you probably think I'm lying about that, but I'm not."

"I believe you."

"No, you don't. No one from the North believes it, but that's beside the point. But going on with the story, Hettie Doubilet was enraged by the folks at the county, and legend has it that when they refused her entrance to the mayor's office, she put a curse on us white folk. She said that if graves of her ancestors would be defiled, then ours would be defiled, too. The ancestors of her people would tread the earth in search of their original resting place and would trample through Cedar Creek on their journey, and that in the end, the whole cemetery would be swallowed whole. Of course, no one paid her any attention that day."

Doris took a bite of her sandwich. "And, well, to make a long story short, the Negroes moved the bodies one by one to another cemetery, the railroad went in, and after that, just as Hettie said, Cedar Creek Cemetery started going bad. Little things at first. A few headstones broken, things like that, like vandals were responsible. The county folks, thinking Hettie's people were responsible, posted guards. But it kept happening, no matter how many guards they put out there. And over the years, it kept getting worse. You went there, right?"

Jeremy nodded.

"So you can see what's happening. Looks like the place is sinking, right, just like Hettie said it would? Anyway, a few years later, the lights started to appear. And ever since then, folks have believed it was the slave spirits marching through."

"So they don't use the cemetery anymore?"

"No, the place was abandoned for good in the late 1970s, but even before that, most people opted to be buried in the other

cemeteries around town because of what was happening to that one. The county owns it now, but they don't take care of it. They haven't for the last twenty years."

"Has anyone ever checked into why the cemetery seems to be sinking?"

"I'm not certain, but I'm almost positive that someone has. A lot of powerful folks had ancestors buried in the cemetery, and the last thing they wanted was their grandpa's tomb being broken up. I'm sure they wanted an explanation, and I've heard stories that some folks from Raleigh came to find out what was happening."

"You mean the students from Duke?"

"Oh, no, not them, honey. They were just kids, and they were here last year. No, I'm talking way back. Maybe around the time the damage first started."

"But you don't know what they learned."

"No. Sorry." She paused, and her eyes took on a mischievous gleam. "But I think I have a pretty good idea."

Jeremy raised his eyebrows. "And that is?"

"Water," she said simply.

"Water?"

"I'm a diviner, remember. I know where water is. And I'll tell you straight up that that land is sinking because of the water underneath it. I know it for a fact."

"I see," Jeremy said.

Doris laughed. "You're so cute, Mr. Marsh. Did you know that your face gets all serious-looking when someone tells you something you don't want to believe?"

"No. No one's ever told me that."

"Well, it does. And I think it's darling. My mom would have had a field day with you. You're so easy to read."

"So what am I thinking?"

Doris hesitated. "Well, like I said, my gifts are different than my mother's. She could read you like a book. And besides, I don't want to scare you."

"Go ahead. Scare me."

"All right," she said. She took a long look at him. "Think of something I couldn't possibly know. And remember, my gift isn't reading minds. I just get . . . hints now and then, and only if they're really strong feelings."

"All right," Jeremy said, playing along. "You do realize, however, that you're hedging yourself here."

"Oh, hush, now." Doris reached for his hands. "Let me hold these, okay?"

Jeremy nodded. "Sure."

"Now think of something personal I couldn't possibly know."

"Okay."

She squeezed his hand. "Seriously. Right now you're just playing with me."

"Fine," he said, "I'll think of something."

Jeremy closed his eyes. He thought of the reason Maria had finally left him, and for a long moment, Doris said nothing at all. Instead, she simply looked at him, as if trying to get him to say something.

He'd been through this before. Countless times. He knew enough to say nothing, and when she remained silent, he knew he had her. She suddenly jerked--unsurprising, Jeremy thought, since it went with the show--and immediately afterward, released his hands.

Jeremy opened his eyes and looked at her.

"And?"

Doris was looking at him strangely. "Nothing," she said.

"Ah," Jeremy added, "I guess it's not in the cards today, huh?"

"Like I said, I'm a diviner." She smiled, almost as if in apology. "But I can definitely say that you're not pregnant."

He chuckled. "I'd have to say that you're right about that."

She smiled at him before glancing toward the table. She brought her eyes up again. "I'm sorry. I shouldn't have done what I did. It was inappropriate."

"No big deal," he said, meaning it.

"No," she insisted. She met his eyes and reached for his hand again. She squeezed it softly. "I'm very sorry."

Jeremy wasn't quite sure how to react when she took his hand again, but he was struck by the compassion in her expression.

And Jeremy had the unnerving feeling that she had guessed more about his personal history than she could possibly know.

Psychic abilities, premonitions, and intuition are simply a product of the interplay among experience, common sense, and accumulated knowledge. Most people greatly underestimate the amount of information they learn in a lifetime, and the human brain is able to instantly correlate the information in a way that no other species--or machine--is capable of doing.

The brain, however, learns to discard the vast majority of information it receives, since, for obvious reasons, it's not critical to remember everything. Of course, some people have better memories than others, a fact that often displays itself in testing scenarios, and the ability to train memories is well documented. But even the worst of students remember 99.99 percent of everything they come across in life. Yet, it's that 0.01 percent that most frequently distinguishes one person from the next. For some people, it manifests itself in the ability to memorize trivia, or excel as doctors, or accurately interpret financial data as a hedge-fund billionaire. For other people, it's an ability to read others, and those people--with an innate ability to draw on memories, common sense, and experience and to codify it quickly and accurately--manifest an ability that strikes others as being supernatural.

But what Doris did was . . . beyond that somehow, Jeremy thought. She knew. Or at least, that was Jeremy's first inclination, until he retreated to the logical explanation of what had happened.

And, in fact, nothing had really happened, he reminded himself. Doris hadn't said anything; it was simply the way she looked at him that made him think she understood those unknowable things. And that belief was coming from him, not from Doris.

Science held the real answers, but even so, she seemed like a nice person. And if she believed in her abilities, so what? To her, it probably did seem supernatural.

Again, she seemed to read him almost immediately.

"Well, I suppose I just confirmed that I'm nuts, huh?"

"No, not really," Jeremy said.

She reached for her sandwich. "Well, anyway, since we're supposed to be enjoying this fine meal, maybe it's better if we just visited for a while. Is there anything I can tell you?"

"Tell me about the town of Boone Creek," he said.

"Like what?"

"Oh, anything, really. I figure that since I'm going to be here for a few days, I might as well know a little about the place."

They spent the next half hour discussing . . . well, not much of anything as far as Jeremy was concerned. Even more than Tully, Doris seemed to know everything that was going on in town. Not because of her supposed abilities--and she admitted as much--but because information passed through small towns like prune juice through an infant.

Doris talked almost nonstop. He learned who was seeing whom, who was hard to work with and why, and the fact that the minister at the local Pentecostal Church was having an affair with one of his parishioners. Most important, according to Doris, at least, was that if his car happened to break down, he should never call Trevor's Towing, since Trevor would probably be drunk, no matter what time of day.

"The man is a menace on the roads," Doris declared. "Everyone knows it, but because his father is the sheriff, no one ever does anything about it. But then, I suppose you shouldn't be surprised. Sheriff Wanner has his own problems, what with his gambling debts."

"Ah," Jeremy said in response, as if he were up on all the goings-on in town. "Makes sense."

For a moment, neither of them said anything. In the lull, he glanced at his watch.

"I suppose you need to be going," Doris said.

He reached for the recorder and shut it off before sliding it back into his jacket. "Probably. I wanted to swing by the library before it closes to see what it has to offer."

"Well, lunch was on me. It's not often that we have a famous visitor come by."

"A brief appearance on Primetime doesn't make a person famous."

"I know that. But I was talking about your column."

"You've read it?"

"Every month. My husband, bless his heart, used to tinker in the garage and he loved the magazine. And after he passed, I just didn't have the heart to cancel the subscription. I sort of picked up where he

left off. You're a pretty smart fellow."

"Thanks," he said.

She stood from the table and began leading him from the restaurant. The remaining patrons, only a few now, looked up to watch them. It went without saying that they'd heard every word, and as soon as Jeremy and Doris had stepped outside, they began to murmur among themselves. This, everyone immediately decided, was exciting stuff.

"Did she say he'd been on television?" one asked.

"I think I've seen him on one of those talk shows."

"He's definitely not a doctor," added another. "I heard him talking about a magazine article."

"Wonder how Doris knows him. Did you happen to catch that?"

"Well, he seemed nice enough."

"I just think he's plain old dreamy," offered Rachel.

Meanwhile, Jeremy and Doris paused on the porch, unaware of the stir they'd caused inside.

"I assume you're staying at Greenleaf?" Doris inquired. When Jeremy nodded, she went on. "Do you know where they are? They're kind of out in the backcountry."

"I have a map," Jeremy said, trying to sound as if he'd been prepared all along. "I'm sure I can find it. But how about directions to the library?"

"Sure," Doris said, "that's just around the corner." She motioned up the road. "Do you see the brick building there? The one with the blue awnings?"

Jeremy nodded.

"Take a left and go through the next stop sign. At the first street after the stop sign, turn right. The library's on the corner just up the way. It's a big white building. Used to be the Middleton House, which belonged to Horace Middleton, before the county bought it."

"They didn't build a new library?"

"It's a small town, Mr. Marsh, and besides, it's plenty big. You'll see."

Jeremy held out his hand. "Thank you. You've been great. And lunch was delicious."

"I do my best."

"Would you mind if I come back with more questions? You seem to have a pretty good handle on things."

"Anytime you want to talk, you just come by. I'm always available. But I will ask that you don't write anything that makes us look like a bunch of bumpkins. A lot of people--me included--love this place."