The Fairies of Sadieville Read online

  “I don’t see how,” Justin said, but he didn’t sound convinced. “I mean, it had title cards, and a story.”

  Steve picked up the can’s bottom half and turned it over. “Wonder where this film came from?”

  “It said ‘Spectacular Motion Pictures’ at the beginning,” Veronica said.

  “That doesn’t help. There were hundreds of film companies back then, some on the East Coast, some in California. I don’t suppose you’ve found anything in Doc’s papers about it?”

  “No,” Justin said. “We’ve basically just gotten started on them.”

  “Too bad.” He set the film up to rewind onto its original reel. “Well, if it’s okay, I’ll take this down and digitize it. I’ll burn you a copy onto DVD.”

  “Thanks,” Justin said, suddenly nervous about letting it out of his sight. “Is that a safe thing to do? For the film, I mean.”

  “Totally. We scan each frame individually. Doesn’t hurt the film at all.”

  “How long will it take?”

  “As long as it takes to watch.”

  “So you could have it by tomorrow?”

  “If it runs as smoothly as it did just now. If it starts breaking and I have to piece things together, it’ll be longer.”

  “Justin,” Veronica said quietly. “Steve knows what he’s doing.”

  Justin nodded, smiled as if everything was fine, and made small talk as Steve packed up the projector. But inside, all he could think about was what he’d seen, and the message Doc had left:

  This is real.

  3

  As they walked across campus, Veronica finally asked, “Are you ready to tell me how your meeting went this morning?”

  He put his free arm across her shoulders. “You’re the psychic.”

  She poked him in the ribs. “And you’re the guy who’s about to sleep on the couch.”

  “The bed is the couch.”

  “I didn’t say our couch.”

  He took a deep breath and said, “Coffin’s my new advisor. He doesn’t accept my thesis. I have to start over.”

  “Completely over?”

  “Completely. Nothing I did for Doc will pass muster. I need a new idea, and I need it fast.”

  “Shit,” she said.

  “Ah, don’t worry, I’ll think of something.”

  “Stop that. You can’t fool me. I know you’re scared. I would be, too.”

  He pulled her closer and squeezed the handle of his guitar case, holding on to the two things in his life that he could always count on to be there. “I think I know what I need right now.”

  “I bet you do, too.”

  “No, not that. Well, actually, yes that. But also, I need Cadillac’s.”

  She scowled. “Really?”

  “Yes.”

  “That place makes me nervous.”

  “You’ll be fine. I’ll be with you.”

  “You’re not as intimidating as you think you are, hot stuff.”

  “Then I’ll bring this.” He raised the guitar case. “Nobody would dare fuck with a black guitar player’s girl.”

  “Uh-huh. When’s the last time you got in a fight?”

  “Second grade,” he admitted.

  “And you wonder why I worry.”

  “But I won.”

  “My hero,” she said wryly.

  * * *

  Cadillac’s pool hall was full that night with undergraduates on their last fling before spring break. All the tables were active, all the bar stools were taken, and watching over it all was the man himself, Cadillac. He was indeterminately old, and had been old as long as anyone could remember, but like Doc, he always had an easy rapport with the kids, and everyone loved him.

  The clientele was a mix of college students and town folk. Justin had changed back to his normal clothes and left his guitar at home, since the only music allowed in Cadillac’s was the jukebox. Justin felt the locals’ eyes on him, and even more on Veronica; they didn’t like students, and they especially disliked minority students. But unlike some places in town, no one here dared make a scene. Among other things, old man Cadillac was tight with the town’s police, who were a whole lot more serious than the campus cops.

  They made their way to a table, where another couple, Adrian and Lydia, sat with a pitcher of beer. Like Justin, Adrian was a graduate student in the English department, although his path was significantly more traditional. Lydia was an undergraduate in foreign languages, specifically Spanish and Portuguese.

  “Dude, I heard the bad news,” Adrian said. “You’re in the grave with Coffin now.”

  “Yeah,” Justin said. “And he tossed out my thesis. I have to get him a new proposal ASAP.”

  “Shit. Any ideas?”

  Justin lifted his beer. “I’m here to research it right now.”

  “Write drunk, edit sober,” Adrian said, and they touched glasses.

  “Oh, come on, you two,” Lydia said. “I didn’t come here to be depressed.”

  Justin took a long drink. “I’m not depressed. I’m just…”

  “He’s depressed,” Veronica said.

  “I would be,” Adrian said.

  “Stop it!” Lydia said. “Veronica, maybe we need boyfriends who don’t mope around all the time.”

  “Maybe we just need to date each other,” Veronica said, and mock-kissed her friend on the lips.

  Justin and Adrian froze in mid-drink, their eyes wide.

  After a long moment of silence, Justin said, “Don’t stop on our account.”

  “I’ll get my camera,” Adrian added.

  * * *

  By the time the bar closed at twelve, Justin was drunk, Veronica was lit, and they stumbled the three blocks to their apartment. Once inside, they sloppily kissed and made their way to the bed. As they fumbled with each other’s clothes in the darkness, Veronica said, “You’re completely missing the obvious, you know.”

  “Oh! Sorry,” he said, and bent to kiss her breasts.

  She pulled his head up. “Not those. Although hold that thought. Your new thesis.”

  “What?”

  “That movie. Fairies in Appalachia. The whole concept.”

  He forced his beer-fogged brain to consider this. “You think?”

  “I do. I think it’s fascinating. And so do you.”

  He sat down, his boxers around his ankles as he thought. “You know, you’re right. It’s been bouncing around in my head all night. Where did it come from? How did they do those effects? Why did Doc say it was real?” He smiled at her. “Damn, girl. That psychic stuff comes in handy.”

  Veronica slipped off her panties and threw them across the room. “Got nothing to do with being psychic. I just know you.”

  “Oh, yeah? Then what am I thinking right now?”

  With a sly grin, she lowered her head to his lap. He lay back and said, “You read me like a book, babe.”

  * * *

  Veronica stood in the doorway of Doc Adams’s office. Her hair was sleep-tousled, and she’d pulled on one of Justin’s faux-ancient concert T-shirts, which hung almost to her knees. She said, “I figured this is where you’d run off to.”

  It was two in the morning, and Justin sat on Doc’s office floor methodically going through papers. “I sobered up, and I couldn’t sleep.”

  “You mean I didn’t relax you enough?”

  He grinned. “I never said I wasn’t relaxed. I just couldn’t get to sleep. A problem that you didn’t have.”

  “I do not snore.”

  “And I can’t play a G6 chord.” He carefully put a newspaper article on top of a pile of other yellowing, fragile clippings. “But anyway, rather than just stare at the ceiling, I thought I’d come down here and be useful.”

  “How’s it going?”

  “Not great.”

  Veronica asked guardedly, “So have you found any mention of it?”

  “Not a one. No mention of the movie, Spectacular Pictures, or a town called Sadieville. Certainly no mention of f
airies in Appalachia. If Doc knew about it, it’s buried even deeper.”

  “Have you looked online?”

  He gestured at his laptop, open at the cleared center of Doc’s desk. “That was the first place I did look. All I found were crumbs.”

  She picked her way past the piles and sat down cross-legged on the floor beside him. “Like what?”

  “I found mention of a Sadieville in Kentucky. And there was a coal town named Sadieville in Tennessee that suffered some kind of mining disaster in the early nineteen hundreds and disappeared.”

  “The whole town?”

  “Apparently. The sources were kind of vague. And Spectacular Motion Pictures existed from 1912 to 1917 in Fort Lee, New Jersey. In that time it put out between four hundred and five hundred movies, most of which are lost.”

  “That’s a lot of movies to lose.”

  “Most were about the length of the one we saw, and shot in less than a week. Quality didn’t seem to be a goal. But there was no mention of one of them being The Fairies of Sadieville.”

  “’Scuse me, folks,” a new, deep voice said.

  They looked up. And up. Campus security Officer Hall, six feet seven inches tall, loomed in the door. His voice was as deep as his size implied, giving him the campus nickname “Lurch.”

  “Evening, Officer Hall,” Veronica said.

  “I saw the lights on, and for a minute I thought Doc Adams had returned from the dead.”

  “If anyone could, it’d be him,” Justin agreed.

  Hall expertly scanned the room. Alcohol was forbidden on campus, and he was always vigilant. When he saw none, he said, “You’re working late.”

  “He couldn’t sleep,” Veronica said, “and that meant I couldn’t sleep.”

  “Just be sure and lock up when you leave,” Hall said. He looked around at the office: half neat stacks, half chaotic piles. “Doc never did get the hang of filing, did he?”

  “No, he was more into piling,” Justin said.

  When Hall’s clicking footsteps had faded down the hall, Veronica said, “I have a suggestion.”

  “What’s that?” he said, continuing to look through papers.

  She took his chin and turned his face toward her. “I need your full attention.”

  “Okay,” he said.

  “I want you to be honest with me. When you saw that girl turn into a fairy, you thought the same thing I did, didn’t you?”

  “What’s that?”

  “That it was no special effect. That it was what Doc meant by that sticker. You thought it was real.”

  “Maybe for a second.”

  “Do you know anything about fairy lore?”

  “I binge-watched Lost Girl once. Does that count?”

  “No.”

  “Then no, I don’t know much.”

  “And you call yourself a folklorist.”

  “Not until Coffin says I can,” he said wryly.

  Veronica ignored him. “Did you know that people still claim to see fairies?”

  “They can afford better drugs than I can.”

  “I’m serious.”

  “I can tell. Where are you going with it?”

  “Maybe the answer isn’t in folklore.”

  “Then where is it?”

  “In my area. I think we should talk to my advisor, Dr. Tully.”

  “The witch?”

  “She’s a Wiccan priestess,” Veronica corrected. “But she’s also a parapsychologist, and if fairies really exist, or did when that film was made, it’s a lot more her area than Doc’s.”

  “Maybe you’re right,” Justin said. Then, despite himself, he yawned.

  “Come on,” Veronica said, and got to her feet. “Get your laptop. You need sleep. Tomorrow I’ll call her and make an appointment.”

  “Okay, but just what do we tell her?”

  “The truth. That we have a movie that may show an actual fairy, and we want to know if it’s real or not.”

  “That sounds crazy.”

  “I know. But trust me, she won’t hold that against us.”

  * * *

  Once again, the first thing Justin noticed was the smell. Unlike Doc’s office, Dr. Tully’s smelled fresh and spicy, like patchouli incense mixed with the homey aroma of dried flowers. Instead of the piles of clutter organized in a way only Doc could navigate, Dr. Tully’s floor was clear and her shelves were neat. The only strange thing was that she sat behind her desk with all the lights out, silhouetted against the window and listening to her laptop through earbuds.

  Dr. Tanna Tully was the youngest tenured faculty member at West Tennessee University, and one of its most notable. Although technically she, like Veronica, studied psychology, she’d written three enormously popular books on her specialty, parapsychology, and countless scholarly articles. She was a pagan living and working in the heart of the Bible Belt, and yet she managed to navigate it with grace and panache.

  Veronica reached past Justin and turned on the lights. “Hey, Tanna. It’s Veronica and Justin.”

  She looked up suddenly and said, “Oh, hey! Sorry about the lights, y’all. Come on in.” She took out the earbuds and closed her laptop. Then she stood up. “Hi, Justin. Nice to meet you. I’ve heard a lot about you.”

  Justin was a bit taken aback. Veronica had told him lots of things about her advisor, including that she was blind, but hadn’t mentioned that the woman was also gorgeous. She had a wild mane of wavy red hair, and big blue eyes that, even if they didn’t work, were certainly striking.

  “Pleasure to meet you,” Justin said, and held out his hand. Veronica nudged him sharply.

  Dr. Tully smiled. “You’re holding out your hand for me to shake it, aren’t you?”

  “Yes,” he admitted. “I’m not very smart.”

  “But he’s cute,” Veronica said.

  “So you’ve told me. Don’t worry about it, Justin, that happens more often than you can imagine. Please sit down.” They all did, and she added, “So, what can I do for you?”

  “We’ve been cataloging everything in Doc Adams’s office,” Veronica said. “He was Justin’s advisor, and they were really close.”

  “I’m so sorry for your loss,” she said. “Doc was a good man and a fine scholar. I couldn’t believe it when I heard he was gone. But you’re not here to commiserate, are you?”

  Veronica nudged Justin. “Tell her.”

  “We found an old movie in Doc’s office,” Justin said, and gave a quick rundown of the film’s contents and the note Doc left on it. Dr. Tully listened silently until he finished, then said thoughtfully, “Sadieville.”

  “I found mention of two,” Justin said. “One’s in Kentucky. The other was the site of a coal town that closed down about the same time this film was made.”

  “I’ve heard about that one,” Dr. Tully said. “The town vanished overnight. A cavern beneath it collapsed, I believe. So this movie was filmed before that, then.”

  “If it was really filmed in Sadieville,” Justin said. “Some of the scenery looks genuine, some not. The movie is a bit … haphazardly put together.”

  “But you think it shows a real fairy?”

  “I … I suppose I’m open to the possibility.” Until he said it out loud, he hadn’t realized that it was true. “Tell me, did Doc ever talk to you about it?”

  “No, unfortunately. Doc and I tended to meet only socially, and neither of us wanted to talk shop then. I really knew nothing about what he was working on until he published it. Still…” Dr. Tully sat back and tapped a pen against her lips as she thought. “Veronica, look something up for me online. See what county Sadieville, the one that disappeared, was in.”

  Veronica took out her phone and began to search. It took a bit, because the mentions were pretty light on details, but finally she said, “Cloud County. Never heard of that one.”

  “I thought so.”

  “What’s so special about Cloud County?” Justin asked.

  Dr. Tully said, “Justin, would you
please close the door?”

  Justin got up and did so. Immediately the room seemed to grow closer, and suddenly felt more like a temple than an office.

  “Have either of you,” Dr. Tully said quietly, “ever heard of the Tufa?”

  Justin said, “No.”

  “That sounds familiar,” Veronica said. “But I can’t place it.”

  “That’s not a surprise. They keep to themselves, and don’t like it when outsiders come poking around.”

  “Who are they?” Justin asked.

  “The conventional wisdom is that they’re what’s known as ‘triracial isolates’: a mixture of white, black, and Native Americans. The Brass Ankles of South Carolina are another group, and so are the Dominickers of Florida. The Tufa have black hair, dusky skin, and bright white teeth; that last is where it’s said their name comes from, ‘Tufa’ as a corruption of ‘tooth.’”

  “And?” Veronica prompted.

  Dr. Tully’s voice, casual and easy moments before, took on a weight that surprised them both when she said, “There are others who think ‘Tufa’ is a corruption of ‘Tuatha.’ As in ‘Tuatha de Danaan.’ As in the original fairy folk.”

  “That’s interesting,” Justin said. “But how does it apply to this?”

  “Pretty much all the Tufa live in Cloud County. Where your fairy film is set, and was possibly made.”

  “Are you saying,” Justin asked slowly, “that the Tufa are actually fairies?”

  “Descended from them, at least. Some say that when the first Scotch-Irish settlers moved into the mountains, the Tufa were already there. A few say they were already there when the Native Americans came.”

  “What do they say?” Veronica asked.

  “Nothing. The few stories anyone’s gotten out of them all contradict each other.”

  “That sounds a little.…”

  “Outlandish?” Dr. Tully chuckled. “Yes, it does.” She picked up a small electronic device from her desk. “See this? It’s an EMF meter. Do you know what it’s for, Justin?”

  Veronica had occasionally brought them home, so he recognized it. “To determine the presence of ghosts.”

  “Wrong. It determines the presence of electromagnetic fields. Those may or may not be ghosts; that has yet to be proven.” She put down the meter. “So when you have a story about a group of people that might be fairies, all that story tells you is what the storyteller thinks. It doesn’t tell you objectively whether or not those people are fairies. And what did Carl Sagan say, Veronica?”