⭐ CHAPTER THREE — What We Found Behind the Curtain

Word travels faster than truth in Pine Knot County, so by the time Miss Mabel and I crept back toward the curtain, half the hall had already whispered six different theories and three of them involved demons.

That’s when Elmira Gail materialized at my elbow a Chicago transplant who somehow mixed Baptist scripture with the Book of Mormon and believed firmly in the “Seven Heavens, give or take one.”

“You girls ain’t going back there alone,” she whispered, clutching her lace collar like a talisman. “Not after what we heard.”

“What did you hear?” I asked.

Elmira widened her eyes.

“A groan that ain’t in any of the seven heavens I was taught.”

Before I could answer, Tommy Ray  a man who carved wooden reindeer with the same energy he used to argue with his ex-wife  joined us.

“That curtain moved on its own,” he said. “And something rattled. Might’ve been a shelf. Might’ve been a body.”

Elmira crossed herself in a confused, half-Mormon, half-Baptist motion.

Miss Mabel snorted. “Let’s go before these two scare each other to death.”

We lifted the curtain.

At first, all we saw was dust dancing in the light and the faint smell of old glue. Then our eyes adjusted.

Chaos.

A metal storage shelf lay toppled sideways, its contents spilled everywhere boxes of plastic holly, a bag of glitter, several dented folding chairs, and one mangled, half-decapitated plastic Santa grinning up at us like he knew something we didn’t.

“Merciful heavens,” Elmira whispered.

Miss Mabel poked Santa with her walker. “Not him. He’s been half-dead since ’82.”

But something else caught my eye.

A purse.

Lila Mae’s.

Wedged under the shelf.

Not crushed, placed.

Before any of us could speak, a loud, sputtering cough echoed through the hall.

The four of us froze.

It came from just outside the curtain.

Then the unmistakable chug-chug-chug of an engine trying to start.

Elmira grabbed my arm.

“Tell me that ain’t her generator”

It was.

Lila Mae’s generator kicked on by itself, coughing and rattling like a dying tractor rising from the grave. People in the hall screamed. Someone shouted, “UNPLUG IT!” even though it wasn’t plugged in at all.

And as if that wasn’t enough, across the room the enormous inflatable snowman the one that had been slumped over all morning began slowly inflating.

Even though nobody had plugged that in either.

The snowman rose inch by inch, its head turning toward us like it wanted a word.

Elmira whispered, horrified and amazed,

“Girls… somethin’ unholy is walkin’ through this Jubilee.”

The lights flickered again.

Twice.

Then from deep in the storage alcove  behind the fallen shelf, past the glitter spill, near the crooked Santa  something shifted.

A shape.

A shadow.

A breath.

Not dead.

But not friendly either.

Miss Mabel tightened her grip on her walker.

“Child,” she said quietly, “you might want to step back.”

The shadow moved again.

And this time?

It moved toward us.