⭐ 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 snor...