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her bony finger at him. “I said go away, or I’ll call the sheriff. I don’t have sons anymore. They’re all dead to me.”
    Her words slammed into him with a force worse than the punches he’d taken in prison.
    Gritting his teeth, he jogged down the steps, grief digging at his throat. Rain sluiced off him as he plowed through the mud to the Pathfinder. When he got inside, he buried his head in his hands, desolation and shame searing him like a hot poker. He’d hoped like hell that at least his mother would believe him now. But the papers hadn’t changed her opinion.
    Which meant the rest of the people in town probably hadn’t changed theirs, either.
    A SUDDEN MOMENT of déjà vu struck Ivy. Had it been raining the night her parents died? Her stomach knotted, the onset of another attack imminent. Beneath the wind, she detected a cry echoing from the hills, but the sound might have been her own thready voice trilling out a prayer to the heavens.
    Whirling around, she ran toward her car, shivering and eager to return to the cabin she’d rented. Darkness descended quickly, the shadows stealing daylight and reminding her that night would soon trap her.
    And so would her nightmares—the blood, the screams, the mangled bodies.
    She cranked up the defogger, squinting through the blinding rain as she drove around the mountain and into Kudzu Hollow. The town seemed tiny to her after living in Chattanooga for the last few years. The park, the brick storefronts, sheriff’s office and small diner were reminiscent of a Norman Rockwell painting. At first glance, the town appeared to be the perfect place to raise a family. And the cabin on the creek where she was staying would be a romantic spot for a young couple to honeymoon.
    But Miss Nellie had been right. The rumors about the ghosts and the killings destroyed any romanticism. Whispers of death floated from beneath the green leafy kudzu vines that crawled along walls and the ground. Locals claimed that nothing could kill the kudzu. It was parasitic, killing its own host. Just as the people couldn’t destroy the evil here, or force the ghosts to move on to another realm. Just as the evil drew the devil to the town and the families killed their own.
    A flashing sign for a local pub named Ole Peculiar drew her eye, but she headed to The Rattlesnake Diner on the next block instead. Determined to learn more about the locals, she veered into the graveled parking lot, climbed out and rushed up the steps, shaking water from her hair as she entered.
    A short, sturdy, middle-aged waitress wearing a colorful dress, white apron and a name tag that read Daisy, approached her, her short gray curls framing a tired face. “Hello again, Miss Ann. You back to take more pictures?”
    Ivy smiled. “Not at the moment. I’m starving.”
    Daisy removed the pencil tucked in her brown bouffant hair. “Well, what’ll it be, honey? Rattlesnake stew?”
    Ivy swallowed. She’d thought the dish a legend, but apparently the cook, Boone, an old-timer who’d lived in the mountains for decades, had inherited the recipe from his grandmother. “A bowl of your vegetable soup. And sweet iced tea, please.”
    Daisy nodded, then waddled away, and Ivy twisted her hands together as she studied the handmade arts and crafts along one wall. Local artisans’ paintings, photographs and jewelry decorated the café in an artful arrangement, with price tags attached. Photographs and sketches of local scenery included valleys and gorges in the mountain, a little white chapel at the top of a cliff, the creek behind her cabin, a water wheel, then one of the junkyard. A charcoal sketch of Rattlesnake Mountain hung in the center, the etchings of the natural indentations that resembled a nest of rattlesnakes along the stone surface, sent a chill up her spine.
    According to her research, the originators of the folklore and black magic in the area had been birthed by a small group of witches who believed that the rocks,