Hang Your Head Over

By Terry L. White

When Caroline Potter visits Barclay Mountain to work on her new book she brings a suitcase full of heartaches and more questions than she knows how to answer about her own life. Her vacation suddenly becomes a quest for truth when she hears about an old mystery and uncovers shocking secrets hidden years before.

ISBN 1-59431-109-9 Romance / Women's Ficiton

Cover Art by Maggie Dix.

Also available in RTF and HTML formats.



The graveyard was sunk in the shadow of hundred foot tall hardwoods that had taken more than a century to grow. Headstones, jumbled like a child's blocks, leaned in every direction and to the right, a great, black hole yawned as if in waiting for another victim.

Caroline Potter shivered and edged a little closer to the sunlight that laid the mountaintop waste in August dun. "I thought we were going to Barclay," she grumbled and hiked up one leg to knock the burrs off her white city slacks.

"Oh, there isn't anything left of the town. They hauled it all away. I thought you would like to see this, though. You can learn a lot from the study of old graveyards." Her cousin, Lottie Barnes, had never left the valley, but she knew where all the bodies were buried.

Caroline had gone off to find her fortune, and had come home a successful novelist looking for her roots.

"This place is spooky," Caroline shivered as her eyes adjusted to the dim, cool light of the graveyard. "This graveyard is enormous. When the old folks talked about Barclay, I always had the idea it wasn't all that big. There must be a thousand headstones here, Lot."

"I heard there were several thousand citizens, or should I call them the Barclay slaves, during the heyday, before the Depression," Lottie was on her haunches, pulling debris away from a tiny marble lamb, a marker for the grave of a child.

She walked carefully, the forest floor was inches deep in rotting leaves, fallen branches and a thick miasma of decay. Back in the 20s it must have been well-maintained, but Caroline could see a few more years of neglect would return this final resting place to its forested original condition.

"Watch where you're going. The coal mines ran under the graveyard and it has caved in a couple of places," Lottie jerked her head toward the pit to their right. "If you look really close, you can see the coffins and the bones that fell down into the shaft."

"Gruesome," Caroline tiptoed to the edge, but she couldn't see anything. Deep down, she was glad.

"So, where are the Barclays buried?" She dug in her shoulder bag for a reporter's pad and pen. "I'd just as soon get the dates I wanted and get out of here, this place is spooky as hell."

The Barclays, once owners of the mountain, the mines, all they could survey, lay tidily buried behind a corroded wrought iron fence.

Caroline yanked at the gate and grunted. Thick with rust, the gate still guarded the owners' remains with steadfast loyalty. At least something was still loyal to the fallen empire. She dropped her bag with a sigh and balanced on the nearest uprooted tombstone, managed to swing one long leg over the spiked barrier and unto the base of a weathered monument topped with a tall barren spire.

"Argh." Long rusty streaks marked the pristine white of her slacks, stained her hands like old blood.

"I told you to put on something junky," Lottie watched with amusement as her cousin broke a fingernail and cursed as she tried to scrape gray-green lichens from the monument's base. "But you were in to big a hurry."

"I thought we were going to Barclay," Caroline cleared the dates quickly, jotted them down on her pad. "They're all here, John, Marrianne, Lucinda... Where's Thomas? The Barclay's had a son, didn't they?"

Lottie had strolled off humming as she walked. She left behind a strange, eerie tune that seemed quite in keeping with the macabre setting.

Caroline completed the ruin of her summer whites climbing back over the derelict fence and contemplated the fate of the Barclays.

According to legend, they had once owned most of the mountain, had raped the land for the coal and timber, kept hundreds of families in near servitude, then lost it all in the Stock Market Crash of `29.

The old folks, her grandparents and their contemporaries had talked about Barclay a lot when she was younger, but gradually they had all died off and the story had become sketchier and sketchier as time wore on.

A breeze, almost arctic in its force, swept across her face and Caroline stepped back a pace, nearly toppling into the sunken graves.

"You look as if you've seen a ghost," Lottie called from across the expanse of toppled tombstones and rotting debris. "I can see how pale you are from way over here. Are you all right?"

"Huh?" Caroline had the sudden, insane feeling someone or something had tried to communicate with her. The icy wind's malign presence was almost alive.

"We shouldn't to hang around here too long," Lottie headed sturdily back towards the car. "Everyone says this place is haunted, you know."

Caroline carried the dank feeling of cold and darkness back to the Lottie's dust-covered oven of a car. The August sun was relentless. It bleached out the greens, left the meadow to their left a dull, lifeless brown. She was glad for her slacks, even though they were ruined. The seat was like a frying pan. Hot, cold, she was glad when Lottie gunned the motor and went bumping over the rutted lane.

"Where are we going now?" She found her brush and dragged her long ash blonde hair back into a ponytail and secured it with a tacky rubber band from the bottom of her survival-kit purse.

Lottie waved her hand to the right. "That's where the railroad was, ran right down into Towanda." She handled the old Chevy like it was a log truck.

Caroline shivered again. It was almost as if the chilling presence from the graveyard decided to hitchhike to town. "I found all the graves, but the son's. What happened to Thomas?"

"Drank himself to death, or so they said," Lottie swerved to avoid a fawn that poked its nose out of the brush, hesitated, then awkwardly dove into their path. "That was close."

The young deer skittered away on angular, toothpick legs.

"There was some story about Thomas falling in love with one of the mill girls, but I don't know if you could find anyone who could tell you about it. Must have been sixty, seventy years ago," Lottie turned at a nearly invisible crossroads and maneuvered the vehicle down a forest path. "This is where the town was, but most of the buildings were torn down when the workers moved out. The big house stood for a couple of years until it was struck by lightning or something. Now there's just a big hole in the ground."

"I can't wait. It was nice of you to bring me up here, Lot," Caroline tried to see through the brush that lined the road, but it closed in, brushing the sides of the car as the lurched along.

Lottie's mouth had thinned in a narrow line of concentration. "This is going to beat the hell out of my car," she complained. "This road hasn't been used in years."

Caroline made soothing sounds. She'd hoped for more. Records, physical remains. According to Lottie, the graveyard was about all that was left of the empire that once was Barclay.

"You could try over at the County Farm," Lottie downshifted and steered the car into a clearing. The mountain rose on either side of the shallow valley. Faint lines that might have once been streets were just visible through the brush. "This is it."

"Doesn't look like much, does it?" Caroline got out her pad and tried to visualize the extent of the community. "You don't know if there are any pictures or maps of Barclay around? The town didn't shut down until the twenties, so there might have been something. If I only knew where to look."

"I think there used to be some real old pictures up in the attic," Lottie backed slowly out of the valley to the turn. "They might still be up there, but Pop took a notion to clean things out a couple of years back. You never know. He might have got rid of them. It was Mom's people who lived in Barclay way back."

"They did?" Caroline hadn't known that. Or had she? She had been around when Grandpa Stalter told his dusty old stories about being a kid in Barclay, but who pays attention when you are a kid? She'd been too busy reading fairy tales. And writing them on any piece of paper that wasn't tied down.