Changing Appalachia

5

A loud rap on the door woke Jody from a deep slumber. He sat up quickly, fumbling for a robe and slippers. Cathy sat up, clinging to the sheets in confusion as the loud knock resounded again.

"Stay here." Jody whispered as he went out into the living room and to the door. In the porch light he saw Cliff Watkins and a few others he recognized from his gatherings so he stepped out on the porch. "Well, it's you. What brings you out here so late?"

"We were over in Blaid tonight at that strip club they got over there," Cliff said quickly. "God told me I needed to go over there and make a showing in his name."

Jody sucked in a breath, this was a terrible idea and he hadn't told them to do it. But be that as it may, it showed their willingness to follow him and their faith in him. "I guess it didn't go well?"

"Hell no," Mickey piped up. "They come out on us. I saw them- we saw them change into true demon form right in front of us, just like I've heard they can but I never thought I would live to see it."

One of the other men, still wide eyed and frightened, gestured with his hands above his head to indicate their height. "They were this tall, covered in hair, big droolin' fangs and all. Lord help us. That was not something of this world, Pastor Jody."

Jody nodded. "No, it ain't. What did you all do?"

"We got the hell out of there," Cliff scoffed. "I wasn't 'bout to stick around and get ate. That was straight out of a horror movie. No, sir. We gotta go back in there with the backup. Somebody that knows more than we do about this kinda thing."

"Can you believe they have a strip club over there?" One of the men Jody didn't immediately recognize lamented. "As if that whole city wasn't eaten up with evil as it is."

"They have to be stopped, just like you said," Cliff met Jody's eyes directly. "We must do it and fast."

Jody nodded. He hadn't actually made a plan for how he would stop them, he had assumed it would work itself out. "I agree. We will meditate on it. We have to be very careful, some humans do live over in Blaid and we don't want them caught up in this, it can be hard to tell them apart sometimes."

The group nodded. But an older woman from the back of the crowd spoke up. "Now hear me out before you shoot it down, Pastor Jody. I know a lady over in Asheville who does some root work, and she might be able to conjure up something to turn them into their true form, and that way we can tell them apart."

"You mean witchcraft?" Jody looked horrified at the notion. "I don't know about all that."

"We won't be doing it. We are hiring someone who's already doing it to do it," she said gently. "Think about it."

"Margie might be on to something," Cliff shrugged. "Worth a try."

"If you think she can--" Jody wasn't sure he believed in this sort of thing. But it could work in his favor, he thought tiredly. Had he not been so tired he would have realized that changing all shifters into their true form meant he would most likely change as well. Jody yawned. "We will talk about this more tomorrow at service."

*

In the bright morning sun, Jesse was working on replacing the leg of a wooden chair that had splintered. He couldn't be surprised, it had been on the front porch for twenty years. He hummed as he stained the chair leg that was clamped to a table.

"Mister Jacobs?" A small female voice that wasn't Jo's drifted through the woodshed door where Jesse was working.

Realizing that it wasn't his wife's voice, Jesse turned around to see Amy in the doorway. He was surprised he recognized her, he'd only seen Elijah's now ex-girlfriend once or twice. "Oh, hey, there. Um, Elijah ain't here."