13. This should not be mistaken for a demographic accident. Kentucky—the thirteenth star on the Confederate flag, the birthplace of both Davis and Lincoln, and the home to over two hundred thousand enslaved men, women, and children—went unmentioned in the Emancipation Proclamation, and was later excluded from Reconstruction. Many freedmen fled, and Kentucky buried their tracks quite efficiently. Their names were forgotten and their homes were torn down; their graveyards were left untended, swallowed up by poison ivy and ironweed, until eventually they were paved over for used car lots or strip malls. Their memories are preserved only by their kin, in the stories told by those who stayed, and those who left.
14. The Gravely Sanatorium was established in 1928 by Donald Gravely, Sr., as an ill-fated attempt to find profit in Eden’s disused mines. After several obliging doctors testified to the healing properties of subterranean life, fifteen tuberculosis patients were lowered into the mines, where they lived in cramped underground huts. None of them survived the winter, but Donald Gravely never considered it a total failure, as he was then able to offer ghost tours for a quarter a head. Several participants claimed they could still hear coughing down in the mines, and heavy, panting breath.
15. In 1970, for example, a young man named Steve Burroughs became convinced that Starling House was a site of “significant spiritual energy.” Having been rebuffed at the front gates, he attempted to tunnel beneath the eastern wall. He went missing for three weeks. Upon his return, he fulfilled his mother’s greatest wish and joined the clergy. When asked why, he said that—having seen Hell—it seemed only fair to see Heaven. The relevant entry in Eva Starling’s journal reads only, House: 1, Jackasses: 0.
16. Jasper was actually in fifth grade when a portion of the Muhlenberg Elementary School roof collapsed. A state audit came to no definitive conclusions; they suggested that perhaps an animal had died above the fifth-grade classroom, given the degree of rot and mold present in the debris.
17. Sipapú is a Hopi word roughly translating to “the place of emergence,” and is generally characterized as a hole in the earth, or a deep cave.
18. Mrs. Caldwell’s uncle might have been referring to Etsuko and John Sugita, first-and second-generation Japanese Americans who became Starlings in 1943. Etsuko drowned in 1955, and the rest of the family relocated to a modest cottage on the coast of Maine. Her daughters, now in their early seventies, remember the house fondly, but were never tempted to return. “No home,” one of them told me, “should cost that much.”
19. Karst topography is characterized by large deposits of limestone and is very favorable for the development of caves and sinkholes. There have never been any significant caves discovered in Eden, but a local motel owner has no doubt of their existence: “Between the caves and the damn mines, if you yell at one end of Kentucky, you’ll hear it on the other.”
20. Mrs. Gutiérrez’s brother-in-law made a full recovery. He ascribes his survival to his grandmother’s crucifix, which he wears tucked beneath his collar on a slim gold chain.
21. The hunter, Dennis Roark, later claimed he was shooting at a doe and missed, and further alleged that it was Jasper’s fault for going out in deer season without wearing orange. Dennis’s mother, Mrs. Roark, said she told him not to go out hunting on such a foggy evening.
22. There is an ongoing and extremely contentious legal case debating whether Opal has a genuine legal claim to the Gravely name. On the one hand, Jewell Gravely never used the name after she left her father’s household—the Corvette was registered to Jewell Wild, and the motel room was originally booked under a Jewell Weary—and marked an x on Opal’s birth certificate. On the other, as several witnesses testified, “She’s a Gravely, alright. Just look at that damn hair.”
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Alix E. Harrow is a New York Times bestselling and Hugo award-winning writer, now living in Virginia with her husband and their two semi-feral kids. She is the author of The Ten Thousand Doors of January, The Once and Future Witches and various pieces of short fiction.