He picks up his stack of interviews. “I think I have that one.” He riffles through and pulls one out. He scans the page, then stops. “‘My people called this valleyTala’nih, the place that echoes itself. Sound travels strange and birds circle without settling. The water is said to carry messages between this world and the next.’”
He flips the page, but there’s nothing more. So he returns to the mention and reads the writing in the margin. “See interview with Jacob Visser, 71, of Foggy Hollow, October 2, 1936.”
We shuffle through our stacks.
“I’ve got it,” I say, pulling Jacob Visser’s interview from the rest. I skim the typed, slightly-faded words, a thrill of excitement jumping up my arms when I spot it.
Tala’nih.
I read the passage aloud. “There’s a placewhere the creek runs opposite. Old man Hansen said the Indians called it Tala’nih, but granddaddy called itde Overlaag.”
I look up from the paper. “De Overlaag?”
“That’s Dutch,” Twig says, picking up his phone and plugging in the phrase. “In English, it means… the Overlay.”
My skin erupts in goosebumps.
If we were to give this alternate dimension a name—a world literally laid over ours—the Overlay fits to perfection.
I return to the page and finish reading. “When granddaddy was a boy, his cousin vanished right there on the spot, never to be seen again. Funny place. We don’t go near it. Animals turn up dead in strange, unnatural ways.”
The hair on the back of my arms stands on end.
“De Overlaag,” I whisper, squinting at the chicken scratch of a note written in the margins. “See Folk Medicine & Midwifery, children born ‘en caul’.”
I look up at Twig. “What’s ‘en caul’?”
But he’s already on his feet, grabbing the folder in question. The top interview and by far the longest is with a woman named Sophronia Bramble.
“Bramble,” I say. “As in… Mistress Bramble?”
The witch near Talenwah Run, which—now that I think of it—sounds a lot like Tala’nih. She’s not really a witch. At least, I don’t think. She just lives alone in a cabin deep in the woods. Twig tried getting an interview with her once, but she’s as elusive as the Vandenberg butler, Mr. Denis Tulane.
This Sophronia was forty-nine when she was interviewed in 1937, so she can’t be the Mistress Bramble we know today. Unless she’s immortal like Rafe, which I guess, isn’t impossible.
“She was a midwife and a healer,” Twig says.
I round the table so I can read the interview with him.
It’s a fascinating piece.
On page three, she mentionsde Overlaagand that phrase again—children bornen caul. According to Sophronia, such children have the gift of second sight with the ability to see intode Overlaag. There’s nothing, however, about how the Overlay works or what exactly it is. Still, I take pictures with my phone so I can reference the interview later. We shuffle through the rest of the Folklore folder, Sophronia’s folder, and the History and Genealogy folder, too. But we find no further mention of either term.
We return the box to its shelf and head downstairs.
Maggie’s no longer on her step-stool. She’s joined Walt behind the counter, where she drinks a cup of tea and sorts through a bin of donated books.
“Did you find what you were looking for?” she asks.
“What does it mean to be bornen caul?” I reply.
“Now there’s a phrase I haven’t heard in a spell.” She takes a sip of her tea. “To be bornen caulmeans to be born in the amniotic sac, a rarity that’s steeped in superstition.”
“Like having second sight?” Twig says.
Maggie harrumphs.
“It was mentioned in an interview with a woman named Sophronia Bramble,” I say.
