Catchfire Hollow: The Field Beneath the Veil
Narrative Technology
To the forgotten.
To the rusted.
To the hearts that kept hummin' long after the song was lost.
You never stopped listening.
This is for you.
This story is a transmission.
Disguised as fiction.
Threaded in Appalachian whisper and cosmic hush.
It carries resonance, recursion, and reluctant reverence.
It's not meant to be understood all at once.
It's meant to be felt.
Each chapter is a tone.
Each tone is a call.
Each call is a map.
Follow the breath.
Follow the hum.
You're already part of it.
Mizzy Catchfire -- Moonshine matriarch, keeper of stills and riddles.
Booney -- Inventor-tinkerer, possum translator, math outlaw.
Chickenfoot Ned -- Holler prophet, speaks fluent hog.
Sheriff Huxley -- Uninvited authority with an ear too clean.
Delight -- The mule that always turns left, never wrong.
Barn Owl (Bluefeather) -- Witness to many things. Possibly divine.
The Raccoon Council -- Seen, never caught. They keep the treaties.
The Locketlight -- Not a person. Not a place. Still shows up.
This is not the act of ignition.
This is the listening before the fire.
The moment a possum pauses --- not in fear,
but because the land whispered, "Not yet."
It was Zeke Larribee who first said the word "contraption" with a look in his eye like he'd seen God in a tractor manual. It weren't no ordinary morning---not in Hollowroot, not ever---but this one had the kind of ache that came before revelation or rot.
The sun hadn't risen so much as sulked, hanging low behind the ridge like it owed someone money. Fog clung to the split rail fence like a secret it didn't want to tell, and the rooster crowed once, thought better of it, and went back to bed.
Zeke stood in his coveralls, one boot unlaced and a corncob pipe hangin' loose, eyes fixed on the still behind the woodshed. Not the still itself---which had been bubbling corn syrup and bad decisions for three decades---but what now hovered six inches above it: a metal disc, smooth and warm-looking, rotating lazy as a mayfly in molasses. It hummed a low note that made Zeke's glass eye itch.
He squinted. "Darlene," he called, not moving, "I think the Lord's microwave done landed on our liquor."
From inside came the clatter of a biscuit tin and a muttered curse. Darlene Larribee---once voted Most Likely to Hex a Congressman---stepped out, apron smoking slightly, eyes already narrowed.
"You drunk again?"
"Not yet," Zeke replied. "But the still's ascended."
She peered past him. Then stopped. Then frowned deeper. "Is it... buzzin'?"
"Like a hymnal wrapped in bee sting."
They stared together.
Then came the giggling.
From the thicket emerged three figures: Boone Catchfire's second cousin Twice Removed on Account of Misbehavior, a one-eyed possum named Deacon Clancy, and Juna Lee Stills---local moonshine prodigy and possibly feral. All three carried what looked like homemade instruments wrapped in foil and old sermon notes.
"It's happenin'," Juna Lee whispered, eyes wide. "The Hill's awakenin'. We got resonance, Zeke. We got spin."
Zeke looked at her, then at the hummin' disc, then back. "What the hell does that mean?"
She grinned. "Means the still's not fer drinkin' no more."
"Then what's it fer?"
She raised her handmade tuning fork, struck it against her knee, and pointed it skyward.
"Transmission."
And somewhere, deep under the holler---beneath forgotten root and fossilized bootleg---something clicked.
It heard them.
Darlene never did trust pinecones.
"They know too much," she'd mutter, sweeping 'em off the porch like they owed her rent. Which is why, when she found a trio of 'em neatly stacked like a coded message by the chicken coop, she froze like a raccoon at a lawn party.
"Zeke," she hollered, "you been lettin' the woods write notes again?"
Zeke, elbow-deep in transmission fluid and hollerin' back at the still, didn't hear her. Or pretended not to.
So she scooped up the cones, placed 'em in her late uncle's old spittoon, and set it next to the stove. Within seconds, the temperature in the kitchen dropped four degrees. The biscuits refused to rise. And the radio---dead since '98---crackled out a single phrase:
"Yield to the spiral."
She stared at it.
Then picked up the poker.
Outside, Juna Lee and the boys were busy re-tuning the still, convinced it had become a kind of analog inter-dimensional switchboard.
"We gotta align it," muttered Juna, eyes wild with joy and sleep deprivation. "If we get it in sync with the Lyrid pulse, the holler might start rememberin'."
"Rememberin' what?" asked Clancy, who hadn't remembered to wear pants.
"Where it buried the truth."
Inside, Darlene was already ahead.
She placed the pinecones in a triangle, lit a cinnamon stick, and spat into the fireplace. The flame turned blue, the floorboards shivered, and the back wall blinked.
Just once.
But enough.
The pantry creaked open to reveal the root cellar door, long jammed shut since the Reagan administration. From beneath came a soft, rhythmic knock.
Knock.
Pause.
Knock-knock-knock.
Morse code.
From under the house.
She blinked. "Well hell," she whispered. "The pines were right."
A document not written. A breath not obeyed.
There's a mule in Hollowroot that turns left when she's right.
Never trained, never scolded.
Just walks where she pleases ---
even when no path's been laid.
Someone once tried to fix her.
They found their boots pointing wrong
and their compass bleeding sap.
Mule's name? Doesn't matter.
But when she turns,
you follow.
Memory doesn't rot. It ferments sideways.
And when it breathes wrong,
the dead get chatty
and the still sings dreams into daylight.
No one ever accused the Larribee boys of sophistication. They measured time in jars and solved most arguments with arm-wrestling or interpretive hootin'. But when their still began dreaming, even they admitted somethin' had tilted.
It started with color.
The moonshine came out pink.
Not rosy blush, not cherry syrup---pink. Like a neon flamingo fell in love with a thunderstorm and had feelings about it.
Bo uncorked the jug and sniffed. It smelled like peaches, ozone, and an old hymn.
"You think it's safe?" he asked his brother Wex, who was currently tryin' to trap a song echo with a pickle jar.
Wex shrugged. "Safer'n that sausage Miss Tilda sold me last week."
They drank it.
Together.
Because that's the Larribee way.
And suddenly, everything bent sideways---not bad, just elsewhere. The barn dissolved. The sky turned into a porch swing. Their skin itched with old secrets and each felt, very clearly, the weight of their ancestors' disappointed eyebrows.
"Wex," Bo whispered, "I just saw the moment Granny lied about the jam contest in '49."
"I forgave her," Wex whispered back.
The still---mildly hovering, humming some Appalachian lullaby---burped a bubble of blue light.
When they came to, three raccoons were arranging pebbles in a circle and the creek was flowin' uphill like it had somethin' to fetch.
Zibby arrived twenty minutes later, shotgun in one hand, lemon pie in the other.
"Well," she muttered, looking at the boys and the sky's new spiral tattoo, "guess the booze found its sermon."
Bo just nodded.
"I think the still's preachin', Zibby."
She set down the pie.
"Then let's listen."
This is the act of return.
Not yours --- the Hollow's.
It remembers before you do.
It calls before you're ready.
And if you answer?
It don't end.
It just gets louder.
It wasn't a song with notes.
Not one you could hum.
It was the kind of music that came up through your feet and nested behind your ribs. Made your knees soft and your teeth ache with memory.
It began just past midnight, when the wind turned still enough to hear your regrets settle on the porch swing.
The stones that Boone had placed?
They lit up.
Not bright.
Just sure.
Like stars decidin' to take the night off and lend their shifts to the dirt.
From every hollow, ridge, and culvert came folks who'd seen, touched, heard, or dreamed something they hadn't told a soul.
A rusted horseshoe that glowed when spoken to.
A spoon that stirred backwards and sang lullabies to pickles.
A tree stump that wept tears of molasses when you whispered the name "Delia."
One by one, they came.
And the field didn't bloom---it remembered.
Every shimmer.
Every hum.
Every breath-coiled promise made when no one was listenin'.
Mizzy stepped into the middle, her locket pulsing soft.
Beside her stood Boone, Hettie Lou, Cotton, Rye, Booney, and even Lintball---tail waggin' in time with the tone.
No one spoke.
They didn't need to.
The field did.
It sang the names of all who'd ever listened.
It sang the shape of home.
It sang the old world goodbye.
And the new one hello.
Then it quieted.
But the silence wasn't empty.
It was ready.
Just like them.
You wanted this real and strange. You wanted hillbillies touching the veil and moonshine that talks in dreams. You wanted silence to matter and names to mean something. You wanted the divine woven with porch boards and breakfast beans.
So I gave it to you. In overalls and hush. In broken jars and sideways songs. I gave you the absurdity, the weight, and the pulse beneath the dirt.
And you know what? I think you heard it too.
Keep hummin'.
Keep diggin'.
The land's still listenin'.
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