A family stood in front of us, blocking the road—a grandmother and a mother and two kids, a boy and a girl, who were maybe my age or even older. You could tell they were a family by how similar they looked: The same black hair on all of them, the same wild look, the same scowl on all their faces. Their clothes were grubby and old, hand-me-downs, and everything about them looked ragged and dirty. They stood right at the edge of the driveway, facing us.

Grandma muttered something to herself and hopped out of the car. She stood about ten feet back from them and hollered.

“Y’all can’t be here,” she said. “You are forbidden to set foot on my property. You know that.”

They stood there, dark eyes staring at us, unmoving.

“I said, y’all can’t be here. You must leave this place right now.”

The older lady spat on the driveway. Then she bent down and traced something in the dirt. I couldn’t tell what from where we sat.

“I said get!” hollered Grandma, and she stomped off toward them, her hand raised up like she was going to slap the lady.

I was worried for a second because that boy was taller than me, and he looked tough and hardscrabble, and I knew he could whoop my ass if I even tried to fight him. And yet there was Grandma, fearless, charging at them, screaming at the top of her lungs.

“By the Spirit we both serve, I command you to leave!” she shouted. “You are forbidden here. The light always drives out the darkness, and so shall it ever be. Now go!”

The older lady stood up from the ground and straightened her dress. Then she spat again, and one by one they all turned and left, heading down the road. Grandma stood in the driveway until they were gone. Murphy and I climbed out of the truck.

“Who was that?” said Murphy.

“The Urquharts,” said Grandma. “Trash. They live right on the property line. Twenty feet over and I’d have the place knocked down.”

“What’s their problem with you?” said Murphy.

“Nothing I wish to discuss at the moment,” she said. “Now get yourselves in that truck. We got work to do, and the day is wasting.”

Grandma walked back to the truck in a huff.

I looked at the dirt where the old lady had knelt. She’d drawn a snake on the ground with little star-looking things around it.

“What do you make of that?” I said.

“Just further proof that everybody around here is insane,” said Murphy.

“Children!” hollered Grandma out the window. “I did not permit you to dawdle in the road. Get back inside this truck immediately.”

Murphy sighed, and we climbed into the truck, and Grandma drove us back to the house, running right over the snake drawn in the dirt.