The Remaking

by Clay McLeod Chapman

  You want that fella to fall in love with you?

  Ella Louise had something for that.

  You want to get back at your boss for firing you?

  Ella Louise had a little something for that, too.

  You feeling sick in your soul?

  Restless in the head?

  Unhappy at your core?

  Ella Louise had so many miracle cures. Medicines that had no names. Roots and leaves and fungi of all kinds. Flora and fauna, sealed within their own jars. The walls of her cottage were lined in glass. Hundreds if not thousands of mason jars, each one holding their own medicinal specimen. Herbs and insects and liquids of various viscosities. Each had a specific purpose, a particular healing property. Her medicines could do what the doctors in town couldn’t. You just had to be brave enough to come out here and knock on her door.

  You had to ask.

  Please, Ella Louise, please help me.

  Save me.

  Please.

  Nobody would come out and admit they had ever paid Ella Louise a visit. No one would profess to taking one of her cure-alls. You might as well confess to consorting with the Devil.

  But we did.

  We all did.

  Men and women, mothers and fathers, boys and girls alike.

  How couldn’t we?

  Ella Louise never judged. Never turned anyone away. She opened her doors to any soul in need who was willing to come knocking.

  Shawna Reynolds had been suffering from severe cramps for the last few months of her pregnancy. She had only a few weeks before her due date, but the pain had become unbearable. Her family physician had failed her. Whatever prescriptions he provided did nothing. Shawna even crossed two county lines just to visit a prenatal specialist in the biggest hospital she could find, and even they couldn’t get to the bottom of what was wrong with her.

  Shawna and her husband had been trying—and trying—to get pregnant for years. Years. They prayed and prayed, but nothing ever took root. Just when they were about to finally give up, just when there wasn’t any hope left of these two ever having their own child…It happened.

  A miracle.

  But the pregnancy took its toll on Shawna. Everyone could tell just by looking at her. That child was leeching the life right out of her. Rather than plumping up as most mothers do, she was only getting thinner. Skeletal. Shawna always had to rest after a few steps, sit down and catch her breath, but she never caught it. Always exhausted, and yet unable to sleep for more than a few minutes. The more her stomach bulged, the more the rest of her wizened away. You could see her rib cage rise up from her skin with every breath. Her cheekbones practically cut through her face. Her eyes sank into the depths of their sockets, all hollowed out.

  Those cramps just kept getting worse.

  Crippling her.

  Killing her.

  If you had no other choice, if modern medicine had failed you, I’d imagine you’d go visit Ella Louise, too. Shawna walked into these woods, alone, and knocked on her door.

  And asked.

  Please, Ella Louise, please help me.

  Save me.

  Please.

  Ella Louise took a mortar and pestle and ground a few leaves and dried root into a powder. She scooped a spoonful and mixed it with water and told Shawna to drink.

  Drink it all.

  Whatever it was, it worked. Shawna’s cramps stopped. All the pain, washed away.

  A miracle.

  Shawna was walking again. Color returned to her cheeks. Her ribs drifted beneath a layer of flesh. Her smile, her happiness, returned, and nobody was the wiser. No one, not even her husband, knew how. Nobody cared. All that mattered was Shawna had turned a corner.

  A miracle.

  It wasn’t until Shawna was finally nine months pregnant that she woke to discover that her bedsheets were spotted. There was blood all over the bed.

  Blood on her thighs.

  Shawna’s husband—Wayne Reynolds—rushed her straight to the doctor’s house in the middle of the night. Carried her the whole way, until they were both covered in blood.

  The baby didn’t make it.

  Their doctor believed the miscarriage had been induced by some sort of chemical agent. The physician didn’t want to alarm Wayne, but they’d found traces of toxins that nobody in their right mind would ever ingest. Especially while they were pregnant.

  Had Shawna been exposed to any kind of rare plant lately, he asked? Like Jerusalem cherry? Water hemlock? Rosary pea? Had she eaten anything from the woods recently?

  Shawna broke down and confessed she had been taking a spoonful of Ella Louise’s special remedy for weeks. Perhaps a little bit more than a spoonful, she sobbed. Wayne was beside himself with grief. Son or daughter, he was prepared to love the child with his whole heart.

  They buried a boy.

  It doesn’t take long before grief curdles into rage, now, does it? Wayne had always been a proud man. A pillar of society. A man of God. Every Sunday, he’d be first in line to receive the sacrament. So imagine how crestfallen, how crushed he was when he found out his own wife had been sneaking off into the woods, behind his back, for a remedy that balked at God’s own divine providence. A potion that killed his unborn child before he was able to take in his first breath. That consigned their unbaptized lamb, as Wayne himself fervently believed, to eternal hellfire.

  What would you have done if you were in Wayne’s shoes?

  What would any of us have done?

  He wanted retribution. He wanted Ella Louise to pay for what she’d done. To his wife. To his child. To his family that would never be.

  Who among us wouldn’t have demanded the exact same thing? Who could have blamed him? Certainly not anyone from our town. Certainly not the people of Pilot’s Creek.

  No—they understood. They saw his pain, his grief, his rage…and they knew what had to be done.

  This had been a long time coming. Imagine a bonfire just waiting for the match.

  Yearning to burn.

  Now it was lit.

  It didn’t take much convincing on Wayne’s part to get his friends all fired up. There were five men, all told. All members of the church. All law-abiding citizens.

  Harold Smith. My own mailman.

  Jeremy Hawthorne. Owner of Hawthorne Hardware.

  Tom Watkins. Dentist.

  Bill Pendleton. Accountant.

  On this night, twenty years ago to the day, those five men went beyond the law. On this night, Wayne demanded justice no court could ever offer him and his family.

  Tonight, they were going to burn a witch.

  They circled around Ella Louise’s cottage in the dark. Lord only knows how long they stood out there. Waiting. Staring through the windows. Watching Ella Louise and Jessica go about their business, none the wiser. Jessica reading to herself while Ella Louise sewed together a new dress for her daughter. Something pretty, no doubt. Humming the whole time.

  Their plan was to smoke them out. Wayne tossed a bottle filled with diesel through the window. Then Harold Smith tossed in another. The flames spread over the pine floor. All those mason jars, all that glass lining the walls of the cottage—it all started to sparkle. The reflection of the conflagration lit up within each jar, hundreds of gleaming stars coming together in some unholy constellation.

  The men waited.

  And waited.

  How long did those two hide inside? Longer than you might imagine. They must’ve known what was waiting for them. But the air grew thick. Dense with smoke. You could hear them coughing, gasping for air as glass started to shatter all around. All those jars, all their remedies, their life’s work, was melting. Bursting. Going up in flames.

  Ella Louise eventually burst through the door with nine-year-old Jes
sica clutched in her arms, hoisting her as best she could. That poor little girl was pressed tight against her mother’s chest, coughing uncontrollably.

  Jeremy Hawthorne and Bill Pendleton each grabbed Ella Louise by her arms. She struggled against their grip, trying desperately to pull herself free.

  Jessica fell to the ground. Her mother yelled for her to run, run, so Jessica scrambled to her feet and raced for the trees.

  She didn’t get far.

  Wayne Reynolds grabbed Jessica by her hair and yanked, sending her back to the ground. Ella Louise let out a howl as the man scooped her daughter up into his arms. Jessica’s feet kicked through the air. But it was pointless. Hopeless. She couldn’t wrestle herself free.

  Tom Watkins was good with an axe, so in a matter of a few swings to a sapling, they had themselves a ready-made stake to tie Ella Louise to. They heaped kindling made of the branches of that sapling at her feet. Wet wood burns slowly. Very slowly.

  The men circled around Ella Louise as she begged for her daughter’s life. Pleaded with them to spare her. Do what they must to her, but let Jessica live.

  The little girl yelled and screamed for her mama. Wayne Reynolds merely passed her off to Bill Pendleton. He fished out a box of wooden matches from his pocket and shook them next to Ella Louise’s ear, those matches rattling.

  Our town will not suffer a witch to live, Wayne said.

  Then he struck a match.

  Lighting her feet most certainly assured a slow burn. Took those flames a while to level with her head. Every mounting inch, every licking flicker was an invitation for her to shriek.

  To plead for mercy.

  To beg.

  They made Jessica watch. Watch the fire rise. Watch the flames engulf her mother. Watch her body disappear beneath a sheet of orange and yellow. Jessica’s screams had subsided into a keening. Just wet sounds. No shape or contours to it at all. Nothing but grief.

  Suddenly little Jessica pulled herself free from Bill Pendleton’s grip and ran right to her mother. Embraced her in flames. Wayne rushed to grab her and drag her back, but the girl wouldn’t let go. The two ended up burning together.

  Imagine, if you can, what it must have been like. Think about the flames at your feet.

  Think about them climbing up your legs.

  Your knees.

  Your thighs.

  Think about the smoke filling your lungs.

  Think about the smell of your hair. That incendiary hiss filling the air, reeking of flame. Your hair, now burning, punctuated with an intermittent sizzle and pop. The smell of it is unavoidable now. Sulfur, scorched and organic. The odor of calcinated tissue wafting along. The smoke rising up from the smoldering web on your scalp, roasting for just a moment before combusting all together. Those chestnut tresses go up so quickly, as fragile as a bird’s nest on fire.

  Ever smell flesh on fire?

  I have.

  We all did. Everyone living within ten miles of Pilot’s Creek smelled it that night.

  I heard their screams. From miles away, in the safety of my own bedroom, under the roof of my parents’ house, I swear I heard Ella Louise and Jessica Ford screaming together.

  Mother and daughter.

  October 16, 1931. Four minutes past midnight.

  At dawn, the sun rose up to ash. All that was left were their blackened bones. The ribs of one skeleton were much smaller than the other, both charred chest cavities gripping onto each other in one last attempt to hold on. Stay together.

  Those men buried Ella Louise in these woods. No gravestone. No marker of any kind. Wherever her body lies out here, those five men took that location to their own graves.

  Nobody knows now.

  Jessica was different. These men knew she was more powerful than her mother. They were afraid of her. She might rise from the grave and avenge her mother for what they’d done.

  So what did they do?

  You know this part of the story. Everyone in town knows. Those foolish men protected themselves the only way they knew how. With God. With consecrated ground.

  Wayne and his co-conspirators buried poor little Jessica in a steel-reinforced coffin. They laid her body to rest right there, in our very own Pilot’s Creek Cemetery, along with the rest of the dead from our town. After they lowered her coffin into the ground, they filled it with concrete. Three whole bags’ worth. And they poured gravel over the top of her hardened sepulcher.

  But those boys didn’t stop there, did they? No—they went ahead and erected a metal fence out of interconnected crosses. Over a hundred crucifixes, arm-in-arm with one another, surrounding her resting place.

  To keep Jessica in the ground.

  To contain the ghost of the Little Witch Girl of Pilot’s Creek.

  Her grave is all that’s left of this story. Their cottage is gone. Nobody knows for sure where it stood.

  See this patch of soil where we’re sitting? The grass won’t grow. Trees won’t grow. Nothing will grow here now. Not in this tainted soil. I reckon this is where Jessica and Ella Louise last held on to each other. Where their bodies burned. Nothing but scorched earth.

  You ever hear of that fungus that killed upwards of sixteen thousand trees back in 1935? Whole forest was nothing but gnarled skeletons in every direction. Dead chestnut trees as far as the eyes could see. The wood wasn’t even good enough for lumber. Rotten all the way through.

  What do you think did that?

  Wasn’t some fungus.

  That was Ella Louise. Her body’s buried in these woods still, somewhere. Out here. Her blood soured the earth. Made the trees sick. What was left of her body broke down, seeping into the soil, until those roots sucked her up and choked. Took ten whole years to replenish these woods. Another five for anything to grow. The chestnuts and Eastern pines have finally come back—but still nothing grows on this very spot where we’re sitting now.

  If you ask me, those two aren’t done.

  Not with this town.

  You can chalk it up to fate, if you feel like it, but everybody knows about Harold Smith’s car wreck. How Jeremy Hawthorne died in a freak accident while restocking his shop late one night. How Tom Watkins asphyxiated after inhaling too much of his own laughing gas, his pants puddled around his ankles. How Bill Pendleton’s body was riddled with all kinds of cancer, every last cell blackened to a crisp.

  And Wayne? Well, everybody knows Wayne Reynolds took his own life not long after what he and his friends had done. Brought a double-barreled shotgun up to his mouth, wrapping his lips around the muzzle. There’s no way of saying for sure, but folks believe the last word he uttered before pulling the trigger wasn’t a word at all, but a name…

  Jessica.

  I hear her in my dreams. Hear her calling for me. Pleading with me. Begging for us all to save them, spare her mother, make it stop, make the flames stop.

  But none of us did. None of us did a damn thing. We let them burn out there that night.

  We all let it happen.

  The whole town.

  I visited Jessica’s grave. Once. Years back, when I was just a kid. Dumbest goddamn thing I’d ever done in my whole life. But you got to understand—you’ve got to believe me when I tell you—all that time, sixteen years up to that point, Jessica had been calling for me.

  Whispering to me. Come to me, she’d say. Come to me.

  I had to see her.

  Just once. Just to know if I was really hearing her voice or if I was going out of my mind.

  I snuck out of my parents’ house in the middle of the night and slipped off to the cemetery. I hadn’t considered the time, but when it reached four minutes after midnight…

  I saw her.

  Jessica. Waltzing along her grave in circles. She wandered as far as her crucifix-fence would allow. Never ste
pped outside it. The hem of her handstitched dress was still scorched in a ring of ash, while the rest of her dress was blinding white. Fresh cotton.

  When she saw me—and she most certainly did see me—she smiled. That grin filled my chest with cold. My lungs locked up. I felt like I was drowning.

  She reached out to me. Held out her hand.

  Help me, she said.

  I took a step closer. Lifted my arm.

  Help me…

  I stopped. There couldn’t be more than a few inches between our fingers.

  Help…

  I couldn’t move. Couldn’t take another step, no matter how loud her voice grew in my skull.

  Help…

  I stepped back. Away from her. Her smile withered. That was when I saw Jessica for what she really was. What she’d become, out there, under the ground, after all that time.

  Her blackened bones.

  Her charred lips.

  Those mossy teeth.

  They say little Jessica is still searching for her mother. Until they’re reunited, her soul won’t be at peace. She wanders about her grave, just waiting for someone to take her hand.

  To let her out.

  There it is. Four minutes past midnight. You can set your watch to it. Jessica and Ella Louise Ford breathed their last at this very moment, twenty years ago to the day.

  Can you hear them? The trees? All those pines at your back, bristling in the breeze. You can nearly feel the pine needles against your neck, can’t you? Piercing your skin. The branches will reach out. Grab you. Pull you away from the campfire and drag you back into the shadows.

  You’ll become a story, too. We all become ghost stories one day.

  A good ghost story gets told…and retold. It’s in the telling where the tale takes on a life of its own. A ghost story grows. It exists on the breath of those who tell it.

  This one will live beyond me.

  And you.

  It’ll live beyond all of us. This whole town. As long as there’s someone around to tell it.

  And tell it.

  You hear that, Jessica? I did my part. Just like I was supposed to. Like I’ve always done.

  I told your story. Again.