by David Neal
After feeding all twelve of her friends, Callie slid her fingers, limp with trust and habit, into one of the boxes and scooped out Petunia and her baby, Juniper. Callie was of course forbidden from touching the snakes—the Reverend had explained many times that without the Spirit to fill and protect her, she would be bitten and quickly dead. But Callie trusted her snakes more than she trusted her own family, and she knew well enough which snakes were venomous, which ill-tempered, and which ones just bared their teeth for show.
She draped Petunia around her neck like a feather boa and let Juniper coil around her wrist. Then she sat down with a thump on the ground and dwelled on her grandfather’s hard mouth, and the way he always looked more through her than at her. She wondered if he had looked at her mother like that when she was still alive, and suddenly Callie’s throat was tight with rage. How dare he.
Callie lay on her back, welcoming the dim glow of the night sky on her face. The stars filled her eyes with dazzling silver, sending shudders down her spine. Juniper travelled up her arm as Petunia nestled into her tangled hair, and Callie, not for the first time, urged the Ghost to fill her.
She had tried so many times before to open herself up to the holy euphoria that attended so easily on her father and grandfather, but she was never sure if she was doing it right, or what exactly she was supposed to be feeling.
A trio of cottonmouths at her elbow began to grow excited, snapping their tails against the dingy plastic of their box, and Callie slid open their door to allow Burke, Earl, and Jacob to slither towards her across the ground. The familiar weight of her pets crawling over her ankles and pooling on her stomach centered her, made her feel as though she could swallow the whole world if ever it rose up and tried to snap its teeth at her.
Callie dredged her memory for the few words of the illicit enchantment her mother had whispered to her at bedtime, the one her grandfather had rapped Callie’s knuckles for when he caught her muttering it over meals. He had called it idolatry, witchcraft even.
“Hail Mary, full of grace. The Lord is with me.”
She was misremembering, she was sure, but it seemed like enough. She felt emboldened by her trespass and repeated the spell again, wringing every ounce of meaning from the words.
“Hail Mary, full of grace. Blessed are thee. Now and at the hour of death, the Lord is with me.”
For a moment, there was nothing, and Callie thought it was going to be another silent night. Then, she tasted sea salt, though she was miles from water, and she smelled the dusky warmth of rosewood, though none of it grew nearby.
Callie heard her name, more in her head than in her ears, and turned her face towards the sound. As her cheek pressed against the dirt, her eyes found the dark corner of the shed where a wooden box sat most days out of the year. The glint of slitted eyes sparkled prettily out from behind the slats, and as soft secret words began to fall on her like rain, Callie understood.
The snake spoke out of the darkness and Callie closed her eyes and let God’s plans unravel all around her.
She understood.
* * *
Once Callie’s dinner had gone cold, Josiah ventured outside to locate his daughter. She was sitting in the glow of the porch light on their wooden steps, a green garden snake hanging from her shoulders. Insects filled the warm night air with a velvety buzz while the snake flicked out a pink tongue to taste the salt of the little girl’s cheek.
Josiah lowered himself down beside his daughter and gingerly retrieved the snake, plucking it up by the neck and tail.
“I told you not to fool with these creatures,” He said, settling the snake down into the sparse grass and watching it slither away. “You’re going to get bit one of these days.”
“He’s just a lil’ old garden snake. He said he just wanted to make me feel better.”
Josiah shook his head, pulling out crumpled flax papers and an Altoids tin from his breast pocket. He tapped out a ration of sweet tobacco from the tin and began to roll a cigarette.
“Snakes can’t talk, Callie.”
Callie scrubbed a puffy eye with the back of her hand.
“You shoulda stood up for me.”
“I did stand up for you,” Josiah said, illuminating Callie’s scornful face with a flick of his lighter. “Your grandfather will never lay a hand on you as long as I’m livin’, and that’s a promise. When I was your age I got beat for every little thing. You should be grateful.”
“You’re afraid of him.”
“Your grandfather’s an important man, Callie, and I respect—”
“He pushes everyone around.”
“Don’t speak ill of your grandfather. He’s done us a great kindness, keeping us on like this after your mother got sick. He practically killed the fatted calf when I showed back up with you.”
“He’s kept us here, all right. We’re trapped like rats.” Josiah pulled a stern face, but Callie continued before he could reprimand her. “It doesn’t matter though. You’ll be Reverend before long.”
Josiah paused mid-drag, smoke curling from his nostrils.
“What?”
Callie gnawed at her stubby thumbnail, drawing blood from the cuticle. Her father snagged her wrist and dumped her hand in her lap.
“Don’t sass me, Callie Ann. I asked you a question.”
The little girl rolled her shoulders back and gazed up at the cloud-wreathed stars.
“Well, if grandpa dies, that makes you the Reverend, right? It’s gonna happen someday, I figure. I think you’d be a good Reverend. Folks at church think so, too. They say so when they think nobody’s listenin’.”
Josiah plucked the cigarette from his lips and looked at his daughter hard. Callie refused to meet her father’s eyes, just drew coiled shapes in the dirt with her fingers instead.
“Have the snakes been talking to you again?” Josiah asked. His tone was even, but his jaw was tight in the low yellow light.
“Snakes can’t talk.”
Josiah reached out to brush a bit of grime from his daughter’s cheek and sighed. “Go get yourself ready for bed. Revival will be here before you know it, and you’re gonna need your rest.”
Callie obediently pulled herself to her feet, kissed her father’s stubbly cheek, and went back inside the house. Josiah watched her go, smoking deeply and wondering.
* * *
The Clearwater Assembly joined forces with the local Holiness Church and Gnatty Branch Signs and Wonders Tabernacle to host a three-day long revival each summer. Like any proper Southern revival, there was old time gospel music, innumerable potluck dishes, and big, beautiful white tents full of ladies fanning themselves with sermon leaflets. Callie always worked the mornings of the revival, sometimes spending as long as four hours ferrying snakes to and from her grandfather’s stage. But once the Clearwater service had ended and the snakes were safely stowed in the back of her father’s truck, Callie was free to play Cornhole or Red Rover with the other children. She made a point to get baptized each year in the peak of the day’s heat, less for the sanctifying nature of the act and more for the refreshing sensation of being dunked in a horse trough of iced water. She usually spent the rest of the afternoon sun-drying and reflecting on God’s blessings while gnawing away at a barbeque rib.
However, this year the Reverend had forgone his usual morning service time in the hopes of drawing in a larger crowd at three in the afternoon. Callie has gotten in line for the horse trough of holiness at two-fifteen, unable to take the heat any longer, but had underestimated the amount of people waiting to publicly dedicate themselves to the Lord. She ended up skittering back to her grandfather’s platform dripping wet and shamefaced at ten-to-three.
“There you are!” Her father exclaimed. He was dressed handsomely in a pressed powder blue shirt and wore his best belt, the one made of genuine leather. “I told you not to wander off.”
“Get to it, girl!” Her grandfather snapped. He was already on stage, guzzling a bottle of water and dressed in red an
d white checkers.
Callie turned on her heel, picking her way through the crowded green at a sprint. Her white dress slapped wetly against her legs, trailing water down the backs of her knees. Some of the more conservative ladies of the congregation sneered at the sheen of her stomach through the almost-translucent fabric. She pushed the shame away and tried to focus her thoughts. This was a big day. There was no room for fumbling.
Callie used both hands to hoist down her father’s truck bed, then tossed back the tarp that shaded the small selection of snakes he had deemed fit for a revival. They snapped to attention in their boxes, eyes following Callie warily. She located Petunia and Edgar immediately. They were her father’s favorites, although he would never admit to having any fondness for something like a snake. She stacked another wooden snake crate on top of Edgar and Petenuia’s box before ferrying the entire load back to her grandfather’s platform.
Josiah was swaying behind the band with his hands pressed to the back of his head. Callie lovingly proffered Edgar and Petunia to his outstretched hands, recognizing the otherworldly gleam in his eyes that silently prompted assistance. Gnatty Branch had lent their fiddler to the small Clearwater worship section, and he sawed away at the strings with furious virtuosity. The sea of bodies crushed up against the platform was twice the size of an average Sunday, and Callie saw plenty of faces alight with the horror of witnessing apostolic wonders for the first time. Josiah, as always, was electric.
The Reverend paced the small corner of the stage where Callie and the snakeboxes sat, rubbing his hands together in a sort of agitation. His granddaughter watched him with unblinking eyes while her heart threatened to burst through her chest.
After a few moments, the Reverend noticed the wooden crate.
“Why did you bring that out here? I didn’t ask for it.”
“Daddy wanted him,” Callie lied, smooth as butter though she couldn’t remember telling a deliberate falsehood in her life. “Just in case two weren’t enough.”
“Stupid boy,” The Reverend muttered, half to himself. “He knows better than to…stupid.”
On stage, Josiah whirled, head tipped back to the swarm of swallows circling through the sky. A woman in the front row was crying and shaking; one of the members of the Clearwater prayer team was taking her by the elbow, speaking in soothing tones.
“Want me to take him back to the truck?” Callie asked, her voice breaking a bit. She had to ask, she knew. It wouldn’t be fair otherwise, and Callie figured God cared an awful lot about fair.
“No, no—leave it.”
The Reverend crossed his bony arms, tapping his toes out of rhythm with the music while Josiah swung Petunia, ever the good sport, around his neck. Callie couldn’t decide if it was the Holy Ghost or a glimmer of jealousy that shined in her grandfather’s eyes as he watched his only son defy death to the screaming adoration of the crowd.
“Fetch one.”
“Reverend?”
“Fetch me a serpent, Callie Ann. The Spirit is moving. I must attend to it.” When Callie stayed rooted to the spot, he actually deigned to look at her. “Go on to the truck. Hurry now.”
“Do you want one from the truck or…it’s just that it’s closer to…well, I reckon we could—” Callie was stuttering, clumsiness slipping out from behind her teeth to perjure her.
“You’ve got your momma’s contentious spirit and your father’s sloth, girl. You make me sick with the shame of you. Fetch me a serpent.”
Something hot rose up in Callie’s throat and her blood burned with boldness. She heaved the wooden box towards her grandfather with a deliberate grunt. A triangular head lifted drowsily behind the cracks in the slats.
“Take Goliath,” Callie said. “He’s the biggest. Mean, too. Everybody will be so impressed when you…when the Spirit protects you.”
Callie raised up her offering and flipped back the lid. The Reverend seized the water moccasin around the middle and strode on stage to join his son. The congregation convulsed with the sight of such a fortuitous thing, and the fiddle screeched out approval. The wind was picking up, sending and electric tingle across Callie’s bare arms as her heart pounded in her chest. Her grandfather’s face was shining with sweat, radiating ecstasy as he raised the serpent up towards heaven. Callie squeezed her eyes shut and mumbled a Hail Mary.
Without warning, Goliath whipped around and sank his fangs into Reverend Clearwater’s forearm.
The congregation writhed like a thing in pain and flooded up on stage to lay on healing hands. Goliath, fat-bodied and sated with violence, slithered away from the body, eliciting gasps and shrieks from those who darted to clear his path. Callie was almost trampled in the sudden uproar, and scrambled up onto bruised knees as quickly as she could. Josiah, still draped with snakes and half-drunk with holiness, struggled to get near his father without bringing the copperheads too close to any of the congregants.
“No one touch that snake!” Josiah was shouting. “That one’s ornery, he wasn’t supposed to—I said don’t touch it, Josephine! Call your brother, have him bring the tong and hooks…”
Josiah was too busy trying to direct traffic to realize that it was already too late. He didn’t even know that the deacon had pronounced his father dead until a murmur of despair rippled through the crowd like a tide.
Somehow, Callie found her father in the fray and clung to his leg, sobbing in grief and relief and other emotions she could not name.
“Callie, don’t, the snakes—!”
But Callie embraced her father tight as death, sopping clothes and all, and buried her face in his shirt.
“The Lord is with me,” She sobbed. “The Lord is with me.”
Petunia leaned over from her perch around Josiah’s wrist to bump her broad nose against Callie’s cheek, but made no move to bite her. Edgar snapped his tail round her neck amicably.
The girl became dimly aware that people were watching her, and looked up to face them through dripping lashes. All the eyes previously fixed on the Reverend’s convulsing body were now glued to Josiah, wreathed in snakes, and his daughter, bramble-haired and safe from snakebites. Callie saw fear in their eyes, but also an awe so big it almost looked like love. It felt as though the very ground had shifted beneath her feet.
Above her head, the sparrows screamed and the wail of ambulance sirens filled the air, but Callie could have sworn she heard church bells.
*
BIOGRAPHIES
STEPHANIE ELLIS writes short story and novella length dark speculative fiction which has found success in a variety of magazines and anthologies. She is co-editor and contributor to The Infernal Clock, a fledgling press which has produced two anthologies to-date. She is also also co-editor of Trembling With Fear, HorrorTree.com’s online magazine.
She can be found, together with samples of her writing, at stephellis.weebly.com and on twitter at @el_stevie.
S.T. GIBSON is a poet, author, and village witch in training. By day she works for an audiobook publisher, and by night she returns to her home on the outskirts of a small New England town to write speculative stories.
A graduate of the creative writing program at the University of North Carolina at Asheville and the theological studies program at Princeton Seminary, S.T. Gibson is the recipient of the Topp Grillot Award for Poetry and the Olivia Grudger Award for Nonfiction. She is the author of the paranormal novella Odd Spirits, and her poetry has been featured in Wordsdance magazine. You can connect with her on her website stgibson.com, or on twitter @s_t_gibson.
ERIC J. GUIGNARD is a writer and editor of dark and speculative fiction, operating from the shadowy outskirts of Los Angeles. He’s won the Bram Stoker Award, been a finalist for the International Thriller Writers Award, and a multi-nominee of the Pushcart Prize. Outside the glamorous and jet-setting world of indie fiction, he’s a technical writer and college professor. Visit Eric at ericjguignard.com, his blog, ericjguignard.blogspot.com, or on Twitter @ericjguignard.
COY HALL live
s on the border of West Virginia with his lovely wife and handsome cat, where he’s an assistant professor of history and writes stories and novels.
SAM HICKS lives in Deptford, South East London, near the river Thames. She spend her days exchanging sarcasms with the local ducks and eating buttered crumpets.
LINDSAY KING-MILLER’s writing has appeared in Glamour Magazine, Bitch Magazine, Cosmopolitan.com, Vice.com, and numerous other publications. She lives in Denver with her partner, their daughter, and two very spoiled cats. She is the author of Ask A Queer Chick (Plume, 2016).
ROMEY PETITE is recognizable by his wire-rimmed spectacles, pinstripes, and suspenders. He loves reading and writing fairy tales, myths, and magical-realist stories that interweave elements of the sacred and mundane. Originally trained as an illustrator, he graduated from the Center for Cartoon Studies and spent some time self-publishing comics before trying to tell stories that don't require pictures to lean on. His short fiction has been published in 3Elements Review, Scott Thrower's podcast Fairy Tales for Unwanted Children, Coffin Bell Journal, Luna Luna Magazine, and Moonchild Magazine. Along with cartoonist Laurel Holden, he is co-author of the illustrated middle-grade reader’s novel Spiderella: The Girl who Spoke to Spiders. He originally hails from New Orleans and now lives in a sleepy little American town with his partner and their pet corgi.
STEVE TOASE lives in Munich, Germany.
His work has appeared in Lackington’s, Aurealis, Not One Of Us, Hinnom Magazine, Cabinet des Feés and Pantheon Magazine amongst others. In 2014, “Call Out” (first published in Innsmouth Magazine) was reprinted in The Best Horror Of The Year 6.
