Cumberland Furnace & Other Fear Forged Fables

by Ronald Kelly

  But the last blasphemous act had been the worst. Someone had defecated on the altar.

  Pastor Wilkes’ face was long and mournful as his huge hands gripped both sides of the podium. “The devil has been testing us lately, my friends,” he said in that deep baritone of his. “At first I just thought it was some disrespectful kids. But after the second incident, I realized that it was something much more serious. It is not an outsider who has committed these sinful acts, but someone in our own midst.”

  I couldn’t believe what I was hearing. A member of the congregation had done those horrible things? A nervous sensation of cold dread began to form in the pit of my stomach, although I wasn’t sure why.

  “Following the burning of the Bible, the deacons and I discussed the matter and came to a decision,” he told us. A grim smile crossed his face. “It’s amazing what you can buy at Radio Shack these days.”

  He then picked up a manila envelope that was lying atop the podium and unfastened the clasp of the flap. “I really hate to show you this,” he said, “but God has compelled me to do so.”

  Pastor Wilkes then pulled an 8x10 photograph from the envelope and held it at armslength for all to see. The congregation gasped as one. The nervous ball of dread deep down in my belly suddenly turned into a cold, hard stone.

  Pictured there in the dimly-lit sanctuary, with her granny panties and support hose pooled around her ankles was my grandmother… smearing her feces across the front of the pulpit.

  I groaned involuntarily, as though someone had just sucker punched me in the gut. I heard someone clear their throat haughtily from the pew behind me. It was Naomi Saunders, the church busybody. I could feel her hot, self-righteous eyes burning into the back of my neck.

  An uneasy silence hung heavily in the sanctuary for a long moment. Then Pastor Wilkes turned and regarded the elderly woman sitting at the church organ. “It grieves me in my heart to do this, Miss Sarah, but I must ask you to leave us now.”

  I watched as my grandmother primly turned off her organ and, for the very last time, left the spot she had occupied for countless Sunday mornings. With her head held high, she walked down the center aisle, enduring the stares of shock and disgust that etched the faces of the congregation.

  As she reached the rear doorway, I shakily stood to my feet. I couldn’t believe the pastor had handled my grandmother’s comeuppance in such a callus and tactless manner. Why couldn’t he and the deacons have confronted her privately?Standing there, I stared the preacher square in the face. “This isn’t right,” I told him in front of everyone.

  I looked for some sign of satisfaction in his face, but there was none. “No,” he said flatly. “It wasn’t.”

  Outside in the parking lot, we sat in the car. “Why, Grandma?” I asked her. “Can you give me a reason?”

  She was silent.

  “Was it because you wanted the church to buy that new organ last month and the budget committee voted it down?”

  She said absolutely nothing in her defense. She simply sat there in the passenger seat, head bowed as if in prayer… but eyes wide open.

  I found Grandma dead the following Monday morning.

  She laid there peacefully in her bed, wrinkled hands folded across her chest, a tiny curl of a smile upon her thin lips.

  The cause of her death was undeniable. Sitting on her nightstand was a tall, skinny bottle. The stained cork sat neatly next to it.

  “Aw, Grandma,” I sighed as I picked up the bottle. It was completely empty. “You drank it all.”It had only been a quarter full the last time I had seen it, but apparently that had been enough.

  The next two days were a blur to me. There was so much to attend to. The proper arrangements were made at the local funeral home; the casket, the vault, the times of visitation and, of course, the funeral itself. After the preparations, I went back to that empty little house on Mulberry Street. The place was a wreck. Along with her will to live, Grandma had apparentlylost her will to clean. I made the four-poster bed she had died in, then moved on to the rest of the house. There were dirty dishes in the sink and damp towels strewn across the bathroom floor.

  The following day, Grandma was stately and dignified in her burnished, rose-hued casket, wearing a dress she had worn at many a Sunday service. The chapel was decorated with a forest of flower arrangements, ceramic angel figurines, and matted pictures of Thomas Kinkade churches that played “Amazing Grace” when you wound a music box on the back.

  The funeral was almost unbearably long, populated by the folks of Harmony, as well as the congregation that had ousted her from their midst only a couple of days before. As Pastor Wilkes droned on and on about what a faithful, God-fearing woman she had been, I sat there on the front pew and tried to imagine Grandma in heaven. But I couldn’t. It simply wouldn’t come to me. Trying to picture her in such a celestial setting was like staring at a blank canvas.

  After the graveside service, everyone met back at the church fellowship hall for a lunch of covered dishes and desserts. I wasn’t very hungry. I just wanted to accept my share of condolences and get out of there. I had much to deal with that afternoon… mostly the nagging question of exactly why my last living relative had done the terrible things she had.

  I found myself standing next to the dessert table with Namoi Sanders. As the woman stuffed her face, she told me about how wonderful a woman Grandma had been and how they were all going to miss her dearly. I pretty much nodded my head solemnly and thought about how very delicious the cookie I was munching was, my second one, in fact.

  “These are pretty good,” I said. I took another bite and washed it down with sweet tea.

  “Snickerdoodles,” Naomi said with a smile. “She always said they were your favorite.”

  I stopped chewing. “Who made these?”

  “Your grandmother, apparently,” she told me. “We found them on that table when we came to set up this morning.”

  Dirty dishes in the sink. Coffee cups, supper plates, mixing bowls…

  “I guess it was one last, loving gesture… God bless her.” Naomi picked up a greeting card from off the table and handed it to me. “This was with it.”

  Numbly, I took it. The card face read “From your Sister in Christ”. When I opened it I found there was no printed caption, only Grandma’s unmistakably floral penmanship. I barely took two breaths as I read the inscription.

  Farewell, my friends… May we meet again in the glorious hereafter…where the hearth fires shall crackle with warmth and we shall labor together in eternity. I shall see you there.Love, Sarah.

  “Sad, but sweet, wasn’t it?” said Namoi.

  I stared at the handwriting in the card. What had she been talking about? There were no hearth fires in heaven… no fire at all. And paradise was a place of rest, not a realm of endless labor…

  I looked down at the half-eaten cookie in my hand, then at the platter on the table. Only three cookies remained where there had been an even two dozen before.

  As I left the church, I wanted to puke… but I couldn’t. The poison was there to stay.

  When I had cleaned the house, I had made the bed… but had neglected to look beneath Grandma’s pillow. When I did look, I knew exactly what I would find.

  A yellowed playing card with a fairy princess on the face.

  Now I understood why I couldn’t picture Grandma in heaven. She was in a much more sinister place. A fiery realm full of ogres and dragons… and wizards named Leech.

  THE THING AT THE SIDE OF THE ROAD

  The thing at the side of the road worried Paul Stinson something awful.

  He didn’t know why. It was nothing more than roadkill. Some unfortunate creature that had strayed past the gravel shoulder of Highway 987 and got clipped by a passing vehicle. Or maybe it had reached the center line, got mashed beneath speeding tires, and crept its way back to the side before curling up and giving up the ghost. Either way, it was dead. Paul had passed it on the way to work and back for the past two weeks
and it was hunkered there in the exact same spot… nothing more than a clump of glossy fur amid a fringe of brown weeds and wilted cocklebur.

  It was the fact that Paul couldn’t easily identify the thing that bothered him so. The thing was too big to be a possum or a coon. It certainly wasn’t a cat… much too bulky and big-boned for that. If it was a dog it was bigger than anything that Paul had seen running around. And its coat bugged him, too. It was slick and black, almost oily looking, with thin streaks of gray running through it.

  What the hell is that thing? Paul found himself wondering every time he drove past.

  Not that the thing at the side of Highway 987 was the only thing about Harlan County that bothered Paul. No, since the company sent him down from Louisville to take over the local State Farm office, he had found more than enough to be bothered about. The people, the way they looked and acted… hell, even the lay of the land was all somehow wrong. But it was nothing tangible… nothing he could actually put his finger on. Every time he tried expressing his concerns to his superior back at the main office he came off looking like a freaking idiot.

  That Saturday afternoon, on the way home from getting groceries in town with his wife, Jill, Paul decided that he had finally had enough. He wasn’t driving another mile without stopping and finding out exactly what that furry black thing was.

  When he slowed the Escalade to the side of the highway, Jill turned and looked at him. “What are you doing?”

  Paul sighed and put the vehicle into park. “You remember that thing at the side of the road? The one I pointed out on the way to town?”

  Jill nodded. “The dead dog?”

  “Yeah, but that’s the point,” said Paul, shutting off the engine. “I don’t know if it’s really a dog or not.”

  His wife regarded him with irritation. “What do you care?”

  Paul exhaled through his nose and gripped the steering wheel. That was Jill’s typical

  reaction. March on through life with blinders on. No curiosity, no worries. Just that

  annoying, sugar-coated, Pollyanna attitude of hers.

  “I care because it’s bugging the shit out of me and I need to know, that’s why.”

  Jill stiffened up a bit and sat back in her seat. She knew better than to argue with her husband when he was in such a pissy mood.

  Paul climbed out of the Escalade, leaving the driver’s door open. “I’ll just be a minute.”

  “Don’t touch that thing. It could’ve died of a disease or something.”

  Paul ignored Jill’s comment. As he walked down the shoulder of Highway 987, a beat-up Ford pickup passed by. The driver – an old man wearing a green John Deere cap – threw up his hand at him, as the old folks did in greeting.

  I don’t know you, buddy, thought Paul, neglecting to return the gesture. Ignorant hick.

  As he walked toward mound of black fur, he surveyed his surroundings. The valley was narrow, with thin stretches of farmland on either side. Across the road was a small farm; a two-story white house, graywood barn, a few outbuildings. It was early spring, so the pastures were empty of crops. No cows around at all.

  A little smile of triumph crossed Paul’s face as he came within eight feet of the questionable roadkill. Now, let’s see what the hell you are. He bent down and picked up a dead branch that lay at the side of the highway.

  When he finally stood over the animal, he was struck by exactly how large the thing was. Even curled inward the way it was, it was huge… much bigger than a normal dog. All he could see was that glossy black coat with the strange gray-striped pattern running through it. He couldn’t make out the creature’s head, tail, or legs; they were completely

  tucked from sight. Standing close to it now, Paul found that the coat wasn’t actually fur, but heavy black bristles, more like that of a wild boar than a canine.

  Also, even after a couple of weeks of rotting on the side of the highway, Paul smelled no trace of decay. Instead, there was merely a heavy muskiness to the thing lying on the shoulder.

  He should have found all this, well, unsettling. Instead, he found his inability to identify the animal infuriating. “Well, we’ll just flip you over and take a better look at you,” he said. Paul wedged the tip of the branch underneath the thing and started to exert a little leverage.

  That was when the thing at the side of the road woke up.

  “Damn!” Paul jumped back as it stretched and then lifted it’s head. It’s massive head. The thing’s black-bristled skull was long and narrow, almost rat-like in a way, its tiny ears laid back sharply toward its broad neck. It had silver eyes. Silver like polished chrome. And the teeth. Lord have mercy! How could anything have so many long, jagged teeth within the cradle of two jaws?

  Paul Stinson knew then that the thing at the side of the road hadn’t been dead for two weeks.

  It had been waiting. Waiting for someone stupid enough to stop by and wake it up.

  Paul held onto the tree branch, but knew that it wouldn’t serve as any sort of effective weapon. He’d fare better going against a pit bull with a toothpick. He took a couple of wary steps backward as the thing stood up. Its legs were short and stubby, like a weasel’s, but powerful. It shook its coat off with a shudder, shedding a couple weeks’ worth of debris. Dead leaves, gravel, an old Snickers wrapper someone had tossed out a car window. It yawned, stretching those awful triangular jaws to capacity. The thing could

  have swallowed a softball without strangling. And all those damn teeth! And a long, thick tongue as coarse and gray as tree bark.

  Paul began to back away. “What…what the hell are you?”

  The thing cocked its huge head and grinned.

  Paul suddenly remembered the Escalade behind him. The driver’s door stood wide open.

  The thing saw it at the same time.

  Paul turned and began to run. He didn’t get far until he sensed the thing beside him, then outdistancing him. Up ahead, in the passenger seat, sat Jill. Her pretty face was a frightened mask blanched of color. She watched, mortified, as the thing, which was about the size of a young calf, poured on the speed, heading for the open door of the SUV.

  “Paul,” he saw her mutter. Then he heard her, loud and shrill. “PAUL!”

  “Stop!” Paul muttered beneath his breath. “Stop you, sonofabitch!”

  But it didn’t. It knew where it was going and it got there a moment later. The black-bristled thing leapt into the Escalade and, with a long tail as sleek and serpentine as a monkey’s, grabbed the door handle and slammed the door solidly behind it.

  “NO!” Paul reached the door as the power locks engaged with a clack! The thing was smart… and it knew what it wanted. And what it wanted at that moment was to not be disturbed.

  “Paul!” shrieked Jill, hidden by the thing’s heaving, black bulk. “Oh, God… Paul, help me! Oh, God… it hurrrrrrts!”

  Outside the vehicle, Paul could hear the thing at work. Biting. Tearing. Ripping.

  Frantically, he looked around; found a large rock at the far side of the highway. He grabbed it up in both hands and battered at the side window. It held fast, refusing to shatter. Damn safety glass!

  Suddenly, the inner glass of the Escalade began to gloss over with great, thick curtains of crimson. “Paul!” screamed Jill from inside that slaughterhouse on wheels. “Paul… pleeeeeeease!”

  Her husband began to scream himself, loud and horrified, full of utter hopelessness. He paced back and forth beside the vehicle, wishing… no, praying that some ignorant Kentucky redneck would happen along to help him. But the highway remained empty and no one came.

  The last window to gloss over with gore was the driver’s window. The thing turned and grinned at him with those awful, four-inch teeth. Pieces of Jill clung inbetween. Her ear, the ruptured sack of an eye, the bottom half of those ruby red lips he had kissed so passionately following their wedding vows seven years ago.

  The thing licked its glistening gray lips, then turned back to the ugly, jagged sa
ck of seat-belted carrion that had once been Paul Stinson’s wife. Rivulets of blood obscured the horrible sight from view… but far from mind.

  At a loss of anything better to do, Paul dug his cell phone from his jacket pocket and dialed 911.

  The first one out of the Harlan County Sheriff’s car was a tall, burly fellow in his fifties. “What seems to be the problem, sir?” he asked. He had a stern, suspicious expression on his broad face; the same severe look that the locals customarily directed toward people who had been born and bred beyond the county line.

  Paul quelled the impulse to run up and grab hold of the man in complete desperation. “An… an animal of some kind is inside my car!” he said. “I… I… I think it’s… oh, God… I think it’s killed her!”

  The deputy, whose name tag identified him as Frank McMahon, walked briskly toward the Escalade. His eyes narrowed as he saw the blood-splattered windows. “What sort of animal? A dog?”

  Paul laughed, almost hysterically, then caught himself. “No… no… wasn’t a damn dog.”

  Deputy McMahon tried the doors. They were all locked. He turned questioning eyes toward Paul.

  “It locked them… by itself.”

  The law officer regarded him suspiciously. “Sir… exactly what is going on here?”

  Anger flared in Paul’s eyes. “I told you… some… some thing… it jumped in there and attacked my wife…”

  “And it slammed the door behind it and locked it?”

  Paul realized how very lame that sounded. “Yes.”

  McMahon studied Paul for a long second, then turned to his partner – a tall, lanky young man – who stood in front of the patrol car. “Grab the Slim-Jim, Jasper… and the shotgun.”

  Soon, both county deputies were standing next to the Escalade, looking at one another. They then looked at Paul, who lingered at the front of the vehicle, pacing back and forth nervously.