by Sean Demory
My latest sun is sinking fast/my race is nearly run he sang, that strong, sweet voice quieting her hunger. My longest trials now are past/my triumph has begun.
The dead girl began to sing along, breath coming as effortlessly as sleep after a long day’s work and a hot dinner. Oh come, angel band/come and around me stand/oh, bear me away on your snow white wings/to my immortal home/oh, bear me away on your snow white wings/to my immortal home.
The jar flies stopped screaming, and she could smell rancid fat and old hair tonic.
“Haint’s back,” the dead girl gasped. “Best kill you now. It’ll be a kindness.”
“Wait.” The Wayfaring Stranger smiled at her. “Just you wait.”
Fixin’ to Hang
The dead girl felt the Wayfaring Stranger’s warm hand in hers once before he fell.
The haint came roaring up the mountain, dragging a dead man by the heel. “What sumbitch is sittin’ on my porch?” he howled, and the hanged men gurgled and hissed in the forest behind him. “What sumbitch is fixin’ to hang?”
Somehow, the Wayfaring Stranger calmed it down. He raised his hand, took off his hat and began to speak, and the haint’s muscles stopped twitching. He complimented the haint on the dead girl’s hospitality and the beauty of his land and the haint puffed up with pride. He told a dirty joke and the haint laughed with a black-lung rattle that lasted after the laugh ended. When the haint told the dead girl to kill a chicken for the table, she looked it in the eye and knew that the Wayfaring Stranger would be dead before sunrise.
After the Wayfaring Stranger ate, the haint sent the dead girl to put on her good dress. She went into the small backroom and dressed slowly in the patchwork party dress, hands lingering over denim and black-dyed wool as she waited for a dull thud from the main room. The dead girl took the haint’s straight razor from the top of a rough-cut dresser and hid it in a fold of her dress.
The dead girl decided that the haint would remember this day, one way or another.
When she came back to the room, the haint was sitting, eyes half-open as the Wayfaring Stranger played a soft, mournful song. It motioned to the dead girl and she sat by its seat so it could run long, spidery fingers through her long, dark hair.
The dead girl looked at the floor. She’d learned to wait, listening to the haint’s nails gouge furrows in its chair and feeling its fingers scrape along her cheek. She felt its fingertips twitch before its hand went slack and listened to the Wayfaring Stranger’s song.
Dead girl, dead girl, come away with me he sang insistently, the sound of the guitar ebbing and flowing in the room like breath. Follow me where the sun shines bright/ Move fast, move fast, only take what you need/Can’t keep the haint down all night.
She looked at the haint and saw its eyes rolled back, its jaw slack. She heard a quiet scrape as the Wayfaring Stranger stood and looked up at him, saw the care in his eyes as he sang.
Saved a man bein’ rode by a hag every night/Gave a drink to the Wandering Jew/ Helped a girl held down by the Serpent hisself/Now I come up this mountain for you. Yes, I come up this mountain for you. And he began to walk, playing softly.
The dead girl watched him leave, saw the tears in the back of his coat where his shadow had been carved free. She sat for a while, her head resting on the haint’s thigh. She watched the haint twitch in its sleep like a starving dog on the hunt.
Then she stood and walked, hearing crickets in the distance and smelling the warm summer air in the Wayfaring Stranger’s wake.
The dead girl walked through the garden of hanged men, listening to them groan and mutter in the darkness. She walked past blackberry brambles with dark thorns, glinting in the night like two-penny nails. She walked past her still, dark pond and saw black shapes gliding under the water. She walked and listened, hearing a snatch of song or quiet strumming in the distance until she saw the Wayfaring Stranger walking along a narrow path toward the river.
The clouds had parted and she could see him look back once and smile, wide and white and relieved.
The dead girl heard something tear behind her, snapping and popping in the woods, and she fought not to run.
The clouds closed over the moon and the jar flies screamed as the haint came for them. The dead girl could hear strangled voices barking and slurring to each other. She could hear the haint curse and fume, heard heavy rope snap and sing. She knew that she’d never get away if she ran.
The dead girl walked deeper into the woods, stepping over twisting roots and leaping over dark, thick patches of moss and listened for gasping sobs, smelled sweat and blood and fear. She found the Wayfaring Stranger crouched behind a tree, battered and muddy and gloriously alive. She sat beside him, put one cold hand over his warm mouth and held his other hand tight, feeling his pulse stutter and pop in his palm.
They hid in the undergrowth as the haint’s hanged men blundered through, heads flopping loose under burlap sacks, hands reaching out to grab and catch. The dead girl saw the haint in the distance, a low fire guttering in its palm.
“You git on home, my darlin’ gal,” it said, each word landing like a heavy strap across her shoulders. “My crops need tended, my dinner needs cooked and my bed’s so cold, my darlin’ gal. You git on home, leave that other one to me.”
The dead girl pointed to the path and stood as the hanged men passed. She began to follow them, dragging her feet heavily through the brush. She reached a cold hand out, blundered past one of the hunters and kept moving, looking back to see the Wayfaring Stranger lurching behind.
She kept moving toward the river, listening to the water flowing and waiting to jump. The dead girl heard a stumble, the sound of well-worn shoes moving quickly toward the path followed by gurgling coughs and guttural bellows. She didn’t turn around until she saw the river, refused to look back until she could see that deep, dark water stretch in front of her.
When the dead girl turned, she saw the haint watching her, a coal hissing in its palm. It held out its other hand to her. She saw a group of hanged men methodically kicking something that snapped and hissed.
“All’s forgiven,” the haint said, jaws snapping around each word. “You git on home, my darlin’ gal.”
The dead girl closed her eyes and stepped backward toward the sound of cold water.
She felt calm and cold as the water closed over her head and, unbidden, the words drifted through her mind. Go down, go down, you Knoxville girl/With the dark and roving eyes/Go down, go down, you Knoxville girl/I’ll never be your bride.
She floated forever, cold and quiet and alone.
And then she felt strong, warm hands grab her by the wrists and drag her out of the water.
Lonesome
The dead girl heard crickets chirping and frogs rumbling in a night filled with stars and a moon that filled the sky with more light than she had ever seen. She remembers dark skin and a wide, white smile that looked like the sun as the Wayfaring Stranger led her on a path past an old willow tree.
He’d escaped, he said, with an old trick he’d learned on the road. The Wayfaring Stranger talked fast, told her the places they’d go and the things they’d do. The dead girl felt the warm air pass her by, smelled night-blooming flowers and saw the man’s unmarred back move down the path.
She followed, hiding the haint’s straight razor behind her back until she could put it to his neck. The dead girl stood close to the shadow, her nose against his ear as she pressed the blade against its throat. She could smell dust and bones and old wine from the Wayfaring Stranger’s shadow.
“Figured that haint, it might find a way to keep me around,” the shadow said. “Only way I can move is if He’s not around. Never seems to last. “
The dead girl led the shadow to the willow tree. The shadow sat, watching her with wide eyes as she sat down beside it, her head on its shoulder and the razor at its throat.
“Sing me a song and you can run,” the de
ad girl said. “It’s a beautiful night. Sing to me and I’ll let you run.”
Kiss me, mother, kiss your darlin' the shadow sang in a soft, broken voice. Lay my head upon your breast/Throw your loving arms around me/I am weary let me rest.
The dead girl sang along. Through the years you've always loved me/and my life you've tried to save/but now I shall slumber sweetly/in a deep and lonely grave.
The dead girl let the shadow run. Its blood was thin and papery, and its flesh tasted like night-blooming flowers.
She walked for months after that, never staying in one place long, listening for a clear, sweet voice and watching for a man without a shadow. She rode with truckers and salesmen, keeping her quiet counsel and remembering to breathe and blink at the right time and to hit hard, bite deep and keep moving when her blood ran too cold and she needed something warm to tide her over.
She walked and wandered until she found a small quiet house near a big, quiet graveyard and waited, sitting at the window, brushing her long, dark hair and waiting for a friendly word or a moment’s company.
Her first dead man watched before he bothered to speak. He stared, mouth moving silently, slowly being eaten away by the march of time and his own memories, and he reached out to her for an hour, not daring to touch her.
The dead girl watched the dead man and laughed for the first time since before the haint took her. “Stop gawping and get on in here,” she said. “It’s lonesome.”
She sat with the dead man, listening to his half-forgotten stories and remembering to nod and smile at the right times and to reach out and brush his arm at the right time. He felt old and worn, musty like a badly-patched coat on a summer morning. He jumped up at that and ran out of the dead girl’s small, quiet house that night.
He came back the next night, glowing with a younger man’s shy bravado. “Welcome home, sugar,” she said, knowing what the dead man wanted to hear. “I’ve been missing you so much.”
Evening’s Trade
The Dead Man’s Whore looks out of her window, where the evening’s trade lines up. Row upon row of the unquiet dead, waiting for a moment’s breath, a moment’s touch, a moment’s flesh. She’s become a wealthy woman, learning the secrets of desperate dead men. Bags of cash, passwords and forgotten promises have kept her very well.
The Dead Man’s Whore lets the memories flow through her as she opens the door to her small, quiet house.
“Welcome home, sugar,” she says as the dead man drifts through, eyes locked on the ground and hat in his hand. “I’ve been missing you so much.” She watches the ghost’s face light up at a lie they both know to be false and hopes that she never dies.
