Long Chills

by Ronald Kelly

  “They’re looking right pretty,” he told her. He didn’t deny her that simple pleasure, since, so far, the flowers seemed to be immune to the horrible changes that seemed to be infecting the other vegetation that grew rampant there on Hayes Ridge.

  Lenora looked up at him. “They’re the only things that are pretty these days… in a place full of ugliness and evil.”

  “It ain’t just like that here on the Ridge, daughter,” he told her. He hunkered down next to her, admiring the colorful marigolds, petunias, and iris in her flowerbed. “There’s a stain upon the whole earth.”

  Lenora kept her eyes on her toiling. “There has to be a better place than this confounded mountain.”

  It disturbed Jubal to hear her dissatisfaction, but then it always had. Seth had never complained about their simple life there on the Ridge, but Lenora had always yearned for better things… things that Jubal neither desired nor could afford. Better clothes, a bigger house, the social standing that folks in the valley held so highly… they were all things that Lenora wanted for herself. He knew it had been difficult for her at school, enduring catcalls like “hillbilly gal” and such. When she was younger she had ran home in tears. Now days she simply existed in a sad, brooding state, her long black hair falling across her face like a mourner’s veil.

  Jubal’s purpose in talking to her had not been wholly innocent. Earlier, when working in the barn, he had looked out of the loft and noticed that she had company. Company he’d just as soon not see come around.

  “You had a visitor today,” he said.

  “Is that why you stopped by, Papa?” she asked, turning angry eyes toward him. “To fuss at me about Eddie?”

  “Not fussing, girl… just concerned, that’s all.” But he wanted to fuss.

  Jubal wanted to rant and rave about that boy who lived down in the foothills.

  He reckoned Eddie Goodman was his daughter’s beau, if anyone was. He seemed to be a nice enough young man, but he tended to fill Lenora’s head with a lot of notions and dreams that made her downright miserable.

  Lenora worked silently for a moment longer. Then she turned and brushed her long hair out of her eyes. “Papa… I’m going down to the valley with Eddie.”

  Jubal had expected as much. “Daughter, there’s nothing down there for you. Not before and certainly not now.”

  “You always did want to keep me clear of a normal life!” she snapped. “Away from nice things and folks who don’t have to scratch and claw for a living. You’re still doing it now. Keeping me up here with all this craziness.”

  “You think this is crazy, wait till you get down to the towns and cities,” Jubal told her flat out. “Life ain’t as sweet and pretty as your flower garden, sweetheart. Folks are doing horrible things down there… raping, killing… eating their own kind, from what I hear. You’d best get those thoughts of a better life out of your head and stay up here with us.”

  “But… but I love him, Papa,” she said. Her eyes pleaded for understanding. “Me and Eddie, we want to get married. Find us a place that ain’t crazy and raise a family.”

  Jubal crouched there for a silent moment, watching his daughter work at her plants. Her long, slender fingers worked at the earth as though of their own accord. Fingers much longer than he last remembered them to be.

  “Lenora, honey, you ain’t likely to find such a place in this day and time,” he told her gently. “And as for raising a family, that’s a dangerous notion to be having, what with all the damned radiation around. You get pregnant and no telling what’s liable to crawl, slither, or claw itself out from betwixt your legs.”

  “That was crude, Papa!” she said, her eyes flashing. “You had no call to say that.”

  “Maybe not. But I advise you to think twice before running off and doing something stupid.”

  Lenora sighed and caressed the pedals of her beloved flowers. “No need to worry yourself none, Papa. I’m not going anywhere.”

  “I ain’t saying all this to be mean, child,” Jubal told her. He stood up and kissed her on top of the head. “I just care for you, that’s all.”

  Lenora simply nodded and kept digging, cultivating, kneading the earth with her pale fingers.

  Jubal headed on back to the barn. He felt no easier after their discussion at the flower bed. Rather, it disturbed him somehow… and not over the thought of her taking off with that Goodman boy.

  When he had kissed her, Jubal hadn’t smelled the shampooed freshness that he was accustomed to. Instead, he detected a dank, earthy odor that he couldn’t quite identify.

  “Papa?”

  Seth’s voice again. Calling softly from out of the darkness.

  Jubal sighed deeply. Can’t these question and answer sessions wait until morning? he wondered.

  The boy’s voice came again, more urgent this time. “Papa!”

  Jubal bolted out of bed. He fumbled for the kerosene lamp on the nightstand and soon had it lit. Pale light filled the cabin, casting oversized shadows upon the inner walls. Cassie and Lenora slept soundly. They were so exhausted from their chores that he doubted the trumpets of the Second Coming could have roused them. Quietly, he took the lamp and walked across the room to Seth’s bed.

  “What’s wrong, son?” he asked, taking a seat on the mattress beside him.

  “It… it’s my eye, Papa,” he said.

  “Is it hurting you?”

  Seth seemed to consider it. “No… but it just ain’t right.”

  Jubal set the lamp aside and began to remove the eye patch. “Let’s take a look.”

  As soon as the eye patch was gone, the bloody wad of cotton gauze fell away… along with something else. It dropped upon the patchwork quilt, a shriveled sack of purple tissue with a curled, dried stem on the end. It took a moment of looking at it for Jubal to realize precisely what it was.

  It was the dead remains of Seth’s left eye.

  “Damn!” exclaimed Jubal. “Seth, your eye, it’s…”

  A smile crossed the ten-year-old’s face. A smile full of excitement and wonder. “Papa! I can see you.”

  “Now, son, that’s impossible.”

  “Papa… I can see a whole bunch of you!”

  The way the boy said that didn’t set well with Jubal. “Let’s see, son,” he said, lifting the lamp closer to his son’s face.

  In the dark hollow of Seth’s eye socket was the bud of a new eye. Not a human eye, but something almost insectile in appearance. It was about the size of a green persimmon and covered in mirrored chambers that reflected crimson in the flickering glow of the lamplight. It twitched and revolved unnaturally, as if trying to focus on the kerosene-fed lamp and the man’s face beyond.

  “It’s pretty, Papa,” said Seth, awestruck. “Like a kaleidoscope.”

  Just looking at it scared the hell out of Jubal. “Let’s cover it back up.”

  “Aw, not yet…”

  “Hush now,” Jubal told him quietly. “Let’s not wake the others.” Carefully, he placed a fresh wad of gauze over the socket, then secured it with the eye patch. “And let’s not tell your ma about this just yet, okay?”

  Seth frowned. “But that’d be lying to her.”

  “More like a white lie,” said Jubal. “Besides, you know how worrisome she gets over you young’uns.”

  “Yes, sir,” said Seth.

  Jubal took time to dispose of the dead eye, then tucked his son beneath the covers. He stared down at Seth, looking a mite worried himself. “Goodnight, son,” he said, before heading for his own bed.

  “Goodnight, Papa.”

  After the lamp had been extinguished, Seth lay there awake for a long time.

  A white lie, his father had said.

  He had been telling his fair share of those lately. Absently, he rubbed at a sore spot on his upper right thigh. Guiltily, he rolled over and tried to go back to sleep, feeling bad about failing to tell his parents about the bite he had suffered in the dead of night, several days before their visit to the cornf
ield.

  The following evening, they sat on the front porch and relaxed after partaking of the best meal they’d had in a long time.

  Taking from the provisions Jubal had liberated from Amos Sterling’s pantry, they had eaten canned tomatoes, corn relish, lime pickles, and a pone of cornbread. They had washed it down with jelly jar glasses of sweet tea. Jubal would have preferred the beverage to be ice-cold rather than lukewarm, but he knew, in that day and time, a man had to take what he could get.

  It had been an uneventful day. As usual, they worked around the mountain farmstead, doing their best to occupy their time and their minds. Jubal had been on the roof of the cabin most of that afternoon, securing a few loose spots in the tin sheets with carpentry nails. Midway through his laboring, he had heard a commotion in the blackberry patch out near the smokehouse. Jubal had glanced up to see that a woodchuck had strayed too close to the thicket. The critter had taken a nibble on one of the succulent berries and been torn asunder savagely by the thorny bramble. Jubal had watched in disgust as the vegetation had ripped the woodchuck into quarters and devoured it at leisure.

  Now as the sunset blazed, fading toward twilight, the farmer sat on the porch with his family. A full belly had put Jubal in a light-hearted mood and he’d brought out his banjo. He picked some of the old standards – “Cripple Creek”, “Cumberland Gap”, and “Cotton-Eyed Joe.” Although Cassie despised the instrument, she seemed to enjoy it when he launched into “Leaning on the Everlasting Arms.”

  Still, despite the music, Jubal couldn’t help but feel worried. He gave his fingers a rest and regarded his children on the porch swing. Lenora sat on one end, while Seth occupied the other. Both had been quiet and to themselves that evening.

  His daughter was reading a book; an old dog-eared paperback of To Kill a Mockingbird that they kept on a bookshelf near the dinner table. Jubal watched her pale fingers grip the covers of the book. Either she was getting skinnier from lack of food… or her fingers were getting longer. He wanted to dismiss the latter as foolishness on his part, but found it difficult to abandon the thought.

  Seth concerned him even more. His son had complained of a splitting headache all that day, as well as stiff and aching joints. He huddled at one end of the swing, covered in a wool blanket, despite it being mid-August. Cassie was afraid that it might be a touch of the flu. She’d worried herself sick over the possibility. If the radiation had transformed the animal and plant life into such monstrosities, wouldn’t it be possible for germs and viruses to be affected as well?

  Jubal had a notion that something else was going on with his son. He’d noticed that the flat of the eye patch was bulging a bit, as though Seth’s new eye was getting larger underneath. So far, Cassie hadn’t seemed to detect anything out of the ordinary. He reckoned she was preoccupied with her praying and Bible reading lately. It seemed like his wife had become obsessed with the book, as though she were searching for some answer as to why things had turned out the way they had.

  At that moment, she was working on her needlepoint. He glanced over at the sampler she had been fiddling with all that evening. She worked with needle and thread on the final letter of the phrase. VENGEANCE IS MINE, SAITH THE LORD it read. Sometimes Jubal was afraid that Cassie’s sanity was slipping due to the adversity they had to face from day to day.

  He played a couple more tunes on his banjo, then stopped as Cassie leaned forward in her rocker and lifted her hand. “Hush for a minute,” she told him.

  Jubal did as she asked. He listened himself and heard something that sounded like wind rustling through the leaves of the trees. But he knew that wasn’t what Cassie had heard. No, it sounded more like a rattling noise… en masse. Setting the banjo aside, he stood up and looked off toward the sunset. He watched as a flock of dark forms winged their way toward them. At first they might have been mistaken for bats. But as Jubal walked to the edge of the porch, he could seem them more clearly. Their wings flapped as their elongated bodies hung coiled underneath them and, at the end of their tails, brittle buttons rattled incessantly. From the thickness of them, the farmer figured there were three or four dozen of the winged creatures.

  “Damn!” he said, his blood running cold. “It’s those confounded snakes again!”

  Cassie jumped up out of her rocker. “Lenora, help your brother in the house! Hurry… before they get here!”

  Lenora did as she was told. She laid the book down and went to Seth. Her little brother shivered beneath the blankets and seemed reluctant to leave his spot on the swing. She finally picked him up and carried him bodily through the front door. Cassie followed.

  As Jubal approached the door, he turned and watched as the winged rattlers grew nearer. They uncoiled their bodies and grew rigid, like the shafts of arrows, then glided in, gaining speed. As he grabbed up his banjo, one of the critters swooped downward, heading straight for him. Jubal tightened his fists around the neck of the instrument and swung at the flying snake. Its mouth opened, its long fangs glistening with venom as it prepared to strike in flight. It hit the skin of the banjo’s body, breaking through and becoming trapped within its wooden pan. Jubal flung the ruined instrument aside and quickly slammed the cabin door behind him. He heard two or three more of the serpents hit the wood on the other side as they flew beneath the overhang of the porch.

  “Get those shutters closed!” he called out. But Cassie and Lenora had already gotten most of the barriers in the house secured. Only the front window was unprotected.

  Jubal was heading to secure those shutters, when the glass of the window shattered and three of the snakes invaded the cabin. Two landed on the boards of the floor, while the third continued to fly about the room, dive-bombing their heads, its fangs snapping maliciously.

  The farmer slammed the shutters shut and slid the bar in place. Then he turned and confronted the snakes. They were unlike the diamondbacks or timber rattlers he had grown up with in the Smokies. Their bodies possessed the same patterns upon their hides, but were a peculiar purple and blue in color. Their wings – leathery like those of a bat – were a pale green hue.

  Jubal grabbed up his shotgun by the door. “Cassie, Lenora… take care of the ones on the floor. I’ll get the one that’s in the air!”

  The womenfolk did as he said. Cassie took her hatchet and went for one of the snakes that flapped and flopped on the living room floor. She dispatched it quickly, severing its head clean off. Lenora took a heavy-bladed butcher knife off the kitchen counter and did the same with the other one.

  Jubal aimed at the flying rattler and pulled the trigger. The first shot missed. He centered his sights again just as the snake spotted Seth’s form lying upon his bed, drawn up into a ball and shuddering with fever. The snake’s jaws yawned wide as it swooped downward.

  “I don’t think so, you sonuvabitch!” growled Jubal beneath his breath. He took aim and fired. The creature disintegrated amid a hail of double-aught buckshot, scarcely three feet from the boy’s bed.

  Outside, they could hear the army of winged serpents attempting to gain entrance into the cabin, hitting the walls and shuttered windows. At least a dozen flapped and slithered upon the rusty tin of the roof, looking for a crevice to squeeze through. Jubal was glad then that he had spent most of that day patching the roof. Perhaps, in some way, he’d had a subconscious inkling of what was to come.

  Suddenly, Jubal hollered out. “Dammit to hell!” He looked down to see the head of a rattler protruding from a narrow crack in the cabin floor, an inch or so from his feet.

  Cassie looked over and spotted the snake. “Did it bite you?” she asked.

  Jubal said nothing. He cracked open the breech of the scattergun, shucking the spent shells and replacing them with fresh ones.

  His wife’s eyes bored into him. “I said… DID IT BITE YOU?!”

  “There’s one coming through the wall yonder!” he told her, glaring back.

  Cassie turned and, axe in hand, headed toward a serpent that had bored a fragment
of clay chinking from betwixt two hand-hewn logs. It was nearly all the way through when she chopped it in half.

  Jubal looked down at the snake that was inching its way up through the crack in the floor. “Nasty bastard!” he cussed. Angrily, he brought the butt of the shotgun down on it, crushing its skull.

  He took Cassie’s cedar chest from the foot of the bed and pulled it over the crack, blocking any further intrusion. He joined his wife at the wall. A second serpent was attempting to gain entrance. Jubal forced it back out with the muzzles of his shotgun and, for the time being, left the gun hanging there to plug the hole.

  Jubal and Cassie moved to the center of the room, while Lenora sat on the bed next to her brother, her hands clamped tightly over her ears. The jittering of rattler buttons seemed to come from all directions, nearly overwhelming in its fury.

  “Make ’em stop, Papa!” the girl screamed. “Make ’em stop!”

  Her parents ignored her hysteria. It seemed like a commonplace thing with her lately. Cassie grabbed her husband by the sleeve of the shirt. “Now honestly… did that snake bite you?”

  “I do declare, woman!” snapped Jubal. He lifted his trouser leg and showed his right ankle. The skin was unblemished. “There… are you satisfied?”

  Cassie grew quiet. Together, they stood and listened as the racket outside grew to a deafening pitch. Then the flapping of leathery wings sounded and the rattling receded. “They’re going,” she said, relieved.

  “They’ll be back,” Jubal told her. He felt exhausted, both physically and mentally. He looked toward the bed. Lenora sat there, face in hands, sobbing loudly. Seth simply lay there silently, shivering in sickness, as though oblivious to what had just taken place.

  How much more of this can I endure? he wondered to himself. Before I go completely mad?

  That night, long after they had fallen asleep, Jubal was awakened by Cassie’s hand on his shoulder. “Jubal?” she whispered.

  He rolled over. “I’m up.”

  “I’m worried… about the young’uns.”