The Bell Witch

by John F. D. Taff

  Under the cover of the trees, they were swallowed by the darkness. Here, it was cooler, damper. The smell of the advancing season was strong and pungent under this canopied twilight.

  Almost dragging her at times, Hank crested and descended hills as if he were being pulled along by an invisible rope toward some destination. He stopped several times in hurried exasperation to disentangle her dress from branches, jerked her back into motion like a recalcitrant puppet.

  “Where are we going, Hank?” she asked again in her otherworldly monotone, but he ignored her.

  At the top of the next hill, he stopped and surveyed his surroundings. Betsy, too, looked around. What she saw below rattled the door of the secret place she had withdrawn to inside herself.

  The entrance to Mud Cave.

  Hank looked down upon it, practically slavering at the sight.

  Starting down the hill toward it, he gave her hand a perfunctory tug.

  Betsy resisted, biting her lip.

  “What?” he snapped, spinning around on her.

  “I thought we were going to have a picnic.”

  Mastering his rough impatience, he smiled at her. “Later. I thought we’d explore a little first.”

  Without waiting for her assent, he yanked her down the hill after him until they stood at the lip of the cave.

  Moist air rolled from the slash in the hillside, musky with the smell of wet earth.

  “We’re going down there? I’ll ruin my dress,” she said, her voice rising a bit in protest.

  Hank noted the change in her tone, as if she were ascending through a layer of something that obscured her mind.

  “Dearest,” he calmed her, his smile seared onto his face. “I’ve a beautiful new dress for you in a package in the wagon. Don’t worry.”

  Inside her mind, however, Betsy heard another exchange, distant yet familiar.

  Pa, I’ll get all dirty down there. Ma’ll be mad at me.

  Don’t worry, honey. We’ll get you all cleaned up ‘fore your Ma sees you.

  “You go first,” urged Hank, leading her around to the opening and easing her to her knees. “I’ll be in right after you.”

  Betsy gathered the hem of her skirt and slipped her bare legs into the humid opening, feeling the pulse of its exhalation against her naked skin.

  It’s dark in here, Pa, came the little girl’s voice in Betsy’s head.

  With a nudge from Hank’s boot, Betsy slid into the hole, sluiced down the chute into the cave. Before her eyes had a chance to accustom themselves to the darkness, Hank slid into her from behind, bounced her to her feet.

  “Move,” he snapped, catching her arm as she stumbled into the darkness. The floor squished uncertainly beneath her shoes, but Hank’s painfully tight grip on her upper arm kept her standing.

  “Hank?” she asked, but he had become another man. She heard his breathing, shallow and constricted, hiss in the blank space between them.

  A candle flame leapt up to fill this space, and in it she saw Hank’s eyes glow with an illumination all their own.

  Their fell, golden light—so much like someone else’s eyes, someone from before—pinned her as if she had been spiked to the earth, penetrated to her very core.

  Their light cast out shadows and cobwebs, shone through walls and fog.

  She recognized their light.

  Feared it.

  “Daddy, you’re hurting me,” she whined, twisting in his grip.

  Hank didn’t respond, and she didn’t seem to realize what she’d said.

  With an urgent grunt, he thrust her before him into the great, yawning darkness. Her footing was uncertain, and she stumbled on the slick, uneven ground. But his grip was insistent, brooking no delay or escape.

  Still, the way was slow and imposed its own strictures on the pair. The sounds of angry wind and dripping water assailed them through the darkness hunching over their tiny globe of candlelight.

  Winding their way through a maze of narrow tunnels, Betsy was lost inside herself, still writhing under the light of Hank’s eyes and the exigency of what it revealed.

  Absorbed in this battle, she didn’t fight Hank at all.

  “Where are we going, Daddy?” the girl’s voice asked, rebounding strangely from the tight passage they careened through.

  Betsy noticed dimly, dumbly, that the girl’s voice now came from her.

  “A special place,” answered Hank. But his was a deeper voice, gruff with age and barely quelled passions.

  The voice of her father.

  A bewildering series of switchbacks and sloping halls led into a great, open room Hank practically threw her into. When he entered after her, the light from the candle he held exploded, filling the room with a burst of silver.

  Betsy saw that the walls and ceiling of the chamber were covered with thousands of crystals, pale white and translucent. Within each, a tiny fire was trapped, reflections of the flame Hank held tightly in his hand.

  Hank seemed blind to the light.

  He advanced silently on her.

  She stood motionless as he twisted his free hand in the front of her dress, ripped it away. The material parted with an intimate, brutal sound.

  “Mommy will fix that, don’t worry,” she assured him.

  Tearing and clawing, he rent the dress. Betsy stepped away from it as it slid to the cavern’s floor, stood before him as shockingly beautiful as Aphrodite pulled from the foam.

  The reflected radiance played about her hair, which floated about her head in the wind. The milky light of the crystals seemed to emanate from her alabaster flesh, shining from within its inviolate structure.

  Hank gasped.

  But he, too, was lost within, and even the sight of her naked body could not reach the levels of darkness he had descended to.

  One thing would, and he knew it.

  He could smell it, tasted it, so overpowering was its presence in this chamber.

  Fumbling, he undid his trousers.

  Shaking, he placed a hand on her naked chest. Her pale flesh gave beneath its touch, and he felt the stirrings of her heart beneath.

  With a sharp moan, he pushed, and she toppled over, fell to the ground, her eyes never leaving his.

  He fell to his knees before her, pushed up through the channel of her thighs until he met flesh with his flesh.

  Jabbing forward, he encountered resistance.

  Then he was inside her.

  And the light was overwhelming.

  A great power wrenched itself loose within her, shot through him.

  He recoiled as if speared by lightning, sprawled from her, lay there like a stunned fish.

  For a moment that lasted an eternity, all was light. There was no darkness, no hint of it, no concept of it. It flooded his senses, seeped into his brain, burned across his soul.

  When he awoke, she straddled him, her thighs clamped tightly around his waist, her breasts in his face.

  He nearly swooned.

  Betsy’s hands were knotted in his shirt, her nails dimpling his chest.

  Instinctively, he bridged his hips, thrust upward.

  “Don’t!” she ordered, and she backhanded him with such strength, with such pent up fury that she broke his nose.

  Hank did not immediately know what had happened. When her hand burst across his face, it left an explosion of light in its wake. To him, it was simply more light.

  “What are you doing?” she hissed, shaking him like a doll. “What do you think you’re doing?”

  “Betsy?” he asked as the pain from his nose stamped out the light. “What the hell did you do? I’m bleeding!”

  He struggled to get up, to throw her off, but she held him tightly, her legs squeezing until he found it difficult to breathe.

  “You were going to rape me.”

  “Rape you?” Hank laughed. “Why would I have to do that? You let me.”

  Those words hurt, cut into her anger like knives. That much was true; she had let him.

  “You w
anted me to,” he protested, renewing his efforts to get away from her. “I didn’t have to force you at all.”

  “I didn’t know!” she screamed, and the ferocity of her reply silenced him. “I didn’t know what you were doing! How could I stop you? Of course, you didn’t have to force me. I trusted you!”

  The words spilled from her faster than she could think or stop them. She realized the words meant more, so much more than just what Hank had tried to do to her. She could feel something else, something dark and monstrous that circled just below the surface of her consciousness, waiting for a moment to thrust itself up into the air.

  “You raped me! It’s rape to do this to someone when they don’t know enough to agree or deny.”

  With a sudden shift of his weight, Hank tossed her off, scrambled to his feet, turned to face her. He was wide-eyed with fear and confusion

  “I trusted you,” she shrieked, kneeling in the mud and muck on the cave floor. “I trusted you. Trusted… because… because…”

  Betsy reeled, drew in a deep, gulping breath.

  “I loved you!”

  As the last word echoed from every crystal in the room, Hank turned and fled, stumbling through the darkness without the aid of his candle.

  Betsy collapsed as if something too big to contain had pushed from her, leaving her limp and without structure.

  For a while, the only thing she was capable of was crying.

  * * *

  Betsy lay curled on the cave floor, lost to all sense of the passage of time. The candle Hank had carried in with him sputtered weakly for a time, throwing a fitful light up to the crystal ceiling. In time, it was consumed, its light swallowed by the gravid darkness.

  Are you all right? came a voice—hated, abhorred—from that space.

  “Go away!” Betsy sobbed, twisting tighter into her fetal position.

  I cannot.

  Another light appeared in the cavern, soft and gold and undefined. It flooded the room, ringing from the crystals, and it seemed to have no source.

  Betsy sensed it through her tightly closed eyes, opened them tentatively.

  From her vantage, she saw how the floor of the room sloped away as it receded from the entrance; gently at first, then dropping suddenly from sight just a few yards from where she lay.

  Behold! announced the Witch in a voice filled with solemn awe. This chamber once held water, clear and pure. The stuff of life. And now, it shall again. Thereby, I fulfill part of my purpose.

  Betsy heard a sound, a distant rumbling that shook the stone beneath her. It became a wet, rushing roar, gurgling up from some depth that this preternatural light did not reach. Drawing herself into a sitting position, she saw movement far back toward where the floor disappeared.

  Water began filling the room, bubbling up from wherever the earth dived to. Within a minute, it stretched across the cavern, creeping inexorably toward Betsy.

  The water was flat, impassive silver in the chamber’s new light. The light moved upon it, but did not penetrate it so solid did it seem. When the water reached her feet, it stopped, and the room became quiet again, save for the soft lapping of the water against the cavern walls.

  What do you see? asked the Witch.

  “Water.”

  Step closer, child.

  Betsy knelt at the water’s edge and gasped.

  There, where her reflection should have been, a small girl peered back at her. Though startled, she didn’t move.

  It was her when she was seven or eight years old, half a lifetime ago.

  As Betsy knelt motionless by the water, the scene changed, and the girl moved away. Another figure appeared from the darkness, larger, imposing, moving with the stealth of guilt and desire.

  She knew him, as well.

  No sound came from the images played out on the surface of the water.

  Inside her head, Betsy heard everything.

  Daddy, what are you doing? asked the little girl as the man’s shadow fell across her.

  Don’t worry, he whispered as his shaking hands moved over her, undid her buttons.

  Daddy? she asked, standing naked and confused before him.

  Silence as he fell upon her, into her.

  Daddy! she screamed, and the surface of the water rippled, brushing the images away.

  Betsy looked and saw her own face again, tears plopping into the lake as if that was how it had been formed.

  How dreadful knowledge of the truth can be when there’s no help in it, intoned the Witch as she stroked Betsy’s hair. So, you must find help in this.

  * * *

  Later, when Betsy’s sobs had subsided, the Witch dressed her in her ruined gown and combed her hair. When she was ready, the golden light guided Betsy from the pool chamber, through the tangle of passages and back into the main cavern.

  At the bottom of the entrance, the Witch wrapped herself around Betsy, and floated her to the hole. Unscathed by mud, Betsy emerged from herself into the last light of day, rose-colored as the sun slipped behind the hills.

  A package wrapped in plain paper lay at her feet.

  Unseen hands tore it open, held it up. It was a lovely verdant green dress. Those same hands removed her old dress, tattered and filthy, and it disappeared into the cool evening air. The new dress settled over her shoulders, fell over her body like a new skin, clean and undamaged.

  Betsy remembered all that she had seen in the cave, but little of the journey home.

  She knew only that her feet never touched the ground, and that the sound of the wind in her ears was fierce and triumphant.

  PART IV

  AND TO MY DEAD HEART…

  November to December 21, 1820

  THIRTY-ONE

  Alone.

  I am truly alone.

  I don’t know what I am, so that I may even say that there are others like me.

  Or there are no others like me.

  I am not meant to be.

  Riven.

  Torn from my rightful place.

  Denied by my rightful soul.

  Can denial alone have been enough to birth me?

  Other souls deny appetites far worse, yet they don’t cause the creation of such as me.

  Do they?

  Am I a spirit?

  I seem to have knowledge far beyond what they have. I can do things they cannot.

  Yet, if I am a part of her, perhaps they, too, all have this power, as suppressed and buried as their desires.

  Anger.

  Bourne of anger, nursed by anger, alive in anger.

  I am become anger.

  But is that all that I am?

  I must be more.

  How could she have done this to me?

  Denied her rightful vengeance at the act done to her by that man?

  Denied her own culpability in the act, brought about by that denial?

  Denied her mother’s silent approval of that violence?

  Why did she cause me to be?

  I do not desire life. Or whatever it is I possess.

  I desire it even less if what I have is but a mockery of the real thing.

  I did not desire it before, or at least do not recall the desire.

  Am I to blame then for what is thrust upon me?

  I bear no responsibility for what he did to her.

  Rather, I fought it, fought her.

  Fought her as she pushed me down, bit me back, forgot me.

  I bear no responsibility for her ignorance.

  And I bear no guilt for what I have been given to do.

  I…

  Perhaps.

  Perhaps there is guilt.

  But I seem affectless against it.

  Weak. Unsure.

  I DO NOT WISH TO KILL HIM.

  Yet, he deserves it, merits it wholly.

  For what he did to her.

  To me.

  I am compelled.

  Am I?

  Have I fought it?

  No.

  Words. Only words.

&n
bsp; And what are they to such as me?

  Whatever I am.

  And yet, if I can secure my release by his death, I will do it!

  Take my place back…

  No.

  I know that there is no place for me within her anymore.

  I showed her the hole in her soul, left when she forced me out.

  And she has filled it in again.

  Reclaimed her anger.

  I have nowhere to go.

  And when he is dead, I fear that I shall go on in this “life,” never at peace, never free.

  Always alone.

  Eternal.

  It is more than I can bear.

  I am no spirit.

  Neither angel nor devil.

  I am… nothing.

  * * *

  Betsy?

  “Yes, Witch?”

  Do you know…?

  “Yes, Witch. Yes.”

  (Silence)

  “What will you do?”

  What I must.

  “Kill him?”

  … Yes.

  “But why?”

  Have you learned nothing, child? Seen nothing?

  “I have seen…”

  Nothing! You have seen nothing! Did I waste the effort in showing you?

  “No! I had to know. I think… it was killing me.”

  Then, think!

  “If you are part of me, however shaped, you must know that I forgive him.”

  (Soft laughter) I know you better than yourself, because I am that part that was hidden even from you. And I know what you’ve said is not true.

  “You don’t think me capable of forgiving my own father… no matter what he’s done?”

  No… not yet, not now.

  “And why not? Because it doesn’t suit you?”

  Because, child, in your mind, he has scarce done anything for which to be forgiven.

  “I don’t understand.”

  Still the same ole Bets, huh?

  (Silence)

  You must allow yourself to feel the emotions you’ve denied for so long. Yes, now you know. Now, you must feel. You must hate first, Betsy.

  “Hate him?”

  Yes. You must hate him to forgive him.

  “I… can’t hate him. He’s my father.”