Damned in Dixie

by Ron Shiflet

  Nan bustled, keeping her eyes away from Lanie. The woman was still shivering, even in the quilt and Nan feared she would never again be warm. The old woman chewed her lip. Had she done the right thing? Lanie was still looking around with wide frightened eyes, almost as though it pained her to be in a house meant for the living, now that she was dead.

  “I’m sorry, but I had to.”

  Nan answered her own internal monologue as she thrust a steaming mug of tea into the other’s hand. Fish-cold skin brushed hers. Her Gram’s quilt was already soaked through and water continued to pool at Lanie’s feet, running over the already warped floorboards. It had a river smell—not quite dirty and not quiet clean. It smelled like green things growing under water and fish that—while still fresh - did not belong indoors.

  Nan frowned, chewing her lip again. She wished, not for the first time, that her Gram were here. She wouldn’t have been afraid. She would have been strong and she would have known the right thing to do. As if called back by memory and desire, Nan heard her Gram’s voice drifting like a ghost wind through her mind.

  “We belong to the river and it belongs to us. Our ancestors sleep in the waves.”

  At the time Nan had taken Gram’s words for a metaphor; now she wasn’t so sure. She had a picture in her mind of her Gram’s death, just as she had a picture of Lissey’s and she was no more certain of the truth of it than she was of the other one. In her mind though, she saw Gram making the careful descent down to the river’s edge by the trails she knew as well as her blood and bones.

  Her hair was loose and silvery in the moonlight and her skin was luminous. Like Lissey, her feet were bare, but the ground did not cut them. For a moment she stood on the river bank and then she walked out into the waves. With the icy water circling around her and making her nightgown heavy, she waded to where the water was deep and simply laid down and went to sleep; another fairy tale princess under the waves.

  Nan looked up to find the dead woman watching her. Had she read Nan’s memories from beneath her skin? Lanie’s eyes asked a question. The eyes were as dark as the Kisatchie on a moonless night and the question was darker still. What had those eyes seen? What did they remember?

  “I’m sorry.” Nan repeated, but this time her voice trembled.

  “But I had to do what I thought was right. It’s your little girl. She ain’t safe where she is. She needs her mother now. You have to go to her.”

  Nan’s voice was firmer now, but inside she was still shivering as Lanie was before her. The woman’s lips parted, blue and pale and Nan saw darkness inside. Water pooled on Lanie’s tongue and she tried to speak, but her voice only gurgled like the river and no words came. Swallowing her own fear, Nan reached out and placed her hand on Lanie’s shoulder.

  “I can’t do nothing else; this is your fight now. You can do this though, for your little girl. Family’s got to look out for each other.”

  Nan looked deep into the river-dark eyes before her and then after a moment, drew her hand away.

  The smell of fish and green things lingered in the little cabin long after Lanie was gone. Nan opened all the windows to the night air, but even if she aired the house out every day for the rest of her life, she feared that the smell would remain. Some lines, once crossed, could never be crossed again.

  Gram’s quilt lay in a sodden pile on the floor and she lifted it to hang out to dry. She thought of Gram’s hands, sewing each piece into place to make a story, to make a whole. She wished Gram was there to tell her a story now that would make everything okay.

  Through the open window, moonlight touched the trail of water that led in and then out of the small cabin again. She almost imagined that she could hear that river whispering between its banks far below. Nan thought of the river stone pressed to her cool cheek and the images that it had brought of Lanie stretched beneath the waves. She hadn’t been alone.

  She couldn’t help them all, couldn’t answer every flickering cry that echoed in her mind and was now imprinted in her blood and bones—not even the cries of her own kin.

  “It’s too late.” She whispered aloud and caught her words in a sob, cut off before it came to full.

  She couldn’t even say if she had done the right thing in answering this call—only what had seemed right at the time. Helping Lissey had seemed right at the time too. Nan shook her head. Gram had always said, if God was reasonable, which she hoped he was, then that was all he could ask for. Nan had to believe in that now.

  They found Buck Hawley lying face down in the Kisatchie two days later. A couple of campers, who had hiked up the trail far beyond the fishing spots and the picnic grounds, had found him. Nan read about it in the papers and later that day she came out and watched a man and a woman from the parish take Sabina away.

  Local gossip being what it was; Nan was able to gather that when they had found Sabina she had been frightened, but otherwise unharmed. The bruise, just barely visible at her hair line, had been duly noted, as had the minor fracture in the wrist bone of her left arm. Most said it was for the best that Buck had gone and gotten himself stupid drunk and drowned, but it sure was a shame about that beautiful little girl—her mother running off like that and her Daddy up and dying on her.

  Nan could easily have directed the local sheriff’s office to Lanie Hawley’s body, but she had already disturbed those bones once—for better or for worse—and she would not do it again.

  Nan often thought of those river-dark eyes and the haunted things she had seen in their glassy gaze. She thought of Lanie’s bones lengthening under the flowing waves and she thought of Lissey and Gram and the little girl who had never been born or given a name. Did they dream sweet dreams on their bed of river stones? She wanted to believe it was so.

  On nights when sleep eluded her, Nan sat up and listened for the chime of glass on the bottle tree. The wind sighed and there was only the beat of her heart in the dry and dusty places where love and family had once been and now there was only her—old in this land where everything was turning to the new and the young. She listened to her heartbeat echo as she waited for the chime of the bottle tree and it sounded of hope and fear together, keeping perfect time.

  THE SKELETON

  WILLIAM B. KALIHER

  A chilling March wind cut coldly down the manmade valley of Interstate 95. The cars and trucks whipping by managed to take God’s freezing wind and lash it even deeper into the two young hitchhikers standing at the last exit south of Florence, South Carolina. They’d felt uneasy all day but the sudden storm had driven the eerie sensation from their minds. Puffy grey clouds clustered overhead and every few minutes sparse specks of rain fell, just enough to make winter’s last wind even colder. Tom, the taller of the two college sophomores, stepped over the pair’s sleeping bags and tattered backpacks as he pulled his windbreaker tighter. “Whaddya wanna do, Bob? This will be mixing with sleet soon.”

  Bob turned his back to fend off the forceful blasts from passing vehicles. “We won’t reach Daytona tonight. No one’s going to stop in this weather. We’ve got an hour’s light left. You decide.”

  Tom now turned to block the wind while Bob took his turn sticking his thumb out. Bob thought a second, “We have three choices. Walk back up under the overpass and hope the cops don’t pick us up for thumbing off the exit; hike back to an exit with a motel; or climb the interstate fence and see if we can find some way to get out of this wind and rain.”

  “I vote for jumping the fence and finding some shelter. We’ll get soaked under the overpass or walking back to find a motel.”

  “Okay; I’d rather spend the room money on beer over Easter break anyway.”

  The boys gathered their belongings and trudged towards the chainlink fence. The rain fell a little harder, reinforcing the wisdom of their decision. “Damn, that fence is cold.” Tom said hoisting himself to the top before leaning down to help Bob.

  “Yeah, it’s going to sleet soon. Let’s get moving; those small pines might break some of the
wind.”

  The little forest of planted pines provided some relief as they stumbled over clumps of frozen brown grass on the way to the frontage road. “Looks like we’ll have to walk back anyway. This exits too far in the country. There’s not a house or building in sight.

  “No, look over there,” said Bob as they labored along. “That high roof, looks like the edge of a church or something. Maybe a warehouse.”

  “You’re right. Some kind of building.” Tom grabbed his friend’s arm. “Come on, if there’s no open door there should be a shed or something we can get under.” They shouldered their backpacks and walked away from the exit. The building appeared larger and yet further away as they hurried toward it.

  After a hundred yards Bob said, “It’s not a church; we’d have seen the steeple by now.”

  “Let’s hurry,” Tom said. “This rain is starting to really come down.”

  The boys began trotting and finally reached a narrow dirt drive cut closely between a thick mixture of pine and hardwood trees. Two hundred yards up the driveway stood a two-story, unpainted frame house. “Faster,” said Bob, rubbing his arms in an effort to make body heat. “The windows are broken; it’s just an old abandoned house. It’s perfect.”

  They covered the two hundred yards at a gallop, the rain beating harder with each step. Shaking their wet coats on the wooden porch floor, they heard the din of heavy drops peppering the tin roof. “That sounds good. You can really snooze with rain beating on a tin roof. I used to love hearing it when I visited my grandma’s farm,” Tom said, running his hand over and through his hair, trying to wring out some of the water.

  Bob, doing the same, said, “Yeah, I know, but I hope you brought the flashlight. It’s almost dark.”

  “Hell yeah, I got it,” said Tom, untying his pack and retrieving a plastic red flashlight. “Come on, let’s find the driest part and make sure there’s not too many rats in this place.”

  Stepping through the door Bob remarked, “Damn, it feels thirty degrees warmer just getting out of that wind.”

  “It’s warmer, Bob, but this place gives me the creeps!”

  “I wish you hadn’t said that. I had the same feeling, and now you’ll get me spooked thinking about it. Oh, well, you take the light and look around upstairs. I’ll look around down here before we lose all of the daylight.”

  Boards creaked with every step the boys took as they searched each room. Bob thought the stairwell would tumble down as Tom climbed up gingerly. “This old kitchen is away from all the rooms that open to the outside,” Bob yelled. “Come on down and see.”

  In a minute they were in the foyer, unloading their rolls and back packs. “The kitchen’s nice,” Bob said. Two entrances, with doors still on both of them. Only a couple of closets or pantries attached to the room. “It’s dry and we can close those doors to block the wind.”

  Tom, looking pale, said, “Did you see anything out of the ordinary, anything strange?”

  “Not really. A few old animal bones scattered around.” Bob thought for a moment. “Most of them were kind of big, though. Probably a cow or something dogs dragged in to eat.”

  “I don’t think so, Bob. Come upstairs.” Bob followed Tom with the sounds of the ancient stairway as noisy as before, but luckily it felt more solid than it sounded. He followed down the narrow hallway and realized Tom was slowing as he approached the back left room.

  “I thought I left this open,” Tom muttered as he swung the door open and entered the room.

  Bob followed and then stopped, staring as Tom focused the little beam onto something in the middle of the room. “What is it?” he asked.

  “It’s a rib cage...I think it’s human.” Bob stepped closer to examine the spectacle. “Can’t be,” he argued. “It’s too large. Look at it! It’s as big around as my torso. A human rib cage would be smaller, unless somebody killed Andre the Giant. Still, I don’t know how dogs would have dragged such a large animal up those stairways. You’re right, it looks big to me, too,” agreed Tom. “But I still think those are human bones.”

  “You’re a psychology major from Pittsburgh. Would you know a horse or cow rib cage if you saw it?” Tom sighed.

  “No, not really. It just doesn’t feel right. I think we’re just spooked. Come on, let’s go back down.

  Tom pulled the door shut and the young men hurried to the foyer downstairs. Tom said, “I know that bone wasn’t near our stuff when we went upstairs. Let’s get out of here!”

  Bob stared at the long, heavy leg bone and picked up his pack “Let’s go. I’m sure we just didn’t see it when we first got in. But...let’s go before it gets too late.”

  Stepping onto the porch a fierce wind sliced their faces and blew through their clothes like dental floss cutting through wide teeth. The pleasant ping of rain against the roof had built into a thunderous crescendo. The flashlight beam survived for only a few feet into the tar-like night. Tom shivered. “Jesus, it’s cold as Hell. Where did that damn fog come from?”

  Bob stood for a second, not wanting to believe he was seeing the same fog and miserable night that had Tom cursing. “We’ll freeze our asses off getting out of here,” he said. “Hell, I’m not even sure we could find the road in this fog and rain. Let’s get back inside before that light gives out completely.” As they made their way back to the kitchen neither boy mentioned the second large femur lying in the foyer. However, they soon made another gruesome discovery.

  “Jesus, what is that?” Tom yelled as they entered the kitchen.

  Bob studied the object briefly. Half a damn cranium. Too large, too large ... He looked at Tom. “Someone must be here trying to scare us.” He kicked it out of the kitchen and down the hallway and yelled, “Okay, we know someone is here! Say something!”

  The only answer was the lifelike groaning of the ancient house settling. “Shut that door,” Bob ordered. “I’ll close this one.”

  Tom slammed the door and asked, “Should we sleep together against each other, or against each door?”

  “I don’t know,” Bob answered. “I’m scared as hell! Someone’s got to be here doing this, but damn I’m scared.”

  The boys threw their sleeping bags in the middle of the floor scarcely a foot apart. Bob said, “Take off your windbreaker and get in. Give me the light; I want to turn it off to save it.” Tom handed Bob the flashlight and they quickly slipped into their sleeping bags. The room was silent, save for the occasional creaking of old wood and the eerily uniform thumping of the rain against the roof.

  “You all right, Bob?” Tom whispered.

  “I’m a little warmer, but that rain doesn’t sound like the pitter-patter at Grandma’s anymore.”

  Tom swallowed hard. “I hate to tell you this, but I think the door just opened.”

  Hoping to break the terror, Bob spoke out loudly. “Yeah, I’m okay. I wish these pranksters would come out, but I guess they’re not done yet. Relax, Tom, there’s no way those doors could have opened. We’d have heard them. Let’s try to sleep.” Despite his brave talk, Bob knew he hadn’t relieved any of the tension they both felt. The young men remained very still, staring at the total darkness. Both closed their eyes from time to time, but terror denied them any true sleep. Hours passed with neither of the boys speaking, but both heard the continuous groans of the house, and the incessant beat of sheet rain against thin metal. Intermittently they also heard a slow scraping as something dragged across the floor. That sound was much worse than the creaks of the house or the muted roar of the rain. Both pretended the sound was just imagination, but the reality of ominous scraping continued and tortured their minds as they remained still, trying to not even breathe.

  After hours of silence Tom said, “Bob, something’s changed. I know the doors are open. Shine the light!”

  Bob emerged from the sleeping bag he had pulled over his head to protect himself from the possibility of seeing or even worse feeling something. “Okay.”

  Lying on his back he aimed at where
one door should be and clicked the flashlight’s plastic switch. The feeble beam carried through the room and into the hall past an open door frame. His arm brought the light up and over in an instant, fixing on where the other closed door should have been. That door was also open. As Bob brought the light toward his friend’s sleeping bag, Tom began screaming. Bob saw it, too. In his shock from the horror his arm kept moving, and the light flew from his hand, crashing into the floor. The thud punctuated the last flicker of light, and the final sounds of the rolling dead light sounded as if in slow motion as Bob buried himself deep in his bag, trembling in a fetal position.

  Skrirrch, skrirrch, rasped against the rough pine flooring. It can’t be, it couldn’t be!, Bob thought, but in that last second of feeble light his eyes had seen the rib cage split on each side of Tom, with smaller bones scattered between them.

  The room pulsated as the howling rain ebbed for a moment, only to renew itself more powerfully as it beat against the house. “Where was the skull, the cranium? I didn’t see them,” Bob mumbled as his body frantically shook and his stomach convulsed.

  Gurgling, sick screams broke through the monotonous drone of driven rain against old wood; it was difficult to focus his thoughts. A part of him tried to overcome the gripping fear so he could aid Tom. But the man’s pitiful wails immediately brought back his own desperation. Try to think of something else, he told himself. Try! It’s a dream, a dream! A damn prank! But the skirrch of bone against wood continued, and there was an occasional clatter as if small pieces of porcelain were somersaulting across the plank floor. Both sounds drove a deep horrifying fear into his soul.

  Fighting the fear that had collapsed him and left him gasping for air, Bob summoned the last shreds of his manhood to help Tom. He struggled to his feet and moved over to his friend. Planting his left palm on the floor for support, he opened his mouth to speak, his words of comfort changed to terrorized screams as a cold, smooth hand savagely grabbed his wrist. In an instant he realized what held his wrist, for another skeletal hand spread smoothly and firmly over his face. The bony fingers squeezed like tentacles, sapping his strength and his sanity.