schoolwork, boy, and quiet yer damn daydreaming.
So James Lee sat there on the floor, scribbling.
The cabin was a log affair with a plank floor and smoke-blackened beams crisscrossing above. There was a sheltered loft, but it wasn’t used now that Marilynn was up in the old shack. A cast iron stove sat in the corner, fire in its belly. Two cauldrons filled with boiling water bubbled on its surface. The air smelled of wood smoke, burned fat, and maple syrup. While Auntie Maretta busied herself washing up the dinner dishes-blue speckled plates and tin cups? Uncle Arlen cleared his throat. Cleared it the way he did when he was about to finally speak what was on his mind.
“ Boy,” he said. “Ye up to an errand? Ye up to bravin’ the snow and night?”
James Lee slapped his book shut, never so ready. “Yessum, Uncle.”
“ Aw right, listen here now. Want ye to go out to the smokehouse. Them hams in there is cured and ready. Take one of ‘em and not the big one, mind, wrap it up tight in a po-tater sack, bring it up to Miss Leevy up yonder on the high road.” He packed his clay pipe with rough-cut tobacco. “Now, she been good t’ us and we gonna be good t’ her. She’s up in years. Ye think ye can handle that?”
“ Yessum.”
“ Off wit ye then.”
It was bitter cold out there, the snow whipping and whistling around the cabin, but James Lee knew he could do it, all right. Out past the sap-house, he dug snow away from the smokehouse door and packaged up the ham. Then he marched straight through the drifts and shrieking wind up onto the road and fought his way up to Miss Leevy’s. She took the ham and made James Lee drink some chamomile tea brightened with ‘shine.
On his way back, he cut through the woods.
He knew where he was going.
He knew what he had to see.
Sheets of snow fell from the pines overhead and the air was kissed with ice. His breath frosted from his lips and the night created crazy, jumping shadows that ringed him tight. But the ‘shine had lit a fire in his belly and he felt the equal of anything. He carried an oil lamp with him, lighting it only when he made out the dim hulk of the shack.
The forbidden shack.
Sucking cold air into his lungs and filling his guts with iron, he made his way over there. He stood outside in the snow, thinking how it wasn’t too late to turn back, wasn’t too late at all. But then his hand was out of its mitten and his fingers were throwing the bolt, just throwing it aside fancy as you please.
First thing he heard was a rattling, dragging sound…as of chains.
Then something like a harsh breathing…but so very harsh it was like fireplace bellows sucking up ash.
It stayed his hand, but not for long. Good and goddammit, James Lee Cobb, a voice echoed in his skull, this is what ye wanted, weren’t it? To know? To see? To look the worse possible thing right in the face and not dare look away? Weren’t it? Well, weren’t it?
It was.
Those chains…or whatever they were…rattled again and there was a rustling sound. James Lee pulled the door open, but slowly, slowly, figuring his mind needed time to adjust. Like slipping into a chill spring lake, you had to do it by degrees. The door swung open and a hot, reeking blast of fetid air hit him full in the face. It stank like wormy meat simmering on a stove lid. His knees went to rubber and something in him-maybe courage-just shriveled right up.
In the flickering lantern light he saw.
He saw his mother quite plainly.
She was chained to the floor, pulling herself away from the light like some gigantic worm. Her flesh had gone marble-white and was damp and glistening like the flesh of a mushroom. Great sores and ulcers were set into her and some had eaten right to the bone beneath. It was hard to say if she was wearing rags or that was just her skin hanging in loops and ragged folds. Her hair was steel-gray and stringy, those eyes just fathomless holes torn into the vellum of her face.
But what struck James Lee the hardest was not the eyes or the stink or even the feces and filthy straw and tiny animal bones scattered about…it was that she seemed to have tentacles. Just like one of them sea monsters in a picture book that ate ships raw. Long, yellow things all curled and coiled like clocksprings.
But then…he realized they were her fingernails.
And they had to be well over two feet in length…hard, bony growths that came out of her fingertips and laid over her like corkscrewed snakes.
James Lee made a sound…he wasn’t sure what…and she opened those flaking lips, revealing gray decayed teeth that sprouted from pitted gums like grayed fence posts. She made a grunting, squealing sound like a hog. And then she reached out to him, seemed to know him, and those fingernails clattered together like castanets.
That’s when he slammed the door shut.
That’s when he threw the bolt.
And that’s when he ran down through the snow and brambles, ducking past dead oaks and vaulting fallen logs. He ran all the way to the cabin and stumbled and fell into the door. Then Uncle Arlen threw it open, yanking him inside, into that mouth of warmth and security, demanding to know what it was, what it was.
But James Lee could not tell.
The Ozarks back then had a fine story-telling tradition. Sometimes a man’s worth was judged on how hard he worked and how good of a yarn he could spin. So James Lee was no stranger to tales of ghosts and haunts, child- eating ogres that lived in the depths of the forests or blood-sucking devil clans that peopled secret hollows. For everything scarcely understood or completely misunderstood, there was a story to explain it. It was a region where folktale and myth were an inseparable part of everyday life. There were faith healers and power doctors, water witches and yarb grannies…you name it, it showed sooner or later.
And one thing the Ozarks never had a shortage of were witches.
Some good, some evil, some real and some storied, regardless, they were there. Ask just about anyone in any locality of the hills and they could tell you where to find one…or point you to someone who could.
The kids at school told of an old man named Heller the Witch-Man who lived up in some misty hollow that few dared venture to. He could cast out devils and call them up, cure disease and make hair grow.
James Lee figured it was just another story…then one day he was down in town. Uncle Arlen was picking up some feed. James Lee was standing out on the boardwalk, kicking pebbles into the street. Suddenly…he got the damnedest feeling. He felt dizzy and the birthmark on his back started to burn something awful.
He turned and some grizzled old man was standing there, staring at him.
He looked like some hillbilly from the high ridges, dirty and smelling in an old hide coat. He had a single gold tooth in his lower jaw and it sparkled in the sunlight.
“ Boy…ye got the mark on ye,” he said. “Ye got it on ye and ye cain’t rid yerself of it…”
Then Uncle Arlen came out and dragged James Lee bodily away. And even after he threw him in the wagon and they made their way out of town, James Lee could feel those eyes on him, feel that mark on his back burning like a coal.
Uncle Arlen shouted and raged and warned James Lee about talking to strangers, because one day you meet the wrong one and soon enough, he sneaks up to the farm and slits all our throats.
James Lee just said: “It’s him, ain’t it? The Witch-Man.”
“ Ain’t no such thing, damn ye! Ain’t no such thing!”
But James Lee couldn’t stop. “They say…they say how he can do things. Things no one else can. Maybe, maybe if we brought the…the crazy woman to him, he could cure her-”
James Lee caught the back of Uncle Arlen’s fist in the mouth for that. And when he got home, he got a better taste of it. When Uncle Arlen was done, James Lee was folded up on the ground bleeding.
“ Ye never, ever, never mention that one ‘round me again, hear?” Uncle Arlen told him. “That heathen devil witch-man is nothin’ but pain and trouble! He cain’t cure nothin’ and no one, all he’ll bring ye is seven yards of hell!”
