Southern Horror

by Ron Shiflet

  Rob stood and took Cat’s hand. “It has been a long day. Thank you for your hospitality, Miss Magnolia, everything was truly delicious but I think we should turn in now. This heat takes some getting used to. I feel a little dizzy.”

  Cat rubbed her temples and leaned into her husband. “My head is throbbing. I think you’re right, let’s go to bed.” Together they entered the house and climbed the stairs.

  Miss Magnolia allowed enough time for her guests to retire to their room before she rang the silver bell to summon Tomas. “Walk with me to the cemetery. We need to let the others know we have Yankees in our midst again.”

  Tomas offered his arm and led his mistress down the steps. They followed a white-gravel path around the side of the house and into a breathtaking rose garden. In the center of the garden was a small reflecting pool that held the image of the gravid silver moon that had appeared in the sky. “The moon is full tonight, Tomas. That is always a good sign. I don’t think our guests noticed the oleander in the tea. You do a splendid job shaping the leaves to look like mint.”

  “Thank you, Ma’am. You once told me the little touches make a world of difference. I have always strived to serve you well. They should be unconscious by the time we get back to the house.” Tomas guided Miss Magnolia around the pond and out the far side of the garden.

  The path wound through a large grove of weeping willows that circled a small natural spring. The trees were immense and the hanging branches were so thick the spring was hidden from sight. The woman knelt and cupped a handful of water. She drank it then filled her hand again. She rubbed the water over her face and sighed. “You too, my faithful servant. This water has nourished Magnolia Manor for two hundred years, keeping her young and vibrant. Refresh yourself, we have a long night ahead before we are through.”

  Tomas lowered his hands and drank the sweet cool water, then helped the woman to her feet. He held the branches open and she passed through the opposite side of the grove.

  A black wrought-iron fence enclosed a small graveyard. As was typical for Florida the graves were above ground in mausoleums or raised stone vaults. White wisps of mist floated in the moonlight. Miss Magnolia moved to a marble bench and sat down. “Dear friends and loyal Sons of the South there are Yankees here tonight. A man and his woman lie waiting in the Manor. They are young, by today’s standards, and wealthy enough.” She paused and watched as four wisps moved to hover in front of her.

  “I am so deeply sorry, Caroline. They have no children so they won’t do for your family. Be patient, dear. Your time for vengeance will come.” Slowly the mists across the cemetery coalesced and Magnolia smiled at the ghosts of her long dead friends and relatives.

  “I promised you all that I would never die until each of you were given back the lives that the Yankees cut short. Just last month, Patrick took the man who wanted me to cover Magnolia Manor in plastic siding.” She rose and walked among the transparent men, women, and children each dressed in clothes more than a hundred years out of style.

  In the back of the cemetery she found the ghosts she sought. “Stephen and Susanna, I think you should come and take a look at them. I know you weren’t married, but you would have been if Stephen had not shot the dog that raped Susanna. The Yankees executed you, and Susanna wasted away from heartbreak. It is time you were able to live the lives you deserve and find some happiness together.”

  “I will warn you that it will take some time to reclaim the porcelain skin you once had, my friend. This woman is almost as brown as a half-bred darkie, but she’s slender and pretty as long as she doesn’t speak. Won’t you come and see?” The spirits joined hands and followed Miss Magnolia and Tomas back to the house.

  Rob and Cat lay naked on the bed. Susanna covered her eyes and waited for Tomas to pull the quilt up and restore a sense of decency. The stench of vomit rose from the waste can and the woman had a wet facecloth over her forehead.

  “Well, what do you think?” Miss Magnolia looked at the spirits standing at the foot of the bed. They embraced and appeared to whisper to each other, though no sound came from their pale lips. After a moment they turned toward Magnolia and nodded their heads.

  “I know it will be hard looking into a stranger’s face, but those who have gone before you assured me the eyes will be those you remember. You will have all your own memories, but will also gain theirs. You can return and claim their lives in payment of those that were taken from you so many years ago, or you can take their dirty money and start new lives right here if you like. It is a strange world, very different than the one you last knew but you will adjust quickly just like the others have done. All you have to do is pass into their flesh. The special tea they drank has left them unable to resist.”

  Tomas and his mistress watched as the spirits melded into the bodies on the bed. Slowly they opened their eyes and smiled. “Thank you Maggie-doll,” said Robert/Stephen as he swept Catherine/Susanna into his arms.

  Magnolia stiffened her back and tried to look serious, but a girlish giggle slipped past her lips. “Oh, brother dear. It has been one-hundred-and-forty-five years since you last called me Maggie-doll. It is only my great delight in seeing you take breath again that stops me from throttling you right now. We have the rest of the week to reminisce before the two of you are expected to return to New York.” She bent down and kissed his cheek.

  “Of course, you could decide to stay here with me and Tomas. I think the website will increase our business beyond what the two of us can handle. There are still so many spirits out back that we need to avenge. As long as Magnolia Manor stands we shall never forget.”

  Stephen sat up and rubbed his arms, drinking in the sensations of being alive once more. “My darling little sister. I promise to think about it, but not tonight. I have waited such a long time to claim my bride, and I can’t think of a better place for our honeymoon than Magnolia Manor. After all, tomorrow is another day. We will talk about it over breakfast. I can’t wait to tuck into a stack of Tomas’ mouth-watering griddlecakes.”

  Magnolia glared at her brother. “But Stephen, you and Susanna will have to wait one more night. I will have Tomas send for the Reverend first thing in the morning, but you cannot share a room until you are properly wed. After all, we are not uncivilized Blue Bellies. For two hundred years Magnolia Manor has always maintained a proper air of decorum. I will not have you sully her reputation now.”

  “You are right, Maggie-doll. I will profess my love before God and his appointed servant as befits a true Southern gentleman.” Stephen gave Susanna a long and tender kiss before she stood and followed Tomas from the room.

  Magnolia wrapped her arms around her brother. “Welcome home at last. Tomorrow will be soon enough, I think. We have all the time in the world.”

  BEATING JOSEPHAT

  LAWRENCE BARKER

  Talbot Carver’s stomach heaved as the hot iron sank into Josephat’s flesh. An overdone pork odor replaced the Georgia spring night’s honeysuckle. Talbot wiped his brow. At least he didn’t have to do more than stand guard, holding his grandfather’s Confederate sword. Talbot’s older brothers, Billy and Solomon, held the black man down while their friend Raph Vantser applied the iron.

  “Lordy,” Josephat screamed. His eyes shown white in the moonlight, outlined against his shadowy features. “Lordy mercy, let me go. I didn’t do nothing. Nothing, I says.”

  “Tell that to Gretta Fall,” Solomon snarled. Raph chuckled, putting down the iron. His fist plowed into Josephat’s face. A tooth tumbled from Josephat’s mouth to the forest floor. Raph struck again and again.

  Talbot cringed. This isn’t how he planned to spend his last night before marrying Gretta, his childhood sweetheart. But Josephat had whistled at Gretta, tarnishing the honor of Southern womanhood. Or so Raph had said. Instead of drinking Uncle Maddox’s popskull, Billy, Solomon, Raph, and Talbot had dragged a black farmer from his shack, leaving his screaming wife and pickaninnies behind.

  Josephat howled again as
Raph went back to the hot iron. Talbot looked away. He wasn’t sure that Josephat had done anything. Raph had been a terrible liar since they were boys fishing the Chattahoochee River. That new Movie—A Nation’s Birth, or something—Raph saw in Atlanta last week might have stirred up. Hadn’t he talked about it for days, and how much President Wilson liked it?

  “Time to put the fruit on the tree,” Billy said. He whipped a short rope from his jacket and tied Josephat’s hands. Without a word, Raph produced a much longer line. His expert hands transformed it into a noose.

  “I’s begging you,” Josephat pleaded as Billy and Solomon dragged him toward the persimmon tree. “I’s got children.”

  “Save your breath,” Solomon snarled. “Soon, yours will be scarce.”

  Raph tossed the rope over a limb. He placed the noose around Josephat’s neck. Josephat bowed his head. “Ain’t no use praying,” Raph said, a smirk on his broad face. He flexed his shoulders, twice as broad most men’s. “Ain’t nobody listening to you.”

  Josephat raised his head. “You wrong, sir. Great-granpappy came from Africa. He knew of somebody who’ll listen.” His eyes became dull, as though hope faded further with each word. “Her price be frightful, but she listen.”

  Solomon started to pull the noose tight. “Wait,” Billy commanded. “Let’s hear his darky fable.” He laughed. “Maybe it will be Br‘er Rabbit’s briar patch.” He eyed the dangling noose. “A right fine tale before Br’er Rope stills his tongue.”

  Josephat threw back his head. “Ee-ah! Ee-ah!” he called, the second syllable drawn like a mule’s cry. The hairs on Talbot’s arms stood up. He instinctively raised the sword, as though to deflect that voice from the pit. “Ee-ah Shup-Niko‘rat!” Josephat howled. “I gives myself and all I’s ever to be to the black goat’s thousand children,” Josephat called. “I be with them, part of them. The warm dark of Shup-Niko’rat rise and take me.”

  “Shut him up,” Solomon growled. Raph pulled the rope tight. Josephat’s feet, kicking for purchase, left the ground. His eyes bulged. His tongue protruded.

  Talbot’s most recent meal exploded onto the forest floor. Billy and Solomon cheered, too engrossed in the spectacle to notice Talbot’s humiliation. After a few minutes, Josephat stopped moving. Raph released the rope. Josephat struck the ground with a sound like something pulling free of mud.

  The four stood still, the thrill passed. “Let’s go,” Solomon said, breaking the silence. “Ain’t too late for Uncle Maddox’s jar-corn.” Off in the piney woods, something that Talbot tried to tell himself was just a screech owl called. Without another word, the quartet headed through the Georgia forest, silver moonlight illuminating their way.

  They had gone about half a mile when a line of clouds swam up from the southeast, an unusual direction. The clouds hid the moon. Something up ahead slithered, as though a legless man squirmed through brush.

  Then something that resembled a six-foot grub-worm—that was what Talbot thought, anyway—sprang from the darkness. “Lord have mercy!” Raph shouted, as the grub pounced on him. Raph fell, the grub bearing him down. Raph and the grub struggled for a moment. Then Raph, three times Cherokee County wrestling champion, wriggled free.

  The grub’s June-bug-and-earthworm smell would have made him lose his stomach contents now, if he hadn’t already done so. He couldn’t afford the distraction. If Solomon was going to just stand there, if Billy wasn’t going to fire that pistol at his side, there was only one thing to do. Talbot raised the Confederate sword. He skewered the grub, its flesh offering no more resistance than an overripe peach. A muddy slime spurted from the wound. The grub moaned a dying man’s hollow moan. With a speed scarcely believable, the grub vanished into the forest, sword imbedded in its gelatinous flesh. At the grub’s disappearance, the clouds broke up. The moon reappeared.

  A viscous brown fluid covered Raph. Talbot stared at the fluid in fascinated horror. It seemed as though a thousand horsehair worms squirmed within the slime that dripped from Raph. A single burning drop trickled over Talbot’s arm. In disgust, Talbot wiped his arm clean. Raph, swearing and cursing about how he would have to burn his clothes, stripped to his union suit.

  “What was that thing? A wild dog?” Solomon’s voice was barely audible. His eyes locked on where the grub had vanished into the forest. “Didn’t look like any hound I ever saw.”

  “I was half a heartbeat from shooting it when Raph ran it off,” Billy added, only then drawing his pistol.

  Was it Talbot’s imagination, or did a walking-in-dried-corn-shucks rattle now color Raph’s voice? And had Raph’s shape changed, shoulders and waist grown narrower? What Talbot thought he saw in Raph’s eyes was even worse. All trace of life had faded. What remained was only dull black portals into Hell’s pit.

  Raph clutched his chest and collapsed. Solomon knelt beside Raph and shook him. “Raph? Don’t fall over like that,” he called, frightened voice a mockery of his usual bluster. Solomon clenched his hands, as though to emphasize his words. “A man don’t fall over ’cause something hurts a little.”

  Raph shivered. A hadn’t-washed-in-months smell rose from him. He curled into a ball, a kicked-crotch moan on his lips. Then he changed. Raph dwindled into a thin, viney shape. He twitched and rolled, bonelessly bending. He squirmed out of his union suit. Then he stood up, legs bowed and feet splayed. Raph’s body had become a tangle of hempen fibers. His features had become knots, hands and feet, frayed rope.

  Then Raph spoke, voice the crackling of rope unrolled for the first time. “A man don’t fall over ’cause something hurts a little?” His arms bent double. They stretched and contracted. “There’s hurt,” he said, “and then there’s hurt.”

  His frayed rope arms shot out, encircling Solomon’s neck. They remained for a second. Then Raph’s rope hands snapped back into his body. Solomon staggered backwards. His hands went to his throat. An ahah-ah sound, like a cat ready to pounce, came from his mouth.

  Solomon’s head rose, neck stretching beneath it. His eyes bulged, tongue protruded. His neck grew longer and thinner. Then his neck, too weak to support his head, gave way. Solomon’s head fell, a break-bone crack coming from his arm-length neck.

  At that, Billy found his nerve. He pumped four shots into Raph, each exploding in a rope-fiber cloud. Raph howled a long, sorrowful wail. He fell backwards, arms and legs flailing. Then Billy turned and ran.

  Talbot hesitated. Was it right to leave Solomon? But Solomon couldn’t still be alive, head on a ribbon of neck that dangled to his belly. And Raph … well, Raph’s arms still thrashed. Talbot didn’t know if Raph would get up. But if he did, Talbot didn’t want to be there. He turned and followed Billy.

  The run through the pine-scented forest, even with the moonlight, was a blind stumble, spring peepers calling the mad dash’s cadence. Neither Talbot nor Billy had any sense of how much time elapsed before they lurched into their ancestral home, a shiny white jewel set among bare-wood outbuildings.

  They bounded up the porch steps, through the door. Talbot locked the doors, first the one behind him and then the others. Billy, not wasting time, checked the windows, securing them all and closing the curtains.

  Talbot and Billy waited in darkness, longing for the kerosene lamp’s light but afraid that illumination would proclaim their location. Talbot scooped up a box of matches—the new kind, easy to strike but not poisonous—and stuffed them in his pocket. Knowing he could have light if he really wanted made him feel better, at least a little.

  “As far as anybody can tell, Raph will have just disappeared. Maybe run off to Tennessee or something,” Billy quavered. “But folks will find Solomon’s body. They’ll want to know what happened. What do we say?”

  “Worry about seeing next sunrise first,” Talbot replied. “Then pick words.”

  Something landed on the roof with an echoing thump. “What’s that?” Billy gasped, as he nervously reloaded his pistol. “Rat in the attic?”

  The noise slid toward the chimney�
�slide-bump; slide-bump; slide-bump . Talbot didn’t know what it was, but it was no rat. He glanced at the fireplace, cold since winter’s end. He dashed to it to check the damper: closed tight. Talbot grimaced; he didn’t take much comfort from that fact.

  Talbot grabbed the old smooth-bore, the one that had seen service at Chickamauga and Lookout Mountain, off the wall. It wasn’t worth much at over a hundred yards. Somehow, Talbot didn’t expect to shoot at anything that distant.

  The brothers stood before the fireplace, weapons drawn. The slide-bump slithered across the roof, dragging over the shingles. Then the noise stopped. Talbot’s heart pounded. His breath rasped, harder than the run through the forest would explain. He ran his fingers over the gun’s stock, smooth and grave-stone cool.

  “I think it’s gone,” Billy whispered.

  At that, the window burst inward. The viney, cordy figure, visible in the broken-window moonlight, was unmistakable: Raph.

  “I killed you!” Billy shouted. He poured six bullets into Raph. Talbot shoved the smooth-bore into Raph’s chest and fired. The awful racket of shots in an enclosed space ice-picked into Talbot’s ears, leaving him deaf to anything but its slow-fading echo.

  Raph’s torso undulated at the bullets’ impact. Instead of falling, Raph whipped his rope arms. He rope legs stretched and contracted, making him an awful jumping jack. Raph’s rope mouth moved. Talbot couldn’t hear, but he could see what words the inhuman lips formed. Raph might have said, “I’ve grown. Lead can hurt me no more.”

  Raph jumped up into the air. His legs stretched out, growing longer by the second. He wrapped them around Bill’s middle. Raph floated in the air for an impossible moment. Then his legs snapped back and he landed on his feet.

  Billy’s expression said that he screamed a night-shattering cry. Talbot was almost glad that his ringing ears concealed it. Then Billy’s chest rose into the air, middle stretching long and snake-thin. His mouth went wider. Like Solomon’s head had collapsed, Billy’s torso doubled over, belly far too slender for his chest.