“I started livin’ there, and it wasn’t bad. It had that well, but when I come up on it for a look, I seen that it had been filled in with rocks and such, and there wasn’t no gettin’ at the water. But there was a creek no more than a hundred feet from the place, and it was spring fed and I was right at the source. There was plenty of game, and I had a garden patch where I grew turnips and the like.”
“I would have thought you would have had your fill of turnips in all shapes and forms.”
“I liked that soup my mama made. I still remember it. Daddy didn’t have no cause to do that over some soup.”
“Now we are commanding the same line of thought.”
“Anyway, the place was just perfect. I started to clean out the well. Spendin’ a bit of time each day pullin’ rocks out of it. In the meantime, I just used the spring down behind the house, but the well was closer, and it had a good stone curbin’ around it, and I thought it would be nice if it was freed up for water. I wouldn’t have to tote so far.
“Meanwhile, I discovered the town of Wood Tick. It isn’t much, as you seen, but there was one thing nice about it, and every man in that town knew it and wanted that nice thing. Sissy. She was one of Mary’s daughters. The only one she knew who her father was. A drummer who passed through and sold her six yards of wool and about five minutes in a back room.
“Thing is, there wasn’t no real competition in Wood Tick for Sissy. That town has the ugliest men you ever seen, and about half of them have goitres and such. She was fifteen and I was just five years older, and I took to courtin’ her.”
“She was nothing but a child.”
“Not in these parts. Ain’t no unusual thing for men to marry younger girls, and Sissy was mature.”
“In the chest or in the head?”
“Both. So we got married, or rather, we just decided we was married, and we moved out to that cabin.”
“And you still had no idea who built it, who it belonged to?”
“Sissy knew, and she told me all about it. She said there had been an old woman who lived there, and that she wasn’t the one who built the house in the first place, but she died there, and then a family ended up with the land, squatted on it, but after a month, they disappeared, all except for the younger daughter who they found walkin’ the road, talkin’ to herself. She kept sayin’ ‘It sucked and it crawled’ or some such. She stayed with Mary in town who did some doctorin’, but wasn’t nothing could be done for her. She died. They said she looked like she aged fifty years in a few days when they put her down.
“Folks went out to the house but there wasn’t nothin’ to be found, and the well was all rocked in. Then another family moved in, and they’d come into town from time to time, and then they didn’t anymore. They just disappeared. In time, one of the townspeople moved in, a fellow who weaved ropes and sold hides and such, and then he too was gone. No sign as to where. Then there was this man come through town, a preacher like you, and he ended up out there, and he said the house was evil, and he stayed on for a long time, but finally he’d had enough and came into town and said the place ought to be set afire and the ground ploughed up and salted so nothing would grow there and no one would want to be there.”
“So he survived?”
“He did until he hung himself in a barn. He left a note said: ‘I seen too much’.”
“Concise,” the Reverend said.
“And then I come there and brought Sissy with me.”
“After all that, you came there and brought a woman as well. Could it be, sir, that you are not too bright?”
“I didn’t believe all them stories then.”
“But you do now?”
“I do. And I want to go back and set some thing straight on account of Sissy. That’s what I was tryin’ to tell them in town, that somethin’ had happened to her, but when I told them what, wouldn’t nobody listen. They just figured I was two nuts shy a squirrel’s lunch and throwed me in that damned old cage. I’d still have been there wasn’t for you. Now, you done good by me, and I appreciate it, and I’d like you to ride me over close to the house, you don’t have to come up on it, but I got some business I want to take care of.”
“Actually, the business you refer to is exactly my business.”
“Haints and such?”
“I suppose you could put it that way. But please, tell me about Sissy. About what happened.”
Norville nodded and swigged some water from the canteen and screwed the cap on. He took a deep breath and leaned loosely against the tree.
“Me and Sissy, we was doin’ all right at first, makin’ a life for ourselves. I took to cleanin’ out that old well. I had to climb down in it and haul the rocks up by bucket, and some of them was so big I had to wrap a rope around them and hook my mule up and haul them out. I got down real deep, and still didn’t reach water. I come to where it was just nothin’ but mud, and I stuck a stick down in the mud, and it was deep, and there really wasn’t anymore I could do, so I gave it up and kept carrying water from the spring. I took to fixin’ up some rotten spots on the house, nailin’ new shingles on the roof. Sissy planted flowers and it all looked nice. Then, of a sudden, it got so she couldn’t sleep nights. She kept sayin’ she was sure there was somethin’ outside, and that she’d seen a face at the window, but when I got my gun and went out, wasn’t nothin’ there but the yard and that pile of rocks I’d pulled out of the well. But the second time I went out there, I had the feelin’ someone was watching, maybe from the woods, and my skin started to crawl. I ain’t never felt that uncomfortable. I started back to the house, and then I got this idea that I was bein’ followed. I stopped and started to look back, but I couldn’t bring myself to do it. Just couldn’t. I felt if I looked back I’d see somethin’ I didn’t want to see. I’m ashamed to say I broke and ran and I closed the door quickly and locked it, and outside the door I could hear somethin’ breathin’.
“From then on, by the time it was dark, we was inside. I boarded up all the windows from the inside. In the day, it seemed silly, but when night come around, it got so we both felt as if something was moving around and around the house, and I even fancied once that it was on the roof, and at the chimney. I built a fire in the chimney quick like, and kept one going at night, even when it was hot, and finally, I rocked it up and we cooked outside durin’ the day and had cold suppers at night. Got so we dreaded the night. We were frightened out of our gourds. We took to sleepin’ a few hours in the day, and I did what I could to tend the garden and hunt for food, but I didn’t like being too far from the house or Sissy.
“Now, the thing to do would have been to just pack up and leave. We talked about it. But the house and that land was what we had, even if it was just by squatter’s rights, and we thought maybe we were being silly, except we got so it wasn’t just a feelin’ we had, or sounds, we could smell it. It smelled like old meat and stagnant water, all at once. It floated around the house at night, through them boarded windows and under the front door. It was like it was gettin’ stronger and bolder.
“One mornin’ we came out and all the flowers Sissy had planted had been jerked out of the ground, and there was a dead coon on the doorstep, its head yanked off.”
“Yanked off?”
“You could tell from the way there was strings of meat comin’ out of the neck. It had been twisted and pulled plumb off, like a wrung chicken neck, and from the looks of it, it appeared someone, or something, had sucked on its neck. Curious, I cut that coon open. Hardly had a drop of blood in it. Ain’t that somethin’?”
“That’s something all right.”
“Our mule disappeared next. No sign of it. We thought it over and decided we needed to get out, but we didn’t know where to go and we didn’t have any real money. Then one mornin’ I come out, and on the stones I’d set in front of the house for steps, there was a muddy print on them. It was a big print and it didn’t have no kind of shape I could recognise, no kind of animal, but it had toes and a heel. Mud
trailed off into the weeds. I got my pistol and went out there, but didn’t find nothin’. No more prints. Nothin’.
“That night I heard a board crack at the bedroom window, and I got up with a gun in my hand. I seen that one of the boards I’d nailed over the window outside had been pulled loose, and a face was pressed up against the glass. It was dark, but I could see enough cause of the moonlight, and it wasn’t like a man’s face. It was the eyes and mouth that made it so different, like it had come out of a human mould of some sort, but the mould had been twisted or dropped or both, and what was made from it was this . . . This thing. The face was as pale as a whore’s butt, and twisted up, and its eyes were blood red and shone at the window as clear as if the thing was standin’ in front of me. I shot at it, shatterin’ an expensive pane of glass, and then it was gone in the wink of that pistol’s flare.
“I decided it had to end, and I told Sissy to stick, and I gave her the pistol, and I took the fire wood axe and went outside and she bolted the door behind me. I went on around to the side of the house, and I thought I caught sight of it, a nude body, maybe, but with strange feet. Wasn’t nothin’ more than a glimpse of it as it went around the edge of the house and I ran after it. I must have run around that damn house three times. It acted like it was a kid playin’ a game with me. Then I saw somethin’ white that at first I couldn’t imagine was it, because it seemed like a sheet being pulled through the bedroom window I’d shot out.
“You mean it was wraith like . . . A haint, as you said before?”
Norville nodded. “I ran to the door, but it was bolted of course, way I told Sissy to do. I ran back to the window and started using the axe to chop out the rest of the boards, knocked the panes and the frame out, and I crawled through, pieces of glass stickin’ and cuttin’ me.
“Sissy wasn’t there. But the pistol was on the floor. I dropped the axe and snatched it up, and then I heard her scream real loud and rushed out into the main room, and there I seen it. It was chewin’ . . . You got to believe me, preacher. It had spread its mouth wide, like a snake, and it had more teeth in its face than a dozen folk, and teeth more like an animal, and it was bitin’ her head off. It jerked its jaws from side to side, and blood went everywhere. I shot at it. I shot at it five times and I hit it five times.
“It didn’t so much as make the thing move. I might as well have been rubbin’ its belly. It lifted its eyes and looked at me, and . . . As God is my witness, it spat out what was left of poor Sissy’s head, and slapped its mouth over her blood pumpin’ neck, and went to suckin’ on it like a kid with a sucker.
“I ain’t ashamed to admit it, my knees went weak. I dropped the pistol and ran and got the axe. When I turned, it was on me. I swung that axe, and hit it. The blade went in, went in deep . . . and there wasn’t no blood, didn’t spurt a drop. Thing grabbed me up and flung me at the window, and damned if I didn’t go straight through it and land out on my back, on top of some of them rocks I’d pulled out of the well. It flowed through that window like it was water, and it come at me. I rolled over and grabbed one of the rocks and flung it and hit that thing square in its bony chest. What five shots from a pistol and a hack from an axe couldn’t do, the rock did.
“Monster yelled like the fire of hell had been shoved down its throat, and it ran straight away for the well faster than I’ve ever seen anything move, its body twistin’ in all directions, like it was going to come apart, or like the bones was shiftin’ inside of it. It ran and dove into the well and I heard it hit the mud below.
“I climbed back through the window, rushed into the main room, tryin’ not to look at poor Sissy’s body, and I got the double barrel off the mantle and lit a lantern and went back outside through the front door with the lantern in one hand, the shotgun in the other.
“First I held the lantern over the well, got me a look, but didn’t see nothin’ but darkness. I bent over the curbin’ and lowered the lantern in some, fearin’ that thing might grab me. The sides of the well were covered with a kind of slime, and I could see the mud down below, and if the thing had gone into it, there wasn’t no sign now except a bit of a ripple.
“I hid out in the woods. I went back the next mornin’ and got Sissy’s body and buried it out back of the place, and then before it was dark, I boarded up all the windows good and locked the door and I got the shotgun and sat with it all night in the middle of the big room. I knew it wouldn’t do me no good, but that was all I had. Me and that shotgun.
“But didn’t nothin’ bother me, though I could hear it and smell it movin’ around outside the house. Come morning, I was brave enough to go out, and Sissy’s body had been pulled from the grave and gnawed on. I reckon animals could have done it in the night, but I didn’t think so. I buried her again, this time deep, and mounded up dirt and packed it down. I cut some sticks and tied a cross together and stuck that up, then I walked into town and told my story. They didn’t even think I was a murderer. They didn’t question if I might have killed Sissy, which is what I thought they might do. They locked me up for bein’ a crazy, and wasn’t no one cared enough to come and see if her body was at the cabin or not. They wasn’t interested. I done taken Sissy off and wasn’t no man wanted her back now that she had been with me, which considerin’ the kind of women they was usually with didn’t make no sense, but then there ain’t much about Wood Tick that does make sense.
“And then you come along, and you know the rest from there.”
III. The Thing Down There
The sun was starting to slant to the West, but there was still plenty of daylight left when they arrived on horseback. The house was built of large logs and it looked solid. The chimney appeared sound. The shingles well cut and nailed down tight. It was indeed a good cabin and the Reverend understood the attraction it held for those who passed by.
Norville slipped off the back of the horse and hurried around behind the cabin. After the Reverend tied up his horse, he too went out back. Norville stood over an empty grave, the cross turned over and broken. Norville and the Reverend stood there for a long moment.
Norville fell to his knees. “Oh, Jesus. I should have taken her off somewhere else. He’s done come and got her.”
“It is done now,” Reverend Mercer said. “Stand up, man. None of this does any good. Let’s look around.”
Norville stood up, but he looked ready to collapse.
“Buck up, man,” Reverend Mercer said. “We have work to do.”
No sight or parcel of the body was found. The Reverend went to the well and bent over and looked down. It was deep. He took out a match and struck it on the curbing and dropped it down the shaft, watched the little light fall. The match hissed out in the mud below.
“Do you believe me,” Norville said, standing back from the well a few paces.
“I do.”
“What can I do?”
“Whatever you do, you will not do alone. I will be here with you.”
“Kind of you, Reverend, but what can you do?”
“At the moment, I’m uncertain. Let’s look inside the house.”
The cabin, though not huge, had two rooms. A small bedroom and a large main room with a kitchen table and a rocked-in fireplace and some benches and a few chairs. There was blood on the floor and on a rug there, and on the walls and even on the ceiling. The Reverend paused at the rocked-up fireplace. He bent down and looked at the rocks. Did you notice a lot of these rocks have a drawing in them?”
“What now?”
“Look here.” Reverend Mercer touched his finger to one of the stones. There was a strange drawing on it, a stick figure with small symbols written around it in a circle. “It’s on a lot of the rocks, and my guess is, if you were to pull the ones without visible symbols free, you could turn them over and the marks would be on the other side. They came from inside the well, correct?”
“Nearly all of them. It’s a very deep well.”
“As I have seen. Did you not notice the marks?”
“Guess I was so anxious to get those rocks out of there I didn’t.”
“It is only visible if you’re looking for it.”
“And you were?”
“I was looking for anything. This is my business. When you said you hit this thing with a rock and it fled after shooting it and hitting it with an axe had no effect, I started to wonder. I believe these are symbols of protection.”
The Reverend began walking about the house. He looked under the bed and at the walls and checked nooks and crannies. He bounced himself on the floor to test the boards. He stood looking down at the blood stained rug for a while. He picked up the edge of the rug and saw there were a series of short boards that didn’t extend completely across the floor.
Sliding the rug aside, the Reverend used his knife and stuck it under the edge of one of the boards and pried it up. There was a space beneath and a metal box was in the space. The Reverend removed a few more boards so he could get a good look at the box. It had a padlock on it.
“Find the axe,” the Reverend said.
Norville went outside and got the axe and brought it back. It was a single edge, and the Reverend turned the flat side down and swung and knocked the lock off with one sure blow. He opened the box. Inside was a book.
“Why would someone put a book under lock and key?” Norville said.
The Reverend went to the table and sat on the long bench next to it. Norville sat on the other side. The Reverend opened the book and studied it. He looked up after a moment, said, “Whoever built this house originally, their intentions for us were not good.”
“Us?” Norville said. “How would they, whoever that is, know we would be here?”
The Mammoth Book of Best New Horror 23 (Mammoth Books) Page 40