The Stone of Blood

by Tony Nalley

  Table of Contents

  Part One

  One

  Two

  Three

  Four

  Five

  Six

  Seven

  Eight

  Nine

  Part Two

  Ten

  Eleven

  Twelve

  Thirteen

  Fourteen

  Fifteen

  Sixteen

  Seventeen

  Eighteen

  Nineteen

  Part Three

  Twenty

  Twenty One

  Twenty Two

  Twenty Three

  Twenty Four

  Twenty Five

  Twenty Six

  Twenty Seven

  Twenty Eight

  Twenty Nine

  Afterthought’s from the Author

  References:

  The Stone of Blood

  By

  Tony Nalley

  Copyright © 2012 Tony Nalley. All rights reserved.

  No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, graphic, electronic, or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, taping, or by any information storage retrieval system, without the permission, in writing, of the publisher.

  In dedication to and in honor of …my son Shaun …for his inspiration …my mother, my father, my sister, and my family for their love and support. And for my grandfather, for without whom none of this would have ever been possible.

  And with special thanks to Carol Lance, for her insight, integrity and editing of my manuscript.

  In a world where myth gives rise to legend, and history veils the truth …a charming and imaginative young boy named Toby and his resourceful cousin Colby uncover a dark secret buried deep beneath the grounds of an abandoned rock quarry near the woods!

  Join them on their exciting adventures in this fascinating coming of age story as they suddenly discover the astonishing truths about their world! Truths that will change their lives forever!

  Table of Contents

  Part One | Beginnings

  One | The Ghost of the Confederate Soldier

  Two | The Halls of the Old Tavern

  Three | In the Shadows of a Great Dark Cloud

  Four | Words of Silence

  Five | Innocent Blood

  Six | By a Single Candle’s Light

  Seven | Of Higher Purpose

  Eight | Wrought with Great Passage

  Nine | Burning Embers

  Part Two | Awakenings

  Ten | That Unforgiving Sky

  Eleven | Back Into the Mountain

  Twelve | A Thirst for Knowledge

  Thirteen | Essence of the Past

  Fourteen | Of Blood or Name

  Fifteen | Seemingly Overnight and Unnoticed

  Sixteen | How We Survived

  Seventeen | Sunlight Rising Upon the Waters

  Eighteen | Through Tangled Woods

  Nineteen | Of Witches Ghosts and Werewolves

  Part Three | Providence

  Twenty | The Depths of My Darkness

  Twenty One | Once Upon a Time

  Twenty Two | Of Faith and Chime

  Twenty Three | Uncharted Territory

  Twenty Four | Crescent Moon

  Twenty Five | A Stone in the Road

  Twenty Six | Beneath these Earthly Grounds

  Twenty Seven | When I Almost Died

  Twenty Eight | Autumn Leaves

  Twenty Nine | Blood Moon

  Afterthoughts | From the Author

  References:

  From the Author:

  I have been talking about sitting down and writing this book for a very long time. I have used so many excuses as to why I hadn’t completed it yet. Excuses like getting married, getting divorced, raising my son or any number of other reasons related to not having the time to do it! But I find that as I get older, the days get shorter and time passes by more quickly. And as we are all only given a finite amount of time to walk upon the earth, I found that I had to just put my pen to paper or fingers to the keyboard as it were, before my time was through.

  I wasn’t a bad kid growing up. At least as long as you don’t ask my sister! But I was a kid like any other, whose stories and adventures were just as important to me as any of those found in a Mark Twain novel or in a Saturday afternoon matinee! Maybe they are not as fanciful with magical horses or buried pirate treasure, but they are just as worthy of bein’ told!

  My grandpa’s stories are the main reason and focus of this book; the idea for it came from cassette tapes that I had recorded of him some thirty-five years ago. The stories within the chapter titled ‘Of Witches Ghosts and Werewolves’ are his. They were either told to him or he experienced them himself. He passed them on to me, and now I pass them on to you. I don’t believe that anyone else in the whole world either recorded his telling of them or wrote them down for others to enjoy.

  And because of this, I am very blessed to share these with you now upon these pages.

  This book itself was written to compliment the telling of my grandfather’s stories. I wanted them to be read in the same context as they were originally told; from my perspective at the time, a time when my imaginations were as real to me as my physical existence. While I based many of the events and characters within these pages upon real people and real life adventures, they are nothing more than a creative blend of fantasy mixed with truth; to add that touch of destiny that we all carry with us …whether we believe we do or not. History is often written from the point of view of its writer. Thereby truth becomes intermingled with beliefs, myths and legends, leaving it to the reader to ascertain the difference.

  For it is written that within all of us lies a destiny. Perhaps my destiny was to write this story, while yours …is to read it. – Tony Nalley

  Preface:

  I took all of the ghost stories and legends of my home town; Bardstown, Kentucky, including the ghost of Jesse James, the haunting of the Old Jail House, the Talbott Tavern, My Old Kentucky Home and the history of the paintings at St. Joseph’s Cathedral and combined them all into one centralized story with an underlying theme that includes a ghost of a Confederate Soldier that I once actually saw myself, and a cave that my cousin and I discovered at an old abandoned rock quarry; a cave that we subsequently named the ‘werewolf cave’. I put all of this into motion in the book along with the ghost stories of my grandfather’s, transcribed here for you upon these pages.

  This is a work I have wanted to complete since I was nine years old. At times it even gave me cold chills! As I was writing it, I found more things to be true about this story; than anything I could have ever possibly imagined as fiction.

  Go ahead, look it up! See for yourself! I dare you! - Tony

  Introduction:

  She came to me in the night, a vision floatin’ in the air just outside of my bedroom window, tappin’ on the windows glass, whisperin’ my name. “Toby…” She whispered hauntingly and slow. “Toby…” She whispered again beggin’ me to let her in.

  I opened up my window and the girl floated into my room, crawlin’ like a cat upon my bed. And as I went to her she reached out for me …and ripped the flesh from my bone!

  Part One

  Beginnings

  Prelude:

  For this reason the spirit cries, no stone has been uncovered.

  In unmarked grave his body lies, for secrets yet discovered.

  One

  The Ghost of the Confederate Soldier

  I sat up there on that old fence post like a modern day Tom Sawyer of sorts, at least wise in my mind and all; and except for I was wearin’ shoes. I sat up there contemplatin’ on life like I was a King or somebody important li
ke that; chewin’ on a piece of tall grass I’d picked up from outta the field.

  The shadows from Mr. Roberts’s red barn were playin’ catch with the lights comin’ in from the other side of it. The sunlight was dancin’ back and forth across the yard like sparklin’ diamonds on the water; the grass still bein’ damp from the early mornin’ rains and all. The sunrise had been a particularly beautiful mixture of bright oranges and yellows that mornin’, and there was just the faintest scent of honeysuckles blowin’ in on that warm summer wind.

  I didn’t know what I wanted to be when I growed up then mind you. And I don’t reckon as I ever gave it much thought actually. At twelve years old, growin’ up to me was like bein’ in a whole other place and time entirely. I figured I’d be somebody else by the time I got there anyways, so I’d have plenty of time to be thinkin’ about stuff like that later on. From right where I was sittin’ at, right there on that fence post, life for me was just fine! And as a matter of fact, it couldn’t have gotten any better!

  “Toby! Where are you son? You alright out there?” My mama shouted from the back porch.

  “Yes Ma’am. I’m alright!” I shouted and waved back. “I’m over here by the gate on the fence!”

  Mama stood outside holdin’ the screen door open with her hip wipin’ her hands on a dish towel.

  “Well, the weather man says there’s a storm comin’ in. So don’t you be out there too long! You hear me?” she asked and then she nodded.

  Mama was always lookin’ out for me and stuff. She said it was her job. But I don’t think she ever got paid for it.

  “Okay Mom!” I shouted back just before the screen door slammed shut.

  My mom and dad named me Toby; they said it was my nickname, but it wasn’t my real name. I was supposed to have been named Tobias, meanin’ “God is good” or somethin’ like that and they were gonna call me Toby for short. But when I was born, they just up and decided to name me after my dad instead; so they just kept the nickname I reckon since they already had their minds set on it. I only ever heard my real name anyways when they were mad at me for somethin’.

  We lived out in the country; in the heart of the bluegrass state. None of us knew exactly why it was called bluegrass mind you. That’s just what they called it we guessed. The grass really wasn’t blue; it really wasn’t! It was just as green as everybody else’s!

  Sometimes the grass grew so tall that we could play hide and seek out there in the fields. But mostly we weren’t allowed to play in it cause of snakes or for some other reasons. It didn’t mean that we didn’t play in it; it just meant that we played in it until we’d get caught!

  ‘Not rememberin’ was always a good excuse when Mama would catch us, and that ‘other kids got to play in the tall grasses’ worked as a reason too. But Mama said that she, “didn’t raise those other kids!” and if she had, then “they wouldn’t get to play out there in those tall grasses neither!”

  So there you go!

  Our farm was every bit of three acres big! Big enough for the four of us: my mom and dad, my sister Anna and me. We had great views from our front porch swing when the weather would permit. We had views of fields; views of corn and grains outlined by trees at nearly every point of horizon.

  I always kind of imagined it lookin’ out across those fields, that God himself must’ve placed an invisible bubble around our home so that no kind of troubles could ever happen there. It was kind of hard to explain, yet in my mind’s eye that’s just how I saw it. It was a safe place.

  We had a garden just this side of Mr. Roberts’s field. It wasn’t a big garden but it was more than enough for us, anyways I didn’t like most of what came out of it. We had a fenced in field behind our house, with a hen house an outhouse and an old barn in it. The barn was located way out there by the pond and the woods, but the hen house and out-house were closer to us, just on the other side of the gate that exited our backyard. The hen house was always full of chickens and eggs. And …the out-house? Well …you don’t want to know what it was full of.

  We had to check them regularly; the chickens in the hen house I mean.

  Our dog named Candy was a white Jack Russell terrier, and she would run around and round them chickens up at nights. She would herd em’ up while my mama would shoo em’ into the chicken coop to keep em’ safe!

  On the left hand side of our hen house, we kept an old beagle hound. His name was Mr. Whiskers, named for self explanatory reasons. And the field all around us was just big enough for a few cows and a pony to run around in.

  My pony’s name was Prince and he was about thirty years old or somethin’.

  I’ve been told he was pretty old for a Shetland pony, but he sure did run around like a young colt out there in the field! Grandpa gave him to me when I was five I think, once we’d moved out to the country.

  Our house was completely surrounded in the back by woods and brush. It made it very private; so that nobody would be lookin’ at you every time you’d come outside or if you had to step out behind the shed or some tree somewhere’s to relieve yourself or somethin’. That’s just how it was out in the country. We didn’t have no inside bathroom, like we did in the city! It was different! And you couldn’t be doing stuff like that up there in town, no sir!

  And Bardstown, well it was even a small town and all, as far as towns go; known as the Bourbon Capital of the world!

  Bourbon is a special kind of whiskey that is made from corn. Not that I’ve ever had any! My dad worked at Barton’s Distillery about five miles from where we lived. They made Bourbon whiskey there. The name Bourbon comes from a time when Kentucky was originally a part of Virginia. And cause the French had helped us defeat the King of England in the Revolutionary War, the Virginian government named several of their new counties after em’. One of em’ was called Bourbon, named after the French royal family, the House of Bourbon.

  Bourbon whiskey was made in Kentucky and was different cause it was the first corn whiskey most people had ever tasted. I aint never tasted none myself, but when Dad come home from work he always smelled of whiskey. And I don’t know that it smelled nothin’ like corn.

  But like I said, Bardstown was a small town and all. Big enough for growin’ up in I reckon’, full of history and stuff; at least wise accordin’ the stories I’ve heard. Mostly true stories, at least wise I never found a reason to doubt any of em’.

  My daddy’s daddy I never got to meet cause he went on up to Heaven before I was born. But I knew my mama’s daddy real well. He was a storyteller. I guess maybe that’s where I got it from. He was born here in Bardstown just like me; only back in nineteen and thirteen.

  Mama told me that when she was little, Grandpa used to gather up all of his kids, and tell stories to em’ around the coal oil lantern or old wood stove at night before bedtime; or at least the smaller kids who still lived at home. She said that ‘this was back before they had TV and radio, when folks would gather around in the nighttime and talk to one another like civilized folks’.

  Grandpa told me tales of how things were when he was a kid. But mostly, he told me stories about witches! I really never saw a witch before nor nothing myself personally. At least wise I don’t ever think that I did.

  Witches gathered in dark places, keepin’ their rituals and surnames secret. Like stories of old they’d catch children found, who’d wandered too far from their homes. Fairy tales disguised the truth in plain sight; with unbelieving mortals unable to ascertain the difference.

  Witches were real! They turned themselves into animals and such, my grandpa told me; castin’ spells upon would be travelers who crossed their paths along lonely roads and amidst the darkened shadows!

  I don’t think that I have ever seen a witch before; at least no witch that I could have ever recognized. But I have seen a ghost! And right out there in broad daylight too! It appeared in that window loft yonder in the old barn sittin’ out in our back field by the fence. The ghost looked down at me, directly into my eyes! Me and this
girl that I knew, we both saw that ghost! She was my witness! Her name was Mary.

  She was a girl who I hung around with when I was younger. Her mama and my mama were friends from way back when they were in high school together. Mary and them had come over to visit. And we were out there in the back field together, walkin’ around near the woods.

  “You know? You could hold my hand if you want to.” Mary said to me.

  “Well I reckon I would if I had a mind to.” I answered. “I just don’t reckon I have a mind to is all.”

  “Well then …what’d you bring me out here for then?” she questioned.