The Bell Witch

by John F. D. Taff

  He stared at the letter, reading and rereading it as if some key portion of its text might change. When he noticed that the sweat from his hands was causing the ink to run, he hurriedly folded it and stuffed it into his pocket.

  And tried to think of some way of telling the General that they could not possibly receive him.

  * * *

  He stalked into the dining room through the door that opened onto the whistle walk. Supper was already in progress, and he quietly seated himself.

  Meals had resumed some of their former character, with conversation and bright faces. The only discernible difference was that now some of that conversation seemed to be conducted with the air.

  Jack tucked his napkin into his collar. One of the slaves must have been fishing that morning, because the main course was fresh, brown river trout. Jack helped himself to an entire fish, some spinach, several thick, fresh tomato slices and a hunk of heavy white bread.

  You should’ve seen their faces, Luce, he heard the Witch cackle as he began eating. Honestly, it was too funny. Imagine, me an Indian!

  Lucy plucked her napkin from her lap and coughed several times into it. “You of all people should know better than tricking children into digging up graves. It’s sacrilegious.”

  Oh, Luce! laughed the Witch, letting the reprimand slide off her. It was only some Indian, dead for hundreds of years. What’s it to him if someone digs up his old bones? He doesn’t need ‘em where he is. Besides, I don’t even have a body to dig up. Inconvenient.

  “You don’t have a body?” asked Lucy, genuinely interested and taken aback. “If you’re a spirit, wouldn’t you have once had a body?”

  “She doesn’t know who she is,” said Jack.

  Jack…, warned the Witch, her voice lowering.

  “She knows why she’s here,” he said matter-of-factly around of mouthful of fish. “Why don’t you tell Lucy, Witch? Tell her at least why you’re here. I’m sure she’d like to know.”

  Jack Bell, hissed the Witch. You’d best watch your tongue, or you’ll find yourself in trouble.

  As she said this, Jack winced. His jaw fell open, and food spilled onto the table.

  He shouldn’t talk with his mouth full. It’s bad manners, said the Witch.

  Jack groaned, both hands rising to his face. “What the hell are you doing to me?”

  Lucy rose, prepared to go to him, but the Witch calmed her.

  It’s all right, Luce. His jaw’s just powerful tired, that’s all, from all that yakking at the table. He should be fine after he rests it a bit. He has no idea why I’m here, anyway.

  “Do you?” Lucy asked, still standing, not taking her eyes off Jack.

  Luce, you know that I can’t lie to you, the Witch responded.

  “Yes or no?”

  Even though I won’t lie to you, I don’t necessarily have to answer your questions, either. So don’t ask your next.

  “Why are you here, Witch?”

  You’re not ready to know that.

  At that, whatever held Jack released its grip. He opened and closed his mouth tentatively, rubbed his jaw gingerly.

  Jack waved Lucy back to her seat as he recovered, and she reseated herself slowly. He took his glass of water, drained it slowly. Lucy noticed the pains he took to keep the rim of the glass tight against his mouth. Water, however, still dribbled between his lips, as if he had lost control over them.

  He said nothing, avoided Lucy’s eyes.

  “Are you all right?” she asked.

  “Tongue’s a little swollen, that’s all. It’ll pass,” he said, still slurring his words.

  “Witch, please, let’s have one meal in this house without your antics!” Lucy snapped, flinging the napkin down on her lap.

  Sorry, Luce. But Old Jack brings out the worst in me. I’ll restrain myself for you.

  “Please do.”

  Jack has some news, she offered. Care to tell them, or should I?

  Jack remembered the letter folded in his back pocket, and his stomach plummeted. Yet, he made no move to produce the letter.

  Now, Jack, you’re being shy. He just received a note from Andy Jackson, Old Hickory, hero of the Battle of New Orleans some years back. It seems we’re going to have houseguests.

  “We’re having no such thing,” countered Jack. “I’m writing the General that we can’t possibly receive him under the present circumstances.”

  “But, Jack,” argued Lucy. “You’ve extended the invitation before. And it’s been so long since you’ve seen him or anyone else from your company.”

  Ah, but the General isn’t interested in trading war stories. He’s got something particular in mind, gloated the Witch.

  “And that is…?” asked Lucy.

  Me! He’s heard about me, and wants to see me for his own self. Right, Jack?

  Jack nodded glumly at Lucy. “But, he’ll not see you. I’m writing today that this is neither a good idea nor a good time. I’ll not be humiliated by you, Witch, in front of the one man I hold above all others,” Jack said with the kind of finality he hadn’t shown in months.

  Party pooper, moaned the Witch.

  Jack picked at his food in silence, then stood and left abruptly.

  After supper, Lucy dawdled around the dining room for a while, conferring with Saloma about the evening meal, instructing Naddy about some special cleaning she wanted done upstairs.

  Though they never would have said anything, each woman noticed the demure lace handkerchief Lucy kept balled in her right hand, which she produced every now and again to cover her mouth against a series of short, raspy, coughs.

  After ensuring that each had their assignments, Lucy collected her sewing basket and went into the parlor, where the light was best.

  It was toward the end of May, and a gentle, cool breeze blew in through the open window, stirred the curtains. Lucy took a seat with the light and the air to her back, pulled a section of a quilt from the basket and began working.

  Every few minutes, she was seized by a spasm of coughing that shuddered through her body. Each time, she brought the handkerchief to her mouth, muffling the sounds.

  What are you doing, Luce? asked the Witch.

  Lucy didn’t flinch as she poked the needle into the heavy material, and drew it through. “Just relaxing. And I’d prefer to do it alone, if you don’t mind.”

  What are you working on?

  “A quilt for John and Liz,” she answered, continuing to work.

  Any special occasion?

  Lucy smiled. “It was their wedding quilt, but I could never seem to finish it. Now, it’s for their first baby.”

  The Witch didn’t speak for a moment. Then, you have plenty of time to get it done.

  “And what do you mean by that?” Lucy asked lightly, not really paying her any attention.

  Children are not in John and Liz’s future.

  Lucy felt the quilt slip to the floor as her hands went slack.

  I’m so sorry, Luce.

  “Are you telling me I won’t be a grandmother?”

  No, calmed the Witch. No, no, not at all, sweet Luce. Why would God deny you grandchildren to dote on in your old age? No, you will have grandchildren.

  “None from John and Liz?”

  I’m sorry. But, don’t tell them this. Often, the trying, not the succeeding, is the important part. They’ll be very happy without.

  Lucy said nothing, stared at the quilt heaped on the floor.

  Luce, you know that this is not because of me, don’t you?

  “Of course, Witch. Even you wouldn’t be so cruel. But you can’t tell me such things and not expect me to react.”

  I know, Luce.

  * * *

  “Witch, if you love me as you say, please honor a request,” said Lucy. “Don’t bring me the future anymore. Let me come to it, as is natural. Even the good predictions you bring are tainted.”

  As you wish.

  “Now, please…” and she was surprised by a fit of coughing so sever
e, she fell back into the chair, knocking the handkerchief to the ground.

  She reached for it, still hacking, and it floated from the floor into her hand. She clamped it over her mouth until the coughing subsided. “Thank you,” she breathed.

  Luce, have you seen Doc Hopson? It doesn’t sound well at all.

  “No, it’s just the time of year. It’ll pass, I expect,” she said. “Now, please let me have some time to myself.”

  All right. I’ll check on you later.

  Lucy drew the quilt back onto her lap, took up the needle again, and paused to make sure the Witch really had left. When she was sure, Lucy set the needle down, ran her hand over the section of material she had completed, with its pink and blue patterns, and wept.

  * * *

  Four days later, it was June, and the weather, as if in realization, turned suddenly hot and humid.

  It hadn’t rained as much as Jack would have liked this far in the growing season, and it worried him. So, he took to spending the mornings in the cornfields, walking the rows between the immature plants. He took note of the crop’s growth, the number of brown leaves he saw, insects, and the dryness of the soil. Jack saw a hundred things each day, any of which could play a vital role in whether this would be a bumper crop or a dismal year.

  That morning, he was inspecting the fields with John, each man already soaked in sweat. Still early, it was a bright-hot, sweltering day, and Jack paused often to mop his brow with a soaking handkerchief.

  John followed behind his father down the rows of waist-high corn. He was worried, too, though not about the corn. He was worried about his father.

  Jack Bell had dropped more weight over the last several weeks––a pound here, a pound there, nothing drastic. But it had begun to add up. John suspected that his father, who probably had weighed in excess of 200 pounds, now weighed under 180.

  He had gone from a hearty man to a thin, pallid man in just a few months; a man who had to stop often to catch his breath. Even his beard lacked its former brightness. Everything about him seemed grey and worn and bloodless.

  As John considered saying something, he heard running feet approach from behind.

  “Mister Bell! Mister Bell!” came the cry, and Jack turned to see who was calling him. “I’ve been lookin’ all over for you.”

  Harry, the young houseboy, waved an envelope in his hands as he came to a dusty stop near them.

  “Whoa, sirrah, catch your breath,” advised Jack.

  “A letter for you, Mister Bell. Just came. The man said it was ‘potent,” said Harry, still breathing hard as he handed the envelope over.

  Jack tore it open, scanned it, and his stomach clenched into an angry knot.

  Dear Col. Bell,

  It was with great pleasure that I received your warm reply. I am glad to learn that my forwardness was not looked upon with too jaundiced an eye by you and yours.

  The suggested date of June 8 for my visit is most satisfactory. You needn’t worry about accommodations, since I’ll be traveling in the company of a few men, and we’ll have our own wagons. Tell your charming wife that we will be no inconvenience to her home whatsoever.

  I look forward to seeing you again, dear Col., and to reestablishing those ties we let slip following our brotherhood in arms for the State of Tennessee.

  Regards,

  Gen’l. A. Jackson

  Jack stared at the paper for a moment dumbfounded. June 8 was less than a week away. He crumpled the letter in his hand, dropped it to the ground.

  Harry stood motionless, not breathing.

  “What news, Pa?” John asked, equally uneasy.

  Jack turned on his heel, and strode back in the direction of the house.

  TWENTY-FIVE

  The early morning rain had begun to dry on the dirt road when General Andrew Jackson’s caravan of wagons clattered toward the Bell home. It had been a slight, steady rain, enough to turn the road into mud after a few hours.

  As soon as the sun rose, it lapped the water up like a great, yellow dog. Its vaporous breath hung visibly in the sunlight, shimmering like a golden curtain.

  Luckily, this made the road solid enough to let the wagons pass over it relatively unimpeded. There were stretches of mud or patches of thick, gelatinous slime, but these were either passed through or gone around with little trouble.

  The caravan had traveled through the rain all night from Jackson’s estate, The Hermitage, just east of Nashville. Jackson had remained awake for some time playing cards with the men in the wagon. After midnight, he’d shooed them off to the other wagons, stretched out across the wagon’s hard, bouncing floor with only a thin cover, and fell promptly asleep. This was, he told people who found this character trait fascinating, a habit he’d learned well during his soldiering days; sleep when you can, wherever you can, no matter the circumstances.

  Along about seven o’clock in the morning, the driver of his wagon, which was leading the group, slowed. The sun, dappling the road through the dense trees, was playing tricks on the driver’s eyes, and he was finding it increasingly difficult to tell pools of shadow from patches of mud.

  The General was awakened minutes later when the wagon came to a lurching stop, and he slid in a heap to the front. Jackson popped instantly awake—another useful trick he picked up as a soldier—noted the wagon’s lack of movement, and pushed out of the canvas flaps at the rear. Surveying his surroundings quickly, he jumped to the ground.

  “Damn and blazes!” he heard the driver roar.

  They were smack in the middle of a huge stretch of muddy ground, which oozed another twenty or so yards up the road. He was standing in it up to the ankles of his newly polished boots.

  And sinking.

  “Jeffries!” he bellowed, not moving. “What’s going on?”

  The driver, a large, ox of a man with wild eyes and a short, neatly trimmed beard, rounded on him from the front of the wagon. “We’re stuck, General,” he said, saluting, his voice dripping with sarcasm.

  “I can see that, man. How bad is it?” Jackson asked, lifting his left boot from the muck with much effort and a sucking sound.

  “Bad,” was his one word reply before he slopped away.

  Jackson made his way carefully into the stand of trees off the side of the road. There, he scraped his boots and took note of their situation.

  They were only about ten minutes from the Bell property, so he reckoned. But the road narrowed here, and mud covered the entire road, so that the other wagons wouldn’t be able to pass around the stuck one to pull it through from the other side.

  As he saw it, the only thing to do was to unhitch the team, pull the wagon backward out of the pit and corduroy over the mud.

  A group of six men from the other two wagons gathered at the edge of the puddle, waiting for someone to tell them what to do.

  “Boys, we’re stuck but good,” Jackson hollered to them, taking his dark jacket off and hanging it on a tree branch. “Get a couple of men up front and unhitch the horses. Then, we’ll––”

  He was cut short by something that struck his cheek. He ducked instinctively.

  It was a pebble.

  “What the devil?” he muttered, watching the other men react as well, some falling to the ground, others shielding their faces.

  Suddenly, they were peppered by a dense barrage of small rocks. They swished through the trees, bounced from trunks.

  Yelping and laughing simultaneously, Jackson yelled, “Retreat!” and the men scurried to the relative safety of the wagons.

  Jackson splashed through the mud and hoisted himself into the wagon as a relatively large rock hit him, not painfully but somewhat ignominiously, square in the rump. Jeffries was already there.

  “Indians?” he asked the General, dour and doe-eyed.

  “Indians?” hooted Jackson as rocks continued to pelt the canvas top of the wagon, sounding like a heavy rain shower. “We ran the Indians out of this area 10 years ago. I know what this is. The Bell Witch!”


  Jackson’s face, surrounded by his tousled, grey hair, lit up with a boyish smile. “I’m going to go out and talk with her,” he said, moving toward the front.

  “Do you think that’s wise, General?”

  “No,” Jackson grinned. “That’s precisely why I’m going to do it.” He parted the canvas slowly, shielded his face as the rocks seemed to arrow in on him. “Witch!” he yelled. “I know it’s you. Please stop!”

  No sooner had the words left his lips, than the barrage halted. All around him, Jackson heard stones dropping to the ground as if the life had left them.

  “Thank you,” he said, to no one in particular. “We’re on our way to Jack Bell’s house to visit you. But, as you can see, we’re a bit stuck. Can you help us?”

  Upon hearing his voice, several of the men in the wagons behind Jackson’s poked their heads through the flaps. The General began to feel a bit foolish making entreaties to the air.

  Without warning, the two horses pulling the wagon reared from the mud, and the wagon sprang forward, almost spilling Jackson out of the wagon.

  Jackson regained his feet and made for the front of the wagon.

  Jeffries righted himself and opened the back flaps. He gaped at what he saw.

  The other two wagons followed in the wake of the lead, driverless, their wheels throwing up no mud. In fact, none of their wheels—or the horses’ hooves—touched the mud at all. They seemed to move above it.

  Jeffries let the flap fall closed. Shaking his head, he joined Jackson in the driver’s seat.

  The General let the useless leather straps fall from his hands, sat back and waited to arrive at the Bell house.

  * * *

  The wagons careened to the front of the Bell house, coming to rest in a loose group near the pear orchard. As soon as they stopped, men spilled out of them and scattered as if the wagons were on fire. All, that is, except General Jackson and Jeffries, though the latter looked as if he sorely wanted to turn tail, too.