The Bell Witch

by John F. D. Taff

  Jack pitched headlong onto the ground. As he fell, his boots and socks were ripped from his feet, and flung away.

  He yelped as they were jerked from him, tears now coursing down his face, tracking through the blood and mire there, erasing it where they touched.

  John looked down at his father’s naked feet. He could not remember ever seeing them before, and, lost for a moment in the chaos, was overcome by how perfect they looked, especially in contrast to his otherwise disheveled, battered appearance. Where he was a haggard man, his feet were smooth and fairly shaped, a clean pinkish-white with neatly trimmed nails. They seemed so curiously out of place on him, like the feet of a baby.

  Jack crawled through the snow gathering his socks and boots. Sitting on his thin haunches, he slowly and deliberately put them back on.

  John made no effort to help him; he knew it was not wanted. Whatever it was his father wanted to accomplish, he wanted to do it alone.

  Rising slowly, painfully, Jack again began a shambling path back to the house.

  He took no more than three steps before his boots and socks were once again torn from him, this time hurtling him to the ground with great force.

  It was more than John could bear.

  “Pa!” he wept, rushing to him, trying to lift him off the ground. “I’ll carry you back, Pa. It’ll be all right.”

  But he couldn’t get his hands under his father’s body, couldn’t even roll him over.

  It was as if he suddenly weighed too much.

  “Witch!” John cried. “Let me carry him!”

  We’ve carried him too long, all of us. Let the penitent walk to God through the snow on bare feet… or better yet, let him crawl. She drew out that last word into a long, evil sneer.

  “He’s my father!”

  He is my father, too! she yelled back.

  Jack turned his bloodied face to his son, his eyes horribly bright against the red mask. “Let me go, John. Just let me… go.”

  John moved away reluctantly, and Jack lay there for a moment, gathering strength. Taking a deep breath, he pulled himself up, forgetting about the discarded boots and socks, and resumed walking. Halfway to the house, he collapsed, his strength utterly exhausted.

  To the sound of harsh, bitter laughter and his son’s weeping, he crawled the remainder of the way to the house. When he reached the back door, he was surrounded by a cordon of slaves who gathered near him, wondering if their help was required, necessary, or even wanted.

  John pushed through them, warning them away.

  When he reached the unconscious form of his father, he found that the Witch had relented, and he was able to pick the slight man up and carry him inside.

  Without a word, he nearly ran through the house, and up the staircase.

  It wasn’t until he placed him carefully in bed that he noticed that his father’s feet were bruised and frostbitten by the snow.

  He wept a little harder as he covered them up.

  * * *

  Hopson left the bedroom and pulled the door shut behind him, his face betraying only a hint of the feelings he held in check. He made his way quickly downstairs to where the family huddled in silent apprehension of his prognosis.

  John offered the doctor a glass of whiskey, which he readily accepted. Closing his eyes, Hopson let the amber contents of the glass spill into him, its warmth penetrating to his bones.

  When he opened his eyes, he could feel the attention of the room focused on him. He handed the empty glass back to John, nodded for a refill.

  “Well, what I’ve found isn’t much––aside from his lacerated face and frostbitten feet––so let’s talk about what I haven’t found, shall we?” he said, accepting the refilled glass from John. He contemplated it for a second, decided to press on without it.

  “I can find no reason for his comatose condition. He has no broken bones, no serious injuries that I can find to his skull, heart or organs. He has no fever. He’s breathing normally, or as normal as can be expected with a tongue as swollen as his—which, of course, I can find no cause for either.”

  He paused, drained half the glass.

  “What I’m trying to say is that whatever is happening to Jack is beyond me, beyond my ability. But then, if it’s the Witch, as you say, that should come as no surprise to any of us here.”

  “Will he be all right, Dr. Hopson?” asked Lucy, who had sat on the couch without a word since coming downstairs. She held an untouched glass of watered brandy that John had made to calm her.

  Hopson downed the rest of the whiskey, his teeth grinding around it as if he were chewing something bitter and hard to swallow.

  “I don’t know,” he finally breathed. “This is worse than the last time. It’s a coma.”

  Hopson rubbed his eyes and knelt beside her. “Damn it, Lucy, I warned you of this, asked you to leave. And now look! That person up there in bed could just as easily be you…”

  “I know,” she answered, not looking at him.

  “Or one of your children. Maybe even Betsy again.”

  “Not me,” came a forgotten voice from behind Hopson. He climbed to his feet and turned to face its owner.

  “And how can you be so sure it wouldn’t be you? The Witch has assailed you nearly as much as she has your father, Betsy.”

  She shook her head vehemently even before he had finished, and Hopson noticed something that he was immediately taken aback by.

  No longer did the girl have the vacant look of detachment from life in her eyes. Now, there was nothing but fierce determination.

  “No,” she answered. “No, you never understood the reason.”

  “The reason?”

  “Why she attacked my father,” came her simple reply.

  Hopson swallowed, for he suddenly remembered the operation he had conducted on her months ago, the conversation he’d had with Powell concerning his own belief about was wrong with her. “And why did she attack your father?” he asked, but his voice was small, hollow and constrained.

  “To punish him.”

  Hopson decided to press all the way. “For what?”

  Betsy lowered her eyes. “I know. Ma knows. That’s enough.” She flicked her eyes up to Lucy, but Lucy avoided them.

  “This is ridiculous!” snapped John. “What’s going on here? Pa’s upstairs, maybe dying, and we can do no more than say he deserved it? I’ll not hear…”

  “Shush, John Bell!” snapped Betsy, a reaction so unexpected that the rest of John’s words shriveled on his tongue. “You have no idea what you’re talking about. He’s unworthy of your defense.”

  When Betsy’s hot gaze fell on him, John shrank before it.

  John blinked at her several times in amazement, but said nothing.

  “Leave me alone,” she said, beginning to cry. “Just leave me alone.” With that, she fled the room.

  As with her outburst against John, her reaction was so unlike her that, for a minute, no one followed her.

  Hopson broke the silence, clearing his throat. “The only thing I can do now, and it isn’t much, is to give you some medicine to administer to him in the morning and evening,” said Hopson, weary with his inability to make an impact on any of them. “I’ve given him one dose already, but you can give him another mouthful or so around midnight.”

  Lucy took the slender tube of medicine, scarcely looked at its clear liquid before tucking it into a pocket of her dress.

  “I don’t know if it will help or not,” he sighed, closing his bag and signaling Naddy, who was waiting nearby, for his coat. “Oh… and Merry Christmas.”

  No one responded to his less-than-cheery tone. Without another word, he drifted out of the room. They heard the door open onto the howling wind, and close again in silence.

  “I’ll take the first shift,” said John, holding his hand out to his mother for the medicine.

  She shook her head. “No, John. I’ll stay up with him. He’s my husband, and I need to see this through now. You go home and look to
your wife. I’ll do what needs doing here.”

  John opened his mouth to protest, but let it pass. “Naddy, why don’t you take Betsy and the boys and get them fed.”

  “Yes, sir, Mr. John,” she said, putting her arms around the boys and leading them from the room.

  Lucy asked Naddy to send up a hot cup of tea, walked slowly up the staircase with a lit candle. John watched her leave, the light eventually swallowed whole within the darkness.

  Watching her ascend, something shivered inside him.

  * * *

  Naddy entered the bedroom hesitantly later that evening.

  Two hours had passed since Hopson’s visit, and Lucy had spent her time in an enormous straightback chair, which had been turned to face the window, away from Jack’s prone body. The back of the chair was to Naddy, and Lucy was entirely blocked from her view by its bulk.

  The only indication that Lucy was there at all was the song she was singing in a low, monotone voice.

  “What is this that casts you down?

  Who are those that grieve you?

  Speak and let the worst be known.

  Speaking may relieve you.”

  Naddy stood silently for a minute, listening to the words of the song. Lucy’s dirge-like rendition turned the song’s soothing words to melancholy in the air. It sent a chill of worry up Naddy’s back. “Excuse me, Mrs. Bell?”

  “Yes, Naddy?” Lucy answered in the same curious, soft, sing-song voice.

  “I needs help turnin’ Mr. Bell over in bed so’s he don’t get them bedsores like Doc Hopson warned.”

  “Saloma’s in the kitchen,” Lucy offered.

  Naddy frowned. “Beggin’ your pardon, Ma’am, but I can’t find Saloma.”

  “I can’t help you, Naddy,” Lucy answered after mulling this over. “I just can’t.”

  “Ma’am, is there something wrong?”

  “I’m just not sure that I can touch him anymore, Naddy. He’s on his own. He’s always been on his own. There’s nothing I can do to help him now,” she continued in her rambling, dreamy voice.

  For the first time she could remember, Naddy actually got angry with Lucy, with her indifferent attitude and uncaring voice. Hell, he was her husband. Here she was, a slave, someone to whom Jack had done direct violence. Yet, she was willing to do her job and turn the evil bastard over so that the flesh on his back and ass didn’t rot.

  Here was his wife, someone who, while she may have been mistreated, had never been subjected to his violence on the same level as Naddy. Yet, she was not willing to lift a single finger in his care.

  Naddy also knew that there were things that happened in a house that couldn’t be read in its bed sheets or dust or dirty laundry, things that stained a home and its inhabitants indelibly.

  Men like Jack, Naddy knew from experience, didn’t take out all of their aggression on the slaves then go home at night all sweetness and light. No, men like Jack carried their personal darkness with them everywhere, doling it out to one and all.

  “All right, Mrs. Bell. I’ll just get one of the men to help me. Mr. Bell’s a heavy old cuss,” Naddy said, sighing a little. “You call me if you need help with him in the night.”

  But Lucy either ignored her or forgot she was there. She simply drifted back to singing.

  “Come, my heart, and let us try

  For a little season

  Every burden to lay by.

  Come and let us reason.”

  * * *

  Some internal clock of Lucy’s went off, and she snapped awake in the chair. It must be close to midnight.

  The fire burned hot and bright in the hearth, and a heavy quilt had been placed over her. She thanked Naddy mentally, and turned to look at Jack.

  He still hadn’t moved, hadn’t died. The slow, shallow rise and fall of the covers over his chest was magnified by the firelight, threw strange, pulsating shadows onto the wall over the bed.

  A hard cylinder pressed urgently against Lucy’s breast, and she wondered what it was. Reaching into her pocket, she produced the vial Doc Hopson had given her. She held the glass to the light, but it took a moment for it to register.

  The liquid had changed color, from clear to a thick, dusky blue, through which the light was barely able to penetrate.

  Her heart stopped, then started again suddenly, pumping in tremendous gulps. The vial he had left for Betsy long, long ago had changed color, too.

  The Witch?

  Lucy’s body creaked as she stood, still holding the vial like a glowing jewel before her. She padded slowly to Jack’s side, her naked feet feeling the coldness of the bare floor. She looked down upon him. Gaunt and spectral he looked by the firelight, wasted and pitiable.

  But she didn’t pity him, couldn’t.

  Standing there, his face seemed younger to her, thinner as it had when they were courting, before the beard and the extra pounds. Before the children and the farm.

  Before his troubles.

  She didn’t want to remember any of that… or to think about it ever again.

  She held the vial up, uncorked it. Air rushed out in a little whoosh!

  She wanted to kiss him, touch him, say goodbye. But she couldn’t.

  She chose, instead, to remember his first kiss to her, given in the shade under a broad elm tree back in North Carolina during a particularly hot August afternoon before the turn of the century; another time, another place. How tender, how patient, how alive with love and power he had seemed to her then.

  And how that had changed so quickly.

  She touched his dry lips, pulled them apart, slid the vial between them. The blue liquid drained into him without a sound, leaving only a slight residue in the tube. She closed his mouth around it. Not a drop spilled.

  He stirred, swallowed.

  The tear that fell to his face, coursed down his cheek and into his mouth was her first indication that she was crying.

  Standing there, she watched his face, unchanging in the flickering light. She saw it with the light of her memory, and it was a younger, smoother face. The face of the man she had loved.

  After a while, something helped her back to the chair, gently wiped the tears from her eyes, and recovered her with the quilt.

  Sleep, dearest, said a distant, familiar voice. You have fulfilled your role.

  Thinking it was Jack, Lucy smiled, snuggled down in her blankets and fell fast asleep.

  * * *

  Sometime in the night, the light descended upon Jack Bell.

  It was a strange, pearly, cloudy blue.

  He embraced it eagerly as it devoured him.

  PART V

  ALL THE HAUNT BE OURS

  December 22, 1820 to May 1821

  THIRTY-FIVE

  And she dreamt…

  There was a field, decked in all the splendor of spring. A wide swath of color––goldenrods and jonquils, daisies and poppies, bluebells and deep, deep purple hyacinths—stretched in every direction, then slipped gently into the powder blue of the sky. The entire field swayed and bent in long, wide laps under the insistent breeze.

  At the center of all this was Lucy. Her hair flew about her face, and a long, shimmering white dress blew about her feet.

  Lucy stood amidst this profusion of life and felt refreshed, young and energetic and alive in a way she had not thought possible again. She reveled in it, dancing through the flowers, plucking stems here and there with carefree abandon.

  Soon, she held a great, multi-colored bouquet whose fragrance was greater than any she had ever held, as if she were inhaling the concentrated essence of each flower for the very first time.

  Near the horizon, she saw someone walk slowly toward her through the field of colors, a distant dark shape, a shadow against the rainbow. For a moment, this nameless, faceless dread clutched at her newly reborn heart. Then, a ray of sunlight struck the figure, lit its face, and it opened like a flower’s new bloom.

  Betsy!

  Lucy’s heart bounded up like an eager p
uppy at the sight of her daughter… and more.

  For she, too, was whole again, the shattered pieces of her life restored seamlessly. She was smiling quixotically, and her eyes sparkled with light and laughter.

  Betsy, too, wore a long, white robe that swirled in the wind as if it were a raiment wove from the stuff of clouds. Her blonde hair, whiter than her mother’s, seemed to radiate its own light.

  “Mama!” she cried when she was closer. Then, she ran to her, threw her arms around her.

  Lucy squeezed her, felt her form within the circle of her arms, alive and vibrant, crackling with vigor; she squeezed her so hard that tears sprang from her own eyes.

  “I love you, Bets,” whispered Lucy into the girl’s ear.

  “I love you, Mama,” said Betsy. But then, she pulled away, almost forcibly separating herself from her mother’s arms. “But, we must talk now. There isn’t much time.”

  Her movements, her tone belied her sunny disposition, and there was something familiar about her voice… something like Betsy, but not.

  “Who are you?” she asked, faltering for the words.

  “I am… the whole,” came her simple answer.

  “Your voice…? It sounds like the Witch’s.”

  “Her voice was but mine own. I speak for her, now, as well as Betsy. For we are one again.”

  Lucy fell to her knees before the apparition of her daughter, dropped the bouquet of flowers.

  “What more?” she moaned. “What more do you want of me?”

  A hand fell on her shoulder, stroked her hair from her face, and touched her cheek.

  “Luce, I am a child suckled upon the teats of three mothers; Betsy, Jack… and you. I was born of this terrible lineage to achieve a terrible purpose. In that, I have fulfilled the nature of my being. Betsy is whole again. Jack is dead.”

  “And me?”