The Bell Witch

by John F. D. Taff

  “Yours was a more difficult purpose, for you did not act when you could have. Every soul must learn this lesson. This was simply your time. And you chose. For whatever reason, you chose. Now, however, you must live with both, your decision and your past indecision, for the rest of your life. Thus is my purpose for you fulfilled.”

  “Then, I killed Jack?”

  “You made the decision to allow Jack to die,” corrected Betsy. “I would have killed him nonetheless. However, your unfulfilled purpose would have exacted a terrible price from you later in this life.”

  “Then, Jack is dead,” said Lucy, to no one really.

  “Yes. His soul is free to seek the solace it was denied. Already, it has moved on,” she said.

  “Do you forgive him, Bets?”

  “What you see here before you now does. I am yet the whole of lesser pieces. In time, I will subsume the rest. In time…,” she trailed away.

  “What of me? Should I forgive him, too?”

  “Forgive yourself. Only then will you be ready to give forgiveness… to Jack or anyone.”

  “How… with what you’ve told me? How can I forgive myself for allowing this to happen? For all those years!” Lucy pleaded in distress.

  “You must find within the answers to these questions. All are capable of forgiveness. Yet, all are not adept at its practice. But it is within your potential.”

  Lucy buried her face in her hands and cried. The scent of the flowers and the caress of the cool wind sought to comfort her. After a while, her sobs subsided.

  Betsy made no further attempt to touch her or offer solace. “I must go now,” she said after Lucy had composed herself.

  “No! Not yet! Stay for a while,” pleaded Lucy.

  The angelic apparition of her daughter smiled again at her, stepped away.

  “Will I see you again?” asked Lucy, still on her knees.

  “Of course. I am your daughter, and I love you dearly. Have you not learned at least that much?” she chided. “But this countenance of the soul will not be seen again for many, many years. Betsy must first have time to heal. Many years for so great a wound.”

  “I love you,” groaned Lucy as Betsy walked away through the field.

  “No,” Betsy answered, turning sorrowfully back toward her. “You must first love yourself. Only then can you truly love another. Think on that, Mama. But remember always that, now, I love you.”

  Betsy turned from her kneeling mother, moved slowly through the swirling colors of the field. As she did so, the light faded with her, the flowers turning to colorless, grey stalks that writhed in the wind like tormented souls.

  Lucy called after her as the light bled away, but her voice was lost even to her own ears.

  Then, blackness wrapped its arm around her, and she slept again.

  THIRTY-SIX

  It began and ended with a scream.

  Snow had lain upon the land for nearly the entire month. And on those few days during which it didn’t snow, even the sun shining down from the painfully bright sky couldn’t seem to melt any of it.

  So, the snow piled up over the landscape, layer upon layer until it erased the outlines of everything beneath it, until there was nothing left but a smooth, flat prairie of white that stretched from horizon to horizon. This was marred only by occasional humps or tree limbs that now seemed too close to the ground, raised above the white tide like the grasping arms of a thousand drowning victims.

  Inside the Bell house on December 21, 1820, the fireplaces blazed all night. The house wore two constant plumes of ashen smoke that rose from the chimneys like grey streamers.

  But the fires, despite their unabated warmth, did little to assuage a deep, inner chill amongst the Bell family. This coldness that fire could not touch had increased, too, layer upon layer around their hearts as the snow fell.

  The snow fell and fell, all that night of December 21, 1820.

  * * *

  Naddy awoke very early, much more so than usual, to check on Lucy and prepare her a quiet, early breakfast.

  She dressed quickly in the cold, dark slaves quarters, rushed through the early morning darkness between the cabin and the kitchen to stoke the cooking fire there. Once she fed the glowing embers a mountain of split wood, she hung a pot of coffee to boil.

  As heat began to fill the room from the enormous hearth, Naddy sat at the table and waited for the coffee. It was one of the few concessions she allowed herself: a morning cup of coffee before serving anyone or cleaning anything.

  Here, early in the morning, was one of the only times she could simply be herself.

  When she finished her coffee, she made a batch of biscuit dough. While these cooked, she fried several eggs and made bacon. This all came together on a tray, and Naddy hefted this, along with a candle, quietly upstairs.

  Once in the Bell bedroom, she set the candle and tray down on the dresser and tended the fire. Only when she had it roaring did she check on the room’s two occupants.

  Seeing that Lucy was deeply asleep, Naddy went to Jack. He was still in the same position he’d been in earlier in the day, flat on his back with his hands clasped around the top of the covers.

  Shaking her head at his condition, she made sure the sheets were tucked in tight around him. His body lay inert as she did this, her movements not disturbing him in the least. When she went to pull the covers up a little, she couldn’t tug them from his grasp. When she took his hand in hers, felt its coldness, its rigidity, she knew.

  Releasing it, she stepped away from the bed, one step, two steps, pressed her back against the wall.

  And screamed.

  * * *

  Hopson pulled the sheet over Jack’s head, and it floated down gently to drape his features.

  It was yet early in the morning, and the children were still asleep. Lucy, preternaturally calm, soothed Naddy and sent Sam out to fetch John and then Hopson. This accomplished, she went down to the kitchen and warmed the coffee that she and Naddy sat and drank in silence in the death room waiting for the men to return.

  Jack Bell lay beneath a pall of white that that covered his features as the snow covered the land outside the window.

  “He must have passed away sometime during the night,” said Hopson. “Did you hear anything, Luce?”

  She shook her head. “No. I fell asleep,” she answered, giving John a sheepish look.

  John seemed to understand the apology implicit in the look. “You needed the sleep, Ma. You were exhausted.”

  Lucy smiled wanly at him.

  “Did you remember to give him the medicine?” Hopson asked, taking a drink of the hot, black coffee Naddy had brought.

  “Why, yes, Dr. Hopson,” sniffed Lucy. As proof, she reached into her dress pocket and pulled the empty vial out, handed it to Hopson.

  Hopson’s face twisted when he saw it. “What in God’s name is this?”

  He held it out to her.

  Within the glass cylinder, there was a thin layer of thick, blue liquid, a few beads of the same substance adhered to the inside walls of the vial.

  The events of the evening and her strange dream came flooding back into her mind, and she sat quickly before they overwhelmed her.

  “That’s what you gave me,” she muttered.

  Hopson pulled off the vial’s cork, sniffed, broke into a coughing fit. “Uhh, Lord! What is this? It’s foul!”

  It’s his medicine, came the Witch’s voice, so unexpectedly that Hopson nearly dropped the glass.

  “You know of this, Witch?” asked Hopson, eyeing Jack’s draped form on the bed.

  I prescribed it, Doc. And look! It sure did the trick! she roared, breaking into hoarse laughter.

  Hopson rushed to the bed, pulled the sheet from Jack’s face, brought his own close to the dead man’s.

  “His tongue’s not swollen anymore,” Hopson said, touching Jack’s cold, dry lips with his fingers.

  See, I cured that! chimed the Witch.

  Hopson pulled Jack’s lips ap
art gently. Immediately, a flood of noxious, blue liquid bubbled from Jack’s mouth, spilling down his chin and staining the sheets.

  “God!” yelled Hopson, jumping back and putting his hand over his mouth and nose. A second later, the odor filled the room, overpowering even the strong, bitter smell of the coffee.

  It was thick and pungent, sweet and rotten and sour all at the same time, all vying with each other to dominate the senses.

  “What is it?” gulped John, his head reeling from the nauseating odor.

  “I don’t know. I’ve never smelled anything like it,” answered Hopson, his back against the wall, his eyes staring wide with loathing at the liquid still running from the corpse’s mouth.

  Naddy, who had by then had enough, eased out of the room. They heard her rapid footsteps on the stairs.

  It’s medicine, I tell you. The medicine he’s been grinding for years and years in the secret mortar of his heart. I just made sure he finally took it, laughed the Witch.

  Hopson looked again at the vial he held in his hand. “We need to see what this is, John,” he said.

  John’s look of horror faded to understanding. “I’ll be right back,” he said, leaving the room.

  * * *

  The cat was not happy.

  It was born outside, had lived its entire life in a fold of green, venturing only into the barn when it was time to sleep or when it was very cold outside. It had never been in the main house with the humans.

  Now that it was here, every feline impulse in its tiny brain was screaming for it to leave.

  John had it in a deceptively simple hold that squashed its lean body against his hip, stretched its hind legs back and rendered its claws useless. It alternated between low, angry mewling and frenetic spitting.

  Hopson looked at John and nodded his head.

  “John?” asked Lucy.

  “I need to know, Luce,” Hopson stated.

  He dipped his index finger in the test tube, twirled it against the sides until it came away with a coating of slick, viscous blue liquid that looked like nothing so much as clotted air.

  “Here,” he said, motioning for John to come over closer. With his clean hand he stroked the cat’s head in a vain attempt to calm it. But it wasn’t buying the ruse. It twisted and pawed furiously in John’s arms.

  “Hurry, Doc. I don’t think I can hold him much longer,” grunted John.

  Hopson hooked a finger in the cat’s mouth, and while it gagged against this intrusion, he swiped the blue finger in, rubbing it against the roof of the cat’s mouth.

  At the touch of the stuff, the cat exploded, became a fury of teeth and claws.

  Alarmed at the reaction, John dropped it.

  Lucy uttered a muffled shriek.

  The Witch began laughing again.

  The cat hit the floor, ran to the center of the room and stopped suddenly as if it had struck an invisible barrier. Looking up at them with accusing eyes, it wobbled in a tight circle. Its head became limp. It fell to the ground, tried to lift its head, failed. With a tiny, panting meow, it stuck out its tongue, spasmed and died. The cat’s lips were drawn back over sharp little teeth, both flecked with frothy blue spittle.

  I told you I killed Jack. Why’d you have to go and kill the poor cat? asked the Witch.

  John grabbed the empty vial from Hopson’s hands, and dashed it into the fireplace.

  Immediately, there was a tiny whumph! of blue flames, and acrid smoke filled the hearth. John drew back, shielded his face from it, but it vanished just as quickly as it had erupted.

  “John!” reprimanded Hopson when this had passed. “I would have liked to have kept that, to find out what it was that killed your father.”

  “What it was that killed my father?” John sneered at him, dumbstruck. “A spirit from Hell killed him, Doctor!” He turned on his heel and left the room.

  Hopson shrugged at Lucy, turned back to the bed. With a handkerchief he produced from his breast pocket, he wiped the blue fluid from Jack’s lips, his chin. Carefully, he folded it and cast it into the fire, where it flared brightly, then vanished in a puff of blue flame.

  Gently, Hopson pulled the sheet up, draped it over the dead man’s face. “I’ll have to leave and get a wagon,” he said, turning back to Lucy. “You may want to keep everyone out of this room until I get back.”

  “I killed him,” she answered, seemingly not hearing what Hopson had said. “Dear God, I killed him.”

  “Luce,” he said, taking her shoulders. “You didn’t kill him. The Witch did it. You had no idea what was in the vial.”

  “Oh, Dr. Hopson, you just don’t understand.”

  Hopson let loose her shoulders.

  Finding no words to answer this, no salve for a wound this deep, he left the room.

  THIRTY-SEVEN

  Jack was buried quickly the next morning. The service and burial were hurried because of Lucy’s adamant refusal to have a wake.

  And because the body had begun to putrefy.

  Later the morning of his death, Hopson returned with a wagon to convey the body to Bill Nies, the local casket maker. Even then, Jack’s body had moved through rigor mortis to the false suppleness that marks the beginnings of true decay.

  By the time Hopson and John had carried the corpse to the wagon, foul-smelling, bloody-blue fluid was leaking from its nose and mouth, pooling in the canvas shroud they had wrapped it in.

  Hopson took notice of this, but thought little more of it until they had reached Nies’ shop, and he had begun to dress the body for burial. Lucy had provided one of Jack’s best suits, little used in life, and Hopson worked with Nies to wrestle the body into it. John had chosen to remain outside during this.

  A leg lifted to insert it into the pants compressed a knee against the abdomen. Immediately, a gout of thick, malodorous fluid, blue-yellow in color and flecked through with blood, leapt from the dead mouth and splashed onto the apron of Nies, who immediately became nauseated and fled the room to vomit.

  The doctor lowered the corpse’s leg and leaned over the body.

  He was shocked by what he saw.

  The skin of Jack’s face looked waxy and sallow, thin and brittle as papyrus stretched over a skull. Already it seemed the flesh had begun to slough away, melting back into the body and decaying into this sludgy, necrotic soup regurgitated by the corpse.

  Hurrying the rest of the clothes onto the body, Hopson tied a sling around the corpse’s head, pulling the jaw tightly shut. This accomplished, only a thin trail of the brackish slime leaked out, and this was easily wiped away.

  Later, Hopson would advise the family to forgo a public viewing of the body, and Lucy was only too quick to assent.

  Recovering enough to venture back into his workshop, Nies quickly placed the lid atop the coffin, nailed it into place and helped Hopson and John load it back into the wagon. From there, the two men drove to the church, unloading the sealed casket.

  The next day, mourners from throughout the county packed the tiny church, a sea of dark clothes and somber faces.

  Reverend Johnston conducted the service with considerable dignity, guiding the congregation through a series of hushed readings and restrained hymns. He said a few words about Jack Bell before ending.

  Overwhelmed by the rush of events, Lucy remembered but two things about the funeral.

  The Witch made no appearance.

  And no one shed a tear during the entire service.

  Not even her.

  * * *

  In the small cemetery just down the road from the church, a group of slaves from the Bell house were busy digging the hole in the packed earth that would contain the remains of Jack Bell. It was hard work, and the earth resisted mightily, unwilling to receive its new occupant.

  Winter burials were hard and uncommon. Wealthier families, like the Bells, preferred interring their winter dead in a crypt or under a temporary cairn of rocks—for later, more permanent burial in the spring.

  Both Lucy and Hopson i
nsisted that the body be buried immediately, albeit for wholly different reasons. So, the slaves had started early that morning carving a grave out of the snow-covered, recalcitrant earth.

  It took them even longer than planned, for when they finally reached a depth they thought deep enough, Adam made them gouge out another foot or so.

  Just to make sure he stays put, Adam said.

  Wrapped in their ragged coats and hats and scarves, the four men who formed the burial party, led by Sam and supervised by Adam, accepted the casket from John, Hopson and Johnston. They lowered it on ropes into the grave. Then, they faded to the rear of the group as Johnston said a few quiet words, crumbled a handful of cold, hard clay onto the top of the coffin.

  They waited for these men to leave before taking their shovels and beginning the task of filling the hole, an infinitely easier—and to all gathered, far more pleasing—task than digging it.

  Taking a break, Sam leaned upon his shovel and looked at the old man sitting on a stump nearby. Although he wasn’t smoking, a wreath of warm, condensed breath hung over his head. “What you thinkin’ ‘bout, Adam?” he asked.

  Adam regarded him for a moment, and Sam wondered whether he would answer or not. Then, “I ‘spect I’m thinkin’ about old Marster Bell, the father of this one here,” he replied, kicking the ground for emphasis.

  Sam shook his head. “What about him?”

  “I was thinkin’ how I felt when he died. More than that, how we all felt when he passed back in Carolina. He was a good man, and his passin’ took a piece right out of all of us. People like that leave a hole inside you that nothing can fill up, or at least fill up right.”

  Sam nodded in understanding. He thought back to the deaths of his father and mother, realized that the old wounds still hadn’t completely scabbed over. A little probing of his memory quickly found the soft, raw spots that still hurt when touched.

  “I guess as how I was thinkin’ ‘bout how this one here’s passin’—that man’s own flesh ‘n blood, mind you—ain’t done nothing but make me glad. Well, now, maybe glad ain’t the right word. It surely ain’t Christian. Relieved, maybe,” the old man mused.