Spooky South

by S. E. Schlosser

  He stood watching as the large bird flew toward the fire.

  “Brother, I am scared,” said the daughter as they watched the man out the window.

  “Sister, you should be scared. That is no man. That is the devil.”

  The little brother reached under the opposite seat, searching for something he could use against the man in gold. He found an egg that had rolled out of the grubby sack.

  “Come, sister,” said the little brother. He pulled his sister out the door on the far side of the carriage. Then the little brother threw the egg into the air. The egg transformed into a large bird.

  “Hop and skip, Betty,” said the little brother. “Carry us home.”

  At once the huge bird picked them up in its claws and flew the brother and sister back to their parents’ home.

  The daughter was very glad to be back home. She wept and told her parents the whole story. They were grateful that their children had escaped. But the little brother was not so sure they had escaped. While the parents led their daughter to her bed to rest, her brother slipped down to the village to talk to May Brown, the local wisewoman.

  After May Brown heard the little brother’s tale, she nodded her head. “That bird will fly right back to the devil, and the devil will know your sister has returned to her home. The devil will come for her, since she is promised to him in marriage.”

  “What should we do then?” asked the little brother.

  “I will engage the devil in a riddle contest,” said the wisewoman. “If I win, then the devil will leave your sister alone. If I lose, then she will have to marry him and go to live with him in General Cling Town.”

  “What’s General Cling Town?” asked the little brother.

  “General Cling Town is what we wisewomen call hell,” said May Brown soberly, “because the devil ‘clings’ to people, tempting them to do wrong, and is generally hard to remove.”

  Just then, they heard a thunderous cry of rage that echoed through the whole sky. There was the sound of hooves racing toward the mansion.

  “The devil is coming,” said the wisewoman. She took the little brother by the hand. They hurried up to the mansion, meeting the devil in his black chariot as he came driving away from the house, the daughter cowering beside him. He looked nothing like a man now. He was glowing red with wicked black eyes, horns on his head, and cloven feet.

  The devil pulled the horses to a stop when he saw them. His eyes met those of the local wisewoman. The little brother could tell at once that they knew each other. When she saw them, the daughter begged them to save her.

  “Is anyone here? Anyone here?” the devil said softly, his eyes glittering. “Name of May Brown from General Cling Town.”

  “I am here,” said the wisewoman. “My name is May Brown, but I am not from General Cling Town.”

  “What is whiter than any sheep’s down in General Cling Town?” asked the devil.

  “Snow,” said the wise woman. “Snow is whiter than any sheep’s down in General Cling Town.”

  The devil glared at her.

  “What is greener than any wheat grown in General Cling Town?” he asked.

  “Grass,” said the wisewoman. “Grass is greener than any wheat grown in General Cling Town.”

  “What is bluer than anything down in General Cling Town?”

  “The sky is bluer than anything down in General Cling Town,” said the wisewoman.

  The devil was furious. He was only allowed four riddles, and May Brown had answered the first three correctly.

  “What is louder than any horns down in General Cling Town?” asked the devil.

  “Thunder is louder than any horns down in General Cling Town,” said the wisewoman. The little brother knew the wisewoman had answered correctly, and so did the devil. He hopped up and down in his chariot, beside himself with rage. The devil had lost his bride.

  “I will have your soul for this, May Brown,” shouted the devil.

  May Brown removed her shoe, tore off the sole, and threw it to the devil.

  The devil caught the sole in his hands. He gripped it so hard it started to burn. The devil stared at it in disbelief. The devil thought he could claim May Brown’s soul, but she had tricked him by giving him the sole of her shoe!

  The devil howled, a chilling sound that haunted the little brother’s dreams for the rest of his life. Then the devil threw the daughter out of his carriage. She landed at her brother’s feet. The devil tossed an egg into the air. It transformed into a large bird.

  “Hop and skip, Betty. Take me home,” said the devil.

  And with that, the devil disappeared.

  22

  Goggle-Eyed Jim

  The Great Dismal Swamp, Virginia

  He was a notorious scoundrel and a horse thief. And he was the bane of my existence. Goggle-Eyed Jim they called him. The things they called me when I failed to catch him . . . Well, that’s beside the point.

  Being the only lawman in a backcountry area close to the Great Dismal Swamp ain’t easy. Too many of my suspects lost themselves in the trees and undergrowth of the swamp, leaving me behind in mud up to my armpits and with—more often than not—a lump on my head where I hit it on a low-hanging branch. It was infuriating.

  But Goggle-Eyed Jim was the worst. Week after week, angry citizens would storm into my office demanding justice. Their reports were always the same. They’d been awakened by the clanging of a cowbell and a huge hullabaloo out in the barn. By the time they’d grabbed a rifle and run outside, a dark-cloaked figure with huge goggles that reflected oddly in the moonlight would flash by on the back of the citizen’s best horse, laughing as he went. Goggle-Eyed Jim had a hee-haw of a laugh, like a braying donkey. But he was no laughing matter.

  When the mayor brought home a real beaut of a stallion that October, I set up a trap for Goggle-Eyed Jim. I arranged with the mayor to sleep in his barn in the hayloft overlooking the horse stalls every night for a week. We were both sure that Goggle-Eyed Jim would come for the horse as soon as he heard about it. And the mayor made sure to parade his new purchase up and down the streets of our little town, boasting all the while of his prowess as a race horse, his beauty, his price.

  Sure enough, three days later I was awakened from a strangely deep sleep by the clanging of a cowbell. I cursed and rolled over in my prickly bed of hay, throwing off my old horse blanket and reaching for my rifle. The blanket sent up a huge cloud of dust, and I sneezed as I snatched up the gun and scrambled on hands and knees to the edge of the loft. How had Goggle-Eyed Jim gotten into the barn without my hearing him? I am the lightest of sleepers, but not even the soft whicker of a horse had disturbed my slumber, though I’d been awakened by much smaller sounds on previous evenings.

  As I reached the edge of the loft, I saw a horse’s tail swishing through the open barn door. By now the other horses were neighing and whinnying to beat the band. Many of them reared when I made a foolish leap directly down to the floor from my perch, still clutching my rifle. I could have busted a leg but somehow made it with only a painful twist to my ankle. I rushed outside, stopping right beside the barn door to take aim at the fleeing rider with his flapping black cloak and reflecting goggle eyes. The mayor came rushing out of the house as I took my first shot, and he got off a second shot as I reloaded and aimed again.

  Goggle-Eyed Jim

  I was sure I’d hit the scalawag with my first shot, and I know I nailed him with the second. But he kept on riding down the lane and out of sight, and the air was filled with the hee-haw of his laughter as he got away again!

  The mayor was not pleased. Folks started talking about running me out of town—or hauling out the tar and feathers. I was about ready to resign when I got a real lead at last on the elusive horse thief. A fella who lived deep in the Great Dismal saw Goggle-Eyed Jim hanging out at a rickety old cabin near Lak
e Drummond that was once used as a hideout by pirates. As soon as he described the place, I knew exactly where he meant. I loaded up my guns and headed into the swamp in the golden afternoon light. It took a couple of hours to locate the old cabin and another couple minutes to find myself a hiding place.

  Darkness fell quickly, and no Goggle-Eyed Jim. I made myself comfortable. I didn’t care how long I had to wait. I’d wait until kingdom come if I had to. That darned horse thief was going to jail, and I was the one who was going to put him there.

  Well, I thought I’d kept my eyes and ears open, but I must have dozed off, ’cause suddenly there was a light shining in the upstairs window and I could hear voices coming from the cabin. One of them was a woman’s voice, and she was giggling and cooing like a dove. Seems like I’d caught Goggle-Eyed Jim in a tryst. Too bad for him.

  I hauled out an old ladder I’d spotted in the lean-to on the side of the cabin and put it against the wall. Cradling my pistol, I climbed up the ladder and peered into the window. Yep. There he was: Goggle-Eyed Jim. He was swathed in his long black cloak and still wearing his green goggles. They seemed to glow in the lantern light—made my skin crawl. I’d be glad to see the creepy fellow behind bars.

  At that moment, a lady wearing not much to speak of flounced into the room with a bottle of brandy and a couple of tin cups. She cozied up to Goggle-Eyed Jim, cooing something flirtatious into his ear.

  “Right-o. Your time is up, old chap,” I muttered, pulling out my pistol. The bounty on Goggle-Eyed Jim said “dead or alive,” and I didn’t much care which it was at that moment. He’d made my life too miserable for too long for me to feel any compassion for him.

  As if he sensed my thoughts, Goggle-Eyed Jim turned his face toward the window where I crouched atop the ladder. His eyes, behind the goggles, seemed to glow with a greenish-blue light. His face was so gray and withered, he looked like a corpse. He grinned suddenly, showing a mouth with more gap than yellow teeth. I aimed and fired. I hit him too. The woman shrieked and fled, and Goggle-Eyed Jim clamped a hand over his chest and staggered dramatically toward the far window. By the time I clambered inside the cabin, he was poised on the window ledge. He gave me a jaunty wave and then tumbled out the window, still dramatically clutching his chest.

  I tore down the stairs, rushing past the floozy and out into the tall grass of the yard. A figure in a dark cloak lay in the grass, his green goggles glowing in the moonlight.

  “I gotcha!” I shouted, racing toward him. And then I stopped abruptly with a gasp of fear. The prone figure before me began floating upward from his grassy bed, his arms still outstretched. Goggle-Eyed Jim was . . . well, he was glowing from within! And, I realized with an ice-cold shudder, I could see the weedy lawn right through his body. He was a ghost!

  By this time, Goggle-Eyed Jim was floating about six feet in the air, his body still sprawled flat on nothing. Suddenly he sat bolt upright and snorted: “Hee-Haw! Hee-Haw!”

  I staggered backward with a gasp of disbelief as the ghastly figure started to spin around and around, faster and faster, still snorting with laughter. A dark hole appeared behind the glowing figure with its piercing green goggles, which were the only part of the spirit I could make out in the furious, body-blurring twirl. Suddenly the spinning figure fell backward into the dark hole, which shut with a loud snap. The empty yard was filled with the smell of sulfur.

  I let out a shriek of pure, gut-wrenching terror and went crashing away into the woods. Behind me, the floozy let out an equally loud shriek and went crashing off in the other direction. I’d run only about a hundred steps before I broke through a tangle of bushes into a hidden meadow and was nearly trampled by the mayor’s stallion, which had been happily grazing in the moonlight until I came crashing along.

  The stallion wasn’t the only horse in the meadow. There were at least six more horses, all of them reported stolen by Goggle-Eyed Jim. I stared at the horses in wonder. Just how long had Goggle-Eyed Jim been a ghost?

  Casting my mind back over the reported thefts and matching them up to the horses before me, I reckoned that the horse thief had been dead at least six months. Not that this small detail had fazed Goggle-Eyed Jim. He’d just kept right on stealing horses, though he had no need to sell them now. No wonder bullets didn’t affect him! I knew both my shots had landed that night at the mayor’s house.

  Standing there in that moonlit meadow, my skin still crawling from my encounter with the ghost, I wondered how I was going to explain the situation to the mayor. Then I shrugged, mounted the stallion bareback, and rode home. I’d return for the other horses in the morning.

  The mayor was mighty glad to get his horse back, though he wasn’t terribly convinced by my story about the ghostly Goggle-Eyed Jim. Still, once he’d seen all them horses grazing in the hidden meadow, he decided at least part of my story must be true. Anyhow, he okayed my plan to have a priest out to the old cabin to do an exorcism. And that did the trick. Goggle-Eyed Jim’s days of horse thieving were over. And I got to keep my job. So one of us had a happy ending. I’m glad it was me!

  23

  The Witch Woman and the Spinning Wheel

  New Orleans, Louisiana

  Moses was a freed slave living just outside of New Orleans, way back before the Civil War. Moses made a pretty good living assisting the local blacksmith, and he was right pleased with his life, but he missed the company of a good woman. Mostly, he wanted a wife because he was such a bad cook. But all the ladies who caught his fancy were already promised to someone else, and the ones who weren’t seemed like they just wanted his money. So Moses stayed single.

  One evening, Moses was out late, hunting in the swamp. He was mighty tired and hungry and far from home when he came to a clearing with a small cabin. The clearing was filled with the most delicious fragrances Moses had ever smelled: cornpone and rabbit meat and some sort of cake. Moses’ mouth started watering.

  “I don’t care what I gotta pay,” Moses told his horse. “I’m gonna get me some of that food.”

  A pretty little lady came hurrying out of the cabin when she saw his horse. She was spry as a bird and had big, sparkling black eyes.

  “You look tired and hungry. Come in and have some supper,” she called to Moses.

  Moses was happy to do so. He tied up his horse and went into the cabin, eyeing the skillet on the coals. The lady was real pretty, and the food was awful good. Moses ate until he was stuffed so full he couldn’t move, and he enjoyed the whole evening with the pretty lady.

  Moses was awful distracted the next day at the smithy. He kept thinking about that good food and the pretty lady who prepared it. So he went back to see her that evening. She fed him and flattered him, and Moses just ate and ate. He was going to get mighty fat if he kept eating that good. The idea appealed to Moses. He kept visiting the pretty lady, and one day they got married, and Moses moved into the cabin at the edge of the swamp.

  Moses started bringing home all his money to the pretty lady, keeping her in comfort and style. And she fed him good. Moses was happy with his life, but his new wife was awful strict with him. She made him come home right after work and wouldn’t let him have a drink or two with his friends. And she was always spending all his money, so there was none left for him. But she was such a good cook that Moses put up with her ways.

  But one thing puzzled Moses about his new wife. Whenever he woke in the middle of the night, his wife would be missing from the cabin. Moses didn’t know where she went at night, and it didn’t seem fair to him that she made him stay home after work while she went gallivanting around.

  So Moses decided to spy on his wife. That night he lay down on the bed in the corner and pretended to sleep. Once his wife heard him snoring, she got up and put a gridiron next to the hearth. Then she got out her spinning wheel and put it next to the gridiron. As soon as the gridiron was red-hot, she sat on the gridiron and started spinning the wheel with
her hand. Moses was horrified. Only a witch could sit on a red-hot gridiron. And Moses knew of only one reason for a witch to heat herself up: She was going to transform herself!

  His wife began to chant, “Turn and spin, come off skin. Turn and spin, come off skin.”

  She plucked a thread of skin from the top of her head and spun it onto the spinning wheel. As Moses watched in amazement, his wife’s skin shucked off as easily as husk from an ear of corn. Underneath her skin was the body of a great big yellow cat. When she was finished, the cat took the skin and tossed it under the bed where Moses lay.

  “Stay there, skin, till I get back. I’m gonna have some fun,” said the big yellow cat. Then she jumped out the window and loped into the night.

  When she was gone, Moses sat up in bed. He was horrified. He had married a witch! She must have put a spell on him the first time he came to her cabin. Moses wanted to run to the preacher right away and make sure he was still going to heaven. But first, he had to do something about that witch.

  Moses grabbed the skin out from under the bed. He poured pepper and salt onto the skin until it was covered. Then he tossed it back under the bed, grabbed his clothes and his money, and ran out the back door.

  Moses hid in the woods and waited a long time for the witch to come home. When the big yellow cat came into the clearing and jumped through the window, Moses snuck up to the cabin and put his eye to a crack in the wall. He wanted to make sure that the witch was taken care of before he went to see the preacher.

  Well, that witch was all cackling and happy after her night out. She laughed as she ran over to the empty bed and grabbed up the skin and shook herself into it. But when she felt the salt and pepper in the skin, she started to scream and scream. She twisted and turned, trying to get the skin off. Smoke started coming off her body, and she writhed in agony until she dropped down dead.