“Is that the thing that’s chasing you?” the rabbit called to us from the road.
“Yes,” Pop said. His voice trembled on the word, and I gripped his hand as tight as I could. I was angry at the thing for scaring my Pop.
“Stay where you are and I will protect you,” said the rabbit.
The light grew and grew, and suddenly I could see the thing coming down the road toward the rabbit. The thing had grown twice as big as a man and the ground shook with its approach. The thing saw the rabbit and stopped.
“Have you seen a man and a boy pass this way?” the thing asked the rabbit.
“Chicky-licky-chow-chow-chow,” said the rabbit, getting up and doing a little dance as it spoke.
The thing frowned fiercely.
“I said, have you seen a man and a boy pass this way?” the thing shouted.
“Chicky-licky-chow-chow-chow,” said the rabbit, spinning around and wagging its long ears at the thing.
“Tell me, have you seen a man and a boy pass this way?!” the thing roared, its flame quills growing as long as tree branches. The heat was intense, worse than standing too close to the fireplace. The light from the thing was brighter than noon. I was afraid the thing might see us hiding in the brush, but it was too busy shouting at the rabbit. “Tell me what I want to know or I will swallow you!” the thing shouted.
“Chicky-licky-chow-chow-chow,” sang the rabbit. It jumped up on the thing’s leg and leapt from there to its top. The rabbit danced a little jig, repeating, “Chicky-licky-chow-chow-chow. Chicky-licky-chow-chow-chow. Once I had a summer house, now I’ve got a winter house.”
“I am going to butt your brains out against a tree!” roared the thing, infuriated by the rabbit’s song and dance. The rabbit just laughed and said, “Chicky-licky-chow-chow-chow.”
So the thing reared back, aimed itself at a giant pine tree, and butted itself against the thick trunk. At the last moment, the rabbit leapt clear, as the thing hit the tree. The thing burst open, and it dropped dead onto the ground, all its flames extinguishing at once. The ground shook under the impact of the thing’s fall, but in the sudden darkness, I couldn’t see what had happened to the rabbit. Had it been crushed by the thing when it fell? Then I heard the soft thump of rabbit paws on the road and heard a cheerful voice singing, “Chicky-licky-chow-chow-chow.”
Pop crawled out of the thicket and pulled me after him. We crouched by the brush, our eyes adjusting to the darkness. The moon had risen, and as my eyes adjusted, I saw the thing on our right. It seemed to be sinking into the earth. As I watched, it disappeared completely and the ground closed over it.
The rabbit appeared right in front of us and Pop said simply, “Thank you.”
“You’re welcome,” said the rabbit gravely. It winked one eye, danced a little jig and sang, “Chicky-licky-chow-chow-chow.” Then we were alone in the moonlight.
Pop never shot another rabbit as long as he lived. And neither of us was ever particularly fond of beef again.
31
The Lady
Richmond, Virginia
“If only . . .” The phrase came frequently to the lips of the good Doctor and his wife. If only they had time and energy. If only they had money. If only they had assistance. But they had none of these things. For themselves, they asked for little; but for their children, they wanted everything. It shamed the Doctor and his wife that they had nothing to give their children—not even an education.
The Doctor was severely injured in the Civil War and had walked with a limp since the second battle of Manassas. This injury kept him from keeping a full day of medical appointments, and it made his life a misery when he was called out to a birth in the middle of the night. On his dear wife fell the burden of keeping house and home up-and-running, itself an awesome task. The couple had no money to hire help because the residents of postwar Virginia could only pay the good doctor in food and clothing. Without money, they couldn’t afford the luxury of hiring a tutor for their intelligent sons or a music teacher for their gifted daughter. And the children—who worked as hard as their parents to make ends meet—were so sleepy at night that they often fell asleep before the doctor or his wife could spare time to give them a lesson.
The Doctor and his wife were rehashing the issue of their children’s education one evening as a mighty storm raged over the countryside. The Doctor’s injured hip ached with the cold and humidity, and he huddled next to the warmth of the fire, too tired to rise and go to bed. As his good wife knitted and fretted beside him, there came a faint knock on the front door.
“Oh no,” moaned the wife. “Not tonight. You are too sore and weary to go out, my dear husband.”
“You know that I took an oath to answer the summons of those in need,” the Doctor replied gently, using both hands to push himself out of the chair. He grabbed his wife’s arm for support as he limped toward the door.
The couple opened the door together and staggered backward as wind and rain whipped inside, almost knocking them over. At first, their fire-dazzled eyes perceived nothing but darkness. Then the wife looked down and saw a woman lying in a pathetic, soaking wet heap at their feet. The Doctor picked up the woman and carried her to the fire, while his wife pushed the door shut with much effort against the wind.
The woman was far gone with cold and fatigue. The Doctor dried her off and wrapped her in warm blankets, all the while speculating on whom this stranger might be. The Doctor knew every man, woman, and child for nearly fifty miles, but he had never seen this woman before. She was unnaturally pale, as if she spent all of her waking life indoors, and her wrists were red and swollen as if the cuffs of her tight sleeves—now mere rags—had cut off her circulation. The Doctor bound the strange wrist injuries while his wife administered a stimulant.
When the Lady roused at last, her eyes focused first upon the library, which lined the walls of the Doctor’s small parlor. “Books,” she murmured. “Books! It has been so long . . .” She closed her eyes weakly, but there was a smile upon her face.
“Shh,” said the wife, smoothing back her tangled hair. “You can read your fill tomorrow. Tonight you must rest.”
The Lady fell into a deep sleep, and they put her on the bed in the tiny spare room that the Doctor used as his office. Then they went upstairs to their own room for the night.
The morning after the storm dawned glorious and fair. The Doctor’s wife lingered over her milking, enjoying the sights and smells of a world washed clean. As she carried her pails toward the house, she heard an angelic voice singing her favorite song, accompanied by the long unused parlor piano.
“Sweet Amaryllis, by a spring’s sweet side . . .” trilled the lovely soprano. The wife beamed, recognizing her daughter Virginia’s voice. But who was playing the piano?
The wife hurried inside just as Virginia’s song broke off. A sweet contralto commanded: “Sing the line again with a full breath, Virginia. Do not break the phrase in the middle.” The pale Lady spoke from her seat on the piano bench. Her pale hands, ringed by bandages, lay upon the keys.
Seeing the Doctor’s wife in the doorway, the Lady added, “Madam, your daughter has great talent and may be one of the Great Singers of the world if she is properly trained.”
Opposite her, in the door to the kitchen, the Doctor and his two sons stood listening, faces beaming with delight.
“Can you teach her, Lady?” asked the Doctor.
The Lady’s eyes traveled from the radiant Virginia to the eager faces of the two boys.
“I can teach them all, Sir,” she replied.
And teach them she did, with skill and authority and the simple magic possessed by the greatest teachers, which calls forth the very best from the minds under their tutelage. The children soaked in their instruction and studied harder than they ever had before, striving to please the Lady they loved.
The Lady never told the
family her name. After the first inquiry they did not ask again, assuming she had run away from a cruel husband or father and needed a place of refuge. It did not bother them, for she was their Lady, the children’s beloved governess, come to the Doctor’s family to fulfill their great need.
For five years, the Lady strove mightily to educate the Doctor’s family, until both boys had qualified for university and Virginia had learned all she could teach and could sing sweetly in three languages. Early one evening, as a great storm rolled into valley, the children’s governess looked one last time upon her sleeping charges, knowing she had done everything she could to ready them for the wide world. Then she slipped away—as she had first come—during the lashing winds and thunderous rains of the storm.
The Doctor and his family wore themselves to the bone searching for their beloved Lady, to no avail. She was gone as a mist, not to be seen again. “Perhaps she was an angel, sent to minister to us in our time of need,” the wife said to her family and friends. “God works in mysterious ways.”
Soon the children were grown and flown: the boys to university and Virginia on a classical music tour that spanned three continents. Of all the songs the great singer performed, the best loved was the old Southern ballad called “Sweet Amaryllis.” Virginia wept whenever she sang it, remembering her beloved Lady.
The Doctor had prospered in the years following the disappearance of the Lady. Once his children were grown he turned more and more to charitable works and the donation of his professional time to those in need. One morning, the Doctor paid a visit to an infamous asylum for the insane. The asylum superintendent herself took him on a tour of the facilities. They walked through the narrow hallways, accompanied for safety by two husky orderlies, discussing public health improvements and the best ways to treat the medically insane.
As the group turned into the corridor that housed the more violent patients, the Doctor heard a sweet contralto voice singing “Sweet Amaryllis.” He stopped abruptly before the barred door from which the voice emerged and asked the matron about the inmate.
“An interesting case,” the superintendent said. “She was left upon our doorstep one night many years ago—before my time—bound hand and foot to keep her from committing violence against herself and others. After several years in the asylum, she broke out of her shackles and vanished; only to reappear five years later and beg to be readmitted. She was afraid she would hurt someone in her madness.”
“What is her name?” the Doctor asked.
“We never knew her name. We just call her the Lady. Sometimes the Lady can be very gentle, but in my experience the gentle ones are the worst kind. You never know when they might lash out. Don’t you agree, Doctor?”
Behind the door, the song broke off abruptly in a sob that broke the good Doctor’s heart. “Open this door,” he commanded the orderlies.
The superintendent looked alarmed. “Doctor, be careful. The Lady is extremely dangerous.”
As the door swung open, the Doctor saw a familiar pale form standing in the middle of the room. Loose chains bound the Lady to the wall. Her wrists, under the shackles, were swollen and red. The wounds were the same as those the Doctor had bandaged five years before. The Lady’s eyes were closed and she swayed as she hummed a few more bars of “Sweet Amaryllis.”
“Remove those shackles,” the Doctor commanded, stepping briskly toward his former governess.
The Lady’s eyes flew open and the Doctor found himself gazing into pupils glowing red with insane hatred and a lust to kill. He stopped in his tracks, stunned by the evil menace twisting the beloved countenance. In that frozen moment, the Lady sprang to the full length of her chains, her long fingernails clawing at the Doctor’s face. He fell to the floor, blood streaming from both eyes and the Lady laughed maniacally as she stood in triumph over her latest victim.
The husky orderlies leapt into the room and wrestled the Lady down onto the bed while the superintendent dragged the Doctor to safety. But it was too late to save him. The Doctor’s eyes were permanently damaged by the Lady’s blow. He never saw again.
32
The Red Rag Under the Churn
The Kentucky Mountains, Kentucky
Back in the old days, before electric lights and such, a man named Harold lived with his pretty wife, Sarah Ann, on a small farm way back in the mountains of Kentucky. They were a happy couple, with two grown children and nice neighbors and livestock enough to keep body and soul together.
One day Harold went over to see his neighbor, hoping to trade with him for a few hogs. When Harold reached the neighbor’s house, the wife came to the door and told Harold that her husband was out in the fields. The wife invited Harold inside to wait for her husband.
Harold sat down and waited patiently while his neighbor’s wife started churning butter. She churned faster and faster until the churn was brimming with butter. Harold was amazed. Sarah Ann couldn’t churn butter like that. There must be some kind of trick to it, Harold decided.
Wanting to get to the bottom of the mystery, Harold asked his neighbor’s wife if she would get him a drink. As soon as she went out the door with her bucket, he examined her churn. It looked the same as his wife’s churn. Then Harold looked underneath it. There was a small red rag under the churn. It looked like a piece of petticoat. Harold clipped off a corner of the rag, put the churn back exactly as the woman had left it, and sat down.
After drinking a dipper of water, Harold told his neighbor’s wife that he was going to try to find her man out in the fields. Wishing her good day, Harold hurried out of the house. But instead of looking for his neighbor, Harold went home to his wife.
“Sary, I need you to do some churning,” he called as soon as he entered the house.
“But Harold, we’ve already got more butter than we need. And there’s almost no cream left for churning,” Sarah Ann answered, looking surprised by his request.
But Harold insisted that Sarah Ann churn the rest of the cream immediately. Sarah Ann knew her husband pretty well, and she knew he was up to something. But it was no use trying to figure it out when he was in this mood, so she got out her churn and put in the last of the cream.
“Before you start, Sary, why don’t I put this bit of red rag under your churn?” said Harold, taking the rag out of his pocket. Sarah Ann looked at him suspiciously, but she let him place the red rag under her churn and she began working the cream. To her astonishment, she could feel the churn filling with butter, even though there hadn’t been enough cream in it to make more than a dab. And her arms were moving twice as fast as normal.
Sarah Ann began to feel frightened because the butter was coming faster and in greater quantities than it ever should. She jumped up, grabbed her churn, and shouted, “I don’t know what devilment you’re up to, Harold, but I won’t be a part of it.” She ran out the door and dumped the bewitched butter into the woods.
Harold grabbed up the bit of red rag and stuffed it in his pocket. He felt bad about scaring his wife, and decided he would apologize to her as soon as he finished his evening chores.
Harold was just heading back to the house after the milking was done when he came face to face with a large figure that looked something like a man, except it had a small pair of horns on its head. The sun seemed to glow red around the figure, which Harold found mighty strange because the sun had already set behind the mountaintop. Harold stopped dead and looked into the tall figure’s burning black eyes. The figure bowed and held out a book to Harold, saying, “Sign here, please.”
“What do you mean, sign here? Sign for what? If you want me to sign that book, you’ve gotta hand it to me,” Harold snapped. He was mighty nervous of that glowing figure with the horns.
“I can’t come over to you,” the horned figure said.
Harold saw that there was a glowing circle surrounding his body, which stopped a few inches from the horned figure. Harold was
frightened, but he reached over and took the book. When he opened it, he saw writing at the top of the first page: We and All We Possess Belong to The Devil. This was followed by the names of all his neighbors. At the top of the list was the name of the neighbor woman who had the red rag under her churn.
Harold looked over at the horned figure. It was glaring at him with flaming eyes. Harold was scared nearly to death, but he said, “I’m not signing this. I don’t belong to the devil and neither do my wife and children.”
“That seems strange to me,” said the horned figure, his eyes glowing brighter with each word. “You’ve been using witchcraft. What about that red rag you put under your churn?”
Harold felt the rag twitch in his pocket, then a pretty little red bird came flying out and landed on his wrist. The bird gave a horrible chuckle. It sounded like a demon. And so it was. It gave a second chuckle and flew over to perch on the shoulder of the horned figure.
Harold knew he had to do something quickly. He turned the page over, wrote We and All We Possess Belong to The Lord, and signed his name to the page. Then he handed the book back. The horned figure took one look at the book and gave a terrible, piercing scream before bursting into flames, smoke swirling around and around it. There was a bright flash and a smell of brimstone, and then Harold fell onto the ground as the horned figure disappeared.
As soon as Harold got back on his feet, he ran right to the house and told Sarah Ann the whole story.
“We’re not staying here another day,” Harold said. “I won’t stay in a place where all my neighbors have sold themselves to the devil.”
Harold and Sarah Ann packed up and left the next day. Their children and their families also left after hearing Harold’s story. There’s no one living on that side of the hill anymore, just a few abandoned buildings and a large burned spot where nothing but sage grass will grow. Folks reckon that’s the spot where the horned figure stood when it tried to get Harold to sign its book. Everyone around these parts calls that spot “the devil’s garden,” and no one goes there.
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