by Ronald Kelly
She grew into a young woman, inheriting her mother’s auburn hair and hazel green eyes, but her skin was pale from lack of sun, as white as alabaster. She was also painfully shy and extremely nervous; her frail, white hands fidgeted constantly with one another. No wonder all the prim, gossiping ladies pegged her as a potential spinster.
So it came as quite a shock to many an old busybody when a handsome, young gentleman by the name of Jeremy Burke began to call regularly upon the reclusive girl.
Their paths had crossed by association with the New Bainesville Bank & Trust. Abigail was the sole beneficiary of her late father’s estate, while Jeremy had recently returned from the war in Europe and had taken over his father’s position as bank president. It was during the execution of the Beecher will that young Jeremy grew to fancy the demure young lady who seemed content to sit in her shaded parlor with her books and Victrola. Miss Abigail seemed equally taken with the outgoing gentleman with the smiling eyes and the slight limp, a battlefield injury he corrected with the help of a horsehead cane.
And so, in January of 1920, the courtship of the two began, to the surprise of many, but the well wishes of all.
It started with suppers at the Beecher home and, afterwards, quiet evenings of pleasant conversation before the big fireplace in the main room. When Jeremy grew to know her better and the weather began to warm, he suggested a picnic for just the two of them beside Haverstone Lake, which bordered his own estate. Being the recluse that she was, Abigail was reluctant at first. But unable to disappoint her beau any longer, she finally consented. Her nurse, Mrs. Henderson, also agreed, feeling that a change of scenery would do her mistress a world of good.
It was a sunny day in mid-March, a day of new spring, daffodils, green-budded trees and songbirds. They took a canoe across the lake, Jeremy in his straw hat and sleeve garters, Abigail wearing a sheer veil to shield her lovely face from the rays of the sun. Their trip to the far side was leisurely. Once, Jeremy had put down the oars and strummed a couple of popular tunes on his five-string banjo. His playing was atrocious and she laughed as she had not laughed in years. Encouraged that the day was off to a good start, Jeremy resumed his rowing and soon they had their lunch laid out upon the grass beneath a blossoming magnolia tree.
The two were engaged in small talk and a feast of fried chicken, roasting ears, and cornbread, when something from the direction of the lake drew the young lady’s eyes from her companion. The man turned and, much to his surprise, saw a snake emerge from the water’s edge. It was a cottonmouth, a snake common in the South that frequented the area’s lakes and rivers. He watched, startled, for the serpent was so bold as to leave the safety of its waterhole and slither straight toward them.
“You need not worry, my dear,” he assured, but when he turned to Abigail he found not fear in her eyes, but rather a strange fascination. She looked fairly hypnotized by the ugly reptile that crossed the spring grass toward them.
He stood and, with his cane, drove the black snake back to the lakeside. “Nasty devil!” he shouted, watching as it swam, head above water, into the quiet breadth of Haverstone Lake. “Now, dear Abigail, we shall finish our lunch and—” He was jolted from his train of thought as he turned back to find her face ghastly pale, her eyes wide with sudden shock. She began to choke, her breath escaping in shallow gasps, her slender arms trembling as she collapsed to the ground.
His heart heavy with fear, Jeremy carried his lady to the boat and oared to the far side. Halfway across, the cursed snake reappeared, craning its head over the edge of the bow. With a shout, Jeremy gave the serpent a vicious swipe with the broad end of his paddle, sending it darting across the rippling waters. By the time Jeremy rowed ashore and, with the help of the groundskeeper, carried her inside to the parlor sofa, Abigail Beecher’s frightful seizure had run its course. It was at that moment, as she lay pale and scared before him, that Jeremy knew he truly loved this frail woman. He took her tiny hands in his own and gently kissed her.
He proposed to her the following evening, in her own parlor on bended knee. And, with tears of happiness in her eyes, Miss Abigail Beecher readily accepted.
They were married on the first day of April. It was a lavish church wedding and it seemed that the entire township of New Bainesville had attended. After the ceremony had proclaimed them husband and wife, they retired to the Burke estate, which would become their permanent home after Abigail’s property was sold. Their love for each other was consummated that night, tenderly and with patience, Jeremy treating his new bride as gently as a china doll.
Abigail’s nurse moved in to look after the lady’s bouts of illness, which seemed to grow fewer as the weeks drew into months. Jeremy was pleased to see that his wife was spending more time outdoors and that she had even taken up oil painting. Many an evening he returned home from the bank to find her at work on the veranda, rendering a likeness of the lakefront. It was on one such evening that he glanced past her latest canvas and spotted a snake—another cursed cottonmouth—winding its way up to the porch from the direction of the boathouse.
Once again he chased it away with his cane. And once again, Abigail’s apparent fascination with the poisonous snake transcended into a fit of coughing and convulsions. She was led to her room with the help of Nurse Henderson, and Old George, the caretaker, was sent to fetch the doctor.
After Doctor Travers had made his examination, he took Jeremy aside and told him that the fit had passed and that Abigail was resting comfortably. He also told the young husband something that took him by surprise. His frail wife was with child. Jeremy voiced his concern, thinking that her ill health might jeopardize the lives of both mother and child. Travers told him not to worry, that the pregnancy would go smoothly if she was kept in bed and protected from further agitation.
After the doctor had left, Jeremy called Old George into his study. “There is a disturbing abundance of cottonmouths venturing up from the lake lately,” he informed the man. “Find their nest and destroy the lot. I will pay you a sterling silver dollar for each one killed.”
***
During the following months of that summer, twenty-seven watersnakes were laid at Jeremy’s feet and his money pouch grew lighter as Old George’s grew heavier. Most had been killed down by the lake, yet, oddly enough, eight were discovered uncomfortably close to the main house.
Abigail’s fever wavered over the days ahead, but her sickness seemed to quell with twilight and she slept peacefully. Jeremy, however, found his sleep fitful on those nights. Half of his insomnia stemmed from worry over his wife and their unborn baby, while the rest was due to the disturbing nightmares he had been having lately. He had been dreaming of snakes, but the dreams lacked substance or any sense of purpose. He dreamt of two serpents—male and female—lying in a bed of grass, entwined in a fitful throe of flailing heads and tails, engaged in an obscene act of copulation. Then amid the thrashing, the grass changed to white bed linens and he realized that the bed was their own, his and Abigail’s. He would bolt awake, near hysteria, while his wife lay in a restful slumber beside him.
Summer passed into the cool nights of autumn and still the nightmare persisted. It was on a night in early September that he awoke abruptly with the eerie feeling that his awful dream had not yet ended. Frightened, he lit a lamp beside the bed and threw back the covers. There, lying between him and Abigail, curled a snake: a single cottonmouth, bearing its deadly needle-like fangs and the gaping white maw that gave the serpent its particular namesake. He had gone for his pistol, yelling for his wife to flee from its reach. But Abigail merely lay there, her breathing deep, her sleep undisturbed.
The gunshot awoke her as Jeremy knocked the serpent to the bedroom floor with his cane and blew its head apart with a single well-aimed bullet. Nurse Henderson rushed in just as Abigail began to strangle violently and lurch upon the feather mattress in a harrowing convulsion that traveled the length of her slender body. After a moment, however, she relaxed and returned to her dreamless s
lumber.
The next few months were the most difficult for Jeremy Burke. He sat in an armchair beside his wife’s sickbed most nights, sometimes reading, but mostly watching her with heart-rending concern. The days since the incident had not been kind to dear Abigail. They were filled with nausea and fever and gut-wrenching cramps that Doc Travers had no diagnosis for. Relief came only with nightfall and it was then that Jeremy suffered, watching silently over his beloved wife, jumping at every little shift in her sleep, every little change in her breathing.
It was on a December night, during one of his nocturnal vigils, that the cause of Abigail’s strange ailment finally became known.
Jeremy had been reading a book of O. Henry, when he unwillingly drifted into sleep. It was only when the hall clock chimed the hour of twelve that he awoke. Silently scolding himself for his goldbricking, Jeremy studied his wife’s pale face in the soft glow of the bedside lamp. She slept as usual, on her back, her mouth open slightly, her breathing shallow. Then, as he returned his weary eyes to his reading, a hitch sounded in the woman’s breath that caused him to glance up.
His heart began to race at the awful sight he was witnessing no more than three feet away. At first he thought it to be her tongue, somehow bloated and bruised, but in an instant, and to his growing horror, he realized that it was rather the triangular head of a serpent that probed inquisitively from between the petals of Abigail’s parted lips.
He was gripped by indecision for only a fraction of a second. Then, without further thought, his hand shot out and fisted around the snake’s slender neck. “Oh dear Lord in heaven!” he gasped as he stood over the bed. His wife awoke, eyes wide in alarm as the horrid thing within her squirmed and convulsed under Jeremy’s firm grasp.
Nearly overcome with the terror of it all, he hesitated, then began to pull. One…two…three feet of the cursed thing he dragged from his wife’s open mouth. It writhed in the cool air of the room, its hide blistered and raw from years of swimming in gastric and intestinal acids. Abigail’s thin hands clawed at the bedclothes, panic bringing her close to the edge of madness as she watched her husband exorcise the demon she had housed since the age of nine.
Finally, the snake was out. Jeremy held the serpent aloft, watching its scarred head strain and turn, trying unsuccessfully to sink its fangs into the flesh of his hand. With a fury born of pure anger and loathing, he flung it against the oaken panel of the bedroom door. Then, retrieving his .45, he emptied the clip into its thrashing body.
***
Dawn brought the sound of Doc Travers’ footsteps as he descended the stairs and joined a haggard Jeremy Burke in the kitchen. Silently, he poured himself a cup of coffee, then spoke. “I gave her something to quiet her down. Physically, I think she is all right. The awful shock of it all did the most damage, but she’ll get over it. In time, we will all get over this whole damned ordeal.”
Jeremy shook his head, reliving the horror. “But that…that horrid thing living inside her for all these years…”
“Indeed,” sighed Doc Travers with a tired smile, “but I had best get back up there. My work won’t be finished here for some time.”
“What do you mean?” asked Jeremy with alarm.
“I mean, young man, that your wife is in early labor. The baby will be premature, but I have delivered many that way,” he said, rising. “I wouldn’t worry if I were you.”
Jeremy buried his head in his hands. “I just pray that dear Abigail can make it through the strain.”
The labor of Abigail Beecher Burke turned out to be a long and painful one and, by the eve of that winter day in 1920, it finally came to its end. Jeremy was there, despite the doctor’s protest, to offer his young wife comfort and to see that things went well.
He watched silently as the birth of his child took place. First the infant’s head appeared, followed by the tiny body and limbs. He watched as Doc Travers tenderly handed the newborn fetus to Nurse Henderson and carefully withdrew the umbilical cord from the womb. Jeremy felt a thrill of terror grip him momentarily for, at first glance, it appeared that the physician held a snake in his hands. That was not the case, but for some reason the link between mother and child was darkly colored and possessed a scale-like texture. He quickly studied his firstborn—a little boy—and relaxed. His new son was incredibly small, but appeared completely normal.
A big wink and a grin from Doc Travers assured Jeremy that everything would be all right as he lifted the baby by its heels and gave it a sharp slap across the buttocks.
Jeremy exchanged a weary, but loving smile with his darling Abigail, took her hand gently in his own and eyed his squawling son as he squirmed within the grasp of the doctor’s experienced hands.
But as the infant began to cry, Jeremy noticed something that caused his newfound pride to swiftly rise toward horror. For the inner lining of the baby’s mouth was not a tender pink in color, but rather a ghastly milky white.
And, just beneath the pale gums, a hint of tiny fangs.
FOREVER ANGELS
To me, the worst nightmare imaginable would be the death of a child. The devastating loss, the grief, the realization of a life unfulfilled, would seem to be more than one could bear. Folks in the South derive some comfort from the belief that children are incapable of going to Hell; that these earthbound angels are simply making the transition to heavenly ones.
I wrote this story when I was a single man and, back then, it really didn’t bother me that much. But now that I am a father of two, it seems particularly disturbing.
Deanna Hudson didn’t believe her second-grade classmates at first. Not until they actually took her there and showed her that it was true.
The Glover County school bus let them out at the corner of Flanders Drive and Pear Tree Road at a quarter after three. Together, they walked the two blocks to the Milburne Baptist Church. The building had stood there for nearly one hundred and fifty years, always virgin white and immaculate, the lofty steeple rising in a pinnacle that could be seen throughout the entire township. Milburne, Tennessee was located on the very buckle of the Southern bible belt and the little church was a picturesque example of how very prominent religion was in that region of the country.
There were five in the youthful procession that walked quietly down the sidewalk, then crossed the well-mown lawn that separated the church property from the adjoining graveyard. There was Deanna, Jimmy Thompson, Butch Spence, and the Waller twins, Vickie and Veronica. They made their way through the cramped cemetery, past marble headstones and a scattering of lonely trees, their backpacks slung over their shoulders. Thunder rumbled overhead. The day had begun cheerfully enough, but by afternoon dark storm clouds had rolled in from the west, promising the threat of spring showers and perhaps a thunderstorm before the night ended.
“Well, there it is…just like I told you,” said Butch with a sneer of triumph. “Can’t call me a liar now, can you?”
Deanna said nothing. With the others, she slowly approached the little half-acre lot that was fenced in ornate wrought iron. An unlocked gate sported a couple of trumpet-playing angels overhead and a poetic inscription: Those who are called to the Lord in innocence shall be, forever, angels.
“Come on,” urged Jimmy, pushing the iron gate open with a rusty squeal. Deanna followed the others inside, trying hard to suppress a shiver of cold uneasiness. Yes, it was exactly what it appeared to be; exactly what Butch and Jimmy had described so masterfully on the elementary school playground. It was a miniature graveyard.
A graveyard for children.
They began to walk among the rows of tiny tombstones, each a quarter of the size of their adult counterparts in the next lot over. “Don’t be such a scaredy-cat!” Butch shot back in disgust when the fair-haired girl hesitated near the gate. Finally, she drew up her courage and followed her schoolmates onto the gently sloping hill of the small graveyard.
At first the stones seemed fairly new, chiseled from pastel granite of pink and blue, bearing cryptic n
ames like “Little Tommy” or “Baby Linda.” Unlike the headstones out in the big graveyard, these seemed devoid of flower arrangements. Instead, long forgotten toys were scattered upon the short mounds: rubber balls, pacifiers, and rattles, their colors bleached by sun and rain, the plastic cracked and broken. A teddy bear lay on its side before the grave of “Sweet Andy Wilson,” its eyes blank and unseeing. The stuffing had been burrowed from the fur of its matted tummy, strewn across the grass by some wild animal that had come foraging for food with no luck.
Further into the cemetery, as the little hill reached its peak and began to descend to the edge of a thick forest, the headstones grew older and the rows were choked with weeds.
The inscriptions were more difficult to read, the names sanded clear down to the bare stone by decades of wind and harsh weather. “My dad says these have been here since the 1800s,” said Butch. “Said there was a big diphtheria epidemic back then that killed half the babies in Glover County. Most of them are buried right here…beneath our feet.”
They stood there in reverent silence for a moment. The gentle breeze had grown blustery, stripping the leathery leaves off the cemetery’s only tree, a huge blossoming magnolia at the very heart of the grassy knoll. Deanna began to back away, a creepy feeling threatening to overcome her. “I’ve got to get home,” she said, her voice barely a whisper.
“Go on home, if you want,” said Butch with a shrug. “But you ain’t gonna be able to escape them, you know. Not as close as you live to this place.” They all peered into the three-acre woods that separated the churchyard from the new subdivision that had been built to either side of Pear Tree Road. Through a gap in the pine grove, Deanna could see her parents’ split-level house, the one they had moved into only two months ago.