Suspicious, Sylvie asked, “Why should I believe you?”
The hag shrugged, “drink the potion. Your circumstances will improve in three days. Come back next week and I will explain my favor. If your circumstances do not improve then do not come back. You have nothing to lose.”
Sylvie considered the proposal but there wasn’t much to consider. She deserved better circumstances and this was her chance. Plus, she was curious about the hag. How did she get these potions? What else was in this little shack?
Sylvie had much more to gain than ‘improved life circumstances’. The air was heavy with a mysterious power and Sylvie wanted that too.
“Give me the potion. But it better work,” Sylvie warned, “If this is a joke, I’ll-”. She was cut off by Zozo’s warning growl. She glowered at him. His red eyes blazed with hate and hunger. She looked down.
The hag handed her a bowl of thick black fluid. Looking in, Sylvie watched a snail-like head poke up through the goo and disappear.
“Drink it all, every drop,” said the hag. “In three days your circumstances will improve. Come back here a week from today. Ask to enter. We will then discuss payment.”
Sylvie said sharply, “Favor, I will do one favor for you and that’s all. There is no payment.”
Zozo growled.
The hag said, “Of course. Favor. You will owe me a favor. Now drink it all.”
Sylvie brought the bowl to her lips. It smelled like rotten fish, sulfur, and mint. Something plopped around in the bowl. She tipped the bowl, drank, and the world turned black.
The next day, Sylvie went about her business of sewing. She was determined to go back to see the hag. There was no question of the power contained in the shack. Its swampy air was heavy with dark, hidden secrets. Sylvie wanted it. If she had to kill the hag then so be it. And she’d kill Zozo too. She might kill Zozo anyway, just for the fun of it.
Sylvie waited until midnight to return to the forest. She’d been different, odd, better, and powerful. Although her body remained the same, her mind and her thoughts felt expanded beyond their normal boundaries.
She had ideas of dark things just beyond the realm of reality. Odd shaped beings cavorted on the edge of vision. Hate swelled and flowed. Like a burial cloth it enclosed her, comforted her, and energized her.
She hurried through the forest and stopped at the thick nest of trees that encased the shack.
“LET ME IN!” She demanded.
A low deep rumble vibrated through the air. It grew louder and KABOOM! The hidden door slammed open revealing the black doorway. Sylvie stalked up the steps and thrust her way through.
The hag was standing on a chair, her bony finger pointed straight at Sylvie’s eye. “Sit!” She ordered before Sylvie could say a word. Sylvie sat.
“What do you want?” Asked the hag still pointing her finger.
“You told me to come back,” replied Sylvie.
“NO! What do you want?”
The hag’s black eyes narrowed into slits.
Sylvie glared and lied, “I came back because you asked me to come back.”
“You LIE!” Exclaimed the hag.
She stepped off the chair, stood in front of Sylvie and stooped until they were face to face.
“You want this?” The hag gestured vaguely around the room, “You long for this?”
Sylvie was silent at the truth. She wanted the power. The air was heavy and swollen with arcane secrets.
The hag stooped closer, her rotten breath hissing out her words, “You’re but a speck of dust upon a pile of filth. This power is not yours or mine to have. It must be taken, ripped from the womb, bloody and screaming.”
Cold silence filled the swampy thick-aired room.
The hag’s dead breath hissed, “The secret is not how to rip it away, the key is absorbing the monstrosity, while it rapes your very being, leeching your mind. It is a question of surviving the parasite while it devours your essence and leaves not a void, but a corrupt, rotting soul in its place.”
The hag’s black eyes glittered, “I ask again, WHAT DO YOU WANT?”
Sylvie’s light gray eyes grew lighter and her pupils disappeared into pinpoints. Her rage was eclipsed by her lust to possess the secrets and power contained within the shack. She NEEDED to possess every shred of knowledge the shack contained. She would and could absorb every decaying piece to own it.
Sylvie, eyes so light to be white and the hag, eyes so black to be empty, glared at each other. The air shifted. A current passed between them. An unspoken understanding, a kindred recognition, not a teacher and a student, but a parasite and its host. A balance of power that at the beginning hurts neither. But as the parasite grows, feeding off the host, the balance shifts; and the parasite becomes a predator, hunting and sucking the life from the host, leaving the host used up and dead.
Sylvie defiantly stood up and pointed her finger down to the hag, “I want what is here! I need it and I shall do whatever it takes to get it,” she hissed, jabbing her finger at the hags face, “whatever it takes.”
And before she could make a final jab, a familiar growl filled the room. Sylvie looked up at the sound. It was coming from a black doorway on the far wall. Two glowing red eyes appeared from within the darkness. The growl grew menacing and louder. Despite herself, Sylvie gasped and sat down. Zozo crept into the room.
The hag cackled and clapped her hands as though witnessing a spectacular performance. Zozo jumped onto the table, settled into his spot and watched Sylvie intently.
Abruptly, the hag stopped clapping, “Are your circumstances improved as I promised?”
Sylvie stared at the new doorway. She didn’t remember seeing it before. Faint voices came through it. Conversational, a short scream, silence, many people whispering urgently, a deep laugh.
Zozo growled.
Sylvie glanced warily at him and said vaguely to the hag, “A man came to my shop today.”
“Richard. A good man. He wants to marry you,” the hag giggled, “love at first sight.”
Sylvie believed her. From the first moment Richard had come into the shop and explained his surprise at unexpected holes in his flour sack, Sylvie had known he was what would ‘improve her circumstances’.
As she sewed the holes, accidentally brushed against him a time or two, and batted her eyes, she felt the certainty of a carefree future. Richard Sterling owned 20 acres and was a respected farmer. Wise to the land and naïve to the world, was an apt description.
“He’ll do,” said Sylvie dismissively, looking at the mysterious doorway.
It wasn’t as tall as the entryway door. It was defined by three wooden beams, one on each side and one across the top. A rising chorus of voices drifted out of the darkness, like there were 100 people in there conversing and carrying on.
Most notable was the darkness itself, it bulged out of the doorway. It twisted and curled like smoke, but rather than drifting into the little room, it curled back onto itself and receded into the darkness. The darkness seemed liquid rather than air.
The shack was colder than before. There was no fire in the fireplace. Two candles were fighting against the gloom and losing, creating capering shadows in the corners. Heavy, cold, moist air blanketed the room creating a feeling of sitting in a swamp.
The hag slapped her knee and laughed uproariously, “of course he’ll do, you’d be a spinster seamstress without him.” And she doubled over with laughter.
Zozo moved to a sitting position on the table. He hunched his back and swung his head slowly from side to side as if tracking a small animal. Sylvie glanced down and saw a flat snakelike shadow slithering around the room. It circled over to the new doorway and melted into the darkness. A human scream rang out and died away as if at a great distance. Zozo jumped off the table, gracefully leapt into the doorway seeming to evaporate.
The hag pulled a rickety chair out from the table and set it in front of Sylvie. She plopped herself down with their knees almost touching.
“It wants you,” she said not needing to explain, “it wants you to join it. And you want it. What’s done is done.”
Somewhere in the darkness of Sylvie’s mind she knew what the hag was speaking of. It was ancient, undefinable, arcane. A defilement of existence. An upside down of all that is known. Not so much a being as a mass of festering rot. An unholy perversion of reality. Sylvie leered triumphantly. She knew she deserved this. It was her rightful heritage. The power would be hers- and hers alone.
The hag smirked, “You owe me a favor.”
Sylvie had no intention of doing anything for the hag. Sylvie was already inventing ways to kill her.
“You cannot enter here without permission. You must ask to enter. There is much for you to learn and I am your guide. The knowledge will come and when my job is through you will know,” said the hag responding to Sylvie’s thoughts.
A slight movement caught Sylvie’s attention. Zozo’s red eyes appeared high in the dark doorway. Sylvie had the distinct impression that Zozo was no longer a panther but an entity standing in the darkness watching her intently.
The hag turned around to look, but Zozo’s gaze stayed on Sylvie. The hag turned back to Sylvie and waved her hand behind her and said, “That is the lost Rumilure Mine.”
The lost Rumilure Mine was a local legend. It predated the town of Kranburg and the state of Illinois. Its true origins are lost to history, but the old-timers claim it existed and no one doubted that it once did.
The story goes that way back, when the Shawnee Indian nation still ruled the land, an old prospector built himself a little cabin on the edge of the forest. He’d followed the gold rush out west, but age and failure sent him east again.
Instead of returning to Boston, he crossed the mighty Mississippi, took one look at the fertile land and decided he had no reason to travel any further. After building his little cabin and plowing a few acres, he noticed a hole in the ground. Assuming it was an old well, he dug it up intending to create a little pond.
Not more than six feet down, his prospector’s dream came true, not by finding gold, but by finding coal. Digging out the little mine and shoring it up with timbers, he used the steady supply of coal for heat and bartering at the trading post in Carbondale. He also offered it to the Shawnee’s, but they declined saying the land was bad. They said it belonged to Rumilure- the black eyed people of the underground. The Rumilures were an underground tribe of the forest land. The Shawnee avoided them and the holes and caves they lived in. No one knows what the old prospector thought of this belief, no one even knows the prospectors name, but legend has it that he happily dug out the coal and made himself a cozy little homestead.
A few years later, the old prospector unfortunately encountered a beast of a man named Ore Stout. Everyone agrees that ‘Ore’ is not his first name, but like the other pieces of the legend, his true name has been lost to time.
Ore was chasing the silver and gold rushes when he came upon the old prospector. As was the custom and as kindred spirits, the old prospector offered Ore a place to hang his hat and rest up during his travels. It didn’t take long for Ore to learn of the productive little mine that provided the prospector’s heat and resources. Envious of the old prospector’s mine and too lazy to hunt for his own, Ore stayed on to help. The story goes that he killed the old prospector and buried his body in an unmarked grave next to the mine. With no one around to notice, except for the Shawnee who were now being forced west, Ore claimed the old prospector’s land as his own.
Greed consumed him as he furiously dug out more of the mine. He traded and sold the coal at the trading post as well as to the few settlers claiming bits and pieces of the old Shawnee grounds. Soon, old Ore had a pile of money and wanted more.
When Illinois became a state it was considered a free state and thus a destination for escaped slaves from the south. Old Ore lived in southern Illinois and would stake himself out at night hunting for escaped slaves. When he found them he would offer them a meager sustenance to work his mine. Old Ore built some flimsy shacks, paid tiny sums of money, and convinced the ex-slaves this was the way of the North. The escaped slaves, not knowing any better and grateful to be away from the whip, agreed to work for Ore.
Soon Ore had fifty men working his mine and at this same time the ghost stories started. The men would whisper of seeing people down in the darks shafts of the mine. They’d see men and women with no eyes beckoning them deeper and deeper into the earth. They’d hear voices and screams coming from deep in the tunnels. They’d see lights where they knew none of the miners were.
The ex-slaves had no experience with mines, but if they had they would have known that the labyrinth of tunnels was not a typical mine. Mines needed to be dug out. The old Rumilure mine had tunnels that were already in existence, like a great network of caves. One would dig for a few feet and then find oneself standing in a preexisting tunnel that curved and turned into darkness at both ends.
There was coal to be had and the ex-slaves dutifully dug it up. And then early one evening they came up upon a body of one of their own. He had been sliced open and his insides were strung along the walls. Further down the tunnel, the stunned group saw flickering red lights. A black shape, followed by three black-eyed men, made its way towards them. They fled, leaving the poor victim’s body behind.
Ore listened to the desperate story and heard the men vowing never to return to that God forsaken place. Wanting the men to eke out some more coal that evening, old Ore told the men an elaborate story of how the Shawnee knew that if you removed the body, and ignored the black-eyed people they would disappear forever.
The Shawnee had said no such thing. In fact, the Shawnee warned all about the Rumilures. But the Shawnee weren’t there anymore and the ex-slaves didn’t know any better. Old Ore upped the ante by offering to pay them all double for the day if they went into the mine and brought out the body as well as some more coal. Old Ore was mighty convincing and to prove his point he said he would lead the way.
So, all men except for one (who had broken his ankle in the mad rush out), grabbed lanterns and entered the mine. No one knows what exactly happened next. The man left behind said there was chanting, laughing, and shrieking. He said he saw lightning and heard thunder coming from the mine and then a mighty explosion as the whole thing blew up.
He limped towards the entrance thinking he would help survivors. He refused to talk about what he saw next only saying that the black-eyed people were walking out of the bellowing smoke and flames like they were out for a stroll. They made their way to the entrance and he limped away as fast as he could.
All the locals came out to help, but it was too late. Smoke billowed from the mine’s opening and the heat made it impossible to get close. It was agreed to come back first thing in the morning to take stock of the situation and figure out a way to smother the fire if needed.
The next day was bright and clear. The townsfolk noticed there was no black smoke billowing and gratefully assumed the fire had burned itself out. Upon getting to the site of Ore’s mine everyone looked around in disbelief at- nothing. No sign of a mine, no sign of a fire, no sign of any type of settlement at all. The ground was beautiful, pristine, and green. The forest leaves rustled upon uncharred trees. People wandered around puzzled. They knew this was the spot, but the only sign of habitation was their own footprints on the dewy grass.
The haunted legend of Rumilure mine was born. Over the years, the remains, or lack thereof, of the Rumilure mine was covered by the forest which butted up to the south of Kranburg. Legends of ghosts and black eyed ghouls were passed around campfires and whispered over fences. Mother’s used them to keep their children from wandering at night. Children used them to scare each other.
Every once in a while, a traveler would claim to have come upon a lone walker during the dark of the night. If the hapless traveler happened to stop, perhaps to see if the walker needed help, they were frightened out of their wits by the malevolent gaze of the lone wa
lker. Sometimes, the Rumilures were blamed for unexplained disappearances and even deaths. Most of the time, a human culprit was found, but not always.
Sylvie knew the old legends and the stories. She, like all the Kranburg children, had grown up with the Rumilure legend. But as a creature of the night, she had never come across a black eyed stranger save for the hag.
But suddenly she knew more. She knew the details, she could visualize the slaughter and knew what happened before the explosion. The knowledge was there. Through the shack, it absorbed into her, waited, and then sprang to life when needed.
Musty, rotted secrets rushed through her mind. She seized on the knowledge and vowed that it would all be hers. Grudgingly, she admitted she needed the hag for a little while. But, in time, it would all belong to Sylvie and Sylvie alone.
Zozo’s red eyes blazed from the darkness of the Rumilure Mine entrance. A white leer of sharp pointed teeth appeared beneath the eyes. Sylvie couldn’t shake the thought that Zozo was standing on two legs watching her, sizing her up and hunting her down. Sylvie tried to stare him down and lost. She looked back towards the hag.
The hag’s black eyes were empty holes in the dying candlelight. She scraped her chair back, stood and hobbled to a shelf. Reaching up, she grabbed an object, cackled and turned towards Sylvie. A flash of light reflected off the gleaming edge of a large meat cleaver. Slowly the hag advanced on Sylvie, brandishing the cleaver in front of her. She stopped and bent down with the cleaver between them. “You owe me a favor,” she said, twisting the cleaver back and forth, “bring me a hand of glory and we shall unlock a great secret.” The cleaver twisted back and forth, flashing in the dim light.
“What is a hand-,” Sylvie stopped. Without warning, the knowledge filled her. She knew what they were and more importantly what they were used for. Like the Rumilure mine, the dark knowledge squirmed its way into her thoughts.
In the traditional sense, a hand of glory is a hand cut from a murderer’s corpse. Dipped in wax, its fingers are used as candles. The hand is an important ingredient for occult spells, rituals, and incantations. But Sylvie understood in the truest sense that any hand would do. It didn’t have to be from a murderer, but it did have to be cut off a living person. Whether that person lived or died afterwards was of no concern. A plan rapidly formed in Sylvie’s mind. Getting a hand of glory would be a joy.
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