Hellbender (Murder Ballads and Whiskey Book 2) Read online

  Hellbender

  BY

  JASON JACK MILLER

  copyright © 2012 by Jason Jack Miller

  Published by Raw Dog Screaming Press

  Bowie, MD First Edition

  Cover: Cover design elements and typography by Hatch Show Print, Nashville, Tennessee, a division of the Country Music Foundation, Inc.

  Book design: Jennifer Barnes

  Printed in the United States of America

  ISBN: 978-1-935738-27-5

  Library of Congress Control Number: 2012937685

  www.RawDogScreaming.com

  Heidi,

  This dream is ours to hold, to keep, to write as only we can.

  Ethnographer’s Note

  The first thing you have to understand about the Appalachian use of natural material for protection and bewitching is that the practice is not a fiction. The methodology didn’t originate in the imagination of some fantasy novel author. Lead can’t be turned into gold by the wave of a wizard’s hand. A sorcerer cannot produce a fireball to slay an orc. In fantasy fiction, a person’s magical abilities can result from special circumstances of their birth—planets align, ravens arrive with the midwife, a mysterious birthmark appears, etc. The Appalachian Encyclopedia Fascinatica crossed the Atlantic as part of a tool kit that included the moldboard plough and the wheel. In other words, my people use hexes and herbs like a carpenter uses a hammer. In most cases, oral tradition is responsible for a majority of the knowledge passed along through the generations, especially amongst the Irish Celts, where the Roman imposition of Christianity made maintaining a vast body of concrete material dangerous. But some printed works do exist, most notably John George Hohman’s Der Lange Verborgene Freund and Clavicula Salomonis, or The Key of Soloman. My people are in possession of both of these books, although I have not been permitted to examine them.

  In my immediate family the use of old magic was somewhat suppressed by my father’s decision to marry a woman from southwestern Pennsylvania rather than West Virginia. ‘Kitchen’ magic is typically passed from mother to daughter in the same way that recipes are, and my mother, a Slovak Catholic, was not part of that line. Therefore, my sister learned at a young age how to milk an ax handle and knock witches from my grandmother, aunts and cousins the same way I learned to skin a deer and tune a fiddle from my grandfather. But even when I did see my grandmother dowse for water or pull fire from a wound, it was as natural to me as seeing a full moon or a rainbow.

  Eventually, my sisters learned to integrate my mother’s Roman Catholicism into their grimoire, most notably at Old Christmas, which falls on January 6, The Epiphany. The stubborn folk of the British Isles refused to accept Rome’s imposition of a new calendar upon them, thus maintaining Old Christmas on its original, true date. In Wales, the Glastonbury Rose is even said to bloom at midnight on Old Christmas as a reminder that this is the correct night of Christ’s birth. A few hundred years later, we have a date where Christ’s birth and the arrival of the Biblical Magi coincide (it should also be noted that The Miracle at Cana, Christ’s first, occurred on this day) and my sister has incorporated frankincense, gold and chalk into her Old Christmas rituals. The first two materials remind us of the journey undertaken by the Magi, and the chalk is to inscribe K † M † B †—the initials of Caspar, Melchior, and Balthasar, and the phrase Christus mansionem benedicat on door lintels so the house may receive blessings. In Appalachia, elder bushes bloom at midnight in lieu of the Glastonbury Rose, and in barns all over the mountain the animals present in the manger on the night of Christ’s birth cry out to announce the arrival of the Savior in recreation of the event. (I must make a point to reprimand the author for his portrayal of Old Christmas in the novel, and should caution readers to refrain from attempting to observe such activities themselves. In a well-known case from Harmon, West Virginia, Neil Yokum woke up blind and mute on the morning of January 7, 1978, after his footprints were found in the new snow leading into his uncle’s barn.)

  In Appalachia, these practices exist as a response to an unfriendly environment, where even today a hard snow can isolate a family for a week or more. Springs still run dry or go bad, leaving a household without water, and food stores can be ruined by rats or leaf rust. Snake bites and animal attacks can kill or maim a person long before proper medical help arrives. Maintaining traditions is survival, and as vital to a family as a knowledge of canning vegetables and distilling their own spirits. Nowhere is this as important as when protecting a family and homestead from witches and other dark forces. SATOR Squares, like the ones mentioned in the book, are protection spells at their most basic. Typically they are placed above windows and doors to keep evil away. (This practice of protecting the lintel isn’t solely an Appalachian one. My mother’s grandmother’s family places a turkey wishbone above the door to attract suitors for unmarried daughters, a Slovak custom.)

  The power of a SATOR Square extends beyond protection of the home. A cow that has been bewitched, and is giving bloody milk or has stopped giving milk altogether, can be made to eat a piece of paper upon which a SATOR Square has been written. Similar charms, such as hex signs, have been used for protection amongst some members of the Pennsylvania Dutch community, although the current trend amongst scholars is to suggest that the hexes are merely decorative and contain no magical power. In an article I wrote for West Virginia University’s annual Appalachian Voices conference a few years ago I hypothesized that the community’s waning use of hex signs is directly related to the rise of violent crime and demonic possession amongst some Pennsylvanian and Ohioan sects.

  Protection from witches is a fairly straightforward practice, primarily consisting of keeping very personal items out of a witch’s possession. Burying things, like old clothing or hair clippings, in secret, sheltered locations is crucial so that the witch cannot possess a part of you, yielding ownership of such a personal item leaves your spirit open to attack. Most hair magic is the result of carelessness—the victim simply didn’t know enough not to keep hair (or fingernail clippings, in some cases) out of a witch’s possession. In North Carolina there is a belief that if a bird uses even one of your hairs to build its nest, you will go insane.

  But protection from dark spirits is an entirely different matter, contingent upon the type of entity and the degree of fragility of a soul, the most frail being the newly departed. The Appalachian tradition of Sitting with the Body is a way of protecting a person from the forces that may try to corrupt the individual before receiving a proper burial. This practice originated in a time when viewings and wakes took place in the home of the newly deceased and three days were needed to properly prepare the departed. Wooden planks were laid across a pair of chairs and ribbons were used to bind the legs, cross the arms and keep the jaw from opening before the body stiffened. All mirrors in the house are turned to face the wall, denying evil an opportunity to enter. The person sitting with the body places a clean dinner plate covered half with salt and half with fresh earth on the newly deceased’s chest for protection.

  Close family members are particularly susceptible to entanglement by evil forces during a Sitting, so the person waiting with the body should be somebody who isn’t kin, preferably a close family friend. One of the most famous Sittings I know of happened shortly after my parents were married. My mother was asked to Sit with a cousin, Martin Collins, who died in a sawmill fire down in Spruce. Some say it was an accident, but my grandmother said that Mary Lewis had been openly courting Martin for weeks. I personally question how any fire that starts in an open air mill during a hard April rain can realistically be called an accident, but I wasn’t there.


  The body was brought to my grandparents’ home and my mother—reluctant as she was—received very specific instructions to flip the mirrors and maintain the plate of earth and salt on the body. She wasn’t supposed to sleep, and various people from the community arrived throughout the ordeal to keep her company and bring food. My mother never said a word about the occurrences of the Sitting after the funeral, but Luther Brownfield said he had to help her pull the body away from the doors and windows several times each day and Sarah Cowger said she heard “… the ground cry…” whenever she took food up to my mother. I personally remember helping my grandpap pick embedded shards of mirror out of the walls when I was a kid. Even after they painted and put up wallpaper, bits of mirror continued to surface, as if drawn out by a magnet. I can also recall my grandmother using throw rugs to hide scorch marks on the floor where the body sat.

  The following year my mother gave birth to her first child. My older sister, Kathryn, died before she ever turned two. Some say it was retribution for my mother’s own life, which had been spared during the Sitting. Some say it was Mary Lewis, who wanted Collins blood for Lewis blood.

  As an ethnographer, I try to remain unbiased in my approach to matters of the supernatural. I know that my people have a propensity for exaggeration that can sometimes render first-hand accounts of events unusable. Superstition and habit make it hard for them to see things as coincidental. Amongst older folks especially, if rain is prayed for and it rains, then by God it rained because of the prayer.

  There are those events that I have seen myself, circumstances for which science has no plausible explanation. I try my darnedest to keep a foot in reality, but I have experienced several proceedings in my life that have left me without words. I fear it would strain my reputation and academic credibility to discuss them here, in this format. So for now they remain with me as they always have, with the understanding that there’s plenty of room in the space between what is real and what isn’t. I know that some of my people have found a way to work within that space, because I’ve seen it myself. And I am a very credible witness.

  Jamie Collins, Davis and Elkins University

  HELLBENDER

  If I could’ve carried her by myself, I would have. But just the weight of the pine and spruce box was more than I could bear alone. The linens that covered her body and her clothes, the last she’d ever wear, made her heavier. The coins that covered her eyes added a few ounces more.

  I could’ve carried her, by herself, forever.

  January wasn’t a kind time for a burial, but we don’t get to choose. Old Christmas hid the sun behind a flat gray wall of clouds. January has a way of taking a person’s optimism and crushing it beneath its bony heel.

  I’d take June, when long days kept wayward pessimism at bay for just a few hours more. When blackberry blossoms spilt over old stone fences while young rabbits got fat and lazy. I’d take Summer Solstice over Old Christmas any day.

  But we don’t get to choose.

  The procession left my front yard. Six pairs of feet tested the driveway’s stiff gravel like it was new ice on a pond. The spindly trees lining the road could care less about my grandfather, who led us all with slumped shoulders and red eyes. He forced a shuffle, all alone, except for Champ, his old collie.

  Ben, my cousin, was next to me, even though I couldn’t see him for the casket. The box trembled as he cried. He’d been depressed since he got back from Afghanistan last year. At Christmas he finally started to smile again, and hasn’t smiled again since.

  My dad had fallen toward the back of the line. He was coming off a real good drunk and was working hard on his next one. I couldn’t blame him. He used to be able to shoot a nickel off a crow’s back. This morning I had to remind him to put on a coat.

  We paused after stepping onto the worn-out lane, which led to my grandfather’s house, before crossing the Blackwater and ending up in Davis. I shifted in the gravel—my bare feet relished the sensation of pain after the dull cold of the front yard. I left my shoes because I remembered how Paul went barefoot on the ABBEY ROAD cover. I must’ve thought it was traditional, or symbolized mutual suffering, or whatever. But standing here, without shoes on, I realized Paul was the corpse, not the pallbearer. I looked at my shuffling feet on the cold ground, then to my pap. He turned briefly, shrugged his shoulders, then surveyed the remainder of the procession. At his signal, the twine of two lonely violins split the afternoon, playing notes I vowed I’d never learn. My cousin, Katy, rolled her fiddle bow weakly across the strings, like flowers blooming too early in the season. My uncle, Jamie—Ben’s dad—propped her up with his own playing.

  We all walked to an easy rhythm, pallbearers’ footfalls counting out a beat for the fiddlers to play to. My bare feet felt every note, accenting the downbeat of their mournful drone. Numb to everything else, my toes blistered and bled on the road, the longest I’d ever known. Past fields too tired to be plowed. Past a colorless stream too sad to see itself out of the valley. Past houses that sheltered frequent turmoil and suffering and up a hill to a hole in the ground where for one of us, days would end.

  Katy and her mom, Rachael, Sat Up with the body for the customary three days, which was fine by me. They were way more capable than me of dealing with the kind of evil that could pursue a recently departed soul. Besides, three days was just about how long it took to dig a grave in West Virginia in January. The calluses on my palms confirmed it.

  One evening to build a bonfire.

  One night to let the coals thaw the frozen earth.

  One day to dig.

  Then again the next night. Then once more.

  My poor hands proved the stubbornness of the rocky earth better than any words could. My cousins offered to dig, but it had to be me and Ben, who’d learned a thing or two about digging graves since he’d enlisted. My mind needed the routine of labor to steady itself against the storm spinning within it. My soul, by far my weariest appendage, bowed and snapped when I heard the news that my sister had died.

  Air without scent, hills without color, a life without her kind words…

  I prepared a eulogy for Janie as we walked. But the same sentence kept playing over and over in my head, and it embarrassed me that I couldn’t think of more.

  By the time we arrived at the family plot a light snow began to fall. My aunts had placed wreaths of spruce and ivy at intervals along the old wrought-iron fence. They’d placed fresh boughs of white pine on the grave of my grandfather’s little sister, Sarah, and on the grave of his oldest daughter, Katherine.

  Women in this family sure don’t last very long, I thought as the procession filed into the space around the graves.

  At the far end of the plot, beneath an old cherry tree, lay the grave that Ben and I dug. The ground was more cobbles than soil and we did our best to separate the stones from the soggy earth. I stopped at the foot of Jane’s grave, and stared into the hole as we waited for the others to catch up.

  My Aunt Rachael and her youngest daughter, Chloe, raced to relight the white candles that the wind had blown out. Some of the mourners carried candles of their own, holding the flame close to their faces for extra warmth. The yellow glow on their cheeks made the sky seem especially dark.

  It was a small group of people, almost all of them family from my dad’s side except for Rachael’s beau, Roy Lee Fenton, and just one of Jane’s friends from school. Nobody really knew my sister. I can’t even say that I did. I wanted to, and even tried on a few occasions. But she left the mountains as if she knew something we all didn’t. Running from that which would inevitably kill her. Content to live in a small apartment off-campus in Morgantown, she severed almost all of her ties with our family and these mountains. The few sniffles I heard were more for the tragedy of a life lost than the sorrow of losing a loved one.

  Sad for the body, not the person. Sad for ourselves for not making a greater attempt to reel her back into our lives. Maybe with the void her death created we realized we should’ve calle
d and had coffee even when the inconvenience was too great. I was most sad for finally realizing I’d failed as a brother.

  Ben and I climbed into the wide hole to direct the casket. This morning’s mud had already refrozen. My other cousins stood at the edge of the grave and guided the box down to us. Roy Lee Fenton and a couple of cousins held onto the back of the casket to make sure its descent was fluid and slow. Ben and I gently placed my sister on the ground between us.

  Jamie reached down to help Ben out. When he offered his hand to me, I couldn’t take it.

  I touched the coffin, made from a straight-grained plank of red spruce that Jamie had been saving to carve a fiddle. There were no knots on it, no blemishes, and Jamie would’ve burned it to see his niece alive. Never again would Jane and I share anything, let alone the same view. I pulled an old thistle from my pocket. I set it on the casket. The purple had faded a long time ago. Jane always thought they were especially pretty, and had a little pewter thistle necklace she wore. It turned up missing after she died.

  “C’mon out of there, son,” my grandfather said.

  I stared up at them from that grave, a hole so deep I wondered how I’d ever fill it. Tiny candles threw upward shadows onto the mourners, leaving me unable to see their eyes.

  My grandfather spoke as I accepted Ben’s hand. “When somebody begins life on an ill-fated path, there’s little that the rest of us can do, except watch. This woman never had a chance. She’s part of a bloodline that knows hard times. Like my little sister and my little girl, Jane left us not knowing that life can be fair, that people can be just. She left the world as scared as the day she came into it, and for that, we remember her.”