THE HORROR OF HAM HOLLER
By
Kelly M. Hudson
This is the true story of the Horror of Ham Holler. I will never forget what happened that day, and neither will you, once you hear it.
My Mamaw had the second sight and that’s a true fact. She says she was born with it and I didn’t ever have any reason to doubt her. People used to come from all around our little mining community to seek her help with things. What Mamaw was best at was finding things. It didn’t matter what they were, from the smallest pin to a precious diamond ring, Mamaw would simply close her eyes, whistle a hymn to the Good Lord Above, concentrate, think on it a while, and then it would come to her. She confided in me one day that they appeared as little pictures in her mind, like God had taken a photograph for only her eyes to see and He’d show it to her when the time was right.
This story I’m about to tell you, this concerns Mamaw trying to find something for someone and its awful consequences. ‘Cause you see, one day this boy up and went missing, so the locals came to Mamaw to find him. And when she did, it weren’t no happy reunion, but a horrible, horrible day.
I was only seven years old at the time, wide-eyed and innocent as a kid living in a holler can be. I ran with a couple of cousins of mine through the mountains there in Eastern Kentucky during the summers, playing and laughing and swimming and living the good life. During the fall and winter we had school and I hated that just about as much as any kid ever hated having to go and be talked down to for eight hours a day by an adult. But the time I’m referring to, when the boy went missing, it was summer and the leaves were green and the trees were thick and the air, when it wasn’t smelling of coal fires during the chillier nights, was clean and fresh. And I swear to God, the air in Kentucky is something different. I been to a lot of places in my life, but I ain’t never tasted air like I did back home and it’s the same whenever I go back. There’s something special about it, something pure and real, and it cuts into your blood like the healing knife of a doctor.
This all took place in the year of 1954, about ten years before we got electricity in the holler and about fifteen before we got indoor plumbing. My whole family lived under the same roof; I had four brothers and three sisters and they were all older than me by five years at the youngest, so I pretty much was left on my own when it came to running wild. But I had those cousins for the heathen days, like I said, and I had my Mamaw for the nights. She lived with us and used to tell me the finest stories in the evenings. She helped Mother around the house while Daddy worked the coal mines. I usually got to run wild with my cousins during the days, but sometimes I had to stay home and do chores. Me and Mamaw were close. She was getting up in years, around 70, I think, and she didn’t get around as good as she used to. She’d always complain about her rheumatism when she wasn’t bathing me in some story from when she was a little girl. She confided in me quite a bit and I never could think of a reason for it except that I was the youngest and she was the oldest and we had some kind of bond because of that. I could never even think of Mamaw as someone who used to be a little girl because to me, she was always and forever this older lady who smothered me in kisses and candy.
So the day came when Tommy Sizemore went missing. This was a huge deal in our little world because Tommy’s daddy was Big Bill Sizemore and he ran things for the coal company. He was the foreman and the sheriff and the forecloser on our possessions if we got behind on payments to the company. You see, most folks had to take out their groceries from the company store on credit against their paycheck and sometimes people took more than they could afford, or someone got sick and didn’t get paid and the next thing you’d know, someone was in debt and in trouble. Big Bill Sizemore dealt with those problems and more. Once, a group of miners got together and tried to get a union started and Big Bill was the man that the company asked to step in and deal with their foolishness. Those men, they got ran right out of town. So when Tommy went to play one day and didn’t come back for supper that night, eyebrows got raised and some thought it was payback for Big Bill being such a company man.
Tommy was just ten years old and I knew him from school but I didn’t like him much. He thought, because of who his daddy was, that he was better than everyone else and if there’s one thing I can’t abide by in this life is those that consider themselves as somehow superior to someone else. I never could see the sense in that kind of thinking and I guess I never will.
The people of Ham Holler, which is where my family lived, went out looking for Tommy, fearing the worst. They looked in the hills, through the fields, and in the woods and couldn’t come up with anything but a scrap of clothing that Tommy’s mother, Ada, identified as coming from the shirt Tommy wore the day he disappeared. Word spread quick through our little community and it seemed that everyone had a theory as to what had happened. Some said a bear had gotten Tommy, others a wildcat. Others had their own stories about what could have happened to Tommy, but they kept those to themselves. Still, I heard plenty of talk about payback to Big Bill and his kin for the way they run roughshod over everyone else. And to be fair, Big Bill and his family were a bunch of rank bastards.
A few days went by and Ada hollered and moaned, crying for her lost child. Big Bill was equally upset, calling off work (for himself—everyone else had to keep at it or there’d be consequences) and spending the days with his grieving wife and his nights down at the store, drinking all the beer up.
Finally, someone got the bright idea to turn to Mamaw for help and Ada showed up one morning carrying that little scrap of clothing and a heart full of sorrow. Big Bill was with her, holding Ada up and looking as lost as his little boy had been. A group of curious folks were with them, tagging along behind like faithful heel hounds.
Mamaw was sitting on the porch in her rocking chair, the one place that you’d better not be sitting when she wanted to use it because she’d tan your hide if you were. I was in the front yard, using a stick to fight an imaginary monster that was threatening to take over the entire world if I didn’t stop it somehow.
Those people came up to the yard and I ran over and stood next to Mamaw, curious and scared all at once. Mamaw didn’t say nothing. She knew they were coming to her for help with something.
Ada stepped forward and begged Mamaw to help her find her lost boy. Big Bill stood by his wife, weeping openly as Ada asked. Mamaw nodded and didn’t say a word. She took the scrap of cloth Ada offered and balled it up into her fist and leaned back in her chair. I stood next to Mamaw like I always did when times like this came around. I don’t know why, but I was protective of her. When she slipped off into that weird trance of hers, she was as vulnerable as a new born calf, trembling as it stood on it own legs for the first time.
Mamaw closed her eyes. The folks gathered took a step back away from the porch. They always did that. They treated going to Mamaw like approaching the altar of God at church. They stayed quiet and kept their distance. Ada and Big Bill didn’t, though. They stood right where they were, waiting for an answer.
Mamaw hummed one of her hymns. I can’t recall which particular one it was, but I imagine it was “Washes Whiter Than,” ‘cause it was always one of her most favorite ones. As Mamaw hummed, the folks in the yard all bowed their heads. Ada did the same, but Big Bill didn’t. Big Bill stared at Mamaw and every now and then his eyes would flicker over at me and I tell you, I didn’t like what I saw in them. First off, Big Bill stopped crying as soon as no one was looking and that wasn’t right. And second, he had a lot of hate in them eyes of his. Both those things added up to being peculiar, so I kept a watch on him in case he tried anything.
All of the sudden, Mamaw stopped singing and threw her head back and let out the most god-awful screech I ever heard. It sounded like a dog being whipped blind by a bail of barbed-wire. Everyone looked up, their reverence gone and replaced by a collective gasp. Ada swooned and nearly fainted and that Big Bill, he just glared.
Mamaw let loose next with a tirade of curses, the kind of language that sailors were famous for back when people talked politely, and you should have seen the faces on those good, God-fearing Christians. It makes me laugh to think of today, even though at the time it scared all hell out of me. I took a step away from Mamaw; she’d never reacted this way before. She kept hollering and screaming, calling to the Lord to save her soul from the evil she was witnessing. None of us saw anything, but we weren’t gifted with the second sight like she was. Then all at once, it was over, and Mamaw was back to her regular self, sort of.
She stopped screaming and leaned forward, her eyes narrow and full of wrath and spite. Mamaw raised a single finger and pointed it at Big Bill.
“He knows, ‘cause he done it,” Mamaw said.
Ada fainted and the rest of the folks let out with another of their gasps in unison. They were so good at it, they sounded practiced, like the church choir. Big Bill, for his part, didn’t say much. He dropped them hateful eyes and teared-up again, holding the collapsed body of his wife next to him. He mumbled something about how awful Mamaw was to accuse him of such a thing and then he turned and carried Ada off, back to their nice house. The rest of the folks all drifted off one by one, some following Big Bill and others who lingered and stared at Mamaw for a while. She paid them no mind.
When everyone was gone, Mamaw turned to me and she apologized for the words that had come out of her mouth. Then she rocked for a while and spoke on it one more time before letting it rest.
“Sometimes, you see some things, and they’re too horrible for any good and decent soul to gaze upon. It’s like men and what they see when they go off to war. What God showed me I will never forget, as long as I live. What that man did to his son was something even the Devil himself would be ashamed of.”
Mamaw got up and went inside and went straight to bed. And that was the last of that, or so I thought.
The next couple of weeks were pretty bad for my family. Word had gotten around and Big Bill was being treated like some kind of leper, with most folks choosing to have nothing to do with him if they could help it. Big Bill was accused of killing his own son but there weren’t nobody to hold him accountable since he was the local law and judge. So Big Bill carried on with no consequences, blaming Mamaw and calling her a rank liar.
When that wasn’t enough, Big Bill made life miserable for my daddy, driving him harder and harder each day at work so that, when he came home each night, it was all Daddy could do to eat his dinner and then go to bed. This drove my Momma up the wall and what it did to Mamaw, who was Daddy’s Mother, I can’t even say. She stayed silent most of the time, keeping to herself and watching. I guess that she figured that the torment would stop eventually but it didn’t. Big Bill kept laying into him until Daddy ended up hurting his back and then was out of work for two weeks. We were like everyone else, no money saved up, so we had to look for store credit. Big Bill made sure that we got none. So there we were, a big family with no money and very little food in the cupboard.
Daddy was laid up in the bedroom and his heart was in anguish, hurting for not being able to provide for his family. Momma kept up her work and rationed the beans that we had, hoping they’d keep us alive until Daddy could go back to work. My two oldest brothers, Ronnie and Carl Wayne, offered to drop out of high school and go to work in the mine but Daddy was having none of that. They went behind his back and tried anyway, and Big Bill laughed them away.
I began to really hate that Big Bill.
So one morning, Mamaw came and woke me early, before anyone else was up, and told me to get my squirrel gun and come with her. I figured we were going out to try and scrounge up some food and I didn’t see the point of it, since my older brothers had tried already and hadn’t had any luck.
I grumbled and got up and wiped the sleep from my eyes and got into my clothes, throwing on a jacket ‘cause those summer mornings could be cold sometimes. Me and Mamaw slipped out of the house and down the creek and up into the hills before the sun came up and got about the business Mamaw wanted us to go about.
What she was up to I didn’t have a clue. Why I was with her didn’t make much sense to me, either, because all she had me do was walk beside her. We went deep into the woods and every now and then Mamaw would stop and pick some plant and place it into a bag she had with her. I didn’t recognize most of them that she got, but when she picked a mess of poisonous mushrooms, I got kind of suspicious. I didn’t know what she was doing, but I worried that maybe she was going to try and poison Big Bill. The morning wore on and Mamaw got tired and I offered to help but she just shushed me, telling me that there was a couple more things for her to gather and then we’d be on our way back home. A few minutes later and she had what she needed. Almost.
Now was the time for me to do my work. Mamaw pointed up in a tree off to our right at a big, fat squirrel that was busy eating something between its grubby paws. She wanted me to shoot it, but she was very careful to tell me not to shoot its body. Mamaw wanted me to shoot it in the head. I had never done a shot like that before, but I took it as a challenge and I gave it a go. Sure enough, I got the little sucker on the first try and its dead body fell from the trees at our feet. Mamaw swooped down and picked it up and threw it in the bag with the rest of her plants and we headed home, just like she’d promised.
We got back and Momma had a lot of questions but Mamaw had told me to keep my mouth shut so I did. After a time, Momma gave up and went out to work in the little garden we kept. She came back only minutes later nearly in tears. It appeared that someone had gone through the garden at night and tore up all our vegetables and it weren’t no critter, neither. It was a man, or a woman, but a person just the same. Mamaw shook her head, angrier than I’d ever seen her before. She advised Momma to rescue what she could.
Mamaw shooed me from the kitchen but I was curious so I kept sticking my head in, getting glimpses as to what she was doing. It appeared that I had been right, that she was going to poison Big Bill, because she took all those things she picked, rolled ‘em up in dough, added the heart and liver of the squirrel I’d shot, and baked it all up into a pie. I can’t say it smelled good or bad, because it didn’t have a scent at all.
When it was finished, about an hour later, Mamaw stood by the counter, looking down at what she’d created. She had sent Momma off to run an errand and Daddy was asleep in the bedroom. Mamaw thought I was outside playing so she didn’t know I seen her standing over her pie, crying something fierce, and mumbling in some crazy language I’d never heard before or since. When she finally calmed down, Mamaw threw her head up to the sky and begged God to forgive her.
I could hardly breathe watching all of this. I was scared by what Mamaw was doing and I admired her just the same. I had a weird mix of fear and pride and it was causing my stomach to flip and flop like a fish out of water.
She finished her prayer, opened the outside door next to the counter, and then took a knife and cut the pie open, slicing it right in half. Some kind of strange, gray gas hissed from the pie, spraying up into the air and then drifting outside, as if it was being guided by some invisible hand. It stunk, too, worse than anything I ever smelled before or since. It smelled like a polecat that got dipped in turpentine and then rolled in sulfur. I could hardly breathe it was so strong. Mamaw broke down crying again and I got out of there, frightened all to hell and not knowing why.
I ran outside to see if I could spot the gas and sure enough, there it flew, off into the woods in one big cloud. The gas disappeared into the trees and that was all I saw of it.
The afternoon wore on and I tried to forget all I’d seen but it stayed stuck there in the back of my mind, always nagging at me. Then things got really strange.
A group of folks came running by the house, hollering and screaming. They were carrying on about Tommy Sizemore and how he had showed back up. I thought they was out of their minds, but I listened anyways and was curious enough to follow along. They said they were going to the mine ‘cause that’s where Tommy seemed to be headed.
So I trailed along, keeping a few feet back from those folk. As we went, more people gathered and went with us until almost everyone in town that wasn’t working was gathered in a big semi-circle at the entrance to the mine.
Tommy Sizemore stood there and the way he looked was something I’ll never forget as long as I live. He was purplish, with big, fat bruises dotting what was left of the skin of his body. He had long chunks ripped out of his arms and legs and back and chest. It didn’t look so much like animals had been at him as something else had worked him over, like a whip or a knife. No blood, though. His clothes were all ripped and shredded and he was nearly naked except for his short pants and one shoe on his right foot.
But it was his face, the way it looked, that was the thing I’ll never forget as long as I live. It was long and his cheeks were sunken in and his mouth hung open, as if in a frozen scream. His teeth were mostly broken out and he had a large gouge where his nose had been. His blond hair was ash brown and tousled and tangled, with chunks missing. And his eyes, his eyes…
They weren’t there. Tommy Sizemore’s eyes were gone, replaced by black holes that glittered of the depths of hell, even in the bright daylight. And though he didn’t have eyes, there was no shaking the fact that Tommy Sizemore was looking, searching for something. Every now and then his gaze would sweep the crowd and everyone would fall back with a sigh. Women fainted and grown men messed their pants. One time, Tommy’s eyeless stare fixed on me and I nearly let loose with all the well water I’d drunk during the day.
Ada showed up after a while, not believing what was happening. She took one look at her dead son and turned right around and walked back to her home, shaking her head and mumbling to herself. Her mind cracked in that moment, and she was never the same again.
Tommy kept staring at the mine and he stood there, waiting patiently. We all knew what he was waiting for. No one moved to say anything to him because they all knew he wasn’t alive. We all knew that Tommy was undead, that he was risen from whatever grave he’d been in and he’d come back for some reason. And everyone knew it had to do with his daddy, Big Bill.
So when quitting time came, and the whistled sounded, all of us in the crowd took a step backwards. Men poured from the mines, their faces caked in coal dust, half of them hacking and the other half lighting up cigarettes. Each of the workers, to a man, when they laid eyes on Tommy, stopped what they were doing and stepped to the side and joined us in the crowd. They knew, too.
It didn’t take long before Big Bill showed up. He was usually last out of the mines, so I heard, and that certainly was true on that day. He walked out and looked around, wondering what everyone was staring at. Then he laid his eyes on his undead son and I could see Big Bill’s mind snap like a twig in a tornado.
Tommy raised his right arm and pointed an accusing finger at Big Bill just like Mamaw had done days before. Tommy’s mouth worked open and then shut and then he let out this awful howl, sounding like a hellhound on the trail of its prey.
The crowd took another step back.
Big Bill fell to his knees, tears streaming down his face, cutting through the coal dust and streaking like the guilt in his heart.
“I did it!” Big Bill bellowed. He screamed and cried and admitted his sin, over and over again. He told us all what he’d done to his son Tommy and I can’t remember every word that he said, but I knew then like I know now that Big Bill was sick in the head. He was like a rabid dog and the men there knew exactly what needed to be done with a rabid dog.
The workers and the folks from town all moved as one, falling on Big Bill and hauling him to his feet. They drug him to a nearby tree and someone from somewhere produced a rope. Big Bill kicked and screamed but he could not get away. The men of the town had him in their grip and they were going to carry out their grim duty and they didn’t need no sheriff or judge or law to tell them what needed to be done. They strung Big Bill up, hanging him by his neck, and we all stood and watched as Big Bill choked to death, kicking and fighting.
Tommy stood there, too, watching it all, his arm raised and his finger pointing at his daddy, never lowering once.
And after a while, Big Bill gave up the ghost, soiling himself and twitching twice before he ceased moving for all time. I watched as the excrement poured from his pants leg and splattered on the ground under his feet. We all watched.
When Big Bill died, so too did Tommy. As soon as his daddy shuddered his last, Tommy collapsed in a heap, his body giving way under him.
Everyone stared at the dead Big Bill and his newly dead again son Tommy. As we did so, a foul, gray gas poured from Tommy’s mouth and clouded up in a ball above his corpse. It smelled of polecat, turpentine, and sulphur. It hung in the air for a moment and then it broke apart and mixed with the wind and pretty soon, it became nothing.
I finally knew what Mamaw had been up to by baking that pie. She didn’t poison Big Bill, she just used Tommy to show Big Bill and the town the poison in their own hearts.
Things changed after that. The workers eventually formed a union and things got better for everybody. Mamaw never used her gift again, claiming that God had taken it from her. She died a year later. I grew up and moved on, joined the Army and got out of that little town.
And that is the true story of the Horror of Ham Holler and I swear by God that I have not embellished a word in its telling. I will never forget what happened that day, and neither will you, now that you done heard it.
It Slithered From the Sea
By
Kelly M. Hudson
I’m a Peeping Tom. There. I admitted to it. I, Terry Anderson, am a Peeping Tom. I just told you the most revealing, most heinous thing I could tell you about myself. I tell you this because by admitting to something so reprehensible, you will know that what I tell you next is the God’s Honest truth. I tell you this so you will believe what I saw last night at old Jonas McMaster’s house.
I’m sure that you’ve heard the stories whispered about Jonas and his family. How the house is haunted, and ghosts and ghouls dance on the lawn during the full moon, with Jonas there amongst them, laughing and twirling and kicking up dust for the Devil. And about how, every forty years or so, the male McMaster, head of the house, suddenly dies and a son, who no one’s heard of or seen before, comes along to claim his property. I’ve listened to those rumors, and I never thought much of them. But the truth is, whenever I ran into Jonas in town, he seemed like a nice enough old fellow, if a bit gruff. Sure, he had that queer right eye that always seemed to follow you even if his left eye didn’t, and yes, if you looked closely, you could see that his left hand was bigger than the right by a measurable difference. But one day a curiosity came over me about him and I had to know if any of the legends were true.
I walked down Regal Avenue as the sun set in the distance, throwing a bright orange glow on the sky, making the clouds seem like giant ginger birds that could swoop down at any moment, scoop you up, and take you to their nests in some foreign sky far away. It was beautiful, but I felt the burn in my chest and knew that, even if I wanted to, I couldn’t stop and soak it in. I had to get to Jonas’ property, and get there now.
It took me an hour. I walked up the dirt road until I was within eyeshot of his small house and then dove off into the woods that surround his property. One thing I’ve learned about peeping is that it’s best not to be seen. Getting caught only creates complications.
But before I ducked into the woods, I was caught up by the sight of Jonas’ old house, sitting like a dark whirlpool set against the sky. The house was rickety and badly in need of repairs. The roof was missing dozens of tiles and the gutters hung down like angry eyebrows, hovering over upstairs windows that glowed with an angry brightness. The house was two stories, with a long porch in its front that had two chairs and a porch swing, all of them made of wood that looked like rotted matchsticks. The porch floor was made of bent and broken boards.
I stood there captivated by the house and property. Jonas had a ramshackle work shed off to the right of the house. Rusting pieces of cars and other metal objects lay strewn about the yard, glinting in the fading sunlight, promising a delicious dance with tetanus if you got too close to them. Behind the house was a pier and dock where Jonas kept his small fishing boat. And just beyond that lay the ocean with its swirling waves crashing on the shore.
I dashed off into the woods and moved through trees. I was shaking with anticipation, but I made my way as quietly as I could. I took up a position just inside the shadows where no one could see me, but which still gave me a good view of the house. I looked all around, plotting escape paths. The front door to the house creaked open and I snapped to attention.
Jonas, with his old hound dog Rex in front of him on a leash, stepped from the house. Rex sniffed the air and howled, staring straight off in my direction. I froze. I hated dogs. They were so quick to spot you, even if a person couldn’t. Jonas looked in the direction that Rex was barking but couldn’t see me.
“Hush, boy,” he said, and then pulled Rex towards the work shed. Rex howled and kept barking at me. Sweat suddenly sprang to my forehead and ran into my eyes.
I watched as Jonas took Rex to the shed and stopped in front of the door. He fished in his pockets and pulled out a key to the padlock hanging there. I wondered why Jonas kept his shed locked as I crept along in the woods to get a better view. The lock cracked open with a loud bang, nearly causing me to wet my pants. I guess it had rusted up pretty good. Jonas just looked at it and chuckled. He went into the shed and pulled Rex after him. The dog didn’t want to go; it whined and sat, forcing Jonas to cuss him and drag Rex in, carving a path in the dirt with his haunches.
I moved closer to the shed as a light came on in its only window. Rex yelped and then went silent. I got next to the shed and heard a wet ripping sound from inside. I froze in fear, wondering what was going on in there.
My question was answered when the door to the shed suddenly banged open and Jonas strode out, the severed head of Rex hanging at the end of a giant hook in his big hand. I fell back with a gasp into some tall weeds behind me and lay there as still as I could. I heard Jonas stop and look around, and after a few seconds, I heard him trudge off down towards the ocean, his boots crunching gravel underneath them.
I took a chance and looked up to see what was going on just in time to glimpse Jonas walking along the pier behind his place and then climbing on board his fishing boat. I stayed where I was and watched as Jonas fired up the engine and took his boat out over the waves, disappearing into the sunset.
The next few hours I busied myself by going through his house and snooping, wondering why Jonas had killed Rex. I thought maybe I would find some kind of answers inside but there wasn’t much, just the detritus of fifty some odd years of living. Jonas kept his house pretty clean, which surprised me, considering what the outside looked like. He had cable television, a kitchen that had a microwave, a nice bedroom, and a study in which he kept several dozen books lying in stacks on the floor. Most of the books were about the sea, its lore, and its myths. I went to the desk and sat on the chair there, studying the papers that lay carefully stacked in front of me. They were deeds and a will, granting that, should Jonas McMaster pass away, his entire life savings and belongings would go to his son, Thomas McMaster. I didn’t know Jonas had a son, nor did anyone I knew. I found it all to be rather odd, and so engrossing, that I almost didn’t hear Jonas’ boat returning and docking on the pier.
I dashed outside and into the woods again. Jonas never saw me. I looked up and saw that the clouds were blotting out the stars and the moon and gave up hope on seeing anything with my naked eye. That’s when Jonas, as if sensing my despair, flicked on the lights that ran from his dock to the house. What I saw flooded my soul with terror and wonder.
Jonas carried a big burlap sack over his right shoulder. It looked heavy and he strained under its weight. I felt my heart leap into my chest as an irrational fear surged through my body. I knew that whatever was in that sack was not normal. It was not some fish he’d caught or some treasure he’d found, but it was something that was perverse to the nature of man. I don’t know how I knew this, but I did, just as surely as I knew the sun would rise and set every day.
I wanted to run away but I dared not; my curiosity, the root of my disease, kept me right where I was. Jonas grunted and wheezed as he carried the sack past the house and to the work shed. He went inside and slammed the door shut behind him. I crept up to the edge of the shack and to the window, which suddenly blazed with light. I was right under it when I heard Jonas from inside, just two feet away from me with only a thin wall separating us, walk over to the window. I looked up and saw him peering outside suspiciously. It was only by the grace of God that he did not look down; otherwise I would have been found out. But Jonas did not. Instead, he pulled a shade down over the window. I kept myself from groaning with disappointment as he did so.
I lay still, pressed my ear to the wall, and listened. I heard Jonas drop the heavy sack onto his work table with a sigh. He was breathing hard and I feared he would have a heart attack. Then I heard the clanging of metal instruments being banged down on the table. The next sound I heard was Jonas, merrily whistling a hymn of our Lord as he moved about the room.
Risking being caught, I slid up the wall and tried to look through the window. A dark shade had been pulled down but not quite all the way. There was a small slit at the bottom of the window that allowed me to peek in and see a little bit of what was going on in there. What I saw will haunt me until the day I die.
Jonas slid what was in the sack onto the table, and the thing that was in there landed with a sick, wet thunk. I caught my breath when I saw what it was, and a few seconds later, the stench coming from it nearly made me vomit against the wall. It smelled like boiled cabbage and sulfur with a dash of lemon thrown on top of it. What the creature was I can surely not say, but I can guess, based on folklore and other mythological stories.
The thing that lay on the table was a baby mermaid; only this mermaid wasn’t like what you’ve seen in movies or comic books. This mermaid was a tiny, twisted little monster, with one human eye in its forehead, a small mouth under two slits I assumed were its nose, a set of gills on each side of its neck, short, stumpy arms with fins growing from the forearms, and a torso the size of a loaf of bread, which tapered off into a giant tail and fin that that ran another four feet, curling in on itself. The tail was covered in scales, bluish red in color, and looked thicker than the rest of the upper body. The mermaid’s skin was a deep, dark green, and covered with miniature pustules that were leaking a brownish fluid out onto the table. What was the worst aspect of the creature was the face. Like I described, it had one eye and slits for a nose and a gash for a mouth, but it was the expression on the thing’s face that turned my stomach. I’ve never seen such evil in my life and I would dare to say that if demons had faces, they would look much the same as this mermaid’s. There was a manifestation in its dead eye that conveyed the greatest hatred I had ever experienced and I couldn’t help but wonder what it would be like to look upon that eye when it was alive. I shuddered and thanked the Lord that it was dead.
Jonas put on a pair of work gloves and spread the beast out on the table. He took a hammer and nails and pounded a pair each through both of the monster’s little hands, pinning them to the table. I wondered why he was doing this as he grabbed a spike from somewhere inside and hammered that through the middle of its long tail. Jonas wiped his forehead with the back of his sleeved forearm to keep the sweat from his eyes as he exerted himself over the thing that lay there. He stopped for a moment and smiled and I couldn’t help but see the same evil in his smile as I’d seen in the mermaid’s dead eye. This flashed quickly though, and Jonas went back to work, moving out of my line of sight and clanging some metal tools together at the back of the shed. When he came back, he held a great knife in his right hand, the kind used to gut large fish. I nearly screamed when Jonas plunged the knife into the mermaid’s stomach and the tiny, twisted, almost fetal fiend suddenly raised its ugly head up and shrieked in agony.
It was alive!
I watched, alternately fascinated and repulsed as Jonas cackled, rubbing his hands together like a mad scientist in a movie. He picked up a small tape recorder and spoke into it. I could barely make out what he said over the squalling of the tortured mermaid.
“Same as always. They feign death, hoping I’ll let them sit and they can eventually escape. No other creature has the ability to lower its body functions to mimic a state of death like these things do,” Jonas said, almost mechanically. “As usual, one of them went for the bait rather quickly. I think a colony of them must live off the coast here.” Jonas chuckled again. “They love the taste of dog.”
The mermaid screeched. I tore my eyes from Jonas and looked at the thing only to find its dark, evil eye staring back at me. Could it see me? I sensed it pleading for help. My only reaction was to finally let my kidneys go. I’m not proud of it, but I wet myself. I couldn’t help it and I tell you, if something stared at you with the accusing eye of hell itself, you would probably do far worse. Jonas began speaking again.
“This time I caught one of their young ones. This monster must be close to two years old or so. I can only hope that the same process that applies to the adults will work today with a child,” Jonas said, pausing and coughing. He cleared his throat. “For two centuries now, my family have studied these things and passed along the results to our offspring. I am no different. I will preserve this tape along with the others for future generations.” Jonas laughed as a thought apparently flitted through his mind. “Plus, I need these records so that I don’t forget. My memory is getting worse, the older I get.”
Jonas set the recorder down and got to work.
I wish I could describe what went on in the following moments. I can only say that there was lots of commotion as Jonas plucked the knife from the creature’s belly and plunged it into the thing’s chest. Pink blood sprayed up into the air as the mermaid child shuddered on the table, dying at last. Its head lolled to the side and that eye, that evil, malefic eye, stared at me. The next thing I knew, Jonas had carved the chest open and reached in with his hands, pulling the heart of the wretched thing free from its home. He held the black, gnarled muscle aloft, screaming with glee. Jonas then did the unspeakable—he chomped into the heart like it was the last meal he would ever have, ripping pieces free with his teeth and swallowing the meat with a savage glee.
I whimpered and dropped to my haunches. I could stomach no more. I vomited my lunch and staggered back from the work shed. Why would Jonas do such a thing? He was a madman!
The screams that came from the shed shook me from my daze, and I was compelled once again to turn and look at what was going on. As God as my witness, I swear what I say next to you is the truth. You won’t believe me, and I don’t expect you to, but it is the absolute reality of what happened.
Jonas stumbled around in the shack, shrieking with pain and agony. I watched as smoke wisped off of his body and his flesh melted onto the floor. I wanted to help, but stood there numb and terrified, helplessly enthralled by the sight before me. Jonas shed his skin, sloughing it off onto the floor of the cabin like a cold drink sweats condensation on a hot day. Before I could scarcely draw a breath, Jonas stood, red and raw and wet, crying out in anguish. Next, his organs fell with a splat onto the floor, joining the pooling flesh, as Jonas came almost completely apart. And then another amazing thing happened—his skin regrew. I stared, mouth agape, as his body healed itself. New organs grew in, and new flesh knitted itself over his bones.
Jonas, beyond pain now, slouched against the wall, panting for breath. In the matter of five minutes, he was whole again, and, most remarkably, young. Old Jonas McMaster’s went from being a man in his fifties to a twenty year old over the course of ten minutes. I could not believe my eyes, but I knew they were not lying to me.
Jonas reached over and took his recorder into his hand, breathing hard.
“Success,” he whispered, and then turned it off.
I fell back, tumbling through the weeds behind me and stumbling into the woods. I wasn’t sure what to think or feel other than pure, unadulterated revulsion. Jonas McMaster had made himself young again through the eating of a mermaid’s heart and was now surely going to pass himself off as his own heir. What should I do about that? How could I tell anyone without their bitter mocking deriding me until I gave up trying to convince anyone?
The answer to my questions came quickly, as the matter was taken out of my hands. For there, upon the tides that were crashing to the shore next to Jonas’s boat, came four creatures straight from the deepest nightmares of mankind.
I smelled them before I saw them. They stunk like the baby had, of cabbage and sulfur. The moonlight slid through the clouds above and then I saw them, slithering along the beach like giant snakes with men’s torsos, sliding across the sands and into the grass and heading straight for the shed where Jonas was still recovering. They were ugly, full-grown versions of the baby mermaid I’d seen, with one eye each, long, strong arms, and tails that moved them, pumping their bodies up and down like they were riding horses or sitting on springs. Each merman, for that is the only term that can describe them, had long talons at the end of their fingers. These talons glinted like steel knives in the moonlight above. They writhed towards the shed with an evil, grim purpose. One of them, the larger of the four, threw his head back and let out a howl that made me empty my bladder for a second time that night. The sound of it was far worse, far more screeching, than any sound I’d ever heard before. The nearest I can equate it was to the sound of nails across a chalkboard to describe its bite and the noise of baby seals being clubbed to death to describe its soul. This merman was angry and sad and it was seeking revenge.
What happened next happened quickly. Jonas threw the door to the shed open and burst out, stark naked and firing an old shotgun. He attacked with a single-mindedness that only a man threatened with murder can have. The first round took one of the mermen full in its chest, blasting a hole the size of a fist in its torso. The creature howled and fell dead, pink blood squirting across the ground.
This seemed only to enrage the three survivors. They slid across the ground, now a mere twenty feet from Jonas and the cabin, like a writhing mass of human vipers, shrieking like banshees full of vengeance. Jonas stepped back and fired again, this shot going astray and peppering his porch instead.
And then, the mermen were upon him.
The leader, the biggest one, slashed Jonas with his talons, laying open the skin on his chest and stomach, ripping it back and exposing the red, raw wetness underneath. Jonas screamed in agony. The other two grabbed Jonas’ arms, knocking the shotgun free and sending it clattering harmlessly to the ground. They held him steady as the leader moved closer, opening its mouth and revealing a full set of fangs that glittered as his talons did. Jonas screamed again and the merman spoke to him, some ancient, foul language born in the oceans. It whispered and as it did my mind was flooded with a barrage of dark, ancestral images, of things rising from the seas and of men, helpless and scared, laid out as sacrifices to the ancient beasts. The leader buried its fangs into Jonas’ face, savagely ripping the skin free and leaving it hanging there, tattered and flapping in the breeze washing off the sea and coursing over the land.
Jonas grunted and cried, pleading for his life. The leader only threw his head back and gnashed Jonas’ throat, gashing and tearing until there was nothing left of Jonas’ neck except for the spine that held the head in place. Jonas sagged and died in the clutch of the leader, who was still not satisfied. He gorged himself on Jonas’s head, licking out the eyeballs and doing things that I dare not repeat for they haunt my nightmares to this day.
Then, through with his vengeance, the leader slithered into the shed and I heard the most mournful, agonizing howl echo through the woods as it slid back out, the corpse of the baby mermaid cradled lovingly in its arms. The leader looked at its compatriots and then stopped, sniffing the air with its slits for a nose and then settling its one eye directly on me.
I was hidden behind a tree but the leader had seen me and I knew I was surely a dead man unless I ran faster than I ever had before. I heard the merman bark something at me and again I saw and felt ancient, terrible things in my mind and heart but they did not slow my feet. I ran, dashing from the woods and onto the path towards the main road, daring to glance back only once.
I saw the leader and his two mermen slithering back towards the sea from where they’d come, dragging along the body of their dead comrade and the corpse of Jonas, dribbling blood along the sandy beach.
I ran and kept running and didn’t stop until I was well into town and far from the coast. The next morning, after a night spent filled with nightmares during the few moments I could close my eyes, I packed my things and fled further inland, putting as much ground between me and the sea as I possibly could.
The distance was not enough to calm my fears, however, and every night I lay in bed, thinking of the events of that evening, sure that one day, the creatures from the sea will come and take me as they had taken Jonas; to drag me off to a watery grave, just for committing the sin of setting eyes upon them.