Page 27 of Spellbound

“Hell is empty, and the devils are here.”

~ William Shakespeare, The Tempest

Ben

Dinner was as good as it always was—Rosalyn was a great cook, if you liked fried foods and meat and potatoes and gravy, and fortunately I did.

I tried not to eat with her more than one or at most two nights a week and opted for lighter fare the rest of the time, or I’d have been probably fifty pounds heavier.

She was known for her heavy desserts too, which were delicious, but not exactly meant for anyone who was watching their calorie intake.

Rosalyn didn’t seem the same as she usually did that evening, though.

She was distracted and irritable. I had to wonder if a little sundowning wasn’t going on.

I caught Janet’s eye once when Rosalyn was banging pots and pans around because the gravy got too thick, and I noticed that she looked concerned.

Rosalyn almost never cursed, but she’d let a few cusswords drop already and was working herself up to more, it seemed.

“Were the two of you out all day shopping?” I asked, in what I thought was a casual way to change the subject, but Janet glanced over at Rosalyn before she answered.

“Most of the day, yes, I’m afraid we both got a bit tired.”

“Speak for yourself,” Rosalyn snapped, her voice a little harsh. “I’m fine.” That really wasn’t like her to snap at her sister. I wondered if they were already getting on each other’s nerves a bit.

I looked back down at my plate. Tonight’s dinner was fried chicken, mashed potatoes and gravy, peas, carrots, and fried okra.

“Everything looks delicious.”

Rosalyn grunted out some reply and started dishing things up, refusing all attempts to help her.

After we ate, and Ash and I got chased out of the kitchen again, and we went to sit on the front porch.

I wondered if I should have insisted both of them go put their feet up, but one menacing glare from Rosalyn convinced me to let sleeping dogs lie.

It was a beautiful evening in late spring, with just a bit of a chill in the air as we sat down on the porch. The sun was setting, and the stars all came out in a rush to light up the night sky. I reached for Ash’s hand and gave it a squeeze.

“I think maybe cooking dinner might have been a bit much for them both after shopping most of the day,” he said. Actually, Janet had seemed fine, but I knew he was trying to be polite.

“I agree, but it would have just upset her more if we’d said so.”

“How old is Rosalyn if you don’t mind my asking?”

“Sixty-six.”

“And my grandmother is twelve years older. Rosalyn’s better now, though, right? From the cancer? My grandmother said she’d been through all of her treatments, and the doctors gave her a good report.”

“Mostly, yes. As far as the cancer goes. But she was first diagnosed with Alzheimer’s when she was fifty.

That’s an extraordinarily long time to go without many symptoms at all.

I think that what was left of her magic has mostly held it off and kept it at bay so far, along with the medicines she takes, but I’ve noticed things getting worse lately. ”

We stopped talking about it then because we heard them coming out to join us, and Ash’s grandmother brought us both a glass of sweet tea.

Wine would have been better, but I took a sip anyway.

It was good tea, if you liked iced sweet tea.

I, unfortunately, did not, so I drank a few sips to be polite, but just a few.

I sat back and let Asher make all the appropriate small talk and thought about how soon we could leave without upsetting anyone.

I was anxious to get him alone again. I knew how fast this all was and considered briefly again that it might be some kind of spell, but I’d tested myself for love spells, and I was clear of any.

I was afraid this must be the real thing that my father warned me about. My “nemesis,” indeed.

After a minute or two, Janet touched Asher’s arm. “I’ve felt nostalgic all day. Today would have been my and Rosalyn’s mother’s birthday.”

“Really?” I said, turning to her with interest. “How old would she have been?”

“Oh, let’s see… she was born in 1914, so what would that be? A hundred and eleven years old? My goodness, that’s hard to believe. She lived to be in her mid-nineties. I’ve been thinking about her all day.”

“A hundred and eleven. The things she must have seen in her lifetime.”

“Yes, indeed. She had the best stories—especially the ones about when she was a girl, living up in the north Georgia mountains. They didn’t have electricity in those days where her family lived, way up on the mountain, you know.

She had to ride a horse to get to school, and they didn’t have a telephone or running water or electricity.

I know it must be hard for you to fathom that. ”

“It is, a little. Did she tell you stories about it?”

“You don’t miss what you never had, so she didn’t talk much about doing without modern conveniences,” Janet said. “But she told us stories about her life where she grew up in the Appalachian foothills. Ghost stories, some of them.”

“Really?” I said, watching Ash listening raptly to his grandma.

“Like what?” Asher asked eagerly. “Tell us one.”

“Oh, well, there were so many. The Appalachians have always been haunted, you know.”

“How do you mean?”

“I guess I think that because they’re so old. People can’t even imagine how old. Just think about the number of people who died here over those long centuries. So many are buried here.”

“Tell Ben about the one where your father saw his wife after she died.”

“Now you know my grandfather—your great grandfather, Asher—was a hard worker, but like a lot of men, he made a little white liquor for his own purposes. He could have been drinking that night, though he always swore he wasn’t. He said he was wide awake.”

“White liquor?” Ben asked.

“You’d probably say moonshine or corn liquor, I guess, but that was what the old people called it where we lived in the North Georgia mountains, close to Tennessee.

“One day he met the revenuers in the woods, and he told his son, who was my uncle and had been with him that day tending to their still in the woods, to run quick and hide and then go back home when it was safe, and so my uncle did, and he got away. My grandfather wasn’t as lucky, and he went to the chain gang for a little while. ”

“Sounds like your grandfather may have had a little magic.”

“Oh, do you think so? He could talk a wart off your hand and take the fire out of a burn. Take away a baby’s thrush too. I’ve seen that with my own eyes. So maybe you’re right.”

“Tell him about the wife though,” Ash said, touching her arm.

“Well, my grandfather was married three times. In those days, with so much infant mortality and young women dying in childbirth, it was common for men to have several wives. And he didn’t have as many children as most men did.

My mother had one older half-sister, and my mother was the youngest of three more children, all from his second wife and my grandmother. But you want a story…”

“Yes, please.”

“This one goes back a long time. To right around 1905 or so. His first wife died young in childbirth. Her name was Annie. She was around twenty-two years old at the time of her death, and she died having her baby, but her baby lived. He said she cried and cried the night she died, worried about leaving him and the baby. The night of her funeral, he couldn’t sleep.

He was sitting up in bed, and he heard a noise by the crib, which was down at the foot.

He looked up and saw her, standing over the baby in its bed, reaching down like she was fixing the covers.

She was wearing the same dress she’d had on when they buried her.

He wasn’t frightened of her, he said. He was glad and he called her name.

She raised her head to look at him and then she just faded away. ”

“That’s sad,” I said, and saw Asher nod.

“Poor girl. He must have been dreaming, don’t you think?”

“He always swore he wasn’t, but then I guess he would.

I believed him though. When I was a young girl, we went to spend the night there one time where he was living up on the mountain.

Him and his third wife, Bertha. They were old and poor and only had a small place.

They gave my mama and daddy their bed and made us kids a pallet on the floor.

They went up the stairs to sleep in the loft.

I can still remember that old cabin way up on the mountain in the woods.

There wasn’t any electricity, so it was dark with just the burning coals in the fire to light the room and the oil lamp turned down low.

I think a place like that makes it easier for a ghost to appear in a place like that. ”

I smiled indulgently at her, but she shook her head. “I know you don’t believe me, but it’s true. That atmosphere just makes it easier to believe.”

“Tell us another one,” Ash said eagerly, and I laughed.

“Ash, I think your gran is tired. Let her rest a little.”

“No, it’s all right. I like to tell the old stories. People will forget them if I don’t.”

I glanced over at Roslyn to see how she was reacting to these ghost stories, and she sat with her mouth in a grim line, staring out at the woods. Though it was still early, I thought she might need to go lie down.

“All right, one more. In those days, when someone died in the wintertime, and the ground was hard, their people might not be able to dig a grave until the weather got a bit warmer. My mother said an old lady—they called her Old Aunt Jenny, and I don’t know why, so don’t ask me.

She died during a cold snap with ice and snow on the ground.

She was an odd woman who some said was a witch. ”

“Was she?” I asked.