Well, howdy there! Good to see you out here
in the garden today. Ain't you glad that spring is finally here?
Everything bright and green; the trees budding, and the iris and
buttercup pushing up out of the earth. The birds back in the dogwoods and
singing up a storm. Just a wellspring of hope and new possibilities!
What's that? You heard something strange singing from that tree over
yonder? Could be a mockingbird—they can mimic most anything. Oh,
yeah—I reckon they'd have a heck of a time duplicating an old
Hank William's song, now wouldn't they?
It could be something other than a bird, you know. Something this
earth ain't never seen before—at least in our lifetime. Seems
that I heard folks talking about a strange critter seen hereabouts
last summer—down around Henry Beck's place.
Maybe it's still there, keeping to the shadows, drawn to humanity, but
too scared to step out into the open and reveal its awful self to the
human eye....
The headaches only worsened as the week drew on. In a span of four
days, Henry Beck had graduated from regular aspirin to extra-strength
Tylenol to a pain killer Estelle had left over from her gall bladder
surgery last spring. However, nothing seemed to help.
"Go see Doc Rhodes," his wife urged, not naggingly, but out
of genuine concern. "It could be something serious."
Henry just shrugged off her suggestion. He had always been a stubborn
man who preferred sticking to his common sense rather than relying on
the advice of others. Besides, he needed no doctor to tell him what
caused the awful migraines that plagued him from sunrise till
mid-afternoon each day. He had a good idea precisely what brought them
about.
Henry had been harvesting his tobacco crop the week before last with
the help of Fred and Jimbo Hayes, a couple of neighboring boys from
down the road a piece. The work had been hard and hot, the temperature
in the mid-nineties that late August day. The boys had a truckload of
cut leaves and were toting them to the graywood barn to be split, hung
on poles, and smoke cured, when Henry found himself alone in the dusty
field with a powerful thirst.
He had gone to the old stone well at the edge of the pasture; the well
that his great-grandfather had dug over a hundred and twenty years
before. It had been covered in disuse for many years, but Estelle's
Frigidaire with the mason jar of ice water on the center shelf seemed
so very far away at the moment, that he turned the wooden lid aside
and lowered the ancient bucket into its depths. The water looked a
little brackish, but it was cool, so he took a long swallow. It went
down like bad medicine; strangely slick like mucus, the foul taste of
algae, sulfur, and something else Henry couldn't quite place causing
him to sputter and gag. With a curse, he had returned the cover to the
well and then forgotten the whole sorry episode.
As the days wore on and the pain intensified, he began to wonder if
the well had been poisoned. If that was the case, then he would have
been stricken with nausea and stomach cramps. Neither had appeared,
only the headaches. That and the tenderness along the sides of his
neck from the collarbone to just behind the ears. And there was that
weird way the headaches abruptly ended around two or three o'clock in
the afternoon. Afterward, Henry always felt refreshed and strangely
energized, as if he were half of his seventy years. Instead of
dragging in, bone weary and sullen, from a hard day's work, he found
himself coming in from the fields, whistling and grinning, feeling
like a million bucks.
Estelle Beck also noticed the change. For years she had witnessed a
gradual breakdown in their relationship, a barrier of disinterest
forming between them that she had both dreaded and sadly resigned
herself to. But recently Henry had come in from his work an entirely
different man. He would bring her wildflowers from the pasture and
give her a big smile and a peck on the cheek, a rare show of affection
for a man as grim as her Henry. Why, the last evening he had even
pickup her up, his calloused hands hooked beneath her arms, and
waltzed her cheerfully across the kitchen floor.
Toward the end of the week, Estelle began to gradually lose her sense
of impending doom and that nagging sense that they were no more than
two strangers with only a yellowed marriage license to link them.
The knots appeared Friday morning.
Small and doughy, they rose atop of the hard ridges of his collarbones
and just behind the lobes of his ears. The tenderness had turned into
soreness, but again the pain only lasted as long as the headaches.
Henry began to feel a great calm overtake him that Friday evening; a
peace of mind that he had not experienced since his youth. It was as
if the horrible migraines had a cleansing effect, as if they drained
his brain of mental impurities. He could think clearer than before.
His senses seemed sharpened to a point he had never known. The evening
sunset that appeared upon the
Tennessee hillscape
seemed to possess colors he had never noticed before. The honeysuckle
and magnolia blooms seemed more sweet to the smell, while his wife's
cooking was definitely more delicious to his heightened taste buds. It
was as if his mind had been rejuvenated; as if the blinders had
suddenly been lifted after years of drab, narrow-minded living.
And his newfound well-being wasn't confined merely to his head. His
physical strength and endurance seemed to increase, and not only in
relation to the work he did in the fields. That night Estelle had
come to bed and found him ready for her. She had been both surprised
and secretly delighted. Due to a back injury, Henry had been
hopelessly impotent for nearly seven years. But now he had no such
problem. Aroused, he had moved to her side of the bed, gently
caressing her, peppering her face and neck with small kisses that made
her heart leap with joy. With a passion unequaled since they were
newlyweds, Henry and Estelle made love. Slow and natural, devoid of
the awkwardness that had always strained their lovemaking before, it
seemed to last for hours, then end with a flashpoint of ecstasy that
Estelle had never experienced in fifty years of marriage.
They fell asleep in each others' arms, Henry snoozing with the
dreamless ease of an infant. His wife lay awake a while longer, an odd
mixture of elation and deep-seated dread swimming in her thoughts
until slumber finally came.
The next morning she was alarmed to find that the bumps on Henry's
neck had grown in size. They also had an ugly bruised color to them.
Estelle once again voiced her concern.
"Probably nothing more than swollen glands," grumbled her
spouse as he chugged the last of Estelle's pain killers with his
morning coffee. She wasn't convinced of that at all, but did not press
the matter, afraid that he wall between them might thicken where it
finally seemed to be crumbling.
Despite Henry's blinding headache, they drove to the nearby town of
Coleman as they always did
on Saturday morning. They did their shopping, ate lunch at the corner
café, then visited Estelle's sister for an hour or so. As they drove
down the main street for home, the courthouse clock struck the hour of
three. Henry's brow, which had been creased with pain, suddenly
smoothed and he turned to his wife with a big smile. "What do you
say we go to the fair?" he proposed with the enthusiasm of a ten
year old.
Estelle stared at him as though he had spoken in a foreign tongue. She
could hardly believe that it was her husband talking. Henry Beck,
although never bitter or cynical, had always been a solemn,
no-nonsense man. Oh, he had been fun when they were first courting,
always ready with a joke, always making her laugh. But three straight
years of drought and failed crops after their wedding had dampened the
man's spirit and hardened his outlook on life. And now here he was
eagerly wanting to take in the Bedloe County Fair. She was beginning
to seriously wonder if severe headaches were a warning sign of
Alzheimer's disease.
Fifteen minutes later, they were there on the crowded midway,
surrounded by the music of the calliope and the sugary scent of cotton
candy. Like children, they gorged themselves on sweets and rode all
the good rides—the rollercoaster, the dodge'em cars, the Tunnel
of Love—both totally unaware of the strange looks they were
receiving from their friends and neighbors. While on the ferris
wheel, the gears had jammed, leaving them suspended at the very top.
They had kissed long and soulfully in the privacy of mid-air,
loosening their embrace only when the grind of machinery once again
pulled them earthward.
During the drive home, in the darkness of the truck cab, their hands
had met, their fingers entwining. They eyes had locked in the faint
light of the dash, conveying that mutual signal which was far too
intimate for spoken words. This time they hadn't waited for the
seclusion of home. Pulling off the road into a grove of crabapple
trees, Henry and Estelle expressed their love in the bed of the
pickup, as shameless as two feverish teenagers, beneath a velvety
blanket of autumn stars.
Later that night, Henry Beck awoke to find himself standing in the open
pasture. Standing beside the old, stone well.
Confusion gripped him momentarily, making him feel faint. He had
fallen asleep under the patchwork quilt of their big brass bed with
Estelle slumbering silently beside him. Now he was standing in
knee-high thicket, his right hand resting upon the roughly-hewn lid of
the well. He was bewildered to find himself drenched with sweat, as if
fresh from some horrid nightmare, the cool September breeze plastering
his damp nightshirt to his lean body. The fleshy knots throbbed along
his neck as big as goose eggs.
He stared up at the sky. From the set of the moon, Henry figured it to
be past three in the morning. Why was he out there? Did he sleepwalk
or had something drawn him there to the well? The thought was not
entirely implausible to him. For some reason, the ancient well had
come to mind several times in the past few days. Not disturbing
thoughts of the fetid waters within, but strangely comforting
thoughts. Images of cool, black liquid and smooth stone walls, of
something down there in the darkened pit, something of great presence
and longevity. A longevity that, after countless ages, was slowly
ebbing, moving toward nonexistence.
Tomorrow....
The word echoed in his mind as if he himself had spoken it aloud. What
was it about tomorrow? Tomorrow he would board up the well securely or
fill it completely with a ton of earth and rock? No, the very thought
of doing such a thing seemed to sicken him. It was like considering
the desecration of something holy, although he could not for the life
him figure out why. It was only an old well full of stagnant water.
Nothing more.
Or was it? His mind thought differently. He slid back the wooden lid
and peered down the curving walls. Moonlight flickered on the pool at
the bottom and, for a moment, he thought he saw movement. He sighed
and felt a great peace engulf him, barreling up at him from out of
that dank pit like a tangible force. He experienced an emotion he
could only describe as belonging; a bizarre kinship that he had
never actually felt with members of his own family.
Then something seemed to whisper up from the black waters; the
unintelligible meanderings of a weakened and dying race. But,
strangely enough, the gist of understanding tickled at his
subconscious—promising things dark and unfathomable.
Henry pulled the lid back into place and started back across the dusty
furrows that had once blossomed with leafy green Burley. His bluetick
hound, Old Sam, met him at the edge of the field. He crouched and
scratched the dog absently behind the ears. "Am I going crazy,
boy?" he asked hoarsely. "Or am I just a damned old
fool?"
The dog had no answers for him. He sniffed at his master's bare ankles
as they walked through Estelle's flower garden for the house. Henry
looked back only once. The well was a squat lump of stone and mortar
on the edge of the dark thicket, sitting where it always had. The old
man felt a great loneliness wash over him. Tears began to well in his
ancient eyes and suddenly he found himself sobbing without
control.
Tomorrow....
Sunday went as it usually did. After church, Henry and Estelle had
come home, ate dinner, and then went about their own weekend
activities. Estelle did her needlepoint, while Henry piddled around in
his workshop in the barn. He was in the process of finishing a
hand-made highchair for his newest grandchild, who would be making its
appearance in late November. The Becks had two children, both grown
with families of their own. It was their daughter Elizabeth who was
expecting, for the third time in five years.
Normalcy reigned over the rural tobacco farm until three o'clock.
Then existence, as he had known it, abruptly changed for Henry
Beck.
He glanced down at his pocket watch, pleased to see the hands nearing
the third hour. Relief would come now, as it did every day at that
time. The awful headache would peter out and he would feel reborn
again, the aches and pains of his advancing years traded in for a
refreshed sense of physical and mental renewal.
He eagerly anticipated the strike of three, but this time it brought
about an entirely different effect. The pain in his head did not
diminish. Rather it increased tenfold, spearing through the very core
of his skull, coursing through the lean column of his neck like liquid
fire.
"Oh, dear God, what's happening?" he gasped, slumping to his
knees in the dusty and manure of the barn floor. His hands went to his
neck, which was now rigid, the muscles taut, stretched to their limit.
His fingers played across the knots and found them huge and pulsating.
They flexed beneath the thin membrane of skin as if something were
there, suddenly awake and restless. Something alive, yet part
of him.
Dear Lord in heaven, what's wrong with me? The searing agony in
his neck continued to intensify. It almost felt as though his head was
attempting to pull itself from his body. But that was utter nonsense,
wasn't it? He knew at once that it was not as the tendons in his neck
began to snap, one by one. At the same instant, the arteries tore
open, flooding his esophagus with a gorge of fresh blood.
He opened his mouth to scream for Estelle, but to no avail. The
cartilage of his larynx pulled apart, the vocal cords popping like
strands of rotten twine. He fell upon his back, crushing the inflamed
nodule behind his left ear. Hot blood bathed the side of his face as
it ruptured. There was blood everywhere. It coursed in swift rivulets
down the front of his blue chambray shirt.
The agony reached a crescendo that Henry could no longer endure. He
felt himself slipping into merciful unconsciousness. But before that
blessed oblivion came, something unfolded from that burst knot behind
his ear. Like a gory spider it passed before his eyes, flexing and
unflexing. It looked as though it was—no, it couldn't have
been—but it was, a tiny, perfectly formed
hand.
It opened its eyes.
The murky shadows of the barn's interior seemed to have lost their
depth, the sparse light intensifying to brilliance near overbearance.
The optical nerves adjusted swiftly however. It stared at the body
that laid on the earthen floor several feet away. The liverspotted
hands were gnarled from the final throes of boundless agony, the trunk
of the neck ragged and frayed like the end of an old rope, the tendons
and bloodless arteries exposed.
The transition had gone well. Yes, there had been pain, but wasn't
there always discomfort in every form of change? From the expulsion of
an infant from the womb to the passage of the soul at the point of
death; there was always a violent rending involved. There had been a
period of horror at first, a few seconds of confused fear when the
host had failed to understand the nature of what was taking place. But
there was no fear now. Only understanding and total acceptance.
The Henry-thing struggled from its prone position, the newly formed
limbs jerking erratically. The swollen knots had sprouted skinny,
malformed appendages; an alien life form's blind interpretation of the
human form. Silently, it strained to a stance, trying hard to keep its
balance. It took a few staggering steps, each movement increasing in
coordination. Yes, it was much better this way, without the cumbersome
weight of the farmer's body. Existence would be much simpler with the
physical condition reduced to a minimum. The cerebral state would
reign as it should—as it had reigned for years in the dank
liquid world of the well.
A low growling came from the barn door. The Henry-thing turned on
under-developed legs and faced Old Sam. The dog bared its teeth at the
scent of fresh blood and this thing that stood before him.
There was some nagging familiarity about this strange, creature, a
mixture of emotion that Old Sam couldn't quite comprehend.
The thing took a couple of faltering steps forward, its jaws working
silently. Go on, boy, echoed words with no sound. Get outta
here!
The hound reacted in absolute terror at the realization that the words
in his head were of his master's voice and that the thing in question
possessed his master's blood smeared face. Old Sam's mind snapped. He
ran like hell across the open field and into the woods beyond. A power
company worker would discover the poor dog a few days later, three
counties away, having literally run itself to death.
A pang of remorse flared in the Henry-thing for a second, then faded.
A sound caught its attention, drawing it like a magnet through the
barn doors and into the warm sunlight of the yard beyond. The sound of
singing drifted from the backdoor screen of the white farmhouse. It
was a sweet sound that stirred something in the underlying psyche that
once been Henry Beck. For a moment it stood trembling in indecision.
Then, tentatively, it crept to the rear of the house.
Through the wire mesh of the screen door it stared at the woman who
stood washing dishes at the kitchen sink. Estelle, singing an
old-time hymn, her voice as light and musical as that of a songbird.
Estelle, the woman Henry Beck had fallen in love with the
First time he had seen her sitting alone at the grange hall square
dance in the autumn of 1938. Estelle, the woman who, for so many
years, had shared his laughter and tears, who had endured the hard
times along with the good.
It stood there uncertain, the confusing emotion welling up like a dam
on the point of bursting. It wanted to call out to make its feeling
known. But, as Estelle began to turn toward the door, a great fear
washed into its mind. Can't let her see me....not like
this!
Estelle Beck walked idly to the back door and looked toward the barn.
Henry's work had grown quiet in the last few minutes. She had a sudden
whim to take him some coffee and a wedge of pecan pie and maybe take a
look at the chair he was making for the new grandbaby. She had stepped
outside with the snack in hand, when she noticed the tracks in the
dust of the back stoop. They were tiny, peculiar looking tracks the
likes of which she had never seen before. About the size of a raccoon
print, but strangely human in shape.
"Henry!" Estelle called with a half-smile on her face.
"Henry, come out here and take a gander at these queer little
tracks." After receiving no response from her husband, she went
out to the barn to see what was keeping him.
It fled deep into the wooded hollow, through the tangle of briers and
bramble, to the cool, babbling brook of Green Creek. In its ears rang
the awful sound of a woman's hysterical screams, brimming with terror
and grief. It was a sound that wracked the Henry-thing's very
existence with a hurt that went far beyond mental boundaries. A sound
that bit down deep into the tender meat of its soul.
It collapsed into the cool rush of the backwoods branch, letting the
water wash away the congealed blood that covered it. The veins and
arteries underneath had sealed upon its metamorphosis. A single quart
of life's fluid coursed through the disembodied head, the pulse of its
temple circulating the blood in absence of a working heart.
Eventually the screams gave way to the wailing of sirens and then the
sound of men with guns walking through the woods. The creature spent
that night hidden beneath a mulberry bush, shivering against the cold.
The awful ache of betrayed love thrummed through every nerve ending.
It fell to sleep, its thoughts torn between the woman Estelle and
those who had been forever left behind in the depths of the ancient
well.
In its troubled dreams, the dying words of its own kind drifted on the
dark currents of its slumber. They steeled its floundering resolve and
told it exactly what must be done to survive.
Estelle sat numbly in the front porch swing. She watched the last car
pull from the gravel drive and head up the main road toward town. The
Reverend Ford, who had said comforting words over Henry's closed
casket, had been the last to leave. Her son and daughter had made
their hasty exit right after the burial, making excuses that Estelle
did no question in the shadow of her grief. She reckoned she couldn't
blame them for wanting to shut out the horrible events of the past few
days. She would have done the same herself, but the recurring
nightmare of Henry's headless body kept replaying unmercifully,
turning her into a nervous wreck.
What was it she had overheard the sheriff tell the reverend earlier
that day? That Henry's head had not been cut off, but rather
pulled off by some great force? A cold shudder ran through the
woman's body and she got up to go inside, straightening her black
dress and removing the dark net of the mourning veil.
She was about to open the door, when something drew her attention to
the flower garden across the drive. Something was
singing—singing in Henry's voice.
In a daze, Estelle found herself in the garden, standing there amid
marigolds and iris, steadying herself beside the concrete birdbath. It
was an old Jimmie Rogers song, one that Henry had sang to her numerous
times during their courting. Her husband had always had a fine singing
voice, a deep baritone that rumbled a head above the rest in the pews
at church. But now the tone seemed different. It was almost as if
Estelle wasn't actually hearing the voice, but rather thinking
that she did.
Abruptly, the singing ended. She felt a presence behind her, an
overwhelming sensation of someone standing there.
"Henry?" she whispered.
I love you, Estelle.
The widow's heart beat like a triphammer and she took a deep breath.
There are such things as ghosts, she thought and turned
around.
Estelle Beck screamed until she collapsed into the wilting greenery of
her flower garden, the eerie image of Henry's smiling face wedged in
the bough of a silver maple tree following her into blessed
oblivion.
The tranquilizers that Doc Rhodes prescribed for her after the
fainting spell helped Estelle sleep better that night. But it did not
stop the dreaming.
She dreamt that Henry was there with her, in the brass-framed bed they
had shared since their wedding night. She had been sleeping and he had
come to her. I love you, Estelle, he whispered, his hot breath
in her ear. I love you, too, she gasped, relishing the
closeness of him. I love you so very much.
Then they had kissed, a deep endless kiss. Their tongues entwined
with a relentless passion they had lost with their youth, yet had now
regained. Their saliva mingled. An unpleasant taste lingered in
Estelle's mouth. It was the taste of stagnation and sulfur and a vile
rankness she could not quite place. But she had not pulled away,
wanting to hang onto Henry as long as she could, even if it was all in
her mind.
The dream ended when she brought her arms up to run her hands along
her lover's muscular back and found nothing there.
The headaches worsened as the week drew on, as did the soreness behind
her ears, and every night there was the sound of singing in the
garden.
Note: This story originally appeared in
Eldritch Tales #26 (1991)
