Harlan County Horrors Part 3

"Psychomachia"

Geoffrey Girard.

Geoffrey Girard has appeared in such publications as Writers of the Future, The Willows, Prime Codex, Aoife's Kiss, Murky Depths, and Apex Digest (which serialized his thriller "Cain XP11" in 2008). His Tales Of... series of books now includes The Jersey Devil, Atlantic Pirates, Eastern Indians, and the forthcoming American Colonies. Girard was born in Germany, was shaped in New Jersey, and is currently teaching and writing in Ohio. More info can be found at geoffreygirard.com.

Vincendi praesens ratio est, si comminus ipsas virtutum facies liceat notare.

-Prudentius.

1. Patientia.

Each night, except Sundays, the boy nests in one of two porch chairs and quietly watches his father and brother clean up at an old barrel filled with rainwater from the roof. Mother won't ever let either back into the house for dinner until they have. Always says Cleanliness is next to G.o.dliness and that a man can't root with pigs and still keep a clean nose. And so, soiled work clothes always stack up again for the next day. And weary hands scrub away another day's dark labor. And the barrel water always turns black.

It's 1918, September 6th. Both men move strangely tonight. Father stares at his thick hands and lower arms as if he's never seen hands or arms before, slowly turning them over and over and over again. His mouth hangs kinda open as he smoothes the water and soap over the earth-blackened skin, stroking more than cleaning up, then touching his dirty cheeks and chin like a blind man as the barrel's cold water trickles down to carve tortuous grey rivers down his blackened neck and chest. The brother cleans just the opposite and scours his skin like he's whetting an axe blade or sanding a small piece of wood. Patches on his arms and a few knuckles are already sc.r.a.ped red. Other areas remain ignored, still completely black with coal dust. He hasn't even taken off his jacket or hat yet. Neither man speaks.

Something happened in the mine, the boy decides, studying the two. The grimy face blank beneath the leather bill of his father's dirty cloth cap. Empty. The fiery man's eyes queerly sleepy tonight. Dead. His mouth, hands. Must have been something Bad. Another overhead collapsed, maybe, slate fall, shattered sandstone. Or a runaway coal gon careening down the track back into the mine. Someone probably got killed. Lost a hand. Some other miner's face half-smashed. His father always comes home extra quiet on these nights. The two smallest fingers on his father's left hand are clipped off just above the knuckles, a story from twenty years before. Who this time? Some other father or brother.

The boy watches and waits without a sound. Eyes the lightning bugs emerging in the dark woods just behind the tracks that run parallel to his house. Thinks of his upcoming ch.o.r.es. Dragging the fire, letting the cat back in, blowing out the oil lamps, resetting kindling for the morning. Ordinarily, his father leaves him a small piece of cake or some h.o.r.ehound candy to find in his lunch bucket and nibble on while waiting during their nightly ritual. But there is no lunch bucket tonight. Forgotten back at the coalmine, looks like. Another sign something has happened. When he is twelve next summer, he will go to work with them. Ten hours a day. Sure is hungry. He tries to sniff dinner cooking inside. The hog fat dripped on the skillets. Fried potatoes, maybe. Biscuits. He smells only the usual wood smoke and coffee. Something else on the cool dusk air now. A funk. The stink of old sweat. His father and brother, sour. Like they are sick.

Finally, his father shuffles away from the barrel into the house. He pa.s.ses the boy without a word. The barrel has not taken away the smell, though his brother continues to scrub away. Sc.r.a.ping at the skin. The boy watches him for awhile, thinks of asking him What Happened, but then moves from the porch, too. His brother hasn't even looked at him. Inside, his father has taken his usual spot at the table as Mother bestows cornbread and a bowl each of soup beans and fried potatoes. The girls sit in their chairs waiting for prayer to begin. And for their brother outside.

The boy slides into his chair and studies his father more. The man has placed his hands up on the table as if waiting for food, but the food is already there. His eyes move again to his hands, stare at nothing. "Somethin' happen?" his mother asks. They wait together but no reply comes from the man. "Darryl?" she tries again.

"Cold," his father replies finally and rubs his thumbs against his fingers.

"What's that?"

"It's still so G.o.d d.a.m.ned cold." Rubbing, rubbing.

"What's that boy doing?" His mother moves on from Somethin' Happen, gets up from the table. "The gravy's what's getting cold now. Paul? Paul!" She moves straight for the porch.

Their father just stares at his hands and the boy pa.s.ses quick looks of confusion with his sisters. The older one stifles an insolent laugh.

Screaming. Their mother is now...screaming.

The boy jumps. The smiling sister's eyes now as big and bright as a carbide lamp. Their father has not moved. His face the same. Untouched. More shrieks from the front porch. But his father accords dead eyes. Nothing. The boy slips from his chair. Outside, in the darkness, his mother is now sobbing. Gasping for air. He stands in the frame behind the screen door measuring her sounds. Mother has fallen back and collapsed against the chairs where he watches his father and brother each night.

His brother still lingers over the barrel, and the light from the house casts through the door onto him, the boy's own shadow hiding some of it. At first, it just looks like his brother has put his work s.h.i.+rt back on and that the s.h.i.+rt's sleeves are ripped. Dangling loosely between his elbows and wrists.

Then the boy understands it is flaps of skin. Hanging over the barrel. Uneven shreds between other lumps of dripping muscle. His brother's fingers even now gouging into the other arm. Scrubbing. Ripping. The porch floor is spattered in small round shadows. His brother's eyes are narrow and gla.s.sy with determination. He is might nigh smiling. The wailing by the chairs doesn't even sound like their mother anymore. Inside, his sisters are now crying. A flash of glistening wet bone. Still, his brother...washes.

A hand on his shoulder, pus.h.i.+ng him aside. His father. Moving out to the porch. He would...his father only reaches for his earth-stained overalls and hat. Dresses. Pays no attention to his oldest son at the barrel at all. Mother's wailing has ceased, her silence somehow even worse. The boy clings to the doorframe to steady himself. His father grabs a lamp and empty lunch bucket, ignoring the snapping of his firstborn's fingers. The boy and his mother watch together as the man steps slowly off the porch into the emergent darkness. His lumbering shadow moves slowly west toward the head of the hollow, back toward the mines. No words spoken.

The boy's brother steeps both arms fully in the barrel, and rain water and blood flow as one over its sides. Mostly blood. The puddle grows out slowly toward the boy and shapes across their porch a s.h.i.+mmering black stain.

It looks just like coal.

2. Industria.

The newest run within the Number Three Mine has a bad overhead, and the water is ten inches deep in some spots. Three dead mules litter the low-sloped tunnel. None of that seems to matter. It's quality coal and, even without the mules, most of the men are still pulling out ten tons a day at fifteen cents per ton. Yesterday, Edgar'd pulled fifteen from the earth, dragging each load topside himself after they'd killed the mules. Hadn't gone home when the company steam whistle blew for second or third s.h.i.+ft. There's still too much to be done here. The whole earth stuffed, pregnant. Bloated with coal.

He isn't the only one working extra s.h.i.+fts for the Freedom K.Y. Coal Company. Digging until he just caint stand another minute. Replacing some of the others who haven't yet returned. Tunnels are crowded with miners shuffling past this way or the other with picks and carts. It is more than two miles to the surface. Some carry single lumps by hand. Many of their lamps have already burned out, and men keep on working in total darkness.

Edgar knocks away another thick shard of night with the pick and retrieves it from the cavern floor. This hunk drips like the rest, covered in the thinnest sheen of what they all can only think of as ice. Unseen vapor, like breath, rises a far piece beneath the earth to unhurriedly freeze again within the unending walls of coal. It is so f.u.c.king cold, it burns through gloves and skin, through bone. Through everything, Edgar dumps the shard into his pushcart, then bends to retrieve his pick. The movement is as natural as breathing, and the blood and ooze from his blisters trickle and tickle down his wrists.

A foot away, Riley Spurlock lies slumped with his back against one of several roof-support timbers. Dropped lifeless like a discarded rag doll. He's left the mine just twice in the past week and has spoken only in gibberish. He hasn't moved in hours and holds the pistol up to his own face, just above the bridge of his nose, just like he's prayin. He's been sitting like this for hours now. The Colt his father'd brought home after time with Company F and the 47th. He's shown it to Edgar many times before. It'd killed two Rebels in Tennessee, Spurlock has claimed, and shot a few rounds at the "battle" of Catron's Creek. But the river'd been too high that day and nothing much had come of that. Catron's Creek...can almost see it. Can't remember exactly when he, himself, has last seen home. Ever since they'd opened the new quarry, after the very first wagons and gondolas were filled. When the mules and pony wouldn't budge no matter how hard you beat them. When they noticed there weren't any rats down here. When some of the men didn't never come back. He's heard some things, gossip, but don't really know. Not really. There is still too much to be done here.

The old Colt finally fires.

When the pushcart fills again, Edgar will need to roll it over Spurlock's legs.

3. Humilitas.

Company camps were empty of anything not directly related to coal. Every building, every tool, and each living soul. The Freedom K.Y. Coal Company was founded in 1914 and managed a dozen such camps along the Wallins Creek and down through Puckett Ridge. All combined, the company employed just over one hundred men, pulling in sixty thousand tons year, and was in land negotiations to double that in 1919 [Note: It never happened. Freedom K.Y. Coal Company closed that same Spring.] In most camps, there was a three-story tipple at the head of the hollow where coal was collected from different mines and sorted by quality and size into coal gondolas for s.h.i.+pment down the W & B.M. railroad. Everything else grew out from that. The ancillary train tracks and donkey trails. The piles of slack coal. The one-room company store and miners' houses that dotted both sides of the hollow. The houses, each one painted yellow with red trim, were always brushed over in a fine coating of coal dust. Sometimes black, but the next glance a strange yellow, like when you smash a lightning bug. It depended on how the sunlight caught.

The community church, in what had been the flags.h.i.+p camp of Rockport, was above the tipple and painted white, yet always looked grey. On Sundays, miners from the other surrounding hollows walked or wagoned many miles to reach it. Families marched into the camp on the rails to keep out of the mud, on tracks that still ran right next to the old church. Boys sometimes played among the cars there, pulling the L-shaped brakes for a hiss of air to get nasty stares and a scolding from any nearby men. If too much air was released, the car could simply roll uncontrollably back to the bottom of the tipple where someone might be killed. This miniscule possibility, naturally, was part of the boys' excitement while their mothers gossiped at the water pump and smaller children played for a short bit before heading home again. Further above the tipple were several two-story homes called "Silk Stocking Row," where management and their families lived. Beyond that, only more trees-the leaves of which gave the barest trace of turning-and more hills.

There, the boys sometimes spied Black Shepherd, a shadowy muleskinner who could run his team of Percheron horses up any hollow in any weather in half the time as the next best carrier in three counties. He lived in the hills alone and came into camps only to pick up and deliver company supplies and s.h.i.+pments from other villages in his wagons and high-runner sled. [Note: Court records in Lejunior say he was also a bootlegger.] He was either part Cherokee or part Shawnee. Or part black man, maybe. Either way, the man had never set foot in a coal mine, would only once in his life, and yet his skin was always as dark as night. Most, even the men who'd worked with him, considered him a bit of a monster. A man best to keep away from. The bigger boys sometimes yelled "n.i.g.g.e.r" and threw railway rocks toward him, but none was ever close enough to hit. He just stared back and usually moved on again whenever church started.

Reverend Enoch Osborne said when church started. For seven years, he'd given the gathered coal camps sermons such as (to name only a few): Rules for Thinking Alongside the Good Book, The Fixed Costs of Resurrection, Dancing with The Prince of Lies, The Value of Souls, The Virgin Birth of Evil, The Seventh Hallelujah, Fasting and Faith, Sinners in the Hands of an Angry G.o.d, Vanquis.h.i.+ng the Cardinal Sins, Accepting Our Divine Responsibilities, and something called the Contest of Souls. Osborne often spoke a hundred words in a single slow breath and always p.r.o.nounced h.e.l.l as 'Ayell with two syllables and without the H. "That weeeeah, my brathes and sistas, may altogaytha of the same mind and conformnity with the Church and Holy Bible, if they shouldda term anythin' to be black which to our eyes appears to be white, we ought, in like manner, p.r.o.nounce it to be black, for we mus' without-a-doubt believe the Speerit of our Lord Jesus Christ, and the Speerit of the Church, by which Speerit we are'all governed and directed from the d.a.m.nations of 'Ayell to the Lord's Salvation, be the same!"

Originally from Tennessee, Osborne was a stocky Baptist who chewed Shoe Peg tobacco and could spit it in your eye from twenty feet away. He'd once accused Owen Ledford of adultery in front of the whole congregation and actually shamed the man into a public confession. He'd whipped Solomon Fouch once while simultaneously scolding the parents for neglecting his Christian upbringing. There was a rumor he'd stabbed a man in Nolansburg. Even the roughest boys lined up quickly when he finally stepped outside to call everyone into service Still, one Sunday in September, Osborne could not get their Salvation started on time. Some of the adults had been arguing. And their voices, despite Osborne's reproach, eventually grew louder and more violent into the biggest s.h.i.+ne anyone'd ever seen. Men threw punches. Someone's jaw shattered when a large rock was thrown, and others wrapped a dirty rag around the man's head to hold it in place.

The cause had been the men from Mine Three. The few who'd actually shown up for church. Others remained working back in the mine and, after the commotion was settled, Enoch Osborne gave the whole congregation a three-hour sermon regarding the Sabbath. Before that, however, all eyes were on these four men. They were wrong. All four still wore their work clothes, each filthier than the last. Stiff with dried sweat. Drenched in coal. Their faces and arms darker than Black Shepherd's. Like walking shadows. Hair greasy and matted with dirt. Disheveled. Unshaven. From the smell, clearly none had bathed in a week or more. Some had cuts on their hands and faces. One face covered in red oozing cysts.

Their wives and children embarra.s.sed, certainly. The rest of the congregation both dismayed and appalled. Reverend Osborne riled to a chilling silence. The four men themselves, it was later recalled, didn't seem to care at all. As if they hadn't the faintest idea what everyone else was fussing about. Didn't even fight back when the hostility started. Ultimately, they were driven away. Back to their own camp, their families in tow but at a distance.

When church was finally over that day, the rest of the congregation stepped back outside. One boy, who walked alone with his mother and sisters because his father was one of the men still working, and his brother was home sick, noticed this: Black Shepherd still in the woods above the church. The criminal muleskinner who looked like he was made from coal. He'd not moved in three hours and was still watching them all.

4. Temperare.

Edgar has not eaten in thirteen days.

His s.h.i.+rt and jacket drape oddly now, and the bones of his clavicle and sternum show. The exact shape of bones in his arms and wrists show. Here a while back, his pants slipped off. Skin collecting at his knees and elbows.

The chill of wet coal courses through his whole body. He drops another handful of coal at the mouth of Mine Three and then shambles back toward the darkness below. His body needs nourishment again. The gra.s.s and bushes just outside the mouth of the mine are already picked bare.

He does not know that the word h.e.l.l-or 'Ayell as his minister often calls it-derives from primordial sounds like h.e.l.le, h.e.l.lja, and holle, and from the Hebrew word sheol. Or that these words, forgotten words created by a dozen different lands, all translate easily to mean "hole" and "cavern" and "hollow" and "to burrow." Or even that each and every one also has a secondary meaning: "to hide." He's never heard these words before. And yet, he understands.

Two others already squat over the bloated mule carca.s.s.

Flies coat its putrid flesh and their green eyes glint like mysterious African jewels.

He kneels.

5. Caritas.

The boy hides in the woods. He knows about bobcats and bears and panthers and wild hogs. And Indian ghosts and witches. He is more afraid of home.

Mother does not talk anymore. His sisters just cry and are filthy. His brother is still propped in one of the chairs on the front porch. Sits there each day and night. Never moving, like something resting in its crypt. And no one else will move him. It rains on him. The bandages on his arms are sticky and yellow. The porch floor is still stained black like coal. Their father does not return.

Their hollow is twenty-six miles from the main road. They have eaten all of the canned food. The train does not come anymore. He hears that the mines are shut down until further notice. That management in Rockport says it is only typhoid.

Another man walks into their house a week ago. Mr. Schaffer. A Hungarian who doesn't speak any English. He is completely naked and looks just like a skeleton. Deep black sockets for eyes and a jawbone and skull etched just beneath his coal-blacked skin. He takes food and sleeps in their parents' bed. He leaves after a few hours, taking their only milk cow. Two days later, it is another man. The boy does not know him and he hides in the latrine behind the house. For two days he hides and does not even come out when he hears his sisters screaming. They, and his mom, and the man are not there when he finally comes out.

He runs to find his father but all of the men at the mines and wandering about camp now look the same. It takes another day before he finds the two small fingers on a left hand clipped off just above the knuckles. He finds them on a man he does not truly recognize just outside the mine. His father is a night thing, completely covered in ancient dust from miles beneath the world. The clothes tattered and black. Bones already protruding in barbed angles out of his coated skin. His father does not recognize him either. Just stares as he would at any boy, any thing, any lump of coal.

The boy is now hungry and roots in a cold stream for crawdads.

It has rained, a biddy drownder that fell on him all night, and a dense fog rises in the surrounding hills. On mornings like this, his father used to say that the groundhogs were making coffee over a fire. He misses his father. He misses setting rabbit boxes in holes with his brother. And tying Mother's sewing thread around June bug legs. And playing to hunt for Indians with his friends. And then pretending to be Jesse James. And his mother's chocolate gravy. And spending a single coin of copper scrip at the company store for a chilly imp or birch beer and some peanuts. Making silly faces at his sisters. He misses the whole world.

He reaches back into the icy water and turns another rock. Nothing. He thinks of the wives' saw that you can turn a horsehair into a snake by putting it under a creek rock.

Just like his father turned when they put him under the earth.

This is precisely what the boy is thinking about when Black Shepherd grabs him.

6. Cast.i.tas.

Females were herded into the mine. Each woman and girl placed into two clumsily crafted pens there. Those who tried to flee were killed there in the dark.

The others were not harmed and used only for procreation.

It was, they thought, just as G.o.d intended.

7. Humanitas.

Black Shepherd looks exactly like The Devil. Or what the boy imagines The Devil would be. The muleskinner's skin is truly grey. And his eyes glow like stars. He wears a frayed oilcloth slicker. His hair is black and long beneath a wide-brim hat, and it frames his rounded face, which has many scars.

He feeds the boy, who sleeps for two days. When the boy wakes, Black Shepherd offers him a pone of cornbread and some coffee. Black Shepherd talks quietly to the boy. Men sometimes go where they should not, he says. Men sometimes go too deep. The boy is terrified of the man but eats all the same, and listens to every word.

h.e.l.l is real. Its falsehoods creep slowly, eternally, from the darkness into light. The greatest deception ever played on man. That which makes man majestic somehow deemed sin. That which makes us loathsome becomes virtue. The seven deadly sins aren't. Imagine, he leads, The Prince of Lies imprisoned in the darkest pit of Earth. A hundred miles below the ground. A thousand. Frozen. Empty. Smiling. His great lie creeping slowly, eternally, from the absolute darkness into The Book, The World. And, just perhaps, that same lie is sometimes carried.

He and the boy approach the mine at dawn.

The entrance gapes. The timbers on either side are fangs. Hot cold breath rolls out the entrance like a fog. The blackness within runs straight down. The creatures milling about do not seem to notice their arrival or intentions. Their own preservation now lost to some icy notion of total humility. While the boy and Black Shepherd prepare, the creatures continue only to dig.

The Percherons resist at first. They will not enter the tunnels. One horse rears, goes mad and is killed. But Black Shepherd is the best hauler in three counties and he Gees and Haws all d.a.m.n day until the coal is slowly stuffed back into the earth. Carts and wagon and small gondolas fill the pa.s.sageway, which now runs some five miles into the earth. The boy enters the darkness beside him to place dynamite and charges they've stolen from the mine supplies and from the company store in Rockport. Narrow tunnels and forty-foot rooms packed with explosives. The creatures move around him. Shrunken black things that ought never again to crawl aboveground. The boy does not look for his father. Strange sounds echo through every tunnel. Voices, maybe. Moaning and wails far below.

Black Shepherd must kill his other horses. He and the boy are exhausted from the day's work, but there is still too much to be done. In October moonlight, they move slowly above the tipple where the last gondola waits empty. They fill it with the rest of the powder. The track runs toward the mine. Fire.

The boy releases the brake.

A hiss of air.

8. Pychomachia.

Tall grey weeds grow between the railroad tracks and cross ties. The rotted remains of an old tipple loom over the place like a giant grey spider. The houses are empty and boarded over like its empty egg sacks. Years before, typhoid fever wiped out this camp. There was also a mine explosion and collapse that killed as many as thirty miners. Some say it was more than that. Some say the place is haunted.

A girl and her grandmother enter the deserted camp. It is 1931. Hoover says we shall soon, with the help of G.o.d, banish poverty, and he has promised a chicken in every pot and a car in every garage. The old woman has seen a truck a few times. The girl has never. The girl is fighting a cold and is grumpy about having to accompany her grandmother on this errand. Her grandmother reminds her that sick persons should have sick persons' manners. The girl stays quiet and twirls the empty bucket at her side to pa.s.s the time.

They have come for the strippings.

A small gleaming black mountain of coal. The smaller portions of coal once deemed not good enough for s.h.i.+pment. Discarded. Forgotten. Perfect for nearby stoves. Many have taken from the pile already. For many years, it has, it will, cook meals and warm homes across the county. It always burns bright and long.

The girl finds it cold to touch.

"Yellow Warblers"

Jason Sizemore.

Jason Sizemore is a Stoker Award-nominated editor and writer who has seen his work published in a number of science fiction and horror publications including Dark Discoveries, Shroud Magazine, and The Writers Workshop of Horror. His first collection, Irredeemable (a collection of Appalachian horror shorts), comes out in the spring of 2010 from Shroud Publications. Jason is originally from Southeast Kentucky, but currently lives in Lexington, KY, where he works as a software developer and book publisher. He maintains a web presence at jason-sizemore.com.

Golden rays of morning sunlight filtered through the single-gla.s.s windowpane, illuminating an elderly man sitting quietly on a cus.h.i.+oned pew, head bent in prayer. His trembling hands held an ancient pair of reading gla.s.ses with lenses so marred and scratched it was a wonder he could see anything through them. Outside, a yellow Kentucky warbler sang joyfully, welcoming the warm spring breeze blowing in from the south and the pale green leaves covering the Appalachian countryside.

"Amen," the old man said aloud, finis.h.i.+ng his prayer. He stretched out his arthritic, tired legs. Both knees popped like the BB gun he had used in his younger days to shoo away the hungry crows from his garden. He grimaced at the sound-a constant reminder of his age-and at the pain that was his daily companion. Something told him, perhaps it was the Lord whispering to him, to enjoy the warm season. Come this time next year, his old legs wouldn't be much use to him anymore.

A silence enveloped the church valley. The yellow warblers hushed. The blowing wind stopped and the air grew still. A chill spread across the old man's body. He'd lived long enough to know the way of the spirits, to listen when they shouted across the heavens to warn the other side of danger.

Outside, a small alien paused at the foot of the steps. It glanced upward at the white-painted spire that held the bra.s.s bell used for calling the congregation on Sunday mornings. The broad leaves of a tall sycamore shadowed the church from the midday sun, giving protection and comfort. The alien climbed the nine wooden steps up to the doorway and entered through the ornate entrance. Angels and demons welcomed it inside.

The alien moved with a grace befitting its slender build and smooth, alabaster skin. The old man had seen one of these before. A Shadow, they'd called it. It had been...what...twenty-three years since last he'd seen one? But there it was, no mistaking. Those large almond eyes in an oval, slightly humanoid face. No mouth. Skin that resembled the plastic of his sister's childhood dolls. Shadows wore no clothes, nor did they demonstrate modesty, avarice, or l.u.s.t. The man wondered if the Shadows had succeeded in the Garden where man had failed.

Many other thoughts crossed his mind as he watched the alien walk forward. He watched as it touched the back of each pew with padded white fingers. It made little noise, no perceptible sounds of breathing, and even the sound of its bare feet slapping against the hardwood floor was muted like feathers falling from the sky.

The old man stood up. After all, this was the Lord's House and he had a duty to perform. "h.e.l.lo," he said. "I'm Preacher Jeremiah Jones."

The Shadow paused. Those big, strange eyes stared back at Jeremiah and then at the old wooden cross hanging from the stucco wall behind the pulpit. A moment of worry pa.s.sed through the preacher's bones. Worry fueled by the deadly sin of pride. The cross had been in the church for 300 years; a true artifact, handmade to perfection and pa.s.sed down through the protective custody of thirty-one preachers at Harlan Baptist Church. He often considered it divine, almost in the same sense the Roman Church had once believed in miraculous power of objects such as grails and ancient shrouds. It didn't take the awestruck presence of a Shadow to convince him of the power of the cross that hung at his back each and every Sunday morning during his sermon.

"I am...John."

"Amen, praise Jesus!" The preacher skipped a holy dance unlike anything he'd done since his snake-handling days as a deacon back at the one room Pentecostal church down around Martin's Fork. The Shadow had touched a finger to a green box hanging around its neck by a piece of yellow string, activating some type of voice machine.

Last time the preacher had seen one of these creatures, they didn't have such vocal contraptions. But that was twenty-three years ago. Right before his last trip down the c.u.mberland River to Nashville as the town's supply runner. Now Larson and Cullen handled the duties, two buck-toothed lads, both crazy on the s.h.i.+ne and the women. They'd landed in jail a number of times at lift outpost while waiting for the teams of men to carry their raft around c.u.mberland Falls and delayed the town's supplies, but for the most part, they got the job done.