Appalachian Horror by Bo Chappell

Author:Bo Chappell [Chappell, Bo]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781096808039
Publisher: Aphotic Realm
Published: 2019-05-15T04:00:00+00:00

“‘When fall the shadow cold of death,

I yet will sing, with parting breath—’”

When I looked back, her face had twisted into a sneer.

Her pale arms arced high above her head.

“‘As comes to me or shade or sun,

Father, thy will, not mine, be done!’”

A blood-curdling screech escaped her lips. A rectangular flash of gray shimmered in the moonlight.

§

My eyes were wet. I couldn’t move my arms. I felt seasick.

Noises far off. My head felt like it was filled with a thousand buzzing hornets. “Over here!”

Voices, yelling. Scuffling of feet.

“I got her! She’s safe!”

My heart leapt. Had I been found? It was dark and cold.

Was I lost?

“Lookie what you done! You know better than to run off like that, Little Missy!” a voice crooned. “Who’d a taken care o’ ya if you done went and got yerself lost?”

I squinted in the dark. My cheek rested on a black, wooden floor. Directly in my line of sight sat a broken cinder block. The corner gleamed crimson in a beam from a flashlight.

“Ain’t nobody but us gonna understand a sinning, dumbstruck mute, Lindernia Lee! You’s goin’ around an’ killin’ people. They gonna take you, lock you up and throw away the key’s what they’re gonna do.”

I heard Lindernia sob. And even though I couldn’t turn my head, I knew her face was buried into her mother’s giant bosom. Footsteps crunched over dead leaves and pine straw.

“Now you go with Miss Beulah. She gon’ take care of you, git you all cleaned up. We’s yer family here, and we’s all you got. I know you’s dumb as a box of rocks, but you gotta think before you go throwing your lot in with strangers in town.”

Voices and the shuffling of feet receded in the distance.

The sound of barking dogs, however, did not.

“We can’t keep doin’ this, Ida Mae,” the Sheriff whispered harshly. “They’s got whole science labs that’s gonna find them missing people. This the third one!”

“An, whatcha propose we do, Artie? Lindernia the only reason we got ta roof over our heads! The mines all done closed up! Without Lindernia’s sangin’, we ain’t a got no people visitin’ this bumbfuck town.”

“But we’re killin’ people, Ida-Mae!”

“We ain’t a killed nobody, Artie! Lindernia done murdered all three.”

“Now, you know that ain’t true, Ida-Mae!”

“Is too! They all died by her hands, not ours.”

“But we drove her to it, Ida-Mae! We let ‘em suffer an’ didn’t get ‘em no help! She only killin’ ‘em to save ‘em!”

A shotgun cocked. “You gon’ let them dogs go clean up the scraps, Artie Wynn, or is they feastin’ on two tonight?” “Now I don’ want no trouble Ida-Mae.”

More crunching leaves, pine straw sliding around. A cold burst of air, unkempt doggie nails on hardwood floors.

Warm tears stung my cheeks as I tried to see through my bleary eyes.

A cold nose against my chin, the quick lap of a doggie tongue on my cheek.

Growling, snarling. Brilliant teeth in the light of the moon.

Blinding pain. Unable to scream. My larynx, no longer inside my body.

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