Hearts Strange and Dreadful by Tim McGregor

Author:Tim McGregor [McGregor, Tim]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Colonial Era, Gothic, Historical Fiction, Horror, New England, Occult, Plague, Puritans
Publisher: Off Limits Press LLC
Published: 2021-11-07T00:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER 21

YOUNG JACOB HAD been gone two days when Mother Stokely declared that she wanted him home. She had had a terrible dream.

“I was in the orchard,” she told us, her face bloodless that morning. “The trees we planted when we first married. The sky darkened and then the apple trees began to wither before my eyes. The fruit blighted instantly, boiling with worms as they tumbled around my feet. The trees split and crashed to the earth. Half the orchard was felled within minutes from some powerful corruption. Then I saw the culprit; a great serpent writhing from tree to tree, poisoning them all with its venom. When the awful viper was done with its destruction, it slithered across the heather and came for me.”

Neither my uncle nor myself spoke for a moment, stunned with such a strange narrative. Dreams are bothersome things, thrashing us about in our beds with their merciless whimsy.

“Twas just a dream, dear,” Pardon said, patting his wife’s hand. “Brought on by an undigested bit of beef.”

She snatched her hand away. “Don’t patronize me. It was a warning.”

Katherine was in a temper and I knew better than to provoke her when her blood was up. I let my uncle dig his own grave.

“Of what? Crop failure?”

“Don’t be so dense, Pardon. Honestly.” She stepped here and stepped there, agitated. Mother Stokely took her omens seriously and with good measure. She was the one who dowsed for water when new wells needed to be dug. “The orchard is our family. I will lose half of them before this nightmare is over.”

Pardon rallied, seeing how upset she was but I feared it was too late. “Katherine, please. It was just a dream. Dreams mean nothing.”

A spoon was flung across the room. It missed my uncle and clattered against the wall. Something diabolic flashed hot in Mother Stokely’s eyes just then. If I hadn’t been standing there, I sincerely believe she would have attacked her husband.

“Death has taken two already,” she cried. “Now Sam is ill, sure to be taken the same way. How many more, Pardon, while we dither about, unable to stop it?”

My uncle stayed on his side of the kitchen table and said nothing. He must have realized that any response would only make things worse. Katherine was sensible and cool-headed most of the time, but her passions ran deep and, when riled, she became volcanic. When that occurred, there was little any of us could do except to hang onto something and ride it out.

Her eyes flashed again but this time it was with terror rather than rage. “And Jacob has gone. Gone to that awful place of ash and death. I need him back. Pardon, go saddle your horse and fetch him. Bring him back to me.”

“Jacob will be fine. The other men will watch out for him. I promise.”

“Promises?” Mother Stokely spat back at him. “The way you promised that Pru’s illness would pass? That Faith would recover?”

Even I felt the sting of that one.

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