Harlan County Horrors (28 page)

He
tasted like chocolate.

She
felt his heart stop, felt his body grow cold in her arms. She felt
him crumble to dust beneath her lips until there was nothing in her
hands but ash. She felt the rainbow colors of the baby inside her
melt away into a majestic, elegant blackness. There was no noise,
no mess, and the feel of the soft soot between her fingers was
ecstasy. She knelt, thrust her hand in the pile of Anthony at her
feet, and pulled out the one thing that would not have turned to
ash: his spark. It was a diamond now, burning with a deep, pure
fire, and Ennica marveled at its perfection.

The
horse woke her, nuzzling her face and shoulder and nudging her into
the sunshine. The house was gone; the witch was gone. She and the
horse were alone at the base of the mountain. She squinted up at
the sky, up the mountain path she’d have sworn she’d climbed the
day before, and then she remembered how stupid she was, and how
insane, and possibly how hormonal. She shrugged it off. A shame,
really, that her little adventure had all been a dream.

She
slowly picked her aching body up, moaning and cursing the
unforgivable ground that had been her bed and wondering where the
rocks had been that made her hurt so badly. She bent and stretched,
trying to work enough kinks out to remount the horse; she should
really get it back to the stables before her father started to
worry. As for the rest of her life...she put a hand on her
belly.

Odd; she felt none of her previous hatred toward Anthony
anymore. She could honestly say she no longer loved him. In fact,
she didn’t feel anything. She closed her eyes...and thought of an
abandoned watchtower, and teacups filled with chocolate, and a
stove that smelled like apple pie. All those horrible memories and
terrible feelings and atrocious, nonsense fantasies were
gone.

“
Thank you,” Ennica whispered to no one, for if it had all
been a dream, there was really no one to thank. As if in reply, a
crow swooped down in a whirlwind of ebony feathers and dropped a
shiny object in the dirt at her feet. Cawing triumphantly, it flew
away, back up the mountain, into the mists from whence it came.
Ennica bent down gingerly to retrieve the diamond, and the
knowledge that came with it.

She
would return the horse and say her goodbyes. She would not stay for
the funeral or the gossip; that was some other girl’s life now.
That blissful innocence had been replaced by something stronger.
Something deadlier. Something...else. Something with the power to
grant wishes, to tame crows, to climb mountains.

She
lifted her face back up to the path through the trees and the
red-tinged dawn of the new day. Somewhere on that mountain, there
was a cabin waiting for her.

A History
of Harlan, KY

by
Preston Halcomb

Harlan's
very name conjures up memories of blood and violence. Decades of
strife have engulfed the county, fueled by both the local coal
mining industry and by feuds between individuals and whole
families. This gives the people here a unique outlook on both
morality and life, and this outlook makes the county an ideal
setting for the stories contained herein.

Harlan
County began life in 1819,
incorporated from a piece of Knox County, Kentucky. Over the years,
it has been chiseled away to form parts of present-day Bell,
Leslie, and Letcher counties. The county as it exists today covers
about 470 square miles of hills and valleys. The biggest cities in
the county include the county seat of Harlan, as well as the cities
of Cumberland and Evarts.

The county was named after Silas
Harlan, who served as a scout and a major in the Continental Army.
Harlan came to Kentucky with James Harrod in 1774, where he
assisted Harrod’s party in Harrodsburg, delivering gunpowder to
settlers and helping them against the British during the
Revolutionary War. Harlan built a stockade near Danville known as
Harlan’s Station; he also assisted in the establishment of Fort
Jefferson at the mouth of the Ohio River in 1780. Silas Harlan died
leading the advance party at the Battle of Blue Licks on August 19,
1782.

Harlan
County has been rocked by
great labor union unrest since the early part of the twentieth
century, primarily centered on the labor unions associated with the
coal mining industry. The area gained one of its enduring
nicknames, “Bloody Harlan,” due to the riots and murders that
occurred. The conflict originally stems from a series of United
Mine Workers strikes and labor-management battles that ended in a
shoot-out between deputized guards and miners on May 4, 1931 in
Evarts. This resulted in the confirmed deaths of three guards and
one miner; an undetermined number were wounded.

The labor unrest
was felt as late as the 1970s, the period documented in the
film
Harlan County, USA
by Barbara Kopple, and one of the most violent
times in the county’s history. In 1973, workers at the Eastover
Coal Company’s Brookside Mine voted to join the United Mine Workers
Union. Soon after, management disputes led the workers to go on
strike. The mine brought in “scabs” (non-union workers) to continue
production, but miners who felt they were being illegally replaced
attacked the scabs. During the strike, mine workers’ wives and
children often joined them on the picket lines. Many were arrested,
hit by baseball bats, shot at, and struck by cars. One miner,
Lawrence Jones, was shot and killed by a replacement worker; the
murderer, Bill Bruner, served no time for this incident. Special
Judge F. Byrd Hogg, a local coal operator who had been assigned to
the union case, ruled in favor of the mine
management.

The county
is filled with folklore and legends going back before its founding.
On a spiritual level, Harlan County is a very devout place.
Churches spring up like mushrooms on a cool morning. Underlying it
all, however, is the same fatalistic worldview for which people
from the area have become known. They have an inherent
understanding that there are things out there that go bump in the
night, and can be counted upon to spin ghost tales about the area
whenever they get together.

Harlan
County today is still a place where the nights are dark and the
shadows deep, but there is a growing lightness as well. Many
efforts have been made to modernize the area: a new ATV park is
drawing nationwide acclaim and bringing much needed revenue into
the county; the schools are being upgraded and consolidated; Harlan
County’s rich natural beauty is being exploited to bring tourism
dollars to the area. The future of Harlan County looks bright, even
if it is shrouded in a past filled with blood and
darkness.

Preston Halcomb

June 2009

Lexington, KY

Editor Bio

Mari Adkins is a paranormal fiction writer who grew up in the
coal mining community of Woodbine, Kentucky. Her fiction has
appeared in the anthologies
Stories from
the Red Light District
,
Aegri Somnia
,
Vampire Bytes,
and
Help,
as well as
in
Toasted Cheese
and
Apex Magazine
. She is a submissions editor for
Apex Magazine
, and the social media
maven for Apex Publications,
in addition to
doing freelance editing, writing, and book reviewing. Her current
home is Lexington, Kentucky, where she lives with her husband and
their calico cat. She is a mother and an avid supporter of kidney
disease awareness and living organ donation awareness. The Kentucky
mountains, their culture, their superstitions, and their particular
magics will always be in her heart and her blood.

Artist Bio

Award-winning artist Billy Tackett is the creator the writer
of the upcoming graphic novel
Dead White
and Blue
comics, the official artist of
Shane Moore’s Abyss Walker series, and the self-proclaimed
“Creepiest Artist in America”.

He
maintains a web site at billytacket.com.