Harlan County Horrors (7 page)

The
others were not harmed and used only for procreation.

It
was, they thought, just as God 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.

Hell 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 damn day until
the coal is slowly stuffed back into the earth. Carts and wagon and
small gondolas fill the passageway, 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 God, 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 pass 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 shipment. 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.

G
olden rays
of morning sunlight filtered through the single-glass windowpane,
illuminating an elderly man sitting quietly on a cushioned pew,
head bent in prayer. His trembling hands held an ancient pair of
reading glasses 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, finishing 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 brass 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 lust. 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. “Hello,” 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 passed 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
passed 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 Cumberland River to Nashville as the town’s supply
runner. Now Larson and Cullen handled the duties, two buck-toothed
lads, both crazy on the shine 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 Cumberland Falls and delayed the
town’s supplies, but for the most part, they got the job
done.

“
I
come from the University of Kentucky,” John said through his green
box. “I am an anthropologist.”

That caught Jeremiah’s attention.
An anthropologist?
This did not bode well. The fair folks of
Harlan had been living in their utopia of isolation for over forty
years. Due to the inaccessibility of the countryside and the fright
caused by the Collapse, the only people who had visited the world
outside these mountains were the raft captains looking to sell
timber for supplies. That meant Larson and Cullen, him, and his
dead buddy Maxie Henson. Many of the folks around these parts had
never seen a Shadow, let alone such fancy things as newspapers,
bathrooms, or people not born and bred in Harlan.

“
Your church is wonderful,” John said. “We do not have these
back at the University, or anywhere else.”

A
world without the Word of God? No wonder He sent the Collapse on
us, foreseeing our heathen ways.
“Praise Jesus,” was all Jeremiah could muster in
response. The typically loquacious man found himself silenced by
the visitor.

The
Shadow stepped up to the pew and looked out over the church. “I
would like to hear you sermonize.”

“
Yes...yes, I mean, of course. Tomorrow morning, 10 a.m.
sharp. The bell can be heard for three miles off on a clear day, I
reckon.”

John nodded and continued on to the front of the little church
until it reached the holy cross hanging from the wall. “This is a
lovely religious artifact. How wonderful it is,” it
said.

“
Praise Jesus,” Jeremiah said again.

A
child ran into the church, breaking up the shared moment of
reverie. It was little Mikey Smith from down Baxter. Mikey usually
helped clean the building before services. “Hey Preacher, momma’s
made a blackberry pie and....” He’d spotted the Shadow behind the
pulpit, watched as it lovingly stroked the cross. The boy’s face
turned white.

“It’s okay, Mikey. We have a visitor from Lexington,” Jeremiah
said.
“This is
John.”

Like a frightened squirrel, the kid made a skidding turn in
his sandals and sprinted back out of the church, hollering for his
momma.

Jeremiah felt a twinge of worry tickle his nerves. He
remembered the calling of the spirits. “Now I don’t want to be
unseemly in God’s house, John, but I think you best be heading back
down the river. Nothing but trouble to be found here for your
kind.”

John turned around and looked at the preacher. Those eyes, so
beautiful. Jeremiah recalled a snippet of a fairytale he’d once
heard…
My
,
what big eyes you
have
....

“
You ask that I leave? But there is so much to see and
document. You know that I bring no harm to you.”

“
But it’s not safe.”

“
Preacher Jeremiah. I want to worship with you.”

Jeremiah swallowed hard as he heard the sudden commotion build
outside the church.
That didn’t take long.
Larson and Cullen, the town’s raft captains—and the
town’s
de
facto
leaders—came
stomping up the wooden steps. Once inside, they slammed the door
shut behind them hard enough to rattle the church bell. Both
carried shotguns.

“
I’ll be goddamn, Cullen, it’s one of those little grey
freaks.”

“
Mr. Larson,” Jeremiah admonished, “you know better than to
take the name of the Lord in vain!”

Larson leveled his shotgun at Jeremiah. “Shut your mouth, old
man. You know how I feel about you and your church. Scaring people
with your talk of hell and damnation, but you know what, I’ve seen
hell and damnation, I see it every six weeks when me and Cullen go
up the river, so I don’t want to hear a goddamn word out of you.”
Larson’s stone-cold gaze froze Jeremiah’s tongue.