The November 2009 Selected Story 3 is by Lawrence Barker
Feel free to email Lawrence at: Sqrt2pi@aol.com
FOLKS DON'T ALWAYS COME OUT OF RATWITCH CAVE THE SAME
By Lawrence Barker
The darkness of Ratwitch Cave clamped its steel trap jaws on Hargus Lequin and his cousin Boog.
"I can relight the lantern," Boog's nasal voice said. Hargus, thinking of what a fool he had been for walking through the cave's pit-dark mouth, said nothing.
Whick, whick. The sound of Boog trying to strike a match echoed through the heavy darkness.
"Why did I listen to that no-good Ealy Coughin's yarn that there’s treasure in Ratwitch Cave?" Boog grumbled, always the complainer.
Hargus sighed. He’d known all along what a liar Ealy was, but he couldn’t let a worse fool like Boog go by himself, so he’d come along for the adventure. If he hadn’t, he would be safe in his cabin with Lona May right now.
Whick, whick. The sound of Boog still trying to strike a match echoed through the suffocating darkness.
The cave's temperature dropped until it felt more like December than the mid May that it was. A faint reek of something that reminded Hargus of the abandoned barn off Bybee Creek, filled with rotting hay and the rustles of unseen things tunneling through that hay, permeated the air.
"Stop trying to light the lantern for a minute," Hargus said.
"You like dark or something?" Boog sounded irritated. Or maybe he figured Hargus caught a whiff of fear hiding under the impatience.
"I hear something. I need to listen a minute," Hargus answered. He strained his ears.
Hargus could not help but remember the tale that Grandpa Ottis had told three days before the sweating sickness took the old man. Grandpa had claimed to have been there for the late night final mid-air kick of old Bessie Peters, the Ratwitch herself. Grandpa had said that, after Bessie Peters had gone a-dangling, a dozen rats had come from the darkness and over-watched her until morning.
But Grandpa Ottis had been a terrible liar, even worse than Ealy Coughin. Who knows if his was true? But, more importantly, was that faint scurrying sound real?
"Try lighting the lantern again now," Hargus commanded. "I need to see whatever that is I hear."
Finally Boog’s attempts paid off. The match's flickering orange light blossomed.
And then they saw what made the noise. Rats, a seething carpet of claws, teeth, and fur, formed a half circle-about them. Boog gasped and dropped the match before he could light the lantern.
Darkness returned. Hargus could hear the lantern roll on the hard ground, and he knew that the fool Boog had dropped the lantern as well as the match.
"Noise scares rats," Hargus shouted. "Yell and scream! Run them off."
The sound of hundreds of rodent feet, scratching the cave's smooth stone floor, filled the darkness. Boog began to scream and yell.
Hargus felt an adrenaline rush when he heard his cousin shout, "Oh God! Get them off!" And then Boog's shouts ended with a strangled cry.
The lantern was still rattling and bouncing. A smell like the guts and blood and raw flesh of a hog butchering filled Hargus' nostrils.
"Boog?" Hargus called, hoping that his imagination had run away from him and that he and his cousin would laugh about this come morning. "Boog? If you’re a-funnin’, I’ll kill you myself."
But the sound of tiny teeth, tearing something soft, told him that his cousin would never laugh again. Hargus had to find that lantern.
Hargus got on his knees and fumbled for the lantern, feeling along the stone cavern floor. Maybe he could find it. Maybe he could find the matches. Maybe he could … his hand brushed a rat. A sticky liquid, the consistency of the blood from a new-slaughtered hog's throat, covered the beast's fur. Hargus turned and fled, never minding the sightless darkness. He stumbled through the cave, smashing into hard stone walls, falling and bloodying his nose, scraping his face.
Lost and exhausted but still propelled by fear, he stumbled over what felt like an old ladder-back chair. Hargus did not care how the chair had gotten there. Furniture belonged to normal life, and Hargus desperately wanted something normal. He sat the chair upright. He clambered onto it and, knees clutched to chest and arms wrapped about himself, sat trembling.
Maybe he could re-group. Maybe he could come up with a plan as to what to do next. He couldn’t see anything, and didn’t know in which direction the mouth of the cave was anymore. He cursed himself for the way he had bolted out of fear. He knew he would never be able to find that lantern now. He needed to sit on the chair for another minute to calm down and to figure out what to do next.
Most of all, he needed to find help for his cousin Boog, still in the depth of the cave somewhere. He needed to somehow save his cousin. But he had to get out of the cave first.
Thoughts of Lona May filled his mind. His Pa might have disapproved because she had just shown up one day instead of being from one of the county's old families. Hargus had never cared, though. To him, Lona May was perfect. He thought of that morning. Lona May had held him close, him basking in her presence like a turtle basks in the sun.
He had to get out of the cave to see Lona May. He had to find help for Boog. Minutes passed in the dark, Hargus still sitting on the chair, when a faint ashen hue replaced the blackness. The outline of a human figure appeared in the gray light. The Angel of Death, come for him?
"Who the hell are you?" he called in fear, feeling his heart pound against his chest. Silence was his only answer.
The stranger carried no lantern, yet seemed at home in the dimness. A chill ran down Hargus' spine. The saying that he had heard a thousand times growing up drifted through his mind: Folks don't always come out of Ratwitch Cave the same.
The stranger came nearer, lit up as though it carried a dim candle. A shawl hid the face, but the shape made it clear that the newcomer was a woman. On each of her shoulders rode the dark outline of a rat. "Wh-who are you?" he quavered. “Please don’t hurt me.”
"I've been called many names, and I ain’t gonna hurt ya." The voice reminded Hargus of rats' claws in straw. Standing this close to her made the hairs on his arms stand up.
The figure continued, "I’va worn many shapes, some pleasing and some not. You think I'm the devil," she accused.
Hargus shivered at the idea that his thoughts were open to her.
"I was old afore your devil was ever heard of," she scoffed.
"Who are you?" Hargus swallowed hard.
She paused, as though dreaming of scenes of times long past. And then she said, "The Indians called me chee-sss-dee-chee a-gay-yuh, rat woman. But times a-changed. I wasn't worshipped no more."
She laughed unpleasantly, then said, "Next best thing to worship is fear. I lived among the whites long enough for them to learn fear."
She shifted her shawl, uncovering eyes that glowed with the color of coals burned down to embers. "Sometimes I would spread trepidation by my lonesome. Sometimes I would find me someone to help me. Sometimes that someone would know my purpose and sometimes not."
She took a step closer. "After enough fear grew, I'd rest until folks forgot again. Then I'd come back out and start the whole shebang over."
Hargus rose, hands holding the chair. Hadn't grandpa Ottis used a chair to brain a Rebel soldier who had tried to take his cow?
"The Ratwitch is dead and buried," Hargus said, trying to buy himself time. "Grave's up atop Grindstone Mountain."
"Takes more than rope to kill chee-sss-dee-chee a-gay-yuh. And as for buried, you're right sure there's anything but an empty shroud?" She came yet another step closer to him. "Folks need to remember what they's forgot."
Hargus shook his head. Was he losing his mind?
The woman snorted with derision, reading his thoughts again. "You ain't crazy. Leastwise no crazier than anybody else who would penetrate this here cave."
Suddenly her hand rattlesnaked out. Fingers, cold, rough, and hard, struck Hargus' brow. A spot in the darkness glowed. Inside that spot, Hargus saw a silent image of Ealy, standing and waiting outside Ratwitch Cave.
"He's having second thoughts about staying on until you come out," she said. "Doesn't know he's about to spread the word that I'm back."
In the image the Ratwitch had allowed Hargus to see, rats, eyes glowing, crept from the cave's mouth. In silence, Hargus watched Ealy move his mouth, as though he shouted at them to keep back. Ealy waved his lantern to frighten the rats. It did no good. Ealy hung his lantern on a bush and waved his hands at the rats, but then the rats charged. Ealy turned and ran. The image faded.
"Now you're sure I'm real," she said, and her voice sounded colder. "As sure as you're the grandson of the one what noosed Bessie Peters."
Grandpa Ottis had done that? It was more than the old man had ever admitted. Despite his efforts to put up a brave show, Hargus' knees trembled. "Wh-what you going to do to me?"
She shrugged. "I could change your whole way of seeing, so you would do something you never would have otherwise. Could change the way you think so what you're seeing fits together better."
Hargus shivered. "You could, but what are you going to?"
"What do you think?" The witch's nails, hard like rat claws, brushed Hargus' cheek. The rats leaped from her shoulders. Chirping a birdlike song, they weaved about Hargus' ankles, the way cats begging to be fed might do.
Images of Lona May floated through Hargus' head. He could see her bent over the well to draw water, churning butter from the milk she had taken from the old cow that his Ma had given them as a wedding present, sewing a quilt that the two of them would sleep under. Her saw her face, radiant in the morning sun as he woke beside her.
Lona May was worth fighting for. Hargus picked up the chair and swung it.
The chair broke against the witch's head. The dim light vanished. Hargus turned and ran.
But this time was even worse than before. He ran into stone walls, smashed his head against stalactites, tripped over rocks. Every time, sustained by the thought that Lona May awaited him, Hargus pulled himself up. After what seemed like an eternity, a pale wash of moonlight appeared before him. Hargus had found his way back to the mouth of Ratwitch Cave.
Hargus scrambled out onto the road. Ealy's lantern hung in a hawthorn tree. Hargus grimaced. A part of him had still hoped that maybe he had imagined the whole night. He had hoped that maybe Boog was still alive, that the witch was only a nightmare. The lantern, hanging on a bush just where the witch's vision had shown him, said that this awful night had been real.
He turned and glanced back into the cave. He saw no rats, no witch. Had he really brained her with the chair? He hoped so, but her being dead seemed too much to hope for. Hargus glanced up at the moon. He had time to reach Lona May before the moon set. Hargus turned and ran for home.
Eventually, the darkened outline of his cabin, windows lit by the kerosene lamp within, came into Hargus' view. An air of unreality hung about the cabin, making this moment feel like a dream. Hargus did not care. He was home. He staggered to the cabin, pushed open the door, and stumbled in, greeted by the smell of herbs drying in the rafters and the lamp's familiar, pungent kerosene aroma.
Lona May stood there on the far side of the kitchen table, between the only two chairs they owned, a heavy Brewster chair and a lighter wheel-back chair.
Hargus froze. He was battered, bruised, and bleeding. Lona May should have been aghast at his appearance. Instead, she seemed calm, as though she had known about his condition before he opened the door. Something was wrong.
"Folks need to remember what they forgot," she said, eyes locked on him. Something about her voice (why hadn't he ever realized it before?) made him think of claws rustling through straw. It was as if he now heard her speak with different ears.
Hargus' hands clenched into fists. The witch's words: Sometimes I would find me someone to help me. Sometimes that someone would know my purpose and sometimes not.…. echoed in his mind.
"It's only justice that the grandson of the one what put the noose around Bessie Peters helps them remember," a voice that didn't sound like Lona May added, although her lips did not move.
Lona May couldn't be the Ratwitch. She couldn't. She couldn't have known what would happen to him after he left home that day. It just wasn't possible.
"What do you mean by helps them remember?" The words came unbidden to Hargus' tongue. It felt as though something outside himself made him speak. Or maybe some part of him really wondered if Lona May might, like the thought kept coming back to him said, be the Ratwitch returned.
"What do you think?" Lona May mirrored the last words the Ratwitch had said to him. Something moved in the shadows beside the empty fireplace. Hargus squinted. A rat looked up at him and chirped a bird-like song of recognition.
Hargus made up his mind. Maybe something outside himself moved him and maybe it didn't. Still, his purpose was fixed.
Hargus reached for the Brewster chair. It was much heavier than the cave's ladder-back chair. It would make a better weapon.
Lawrence Barker
Lawrence Barker grew up in the Appalachia so often featured in his fiction. Lawrence is the winner of the 2007 James Award for this short story Cyrus Fell's Blues, a tale of a space alien vampire in 1950s Georgia. His latest novel, Blood Red Sphere, is a tale of a Mars that should have been, with political intrigue, lost artifacts, and enigmatic Martians. Blood Red Sphere is available from Swimming Kangaroo Publications.
See Blood Red Sphere at:
http://www.swimmingkangaroo.com/bloodredsphere.html
