Written by Bill Darby

He had seen her twice before she called out to him. He walked up to her porch and took a seat by this lively country lass.

“What’s your name?” she asked as he stretched out his legs.

“Frank, Frank Gorin. I moved here just a few weeks ago.”

“I’m Carol Haislip. I seen you a walking down through the road there.”

Frank almost laughed at her slurred words and grammar. She was charming to look at… to be with. He took her to be in her twenties; but she didn’t seem to be very mature. Oddly, he liked that about her.

“I need to take walks,” he said. “It helps me get the layout of the town. I moved from a bigger city. Had to change jobs, ways, a life.”

He was beginning to like this town. His new job was tolerable. The slower pace was getting hold. Somewhere in the distance he heard some kids playing – a sound that he had almost forgotten. He wondered if this Alabama town was typical of other southern communites.

“You like walkin’?”

“Sure. There’s not much else to do here.”

“You like runnin’?” he eyes brightened as she sat up a bit.

“Pretty much,” he said almost laughing again. “I was on the track team in high school. Boy, that seems like such a long time ago.”

“I love to run,” she said sitting back. “I run most every day. I was always the fastest one in my school. I bet you couldn’t keep up with me.”

Again, he was almost startled. She sounded like an eight year old.

“Oh, I imagine I could,” he argued nudging her slightly.

“I’ll take you around the block, right now.”

“Here? Wouldn’t we look kind of silly?”

She giggled. “Folks around here just expect to see me runnin’. It won’t matter a bit. They know me.

“Maybe some other time,” he said.

He felt her relax next to him. He felt strange; but he was enjoying this. The dusk had begun to creep in; and there was a slight August wind whispering through the street.

“There’s this lake, Peterson’s lake that’s a beautiful place. We could go there,” she said softly.

“That sounds fine,” he agreed. “What do you say, you show me the lake this weekend.”

“OK,” she said.

So he had a date. When he knocked on her door that fine Saturday morning, she appeared in a long skirt, obviously worn a long time. It was sad how these people lived, he thought. But, also, there was an alluring charm about it as well. He drove her to a beautiful lake beside several green hills.

After they ate, they were sitting in the shade of a big oak. The talk was scattered and unimportant. This was a new experience for him.

“Hey,” she said suddenly, “Why don’t we race?”

“We just ate,” he protested.

“So,” She stood up, looking around like an excited school girl. “I race ya to that tree over there.”

He laughed, starting to get up. “What is it about you and racing?”

She was off. He took off after her; but to his amazement, was unable to gain on her. Her legs ran with precision as she flung the long dress wildly. He turned on the speed, determined to catch her; but he gave out. A stab of pain in his side reminded him that he hadn’t run for a long time. She stopped and looked back.

“What’s the matter?” she called out.

“Give me a second,” he said bending forward.

She strode back up to him with a smirk on her face. “I got you on that one.”

“It’s been a long time,” he heaved. “Longer than I thought.”

“Oh, that’s OK,” she said. “Let’s go for a walk. There’s some really neat trails up on those hills.”

He straightened up. Those hills looked tall; and he wasn’t in a hurry to climb them. Still, he couldn’t let her show him up so. Without a word, she took his hand, and off they went at a lively pace.

They arrived at a small stream that fed into the lake. They stepped across, seeing a winding trail that led upwards into green thicket. She started up with agile steps. He followed more cautiously.

“You must come out . . here a lot,” he said.

“All the time,” she said. “I like it here.”

The climbing became more difficult; and again, he found himself being outpaced by this sturdy country girl. “Try to keep up,” she said.

A few minutes later, he was alone on the trail, his progress reduced to to a slow plodding. She was nowhere in sight. He looked upward trying to see.

“Come on,” she called out some distance away. He continued on; but his side was hurting him again. After a few more minutes, he had reached the hilltop. He struggled over to a fallen log and sat down, getting back his breath.

“What’s the matter?” came a voice beside him. She was there. He jumped over to the right.

“I didn’t see you,” he heaved. “Where did you come from?”

“Right here. Come on, there’s a neat little cave down at the bottom of this hill.”

“Can’t we rest a minute. That climb almost killed me.”

“Ohhh, ” she mocked. She sat down. “What’s wrong old man. You can’t keep up with me.”

“Maybe you’re right,” he said. “like I said, ‘s been a long time. . ”

He was cut off in mid sentence. He saw something. Slowly he got up and walked over to a large maple. The rounded object looked, at a glance, so much like . . He moved it with his foot. It was an old yellowed skull – a human skull.

“Look at this,” he almost said to himself. Carol came up beside him.

“Carol. Somebody died up here.”

“These hills are haunted with ‘em,” she said with her eyes sparkling. “At night you can hear them whispering and crying to each other. Awful sound.”

A chill went down his spine. “But, we need to report this,” he said looking for something to say.

“You can tell old Rodgers about it,” she said. “He couldn’t even climb these hills if he had to.”

“Well, I’ll look him up and let him know about it. This was probably a missing person or something. I wonder how he could have died.”

“He couldn’t keep up,” she said perkily.

“What do you mean by that?”

“Come on,” she said tugging at his arm. He followed her. She was headed down the hill – in the other direction.

“Oh, not that way,” he said. She was running ahead. “Wait.”

He regretted this date. He had gotten a lot more than he had bargained for. He went down a slope which suddenly turned steep. The trail was hard to see. He was holding limbs and small trees to keep his balance. He swore, falling a few times.

After several more minutes of this, he found himself at another stream bigger than the one before. He would have to wade through it to get to the other side. But there was no sign of a trail now.

“I see you,” came a distant voice.

He looked for her without success. Noticing the sun, he saw it lowering through the western trees. How could that be? How long had he been here with this wild lass?

“Carol,” he called out.

“Up here.”

Groaning, he stepped through the water and began to climb the hill. This one was not as steep; but he was fatigued, and every step hurt. He didn’t want to think about the trip back. He would take a few steps, then rest against a tree. He temples were throbbing.

At last, he reached the top. He was in a canopy of green, sweat pouring off of him. He heard some footsteps beside him and looked.

“Don’t tell me you’re sittin’ again,” she said.

“Carol. It’s getting late. We’ve got a few miles of hills to cover before we get back to the lake.”

“All right,” she conceded. “But I can get back there in no time at all.”

“Yes,” he agreed, but I can’t.

“Old man,” she muttered.

His humor had quite disappeared. He only wanted to get back home and take a cool shower. He stood, because his left leg was getting cramped. That is when he saw the rib cage.

Walking over to it, he knelt down. It had to be human. And here was an arm bone, and some other smaller pieces.

“Holy cow! Here’s where somebody else died. What is this place? Do people just come up here and drop dead?”

“Listen,” she giggled. “They’ll start telling you secrets if you listen real close.”

Something was working in his mind – something really dark and sinister. There was some very uncomfortable questions forming. He had heard really strange tales about lynchings and murders in the country. But all of that was over now, right? That sort of thing did not happen any more.

“We’d better go,” he said.

“OK lazy bones, I’m off.”

“No ! Carol, wait.”

But she had run down the hill. Incredibly she wove through the trees without so much as a bump. He took off as well, making about fifty feet before he fell. His side was killing him now. He could not run.

It seemed that dusk was coming. He knew the way back, he thought. Sure. Down this hill to the stream. And wouldn’t the stream lead right to the lake? But he couldn’t leave her on the hill. He had to find her again. In time, he made it to the stream. He looked around.

“Up here slow bones,” he heard her say from above. Another hill.

He climbed. He rested. The sun was now low and red, peeking at him through the forest tangle. His side hurt. His legs were numb. Years of neglect were showing. But finally, he had topped the first hill. It would have been beautiful to view if he wasn’t in such pain. Again, she was beside him as if she had appeared.

“Come on,” she said.

“I can’t. In a minute. Carol, I found another body on that other hill. We’re going to have to report this. People don’t just come up here to die. Something’s wrong here.”

“You couldn’t keep up with me,” she said slightly pouting.

“All right!” he shot back. “I couldn’t keep up with you. What is the big thing about keeping up?!!”

“Nobody can,” she said. “You’re just like all the rest.”

He tried to stand back up; but he collapsed again. “What do you mean ‘all the rest ‘ What are you talking about?”

“I’m going,” she said disappointedly.

“Wait,” he moaned with closed eyes. “I don’t know the way back. There’s . . . there’s no trail. Just give me a minute. Ohh.”

But she disappeared down the hill, out of sight, still gaily bouncing. She paused a moment to look back at him. He saw a look of teasing glee in her eyes as she turned away to resume her escape. Again he tried to rise; but he could not. His legs seemed to be paralyzed.

He was alone. The sun was setting. He was terribly thirsty; and he knew, somehow, that he would be spending the night there. And slowly, his mind echoed her last words to him – ‘You’re just like all the rest’. Slowly, painfully, he now realized just what she meant.

- THE END -

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Written by Craig Dominey and Lanny Gilbert

Bill Morgan and Tom Edwards sat nursing their umpteenth beers in Fat Daddy’s Saloon, a loud, smoke-filled, neon-lit honky tonk in the foothills of the North Georgia mountains. Fat Daddy’s had always been their bar of choice on the weekends, but ever since Bill and Tom lost their jobs at the bottling plant, they were there almost every night, drinking away the last dollars they had.

If you hung out in Fat Daddy’s long enough, the same things would happen every night like clockwork. The phone behind the bar would ring precisely at seven, as Mrs. Floyd would call making sure her husband hadn’t snuck over there after work. At eight-thirty, Little Jake would lose yet another pool game to Mike “The Mouth” Kilbey, and he’d hear about it the rest of the night. At nine-thirty, someone would play “Whisky River” on the beat-up old jukebox. And at ten o’clock, sitting alone at the end of the bar, Chief “B.S.” would tell his tired old tale of the gold in Sawnee Mountain to anyone who would listen.

Now, some of you young folks may not know what “B.S.” stands for, but you older folks surely do. Bill gave the Chief that name because he got tired of hearing the same old stories coming out of his mouth. The Chief was an old Cherokee with long grey hair, wrinkled, leathery skin, piercing eyes, and a beaten up hat with some sort of turkey feather sticking out of the brim. His ancestors had lived and hunted in the North Georgia mountains long before the white man arrived. And he knew those mountains so well that he could hike through them blindfolded if he had to.

That didn’t matter much to the good ol’ boys at Fat Daddy’s, who considered the Chief a weird outsider. But maybe it was their dire employment situation that led Bill and Tom to suddenly pay attention to the Chief as he told his story to another unsuspecting drunk. He always started his tale by talking about the Trail of Tears, and how Chief Sawnee, one of the most respected Cherokee leaders in Georgia, refused to go. Instead, Chief Sawnee hid in the North Georgia mountains with his loyal braves, and when he died he was buried in the mountain which now bears his name. According to the story, he was also buried with a large stash of gold coins, which his remaining braves buried with him.

This was the part of the story where everyone in the bar would laugh at the old man and tell him he was nuts. “It’s true,” the Chief insisted, “The gold is buried with Chief Sawneee deep in Sawnee Mountain. But it’s protected by his spirit. I can tell you how to get there, but I’d never go in myself. I don’t need gold bad enough to have a ghost hounding me for the rest of my life.”

Well, maybe the Chief didn’t want the gold that badly, but Bill Morgan certainly did. He moved two barstools down toward the old man and said, “Tell you what, Chief. You draw me a map, and I’ll go up and get that gold. I’ll even give you a cut of it.”

Tom looked at his friend in disbelief. “I ain’t goin’ bushwackin’ up there on some wild goose chase!” he said.

Bill put his arm mockingly around the Chief and grinned a phony grin. “It ain’t no wild goose chase, is it, Chief? That gold’s up there, and we’re gonna get it!”

The Chief took a long, contemplative swig of beer, then stared at Bill with his black, piercing eyes. “You two church going men?” he asked.

“What difference does that make?” asked Bill with a chuckle.

“Like I said, the gold is protected by Chief Sawnee’s spirit,” the old Cherokee answered. “If you go in there, you gotta go in with a pure heart. So a church going man will stand a better chance with the spirit than a sinful one.”

Bill rolled his eyes, grabbed one of the bar napkins and said, “Yeah, whatever. Draw us a map on this napkin and we’ll go see if your story’s true or not.” Then winking at his friend Tom he whispered, “If Chief B.S. is right, we’re gonna be rich this time tomorrow. Besides, what do we got to lose?”

After the Chief had drawn the map, Tom followed Bill as he staggered out of the bar. Bill tossed his keys to Tom and said, “You drive. I’ll show you where to go.”

“You can’t be serious,” answered Tom. “C’mon, you’re drunk. There ain’t no gold up there. Besides, it’s dark out.”

But Bill wouldn’t be swayed. “C’mon, I need your help. We’ll just take a quick look, I promise.”

Now Tom knew he had done plenty of stupid things himself after one too many beers. And his friend Bill had always been there to bail him out off trouble. So with a heavy sigh, Tom grabbed a couple of flashlights from the back of his truck and said, “Alright, which way do we go?”

For hours it seemed, Tom drove Bill’s truck up the curvy, two-lane road that led up into the highest elevations in North Georgia. The lights from town disappeared, and soon they were enveloped in darkness, alone on the road, with only the intensely bright stars above keeping them company. In fact, Tom had never seen stars so beautiful and bright. Or perhaps he was always too busy to notice them. Maybe those Cherokees back then didn’t have it so bad after all, he thought to himself.

“There it is!” Bill suddenly screamed.

Tom slammed on the brakes and looked where Bill was pointing. On the side of the road stood a wooden, unoccupied lean-to with a big black pot inside. A crudely painted sign nailed to a tree above it read BOILED P-NUTS $1.00. Tom rolled his eyes – these tourist traps were a dime a dozen up in the hills, especially in the fall when the leaf watchers drove up in their shiny SUVs from Atlanta. Tom looked at the map scrawled on Bill’s napkin. Indeed, the Chief had drawn the peanut stand with a long dotted line behind it, indicating a dirt road. Tom turned onto the dirt road behind the peanut stand and plunged deep into the dark forest.

For several miles, the dirt road was in surprisingly good shape. But then it suddenly worsened, with Tom’s truck rocking violently in the deep ruts. Thick clouds of dust blanketed Toms’ headlights, obscuring what little of the road he could see. It was obvious that no one had been down this old hunting road in years. Tom was just about to turn around when the road suddenly dead-ended into a thick, impenetrable wall of old-growth trees.

Bill looked at the map clutched in his sweaty hands, grinned and said, “We’re here!”

Where’s “here,” Tom thought to himself as they exited the truck. The woods surrounding them were pitch black and silent, save the loud crickets that seemed to be everywhere. Tom followed Bill as he plunged into the old growth forest, the trees wider and taller than anything he had seen before. The ground rose up steeply before them, and all the beer Tom had consumed that night quickly perspired from his body. He was now totally sober, wondering what in the world they were doing out there.

Panting and exhausted, Tom rested against a tree. After a few minutes passed, he noticed that Bill’s flashlight beam had disappeared. He called out Bill’s name, but only the crickets answered him. “Bill?” he called out again, but there was still no answer. Now worried, Tom cried out as loud as he could, “Bill!!” Bill’s faint voice drifted back from somewhere in the darkness. “Hey, man! I’m over here! Look over…” “YAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA!!!!!!!!! ”

Tom ran frantically in the direction of Bill’s screams, his flashlight beam bouncing off the ominous trees. He screamed his friend’s name over and over, but only the mocking crickets called back. Then his flashlight beam cut across a small cloud of dust floating in the distance. He ran in that direction, only to suddenly freeze in his tracks, his eyes widening. A few inches from his feet was a yawning black hole, leading straight down into black, uncharted darkness.

“Tom, you up there?” screamed Bill hoarsely from somewhere in the dark depths.

Tom pointed his flashlight into the hole, revealing a rocky pit nearly fifty feet deep. Bill looked up at him from the bottom, a bleeding gash on his face, but he was standing. He then gave Tom and boyish grin and said, “Look here what I found.”

Bill turned on his light, and Tom could see that he was standing in some sort of cavern entrance, with numerous holes in the walls leading God-knows-where. In the dancing beam, he could also see eerie paintings on the walls – pictures of the universe, of animals, of warrior figures and strange tribal masks. On the ground beside Bill’s feet, Tom swore he saw a human skull buried below the nose in red clay.

But it was what he saw next that made his jaw drop. Sparkling in Bill’s flashlight beam was a dirty burlap sac, filled with gold coins! Bill looked up at Tom and grinned. “What do ya’ know,” he said, “the Injun was right!”

They wasted no time hauling the bag of gold out of the pit and running back through the woods. Bill had sprained his ankle slightly in the fall, but that didn’t stop him from making a beeline toward the truck. And as they roared back to town, they whooped and hollered out the open windows, listing all the things that gold was going to buy them – sports cars, motorcycles, beach houses, beautiful ladies. But they agreed that the first thing they would do is march right back to that bottling plant and tell their old boss to…well, you can imagine the rest.

Several days passed after their discovery, and Tom became concerned that he hadn’t heard anything from Bill since then. Tom’s phone calls to Bill’s home went unanswered, and nobody at Fat Daddy’s had seen him, which was very unusual. Had Bill left town with his share of the gold?

So one day, Tom drove over to Bill’s place to check up on him. Bill lived in an old trailer home on some barren and overgrown family farmland several miles out of town. He saw Bill’s truck in the driveway, went up to the door and knocked, but there was no answer. He then tried the doorknob, and was surprised when the door suddenly creaked open. Tom’s stomach turned as he was greeted by an awful smell, worse than any barn or latrine he’d ever run across. Covering his nose and mouth, he walked cautiously into the trailer. He noticed a light burning in Bill’s bedroom. He walked over to the door and peaked inside.

What he saw next froze his blood. There was Bill lying on his soiled bed, horrifyingly thin, his eyes bulging out of his pale, skeletal face. Tom could see Bill’s exposed rib cage underneath his filthy shirt, heaving up and down with each pained breath.

“What happened to you?” Tom blurted out. But Bill didn’t answer. “Can you hear me?” Tom asked. Again, Bill didn’t answer, but instead rolled his eyes, as if directing Tom toward his bedside. Tom moved toward him and leaned close to Bill’s face. And in a painful, hoarse whisper that took every ounce of his strength, Bill said:

“He…won’t…let…me…get…up.”

Tom grabbed Bill’s arm, but it wouldn’t move, as if it were super-glued to the bed. He tried his other arm and his legs, but still he wouldn’t budge. Tom knew that Bill was too frail to resist him. Something else was holding Bill on the bed – something powerful and invisible.

Tom lunged for the phone to call for help, but it was dead. Frantic, he ran into the kitchen, heated up a bowl of canned soup, then brought it to Bill’s bedside with a glass of water. But Bill spit up everything Tom tried to put in his mouth, his eyes deliriously rolling back in his head. As Tom watched his friend suffer, his mind suddenly crossed that line between the real and the surreal. That moment when you finally realize you don’t really know everything about how this world operates, and anything is possible. So without thinking, Tom grabbed Bill’s share of Chief Sawnee’s gold, still sitting in the burlap sack in the closet. He then rushed home, grabbed his share, and sped back up into the hills. Past the “Boiled P-Nut” stand, down the old hunting road, through the creepy, old growth forest, and up to the edge of the deep pit. And with tears in his eyes, he called out to the skeletal remains below: “I’m givin’ you your gold back, Chief Sawnee! I don’t need it, and I’m sorry I took it! I’ll never bother you again. Just please let my friend go – please! He’s my only friend in the world! And that’s the only thing that matters to me! I swear!”

And with those words, he tossed the bags of gold coins back into the pit. Then using his bare hands, he shoveled dirt, rocks, branches, anything he could find over the hole, so no one else would ever find it. He then bolted back to his truck and sped back towards town.

Tom knew he had to find a phone fast, and the closest one was at Fat Daddy’s a few miles away. The sun was quickly setting over the hills, and he knew that Bill didn’t have much more time. Tom knew he’d get strange looks wandering into the bar with his filthy clothes and cut, bleeding hands, but he would find a way to explain it later.

When Tom finally roared into the Fat Daddy’s parking lot around ten o’ clock, he was surprised to find it empty. The lot was usually full on a Saturday night – maybe they closed early, Tom thought fearfully. Tom was relieved to find the door unlocked. He ran inside and found it dark and empty. He ran behind the bar, grabbed the phone, and dialed Bill’s sister in a neighboring town. She picked up her cell phone after one ring. “Bill’s been rushed to the hospital,” she said in a panicked voice. “He called me a few hours ago and said he couldn’t get out of bed. The doctor says he’s lucky to be alive. Now I’m trying to get Mom on the phone. He looked awful, Tom. What happened to him? Do you know?”

Tom couldn’t answer, but the news of Bill’s condition sent waves of relief through him. He assured her that he would head straight to the hospital, then hung up the phone.

“You’ve been up to Chief Sawnee’s cave, haven’t you?” said a sudden voice from the darkness.

Tom nearly leapt out of his skin. Sitting at the bar was old “Chief B.S.,” nursing a beer.

“What do you know about it?” was all Tom could say.

The Chief took a long, contemplative swig of beer, stared at Tom with his piercing eyes, then said in a voice that seemed deeper and older than the one Tom had heard so often: “That gold isn’t going to do me no good. You’re welcome to it. But I told you to accept it with a good heart. That’s all I ask. Now use it that way. Or I’ll come back to see you again.”

With that, the Chief polished off his beer and strolled leisurely out the door. Tom looked at the Chief’s bar stool. Sitting there was the dirty burlap sack of gold coins that Tom had thrown into the pit hours earlier. Tom could hardly believe his eyes. He then charged out the door to find the Chief. But only the stiff evening breeze rolling off the North Georgia mountains greeted him. The Chief had vanished into the night.

And in the years that followed, as Tom and Bill both married and finally settled down, Chief B.S. – or Chief Sawnee, as they called him to anyone who would listen to their crazy stories – was never seen in those parts again.

- THE END -

Story Credits | Story Background

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Written by Veronica Byrd

The trials and tribulations of living in today’s modern society can tend to wear on your nerves. One can grow very weary of dealing with bills, taxes, insurance, traffic, and pollution; not to mention anything about keeping food in the refrigerator. Often times the whole thing can make you wanna holler, throw up both your hands!

And that’s exactly what old Bill Smith did. He gave up all the luxuries (and, if you ask me, some of the necessities) of modern life. He loaded up just the barest of essentials and his three hunting dogs into his truck and moved way up into the north Georgia mountains.

Smitty (that’s what all of us folks in town called him) figured it wouldn’t be that much of an adjustment – after all, he did love hunting, fishing and the “Great Outdoors.” And he did have the companionship of his three best friends, his dogs Iknow, Youknow, and Comptiko Callico. What more could a man ask for?

Smitty built himself a nice little cabin way back in the woods. It wasn’t very big, but it was just enough for him. The cabin only had two rooms, one he used for a bedroom, and the other for every other room (living room, dining room, den and kitchen). He had built himself a nice big fireplace where he could cook his food and warm his body on chilly nights. He planted himself a nice little vegetable garden on the side of the house and would hunt and fish for most of his food.  But at least once a month, he would drive the twenty-five miles down the mountain to the little store to buy those things that he couldn’t provide for himself.

During the warm months, Smitty had no problem catching as much small game as he needed. But the colder months proved to be a little more difficult to keep his stomach full. Well, it was on one of those cold wintry nights that Smitty went out to his storage shed to see what he could find for dinner. All he found was a small piece of fatback meat and a handful of rice. There was too much snow on the ground to travel the twenty-five miles to the store, so he had to make do with what he had. He ate the fatback and a little of the rice, but he gave most of the rice and the water where he had boiled the meat to his dogs. After all, they had to eat too!

He called out, “Iknow, Youknow, Comtiko Callico, come on doggies and get you some of this heyeah dinner!” And those dogs came running in as fast as they could and lapped up all of that rice mixture. Smitty was still a little hungry, but there wasn’t much he could do about that. So despite the protests of his grumbling stomach, Smitty stoked the fire in the fireplace to keep the cabin warm and he went to bed.

The sound of the wind blowing around (and in some places through) the tiny cabin had almost lulled Smitty to sleep, when he heard something. He opened his eyes and saw a shadow on the wall. He eased out of bed and tiptoed into the other room. There, he saw the oddest looking creature he had ever seen. It was short and stubby, with pointed ears and short fat feet with long claws, and it had a long bushy tail. There were no open doors or windows, so Smitty was confused as to how the funny looking thing had gotten in.

Smitty quietly picked up his ax, crept over to the odd critter, who was devouring an insect of some sort, raised his ax, and came down squarely on the creatures tail! Smitty turned to catch the varmint, but he was too quick. It hurriedly escaped — through the wall! So Smitty was left standing there with this long bushy tail and a blood-laden ax in his hand, and no sign of the funny looking creature.

Smitty was about to throw the old tail out the door, when his growling stomach reminded him of how hungry he still was. So he took that tail, cleaned it, cooked it with some of the herbs from his garden he had stored away, and ate it. It didn’t taste that bad –why, it kinda tasted like chicken! With his stomach finally full, Smitty got back into his warm cozy bed.

Smitty had just drifted off into a deep sleep when a strange sound awakened him. It sounded like something trying to scratch its way into the cabin — perhaps a raccoon. Smitty knew that if he stayed real quiet it would probably go away. So he stayed as quiet as he could, but then he heard a strange, otherworldy voice, which hissed, “Taily- Po, I want my Taily-Po!!” Smitty thought the wind was playing tricks on his ears, but he heard it again, “Taily-Po, Taily-Po, I want my Taily-Po.”

Smitty jumped out of bed, flung open the door and called out to his dogs, “Iknow, Youknow, Comtiko Callico, come on over heayah and see what’s making that noise!” The dogs came running, barking and sniffing around, but they didn’t find anything at all. So Smitty put the dogs back outside and went back to bed.

Sleep had just eased itself into Smitty’s body when he heard the voice again. This time, the scratching sounded like it was at the window. Whatever it was, it really, really wanted to get in! But the scratching seemed to be on two walls at one time. Smitty called out, “Hey, hey, hey, who’s that at my door? Get on away from heyeah!”

Then he heard the strange voice again, only this time a little louder: “Taily-Po, Taily-Po, I want my Taily-Po. Taily-Po,Taily-Po, I’m comin’ to get my Taily-Po!”

Old Smitty, who wasn’t one to frighten easily, was getting a little shaky — this was getting really weird. So he eased to the window and called, “Iknow, Youknow, Comtiko Callico, come on over heyeah and see what this is scratching at my house!” The three dogs bounded up to the porch and they sniffed around and barked, barked and sniffed, but they never found anything at all.

Smitty decided to stay up for the rest of the night to protect himself, his dogs and his little cabin. So he pulled a chair next to the fireplace, grabbed a blanket from his bed and settled in for the rest of the wind-chilled, wintry night. Sleep soon overtook him, and once again he dozed off.

It was almost dawn when Smitty woke with a start. The sound of scratching seemed to reverberate from every area of the cabin. Smitty searched frantically for his ax, his rifle, or something to defend himself with, but he was so frightened he couldn’t find anything. The scratching grew louder and louder and louder, and then the voice — “Taily-Po, where is my Taily-Po? Give me back my Taily-Po!!”

Smitty yelled back, “Leave me alone, I ain’t got your Taily-Po!” Then he called, “Iknow, Youknow, Comtiko Callico, come on in heyeah and protect your old master!” This time, the dogs didn’t come. So he called again, “Iknow, Youknow, Comtiko Callico, don’t you hear me calling you? Come here doggies!” He waited and waited, but still not one dog came running. Smitty had never been so scared in his life. He ran to his bed and jumped in. The scratching and the voice grew louder and louder and louder. Smitty yelled back as loud as he could, “I ain’t got no Taily-Po, so why don’t you leave me alone and go on about your business? I ain’t never hurt nobody or nothing, just leave me alone!”

The scratching seemed to be inside the house now and the voice was so loud it was deafening: “Taily-Po, you took my Taily-Po, and now I’m back to get it, give it to me NOW!!” Smitty pulled the cover up over his head and stayed as quiet as he could, but the scratching was now in his room! “Taily-Po, you better give me back my Taily-Po!”

Smitty then felt the thing scratching up the bottom of the bed and onto the cover. Smitty eased the cover down to see what was steadily approaching. Then he saw it — a short, stubby creature with pointed ears, fat feet with long claws and bloodshot red eyes that glowed in the dark — eyes that seemed to burn straight through Smitty! Before he could pull the cover over his head again, the thing pounced on his chest, looked straight down at him and said, “You got my Taily-Po, and you better give it back to me NOW!”

Smitty yelled, “I ate it! I ate your Taily-Po, it’s gone!” And that thing started to scratch and claw and tear away at poor old Smitty, trying to get that Taily-Po back. Smitty tried to fight back, but that thing was too strong and those claws were too sharp. Smitty’s screams echoed throughout the dark mountains, then stopped, leaving a chilling silence.

After a month or two without hearing from Smitty, the folks who owned the store at the base of the mountain went up to his cabin to make sure everything was alright. When they got there, they found his cabin torn to shreds, but no sign of Smitty or the dogs. They searched the woods and called for them, “Smitty, Iknow, Youknow, Comptiko Callico!” But they never found a thing.

As the search party was heading down the mountain, the wintry wind began to blow and a strange voice could be heard saying, “Taily-Po, Taily-Po. Now I’ve got my Taily-Po!”

-THE END -

Story Credits | Story Background

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Written by Jim McAmis

Back in the 1920s, folks in the South didn’t have big department stores or malls where they could buy the things they needed. At best, they had a general store near by, maybe a town with some larger stores, and, of course, there were always the mail order catalogs.

Another source of goods was the “rolling store.” It was usually a good sized truck loaded down with about everything you could imagine. They’d come rolling into town and set up where folks could come, look and buy. It wasn’t unusual for them to pull right up in somebody’s driveway and open up.

In Kentucky, there were lots of coal mining company towns. If a rolling store passed through there, the company got their cut. You couldn’t compete with the company store and not ante up something.

Earl had a rolling store that he drove through the deep, rural hills of eastern Kentucky. He didn’t make great money, and he missed his family now and again. But on the open road, he was generally happy and free.

One day, as it was getting on towards dark, Earl was out looking for a place to pull over and spend the night. You see, some rolling stores had a little compartment in the back of the truck that the driver would sleep in. Sort of a 1920′s version of an RV.

It was then that he saw something standing still in the road up ahead of him. He wasn’t sure what it was at first. Then it turned and looked at him, its eyes glowing in the headlights. It was a black dog – looked more wolf than dog – blacker than any dog Earl had ever seen. Earl eased to a stop, but the dog showed no sign of moving.

“Hey!” Earl hollered out the window. “Wanna get run over?”

The dog just looked at him. Earl blew his horn, but the dog never budged.

“Well I’ll be…” When Earl stepped out of the truck, the dog suddenly got up and ambled down the road. “Now where’re you going?” Earl called after him.

Earl got back in the truck and started it up. He couldn’t pass the dog, because the dog was walking down the middle of the road. Calling it a road was being benevolent, for it was more like a trail, with ruts and a big ditch on either side. And Earl sure didn’t want to run over this strange dog.

Up ahead, he saw a nice flat place by the crossroads. There was plenty of room for the truck, and a good stream was running right by the road. The dog went over and lay in the grass. Earl pulled over, got out, stretched a bit and gathered some wood for a fire. He cooked a little supper and even offered to share it with the dog. But the dog kept his distance.

Just as the moon came up, the dog stirred. He acted like he wanted Earl to come with him. For some reason, Earl felt compelled to go. He followed the dog down the moonlit road. Not too far away was a sharp right hand curve. Just as they got there the dog suddenly turned, looked at Earl and leaped into the hillside.

Just like that, the dog disappeared.

Dumbfounded, Earl just stood there and stared at the hillside for the longest time. Finally, he went on back to the camp, but he did not sleep well that night.

The next morning, Earl went on his way, pulling into the next coal mining company town. This whole area of eastern Kentucky was company town country. The mining company would come in and build houses for their workers. Every company town looked just like another – rows of cookie-cutter, clapboard houses, with the only distinguishing feature being the color. Some folks used store- bought paint to paint their houses in bright colors, while others used whitewash. Still others would mix a little color in the whitewash and use that, and some just left the house unpainted.

Salesmen never knew how good they’d do in company towns. A lot depended on the company, and how much of a cut they took. Earl did fairly well that day, even with the company cut.

It was getting dusky dark as Earl headed out of town back towards the crossroads. Then, lo and behold, in the road ahead he spotted the mystery dog again, just standing in the road. It would walk ahead a little ways and then turn to look at Earl, wanting him to follow. When the dog got to the same sharp curve in the road that Earl had visited before, it turned, looked at Earl, then leaped into the hillside, vanishing without a trace.

By this point, Earl was thoroughly shaken, but he drove on to the crossroads to spend the night. He determined that he’d hit the next town and then clear out of these parts. Life on the road could be strange enough without disappearing dogs.

The following morning, as he pulled into the next company town, he knew something was wrong. It seemed everybody in town was all dressed up – and it wasn’t even Sunday. They were gathered around the yards and porches of several of the houses.

At the first house, Earl found out there had been a cave-in at one of the coal mines. Shaft #3 had caved in, killing all of the miners inside except for one, who was still missing. The townspeople figured that the lone miner was most likely still buried under tons of coal and rock. Earl figured he wouldn’t be selling anything during the funeral, so he headed out of town, almost relieved to be getting away.

Slowly, he drove by house after house. Sad-faced, black frocked women sat on the porches clutching pictures of loved ones. Other women, relatives, and friends tried to comfort them. The yards were full of men, not saying much, just standing around uneasily, not really knowing what to do.

As Earl was about to turn out of town, he saw something that made the hair on the back of his neck stand straight up. On one of the porches stood a woman holding a picture of a big burly coal miner, hard hat and carbide lamp on his head, covered in coal dust. Only his eyes and toothy grin shone out of the blackness.

Striking though the miner was, it was the other image that had caused Earl to stop – a large, coal black dog, more wolf than dog. THE dog from the road – or at least its twin. Earl started to get out of the truck, but the somber, unfriendly looks from the men in the yard made him figure it was time to go.

As he drove out of town, he tried to think about where he would go next, but he could not shake that picture from his mind. Then, before he knew it, he came upon the dog again. The animal looked straight at Earl, turned and jumped into the hillside, vanishing without a trace.

It was then that Earl changed his mind. In a big cloud of dust, he turned around and headed back down the road toward the last town as fast as he dared. He had to go back and tell the townspeople what he had seen.

Earl pulled up in front of the house where he had seen the woman with the picture. All of the women were still on the front porch and the men, in their Sunday best, filled the front yard. From the porch, he could hear the women humming the old time hymn “Precious Memories,” keeping time by rocking in their rocking chairs and fluttering their funeral home fans. The men were in several clusters, most smoking their cigarettes or pipes. They shifted uneasily as they stood around, tugging at the unfamiliar tightness of a starched collar.

Earl jumped out of his truck and started up the walk to the house. A couple of grim-faced men stepped in front of him. “You best be getting on down the road, Peddler Man, this ain’t got nothing to do with you. Ain’t nobody buying today.”

Ignoring them, Earl leaned around and called out to the woman with the photograph he’d spotted earlier. “Ma’am, I’ve got to talk to you. It’s about the dog. The dog in that picture.”

“What about the dog?” growled the larger of the men.

“I’ve seen the dog.”

The woman on the porch stood up. “You’ve seen Shuck?”

“If that’s the dog’s name, yes, Ma’am”

The yard suddenly fell silent. All of the men within earshot turned and looked. The men blocking his way took a couple of steps back. The large man glared at Earl and said, “Peddler Man, if this is some kind of joke.”

The woman shushed the large man and turned back toward Earl. “What do you mean you saw the dog?” she asked. ”He’s lost in the mine with my husband, Jack. Shuck went down in the mine every day just like a regular miner. Jack said he worked harder than some down there. He always said Shuck was good luck. Now, speak your peace.”

Earl told them the entire story of the black dog he’d seen on the road. The woman clutched the picture ever closer and closed her eyes to hold back the tears.

“Mister,” said one of the men, “I don’t know what you saw, or why you’re here, but I think it’s time you were getting along. You ain’t helping.”

It was then that an ancient, wrinkled man, whose every pore seemed to be filled with coal dust, stepped out of the crowd and said, “You all hear what this feller just told? Don’t you realize where he’s talking about?”

“Wait a minute,” another man said, “that’s right there at the Devil’s Mouth.”

“What do you mean? What’s the Devil’s Mouth?” asked Earl.

The old man spoke. “The company called it Shaft #1. It was the richest coal vein and the biggest, deepest, blackest shaft anybody ever saw. Dug before any type of power drills or any other machinery. Dug by hand. Why, when you started down that shaft, seemed like it went on forever. Seemed like she wouldn’t bottom out this side of Perdition. So all the folks around here took to calling her the Devil’s Mouth. When the vein played out they dynamited her shut and built the road along there.”

“I wonder if it still connects to #3?” someone wondered aloud.

Suddenly, men from the surrounding houses began to fill the yard, hearing what was going on. The old man stepped up on the porch and addressed the crowd. “The burying’s just gonna have to wait. We’ve got work to do. Shuck’s showed the way and Jack may just be in there. Alive or dead, we’ve got to get him out.”

The crowd evaporated, only to reappear moments later in work clothes and carrying picks, shovels, drills, hardhats, and carbide lamps. Everybody piled into trucks and off they went.

When they reached the Devil’s Mouth, everybody piled out and started digging. They moved tons of earth in what seemed like minutes. On into the night they dug. Anxious women waited at the edge of the light. Younguns peeked out from behind their skirt tails. Miners worked in shifts, digging and shoring up the shaft they were making in the hillside – reopening the Devil’s Mouth.

Finally there came a shout: “We’ve broke through!” The crowd surged forward, looking and listening for any sign that they had found the lost miner.

“He’s alive!” The words flew like lightning through the crowd. “He’s alive! Oh thank heaven, he’s alive!”

They found Shuck too, just a little bit away. He was dead – crushed by a fallen timber. When Jack was carried out, he was exhausted and hungry but, aside from a broken leg, he was okay. Jack then told his story: “When the tremblin’ started, me and Shuck lit out. Ran as fast as we could. I was hopin’ the shafts still connected. And I was hopin’ I remembered how to get there. When the back end there fell in, Shuck got caught and my leg got broke. I crawled over to him, but he was gone. I been setting here for three days wonderin’ if I’d ever see the light of day again. Been awful dark since my carbide run out.”

“But, you know,” said Jack, “the strangest thing was that sometimes it felt like Shuck was right here by my side. Nuzzling up to me just like always. Keepin’ me company. He was a good dog. I’ll miss him.”

Jack didn’t know how good a dog he really was. For somehow, even in death, Shuck had come to his master’s rescue.

And that’s the story of the Black Dog.

- THE END -

Story Credits | Story Background

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Written by Craig Dominey

They say that death, like love, is careless in its choosing. Everyone will be visited by death eventually, from the most ruthless tyrant to the kindest soul on Earth. And that’s just what Sam Dylan was – a kindhearted and gentle young farmer who everyone agreed deserved nothing but the best in life.

Back in the olden days, Sam lived with his childhood sweetheart Marie on a hillside farm deep in the hollows of eastern Kentucky. Sam had loved no one but Marie since he was a boy, and when they finally got to marrying age, Sam immediately made her his bride. They could barely eke out a living on their rocky farmland, but they rarely complained. After all, the only thing they felt they really needed in life was each other.

But in those times, the coming of winter brought sickness and death to many folks deep in the hills. And the first winter after their marriage, Marie came down with a bad fever, which grew worse by the day. Sam watched with anguish as his longtime love slowly slipped away from him. And one sad morning, Marie never woke up from her sleep.

Sam’s neighbors buried Marie in a small, windswept cemetery high above the town. But Sam knew he could no longer live in that town without Marie. For it was filled with so many memories of their life together. So Sam sold his farm, stuffed the bare essentials into a tattered canvas bag, mounted his horse and rode far away from his home, never to return.

Sam rode over and through the high, treacherous mountains, his overwhelming grief driving him forward into strange lands he’d never seen. The dirt roads gave way to wild, untamed forests. Strange creatures chattered and shrieked from behind the dark trees. Gentle creeks gave way to raging, dangerous rivers. After a few weeks, Sam finally got tired of being alone, and wanted human companionship again.

One day, Sam fought his way through the thick brush and found himself standing on a ledge overlooking a beautiful valley. And nestled in that valley was a pretty mountain village, with its freshly painted houses, lush fields and gardens, and a clean, sparkling stream flowing through the center of town. A hand-painted sign beside the road read: “Town of Burning Creek. Welcome to All!”

Sam rode into the village and looked around. It had everything a mountain town in those times typically had: a church, a mercantile store, a restaurant and a small hotel. But Sam was surprised to find that Burning Creek was missing one key feature. So he rode up to one of the townspeople and asked out of curiosity: “Excuse me sir, can you tell me where the cemetery is?”

The man, who Sam noticed looked extremely tan, healthy and strong, let out a hearty laugh and answered, “There’s no cemetery here. Ain’t no need for one.”

“Why’s that?” Sam asked, surprised at his answer.

“‘Cause there ain’t no death here in Burning Creek, that’s why. We’re all too happy and healthy to die.”

The man then pointed at the stream. “You see that water there? It’s filled with special minerals that come outta old Indian caves.” He then pointed at the thick forest surrounding them. “You see them woods? They’re filled with wild game – the biggest and healthiest critters you’ve ever seen. No one goes hungry here, and no one gets sick. And no one dies.”

The jolly man then looked over Sam’s thin, malnourished frame and said, “Son, it looks like you could use a good meal. Why don’t you come down to the restaurant tonight for supper? They’ll be plenty for you to eat, I promise.”

Well needless to say, Sam had never heard such a crazy story in all his life. But his rumbling stomach convinced him to look over this minor quibble and accept the man’s offer.

Later that evening, Sam cleaned up and went down to the restaurant. Sure enough, it was just as the jolly man told him it would be. The tables were overflowing with fresh fruits and vegetables, cheeses and bread. And the sweet smell of glazed, cooked meat filled the air. Sam dug ravenously into a huge, steaming plate of cooked game, the juicy meat just falling off the bones and melting in his mouth. He had never tasted meat so delicious in his life. Sam ate so much that night he nearly passed out. So he decided to make Burning Creek his new home, at least for the time being.

The next day, he found a job as a farmhand on a large cattle farm at the edge of the forest. Each night after a hard days work, he’d go back to the restaurant and devour giant helpings of that steaming, delicious game. Then he’d stagger back to this employer’s farm, his belly hanging over his pants, and pass out in the barn loft.

And as time passed, Sam started to believe the story he was told – that there really was no death in Burning Creek. Everyone seemed healthy and fit. No one appeared to be old or sick. He thought maybe in his long travels, he had stumbled across Heaven itself.

But on some nights, a strange thing would happen that would awaken Sam from his deep slumber. He would hear strange sounds drifting from the dark woods surrounding the farm. At first, he only heard the sounds of the night crickets as they called out to one another. Sometimes he would hear the howl of a wolf, or the low hoot of a mountain owl. But then he would hear something else, something that sounded like – whispers. Numerous whispering voices drifting from the blackness, in a hushed conversation Sam could not understand. They would then drift away, and Sam would return to his slumber.

And so each day was just like the last. Sam worked hard on the farm, and then would head to the restaurant for another massive dinner. And as the weeks passed, Sam’s thin physique began to grow more and more plump. He simply couldn’t stop himself from eating that delicious food. But when he would return to the barn at night, he’d awaken to that same strange sound. Eerie, unintelligible whispers drifting from the darkness, growling louder as they surrounded him, then vanishing as quickly as they came. Sam figured something in that food was giving him crazy dreams, but it seemed a small price to pay.

Sam followed this same routine day after day until he turned into quite a chubby man. It took all his strength just to do the simple farm chores he had done so many times before. Rivers of sweat would pour down his shirt, and he constantly had to plop down under a shady tree and rest, his chest heaving with each pained breath.

One night, he was awoken again by whispering, but this time the voices weren’t coming from the woods. He looked out the window and saw a light on in the farmhouse kitchen. Through the curtain, he saw the shadows of three men sitting around the table. It was quite unusual for his boss to be up so late at night – and with company, no less. Curious, Sam crept out of the barn and over to the window, eavesdropping on the hushed conversation inside.

“That boy’s getting sicker every day,” he heard his boss say. “We wait much longer, he’ll be too sickly for us to eat.”

“He’s gotten plenty big by now,” said another. “You seen the size of him lately? We’ll get two, maybe three, good meals out of him.”

“Just lookin’ at him work them fields makes me hungry,” answered another.

Sam’s boss then replied, “Alright then, I’ll kill him tomorrow. But you boys gotta help me out this time. I ain’t stayin’ up all night cookin’ him like I did the last one.”

Sam’s stomach turned, his head spinning so hard he had to lean against the house. Now he knew why there wasn’t a graveyard in Burning Springs. He had been eating the bodies of the dead. And what’s worse, he was next!

Sam felt sickness building in his throat, but knew he had no choice but to run away into the night. He left his belongings behind and charged straight into the forest, staggering blindly in the darkness, the tree limbs scratching and clawing at his face. For what seemed like hours, he huffed and puffed through the woods until he could take no more. He collapsed under a tree, his heart pounding in his ears.

As the forest grew still around him, he began to hear the whispering again. The same voices he had heard each night in the barn. The whispers grew louder and louder, seemingly surrounding him. And as he listened close, he could finally make out what they were saying:

“Dig us a grave. Dig us a grave. Dig us a grave.”

It was then that the bright moon shone though the trees, and in that moonlight Sam saw a sight that chilled his blood. The woods were strewn with human bones, hundreds of them – skulls, rib cages, arms, legs, fingers and toes. Maybe they wayward travelers like Sam, picked clean of their flesh by the human vultures of Burning Creek. And their whispers grew even louder:

“Dig us a grave. Dig us a grave. Dig us a grave.”

Well, like I said, Sam was a kindhearted man. He was terrified, exhausted and sick to his stomach, but he also knew he had a job to do. So he found a large rock and dug a crude grave. For hours he worked, his hands cut and bleeding. He then gingerly lowered every bone he could find into that pit, and shoveled the dirt back on top.

Sure enough, as he kicked the last bit of dirt over that grave, the loud whispering suddenly stopped, and the night was quiet again. Sam then continued running into the woods and vanished into the night.

A few days later, Sam stumbled across a small mining town. He immediately found the sheriff and told him the hideous story. At first the sheriff thought Sam was crazy, but he had heard stories in the past of travelers who had ridden in the direction of Burning Creek, never to return. So he agreed to lead a posse over to Burning Creek to check things out, with Sam leading the way.

When the sheriff’s posse finally arrived in Burning Creek, they found the streets eerily quiet and empty. “Hello!” they called out, but no one answered. They then walked over to the restaurant and opened the door with a loud creak.

What awaited them inside was a ghastly sight. It was a dinner party that had suddenly been frozen in time. The tables were filled with smelly, rotting food, with flies and rodents feasting on the remains. Sitting frozen in the chairs were the dead citizens of Burning Creek, their faces twisted in agonizing pain, the skin on their skeletal corpses marked with hideous purple blotches. The sheriff turned to Sam and said, “Them people got poisoned. Real bad poison.” He then picked up a piece of rotten meat and said, “Maybe it was somethin’ they ate.”

That story was good enough for the sheriff. To stop the spread of disease, they wheeled away the bodies and buried them in a mass grave, giving Burning Springs its first real cemetery.

But Sam knew something else had happened. By giving the poor souls scattered throughout the woods a proper burial, he had freed their spirits from eternal torment. And before those spirits traveled to their final resting place, they got their revenge on the citizens of Burning Creek.

Sam eventually found another town to live in – one with a prominent cemetery on a hillside overlooking the town. A constant reminder for Sam that there really was no escape from death, and that life must be lived to the fullest each day.

- THE END -

Story Credits | Story Background

You can help keep the stories coming by making a donation to The Moonlit Road.com. Large or small, any amount helps!

Written by Craig Dominey

 The year was 1838. As the first rays of early morning light crept through the dark and misty mountain valley, Tsali gazed out of his tiny cave with a heavy heart. As a young boy, he spent days running though the thick woods and scampering up the steep, rocky hillsides that surrounded his Cherokee village in western North Carolina. The mountains were his place of escape — a place where he could dream, and be alone with his thoughts.

But now, as an ailing, 60-year-old man, Tsali was hiding in these hills for a very different reason. The white man had taken away the land that his ancestors had lived on for centuries. And they would not stop until even these majestic, sacred hills were theirs.

Tsali looked out and saw his fellow villagers, who were also hiding in the tiny crevices that dotted the wooded hillside. Many were shivering in the early morning chill. In their haste to leave, they had had no time to pack their belongings. Some managed to smile back at Tsali, their teeth chattering in the bone-chilling wind. Tsali was one of the elders of the village, and was highly respected amongst his people.

Tsali managed to smile back, but in his heart he knew that, as long as he stayed here, he was a danger to all of them. For of all the fugitive Cherokees, he was the most wanted by the white man.

Now, as the bright morning light slowly burned through the bluish mist, Tsali knew he was about to make the most important decision of his life.

Only two weeks ago, Tsali had stubbornly woken up at dawn and joined his two strong sons for their normal round of farm chores. Tsali and his family lived in a modest log cabin on their own farmstead, raising corn and other vegetables. Although Tsali could feel his old age creeping through his brittle bones, he stubbornly refused to rest — for to him, hard work was what made the man.

The Cherokees who lived in these North Carolina mountains in the 1800s did not wear headdresses or live in teepees. They dressed like the white man and lived in small villages, complete with stores, churches and schools. They had their own alphabet, and even published their own newspaper. Even though the white settlers had taken over most of their land through the years, the Cherokees wanted nothing more than to be accepted by the white man and to live in peace.

But to many white people, no matter what advances the Cherokees made, they would always be an inferior race of “savages.” Gold was discovered down in Georgia, bringing a flood of white prospectors into the area. They harassed the Cherokees, looted their homes and stole their livestock. Meanwhile, other white settlers stood by like vultures, waiting to pounce on the Cherokee land if they fled. Certainly, the Cherokees thought, the U.S. government will send troops to help us, for we have been promised that we can stay on this land.

But no help ever arrived.

So it was no surprise to Tsali when word came into his village one day that U.S. President Andrew Jackson had made a stunning announcement. He ordered the Cherokees to move from their North Carolina homeland to strange lands way out West. This was a ridiculous order to Tsali — they were farmers, not hunters. How could they uproot everything and move? Their ancestors had lived on this land for centuries, and as long as their spirits remained there, Tsali’s people could never leave. So Tsali and his people refused the order, choosing instead to fight back the white man’s way — through the courts.

Two years had passed since the order, and as Tsali worked on his farm that morning, he had almost forgotten that he and his people were living in contempt of the U.S. government. He limped down to the barn to milk the cows, the crisp morning air throbbing in his aching knees.

Just as he reached the door, an ear-splitting scream filled the air, followed by a loud crash. Tsali dropped his bucket and ran to the side of the barn. As he looked down on the village, he could see a small army of white soldiers, armed with bayonets, kicking down the doors of the houses. Men, women and children were yanked screaming out of their homes and taken away, not even given time to look back. As they left, white looters ransacked their homes, snatching everything of value they could find.

Tsali’s sons ran up behind him. “What’s going on?” said the eldest son, his eyes filling with horror. “What are they doing?”

Tsali pushed them back toward the house. “Go get your mother,” he yelled. “We’ve got to get out of here!”

Tsali’s wife had come down with a bad fever that spring, and could barely muster up the strength to get of bed. Tsali’s sons grabbed her and, with Tsali leading the way, ran away from their home forever, taking nothing with them.

As they ran, they could hear the soldiers yelling for them to stop. “Don’t look back,” yelled Tsali to his family. “Keep moving!”

As they reached the outskirts of the village, a cavalry of soldiers suddenly encircled them on horseback. Tsali’s eldest son tried to escape, but a soldier clubbed him in the head with the butt of his bayonet. Tsali frantically looked around him, his pale wife gasping for breath on his arm — they were helplessly surrounded.

Tsali’s family was marched away from the village at gun point, along with other villagers who had tried to escape. One thing the Cherokees had not given up was their native tongue, and whenever the white soldiers weren’t looking, Tsali whispered to his fellow villagers along the trail. He learned that many Cherokees had managed to escape into the hills. He also learned that the white soldiers had stockades set up to imprison the Cherokees before they were forced out West.

Tsali looked over at his poor, feverish wife, barely able to stand. She won’t be able to live in such a place, he thought. His blood boiled inside him — for the first time in his life, he was helpless, his manhood taken away by these white soldiers. He could do nothing to help his family.

In the distance, they could see the stockade — a makeshift wooden fort bellowing smoke and misery from its depths. At the sight of it, Tsali’s wife suddenly froze, her eyes filled with fear. “Keep moving!” snarled the soldier behind her. In her sickness, she paid no attention to him. Impatient, the soldier jabbed her in the back with his bayonet. She tumbled to the ground.

Without thinking, Tsali leapt at the solider. They struggled for the gun, Tsali’s rage filling him with youthful strength. The gun suddenly exploded, and the soldier fell limp, a bloody hole shot through his chest.

The second soldier was in a state of shock, unsure what to do. In the distance, Tsali could see the other soldiers looking back at them, screaming for reinforcements. Tsali snatched the rifle from the soldier and shot him from his horse.

Now scores of soldiers were running toward them, guns drawn. Tsali frantically looked around him, unsure where to go. Then he looked up into the dark hills — the same hills he had lost himself in as a boy. He knew every inch of those hills, and if his family was going to be captured, they weren’t going to surrender without a fight.

Tsali lifted his wife onto his shoulder and turned toward the hills. “Run!” he screamed to his family.

Through the deep woods they ran — up and over the rocky hillsides, through treacherous mountain rivers, finally stopping in a remote valley farther away than any white soldier had ever traveled. A number of caves riddled the valley, and as Tsali expected, other fugitive Cherokees had also come here to hide. Tsali warmly greeted his friends and neighbors before finding his own crevice, hiding his family inside, and pondering what to do next.

For days they waited, but no white solider appeared. But Tsali figured it was only a matter of time. For he had just killed two white soldiers, and there was no way they were going to let him get away with it.

Then, almost a week after the invasion, some Cherokee scouts passed word up the valley that a white man was approaching the caves. The odd thing was, he was walking through the valley alone, with no weapons that they could see. Perhaps he was a white settler lost in the woods, they reasoned. No one made a motion to kill him, for the last thing they needed was more white blood on their hands.

Tsali peered out of his crevice as the white man slowly walked out of the woods. He was dressed like a mountain man in dirty, well-worn clothes. It was then that Tsali recognized him — he was William Thomas, a white trader who had done a lot of business with Tsali’s village. William knew these woods almost as good as Tsali, and must have known exactly where the fugitive Cherokees had gone to hide. Tsali and William weren’t friends, but Tsali respected him enough to know that he was a man of honor, and had come alone.

Tsali crept out of the cave and walked slowly down the hillside toward him. William shook his hand, then explained what business had brought him up there:

“General Scott is furious about what you’ve done, Tsali. He says he’s going to bring his men up here to hunt you down. You may be able to hide up in these hills for awhile, but one of these days, he’s going to find you. You and your people are going to spend the rest of your lives on the run.”

Tsali nodded and stared at the ground, William’s harsh words ringing true.

“But he’s sent me up here with an offer,” William continued. “He says if you’ll give yourself up, he’ll call off his search, and your people can stay in these hills as long as they want. He gave his word.”

Tsali glared at William and said, “His word means nothing to me. I’ve heard these promises from white people before. Why should I believe him?”

“What choice do you have?” asked William. “You stay here, he’ll come after you anyway. And he may be mad enough at that point to kill both you and your people. He doesn’t want to send his soldiers up into this wilderness – not when he’s only after one man. But he will if he has to.”

Tsali looked up into the cloudless sky, pondering the offer. In his heart, he knew that William was right. As long as he stayed in hiding, he was a danger to his family and his community. He sighed a deep sigh, then replied, “whatever decision I make, I must speak with my family first. Come back in one week, and I will give you my answer.”

As the morning sun rose over the valley a week later, Tsali had made his decision. He would give himself up to the white man, and face certain death. Throughout the night, he had consoled his frightened wife and children, trying to make them understand that it was his life for a thousand. To his sons, he asked that they always look after their mother and help the community rebuild itself. To his wife, he promised through his tears that they would be together soon, in spirit.

William returned that morning, and Tsali joined him for the long walk back to the village. Behind him, he could hear the cries of his entire community, filling the dark hills with their sorrow. Tsali could not bear to look back.

Tsali and William walked in silence though the thick forest. Tsali breathed in the cool mountain air for the last time, taking in every smell, sound and sight that he could. He prayed that his spirit would still walk through these hills long after he was gone.

The next day, Tsali arrived back at the village — or what was left of it. All the homes had either been vandalized or burned to the ground. Crops and farmland had been destroyed. Tsali hoped that William was right, and that the rest of his people would be spared further misery.

The soldiers roughly grabbed Tsali and pushed him toward the firing range. As a final affront to the Cherokees, two Cherokee prisoners were ordered to serve as Tsali’s executioners. As they tied Tsali, they begged him to wear a blindfold. But Tsali calmly refused, choosing instead to stare one last time at the sky as the bullets tore through his heart.

Thanks to Tsali’s heroic sacrifice, the white soldiers never marched into the hills after the Cherokee fugitives. They were allowed to stay, and in later years, their descendants became the Eastern Band of Cherokees. To this day, these Cherokees still live in Western North Carolina on land specifically designated for them. You can visit them today in the town of Cherokee, North Carolina.

As more hikers began exploring the area in modern times, reports began coming in of a mysterious, shadowy figure wandering through the dense forests. In the blink of an eye, the shadow would disappear, only to reappear again at night, silhouetted tall in the sky against the bright moon. Local newspapers wrote stories about this mysterious ghost, and curiosity seekers soon filled the area.

But the Eastern Band of Cherokees knew who this mystery figure was. They knew it was Tsali, returning to wander forever through the majestic hills he loved.

- THE END -

Story Credits | Story Background

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Written by Craig Dominey and Babs Bagriansky

Liz was 16 years old and sitting right in the middle of what she called “Nowheresville, USA” – Adams, Tennessee. Why her parents thought she’d be happy spending the weekend here with her “country cousins” while they were gallivanting about in New York City on vacation was beyond human reason. “It’s a peaceful place to visit,” her parents had said. “It has beautiful, scenic farmland – very bucolic.”

More like bubonic, Liz thought, with a terminal disease of the drop dead dull.

Her country cousin Jimmy, also 16, was no help. He seemed to think dodging cowchips was an athletic event. Nashville was Liz’s home; Nashville was where things were happening. All her friends were off to Halloween parties and spooky movie marathons. “Child’s play,” her father had said. “Halloween was meant for the young ones to trick and treat – older, mature folks had more serious business.” Yeah, Liz thought, like seeing Broadway shows and dancing in Manhattan nightclubs.

Liz walked out on the porch and watched the sun set over the peaceful fields. Oh well, she thought, at least I brought my iPod. She put on her earbuds, pressed the play button – and the battery died. Liz ripped the earbuds out and sighed – wasn’t anything going to go right?

Country cousin Jimmy walked out and joined her on the porch. I might as well hang out with him, Liz thought. It’s better than talking to the plants – but not by much.

Liz turned to him and said, “So Jimmy, what do you do around here besides milk cows and bring in the crops?”

Jimmy shrugged, gazed out at the fields and answered with his lazy rural drawl – “Oh, I don’t know. Fishing, ball games. I like to read, watch TV…”

“Oh, come on. There must be something to do around here. What’s the coolest thing about Adams, Tennessee?”

Jimmy thought about that question a bit and said, “Well, we got the Bell Witch Cave.”

Now that sounds somewhat interesting, Liz thought. “Why’s it called the Bell Witch Cave?”

Jimmy seemed real reluctant to talk about it. “Cause they say it’s haunted,” he said.

Liz rolled her eyes – sometimes getting Jimmy to talk about things was like pulling eyeteeth. “Whoa, don’t stop there – come on, what’s the story? You ever been there? Did you ever see any ghosts?”

“Well, I’ve only been there once with some friends. It was kinda icky and muddy, and full of spiders and all.”

Liz was now really getting impatient. “Tell me about it, Jimmy! Come on!”

Jimmy sighed, sat down and told her the story:

“Well, a long time ago, there used to be this old farm out there. That’s where the Bell family used to live back in the 1800s. They were pretty successful farmers – had a nice house, slave quarters and all. They went to church every Sunday and all that, so everybody in town liked ‘em.

But one day, they started getting haunted by this weird spirit. It started out looking like an old buzzard sitting out on the fence. Then it turned into this dog-like creature. Then they saw this mysterious old woman walking around in the orchard. Then one day, she just vanished into thin air.

But then she came back as a ghost. At night, they could hear her flyin’ ’round the house making these horrible sounds. She’d keep ‘em up all night, knocking on doors and windows, making these sounds like wings flapping against the roof and animals fighting and scratching. Then she started getting physical – pulling the blankets off their beds, punching ‘em, pinching ‘em and pulling their hair.

One day, she started talking to ‘em. She’d make fun of ‘em, argue with ‘em about the Bible, sing these nasty drinkin’ songs. They asked her over and over again why she was bothering ‘em. She told ‘em lots of things, like she was the ghost of an Indian whose grave had been disturbed, or a dead settler who’d come back looking for buried treasure.

But most folks believe she was a witch conjured up by this crazy old woman named Kate Batts. Kate Batts lived next door to the Bells. And she hated the father, John Bell, ’cause he ripped her off in a slave deal one time. In fact, the witch said several times that she was gonna kill John Bell one day.

Not long after that, John Bell got real sick and was taken to bed. The next morning, they found him dead. The witch started laughing and said she’d poisoned him. Sure ‘nough, when they looked in the medicine cabinet, they saw that his medicine had been switched with a vial of poison.

The witch laughed and carried on all during John Bell’s funeral. Then she told everybody she was leaving, but would come back one day. No one heard from her again for a long time.

But some folks in town believe that the Bell Witch has come back. They say if you make fun of her, or tell folks you don’t believe in her, that bad things will happen to you. And some say you can hear her laughin’ in that cave on the old Bell property, just waiting to put a fright into anybody who dares to go in there.”

When Jimmy finished his story, he was certain that Liz would be scared to death. To his surprise, she was more excited than ever. Her eyes bulging, she squealed, “Let’s go!”

“What? Are you crazy?” said Jimmy. “Come on, it’d be fun!”

“I ain’t goin’ in there,” protested Jimmy. “It ain’t safe. It’s muddy and dark and full of spiders…”

“Oh, come on,” interrupted Liz. “I’m not supposed to go out after dark without permission. And it’s on private property.”

“We’ll sneak the car out.” Jimmy was running out of excuses.

“It’s too far to go,” he said.

Liz gave him a teasing smirk. “Oh, I see,” she said, “you’re chicken, aren’t you? Squawk! Squawk! The country boy’s a chicken! The country boy’s a scaredy cat!”

Well, that did it – Jimmy wasn’t about to be called a chicken by no girl, especially his holier-than-thou, citified cousin. Later that night, when his parents fell asleep, Jimmy grabbed the flashlight and the car keys, and Liz taught him how to sneak a car out in the middle of the night. They quietly pushed the car out of the drive, then down the road a bit and – VAROOM! – started the engine away from the house.

When they got near the cave property, Jimmy pulled over, killed the engine and headlights, and quietly got out of the car. As they crept down the road, Jimmy was relieved to see that the current landowners’ farmhouse was dark and quiet. Jimmy and Liz hid themselves in the shadows away from the bright moonlight and snuck around the house.

They slowly made their way across the overgrown field until they finally saw it – a gaping, black hole yawning ominously out of the side of a steep rocky bluff. As they climbed up the slope toward it, Jimmy held back a bit, a twinge of fear shooting through his body. But Liz grabbed the flashlight and barreled inside more excited than ever. Jimmy sighed, took a deep breath, and entered slowly behind her.

Liz and Jimmy squeezed their way down the tight, dark, winding tunnel. In the dim flashlight beam, they could see eerie rock formations hanging from the ceiling and jutting out of the floor. Water was dripping everywhere, and their feet made squishing sounds as they moved through the muddy floor. Somewhere in the dark depths, they could hear rocks plopping, along with strange sucking sounds – but no witches laughing or moaning.

Liz kept moving rapidly forward with Jimmy tailing behind until they reached a tiny crack between two massive, fallen boulders. Liz squeezed her skinny body through, but Jimmy, who had a few pounds on her, couldn’t fit. Liz shined her flashlight around and mockingly called out into the darkness, “Here we are, you ol’ Bell Witch! Come on out and show yourself! Oooooooooo.”

Hearing no reply, Liz turned back toward her cousin and grinned. “Oh, well. Guess she’s out painting the town, Jimmy.”

“I can’t get through those rocks,” he said. “C’mon, let’s get outta here. There’s nothin’ back there worth seein’.”

“I want to keep going,” answered Liz from the other side. “Just wait for me here.”

“You can’t go back there by yourself. You ain’t ever been in a cave before. It could be dangerous.”

“I didn’t come all the way out here to stay for five minutes,” said Liz. “Just wait for me. I’ll be back in a little while.”

“No,” barked Jimmy. “I’m responsible for you!”

Liz hesitated a moment, then said in a mocking tone, “Well, if you can’t get through these rocks, I guess you can’t stop me now, can you?”

Now Jimmy was really getting tired of this cocky cousin of his. He had risked his neck sneaking out, going on private property, and all just to prove he wasn’t scared for some stupid reason. But what he didn’t want Liz to know was that he really was getting scared.

“I’ll wait for you outside,” Jimmy said gruffly as he turned and walked back in a huff.

Liz laughed after him and continued into the cave. As she crept further down the dark tunnel, she saw more strange rock formations in beautiful colors and shapes. To her, the cave was hypnotizing and otherworldly, unlike anything she had ever seen before. She wandered further and further down the tunnel in a trance, losing track of direction and time, always wondering what was beyond the next turn.

As she continued on, the ceiling pressed down lower and lower, forcing her to crawl on her knees. Suddenly, the passage ended in a tiny crawl space, leading on to who-knows-what. Now totally hypnotized by the cave, Liz couldn’t stop herself from continuing on. She wiggled into the tiny crawl space head first, pushing herself a little more and a little more until…

She got stuck.

As she tried to wiggle herself free, rocks and gravel fell around her, wedging her in even tighter. She called out for Jimmy, certain he was still somewhere near by, but he didn’t answer. Stupid boy, she thought. Then, of all the darn things, the flashlight went out, plunging her into total darkness.

Liz’s could hear her heart pounding in her chest. “Be calm,” she said to herself, “just be calm and try to move real slow.” But she was totally stuck in the crawl space, with escape all but impossible. She was really getting scared now.

Then, from somewhere deep in the cave, she heard eerie sounds moving toward her. At first, they sounded like scratching noises, then like someone gasping for air. As the sounds got louder, she thought she heard a scraping sound, like feet dragging on the cave floor.

Liz called out in the direction of the noises: “Jimmy, I’m stuck. Pull me out of here, come on.”

There was no answer except for the scraping, gasping sounds moving closer and closer.

“Jimmy come on, quit playing games. Fun’s over.”

There was still no answer.

Liz’s blood was running cold. “Jimmy, I said, get me out of here!”

The eerie sounds kept getting louder and louder as they got closer and closer until Liz could swear they were right on top of her.

Then they suddenly stopped, filling the room with horrifying silence. “Jimmy?” whispered Liz.

AAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!!!!!!! Liz screamed as she felt two massive, cold, scaly, nonhuman hands grab her legs. They yanked her out of the passage like a cork out of a bottle and dragged her deep into the bowels of the cave. She could see nothing in the darkness as she was dragged away.

AAAAAAAAAHHHHH!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! she screamed.

A few minutes later, the hands suddenly let her go. Liz lifted her head, cleared the mud from her eyes and found herself lying at the mouth of the cave, the bright moon filling the entrance with its blessed light. Cousin Jimmy was there, staring down at her.

As Jimmy lifted Liz to her feet, she teetered unsteadily, trying to catch her breath. “It was you!” Liz gasped. “I knew it. You really had me there. I was sure a ghost had me.” She then smiled and patted Jimmy on the shoulder. “Thanks for pulling me out. That was a good one. You know, you’re not so bad after all.”

Jimmy just stared at her in disbelief, his face white as a sheet. “I…I didn’t pull you out,” he finally replied.

They stared at each other for a moment. Then, from deep in the cave, they heard it – the horrible, cackling laughter of the Bell Witch as she floated back into the darkness. Liz and Jimmy ran back to the car as fast as two human beings could run. Jimmy gunned the engine, and they drove away like lightning, never looking back.

And even though the Bell Witch may return to that cave every now and then, Liz and Jimmy never did.

And that’s the story of The Bell Witch Cave.

- THE END -

Story Credits | Story Background

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Adapted from folklore by Craig Dominey

Back in the late 1800s, Martin Stone was the most popular young fiddle player in northeastern Tennessee. For years, he wandered the mountainous backroads of Johnson County, playing at every social event that would have him — church picnics, weddings, barn dances, even funerals. It was a good living, allowing Martin plenty of leisure time to do whatever he wanted.

In the summertime, Martin liked to take Sunday off and sit up on a rocky bluff near the top of Stone Mountain. There, he would play his fiddle and watch the sun come up over the green, rolling hills. Sometimes he would spend all day up there, playing reel after reel until the sun dropped from the sky.

One day, Martin was playing a slow, leisurely tune on his fiddle when a rattlesnake slithered out from under a rock, curled up in the sun, and watched him play. Then another one came out and joined him, followed by yet another. Before Martin knew it, the surrounding rocks were filled with rattlesnakes. Most people would have fainted dead away in terror at that point, but Martin was fascinated. For the snakes made no move to strike — instead, they swayed back and forth to the music like scaly, reptilian metronomes.

As the sun went down and dark shadows filled the valley, the snakes slithered back into their nests. Martin packed up his fiddle with a chuckle, and made plans to come back next week — but with a surprise.

The next Sunday, Martin climbed to the rocky overhang and began to play his fiddle. Again, the rattlesnakes slithered out from beneath the rocks and listened to him, hypnotized. Martin chuckled to himself, put down his fiddle and picked up a shotgun. He began blasting away at the rattlesnakes, picking them off one by one. The other snakes slithered back to their nests in terror.

Martin stopped shooting and laughed heartily as he collected the dead snakes in a burlap sack. This is too easy, he thought to himself — I can make even more money selling rattlesnake hides!

Every Sunday for the next few weeks, Martin returned to the bluff, played his fiddle until the snakes came out, then began shooting. It became a sport to him, and soon he became known around the county as the “Fiddlin’ Snake Man.” Whenever someone wanted a snake skin to wrap around their hat or to make into a belt, or a rattle for their babies to play with, Martin was the man to see.

One Sunday toward the end of summer, Martin returned to the bluff like he had done many times before. As the sun rose, he began to play a soft waltz on his fiddle. Once again, the rattlesnakes wiggled out from underneath the rocks and listened, swaying back and forth to the music.

Martin stopped playing, reached for his shotgun — then stopped. Something in the snakes’ eyes caught his attention. On his previous trips, the snakes’ black eyes seemed to glaze over from the soft, gentle notes of his fiddle. But today, the snakes glared at Martin with fiery red eyes, burning with intense hatred. Martin was hypnotized in their glare — as hard as he tried, he couldn’t reach for his gun.

The snakes surrounded Martin and, one by one, began crawling up inside his pant legs. Martin was frozen with terror as he felt their scaly bodies wriggle around his legs, his chest and his arms. All at once, the snakes started biting, their sharp fangs ripping into Martin’s flesh. As their icy venom flowed through his veins, all Martin could do was scream — a horrifying scream that resounded throughout the valley.

A few days later, a search party found Martin’s lifeless body sprawled across the overhang, his fiddle by his side. They looked with horror at the bite marks that covered his skin. Even more of a mystery was the loaded shotgun leaning against the rock, well within Martin’s reach. Why didn’t he try to defend himself?

To this day, some Johnson County residents refuse to climb to the rocky overhang at the top of Stone Mountain, which they now call “Fiddler’s Rock.” For in the lazy summer months, when the sun rises over the hills, they say you can hear the faint notes of a fiddle, followed by a high-pitched screeching sound — the scream of Martin Stone, as the snakes take their revenge.

- THE END -

Story Credits | Story Background

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Tom McBride missed his Grandpa terribly. Well, he wasn’t really his Grandpa. You see, Tom was an orphan growing up in the hard scrabble Tennessee hills during the Depression. At age 12, both his parents drank bad milk from a cow and died. He would’ve been in a lot of trouble were it not for Benjamin Franklin Farley, an old farmer across the holler who agreed to take Tom in. “Mr. Ben,” as the townspeople called him, was getting up in years, and really needed a young man to help out around the farm.

As the years went by, Tom and Mr. Ben grew very close. Mr. Ben told Tom to call him “Grandpa,” and Tom always loved him like one. Tom was thankful that he and Grandpa got to share many special moments together before he died – swapping tall tales by a crackling fire, fishing for trout in the cool mountain streams, riding horses across the misty mountain ridges at dawn. But before Tom knew it, a week before his 17th birthday, Grandpa silently and peacefully passed away in his sleep.

One thing that Tom couldn’t get over when Grandpa was alive was how much he loved hazel nuts. As long as Tom could remember, Grandpa carried around a pocket full of nuts everywhere he went. At break time, or when he was just fighting boredom, Grandpa would whip out a large hunting knife from a holder on his belt, reach into the frayed pockets of his jacket for a handful of nuts, and start peeling those nuts with a loud CRACK! Tom remembered that the knife had a real fancy handle that glistened in the sun as his Grandpa went to work on the nuts. But most of all, Tom remembered the clock-like CRACK and munch, CRACK and munch of Grandpa eating those hazel nuts. Sometimes, he’d give Tom some, too.

In fact, Grandpa loved eating hazel nuts so much that he told Tom that he wanted to be buried with a handful in his suit pocket. This may have been a bizarre request to some folks, but Tom knew that there was no better way to honor his Grandpa’s life. As the family sat up with Grandpa’s body the night before the funeral, Tom did as he was told, slipping the hunting knife into the coffin and a handful of nuts into Grandpa’s suit pocket.

After the funeral, Tom went to live with Grandpa’s eldest daughter, Kate. “Aunt Kate,” as Tom always called her, was a bit on the heavy side – so large, in fact, that she could barely walk. After her father died, Aunt Kate was completely devastated. What little energy she had to raise herself out of bed in the morning quickly dissipated, and Tom was left with the task of running errands for her in town.

The road to town was a battered, one lane dirt road that snaked around the steep hills and down into the valley. During the day, it was a beautiful walk – on some days, you could see parts of North Carolina from up top. But most folks stayed away from the road at night, for it passed right by the town cemetery. The cemetery was already a spooky place, with its cold stone slabs surrounded by eerie oak trees, and a rusty iron gate that bent and creaked in the stiff mountain wind. To the already superstitious mountain folk, it was definitely off limits at night.

But to Tom, invincible teenager that he was, fears about the graveyard were silly. He thought nothing of returning home along the town road at sunset. One day, he even stayed at a friend’s house in town until way past supper time, when the skies were already pitch black dark. His friends tried to talk him into staying the night, but Tom shrugged them off with a grin. Lighting his lantern, he started on the long road back home.

Like he had done many times before, Tom strolled past the cemetery that night without a care. Suddenly, from somewhere in the darkness, he heard a rustling sound. He stopped and went over to the gate, more curious than scared. After a brief moment of silence, he heard it again – it sounded like a large animal rummaging around the graves. Maybe a dear eating some of the scrub grass, Tom thought.

Then a gruff, menacing voice cut through the darkness from beyond, causing Tom to jump. “That’s a good ‘un over thar,” it said. “There’s another good ‘un over thar. I think we’re gon’ have to go round us up some more. This ain’t near enough.”

What came next made Tom’s blood run cold. From around the area where his dear Grandpa was buried, he heard the familiar CRACK and munch, CRACK and munch of hazel nuts being eaten.

“Yessir, we’re gon’ have to git us some more.”

Everyone in town knew that, when folks died, the Devil and the Angel of the Lord came down to the cemetery to sort out the souls. Tom had always laughed at those stories, but now he found himself believing them. He just knew that the Devil himself had gotten a hold of the knife and the hazel nuts in Grandpa’s pocket and was having himself a snack. What’s worse, he’d probably gotten a hold of Grandpa’s soul!

Tom ran home faster than he’d ever run before. Out of breath, he barged into Aunt Kate’s bedroom and yelled, “Aunt Kate! Aunt Kate! I heard the Devil ‘n’ the Angel of the Lord up in the cemetery sortin’ out souls! I think th’ Devil’s got Grandpa!”

Now Aunt Kate, as has been said, was a large woman. She was so large that she had to lift herself up out of bed with a rope that was tied to an iron ring up on the ceiling. “Well, we’re gon’ have to go up thar, but I cain’t walk,” she said, pulling herself up until she looked Tom square in the eye. “Yer gon’ have t’ carry me.”

Tom swallowed hard at the thought of carrying her back up the road. “But it’s too cold out there,” he said, thinking of any excuse he could. “You’ll freeze.”

“Well, then wrap this sheet around me,” she replied, ripping a sheet off the bed. After she got dressed, Tom sighed to himself, wrapped the sheet around her and, with a grunt, lifted her up on his shoulders. He lit his lantern and stumbled out the door.

Tom stumbled up the road a bit, his knees buckling from Aunt Kate’s weight. He knew that the road to town would take too long, and he wanted to get this trip over with as soon as possible. So he decided to take a shortcut across the fields. Luckily, most of the fences and gates were down. It took them a bit longer to cross the stream, but Tom had heard that the foot logs they normally took to cross had started to rot, and he wasn’t about to get wet in this cold night.

Finally, huffing and puffing, Tom made it back to the cemetery. He put out the light, crept up to the iron gate and waited, straining to hear the noises from before. Sure enough, after a few agonizingly-long minutes, the same gruff voice boomed out of the darkness.

“Yep, that’s plenty of ‘em now,” it said. “Nearly ‘nough, we got nearly ‘nough. Got ‘em all around here.”

Then came the CRACK of the nuts, and the munching sounds. Aunt Kate gasped and whispered, “We’ve got to get up closer. I’ve got to see.”

So Tom eased through the cemetery gate and crept toward where he thought the voices were coming from. With Aunt Kate on his back, still wrapped in the white sheet, Tom bumped and stumbled against the large headstones until he thought he could see two shadow figures in the moonlight. Crouching down behind a headstone, Tom could see that one of the figures was bigger than the other, and was counting something with its hands. Sure enough, they were sitting right by Grandpa’s grave!

“You take that half an’ I’ll take these,” one of them said.

Suddenly, the larger of the two stood up and pointed in Tom’s direction. With a gruff, bloodcurdling voice, he screamed, “Hey, looky yonder! Look at that biggun right over thar!”

At that moment, Tom’s bravery forsook him. He dropped Aunt Kate on the ground with a thud and ran full tail out of the cemetery. He dashed into the forest, the briars ripping and clawing his clothing. He leapt across the stream, the rotten foot logs he had so deftly avoided before shattering under his feet. Cold and damp, he sprinted across the fields.

From behind, he thought he could hear footsteps running after him. When something splashed in the stream behind him where the rotted foot logs were, his eyes bulged out of his skull – the Devil was after him! He ran faster and faster toward the house, its lights only a distant speck on the horizon. The footsteps behind him moved closer and closer. Tom was too frightened to look back. If only he could make it to the house!

Minutes later, Tom sprinted up the hillside. There stood Aunt Kate’s house, and he had never seen such a welcome site in his life. The footsteps behind him were so close that he could hear the Devil’s breath – deep, labored and spitting fire. Tom lunged at the door, flung himself inside and slammed it shut. He bolted the front door, then every window in the house, and collapsed on the floor.

For a few moments, the house was excruciatingly silent. Then, the back door began to slowly creek open. In his haste, Tom had forgotten to lock it, and now the Devil was inside. He could hear its heavy, cloven hoofs stomping like thunder across the kitchen. In just a few moments, Tom knew that he would be joining his Grandpa in Hell.

Tom frantically searched the room for a weapon. He finally spotted a hot poker in the fireplace, grabbed it and hid behind the wall. He could hear the thunderous hooves coming closer and closer, the heavy, unearthly breathing, and he knew that it was now or never. As Tom heard the Devil walk through the door toward him, he took a deep breath, swallowed hard and leapt out toward it, hot poker raised high, screaming at the top of his lungs:

“Die, Devil!”

The monstrous shadow figure before him screamed in terror. It was not the gruff voice from the cemetery, but a woman’s voice, and strangely familiar. Tom slowly put the poker down and, in the firelight, could see the most torn up, wettest, horrified looking Aunt Kate he had ever seen in his life, her chest heaving.

Tom’s jaw dropped. “Aunt Kate!” he screamed. “I thought you couldn’t walk! I’m sorry I left you back thar, but I thought I heard the Devil and…”

Aunt Kate raised a hand to stop him. Her breath labored, she smiled, pointed at her legs and said, “Son, let me tell ya’. I don’t know if that was the Devil and the Angel of the Lord out thar or not. But between the good grace of the Lord Himself an’ these brand new Sears and Roebuck support hose, I nearly beat you home.”

A few days later, word came up the mountain that two of the most notorious sheep thieves in the county had been caught and were sitting in the county jail. Turns out they had used the cemetery as the place where they rounded up the sheep, and it was their voices that Tom and Aunt Kate had heard that night. What’s more, just like Grandpa, one of the thieves had a particular affinity for hazel nuts.

But for the rest of his life, whenever Tom walked home at night from town, he’d walk by the old cemetery just a little bit quicker. Just so he didn’t ever have to hear the horrible CRACK and munch, CRACK and munch of another Nut Eating Devil.

- THE END -

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Written by Craig Dominey

Now I’m going to tell you all a Christmas story – but before I do, I have a word of warning for all you adults in the room. I’m about to let you in on a little secret that might change your life. It might change the way you look at the world and make you question everything you’ve been told, and everything you believe in. Are you ready? Then, here goes…

Despite what your parents may have told you – there is a real Santa Claus. And I should know, because I’ve seen him myself!

Now before you think I’m absolutely nuts, let me tell you a little bit about myself. I was born in 1937 deep in the remote mountains of southwestern Virginia. Even as a very young boy, I remember how big and rocky those mountains were. Our tiny, two-room cabin clung to the mountainside like a crow perched on a tree limb. The soil was so hard and barren that nobody could make a decent living growing crops. If you ever saw where we lived, you might wonder why we didn’t just get up and leave.

Daddy moved us there for two reasons – to be close to relatives, and to work the coal mines. Daddy’s family had worked in the mines for years, so when he was old enough, he grabbed a shovel and went to work. Of course, back then a lot of the work was done by hand. Daddy would frequently come home and fall fast asleep on the couch from exhaustion. But even though we didn’t have much, he provided everything we needed to live.

One day, Daddy was told he had to go off and fight for our country in some place I’d never heard of. After he left, my older brothers and sisters would read his letters aloud that he sent back from these real exotic-sounding places. But one day, the letters stopped coming. Mama worried herself sick until the day some military men showed up on our doorstep. My daddy was killed in battle, they said, but rest assured – he had died bravely.

So Mama was faced with the hard job of raising my brothers and sisters and me alone. She could barely pay our bills, but there was really nowhere else we could go. We all slept in the same room, and there was barely enough food to make it through the day. When winter came, the bitterly cold winds would blow through the holes in the walls, and we’d huddle up against one another to keep warm. But we had many happy days – more than some families I know. I guess if you don’t know what you’re missing, then what you got is good enough.

Like I said, where we grew up was very remote. There was only one winding dirt road which lead into the mining town, and it took so long to get there that we’d take combined trips with our neighbors to get supplies. Now when I say “town,” I ain’t talking New York City here. Our “town” had about three buildings: a bank, a barbershop and a company store. But to me, going to town was an adventure, for it was my only contact with the outside world.

I remember Christmas being a very special time for us. All the families would decorate the local church and fix these huge dinners. We’d sing and laugh and have the biggest snowball fights you ever saw. And on Sunday, our own family would make a special trip to the cemetery to decorate Daddy’s grave with Christmas flowers and ribbons. We figured he ought to celebrate with us, for Mama always said that he was still around, even though we couldn’t see him.

As you may imagine, there wasn’t much gift-giving going on in our neck of the woods. In fact, I really didn’t know that people gave gifts during Christmas. That is, until I made a trip to town one day and saw a funny sight in the store window: a picture of a jolly old man in a red suit, jumping down a chimney with what looked like a bag full of presents.

“Who’s that?” I asked Mama, pointing at the picture.

“Nothing, honey,” she said, quickly turning me away. “It’s just a picture.”

Well, me being four years old at the time, that answer wasn’t nearly good enough. Every time we’d pass that store, I’d tug Mama’s sleeve and ask over and over again, “Who’s that man?” And I began to notice that she was very reluctant to answer. In fact, it got to the point where we’d avoid the store altogether, and she’d send one of my older brothers in to get whatever we needed.

But one Christmas, I eventually wore her down. The mining town was filled with even more pictures of this mysterious old man, and I could barely contain my curiosity. So when I asked again, this was the answer my mama gave me: “His name’s Santa Claus, dear. It’s just a Christmas story some folks tell. He’s not a real person.”

I believed her at first, but then I started hearing other things at school. And when we’d go into town, I’d sneak a look at some of the Christmas magazines and books. I learned that, for someone who supposedly isn’t real, an awful lot of people seemed to believe in him. He lived up in the North Pole and had a team of elves that built toys for him. And when Christmas came, he’d hop in his sleigh and deliver those toys to children who’d been good all year round. And we’re not just talking down the street – he delivered presents as far away as China – all in one night!

I presented this evidence to my mother on Christmas Eve that year. And I told her that, other than the time I scared Mrs. Robinson’s mule with a firecracker, and the time I threw mud at Jimmy Harlan (he deserved it, by the way), I’d been a pretty good kid. Why hadn’t Santa come out to see us?

My older brothers and sisters looked at each other with this sad look. And I remember tears suddenly filling my mama’s eyes as she turned away. I wasn’t too young to know that I’d just asked a question I shouldn’t have.

You ever have one of those moments when you suddenly find out the truth about something, and everything around you seems to change? Well that’s what happened to me that night. I looked around at our musty, cold cabin filled with broken furniture and empty cabinets. I noticed the old, ragged shirts we wore, their colors scrubbed out long ago in the hard stream water. I noticed the jagged mountains towering above us, blanketing us in dark shadows broken only by the candles we placed around the room.

I then knew the truth – Santa was real, and he wasn’t coming to see us. Only children with real homes in fancy cities would find him sliding down their chimneys Christmas morning. Santa had forgotten us, and it looked like it was going to stay that way.

Talk about getting down in the mouth – that was me all over. I wasn’t in the mood to do all the happy holiday stuff we did in years past. After all, if Christmas was a holiday for rich people, why should we bother celebrating it?

So as another year went by, I started dreading Christmas. The last thing I wanted to see were those red ribbons on the town lampposts, the wreaths on the church door – and certainly not that mean old man whose picture was hanging in the company store. Whenever everyone went into town, I’d stay at home and sit on the porch. I was six years old, and I already wanted to leave this place.

One day, I remember sitting alone on the porch throwing rocks at the fence post. Everyone else had gone into town, and a cold silence had filled the snowy valley. The distant whistle of the approaching 3:00 train suddenly filled the air, followed by the chug-chug-chug of the locomotive. It arrived every day like clockwork, and by its sound I knew my family would be home shortly.

It was then that I heard the frantic sound of footsteps running down the road toward our house. I turned and saw a sight that made my blood run cold – it was Jimmy Harlan, running breathlessly in my direction, his face red and his eyes wild. Jimmy was a very big boy with a mean streak to match. Obviously, I thought, he hasn’t forgotten the mud-throwing incident from over a year ago. And now that my family was gone, he was going to take his revenge on me, the scrawniest kid in the valley.

“Wait!” he screamed as I bolted for the door. “I gotta tell you somethin’!”

As I slammed the door behind me, Jimmy ran up on the porch and looked through the window. Something in his eyes made me curious, so I asked, “What do you want?”

“He’s here!” Jimmy yelled through the glass. “You gotta come see. Quick, before he leaves!”

“Who’s here?”

“Santa Claus!” Jimmy gasped. “He’s on the train!”

Now if Jimmy wanted revenge, he’d picked a good way to do it. I was already feeling lousy enough about Christmas, and now here was Jimmy rubbing it in. I had to give him credit – he was a pretty smart guy.

But to my surprise, Jimmy didn’t wait for me to open the door so he could beat me to a pulp. Instead, he went running as fast as he could down the hillside, straight toward the approaching train. When he had gotten far enough away, I eased open the door and made my way slowly down the hill behind him – my curiosity had gotten the best of me.

As I got closer to the tracks, I could hear the sounds of people cheering. I ran faster and faster through the woods, the thundering train wheels growing louder and louder as I approached. I finally cleared the trees and found myself right up against the tracks. And what I saw next made my jaw drop.

A crowd of people had lined the tracks, waving and cheering to the train as it slowly inched its way past them. I wondered what the big deal was since this train arrived without fanfare almost every day – that is, until I saw the caboose. There, sitting in the back surrounded by big burlap sacks of gifts was Santa Claus – flowing white beard, big belly, red suit and all, just like in the pictures!

“Ho! Ho! Ho!” he laughed heartily as he reached into the sacks and tossed toys, warm clothing and candy to the ecstatic boys and girls. “Merry Christmas! Ole Santa sees you.” His team of elves surrounded him, and they didn’t look like the tiny people I had seen in books. In fact, they almost looked like normal people – without the pointy ears, of course.

As Santa rolled on past me, he gave me a wink and threw a wrapped box in my direction, along with handfuls of hard candy. He then gave me one last wave and a hearty laugh before disappearing around the bend.

I remember standing by the tracks in a state of shock as Santa’s train whistle faded into memory. To this day, I can’t remember what the present was that Santa gave me, and it really doesn’t matter. And year after year, Santa would return aboard “The Santa Claus Special,” as it later became known. Word would spread like wildfire as the train approached, and the air was filled with what would become the traditional shout: “Santa’s coming! Santa’s coming!”

And as I grew older, I began to realize that Santa doesn’t just live in the North Pole like all the books say. He lives in London, England, the African jungle and, yes, southwestern Virginia – anywhere that there are people that could use a little magic and joy this time of year.

How do I know this, you ask? Because almost 57 years later, I have become Santa Claus. When I looked old enough to play the part (the white hair and big belly helped), I slipped into the uniform, boarded “The Santa Claus Special” and returned to my mountain home. And although the area isn’t as isolated as it used to be, the looks on the children’s faces are still the same as mine was so long ago.

So yes, there is a Santa Claus after all. And you don’t have to look very far to find him.

- THE END -

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