So Uncle Arlen ceased beating him and took the hickory switch to his wife instead. But that got it out of him. Like other times when he got heavy with his fists, he went up into the hills to do some drinking. When he came back, he was better.
The Devil was purged.
One night, when they thought he was sleeping, James Lee heard them talking by the stove in hushed voices.
“Don’t never wan’ that boy finding out, hear?” Uncle Arlen said in his gravelly voice. “Don’t need to know that woman’s his mother.”
“Never ever,” Auntie Maretta told him. “Why, Jimmy Lee… he’s m’ boy, m’ big and proud boy. He ain’t like her, cain’t ye see? He’s like m’ own flesh.”
“He ain’t though, woman,” Uncle Arlen pointed out. “Place he comes from… well things jus’ ain’t right there. Ain’t proper.”
Auntie Maretta chewed on that for a time, decided she didn’t like the taste and spit it right back out. “He’s more mine than he is hers. Don’t ye see? Lord above, sometimes I wish she’d up and expire.”
“Woman, now she’s kin.”
“Y’all wish it, too, Arlen Cobb.”
“In a weaker moment, yessum. But, hell, ain’t happenin’… she’s up in the shack doin’ what she does and livin’ on… how can that be, woman? How can that be? Don’t even freeze to death proper in the winter… now how is that?”
But Auntie Maretta didn’t know. “Hexed, is all.”
“I jus’ worry about that boy… he carries the taint on him and ye know it. What’s in her is in him. Blood’ll tell and it’ll tell every time. Cousin Marilynn ain’t scarcely human, I figure. That whole brood is cursed… Jesus, lookit her old man, kilt himself and what! And him a preacher.”
“Easterners,” Auntie Maretta said. “They ain’t right in the head.”
“Neither is that boy… he likes blood and killin’ too much. Like his mama, he carries the taint on his soul…”
James Lee was thirteen when he heard that.
But it hadn’t been the first time.
He didn’t know all the story, but he knew enough by then to put some of it together. That crazy woman was his mother and they had come from back east, from some awful place of witches and tainted heredity and things too awful to put into words. At night, he’d lay there and think on it and think on it some more. One way or another, come hell or high water, he was going to learn what it was all about. He figured his first step was to climb up into the hills and get a look at… at his mother. He was banned from going up there, but maybe knowledge was worth a good beating.
The very next winter he got his chance.
A bad blizzard had set its teeth into the Ozarks and snow was drifted up near the windows which were locked tight with patterns of frost. Rags had been stuffed in the cracks to keep the wind out, but there was still a chill in the cabin. A chill that set upon you like something hungry if you strayed too far from the fire. James Lee was sitting before it, working out some arithmetic problems by candlelight. His Uncle and Auntie sat at the hardwood table, him with his pipe and her with her knitting.
Whenever Auntie Maretta caught his eyes, she’d give him a sly, secretive smile that spoke of love and trust and faith. A look that said, yer a good boy and I knows it.
Whenever Uncle Arlen caught his eyes, he gave him a hard, withering look that simply said, mind yer schoolwork, boy, and quiet yer damn daydreaming.
So James Lee sat there on the floor, scribbling.
The cabin was a log affair with a plank floor and smoke-blackened beams crisscrossing above. There was a sheltered loft, but it wasn’t used now that Marilynn was up in the old shack. A cast iron stove sat in the corner, fire in its belly. Two cauldrons filled with boiling water bubbled on its surface. The air smelled of wood smoke, burned fat, and maple syrup. While Auntie Maretta busied herself washing up the dinner dishes-blue speckled plates and tin cups? Uncle Arlen cleared his throat. Cleared it the way he did when he was about to finally speak what was on his mind.
“Boy,” he said. “Ye up to an errand? Ye up to bravin’ the snow and night?”
James Lee slapped his book shut, never so ready. “Yessum, Uncle.”
“Aw right, listen here now. Want ye to go out to the smokehouse. Them hams in there is cured and ready. Take one of ’em and not the big one, mind, wrap it up tight in a po-tater sack, bring it up to Miss Leevy up yonder on the high road.” He packed his clay pipe with rough-cut tobacco. “Now, she been good t’ us and we gonna be good t’ her. She’s up in years. Ye think ye can handle that?”
“Yessum.”
“Off wit ye then.”
It was bitter cold out there, the snow whipping and whistling around the cabin, but James Lee knew he could do it, all right. Out past the sap-house, he dug snow away from the smokehouse door and packaged up the ham. Then he marched straight through the drifts and shrieking wind up onto the road and fought his way up to Miss Leevy’s. She took the ham and made James Lee drink some chamomile tea brightened with ‘shine.
On his way back, he cut through the woods.
He knew where he was going.
He knew what he had to see.
Sheets of snow fell from the pines overhead and the air was kissed with ice. His breath frosted from his lips and the night created crazy, jumping shadows that ringed him tight. But the ‘shine had lit a fire in his belly and he felt the equal of anything. He carried an oil lamp with him, lighting it only when he made out the dim hulk of the shack.
The forbidden shack.
Sucking cold air into his lungs and filling his guts with iron, he made his way over there. He stood outside in the snow, thinking how it wasn’t too late to turn back, wasn’t too late at all. But then his hand was out of its mitten and his fingers were throwing the bolt, just throwing it aside fancy as you please.
First thing he heard was a rattling, dragging sound… as of chains.
Then something like a harsh breathing… but so very harsh it was like fireplace bellows sucking up ash.
It stayed his hand, but not for long. Good and goddammit, James Lee Cobb, a voice echoed in his skull, this is what ye wanted, weren’t it? To know? To see? To look the worse possible thing right in the face and not dare look away? Weren’t it? Well, weren’t it?
It was.
Those chains… or whatever they were… rattled again and there was a rustling sound. James Lee pulled the door open, but slowly, slowly, figuring his mind needed time to adjust. Like slipping into a chill spring lake, you had to do it by degrees. The door swung open and a hot, reeking blast of fetid air hit him full in the face. It stank like wormy meat simmering on a stove lid. His knees went to rubber and something in him-maybe courage-just shriveled right up.
In the flickering lantern light he saw.
He saw his mother quite plainly.
She was chained to the floor, pulling herself away from the light like some gigantic worm. Her flesh had gone marble-white and was damp and glistening like the flesh of a mushroom. Great sores and ulcers were set into her and some had eaten right to the bone beneath. It was hard to say if she was wearing rags or that was just her skin hanging in loops and ragged folds. Her hair was steel-gray and stringy, those eyes just fathomless holes torn into the vellum of her face.
But what struck James Lee the hardest was not the eyes or the stink or even the feces and filthy straw and tiny animal bones scattered about… it was that she seemed to have tentacles. Just like one of them sea monsters in a picture book that ate ships raw. Long, yellow things all curled and coiled like clocksprings.
But then… he realized they were her fingernails.
And they had to be well over two feet in length… hard, bony growths that came out of her fingertips and laid over her like corkscrewed snakes.
James Lee made a sound… he wasn’t sure what… and she opened those flaking lips, revealing gray decayed teeth that sprouted from pitted gums like grayed fence posts. She made a grunting, squealing sound like a hog. And then she reached out to him, seemed to know him, and those fingernails clattered together like castanets.