Harlan County Horrors Read online

  "You are still afraid of the attic."

  I began to protest, but she'd already taken Jania up the stairs.

  That night, I read while the boys watched an obnoxious movie on DVD. Becca knitted a sock, her first, and she constantly wrinkled her nose at the book providing the instructions. Out of the corner of my eye, I saw her sigh, close the book, and coil the half-knitted sock around its needles. She stashed everything in a canvas bag and popped back the recliner.

  "What're you reading?"

  "It's for work," I said, not looking at her.

  "About what?"

  "Selkies."

  Her sons turned around. "What's a silky?" Tommy asked.

  "Selkie, not silky. It's like a woman with a seal skin she can take on and off, kinda like a mermaid."

  "Never heard of that," Becca said.

  "We got a report of some sightings in Scotland." I decided to keep my transfer to myself. The timing was perfect and I'd been raised too superstitious to do anything to jinx it.

  "Cool," Matt said.

  Becca threw her feet over the edge of the chair. "How do you study all these things and you don't believe any of them?"

  "Because I study them." I turned a page I hadn't really read.

  Matt opened his mouth, but before he could speak, Becca announced that it was bedtime. The boys groaned. "We have to get up early for Grandma. I don't want any fighting or sass tomorrow."

  As soon as the three of them headed to the attic, I flipped off the TV and followed their footfalls. The boys settled in the back of the attic, near the door for the steps. That was good. It was the front of the attic that concerned me. I hadn't yet figured how to get Becca to allow me to poke around, but I needed to see the trunk. Better yet, I needed to see that it wasn't there.

  Becca had a couple of drinks before we headed to the Baptist church in Evarts. I drove her van and made extra sure the kids were buckled before we headed out. Matt asked me to turn on the radio, and when I told him no, he pouted the whole trip. Tommy played some kind of little video game and Jania kept setting off some electronic musical toy.

  Our brother and sister were already at the church. When Becca crumpled into a chair in front of the urn that held our mother's remains, Sissy asked me if she was drunk. I said that she'd had a few.

  I hadn't seen JR in a couple of years, since Gertie had closed and he'd started driving trucks. I thought he'd turned manager at a Wal-Mart or something, but I wasn't sure. His boots didn't have a trace of dirt. None of them ever understood my job so we never talked much about what we all did.

  "Came on quick," JR said, like he was the authority on our mother's cancer. "She didn't want no treatment but she could've if she'd wanted it."

  I swallowed hard and pushed my hands into my pockets.

  "How's she doing?" He nodded toward Becca.

  I shrugged. "Couple shots this morning, but that's all she's had since I been home. Boys look good. Baby's healthy. Place is clean."

  "I'm glad it's over," Sissy said from behind me, holding our niece on one hip. "Mama being sick, I mean."

  "Same here," JR said.

  "Becca's glad too, even if she won't say," Sissy added. "I'm glad Mama didn't drag it out. She said to me, 'I want this over and done with' and it was. Just the way Mama wanted."

  "Reckon we should sit down," I said, sliding in beside Becca. I draped my arm over the back of the pew, and she took it as a sign to curl toward me. I spent the first half of my mother's memorial smelling Jack Daniels and handing Becca balled-up Kleenex out of her purse.

  By the time we were to sing "What a Friend We Have in Jesus," I whispered to Becca that I would find Sissy and Jania, see if the baby needed anything. JR slid over toward her when I rose and inched my way along the pew.

  I found them in the otherwise empty nursery, Sissy watching the crowd through a one-way window.

  "Nice turnout," she said when I closed the door. "Mama'd be happy."

  "I had a hell of a time talking her out of having Mama laid out." I wanted to add that our mother must've told me a thousand times, begged me even, to have her cremated.

  "You want a drink of water, Peter? You don't look so good."

  "I...I just want to make sure everything's how she need...wanted it."

  "Well, we done the best we could. She didn't leave us clear instructions. She just told you everything. Always did." Sissy crossed the room and popped a paper cup out of a dispenser. "You coming to the will reading?"

  "Yeah. You?"

  "Suppose." She filled the cup with cool water and brought it to me. "So you gonna tell me all her secrets now?"

  I smiled to avoid lying. "Sissy, let her rest."

  Sissy nibbled her lip for a minute and considered. I could see the thoughts flashing before her eyes--the insinuations, the blame, the rumors.

  Her voice calm, she said, "Tell me Poppa was my daddy."

  "Oh he was, he was," I said, filled with relief. "You never believed that rumor, did you?"

  "Course I did."

  "Pop didn't...what he did had nothing to do with you. Hear?"

  Sissy sat on the floor beside Jania and started building a tower of blocks for her to topple.

  "Things weren't...he was so different when he came back from that second tour, Sis. He wasn't...the man he became, it near about killed Mama. If he hadn't done what he did, she'd have died thirty years ago. You'd never have remembered her."

  "Sometimes I wonder if that might've been better."

  "It wasn't anything about you, Sissy. She went through an awful lot. Married at sixteen, pregnant with me and JR not a year after. Pop being drafted. Helping with the strike. Pop coming back and going into the mine. Becca and then with you on the way, Pop re-upping and coming back. It was hard going, Sis."

  "And no different from any other Harlan woman's story either, Peter. But they don't use it for an excuse to treat their children like dirt underfoot." Sissy held her anger for a few moments, then sighed. "Guess it's over now. Don't do any good to hold on now, does it?"

  I hid my grimace behind the cup, already empty, and pretended to drink.

  While the family hosted the post-funeral dinner at the church basement, I excused myself and said I needed to take care of some things. I spent the drive over to Harlan biting my thumb and letting the "scan" feature run endlessly on Becca's radio.

  I passed the old company houses, including the one where we'd lived until Sissy was born, and drove through Fisher's Hollow. I glanced down the road toward Gertie, her rusting tipple poking through the pines. I rubbed my eyes with one hand and accelerated.

  With Becca and the kids at the church, I figured I wouldn't get a better chance to go into the attic so I took it. I didn't stop at the front door, just bounded up the steps and then up into the attic, walking sideways to fit my feet.

  The boys had two camp mattresses set up under the window in the back. I stepped around the puddled blankets and inched toward the front of the room. The stuff there hadn't been moved for ages. Trying not to raise too much dust, I sifted through the piles of junk until I spotted the rotting steamer. Its rust-speckled latches creaked as I flipped them. I brought my keys out of my pocket and found the one Mama had sent me. It slid into the lock with surprising ease, clicked, and the trunk seemed to sigh with release.

  I choked back the tears from my nose and inched open the lid. On top of a tattered, moth-eaten wool blanket was a letter in a yellowed, unsealed envelope. The letter read, "I'm sorry. Jesus forgive me."

  I replaced it on top of the blanket and secured and locked the trunk. No one knew. No one had seen. Now I had to get it out of the attic and get rid of it. Alone.

  Mama hadn't had much, so it surprised us that we had to go to a will reading. She'd had a little savings, which she'd left to Becca for taking care of her. There was also a letter for each of us. Mine was much thicker than the others, but I made a joke about being the oldest and it seemed to settle any reason for it. She also left a short list of possessions
she wanted distributed a certain way.

  Sissy looked at Becca and said, "Keep 'em" when the list of things Mama had bequeathed to her was read. JR got a few things that had belonged to Pop, like his medals, uniform and dog tags, both from the service. To me she left "your father's purple heart, the old steamer trunk, and Ching-Ching." The lawyer raised his eyebrows and said, "What's a ching-ching?"

  I felt a flash of nausea while the others laughed. JR spoke up. "It's this godawful thing our pop brought back from Vietnam." To me, he added, "Guess you win, Pete."

  "Ching-Ching's gonna get you," Sissy added with an extra laugh.

  I forced a smile and pressed my fist against my mouth.

  The boys ran straight upstairs when we got back to Becca's. As I stripped off my jacket, I asked, "So where is Ching-Ching anyway?"

  "On the shelf." She lifted her chin toward a bookcase beside the TV stand. "It's up top so I don't have to look at it. Go ahead and pack it. Jesus, I'll be glad to be rid of it." As she took the baby up for a nap, she added, "It gives me the willies."

  I spotted it right away in the back, on the topmost shelf, half-behind a framed photo of our dad in his uniform. I lifted it out and blew the dust off it. It had always reminded me of a coconut, but egg-shaped, with the flatter end on the bottom and covered in coarse brown hairs. It had a thin white line around what would be its waist and, near the top, an engraved and painted face with narrow, angry eyes and a firm mouth. It had more hairs sprouting from the top of its head, worn at the ends and frazzled but originally in a freakish bowl cut meant to emphasize its eyes. JR and I used to play GI Joes with it until Mama caught us, whupped us, and put it on top of the refrigerator. When Pop died, she moved it behind his photo and we were all glad to be rid of the sight of it.

  I remember him bringing it back after his second tour. Sissy was walking already and he had gone back into the mines. He pulled it out of his duffel and showed it to Becca, JR and me. We gathered around, simultaneously repulsed and attracted. He explained something about it, using words that sounded so exotic I decided that if the war started up again, I would go. All I caught out of it was something that sounded like "Ching," so we named the little figure "Ching-Ching." Pop kept it on top of the chiffarobe, beside Mama's bottle of Skin So Soft. When he found out we'd played with it, we thought he'd kill us. Instead, he said, "I didn't bring that halfway across the goddamn world for you to break it."

  I put Ching-Ching back in its spot and went out to the kitchen. Becca surprised me hot on my heels. "You want some coffee?" she offered.

  I considered a moment and asked for something stronger.

  She got the coffee going and opened a high cabinet. "What do you want?"

  "Anything."

  She poured. When I asked if she'd join me, knowing I shouldn't, she shook her head. I watched her lean against the counter, her body language exactly like Mama's as she lit a cigarette and tossed her lighter back into her purse. She half-filled a cup of coffee, topped it with milk and three spoonfuls of sugar. As she came over to join me, I saw something out of the corner of my eye and gasped.

  Ching-Ching sat in the passage between the kitchen and the living room, its gouged, white eyes staring in my direction.

  "Damn it," she said, slamming her mug down on the table. Becca stomped over to it, snatched it up, and headed into the living room. I heard her set it back in place and yell up the stairs, "Y'all leave this thing alone!"

  The response was a creak of the floor in the attic and a ripple of feedback on the baby monitor.

  "Of all days," she said, taking her seat at my knee.

  I sipped my drink and kept my eyes on the doorway.

  "Becca."

  "Yes?"

  "How come you weren't gonna follow Mama's wishes and cremate her?"

  Becca took a long draw on her cigarette, her fingers trembling, then tapped it on a breakfast plate. "I wanted to see her, Peter."

  "You'd seen her for months."

  "Sick." She flashed her filling eyes at me. "I wanted to see her made up and pretty one more time, all right? I saw her all sunken and ashy and vomiting blood every goddamn day. I didn't want that to be how I remembered her. We didn't get to see Pop and I wasn't going to be cheated out of seeing Mama."

  "You know why we didn't see Pop."

  She opened her mouth and snapped it shut just as quickly. In the silence, I stole a glance at the doorway. Nothing.

  I said, "I suppose now she's gone, we can talk about it. Why he k---"

  "I don't want to talk about it."

  I nodded and finished my drink, my eyes locked to the spot where the kitchen's linoleum met the living room's shag carpet.

  At around 3 a.m., I woke out of a sound and dreamless sleep. I rolled onto my back and stared at glow-in-the-dark stickers on the bottom of the bunk bed overhead. There wasn't a lot of moonlight, but there was enough that I could make out shapes on the dresser. A baseball in an acrylic box. Stacks of folded clothes waiting to be put away. Something small, almost round, with white eyes...

  I sat bolt upright and began to hyperventilate. I clapped my hand to my mouth, partly to calm my breathing and partly to keep from being sick. I knew the boys hadn't brought it in. I knew Becca wasn't playing a practical joke. I'd locked the door and put a useless beanbag chair behind it.

  I stood and snatched up Ching-Ching. Warmth. And underneath its hard shell, a pulse---single, almost electric, combined with a constant hum. In that moment, I suspected what Mama had told me was true. But it wasn't enough. Without letting go of the thing, I shoved my feet into my sneakers and grabbed my keys and jacket.

  It only took four and a half minutes to drive to #17 and another thirty seconds to run as far as I could into the shaft. I didn't want to follow the tracks into the four-foot-high maw that lead to the collapsing and crumbling mine.

  "Where are you?" I yelled into the darkness. My voice echoed off the stone that glittered with threads of virgin coal. After a while, I yelled again. "I know you're here. I know it."

  Silence.

  I stomped toward one of the seemingly bottomless air shafts along the walls. "Get out here or I throw this thing down the chute."

  "You know it'll just come back."

  I gasped so hard that I choked. The voice came from the darkness of the mine, where the trams sat rusting.

  "What is this?" I growled toward the voice as I held out the throbbing mutant coconut.

  "It don't matter, Peter." He stepped from the darkness into shadow, the slightest bit of moonlight creeping in as far as where we stood, defining his hands and the line of his jaw. "What matters is that now it belongs to you."

  I poised over the manway. "I don't want it."

  "Yet you know that if you drop it, you'll drive home and find it waiting on your pillow."

  I shook to the point that I had to grip the wall for support. I nodded and waited for him to speak again.

  "You don't seem surprised to see me."

  "'Surprised' isn't the word for it, Pop."

  "She told you. She told you what I'd become."

  I nodded again. Desperate for something to do, I turned Ching-Ching over in my hands. Its pulse grew stronger and it became downright hot, almost too hot to hold. I set it on the ground at my feet.

  I said, "I couldn't hardly believe her, though."

  "So you spent your life trying to prove creatures like me don't exist, that it? 'Cause if you can do that, it was all in her head. And what come after, well, that would've been in yours."

  I slumped against one of the support pillars, my elbows on my knees and my head in my hands.

  He walked toward me, but not with the gait of a sixty-something-year-old man or a thirty-year-old one. He moved slowly, as though forcing an illusion of grace. He knelt beside me as I looked up. My eyes had adjusted to the light, and I could see the reality of him. He was no ghost, no figment of my imagination. He was exactly as I'd remembered him, which was impossible. Longish hair and sideburns, now with strands of s
ilver but styled as they had been in the years after he'd crossed the ocean. But how? I said to myself. How is it possible?

  I opened my mouth to say something, but before I could decide what to ask, he said, "Your mother's trunk."

  His eyes held mine. I nodded and exhaled. "Yes."

  "Where is it?"

  "The attic. Becca's attic."

  "She left it to you."

  "The trunk? Yeah."

  "Get it and bring it here."

  "But I can't---"

  "We can get it down the cage, you and me. After that, I'll take care of everything."

  "Take care of it?"

  "I know what's in the trunk, Peter."

  "She told you?"

  He nodded. "I know your hand in it, too."

  I felt sick. My father sat cross-legged on the ground beside me and picked up Ching-Ching. As he talked, he passed it between his hands, as I had. I felt its pulse under his words and in the rock that surrounded us. Everything in the mine came alive with exotic, living energy.

  "I was hurt bad at Xuan Loc. Real bad. A hole in my chest big enough to stick two fists in. I watched medics pass me by, over and over. I laid there with my eyes staring into the sun, then the dark of night, unable to die."

  "I can't believe that, Pop."

  As if I hadn't spoken, he continued. "Locals come by, pointed at me, whispered. I couldn't move my head, my eyes even, to see what they were doing. They used a blanket for a gurney and carried me through the jungle to a thatch hut so camou'ed, you didn't even realize it was there. I felt solid ground under my body. An old man with long white hair bent over me. I felt his hands on me, inside me. I couldn't speak. I heard his voice in my head. He spoke Chinese and I could understand him, Peter. I knew a language I'd never heard and I knew what language it was. He said 'Your p'ai is strong.'

  "I told him I wanted to go home, that I had a baby I'd never seen and I had to see her, had to see my wife, had to see you. I told him your names. While I spoke to him with my mind, he worked and nodded. Aloud he spoke Chinese, and I couldn't tell what he said but he used the word p'ai again. Room smelled like incense and blood. In my head, he said, 'I will make you strong but your body will be weary.' I closed and opened my eyes. I felt tears on my cheeks. It was a miracle. A true miracle, son. This old witch doctor was fixin' me up and I was goin' home. Layin' on the floor of that hut, I promised Jesus I would never leave you all again. If it meant I had to stay in these mines the rest of my life, I'd never, ever leave none of you."