Harlan County Horrors Read online

  "You loved?" It was impertinent to ask, but Ennica could not help herself. In a way, she was jealous. She wished she didn't have to feel anything. How much easier her life would be right now if she couldn't experience the pain of love and hate, humiliation and responsibility.

  Mr. Hue cawed again and preened himself. Had the crow been her lover? "No," said the witch. "Mr. Hue and I connect beyond trivial emotions. But I did love a man once, a human man. I yearned to hold him in my arms, to sink my hands into his flesh and watch him crumble to ash, to free him from the prison of life."

  Ennica wasn't sure if she should be more worried that the witch spoke so casually of murdering her lover, or that Ennica herself wasn't moved by it. "You didn't kill him?" she asked.

  "Worse," answered the witch. "I doomed him to live. I fled into these woods, as close as I could ever be again to the heart of my home, my mountain, and here I have remained."

  "I'm sorry." Ennica reached her hand across the table to pat the witch's arm, give her some comfort in knowing that, for this little while at least, she was not alone. The witch's skin was cool and smooth, like marble. Like death.

  Ennica bit back a sigh. Only she would be stupid enough to comfort Death.

  "It is late for you," said the being to whom time meant next to nothing. "You should rest; regain your strength." She opened the door behind her, a door that had not been there until she reached for it.

  The house was like the teacup of water, then; it was whatever she wanted it to be. Nice. In the room was a bed, as simple a furnishing as the table at which they sat, but it would suffice. Beggars can't be choosers. Still far and away better than slowly dying outside on the frozen ground.

  The teacup was now gone, as was the table. And when Ennica stood to follow the witch into the room, the chair beneath her disappeared as well. Would that certain memories could vanish just as easily.

  "I will grant your wish," the witch told her. Mr. Hue cawed his concurrence from her shoulder.

  Ennica had never voiced her desire aloud, but she apparently hadn't needed to. "Thank you."

  "For once, I believe it is I who should be thanking you," said the witch. "Sleep well."

  Ennica did sleep well; her exhaustion caught up with her the moment her head hit the thin feather pillow. But her dreams were not sweet.

  As before, the shadows on the backs of her eyelids resolved themselves into Anthony and Tanya. Ennica clenched her fists as she watched them conspiring, laughing, carefree without so much as a passing worry about the innocent life---lives!---they had ruined in their selfish wake.

  She was not a fairy; she was no firedamp. She could not stand aside with a soul of vapor and a heart of coal and watch, indifferently, as she doomed her lover to live out his life. She walked up to the couple, her long black skirts swirling about her legs and brushing the tops of her bare feet. With one pale arm she pushed Tanya to the side, and with the other she swept Anthony up in her cold embrace and kissed him. Through that kiss she fed him all her love and all her pain and everything else she had in her that he never did---and never would---understand.

  He tasted like chocolate.

  She felt his heart stop, felt his body grow cold in her arms. She felt him crumble to dust beneath her lips until there was nothing in her hands but ash. She felt the rainbow colors of the baby inside her melt away into a majestic, elegant blackness. There was no noise, no mess, and the feel of the soft soot between her fingers was ecstasy. She knelt, thrust her hand in the pile of Anthony at her feet, and pulled out the one thing that would not have turned to ash: his spark. It was a diamond now, burning with a deep, pure fire, and Ennica marveled at its perfection.

  The horse woke her, nuzzling her face and shoulder and nudging her into the sunshine. The house was gone; the witch was gone. She and the horse were alone at the base of the mountain. She squinted up at the sky, up the mountain path she'd have sworn she'd climbed the day before, and then she remembered how stupid she was, and how insane, and possibly how hormonal. She shrugged it off. A shame, really, that her little adventure had all been a dream.

  She slowly picked her aching body up, moaning and cursing the unforgivable ground that had been her bed and wondering where the rocks had been that made her hurt so badly. She bent and stretched, trying to work enough kinks out to remount the horse; she should really get it back to the stables before her father started to worry. As for the rest of her life...she put a hand on her belly.

  Odd; she felt none of her previous hatred toward Anthony anymore. She could honestly say she no longer loved him. In fact, she didn't feel anything. She closed her eyes...and thought of an abandoned watchtower, and teacups filled with chocolate, and a stove that smelled like apple pie. All those horrible memories and terrible feelings and atrocious, nonsense fantasies were gone.

  "Thank you," Ennica whispered to no one, for if it had all been a dream, there was really no one to thank. As if in reply, a crow swooped down in a whirlwind of ebony feathers and dropped a shiny object in the dirt at her feet. Cawing triumphantly, it flew away, back up the mountain, into the mists from whence it came. Ennica bent down gingerly to retrieve the diamond, and the knowledge that came with it.

  She would return the horse and say her goodbyes. She would not stay for the funeral or the gossip; that was some other girl's life now. That blissful innocence had been replaced by something stronger. Something deadlier. Something...else. Something with the power to grant wishes, to tame crows, to climb mountains.

  She lifted her face back up to the path through the trees and the red-tinged dawn of the new day. Somewhere on that mountain, there was a cabin waiting for her.

  A History of Harlan, KY

  by Preston Halcomb

  Harlan's very name conjures up memories of blood and violence. Decades of strife have engulfed the county, fueled by both the local coal mining industry and by feuds between individuals and whole families. This gives the people here a unique outlook on both morality and life, and this outlook makes the county an ideal setting for the stories contained herein.

  Harlan County began life in 1819, incorporated from a piece of Knox County, Kentucky. Over the years, it has been chiseled away to form parts of present-day Bell, Leslie, and Letcher counties. The county as it exists today covers about 470 square miles of hills and valleys. The biggest cities in the county include the county seat of Harlan, as well as the cities of Cumberland and Evarts.

  The county was named after Silas Harlan, who served as a scout and a major in the Continental Army. Harlan came to Kentucky with James Harrod in 1774, where he assisted Harrod's party in Harrodsburg, delivering gunpowder to settlers and helping them against the British during the Revolutionary War. Harlan built a stockade near Danville known as Harlan's Station; he also assisted in the establishment of Fort Jefferson at the mouth of the Ohio River in 1780. Silas Harlan died leading the advance party at the Battle of Blue Licks on August 19, 1782.

  Harlan County has been rocked by great labor union unrest since the early part of the twentieth century, primarily centered on the labor unions associated with the coal mining industry. The area gained one of its enduring nicknames, "Bloody Harlan," due to the riots and murders that occurred. The conflict originally stems from a series of United Mine Workers strikes and labor-management battles that ended in a shoot-out between deputized guards and miners on May 4, 1931 in Evarts. This resulted in the confirmed deaths of three guards and one miner; an undetermined number were wounded.

  The labor unrest was felt as late as the 1970s, the period documented in the film Harlan County, USA by Barbara Kopple, and one of the most violent times in the county's history. In 1973, workers at the Eastover Coal Company's Brookside Mine voted to join the United Mine Workers Union. Soon after, management disputes led the workers to go on strike. The mine brought in "scabs" (non-union workers) to continue production, but miners who felt they were being illegally replaced attacked the scabs. During the strike, mine workers' wives and children often joined them on
the picket lines. Many were arrested, hit by baseball bats, shot at, and struck by cars. One miner, Lawrence Jones, was shot and killed by a replacement worker; the murderer, Bill Bruner, served no time for this incident. Special Judge F. Byrd Hogg, a local coal operator who had been assigned to the union case, ruled in favor of the mine management.

  The county is filled with folklore and legends going back before its founding. On a spiritual level, Harlan County is a very devout place. Churches spring up like mushrooms on a cool morning. Underlying it all, however, is the same fatalistic worldview for which people from the area have become known. They have an inherent understanding that there are things out there that go bump in the night, and can be counted upon to spin ghost tales about the area whenever they get together.

  Harlan County today is still a place where the nights are dark and the shadows deep, but there is a growing lightness as well. Many efforts have been made to modernize the area: a new ATV park is drawing nationwide acclaim and bringing much needed revenue into the county; the schools are being upgraded and consolidated; Harlan County's rich natural beauty is being exploited to bring tourism dollars to the area. The future of Harlan County looks bright, even if it is shrouded in a past filled with blood and darkness.

  Preston Halcomb

  June 2009

  Lexington, KY

  Editor Bio

  Mari Adkins is a paranormal fiction writer who grew up in the coal mining community of Woodbine, Kentucky. Her fiction has appeared in the anthologies Stories from the Red Light District, Aegri Somnia, Vampire Bytes, and Help, as well as in Toasted Cheese and Apex Magazine. She is a submissions editor for Apex Magazine, and the social media maven for Apex Publications, in addition to doing freelance editing, writing, and book reviewing. Her current home is Lexington, Kentucky, where she lives with her husband and their calico cat. She is a mother and an avid supporter of kidney disease awareness and living organ donation awareness. The Kentucky mountains, their culture, their superstitions, and their particular magics will always be in her heart and her blood.

  Artist Bio

  Award-winning artist Billy Tackett is the creator the writer of the upcoming graphic novel Dead White and Blue comics, the official artist of Shane Moore's Abyss Walker series, and the self-proclaimed "Creepiest Artist in America".

  He maintains a web site at billytacket.com.

  Table of Contents

  Title Page

  Front Matter

  Dedication

  Introduction

  “

  Hiding Mountain: Our Future in Apples”

  Psychomachia”

  Yellow Warblers”

  Kingdom Come”

  Trouble Among the Yearlings”

  Spirit Fire”

  The Thing at the Side of the Road”

  Inheritance”

  Greater of Two Evils”

  Harlan Moon”

  The Witch of Black Mountain”

  A History of Harlan, KY

  Editor Bio

  Artist Bio