Ask the Bones (13 page)

The son screamed for hours. Finally his voice became so hoarse that he started braying. Day after day he lay in wait for his father—around corners, behind trees—ready to drop down on his hands and kick him with both feet.

The master spent months dodging his son and hoping that he would improve. But the braying and kicking only grew worse.

He lay awake at night, distraught. When he arose in the morning, his eyes looked dark and haunted.

He knew the doctors hadn't helped his wife. But he finally sent his son away for treatment. What else could he do?

Now only he and his daughter were left. He was sure he would go mad if he lost her. So he took her to Tennessee, traveling in the middle of the night, crossing fields and following back roads, hoping that the shadowy figure would not find them again.

But it did.

One evening the master saw someone climbing down from the live oak tree at the bottom of the drive. He didn't know that Luke had just tucked a scrap of the bloody handkerchief into a nest high in the tree. But he did know that something terrible happened every time that person appeared. So he raced to his daughter's room to make sure she was safe. But she wasn't there.

He ran from room to room, calling her name, but he couldn't find her. He ordered his servants to saddle his horse so he could ride forth to save his missing daughter.

He opened the closet door to get his coat, and gasped. There she was, perched on a shelf, giggling. And when she finally stopped, she was cawing like a crow and flapping her arms, trying to fly. Each day thereafter, she spent hours sitting on a branch of the live oak tree.

The master didn't need to send her away, because she was harmless. But he sobbed as he watched her flapping by.

He now knew that he couldn't escape the shadowy figure. Luke always found him, wherever he moved. Even the wind began to mock him with the voice of the dead girl.

The master prowled around his property, night and day, watching and waiting. He missed meals, forgot to change his clothes, and let his hair grow wild.

When the branches of trees rubbed together in the wind, he heard Jo's death cry. When clouds raced across the moon, he saw shadowy figures everywhere. But no matter how carefully he aimed, his bullets never struck anything. And no one else saw what he saw or heard what he heard. He began to believe that nothing around him was real.

Then a letter arrived from the institution in Georgia. The master guessed what it said even before he slit open the envelope. His wife had died, and she had been buried in the family cemetery there.

He started off that very afternoon to visit her grave. He rode for days, and finally, one moonlit night, he reached the lonely road that led to the cemetery. He heard footsteps behind him and saw the glowing eyes of wolves in the surrounding forest, but he was sure his mind was playing tricks again.

When he found his wife's grave, he knelt beside it, his head bowed. He thought he felt a sympathetic hand on his shoulder, and he remembered his wife's gentle touch, before she went mad. By the time he looked up, he saw just what he expected—no one.

But if he had run his fingers across the back of his jacket, he would have found a scrap of bloody handkerchief clinging there.

Suddenly he felt a tremendous urge to get down on all fours. And when his eyes began to glow, he threw back his head and bayed at the moon.

 

 

 

N
o one in the family ever went near the attic. They hoped the eerie sounds up there were made by branches scraping against the house. But they took no chances. And that was wise, for up in the attic an evil demoness awaited them.

She had been flying past the house, years before, when the mother of the family had packed her wedding gown into a wooden trunk. The demoness loved silken gowns, and when she glimpsed the wedding dress through the attic window, she wanted to try it on.

If the mother had remembered to utter the name of God when she packed her gown, there would have been no trouble, but she forgot. And in a wink, the demoness entered the trunk. The mother could not see her and closed the lid.

The demoness found herself trapped, and she grew angrier hour by hour. After she had been imprisoned for years, her fury was colossal. She vowed that she would take possession of the very next person who tried on the gown.

The daughter of the family had been warned to stay out of the attic. She'd also been warned never, ever, to open the wooden trunk. But she didn't know why. In truth, the gown was being saved for her own wedding. And her mother believed that bad luck would haunt her daughter for the rest of her life if she saw the gown before her wedding day.

For years, the girl wondered what was in the forbidden trunk. One day when the demoness was unusually quiet, the girl slipped up the stairs and opened the attic door. There before her was the trunk, right beside the window. She knelt on the dusty floor and quietly unhooked the latches. Then she raised the lid just a crack.

Inside, she saw her mother's silk wedding gown. She pushed the lid back and ran her fingers over the soft material, marveling at the tiny stitches. It was so beautiful that it almost took her breath away.

The girl couldn't understand why her mother kept it hidden, nor could she resist taking it out of the trunk and trying it on. But she had barely pulled it over her head when suddenly she felt as if she were spinning into the depths of a dark whirlwind.

She was already feeling sick when she looked at the gown and saw it turning to worms—creeping, crawling, slimy worms. Worms were crawling all over her body, across her shoulders, up her neck, and into her hair. She screamed.

Her mother rushed up to the attic and began crying as hysterically as her daughter. But she managed to pull off the wormy gown, run down the stairs, and cast it into the fire. The mother was still crying when she returned to the attic, but her daughter seemed strangely calm, even cold. And as the mother watched, an evil grin spread across her daughter's face, for the angry demoness had taken possession of the girl's body.

The frightened mother suspected that her daughter was possessed and ran out of the house to find a rabbi who could expel evil spirits.

When she and the rabbi returned, they found the girl pulling food from the cupboards, tossing it on the floor, and stamping on it. And all the while she bared her teeth in an evil grin.

The rabbi realized that the demoness was hunting for jam, the favorite food of demons. So he took some down from a high shelf and told the girl she could have it if she returned to the attic with them. The girl followed, licking her lips.

When she was standing in front of the trunk once more, he told her, “Close the lid most of the way, then push your little finger inside.” The girl refused, for the demoness was controlling her. But when the rabbi threatened to withhold the jam, she obeyed.

At that moment, the rabbi fervently pronounced the secret name of God, and the demoness was forced out of the girl's body by way of her little finger. The girl screamed and pulled her hand away. The rabbi slammed the lid of the trunk shut, imprisoning the demoness once more.

The girl backed away, trembling, still terrified of the demoness. While her mother consoled her, the rabbi rushed to put a huge lock on the trunk. Then he hauled the trunk onto a wagon and drove it into a dark forest where he buried it as deeply as he could, covering it with dirt and heavy stones.

Even now, some say that eerie sounds rise through the earth in that dark place. Some say those sounds are no longer as muffled as they were when the trunk was first buried.

But who knows how long it takes for a wooden trunk to rot and a demoness to claw her way free?

 

 

 

T
he old man's wife died the very day his goat disappeared. He wept. How could he pay for a decent funeral if he had no goat's milk to sell?

He trudged through the snow to his greedy neighbor's house. Perhaps he could borrow some money. But as he walked along, he saw hoofprints that seemed familiar, leading directly to his neighbor's yard. And when he knocked on the door, he smelled savory goat stew cooking over the fire.

The old man was trembling by the time his neighbor appeared. “Where's my goat?” he cried.

“What goat?” the neighbor asked. And he quickly rubbed the back of his hand across his chin, wiping off a glob of gravy.

“My only goat,” the poor man shouted. “The goat who was going to help me pay for my wife's funeral.”

“Who knows what happened to your goat?” growled his neighbor. “It's not in the field with mine. And don't bother me for money. I have none to spare.”

He slammed the door so quickly that he didn't hear the old man's anguished curse: “May the fate of my goat befall you.”

The poor man returned home, moaning. “At least I can dig a proper grave for my wife.” He picked up his tools and went to the graveyard. The ground was frozen, but he chopped it with his ax and scooped it up with his shovel, removing icy chunks of dirt. His fingers and toes ached from the cold, but he dug deeper and deeper into the earth.

Just as the sun was about to set, he noticed something round at the bottom of the hole. He pulled a pot out of the dirt and pried off the lid. And what did he find inside? Gold coins.

The old man was overjoyed. Now he could give his wife the finest funeral his village had ever seen, with a gleaming coffin and an elaborate church service.

After the funeral was over, he invited everyone to his hut for dinner, even his greedy neighbor, for the old man had begun to wonder if he had judged him too harshly.