Midnight Grinding (2 page)

MISS ABIGAIL’S DELICATE

CONDITION

I hate snakes. Whenever I see one I go into a blind panic. It’s not just rattlers and copperheads, either. Big or little, dead or alive…I utterly loathe the things. I can’t say why I react in such a way. Maybe it goes clear back to that nasty business in Genesis. Whenever I cast my eyes upon the serpent all I see is treachery and evil.

If you don’t already have a fear of snakes, this story may leave you with one. It is based on a true medical account that took place back in the early 1900s…I just embellished the outcome a bit.

Most folks in the little town of New Bainesville, Virginia were certain that Miss Abigail Beecher would go to her grave an old maid, even though she was now only nineteen years of age. It wasn’t that Miss Beecher was terribly homely; on the contrary, she was quite lovely. And it was not that she came from a poverty-stricken home and had no dowry to interest potential suitors. No, the young lady came from one of the wealthiest and most respected families in New Bainesville. Rather, it was the nature of Miss Abigail’s physical condition that made her a less than likely candidate for matrimony.

Since childhood, Abigail had been sickly, plagued with physical ailments galore. It was rumored that her problem began at the age of nine. Her family had been picnicking down beside the babbling swell of Chestnut Creek on the Beecher property, when young Abigail knelt and drank from the creekbed. The picnic went well, but upon returning home, the child became quite ill. She lay with a high fever for many days, unable to eat anything, before her temperature finally broke and lowered to normal. But much to her parents’ dismay, her troubles did not end there. The fevers resurfaced regularly, accompanied by alternate periods of nausea, choking, and convulsive fits. It was believed that she had consumed some strange bacteria from the innocent swallow of creekwater. And it soon became necessary for James Beecher to employ a full-time nurse to watch over his daughter’s fluctuating condition.

She grew into a young woman, inheriting her mother’s auburn hair and hazel green eyes, but her skin was pale from lack of sun, as white as alabaster. She was also painfully shy and extremely nervous; her frail, white hands fidgeted constantly with one another. No wonder all the prim, gossiping ladies pegged her as a potential spinster.

So it came as quite a shock to many an old busybody when a handsome, young gentleman by the name of Jeremy Burke began to call regularly upon the reclusive girl.

Their paths had crossed by association with the New Bainesville Bank & Trust. Abigail was the sole beneficiary of her late father’s estate, while Jeremy had recently returned from the war in Europe and had taken over his father’s position as bank president. It was during the execution of the Beecher will that young Jeremy grew to fancy the demure young lady who seemed content to sit in her shaded parlor with her books and Victrola. Miss Abigail seemed equally taken with the outgoing gentleman with the smiling eyes and the slight limp, a battlefield injury he corrected with the help of a horsehead cane.

And so, in January of 1920, the courtship of the two began, to the surprise of many, but the well wishes of all.

It started with suppers at the Beecher home and, afterwards, quiet evenings of pleasant conversation before the big fireplace in the main room. When Jeremy grew to know her better and the weather began to warm, he suggested a picnic for just the two of them beside Haverstone Lake, which bordered his own estate. Being the recluse that she was, Abigail was reluctant at first. But unable to disappoint her beau any longer, she finally consented. Her nurse, Mrs. Henderson, also agreed, feeling that a change of scenery would do her mistress a world of good.

It was a sunny day in mid-March, a day of new spring, daffodils, green-budded trees and songbirds. They took a canoe across the lake, Jeremy in his straw hat and sleeve garters, Abigail wearing a sheer veil to shield her lovely face from the rays of the sun. Their trip to the far side was leisurely. Once, Jeremy had put down the oars and strummed a couple of popular tunes on his five-string banjo. His playing was atrocious and she laughed as she had not laughed in years. Encouraged that the day was off to a good start, Jeremy resumed his rowing and soon they had their lunch laid out upon the grass beneath a blossoming magnolia tree.

The two were engaged in small talk and a feast of fried chicken, roasting ears, and cornbread, when something from the direction of the lake drew the young lady’s eyes from her companion. The man turned and, much to his surprise, saw a snake emerge from the water’s edge. It was a cottonmouth, a snake common in the South that frequented the area’s lakes and rivers. He watched, startled, for the serpent was so bold as to leave the safety of its waterhole and slither straight toward them.

“You need not worry, my dear,” he assured, but when he turned to Abigail he found not fear in her eyes, but rather a strange fascination. She looked fairly hypnotized by the ugly reptile that crossed the spring grass toward them.

He stood and, with his cane, drove the black snake back to the lakeside. “Nasty devil!” he shouted, watching as it swam, head above water, into the quiet breadth of Haverstone Lake. “Now, dear Abigail, we shall finish our lunch and—” He was jolted from his train of thought as he turned back to find her face ghastly pale, her eyes wide with sudden shock. She began to choke, her breath escaping in shallow gasps, her slender arms trembling as she collapsed to the ground.

His heart heavy with fear, Jeremy carried his lady to the boat and oared to the far side. Halfway across, the cursed snake reappeared, craning its head over the edge of the bow. With a shout, Jeremy gave the serpent a vicious swipe with the broad end of his paddle, sending it darting across the rippling waters. By the time Jeremy rowed ashore and, with the help of the groundskeeper, carried her inside to the parlor sofa, Abigail Beecher’s frightful seizure had run its course. It was at that moment, as she lay pale and scared before him, that Jeremy knew he truly loved this frail woman. He took her tiny hands in his own and gently kissed her.

He proposed to her the following evening, in her own parlor on bended knee. And, with tears of happiness in her eyes, Miss Abigail Beecher readily accepted.

They were married on the first day of April. It was a lavish church wedding and it seemed that the entire township of New Bainesville had attended. After the ceremony had proclaimed them husband and wife, they retired to the Burke estate, which would become their permanent home after Abigail’s property was sold. Their love for each other was consummated that night, tenderly and with patience, Jeremy treating his new bride as gently as a china doll.

Abigail’s nurse moved in to look after the lady’s bouts of illness, which seemed to grow fewer as the weeks drew into months. Jeremy was pleased to see that his wife was spending more time outdoors and that she had even taken up oil painting. Many an evening he returned home from the bank to find her at work on the veranda, rendering a likeness of the lakefront. It was on one such evening that he glanced past her latest canvas and spotted a snake
—
another cursed cottonmouth
—
winding its way up to the porch from the direction of the boathouse.

Once again he chased it away with his cane. And once again, Abigail’s apparent fascination with the poisonous snake transcended into a fit of coughing and convulsions. She was led to her room with the help of Nurse Henderson, and Old George, the caretaker, was sent to fetch the doctor.

After Doctor Travers had made his examination, he took Jeremy aside and told him that the fit had passed and that Abigail was resting comfortably. He also told the young husband something that took him by surprise. His frail wife was with child. Jeremy voiced his concern, thinking that her ill health might jeopardize the lives of both mother and child. Travers told him not to worry, that the pregnancy would go smoothly if she was kept in bed and protected from further agitation.

After the doctor had left, Jeremy called Old George into his study. “There is a disturbing abundance of cottonmouths venturing up from the lake lately,” he informed the man. “Find their nest and destroy the lot. I will pay you a sterling silver dollar for each one killed.”

***

During the following months of that summer, twenty-seven watersnakes were laid at Jeremy’s feet and his money pouch grew lighter as Old George’s grew heavier. Most had been killed down by the lake, yet, oddly enough, eight were discovered uncomfortably close to the main house.

Abigail’s fever wavered over the days ahead, but her sickness seemed to quell with twilight and she slept peacefully. Jeremy, however, found his sleep fitful on those nights. Half of his insomnia stemmed from worry over his wife and their unborn baby, while the rest was due to the disturbing nightmares he had been having lately. He had been dreaming of snakes, but the dreams lacked substance or any sense of purpose. He dreamt of two serpents
—
male and female
—
lying in a bed of grass, entwined in a fitful throe of flailing heads and tails, engaged in an obscene act of copulation. Then amid the thrashing, the grass changed to white bed linens and he realized that the bed was their own, his and Abigail’s. He would bolt awake, near hysteria, while his wife lay in a restful slumber beside him.

Summer passed into the cool nights of autumn and still the nightmare persisted. It was on a night in early September that he awoke abruptly with the eerie feeling that his awful dream had not yet ended. Frightened, he lit a lamp beside the bed and threw back the covers. There, lying between him and Abigail, curled a snake: a single cottonmouth, bearing its deadly needle-like fangs and the gaping white maw that gave the serpent its particular namesake. He had gone for his pistol, yelling for his wife to flee from its reach. But Abigail merely lay there, her breathing deep, her sleep undisturbed.

The gunshot awoke her as Jeremy knocked the serpent to the bedroom floor with his cane and blew its head apart with a single well-aimed bullet. Nurse Henderson rushed in just as Abigail began to strangle violently and lurch upon the feather mattress in a harrowing convulsion that traveled the length of her slender body. After a moment, however, she relaxed and returned to her dreamless slumber.

The next few months were the most difficult for Jeremy Burke. He sat in an armchair beside his wife’s sickbed most nights, sometimes reading, but mostly watching her with heart-rending concern. The days since the incident had not been kind to dear Abigail. They were filled with nausea and fever and gut-wrenching cramps that Doc Travers had no diagnosis for. Relief came only with nightfall and it was then that Jeremy suffered, watching silently over his beloved wife, jumping at every little shift in her sleep, every little change in her breathing.

It was on a December night, during one of his nocturnal vigils, that the cause of Abigail’s strange ailment finally became known.

Jeremy had been reading a book of O. Henry, when he unwillingly drifted into sleep. It was only when the hall clock chimed the hour of twelve that he awoke. Silently scolding himself for his goldbricking, Jeremy studied his wife’s pale face in the soft glow of the bedside lamp. She slept as usual, on her back, her mouth open slightly, her breathing shallow. Then, as he returned his weary eyes to his reading, a hitch sounded in the woman’s breath that caused him to glance up.

His heart began to race at the awful sight he was witnessing no more than three feet away. At first he thought it to be her tongue, somehow bloated and bruised, but in an instant, and to his growing horror, he realized that it was rather the triangular head of a
serpent
that probed inquisitively from between the petals of Abigail’s parted lips.

He was gripped by indecision for only a fraction of a second. Then, without further thought, his hand shot out and fisted around the snake’s slender neck. “
Oh dear Lord in heaven!
” he gasped as he stood over the bed. His wife awoke, eyes wide in alarm as the horrid thing within her squirmed and convulsed under Jeremy’s firm grasp.

Nearly overcome with the terror of it all, he hesitated, then began to pull. One…two…
three
feet of the cursed thing he dragged from his wife’s open mouth. It writhed in the cool air of the room, its hide blistered and raw from years of swimming in gastric and intestinal acids. Abigail’s thin hands clawed at the bedclothes, panic bringing her close to the edge of madness as she watched her husband exorcise the demon she had housed since the age of nine.

Finally, the snake was out. Jeremy held the serpent aloft, watching its scarred head strain and turn, trying unsuccessfully to sink its fangs into the flesh of his hand. With a fury born of pure anger and loathing, he flung it against the oaken panel of the bedroom door. Then, retrieving his .45, he emptied the clip into its thrashing body.