William Gay - Little Sister Death

The winter, a harsh one with many snows, seemed to have passed uneventfully, the Beales reporting nothing out of the way, though Vestal swore he saw a light bobbing about the winter cornfields and that on the way to visit his wife, who lived at a neighboring farm, he habitually met a black dog in the same spot of the road every night, no matter what time his progress brought him to that point.

Then in the early spring, when the trees were greening out, Ginny was on her way home from school when she chanced to look down into a meadow that bordered the path she was on. There was a great oak tree there where the children used to play, and swinging from one of its topmost branches was a young girl. The girl wore a dress of brown homespun, a butternut color, and she had long yellow hair like Ginny, who did not recognize her and drew nearer to call to her, thinking her new to the neighborhood and not yet entered in school.

The girl was watching her, holding the limb by her arms and swinging slowly in the air. Ginny crossed the splitrail fence and stooped to put down her books, and when she looked up the girl was gone. The branch still tossed with released weight.

From that the haunting grew in intensity, as if it drew nourishment from the fecund growth of that long ago wilderness spring, or had some urgent need to make itself known so strongly that even Jacob Beale himself could no longer deny its existence.

Noises began to be heard at night, soft and furtive, so that the Beale family felt the house had become infested with rats; during the night gnawing sounds would issue forth until it seemed that the very beds were being consumed as they lay upon them, and there was a persistent chewing behind the paneling, but when lights were lit and carried from room to room nothing seemed to have been disturbed.

There were the sounds of dogs fighting, as if chained together to battle to the death, bounding and leaping over the furniture. One night a great flapping of wings in the attic that moved from one corner to the other, as if some winged beast the size and weight of a heifer calf was cavorting there.

During the day the Beales would ransack the house from top to bottom, some of the flooring and paneling even being removed and replaced in an effort to locate the source of their troubles, all of which was in vain. Cats and dogs were brought into the house at nightfall to try and scent out the infestation, the animals behaving peculiarly and immediately seeking an egress; no dog ever spent the night willingly in Jacob Beale’s house after the haunting began. This was tried early and abandoned, as the dogs created such a cacophony of noise with their howling and whimpering, not ceasing even when Jacob Beale arose to beat them, that the family seemed almost to prefer the sounds of the Haunt.

These were trying times for the Beales, and though they could not have known it, they were to continue for four more years.

Jacob Beale was a man trying to get a crop in and keep his slaves under control, who were likewise affected by the haunting. Ignorant and superstitious, they were even more terrorized by the sounds and flitting lights than the white people were, some of them even slipping away and trying to escape, having to be returned by patrollers. Mr. Beale was under great pressure at this time, as were to a lesser degree the members of his family. Unable to sleep at night and having to carry on his business and financial transactions in the daytime, he now became afflicted by a singular malady. His tongue and jaws seemed to be most affected, swelling and paining him so intensely that he was at times unable to speak or eat. These spells were generally of short duration, however, enabling him to continue his business affairs rather than completely giving up and taking to his bed.

At first he tried to blame the nocturnal noises on the effects of the earth quaking, earthquakes being on the mind of Tennesseans, a severe quake having just recently struck Tennessee, affecting much of the countryside and creating Reelfoot Lake, which at that time was widely believed to be bottomless.

At last, however, he was forced to seek outside help, going for counsel to Brother Joseph Primm, preachers being known to possess a greater knowledge of such things than the common man.

It is not recorded what Brother Primm thought of these revelations, but he and his wife agreed to spend the night with the Beales and listen for themselves. Before retiring he offered a prayer and a song, praying piously and at great length for the good Lord to direct his attentions toward alleviating the circumstances that had brought his friend Beale to such a sorry state.

The lights were scarcely blown out and the folk abed before the Haunt seemed to fairly spread herself. Objects were thrown, the sound of furniture being overturned, the covers were jerked from Brother Primm’s fingers. For the first time coarse and derisive laughter arose, went effortlessly from room to room, and continued so loudly that none were able to sleep, not even desisting when Reverend Primm called loudly on a Higher Power, but continuing until it seemed to tire itself out, or just to weary of the game.

The next day, under the advice of Brother Primm, others of Jacob’s neighbors were told of the troubles, the affair being of so complicated a nature that the efforts of their common minds might be able to unravel this riddle.

They were sworn to secrecy, but in a community as small and closely knit as Sinking Creek, and a matter as marvelous as this one was, it can come as no surprise that word spread throughout the countryside like wildfire, so that in the evenings the house would be full of neighbors who had gathered to hear for themselves these wonders.

Reverend Primm was the unofficial leader of the group, and he used to sit before the fire and talk to the Haunt, beseeching it to speak and make its purpose known. To their great surprise it did learn to talk, making at first a kind of babylike gurgling. As the nights passed it grew stronger, saying a few words and humming a few lines from gospel songs of that day; and then one night it began to speak, repeating word for word Reverend Primm’s sermon of the previous Sunday, and concluding with the song he had used to lead the service. It was a wonderful mimicry, copying perfectly the inflections of Brother Primm’s mellifluous voice.

As soon as the Haunt could speak it was begged to reveal its intentions, and it was not loathe to do so. It said that it had come to torture Virginia Beale and to drive Jacob Beale, whom it referred to as old Jake, to his death, at which time it promised to return whence it had come.

After crops were laid that summer, they would be there every night. The yard would be full of wagons and tethered horses, playing children chasing fireflies, solitary workers appearing sourceless in blue dusk from whichever direction they happened to live in. Not even waiting now for full dark, but stringing out along the roads in early dusk, whole families of them coming from God knew where, folks Beale had never seen before or heard rumored, the men dressed in their Sunday best, stiff on the wagon seats, the women bonneted in their best finery, shifting the snuffstick aside in their drawstring mouths and watching him with their flinty little eyes, knowing as sure as death that he knew what they came to hear: not the gospelsinging or the sugarmouthed pseudopreaching but the Haunt’s obscene rantings, its dirtymouth tattling of the community doings. Them hearing it and rolling their eyes in spurious shock and saying, They Lord have mercy, as if it had taken them by surprise, as if it was not something they had come anticipating, by now a perverse source of entertainment that drew them gapejawed and slackmouthed out of the brush as sugar draws flies.

And him feeding them, likely as not. Or having to offer, anyway, a few of them saying no thanks ye, we got a little somethin here we brought. The rest of them taking whatever fare was offered, and there would have to be more flour and coffee brought by the end of the month.