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Granny sat on the porch of her little house in the hollow, de-stringing a dishpan of green beans. Picked from her garden, she wanted to can them this afternoon. She enjoyed growing her own vegetables, but her garden got smaller every year as she was able to spend less time bent over digging in the red dirt.
She’d had a restless night. There’d been blood on the moon, an evil omen. Someone was going to die. And her nose had been itching all morning, so company was coming.
Eb, a gangly kid with a scruffy beard, didn’t surprise her when he walked up to the porch. She’d heard her great-nephew was in trouble with the law over the Roberts girl and had been hiding out in the woods.
“Eb,” she said.
“Granny.” He smiled his dopey grin and sat in one of the mismatched chairs.
“Good weather.” She snapped more beans.
He looked at the clouds overhead. “Might rain tomorrow.”
“Nah. My knees say we’re fine. How are your folks?”
“They’re good. Mama says she’s got a couple bushels of tomatoes for you. Her garden has twice as many as last year.”
Eb’s mama had two green thumbs. “I hear you got yourself in a bit of trouble,” Granny said.
He hung his head. “Mr. Roberts got the law after me. He shot at me!”
Eb wasn’t her brightest kin, but what young man in love wasn’t stupid?
“I don’t see any holes in you,” she said. “He must be a bad shot.”
“I made it out her bedroom window before he got his shotgun loaded,” Eb said. “He knows I wouldn’t hurt a hair on Rebecca’s head.”
“So why come see me?”
“Mama says you might be able to change Mr. Roberts’ mind. I don’t want to end up in the county jail until the baby comes.”
Her kinfolk gave the old witch too much credit. “If you want a wart removed, I can help, but I can’t turn back time or make Rebecca’s pa think better of you.”
“She gave me some of his hair and a handkerchief.”
A devil doll? Granny hadn’t made one in decades. They were more trouble than they were worth.
“I’ll do anything,” Eb said.
She thought about it. “I’ve been needing indoor plumbing. The outhouse seems to move farther from the house every year.”
“I could do that. I’m good with my hands.” And other parts of his body apparently. “She says she might be a little bit pregnant.”
“There’s no little bit when it comes to having a child.” Granny laughed. “You either are or you ain’t. Give me the cloth and hair. I’ll see what I can do.”
Eb reached into his pocket and pulled out a piece of folded fabric. “Don’t kill him, Granny. Just make him like me.”
She took the faded handkerchief. “At least there’s a full moon tonight. This kind of spell needs night magic. Your pa won’t be pleased.” Her nephew, Eb’s father, was a religious man and disliked her practicing the old ways.
“He told me to turn myself in to the sheriff.”
She snorted. Eb’s father had snuck out of a few bedroom windows when he was younger. He had been one of the most handsome men in the county. Like Eb, he’d found it too easy to get what he wanted. Unlike Eb, he’d been quicker climbing out bedroom windows.
“It may not work,” Granny said. “Zephram Roberts is a mule-headed man.” Just like his mama, Old Lady Roberts, had been. Meanest woman in the country. That had been one funeral Granny hadn’t minded attending.
She snapped more beans. “It might be simpler if you looked for a job out of town for a while.”
“I can’t leave, Granny. I love her.”
The boy had backbone. But he’d sit in jail until Rebecca had the baby and her pa and his shotgun decided it needed a name.
Granny shouldn’t mess with forces that didn’t like being messed with. She cured an occasional case of gout and told the neighbors the best time of the moon to plant squash, but she was capable of more. Old age hadn’t made her cranky; she’d always been feisty.
“I have most of what I need for a hexing,” she said, “but there are a few things you can fetch for me.”
His shoulders sagged with relief. “What do you need?”
“My old rooster is getting too big for his britches. I’ll need his blood. Also, some wild ginseng, a big handful.”
“I’ll bring them before dark,” Eb said. “Do you need me here?”
She shook her head. “It’s better if you ain’t. I will need your left pinkie.”
The shocked look on his face made her laugh. “Just joshin’ you. The rooster blood and ginseng should be enough.”
The fabric from her quilting bag would make the doll’s clothes and Zephram’s handkerchief would make up the body. She’d stuff it with ginseng and a poultice of rooster blood and some herbs she kept hidden in the back of the cabinet.
Eb scurried off to the chicken coop on the hill above Granny’s cabin, and she finished her beans before going inside for her rag bag.
* * *
The spell wasn’t working. The doll struggled in her grasp, refusing to obey her commands. Twice it had tried to poke her with the needle she’d used to sew it up.
“You will love Eb,” she said after chanting the words to give the doll a semblance of life. It looked like Zephram, right down to the frown he always wore and his halo of gray hair. He shouldn’t be resisting her.
But he was. She stood in the night air beneath the full moon, using the stump where Eb had beheaded the rooster as an altar.
She lay the worthless doll on the stump and considered destroying it. She held the needle she’d taken from it. If the doll didn’t want to do what she ordered, maybe pain would change its mind. Anything she inflicted on the miniature would be felt by Zephram, but everyone had aches and pains. If she didn’t overdo it, he wouldn’t realize he’d been temporarily cursed.
When she lifted the needle, the doll scurried backward on the stump. In the moonlight, it looked defiant, and when she jabbed it, her needle broke in two.
“What?” she asked herself. “Impossible.”
The doll looked as surprised as she did. It laughed silently, and its rag body shook.
What could protect an effigy? Either she’d lost her touch, or…
“You little stinker,” Granny said. “You’re already cursed.” Because the real Zephram had a hex on him, she was unable to add a new one. Who had bewitched the old man?
Grasping the wiggling doll, Granny turned to the shadows. “You can come out now. I know you’re here.”
Rebecca stepped forward, a pretty young woman in a pale blue dress. Her blonde hair shone in the moonlight, and she held a willow wand pointed at Granny. “I shouldn’t have given Pa’s handkerchief to Eb, should I? That’s how you knew I was a witch.”
Granny didn’t know Rebecca was a witch. Had she cast a spell on her father? Why? The old woman didn’t need a wand to protect herself. She waved her hand, and Rebecca’s wand snapped in half.
“Foolish girl,” Granny said. “Come here.”
Rebecca dropped her broken wand, and her shoulders slumped. “Are you going to kill me?”
“For waving a wand at me? No. It can’t hurt me.” Considering the girl’s grandma had been one of the most evil witches in the hollow, Granny was surprised Rebecca hadn’t tried something stronger.
The young woman studied the doll, no longer struggling. “I’ve never made a devil doll.”
“Old Lady Roberts never showed you how?” Granny asked. “The spell you put on your pa is a good one. Why did you do it?” Had the girl made her father dislike Eb for sport?
Rebecca sighed. “Johnny Amburn was my beau until Eb came along. I reckoned I’d hex Pa to get rid of Johnny, but I overdid it somehow. I made him too eager to send my boyfriends running for the hills. Now he hates Johnny and Eb and probably any other suitors I’ll ever have.”
Stupid girl. “Why didn’t you remove the spell?”
Rebecca hung her head. “Granny Roberts never showed me how.”
Stupid old woman. Always stingy with her gifts. Granny waved her hand at Rebecca’s abdomen. “There’s no baby?”
“No. I lied to Eb so he’d stay with me.” She sniffled. “I’m sorry.”
Granny shook her head. “That boy loves you so much he would’ve lost a finger for you. What happened to the Amburn boy?”
“He took up with Jeanette Hawkins.”
Granny stared at the doll. “Okay. First, we need to remove the spell you put on your father. Do you remember the enchantment?”
“I used drops of his blood mixed with hellbane and some crushed four o’clocks.” The white berries were so poisonous that if a person ate one in the morning, they’d be dead by four in the afternoon.
Granny knew the potent spell. It was lucky Rebecca hadn’t killed her father or turned him into a raging killer. Granny knew how to counteract it.
“To change someone’s personality takes real magic,” Granny said. “To change it back, we have to remove your hex completely.”
“How?”
Granny lifted the doll into the moonlight and fished the box of matches out of her apron pocket. “We burn the doll, and the curse goes with it.”
Rebecca pressed her fingers to her mouth. “Won’t that kill Pa?”
“He’ll feel a little pain, but flame is the only way to break the link. When the doll turns to ash, your pa will be fine.” There’d be screaming and yelling, and Zephram might think he’d experienced a heart attack, but he’d be all right afterward. She hoped the blood moon hadn’t been a warning about him.
Granny handed the girl the box of matches. “You set it on fire while I hold it.”
Rebecca lit the match. The doll struggled and thrashed its arms and legs, but Granny held tight as the young woman set the hem of its pants on fire.
When a good portion of it was ablaze, Granny threw it onto the stump. She imagined she heard Zephram screaming a mile away.
Rebecca sighed. “I’m sorry, Granny. I won’t do it again.”
“You certainly will.” Granny checked the ashes to ensure the doll was completely gone. She didn’t want parts of a ragdoll trying to strangle in her sleep. “Your grandmother shouldn’t have left the job half-finished. Your training has to continue, girl.”
“But how?”
“I haven’t had an apprentice for a while. Without training, who knows what damage you could cause.” The fire had gone out, and the ashes lay still.
“What about Pa? Will he be all right?”
“He’s feeling better already. He’ll call off the sheriff in the morning.”
“Eb will never speak to me again.”
“He doesn’t have to know about you hexing your pa. Eb’s mama was my last apprentice, and she turned out pretty well.”
“Granny Roberts said I didn’t have the talent.”
“Your grandma was a mean old witch. Always jealous of everyone else’s magic. If you can do a four o’clock spell without killing the subject, you’re more than a little talented. Come into the house. You’ll make some tea, and we’ll wait for Eb.”
Indoor plumbing, an apprentice, and another witch in the family. Not bad for an old mountain woman. Not bad at all. The blood moon must have been for someone else. This time.
Granny wouldn’t tell Rebecca how Old Lady Roberts had died. The girl wasn’t the only one who knew how to use four o’clocks.
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AUTHOR BIO:
Tom Howard is a fantasy and science fiction short story writer living in Little Rock, Arkansas. He thanks his Smoky Mountain kinfolk for inspiration and the Central Arkansas Speculative Fiction Writers’ Group for their perspiration.
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WHY WE CHOSE TO PUBLISH “Blood on the Moon”:
Good stories come in all shapes and sizes and sprinkled with varied themes, story lines, and interesting (hopefully) characters. What’s also important is a strong and intriguing opening. Good openings lay out the setting, character, and conflict to pull in the reader immediately.
That’s just what author Tom Howard does here. Along with an intriguing title, we have setting (to orient the reader) and a well-defined character in the first paragraph. The second paragraph gives us the conflict and foreshadows what’s to come. And the third paragraph introduces the second character and takes us into the story with slowly rising action and tension.
In under 2000 words the author weaves a fine tale, adding bits of humor, and keeps us reading right up to the neat surprise at the end that leaves the reader smiling. Nothing is wasted in this piece word-wise: no long stretches of backstory that stop the main story. All the backstory we need is folded in at the just right time in the perfect amount to keep everything moving smoothly along. The reader knows how the characters feel about what’s happening by their actions, without being told directly.
We liked how Granny talked to herself, a way the author let us learn more about her personality and a great way to show and not tell. All in all, it’s a well-crafted piece that takes the reader somewhere different using a bit of almost-believable fantasy.