CANDLELIT CHRONICLES: HISTORIC HAUNTS

June 12#2 free read 531 wc

from my novel Child-Puppets of The Testament Logging Corporation, in progress:

Chapter Thirteen

         It had been a long and very difficult walk in the night for Willis Jenks, carrying his tiny six-day old son bundled in what few blankets they possessed, from his tiny house in Rennald-itself not much bigger than a two-room gardening shed) to his Pappy Callwood's wedge-shaped farm off Knox Road, next to important Farmer Jennell's place. He was still without a clue as to what had happened; his wife Clytie had simply disappeared, without notice, without a note. He knew it had to have happened prior to nightfall, because neither of the lanterns had been lit; probably it was even before twilight, because in November, winter night came early in The Big Forest region, and their tiny two-room house only had one window, in the kitchen, looking out on to the small back yard.





          What didn't make sense, either, was for a six-day-old newborn to be freshly dressed and swaddled in a dry nappie, as Clyde was when Willis came in (and still was, if his daddy had taken time to stop and check him while still on the road). Fifty years later, in 1950, there would have been occasional traffic along this stretch; a decade before that, more traffic; and in the 1920's, still twenty to thirty years in the future, log truckers would be piling up and down these roads. But not tonight, not in November 1900, not while young darkie Willis Jenks carried his almost week-old infant son home to his GrandPappy Callwood's farm, the farm that Willis himself only a year ago had rejected as unworthy of himself.





         Willis just could not understand what had gone wrong. He had been so happy for the past year or so since he had met Clytie; he had changed himself into a new, hard-working man, he had a beautiful wife he loved so very much, and a darling newborn son to carry on the family name. Willis didn't care whether Clyde grew up to work on Callwood's farm, or got himself a job in town. He just wanted Clyde to be a good man-and happy with it. And mostly he just wanted Clytie back, but that thumbnail-size dried blood spot on the kitchen floor, between the small round scratched wood table and the single door, worried him terribly.





         Willis had mutated from shiftless and lazy to hard-working and productive, but he hadn't gained intuition in the process, nor any psychic abilitiy. He didn't know the real nature of his son Clyde (and would not have believed it if he had been told), he didn't know what could have happened to his wife Clytie-why she would just disappear from the house in only her nightie-and she sure would never have left their precious son! (and if somebody had told Willis she was taken by a Demon, he would have laughed, until he remembered her loss, and then he would have sat down and cried) He didn't know the secrets his Pappy Callwood carried-not any of them. But some of these secrets-about Clyde, and about Callwood, and about Clytie-Willis was indeed just about to find out.