A Terrifying Taste of Short & Shivery Read online

  Occom nodded as he fitted an arrow to his bowstring.

  From the den came a single yelp.

  Behind them, the dog fled howling into the woods.

  Then the shadow at the foot of the moonlit rocks began to grow. To the startled men, it seemed as though the shadow had turned to smoke, which was now billowing out at them. In an instant, the dark cloud had swallowed them. Winslow fired his rifle, but the sound was faint, as though buried under layers of cloth, or coming from a great distance.

  And then the smothering darkness was gone. The two men stood on the smooth snow that was shining in the moon’s rays. There was no trace of rocks or the fox’s den. The dog had vanished. At the far side of the open space, the shadow fox appeared. It yipped once, and the chase was on.

  The two men ran forward. Nothing existed for them except the hunt. On and on they ran, beneath a moon that never set, in a silent wood where no wind blew, through a night that would never meet day. In the stillness, there was only the movement of the hunters, running and running as the fox scampered on and on, forever ahead of them.

  Frightened and hungry, the dog returned to Winslow’s cabin. He lay down on the cold stoop.

  In the spring, a woodsman found the dog’s bones beside the closed door of the deserted cabin. No trace was found of James Winslow or his friend, Occom. But from time to time, a lone hunter will spot two shadowy figures running through the pines. They never answer if called to. They hurry on and are soon lost to sight. The men chase a small shadow that always keeps just ahead—the black fox of Salmon River.

  The Mother and Death

  (Denmark—from Hans Christian Andersen)

  A sorrowful young mother sat beside her sick child, fearing that the little girl would die. Then there was a knock at the door, and an old man came in, wrapped in a great cape, for it was winter. Outside, everything was covered with snow and ice, and the wind blew sharply enough to cut one’s face.

  The old man trembled with cold. Since the child was quiet for a moment, the mother put on a pot of tea to warm her visitor. The old man sat down and rocked the cradle, and the mother seated herself near him. She seized her sick child’s little hand.

  “The good God will not take her, will he?” she asked.

  The old man—he was Death—nodded in a strange way that might have meant yes or no. Then the mother became so weary that she could not keep her eyes open. She dozed a moment. When she awoke, the old man was gone; and he had taken her child with him.

  The poor woman rushed out of the house, crying for her child. Out in the snow, she met an old woman in long black robes. “I saw Death with your child,” the old woman said. “He never brings back what he has taken away.”

  “Tell me which way he went!” cried the mother.

  “Before I tell you,” said the old woman, “you must sing me all the songs you have sung to your child. I am Night, and I heard you sing them. I love those songs.”

  “I will sing them all for you later,” said the mother. “Help me follow my child now.”

  But Night kept silent. So the mother sang and wept. When she was done, Night said, “Go to the right, into the dark fir wood. Death took that path with your child.”

  The mother hurried along the path into the wood. Soon she came to a crossroads, and did not know which way to go. She asked a blackthorn bush with icicles hanging from its bare twigs, “Have you see Death go by, with my little child?”

  “Yes,” replied the bush, “but I will not tell you which way unless you warm me.”

  The woman threw her cloak over the bush and hugged it, so that the thorns scratched her skin. And the blackthorn put out fresh green leaves and blossomed; then it told her the way she should go.

  The mother hurried on, though her skin was bleeding and her limbs ached with weariness. At last she came to a great lake, but it was not frozen enough to hold her. She begged the water, “Carry me across.”

  “I’m fond of collecting pearls,” the lake answered. “Your eyes are two of the clearest I have seen. Weep them into me, and I will carry you over to the great greenhouse where Death grows flowers and trees. Each of these is a human life.”

  So the mother wept, and her eyes fell into the lake and became two wondrous pearls. Then the lake lifted her up on a wave, and carried her to the opposite shore. There a wonderful house stood, miles in length, all made of glass. But the woman could not see it, since she had lost her eyes.

  She called out, “Where will I find Death?”

  “He is not here,” said a gray-haired woman who tended Death’s greenhouse.

  “I have come for my child,” the blind woman said. “Can you help me?”

  The old woman said, “Every human being has a tree or flower of life here. They look like other plants, but their hearts beat. If you give me your long black hair, I will tell you what to do to save your child.”

  “I will give you that gladly,” said the young mother. So she gave away her beautiful hair, and took the old woman’s gray hair in exchange.

  Then they went into the greenhouse, where flowers and trees of every sort grew. Each had a name; each was a human life. Each belonged to a person who was still alive somewhere in the world.

  “Wait here,” said the old woman. “When Death comes, don’t let him pull up any plant until he returns your child to you. Tell him you will uproot every plant within your reach. That will frighten him, because he has to account for them all. None may be pulled up until he receives word from Heaven.”

  Suddenly an icy wind rushed through the greenhouse, and the blind mother knew Death had arrived.

  “Why are you here?” asked the old man who was Death.

  “I have come for my child,” the mother answered.

  “I only take what God commands,” said Death. “I am His gardener. When He commands, I take His trees and flowers and transplant them into the great gardens of Paradise, the unknown land.”

  Then the woman grasped two little flowers with her two hands. “If you don’t give me back my child, I will tear up all your flowers because I am so unhappy.”

  “And you want to make another mother just as unhappy?”

  “Another mother?” said the poor woman, letting go of the flowers.

  “Here are your eyes,” said Death. “I fished them out of the lake because they gleamed so brightly. Take them, then look down the deep well over here. You will see the future lives of those two flowers you were about to destroy. And you will understand the consequences of tampering with Heaven’s commands.”

  The mother looked down the well and saw the first child, a boy, growing to become a blessing to the world. He brought joy and gladness to everyone around him. It filled her heart with happiness to see this.

  Then the mother saw a second child, a girl, growing into a life of care and poverty, misery and woe. And she screamed aloud for terror, because the child was her own.

  “Oh, my poor child!” she cried. “Is this what she would suffer if I try to undo what God has willed?”

  Death nodded.

  Her voice barely a whisper, the mother said, “I was wrong to deny Heaven’s will, which is always for the best. Carry her into God’s Kingdom, as He has commanded.”

  Then Death picked the pale flower that was her child’s life, and went away with it into the unknown land.

  Notes on Sources

  CROOKER WAITS. This retelling is based on an account in Katharine M. Briggs, A Dictionary of British Folk-Tales in the English Language: Part A—Folk Narratives (New York and London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1970; paperback reprint, 1991). Presumably, the three women are fairies, for they wear green, the traditional color of fairy folk. The traveler’s kindness in freeing various creatures of the wild has earned him the goodwill of these nature spirits. St. John’s Wort is called this because it was gathered on St. John’s Eve to ward off evil spirits. The yew tree was thought to have sacred and magical properties. A full discussion can be found in The Yew Tree: A Thousand Whispers: Biography
of a Species, by Hal Hartzell, Jr. (Eugene, Oregon: Hulogosi Press, 1991). Katharine Briggs notes, “Traditions of malignant and benevolent trees are widespread in England”—probably harking back to pre-Christian nature worship.

  YARA-MA-YHA-WHO. This story is retold from accounts in Myths & Legends of the Australian Aboriginals, by William Ramsay Smith (London: George G. Harrap, 1930; reprinted as Aborigine Myths & Legends (London: Senate/Random House UK, Ltd., 1996), and in Aboriginal Myths, Legends & Fables, by A. W. Reed (Chatswood, New South Wales: Reed/William Heinemann Australia, 1982). The Yara-ma-yha-who is a kind of “nursery boogey”—a monster in a cautionary story told to make disobedient children behave or to warn them away from dangers.

  THE FATA. I have expanded this story from a very brief narrative (almost an anecdote) and additional information about the fata (plural form: fate) in A Field Guide to the Little People, by Nancy Arrowsmith with George Moorse (New York: Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 1977; paperback reprint, New York: Simon & Schuster, 1978). The fata is akin to a fairy or nature spirit. Fata Alcina, mentioned in the story, is the sister of the dreaded Fata Morgana, or Morgan le Fay, who often deceived humans with her powers of enchantment.

  THE FIDDLER. Retold and expanded from a brief account in The Welsh Fairy Books, by W. Jenkyn Thomas (London: T. Fisher Unwin, 1907; reprint, Cardiff: University of Wales, 1952). Tales of fiddlers who acquire their instruments or arts from the devil, or who challenge the devil to fiddling contests, are well known throughout Europe and America. While the original story does not spell out the exact nature of the “invisible agency” that pulls the fiddler to his fate, it would be safe to assume that the cave is a key to the underworld—either of mischievous fairies or devils—an encounter with either group often proving fatal. Will-o’-the-wisps are phosphorescent lights seen in swamps or other deserted places. Long a puzzle to scientists, they have been explained in a variety of ways in world folklore—as everything from lights carried by elves to the souls of the departed. They are much like the oni-hi, or demon fires, mentioned in the note to “Hoichi the Earless.”

  LAND-OTTER. Adapted from “The Return of Land-Otter” by Mrs. Andrew Lang. Published about 1900, this has been reprinted in Ghosts and Spirits of Many Lands, edited by Freya Littledale (Garden City, New York: Doubleday & Company, Inc., 1970). The Tlingit believed that human beings, after death, were born again as babies—part of the great cycle of life. “Supernatural beings were everywhere in the world of the Tlingits,taking on many different forms.… There was the Land Otter Man, a fierce looking creature who stole people away, deprived them of their senses, and turned them into land otter men who tormented humans. Raven, the Trickster, was a major supernatural being.”—America’s Fascinating Indian Heritage: The First Americans—Their Customs, Art, History, and How They Lived, by the Editors of Reader’s Digest (Pleasantville, New York: The Reader’s Digest Association, Inc., 1978). While the Land-Otter of this tale may have come back to some kind of life through the power of the supernatural Land Otter Man, his purpose is benevolent—though, in the end, the parents lose their son a second time. For a more detailed discussion of the kushtaka (Tlingit for Land Otter Man), consult Shamans and Kushtakas: North Coast Tales of the Supernatural, by Mary Giraudo Beck (Seattle: Alaska Northwest Books, 1991).

  A FISH STORY. Retold from a tale published by Mrs. A.M.H. Christensen in a collection of African American folktales in 1893. A reprint of the original tale can be found under the title “A Fish Story from Farmville, Virginia,” in American Negro Folklore: Tales, Songs, Memoirs, Superstitions, Proverbs, Rhymes, Riddles, Names, by J. Mason Brewer (New York: Quadrangle/New York Times Book Co., 1968). This cautionary tale about the consequences of eating forbidden fruit is somewhat like the popular folktale “Tailypo,” which I have retold in Short & Shivery: Thirty Chilling Tales (New York: Doubleday, 1987), the first volume of this series.

  APPARITIONS. This is a shortened version of an account that appeared in Apparitions: A Narrative of Facts, by the Rev. Bourchier Wrey Saville, in 1880. The original chapter has been reprinted in The Eerie Book: Tales of the Macabre and Supernatural, edited by Margaret Armour (Secaucus, New Jersey: Castle Books/Book Sales, Inc., 1981). Prussia, part of present-day Germany, was an independent kingdom during the time of this story. The Seven Years’ War (1756–1763) was fought between Prussia and other European powers.

  THE BIJLI. Adapted from a longer account, titled “The Bijli of the Flaming Torch,” by H. Mayne Young, in Occult Review 4 (1906). The article was reprinted in Supernatural Tales from Around the World, edited by Terri Hardin (New York: Barnes & Noble Books, 1995). A fakir (or fakeer) is a Hindu wandering holy man who lives by begging, and who often performs feats of magic or endurance (such as remaining perfectly still for long periods of meditation). Hinduism, one of the main religions of India, has a complex mythology, which includes belief in ghosts. The bijli of the story seems to be a particular kind of preta, or ghost, which is doomed to wander the earth as a kind of punishment for sins committed during life, or because a person did not receive a proper burial. Some merely haunt a place; others can become dangerous to the living. There is also a kind of malignant spirit, or goblin, called a bhuta. It is sometimes identified with the preta, or ghost, of someone who has met with a violent death. The bhutas haunt forests or deserted houses, and always hover above the ground. In modern India, bhutas represent the spirits of the dead, whether evil or benevolent.

  THE LUTIN. Composited from a number of sources; among the most helpful were Canadian Folklore: Perspectives on Canadian Culture, by Edith Fowke (Don Mills, Ontario: Oxford University Press, 1989), and Were-Wolves and Will-o’-the-wisps: French Tales of Mackinac Retold, by Dirk Gringhuis (Mackinac Island, Michigan: Mackinac Island State Park Commission, 1974). The creatures are familiar figures in France and parts of Switzerland. They reportedly can appear in any shape, from a small boy to a giant spider, from a traveling flame to a gust of wind. Malicious or playful, they use violence only when humans disturb them or spy on them.

  THE HUNDREDTH SKULL. Retold from the original narrative of the same title found in Myths and Legends of Our Own Land, by Charles M. Skinner (Philadelphia: J. B. Lippincott Company, 1896, 1924). The story is retold in Michigan Haunts and Hauntings, by Marion Kucko (Lansing, Michigan: Thunder Bay Press, 1992). This author sets the story in Michigan, and suggests that the ghosts of the father and grandfather were the agents of Tom Quick’s decapitation.

  THE OGRE’S ARM. This story is a composite of two tales, “The Goblin of Adachigahara” and “The Ogre of Rashomon,” from The Japanese Fairy Book, compiled by Yei Theodora Ozaki (London: Archibald Constable & Co., Ltd., 1903; reprint, New York: Dover Publications, Inc., 1967). The two stories blend well—largely because of similar elements, especially the device in both of a hideous, man-eating monster in the guise of a harmless-seeming old woman. I changed the first old woman to a young man to maintain a final element of surprise.

  THE HAIRY HANDS. This retelling is based on a variety of accounts, including those in Witchcraft and Folklore of Dartmoor, by Ruth E. St. Leger-Gordon (New York: Bell Publishing Company/Crown Books, 1965); Aidan Chambers’ Book of Ghosts and Hauntings, by Aidan Chambers (Harmondsworth, Middlesex, England: Kestrel Books/Penguin Books Ltd., 1973); and Myths, Gods and Fantasy: A Sourcebook, by Pamela Allardice (Bridport, Dorset, England: Prism Press, 1990). Ruth E. St. Leger-Gordon calls the story “yet another example of folklore in the making. As far as I have been able to ascertain, there is no mention or hint of the Hairy Hands before the second decade of the present [twentieth] century.”

  THE SNOW HUSBAND. This is adapted from the story “The Snow-Man Husband” in North American Indians, by Lewis Spence (London: George G. Harrap & Co., Ltd., 1916; reprint, London: Bracken Books, 1985). Alan Garner has adapted the tale in the form of a prose poem, “Moowis,” in A Book of Goblins (London: Hamish Hamilton Ltd., 1969; reprint, Harmondsworth, Middlesex, England: Puffin Books/Penguin Books Ltd., 1972). The Algonquin people lived in w
hat is now Canada, in the territory between and north of Lake Ontario and Lake Huron.

  THE ZIMWI. Adapted from two interlocked accounts, “A Swahili Tale” and “The Baleful Pumpkin,” in Africa—Myths & Legends, by Alice Werner (London: George G. Harrap & Co., Ltd., 1933; reprint, London: Studio Editions Ltd., 1995). I have changed some details of the story, and have made the young woman, Mbodze, the heroine who destroys the pumpkin. Many African folktales concern a huge pumpkin, elephant, or other type of swallowing monster. Since it is often an old woman who rescues her village, or a young mother who rescues her children, by letting herself be swallowed up, then cutting everyone free as she destroys the monster, it seemed consistent to keep the young woman as rescuer. For another example, see “Mahada and the Bull Elephant” in Some Gold and a Little Ivory: Country Tales from Ghana and the Ivory Coast, edited by Edythe Rance Haskett (New York: John Day Company, 1971). I included an African American variant from Missouri, “Old Sally Cato,” in my Cut From the Same Cloth: American Women of Myth, Legend, and Tall Tale (New York: Philomel Books, 1993). For a variant with a boy, rather than a girl, as the demon’s captive, see “The Pumpkin Spirit,” in Myths and Legends of the Swahili, by Jan Knappert (London: Heinemann Educational Books, 1970).

  WITCHBIRDS. I have shortened and adapted this story from the chapter “Bird Women” in Human Animals: Werewolves & Other Transformations by Frank Hamel (London: William Rider & Son, Ltd., 1915; reprint, Hyde Park, New York: University Books, 1969). I have made the nameless young man who falls in love with the youngest witch the boy Léonce for the purposes of dramatic effect and narrative length. The complete original text is reprinted in Supernatural Tales from Around the World (op. cit.). “[In] medieval folklore the owl signified night and all that was dark and ugly … Jewish folklore believed that Lilith … flew about as a night owl, making off with children …”—Anthony S. Mercatante in Zoo of the Gods: Animals in Myth, Legend, & Fable (New York: Harper & Row, 1974). In West Africa, the owl is considered a witch’s sacred bird. The use of magic ointments appears in many European and American tales of witches who are able to fly.