Daemon of the Dark Wood Read Online Free PDF Page A

had spoken that long-ago day. With the Mason jar of spirits forgotten for the moment, she closed her eyes and once again revisited the fateful conversation with her mother’s mother.
    “They’s some things you need to know, now that you’re not a child anymore,” Granny said with heavy solemnity. Her weathered face lost all trace of her characteristic kindliness.
    Thinking the old lady was about to tell her about the “birds and the bees,” Liza said, “Mama already told me all that, Granny.”
    Granny shook her gray head. “I’m not talking about marital relations. Now you hush and just listen. Some things you think you know, ain’t true. A long time ago they wuz some bad things happened hereabouts. Things so terrible that they’re only spoken of in whispers or not spoken of atall.
    “Things the menfolk don’t know about and—God willin’—never will. You must never breathe a word of this to your husband, nor to any man.”
    Young Liza was chilled by the gravity of Granny’s voice and demeanor. She could not imagine what her grandmother was talking about, but she was seized by a powerful yearning to learn of the forbidden—and tantalizing—secret.
    “You know how our little hamlet come to be called Widow’s Ridge?” asked the elder.
    “Yes ma’am. ’Cause back during the Civil War, none of the men came home. They all died of grievous wounds or terrible disease, making widows out of all the married women of the little hamlet with no name.”
    “That’s what you’ve been told, and you learned it word for word, but it’s a made-up story. After what
really
happened, the womenfolk got together and come up with that cock-and-bull tale and repeated it so many years that it stuck. They did it to hide the truth. It weren’t the war what killed all them boys.”
    “Then what was it, Granny?” Brimming with impatience, Liza squirmed in her hard seat.
    The old woman shut her eyes and shook her head, as if trying to dispel thoughts too dreadful to bear. When finally she answered, the words issued from her tremulous lips like the mournful wail of a bereaved widow at her husband’s wake. “The Helling,” she lamented.
    Taken aback by her grandmother’s display of naked emotion, young Liza only echoed the words in a hoarse, questioning whisper. “The Helling?”
    The rumbling whine of an approaching automobile intruded upon Liza Leatherwood’s darksome remembrance, and she opened her eyes to see the sporty little car turning off the dusty road and motoring up the gravel drive which led to her house.
    “Damnation,” she spat, screwing the lid back on the Mason jar. “That man’s determined to hound me to my grave.”
    Tires crunching the gravel, the sports car stopped behind Wilbur’s ancient pickup truck (which hadn’t been started in over six years), and Professor Alfred Thorn hopped out of the convertible, giving her the glad hand. “Hello, Mrs. Leatherwood,” he called as he strode to the front steps. “I’ve got something for you.”
    Liza rocked forward in her chair. “You’re wasting your time, Professor. I told you, I don’t know anything about that twaddle.”
    Ignoring her comment, Professor Thorn stopped on the first porch-step and held up a fat book. “It’s
The Complete Works of Nathaniel Hawthorne
. My gift to you, no strings attached.”
    “Everything’s got strings,” she contended. “Just because you can’t see ’em, don’t mean you can’t get tangled up in ’em.”
    Thorn chuckled, thoughtfully stroking his white-whiskered chin. “Perhaps you’re right,” he said. “Nevertheless, I want you to have this. You did say Hawthorne’s your favorite author.”
    “I did. And I likewise said I can’t help you with your re-search.”
    “You did, indeed. And I have to take you at your word.” He came up the steps and held out the book bound handsomely in brown leather. “Please, Mrs. Leatherwood, accept this as a tribute from one Hawthorne-lover to another.