Inheritance of Darkness

In the arcane mystery surrounding darkness, voices bemoan, “Out of it you were taken.” A moment passes, and a quiet bears its countenance upon a cursed woman, who clings to the air for breath. Her eyes bear gold in the light. Her voice calls out, “You are dust…and to dust, you shall return.”

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Here was a room whose window made a home for the resting shine of the Moon. The light overlooked a bed, where a promontory of shadows danced upon the resident. Lying there, beneath the covers, a poor woman stared across the room to the light. The woman’s hand—a decrepit old limb, bruised purple—nudged around the bedding and found a remote. With a push, light flooded the room. The air welcomed shrills of wretched fright as the shadows retreated to a closet, peering beyond the edges, awaiting a dark safety. The woman’s eyes ignored the shadows, glanced to the right, and saw a chair, a desk, and a bench, which found comfort beneath the window. The woman’s heart marveled at a purple quilt that lay there, marked by the word “Gayheart” in faded ivory. Not quite white, but a quality of white, or shade of chalk faded by the Sun, or even by the unholy shades under the moonlight mocking the sheet’s existence, she thought, glancing to the open closet. The image of the blanket collapsed upon her, and she believed, for a moment, that she once possessed something like it. It bears a beauty too precious to forget. Do I know it?

In front of the bed, next to a door, the old woman’s eyes found a table, above which hung a screen. The hand lifted the remote and pushed a button. Flash. A man looks at a burning house. He cries. Flash. A woman with fiery auburn hair dances like the winds of a great tempest. Flash. A girl without eyes stares. Flash. A man turns away from children. Flash. Darkness. The hand lowered the remote. The woman’s eyes looked to the left.

On the stucco wall, a painting, elaborately framed in gold, depicts a young woman and her child next to a woman with wings (1). She stared at the young woman’s face. What is in a face, oh gracious lady? she thought. What does your face behold? Is it the little one, the little lamb? The old woman’s lips quivered for a moment. Do you fear for him? Do you know what he will bear?

She looked into the young child’s eyes. Herein, young sir, what man will you become? What shall thee fashion and, thus, leave for the Earth? A wide grin became her features. Oh, beloved, you already know. Behold, ere a time preceding the wake of this day, a Passion on the Earth unto you!

She looked at the face of the lady once more. Oh, gracious lady, do not lament! The world’s treacheries captivate us enough. I pray you remember that the inheritance we receive by sacrifice is greater than the inheritance we deliver. I pray for you, that this cursed land—this wretched place of shadow and dust—will shake because of him. The old woman smiled as tears clouded her vision and fell down her cheeks. 

She now looked to the child. I pray for what will come to pass in this chamber, here. Free us and lead us on.

A knock arrived at the door. Who bears suffering upon my passing? 

A woman with blonde hair manifested before the door. The old woman stared into her eyes and saw a grey, nearly purple. More shallow than nightshade, deeper than orchid, but darker than a calla lily. Like flowers that sprang from the Earth…O! O Lord, but do I know? Was there once a garden for love to grow (2) on the land of my home? The woman with blond hair stood at the foot of the bed and smiled. “Well, hi thur, Miss! How’ve ya bin on this fine eve-eh-nin’? That warmness treatin’ ya as kind-lee as it’s bin treatin’ me?” she asked, patting the linen shrouds that entombed the old woman. The old woman stared at the smile before her with a face ancient as the mountains. 

The blonde-haired woman looked back and saw a great quiver on the lip before her. Slowly, the old woman opened her mouth. “On this night…” She paused. “I am.” 

The blonde-haired woman cocked her head to the side, as a dog might encountering an unfamiliar sound. “Ma’am, I gotta admit—I don’t right-lee grasp whatcha mean. So yur doin’ all-right?” she questioned, with a vexing sweetness in her drawl.

The old woman pondered. She turned her head to the stucco wall, returned to the oblivious face, and licked her lips. She shrugged her shoulders. The blonde-haired woman leaned in. The old woman spoke, “Begone.”

The blonde-haired woman turned to a device behind the old woman’s left shoulder. She waved a card over a white box, which flashed green. Above, another screen brightened. Click-click-click-click. Click. Click-click. Click. The old woman looked at the stucco wall. Click-click. Click. She felt the surface of the linen. It was cold. Click. The old woman turned her head. “May I have silence?” Click. Click. Click-click-click-click-click. Click. She became bored. She then saw, in the corner of her eye, the shadows in the closet frisk the air and attempt to place enmity between them through throbbing ripples. 

“Jus’ one more momint, Miss! I gotta ask: hav’ ya felt any sense o’ derelict on this evenin’? Would’ya care for somethin’ to ease the mind? To soothe the faculties?”

The old woman stared at the stucco wall. Gently, she shook her head.

“Ya shoor ‘bout that? I can rustle up somethin’, if that’s what ya be needin’.”

“No…I am.”

The blonde-haired woman seemed poised to tackle the old woman’s response with some mocking sense of “how dee-vine this fair evenin’,” but another knock interrupted her words. The old woman turned to the door and saw a gentle face. 

A man appeared, wearing a coat that draped down to his knees. It was brown, like the redwoods, like his beard. The old woman looked at him with a face of wonder. A countenance most gentle and fair…he does strike a chord with familiarity. But who, O, dreadful memory! Who bears his face upon mine? she thought. Oh, but I must know…he must have wandered the hills and made merry amidst the pines above that snaking old Troublesome (3). Perhaps unto a man of the mountains, fashioned by the hand of the wilderness. A countenance most gentle and fair, I believe…I must know his face! She smiled, or so she thought, merely showing a giant grin with empty cavities in the gums behind. 

The man returned the greeting of the old woman with a smile of his own. He walked to her bedside, held her gaunt hand, leaned over the bed, and kissed her head. He then turned to the blonde-haired woman to converse. The old woman didn’t pay attention to what they were discussing (“The subarachnoid hemorrhage last year…pain…keeps gittin’ worse…she speaks well enough…reckin ‘well ‘nough’ comes b’fore it anyhow…how long…who knows…”). Before the man turned again, the old woman gaped at his eyes. Suddenly, an image emerged from the depths of her mind, which fashioned the gentle man who stood before her into a boy, one she could sweep into her arms and embrace. I must know his face!

The man finished his conversation and turned, again, to the old woman. He grabbed a chair and sat down by the bench. He began, “Dear lady! I pray you are well in this gentle hour, as the moon makes her way across the heavens, blessing the worshipping stars along the way.” He smiled and waved his hand in the air, tracing the journey of the constellations. He continued. “How are you?” He slowed at this last remark, lingering upon each word with the passing of his smile.

Silence grazed their conversation following the man’s question. The old woman looked into his eyes and spoke softly, “I am.”

The man nodded. The blonde-haired woman shook her head and questioned the old woman’s declaration of “I am.” 

The old woman looked at the face above her. As the blonde-haired woman prepared to leave, the old voice bemoaned, “Miss…” The blonde-haired woman returned to the other side of the bed. The man held the old woman’s hand. She licked her lips and looked up. 

“What shall I call thee?” the old woman slowly interrogated.

The blonde-haired woman smiled. “It’s Grace, Miss.”

The chest of the old woman gave a great release, gasping for air. “Grace…like the Lord’s grace…upon me.”

The man caressed the old woman’s hand. “Like the Lord’s grace upon us all.”

Grace smiled, held the old woman’s other hand, and looked deeply into her eyes. “I’ve known many a’kind folk to bless these halls,” Grace began. “But I can’t right-lee recall ever seein’ the depth that ya carry inside. Do know, we’ll do what we can to be with ya. Until the end.”

The old woman stared into Grace’s eyes, where the purple intensified, clouding the gray in a cloak of magisterial equanimity. The old woman summoned a ghastly expression, colder than stone.

“What end?”

Grace’s smile faded, too. Her eyebrows drooped, she pulled her hands away, and gently claimed, “Ermm…well, Miss, the end. We’re here to look after folks neerin’ life’s closure. We’re a temporary passage.”

The old woman turned to the man. He sat up and looked into her eyes. She inquired, “What do I mean?” She spoke that last bit through gritted gums, somewhat because of Grace’s misunderstanding, but mostly because she lacked teeth.

The man bore trouble on his facade and looked out the window. “Perhaps, Death, you fear not. There is no end to what we live but a passing moment in forever.” The man then looked at the old woman. “You know the echoes of infinity.”

The old woman shook her head, her eyes disagreeing. “I will journey home.”

The man smiled. “Home. A beautiful place where the flowers bloom in a patchwork along the plain, and the water roars with life by the riverbank. A place where love finds you. To journey to a place where the generations congregate to what we inherit. To a place where you learn true grace.” He glanced at the blonde-haired woman. “To journey home. To remember the soul of one’s joy, the spirit of one’s preservation. We all mean to find that path.” 

The man sighed as he looked at the old woman, who now rested under the covers in true warmth. “The problem is time. What we, perhaps, fear. The thing I believe we lack most is time.” He then glanced back toward the window, a pale expression lingering upon his facade.

Grace interrupted the man’s thoughts. “Oh, but time is no more an enemy that leads us to the grave than it’s a friend on our journeys along.” 

The old woman turned to the speaker and stared. The man did the same before bearing the expression of resolve. “Then…to go home,” he began, “is to journey amidst the dark and the light. Until relief becomes us by the fading of Shadow.” The man looked deeper into the complexion of the old woman, whose eyes now lingered upon his countenance, immovable as stones. Softly, he joined his free hand with the union already between them. “It is the desire we have to follow the path home that matters.”

The shadows, in the safety of the closet, delivered a chorus of transgression.

The man looked at Grace, who received his meaning. She returned to the light behind the door, disappearing, and leaving the old woman staring, in silence. 

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His voice came like a whisper. “Here lies an image of one far in my recollection.” The old woman awakened and looked to the speaker. In that moment, she lost many of her faculties and stared into his eyes. A pure white surrounded his iris, which shone hazel. Hazel, but a kind of hazel one only sees if one looks for green. The old woman discovered the dark labyrinth of his pupil, and there, she saw a boy fallen and bloodied. As he moved his head, however, a light emerged and refracted internally, giving his hazel the resemblance of pure gold. 

The man held the old woman’s outstretched hand, seeing her brows upturned and mouth gaping. “Memory may not serve my name—even though you behold it, O gracious lady—but I have been a part of it since life began. Ever since I journeyed from home. Since the stars began to shine again.”

The old woman blinked and looked for a name.

The man turned to the bench. “I believe I know this garment,” he said, as he stood to lift the quilt. In the expanse of the light, it shone purple—not unlike Grace’s eyes—with crimson and gold swatches along the borders. The man laughed, like those you hear from the days of childhood. “Was this not among those that decorated your great hall? There was a red quilt, a green quilt, and…oh, yes,” and, grinning from ear to ear, “and an ivory one with a blue cross that glistened in the sun! O, glorious day, this young man never forgot those precious beauties. They gave us small folk belief that dusk could never capture us alive!” He turned the quilt around and laid it down. The old woman saw the man caress a line of stitches that ran down its spine to the name “Gayheart,” revealed by the moonlight. 

“Would you like to hear a story?” He asked suddenly, almost too suddenly, as if he, himself, were not ready to tell it. “This garment here reminds me of one I heard ages ago, one passed down through generations.”

The old woman, only by her deepest curiosity, managed a nod. She patted the linen sheets and claimed, “I listen.”

The man gently smiled, recollecting. He enveloped the old woman’s hand, and they felt the ripple of time. The man, bearing passion in his eyes, turned to the woman. She looked at him and saw a man become a young child again, wearing a red shirt. He then replied, “Then, O gracious lady, let me weave for you a story of home you will, at once, remember again.”

Eons ago, by the waters of a river once pure, the Gayhearts came to be. They found their home between “a hillock and a hen-pecked holler,” as the ancient of days would say, down in a little valley that its inhabitants named Rowdy (4). Ezekiel Gayheart, born by the blood of the red clay, moved to the valley. Ezekiel labored for many moons to build a home on the stony expanse by the river. “Jughead” Eldridge, the old drunk who lived up the right-hand holler (5) around Clayhole, said the stone formed where the great river severed the plain and the mountain made great bounty deep in its roots. The greatest feature of the home, ornamenting the gable that bore the rising Sun, was a stained glass window of the Manus Dei (6). 

Ezekiel married Lara Gail Murray, pulled from the high gales of the mountain wind, and they lived simply, drinking sweetly from the creek, tending greatly to their cattle, and toiling laboriously amidst their harvest. As the couple settled, however, they experienced many curious incidents. One morning, before feeding, Ezekiel found claw marks etched with blood on their front door. A man from across the waters died a couple of weeks later, and where he was buried, a bobcat pierced the blackness of the nights with dreadful howls.

The couple learned from the inhabitants that a Shadow lived in the hillocks, formed by the malicious contempt of a religious man burned alive for heresy. One day, as the couple walked along the edge of the waters, where they harvested berries and fruits, Lara discovered a grave. She knelt to the ground, inspecting the headstone, Ezekiel’s hand resting upon her shoulder. In that moment, a darkness emerged and gripped her heart.

It was many months later, after carrying their first child, that Lara gave birth to a putrid creature born blue and cold to the world. A whispering squall howled low through the valley that night. In the candlelight, Lara saw a dark flicker in the shape of a hand move around the remains of her crippled child, made immobile by the burden of its lost soul, and shatter the window of Manus Dei. Ezekiel replaced the window the following morning.

The couple still wanted a child. After many generations of the dark-eyed Juncos (7), a boy named Benjamin was born, bearing a crooked spine and a countenance of dark vision. The waters in which he played darkened with the passing of his days, as did the stars in the skies. Lara bore another son, Michael, a child of goodness. In the early days, the brothers adventured down the creek and up the hillocks. To their duties, Ezekiel reared the sons in his work, teaching Benjamin to labor in the fields and Michael to care for the cattle. Michael, in humorous propitiation, trailed his older brother like a shadow. 

On the eve of Michael’s seventeenth birthday, the brothers shared company in the barn. At the setting of the Sun, however, the structure erupted in a tempestuous holocaust (8). The flames licked the windows of the living room where Lara watched the scene with emaciated horror. Nobody knew how the fire began, but when the community dug through the rubble, they found a corpse, buried alive in dust and ashes. Whispers wandered through the hills that Benjamin was seen walking away, followed by shadows.

Benjamin wandered down the hollers, reaching the town of Jackson (9), where he worked on the railroad and found a wife. She gave him a daughter, Delilah, who entered the world as her mother left. Bearing fiery auburn hair, she became a beauty too fierce for the eyes of the guiltless and too sorrowful for the hearts of the pure. She married thrice, keeping her family name, but none of her husbands lived. One drowned in the shallows of North Fork (10), while another died by suicide on railroad tracks. Her last husband, married for mere moments, choked to death on a peach pit at their wedding. They say that Zechariah Amburgey witnessed a naked Delilah that night, dragging her white gown through the mud, singing words he could not understand. And behind her, he saw something follow—a creature of great fiery Shadow and darkness. Zechariah went white-haired by winter and never spoke again.

The man paused for a moment, glancing at the troubled eyes of the old woman. She blinked slowly, as if seeing through the years, letting her fingers curl tighter around those of the man. Then, feeling sorrow unearthed, she sighed.

“I remember when I was young,” began the man, “some of the cousins remembered Delilah. They say she told stories of her youth. That ‘she bore the beauty of a flame that burned in the window of a dark house. Mesmerizing.’ At her will, that old daughter of Benjamin became a fiend, a darkened mirage of…of deviltry.” He trembled, bearing the image in his mind. “Aunt Jenny even said she killed J.B. Marcum (11).”

She looked at the man with her own eyes, which held remembrance of knowing. “And you speak her name again, knowing what has been buried.”

His lips pressed thin. “And here I am, forsaking you, O bearer of knowledge.”

“I am, whether memory serves or not,” she retorted. Now, annoyance entered her eyes, and a grump became her face. “Continue.”

He raised his hands in recompense. “Then let me continue.”

After Delilah’s final husband passed, she bore a son and gave him the name Gomer. The handsome boy possessed a cleverness that fooled any ignorance before him. He seduced many women and promised what his hands could never keep. The holler was filled with children who shared his chin and smile, and all bore his name. He called himself a preacher of the Divine and recklessly loved any creature who wandered in his path. His first wife, once beautiful, withered like a dogwood in the cruelty of a late winter. She died without a word or any children to her claim.

Gomer’s second wife stood by him for many years, in spite of his vices. One night, however, anticipating the rising Moon, she watched him kneel before a mirror—the room lit only by a flickering lamp—and murmur in a begging submission. She fled the home, barefoot in the dark, after seeing a dark Shadow in the reflection, turning her husband’s eyes into a sea of glass and piercing the essence of his soul, purging it of all life.

One of Gomer’s many daughters was named Belle. She drifted around the counties on the kindness of strangers, walking barefoot in the snow and hitching rides on the back of pickup trucks up Pigeonroost Road (12). She took lovers like a chimpanzee (13); there were men with wide gaits, men of little sympathy, men whose eyes shone like black diamonds (14). A foolish one, strong as the ox, asked for her hand in marriage, but she laughed a dark hymn that melted the poor man’s heart and left him crawling in the slough of despond (15). Surprising the gentle congregation of Homeplace, however, Belle walked into church many months later with a son, who bore the man’s resemblance. 

Belle named the boy Judah, who was bent by darkness. When he was young, he witnessed a man carve out the eyes of his mother on the dust of an earthen road. Later, after the man left, the boy played with her bloodied body. After that, Judah seemingly vanished. Only two decades later, with the decay of the once-respectable home by the creek, he appeared with a wife and seven children. He left his family on the doorstep of the house—children clinging to the tears on their mother’s ragged clothing—and never returned.

The youngest of those children was Ann Marie Gayheart, born under the light of the peaceful Sun. Ann Marie became a child who gave tumultuous fits of giggles against the bloody creekbank, where she watched the water ripple with the coming eventide. With the help of her mother, Ann Marie also kept a garden of patchwork sweetness, carved into the hillside. In the spring, flowers flooded the plain, with lilacs, calla lilies, roses, sunflowers, marigolds, and an assortment of wildflowers with their white mouths open to heaven. However, she bore the burden of seeing the present through a haze, behind which moments would converge with dark visions of descent. Through her dreams, she came to know those who came before her. 

Ann Marie prayed to the Lord and found a man named Eli, born gently in the bruised reeds. He was a quiet man and possessed a mind so distant that it brought forth sagacious regality. He had eyes as soft as the hope of a child’s and a heart as gentle as the breeze on the summer air. When Ann Marie awoke, shaking from dreams in the night, Eli placed a hand on her back and prayed for her spirit until sleep returned. He knew the burden that his Ann Marie carried, and he loved her through it, like faith made flesh. She eventually gave birth to a daughter, who, after marrying, gave birth to three brothers. They all lived, Mamaw and Papaw and Mommy and Daddy and the three little children. 

The stillness of the dark mornings in the valley—before the hens rustled in their coop, before the mountains exhaled their blue breath through the pines—was when Mamaw came most alive. Perched by the library window, coffee warming the frailty in her hands, she read whatever goodness her soul yearned for, from Homer to Austen, Dickinson to Woolf, Cooper to Hughes. The pages of their great tomes, worn from use, preserved ideas deep in the margins and blank spaces. An entire shelf bore notebooks overflowing with verses, revelations, and scrawled-out questions. She once told the boys, with a far-off look, that stories were the closest thing to flying God ever gave us, even those with “all the mighty darkness.” 

In her younger years, Mamaw had been a master of the needle. After long shifts at the hospital, she would walk home beneath the painted hush of the setting sun, its golden fingers draping the tops of the hills, and slip into her quilting. The work left her fingers aching after drawing so deftly from images in her memory. She reverently stitched swatches of pure color together in the darkness of the night. After completion, she sent many to her sister in Indiana; others she passed down to her grandsons, though they were too young, then, to understand the gift. The quilts hung upon the walls as the boys ventured into the creekbottom, risking life and limb in games whose stakes were no less dire than the slow waltz of fireflies drifting across the dusky plains of late summer.

The man saw the old woman smile. She made a small grunt, indicating her enjoyment in the little narrative.

“Enjoying yourself, perhaps?”

The old woman, bemused, looked him in the eyes. “Boys.”

The man gave a grin, knowing full well the sentiment. “And what of them?”

“What men will they become?” She paused, licking her lips. She smiled, “walking the earth…alongside other men?” She breathed loudly at the last word, which dragged on like the sigh she gave. She looked again at the stucco wall.

“Oh, the boys! They became men whose bodies labored in the dust but whose hearts were transformed by those they loved and those who loved them. Especially those who loved them. A great mercy of nature passed through them all. Yet, perchance, this knowledge does bear upon it a shadow of amnesia, which was veiled by secrecy.”

The old woman nodded.

“Then, continue we shall.”

One day, during the delights of their wild imaginations, the little boys prepared for a visiting people from up the river; the Dean brothers, they were called, and they were there to wage war. All morning, the little boys had prepared their wooden swords and made good their defensive preparations, all the while devising tactics to counter any stratagem against their faculties. For this particular occasion, the youngest suggested acquiring one of Mamaw’s quilts to express their honor by blood.

“But those are her quilts!” The eldest said, rejecting the inquiry.

“Fraidy cat! Fraidy cat!” The youngest returned.

“I’m telling you…she wouldn’t like us using them on the creekbank. It’ll get dirty.”

“Fraidy cat! Fraidy cat!” Both younger brothers now jeered.

“Why don’t you do it?” the eldest pointed to the youngest brother. 

“FRAIDY CAT! FRAIDY CAT!” They raised their voices so high that the eldest believed they were attempting to blow their cover. 

“Fine,” the eldest said begrudgingly. The boy went through the back of the house, meandering in the shadows before he found the display room. Using a small ladder, he hoisted himself up the display wall—holding onto the rungs with a mighty grip—and began untying a great purple quilt with crimson and gold patterns along the borders. Mamaw came around the corner, saw him standing precariously on the edge, and grew fearful.

At that moment, Mamaw heard a great shriek rising in the distance, tearing through the air with a malice that once held the hearts of those who came before her.

In the corner of her eye, from the darkness of the window, Mamaw saw the emergence of a great Shadow. It rose against the boy and threw him upon the ground. Again and again, the Darkness looked past the horror in the child’s eyes and scourged him with a savagery of fire. It gored the gentleness in his hands and face, leaving a field of blood (16) on the floor. With each blow, the boy became less and less human, and the room and light outside faded with him. Mamaw felt her hands quivering in the heat, as though the Shadow were condemning her. Then she saw it, rising above her grandson: a luminous aura, the final breath of his poor soul departing. In desperation, Mamaw answered the bloody, echoing howl of the Shadow with a cry of guttural pain. She collapsed in a lump upon the floor and prayed, “Oh Lord, why have you forsaken me?” Weeping, she looked into his eyes and saw, for a moment, a flicker of golden light. She then rose with a fire stoked in her heart. “Lord! O, Lord! Let this pass from him! Release us from darkness! Begone, O Shadow of my enmity!” From its display, she pulled the purple quilt and hurled herself and the garment at the Shadow.

The weight of the quilt subdued Evil. Mamaw lay herself over the bloodied body of her grandson, who weakened beneath her weight. The darkened hand of the Shadow then severed the quilt and, in its infernal wrath, reached into the heart of the old woman. Before it could crush what remained pure, however, a Great Light burst forth from her chest. There, in the consuming darkness, a luminous being emerged, quite unlike Man, bearing eyes—reflecting the light of pure gold—all around the body and within, and seven sets of wings, white as snow. In one of its pellucid limbs, it held a sword bearing an impassioned flame. It rose above the Shadow, which turned its fiery gaze upon the purity looming before it. From the body of the Great Light emerged a voice, saying, “Whence comest thou, O shameful malefactor, pitiless accuser? Thou hast plagued this house since the ancient of days, and thy reign approaches its end. Thou Shadow of malignant revelation, which was, and is, and, will only be, an impermanent fixture upon our inheritible manifold.” The Great Light raised Its weapon and gave a shrill whisper that echoed along the hills. “For dust thou art…and unto dust shall thee return!” 

With a single blow by the sword of impassioned flame, the Great Light lashed through its dark adversary. The Shadow shattered into ash, releasing a shriek of great terror that rippled through the power of the air in the little valley. It became a darkened multitude and delved deep within the Earth, where it returned to dust.

And then, suddenly, silence became the room. The shadows and Great Light now dissipated, Mamaw lifted her gaze to her grandson, who lay there, unscathed, unbloodied, motionless, and still. Then, without a word, the boy released himself from the clutch of his Mamaw and ran to his room. He stayed there through supper, and only afterward did he hobble downstairs to meet the tear-stained eyes of his Mamaw. 

After dinner, like a ritual, the boy and Mamaw went to his room and played a game, this occasion being Jenga. The boy held his breath with every pull, and Mamaw, steady as ever, moved with a patience like the days of her quilting. In the middle of the game, when she was winning big, she paused a moment and looked into the eyes of the boy. 

“My child…I want you to hear what I’m about to tell you. I fear for you. The woman you saw collapsing on the floor saw a vision of Hellfire strike your fragility. I saw a Shadow emerge from the pains of my past and scourge your innocent flesh, attempting to take the breath of life from you.” She started crying again. The boy stared into the eyes of his Mamaw.

“I am sorry, little Jesse. The Shadow that came at you is the same Shadow that has plagued my family for generations. One day, I will tell you their stories so you understand what I have seen. I pray you will not have to bear what I have carried.” Tears flooded the plane, including on the boy’s shirt. “I am sorry, baby child. I love you.”

“I love you too, Mamaw.” 

The two embraced in the middle of the game. From that moment on, the little boy, the eldest grandson, carried with him the knowledge that people are troubled, troubled like the dust, troubled to toil in the ways of those before you. It was a choice she made to uphold her life, and uphold her life she did. No Shadow bore their countenance upon his soul.

The man stared into the eyes of the old woman. She was in the same position as before. He leaned back and looked at the moonlight on the window. 

“I fear for you.”

The man turned like a whip toward the face, whose eyes were now open, staring above as if calling upon some greater image engraved upon the ceiling. 

“My gracious lady, do not be troubled by fear! The world’s treacheries beg enough of us. I have tried being the man you could be proud of,” the man said confidently. She sensed in his voice that it had been a long time since anything of that nature left his mouth. 

“What troubles you?” She croaked in mild bemusement.

The man studied the old woman’s eyes for a moment, as if waiting for her to explore the difficulties of his judgment with her now-faded sense.

“I fear what you face now,” he began, returning his hand to caress hers, perhaps more to comfort his own spirit than hers. “It is only witnessing those upon the edge of life that I see how darkness contends with the well-lived souls and the light they exhume. We have seen many fade from this Earth, and now, I am to lose another. Another whom I love, earnestly, and…” the man paused, momentarily, to bear the weight of his burden, “…and will fade away.”

The old woman lay there, hearkening to the light which fell from the Moon. She then shook her head in disagreement.

“My love, be not afraid,” she began. “I will never truly fade. I will walk with you, like light and darkness…” she paused, seeing the light in his eyes, “for all the days of your life.”

The man suddenly looked into the eyes of the old woman and saw a beating heart. A great, big beating heart that touched his soul and lived through him in all aspects. A great home in which he would cherish the generations of succeeding children who lived and loved and sacrificed and passed on like Mamaw. The man saw all this in her eyes, which smiled and drew forth a warmth so great, so powerful, that he nearly threw himself upon her body in a great embrace. 

He exclaimed, “Do you know what you have done? You have awakened the stars from their perilous winter. You have made them shine bright,” the man said.

The old woman shot a glance at the closet, where the eyes of shadows still watched in safety. She blinked and watched them recede further into the depths.

The old woman then looked again into the man’s eyes. The hazel and deep gold shone brilliantly against the dim light. She smiled.

“You are rid of my curse.”

“Now?”

“I am.”

The man and the old woman stared at each other for a moment before the sparkling smile left her countenance, which fell into a wave of release. A wave letting go. He gripped her stone-cold hands.

References

1. The Virgin of the Rocks by Leonardo da Vinci.
2. “For love to grow,” from Adele’s song “To Be Loved.” 
3. Troublesome Creek, a fork of the Kentucky River flowing through Appalachian Kentucky.
4. Rowdy, an unincorporated community in Perry County, Kentucky.
5. A variant of the word “hollow,” referring to a small valley.
6. Manus Dei, an icon in Christian art depicting the Hand of God.
7. The dark-eyed Juncos, a species of bird endemic to Appalachian Kentucky.
8. Holocaust, an historical word referring to a burnt offering consumed by fire.
9. Jackson, a town north of Rowdy in Breathitt County, Kentucky.
10. The North Fork, another fork of the Kentucky River flowing through Appalachian Kentucky.
11. J.B. Marcum, a prominent attorney and U.S. Commissioner in Breathitt County. He was assassinated in 1904 and is memorialized in a namesake folk ballad.
12. Pigeonroost Road, referring to a small road in Perry County, Kentucky.
13. Chimpanzees are polygynandrous animals. Females will have multiple mates. 
14. “Black diamond,” a nickname of coal.
15. The “Slough of Despond,” a location in John Bunyan’s The Pilgrim’s Progress.
16. The Field of Blood, also known as Akeldama, a Biblical place associated with Judas.