repost of Halloween story. Original art by my mother Kathleen Swain
The backyard campout was all Billy and his friends could talk about. My cousin Sue and I furiously watched them build a tent out of old quilts stretched over the clothesline, furious we couldn’t camp out with them. No girls allowed!
The boys kept reminding us all day what a great night they would have while we slept in the house. However, watching ghost movies had their teeth chattering even before they headed out for their camp-out. Those smart-alecky boys were spooked even before they straggled out to the tent with only one failing flashlight between them and the terrifying night. The further they got from the door, the faster they ran, expecting to be grabbed at any second. The lights in the house blinked off one by one, leaving them totally alone in the blackness. Sue and I gave my parents plenty of time to go to sleep before slipping out to fix Billy and his buddies. We made a wide loop behind their tent and lay in the bushes quietly listening to the boys telling the story of Maggie Parker.
“Maggie Parker was a witchy old woman who had lived deep in the woods not far from us. There was gold buried behind the house haunted by the ghosts of her seven husbands all buried in a row. If you were brave or crazy enough to go out there on a dark night and wade through the thick vines, you could see ghostly eyes shining on each of the seven tombstones. No one knew how her husbands had really died, but the rumor was she killed each of them after she got their gold. Someone else said she kept her crazy hired man locked in the shed and only let him out to work. If he ever got loose at night, he would kill her or anyone else he crept up on. Froggy told about his daddy’s grandma’s uncle who went out one night looking for Maggie Parker’s gold and was found four days later in the woods by some hunters. His hair turned white and he never spoke another word. He was led around like a child for the rest of his life. He screamed in his sleep and shook in his bed so bad, they had to lock him in a shed at night. One morning a few years later they found him lying in his bed, eyes wide open, like he had seen a ghost………..scared to death.” The stories got scarier the later it got.
The only sound was the chirping of crlckets as they lay in their lonely tent, talking in low voices about the last movie they had seen. An angry village mob had tortured a poor crazy old hermit, cut his legs off, and left him for dead. He somehow managed to survive by dragging himself into a cave. The frogs were croaking loudly as the darkness fell. In his fevered sleep, he dreamed he had his legs back. He rose and walked on his stumps, leaving bloody prints behind him. The frogs got quieter. Just before he knifed his torturers……..….total silence. The last thing you could see was him raising his knife and hear the screams of the dying.
The longer they talked, the more scared they got. Finally they got so tired they just had to try go to sleep. They could hear the frogs just outside their tent. The frogs got louder. It was horrible. Suddenly………..dead silence. Too scared to breathe, they waited for the knife!!! Finally…..the frogs started back up. Just as they exhaled nervously, they were grabbed from behind! They exploded outward, disintegrating the tattered tent, falling and grabbing in their fight for survival, their fear fed by the maniacal screaming in the dark. A ghostly figure was staggering around in tattered rags, arms outstretched. They beat each other and everything else in their path trying to reach the safety of the house. In their wild terror, they ripped straight through the latched screen door of the kitchen, shattering it. The ghost was right behind them!
My parents were jolted awake by the crashing screen door and screaming campers, sure they were being murdered in their beds. The pulled the tattered quilt from around the ghost revealing Foggy, who’d gotten tangled in the quilt, thought the ghost had him, and was as terrified as everyone else. When they finally calmed the boys and did a head count, they found everyone alive but battered. Sue and I came staggering out of my bedroom rubbing sleep out of our eyes and trying to look like we just woke up though we both had wet grass stuck to our feet and dirty pajamas. Our plan to scare the boys had worked far better than we dreamed it would, and the best part was, we had more fun at the camp-out than anyone else!
“Sing at the table. Sing in the bed. The boogerman‘ll get you by the hair of the head.”
When I was a small child, I was spending the night with my cousin Sue when an incredible thunderstorm passed through. I welcomed storms, invigorated by the rumble of thunder, the splendor of lightning, and the smell of ozone. Recalling her childhood fear of storms, Mother had always downplayed the noise and drama of storms. We were supposed to be settling into sleep but I was wildly excited by the storm and enlisted my cousins to join me in bed jumping. Aunt Julie was terrified of storms and made no effort to hide her agitation at the combination of the fearsome storm and the banshee bed-jumpers. She did not share Mother’s tender philosophy.
“You little devils shut up and lay down. All that racket is making the the lightning worse. It’s gonna strike you if you don’t settle down and shut up.” One of the little devils got up and jumped on the bed again before the threat left her lips. A mighty crash of thunder rattled the windows promising to come for the miscreant. Kids dived under covers and hid in closets. “See what I told you. If the lightning don’t fit you, the boogerman will!”
I stayed put, even though Mother had often told me there was no boogerman. Aunt Julie looked scary enough on her own to do the trick. Since then, I’ve often wondered why Mother never availed herself of the Boogerman. It seems like she overlooked a valuable child-rearing resource.
Through a connection with his son, Uncle Albert somehow came up on a ninety-nine year lease on several acres on Dorcheat Bayou in Louisiana. Ready to retire from farming, he decided a fish camp would provide a modest retirement income. My father bought his farm and stock, but that’s a story for another day. Obviously, he was a multi-talented man, able to turn his hand to any task. His farm boasted two cabins. He moved into the second cabin, disassembled the log house he was living in loaded it piece by piece on his old truck, and moved it to his lease, where he went to work reassembling it just as it had originally been, except he added an additional bedroom, occasionally recruiting help from relatives with bigger jobs. Once the reassembled house was in the dry, he took apart the second cabin, using the timber to cover over the logs and seal the house tighter. One day, Daddy decided we’d go by and check on Uncle Albert’s progress. My older sister climbed on the unsecured log walls, tumbling them to the ground. I was so glad she got to them before I did. Neither Daddy nor Uncle Albert was pleased. Daddy spent the rest of that evening and Saturday helping Uncle Albert get it back together. None of us kids were invited along, for some reason. When Uncle Albert was satisfied with his house, he used the rest of the salvaged lumber for fishing boats, a pier, fences, a bait shop, and outbuildings. Soon he had a pretty good business going. By the next spring, he had a large garden underway.
Nutsrok 