The Honey Witch

Chapter IV





I am a tall man, but the man who faced me in the first minutes of settled darkness might have easily towered above me, had it not been for a grievously bent spine and sloping shoulder. The man raised his narrow lantern and held the rusted object menacingly close to my nose. The immediate air took on an overwhelming odor of kerosene, combined with stale wood smoke and decaying teeth.

“You look like the type she’d call,” growled the stranger.

I noted, with a false ease, the severity behind the man’s heavily veined eyes and was not certain, at this point, whether I faced bitter peril or mere outrage. Every myth of the isolated, shotgun wielding misanthrope played itself through my mind.

“Who?” I asked. “Ana Lagori?”

“The evil one!” the grizzly man spat. “The Evangeline.”

The prospect of peril became less ambiguous when I found the man gripped a rifle at his side, and glanced to see the tempered presence of a black dog monitoring our exchange with guarded scrutiny.

I successfully affected a confidence I did not thoroughly feel. “I’m not quite sure I understand.”

“A terrible evil,” the man muttered bitterly. “Just like she before and she before that.” He nodded with a grunt and narrowed his morbidly bloodshot eyes. “She’ll take you, no doubt in that. They like ‘em pretty. Just didn't know it’d be a Yank. But what if I was to cut that handsome face or spill those Yankee guts into the dirt? Wonder what she'd say about that, eh?"

Should I question his word, he opened his tattered, smoke stained coat to produce a clear view of a steel bladed hunting knife, attached to a strap inside the frayed lining.

In a vision of myself eviscerated on the forest floor, I shoved my hands against the man’s sunken chest, just at the moment some large winged bird tore at his shocked brow under extended talons. With the immediate threat confounding my would-be assassin, I ran with adrenaline induced swiftness down the darkened pathway. The raucous pronouncement: “Thou shall not suffer a witch to live!” soon trailed from the murky distance, but the old man did not follow my flight.

On the doorstep of my cabin, I found Aaron Westmore, sitting against the frame and playing soft bluegrass notes on the steel strings of an acoustic guitar.

I slid exhaustively onto the step beside him.

“Just now,” I managed to sputter. “Just now, in those woods, I came straight up against some deranged vagrant.”

“Reverend Fitch,” said Aaron, setting his guitar aside and handing over a crock of water.

“This was no Reverend,” I told him. “I swear to God, the bastard was out to spill blood.” I took a swallow of the liquid and winced. Not water…home-brew. “Mine, in particular.”

“Filthy clothes?” described Aaron “Old black dog?”

“That’d be the one,” I acknowledged, returning the crock. “I wonder if I should go back? That woman is up there alone.”

Aaron laughed lightly, taking an easy swallow of the 100 Proof. “She’s quite safe, I assure you. Nobody will go near that place at night, least of all Fitch.”

I leaned back against the screen door. “I’ve had the strangest afternoon…then this man, Fitch.” I breathed in an unusually painful intake of air. “And I don’t know if this Ana person is simply a cleverly disguised madwoman or a brilliant aberration.”

“I see she has left an impression,” remarked Aaron, lighting a cigarette and offering one from the opened pack.

I hummed a vague uncertainty to the question of Ana and waved away the cigarette. “I gave them up for Lent,” I faintly smiled.

Aaron snorted out a puff of smoke, replacing the pack in his shirt pocket.

“Tell me about this man, this Fitch,” I said. “He threatened to spill my guts on the dirt.”

“That’d be Fitch,” Aaron laughed humorlessly.

“So, he really is some backwoods preacher?” I asked.

Aaron blew a billow of smoke into the evening air. “Despite all appearance to the contrary, Fitch really is ordained…or was once. Word is, he came to these hills from Memphis nearly 30 years ago and fell into the sin of lust. Ana’s mother, in fact. The beautiful Lily Ann. Now, old Fitch was a good looker back in the day, with what is rumored to have been the voice of angels. The old women here still call him that: the voice of angels, though you couldn’t tell it now.

“Then something happened. I’m not clear on exactly what, but he was banished from her affections and a year later, Lily Ann was found drowned in the Cutler. He began acting strangely after that. Got it in his head Lily Ann’s mother was some kind of witch and blamed her for the loss of Lily Ann. Started preaching against the ways of the herbs and roots ever since.”

Aaron sucked in a deep inhalation from the burning Marlboro and exhaled a stream of thick, fragmented smoke.

“How I understand it,” he went on to explain, “is the old woman had a say as to who would have her Lily Ann and I guess it turned out not to be Fitch. The old woman is long dead; only Lily Ann’s daughter, Ana, remains and, of course, old Fitch and his memory of thwarted love. I think he sees the fact she is albino as evidence of some demonic union. Fuel for the damnation fire, if you will.”

“A bit depraved, don’t you think?” I asked.

“Old Time religion can get you that way sometimes,” said Aaron, stamping out his cigarette and placing the flattened filter into his pocket. “Especially if you think you’re guilty of something, which, in Fitch’s case, was wanting Lily Ann just a little too much.

“And Ana’s father?” I wanted to know.

"Dead, too, I guess," Aaron shrugged.

“This belief, then, that Ana Lagori is some kind of witch woman comes down from her grandmother?” I wondered aloud. Perhaps it was the grandmother, who cured my grandfather in a haze of venomous hallucination. Maybe Ana knew something of the story or maybe she didn’t.

“Further than that, my friend,” said Aaron. “When we spoke in Chicago, you told me about some history you uncovered.”

“An old diary page my grandfather clipped in his notes, yes,” I agreed. “Which may be nothing more than coincidental delusion.”

“Any tale is linked to some event,” said Aaron. “Delusion, too, maybe.”

“There might be some connection,” I agreed, stiffly. My mind kept straying to both the ambiguous Ana Lagori and the bitter acrimony of Fitch. “Even considering my grandfather’s account and the possibility of some undetected plant source, it might be a bit far reaching.”

Aaron’s expression became difficult to read in any precise detail.

“As to that, I can’t say for certain,” he said, “but I will say this: there are some, like Ana Lagori, who have it in them to directly affect the physiology of the mind and body. I don’t have a clue as to how it is done, but isn’t this what you came here to find out?”

“I’m not sure,” I told him truthfully. “But this Fitch person did call her Evangeline and a witch. That would be consistent with my grandfather’s story, although he did not refer to the apparition he claimed to have seen as an Evangeline, only that the word was used to describe what it was he saw. It's a peculiar description to use...Evangeline.”

“It’s just an old country word,” said Aaron. “And Fitch is an old country fool.”

“Is that it, then,” I stated dryly.

“I don’t know if you’ll ever find this blue poke,” returned Aaron, “or if you’ll ever find the truth about your grandfather’s encounter, but my advice is that you learn what you can in the least invasive terms and take nothing more with you. Nothing more or…”

“I might end up like old Fitch?” I finished for him. “I’ve already been threatened twice today, why not make it a third?”

“Someone else threatened to spill your guts?” Aaron grinned.

I smiled despite my failing mood. I liked Aaron Westmore. I really did. Moreover, I appreciated the efforts he made on my behalf with complete and humble sincerity, but I had grown exhausted, now, at the end of the day, of covert threats and unsettling discourse.

“A woman warned me against spilling secrets,” I said. “What secrets she was referring to, God knows. Spilling guts or spilling secrets. Take your pick.”

“No threats,” replied Aaron. He exhaled a pent-up breath. “But the most sincere man can be tempted by what, shall we say, might offer a very lucrative future?”

“In the exploitation of the plant,” I clarified.

“And the woman,” said Aaron.

“I have no hidden agenda,” I replied wearily, “and would be content simply to satisfy an old man’s story; however, should this plant exist, it might offer some benefit to medical research.”

“Perhaps,” agreed Aaron. “But you may find the options must be weighed carefully.”

***

I studied the book on Appalachian wild plants late into the kerosene lit night, until my eyes burned behind the lenses of my reading glasses. I found no indication of a layman blue poke and with some lingering doubt over its existence beyond regional fancy, I consumed three sedatives and recorded the subtle complexities of the day in my notebook: Met with Ana Lagori. Had not fully comprehended the fact she is a true albino. Rich violet red eyes. Reserved disposition. A religious fanatic wandering about the woods. Enlightening conversation with Aaron Westmore. Things not as they seem.

And I dreamt, near dawn, of three bulbous moons: each, of which bore, within its milky sphere, a pale and wraith-like feminine feature; compelling the sea to rise up ominously on a shore of swiftly shifting sand.





~*~