Southworth by Tabitha Pollardson

Protestants can sense demons, but only Catholics may acknowledge them. The only spirit a Protestant can speak to is the holy ghost. At least, that’s the impression I always got. Although I’ve even seen some Protestants carry a rosary and holy water when in a ghost busting situation.

Appalachian Protestants are different, a little looser. We hate Catholics because of our daddy issues, because we’re jealous of their golden toys and church fathers, but we don’t mind ghosts. We don’t fear the supernatural because we’re washed in his blood, but we would die before giving up our superstitions. We’re also not Pentecostal, like the people in the next valley over, so we don’t get down with all that hogwash about sensing the holy ghost or having feelings from God. The Appalachian Protestant non-Pentecostal God does not work in feelings. I’m not sure what they do.

Appalachian Protestant non-Pentecostal non-feeling God (who is firmly a man, despite the pronouns I’ve been using) steps out the way anytime a haint or strange animal or strange woman (witch, bitch, etc.) enters the scene. Although this God is firmly a man, their main followers are women. Women who have time to pray/gossip and sing the gospel songs about being touched, moved, poked, and filled with the spirit. Like Mary, the ultimate woman, although now we’re circling back to Catholicism, so we tend to ignore her.

The point is, we let God move over for the unknown. You have to when you’ve lived in the same woods your whole life but you’re stuck with a nomadic desert God. There are some things in these mountains we don’t understand and neither does God, bless their heart, who is a foreigner in a foreign land. We all turn a blind eye, do our protection rituals, and carry on. And we never go into the woods after dark.

I wasn’t in the woods, it wasn’t after dark, and I don’t think I’m one of those women. We were at an antique store hunting for old gizmos, like keys or watches, for me to make into funky jewelry. From the outside the building looked huge. It squatted over half a city block, peeling plum paint over bright white stone, low by the bridge that led into town. Brown crumbly vines, pokeberries and ivy, trailed up and down the walls. The riverbank beneath had eroded over the years, and the building leaned back as if avoiding the street. Black storefront windows took up most of the building’s face. Half the first floor had sunk beneath the earth, so we had to walk down lumpy carpeted steps to enter the front door.

The ceiling nearly grazed the top of my head. There was no light in the building apart from weak sun straggling in the windows. Lumpy gray carpet covered the rotted floorboards. Hidden stairs, one or two at a time, waited to trip up customers. One man sat behind the counter, tapping at an ancient boxy computer. Boxes piled high on the counter contained the bits and bobs I wanted.

I picked out some keys and brooches while my boyfriend peered at the bone-handled penknives in the glass case. There was a real civil war sword on the bottom shelf, rusted and bowed but still sharp. I looked for innocent blood. There was none.

We wandered deeper into the building. There were little rooms carved out of the big room, one or two stairs leading up or down into them with no rhyme or reason, depending on how the riverbank had settled. Victorian portrait photographs lined the walls of one room near the front. My boyfriend said their eyes were creepy. I said his face was creepy. I liked old pictures. I liked that they were a little creepy and their eyes followed us as we left.

There were rooms of old kitchen gadgets, full glass Coke bottles, even tiny glass bottles of unknown pills. Room upon room contained nothing but books. Old books, new books, books from 1500 to about 1999. Old Bibles, pre-Luther and full of unedited stories about blood and God-inflicted violence. Maybe that was God’s vibe until we moved them to the mountains. I wish I’d bought one.

In one dark corner, lined with books on sagging shelves, my boyfriend looked up sharply and called my name. The floor sloped towards him; I moved closer, almost against my will.

“I don’t like this corner,” I said, glancing up at the ceiling. It was just as gray and lumpy as the carpet below.

Caught between lumps, my boyfriend looked at me, a little flushed, book in his hands open to the Autoportrait au Christ Jaune. “I feel weird over here too. It’s just dark and musty, you know? All the old books. That’s all.”

All the same, I grabbed his hand and pulled him away.

We found a tiny room at the back of the building, two stairs leading down. The whole room was the width of the doorframe. More of a closet. All three available walls were shelved with bright, colorful cookbooks, newer than the other books by several centuries. In the center of the room, leaving barely space to walk around the perimeter, sat a wooden chair the color of honey. I slipped in. I liked cookbooks, especially weird old ones.

“I don’t like this room,” said my boyfriend, hovering at the doorway. “Do you feel like someone is watching us?”

“Hm,” I said, not because I didn’t care but because I didn’t feel anything. “Not really.” “It’s not unpleasant, but there’s someone in this room,” he said. I didn’t disagree.

We went up to the second floor. The stairs were narrow and impossibly steep, carpeted the same. Not a soul in sight. There was, inexplicably, a stained-glass window on the wall over the stairs. The ceiling here was tall, less claustrophobic. Around the perimeter sat cardboard boxes of children’s books and dolls and racks of vintage coats and scarves.

We skirted around a rag doll in a tiny rocking chair. I picked up a couple Dick and Jane books from a box piled high. The books were yellow and brown with age, the pages damp. I wondered if the readers were dead or grandparents by now.

The next room was a step down. It was enormous. The ceiling must have been 12 feet tall, with huge bow windows looking out to the street below. It was almost empty but not silent. A colorful jukebox in the corner played organ music from a long-ago carnival. A glass shop case, unmanned and abandoned, languished to the left of the doorframe. It was full of tiny knickknacks and dolls. The rest of the room was empty except for one rack of clothes, one partly- assembled bedframe, and one rusty plow.

We entered hand in hand. Out of the corner of my eye, I caught movement behind the plow. A rat? No, bigger, more sinuous, something on two legs. I couldn’t see anything when I looked straight ahead. But in that corner with the plow, something watched me. Now it was crouching. It was dark. Something there writhed and slithered. The hair on my arms prickled.

“I feel weird,” I said. “This room is weird. My stomach hurts. Let’s go.”

My boyfriend turned to me, the hem of his floor-length coat dusting the floor. He had taken it from a coat rack in the nearest corner. He stepped toward me, holding out his hand, hulking in the coat, and I shrank back. If he touched my arm I’d scream. Yet I wanted him near. If he left me I’d be alone.

“Do you feel that?” he whispered, and the coat deflated. Both of us avoided eye contact.

Avoided looking at the corner.

“It’s just the music,” I said. “It’s just the room. But I don’t like that corner. We should go.”

A tickle down my inner arms. Pounding in my temples. I ripped the coat off my boyfriend and dragged him past the glass case of dolls. His face was red. Sweat dripped down the small of my back. Outside the room, we faced each other, trembling with the primal knowledge that a predator was nearby. We took deep breaths, calming. How silly to run from an empty room. It wasn’t so scary now that we couldn’t hear the jukebox.

He had to pee, so he went into a closet with a toilet in it just around the corner. He came out a minute later. The toilet was out of order, with rotting waste piled up in the bowl. We tumbled down the lumpy stairs, single file. The man at the counter didn’t look up as we left.

A couple months later, I told my mom we should go antiquing. I told her I found a store that she would like. I didn’t tell her any other details. We went to Southworth.

It was midday, hot summer with brilliant sun, heat rising off the pavement as we entered the cool gloom of the store. Mom was interested in the photo room and the knickknacks. She really liked the boxes with heaps of doorknobs. She was washed by the blood of the lamb and walked in boldness and confidence. She didn’t know God had stepped aside already, out of their element.

I pointed out a complete matching set of Dickens and we exclaimed over the leather covers. I steered her towards the art book corner. She thought something was strange. I’ve always been able to gauge paranormal activity by how red my mom’s nose is. It was pink in the art corner, Autoportrait au Christ rose. She glanced up at the lumpy ceiling but kept moving.

I led her to the chair room, saying nothing in particular except that there were cookbooks here she might like. She went inside and took in the chair.

“There is a spirit here,” she said, nose red as if she’d just come in from the cold. “It’s a person. He’s not angry. He’s just here. He’s almost pleasant.”

“Hmm,” I said, neither confirming nor denying.

We climbed up the stairs single file. I walked ahead, leaning forward to balance. When we got to the top, everything was exactly how I’d left it. I turned to check on Mom’s nose. Color was rising in her face like mercury in a thermometer.

“Are you ok?” I asked.

She said yes too quickly, like she was trying to sound normal.

Footsteps, footsteps, creaking down the hall. I padded towards the room, trying to look casual.

This is right above the art corner downstairs, I realized. I took a step beyond the doorframe, but Mom stopped short.

“How do you feel about this room?” I asked, trying not to lead her on, but I knew she saw the eagerness on my face.

Panting, breathing, coming up from behind. Even if we’d believed in her, Mary couldn’t save us now.

“I don’t like this.” Mom’s voice shook. She pointed at the plow. “There’s something in that corner. It’s crouching.” She stepped back, one step, two, rocking on her heels. The metal bedframe and farm equipment were right where I’d last seen it. I stepped inside to prove I didn’t believe in any of this superstition. I wasn’t like the others. I wasn’t in the woods and it wasn’t after dark. Hail, Mary, full of grace. Blessed art thou among women.

“Come on, come in,” I said.

Voice too thick to speak, Mom shook her head. She stayed in the doorframe, shrinking, shaking, standing her ground.

“That corner?” I pointed. It was quiet today. The jukebox wasn’t playing. Had it stopped? “It’s angry,” Mom said. She steadied herself. I wondered what she saw.

“Someone is not happy over there. We better leave him alone. It’s a him. But it’s not human.”

Small shadows flitted across the wall, even though it was broad daylight. Holy Mary, mother of God, pray for us sinners. What sins must one commit to become a creature crouching in a corner of an antique store?

In a flash, Mom’s head cracked against the doorframe and sparks flew outward from my vision. She was flung to the ground and trampled, the invisible force leaving only indentations on her chest. A rush of cold air gusted over her form and out the door. She looked so tiny on the gray carpet. Now and at the hour of our death, amen.

I shook my head and the sparks disappeared. Just a vision. An intrusive thought. Mom still stood, shoulders squared. The image only lasted a split second, but the silver sparks floated back into my sight. It was time to leave.

“Let’s go,” I said.

Downstairs again, the heat slowly left Mom’s face. She even waved to the man behind the counter. One of her secret specialties was flirting with men who worked behind counters. That’s how she got stuff, like sales or freebies. When she bought me a ukulele for Christmas a few years ago, she flirted so hard she got a free case with it. A nice case with padded shoulder straps. She said she even touched his arm when she laughed at his jokes. O Mary, conceived without sin, pray for us.

So of course, we went up to the desk and Mom leaned forward on the counter. Her accent thickened when she smiled at the poor man, vowels tilting over and up like mourning doves.

“Do you know the history of this building?” she asked, smiling sweetly. “It’s such an old building, isn’t it? Do you know how old it is?”

He looked up from his computer, took in her still-pink nose and me hovering in the background. “No, I’m not too sure.”

“Well," “have you ever had any supernatural experiences here? Anything weird happen? There is some weird energy upstairs!”

“Umm, no,” he said.

She knew when she’d been defeated. “Well, thank you,” she said, and we left.

She was still so queasy that we walked down to the riverfront park to get some fresh air. But her senses were on high alert at this point. The park was brand new, bright and sunny with rough benches made of stones from the river. She touched one of the stones but wouldn’t sit.

“I think this stone was quarried by slaves,” she said, accent still thick for no one’s benefit but her own. “This is very sad. These stones are not happy.”

The bright white stones, same as the walls of Southworth, winked in the sunlight. We went home.

Now you tell me what’s going on here. All I can figure is that an Appalachian Protestant like my mom knew about haints before she knew about God, before anyone could tell her that God was real and other beings aren’t. The Appalachian Protestants understood the things in the woods and the corner crouchers and the blue ceilings and the horseshoes over the door. They knew about things boiled in pots and people healed by herbs under a waxing moon.

When you live in the oldest mountains in America, there are things in your backyard that laid claim to the land long before you did. Maybe even long before the haints—maybe even before God. Or maybe God was there first. Maybe God put the spirits there just to spice it up. Maybe that was the Pentecostal God, the one that likes feelings and holy ghosts. Or even the Catholic God, the one that deals in women and gold trinkets. Maybe the Protestant God stepped aside, gave up control the second they crossed the Cumberland Gap.

Tabitha Pollardson is a professional editor and bookseller from the haunted mountains of southwest Virginia. She is passionate about finding and telling stories which explore the dark and musty sides of life, and she always has a cup of coffee on hand. She lives in a 200-year-old tavern with her husband, dog, kitten, and about a thousand books.