Storytime Blog Hop - July 2021 - Abigail
Happy July!
Story time again - check out the links at the bottom for more stories from around the world and let me know what you think about Abigail. :)
Abigail
I thought I'd be safe: it was July for spiritssake and nowhere near Halloween; the town was out-in-the-middle-of-nowhere tiny and not Portland or N'Orleans or San Francisco; and none of my family had ever lived there so the ghosts wouldn't know my name.
But trouble follows me like chicks after their momma, despite the cabin in some fishing town in Nowhere, USA.
I'd relaxed, just a little, when I saw the "cabin" which was more a house in a clearing in the woods than a cabin. The street was paved all the way to the driveway. There was electricity and running water--even if it was well-water--and wi-fi. And I wasn't the first one there, nor the last, so that horror-movie luck had skipped me as well.
I greeted my friends and had dinner and slept all night in a decently comfy bed. No cold spots, no moaning or creaking other than the normal sounds a house makes. When I got up the next morning, nothing had moved that couldn't be accounted for by those up before me. When I practiced Tai Chi under the trees, no animals came to stare at me inappropriately.
I relaxed.
Then when we went walking along the road--the road, mind you, not a trail we didn't know nor alone, nor late at night but at near-midday--we heard the baby cry. I'd not brought my nearly grown babies along, having determined this would be a vacation, but I was sympathetic enough to other mommas to know how difficult babies can be, so other than a slight pause, we kept walking, talking of stories and family and food.
When we turned around, I startled enough to stop my friend mid-sentence.
"Was that there when we went past here the first time?" I asked her, suddenly unaccountably hot under the late morning sun even though I'd needed my hoodie just a minute before.
"No," she whispered back to me. Being the practical sort, she took another step along the road, but my feet weren't quite ready yet.
The doll had been propped up on a log so it looked almost right at us, its blue glass eyes wide and its painted red lips silent. Its long blonde hair draped across its shoulders in loose curls and its white lace gown was as pristine as if it was staring at us from a shop shelf.
I shuddered and startled again when the baby started to cry, but that broke my feet loose and I hurried past, taking my friend's arm to pull her along.
She had named the doll Abigail by the time we got back to the house, and made jokes about it with the others, but I kept silent. Sometimes the more you say about something uncanny, the more power you give it and I wasn't giving the doll any more power than it already had.
At dusk, I walked out again with a marshmallow to try to appease the spirit, but the doll was gone.
I refused to search for it after dark. I've seen the horror films and had my own brushes with evil. A high-pitched whine tangled in my ear that night and by the next morning nothing could do but to find the thing again and see what it wanted.
By dawn's light--late in the mountains of the fishing town--I walked up the road with the tools of my trade tucked into my pockets. Bits of string to tie the spirit, bites of chocolate to sweeten it, blessed scissors and wax, and cards to give it a voice.
The baby was crying again. I walked past and came back, and there she was, Abigail fair of face and dark of spirit. As I'd been taught, I started by giving her my family name like a pedigree. The baby's cry stopped and silence blanketed our bit of the road.
I started with the chocolate, setting it before her like the offering it was. Best start with honey over vinegar, though I had both. "I'm here. What do you want from me?"
An ATV roared in the distance but it didn't come close enough to disturb us. The doll said nothing.
The chocolate disappeared, and if I hadn't been watching so close I'd have been convinced it was the spirit and not a tiny mortal hand that took it. I crouched down. "I'm here to help," I said softly.
The child that peeked out from the green behind the doll had the same solemn blue eyes but her face was pinched and a bruise mottled the left side of her face. She crawled out of the leaves and stood, glancing over her shoulder at me before she staggered toward the cabin.
Horror-esque, it was rotting clapboard over termites, but I followed her anyway, drawn as much by this mortal child as I ever had been by a spirit. She continued down the ruts in the rock, never letting me too close, but making sure I followed.
Flies wreathed the windows but she went in through the door anyway and when I ignored the stench of death and stepped inside, she slipped her hand into mine and tugged me past the bodies on the floor to the cradle. The baby cried faintly.
I took the living out of the house of the dead and down the road to the fire station where I waited for the local police to come and deal with a homicide/suicide while I fed the girls and held them while they slept and wondered if it was so bad to deal with spirits when mortals were evil enough on their own.
From then on, I was haunted enough for any two people, but I helped when I was needed. It was what my family did, after all.