# To Your Grave

Author: Aux Chiens
Tags: Appalachia, Curse, Goat, Horns, Male, North Carolina, Satyr, Transformation, Witchcraft, creepy, weird

No doubt
you have read of the Witches' Sabbath, and have laughed at the tales which
terrified our ancestors; the black cats, and the broomsticks, and dooms
pronounced against some old woman's cow. Since I have known the truth I have
often reflected that it is on the whole a happy thing that such burlesque as
this is believed, for it serves to conceal much that it is better should not be
known generally. 
_________ 
Arthur Machen, "The Novel of the
White Powder" 
            Jim McCall was Jimmy McCall, just a small
boy in the dire years of the Depression, when he heard a story from an old, old
man named Eph, short for Ephraim Chandler, who had lived in a place called
Blowing Rock near to all his life. 
            Ever after, when whenever Eph
came up in conversation - little by little less and less each year, as more and
more oldtimers passed on and forgot - Jim McCall would tell anyone in earshot
that the man was burning in Hell, deserving every touch of the Devil's
pitchfork.            When he was a boy he had not minded his folks who had told
him to stay away from Eph, but Jimmy was of a family that always did things
their own way, and at even at seven years old Jimmy was his family's child and
acted out his restless, rebellious spirit - his older brother, many years his
senior, would do the same, and shoot a man in Boone over money owed him, and
breathed his last screaming in hellfire in the electric chair at Central
Prison.            Eph sold decent shine made from corn and cane, just enough
to get by, and had one or two goats on his property that, like him, seemed to
be ridiculously ancient. He was probably the oldest man in Watauga County, certainly
the oldest person anyone in Boone knew of: he told people stories about how he
met Jeff Davis - beg pardon, President
Jeff Davis - and offered him a place to stay when he was on the run from the
Yankees all those years ago. This was just one of many tall tales the man would
spout to anyone he thought was listening - but then again, that story alone
would put him at nearly a hundred years old, well far enough advanced in age to
be certifiably crazy.             He had a wizened face that may have been handsome in the
time that he once had claimed to live, and an uncombed scraggly white beard
coming down his chin. He walked with a strange gait and wore shoes entirely too
large for his feet - a mark of eccentricity and senility, no doubt, like the
funny wideawake hat he never took off.            But however offputting, however much of a liar everyone
else thought he was, Jimmy McCall believed every word. He didn't used to - a
jaded skeptic even at so green an age - but one night, the last night he ever
dared venture to Eph's place, he believed
every word.            After the Japs bombed Pearl Harbor, Jimmy was by that time
Jim, and he did his duty and signed up - he was shipped off to the
Mediterranean and defended freedom in Sicily. While he was stationed in
Palermo, he got a letter from his Ma telling him, in part, that some folk in
Boone had it on good authority Eph finally passed, his cabin up in the woods
burnt down one Summer's night.            It was right after that, when anyone back home ever
mentioned Eph, he would nod, solemnly as though he were taking an oath, and
said "That man's a-burnin in Hell, sure as certain - that fire weren't no
accident, just his master a-callin em home."            And then somebody, inevitably, would scold him for
speaking ill of the dead, but Jim would be shake his head slowly and repeat
what he said before.            A few remembered him in the days of his boyhood hanging
round Eph's place, doing chores for him and listening to his crazy stories.
What in goodness had happened to make him think such a thing, after all?            And as it happened, Jim McCall rarely told a soul - master
storyteller though he was, delighting in the perverse and the macabre, he would
clam up as soon as anyone mentioned it. He'd change the subject or he'd offer
someone a drink or some pie, and that was that.
            Usually.            But if you were lucky enough to hear why Jim McCall knew, sure as certain, that Eph was burning in
Hell, well - you'd never have trouble remembering it, because it's the kind of
thing one doesn't readily forget.            The story went like this:
            Eph
was widely known as a man to avoid - the years had clearly done something to
his head that made it sicken and grow strange, until now he just lived up there
all alone in the woods, sometimes with his goats. He was a looney, maybe even
dangerous - and like every other boy in Watauga County, probably, Jimmy McCall
had been expressly warned to stay away from him. But, again, being who he was -
the restlessness that ran unaccountably through his veins - he disobeyed, and
one Summer during the Depression, when the mountains were vibrantly green and
the woods thick with buzzing birds and the cheater-cheater-cheater!
call of the Carolina Wren, he went to go pay this mysterious Eph a visit. 
            Jimmy was a strong, handsome
boy, with hair the color of chocolate and big brown eyes to match, but always
had a serene expression of being calm and contented wherever he went. He acted
the part, as well, even as young as he was. So it didn't surprise Jimmy - it
very well should have, but Jimmy was
a fearless and headstrong child - when, after he knocked on the cabin door,
there appeared in the doorway the tall man with the queer white scraggly beard.

            "I'm Jimmy McCall, sir. I come ta see if ya need
any work doin."
            "Why yer Jesse McCall's
grandboy! I knew him since he was knee-high to a grasshopper!"
            From that boisterous bit of
introduction, Jimmy and Eph became fast friends.
            At first, Jimmy found that the
way his folks talked about this mountaineering codger was totally unfounded: it
was true he had weird white hair on his chin and on his arms, and it was true
he never ate meat but always had fresh greens in a kind of salad, and as old as
he was he still had all his teeth - but that was no reason not to be nice to
the man! 
            He spoke kindly and let Jimmy
pet and handfeed his nanny-goats, soften and wheaten and sweet-natured with
their strange eyes and lilting bleat - Jimmy may have been mature for his age
but he was still a boy, and simple things such as this appealed to him enough
to flat-out tell his parents (and get spanked for the trouble, the first time)
that they were wrong but Eph and who he was.
            After several days of this, his
parents relented and let Jimmy go down to Eph's to do chores for the man -
Jimmy's pa ran a general store that attracted only a few customers a day, it
was a dull place for a boy of boundless energy like Jimmy himself.
            Jimmy soon learned a great
deal about his new, elderly friend. It seems Eph had lived the way he had, up
that way with the occasional goat, selling shine for a little bit of coin, for
as long as anyone could remember, because just
as long as anyone could remember, Eph had been up there, in his cabin,
crazier than owl shit, as the folk say. But he was always kind to Jimmy,
rewarding him for tending to his still way, way up in the woods, and feeding
his goats and stacking his firewood with choice herbs and delicious fresh goat's
milk that Jimmy's pa sold for a profit down at his store.
            When it grew dark and it was
near time for Jimmy to run on home, Eph would tell stories. "Lemme tell ya a story, child!" 
            Jimmy would sit on the planks
of the cabin floor, a fire in the woodstove, herbs and mushrooms hung to dry,
the nanny-goats in the lean-to he had built, attached long ago, to the cabin
proper, the sounds of crickets and katydids and cicadas accompanying whatever
tale Eph would spin, that odd little white beard wagging away with every word.
            In his baggy clothes and
ill-footing shoes and big wideawake hat that Jimmy never saw him without, Eph
would sit back in his rocking chair, back and forth, and recount the impossibly
far-off days of his half-remembered youth: how he marched with General Lee but
turned back after Petersburg, that one story about how he offered President
Davis shelter at his cabin, how he shot a turkey with two heads that warbled
something that sounded like a person talking.
            At first, this was an
excellent arrangement for all involved, and Jimmy's dad seemed sorry for
spanking his boy for disobeying when he had fresh goat's milk to sell and herbs
for his cooking.
            Then, as the weeks went on, Eph's
behavior became disquieting, and he seemed to linger in his touches on Jimmy's
shoulder, and some of the off-handed things he'd say seemed like they had more
than one meaning. Jimmy still being seven - precocious or not - he was never
sure, but he was smart enough to trust his instinct.
            He knew, for one, that Eph's stories
were getting progressively stranger and more morbid. There was the time he was
hunting west of here and saw a whole tribe of people who weren't quite elk,
weren't quite human cavorting around a weird fire. There was the time he swore
he saw an elderly woman who looked like an old nanny-goat cooking something
horrid-smelling in a big cauldron. And he would - imply things, things not
meant to be repeated to children, about these strange things he saw in the
mountains, and chuckle to himself the way he always did, leaving Jimmy feeling
dirty, for whatever reason, and deeply uncomfortable.
            But the worst was yet to come.
            One evening when the Sun was
peeling away its golden beams over the crests of the High Country, and Eph had
Jimmy start a fire for him in the woodstove, he rested his old bones in the
rocking chair, like he always did - but lifted his head, suddenly, as though
remembering something important.
            "Say - say boy--"
            "Yessir?"
            "I ever tell you about
Mr. Ferro?"
            "No sir," answered
Jimmy, dusting his hands off on his britches. "Who's Mr. Ferr--"
            Eph cut him off with a sharp,
bitter laugh.
            "I reckon I better tell
ya then! Ah, boy - he's the Witchin Man!"
            "A Witchin Man?"
            "Not a Witchin Man, child - the Witchin
Man." Eph's eyes grew distant, seeing past Jimmy , his cabin door, into
the yawning starlit North Carolina darkness. "Yes - oh yes, boy..." Now
his eyes flicked back to Jimmy , seeming furtive, excitable. "Y'ain't
never heard of em?"
            "No sir."
            "Folks never said nuthin?"
            "No sir," Jimmy repeated.
"I heard o'sum witches, but no Witchin Men
- err, Man. I heard o'the Devil,
too, but he's in the Bible."
            "Devil jest as real as
yew or I, boy - any good preacher'll tell ya that." Back Eph came in his
rocking chair again, that surreptitious look curling his mouth with a queer
kind of smile. "Ain't surprised - long time gone, Mr. Ferro ain't come
round here no more."
            "Well why ain't he come
round, then?"            Eph stopped the comfortable rhythm
of his rocking chair to tilt his head, as though thinking, the firelight
casting distorted shadows that, as Jimmy watched, he thought he could see move
on their own...            "S'pose eh got what he
wanted," he said, a little too cryptically for Jimmy's comfort. "Ya
see, child, long, long time gone,
when Boone, up yonder, weren't nuthin t'all, Ferro come up here lookin fer
sumthin - least that's what he said...wantin ta give somebody sumthin, a
li'l  bizness no barter, ya see." He
paused, his face still pensive with the memories of countless decades gone by.
"Folk know - folk knew not ta do no barter with Farro, though, child -
he'd cheat ya, no matter what it was for he'd cheat ya outta anythin."
            "Why'd he cheat?"
asked Jimmy, sitting up suddenly, feeling a chill, eerie feeling come upon him.
            "That's jest what Ferro
like ta do, child..." Eph flashed a smile at Jimmy like it was meant to be a
joke. "Why - the greatest thing he ever done was cheat a young fella, promised
him a whole mess of stuff, but only gave em a lifetime of bein ugly."
            "Oh
my goodness..." Jimmy whispered, eyes wide, withdrawing into a quivering
pile. "He made em ugly?"
            Eph
nodded, a brief twinkle coming to his eyes. "Yes indeed. Ugly - as sin."
            "H-how--?"
Jimmy found his throat had gone dry in fear.
            "Well,
now, this boy - he was a curious one, but also didn't care none for no
Scripture, he blasphemed and cursed and spat and all this, he wudn't raised no
good." Eph leaned back in his rocking chair and Jimmy fidgeted where he
was, wondering if this boy was actually him,
and this would turn into some sort of advice. "So he wudn't scared none
when Mr. Ferro come up here."
            Jimmy
could only nod, waiting for Eph to finish.
"Mr. Ferro was old, older than Methuselah, but he look so young and spry
so ye'd cudn't believe how many years he really had on em. Long, dark hair,
came past his shoulders - big dark eyes - stovepipe hat, cape." Eph chuckled. "Quite a sight for that boy, that
little town that weren't nuthin yet." He raised an eyebrow. "That
ought've been enough for that boy, there, ta mind his folks and not have nuthin
to do with the man..." The eyebrow came down. "But he went up and
talked t'em anyhow."
            As
Eph went on, he described the scenes sparsely enough, but it filled Jimmy's
little head with the awfulest visions. Eph was masterful at the raconteur's art
- pausing for effect, rise and fall, boom and whisper, to capture his audience,
his very voice the greatest actor of the drama.
            It
seems the boy - who was never given a name - was enthralled by how charming and
how rich Ferro seemed to be. Ferro said he was a chemist, of sorts, offering
all kinds of remedies for all manner of maladies...including, he said, old age.
            At
this, the boy perked up. What did Ferro mean by this?
            Why
- said Ferro with a clever smile, showing off his teeth, white like snow,
straight as ice - a way to live with years uncounted, in a form you will no doubt enjoy.
            Now,
any fella with any sense could have seen that this was a bad idea and a worse
offer - but the boy, nearly a teen, was deeply thrilled with the prospect, naïve,
maybe a little stupid, like he was.
            What
would he have to do?
            Two
things, Ferro explained - the first is to drink an elixir, which he procured,
Johnny-on-the-spot, from the cloak he wore.   The
second was to go up on a bald, where Ferro liked to conduct business - his phrase
- to complete the process.
            The boy didn't think this was
too outrageous, but when he asked how much this would cost him, Ferro just
laughed, and changed the subject.
            In order for the elixir to
work, Ferro explained, he had to drink in four parts, and offer himself to the Devil
in Hell, just like the witches would.
            At this, for the first time,
the boy hesitated. He was no firm believer but he thought that doing anything
devilish was right unwise.
            But Ferro waved his hand - why
think of the fires of Hell when one could live so long?
            Poor reasoning - but the boy
was too curious, too prideful of his own looks to wonder what would happen
should they ever fade away, to refuse.
            He handed the elixir to the
boy, popped off the top, and made him say this chant, one for every time he
drank the strange liquid - greenish-white, it tasted like grass, but more
bitter.
            Devil take me - Devil take the ring - Devil take me - And everything.            The boy took deep breaths,
now, feeling a little woozy after drinking the strange concoction from the
strange alchemist he had been warned not to mess with.
            He saw Ferro smile, again
seeing those enormous teeth, oddly, brilliantly white as they were.            Excellent, was how Ferro
praised the boy. Now, they had to finish the rest.            Up
they want to the bald at the top of that mountain -    Ferro sprinkled an amount of ground-up mushroom that glowed in the
dark, foxfire he called it, to make a
ring.
            Step into this ring, he
instructed the boy, and then it would be it for him to say the words, just as
he did when drink the elixir earlier.
            The
boy did as he was told - but almost immediately, he felt unwell, like something
wasn't quite right. But at the same time did his heart race with that lethal
swirl of excitement, and fear - was it really possible that he, humble he,
could live in years uncounted, longer than anyone he knew?
            Ferro's
voice seemed to take an - otherworldly tone. 
            Heat
lightning appeared, distant, dancing on the mountains. A cold wind picked up
from nowhere.
            But
what had Ferro said about - in a form you
will no doubt enjoy - that was being forever youthful, was it not?
Yet he had very little time to think - for now the the boy heard Ferro recite
his blasphemous prayer:
            Devil take me--            The boy sputtered in shock - he felt the wooly fur
sprouting on his legs, his arms, he felt the itch on his chin where a caprine
growth of beard was starting, his whole body exploding in a sickened, cold
sweat.            Devil take the ring--            Now his feet burned hot with sudden agony, swelling and
moving about in his boots, so that he was thrown to the ground in utter
excruciation - the very bones of his toes seemed to bloat, at first, and grow
bigger, breaking the skin, but then worst of all they started to fuse together, and get larger still, so that
he felt the leather of his boots heave and then tear, bursting through the
fabric...his new hooves, gnarled and
goatish.             Devil take me--
            The
boy realized in the moment that, were he to stay in the magic circle, he would
continue to change in these eldritch ways. He tried to run, but he stumbled,
and stumbled hard, his new hooves too unsteady to maneuver - he went down
headfirst, only for a pain to grip his entire skull, a migraine that caused the
blackness behind his tightly shut eyes to flash with starbursts of fresh pain...mere
seconds passed before he reached up to his head to feel something growing on it, out of it, ripping open
places through his flesh to emerge, hard and yellowing like aged ivory, goaty horns, oh how he screamed, alone,
aloud, in dire panic, clawing his way blindly through the grass, barely making
it out of that accursed glowing circle.
            And - everything...
            The
ritual was done - and the boy had only just managed to save himself. He looked
back at Farro, those dark eyes lit up by the moonlight, laughing at him, that
echoing, mocking, jeering laugh of knowing he had fooled that boy into doing
something so utterly foolish that could never, ever be reversed.
            He
let the boy go - telling him never to come up on the bald he'd taken to, and
never tell a soul what had happened - but not before laughing, one more time,
to enjoy all the long life he had earned.
            Eph
stopped - his tale ended.
            His
toothy smile was from ear to ear, seemingly pleased that he held his young
audience so tautly spellbound.            Now Jimmy was just about as horrified as he had ever been
in his own short life - he was shaking something fierce, the flames in the
fireplace providing him neither warmth nor comfort, but seemed to reflect,
burning themselves, in Eph's eyes.            "What...what happened ta the boy?" Jimmy asked.
"In - in the story--"            "Ferro had his bargain and let him go," Eph said
with another one of his strange, discomforting smiles. "But he left em all
messed up like he done. Teach em a lesson."            "Jest left em like that?!"            "Oh yes, boy. All horned and goaty and ugly."            "That's awful."            "Aye, boy. And he was so ugly that way - jest so
damned ugly - only a goat would wanna lay with em." A twinkle appeared in
his eye that, even though Jimmy couldn't rightly understand it, made his bowels
turn to ice. "And so he did!"            "He - he did what
now...?"            Eph chuckled. "Never ya mind, boy. Trust me, ain't
nuthin Ferro wudn't do, ta make somebody hurt."            Jimmy found he couldn't stop trembling, but he gathered up
some hidden reserve of courage to ask his last question - what had been bothering
him all this time Eph had been speaking:            "H-how - how come yew know all this?"            He wished he hadn't asked it - he'd wished he'd just been
ignorant the rest of his life, and never realize just what kind of awful world
he and everybody else was living in, that such things could exist, that
something so damnably horrible could ever be true.            But he got his answer. And when he got it, he tore off
a-hollerin from that accursed cabin, running so hard his legs felt like they
would fall off and his lungs would swell up and burst in his chest.            Years and years went by and he never told a single person
what he seen that night. Sometimes when he was too drunk or too tired as he
grew older the truth would come out, but never before. 
            He
had seen nightmarish things in Sicily, he would see still more as his battalion
moved up into Italy, but only one thing Jim McCall ever saw made him scream
awake in the middle of the night then what he saw that night as a seven-year
old boy.            "How do I know?" Eph had repeated back to him
with a cold laugh.            The firelight had took to that hideous twinkle in his
eyes, and Eph smiled a terrible smile - he took off his big hat.            There, underneath the fabric, hidden in a tussle of white,
woolen hair, was a pair of enormous, curved goat
horns.
            "Cuz
that boy - was me!"

Source: https://sofurry.com/view/1152023