Blysswrytes: July 2011

Janie walked in the door of her grandparents’ six room house and all the memories of her childhood flooded her mind. It was a small house that sat in the deep wooded area of Ocala, Florida. In thirty year’s nothing changed, everything was still the same, even the smell of mothballs and fried chicken lingered. All her aunts and uncles had been born there, but they refused to step foot back in the house. “Strange things have happened there Janie. You sure you want to take on this responsibility?” They said to her when they found out the house had been willed to her after Grandpa Joe passed away. When she asked them what kind of things happened they would utter things like “you see hags running in those woods,” or “we used to see people living in the trees that were no bigger than a humming bird”. But Janie thought they were all crazy, she spent many nights in the house and never saw or heard anything that would make her cringe.

Whatever happened back then was none of Janie’s concern now; she was looking for a new life, away from the city and away from her ex-husband. Since the divorce became final, Mack had been calling and harassing her in hopes of getting back together with her. She had enough when he called her at three-thirty in the morning telling her he was outside the house and wanted to see the kids.

“Are you crazy?” She asked him jumping out of bed to see his white Cadillac Seville parked outside the house they once shared.

“They're my kids and I can see them whenever I want,” he said jumping out of the car.

“I’m not opening the door for you,” she said walking in the hallway to peek in on the kids.

“You don’t gotta let me in, I still have my key,” he said jigging the key in the lock. Janie ran downstairs to put the bolt lock on she installed a few days prior, but forgot to lock before she went to bed. When she got to the door and tried turning the lock, Mack pushed the door open knocking Janie to the floor.

“You trynna keep me from my kids?” He said grabbing her by the neck.

“Mack, it’s late,” she said, her voice trembling. “Why don’t you come back later after they get out of school?”

“I want to see my kids now,” he demanded. Not only could Janie smell the liquor on him, but she could see that he was drunk. And when Mack got that intoxicated he was a force to be reckoned with, but Janie had enough.

“They’re sleeping Mack, come back later,” she said firmly. That’s all Janie remembered before he knocked her out cold. It hurt for her to remember. It hurt for her to think about what he could have done had he not passed out on top of her.

Janie walked into the small room her grandparents slept in and all the memoires she forgot came back. Memories like the times her grandmother would hand her a comb and tell her to scratch and grease her scalp. She sat her bags on the steel framed bed and let the load she was carrying in her heart free. This was a new beginning for Janie and there was no way she was going to let the baggage she was carrying from her past into her future.

“Mommy the light doesn’t work in the bathroom,” Janie’s daughter, Melina, said startling her.

“Well Lina get the light bulbs out of the Lowe’s bag in the car and ask Kwame to put them in. Tell him to make sure he puts them in before it gets dark, because there’s no street lights out here.”

“No street lights? Mom are you serious? I don’t want to stay here,” Melina said staring out the bedroom window. “It looks scary outside Mom.”

“Nonsense Lina, I used to love staying here with my grandparents. There’s nothing to be afraid of. Now go do what I told you to do,” Janie said running her fingers through her new unwanted hair cut.

Janie walked outside to make sure Melina was doing what she was told, and when she heard the melodramatic story Melina was telling Kwame she laughed. She became uneasy when she felt someone watching her; she turned around and noticed an old woman with long braided brittle silver hair staring at her. Rocking slowly back and forth on her porch, the old woman sat there with a crocheted blanket sitting on her lap glaring at Janie. Janie waved to her, but the old woman just sat there staring and rocking. Janie stepped off her porch, sure the frail old woman didn’t see her, and headed over to introduce herself. The closer Janie got to the frail looking woman the slower she rocked until she came to a complete stop.

“Hello ma’am,” Janie said approaching the gray wooden porch.

“You Janie Mae grandbaby ain’tcha?” The old woman said holding an old rusty can.

“Yes ma’am I am. My name is…”

“Your name is Janie after your grandmamma. You moving in that house wit’ dem chil’ren?” The woman said spitting black juice into the can. She looked at Janie with cold eyes, disapproving and stern.

“Yeah… yes ma’am. What’s your name? I don’t remember you; I used to come here…”

“You don’t remember me, but I remember you. I remember your mama too, used to play with my great-grandbaby Cora when she was little,” the old lady said sticking her nose in the air.

“Your great-granddaughter?” Janie laughed trying to ease the tension. “You don’t look a day over fifty ma’am.” But the old woman didn’t crack a smile. “Well you never told me your name Ma’am,” Janie said looking around to see if she saw anyone else. “Do you live here all by yourself?”

“I’m the only one left!” The old woman shouted throwing the quilt off her lap and standing up. “Looky here Janie Mae grandbaby,” the old woman said in an unyielding voice. “You best mind your business ‘round here. Tell them chil’ren’s not to be runnin’ ‘round unattended you hear? ‘Specially in my yard,” she said before opening her screen door.

“I didn’t mean to offend you ma’am really, and don’t worry about the kids I’ll keep an eye on them,” Janie said backing away.

“I ain’t the one needs be worryin,” the old woman said walking into her house slamming her screen door.

Janie stood there for a minute trying to figure out what the lady meant when she felt an ice chilling breeze on the side of her face, snapping her out of the daze she was in. She rubbed her hand across her face and realized that under the hot Florida sun, there was not a single tree leaf blowing and Janie couldn’t understand why she felt such a cool breeze. When she looked in the direction the wind came from the old woman stood watching Janie through a window. She almost tripped over her feet trying to make it home, but when Janie got there it didn’t make her feel any better. She decided that from that day forward she would mind her own business.

It was six months before Kwame and Melina started asking about going to see their dad. Although Janie didn’t like the idea of them being alone with a drunk, he assured her that he was attending Alcoholics Anonymous meetings on a regular basis. They all agreed that the kids would spend the whole summer in Baltimore between their dad’s and Janie’s parents’ house. In all honesty, Janie was relieved that the kids were going away for a little while; since moving into her grandparents’ home she hadn’t had a minute to herself and she needed the peace.

After seeing the kids off, Janie went to Wal-mart and bought as many candles as she could fit into the shopping cart. On her way back home, Janie blasted the music and didn’t have a single care in the world, all she thought about was taking a long hot bath and catching up on some reading. When she pulled into the wooded area leading to her house she felt strange, kind of like she was going into a trance. She turned the air condition on and rolled the windows up, she was sure it was the heat making her feel light headed. When she made the left turn down the road she lived on her eyes gravitated to what looked like a man running up a tree. “What the hell!” She yelled. “I must really need to relax because I’m trippin’ right now.”

Janie walked in the house, sat the half dozen bags of candles down, and began emptying them. She had all kinds of candles to liven up the small sleepy house. She had tea light candles, short and tall candles, and huge round three wicked candles. She lit candles all around the house and went in the bathroom to run her bath water. She smiled to herself when she laid her satin night gown down on the bed along with her favorite Bath and Body Works lotion. She went to the bathroom, opened her brand new champagne bubble bath, and lavishly poured some into the filling bathtub. She stuck her hand in the water and turned the cold water off; she wanted to relax and the only way she could do that was with a hot bath.

Janie sank her body into the steaming hot claw foot bathtub and released the tension she felt in her body. The iridescent light from the candles filled the room with a serene energy, and when she closed her eyes she let her mind take her to a peaceful place. When she opened them she was shocked to find that every flame on every candle was blown out. Since there was very little light shining in the bathroom she washed her body in a hurry, got out the tub, and flicked the light switch to the ‘on’ position. “That’s strange,” she said. “The light was working before I got in the tub.” She wrapped herself in her terrycloth towel and went into her bedroom to see whether the light was working in there. When the light didn’t come on in her bedroom she went into every room only to discover that all the candles were blown out and none of the lights worked. She called the power company, but they said they had no reports of any power outages in the area.

Janie lit all the candles around the house again and went to her room to get dressed. When she went back into the living room she discovered the candles were out again. “Okay grandma or grandpa I know it’s you so please stop, I know you’re here,” she said. But a cacophonous laughter—coming from nowhere in particular—told her it was not her grandparents and that it was time to get some sleep. She went to her room pulled the sheet back, eased into bed, and fell into a deep sleep.

Brutally awakened by the violent shaking of her bed, Janie tried to get up but couldn’t move; it was as if someone was pressing down on her chest. “Our Father, which art in Heaven,” she began chanting the Lord’s Prayer. “Hollow be thy name, thy kingdom come, thy will be done…,” she said straining to even breathe the inaudible words. But before she finished the prayer she no longer felt restrained and saw a dark shadow run across her room. She jerked her body out of the bed, felt her way to the night stand, and grabbed the flashlight. She grabbed her cell phone, hit the button to automatically dial her mother’s number, and ran over to her bedroom door to shut it.

Before her mother could answer the phone Janie looked out her bedroom window and saw the old lady standing on her porch with what looked like a handful of cut hair in her hands. Janie ran her fingers through her head and, before she started to panic, she remembered that Mack chopped all but a few inches off before he passed out on top of her.

“Janie, what’s wrong with you?” Her mother screamed in the phone. “You call my house at two-thirty in the morning and not say anything something must be wrong.”

“Mom, I…,” Janie said trying to speak.

“Did you talk to anybody Janie?” Her mother demanded, but Janie didn’t say a word. “You don’t have to tell me, it’s the witching hour. Go to the bathroom right now, you’ve got to hurry. They like to tap into your weaknesses and play tricks on your mind.”

“I…I can’t move mom, the old lady next door….”

“Did you talk to her?” Janie’s mother calmly asked her.

“Yeah, when I first moved in, but...” Janie replied still in shock.

“You’ve got to move now! Go to the bathroom and on the side of the wall near the toilette there’s a board that has an oval hole in it, you need to find it. Hurry up Janie, get yourself together, this is serious,” her mother said. Janie grabbed the flashlight, ran to the bathroom and searched for the oval hole her mother instructed her to find. She felt that same eerie wind blow on her face again, making all the hairs on her body stick up, but she ignored it. When she found the oval hole she started hearing voices whispering, telling her she’d die if she opened it. “It’s a quarter to three Janie, you found that hole yet, you’ve got to hurry.”

“I got it mom, now what do you want me to do?” Janie asked frantically.

“Hit it three times saying ‘Rohoyah minah’, but I want you to hit it really hard on the last time Janie.” She did as she was told and when she opened it Janie found a picture of an old woman in a casket, a white rag, a black candle, and a box of matches. She told her mother what she found and her mother gave her instructions to perform a ritual.

“After you light the candle, look in the matchbox and there’s a needle in there, you need to prick your finger, drop your blood on that rag, and wrap the rag around the picture. After you do that, say ‘Ethel Lee Deans you don’t belong here, you are dead, you are not welcome here, go back to where you belong.’ You’ve got to say it with conviction.” Janie did as she was told and as soon as she was done all the lights came back on in her house.

“You want to tell me what the hell is going on mom!” Janie screamed. Her mother told her how Ethel Lee Deans was an old hag who died, but every so often she liked to come back. She told Janie how people said the old woman lived to be 120 years old; some said she was even older than that. She told Janie how the old woman didn’t like Janie’s grandmother because she stopped letting her play with the old hags great-great-granddaughter Cora.

“I remember my mother coming into my room telling me Cora got bit by a snake and was dead. I remember going to her funeral, then about a week later Cora came back. I was outside playing with her in the yard when my mother told me to come in the house. She asked me who I was playing with, and when I told her it was Cora she told me not to play with her again. My mother said ‘Old Hag Ethel done turned her grandbaby into a zombie’.”

“A zombie mom? I don’t believe that,” Janie said.

“You don’t believe it or you don’t want to believe it? We all told you strange things happened there and you didn’t want to believe it, we grew up there. If you’re going to stay there you have to pay attention to how people act and react. You have to make sure you ask them lots of questions, talk to them about recent things that happened in the news. If they don’t want to answer any of your questions, then they have something to hide. It’s okay to have friends, but you have to watch out for the sake of them babies. Once you start talking to hags and people who practice magic you give them permission to play games with your mind,” Janie’s mother said. The two talked until the sun came up, but that didn’t make Janie feel any better.

For the next few weeks Janie had a hard time falling asleep at night, it took her awhile to fall asleep without her nightlight. After awhile she was surprised she didn’t even have any nightmares; it was as if the old hag never existed. And when she went outside to do yard work she didn’t even look in the direction of the old woman’s house. Slowly, everything was returning to normal and she enjoyed the rest of her vacation in peace.

By the time the kids came back everything was back to normal. There were no more chilling winds in the hot-muggy-heat of Ocala, Florida, and no more strange things happening. Everything was going great, so great that Janie forgot about the night when a real witch rode her back. She was sure, willing to bet, nothing else could go wrong, and now she was free to live her life in peace

On Sunday’s, Janie liked to wake up early to do yard work before it got too hot outside. While she was sitting down at the kitchen table having her morning coffee a little girl knocked on the door. She thought it was strange for a child to be up and dressed that early in the morning, but it was Sunday and Janie assumed the little girl was getting ready to go to Sunday school.

“Can yo’ lil girl come out to play ma’am?” The little girl asked in the sweetest southern accent.

“She’s sleeping sweetie, she can come out to play when she gets up,” Janie said smiling at the girl. When Janie finished her coffee she went into her bedroom to put her gardening clothes on. When she glimpsed out her bedroom window she was surprised to see the little girl still outside. Curious about who the lonesome looking little girl was, Janie went to Melina’s room to question her. She shook Melina lightly, sat on the edge of her bed, and ran her fingers through her hair.

“Yeah mom?” Melina said squinting her eyes to keep the sunlight out.

“A little girl just came here for you, where do you know her from? I’ve never seen her around here before.”

“She’s visiting, I just met her yesterday,” Melina said yawning.

“Well where is she staying?” Janie asked.

“Not too far mom, I think in one of those houses over there,” Melina said pointing towards Janie’s room.

“Well what’s her name?’’ Janie asked.

“Cora.” Melina said turning over.

Blysswrytes

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