In the Forest of Light and Dark (9 page)

was
surviving and doing just fine all by her lonesome in the forest, had some of the villagers on edge—thinking that she had gotten some sort of ungodly help out there. So, they had started calling her names like witch and sorceress and spreading rumors that she had sold her soul to the Morning Star—Satan—and was now forever married to the Devil.”
    
“
Wow, that’s pretty fucked up.” I said after hearing what my mama had to say, but then quickly apologized for my language fearing that she wouldn’t go on with her story. But she still gave me a tongue-lashing anyways by saying, “Cera, your language, please.” even though, like I’d said, I had apologized. And, on top of that she gave me her patented look of disapproval.
     “Anyway,” my mama, then began again. “So during the time that Alcina was known to be living out in the forest there was also this girl from the village named, Abellona Abbott, who
by all accounts was just your normal, teenage girl. You know, she would go out into the forest with friends to play and hang out, gossip with other girls about the boys they liked. Normal stuff like that for a girl her age.
     “But it’s said that at some point, Abellona ends up meeting Alcina out in the forest and the two of them allegedly became good friends.
     “Well, this friendship goes on for a while without anybody from Abellona’s village finding out about it. And, legend has it… Well, at least from what I’ve managed to gather from the stories I’d heard when I was a kid. Is that,
Abellona and maybe even a few of her friends kept on visiting Alcina out in the forest, even though they were forbidden to do so. It is believed that they had even started bringing Alcina things from the village that she may have asked them for. In return,
Alcina would tell the girls stories and share with them her knowledge about the forest whenever they’d come to visit her.”
     “What kind of knowledge about the forest would she share with the girls?” I asked.
     “Oh, stuff like what plants could be used in stews, and which ones were good for healing cuts and scrapes, and even things like which flowers’ scents could be used to get the village boy that they had a crush on to notice them. It was mostly hogwash stuff, but considered absolute truth at the time.
     “But eventually, one day, Abellona goes off to visit Alcina at her cottage and it just so happens that one of the village boys—whose name I can no longer remember… had been spying on her. He had seen Abellona leave the village, so he decides to follow her into the woods to see where she goes, and what she’s up to.
     “After doing so, the boy discovers that Abellona has been visiting Alcina at her cottage. So, he runs back to the village to tell his father. His father then goes and tells the village pastor, or vicar, or
whatever
it is they called the local priest back then—some guy named Joseph Baker. The boy’s father and the pastor then rounded up the village’s lynching crew and they head out into the forest in search of Abellona and Alcina.
     “One story goes that some of the people of the village believed that Alcina had put Abellona under some sort of spell or charm, and that’s why she had defied the village elders and went out into the forest seeking Alcina. They thought of Abellona as having become some sort of servant for Alcina or a slave even. While others thought that Abellona had given herself up to Alcina of her own volition.
     “But either way, the men trape off into the forest on their way to find Alcina’s cottage, and when they get there they find that Abellona is still there with the old woman. They were both just attending to Alcina’s small garden, she had for herself.
     “The men immediately take Alcina and Abellona into custody and then commence with searching Alcina’s home for signs of witchcraft, Devil worshiping, or any other types of hocus-pocus they could accuse her of. But they find nothing, just some jars of herbs and Alcina’s writings that she’d kept in a journal. Still, they weren’t going to let a lack of evidence stop them and spoil a good lynching though.
     “So the men right away condemn Alcina and
Abellona of being guilty of witchcraft. Claiming that the things which Alcina had written in her journals—mostly recipes and other knowledge she’d obtained from her time in the forest—was actually magic spells and thereby evidence of her sorcery.
     “The villagers then accuse the two of them of being cohorts of the Devil, and the ones solely responsible for the poor farming season the village had recently experienced.
     “The truth was that the northeast that year had experienced an exceptionally wet spring and beginning of summer, which had caused the crop’s roots to rot in the soil. They had also even blamed Alcina and Abellona for being responsible for the acute bout of influenza that had swept through the village taking out several community members during the past winter.”
     “What a crock… That’s ridiculous.” I said interrupting my mama as I was completely incredulous to just how stupid people could be.
   “Yes, well, it was a much different time back then.” My mama then said as she let out a plaintive sigh. “People believed in evil spirits, the boogie man, and all sorts of weird stuff. In a way, things haven’t changed all that much around here in the past two hundred eighty some-odd years.”
     I had watched my mama for a moment as she paused and thought deeply about what she’d just said to me. I even thought for a second that she might have been reminiscing about her childhood. Growing up around here and all the tough times she must have had with some of the people who ultimately caused her to want to run away.
     After a while though she started to freak me out a little when she seemed to linger on a little too long in her hypnotic state. Soon I began to feel like I should do something—raise my voice at her, or snap my fingers, maybe clap my hands, or even just give her a hug. But I didn’t do any of that, I just ended up saying, “And then what happened?”
which seemed to do just fine breaking her out of her daydream.
     She went on. “Well, like I said, Abellona and Alcina were both arrested and charged with practicing witchcraft and Satanism. Alcina, was never even given any sort of trial what-so-ever, and was immediately sentenced to death by fire.”
     “
Awe, that’s awful…
” I chimed in again feeling emphatically appalled.
     “And, as for Abellona, since she was a child of the village, and since some of the people of the village felt that she was under Alcina’s control. She was given a chance to repent, or face her own form of corporal punishment.
     “The very next day, Alcina’s execution was carried out, and she was subsequently burnt at the stake somewhere, right here in the village after the Honorable Pastor Joseph Baker condemned her to die. Then, right after Alcina’s execution had transpired, Abellona was given her fake trial.
     “During her pre-trial, which was kind of like a little arraignment they had for her, Abellona refused to admit that she was a witch or that she’d ever practiced witchcraft or Satanism with Alcina. But that didn’t matter, because the pastor had decided to go through with her trial anyway, and it was to be carried out the next day at sunup.
     “They had planned on tying Abellona down into a dunking chair, which they would then lower into the Genesee River, and if she drowned, she would be exonerated, and if she didn’t, well… Then, she’d be declared a witch and would be burnt at the stake just like Alcina had been.”
     “You’re fuckin’ kiddin’ me, right?” I said, after yet again being astonished and affronted by how cruel the villagers could be.
     “Cera, please,
that
language.” My mama said brusquely.
     The black cat in my mama’s lap, then stood up and spun around in circles before settling herself back down.
     My mama, then went on.
     “So it’s believed that during the night while Abellona was locked away in an old storage shed that the villagers had used as a makeshift jail, she began praying to Hecate—whom she’d learned about from Alcina. Hecate being the Greek goddess of sorcery and witchcraft. While,
others say she had made a pact with the Devil that night by selling her soul to him in exchange for powers that would allow her to exact her revenge on the villagers for what they had done to Alcina, and for what they were planning on doing to her at first light.
     “And when the darkness lifted at sunrise, the villagers came to pull Abellona from her improvised cell and then before the entire village, Pastor Joseph Baker grants Abellona one last chance to repent and admit that she’s a witch. To which it is also believed that Abellona then spits in his face and says something in a language that nobody there to witness it could even remotely comprehend. It was an action that had frightened the villagers and ended up sealing her fate.
     “The pastor and the villagers then quickly convicted Abellona of her guilt. Soon afterwards, the Joseph Baker commenced in blessing her with Holy water as some of the village’s strong men began strapping her down into the dunking chair all while she kicked and screamed.
     “They then carried her in the chair down to the edge of the river, but before throwing her in, the pastor asked Abellona one more time if she would like to repent. And, it is believed; that Abellona, then for a second time said something to the pastor in that strange tongue nobody could quite grasp. But then, speaking in English she told the villagers that it was
they
who were the ones guilty of witchcraft, and that they would pay dearly for what they had done to Alcina and for what they were about to do to her.
     “Abellona then spoke in riddles again, and afterwards she told the villagers that she had cursed their children. That she would come for them, for their souls, and that the village of Mt. Harrison would never know peace again until they’ve repented for their sins against her and Alcina and have denounced their wicked God.
     “Well, at that point, Pastor Joseph Baker had heard about enough from Abellona and he says to her, ‘May God have mercy on your soul.’ then the sanctimonious jerk pushed her as she sat locked in the chair backwards into the cold river waters.”
     “So then what happened?” I asked my mama in anticipation. “
Did she drown?”
     A smile then curled up from my mama’s pursed lips. It was acknowledgement to me that she knew she had me eating from the palm of her hand. She then said to me, “What do you think happened, silly? They tied the poor girl to a chair and pushed her backwards into the river, of course she drowned.
There’s no such thing as witches.
”
     At that point I was feeling pretty sheepish for having asked such an obvious question. But that feeling quickly subsided when for a reason unbeknownst to us the black cat cradled in my mama’s lap suddenly reared up and started baring her teeth while letting out a hiss like she’d felt threatened.
     My mama panicked and quickly tossed the cat from her lap and I watched as it ran off through the yard and into the scatter of trees behind our house before heading straight for the Genesee River and the forest of Mount Harrison.
     “Well, I guess she didn’t like that story.” I said, feeling somewhat startled myself by the cat’s sudden outburst.
     “Either that or she was a critic of my storytelling.” my mama assented.
     My mama, then took a few deep breaths to help her collect her composure, and I paused, giving her a moment before saying, “So, since Abellona’s death, many years have passed and the world seems to have wised up to the ridiculousness of witchcraft being real. So why then do so many people around here still seem to believe in this nonsense?”
     My mama, then answered me by saying, “Because people will always look for a scapegoat to blame their problems on, that’s why.
Also in part because
of Abellona allegedly having said that she’d placed a curse on the children of Mt. Harrison, and that the village would never know peace and prosperity again until its people repented. Since then, for over the past two hundred eighty years the people around here have had a tendency to believe that every time something goes wrong in the village, it’s Abellona’s doing. When the surrounding farmers yield a bad crop, it is Abellona’s curse. When someone got sick and died, it was Abellona who had killed them. When another high school’s football team beat ours, it was Abellona working her sorcery again.”
     “Sounds like a coward’s excuse.” I said.
     “It is.” My mama agreed.
     “So, whatever happened to Alcina’s and Abellona’s remains?”
     “Well, the story goes that there was nothing left of Alcina’s body to bury. She’d been reduced down to just ashes, which they then gathered up and threw in the river. And, as for Abellona… They had refused to allow her burial in the village cemetery. So, she was laid to rest somewhere out in the forest high atop Mt. Harrison in an unmarked grave. Just a large stone left in place atop of her gravesite as a marker.”

Our Visit to See Grandma
 

A week had passed since we’d moved into my grandmother’s house, and my mama and I had figured that it would be nice to finally pay her a visit and give our respects.
     The village cemetery wasn’t far from my grandmother’s house—well, I guess I should start referring to it as our house now—so we decided to just walk there.
     When we arrived, I noticed that the place was bigger than I would’ve imagined. It carried an ancient spooky cool to it too, like old-world European.
     There were a few very tall monuments scattered throughout dotting the landscape that looked to me like they might’ve been made of marble. Most of them though had been severely weathered over the years—their family names barely decipherable anymore. The cemetery also had a few mausoleums that looked like they could’ve been an entrance to a catacomb or the Batcave for that matter. There were also plenty of smaller graves that I had assumed belonged to common folk. The headstones of these more modest gravesites looked to me as if they’d been made from cement. Over the years the names and dates on them had also been whitewashed away by the elements to the point where they were indecipherable.
     My parents and I had begun walking down the cemetery’s access road and I was a little ahead of them when I glanced back noticing that they were walking hand-in-hand. So, I reckoned I would give them a little time alone by taking off on my own to explore the cemetery further.
     After wandering aimlessly for a while, I found myself having ventured into an area of the cemetery that looked as if it had been long forgotten by anybody still alive today—except of course maybe the cemetery’s grounds keeper who obviously wasn’t doing the greatest of a job.
     The graves in this area were incredibly old, most of them having had their headstones cracked or broken, possibly even vandalized. A lot of them even had a bad repair job done to them at some point.
     As I walked on in this forlorn area of the cemetery I reminisced of a book I had once read about a cemetery named Highgate in London. It was a privately owned cemetery that had run out of room to take in new members. So, the money used to keep up the place had run dry causing the grounds to fall into disarray which allowed trees and vines to grow all over the headstones and walkways. This place was eerily similar.
    Coming up on one of the rows of graves I tried to read the names and dates on them, but with most I just couldn’t make out what had once been engraved on them, the words just to worn away.
     There were a few
though,
I could decipher if I really concentrated. One was of a girl named Rebecka Sherwen 1724-1738, next to her was her sister Edith Sherwen 1726-1731.
  
How sad,
I thought of both of them to die so young and I wondered if their parents had any other children?
But I didn’t see any other graves marked with the Sherwen surname that had dates on them that suggested they did. Next to the sisters was just two more graves Lorena Sherwen 1704-1749 and Bennet Sherwen 1697-1746, who I had assumed must have been Rebecka and Edith’s parents.
     Further down the row, I came across even more graves of children from the 1700’s. Elijah Bligh, 1729-1739 and William Whipple 1731-1743. As I gazed upon their gravestones I wondered if any of them had known Abellona Abbott, but after pondering the thought I walked on down the row, assuming that they must’ve known her in some fashion given how small the village must have been back then.
    As I approached the end of the row, I rapidly found myself drawn to one grave in particular. It stood isolated and behind it was a huge oak tree looming that had basked the grave in shadow and shade. The grave’s headstone had been intricately carved out of white marble and had angel inlays impressed into it. The name engraved on it read, Magdalena Scovell, with the dates 1773-1790. I imagined about her life and how cool it must have been that this girl had been alive during the time when our country was just being forged from a small group of revolutionists that didn’t want to deal with a King’s bullshit anymore.
     It was at that point in my journey that I looked back over the cemetery’s landscape for my parents, but they were nowhere in sight. I was then about to start heading back over to the other side of the cemetery, to where I’d seen several small mounds of dirt indicative of fresh graves to see if they’d be around there. I had figured that my Grandmother’s grave would most likely be somewhere over there among all the other newbies.
     I had just turned around to begin my walk back when unexpectedly, a cat sprang out from somewhere behind Magdalena’s grave landing right atop of her tomb’s headstone. It had startled me, but then I quickly regained my composure as I remembered my mama saying something about Mt. Harrison having a stray problem. I was definitely starting to realize just what she’d meant by that.
     This cat had brown, puffy fur and black feet. As she stood on the gravestone she looked right at me and began to meow before turning back and forth in tight circles as if cavorting.
     “Where did you come from?” I had asked her in a soft tone as if I was ever going to get an answer out of a cat.
     She then mewed again, following that up with a low purr as I reached out my hand to rub her supple fur along her back. To me she didn’t look like she was a stray. In fact,
she looked pretty well fed, healthy. I figured she might even be somebody’s house cat, possibly belonging to one of the homes nearby the cemetery. But then again,
if she indeed was a stray, then this cemetery might be a helluva good place to find a lot of field mice or rats that she can munch on.
     I spent another moment with her and then said my goodbye, and as I walked down the rows of aging gravestones, out of my peripherals I could see that she hadn’t been alone. She wasn’t the sole queen of Mt. Harrison cemetery. There was another one peering out at me from behind one of the other graves. Then soon
I saw another, and then another. They seemed as if they were following me and I couldn’t help but think of myself at that moment as being Michelle Pfeiffer in
Batman Returns
with her legions of cats as her minions.
     When I’d reached the access road I had followed it to the other side of the cemetery, my new friends still in tow. As I went, I did my best not to look right at any of them specifically because every time I did whichever cat I’d look at would then dash behind a gravestone to hide like a child having been caught out of bed by their parents. Even though I wasn’t looking right at them and couldn’t really see them too well as they stalked behind me, I could still hear them behind me, meowing. I wasn’t sure how many there actually were, but I sure-as-hell knew that there was a lot more than the three or four I had definitely seen.
     (Now that I’m writing this, I reckon I should’ve been more freaked out than I was by having a horde of cats follow me around. They didn’t scare me though, honestly, at the time I recall having felt comforted by their presence.)
     At the end of the access road I could see my mama and step daddy walking down by a row of graves that I could tell were some of the newer ones in the cemetery. (Because all the dates on the ones I was walking past were edging their way into the twenty-first century.) As I approached them, I began to whisper to my mama, “
Hey, look behind me.”
To which she replied, “What, dear?” So, I again said, “
Look behind me, do you see them?”
     “See what?” she then asked with a perplexed look taking over her face.
     “The cats,” I said only slightly above a whisper. “You were right. This place sure has a lot of strays. There must be a hundred of them right behind me.”
     “I don’t see nothin’!” Step Daddy Cade suddenly shouted like a moron.
     “Shh, they’re skittish. You’re gonna scare them off.” I scolded him slightly above a whisper and surely sounding a bit more derisive than I would have liked.
     “I hate to tell you this, kid, but there ain’t a damn thing behind you.”
     I turned around to look back at the graves, and to my astonishment, my Step Daddy Cade was right, they were gone. I’d figured that at some point, as I was walking closer to my parents, they must have lost interest in me, turning around and having gone back to the old part of the cemetery.
    
“
Huh, that’s funny, they were right behind me…” I mumbled to myself.
     “Yeah, well, whatever. C’mon, you can help us find your grandmama’s grave. It’s gettin’ hot, so I wanna get this over with.”
     “Gees, you guys still haven’t found it yet?” I asked thinking,
What the hell have the two of you been doing all this time?
     “No, No… I know where it is.” My mama then said chiming in. “She’ll be with the rest of the family down by the creek.”
     When we came to the area of the cemetery where my mama had said the Barrett clan lay buried, I could see right away, by my family’s isolation, that the people of Mount Harrison didn’t want our family being with the rest of the deceased residence of the village.
     Our family’s tombs were down at the bottom of a hill and at the end of a narrow gravel pathway that snaked its way through the hillslope and around a couple of old weeping willows. The base of the hill ultimately came to a plateau leveling out where the Barrett family graves began and ended before reaching another small escarpment that led directly into a creek that wound its way around the east end of the cemetery.
     We were careful as we made our way down to the graves, due to this part of the cemetery, not having been very well taken care of—having been neglected for at least a decade or more.
     As we walked down the incline of the hill where the weeping willows cast their heavy shadows down upon the Barrett gravesite below, I could hear the behemoths creaking when the breeze blew. Their invasive roots had breached up from the ground crossing over the gravel-dirt pathway we had to follow. The grass on the hill and down by the graves looked as if it hadn’t been mowed all summer, while the graves themselves—the ones that weren’t toppled over—had weeds and vines growing all over them, giving them an appearance that they were being slowly swallowed.
     “Wow, is it just all us Barretts down here?” I asked my mama.
     “Afraid so,” she said, answering me back. “We have our very own private Potter’s field down here.”
     “So what’s the deal with this?” I then asked her when we’d finally made it to the end of the path where the beginning of the graves started. “I mean, why would they only put us down here?”
     “Oh, it’s just because a long time ago, like in Abellona’s time, you remember the girl we talked about last week, the one that all the yahoos around here killed for no good reason?”
     “Yeah,” I answered.
     “Well, during that time,
the people who had lived here in this village thought that one of our great-great ancestors was a friend of Abellona, and therefore guilty by association of witchcraft too. So,
when she died, they put her down here in this unconsecrated ground. Then,
when her parents and her sister had also passed away, they wanted to be buried here next to her, so they’d been added. Then her sister’s husband and their children had their interment here. Soon, as time went on, the grandchildren’s burials were here, and-so-on-and-so-forth with more-and-more Barretts. Before long, we Barretts had a monopoly on our own little corner of the cemetery.”
     “Who was she?” I asked.
     “
Who
our ancestor they originally put down here?”
     “
Uh- yeah,”
     “Oh, I don’t really remember her name anymore, honey. It was a long time ago, back when I was a kid that I used to hear these stories.”
     That’s what my mama had told me, but I didn’t believe her. I could always tell when she was trying to keep the truth from me, which was happening a lot lately.
     The graves in my family’s area of the cemetery were like looking at a timeline and I could easily determined right away which one was my Grandma Lyanna’s. (It was the one not far off from the gravel-dirt pathway and the only one which still had a fresh mound of dirt on it.)
     “Look, over here. I found Grandma!” I called out to my parents who were coming up the row behind me.
     My Grandmother’s grave still didn’t yet have the headstone that my mama had said she’d purchased for it. But there was a white, wooden cross marker with a brass plaque that read.
 

Lyanna Barrett
December 18, 1955—June 26, 2010
 

My mama had told me that the ground needed to settle in for some time before they could set up the stone or it risked toppling over as the dirt shifted and settled beneath it. But judging by the wear-and-tear on the other stones in the cemetery—especially us Barretts—I would’ve said the greatest threat came primarily from people vandalizing the stones, not the ground re-solidifying making them unstable
.
    
“How had grandma even died?” I asked Mama having realized just then that She’d never mentioned to me what had happened to her. “I mean, she was pretty young, only fifty-four, and looked pretty healthy in those pictures I saw of her back at the house.” I then added.
     “I really don’t know.” My mama told me sounding plaintive, and I thought I could hear a sob creeping up in her voice. “The coroner’s report just said that she had died of natural causes.”
     I knew by the inflection in my mama’s voice having changed suddenly that she was getting upset talking about it, so I didn’t push the issue any further. I then had reckoned that she might want a little time alone with her mama, so I gave a steady glance at Step Daddy Cade trying to get his attention, but he just stood there with a vacuous look on his face while smoking a cigarette.
     Furtively, I edged my way over to him and gave him a little smack on the arm with the back of my hand. He then looked at me having been snapped out of his trance and I then signaled him with my eyes to follow me, to which he just looked at me dumbfounded, but then soon caught on as to what I was getting at.
     My step daddy and I then slowly walked off together, making our way further into the depths of the Barrett family’s little section of the cemetery. As we carried on I noticed that the graves seemed to get older the closer we headed towards the edge of the creek.