Rawhead and Bloody Bones

Once, long ago, in the wilds of Mississippi, lived an old conjure woman named Betty. Betty was a weird old woman with wild, woolly hair and a witchy, wicked wit, and she lived in a shack in the deep recesses of the woods, alone.

The nearby villagers tolerated Betty because she could help, with the aid of her nostrums and potions, any number of peculiar ailments and states. She could even, it was said, make a man or woman fall madly in love with you if you so desired...and most folks reckoned she could stir up a mess 'o hate in folks, too.

No one was allowed in Betty's shack, but folks that came to receive her special nostrums sometimes peered through the boarded-over windows. Inside, in the dark, Betty often sat talking with her prized razorback hog, her only friend in the world, which she christened "Rawhead," because the derned animal was so infernally ugly. Some folks swore that Rawhead sometimes reared up on its little piggy hindquarters and walked across the floor like a man. Some folks even swore it sat, from time to time, in a wooden chair.

Be that as it may, Rawhead was fairly popular with the local butcher, who was always careful to feed the animal delectable scraps and precious vittles whenever Betty came to town for supplies. So, it was with some surprise that the man saw Betty enter his store one fine summer evening...but no Rawhead!

When asked about this unusual situation, Betty snorted and glanced, with her beady, misshapen, wrongly-colored eyes, "Hm. I ain't seed hide nor hair of that varmint all day, and I'm gettin' a might worried. If he comes in here, send him home right away! I sure do miss him!"

And the butcher (who could have in no way expected the hog would come into his store without his mistress) said that, indeed, were Rawhead to put in an appearance, he would most certainly tell him to march his little piggy trotters straight home to his mistress.

Well, at this very time, the hunter, who lived not far from Betty, began to covet the flesh of a fat hog, and so he sought high and low, and finally saw Rawhead rooting among the brushes. He quickly aimed his rifle at the ugly beast and fired, felling the critter and sending up a bright splash of pig blood to cover the trees.

He then took the carcass, cut off its head, and tossed it on top of a pile of other critters he had laid bleeding and dead in the back of his wagon.

He stripped what flesh he could from the bones, and then went to grease up his frying pan.

Well, Betty waited and waited, and became more and more worried about her razorback hog, so she looked deep into a cloudy pan of murky liquid, which she could use to see over long distances many things dark and secret. What she saw drove her to fiery anger.

Rawhead was dead! Killed, she knew, by the greedy hunter, who lived nearby. Her poor razorback hog, her only companion, was lying in a bloody heap on the ground, his ugly head rotting on top of a pile of other trophies. Betty howled and screeched, and, going to her tottering bookshelf, took out the secret tome of black magic rituals she reserved just for occasions such as these.

Invoking the darkest spirits that she knew, she sent a lightning bolt of fury to the shack in the hollow where the Hunter lived.

Instantly, the severed head of Rawhead rolled from off the top of the wagon heap. It fell to the ground, rolled over to where its bloody bones of lay in a pile--and reattached itself to the neck! Then, with scraps and bits of raw, mutilated flesh hanging off its limbs, it stood upright and growled. Like a man!

Unsuspecting, the Hunter came out of his wretched shack and saw the giant figure of the monstrous Rawhead standing in the shadowy, moonlit gloom!

"Man alive!" said the Hunter. "Them sure are some silly-looking eyes you got there, feller!"

And so Rawhead answered, "All the better to see you in the darkness!"

And, as he was quite drunk, the hunter continued foolishly. "Well, them sure are some funny-looking claws you got there, feller!"

And Rawhead answered, "All the better to grasp you and feel you before you can run away from me!"

And the hunter, still too drunk to see, unbelievably, that he was in mortal danger, said, "Well, them sure are some strange, ugly teeth you got there, feller!"

And so Rawhead finally replied, "All the better to eat you the way you wanted to eat me!"

And the monster fell upon the hunter, and tore out his throat, and gouged out his eyes, and ate his flesh, and drank his blood. Then (we can only assume) Rawhead went home to Betty.

Forever after, people spoke in hushed, fearful whispers about the ghost of the old witch, and the monstrous, rotting skeleton with the head of a hungry razorback. They told tales, until the tales became mere legends and bedtime stories, and people stopped believing in them altogether.

(Surely YOU don't believe them, do you?)