Apostate

It was about a quarter past seven and the sun just started to touch the horizon line when I saw him. I was sitting out on my front porch chair, finishing off the last of my tobacco and there he was. I had heard people talking about him in the feed store, whispers in the church house, but to actually see him was something else! Seeing him like this was different, it was kinda scary.

I guess he has been coming around the town for about six or seven months now. His visits are not quite with the cycles of the moon but pretty damn close. About once a month, and even one month he came twice, in the start and again at the end .

He comes to our quiet little town and he takes his offering.

Out here in Thorpe’s Prairie it’s all pretty much farmland. There is quite a lot of space between homesteads and a lot of time can pass before things get noticed. But ain't the same with people though, we are a really close community so when you don’t see a person for a day, it’s pretty unusual. When a couple of folks went missing, people got a bit concerned, myself included. But after the third person disappeared I had a pretty good idea about what was going on. I just didn’t believe it was actually true, or really I think maybe I just did’t want to believe it.

And now that I have seen him with my own two eyes, I have some really mixed feelings about the whole thing. I mean, I didn’t actually think it would work. I was just at my whits end. I felt like had nowhere else to turn. I tried to talk to the pastor at the church and like he always says, well you know how those guys are, they feed you some line about “God has a plan for us all” blah, blah blah. Well God Damn it, that just wasn’t going to be good enough for me! I needed to see him again.

To the woods I went. It felt like I was searching deep into those Blackburn woods, felt hours and hours. At first I thought “she was just some local legend, I ain’t never going find her”. I was thinking “she ain’t real” but I kept on walking. I must have walked half a full summers day and nearly gave up before I finally came up one her place out in them woods.

She was very specific about the whole thing. She reminding my, if I do this thing, if I go through with it, I need to understand something. He won’t be the same. If I wanted to see him, I needed to make an offering each month to the day. I could only see him from a distance and could never touch or speak with him.

So I did it, and he came back. He was different, like she said. He was also something else...he was hungry. I made my monthly offerings but that was only good enough for me, those were my offerings. My Neaghbor’s weren’t so lucky, and I sure as hell couldn’t just tell 'em about the whole thing. I mean what was I gonna say “Oh, yeah. I made a pact with the Blackburn Witch and brought my boy back from the dead”? Nope, I can't do that, after all he is still my boy.

Now, on each twenty-eight day from the last twenty-eighth day I leave my boy his offering. He stops by our front porch and takes his treat and moves on. I haven’t gotten the nerve to look him in the eyes yet. Some day I may say hello, but until then we just have this arrangement and these slices of chocolate cake.