Long Memories and Short Tempers.

There were two opinions in Randolph County about Matilda Henshaw. Either you loved her, or you didn’t think much of her at all. Those two schools of thought extended to her family. The Henshaws were a well-known, although in some cases not particularly well respected, or even well-liked family in the county, and Matilda was the family matriarch. 

It had long been rumored that Matilda, a churchgoer every time the doors were open, also trafficked in… other ways. Backwoods magicks, potions and unconventional remedies, and dealings with things that dwelt in abandoned houses and down wells and under bridges: these were things people talked about in hushed tones and never mentioned around a member of the family. After all, Matilda was an elder in the church, and her youngest boy and one of her granddaughter's husbands were a pastor and assistant pastor in the church. It wouldn’t do for rumors like that to reach their ears.

Matilda knew about the rumors, had added to some, had started others, and encouraged all of them. After all, she’d outlived three husbands and two children, as well as various other relations, friends, and acquaintances. She deserved to be a legendary figure, didn’t she? Didn’t really matter that two of those husbands and more than a couple of those relations, friends, and acquaintances may have had a little help reaching the pearly gates, now did it? And it mattered even less who knew about it, or thought they knew about it.

That was Matilda. She didn’t have much use for money. But fear? Control? Now those she had use for. Those she could use. Her favorite method was invoking the names of spooks and haints. It was especially effective with the younger children. She could threaten to leave them in the woods for whatever haint or booger was the flavor of the week. One of her favorites was the Sack Man, a skeletal man in raggedy clothes that would snatch up naughty children and stuff them in a gunny sack to haul off to toss in his stew pot, or some other horrible fate. The specifics didn’t really matter, as long as those young’uns toed the line.

Things might have continued this way until old Matilda finally kicked the bucket, were it not for the events that unfolded a couple of summers after husband number four passed on. Her eldest granddaughter, Tiffany, had finally gotten married, the last of her grandchildren to do so. This was a fact that Matilda never missed an opportunity to bring up, much to Tiffany’s annoyance. 

Her new husband, Seamus, a large man with long brown hair and gray eyes, although quiet, was friendly enough once he felt comfortable. The young man was quick-witted, and seemed to have a joke or humorous story ready for family gatherings, often eliciting a laugh. Matilda instantly disliked him.

“I don’t like him,” Matilda told her son, Albert, Tiffany’s father, “You just see that he stays away from me.”

Seamus, for his part, merely shrugged when it was strongly suggested to him that he steer clear of Ma Henshaw. “I’ve got more important things to do than bother an old lady,” he told Albert with a chuckle, “Don’t worry about me.”

It was true, Seamus was an accomplished craftsman and quickly found work as a cabinet maker. A healthy chunk of his time was consumed with setting up shop and filling orders, and the other half of his time was consumed with enjoying life with his new wife. Within a couple of months, the newlyweds had turned an admittedly rundown cottage into a cozy, albeit humble home. Within a year, they were expecting a baby.

The uneasy truce held until the Henshaw Family Reunion. Much to Matilda’s displeasure, Seamus was in attendance with Tiffany, who was about five months along in her pregnancy. The prevailing conversation concerned the gender of the expected child.

“According to Seamus’s mom, everything points to it being a boy,” Tiffany told Aunt Ellie with a smile. “I mean, it’s all old wives’ tales, but still, I can’t help getting excited.”

“And why shouldn’t we get excited, sweet?” Seamus said, “After all, sometimes those old wives’ tales have just as much of a chance of being right as an ultrasound.”

Ma Henshaw harrumphed as she spooned pintos into her bowl. What did he know about old wives’ tales? The old ways? Had he done business with haints, spooks, and boogers? She didn’t think so. And she was darned if she’d let someone like him interfere with… anything.

After dinner, when everyone had been fed and watered, Seamus stood and stretched. “Well, I think I’ll take a walk. Anyone care to join me?”

Most of the older folks just groaned and waved him off, but the younger kids just gaped at him in borderline horror. His niece, Nancy, the daughter of Tiffany’s sister Kelly, a small blonde girl of six, whispered softly to him, “We don’t go in the woods.”

Seamus knelt to look her in the eye, “Is that so, love? And why is that?”

“Because of the Sack Man.”

“The what?”

“Granny Tilda told us about him. He lives in the woods and Granny said he’ll come get us if we’re naughty.”

“I see,” Seamus said, stroking his beard for a moment, then leaned in close to her and whispered, “Have you been naughty?”

Nancy shook her head.

Seamus chuckled, ruffling the little girl’s hair, “Then I think you’ll be okay.” He stood up. “Besides, I've got myself a big oak walking stick that should be more than equal to anything we’re apt to run into on a sunny day. So, would anybody like to join me?”

He got a more enthusiastic response this time, as Nancy and her cousins, with the enthusiasm of young children whose fears had been allayed by a trusted elder, flocked around him. Seamus looked over his shoulder as he walked out the door, “Tiff? Care to join us?”

Tiffany was chatting with Kelly and Aunt Ellie. She looked up at her husband and smiled, “I don’t think so, dear. Walks are more like waddles right now, but you guys have fun.”

Once Seamus and the kids were out the door, the conversations resumed until Tiffany felt a hand on her shoulder. She looked up to see Granny Henshaw standing over her. “Oh, Granny. Do you need something?”

Matilda scowled at her. “You’d better get that man of yours under control, girl.”

“What?”

“I’m not gonna have him undermining me, and I’m not gonna have him disrespecting me neither.”

Tiffany smiled uneasily at her grandmother, “I’m sure I don’t know what you mean, Granny. He’s just taking the kids for a walk.”

“He just better watch his step,” Matilda muttered, shooting Tiffany a glare as she stalked off to wash dishes.

The three women sat in stunned silence until Aunt Ellie cleared her throat. “Well… so, Tiffany, have you decided on a name yet?”

A few minutes later, Seamus came back in with the kids, each of them carrying sticks, leaves, and other bits and bobs that they’d found that caught their fancies. The kids ran to their respective parents, showing them their treasures. Seamus sat down next to his wife with a groan. Tiffany giggled, “Did you have fun, dear?”

Seamus groaned again, “A walk with six kids under ten with a full stomach… such a bad idea.”

After the reunion, Matilda’s mood seemed only to worsen, as she had taken Seamus’s actions as a personal affront. Albert did his best to mitigate her fury, but to no avail. She saw Seamus as a direct threat to her authority, and nothing would convince her otherwise. Things came to a head once more on Thanksgiving. 

Once again, dinner had been eaten and thoroughly enjoyed, and Seamus had invited the kids for a walk. Matilda had been uncharacteristically good tempered that day, and especially when the kids had followed Seamus out the door. The quiet conversations around the room were suddenly interrupted when the kids had run back into the house a short time later, shouting, “We caught him! We caught him!”

The first thing Tiffany had noticed was that her husband wasn’t with them. “Where’s Seamus?” she asked, hauling herself up and waddling toward the back door. 

Before she’d gotten too far, however, the door opened and in strode Seamus, walking stick in one hand, dragging what looked like a scarecrow by the collar with the other, “I found your ‘Sack Man,’” he said, looking over at Matilda. He dropped the figure on the floor with a thud. It was dressed in ragged clothes, with a shabby hat and a burlap mask on its head and a big sack across its back. Seamus knelt, pulled off its hat, and then pulled the mask off. Lying on the floor, with a bloody nose and a knot on his forehead, was-

“George Kivett?” Albert asked incredulously.

George was a man that did handyman work for Matilda and could usually be found somewhere around the property. Matilda, for her part, had gone silent, glowering at Seamus. “What’d you do to George?” she demanded.

“I didn’t do anything but deal with a prowler.” Seamus replied calmly, stepping over George and pouring himself a drink. “Or a ‘sack man’, if you like.”

“George ain’t the Sack Man!” Matilda all but screeched.

“I’ll say,” Seamus said, taking a sip of his soda.

“You better be careful talkin’ like that!”

Seamus fixed her with a stare. “And you’d do well to have a care. The problem with bandying about the names of things on the other side of the veil is that some of them have long memories, and short tempers.” He looked down at George, who was just beginning to come to his senses. “And they take an especially dim view of people who run around pretending to be them.”

Any further confrontation was cut short by the start of Tiffany’s contractions. While not close enough together to be of concern just yet, she and Seamus decided to leave to be able to grab her suitcase from home while they still had time. Timothy Fergus Callaghan was born the following afternoon, named after Tiffany and Seamus’s maternal grandfathers.

It was a brisk December morning when the sheriff’s deputy knocked on Seamus and Tiffany’s door. From somewhere in the house, a dog barked, followed by the sound of Seamus scolding the animal, “Edgar, shuddup before you wake the whole house, will ya?” 

The door unlocked and opened, and Seamus stepped out onto the porch, dressed in pajamas and slippers and holding a cup of coffee, “Good morning, officer, what can I do for you?”

“Good morning, are you Mr. Callaghan?”

“Yes sir, I am.”

“I’m sorry to bother you so early, but we’ve gotten a complaint of you keeping a vicious animal on your property.”

Seamus’s brow furrowed, “Is that so? Well, I can assure you that apart from a toothless old rescue beagle and a scrawny tom cat that lives under our chicken coop out back, we don’t have anything else out here, and certainly nothing that would qualify as vicious."

“Well, nevertheless, would you mind if I had a look around?”

Seamus shrugged, “As long as we keep this outside. We have a three-week-old that’s just finally sleeping, along with his momma. I’m afraid if we wake them up, you may need to radio for backup to get us out of it.”

The deputy chuckled, “Understandable. The complaint was for something outside of the house anyway.”

“Alright then. Let’s take a walk.”

The two men set off around the side of the house. As they walked, Seamus sipped his coffee and asked, “If you don’t mind my asking, can you tell me anything else about this complaint? I mean, we don’t get many visitors out here, and it’s a little concerning that someone was out here without my knowledge. Although if they came out here with ill intent and ran afoul of some wild animal, it sounds like they got what was coming to them.”

The deputy shrugged, “I guess I can tell you that much. Apparently, someone came out here a day or so ago and got chewed up pretty badly by something.”

“I see,” Seamus paused, stooping down, “Hello, what’s this?” 

The deputy knelt next to him. Lying on the ground along the edge of the house were three items: a long iron nail that looked like a railroad spike, a hammer, and a burlap sack. The items had seemingly been dropped haphazardly, as if someone had been skulking along the side of the house and been suddenly set upon by something, then had fled in a hurry. “Huh, so these aren’t yours?”

“No sir. All my tools are locked up in my shop, and I don’t have any use for nails that big.”

After a quick inspection of the back yard, the deputy bade Seamus a good day and left. Seamus stood on the porch, watching him leave and sipping his coffee. He had declined to file a statement and simply tossed the found items into the trash can, telling the deputy he’d be in touch about having whoever had filed the complaint trespassed from his property. “Hmph,” he muttered to himself, “Interesting.”

Granny Henshaw was, needless to say, tremendously unhappy about the occurrence at Seamus and Tiffany’s. George had, obviously, bungled the task she’d given him. He was supposed to nail the burlap sack to the couple’s back door as a warning from the "Sack Man”, and he’d managed to screw that up, coming back covered with scratches and babbling hysterically about a huge black cat. She’d patched him up as well as she could, telling him a couple of the bigger scratches would need stitches, and sent him on to the hospital. It was nine in the evening when he left, and after he did, she went to bed, muttering that if she wanted a job done right, she should’ve done it herself. 

She was jolted awake by a sound outside. A shuffling, like someone sneaking around outside of her house. Matilda was no coward, that much at least could be said of her, but she knew better than to go outside at night to investigate a prowler. She had just made up her mind to slip out of bed and call the police when the house shook, as if someone had swung a massive hammer and struck the front of the house. Boom. Boom. Boom. Three times a massive object hit the side of the house.

She glanced at the clock on her bedside table. Three o’clock. The Witching Hour. Trembling, she pulled the covers over her head, feeling real fear for the first time in a long time. She didn’t dare call for help right now, for fear of being seen as a panicky, possibly senile old woman. The rumors would start. Ol’ Granny’s starting to slip. No. That wouldn’t do.

Whatever or whoever it was, it was still shuffling around outside of the house. The door handle jiggled, as if something was trying to get in. 

“Begone!” She shouted, sounding much braver than she felt. “Whatever you are, you have no power here!”

The door shook as whatever it was pounded heavily on it. It was a study door, solid wood and iron, but Matilda waited in terror for it to start splintering. “I rebuke you in the name of Jesus! Get out of here! Leave me alone.”

A voice came from the other side of the door. A laugh colder than a winter's night, and as hoarse as a dying man's last words. “Jesus? I know Him. Do you? Or is He another good luck charm you keep around your neck?”

The house shook again, and the door splintered, as if something was being driven into the wood. A final blow drove the nail home, followed by the sound of boots on gravel as whatever it was walked away.

Matilda climbed out of bed, cautiously approaching the door. A long metal spike, not unlike a railroad spike, poked through her door. Turning on her porch light, she slowly opened the door. No one waited on the other side. No spook. No booger. No haint.

Something caught her eye, fluttering against the door in the night air. A burlap sack. Fixed to her door by the spike that had been pounded into it. Pride driven out by sheer, unhinged panic, she called Albert.

“If I've told you once, I've told you a dozen times, I've got no interest in harassing a cranky old woman. No, it wasn't me, for the umpteenth time. Yeah. Hope you get it straightened out. Bye,” Seamus ended the call and tossed the phone on the table. “Woman's gonna be the death of me yet,” he muttered. 

Tiffany looked up from feeding Timothy, “Everything okay, dear?”

“Apparently Matilda had some kind of episode this morning around three. Called your dad, he went over there, and found,” He paused for a sip of coffee, “Now, I can’t make this up. He found a burlap sack nailed to her door.”

Tiffany’s eyes narrowed. “You didn't.”

“Didn’t what?”

“You know perfectly well what.”

Seamus returned her gaze. “Okay, then why would I?”

“Revenge.”

He chuckled, “For the other day? Even if I had the inclination, that whole thing wrapped itself up nicely.”

“Yeah, with George getting rabies shots.”

 “Hey, he played a stupid game. Turns out the stupid prize he won was a round of incredibly painful shots.”

Timothy had finished his feeding, so Tiffany pulled her shirt down and began burping him, “And you had nothing to do with that ‘huge black cat’?”

Seamus shrugged, “I didn’t see it, so how should I know? It was at night, and we weren't home, so it could've been a bobcat for all I know.”

Tiffany stared at him hard for a moment. “You know how I feel about that stuff, Shay. I hate that Granny uses it, and I'm not crazy that you know anything about it.”

Seamus reached across the table, placing his hand on hers. “I told you once that I only ever use what I know to counter those with ill intent. And to that I hold.”

“I'd rather you mess with it at all.”

Tiffany sat in her car, staring at the house. She’d told Granny she was coming, and Seamus was at home with Timothy. As much as she wanted to be home with them, this needed to be done. This needed to come to an end.

Getting out of the car, she walked up the steps to the door and knocked. Granny called for her to come in. Once inside, Granny poured her a cup of coffee, and the two sat at her dining room table. 

“So what brings you here?” Matilda asked, “You’ve never come over here unless your mama and daddy make you.”

“Granny, I’m a married woman,” Tiffany said. “The only person I have to answer to is my husband.”

“Oh. Him,” Matilda practically spit the word. “So what do you want?”

“I want to put a stop to this.”

“To what?”

Tiffany gestured around, seemingly struggling to find the words. “This… stupid feud you have with my husband. I mean, other than like… passively stand up to you, what has he actually done to you?”

“That’s enough, isn’t it?” Matilda snapped. “For sixty years I ain’t let anyone walk over me and I ain’t gonna start now!”

Her granddaughter laughed incredulously, “Walk over you? Are you serious?”

“Yes!” Matilda slammed her cup down on the table. “You don’t understand. You’re soft. Weak. Always were. You never had to do the hard things.”

“Alright, fine. I’m weak. Whatever. What’s it going to take to make peace?”

“Get rid of him. I don’t care how, but I want him gone.”

A chill ran through Tiffany. “You want me to leave Seamus?”

“Never said that. I just said I want him gone.”

Tiffany pushed her coffee, which had gone untouched, away. “That’s not going to happen. I love Seamus, and he loves me. He’s a wonderful father to Tim-”

“Those are my terms. You asked me what I wanted, and that’s it.”

Tiffany picked up her purse as she stood up. “Then I guess there’s nothing else to say. Goodbye, Granny.”

Matilda sat there silently as her granddaughter slung her bag over her shoulder and walked toward the door. Tiffany glanced at the patched-up hole in the oak door, her hand on the handle as she looked back at her grandmother, “I hope you understand what your pride made you give up.”

With that, Tiffany Callaghan stepped into the January night, and out of her grandmother’s life.

It had been six months since the night Matilda had had her witching hour visitor. And five months since she'd vanished. One Saturday night she'd been there at home, and on Sunday morning, when Albert had gone to her house to pick her up for church, she was nowhere to be found.

Having called off the morning service, the search party had found no trace of her wandering off. No signs of a struggle. No footprints leading away from her house. Not even the sheriff’s department had found anything. Despite searching the woods around her house for days, there was no getting around the increasingly evident truth. Regardless of where she was, Matilda Henshaw was gone.

Of course, given her history with Seamus, he was one of the few people questioned regarding her disappearance. Most of the other people who had an opinion about such things were sure he had something to do with it, but he and Tiffany had been out of town visiting Seamus’s family at the time.

It wasn't until sometime later, during the next deer season, that a hunter, who had gotten turned around deep in the Uwharries, stumbled upon a rundown shack deep in the wilderness. Pushing the door open, he'd discovered packages neatly wrapped in white paper hanging from the ceiling, and two barrels full of salt sitting against the back wall. A stew pot over a low fire bubbled slowly in the fireplace. Upon further inspection, the sight of what looked horribly like a human finger floating in the stew sent him fleeing from the cabin.

A game warden finally led a pair of sheriff’s deputies back to the cabin, but refused to go in. “We don't go in there. The last one of our guys dumb enough to go in didn’t come back out. Last thing we found was his belt and boots.” 

The deputies paled, and the game warden held their gazes for a moment before letting out a guffaw. “Aw, I’m just screwin’ with you boys. There’s an old prepper fella lives here. Tall, gangly fella. Wears a big ol’ brimmed hat and scraggly old duster. Never says much.”

A search of the cabin yielded little of interest. The “finger” turned out to be a piece of sausage, and the white packages were meticulously wrapped hams and other preserved meats. Nothing seemed horribly abnormal until one of the men noticed tufts of gray hair poking out of the top of one of the barrels of salt. 

As they toppled the barrel, the salt mummified form of an old woman tumbled across the floor. Upon closer inspection, it was clear she’d been in the barrel for months at least. Clutched in her fist was an embroidered handkerchief, with two letters in one corner in elaborate script. M.H.