The Way She Gets Her Dinner

The cabin in the woods had been abandoned for years, but one night, a candle burned in the window.

We had seen the cabin from a distance on many a hike through the deep, marshy woods near Widow Lake. Our troopmaster let us explore the woods on our own and we relished the adventure beyond the safety of the campgrounds and the promise of discovery.

The woods near Bogue Chitto, Mississippi, were littered with the old bones and ghosts of creatures passed on. Jerrod had an odd attraction to them. He collected bones. Especially the unusual ones, the ones that didn’t seem to belong, the ones that made you guess if it was a ‘coon or buck – or human.

I was the leader. Not by choice, but by default. Big Bobby, the oldest and only Webelo scout among us should have been. But he was a little slow and tended to enjoy just following along. His Momma was pretty poor, and he had been wearing the same raggedy blue shirt since he was a Wolf. The buttons had been replaced, but it didn’t stop his belly from hanging over his belt. Big Bobby was afraid of his own shadow, but he was big. And that helped keep the bullies away. I liked him.

All our Daddies were dead. I didn’t know mine. I can’t remember his face. But Big Bobby’s Daddy went missing just last year. They never found his body. At least his whole body. They found a piece of him out near the hunting grounds. Just a finger. Bobby didn’t talk much about it.

Jerrod didn’t talk about his Daddy either. He disappeared years ago, and everyone just assumed he up and left them for a young girl in Jackson. But Jerrod hated him anyway. He wasn’t a good man. Like most men in Bogue Chitto, he lived two lives. One for God and one for the Devil.

Our Moms would get drunk together on beer and whiskey at The Burning Piano where they would audition potential step daddies. I guess they got to talkin’ and that’s where they decided that we needed “male influence” in our lives. So, they put us in scouts to teach us to be men. It was a noble idea. But mostly we learned how to cuss and play with knives.

Jerrod, Bobby, and I would probably not be friends if it wasn’t for scouting. Jerrod was a future serial killer, for sure, but it was good to have him on my side. I didn’t think he would ever kill me. At least not for good reason.

The spider wears a plain brown dress,

And she is a steady spinner;

To see her, quiet as a mouse,

Going about her silver house,

You would never, never, never guess

The way she gets her dinner.

Jerrod had collected some good bones that night and his pack was full of shattered femurs, jaws and a small fragment that looked like it could have come from a cracked skull. The woods around the cabin were littered with treasure. You didn’t have to dig far. You could see the bones like weathered stones among the fallen leaves.

Normally, we never went too close to the cabin. The eaves were mildewed with rotten leaves and branches. It rose two stories in the thick forest, a relic to some forgotten family. The windows were still intact but covered with a thick white dust. The downspouts had collapsed years ago leaving the patterns of rainwater and soil to create a mural of macabre on the side of the house resembling tortured souls crying out to be saved. Even Jerrod was afraid of it.

But, that night, we saw the candle in the window. The crimson and mandarin flame danced in the upstairs window casting shadows across the broken shingles of the porch roof. The only clean window in the cabin. Not a streak of dust or dirt. As if it had been polished clean to celebrate the candle’s majesty and beckon all her subjects to come and pay homage to her.

“What’s that?” asked Jerrod. “Damn if there isn’t someone living up there.” I could see the flame dance in his dark eyes. Like a moth, he was drawn to it.

The three of us approached the porch in unison. We stood at attention. Our scout uniforms soiled from bone collecting. Our boots deep in the moldy leaves and decaying underbrush.

We stood in a line, just inches from the porch steps. The door was solid oak, but rotted, as if it had been washed up on the shore after a shipwreck. It was adorned by jagged, splintered wood with patterns of musty mold and mildew across it in streaks of white and grey. The door handle was bronze and green from neglect.

The door was open.

We stood there for a long time and didn’t speak. But we knew we were going in. We were curious. Surely, there was no one living there. But there might be some treasure to steal and bring back to camp.

The candle flickered in the window above us.

She looks as if no thought of ill

In all her life had stirred her;

But while she moves with careful tread, And

while she spins her silken thread,

She is planning, planning, planning still

The way to do some murder.

I took the first step. The wooden steps creaked and gave way slightly to my small frame. I took the second step. This time the boards held solid as if to say, “It’s okay. You’re safe here.”

I don’t know why they followed. Jerrod was afraid of the dark, generally. He had killed at least two neighborhood cats that year and sometimes he thought the feline ghosts visited him at night. He was always talkin' about ghosts and demons, as if he knew them personally. Perhaps he did. But still he followed me up to the open door.

Big Bobby, on the other hand, would normally have run screaming into the woods crying for our scoutmaster to come and stop us. But he followed, too. Step by step. As if we were called to enter. As if the crooked flame of the candle was assurance that we would be safe. Big Bobby wasn’t innocent. He was known for touching girls the wrong way. He didn’t have a moral compass. But his cowardice helped guide him to do the right thing – sometimes.

The door was wide enough to enter without touching her. The entryway was dark. Jerrod fumbled through his pack and pulled out a glow stick. I heard the glass crack inside, creating the chemical reaction that lit up the entryway to the cabin. Jerrod’s face was spiritless. Big Bobby was silently crying.

The room was decorated top to bottom by curtains of cobwebs that adorned the walls and danced in the breeze coming through the doorway. Across the hall was a small room with a fireplace unused and framed by broken brick. Above the fireplace, a portrait of a woman.

“Come here,” I beckoned Jerrod.” And they followed behind me. I grabbed the glowstick from him and put it in my hand. I raised it up to the portrait.

Her hair cascaded like silky black threads over her back and waist. Her eyes of green were large and inviting. Her long, dark brown velvet dress hugged her hourglass frame – her breasts milky white and large, her hips round and womanly. The dress was adorned by emeralds and white diamonds. She did not smile, but her red lips were parted slightly as if dipped in blood red wine and ready for another taste. I’ve never seen anyone more beautiful or bewitching.

I didn’t notice he had gone. Big Bobby had slipped away without us seeing. To wander the house, or perhaps, escape her.

“Jerrod! Where’s Bobby? Bobby! Where’d you go?,” my voice echoed across the empty floorboards of the cabin. Jerrod just looked blankly at the portrait. I shook him violently. “Jerrod, wake up!”

I reached into his pack and took out another glow stick. Cracking it, I left Jerrod at the fireplace in a trance, cursed by the woman’s beauty. He stood there, as if wrapped in a fog.

I ran to the entryway, the green glowstick my only refuge. “Bobby!”

The cabin echoed with bone-chilling screams. I don’t remember what I heard first. The thump above me that cast a shower of dust over my hands and face or the sound of Bobby crying out in terror. I never heard him scream before. But I knew it was him. I could hear the fear in the back of his throat as he cried out. His screams grew softer, but I could hear him crying through his terror. I could hear the fluid caught in his throat. The blood and tears making it impossible for him to cry out for help and suffocating him.

What did he say? Did he cry out “mother?” Or did he say “monster?”

“Bobby! Where are you?!”

The cabin filled with silence.

And then a woman’s voice. “He is here now. Come up and see. He is resting. Come rest with me.”

Her voice was like a song. It filled my head and made me feel safe.

I looked up and saw the flicker of the candle from the window near the top of the stairs. The amber light cast shadows on the wall among the cobweb curtains. I took three steps up the stairs. The wall to my left was adorned with primitive artwork. Choctaw Indian watercolors. Weavings.

She beckoned. “My home is yours. It’s safe and warm. Come rest with me. Escape the storm.”

I could hear the rain now. Like the sound of cats dancing on the roof, the rain struck the cabin and filled the room with a cold, wet air. Rain dripped through the broken eaves like tears.

How long had we been there?

I continued up the stairs. My hands were sticky. I could feel the rain bounce off my face onto the railing. The water and the webs combining to make a sticky paste.

I heard the woman’s voice again, but this time I could not only hear her, but smell her, taste her.

My head was filled with her voice as she spoke softly but deliberately. “Follow the stairs. Up to my bed. Follow the flame. And rest your head.”

The flame was brighter now. It filled the walls and laughed at me. I could hear the rain and thunder clouds sing in the distance.

Splash! Crash!

I could see my shadow against the wall as a I reached the top of the stairs. My nose filled with the sweet smell of blood and perfume.

And then her shadow. Beautiful. The flame caressed her silhouette. Did I dare turn and look upon her?

She whispered deeply into my mind as if to fill me up and drown me in her voice. “Embrace my body. Safe from the flood. Eternal peace. In sacred blood.”

I turned slowly toward her. Her emerald eyes shone in the dark like pools of magic as they met my gaze.

I walked toward her. I could smell her sweet breath. Her brown velvet dress cascading across the floor like pools of chocolate. I was right in front of her now. Her raven hair in front of me shimmering in pools of black gold. I could give myself to her completely.

I heard the cracking under my boots. Bones splintering.

My boots stuck to the floor. Old and fresh blood in a soupy mess.

I looked down. And I saw him. Big Bobby. His face torn from his head. His eyes wide as if to give me a final warning. Run.

Her fangs penetrated by flesh with force. I could feel the venom flow through me. I felt the coarse hair of her arms. My body twisting. Spinning in the air. My arms flailing. I had lost control.

For a brief moment, I felt everything. Terror. Pain. Guilt. Remorse. We weren’t good boys. Did we deserve this fate? Did we invite our death?

I caught one last glimpse of the flame. I was at peace.

____________________________________________________

I hope Jerrod escaped the cabin. I hope that he was strong enough to reject her seduction. To look away from the flame that brought us to the cabin and to my death. I hope that maybe he had escaped and changed his ways. That our death would teach him a lesson.

The woods were filled with the bones of men and boys. Weak men and boys that did not have the strength to reject temptation. Those that ventured too far away from home. From their wives. Their children. Young boys without a conscious, without a purpose. Lost boys seeking hope and love in the wrong places. Attracted to false promises. Drawn to the flame for light and warmth.

'Tis not the house, and not the dress,

That makes the saint or sinner.

To see the spider sit and spin,

Shut with her walls of silver in,

You would never, never, never guess

The way she gets her dinner.*

* Poetry excerpts from “Pretty is as Pretty Does” by Alice Cary