2018 Second-Place Winner  

Cecily Nabors lives in Maryland, though her family’s roots are in Kentucky. She’s a retired software manager who has sold short stories and articles to many different publications, ranging from Mike Shayne’s Mystery Magazine to BirdWatching to The Washington Post. She’s published many travel articles based on trips with her long-time partner, who says he likes her nature articles even better. Her website, www.CecilyNabors.com, includes her blog, an introduction to her memoir A Reader’s Journey, and excerpts from two novels written for middle-schoolers. 

Lainey and the Monsters

“Lainey? Lainey!” Granny’s screech rose above the thumping of her cane against the wall. “Get up and make the fire!”

Lainey pushed back her mama’s patchwork quilt. It wasn’t good daylight yet, so the monster snakes under her bed would be waiting, as they had all her six years. One mistake and the slithery coils would snatch her. From her bed, she made a standing jump to the floorboard that had the knot like a toad’s head. The monsters couldn’t reach past that.

In two shakes, she was in the front room, pulling open the stove door and shoving in kindling. The weather wasn’t yet so cold that she could see her breath inside, but still she was glad when the sticks caught fire. Fire was friendly, like the barely remembered hug her mama gave her before she went away.

Lainey skinned out of her night-things, danced her naked self by the stove to warm, and pulled on her day dress. By the time Granny appeared, Lainey had water heating for coffee.

“After breakfast, fetch more water and wood,” Granny said, tying her apron over her long brown dress. She poured buttermilk into two bowls and crumbled leftover cornbread into it. “Old Rabson Wade’s hankering after Frank Hunt’s girl Reba. He’s coming today for ginseng and one of my special spells and devisings.”

Why would Granny fix things for old Mr. Wade but not for Lainey? She’d begged Granny to witch away the monster snakes under her bed. Granny always snapped, “Ain’t no need for a God-fearing child to worry none.”

Lainey did fear God, but she feared the monsters more, and Granny most of all.

When she ran out to pump the water, Whistle, the mongrel that Granny kept to warn her of approaching visitors, frolicked out from under the cabin. Fog ghosted the autumn trees and lay among the folded hills. No surprise to Lainey that Miss Darleen Cooper had stared around her when she first visited the cabin. Some folks called the ridge lonely as a mountain cat’s scream, but to Lainey it was a sightly place, and home.

While Lainey toted water and baskets of stovewood, she hugged the knowing that Miss Darleen Cooper would be coming tomorrow. Soft as she looked, there wasn’t much give to her. She’d stood up to Granny, all right.

Granny’s wide straight mouth had clamped tight as the well cover and her eyes had blazed, but Miss Darleen Cooper didn’t back off. “I hope you’ll change your mind, Mrs. Menifee,” she’d said, so polite. “Elaine would benefit greatly from starting school.”

Lainey wished she could give Miss Cooper a pretty just for saying her name. Her fingers and toes curled with wanting school, but she dassent speak against Granny.

“She’s too young,” Granny snapped. “I’m raisin’ up a child alone. Don’t need notions of schooling and town in her head. Town lured her mama like flowers draw bees. Then she came back here to bear a shame child and soon enough lit off again. Ridge folks belong on the ridge.” Granny turned away.

“I’ll be back,” said Miss Cooper. And she did come back, every week.

Lainey took the pan of breakfast scraps out to Whistle. She crawled under the cabin to watch him wolf the food. Curled up in his dog-smelling nest of rags, she looked out at the world from between the cabin’s stone pillars.

Granny’s screech found her. “Lainey! Feed the chickens!”

Lainey scattered feed to the six Hampshire Red hens. Her fingers sifted through the straw of their roosts for eggs. Oh! Something soft and warm! It was a nest of baby mice, with tiny blind faces and delicate paws. Lainey’s finger gentled them as she put them into the egg basket. Lordy, wasn’t it lucky Miss Darleen Cooper was coming! Maybe she would like one to raise up.

When Granny saw what was in the egg basket, she opened the stove door and flung the baby mice into the flames. “Don’t want no mice eating our feed.”

“They were for Miss Darleen Cooper,” Lainey sobbed. “A pretty.”

“Nosey somebodies don’t need a pretty. Outsiders got no call telling ridge folks how to do for their own. Now go get me some eggs—I need one in this potion. And fetch that rabbit.”

Head drooping, Lainey shuffled out. Trouble piled on trouble. Yesterday she’d let that dear little rabbit go.

Could she fool Granny? She went to the rabbit’s pen and pulled one edge of wire loose. Sucking a punctured finger, she went back to Granny. “It’s got away,” she said. “Must’ve pushed out.” She kept her eyes lowered—no one dast look at Granny and tell her a lie.

Granny grabbed her wrist and pulled her out to the pen. “No fur’s caught in that wire.” She hauled Lainey over to the woodpile and gave her a licking with a stick of stovewood. Then she smacked the tearful child ahead of her into the cabin. “Make that finger drip into the potion. No time to catch another rabbit. Virgin’s blood will have to do.”

Lainey’s stomach curdled to think of Rabson Wade drinking her blood, but she let three red drops fall into Granny’s brew.

“Now reach me down that big kettle,” Granny ordered.

That meant going to the loft. Lainey shivered. No telling what all lived up there in the dark. “Can’t you use ary other kettle?”

“No. Now fetch that ladder ‘fore I give you something else to cry about.”

Lainey dragged the ladder into her bedroom. Sunlight brightened the room, keeping the snakes quiet and harmless. Sun and fire were clean and pure, magic against dark and monsters. She dried her eyes on her mama’s quilt and hugged it for a sweet minute.

“Move, girl,” Granny snapped. She steadied the ladder as Lainey pulled herself up, step by slow step. Lainey’s trembling hand pushed against the loft’s wooden cover. It thumped sideways.

Blackness hovered in the loft.

Lainey clung to the ladder. She stared into the dark and the dark stared back. Blacker than bats’ wings, blacker than coal, the dark stirred itself and flowed toward her. Lainey gasped. The dark growled like long low thunder. Lainey screamed and flung herself down the ladder.

Granny caught her arm. “What ails you, child?”

“There’s a monster in the loft, worse than snakes! Big as the night! It growled at me.”

“Nonsense. Now get me that kettle.”

Lainey squeezed her eyes shut and crept back up the ladder. She flailed her hand around, found the edge of the big kettle, and slid it down to Granny. Whimpering, she tugged the lid back across the opening, trapping the dark inside. “Granny, can’t you witch the monster away?”

“If you ain’t the foolishest,” Granny scoffed. “I’ll not waste my spells and devisings on fanciful monsters.”

Now Lainey knew what she had to do. She hurried outside to make a spell and devising of her own. She found an acorn, a sharp stick for a body, and another one for arms, and bound them together with threads from a feed sack. The reddish-brown feathers that littered the chicken house were almost the color of Granny’s long dress. She pulled more threads from the feed sack and tied the feathers around her doll under the stick arms. A square torn from the sack became an apron to bind the doll’s waist. With a rock, she marked black eyes and a wide straight mouth on the acorn face.

“Be Granny. Be Granny. Be Granny.” Spells were always in threes.

Keeping the doll close to her body so Granny wouldn’t see it if she looked out, Lainey walked three times around the cabin. “Use your powers to witch away the monsters,” she whispered. “Witch away the monsters. Witch away the monsters.”

But how to set the spell?

“Lainey? Lainey!” Granny stumped down the cabin steps. She headed for the henhouse, grumbling, “Child’s always out of pocket.”

Quick as thought, Lainey flew up the steps, hauled open the stove door, and threw the doll-Granny inside. “Fire, fire, clean and pure, set the spell as sure as sure.”

She was almost certain those were the right words. Flames licked greedily at the dry sticks. Feathers sizzled and stank. She closed the stove and hightailed it out to the porch. She’d done the best she knew how. Now it was up to the magic.

Old Rabson Wade brought a mess of quail to pay for his wooing potion, and Granny fried them for supper. Afterward, Lainey sat on the cabin steps. A dry-leaf tang hung in the air and a fat yellow moon was rising. Whistle leaned against her as she played with his soft ears.

Granny called, “Lainey, come put the kettle back in the loft.”

Lainey’s heart quivered in her throat. “But I’m most mortally feared of the loft.”

Granny’s voice was hard as iron. “Now.”

Lainey carried the kerosene lamp from the front room to her bedroom. Keeping as far from the bed as she could, she set the lamp on the table. Maybe the snakes weren’t good awake yet.

Granny held a candle up, and Lainey felt better. Maybe the loft-monster, made of the dark, feared the light. Maybe it would squinch back into a corner and leave her be.

Her legs shook as she climbed the ladder and pushed the cover of the loft aside. Granny handed up the kettle. Aching with fear, Lainey raised the heavy kettle to the edge and looked into the loft.

The dark loomed out at her. In the candlelight, huge shiny eyes gleamed, wild and fierce as a mountain cat’s eyes. The dark-monster growled. Lainey shrieked. The heavy kettle dropped from her shaking fingers. Lainey huddled on the ladder, her hands over her eyes. Behind her she heard a loud thump. The candle went out.

“Granny, run!” she cried. “It’ll devour us both.” She stumbled down the ladder, snatched up the lamp, and fled. She looked back only once. Slithery snakes waved their coils from under her bed all the way to the toad’s head knot. The dark, growling and slavering, was flowing down the ladder.

Granny must be outside already. Shadows leaped around Lainey’s lamp as she ran across the front room and out into the night. “Granny! Where are you?”

Granny wasn’t anywhere. Lainey crouched under a tree at the edge of the clearing. Whistle licked tears from her face. “The monsters have eat Granny clean up,” she quavered.

She and Whistle were alone against the monsters. The moon, riding high and white, penned the dark-monster inside the cabin for now. But in the blackness before sunrise, would the dark flow down the cabin steps toward Lainey?

No. She knew for sure and for sure what she had to do. “You stay here, Whistle,” she commanded. The dog settled down with his nose on his paws.

Carrying the lamp, Lainey crawled under the cabin, shuddering with the blackness of it and the horrors overhead. The cabin squatted above her on its stone pillars like a bloated spider. When she reached Whistle’s rag nest, she held a rag in the lamp’s flame until it blazed, then stuffed it into a chink of the cabin floor. Above her, something moved and moaned. She whimpered with fear, but she kept lighting rags and stuffing chinks as she backed out. Her heart hammered as she dashed across the clearing to Whistle’s warmth.

Eerie shadows moved in the cabin’s flames. Sparks flew from the dry wood. Suddenly a wild shriek rang out, like nothing Lainey had ever heard. She knew it was the sound of a monster in mortal pain.

When the cabin was but a collection of small fires and smoking timbers, Lainey put her head down on Whistle’s neck. “Miss Darleen Cooper will be here soon,” she told him.

It was a pure pleasure to her that all the monsters were dead.