Devil in the Delta Read Online Free Page A

mean they lived out in the middle of nowhere—an area usually dubbed “the Boondocks” by Missourians. And I don’t mind saying that visiting there was a dreaded affair, but not because of my family. It was entirely because of the quality of life they had and the living conditions on the farm. Going to Marston, Missouri, in the 1970s was like traveling back in time to the turn of the century.
    A trip to my grandparents’ house meant going to the bathroom in an outhouse, pitching in with the chores (these could, and did, often include chopping cotton, picking beans, and hauling hay), and, worst of all, constantly dodging tornadoes. A visit from a “twister” meant fleeing outside into the windy night and huddling in a damp and dark storm cellar that doubled as a storage area for homemade canned goods. We would all clutch blankets and peer at each other through the oily light of an old kerosene lamp as the numerous Bell jars of canned tomatoes and green beans clattered and clanged around us. We would sometimes endure hours of this until a storm had passed.
    On top of all this, even the “fun” things in the country often involved work of some kind—such as slaving over an ice cream churn for an hour to get some dessert. Or trudging through the yard picking pecans for an entire morning to get a pie that would be hours away from getting into our mouths. This was just how things worked out there. Of course, there was also, as previously mentioned, many a night of tale-telling. Nights spent at the hearth or on the front porch talking of dark things by moonlight.
    It was during one of these visits to Marston that my mother, along with one of my uncles, told me a ghost story that I still remember to this day. Just down the gravel road from my grandparents ’ home was a neighbor who we would often see working outside in the yard. She was always by herself and seemed a lonely soul out there in the country all alone—but it hadn’t always been that way. At one point, when my mother and her siblings were young, she lived with her son there in the old house. Her husband had died long before, so it was just the two of them there, eking out a meager existence.
    Since they were neighbors, my grandparents felt bad for the widowed woman. As a result, my uncles would often spend the night at the house to socialize with the woman and to play with the boy. That is, they did so until the boy drowned just outside the house in a large drainage ditch. As you can imagine, this pushed the poor woman to the edge of her sanity. To attempt to alleviate her pain and loss—as well as to provide her with some much-needed company—my uncles would still, on occasion, spend the night with her in her home. It was during one of these visits that this story takes place …
    My two uncles had finished playing for the night and the woman had just tucked them in for some sleep when they began hearing some strange sounds coming from the upstairs hallway, just outside the guest bedroom. These noises began as soft knocks and bangs, but soon escalated to the sounds of footsteps and even an unintelligible voice whispering from just outside the door. Needless to say, my uncles were quite frightened, though they did manage to eventually drift off to sleep. But later that same night, the two of them decided to make a trip to the bathroom together. (Hey, if you have to be pee and be scared, pee and be scared with company.)
    According to them, while they were using the restroom, something kept turning off the bathroom light and knocking on the bathroom door. Once they had finished up, they immediately ran back to their beds and jumped under the covers. Eventually, they drifted off to sleep once again. But this wasn’t the end of it.
    Off and on, for the rest of the night, they would both feel something tugging at their blankets—and, on occasion, their feet. They would wake up, peer over the covers for any