The following short story was perhaps my last straightforward ghost story, written during my junior year of college (circa 2005). The attempt to undermine the traditional ghost lore is already present, though masked in very traditional mountain legend language and local color. I never really gave the story an adequate end and, looking back, wish that I had developed the theology of the piece a bit more in light of my understanding of “ghost” phenomenon. However, six years after writing, I believe it is best to leave the story as I wrote it at the time.
There is a point in the evening when the sun has finally gone to rest beyond the horizon, and yet its light still lingers on, reminding everything else of its continued presence, even after it has departed. The vanished sun’s phantom glow allows the things of the day to remain visible for a few more waking moments before the shadows of the evening come to suffocate them and drain them of their life in the daylight. These shadows come quickly, and my father always told me a person should not be found alone along a solitary dirt road, much worse near a graveyard or an old, dilapidated house or barn, when the time of shadows comes. That is, lest there be someone or something waiting in those shadows for you.
These shadows come very fast, indeed, in some of the old, rural parts of north Georgia. The Appalachian Mountains, which run down from the upper reaches of Maine, finally meet their low, rolling demise here. These ancient old foothills consume the last glimmers of sunlight long before it can reach those in the valleys down below. The tall, dark trees in a particularly woodsy area of the valleys can, at this strange moment in the day, suddenly turn from being at one moment steadfast shade trees, the friends of a beautiful day, to being looming adversaries with outstretched, claw-like fingers the very next.
Oh yes, my papa warned me about this time of day. He warned me that strange things happened in the shadows. He said that in the shadows mystical creatures roamed, and the dead of old could spring out of their graves and walk the earth until dawn. I was twelve years old that October of 1947, though, and really didn’t take a liking to such gibberish. Those were surely just wild stories he told me to make sure I was home by night. They were just like Santa Claus, the Easter Bunny, and all of the other things I had learned by then not to believe in. Papa probably doesn’t even believe in them himself, I figured.
What is easy to dismiss during the daylight hours when you’re asking your mama for ten cents to go see the Saturday evening picture show is much less easy to put out of mind, however, when stepping out of the cinema much later in the evening. This is especially true after you’ve been filled with jitters from the images of The House of Dracula and its host of nocturnal ghouls. I stepped out of the theater at about seven that cool, early October evening to discover that, yes, the sun had slumped down behind Blackridge Mountain, and its glow sparsely covered the landscape. It was a mile and a half between town and home along the main road, and I realized that I had only two options. I could either run roadside and still have to face the last half mile in the dark, or I could shortcut through the old deer trail behind the drugstore through the woods, go straight across Orchard Hill, and high-tail it straight for home, praying that I reached my front porch steps before the landscape became nothing but a sea of jagged black shapes amidst a navy blue backdrop.
I sprung for the trail. I entered the woods and at once wished that I had stuck it out on the roadside. I had misjudged the trees by their friendlier daylight incarnations. These trees were massive monsters, blocking any glow of light from the sky, and I realized that now, instead of running part of my course in the dark, I would be facing my entire journey in the midst of shadow. I found my way through the trees on the upward slope of the hill, completely in darkness, and reached the remains of the old apple orchard without incident. I had to slow down here, though, because the trees of the orchard grew so tightly together.
Nobody kept up this orchard anymore. There was no need. The trees no longer produced apples. They simply grew, stretching and entangling their limbs with each other. As I tried to scurry as quickly as I could through the orchard, a rustling, accompanied by a clunking sound caught my ear. Clunk… clunk… clunk… the sound objects make when falling into a basket against each other. I had heard this sound many times in Papa’s store when apples were in season and the men and women filled their baskets full of juicy reds and goldens, one apple at a time. I looked behind me to where the sound was coming from and saw the old apple trees moving, but I saw no shape in the shadows. The rustling and the clunking came closer and closer, though.
I was off like a shot. I didn’t know what this was, but I didn’t want it to catch up to me. I ran straight through the wild apple trees and the thick and thorny overgrowth surrounding it. My face was scratched probably three dozen times by the limbs, and my shirt and trousers were rent to ruin by the twigs and briars of the endless trees and undergrowth I tackled. Behind me, I could still hear the rustling of the trees, closer now and keeping pace with my run, the sound of apples now hitting the earth instead of a basket. This thing was chasing me!
I finally reached the edge of the old thicket, only to stumble across a jagged rock. I rushed to pick myself up, and looked down at the rock in the process. It was not a rock… it was a stone… a solitary, old gravestone. I had no clue what this odd finding was doing at the edge of an orchard. Overcoming the delay caused by the strange grave, I ran faster, having finally reached the open field and spotting the glowing lamplight from my living room window in the distance. As I cut across the grey grass, colorless in the darkness of night, and came within feet of my porch, I glanced back towards the scraggly old orchard. It looked calm, save for a pale, eerie glow that seemed to be coming from the spot of the old, solitary grave.
I burst into the house and ran up the stairs, pulling what remained of my dressings off and jumped into my bed, under the covers. I listened as the sound of the radio cracked downstairs: “…tonight’s special radio presentation of the gothic classic The Phantom of the Opera featuring Basil Rathbone, Susanne Foster, and Nelson Eddy…” Click! It shut off. I heard my father’s familiar footsteps climb the stairs and I watched as he entered my bedroom. I felt him sit down below me on the bed and run his fingers through my hair.
“You cut across Orchard Hill tonight, didn’t you, son?”
“Yes, sir.”
“You heard something, too, didn’t you?”
I hesitated. “Yes, sir.”
“What did you hear?”
“Papa, I heard someone moving through the trees, picking apples… but there were no apples, and there was nobody there. Then it started chasing me and, Papa, there was this grave and it glowed and…”
“Oh, there was someone there, son. It was old Mr. Harper still picking apples in his orchard. You see, when I was about your age, Mr. Harper grew more apples than anyone in the whole county. He had several men helping him tend his orchard because it was so large. One day, he walked in on one of his men, Eldridge Smith, having relations with Mrs. Harper. Old Mr. Harper went mad and ran both his wife and Mr. Smith through with his pruning shears. The rest of the hands came at once at the horrible noise. They overtook Mr. Harper and brought him before the judge. He confessed to the murders and was sentenced to die that very day. They hanged and buried him in his very own orchard. With his last words, he cursed his own apple trees, saying that no man would ever again taste a single fruit from his orchard. Since that time not one apple has grown in that orchard, and few have wandered through the old grove without hearing the sound of old Mr. Harper still picking his apples and keeping all who enter away from them.”
