"The Battle Begins" Part 1

THE BATTLE BEGINS

It was to be a warm summer day, or so said the weather man, and I was out of school for vacation. Nothing about the sky dictated what events may unfold, the clouds were not dark and gloomy, nor crows on the lawn, on the contrary, there was nothing but blue skies and green crow free grass.

I loved to run around outside, it was my pleasure, my delight that God had given me legs, and who was I to deny them as much use and possible.

I played for a long while that day, but even the most hyperactive of children eventually come down from their energy high, as did I. I had not seen my grandmother since earlier that morning, so I made my way to the front of the house where she often would sit and talk with visitors. This day her company would be her mother, hence my great grandmother.

In singular form they possessed grand abilities of telling old tales, but together their words were legend to me. One would start a story and the other would add something to it that the other didn’t know, the dance of the story tellers in a way. For the open mind of a child, nothing can beat the satisfaction of a well told story, so naturally I was intrigued to hang around and listen.

I stood there, listening as they shared their personal experiences and the experiences of others.

The first story was about corn shucking, not to interesting at first I admit. It was the gathering of country folk dancing and partying at the occasional corn shucking. I didn’t quite get what could be fun about cleaning some corn, but hey what did I know.

The tale went something along the lines of a group of people returning home one night through a darkened path in the forest. The path followed wasn’t traveled very often, but it was a shortcut home.

After a while walking on the path, they found themselves moving between two logs lying on the grass. Two figures sat upon each log, but from the distance it just looked like two people chatting with one another. As they got closer, it became all too obvious that the two figures were lacking something as their voices lowered to there approach.

What they lacked were heads, according to the terrified group as they came running out of the forest. They joined up with some of there friends and told them about it, and naturally they didn’t believe a word of it. So after calming down, they were taken back down to where they supposedly saw the two headless people. They were expecting to find nothing when they got there. One can imagine there surprise when they heard chatter in the distance, coming from the two figures that were there earlier. They too didn’t believe they were headless until they came closer, and as before, the talking slowly stopped as they got closer and picked back up as they ran out. They didn’t really say what became of this trail, but I had no interest walking it that was for sure.

Keep in mind that I wasn’t an easily frightened child, so stories such as these had little effect on me. No nightmares preventing sleep that I can recall, nor unexplained fear of the dark. On the contrary I normally enjoyed them.

Some of their other tales wasn’t as drawn out, one having to do with a dog becoming a woman. They say that down near a road close to where I used to go to school you could find a dog.

It had to be a rainy evening, but a misty rain; almost where it looked liked fog. If you timed it right, when you walked on this road you could see a shaggy dog in the distance, slowly walking towards you. As the dog would approach it would slowly transform into a gorgeous woman.

They said some people that saw this happened sometimes tried to speak to the woman, but it did no good. She just walked on past all who saw her in a trance like state, until she could be seen no more, disappearing into the fog like rain. I have to admit that even until this day I’ve been tempted to go and see if I could witness this. By now though I’m sure the road that they spoke of is no more, just another piece of lore lost in the abyss of time.

The next to the last one was something that actually happened to my grandmother. She said that one day while her and her brothers and sisters were out playing, in the late evening; they noticed a strange light in the swamp near where they lived.

All of them stood and looked at it for a few seconds, but before too much could take place their mom came out to tell them to come in for the night. She took notice of the children looking at something, she saw the light, but unlike the others, she knew what it was.

It was a Jack-o-lantern, and apparently it wasn’t the kind we see on Halloween, sitting on peoples porches. This kind was something like a typical lantern held by night travelers, but instead was held by a wandering ghost.

She made them stop looking at the light and told them to never look at it again. The light according to her had the ability to charm anyone who looked at it long enough, forcing them to wander the swamp with the spirit for eternity. Naturally they never looked at it again, and considering that I live near a swampy area myself, I doubt I’d be tempted to look at any moving lights either after this tale.

They spoke of many other things, but these that I have mentioned are the ones that have survived the trial of time in my mind, so they are the ones I’ve shared best I could.

There was one last thing that they spoke of however, and even today my grandmother can not tell me how they stumbled upon the conversation, because it wasn’t something I’d ever heard them discuss.

It was the discussion of ones most precious gift given from God, that gift being of the soul. They spoke of how people can and sometimes do make deals with devils and demons in exchange for their souls. How someone could do something like that is beyond me, it makes no since to me even unto this day.

They continued on with the conversation for a few moments, but most of it is blurred in my mind. Something was happening to me as they continued to talk, my chest pounded, it was hard to breath, and a feeling of extreme emotional pain came over me. I walked off the porch to the pavement, hoping that if I moved away from the conversation this pain would go away, but it didn’t. I fell to my knees, and holding my chest bent over, crying uncontrollably.