An Interlude: The Scenic Route

Well, hey there, family.

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What changed for the team today?

It was the new game day scratchers from the California lottery.

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Hey there, family.

It's been a hard week or so for those of us here at Deep Nerd Media and Old Gods of Appalachia.

We lost two people from our past and from our family that we held very near and dear to our hearts.

Miss Rhonda Dooley of Wise County, Virginia was a friend of mine from the time that I was a young teen all the way up into my adult life and was one of the first people that got me into the medieval nurdery that I still participate in to this day.

And as you may notice, her last name is Dooley.

And yes, in fact, that is where I took the surname for our own beloved daughter, Dooley.

We lost Rhonda to COVID at the age of 52.

So please wear a mask.

Be safe.

Take the vaccine when it's time.

I don't want to lose any more of y'all.

A day or so after that, I was notified by a friend that my former student Gray, who I had worked with in the past couple of years, had succumbed to their long battle with mental illness and had, in fact, passed on.

That's a loss as a teacher and mentor and as a fellow artist.

I feel very deeply, and I still quite haven't processed that one yet.

But hold those you love near and dear.

Today's episode was delayed because frankly y'all i'm moving real slow when it comes to this kind of stuff and then just this craziness yesterday at the capitol

everything's a lot there's help out there if you feel the darkness calling you in a way that might take you from us please look down at the show notes of this episode in the description we're going to provide some links and numbers for you the story we are going to share with you today has been an idea floating around and on an outline and a script somewhere that maybe we thought we would do as a Patreon bonus or as a live read.

And when we knew that we needed to change things up, it was just a natural fit to take that idea and blow it up and turn it into a script.

It took a minute, but we're here.

And it's a story about a lot of things,

but I think you'll get why we chose it.

That all being said, Old Gods of Appalachia is a horror anthology podcast and therefore may contain material not suitable for all audiences.

So, listener discretion is advised.

no time to rest these weary balls

I hear her song

and my heart goes hollow

Best not to walk these words alone

Best stick to the roads and out of the shadow

Best get on home

Best to leave them embroidery

There is a darkness that can only truly fall in the deep woods.

An enveloping shadow of some great beast that at the same time is soothing and terrifying, and can only exist in the absence of electric light and full moon.

The hours that pass beneath this hallowed veil are usually best spent sleeping, so you do not witness the world that only thrives when the living ain't in it, unless they're spent by watchful vigil keepers who keep that world at bay.

For most of us, though, there are two worlds of light and dark that for our own good must be kept separate and sanctified.

For many of those who walked in the light of day have been raised not to suffer a witch to live, and those born of the night,

well, a lot of times they're just plain old witches, but I digress, family.

The hours of the wolf, the witching hours, the dark times, whatever you want to call that sacred span of silence, it can feel like centuries of suffering when you wake suddenly to nature's call and have no idea where the privy is.

This is the current state of the young boy sleeping in a borrowed bed in an ancient cabin on the side of a mountain overlooking a river that he does not know the name of.

A place that at two hours past midnight feels like the actual middle of nowhere.

And this boy does not know if the middle of nowhere has an outhouse or if he's going to end up soaking this musty old mattress and the even mustier linens.

for fate and biology had both conspired in this moment that cowboy absher

really needed to pee

the drive from baker's gap to the north corner of esau county could be a dangerous thing if you didn't know what you were doing or where you were going

Mountain roads were beasts unto themselves, and Miss Ellie had insisted that Mr.

Blevins take the scenic route to her house in southwestern Virginia.

It felt to Cowboy like they left Baker's Gap a full week ago, and it had only been a couple of days.

Cowboy had worked hard not to think about how much he missed his friends or either of his families now that he could recall them both.

He knew that because of whatever had happened to his family and by extension to him,

he was not like other children.

He'd overheard Miss Marcy tell Miss Ellie he was touched.

And he heard the fear in her voice when she said it, heard her say she hoped they could help him up there in the holler.

He could also hear the shiver in her voice when she talked about the holler and Ms.

Boggs that lived there.

If something or somewhere could shiver someone clearly as brave and kind as Miss Marcy, then how in the world could he face it?

Miss Ellie had kept them fed with the food packed from the Walker house, and turns out Mr.

Blevins was pretty handy at foraging and gathering to round out their traveling pantry.

This was their second overnight stop on the trip.

The first night they'd camped out under the stars a few hours from the Virginia state line.

Miss Ellie said the land belonged to a lady she'd referred to simply as Miss Rhonda, who had inherited it from her mama but never bothered to build on it.

It was a big stretch of property right off a long straightaway of dirt road obscured by a stretch of closely planted poplars.

It was a known spot for folk of their sort to stop and rest and somehow remain unseen and unbothered by other passers-by on the road.

It was like you turned onto that land and just disappeared.

It had been a clear, cool evening and cowboy had fallen asleep to Miss Ellie singing an old song that she said her daddy taught her in a language that Cowboy guessed was French.

But that was just a guess, and they were up early the next morning for a breakfast of cold bread and boiled eggs before getting back at it.

They'd taken some real hard routes into the Commonwealth of Virginia.

These were more ruts than proper roads.

Snaking things that bounced and jounced up and around the mountain following the cut of a nearby river.

And that river was now just down the hillside from his cabin, his gentle murmur drifting through the open windows and doing no favors for the horrendous pressure building in Cowboy's bladder.

Finally,

rather than sleep in soggy breeches, Cowboy gave up the ghost, slowly rose from his bed, and blindly began to pick his way across the small room.

He kept his left hand extended in front of him, waiting for it to meet fabric as he moved.

Miss Ellie had hung up a sheet as a makeshift privacy curtain dividing the room just to keep things proper.

So if Cowboy suddenly felt thin cotton meeting his fingertips, he'd know to steer himself away from Miss Ellie's space and towards the tightly closed door.

It was a new moon, and there wasn't a speck of light leaking in from the outside.

After a few minutes of careful stepping and redirecting, that room felt so much bigger than he knowed it to be in daylight.

Cowboy found the doorknob and tried his best to will his lower anatomy to stem the flood of his rising need long enough for him to open the door without waking Miss Ellie.

Mr.

Blevins was sleeping in his truck, which was pulled around to the other side of the small structure.

The cabin came courtesy of the Groves family.

Joycey Groves had been a matriarch of a long line of good men and better women who might or might not have had a gift or two among them.

But they were a family that Ellie's mama had known and trusted.

Folks who, when they left this world, left their places and their goods behind to be a help and comfort to the folks they cared for, as well as folks who just needed caring for, and thus the Groves cabin was a place that a wayward traveler could find a dry, if maybe musty, bed and shelter from the rain.

Cowboys stepped out onto the narrow porch and could not wait any longer.

Looking around to make sure there were no eyes that could see through this tar black night, Cowboys set about emptying a full day's worth of cold water and lemonade back into the earth.

The relief that comes from such a satisfying bit of business can leave a man light-headed if he'd held it long enough.

And that's how young Mr.

Absher felt as he pulled his breeches into the bound and upright position and forgot not to

look at the world around him.

As Cowboy's sight slipped over him, the world became a different place.

The velvet shroud of the deep night became a tapestry of color and life.

There were markings on the ground, like at the Walker house, but smaller and in a different handwriting, best he could make sense of it, arced and whirled around the cabin and the path that led to it.

Old and gentle protective wards and bindings that made him feel safe and welcome.

He saw that they faded the closer they got to the river.

Now the passing of running water can do that to a working family, and it can actually stand stronger than any protection ever could as well.

Running water is a powerful thing in many worlds.

Caleb,

for he thought of himself as Caleb now when he saw the world, couldn't help himself.

He stepped off the tiny porch and walked down the hill, the path clear and marked by Joycey Groves or one of her girls' hands, down to the river.

And just as the marked path was about to end, though,

Caleb froze.

Sitting on a big rock right on the river's edge was

another boy.

Miss Ellie had been worried there might be bad people looking for him, people that knew about his sight and

the other thing that protected him when things got scary, people who might want to hurt him or use him.

Caleb wasn't scared when he saw this boy, though.

Firstly, he looked littler than Caleb by a year or two, and he was shirtless and had his pants rolled up to his knees like he'd been wading in the shallows.

His feet shone pale in the moonlight, and he looked dirty, like he'd been on his own for a while.

Caleb knew what that was like.

The little boy turned and saw him, and he started too.

Slowly they both raised a hand in greeting, and Caleb continued down the path.

Hey there, Caleb began.

Hey, yourself, the boy replied.

He sounded even younger than he looked.

Closer, Caleb could see he had curly blonde hair that was grown out a little too long in the back and hadn't seen a bath in a dog's age.

What are you doing out here in the middle of the night?

Caleb asked, trying to sound like he was a little more grown, as if he had any business down by a strange river in the middle of the night either.

Oh,

I just like the water, the boy said,

as if that made perfect sense.

Oh, d do you live around here?

Caleb asked, realizing the boy was little enough to probably need to have his people close by, maybe.

His eyes scanned the surrounding hillside, but saw no other structures but the shadow of the cabin.

No,

said the other boy with a laugh.

I I'm a good ways from home.

You?

Caleb shook his head.

No

Just passing passing through.

Me too.

There's a whole bunch of us down that way there.

The boy pointed downriver.

Oh,

you you got family out here with you?

Grown folk?

Caleb was suddenly apprehensive.

One boy was one thing.

A whole mess of people is something Miss Ellie would want need to know about.

He looked back up at the cabin, saw the glowing wards along the path.

The smaller boy shook his head almost comically fast.

No,

no, no grown-ups.

We don't need them.

It's just us boys.

We go wherever we want.

Well,

sort of.

We go wherever we are needed.

He said that last part like a recitation or something he'd been taught to repeat.

Needed for what?

Caleb asked, moving closer to the boy till he could see the table-sized river rock the boy sat on.

Come on over and have a seat.

Caleb, my name is Caleb.

As he said it, he looked away from the boy, not wanting his sight to show him when and how the boy would grow and wither and die like it did with other people.

He tried to clear his head and throw it off, but the boy kept on talking and breaking his concentration.

Well, sit down, Caleb.

My name's Grayson Brown, but my friends call me Brownie.

Come sit now.

I'll do my best to tell you what it is we do.

I don't tell it as good as he does, but I can tell you my part of it at least.

As good as who does?

Caleb asked, again, wary.

Oh, my buddy.

He comes in at the end of the story.

That's the best part.

And Caleb listened as the boy told him about his life.

He'd grown up in a tiny little place in West Virginia, way up in the mountains, near a bigger town called Monoggan.

Monogan was was a mining town built just to dig coal out of the ground, he said.

Big coal companies from all over the world tried to dig coal there, but only one could make it stick.

Brownie's daddy had wanted to stay in their Littler town and try to make a go of it raising pigs like his daddy, but the money from the mines was so much better.

And the town kept growing and growing until it swallowed his town right up.

And when he'd gotten big enough, all eight eight years old, Brownie had gone to work with his daddy in the mines.

It was real hard.

We had to do just about everything you could think of, and the bosses were real mean if you didn't.

They were real mean if you did too.

But we were big boys, and we had to do big boy work.

So we worked hard.

Daddy said he was real proud of me.

I didn't complain or nothing, even.

Even when I got my foot hurt that time, daddy told me he was sorry all the time.

Wished we didn't have to work in no mines and I could have had a farm to come up on like he did.

By that time we'd moved into town proper.

The company bought our little bit of land and paid daddy for the mineral rights.

Real good money, he said.

We used it to bury mama.

She got sick from something in the water, we think.

Monogan was a dirty town.

Coal dust and soot everywhere and the mines just got bigger and bigger and more men come and the job got harder and everybody got meaner.

It seemed like the more people there was, the meaner everybody got.

And it wasn't nothing like that before the town and the company come and swallowed up our little place.

But by the end, there wasn't hardly nobody left

who remembered where Cottonflyer was,

much less what it was like.

And then one...

One day at work,

the roof fell down.

There was a real loud noise.

And And there was smoke, and there was rocks falling, and there was dust.

Oh, there was so much dust everywhere, Caleb.

And somebody hollered, there was a fire, and I yelled real loud for my daddy.

Then something else fell up above us, and

next thing I knew, somebody was helping me up.

I thought I was done for.

But I'm as whole as I am now, see?

And the boy held out his arms as if to show Caleb that he was as fine and healthy as a young boy should be.

See?

See Caleb?

Look.

And Caleb finally relented

and looked at him.

And Caleb blinked.

The boy did not age nor die before his very eyes.

The story of his life and eventual death did not sprawl out before Caleb like some sort of fairy tale that only he could see.

He just saw a pale, skinny young boy smiling back at him

and realized he'd seen him like this the entire time

he could not see how Grayson Brown would die

because Grayson Brown

Brownie to his friends

already had

but like I said Brownie went on somebody pulled me up and it was my buddy I was talking about He's older than me, covered in the same dust and blood that I was.

He said he'd been down in the mines for a long time too.

Said he knew how awful being a boy in the mines could be.

Brownie nodded here, remembering the solidarity of that moment.

Told me if I wanted to, I could help him make sure nothing like this happened to other boys.

Told me we didn't have to haul no more engine oil, scrape through no more rocks, or breathe that dust, lift you coughing up the nasty black stuff.

All I had to do was come with him and tell my story and help the other boys tell theirs.

He said the mean bosses and the company to hurt us took our mommies and daddies from us that hell, that company took my whole town from me, and they should pay for that.

Brownie clenched his fists, his face tightening as the story flowed through him.

Told me if I came with him and a bunch of other boys, we could make sure they couldn't hurt nobody else.

Caleb wasn't sure what to make of this.

What was this boy?

A ghost?

He hadn't met one of them yet.

Some other sort of thing, maybe?

He didn't feel wrong like the shadow that wasn't Kirk Kilgore's daddy, no.

Nor did he feel cold like the woman that come in his dreams did sometimes, not precisely the same.

Say, did you say you was passing through?

Brownie's face brightened.

Are you with your mommy and daddy?

Caleb shook his head, unsure of what to say.

Yeah,

said Brownie, his expression shifting.

I can see it on you now.

He's gone, ain't they?

Caleb nodded slowly.

You could come with us if you wanted to.

The littler boy was looking at him differently now as if he had his own special sight, and he was just seeing Caleb for the first time.

Yeah,

you aren't just just like us, but

you ain't like the rest of them neither.

Caleb shook himself free to speak.

Rest of who?

Oh,

living folks, I guess,

Brownie said.

Caleb was about to ask what Brownie meant by that exactly when the smaller boy cried out in excitement and pointed, oh, they come looking for me.

You want to meet my friends, Caleb?

Caleb Gibson looked across the river and saw an army of dead boys.

They seemed to materialize out of the gloom without a sound.

Tall, short, young, older, big, and little, some missing arms, others missing eyes or feet, a tackle box selection of scars and innocence disfigured.

A menagerie of busted spare parts belonging to long, obsolete machines.

Caleb's sight strained to truly see them,

but they remained unchanged.

All he could make out was their pain and anger and hunger for lives they'd had stolen from them.

It wreathed about them like a soft gray flame, lighting their dust-blackened faces like unfinished portraits.

Through their midst,

he saw a light moving.

The light of a gently swaying oil lantern making its way to the front of the crowd.

The boy who carried it was unlike the rest.

He was not a child wraith made of burned-up hope and lost dreams.

He was death-black vengeance stuffed into the idea of a boy.

His was a shape that seemed to struggle to keep up with containing him.

He kept changing form and size and dimensions as Caleb turned his sight on him.

One moment he was a tiny boy of no more than five.

The next, he was almost grown.

The next, he was a scarecrow made of burning black breath.

And then he was just a boy again of no determinable age.

He wore a cap in that form,

pulled down low over his eyes.

Eyes that Caleb desperately did not want to look into.

Is that your

friend?

The one who saved you?

Caleb asked.

Yeah, I can introduce you if you want.

No, Caleb blurted, then softer.

I mean, no, Brownie.

Thank you, though.

I got people back up the hill waiting for me.

I'll be okay.

Grayson Brown looked a touch sad and disappointed.

Oh,

okay.

That's too bad.

I think he would have really liked you.

But you better go then.

I think we're about to head out.

Yeah,

yeah, you're right.

I should get back to bed.

It was good to meet you, Brownie.

You take care now.

You too, Caleb.

Caleb turned and made his way back down to the sigil-marked path to the cabin, and was about to clear his head and make his way back without his sight when he heard a grown man's voice speak in the near distance behind him,

Cottonflower,

what were you doing talking to that thing over there?

I told y'all y'all can't trust them, them hanks you meet out here.

Sleepwalkers, all of them.

Now get with the others.

We got a ways to go.

Looks like them boys over in Pocahontas might not have learned their lesson.

Caleb did not turn around.

He did not look over his shoulder.

He just kept walking.

By the time he could see the porch again, he was doing so with the eyes he was born with, and Cowboy Absher eased the door open and stepped quietly back into the cabin.

He felt his way back to his borrowed musty bed and climbed in, letting the dark settle back around him, and he tried not to think about what was moving through the black hours down by the river.

Tried not to remember what he'd heard that other

boy call him.

Then he heard Miss Ellie snore and then snort gently across the room.

He covered his mouth and fought a surprised chuckle at the thought of pretty Miss Ellie sawing logs like Mr.

Blevins did.

The reminder of the two grown folks' presence did him a world of good.

He was safe.

Whatever was up here in Virginia,

whoever was waiting in Esau County to help him, well, Miss Ellie trusted him, and he trusted Miss Ellie.

And besides,

it had to be better than just being a boy wandering angry through the dark.

There is a curse upon my every

waking breath,

and

Hey there, family.

Thank you for your patience and giving us the space and time we've needed to get this episode out to you.

This was an episode that up until a few days ago was just an idea for something we would do up the road.

And current climate and current things going on within the family and out in the world,

believe me, it's just right that we take a minute before we head into Act Two of Season Two.

Still gonna be good, still gonna mess you up, but we can use today to take a breath and remember our friends Rhonda and Gray

and hold a moment of silence for them for contemplation or for you to talk to whatever deity or non that you would like.

I'd like to do that now just for a moment.

If you just hold this space with me, family.

Thank you.

Today's story was written and performed by Steve Schell.

Our intro music is by our brother Landon Blood.

Feel better, Landon.

And our outro music, as always, well, most of the time, is by those poor bastards.

For more information on this and other stories, and about how you can support us on Patreon or via individual donation, or heck, buy a swanky t-shirt off our TeePublic or threadless stores.

You can head on over to Old Gods of Appalachia where you will find links to all those things as well as a link to our famous Discord server.

A lot of exciting things are coming, family.

Thank you for giving us this space to breathe and honor our fallen family.

We love you.

We appreciate you.

And we'll see you real soon, family.

Y'all stay safe now.

This is Hannah Berner from Giggly Squad.

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We love to see it.

Coach, the energy out there felt different.

What changed for the team today?

It was the new game day scratchers from the California Lottery.

Play is everything.

Those games sent the team's energy through the roof.

Are you saying it was the off-field play that made the difference on the field?

Hey, a little play makes your day, and today it made the game.

That's all for now.

Coach, one more question.

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