A Once-Told Tale: The Wolf Sisters Part One

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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.

Play the new Los Angeles Chargers, San Francisco 49ers, and Los Angeles Rams Scratchers from the California Lottery.

A little play can make your day.

Please play responsibly.

Must be 18 years or older to purchase play or claim.

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Save on items like Hershey's, Reese's, pumpkins, Snickers, miniatures, Tootsie Rolls, raw sugar, milk, chocolate, caramel, jack-o'-lanterns, Brock's Candy Corn, Charms Mini Pops, and more.

Off friends, October 7th.

Restrictions apply, offers may vary.

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The following is a special presentation of Old Gods of Appalachia, which is a horror anthology podcast and therefore may contain material not suitable for all audiences.

So, listener discretion is advised.

The birth of a healthy living child is a cause for celebration in most places.

The birth of a healthy living child to a living and loving mother, even more so.

But when it's a child that should have never been born,

the narrative shifts.

When a child's very existence threatens the wealth and social standing of a rich and well-known father because maybe the mother is poor and not the right shade of white,

well then it becomes a very different story entirely.

It is important to note, however, before we move into this tale that both the babe and mother in this scenario lived.

They were never in any real imminent danger and both went on to live long and prosperous and frankly quite boring lives, knowing and loving each other for for all their days.

So don't y'all worry about that, none.

The man they left behind, though.

Well,

let's talk about him.

Jubal Tucker owned a good stretch of land with a right nice house on it out in the country near a thriving little town in eastern Tennessee.

It wasn't a rich place yet, but the railroad had been carving up the foothills for a better part of the decade down that way and buddy Jubal Tucker had already cashed in.

A bachelor well into his 30s, Jubal had never married.

He'd come close once, but his lady love had passed in a flu epidemic and Jubal never fully recovered from her passing.

And while not exactly a recluse, Jubal Tucker kept to himself, lived in a fine house outside of Bakers Gap, Tennessee.

And from time to time, he would employ women from the town or thereabouts to clean and care for his property.

It would be one of these women that sets our story into motion.

Jubal Tucker would come to hire a beautiful young thing named Dolores to clean his house, tend to his linens, and his washing.

Now, Dolores' skin and tongue carried notes of distant Mexico, and she was a unique and strange beauty in this deeply white little town.

Now the greater Bakers Gap area is carved up equal by river and railroad, and there are a thousand little hollers and nooks that wind back into the hills and by the river.

But the one everybody knows about,

but the one they seldom talk about,

was called the Clutch.

The clutch was a deep dipping holler that had been home for more than a little while to a group of women of varying ages and ethnicities.

Young, old, white, black, brown, native, and all the mixing in between, there tended to be nine or ten women at a time living in the clutch, but never any men.

Sometimes women came to the area and settled there a while before finding a more permanent living arrangement or job.

And it was through her cousin Nesme that Dolores had come to Tennessee, and she had shared the older woman's small house and had been welcomed into that community on a whole and accepting level that she would never know in the town proper.

The clutch was also a place where women who didn't have no kin or nobody left could go if things went sideways.

Now, nobody from Baker's Gap would go live there for Finn.

No, the respectable and Lily White of that fine Tennessee community kept to their own, thank you very much.

But it didn't stop folks from seeking a remedy out that way sometimes.

Maybe a throwing of the bones or a bit of a charm.

A potion to empty a womb.

Private things.

Things they don't talk about, especially not with us men folk around.

But the women of the clutch were a peculiar mix of settled outsider and widowed matriarchs of folks from elsewhere.

But it was also common thought that they were all witches and would eat your children if you looked at them wrong in the mercantile.

So, best keep moving, sister.

Dolores worked for Jubal Tucker for four months before he kissed her.

Now, I want to be clear here, family.

Jubal Tucker, damaged and eventually doomed man that he was, was also kind and gentle.

He minded his boundaries, neither forced nor coerced Dolores into sharing his home or his bed.

He had money and security and he offered it.

More than that, he had a lonely heart and she made him happy.

So he kept her there.

Kept her secreted away from the rest of Baker's Gap and from his family who still held their property in Georgia.

Jubal was happier than he'd been in years.

And when Dolores told him she was with child,

he was over the moon.

He had decided he would marry this woman.

He would raise this child, hopefully a son, as his own, and damn the world.

He would claim his own way.

And if it cost him the family money, then, well, so be it.

This was all well and good and set in the stone of a good man until Jubal Tucker's mother came to call from far and distant Blairsville, Georgia.

Enraged and scandalized that her son would commingle the family bloodline with something other than good Christian white girl, Mavis Tucker raged and threatened and pointed fingers.

And if Dolores knew what was good for her, she'd get her whore self back to wherever she'd come from before she cut that whelp out of her belly herself.

And she'd even gone so far as to brandish a kitchen knife at Dolores' pregnant belly.

And Jubal stood mute and petrified as the woman he loved fled his house and back toward the clutch.

He would never see her again.

It took two days for Mavis Tucker to get Jubal's uncles to town and to pack Jubal off to the family estate back in Blairsville just until things cooled off.

She assured Jubal she wouldn't hurt the girl none.

She'd just been upset.

She'd talk to her, give her some money, but Jubal would not marry her.

And he would not claim whatever crawled out of her womb.

And just like that,

Jubal went back to Georgia.

But then his mama called on a handyman who had done work for their family for years.

A trusted old Army buddy of her late husband, a man who knew how to take care of things, a man who could clean this up and who knew how to be discreet and how not to be seen when he was about his business.

Now, by the time Mavis Tucker's man, Jr.

Metcalf, was able to find where the pregnant girl that worked for Mr.

Tucker had lived, well, she'd already had the baby.

Beautiful, healthy little boy that she named Joaquin after her father.

Within days of delivery, the women of the clutch who had overseen and blessed the child's birthing had smuggled the mother and child from the town, then the county, then the state all the way west to Arkansas, where as we said, they lived out happy and natural lives.

By the time Junior Metcalf did creep into the clutch that night with his big army knife and his big army surplus bag full of all kinds of nasty things,

Dolores and her baby had been gone for two days.

The women of the clutch, however,

were all at home.

Junior had been crouching at the perimeter of the shared yard.

The main buildings of the clutch, you see, were built in a three-quarter circle with a common yard with a fire pit, clothes lines, and other common things of rustic life readily available for all

when he saw the old woman.

She looked about 60 or 160.

Hell, he couldn't tell.

She was clearly Cherokee and stood staring blankly at him from about 30 feet away.

You are too late, she said and began to laugh.

Too late.

And her laughter grew.

Too late, silly man, called a younger voice from somewhere else.

Higher-pitched laughter joined the older woman's croaking cackles.

A third voice called something in a language Junior didn't recognize, and its voice began to laugh too.

Junior stumbled back.

The voices seemed to be all round him now, at least a half-dozen of them, and he felt strange,

disoriented.

His feet seemed heavy, and his breathing was slow.

He stared down at his feet, willing them to move.

And then, when he looked up, there was a snarl, and jaws closed on his throat.

The next morning,

Mavis Tucker was locking up her son's house.

She had stepped onto the porch and was turning the key in the lock when she heard someone behind her laugh softly.

She turned with a start to find a stout, middle-aged black woman, dressed as if to clean the house, holding a canvas bag at the foot of the steps.

Oh, I'm sorry, Mavis began.

You frighten me.

Mr.

Jubal has gone back to Georgia for a while.

He won't need you to clean for at least two weeks.

The woman stared at Mavis,

her eyes glinting playfully,

knowingly.

She began to smile widely,

and she offered Mavis the satchel.

No, honey, I'm sorry.

I can't let you in to clean.

Mr.

Jubal

not here.

Do you understand me?

The woman offered her the satchel again.

Mavis was a little bit scared of this woman.

Well, she was bigger than her for one, so if she wanted to rob her, well, what could Mavis do?

But mostly it was her eyes.

They didn't look quite right to Mavis.

What's this?

Mavis reached hesitantly for the bag.

The woman was clearly fighting back giggles at this point, and Mavis began to suspect she was being mocked.

You lost this.

And her accent alone was enough to shiver Mavis.

Mavis looked at the bag, recognized the U.S.

Army markings that would designate 90% of the possessions a man like Junior Metcalf would have to his name.

Where'd you get this?

Did you steal this?

You lost this.

We found.

And she giggled and started walking away her laughter growing

mavis watched the woman go and then looked down at what was clearly junior's bag

mavis opened it and looked inside

and screamed

the bag contained junior's big army knife Oh, and his army ring, too,

which was still on the finger of his severed right hand that was also in the bag, along with Junior's teeth and tongue that rested in the pale desert of that bloodless palm.

Mavis Tucker would see those artifacts of her own failed cruelty in her dreams for years to come.

But she'd never returned to Baker's Gap and would die on her own terms the following year.

The magic of vengeance is never a clean thing, though.

When Jubal's uncles returned to the gap on their mother's instructions to see what had happened to their father's oldest friend, they made it all a three days wandering the woods around the clutch.

They had been loud and cloudish fools in white shirts and stupid-looking hats.

They had prayed loudly in the road about casting out witches and suffering them not to live.

They'd even attempted to reach out to the local Grand Dragon to get some white hooded help.

But even those bloated old bags of coleslaw knew better than to come down to the clutch.

Either way, the two men were found tied to a tree on their nephew's property, throats torn out,

hands chewed off,

stinking of animal piss and rot.

Jubal Tucker himself returned to Baker's Gap later that year,

his heart broken and his soul shamed by his doings.

If he'd just stood up to his mama, if he'd married Dolores from the outset, I mean, sure, they'd have less money because mama would have disowned him for sure, but his uncle Sammy and Tripp would still be alive.

Dolores would be with him and he'd know his child.

He slept in his house for two nights and had dreamed of his love and their son.

Dreamed of the life they could have had.

But the dream he had on the last night there

was different.

It started like all the others.

Him and Dolores and a beautiful boy of about four or five years old walking in a golden-lit yard, laughing,

tossing a ball for the little man, watching him chase it, scooping up his boy and swinging him around.

Bliss.

In this this version of the dream, however,

the skies darkened as he swung his son through the air.

The intense musk of animals filled his nose as the growls and howls of wolves broke through the peace of his dream like a clumsy child through spider webs.

Jubal nearly sprung from his bed.

He sat up so quickly.

But family,

you know how dreams work in this place, don't you?

They never seem to stay all the way on the other side, now do they?

So Jubal made his way to the front door,

his sense of smell still rife with the stench of marked territory and lupine breath.

And so there,

Jubal Tucker found himself

standing on his front porch in the edge of dawn mists, staring down six women of six different ages of four different races,

naked as the day they were born,

and their bodies were of diverse shapes and colors,

their hair long to their waists or chopped below the ear.

They were not a uniformed body of risen dead, they were not the unheard whispers of the women in church, they were not an auxiliary, or a hen house, or a gaggle.

It was clear from the tilt of their heads,

the scent in the air,

the way their bodies seemed attuned to the morning breeze and the fluid indolence in their slightly swaying forms.

Jubal knew a pack when he saw one.

One by one,

they turned their eyes on him.

Their change was quick.

Jubal's death

was not.

The magic of vengeance is never a clean thing.

The number of animal attacks that spring set a new record.

Men vanished from railroad jobs, from outside late-night saloons on their way to and from work.

Their mauled and half-eaten bodies always delivered to their families' doorstep within a few days.

And there were were never any witnesses,

just dead bodies and wolf tracks.

Now, people who would know about these sort of things within the town that would rather other people not know that they know about said things started looking into things.

Every small town has people, sometimes elders, sometimes not, who know about the things that happen in the black spaces between these mountains.

And these people went to the clutch to see what the women there knew.

They found it empty,

abandoned.

Clothes left on lines, food left rotting in stores, beds unslept in.

So this clandestine council of unnamed folk took the steps required of them, and a letter was hand-delivered to a tall log building about 12 miles outside of Baker's Gap.

A structure that looked part respectable vacation lodge and part mountain fortress with a well-kept plank walkway that spanned up the side of the high hill to the front door.

The front porch itself was supported by 12-foot sturdy columns, each ornately carved with local flora and fauna.

The floor of said porch was a constellation of elaborate whirling lines and geometrical shapes and traps.

The light from the front room

was warm and a soft bronze.

If you were welcome here,

this might feel more like home than you'd ever know.

If you were unwelcome,

well,

there's that.

The deed to this property was registered to Pleasant Evenings Enterprises of Tourniquet, West Virginia.

But the sign over the door simply read,

The Walker House.

Marcy Walker was the first of her sisters to be sent out into the world by her late mama, Sheila, to use the considerable nest egg Mama had gathered for them at first to build her own parlor house, staffing six girls and three boys and doing quite well for herself

until that business with the local magistrate and the railroad man.

And well, after that,

things had to change, but that's a story for another time, just

not right now.

So Pleasant Evenings, as the first house had been called, shifted purpose and became the Walker House for Wayward Women in Need.

And it was exactly what its name said it was.

It was a place for a child to be born away from prying church eyes.

It was a place for a woman with a dangerous husband or wife to stay while a new life was found for her.

It had been the place that young Dolores Jimenez and eventually her infant son Joaquin had passed through on their way back west, never to be seen in these parts again.

And if that were the only part the Walker House had to play in this story,

that would be a blessing.

But sadly, it is not.

You see, Marcy Walker took keen interest in the activities of all women with the true gift in these parts of the mountains.

Bad attention for a few could and usually would mean bad attention for all.

So when the women of the clutch had begun their blood song on the men of Baker's Gap,

it would only be a matter of time before that song was turned back upon every practicing holler witch in these parts.

She understood the women down in the clutch, though.

I mean hell, you go without having any kind of power at all.

Having to hide what you have for so long that when you do get to let a little bit out to set something right,

well, it could be right painful to go back into hiding.

The problem was not that they had become so enamored with becoming wolves that they had decided to forsake their given forms.

That had happened in the past, would happen again.

Sometimes, folks, is just born into the wrong shape

and need to be able to shift to find home.

Being a wolf is a beautiful and deadly thing.

All that speed and power, all the jaws alone are worth the loss of humanity.

To be a wolf is a thing of spring-loaded joy, of black-gummed panting death, of pack and ground, torn tendon blood and broken bones in feasting abandoned beneath a split and howling sky, but to be a wolf with the mind of a mortal man or woman.

No.

No, we can't be trusted with that kind of power without being broken by it.

Not even the wise women of the clutch.

No.

Not even them.

So something was going to have to be done.

And to get that something done, she'd need help.

She couldn't do it by herself.

She could send Melvin to fetch Ellie and she could be here by midweek, she figured.

She hated it when this happened.

Good, strong gifts gone bad.

But something had been moving lately.

That was for sure.

She could smell it in the air,

almost taste it.

1917 was shaping up to be a hell of a year.

Things were already this wild in the spring.

What in her mama's name would the summer bring?

There is a curse upon my

every waking breath,

and I cannot escape

the darkness.

Hey, family.

How y'all doing?

I hope y'all enjoyed this full production version of the Wolf Sisters Part 1.

Now, this is not the launch of season two let me say that again this is not the launch of season two

nor is build mama a coffin season two we've had some people be confused about that and want to uh talk about us jumping behind a paywall for season two and we are doing no such thing be clear build mama a coffin as we've told you from the get-go if you listen and paid attention is an exclusive storyline for patreon patrons not to be mistaken for season two which will come and will be free just like season one was

Now the Wolf Sisters was originally performed on Discord for an audience of a few hundred people crammed into a Discord voice channel just last weekend in late March here in the year of the plague.

I hope everybody is keeping sane and safe in your isolation and you're not going out doing something stupid trying to go to a red lobster that's not open or something.

Nobody wants that.

The Sizzler can wait y'all Okay, Bonanza will still be there.

But we are going to return to the live arena on Discord, which that was fun.

And we can't really have the sound effects on the ambiance that I would like to have, but it's a cool and easy way for everybody to access.

And it was kind of cool.

There were some challenges, but we think we've got a better handle on it, cramming a few hundred people into a Discord voice channel.

But Saturday, April 4th, 2020, the year of the plague.

We will gather again in congregation to finish this story.

The Walker sisters, y'all, they're here.

And if you did the math on those dates, you know what we're right before.

You know what comes in the summer of 1917 in our world.

And you know where you meet the Walker Sisters.

So there's some interesting things to examine.

And I'm going to go ahead and announce this now in a recorded format.

I announced it on the Discord server.

In season two, when it happens, and it will.

We're getting closer and closer to making an announcement about season two.

There will be a Walker Sisters story arc in season two.

Y'all kind of asked for it.

You got it.

In fact, if you've not been by the Threadless store lately, the same night of the Discord reading, we unveiled a Walker Sisters t-shirt, which is over at oldgodsofappalachia.threadless.com, along with our new collection of old socks of Appalachia.

Go check those out as well.

This is a hard time.

Y'all, we're in an unprecedented territory and things are hard.

Two out of the three of the members of this team that produce this show have lost their jobs.

I'm still blessed enough to be teaching.

And how have y'all responded to this news on social media?

You've upped your Patreon pledges.

You've bought merch.

You've asked us for our PayPal for the love of God.

Thank you, family.

Thank you from the bottoms of our cold, black, slowly pulsating hearts that are actually voids, but don't ask questions about that.

Thank you.

Look, this is beyond anything we ever imagined.

This is not a fandom.

This is the family.

And we love y'all very, very much.

And if you do want to help,

And we're back live during a flex alert.

Oh, we're pre-cooling before 4 p.m., folks.

And that's the end of the third.

Time to set it back to 78 from 4 to 9 p.m.

What a performance by Team California.

The power is ours.

Coach, the energy out there felt different.

What changed for the team today?

It was the new game day scratches 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 today it made the game.

That's all for now.

Coach, one more question.

Play the new Los Angeles Chargers, San Francisco 49ers, and Los Angeles Rams Scratchers from the California Lottery.

A little play can make your day.

Please play responsibly must be 18 years or older to purchase, play, or claim.

At CertaPro Painters, we know that a happy place comes in many colors.

Like ones that inspire a sense of wonder or a new flavor that makes life just a little bit sweeter.

Or one to celebrate those moments that lift you to new heights at home or at work.

We'll make your happy place your own.

CertaPro Painters.

That's Painting Happy.

Each Certipro Painters business is independently owned and operated.

Contractor license and registration information is available at certapro.com.

Patreon.com/slash old gods of Appalachia.

It's where you can become a patron.

Build Mama a coffin is still going.

There's a lot of cool stuff to come.

So we'll see you all on April 4th over on Discord.

Talk to you soon, family.