Listen, Children ... Listen!

_The elements of horror are as many and varied as the threads in a Gobelin tapestry--with special stimuli for each of us. Perhaps terror lies in the howl of a coyote, in the noises of an old house, in a blaze of fire. Or perhaps it responds to the mournful creak of wheels on a gravel road, to moonlight reflected from a huge old mirror._

[Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from Fantastic Universe October-November 1953. Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.]

My grandmother was fey. At least that's what the neighbors said. She could predict the weather by the way her left heel "eetched." She always knew by some sixth sense when any of her blood was coming down from Indianapolis to visit our tumbledown farm. She insisted she heard angels singing (or sounds considerably more terrifying) during funerals at the New Harmony Church over the hill.

In the eyes of myself and my sister Annette Maw was as old as the gullies which cut up our clay fields. Probably she was about sixty when I first remember her. She still carried her lean body proudly though her back was bowed. She had a gift for mimicry and a merry smile marred by the fact that she had been salivated by taking too much calomel to fight off fever'n'aiger. This misfortune had caused her gums to recede and gave her a snaggle-toothed look. Some of her fangs moved when she ate but, to our eternal wonder, they never fell out.

She had the untiring wreck of a fine alto voice and regaled us with renditions of bloody old hymns or ballads like "The Ship's Carpenter" (And three times 'round went our gallant ship e'er she sank to the bottom of the sea) or an endless garbled song about a girl who masqueraded as a soldier to join her sweetheart in the wars between "Tors and Highlanzer."

I still have nightmares about those childhood years. The Brown murder was a recent memory--Patriarch Brown and his blind wife had been slaughtered by "persons unknown" in a hemlock-shrouded farmhouse half a mile from our cabin. Repercussions of the trial had hardly died away.

There was talk of another investigation and the persons--well known to everyone but the law--were prowling the countryside, flashing dark lanterns under doors and shouting threats of what would happen to neighbors who dared tell what they knew. Paw woke one night and fired his squirrel rifle at what he thought was a lantern but which was only a suddenly-flaming fireplace ember. The bullet knocked a newel post off my bed.

Despite the campaign of terror Paw just had to drive to the county seat once a month for supplies. Always he promised to be back by sundown. Always he met some old Butternut cronies--comrades-at-arms in the Knights of the Golden Circle during Civil War days. And in talking about how they had outfoxed and outfought the National Guard sent to punish them for desertion from the Union Army he usually would be delayed until the night closed in.

Then, as Annette and I lay in our bed beside the fireplace, refusing to go to sleep because we knew Paw would bring us presents, Maw would open the front door, hook her bare foot around it and listen, tense with a fear which communicated itself to us.

The katydids might be quarreling. Or the baying of Mr. Morningstar's coon dogs might drift through the fall or winter air. A screechowl's sobbing might cause us to cling together in a shiver.

Finally we'd start whimpering. Then Maw would twist her wrinkled head back through the crack in the door and whisper, "Shhh! Listen, children.... Listen! I think I hear Josiah's wagon. They hain't got him this time."