In celebration of the release of Hell Hollow, we're featuring a
companion story to the novel called "Grandma's Favorite Recipe". It's a
tale of the hidden darkness in folks' hearts and how Doctor Leech's evil
elixir might perpetuate evil if it ended up in the wrong hands.
The character of Sarah Plummer was a composite of my maternal and
paternal grandmothers, God rest their souls. One was kind and generous, as
sweet as honeysuckle on a summer breeze, while the other was rambunctious,
with a razor tongue and a hint of a wicked gleam in her eye.
GRANDMA'S FAVORITE RECIPE
My grandmother was a pillar of the community.
Yeah, I know. You hear that about people all the time. But in this case,
it was true. Sarah Plummer was a kind and loving neighbor, a faithful
friend to those around her, and a great woman of faith. She cherished
the little farming community of Harmony, Tennessee with all her heart
and was very active at the local church. Every Sunday morning, come rain
or shine, you would find her there, teaching Sunday school and playing
accompaniment on the organ as the choir sang. She always visited the
sick at the hospital and the shut-ins at the nursing home, and she
mailed out cards daily, saying "Get well soon!" or
"Missed you at church Sunday". She visited every yard sale
that was held in Harmony and bought at least one item, however
insignificant, just to let them know that she had done her part.
And Grandma baked. She was legendary in town for her confectionary
masterpieces and her homemade cakes and pies. Her specialty was cookies.
Raisin oatmeal, chocolate chip, and, my personal favorite,
snickerdoodles. Whenever she got wind that someone was down and ailing,
she would take out her ceramic mixing bowls and flour sifter, her
cinnamon, nutmeg, and baker's coca, and set to work. Grandma did
everything entirely by scratch. No store-bought cake mix ever tarnished
her kitchen counter. Pure ingredients were always used in just the
proper amounts; flour, lard, fine cane sugar, and fresh country eggs
from Will Turney's farm a mile outside of town. Then came the additions
that really gave Grandma's desserts their sparkle. Big tollhouse
chocolate chips, freshly-shred coconut, juicy raisins, pecans, and
walnuts. When she was through and the pans of earthly delight were
cooking in the oven, Grandma's kitchen smelled like how I imagined the
sweet aromas of heaven itself might be.
Then, after the cooling, Grandma Plummer would place an even dozen on a
plate and cover it with a tent of aluminum foil. Whenever the townfolk
saw her walking through town with a silvery parcel in her hands, they
smiled. They knew that she would be ringing someone's doorbell soon and
wishing them well, with both kind words and a special treat, the likes
of which only she could concoct.
Yes, my dear, little grandmother was a saintly woman.
Or so I thought for a very long time.
* * *
Sarah Plummer had not had an easy way during the ninety-six years of her
life.
She had been born to a hard-pan dirt farmer and his wife, a sickly woman
who had been weakened by a bout of typhoid fever when she was a child.
Grandma's early years had been difficult, hungry ones and, in the year
of 1917, she had lost her four brothers and sisters to an influenza
outbreak. She had been the only surviving child.
She had married at the age of eighteen to a man named Harold Plummer,
who served as postmaster of the Harmony post office for nearly forty
years. He had died of a sudden stroke in 1988. Being a housewife for her
entire married life, Grandma lived modestly on Grandpa's postal pension
in the little, white-clapboard house they had shared on Mulberry Street.
Like Grandma, I too had been dealt my share of hard blows throughout my
childhood. When I was four years old, my father was fatally injured at
the sawmill he worked at. He fell into a buzzsaw and bled to death
before the paramedics arrived. Then a year and a half later, my mother
was diagnosed with ovarian cancer. Despite a hysterectomy and numerous
chemo treatments, she succumbed to the disease nine months later. I went
to live with Grandma Plummer then and thanked the good Lord that she was
there to receive me with open arms. She did the best she could to raise
me into the man I have now become and I have nothing but gratitude for
both the discipline she provided and the love she gave me during those
tender years of childhood.
Despite what people thought, my grandmother did possess something of a
temper, however. Whenever someone hurt her feelings or she felt slighted
or wronged, she would grow absolutely livid. But that never seemed to
last very long. She would always take her Bible in hand and, sitting in
her rocking chair on the front porch, pray until those anger lines
smoothed from her face and that gentle smile returned once again. Then
she would get up, go into her kitchen, and bake a peace offering.
* * *
The first time I sensed that something wasn't quite right with Grandma
Plummer was shortly after my twelfth birthday. It was a balmy May that
year and Grandma's flower garden was brilliant with spring color;
marigolds, hyacinth, petunias, and moss roses.
There was a neighborhood dog from down the street, however, that had
been trying Grandma's patience lately. Buster was the hound's name and
he had dug up about every purple and blue iris that Grandma had planted
along the driveway. I had pegged him in the hindquarters with a Little
League baseball a couple times, but he kept coming back and wreaking
more havoc. I suggested that we buy a BB gun - not necessarily to scare
the dog off, but because I really, really wanted one at that age. But
Grandma would hear none of it.
A while later, she walked out the back door with a leftover piece of my
birthday cake on a plate. She sat it down in the grass and, soon, Buster
was there, chowing it down hungrily.
"Why are you feeding the mangy mutt?" I asked her.
"Because even though Buster vexes us with his bad behavior
sometimes, he is still one of God's creatures," she explained.
"I'm repaying his transgressions with an act of kindness. Turn the
other cheek. That's the way the Good Book says it should be."
I wasn't so sure about that. I stood and watched the dog wolf down my
last piece of birthday cake. "If you say so," I mumbled,
scratching my head.
The next day, Buster was staggering around in the middle of Mulberry
Street, snapping and snarling and foaming at the mouth. The neighborhood
kids - me included - watched in horror as Sheriff Tom Stratford shot the
dog down with his service revolver. hey strung yellow police tape around
Buster's stiffening body until a man from the county animal control
could come out. He showed up a couple hours later, scooped Buster into a
black plastic bag, and hauled him off.
No one in town could figure out how a healthy animal like Buster had
contracted rabies so swiftly, with no signs or symptoms to forewarn
anyone.
But I had my suspicions.
* * *
That night, after Grandma had gone to bed, I got up and took a
flashlight from my nightstand drawer. Then I explored the kitchen
pantry.
Something had bugged me the previous afternoon, when Grandma had served
that piece of birthday cake to old Buster. It hadn't looked right. The
sugary white icing with its red-laced baseballs and hickory brown bats
had held a nasty grayish tint to it. And, that evening, when I had gone
in for supper, I had spotted a bottle sitting on the kitchen counter. A
tall, skinny bottle that held a dark liquid. I just assumed it was
vanilla extract from Grandma's baking ingredients. Before I could ask,
however, she had taken the bottle and spirited it back to one of the
shelves in her pantry.
The little closet smelled of cinnamon and garlic as I swung the pale
beam of the light around, searching for that bottle. I found it a few
minutes later, sitting on the shelf with her spices and baking supplies.
Quietly, I reached to the back of the shelf and brought it forward,
where I could get a better look.
It was an old bottle; very old. It was tall and narrow, and sported a
single dark cork in the mouth of the stem. A label - yellowed and curled
at the edges by age - read:
DR. AUGUSTUS LEECH'S PATENTED ELIXIR - CURES A VARIETY OF PHYSICAL
ILLNESSES: GOUT, ARTHRITIS, IRREGULARITY, AND CHILDHOOD ALIMENTS.
A cold feeling washed over me at that moment.
Augustus Leech. I had heard that name before... a story whispered over a
crackling fire at a local summer camp when I was eight years old. A
dark, lanky medicine show man with a top hat full of magic tricks, a
song and a dance, and a patented elixir that guaranteed to cure all
maladies and ailments. He had come to town in the early 1900's and sold
his tonic for croup, anemia, and dysentery. And, in the process,
poisoned half the children of Harmony.
Legend had it that the menfolk had armed themselves with guns and
pitchforks and, like a mob in an old Frankenstein movie, had chased
Leech out of town. Deep down into a shadowy place called Hell Hollow...
never to be seen again.
Some kids in town had dared to explore the hollow, but I never did. I
wasn't a child for taking risks. Not with the share of tragedy fate had
given me in my younger years.
I picked up the narrow bottle. The glass seemed oily to the touch. I
studied it in the pale glow of the flashlight. It was half full of a
dark, syrupy liquid. Curious, I wiggled the cork until it pulled free.
The contents smelled both sweet and sickening; like cotton candy and
jelly beans mixed with dog vomit and the decay of a bloated possum at
the side of the road. I didn't breathe it in very deeply. It made me
feel sort of lightheaded.
Is this what Grandma had used to poison poor Buster? Or was poison too
kind a word for what had been done? And where had she gotten the elixir?
The stuff was absolutely ancient.
In the muted glow of the flashlight, the dark liquid seemed to shift and
swirl of its own accord. It almost appeared to change colors somehow;
from pitch black, to blood red, to pond scum green, then black again.
In the darkness of the pantry, something moved. A mouse savaging for
crumbs perhaps. Or perhaps not.
Hurriedly, I corked the bottle and slid it to the back of the shelf
where I had found it.
Back in bed, I laid there for a very long time before sleep finally
claimed me. And, even then, it was not an easy one.
* * *
The next time Grandma showed her true nature, I was a sophomore in high
school.
Our next door neighbors, the Masons, had suffered a very bad year. Bob
and Betty Mason's daughter, Judy, had endured a long bout with cancer
and had passed away the previous week. I was pretty depressed about her
death. I'd had a crush on Judy since sixth grade. I had even asked her
out to a school dance the previous year, but she had turned me down.
Grandma had watched the whole thing from her kitchen window and I think
it made her mad, but she hadn't said anything.
It wasn't long afterward that Judy Mason was diagnosed with leukemia. I
had just stepped off the school bus a few houses down, when I saw
Grandma standing at the Mason's door, holding a plate wrapped in
aluminum foil in her hands. I couldn't help but smile to myself. The
Cookie Patrol was on the roll again.
As I made my way down the sidewalk toward our house, I could hear
Grandma talking to Betty Mason at the doorway. "Things will be
better," Grandma told her in comforting tones. "All we can do
is pray to the good Lord for strength through this difficult time."
Mrs. Mason nodded sadly and smiled. "We appreciate your concern,
Miss Sarah. And thank you for the dessert. You know how Bob loves your
sweets."
"It's not much," Grandma told her. "But perhaps it'll
provide a small bit of comfort to you during your time of need."
Betty Mason thanked her again and closed the door. I was nearly to the
gate of the Mason's picket fence, when Grandma turned around. That
small, gentle smile crossed her lips; the same smile I'd seen a thousand
times at hospital visitations and charity bazaars, and at church as she
played her favorite hymns on the organ she mastered so well.
It was her eyes that disturbed me. They held none of the benevolence
that the rest of her face shown. They were hard, hate-filled eyes,
peering from behind her horn-rimmed glasses like tiny black stones.
Then, when she saw me approaching, they changed. They once again became
the warm lights of Christian kindness that I was so accustomed to.
"Home a little early, aren't you?" she said. "Well, come
on to the kitchen. I 've got a fresh apple crumb cake cooling on the
counter. I just took it out of the oven."
As I sat in Grandma's kitchen that afternoon, eating my second slice of
cake, I couldn't have imagined that Bob and Betty Mason would be dead
within a week. The following Thursday, their car had veered unexpectedly
across the grass median of the interstate and plowed, head-on, into a
tractor-trailer truck. Both had died upon impact.
* * *
On the night following the Masons' funeral, I had the strangest dream.
One in which I was not a participant, but a spectator.
I was in an old farmhouse. In one room a baby cried. In the other a
frail woman wailed mournfully.
I stood in a doorway between kitchen and bedroom. As the woman vented
her grief, two neighboring women were silently at work. Lying across the
eating table were the bodies of three children; two boys and a girl. All
were dead; being prepared for burial.
A man paced around the room like a bobcat on the prowl. His eyes burned
with a rage only a father can feel at the loss of his children.
I turned and looked into the bedroom. A baby - perhaps two or three
months old - wept loudly from a hand-made cradle. Feeding time had
passed, but the infant had been forgotten. And there was another child.
A four-year- old girl who sat cross-legged in the center of a big brass
bed. The girl didn't seem in the least disturbed by the events that were
taking place around her. Her eyes were focused on an object that stood
on a cherrywood bureau across the room.
It was a bottle. A tall, skinny bottle with a cork in the top. The label
read DR. AUGUSTUS LEECH'S PATENTED ELIXIR. The bottle was three
spoonfuls shy of being full.
The little girl smiled. She was quite fond of Augustus Leech; the
medicine show man who had driven his horsedrawn wagon into town and
stirred things up a bit. She had watched, enthralled, as he performed
incredible feats of magic, picked a few tunes on a five-string banjo,
and touted his patented elixir as the "Cure-All of the Ages".
And, when her father wasn't looking, he had slipped her a prize. A
playing card with a picture of a fairy princess on the face.
She had placed that card beneath her pillow last night and dreamed that
she was in an enchanted kingdom full of ogres, dragons, and wizards. A
place more real to her than the drab town of Harmony had ever been.
Her baby sister continued to cry. Slowly, the girl left the bed and took
the skinny bottle from the bureau. She knelt beside the cradle.
"Hungry?" she asked. The baby continued to wail.
She uncorked the bottle and unleashed a single drop. The infant rolled
the dark liquid around on her tiny, pink tongue for a moment. Then grew
silent.
No more middle child, the girl thought. Only me.
She smiled a curl of a thin-lipped smile... that girl with my
grandmother's eyes.
* * *
I woke up in the darkness, my heart pounding. I climbed out of bed and
went downstairs... to the pantry.
The bottle was still there, even after all these years. But it was only
a quarter of the way full now.
A cold feeling threatened to overcome me. I began to recall bits and
pieces of conflicts during my childhood. Conflicts that didn't involve
me directly, but were always between my parents and my grandmother, my
grandmother and friends and neighbors. An accusation of infidelity
toward my grandfather. A heated argument over meddling interference with
my father. A petty grudge between my mother and Grandma that echoed from
years before I was born. Hurt feelings and imagined wrongs done to the
matriarch of the Plummer family by townfolk and neighbors. But the dust
had always settled and peace was always made.
And, afterwards, there had always been sweets from Grandma's kitchen.
Followed by death.
I began to wonder if she was responsible. That maybe she was poisoning
folks with that ancient elixir that sat on the pantry shelf. But my mind
couldn't comprehend such a thing. The Masons had died in an unfortunate
accident, like my father. A ninety-six year old woman can't condemn
someone to cancer or a fatal car crash by baking them a lemon meringue
pie.
I left the kitchen pantry that night, telling myself that I was being
foolish; that my kindly grandmother had nothing to do with the
misfortunes of the citizens of Harmony. But I could never erase that
dream from my thoughts. And that little girl with the wicked grin on her
face.
* * *
Several days ago, everything just sort of fell apart for me and Grandma.
It happened on Sunday morning, I was home from college for the weekend,
sitting in a right-hand pew of the sanctuary. Church service was
proceeding as it normally did at Harmony Holiness. Jill Thompson, the
pianist, and Grandma Plummer at her organ, were playing "Leaning on
the Everlasting Arms" flawlessly. Then, before they had finished,
Pastor Alfred Wilkes rose to his feet prematurely.
The ladies stopped their playing. The entire congregation froze.
Everyone was already on edge, as it was. Bad things had been taking
place at the church in the wee hours of the night. Vandalism and
desecration.
It had begun two weeks ago. Someone had thrown rocks through three of
the stained-glass windows. Then, later, an intruder had stolen the
church's 180-year-old King James Bible from a display case in the foyer
and set fire to it on the stoop outside.
But the last blasphemous act had been the worst. Someone had defecated
on the altar.
Pastor Wilkes' face was long and mournful as his huge hands gripped both
sides of the podium. "The devil has been testing us lately, my
friends," he said in that deep baritone of his. "At first I
just thought it was some disrespectful kids. But after the second
incident, I realized that it was something much more serious. It is not
an outsider who has committed these sinful acts, but someone in our own
midst."
I couldn't believe what I was hearing. A member of the congregation had
done those horrible things? A nervous sensation of cold dread began to
form in the pit of my stomach, although I wasn't sure why.
"Following the burning of the Bible, the deacons and I discussed
the matter and came to a decision," he told us. A grim smile
crossed his face. "It's amazing what you can buy at Radio Shack
these days."
He then picked up a manila envelope that was lying atop the podium and
unfastened the clasp of the flap. "I really hate to show you
this," he said, "but God has compelled me to do so."
Pastor Wilkes then pulled an 8x10 photograph from the envelope and held
it at armslength for all to see. The congregation gasped as one. The
nervous ball of dread deep down in my belly suddenly turned into a cold,
hard stone.
Pictured there in the dimly-lit sanctuary, with her granny panties and
support hose pooled around her ankles was my grandmother... smearing her
feces across the front of the pulpit.
I groaned involuntarily, as though someone had just sucker punched me in
the gut. I heard someone clear their throat haughtily from the pew
behind me. It was Naomi Saunders, the church busybody. I could feel her
hot, self-righteous eyes burning into the back of my neck.
An uneasy silence hung heavily in the sanctuary for a long moment. Then
Pastor Wilkes turned and regarded the elderly woman sitting at the
church organ. "It grieves me in my heart to do this, Miss Sarah,
but I must ask you to leave us now."
I watched as my grandmother primly turned off her organ and, for the
very last time, left the spot she had occupied for countless Sunday
mornings. With her head held high, she walked down the center aisle,
enduring the stares of shock and disgust that etched the faces of the
congregation.
As she reached the rear doorway, I shakily stood to my feet. I couldn't
believe the pastor had handled my grandmother's comeuppance in such a
callus and tactless manner. Why couldn't he and the deacons have
confronted her privately? Standing there, I stared the preacher square
in the face. "This isn't right," I told him in front of
everyone.
I looked for some sign of satisfaction in his face, but there was none.
"No," he said flatly. "It wasn't."
Outside in the parking lot, we sat in the car. "Why,
Grandma?" I asked her. "Can you give me a reason?"
She was silent.
"Was it because you wanted the church to buy that new organ last
month and the budget committee voted it down?"
She said absolutely nothing in her defense. She simply sat there in the
passenger seat, head bowed as if in prayer... but eyes wide open.
* * *
I found Grandma dead the following Monday morning.
She laid there peacefully in her bed, wrinkled hands folded across her
chest, a tiny curl of a smile upon her thin lips.
The cause of her death was undeniable. Sitting on her nightstand was a
tall, skinny bottle. The stained cork sat neatly next to it.
"Aw, Grandma," I sighed as I picked up the bottle. It was
completely empty. "You drank it all." It had only been a
quarter full the last time I had seen it, but apparently that had been
enough.
The next two days were a blur to me. There was so much to attend to. The
proper arrangements were made at the local funeral home; the casket, the
vault, the times of visitation and, of course, the funeral itself. After
the preparations, I went back to that empty little house on Mulberry
Street. The place was a wreck. Along with her will to live, Grandma had
apparently lost her will to clean. I made the four-poster bed she had
died in, then moved on to the rest of the house. There were dirty dishes
in the sink and damp towels strewn across the bathroom floor.
The following day, Grandma was stately and dignified in her burnished,
rose-hued casket, wearing a dress she had worn at many a Sunday service.
The chapel was decorated with a forest of flower arrangements, ceramic
angel figurines, and matted pictures of Thomas Kinkade churches that
played "Amazing Grace" when you wound a music box on the back.
The funeral was almost unbearably long, populated by the folks of
Harmony, as well as the congregation that had ousted her from their
midst only a couple of days before. As Pastor Wilkes droned on and on
about what a faithful, God-fearing woman she had been, I sat there on
the front pew and tried to imagine Grandma in heaven. But I couldn't. It
simply wouldn't come to me. Trying to picture her in such a celestial
setting was like staring at a blank canvas.
After the graveside service, everyone met back at the church fellowship
hall for a lunch of covered dishes and desserts. I wasn't very hungry. I
just wanted to accept my share of condolences and get out of there. I
had much to deal with that afternoon... mostly the nagging question of
exactly why my last living relative had done the terrible things she
had.
I found myself standing next to the dessert table with Namoi Sanders. As
the woman stuffed her face, she told me about how wonderful a woman
Grandma had been and how they were all going to miss her dearly. I
pretty much nodded my head solemnly and thought about how very delicious
the cookie I was munching was, my second one, in fact.
"These are pretty good," I said. I took another bite and
washed it down with sweet tea.
"Snickerdoodles," Naomi said with a smile. "She always
said they were your favorite."
I stopped chewing. "Who made these?"
"Your grandmother, apparently," she told me. "We found
them on that table when we came to set up this morning."
Dirty dishes in the sink. Coffee cups, supper plates, mixing
bowls...
"I guess it was one last, loving gesture... God bless her."
Naomi picked up a greeting card from off the table and handed it to me.
"This was with it."
Numbly, I took it. The card face read "From your Sister in
Christ". When I opened it I found there was no printed caption,
only Grandma's unmistakably floral penmanship. I barely took two breaths
as I read the inscription.
Farewell, my friends... May we meet again in the glorious
hereafter...where the hearthfires shall crackle with warmth and we shall
labor together in eternity. I shall see you there. Love, Sarah.
"Sad, but sweet, wasn't it?" said Namoi.
I stared at the handwriting in the card. What had she been talking
about? There were no hearthfires in heaven... no fire at all. And
paradise was a place of rest, not a realm of endless labor...
I looked down at the half-eaten cookie in my hand, then at the platter
on the table. Only three cookies remained where there had been an even
two dozen before.
As I left the church, I wanted to puke... but I couldn't. The poison was
there to stay.
When I had cleaned the house, I had made the bed... but had neglected to
look beneath Grandma's pillow. When I did look, I knew exactly what I
would find.
A yellowed playing card with a fairy princess on the face.
Now I understood why I couldn't picture Grandma in heaven. She was in a
much more sinister place. A fiery realm full of ogres and dragons... and
wizards named Leech.
