Skin Medicine

She was chained to the floor, pulling herself away from the light like some gigantic worm. Her flesh had gone marble-white and was damp and glistening like the flesh of a mushroom. Great sores and ulcers were set into her and some had eaten right to the bone beneath. It was hard to say if she was wearing rags or that was just her skin hanging in loops and ragged folds. Her hair was steel-gray and stringy, those eyes just fathomless holes torn into the vellum of her face.

But what struck James Lee the hardest was not the eyes or the stink or even the feces and filthy straw and tiny animal bones scattered about…it was that she seemed to have tentacles. Just like one of them sea monsters in a picture book that ate ships raw. Long, yellow things all curled and coiled like clocksprings.

But then…he realized they were her fingernails.

And they had to be well over two feet in length…hard, bony growths that came out of her fingertips and laid over her like corkscrewed snakes.

James Lee made a sound…he wasn’t sure what…and she opened those flaking lips, revealing gray decayed teeth that sprouted from pitted gums like grayed fence posts. She made a grunting, squealing sound like a hog. And then she reached out to him, seemed to know him, and those fingernails clattered together like castanets.

That’s when he slammed the door shut.

That’s when he threw the bolt.

And that’s when he ran down through the snow and brambles, ducking past dead oaks and vaulting fallen logs. He ran all the way to the cabin and stumbled and fell into the door. Then Uncle Arlen threw it open, yanking him inside, into that mouth of warmth and security, demanding to know what it was, what it was.

But James Lee could not tell.

***

The Ozarks back then had a fine story-telling tradition. Sometimes a man’s worth was judged on how hard he worked and how good of a yarn he could spin. So James Lee was no stranger to tales of ghosts and haunts, child-eating ogres that lived in the depths of the forests or blood-sucking devil clans that peopled secret hollows. For everything scarcely understood or completely misunderstood, there was a story to explain it. It was a region where folktale and myth were an inseparable part of everyday life. There were faith healers and power doctors, water witches and yarb grannies…you name it, it showed sooner or later.

And one thing the Ozarks never had a shortage of were witches.

Some good, some evil, some real and some storied, regardless, they were there. Ask just about anyone in any locality of the hills and they could tell you where to find one…or point you to someone who could.

The kids at school told of an old man named Heller the Witch-Man who lived up in some misty hollow that few dared venture to. He could cast out devils and call them up, cure disease and make hair grow.

James Lee figured it was just another story…then one day he was down in town. Uncle Arlen was picking up some feed. James Lee was standing out on the boardwalk, kicking pebbles into the street. Suddenly…he got the damnedest feeling. He felt dizzy and the birthmark on his back started to burn something awful.

He turned and some grizzled old man was standing there, staring at him.

He looked like some hillbilly from the high ridges, dirty and smelling in an old hide coat. He had a single gold tooth in his lower jaw and it sparkled in the sunlight.

“ Boy…ye got the mark on ye,” he said. “Ye got it on ye and ye cain’t rid yerself of it…”

Then Uncle Arlen came out and dragged James Lee bodily away. And even after he threw him in the wagon and they made their way out of town, James Lee could feel those eyes on him, feel that mark on his back burning like a coal.

Uncle Arlen shouted and raged and warned James Lee about talking to strangers, because one day you meet the wrong one and soon enough, he sneaks up to the farm and slits all our throats.

James Lee just said: “It’s him, ain’t it? The Witch-Man.”

“ Ain’t no such thing, damn ye! Ain’t no such thing!”

But James Lee couldn’t stop. “They say…they say how he can do things. Things no one else can. Maybe, maybe if we brought the…the crazy woman to him, he could cure her-”

James Lee caught the back of Uncle Arlen’s fist in the mouth for that. And when he got home, he got a better taste of it. When Uncle Arlen was done, James Lee was folded up on the ground bleeding.

“ Ye never, ever, never mention that one ‘round me again, hear?” Uncle Arlen told him. “That heathen devil witch-man is nothin’ but pain and trouble! He cain’t cure nothin’ and no one, all he’ll bring ye is seven yards of hell!”

After that, James Lee didn’t mention Heller the Witch-Man again.

Even Auntie Maretta looked on him differently. She wasn’t exactly cold, but gone was the warmth and love he’d once known. Sometimes he got the feeling she was scared of him. And one night he heard Uncle Arlen say:

“ What’d I tell ye, woman? Like calls to like.”