Miss Rose Duke had the spiritual tapeworm. That was the best hypothesis
old Doc Smithers could come up with. She carpeted the chintz upstairs
with her out-falling hairs. The most hideous of blotches covered her
face. Only the old ladies would go near her, and only after spitting,
mumbling, and many various gestures against the evil eye — they'd cross
themselves and totter up the stairs, lucky charms jingling from their
bony fists.

We borrowed some idiots from the Asylum to take out her body in a
linen sack. In a hole well away from the rest of the town dead, they
planted her beneath shovelsful of lime.

 

Fully 50 years afterward, stories of will-of-the-wisps & glowing
graveyard stones issued from the local geezers. Strange lights were
witnessed in that general direction, appearing to land and take off
again. One morning a raccoon the size of a bear was shot near the local
dump by Zeke. This was about when The Exorcist came out, and the local
parish was prevailed upon to send a priest out there. He disappeared.

 

Three months later, he wandered out of the woods, speaking a
language no one had ever heard before. If we had'n'a known him
beforehand, we'd'a thought he was a latter-day Kaspar Hauser.

 

In the end, the scientists built a mausoleum of reinforced concrete.
Atop that, the backwoods folk carved magic symbols to ward off evil. And
that's how it stands now, though occasionally teens of necking age come
stumbling back from nights where no one knows where they been, and can't
be made to speak about what's turned their hair white.

 

————
NOTES:
1. This piece was inspired by an antique ad for "Radiumelys Radio-Active Toilet And Beauty
Preparations". Wondering at the fate of the svelte 1920's actress endorsing the stuff.
2. Kaspar Hauser is a historical mystery person, a boy who appeared at the gates of
Nuremberg in the 1800s with no history, language, or understanding of modern conventions.