PodCastle

* Author : Lora Gray
* Narrator : Alethea Kontis
* Host : Summer Fletcher
* Audio Producer : Peter Adrian Behravesh
*
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Previously published by Apparition Literary Magazine.


Violence, including child abuse.


Rated PG-13 for violence, including child abuse.
Our Roots Devour
by Lora Gray
Momma always told us the Tree ain’t got a taste for our family’s blood. But it’s hard to keep my heart from hammering when I lay that blackbird, swaddled like a baby in one of Momma’s old blouses, against its roots. The Tree’s face is pinched and lurksome in the afternoon light. And those roots? They crawl out the river like spider legs, knots and whorls winking at me like we got secrets between us.
Maybe we do.
But I don’t rightly know how to share them, I don’t know how to Sing to that Tree. Hannah’s the one who got Momma’s voice, not me. 
I try not to think about what that blackbird’ll look like all chewed up and wrung round the Tree’s branches like an old dish towel when I run back up the gully and through the woods. I think about my momma, even though she’s dead and gone under the earth. And I think about Hannah in the cellar where Aunt Marylou put her, tied up and gagged, all her magic silent.
I run faster.
I only stop when I reach the edge of the woods, my side stitching, my bare arms sweaty and bramble scratched. There, across the tangle of grass that used to be our tomato garden, is Aunt Marylou’s house, that shack with the old barn leaning against it, rotted planks slumped on busted gutters. The hayloft window gapes like it’s surprised to see me there, crouched in the chicory.
One of these days that barn’s gonna fall right over and smash Aunt Marylou’s shack. Maybe Aunt Marylou’ll be there when it happens, sitting like she is now on her back porch in that rocking chair of hers. There’s a half-gone jar of hooch in her hand. It’s the strong stuff she trades Pickle Nelson for, and the turpentine stink pulls tears out the corners of my eyes when the wind shifts. She takes a drink. The hooch sloshes. The jar clinks.
There’s an axe in Aunt Marylou’s lap, the handle long, the blade shining, and she touches it. She prays. “Show me what You want me to do,” she says over and over again. “Show me what You want me to do.”
Closing her eyes, she lights her cigarette.

I take my chance, gnats swarming all ‘round me, as I crawl into the tall grass, past her, across the lawn to that dark space between the shack and the barn where the cellar sets. 
The paint on the cellar door is flakey. The hinges are rusty.
The padlock is new.
“Hannah?” I whisper, leaning down to try to see between the cracked planks. 
It’s dark as tar down there, but I hear shuffling, bare feet on packed dirt and I imagine Hannah between all them cobwebs and last year’s canned tomatoes, her mouth stuffed with a dirty handkerchief, her hands tied up and clenched like she’s fixing to pound the whole world flat. She kicks a mason jar, and I wonder how many she broke since Aunt Marylou locked her down there last night.
“I done it,” I say. “I killed one of them birds that’s always on the Nelson’s fence. You know, the black ones? I don’t think Aunt Marylou saw.”
Hannah makes a frustrated sound. A scared sound. ‘Cause she’s been down there all day and time’s running out. I’m afraid to tell her about Aunt Marylou’s axe and how it looked fit for chopp...