Having told y’all some of what it was like growing up in my neck of the Ozarks, seems like I need to keep going. Telling about and warning about places is one thing. That is easy enough, just don’t go there and you’ll be safe enough (still won’t help you if you step on a Cottonmouth Snake thinking it’s a stick), and you can find yourself home in time for dinner.
Now I’m thinking maybe it is a time to share with those of you who will listen to some of that what could come looking for you. What to do, or if it would be too late.
Folks, understand I grew up here and my facts sure might be different than yours, but to discount what I’m talking to you about would be a foolish thing.
See, when this land was being settled by white folk they were mostly of German, Dutch, and Irish blood. For those that settled in the hills they got on well enough with the native people. Civil war saw a lot of changes in a lot of places, along with things like the Trail of Tears (bless the fallen), but the hill-folk? They did their best to mind their own just like always. They learned the ways of this new land and did what they always did. Respect where they lived. I have to wonder if it wasn’t those same ways that caused them to bring with them what they did, for good or ill.
Neither here nor there, I sure ain’t here to give y’all a history lesson. The lessons I mean to talk on, they’re older for sure. I can only try to share.
Something all of them that settled here shared was a belief in that which moves unseen. Become a popular trend of late to speak of them so I figure I might warn of a few. Shoot, you will still see some folk put out milk and honey ‘round these parts. Bits of bread or biscuit, some of the fat from a good hunt. It’s all for “Them” you see. You should know what I mean by now of what I’m talking about and if you don’t, then just follow along. Ya might just learn a thing or three.
As a small child one of my earliest memories isn’t of family, faces, or smells. Nope, it was a sound. I remember it well and sure my own young ones will too. A beat and a song with no words. Every night, it’s what would settle my young head and lull me to slumber.
See, folk speak of house sprites, brownies, boggans and the like, but nah, we lived in a house built by folk of German descent and when they passed on and my folks bought it and the land, well let’s just say some things they learned the hard way. Like what would lay me to dream as a babe.
Oh it could be right helpful round the place, keeping the embers in the wood stove, making certain the spiders stayed out of our shoes and that our home was a place of safety if not of wealth. My own sister saw him once with a friend of hers and scared the piss out of both of them.
What I aim for is when I was, oh, about eight years old or so something happened. There was a turn in the feel of the house, and it was due to my Ma being all I knew. She turned mean, hateful, spiteful to everyone in the family. Started aiming it at my Pa, then eventually towards me. Not here for that though.
It made me notice a lot more though, having to watch for when the next beating would fall. Like the small flitting shadow that would zip away out the corner of my eye right before Ma would fly into a fit about losing something she just sat down. I know it to be real now, and she hated that thing. Cursed it and threatened it.
When I would hide at night in my bed it was from fear of pain, not monsters, and on occasion I would still hear that beat. That was when I knew it for what it was, that sound. It was a small but very deep heartbeat. The flit of a shadow was all I ever saw.
It wasn’t long before she done made it right angry. I can only wonder at what she did, but I do know that the night it happened I was outside, hiding in the overgrowth. I heard that heartbeat nearby. It wasn’t alone. The crickets had gone quiet and the fireflies were all red that night. What I tell myself anyhow.
It was like being in the middle of a circle of drummers, but then the drums moved quick toward the house, a circle closing in. Window and doors flew open and shadows poured in at the same time the lights all went out. Never, ever make a Kobold angry folks and I ain’t talking bout those lizards from D-n-D. REAL Kobolds. Ma had scars and wounds what never healed. Her mind broke too. I hid out in that brush while she screamed first in anger then pain.
She saw things everywhere after that and it was absolute terror until she had that wise woman out with the broom and dirty salt. Only then did she calm down. She still lost fingers and an eye and her mind, well she wasn’t the same. She was a cold mean after that. Like living with a pissed off coiled viper, why I spent most my time in the hills and hollows.
But she never knew a day of peace until the day she died. So what is this other than a ramble? Simple. If you ever hear a small beating as you are drifting off to sleep, know that you share your home with a Kobold. They are just some of the smallest that live round these parts. If you anger it, remember they have kin and they like fresh blood and meat.