The Maynard Girls

By Mary Beth Young

Meemaw Maynard shares the macabre and grotesque tales in this southern gothic collection with her fourteen year old granddaughter Sarah in order to warn her about the mad and violent inheritance she has flowing through her veins as one of the Maynard girls.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Mary Beth Young
• Release date: Jul 15, 2013
• ISBN: 9781301459452

Mary Beth Young

Mary Beth Young grew up in Kentucky and currently lives a reclusive existence in Tucson, Arizona with her two cats, Maudie and Pearl. Find out more at www.mbyoung.org

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The Maynard Girls

by

Mary Beth Young

Published by Mary Beth Young at Smashwords

Copyright 2013 Mary Beth Young

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Chapter 1- The Curse

I've had a lot of time to think lately and my mind just keeps going back to Meemaw Maynard. She was a bony little lady with wrinkled brown skin and rough, calloused hands that betrayed the lifetime she'd spent working in tobacco and trying to raise up twelve kids the best way she knew how. But the twinkle in her blue eyes always let you know that through it all, she'd never let the hard times get her down. That twinkle changed to a steely glint though, the night she sat me down and finally told me the truth about my great grandma, June.

My mom was working the late shift at the Golden Corral and being fourteen, I wasn't at all interested in spending Friday night listening to my grandmother ramble on about her childhood. I was only five when Papaw Maynard died and that's when Meemaw came to live with us. She became kind of like a second parent to me since my daddy was never really in the picture. And I treated her accordingly by ignoring her until she raised her voice, something Meemaw rarely did.

Look here child, you better set your little ass down and listen to me!

She was a devout Pentecostal woman so I knew when she used the word ass, it was serious. I pulled out the chair across from her at the kitchen table and waited for Meemaw to continue.

"There's something you need to know, and the only way you're gonna understand it all is if I start with the story of your Granny June...Well, not just your Granny June, that's what everybody called her."

Why's that?

She supplied the herbs and drugs, and even some spells that would help people with things that the churches and doctors couldn't. Since she followed the old ways, I guess it aged her somehow too. But how she accessed those old ways, that's what's important to us.

Meemaw paused for a minute and exhaled audibly.

Okay, now I know that some of what I'm gonna say may be hard to believe but as God is my witness, every word of it's true... Do you remember hearing about them mummies they pulled out of Mammoth Cave?

Is that like the Wampus Woompus story?

What?! Lord no! Didn't I just tell you that every bit of this is the God's honest truth? Them mummies ain't nothing like that crazy old tale of your Papaw's about some cow-eating dinosaur thing coming up out of that cave. Those mummies really did exist. You can look it up on that internet.

It's okay, I tried to soothe Meemaw, I believe you.

And Mammoth Cave wasn't the only place you could find mummies around these parts. When Granny June was just a little girl she used to climb down in the sinkhole behind her house and listen to a lady's voice coming out of the ground around her. Eventually, she dug a hole big enough to crawl through where she thought the voice was coming from and found a mummy right there in a hidden cave on her daddy's property. It was a big old woman, well over six feet tall, and she was seated on a makeshift rock throne with wisps of rusty red hair trailing from the back of her skull. Granny June was sure she'd found some ancient goddess. I ain't so sure what she was but by the time I can remember, my mama just called her the Spider Lady.

So you saw her too?

"Oh yeah, Mama started taking me out to the cave when I wasn't much more than a baby, maybe