Apparitions of Elizabeth Robinson

By Jennie L. Morris

Elizabeth Robinson.

An Elizabeth Robinson has lived in the hills of Eastern Kentucky as long as people have built permanent settlements in the lush, green forests. While the mountains recover from the War of Northern Aggression, the simple folk seek the healings of the Robinson women. Three generations, working the ways from the old country, live in isolation.

 

The youngest Elizabeth Robinson, a healer by happenstance, despises her role in the family. She longs for freedom, the wilderness of her youth, an escape from a dark secret. Alone in the forest, she stumbles upon the ghost of a Yankee soldier, Samuel Henry.

 

Determined to help Samuel pass beyond the veil, Elizabeth brings him back to her mountain home. Turning of the wheel of fortune, prosperity changes to misfortune for the Robinsons, and a menacing figure lingers like a thick fog. Generations, built on lies, force Elizabeth to face a bleak reality and make the ultimate sacrifice.

• Language: English
• Publisher: By Quill and Lantern Publishing
• Release date: Dec 13, 2019
• ISBN: 9781393975854

Book preview

Chapter 1

Eastern Kentucky, 1870

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The bird called. She listened, walking through the trees, headed home. Elizabeth Robinson, not her birth name, was tired. Each generation had an Elizabeth Robinson. She picked the long way, through the winding, slender path, which slithered through oaks and hickory. It danced around the sugar maples and yellow-poplar, meandering as a rocky stream.

Hot summer, when the air dripped with water, and the mountains’ mist clung like a suffocating blanket. She switched the bucket from her left hand to her right, the crawdads from the stony creek, sloshing in the water. Barefoot, born to wander shoeless, she caught sight of the family house through a break in the undergrowth.

Visitors.

Mamma and Granny were Elizabeth Robinsons too. Her Mamma went by Beth. Granny, they all called her Old Liza. Everyone referred to her as Elizabeth now. She forgot her old name, her old self.

Climbing up the creaking porch, she didn’t bother acknowledging the man and woman waiting on the worn, rough-hewn bench. She went through the paint-chipped door, past the cramped sitting room, to the kitchen, and placed their dinner on the wobbly table. The work came first.

Where ye been, child? Granny asked, standing at the rusty wood-fed iron stove, holding her spiral knobbed cane. The metal beast, a barter from when her Granny was a child, heated the house in the winter and cooked their food year-round.

Elizabeth, the name as ill-fitting as her yellow hand-me-down dress, pointed at the bucket. Getting crawdads as Mamma told me.

Wash yer face and yer hands. Ye’re filthy. Granny shuffled to the battered metal skink and primed the water pump. Cold water gurgled up from their mineral spring. Get going child. We haven’t got all day.

Giving off a slight smell of animal fat, the soap, hard and lumpy, made suds. She scrubbed her hands, then dunked her face in the water. Granny threw a coarse rag at her, then hobbled into the sitting room, inviting the couple inside the sweltering house.

With one blind eye, Mamma relied on her hands to traverse the dark, steep staircase from upstairs into the kitchen. Once a beauty with fiery red hair, pale buttercream skin, and the voice of a songbird, she no longer bothered with her appearance. The injury which caused her blindness wasn’t the cause for the change, she accepted the loss of sight in her left eye with grace. The blindness helped with the other sight, she saw deep into people, reading their sicknesses. No, it was giving up three sons, and then the loss, which drained her Mamma of life like a fat tick sucking blood until bursting.

Elizabeth, ye minding yer Granny? she asked, reaching the bottom step. So thin, a boney, angular woman, no one would call her beautiful anymore. Haunted maybe.

I always mind, Mamma, she answered, trying to comb out her lengthy, black hair with her fingers. Go in, Mamma. I’ll get the basket.

No remark, her mother went on into the sitting room.

Elizabeth grabbed a basket weaved of green willow twigs and studied their supply shelves. An assortment of bottles, jars, and baskets filled each shelf. She put specific herbs and the usual tools into the basket, set it on her hip and carried it into the adjacent room.

Ye be wanting a son? Granny asked, grabbing the woman by the belly, her gnarled, arthritic hands digging into the frightened woman’s flesh. The woman’s dress scrunched up, showing knobby knees and bruised legs.

Her husband, a laborer from a timber company, nodded. Yes, ma’am. Heard ye were the ladies to see ‘bout it.

How many ye lost? Granny examined the woman: peering in her eyes, looking down her throat, feeling down her long, white arms. A number, I reckon, four or five.

Astonished, the woman shot a glance at her husband. I’ve had four miscarriages, Mrs. Robinson.

No one came asking for a girl-child. Not since remembering had Elizabeth heard a couple pay for help getting a girl. When she was a child, it wasn’t a strange thing to her. With childhood gone, she understood the value of females, half of a whole.

Granny proceeded on inspecting her husband, grabbed his manhood. Unruffled, Elizabeth stood at her mother’s side, watching her elder. Elizabeth memorized the entire routine. Same thing for each couple wanting children, though the findings varied.

Squeaking, Mamma closed her eyes and leaned her head back. The man and woman, big-eyed like a river fish, paled, seeing Mamma as the visions caught her. Elizabeth, silent, stared straight ahead, unnerving them. For her,

When Mamma woke, blinking hard, a tear rolled down her white eye. She dabbed at it with a wrinkled handkerchief. We need to clear her womb. Until we clear the womb, no child will grow.

How do ye do it? the woman asked, her voice trembled like a warbling bird.

Women’s work. Yer husband needs to wait outside. Granny pointed at the door. I’ll get ye when we’re done.

The man gripped his wife’s hand, kissing the white knuckles. A silent question passed between them. She nodded, and he left the house, pulling the door shut behind him. Granny took an old quilt from the back of the threadbare settee and tossed it on the wooden floorboards. Spread the blanket out, Child.

Doing as told, Elizabeth constructed a pallet bed for the woman and helped her lie down. Don’t worry, ma’am. Granny and Mamma, their healing is strong. Ye’ll get the boy ye want. I got to undress ye, from the waist down. I promise to be here the whole time. The woman shook as her brown eyes glistened with worried tears. Elizabeth squeezed her thin shoulder. Listen, ma’am, a little pain now, but ye’ll forget it. I’m the truth, the voice, the witness. No one shall hurt ye while I’m here.

The words calmed her. They always soothed them. Elizabeth pulled down the woman’s worn under clothing and folded them. Mamma grabbed the herbs and tools from the basket, settling down by the woman’s skinny legs. Elizabeth moved by her head, grasping both her hands, holding them with firmness.

Granny, suspicious, watched with a vulture’s vision. "Keep her calm, Elizabeth. Ye speak the words. Let yer Mamma set things