The Boy in the Valley

By Mark Nadratowski

"The Boy in the Valley" is a tale that weaves together elements of fantasy, history, religion, adventure, romance, and drama into a gripping story set in the Depression era South. In the state of Georgia, a man of great wealth named Josiah King. finds himself in a fight to save a legendary valley near his land from being flooded by the Tennessee Valley Authority. This man is not an opponent of progress or big government. Rather, he has a bastard son who lives in the Valley, a boy about who no one else knows, including his wife and son with her. But on his death bed the story must be told, and as a dying wish he asks his older son, Thomas, to find his son and bring him home. Thomas accepts the mission, but it turns out to be far more than he bargained for. The boy, Malachi, is black, and his mother was an angel who once saved Josiah from certain death, which means the boy has powers that are dangerous to friend and foe alike. What Thomas does not know is that his mother, Annabelle, is a fallen angel, one who followed Satan out of Heaven, and he has many of the same powers gifted to Malachi. But Annabelle is in love with Josiah's estranged brother, Dickie, and they work together to foil Thomas' mission and eliminate the threat to their future reign, Malachi. Other important characters will emerge, such as an outlaw named the Hangman and a beautiful young woman sent to tempt Thomas named Sarah. An epic journey commences, and the fate of the world hangs in the balance. This is a story epic in scope, with themes familiar to readers of all races, backgrounds, and ages. It is a timeless tale all readers are sure to enjoy.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Mark Nadratowski
• Release date: Dec 14, 2023
• ISBN: 9798223424093

Book preview

CHAPTER 1

Josiah King was once the ideal of the new, modern Southern man, a man unshackled by sectional strife, a leader of the generation too busy to hate. His auburn mane perched atop broad shoulders fit to carry a legacy made of one part pride and two parts shame. The King had seen immense tumult in his life, reared in an era where progress was a golden chalice and the past a four-letter word, a promised land a rebellious generation and their progeny would chase forever. Like most things, it was all a matter of perspective. Josiah King had only seen sixty years, a child of the centennial, but they were hard years, his lithe body had been bruised and broken by momentous events. 

The King was a veteran of that sand box fight in Cuba ginned up by the Ohio Napoleon and Mister Rosebud. He was one of a generation of gentrified young men inspired by the resurrection of Manifest Destiny, eager to deliver upon the indigenous peoples of foreign lands the special brand of brutality inflicted on our own for centuries. Josiah enlisted before the fire that consumed The Maine was put out. He charged up San Juan Hill, and when the fight moved to Puerto Rico he joined in at Fajardo. Though Yellow Fever took more men than Spanish fire, Josiah was an exception. He came home from his Caribbean excursion with a slight limp and a long scar, a parting gift courtesy of the Spanish empire.

While he’d come through the war relatively unscathed, the emotional trauma of his time in battle would never leave, always there like a man with his shadow. He flinched at every loud noise, the echo taking him back to the chaos of battle. He lit his cigarettes unlike other men, putting his hand in front of his lighter to hide the flame from an enemy that was long gone. He had been rolled through a fiery furnace, and to strangers he looked like a man thirty years older than he actually was. Everything was just a little less than it used to be. His hair was a little thinner, his back a whisper hunched. His voice shook when raised in anger, his hands trembled every so often. His right hand, his power hand, had just been decorated with it’s first liver spot. He had run his race, he was a war horse ready for pasture, and as he approached the twilight of his life what Josiah King wanted more than anything was peace. 

But it wasn’t meant to be. A new army of Yankees invaded the South, wearing three piece suits instead of military blues and carrying protractors instead of muskets. They were sent by a President who sermonized about progress and sharing with the masses what had long been hoarded by a privileged few, a sermon that found a rapt audience in a country ravaged by an economic Armageddon. They promised a different kind of freedom, a freedom from a bygone time, emancipation by electricity. The plan was to divert and damn the Oconee River, a river that for centuries sustained Natives and would ultimately suffer the same fate as those that depended on it-a forced migration in the name of progress, in service of western civilization. But instead of being forced West the Oconee would be forced South, not geographically but literally downward into a black hole that was less a geological occurrence and more the final destination of the worst of humanity.   

For the longest time Josiah King was afraid to enter the Valley, and he was not alone. For decades children had been told stories about what lived down there, from blood thirsty beasts to maniacal mad men with nothing to lose because life had already taken everything of value. The word Valley didn’t do the black mass justice. It was an abyss, a Grand Canyon of the East, shaped not by glaciers and tectonics but by the dark forces that made the gorge its playground. It was a hundred square miles of darkness at least, maybe more, you couldn’t see where it ended even if you stood on its edge. Snakes slithered around its entrance, the trees that grew out of it were less vegetation than daggers decorated as such. Noises emanated from it, ghastly groans that whether they came from man or monster sent a clear message: get out. Do not enter, and if you do you will not exit the same person, if at all.

And then there’s the beast. No one had actually seen it, save for glimpses here and there. But the various slivers of sightings had allowed a full picture to be created, a puzzle constructed of part fact and part imagination. The monster was ten feet tall if it was a foot, at least four hundred pounds, covered with skin spiked with razor blades and capable of swallowing two grown men or four children without taking a bite. Its drool created great lakes wherever it went, its snarl broke ear drums from miles away. And he wasn’t one of those monsters who just wanted to be left alone. No, he was a hunter, a predator, he had a thirst for blood, virgin blood especially.

Josiah King had been convinced that Hell was not some deeply buried catacomb of lost souls but rather a living, breathing place that was easy to find, just a few miles from his bed, ruled by a monster that wanted nothing more than to taste his flesh and devour his soul. Whether the stories were true or not they were effective in keeping people away. Generations of men marched off to war, but none could work up the nerve to enter the Valley.   

You’d think the prospect of destroying the source of his most virulent nightmares and drowning the monster that tormented him would thrill Josiah King, but instead it lit him up with a new kind of rage all together. The plan to flood the Valley awoke something inside him, lighting a fire that had been extinguished years ago. His family didn’t recognize their revitalized patriarch. His wife saw the return of the vibrant war hero she’d rejected scores of suitors for, his son Luke meeting a father he’d never really known except from dreams he’d hoped were inspired by reality but was never really sure. 

Josiah King recruited an army to help him fight the march of progress. Mostly farmers who had more of a need to preserve their history than electricity, some of them had followed Josiah to Europe to fight the Kaiser, while others were fighting their first battles. But all shared a deep respect for Josiah and his family, the first family of Middle Georgia. The King family had been the first to settle this land, they built the first house in the area and the first school, they laid the cornerstone of the first Baptist church of King’s Landing. They fired the first shots of both rebellions and burned the first cross of Reconstruction. If anyone were going to destroy the Valley it should be the King family, not some carpetbaggers from up North promising a better life they couldn’t provide. And if Josiah King wanted to save the Valley, then by God they were going to save it, even if it meant protecting a plot of land that grew nothing but iniquity and harvested nothing but fear.

The war started with a skirmish, as most do, with the rival sides jabbing at each other, fleshing out their opponents’ will to carry the fight to its inevitable conclusion. The Yankees held a meeting at the town hall Josiah King’s ancestors had lent their slaves to build. They came armed with an arsenal of promises to drag the town into the future, to light up the night like the stars had come down from the heavens. Anything would be possible in this new, illuminated world, the monsters that haunted the darkness would be vanquished once and for all. 

Josiah and his army invaded the meeting with the same determination Bobby Lee once took to the North, trying to keep the engineers from spreading their gospel of progress. As Josiah rose to speak out against the project the room fell silent, the locals out of respect for the King and the carpetbaggers out of respect for the sensibilities of the community. Josiah gave a passionate speech, a lyrical defense of his home and his heritage, the kind of creation that comes to a man in a dream, the kind inspired by Calliope, that’s chiseled onto marble statues and taught to school children through the ages. No one who heard it was left unaffected, unless their heart was made of steel. Unfortunately for the King, the carpetbaggers had come south from the steel belt of America, and the forces of the future were armed, not just with information but with the best rifles Pennsylvania had to offer. They had been warned that there were insurgents in the area, and they were not going to be denied. Josiah and his men were dragged out of the meeting, kicking and screaming like children that didn’t get what they wanted from Santa. Most men would have quit there, most of the men wanted to quit there, but Josiah endured, defiant and righteous in his cause. If the Yankees wanted a fight they would get one. 

In 1864 William Sherman had marched through King’s Landing, leaving devastation and ill will that would linger over the South for generations on his way to infamy, or eminence, depending on your point of view. Regardless, it had been seventy years since a shot had been fired in anger in this community, a streak of tranquility that would be broken on a steamy summer afternoon.  The Battle of King’s Landing broke out when the sun and tempers were at their highest. No one came to the landing looking for violence. One side wanted to vent their anger, the other just wanted to work, a desire boiling over since Black Monday eight years earlier. It was a desire to live, to be a man, a desire no cause, however righteous, could deny. Only harsh words were meant to be lobbed by each side, but things escalated, propelled down a dangerous path by rising tensions and shaky nerves. 

The first rock was thrown by Arthur Arnett, a carpenter who was out of work for three years before Josiah hired him to build a smoke house he didn’t need. Arthur didn’t have much affection for the Valley, but he owed his life to Josiah. The rock was small but thrown with righteous rage, as if thrown by an acolyte taking aim at a heathen. It was a direct hit, hitting burly Bostonian Tommy McCarthy square in the head. Once he recovered his senses McCarthy was livid. He had traveled a hundred years and a thousand miles to this sweltering mud farm to drag a bunch of inbred illiterates into the modern world and this is the thanks he gets? No, no. This insolence would not stand.   

Plenty of men tried to stop Tommy from introducing himself to Arthur, but none of them succeeded. In that moment Hercules himself couldn’t have stopped Tommy McCarthy. Tommy tore into Arthur like the twister that had torn through King’s Landing a decade earlier. He tossed Arthur around like the man was a toy, the Mickey Mouse doll the man child had just gotten for his birthday. And it all happened so fast, the hulk had knocked Arthur into next week before anyone could respond. But they did respond. Arthur Arnett was the first casualty, but not the last. 

Tommy’s exploits attracted the attention of Arthur’s brothers in arms, and they swarmed the behemoth like fire ants on a fallen ice cream cone. But they met a fate similar to Arthur’s, their attack only serving to draw in Tommy’s friends and anger the Boston mauler. The battle had officially begun. As hostilities escalated a rain began to fall, not enough to impede but just enough to agitate. A summer rain can soothe or aggravate, depending on a man’s disposition. Josiah and his men were riled up enough, the last thing their fires needed was an accelerant. 

A general can plan an attack down to every last detail, but every battle descends into chaos, a symphony of violence and madness. The Battle of King’s Landing was no different, it quickly became a demonstration of lost bearings and lost senses, the combatants swinging their fists like a child flinging their books across the room after a long day at school. Their bearings and senses were long gone, as were their inhibitions, they hoped to hit something but didn’t care what they hit. Yet through the sturm and drang of war one sound cut through, one sound caused every man to stop dead in their tracks, one sound drew the attention of every warrior despite the carnage that surrounded them. The howl that stopped the world on its axis came from Josiah King. He hadn’t been hit, despite his advanced age and regressing body the Yankees couldn’t touch him. But while his spirit was up to the fight his heart was not, and the pain that came from it hit the King like a sniper’s bullet, dropping him to his knees, putting him in the pose and psyche to beg his creator for salvation. But the pain worsened, only eased by the blackness of unconsciousness. In this moment Josiah’s disciples forgot about the war and ran to their leader, begging for him to rise like a puppy begs his master for affection. But salvation was withheld. The soldiers picked up their fallen leader and carried him over their heads, high enough so that the enemy could not touch him but maybe the Lord could. The Yankees cleared a path for him, parting like Moses had asked for the favor. The men carried the King like that for ten miles, back to the old King plantation. Men fell back along the way, some succumbing to their war wounds, others giving in to exhaustion. But not once was quitting an option. Every effort to save Josiah would be made, because no one could imagine what a world without him would look like. 

CHAPTER 2

When our founding fathers colonized the new world, they may have brought proto-Christian nationalism and vulture capitalism with them, but the left many of Old Europe’s quirks behind, chief among them the divine right of kings. And one of their hobbies that was most certainly left behind was the building of castles. Sure, America has its share of gluttonous abodes, but the cold, sprawling citadels that were more displays of dominance than actual homes were left on the other side of the ocean. Could you imagine the pitter patter of tiny feet echoing through the halls of Versailles? But to this day Mount Vernon pulsates with the life of its past inhabitants. Its boards still creak, its walls still groan. It’s a living, breathing organism rather than a mausoleum. 

If there was one exception to this rule though it was Shiloh. The King family compound encompassed nearly two hundred acres of heaven. Over the years it had grown sweet corn, cabbage, and the king of all southern crops, cotton. Yes, cotton was the true king of this land for a long time, harvested by the black hands of the victims of America’s unquenchable thirst for prosperity. White gold grew in their crimson blood, their pain a most potent fertilizer. Maybe that’s why the first King to live on this land built such a lavish home, to draw attention away from the war crime that took place in his fields. And though their manor was built with the wages of sin, generations of Kings, even the good ones, slept soundly inside those palace walls. 

The main house at Shiloh had more bedrooms than any house South of the Mason-Dixon Line, with marble columns more impressive than any purloined from fallen empires by English Earls. There was a small garden of petunias first cultivated by Josiah’s grandmother that had grown over the years into a regional attraction and featured stop on the county’s festival of lights. Shiloh was the first house in the county with running water, the first in the state with electricity thanks to the mad genius of an industrious Romanian immigrant. Each of its ten bedrooms was decorated in a distinct motif, ranging from pastoral blue to tropical green and all colors of the rainbow in between. The main staircase was a marvel of engineering, a labyrinth of wrought iron and thin air that defied gravity and the imagination. The mural on the ceiling above was a masterpiece done by a down on his luck drifter who must have channeled Rembrandt for a weekend.   

For a time, the house was surrounded by as many slave shacks as crops, a slumbering army of liberation if only they knew what they were capable of. They came close to enlightenment once, led by a strapping young buck who claimed he was Christ reborn, sent by his father to cleanse America of its original sin. The rebellion was put down after a week of terror and a river of blood, which is why for the rest of the Antebellum period the main house had a bigger arsenal than Harper’s Ferry. Now those shacks were occupied by sharecroppers, slaves in name only. Exploitation was a value that never went out of style. 

It sounded like thunder as they arrived with the fallen King, the ground rumbled as though it must have when Hannibal’s army of war elephants thundered through the Alpine pass. The few men who started the journey had become a procession of the entire town, everyone who saw the cortege joined in, sensing this was a moment that demanded their presence. They were met at the house by Josiah’s son, Thomas Jonathan Stonewall King. Named after the one man who could’ve saved the South’s lost cause, Thomas inherited his father’s good looks and broad shoulders but none of his charisma. A popular joke among the Residents of King’s Landing went an empty carriage pulled up to my door and Thomas King stepped out. Thomas had no discernible talents or interests anyone could see. For a moment there was a thought he could become an athlete of some renown; when he was twelve his fastball was unhittable, and his toss sweep was unstoppable. But once the other kids matched his growth spurt Thomas’ lack of athleticism became painfully clear. These days he seemed content to spend the prime of his life lounging on his family’s land, sipping lemonade during the day and more lively spirits after night fall, biding his time until the King family’s empire was his to rule.

Josiah was delicately laid on his bed, like his skin was a centuries old sarcophagus holding the frail bones of a once ferocious king. One wrong move away from shattering into a thousand pieces. Doctor Whitaker was summoned immediately, and once his examination was complete, he delivered the worst possible diagnosis: Josiah had started down the road to perdition, and there was no turning back. All that could be done now was make his journey as pleasant as possible. 

The ensuing night was Hell, for Josiah and Thomas. There was no comfort on offer to the condemned, he convulsed like a thousand bolts of electricity ran through him every few seconds. He groaned like Shiloh did late at night, haunted by the spirits from whose blood grew gold. Doc Whitaker gave Thomas a chemical concoction to subdue the patient, and enough of it to put down a bull, but it was no match for Josiah’s suffering. Josiah’s pain was Biblical, a fierce anguish inspired by a regret for what he’d done and what he’d failed to do. And Thomas was left to deal with the wretched soul alone, his mother summoned from a coastal retreat but yet to arrive. 

Thomas stayed by his father’s side as long as he could, longer than most would. He did it out of respect, out of devotion, out of duty. Josiah was cold to Thomas for the first ten years of his son’s life, almost like the boys were strangers thrown together in a social experiment. Josiah didn’t hate the boy, though that might have been preferred by Thomas. At least hate is an emotion. What Thomas got was in many ways worse: indifference. Thomas was the shoeshine boy on the corner Josiah passed on his way to work every morning. He got a forced smile and a friendly nod but no affection. But that tenth year was a momentous one. When Josiah returned from an excursion, a business trip as his wife called it, he was a changed man. He was warm and attentive, he schooled his son on the secrets of the family business, he became Thomas’ favorite scene partner, Thomas never knew a better Mercutio to his Romeo. One of the great mysteries of Thomas’ life is just what happened during the two months his father was away. He was afraid to ask but desperate to know. 

Thomas watched his father die for two days. As he did, he realized he knew nothing about the man who’d made him. He’d been forged by a complete stranger. What were his dreams? What did he desire? Was he happy with who he’d become? Or was he tortured by the places he’d never seen, the things he’d never done? He needed a break, a moment to breathe in fresh air to replace the diseased puff that had filled his lungs, to cry out all the sadness that had built up from watching his father slowly drift away. Before he left his father’s side, he had just one thing to say to the old man. 

I just wish I knew why you cared so much about that damn Valley. 

As Thomas made the long walk to fleeting freedom Josiah came to life. He used all the life left in him to push out one agony filled syllable. 

Stop! 

And Thomas did, dead in his tracks. To his wonder, Josiah had more to say. 

Let me tell you. 

CHAPTER 3

Shiloh wasn’t that much different twenty years ago. I was younger. I was a lot like you actually, not much interested in an honest day’s work. It’s all right, apathy is one of the perks of youth. My