Episode 12: The Other Queen

Blurb
These yarns were spun to teach you to stay safe and mind common sense, and most importantly, your mama. The stories that get lost though — the ones hardly nobody ever lived to tell — were often just blunt and simple warnings. There is darkness here: fear it. Trust those who can see through it and you might live to see the dawn. Or then again... maybe not.

Plot Synopsis
There are two queens in the woods of Southern Appalachia. The Witch Queen’s story will continue to be told; now is the time to tell the story of the younger Queen. She died in childbirth as a 12 year-old girl and was buried deep in the dark woods, the father unknown. The father’s blood was said to have done strange things to both the mother and the baby.

The girl aged and grew beneath the soil, and on her 20th birthday, she crawled, decayed, from the grave with her baby at her breast, unable to know any peace and searching for vengeance. The things that walk her half of the woods are worse than dead, and witches and haints alike fear her. She is called The Dead Queen, and she has walked the hills for generations.

Big Jim Gibson and his family live in Craw, Tennessee. They left Isaac, West Virginia because Jim couldn’t find work due to his reputation as a man who had been to prison, along with his father and little brother Ricky Lee. Ricky Lee left first, and got a job with the Locke Railroad. Jim followed, and they purchased land along the North Carolina line. They name the land Craw, because it’s where they stuck.

Caleb Gibson, Jim’s 10 year-old son, has few friends and frail health, but is loved by his family. He sneaks out of bed at night, and he sees the Dead Queen at the edge of the property.

He asks his mother Brunetta about the “witchy woman” of the stories he’s been told and about the woman he saw. She sees how frightened he is and comforts him, telling him he was only dreaming.

A week after his Papaw and uncle move into their own house, he sees the woman again. Creeping out of bed to investigate the sound of dogs, he finds her standing beneath a hawthorn tree. Caleb fears dogs, and the two he sees in the yard are “wrong” somehow. When he looks up, he sees the woman staring straight at him. She raises her hand, and the dogs collapse and disappear into the earth.

The next morning, he finds rotten leaves and old roots where the dogs were, and the smell of rotten meat. Investigating further, he finds an animal jaw and an eye. He shows his mother, but finds nothing but Caleb’s vomit. She puts him to bed.

That night, Caleb wakes and is unable to stop himself from getting up, dressing, and going out into the yard. The woman is there, and he walks toward her involuntarily, where he can see how old and rotted her clothing is, how emaciated and horrifying her body is. She holds out her hand and he takes it against his will, following her into the woods.