I grew up in Bristly Hollow, on the edge of the bluegrass, and my family had lived there for generations, but I had left the county when I was eighteen, chasing stories in the city, chasing the idea of a life that did not live in a small town that smelled of pine sap and horse manure. The letter that had brought me back was as plain as the paper it was written on, torn yellowing parchment from what looks to have been a journal, handwritten from a great‑aunt that I cannot remember ever meeting, this is not uncommon a kin ties in small towns often lead to family trees as dense as forests. Her name was scribbled in a shaky hand “Maybelyn”. I went to my shelf to pull from family letters and albums and after some flipping back and forth several times, pulling photographs out from there plastic pages to see the writing on the backs, I did find one picture of her and the memory began to force itself back. She had been a woman of mystery, a recluse who claimed she was born in a "tiger‑spotted" house that no one could find, who spoke in riddles about her “ancestral river” and the “Old Man of the Water.” Her letter was simple: “You've got to come back. Your great grandfather’s place isn’t empty. It needs someone to listen.”
While I packed my things I could only think about why I left my home town large parties over the fire, preaching that lasted hours, and heavy handed versus about bloodlines and lineage. It made me nauseous to think about. Handling my luggage into the truck I packed the essentials for a basic camping trip, thinking to myself that if the house is as run down as I had left it the first time, surely I will everything I can to make myself comfortable there for at least three days. As I left the urban sprawl of the city and the exits became fewer on the freeways, the land began to open up into vast emptiness.
The road wound like a living thing through the hills of eastern Kentucky, a ribbon of cracked blacktopped asphalt that seemed to split the land as if a great snake slithered through it. The trees, pitch black pines that grew thick enough to make the sunlight feel like a trickster, peeking through right into your eyes, lined the side, their branches knotted together in a way that looked almost like a canopy of bone. By the time I reached the little town of Bristly Hollow, the world had narrowed to a handful of crooked houses, a post‑office that seems no longer in service, a grocery store, and a whitewashed church with a worn looking bell. A bell that I am sure had been rung a thousand times to celebrate, to mourn, to remember and shall continue to ring a thousand more. The sound always left a pit in my stomach.
I found the house under a roof that sagged like a wet tarp. Its front porch creaked with each step, the porch boards had been rubbed smooth by the wind and countless footsteps. The white paint peeled like scabs, and the windows were dark, as if the light were trapped inside. My hands shook, not from the chill in the air, but from the feeling that the house was about to collapse by my mere presence. I reached for the handle that wiggled in my grip and I found it was unlocked. I announced myself, hoping not to spook anyone in the home and to let possible vagrants be aware they might need to leave. Inside, the house was a relic of a different time. Dust lay thick over a table with an old typewriter, a stack of yellowed newspapers, and a photograph of a family that had faded into black and white. My great grandfather, a lanky man with a beard of ash, stood in the center of the image, eyes gleaming with something, a catch of contempt. He held a small, stone carving in his hand that looked like a serpent coiled around a bone.
The house seemed to breathe, the walls sighing as the wind outside whispered through the cracks. I could hear the house’s heartbeat, soft, steady. I walked deeper into the living room, and my mind began to think of all the things that could be hiding behind this old house: the stories, the family secrets, the myths. I had come to listen, as Maybelyn had said. A small wooden chest lay in a corner, half buried under a sheet. I opened it with my fingertips, feeling the cold metal of a key and the weight of the chest. Inside, I found a trunk that had been locked for what had to be decades. The lock was rusted, but it was not impossible to pry open with enough force and a small brick that has broken off the fireplace. Inside the trunk was a bundle of letters, journals, and a single volume of a book I had never seen before, bound in a leather that was no longer soft but brittle and rough as bark. I lifted it onto the table, feeling a prickle on my skin.
It was written in a style that was old but not foreign to me. The ink had a faint purple tinge, as if it had absorbed the scent of the woods. The first page was titled: “The River of Bones.” The words on that page, as I read them, seemed to swirl around my eyes, as if the ink itself was alive. “When the moon is full, when the night is a cloak of darkness that hides all of the stars, the water of the river rises with a face that is neither flesh nor water. It is the Old Man of the Water, a being that lives in the deep. We call him the Serpent of the Hills, because he has the shape of a snake that has lived for millennia.” The handwriting was dense and had a slight slant, as if the writer had always hurried.
There were more pages after that, written in a cramped script. They spoke of the rituals that my great grandfather’s family had performed for generations, of how the river would rise and how people would gather in the valley, in the hollows, to offer a sacrifice. The sacrifice was a thing that could not be seen from the light: a child. No, not a child in the way of our definition. A life taken by the river, a life that could be offered to the serpent. There was mention of a stone arch, and a stone carved into the riverbank that looked like a serpent’s head. The page was faded at places, but the words remained clear. Memories opened up in my mind, the gates they were locked behind opening all at once.
The story of the river was already part of the folklore of the area. When I was a child, I had heard my aunties talk about a place called the “Muddy River”, a river that was said to swallow all living things that crossed its path. The people in Bristly Hollow had a superstition that if you followed the river downstream at night, you could hear it hum and see its eyes in the dark. My fingers shook as I closed the journal and placed it back on the table. My throat felt tight, and a feeling of dread crept into my mind. The house, the journal, the river, my mind was racing, and my thoughts were a tangled web. I went to the kitchen for a drink. The stove was cold and the sink was useless. I looked out the window at the dark horizon. The moon was large with a small sliver taken out of it, enough to light the dark forest. The trees were black silhouettes against the sky, their branches twisted like the fingers of a hand. It was as if the trees were leaning in to listen.
In the corner of the kitchen, I saw something that had not been there before, a faint outline of a figure, almost invisible. I turned to the counter, and a low, guttural hum rose from the house. The sound came from nowhere and everywhere. My mind tried to rationalize the hum as a draft, a trick of the wind, but the sound seemed to rise from the walls themselves. It made my eyes water, and I thought I saw the outline of a figure that was no longer in the kitchen. I felt like this was enough as the sun sunk below the horizon and the natural light I was using to see into the house vanished completely, leaving nothing but darkness and chills.
The next morning I went down to the basement. It was an old, cramped space, lined with a stack of wooden crates that had been stored over the years. A small wooden door at the back led to a passageway that led to the ground floor, and a stairway that seemed to go down into the earth. The house seemed to be the body of a living creature that was breathing in the darkness. In the basement, there were several large tapestries hanging from the banisters, the walls around them, strangely clean. I shifted them aside I discovered a hidden room. The door was wrapped in vines and bark, and the paint was faded. Inside, there was a small table with a carved stone on it. The stone had a shape that was unmistakable, once again, a serpent with a head that looked like a skull. The serpent's body twisted around a stone that had a strange symbol on it. The symbol was a circle with an arrow pointing outward. The symbol had a similar look to a sigil, but it was different, it was a sign of an cult unknown by everyone but this town.
I turned the stone over, feeling a tremor in my fingers. The stone was warm. It had a faint heat that rose from the stone, and I could see the faint outline of the symbol. I looked at the symbol, and I saw a pattern. Tracing my finger over the weathered etchings I could feel a electric vibration curling my finger, beyond myself and rationale, I could feel the contractions of my arm forcing something up into the very air in my lungs. I felt and knew the symbol that had been used for generations in the region to summon something. I read the page in the journal again, and I realized that the symbol was the same as the one on the stone. It was a symbol that had been used to summon the Old Man of the Water.
The next time I heard the hum of the house. It sounded as if a voice were speaking. It was a voice that sounded ancient, and it sounded like a sound that was from the deep. The dread filled me with the instinct to flee, I ran outside to regain myself. Hoping the cool air could expel he terror. I looked into the wood while I steadied myself against a tree. Peeking past the brush and into the shadows to the horizon I saw an old man in the hills. He was walking in the forest, covered by a robe that was the color of dark earth and carrying a large walking stick that was the size of a large tree branch, the leaves dead on top, leaves falling with every step. While I could not see his eyes I knew he was casting his gaze over me, he was foggy, faded by the steam rising from the ground and it gave him an aura of a spirit. His mouth opened and a rumble came through the branches and into my ears, like a whisper.
The old man was a messenger. He spoke in a voice that was as old as the hills themselves. He spoke about the "River of Bones" and how the serpent was waking up. He told me about the ritual. The ritual was to be held at the river on the full moon, when the moon would become an empty hole, and the serpent would come up from the water. The river itself was a living thing, and the river was a creature that had been in the hills for a very long time. I felt the water’s breath as if the water had been alive. The water was moving. I could see a movement beneath the surface of the water, and I could see that there were something that was alive. A long, black thing. I could see that it had been alive for a very long time. A shimmer in the mud, an obsidian maw opening to only consume.
I had to leave this place, I had to escape to leave history in it's place. The danger and the fear coiling up my legs gave me the energy to run to my car, leaving all of this behind. I had listened to a letter and done my deed. But now I know of a ritual that had been hidden for decades, and it was a ritual that had been used to summon something that had been alive for a very long time. I realized that the journal had the ritual. The ritual had been written down, and I had become part of the ritual. The ritual was to be held at the river on the full moon. I left Bristly Hollow that night, my body heavy from exhaustion. I realized that I was part of a very old story that had been in the hills for a very long time. The serpent, the river, the house. All of them were alive and will continue to live on through me.