Mary Marrow lives in a casket about eight miles up Deer Run Creek. Grownups tell you she’s dead, because she doesn’t move and she doesn’t breathe, but they know that’s not true. They just don’t want you to be scared. If she was dead, then why doesn’t she rot?
She’s not dead. I saw her drown, but she’s not dead.
Grownups don’t want you afraid of her, but the truth is that you should be afraid of her. You should stay clear of her body, sure enough, but you should also never drink from Deer Run when it runs red, and you should never eat the red berries that grow along the bank, and you should never make anyone in town here cross. You never know which of us do her bidding.
I used to do her bidding.
I was once young like you are. Most old women tell you that not for your sake, but for their own sake. They’re reminding themselves that, as impossible as it seems, they used to be young. I’m telling you for your sake. I don’t want to remember being young.
When I was maybe fourteen, I was beautiful, and that I’m telling you for my own sake. All the boys and some of the girls knew it, and sometimes I’d let them bring me favors: a loaf of bread, a jar of jam, a pretty rock, a pilfered bracelet, things of that nature. Mary Marrow, she was just Mary Olgden then, she brought me berries. Those red berries, the ones that grow on the bank that feed crows and squirrels.
“Don’t eat them,” she said, after the first time she offered me a handful, “or you’ll fall in love with me.” She ate one herself and she smiled and the purple juice stained her lips as sure as lipstick.
“I will not fall in love with you, Mary Olgden,” I told her. I ate two of the berries. They’re sour but still good, like beer or old love.
“Now you’re going to fall for me,” she said, laughing.
I didn’t believe her, though, because I had my eyes on another girl, on Lora Haroldson. Lora only liked boys, sometimes the same boys I liked, and I didn’t know better yet than to fall for a girl who only liked boys.
Two years came and went, fast as rain. I left school at sixteen to work in the factory. Another two years went by like a passing storm. The summer I turned eighteen, Lora Haroldson moved away to the city for school. Those bright, long days of summer, I was as sad as the depths of snow.
That summer, Mary Olgden became an orphan. Her parents were found hanging, apparent suicide—no one thinks that now, but it’s what we thought then. Mary said Olgden was a family name, and she didn’t have a family, she didn’t want a family, so she changed her name to Mary Marrow.
We didn’t see her much. She was off in the woods more days and nights than not, skipping shifts at the factory as often as not. The Olgden’s house fell into the sorry state you know it to be today. The lawn grew up as high as the fence, brambles tore the pickets asunder, and a murder of crows took up residence in the apple tree.
That house is safe, by the way. Some tame things look terrifying. You can even eat the apples, though an untended tree doesn’t make for good fruit.
People whispered words like “magic” and “witchcraft” when Mary wasn’t around. By the time I was eighteen, people began to whisper those words when she was around. Soon thereafter, people stopped bothering to keep their voices at a whisper.
I barely noticed any of this. I barely thought about the young Ms. Marrow. A few times more, she’d brought me presents, but she knew she was not high on my list of suitors and never tried hard to woo me.
I determined not to wed anyone. I let many of those suitors go home happy and they left me happy, but I didn’t want to marry anyone. I had a reputation, of course, but I didn’t care. No one who matters cares about that sort of thing.
Still, I pined for Lora.
I took to walking in the woods that summer, after every early morning shift. I’d learned most of its paths and glades and ruins on this or that tryst and I started going further and farther afield. I never got lost, because at the end of every day, when the sun dipped low enough to touch the peak of Grayhill Mountain, I walked east or west as needed to find Deer Run Creek and followed it home.
I was walking home on the day of the equinox, with plenty far to go and little hope of reaching town before dark, when I saw a red glow on the water ahead of me. There was a man—if you could call him that—as thin as needle, as thin as a lie, and where his nude skin touched the water, the water glowed red. His hair was long and feminine, but I could see nothing of his face at that distance. Like a baptist, or a husband carrying his bride across the threshold, he held Mary Marrow in all her Sunday clothes.
She looked at me, and she grinned a wild grin, and the man—the devil or angel or some beast in between—put Mary Marrow beneath the cold water and drowned her. I stood still, on the bank twenty yards upstream, and watched.
I should have run to her, I know that. I carried a large enough knife when I walked those woods; I should have put it between that creature’s ribs. I didn’t. I stood as still as a deer in the moonlight, as still as a rock in the water.
I’m not sure I took a single breath, all that time Mary’s lungs filled with water.
The man lifted her up and carried her to shore. He set her body in an open casket, then walked into the woods and disappeared. I’ve never seen him again.
I ran to her.
Her lips were stained purple, with the blood of those berries. Just like her lips are still, if you walk those eight miles upstream to see her, which you should not.
She wasn’t breathing. Her eyes were open and hazel, shining bright enough to retain their color even as color fled the rest of everything with the coming of night.
I laid down at the foot of her casket, right down on my back on the rocks. I couldn’t tell you why I did it. I wasn’t in my right head. As the last of the light left the world, I fell asleep.
I woke up with the moon above me. I couldn’t move. I couldn’t speak.
Mary Marrow climbed out of her casket and stood over me, watching me. She smiled, a soft smile, a beautiful smile.
I’d never noticed how beautiful she was.
“You have come to love me,” she said. It wasn’t a question. As she watched me unwavering, I slowly, fearfully, fell back to sleep.
In the morning, she was once more lying in that pine box. I had not dreamt her drowning, but I had certainly dreamt her rising to speak. I was certain of it.
I was also certain, however, that I loved her.
Not one day, in the fifty years that have passed from then to now, have I lingered on thoughts of Lora Haroldson. The candle I’d held for her was blown out by a vile wind, a witchwind.
I went home, changed for work, and didn’t go back upstream for some time after that. I didn’t tell anyone what I’d seen, either, and no one reported Mary missing because no one missed her. More shifts for the rest of us.
I kept at my habits, though I took my suitors downstream instead of upstream. Then, with the last echoes of summer fading out, so did my fancy for casual affairs. After my shifts in the factory, I took to staying inside with books.
On Samhain, I worked a double and only got out after the land was lit by a waning crescent of a moon. I was restless. I didn’t even change out of my work clothes, I just walked up Deer Run a few hours to see my love.
She wasn’t alone. Three others lay on rocks, each asleep on their backs. One was a drifter I’d seen in town. Another was a child, a stranger. The third… the third was Lora Haroldson. To this day, I don’t know if Mary had ensorcelled her so that I could see her again, to take vengeance on me for having once loved another, or by happenstance.
I found space between the tramp and the woman who had once been my heart’s desire and I slept.
Once more, I woke to starlight and to paralysis and to Mary Marrow, standing over me, watching me.
“There are sixteen men on the old road tomorrow,” she said. “They will come alone or in groups of two and three. I want seven of them here and alive, eight of them dead, and one to believe he has escaped our wrath.”
I fell back asleep.
I woke with the sun on my face. I was late for work, but I didn’t care. I didn’t go to work.
With my new fellows, I made my way to the old road, which is what we used to call the hiking trail that runs from the town to the peak of Grayhill and out to mountains beyond. It was popular with tourists. It’s still there, though the paving stones have sunk deep into the earth and few dare to walk it.
We found a place where the trees crowded in close and we waited.
We killed eight men on the path, with rocks and knives. Bashing and breaking and carving and carving and carving. We captured seven men, who kicked and bit and screamed. We let one man escape.
The seven, we led back to Mary. We tied them to trees, each so he faced the creek, each so he could watch.
We drowned the men, one after the other. Myself and Lora held each one underwater while they thrashed like fish. We never cut them, but the river glowed red around our skin as their sorrows and their joys and their dreams and their memories died. Some of that red drifted downstream.
The next day, the berries along the bank were ripe and red and beautiful.
We ate them, joyous. I’d never been so content and calm, surrounded by my new family, sitting at the feet of our love Mary.
I did the witch’s dark work for a decade. Followers came and went—Lora was with us a year only before she returned to her studies, released from service. Others, like the drifter and the child, eventually died at the hands of those we destroyed. Myself, I drowned men and I cut men and I ate the flesh of men. I set fire to barns and I set fire to fields and I set fire to houses full of people. I also led the chosen to meet their new master.
I’d never known love like the love of Mary Marrow. Every meal I ate was richer, every dream I had more beautiful, every woman and man I knew more passionate, while I served her.
A decade was a long time to me back then, and I wanted more from life. I prayed to Mary, like I’d never prayed to Christ, to release me. She did.
For another ten years, I wandered these hills, living off of ramps and rabbits. I was afraid of being found for my crimes, and more than that I was afraid of seeing the woman I had loved, with her purple lips, her hazel eyes, unbreathing. I was afraid of the power she held over me. I was afraid of that thing that may or may not have been love. So I just wandered.
A decade was still a long time to me back then, and I came home. The factory is always hiring. The factory doesn’t care to know where you’ve been and what you’ve done.
I don’t do her work, not anymore. Now I tell children, like you, to stay away. To not be curious. To live simple lives, to work at the factory, to let magic be feared. You must not stain your lips by eating berries, and you must never drink the water when it runs red.
I tell children like you to absolutely, whatever you do, not go eight miles upstream and visit Mary Marrow where she rests on the east bank of the river, to not sleep at the foot of her casket and let her into your dreams and into your hearts. Never join her loving family.
You must never do that.