Other Worlds (5 page)

One evening the brothers were discussing some of the Spirits antics with their hosts. Was it corporeal, but invisible? It must have hands; too many people had felt its hard slaps.

The Spirit chimed in. Yes, it had hands, would Calvin like to hold one of them, just for a moment?

Calvin certainly would.

"You must promise not to hold on, or squeeze it," warned the voice.

Calvin promised. He held out his hand.

The fingers that rested on his, shyly and fleetingly, were as soft and delicate as those of a woman.

A trifle miffed, John asked to be granted the same favor.

"You only want a chance to catch me," the Spirit said shrewdly.

"No, no, I promise."

"I know you, John Johnson. You are a grand rascal, trying to find me out, but I won't trust you."

So Calvin Johnson was the only person who ever felt the Spirit's touch—except for slaps and pinches. But another neighbor actually got his arms around it.

William Porter had spent night after night with the Bells in the hope of helping them. He and the Spirit were on good terms; it enjoyed his conversation almost as much as it did that of John Johnson. William, called Billy by his friends, was unmarried. His house was a typical bachelor log cabin, with only two rooms. There was a single fireplace at one end of the larger room. The
second room was Billy's bedroom, and on cold nights he left his door open so the warmth of the fire could reach him.

One winter evening Billy arrived at the Bells to find a large company assembled, waiting for the Spirit to make an appearance. It was obvious that he was very excited, and he needed little persuasion to tell his story.

"It was a cold night last night, and I made a big log fire before retiring, to keep the house warm. As soon as I got in bed I heard scratching and thumping about the bed. Just like Kate's tricks, as I thought, but was not long in doubt as to the fact. Presently I felt the cover drawing to the back side, and immediately the witch spoke.

'"Billy, I have come to sleep with you and keep you warm.'

"'Well, Kate,' I replied, 'if you are going to sleep with me you must behave yourself.'

"I clung to the cover, feeling that it was drawing away from me, as it appeared to be raised from the bed on the other side, and something snakelike crawling under. I was never afraid of the witch, or apprehended that it would do me any harm; but somehow this produced a kind of chilly sensation, a freak of all-overishness that was simply awful. The cover continued to slip in spite of my tenacious grasp and was twisted into a roll on the back side of the bed, just like a boy would roll himself in a quilt, and not a strip was left on me. I jumped out of bed in a second, and observing that Kate had rolled up in the cover, the thought struck me, 'I have got you now, you rascal, and will burn you up.'

"In an instant I grabbed the roll of cover in my arms and started to the fire. It was very weighty and smelled awful. I had not gone halfway across the room before the luggage got so heavy and became so offensive that I was compelled to drop it on the floor and rush out of doors for a breath of fresh air. The odor emitted from the roll was the most offensive stench I ever
smelled. It was absolutely stifling, and I could not have endured it another second.

"After being refreshed I returned to the room and gathered up the roll of bedclothing and shook it out, but Kate had departed and there was no unusual weight or offensive odor remaining. And that is just how near I came to catching the witch."

One of the Spirit's less attractive attributes was its vulgarly outspoken antipathy toward the family slaves. I will not comment at length on this barbaric custom, except to say that the relationship between master and slave on these western farms was quite different from the one that prevailed on the great eastern plantations, which might employ hundreds of persons. Mr. Bell worked closely with his slaves, many of whom had grown up in the family. Religious doctrine frowned on cruelty to slaves—though it condoned that greater injustice, slavery itself—and in that close-knit community a man could not mistreat his servants without the fact being known and censured by his peers. Slaveowners like the Bells viewed the servants with a kind of contemptuous affection. They cherished the fond delusion that their affection was returned, and perhaps, in some cases, it was. But beneath the seeming docility and the servile references to little Missy and dear old Massa must have boiled a sea of burning resentment.

The Spirit hated "niggers." This is a word the Bells would never have used, and in other ways the Spirit's behavior toward persons of the Negro race resembled that of the lowest and least educated classes in society. Being a social snob, it preferred the amenities of the master's house to the poor cabins of the slaves, and was never known to invade their quarters. But if one of the servants ventured outside after dark he might meet something he had not bargained for.

A young man named Harry, who was in his teens when the
Spirit first appeared, lived to a ripe old age and was still working for the Bell family fifty years later. The children called him "Uncle Hack" and loved to listen to his stories of his encounter with the Spirit. We may be sure that these tales lost none of their dramatic content over the years.

One of Harry's chores was tending the fires, no light task when fireplaces were the only source of heat and wood was the only fuel. Like all young people, Harry liked to sleep late when he could get away with it. Winters in Tennessee can be chilly, and Mr. Bell was an early riser; it vexed him to rise from his warm bed and find that Harry had not started the fire.

He cannot have been a harsh master, for Harry was so unimpressed by the scoldings he received that he continued to sleep in. One morning he was very late. As he knelt by the hearth trying to blow the coals into flame, a piece of kindling rose into the air and applied itself to the seat of his trousers. Harry's attempts to avoid the missile were in vain. Invisible hands seized him, threw him across a chair, and smacked him harder than before. The sounds of the blows and the poor lad's cries were heard all over the house. John Bell came running. When the Spirit finally left off chastising the lad, he warned Harry that if he was late again he would be beaten to death and thrown into the fire.

We may be sure Harry was on time after that. In order to make his morning task easier, he carried in wood and kindling the night before. One night he was on his way to his cabin after finishing this chore when he heard the ominous voice address him from the darkness.

"Go right over to Mr. James Johnson's and cut wood and kindling for his morning's fires. He and his folks are sick, and I told him I would send you. James Johnson is the best man in this county. Your master will be glad I sent you; don't stop to ask him."

The Johnson house was half a mile away, and Harry must
have been very tired. But he said he hurried—and I believe him. Mr. Johnson was expecting him. The Spirit had already spoken to him.

"It will be no trouble, Harry just likes to make fires on cold mornings," it said, with the sardonic humor it sometimes displayed. "If you are going to be sick long, Harry will come every day and see to your fires. I'll tell his master to send him and he will be glad to have it done."

Several of the other slaves felt the effect of the Spirit's disapproval, but it abused the members of the family even more.

The three younger boys, Joel, Richard, and Drew, all suffered from the Spirit's invisible hands. It pulled the covers off their beds, threw sticks and stones at them from the bushes along the road when they walked to school, slapped them and pulled their hair. Once when Drew was leaning against a heavy piece of furniture it yanked the support away from him so that he fell to the floor and bruised himself badly.

By contrast, the Spirit's behavior toward John Junior was curiously considerate. It never laid hands on him, and it addressed him in an almost apologetic manner. He was not at all afraid of it, and as its behavior worsened, he often threatened and cursed it. Once it admitted that it liked him because he had the courage to talk back to it.

"I will try to tell you of more pleasant things next time," it said, adding airily,
"au plaisir de vous revoir."
We are told that the Spirit spoke all languages fluently, but this is the only specific example that has survived.

The Spirit, you see, had its amiable side. It was not an unmixed disaster for the Bells or for the neighborhood. Few examples of misbehavior went unnoticed, and it always reported these, in sanctimonious tones, to the chagrin of the parties concerned. Some of the neighbors ruefully admitted that the moral
tone of the community had never been higher. A man who might be tempted to beat a slave or abuse his children would refrain, knowing that by nightfall everybody in the area would know about it. It must have been like having a policeman always at one's side.

For some of the Bells, however, its presence was far from pleasant. It never ceased to threaten Mr. Bell, and as the summer of 1819 approached, another of its purposes became apparent.

"Mid woodland bowers and grassy dell

Dwelt pretty blue-eyed Betsy Bell.

But elvin phantoms cursed the dell

And sylvan witches all unseen

Wielded scepter o'er this queen."

The woodcut
accompanying this bit of doggerel in a book written some years later does not flatter Miss Betsy. She resembles a witch herself, with her hair in wild disarray and her hands raised in horror. If she had been a lady of high degree in old Scotland (a region much afflicted with witchcraft, it seems), some Highland minstrel might have immortalized her sufferings in better verse, and a handsomer portrait might have been painted. But perhaps she was better off as she was. In a less enlightened age she might have been condemned for witchcraft, or sent some other poor wretch to a grisly death.

I told you Betsy was the heroine of this tale of Gothic horror, and I stick to that opinion, even though the Spirit itself is the major character. A good many clues suggest that it was of the female gender, but it is hard to ascribe sexual identity to a disembodied voice, and we cannot call the Spirit a heroine unless
we are willing to apply the same term to characters like Medea and Messalina.

Betsy is certainly a central figure. Any theory that attempts to account for the strange happenings in the Bell household must focus on her, as victim or as perpetrator—and rest assured, she did not escape suspicion. What was she like, this queen of the dell?

Medical men may point out that Betsy was a child blossoming into womanhood, and therefore liable to be afflicted by female complaints common to that stage in life. But she was no swooning, civilized young lady. She was a healthy country girl, and something of a tomboy. "She knew all the trees, poplars, oaks, gums, maples, and all the others; she enjoyed the budding of the trees in the spring and loved their red and golden hues in the fall. She gathered the wild flowers and knew all the birds in the woodland."

This rhapsodic description was written half a century later by one of Betsy's partisans, in a period when flowery hyperbole was fashionable. It doesn't say much. Contemporary descriptions are more specific. Betsy was an excellent horsewoman. She could shoot a gun and hitch mules to a plow or wagon. "A stout girl," one of her brothers said approvingly. He was referring to her state of health, not to her figure; other witnesses describe her as blonde and lithesome, with a beautiful shape, a perfect complexion, and rosy lips, not to mention the blue eyes. She also possessed "good sense, a cheery disposition, and a perfect character."

More hyperbole! More revealing are Betsy's reminiscences when, as an old lady of eighty, she talked with her brother's grandson about her childhood days.

Memories of pleasure endure longer than memories of pain. Betsy's tales of her girlhood have an air of sunlit innocence that even the recurrent presence of the Spirit did not darken. Mr. and Mrs. Bell were not strict parents. They encouraged the young peo
pl
e in all sorts of harmless pleasures—picnics in the wood, fishing in the river, parties, horseback riding, evenings with friends. The Spirit enjoyed these activities, too. It seldom missed a party.

Sleigh riding was a popular winter sport. The vehicles were actually called slides, and were designed for farm work, the runners being cut from trees that had a natural curve. When mounted under a platform and carefully polished, they served to, haul produce from the fields to the barns. In winter the rough vehicles made fine sleighs.

One sleigh ride proved a bit unusual. Betsy had invited a group of friends, both boys and girls, to spend the day, and after the usual hearty dinner, which was served at noontime, they decided to hitch up the sleigh and go for a ride. Bundled in coats and scarves and wool caps, the girls piled onto the slide while the boys went to get the horses. Suddenly a voice cried out, "Hold tight when we get to the corners," and off went the sleigh, sans horses. It went around the house three times, taking the corners so fast that the runners slipped and skidded and the girls squealed with mingled delight and fear.

The Spirit's presence proved helpful to the young people on several of their expeditions. It would advise them how to cast a line when they were fishing, and once it pulled an adventurous youth out of a pocket of quicksand. It also saved Betsy from death or serious injury on one occasion.

Betsy had gone for a ride with Richard and some of their friends, following the river to a bend where there were some magnificent poplar trees. Here they were caught by a sudden summer storm, but were unable to take shelter under the trees, for the high winds tore leaves and branches and even huge limbs away, and the youngsters were in danger of being struck. In an agitated voice the Spirit urged them to cross the river, where they would be safer, but the frightened horses refused to enter the water.

"You little fools," the Spirit cried. "Hold tight now and say nothing to the horses."

Calmed and led by invisible hands, the animals made the crossing. Later Betsy found the path they had left littered with great branches and fallen trees.

A curious and, I think, noteworthy footnote to this tale is that Betsy insisted the Spirit had warned them not to go riding that day because a storm was approaching. She added, "It had a way of saying things like that when we were going off, just as our father did when he wanted us to stay home, and told us many things to scare us that were not true."

Need I point out to you gentlemen why I consider this comment significant? No, I see I do not.

Stories of the Spirit's kindly actions—there were others—all derived from stout old Mrs. Betsy herself after an interval of many years, give quite a different picture of the Spirit's interest in her than we get from other witnesses. According to her brothers and her friends, the invisible presence afflicted the girl more and more painfully as time went on.

Betsy began to suffer from fainting spells, as Richard calls them. In fact, they were a good deal more serious. After a period of panting and gasping, she would seem to stop breathing, and would remain unconscious for as long as half an hour. The seizures left no permanent effects, but they must have been agonizing to endure and dreadful to watch. No one doubted the Spirit was responsible for them. They came on in the evening, at about the time the Spirit usually presented itself, and while the girl was unconscious the voice was not heard.

As if this affliction were not enough, the Spirit now began a campaign to deprive Betsy of a young girl's fondest hope—a lover of her own.