Swing Low: Chapter 7

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Installment #8 of:Sing Low: The Hangman of the WoodsBy B.C. Crow (Download audio podcast here) ()Chapter 7In the woods, justice is swift. Judgment pronounced without a trial. The punishment can even precede the crime. But the crime would surely happen otherwise. The judge and executioner were one. No law, save a higher law, can guide such condemnation. Still, who could ever forgive a soul who waited till after the heinous crime was committed, especially when the murder was obviously imminent? There was one who wandered the woods, striking fear into all those who dare attempt the cowardice act. He couldn’t catch all, but for those he did find, no mercy on earth is meted to them. They will never return home from the woods.The man pinned me to the great tree. Bits of bark and twig wedged between my shirt and sweat slicked skin. He was frantic—I was frantic! He’d heard all the same stories that I had. Undoubtedly he wouldn’t navigate these woods if not for the courage lent him by his bottle. In his distraction, he eased up on choking me and I drew in short labored breaths. His clammy palms still prevented me from wiggling away, but my vision cleared enough to see again.Sickeningly sweet palm wine assaulted my nose. Nasty alcohol laced saliva sprayed from his mouth. The stench also seemed to pour in the form of tainted sweat, mostly in great rivulets draining through his greasy hair as it beaded toward his darkened nose and chin. His body contorted as he struggled to hold me and look all around at the same time. The low voice of the singer bounced off every tree, as if the person was everywhere and nowhere.My captor’s eyes swiveled, eventually returning to look at me. I could see a bloodshot panic around those dilated pupils. He knew something. A story that I didn’t know. Enough to be terrified. If he was panicked, I was doubly so. With one free hand, he brought a finger to his lips, ordering me to be silent, as if that was a problem. I couldn’t have made a sound if I tried. This whole thing was a nightmare. I expected to jump awake, get a drink of water, go pee, and go back to bed with hopes of a better dream. Somewhere in the back of my mind, I felt relieved that my bladder hadn’t already emptied itself. I could still wake up from this. Only in dreams was I ever so frightened that running or speaking was impossible; but no, this was no dream.I’ve often heard that the human mind can be brilliant, but slow. That’s why we rely so heavily on computers. But as this was happening, that axiom held little weight. My mind was racing faster than light, almost fast enough to give the illusion that these thoughts were all speaking at once. There was regret that I wouldn’t make it to school; sadness, knowing my mother would never know what happened to me; the awful realization that I would die a coward; the curiosity of who or what was nearly upon us; the poor baby on the ground, swaddled in blankets, unlikely to live beyond the day; guilt for disappointing my father, and wondering if this was his vengeance that he was directing from the grave; then, oddly enough, I thought about Krystal, and wondered if she would cry when she heard of my disappearance. More than likely she’d just want to speak at my funeral.“You brought'im ta me,” the drunk whispered, snapping me out of my end-of-life daze.Was it just me, or was his speech getting worse? “I didn’t bring anyone here, I-I-I’m alone.”“I was'n born'esterday!" He hissed, spittle spraying from his lips, landing across my face. "No boy you'age has any reason a be out'ere alone. You’re with'im, aren’t you?”“N-no, I d-d-on’t know who—”“Quiet!” He placed his free hand over my mouth. The taste of his salt, mingled with the sour sweetness of his alcohol-infused sweat, invaded my mouth. I nearly gagged, but knew better than to let that happen.Only a moment ago, I was about to be strangled to death, and would be by now if not for this new threat. Maybe it would have been a better death than suffering at this new monster’s hands. Clearly my captor didn’t expect me to help fend off the new threat. He thought I’d brought it to him. Then I realized why he hadn’t killed me yet. If he thought I was connected to this singing beast, then he planned on using me.No, not that, either. He was probably too drunk by now to think that clearly. He was just too distracted to finish me off.Whoever was out there was no friend of mine. My captor had to know this. If anything, I would simply serve as a fat human shield, my captor holding off the threat long enough for me to die an ignominious death, and for him to make a run for it. I doubted this man could escape, though. I’d just be a fleshy nuisance before the drunk was killed, too.There must be a way to free myself. Planning under pressure was not my strong suit. All I could do was wiggle and squirm, try to break free. No sooner did I try, than I found a knee shoved hard into my lower gut. I’d never been outright assaulted before, but always thought that with my extra bulk, a blow like that might have been softened some. Yeah, right! If not for the hand holding me up by my neck, I would have collapsed in pain. All the fight in me was gone. How pathetic I was. Of the fights I’d witnessed in the past, few were ever resolved so quickly. Most men, and almost as many boys, could take a punch and keep on fighting. Then there was me, pacified by a single blow. At least when I died today, nobody else would know.“I am not going to swing today,” the drunk whispered to me. “Do you hear me? If your friend tries putting that noose around my neck, I’ll rip your throat out.”That confirmed it, I realized. The singing man was the one they called the hangman. Obviously escape was possible. How else would any rumors about the hangman get started? If only I could—No. It wouldn’t work. I was not that agile. Very few people had escaped this hangman to tell about him. Someone like me wouldn’t stand a chance. That’s ignoring the fact that I first had to escape this drunk. With two seemingly impossible foes to escape from, I knew my death was inevitable. Still, I couldn’t quite accept that. How does one accept one’s fate? All I knew was that I was terrified. Fear of death, pain, brutality, and somewhere in the mix, I was worried about my mother. Compounding my discomfort, the bark and twigs that were matted to my back kept scratching and causing my back to itch.My body trembled and a small whimper escaped my lips as my jaw quivered. The drunk whispered, “I’m going to move my hand. Don’t you dare make a sound.”I resolved to obey, but I don’t know why I cared what he told me. After all, regardless of what happened, he still planned on killing me. I watched his hand as it pulled away from my mouth. I choked back a sudden urge to cry. Instead I watched as the hand moved down. His leg came up, and I saw him pull a large sheath knife from his boot. As he raised the sharpened steel, his eyes arched past me, then around in a circle. He was looking for the hangman. The hangman was nowhere to be seen, but his singing was everywhere to be heard. He sounded so very close.Just as my captor’s eyes found their way back to looking at me, a rope suddenly looped around his neck. His eyes went wide with delayed surprise and then he was yanked backward. His knife fell from his hands and his feet flew high in the air. He landed about three meters away from where he’d been standing.My body was heavy, and my feet could not support me as the man was dragged away. This was my only chance to escape, but I couldn’t muster the strength. I sank to my knees and watched in horror. In front of me, kicking and cursing, the man was being pulled by the neck with a thick coil of rope. On the other end of the rope, about fifteen feet away, was the biggest creature I’d ever seen. At first I couldn’t believe he was actually a man. He was a veritable giant with features the likes of which I’d never seen on any man in my life.Barely even straining, his muscular arms—almost as thick as my considerable belly—pulled the murderous father several feet with each tug. His body wasn’t out of proportion, either. The trunk of his body was massive, covered in a tan homespun-style vest with brown cotton or wool trousers. But his head! The rest of his body could have passed for a normal, albeit giant, man, but that head was enough to paralyze anyone from a single glance.Most people’s heads are taller than they are wide. This man’s head was wider than it was tall. It looked almost lemon shaped, if the lemon were lying sideways and was as large as a watermelon. Stretching from one end of his face to the other was a gargantuan smile. Each tooth was at least twice as large as both of my thumbs put side by side. This bulking deformity of man could have easily bitten the head off the drunk who was now at his feet.Great bushy eyebrows crowded close to each other above those dark slanted eyes. Maybe it was a shadow, but even the whites of his eyes seemed a darker shade of gray. The hangman looked down his flat nose at the now pitiful drunk. Anyone would be pitiful compared to this lumbering mass of muscle. With one hand, big enough to wrap halfway around the drunk’s chest, he grabbed the man by the ribs and lifted him into the air. With the noose firmly snugged around the drunk’s neck, the giant’s other hand gripped the opposite end of the rope with a white-knuckled fist. As if it was no big deal, he single-handedly lobbed the man’s body into the air, arching him over a high, stout branch of the nearest tree.Arms and legs flailed wildly as the drunk flew into the air. Then his neck cracked as the full weight of his body was snapped straight. His limbs flinched, but he didn’t have time to suffocate. He was spared mercifully by that broken neck. The giant let the body dangle for only a few seconds before lowering him. The whole while, through that massively toothy grin, the giant kept repeating, “Swing low, sweet chariot / Coming for to carry me home . . .”The drunk never had a chance. Whatever stories he’d heard, he must have imagined them to contain some degree of exaggeration. If he’d known what he was really up against, he’d have run for all he was worth, not daring to wait around until the hangman showed himself.The giant started into another verse as he unfastened the rope from the corpse’s neck. “Sometimes I’m up, and sometimes I’m down / Coming for to carry me home / But still my soul feels heavenly bound . . .”I'd escaped one death only to be confronted by another. Yet all I could do was stare at the casual brutality of the scene before me. I would be next, but running never crossed my mind. My jaw hung low in shock. I was hypnotized by this creature. I completely forgot about the baby, bundled several meters away; at least I forgot until the monster lumbered over to where it was crying.Without thinking I yelled, “Not the baby! Don’t hurt the baby!”The giant looked back at me, pausing in his song for only a second or two. His smile remained, but he looked almost hurt. Then, more gently than I guessed a behemoth of his stature could manage, he cradled the child in the palm of one hand. He ended his song, “Tell all my friends I’m coming there too / Coming for to carry me home.” As he intoned these last words, he looked at me again, and with one huge hand, he waved for me to follow.End of Chapter 7Thanks for reading. Remember to comment on anything you liked or that you think should be fixed.Click here to read Chapter 8Copyright 2017: While I encourage you to share this link with your friends and family, please keep in mind that this is copyrighted material. Under no circumstances do you have the right to re-publish any or part of this content without specific written permission from BC Crow and Blue House Publishing.