Locks of Her Hair Read online

“Uncle Andy,” Billy asked, “Is that story true?” His eyes were wide, the hairs on the back of his neck standing up.

  “Uncle Andy, are you terrorizing the children again?” Alice asked. “Come inside.”

  “It’s true, all of it!” Andrew said, stamping his cane on the wooden porch for effect.

  Alice took his arm to help him out of his chair on the porch.

  “Come on, it’s time for your pill and your nap.”

  As she led him to the door, he paused and turned back to the children.

  “Don’t go in there after dark!” he yelled. “You hear?”

  “Stop it, Andrew. You’re scaring the children again. I’ll never get them to sleep tonight.”

  “Don’t go in there,” he called, softer now. “Don’t go in there,” now in just a whisper as he shuffled through the door and towards his bedroom.

  Behind him, the neighborhood children were talking.

  “It can’t be true. No one’s hair can change color like that.”

  “Yeah, well my Uncle Buck tells this story about a One-Armed Man who hunts kids on camping trips.”

  “Did you ever hear the story about the man with a bloody hook for a hand?”

  The screen door slammed with a squeak and a bang.

  Alice led Uncle Andrew to his bed and guided him to sit. She pulled his shoes off as she continued to admonish him.

  “You have to stop telling stories like that. It only scares the little ones. They don’t really enjoy it.”

  Andrew grasped his niece’s arm, a look of desperation on his face.

  “You won’t let them, will you? Keep them inside after dark. It’s the harvest moon tonight.”

  “I’ll watch them, you get some rest. I’ll get you some water for your pill.”

  Andrew lay down with his cane next to him on the bed. He always kept the cane at his side, day and night. He didn’t know what protection it would provide from creatures that brought forth fire from the palms of their hands, but he never even slept without it.

  Alice looked back at him as she gently closed the door. It was hard sometimes caring for her old uncle. He could be ornery and he scared the kids sometimes, but he was family after all. She looked at the nightstand, with its Farmer’s Almanac opened to the chart of full moons in October, his bottles of medication and a crucifix next to it, and shook her head.

  Andrew lay there in the silence, remembering. Then he got up with a struggle. It was difficult for him because of his age, but he got down on his knees and bent down to feel around under the bed. It wasn’t there! He bent further with a creak and a groan, and saw it, just out of his reach. He grabbed his cane and used that to pull the box toward him. Lying down on the bed again, clutching the old King Edward box to his chest, his heart raced as he remembered.

  He opened the box on his chest. He didn’t need to look inside. He knew its contents by heart, the only two artifacts he kept from his childhood—a mostly smoked cigar and a white handkerchief. He took out the handkerchief and carefully opened it, looking at it with moist eyes. It was locks of hair he had taken from Dianna’s hairbrush after she had died. For even though the hair on her head remained flaxen blonde until the day she died, the hairs that stuck to her brush were always orange-red, the color of Halloween pumpkins.

  The End

  This story is Copyright 2013 by Jon Paul Olivier

  All rights reserved