Appalachia Bare is pleased to present Daniel Roop’s Third Prize entry for our Folklore Short Story Contest entitled “Pitty-Pitty-Pitty-Pat.”
Daniel Roop is a member of the Horror Writers Association and has been nominated for a Pushcart Prize for his work in Will Work for Peace from Zeropanik Press. His speculative fiction has been published or is forthcoming in Flash Fiction Online, Dark Spores, Black Cat Tales, The Maul Magazine, and Appalachian Places.
“Pitty-Pitty-Pitty-Pat”
The road from our farm to Sale Creek down Shipley Hollow is rougher tonight than I expected. In all my ten years, I reckon I’ve walked it ten thousand times, but never carrying nothing heavier than a fishing pole. Now, pushing the wheelbarrow, I wince at every bump and dip and loose gravel, worried I’m jarring him too much inside. He insisted we use the old wooden wheelbarrow instead of Daddy’s newer metal one, on account of he says he can’t stand the touch of iron. He’s in there now, curled against the smooth wood, covered by feed sacks tied on by twine just in case we run into anybody out here at night.
Another bump, and I hear him stifle a groan, hear the little piglet he’s holding let out a squeal. “This’d be a sight easier if you could just make this thing fly,” I say, on account of me having seen E.T. at the Hixson Cinemark last week. It was just magic, and I had to stop myself from jumping outta my seat and whooping and hollering when them bikes took to the air. Daddy and Mama smiled on either side of me, the first time I’d seen them smile in a month.
“Be easier, too, if we’d’a done this during the day,” I said. We’d argued about that all week while we made our plan, him saying every time:
Travel by the moon we must
Daylight people we can’t trust.
He always spoke in rhyme, ever since the day I found him in the hayloft a few weeks back. I’d been spending more time out there recently, seeing as how the house’d turned into a miserable place to be, ever since Mama found Casey face down in the pond. He was just shy of two years old, and while he loved the water, no one expected he’d crawl out of his toddler bed and stumble down there, and well, you know. I reckon Mama blamed herself, and Daddy blamed himself, and they both blamed each other, and so I’m the one what got yelled at one minute and hugged ‘til I about suffocated the next. Mama spent a lot of time crying, looking out at the pond, and Daddy, who’d been the workingest man in town, spent more time drinking beer, and I spent more time in the barn, missing Casey something awful.
So, there I was, up in the loft, racing my Hot Wheels cars along the beams, when I reached too far out and lost my balance and fell in the hay, and I heard something between an oof and a squeal. I pulled the hay away and felt something trying to pull the hay back down, and before I knew it, I was looking at a little hairy brown head. It wasn’t an animal and it wasn’t a person, and I jumped right back and said, “Holy—” and then a word I’m not supposed to know.
He sat there, blinking at me, tilting his head, like he was getting my measure, then he stood up slowly, like it was hard to do, and bowed. He was about the size of a cat, and covered in bristly brown hair, but the hair was coming out in clumps, so he had bald spots all over. His arms and legs looked like a person’s, and he had nimble fingers with sharp little claws at the end, but they looked brittle. He grinned and said,
Pitty-pitty-pitty-pat
Pleased to meet you, that’s a fact.
I think I said something like, “Huh?” And he giggled, and after looking ‘round to make sure we were alone, he came down from the haypile and told me his story, and it went all the way back to 1775, and really, farther than that.
He was from the Old Country, or at least, a place connected to the Old Country by a door in the air, or a portal, or something. His kind could move back and forth between worlds. Well, the most powerful ones could. He was just a lowly creature, he said, and one day on a visit he got distracted watching children act out a play and missed the journey back before the door closed. He tried making a door himself, mimicking what his Lord and Lady did, but all that door did was drop him here, in Sale Creek.
He was all out of sorts and landed right in front of a horse and buggy. Before he knew what was happening, that horse panicked and that buggy flipped over, and the lady driving it snapped her neck quick as you could snap your fingers. She had four little children with her, and he said he helped them out of the buggy on that cold, dark road, being sure not to touch any iron, and comforted them as best he could. I asked him what happened to the children.
Don’t fear their consequence my child.
They went to wander in the wild.
That wasn’t much of an answer, but then he told me how he’d been trying to get back home ever since, and how lonely he was here without his kind. He’d been hiding in the woods, and every now and then he’d get brave and run up behind someone at night to ask for help, but they’d hear that pit-pat-pit-pat-pit-pat and tear off like they’d seen a ghost. He’d just about given up, he said, but then asked,
Pitty-pitty-pitty-pat
Won’t you help me journey back?
My homeland, through a veil it lies
Golden fields and silver skies.
Now, I’d never thought about anyplace being more beautiful than Tennessee, but as he kept describing his world, I thought, no wonder he misses it, ‘cause I know how much I’d miss the hollers and hills of Sale Creek, and I thought about them kids helping E.T. and how good that would feel. So, I said, “Of course I’ll help,” and he just beamed ear-to-ear, but then just as quick his face fell. He said he didn’t know what to do, because the only way to get his folk to open a door back home for him was just awful.
“What’s that?” I asked, and he said his Lord and Lady, well,
They’ve always craved a human babe
To raise and train and keep enslaved.
Well, that sounded terrible, I said, and he agreed, and he said he couldn’t bring himself to steal a baby. Any child old enough to choose to go was too old for their purpose, being too full of, I don’t know, earth stuff already. So, I told him not to give up, and me and ole PitPat talked it out over the next week.
He stayed hid in the hayloft, and I brought him food and water. The food was tricky. He said he was looking so old and sick because of the changes in our world—not just the iron, but the poisons we put on our food and in our land. He couldn’t eat any of our crops, so I had to hunt wildflowers—bloodroot, painted trillium, Pink Lady’s Slippers. He munched on that as we plotted.
“Reckon they’d fall for a doll? Do they have dolls there?” He shook his head and chewed a mouthful of Jack-in-the-pulpit.
“Think they’d take a chick or a duckling? Those are earth critters, at least.” He nixed that.
After a week of nothing, I finally cracked it. “Wait!” I said. “A piglet! They’re smart as can be, and they even put pig hearts in sick people!” He pondered a minute, swallowed his milkweed, and said,
An infant pig will catch their eye!
Pitpat will then say, Goodbye!
Over that next week we smoothed out the details, and now here we are, bouncing this old wheelbarrow along Shipley Hollow, this dang piglet squealing with every bump. It feels like it’s taking forever, then Pitpat finally peeks out and points to a spot at the creek and says, here.
I help him out of the wheelbarrow, making sure we don’t let the piglet squirm away. I grip it under my arm, and Pitpat takes my hand and says,
Lord and Lady, grant me your eyes
Open the door, receive your prize!
The night air shimmers, like heat over fresh asphalt, and a golden line appears, and sure enough, traces a door at the edge of the creekbank. Through it, I can just make out two people, but not people, tall and regal and shining like the sun. And Pitpat, he says,
The prior children were too young
But now I’ve found the perfect one.
The Lord and Lady smile, and they’re beautiful, but terrible, too. They beckon me through the door, and I shake my head no, and I’m screaming for Mama and Daddy, and Pitpat dances around me. The Lord and Lady lift their hands, and my feet leave the ground, and I’m moving towards them, kicking the air, and honest to God, I’m flying.
END
**Featured image credit: Darcy Lawrey, Pexels
Congratulations! Wonderful story.