The Trouble with Ginseng
William P Adams
Issue Two - December 2024
Original Art: Drones by Anne Anthony
My name is Sonny Doggett, and folks around these parts call me Sonny Dogs. I’m okay with that. Here in the hill country, nicknames is as common as June Bugs. I ain’t told nobody what I’m about to, and I figured if it was wrote down, it wouldn’t get all balled up and messed with in the telling. What happened to me early last fall is true, but I wisht it weren’t.
I heard tell of most all the descriptions of what befell me next to that cabin – the Heebie Jeebies, the Willies, the Creepy Crawlies, and my gosh, even the Howling Fantods, but none of ‘em come close to the god-awful feeling in my body and soul that made me wisht I’d never been born.
Down in Reznor County, I was. Alone and hunting wild ginseng – in season, with permission – I ain’t stupid. I hiked into what I thought was the right spot, but I couldn’t be sure because the map Artis Wiggins drew up was for shit. I trusted Artis, but that boy was a meth head, so there is that. Anyways, I come up below a ridge where a small crick ran along and spied an old cabin next to a shagbark hickory. What happened next made me wisht to God I stayed home that day.
As I stood in a clearing, deciding if I should knock on the cabin door and see if anyone was there and could tell where the hell I’d gotten up to, the door opened, and two figures come out. One was a girl in a sack dress, a young teenage, I’d bet. The other was a younger boy with faded overhauls and a dirty face who looked at me with a knowing grin.
The girl walked slow down the three steps from the cabin porch to the clearing while the boy sat on the top step. I was about to open my mouth to ask directions when the girl opened hers. What come out weren’t human speech – it was like bees - like a thousand of ‘em buzzing words in a horrible bee language that rose and fell in tones that were sheer torture to hear.
Now, I’d been around snake handlers and tongue talkers all my life, but this girl was speaking things in that unholy buzz that froze me in place, and it felt like being crushed by a weight that would not let up. I tried to cry out and say the name of Jesus, but the word was stuffed down my throat like a hand squeezing around my vocal cords and would not come forth.
I honest to God reckoned I was done for, and if dying would stop the horrific bee talk that circled around me like bob wire, then let it come quick like. As the girl’s droning buzz grew to an unbearable, high-pitched whine, I looked up from my knees and seen two things – the boy beat it into the cabin and shut the door, and a massive swarm of genuine, bona fide bees come flying out of a hole in the old hickory.
The bee swarm landed as one on the girl's head, and the tarnal buzzing what come out of her suddenly stopped. I could move then and wasted no time scrabbling up off the ground. The last thing I seen before I turned tail and ran back to where I stashed my truck was her with a giant bee head, standing there staring at me.
I made it to the truck, and I don’t remember the drive home, but I got there.
I quit the ginseng game – it weren't worth the trouble.
I cut ties with that no-account Artis – no big loss there.
I started up with the Full Gospel Holiness Tabernacle. So far, I ain’t been bit.
About
William P Adams
William P Adams writes short fiction inspired by his upbringing in the baby boom generation. He has been published online in Friday Flash Fiction and resides in the Pacific Northwest.