An Ozark Ghost Story by BJ Roshone
They say Widow’s Gap ain’t on no map, and you’d be wise to keep it that way.
Up past Devil’s Elbow and through the pine-snarled switchbacks, you’ll find a hollow so steeped in shade that not even high noon can chase off the dark. Folks around here don’t go there—not since Annie Belle went missing in ’58. Not since the haint took up residence.
But Kelly Ray didn’t believe in haints. He was young, cocky, and newly back from the Army, the kind that thinks a little mud and moonlight makes a man invincible. He’d heard the stories growing up—how the Widow Cade still walked the ridge above the Gap, her nightgown drifting like mist, whispering folks’ names just before they vanished. But he’d also heard his uncle say that land was full of good oak and maybe a spring-fed cave worth digging.
So one October evening, when the mist hung low and the whippoorwills refused to sing, Kelly Ray went looking.
He took his daddy’s old Winchester and a flashlight, though he told himself he wouldn’t need either. He followed the game trail into the hollow, brushing past wet cedar and thorny underbrush until the trees opened into Widow’s Gap, a place so still even the crickets held their breath.
The wind changed as soon as he stepped inside. Cold like creek water, and wrong.
The first sign should’ve been the foxglove blooming out of season, pale as bone and swaying when there was no breeze. The second was the stone chimney, standing lonesome where no cabin remained—just moss, broken glass, and the rusted hoop of an old washtub.
He paused there, watching his breath curl in the air. Then he heard her.
“Kelly Ray…”
It was his mama’s voice. Soft. Sweet. Coming from the trees behind him.
He turned, heart hammering.
Nobody.
Then again: “Kelly Ray… come here now, honey…”
But Mama had been dead near two years, buried in red clay up on Dogwood Hill.
He gripped the Winchester tighter and backed toward the chimney. His flashlight flickered, sputtered, then went dead. The woods thickened around him, shadows moving like water.
A figure stepped into view.
She was tall, white-haired, her skin a faded parchment shade. Her dress fluttered though no wind blew, and her eyes were a milky silver that saw through time.
“You shouldn’t’ve come here,” the Widow Cade said. “You got war stink on you. Blood, too. The haint hungers for that.”
Kelly Ray tried to lift his rifle, but it was heavy, too heavy. Like the air itself pressed down on him.
“You hear the whippoorwill?” she asked.
He shook his head.
“You won’t. Not tonight.”
Behind her, from the shadows of the chimney, something began to emerge. It was too long. Too lean. Blacker than coal smoke. Its limbs moved wrong, like a spider wearing a man’s skin. It smelled of turned earth and rotwater.
The haint.
It hissed through teeth it didn’t have, and Kelly Ray’s mind snapped like dry kindling.
He ran.
Branches clawed at his face. Thorns tore his shirt. The path twisted, coiled like a serpent, and somewhere behind him the haint gave chase, whispering his name in all the voices he’d ever loved.
“Kelly Ray… Kelly Ray… Kelly Ray…”
He burst from the hollow at dawn, collapsed by the gravel road that runs past Devil’s Elbow. His eyes were wide. His voice was gone. And though he lived another sixty years, he never spoke again.
Some say he left his voice in the Gap.
Some say the haint keeps it.
And some say, when the moon is right and the foxglove blooms in fall, you can still hear Widow Cade whispering to the trees, calling out names in the dark.
JP Brand Books 