Rusty Quill presents

Old Gods of Appalachia is a horror anthology podcast and therefore may contain material not suitable for all audiences.

So listen to discretion is advised.

I'll walk these hills, lead these dark valleys, where I can't stay down the lands of no one.

There are only these hills, but I will walk so often.

I can feel the winds now only in the woods.

Helloes Walker had to pass through Baker's Gap proper to get to the Walker house and so she had taken it upon herself to scout the area around the clutch to see what she could see.

Her sister Marcy's man Melvin had shown up with a letter detailing the happenings in Baker's Gap and she knew she'd be more likely to find signs of what had gone awry with the women of the clutch on her own.

She loved her sister dearly and would rather have no one else at her back in a tough spot but Marcy's gift was blunt in some ways.

Now Marcy Walker was brute force strong with the true gift and could work a protection charm or a bind in with the absolute best in the world.

But the fact that her focus was a long carved walking stick as thick as a small man's arm and Ellie's was a razor-bladed hunting knife couldn't be more apt.

Ellie's gift came and found lace-like details. Connections had always revealed themselves to her since she was a girl.

When she stilled her mind she could see the green reaching out in all its forms through rain and wind, flower and pollen, tree and root and she could sense the places those connections had been broken or corrupted.

She could smell the rot that rose up from beneath trying to break those holy connective tissues that held the body of this world together.

When she was with her sibling their combined gifts were things to be feared.

But the brightness and loudness of her sister's presence could make the finer things hard to find.

So here she stood on her own on the berm looking down into the entrance of the clutch and you'd have to go down into the holler about a quarter of a mile for you'd see any signs of life.

She wouldn't go down that gullet on her own but she could sniff around, reach out.

She stilled her mind and her heart, relaxed, breathed slow and deep. Let herself open to the green.

At first it was like pouring ice water across dirt covered stones, watching and feeling the cool flow as the layers of this world were stripped away.

She could see the life in all its shades pulsing and reaching out like a vast whip across plants and trees great and small and she could feel her heart swell with the old magic that slept here and that didn't sleep here.

She could feel the women who did have the gifts working here could feel their calls for good fortune and protection for healing and for far sight.

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