Rusty Quill presents

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

So, Lister discretion is advised.

The

Christmas

The

Christmas

Barlow Kentucky, 1970, the night before Sarah Avery ran.

The house was emptier without the boys in it. That much was for sure.

Carol Ann Avery, wife of Pinkie and mother to Sarah, sat on her front porch and looked out at the darkening yard.

Old number seven had claimed the father of her child and the closest thing to a papal that child would ever have.

And here she was, left alone on the side of this mountain by this smelly old creek, knowing it was just a matter of time.

It was beginning or ending, depending on how you looked at it.

Either way, she shouldn't have to wait too long.

She'd seen the mass graves at old fold, clean, discarboned, and his nonsense, talking loonies at Doug with the help of the union boys.

She'd seen what was left of them, city boys, they barely bothered to sift out of the rubble.

She saw bones. She saw blood. She forced off fire. She knew what a burnt offering looked like when she saw one.

Tonight of all nights, she had sent Sarah to stay with her friends the Calaways.

She needed a night to herself in this house to settle all the old ghosts and the new ones that might come.

Carol Ann Avery, formerly Carol Ann Walker from Turnikit West, Virginia, a town even smaller and dirtier than Barlow, so named because it was meant to stop the bleeding, the Exodus, a failed settlements and mines from that area, and rightly named because all it did was cause the amputation of the very same things.

Had come to Barlow with her new husband and full belly ten year ago.

Pinky, a kind but cowardly man, had thought he was delivering his bride and babe to be to the promised land of milk and honey.

...