On a cold and stormy morning many years ago on an old farm house, a farmer is getting ready for his days work. As he heads out the front door he sees a basket on the stoop. Thinking one of his neighbor farmers had dropped off some vegetables, he picks up the basket to bring inside. As he closes the door he hears a faint cry from the basket. “Mama” he cries, “come quick!”His wife races in from the kitchen shouting “Jeb, what’s all the commotion about?” Jeb thrust the basket towards Selma, “there’s something alive in it, Selma”. Selma grabbed the basket and looked inside. What she saw was an old dirty blanket with a baby wrapped in it, or at least she thought it was a baby. She also found a note that read “Please take my baby Marilyn and raise her as your own. I do not have the means nor the will to care for her.” Reading this she told Jeb to go on about his day and she would take care of “fixin’ up the baby”.
She took the basket to the kitchen and ran some warm water in the sink to bathe the child. As she removed the baby from the old blanket, she saw that Marilyn had black hair with a white streak, she had pale green eyes that seemed to be lifeless. She had the beginnings of teeth coming in, but what troubled Selma most of all was the scars on her. She had scars on her face and body, scars on top of scars. This puzzled Selma as these scars seemed to be years old, the kind you would get from a life of torment and torture. How could this be since Marilyn was not more than five or six months old? She bathes the child and then fashioned a diaper out of a kitchen towel and wrapped her in a clean blanket and went about making something to feed her. All the time Selma was wondering what kind of mother could treat her daughter like this. After she finished feeding her she held her in her arms and softly whispered to her “It’s OK Marilyn you’re home now”.
Later when Jeb returned he asked Selma “what are we going to do with that thing?” Selma told him she was going to do as the note said and raise Marilyn as theirs. Jeb was not too happy about his wife’s decision but realized it was what she always wanted but was never able to have, a child of her own.
As the years past, Selma realizes that Marilyn is not learning to talk. Oh she makes grunting sounds and screams and cries, but no words are ever spoken by her. This seems to break Selma’s heart as she always wanted to hear the word mama from her own child but never would. Selma decides that Marilyn is too fragile for the world and goes about teaching her at home. She shows Marilyn how to live and work on a farm as well as teaches her “readin’ and writin’.”
At age 12, Jeb realizes Marilyn is as tall as he is and almost as strong! He realizes he can save money on hiring a farmhand to most of the heavy lifting and slaughtering of the livestock. He quickly shows Marilyn how to do the work of a farm hand, feeding pigs and sheep, lifting bales of hay, cleaning out pigpens and chicken coops. At age 14, Jeb decides it’s time Marilyn learns how to slaughter some of the livestock for market. He takes Marilyn to the chicken house and shows her how to grab a chicken by the feet and in one fast motion twist its head until it is clear from the body. He then drops both to the ground and the chicken runs around without a head. Seeing this Marilyn lets out a shriek, not a shriek of horror, but almost laughter. She then grabs another chicken and proceeds to ring its neck. Again the air is filled with shrilling laughter and she prances around the chicken coop almost celebrating what she has learned. Marilyn starts to bend down and grab another chicken but Jeb stops her and says “that’s enough girl, we got plenty for supper”.
They head back to the house to give Selma the chickens to clean for dinner. Jeb walks in and hands her the chickens and says “well I think we finally found something that girl’s good at. Killing chickens! She took to it like a fish to water!” Hearing this Selma realizes that her daughter was more like a son to Jeb than a daughter. This disappointment causes her heart to break for the last time and she seems to grow cold right before their eyes. The joy was gone from her life and she snaps at Marilyn and Jeb, “You fellows get out of my house and get back to work or there will be no supper!”
Later that evening the all sat around the dinner table eating the chicken from earlier. Jeb says to Marilyn “Taste better when you kill it yourself, don’t it?” Marilyn gives out a grunt with an odd look on her scarred face. Selma just sat there quietly eating her supper and never utter a word again.
The years slipped by and Marilyn becomes Jeb’s pride and joy. She handles all the chores around the old farmhouse with great ease. Jeb takes great pride in the way Marilyn butchers a pig in less than five minutes and thinks she will always be able to find work at the slaughter house when they’re gone.
Marilyn was now eighteen and they had a little birthday cake for her. Selma tried to seem happy at her daughter’s birthday, but years of hard work and disappointments had taken a toll on her. She was frail and old and deeply sad about the way her daughter had turned out. Maybe this is why she never could have any children of her own she thought. Selma died in her sleep that night. Jeb was torn up with grief and loneliness. He had the undertaker dress Selma in her favorite blue dress with her pearls and picked out a nice white casket and she was placed in the family crypt at Pepper Tree Cemetery. But he did not let Marilyn attend the funeral, as he believed she did not have the mental capacity to understand what was happening and she would embarrass him at the service. And he also wouldn’t have to deal with all the strange looks that the town’s people gave Marilyn when they saw her. So he decided to leave Marilyn at the farm doing her chores.
After the services were over, Jeb returned to the farmhouse, only to find it dark and empty. He shouted for Marilyn but did not hear a response. He checked throughout the house but she was not there. He ran out back to look for her. He went to the chicken house to try and find her. When he opened the door he was horrified by a gruesome site. All of the chickens were beheaded and lying on the floor in a pool of blood. And written on the wall in blood was “rest in peace Mama”. Apparently Marilyn was not that dumb and did learn to read and write.
Jeb set out to find her thinking that he had done a horrible thing by not taking Marilyn to the funeral. He checks the pigpen only to find all the pigs slaughter and their heads stuck on the post of the pens. He checks the stables where the sheep were kept only to find all of them mutilated. It seemed that Marilyn had become quite the butcher overtime and was quite skilled with a knife.
Jeb gave up on his search and was not at all secure in being alone out on the farm at night with Marilyn on the prowl. He returned to the farmhouse and came up the back steps to the kitchen. As he enters the house he reached for the light switch and turned it on only to find Selma’s body sitting at the kitchen table. It seems that Marilyn was not ready for her mom to be gone and went to the old cemetery to get her back. Jeb was horrified and turned to leave the house, when he ran smack dab into Marilyn. Looking up at her scarred bloody face towering over him, he cried “Marilyn, I’m sorry for what I have done”. “I didn’t think that you understood what happened to your mother” He began to weep and reached out to hug his daughter. Marilyn had a tear in her eye and bent down towards her father. They began to embrace, Marilyn’s left hand covering her father’s shoulder and her right hand caressing the back of his head. “Please forgive me my daughter, you’re all I have now in this world” Jeb cried. Marilyn began to shriek and grown and with a violent twisting motion she ripped her father’s head from his body and threw them both to the floor, just like she had done to the chickens so many times in her life.
The old farmhouse has been empty now for almost fifty years. No one knows whatever became of Marilyn or if she ever did exist. Some say she was seen in a freak show of a traveling carnival, others say she went to work in the dark and dangerous Shackle’s Mine. Still others say that she was found by an old gypsy woman wondering down the road covered in blood. The Gypsy woman took her in and looked after her. After all she was a Gypsy and had been scorn by society for most of her life; she could use a little company and an able body to help out with work. Legend says that the Gypsy woman taught Marilyn the ways of the Gypsies, how to read a crystal ball, tell someone’s fortune in tea leaves, and most of all how to cast curses on your enemies. But after all these are just rumors and here say.
One legend persists to this day. The people that live around the abandoned farm house say that every year in the Halloween season, strange things go on at the farm. It seems that Marilyn returns to her childhood home and for two nights she brings it back to life, or death. She brings back all of her nightmare’s from a life of torment and torture and makes them real! The locals don’t dare to go up to the old farmhouse near Halloween time, as they all know of the horrors that Marilyn brings and they don’t want to become a main attraction in her next nightmare.
But again I say that these are all just stories that people tell around campfires to scare little ones. They can’t be real can they? I have bought the old farmhouse and have not found anything out of the ordinary. It seems like an old quaint place with peace and relaxation a plenty. Hog wash I say to these stories! Of course I haven’t spent my first Halloween here.......
