Red Canary Stories

  6. The Man Bound & the Red Hound  Lilia Hightower, Alexander’s paternal grandmother, was a superstitious individual. He always believed the woman was just senile. Lilia spent the last three years of her miserable existence wandering the halls of Old Cahawba like a ghostly specter, lost in her constant rambling. Since Lilia was the mother of Cornelius, the previous head and Alexander’s father, she was left to her own devices. Everyone moved around the woman as if she didn't exist. The mayor of Wych Elm chortled loudly as he made the Sign of the Cross. "Oh, Grandmother Lilia! You weren't a batty old crone after all." Lilia was long deceased; she died ten years prior when Alexander was twenty-five. Alexander recalled the old superstition he once heard Lilia mutter one time. If a knife fell on the floor, a man would come to visit. If a spoon, then a woman would come. Alexander had dropped his fork which meant the visitor that came to him that night was somethi...

  5. A Deal with the Hightowers The High Families to the people of Wych Elm were like the Boogeyman to children. But while the Boogeyman was the stuff of fiction, the evil that was the High Families was very much real. The horrors that were their tyranny, oppression, and violence lingered over the town like a dark curtain for over 200 years. Wych Elm native, Hamona Belleweather, nearly wept tears of joy intermixed with decades of ongoing sorrow. The woman of thirty-two years had dreamed of that day since she was ten. The violent nature of the High Families' were a universal experience for all who lived in Wych Elm. Hamona was one of her parents' two children but their only surviving one. She had an older brother, Hiram, who had been three years her senior. The two Belleweather siblings were nearly inseparable; their love for one another ran deep. Unfortunately, Hiram met his untimely end at the young age of thirteen. His death permanently altered the Belleweather fami...