After Dr. Elias Robertson accidentally kills an important patient on the operating table, he and his daughter Cordelia are forced to leave their native Massachusetts for the Tug River Valley in the Appalachians. While her father establishes a medica...
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1914 Tug Fork, West Virginia
The death bed vigil lasted all night. Devil Anse Hatfield, the newly baptized child of God, had a fit at his logging yard. He fell to the dust, convulsing and foaming at the mouth. He never regained conciousness, but laid all night still breathing with his family gathered around him.
Reverend Elias W. Hatfield called in his predecessor, Preacher Garrett, to help with his family. The older man, white haired as his grandfather, came without delay. Cordelia Hatfield reassured her eldest that he had done the right thing. He couldn't be expected to bear his own grief and everyone else's.
At moonset, Anse took his last breath. He left behind a widow, seven children, and six grandchildren. In quiet tones, Preacher Garrett said that they would plan the burial after everyone got some sleep. Elias agreed. His father was in no shape for agonizing over details.
Truth be told, Elias was in no shape for it either.
The young preacher opened a new bottle of whiskey when he returned home to the annexed cottage beside the parish. The stars were just fading and the light outside was bluish grey. He filled a glass to the brim. He told himself that he needed it. At least he wasn't tipping it back, straight from the bottle.
Elias stepped out into the small garden. It was sparsely tended though weeded, the flower beds of a responsible bachelor. He took a draw from his glass and wearily surveyed his country church and it's grounds.
At first, he had been worried about rumors of nepotism when he was given the parish. His family had one of the most infamous names in the county, but was also one of the most influential and prosperous. The Hatfields had been reaping a rich harvest since those dark days when his father was a youth.
However, the community accepted him without question. His reputation proceeded him. Elias was well loved by the people of Tug Fork. Kind, intelligent, and soft spoken, he was also tall and broadly built with a thick mop of golden red hair. With a masculine jawline and gentle eyes, he was the golden boy.
Still he possessed serious doubts about his own self worth. Their high expectations were ill founded and Elias dreaded the day that his sins would come to light.
He drained the cup and turned to go back inside to pour another when a flash of white in the misty grey caught his eye. A ghostly figure hovered in the graveyard. Elias moved out in front of the parish and squinted through the gloom.
Despite his grandmother's superstitious tendencies, which even his practical Yankee mother indulged in on occasion, Elias was a skeptic. Though sometimes he wondered if that was a unhealthy quality in a man of God. But he'd always taken stories of curses and haunts with a grain of salt and a smirk.
The hair on the back of his neck stood on end as he watched the girl in the white nightgown crouch beside a headstone and start to dig. She pulled something from the soil and tucked it into a handkerchief. Rising, a damp breeze teased the brown curls from her shoulders. The fabric clung to her legs. Elias was entranced.
The girl gazed across the graveyard towards him. She was not ghost. Whoever she was, this girl was of the flesh. A black dog trotted out of the trees to her side. Resting a hand on its massive skull, she gave a odd smile then stuck out her tongue at Elias. She had to be at least eighteen. Something about her made him think she wasn't being coquettish, only mean spirited, like a child in a school yard.
She trotted away as the sun broke past the hills to the east and spilled into the Tug River Valley. The black dog, an omen of bad luck according to his grandmother, followed on her heels.
Elias didn't move. Strands of mist coated the graves in the silvery white glow. Finally, he walked towards the place where she was digging, if only to prove to himself that she wasn't a hallucination.
The ground had been freshly disturbed. Kneeling, he found a small patch of root vegetables and unfamiliar herbs. He read the rain beaten headstone beside it.
Nancy McCoy Phillips 1865 - 1901
The next morning, Elias received word from Preacher Garrett of another death in town. As they had been bound in life through conflict and blood, the patriarchs of the Hatfield and McCoy clans were joined in death.
Randall McCoy had been burned alive in his tiny homestead in the middle of the woods. His two nieces were the only survivors, but claimed they hadn't heard anything until the cabin was engulfed in flames.
