The peddler had a secret smile.
It was the kind that promised the world and all its delicious mysteries.
And Lydia knew it was meant only for her.
She’d seen him from between the trees on his way into town, his great hump of a pack cutting through the forest like a bit of the mountains come to life.
He stood tall and broad-shouldered even under its weight, and Lydia thought he was the handsomest man she’d ever seen. This wasn’t difficult. The few men that populated her small hamlet in the Alleghenies were hard, serious, old before their time.
She wanted to see more of this stranger. Luckily she knew the forest. Knew the right way to weave through its trunks to keep out of sight while still watching the path. She shadowed him as he walked, trailed him all the way to the edge of town, when the thick growth finally gave way to a dell at the bottom of a roundbacked ridge.
From here, if Lydia turned to the south, she could see the shoulders of the foothills as they rolled away to the horizon. It was her favorite place to come and the pull of it was enough to draw her gaze away from the peddler for a moment.
She let her thoughts follow the hills, out and away. She wondered what it must be like, to live like him. To walk from town to town. Roaming the roads with nothing to hold you down but the pack on your back. Dangerous and wild, she imagined. But also free. It made Lydia’s chest twist with longing.
She turned back then and drew in a quick breath. He’d spotted her through the thick underbrush.
That was when she saw it. The secret smile.
The blood rushed to Lydia’s cheeks making them burn, and her heart thudded out a peculiar rhythm—one that she’d never known and therefore couldn’t name.
But if she’d thought on it for a moment, country girl that she was, she’d have understood. Afterall, she’d seen it plenty of times in the forest.
Her heart raced like a rabbit.
And the peddler, he smiled like a fox.
By the time the peddler had dropped his pack on the green outside the town’s clapboard chapel, Lydia had slipped out from the treeline and joined her neighbors as they milled about, cautious but curious.
Up close like this, Lydia admired the peddler’s bramble of raven hair, his dark eyes that sparked like flint in the afternoon light. She surprised herself by how much she wanted to feel those eyes on her, but he was preoccupied at the moment. A bits and bobs showman, ready to get down to business.
“Friends,” he called to the people of the hamlet who gathered around him, “I, Nehemiah Loveridge, come to you from far away, bearing stories of my wanderings and all the items from this prodigious pack.”
He turned and waved his hands at the wooden contraption now standing at attention on the grass. Barrels, boxes, and packages of varying shapes and sizes were lashed to it with a rough rope, and he began unpacking them, one by one, weaving his story as he went.
“Several hundred miles have my feet seen this year, but when I heard tell of this place far up in the mountains, I knew I must make my way hither. For if ever there was a place that might have use for what I have carried so far, it is this one.”
“And what have you then, son?” It was one of the town’s many loggers, careworn face jutting from his long neck as he craned for a better view.
The peddler smiled at the man. It wasn’t the secret smile. The one just for her. But it was close and it made Lydia shiver. She stepped closer. Tried to catch his eye.
“Why, a good many things that could be of real use to you, Sir,” Nehemiah responded. “And to you, Ma’am.” He nodded at Old Lady Jenkins. “And to you, Miss.” His gaze finally met Lydia’s and she froze, transfixed.
She wondered, suddenly, what it would be like to feel his teeth on her. The unbidden thought, like the frantic beating of her heart, was something new. It scared her. Excited her. She shook it away.
“Look here,” he continued. “Buttons, pins, combs, and razors. Scissors with sharp edges and knives sharper still. Lace and ribbons for bonnets and bodices. An assortment of woodenware to grace your tables. Candlesticks, whistles, and oils for your ailments. Bolts of cloth for a new dress. Hats and glasses. And more. Much more besides.”
Nehemiah Loveridge beckoned them nearer, and Lydia took his invitation to heart, sidling up as close as she dared to the stranger. His moss green frock coat scratched against her arm. Lydia ran a hand across the skin where it had touched her.
“What can I help you find, Miss?”
Lydia turned, wide-eyed, tongue stuck behind her teeth. She looked at him and thought she might as well ask the man for help finding the land of the fairies as for something that might belong in their rough-hewn cabin.
“No, nothing, thank you. I only came to look.”
The secret smile played at the corners of Nehemiah Loveridge’s lips once more.
“Well, I wouldn’t want one such as yourself to leave here empty-handed.”
“One such as myself?”
“Marked for more, you are. I can smell it on ya.” Nehemiah bent down, whispered in her ear. “Sweet. Ripe.” The sibilance of the ‘s’ caressed her cheek. The pop of the ‘p’ burst somewhere deep inside her.
Lydia tucked a loose curl behind her ear. Bit her lip. She wondered if anyone else had heard his words, but her neighbors were bustling about, busy with the work of spending their hard-earned coin.
“Here.”
Nehemiah crouched down and retrieved a battered box with a black iron latch from where it had been tucked away beneath a bit of canvas. He lifted the lid and Lydia went up on her tiptoes to see inside.
Her mind raced with possibilities. A ring, perhaps. Maybe a tortoiseshell comb for her hair. She wasn’t much of one for such baubles, but if it came from Nehemiah’s trove, she’d make an exception.
Nehemiah swept his hand across the bottom of the box and when he withdrew his fist, a clutch of clothespins protruded from his fingers. They were made from some dark wood, branches that had been split nearly clean up the middle. Their tops were tightly wrapped with metal bands.
Lydia’s heart sank, but she tried not to let it show on her face.
Nehemiah’s eyes sparkled black and brilliant against the gathering shadows of the waning day.
“You’ll get more use out of these than any of the other trinkets I’ve got tucked away, I’d wager.”
Lydia pressed her lips together, lifted a corner of her mouth, an expression of courtesy, nothing more. She reached out both hands, taking the thick clothespins from his rough fingers.
As she was drawing away, he laid one calloused hand on hers.
A curtain drew itself around her, a wall between them and the rest of the world. Her blood rushed through her veins, her breath filled the deepest pockets of her lungs. She could run like a rabbit.
Or stay.
And if she stayed, she knew she’d do anything for him.
His fingers slipped from hers, and Lydia came back to herself, blinking. She felt alone. Unsettled. Afraid.
And tucking the clothespins into her apron pocket, she hurried home, bare feet slapping against the dirt path.
The next day she helped her mother cook stew in the morning, sweep the cabin clean in the afternoon. All the while, the clothespins knocked together in her pocket, the wood and iron making a strange music. Lydia hummed along, the hours passing faster than usual.
As sunset approached, her mother handed Lydia a basket of laundry. She looked at the pile of bedclothes and her heart leapt, although with terror or joy, she couldn’t be sure.
She crossed the threshold with the washtub, Nehemiah’s clothespins growing heavy in her pocket. Lydia worked quickly, filling the tub with water from the handpump and scrubbing the sheets clean with wood ash lye.
As she wrung them out, her forearms tensed and her back flexed, and she thought about the peddler. His black curls and midnight eyes. The clothespins were hot against her hip.
When the sheets were finally ready for drying, she dipped her fingers into her pocket and drew out the first pin. Smooth it was, with a satisfying heft. It looked a little like a person, Lydia thought, with two legs and a little halo for hair, and she wrapped her fingers around it, tight.
She bent and pulled out the sheet, heavy and awkward from the wash, and lifted the corner of it over the thin rope strung up between two beech trees. Lydia pushed the clothespin over the sheet, trapping it against the rope.
Overhead, an early-rising barred owl called out, ringing hoots sounding like laughter in the trees.
Lydia ran her hand along the rope, stretching the sheet out as she went, and then folded the opposite corner over the scratchy hemp fibers.
She withdrew a second clothespin. This one was thinner than the first, with a thicker iron wrap. It took a little more force to trap the sheet against the rope this time. And she sighed when it finally slid into place.
Down the line she went, hanging sheets until she’d exhausted her supply of Nehemiah’s pins. Until they made a curtain, a wall, between herself and the rest of the forest. It seemed right to her, like her work was done, so she let the rest of the laundry sit in the basket.
Lydia smiled, a stealthy thing.
As the sun sank lower behind the ridge that marked the edge of their property, a gentle wind kicked up and played with the hem of Lydia’s dress before making the edges of the sheets billow.
Lydia heard something then. It could have been the call of the owl, or the wind playing in the beech tree branches. It could have been a voice, low and slow and honied with menace.
“Holdfast,” the voice said. And Lydia did, her bare toes curling into the grass.
“Holdfast.” And Lydia did, even as her heart pounded in her ears.
“Holdfast.” It was a command and Lydia tried her best to obey, but the roar of blood in her veins made her legs twitch and before she knew it, her feet were thudding against the wood floor of the cabin, the door shut and latched behind her.
“Something on the wind tonight,” her mother said, and Lydia looked at the woman with wide eyes. “Might be a storm blowing in.”
Lydia nodded. But with her back to the door, she could still hear the echo of the voice on the breeze. It was no storm.
Lydia’s mother boxed her ears when she saw the wet sheets still in the basket the next morning. She was mad. Mad about the sheets, but madder about something else.
“Old Lady Jenkins said you were making eyes at some stranger come to town yesterday.”
Lydia didn’t say anything. There was nothing to say when her mother was this angry.
“It’s bad enough you wandering the woods when you should be helping around the house. The neighbors wag their tongues, saying look at Sarah Jane’s little wake-snakes. Nothing but flumadiddle from her. A waste of a woman.”
Her mother was shouting now, and as her voice grew stronger, so, it seemed, did her muscles. Soon Lydia’s head rang with the high, tinny pitch of a cicada.
“That’s all bad enough,” her mother kept on. “But now? Now you got to shame yourself on top of it? You know what they call you in town, Lydia? After fawning over that dirty peddler. Now you’re a hoyden. A romp.”
Lydia tried to pull away from the onslaught of words and fists, but her mother was well-built, her fingers wrapping fully around Lydia’s arm. She looked at her mother’s hand, dark from long days at work in the sun, and thought of the circle of iron on the clothespins.
Holdfast. The word seemed to rise up from the ground, worm its way through her flesh and up to her brain. From where they stood, Lydia could see the pins rocking gently on the rope, that same strange breeze making them move.
This time she would mind the command. And she stood firm until, winded, her mother finally stayed her hand.
“Clean them sheets again,” she huffed. “And you come right back in when you’re done. No wandering about like some damn hussy.”
Lydia stumbled into the grass when her mother finally released her, eardrums full of cicadas and her mind full of Nehemiah.
She spent all afternoon cleaning the sheets she’d let moulder, damp in their basket. She took her time as the well water splashed, crystalline, into the tub, and the soap gathered, chalky, under her fingernails.
She pulled Nehemiah’s pins off the sun-dried linens, relishing the satisfying snap they made as they came free. She let the fresh sheets fall. The wood of the pins felt too good in her hands to be bothered with gathering and folding.
It was golden hour by the time Lydia had lifted the last of the day’s wash onto the rope, yesterday’s laundry trampled underfoot. She stopped to catch her breath, stretch her back, admire her work.
Tonight, no owl laughed. But a red fox screamed some ways off. She should be inside, spooning up supper and listening to her mother read verses by firelight. But she stood before the sheets, hoping for a breeze. Yearning for that wild voice in her ears again.
After her feet had grown cold and the sun had given in to the moon, Lydia sighed and turned to the cabin. She’d taken one step when she heard the whisper.
Holdfast.
She spun around and a light bloomed behind the sheet closest to her. Silhouetted against the pale orange glow was a figure. At first it looked like one of the clothespins, a sketch of a person with long legs and a blunt head. But as the silhouette grew larger, Lydia recognized the crown of curls, the broad shoulders. Nehemiah.
Lydia called out to him, but the figure didn’t move. She stepped closer to the sheet, peeked around the edge of it. But on this side there was only the gathering darkness of the forest. No light. No peddler.
Lydia blinked. Swallowed. And then returned to where she had stood. The shadow of Nehemiah was there. It had no face, but Lydia could feel his dark eyes on her.
And then the breeze came, rattling the beech trees until the branches beat out a wild rhythm and the edge of the sheet lifted and the shadow of Nehemiah breathed.
Holdfast.
And this time Lydia did.
And because she was brave and didn’t run she was treated to a show. The shadow of Nehemiah jumped and glided across the sheets held by his pins. It was a dance like none other that Lydia had ever seen. His arms wove stories. His feet traced songs. His body called to her as it rose and fell across the linen.
It was feral. Dangerous. Mesmerizing. Lydia let herself go and she danced along with the shadow of the man. And by the time the wind died in the branches and she finally stopped, she was wet with sweat, slick in ways she’d never known before.
She smiled. And she couldn’t be sure, but she thought the shadow of Nehemiah smiled too.
A different orange glow blossomed behind them, then. Dawn.
The shadow of Nehemiah lifted a hand. Lydia stepped closer. Closer. She brought her own hand up and pressed it against the sheet. Her palm felt the warm solidity of him and she hiccuped, swallowing down fear. Desire.
“Lydia!”
Her mother’s voice rang out across the yard like the scream of a fox. The soft pressure of Nehemiah’s touch disappeared. But in her hand was a new clothespin. This one was made from darker wood than the others. The iron wrapped around the top was red with rust. And the twinned prongs were sharp.
“Have you been out here all night?” Her mother stomped over to Lydia, wrapping her fingers around her arm again, squeezing the bruise she’d left the day before.
Her mother spun Lydia around, pulled her close. She looked at her: tangled hair, breathless rise and fall of her chest, flushed cheeks, the shine of sweat on her skin.
She looked at the crumpled sheets on the ground, streaked with dirt.
She looked at Lydia’s secret smile.
“Hoyden, romp, wake-snakes,” her mother screamed. “Hussy. Whore.”
The pin in Lydia’s hand put fire in her veins. It echoed with the call of the owl and the cry of the fox and the promise of the wild. It sang with deliverance, danger, desire.
And in that moment, holding the pronged wood close to her chest, Lydia would do anything it told her to.
Holdfast, it whispered. And be free.
“Holdfast,” Lydia breathed as she smiled.
“Wha—”
Lydia drove the sharp ends of the dark-wood clothespin into her mother’s throat. Hot blood sprayed from the wound, speckling Lydia’s face.
“Holdfast.”
Lydia wrenched the clothespin free and jammed it into her mother’s shoulder. The hand gripping her arm spasmed and then slipped away from her slick skin.
“Holdfast. Holdfast. Holdfast.”
The word had scared her once, when it was whispered on the breeze, played out in the branches of the trees. But now she understood its power. And by the time she was done saying it, her mother breathed no more.
Somewhere a barred owl, late to bed, called. A savage laugh on the edge of a new day.
Red and glistening, breathing hard, Lydia turned back to the sheets. He was there, the shadow of Nehemiah, hand raised.
Lydia pressed her hand against his once more, blood soaking into the fibers and painting the linen red.
“Holdfast.” It was him, the word wicked and sweet as it slipped past his secret smile.
Her fingers wrapped around his. His touch was hard against her skin, but his hand fit the curve of her grip as though she’d held him before.
“Holdfast,” he whispered. And she did, melting into his shadow until there was nothing in the yard behind the cabin but a body going cold and sheets painted red.
Some time later, when the bones of Lydia’s mother had been picked clean, and the sheets had long since crumpled into dirt, a peddler appeared. He whistled a song that might have been a owl’s hoot or the screech of a fox. Or maybe the wild sighs of a girl at dusk.
His feet had seen many hundreds of miles already that year. But he knew it was well worth his time to come back to these mountains.
No one had disturbed the cabin. Cursed, they said. Haunted. But a peddler doesn’t pass up things he can easily sell a little further down the road. He packed up the woodenware in the kitchen. Took the knitting needles and yarn, the few volumes of verse, and even the bars of wood ash soap left on the shelf.
Then he stepped out into the yard, avoiding the bones and what was left of the blood-stained sheets. Nehemiah Loveridge plucked each of the clothespins from the worn rope, lined them up like little toy soldiers in the bottom of a battered box, slid the iron latch home and tucked it away into his pack.
Then he stepped into the forest and disappeared into the trees, a secret smile on his lips.
This story is part of the Small and Scary / Big and Beastly Substack event, featuring tales that take the tiny and make it terrifying, showcasing smaller Stacks that pack a big punch alongside some horror and dark fantasy heavyweights.
Check out all the stories here! With almost 30 to choose from, it’s a veritable haunted house's worth of spooky tales to delight and horrify.
Want more Only Child Originals? I’d love to have you at my witch’s table where things are sometimes dark, sometimes scary, but always served up with heart. 🖤
And a big thank you to Shane Bzdok and Sean Thomas McDonnell for their help in getting Holdfast ready for readers’ eyes.
Hell yes! Sooooooo good. You brilliantly balanced it all - charm, desire, magic, and death. An exquisite story, my friend.
Nailed the vibe! Great job, Garen!