Free Beneath a Thousand Apple Trees by Janie DeVos

mumbled something about the trees having grown so much over the years, which made me wonder just how many years she’d been coming to this isolated, dark place. We traveled about a half-mile further down the old path until we came around a bend and into view of one of the strangest sights I’d ever seen before.
    In the middle of a clearing stood a very old, rather small log cabin that had been weather-darkened to a deep molasses brown. Over the front doorway was a plaque with the Lord’s Prayer handwritten in what had once been bright blue paint, with two simple crosses painted in now-faded white on each side of the words. But it wasn’t the cabin with its religious signs that made the scene strange, it was the trees, or rather what was in the trees. For there, hanging from and amid the branches were hundreds of hand-cut and carved wooden or metal crescent moons, in all shapes, sizes, and colors. Some had faces painted or carved on them, while others were plain and somehow frighteningly beautiful in their own simplicity. They hung from the tree branches with fishing line, so that it seemed as if they floated on their own. They spun, bounced, and swirled in the chilly November wind, then calmed in their movement between the gusts to a gentle swinging and swaying.
    â€œWhat are they doin’ here, Grandma?” I asked in a breathy whisper. And what are we doin’ here , I silently asked myself.
    â€œKeepin’ haints out,” she answered.
    Warding off ghosts was not the answer I’d hoped to hear. That was not one of the calming, reassuring answers that I could usually count on from her. This was an answer that almost began to make me sorry I had come along for the ride . . . almost, but not quite.
    â€œHow many are hauntin’ this place, Grandma?” I whispered.
    â€œOnly one, that I knows of anyway,” she answered.
    â€œWho is it?” I asked.
    â€œYour granddaddy, chil’.”
    I immediately looked at the plaque over the front door, and when I understood the reason for it, started reciting the Lord’s Prayer to myself: Our Father, who art in Heaven, hallowed be Thy name. Thy kingdom come . . . This was as good a time for it as there ever had been in the history of mankind. Oh, God, oh, Jesus! Oh, God, oh Jesus (and any others that might want to jump right in here to help me!) , I prayed, I swear on my family’s Bible that if you’ll keep that ghost—my granddaddy!—away from me, I’ll try to like Mama better again, and I’ll not wish bad things on Ray Coons. Well, I won’t wish for things to happen to him that could kill him, anyway. And I’ll never touch my breasts—or anyplace lower—under my sheets at night again.
    I was so scared I couldn’t even ask why my granddaddy (who’d died before Mama was born) was haunting this, of all places. And, most importantly, why was he haunting any place at all?
    Suddenly, a shotgun blast snapped me out of my holy supplications, and caused Natty to buck and try to turn around.
    â€œWhoa, Nat! Whoa!” Grandma called to the startled horse, while pulling on the reins in quick response. As no other shot was forthcoming, Grandma loudly called out, “Sam, it’s Willa. Willa Holton! Come out here, old dog, where I can see ya.”
    â€œGreat day in the morning!” An excited voice exclaimed from around the back of the cabin. “Willa? Is it truly you, gal? Sweet Savior! Hold on, I’m a-comin’!”
    And, with that, a rather thin but strong-looking man of medium height came into view with a shotgun in his right hand and a long, fat, dead rattlesnake in the other. He had thick, mostly gray hair, but with golden blond streaks running through it, and his eyes were an intense rich brown. I wasn’t sure which one I should be more afraid of, but I was pretty sure it was the old man given that the snake’s head was gone. I leaned into Grandma, who