The Red Hills Covenant

The pines grew close along the ridge, leaning like gossiping old women, their needles whispering in the dusk. South Georgia woods; red dirt, iron smell, cicadas shrieking until your teeth hurt. Folks around Briar County said the hills weren’t right. Too steep, too many gullies that swallowed dogs and men.

The place was poor then. Still is. Cotton fields long gone, soil washed out. Sharecropper shacks leaning, tin roofs rusting through. In the summers of the 1930s, people talked about the Covenant, though never in daylight. Not if they wanted their crops to grow.

Elias Miller was twelve that summer. His father had gone west looking for work, never came back. His mother kept the house like a shadow, sick from the lungs, her cough shaking the rafters at night. Elias carried water, split wood, tried to keep the chickens from starving. That’s how he met them.

It started with the singing.

On nights when the moon swelled fat, he’d hear it. Not hymns from the church down at Peachtree Crossing. No, this was older. The voices rolled through the trees, low and heavy, like the ground itself was humming. He swore he heard words in it, though not English, not anything he knew.

One night, he followed.

Barefoot, quiet as he could, down the ridge, past the gully where the clay bled red in the rain. The sound drew him to a clearing. A circle of stones rose there, taller than any man, black with lichen. The folk around them were neighbors, people he knew. Mr. Cates, who ran the mill. Widow Haskins, gray hair down to her waist. Even Reverend Walker, white collar unbuttoned, eyes closed like a drunk in prayer.

They sang to the stones.

And the stones answered.

Elias saw them glow, faint green like foxfire, and shadows bent across the clearing that had no bodies. The air smelled of copper. He ran before they saw him, feet slapping dirt, heart hammering. He swore he heard them laugh as he fled.

At breakfast his mother sat pale, coughing blood into her handkerchief. She caught his look and whispered, “Don’t go near them hills again, boy. Promise me.”

He promised. He lied.

By August, the drought had broken every farm. Corn stalks stood brittle as bones. Chickens keeled over in the heat. Folks whispered harder about the Covenant. They didn’t go hungry, no matter how bad it got. Their wells never dried. Their fields still green.

Elias watched, stomach knotted, as wagons rolled in from other towns, folks trading whatever they had for grain the Covenant sold cheap. They called it blessed. Elias thought it looked wrong. Too fat, too green, too slick with a shine that reminded him of wet moss.

He saw Widow Haskins one morning, her basket piled with ears. She caught him looking. Smiled with teeth too sharp. “Plenty to go ‘round, boy, if you ain’t too proud.”

That night Elias dreamed of his father. Saw him standing in the gully, skin gone, bones red with clay. The voice in the dream said: He’s here. We keep what comes to us.

He woke screaming. His mother held him, weak arms trembling. She said nothing, just rocked until the rooster crowed.

The worst came in September.

His mother didn’t get up. The coughing had hollowed her out. Elias sat by the bed, holding her hand. She whispered, “They’ll come. Don’t you let them.”

He didn’t know what she meant until the knock came.

Three figures at the door. Reverend Walker in front, hat in his hand. Mr. Cates behind him, eyes shining in the lantern light. Widow Haskins smiling that smile.

“She’s passed?” the Reverend asked. His voice was kind, too kind.

Elias couldn’t speak.

“She’ll rest easy with us,” Haskins said. “We’ll take her to the stones. Make sure her spirit don’t wander.”

Elias shook his head. “She said no.”

The Reverend’s face stayed smooth, but his eyes went hard. “Boy, you don’t understand. It’s not your choice.”

They pushed past him. He tried to stop them, but Cates caught his arm and held him like iron. Elias kicked, screamed, but they lifted his mother’s body gentle as Sunday bread and carried her out.

He followed them down the ridge, moon full above, cicadas screaming. At the clearing they laid her at the foot of the stones. The Covenant circled, chanting low.

The stones glowed.

Elias saw the earth shift. Roots rose like fingers, black and wet, curling around his mother’s body, pulling her down into the red clay. The ground swallowed her. Her eyes opened once as she sank. Not blue anymore. Green.

He ran.

Elias didn’t sleep for three days. Every time his eyes closed he saw her face in the dirt, lips moving, whispering in that old tongue.

He thought about leaving. Walking west like his father. But where would he go? He had nothing.

On the fourth night he heard the singing again. Closer now. He looked out and saw them coming up the ridge. Dozens of them, torches in hand, faces shining with sweat and hunger.

They came for him.

He bolted, running through the woods, bare feet bleeding on pine needles. The voices followed, low and steady, pulling at his chest. He tripped, rolled down into the gully, red clay filling his mouth.

At the bottom he saw the bones.

Not just his father. Hundreds. Skulls stacked in the dirt like roots of some old tree. Eye sockets glowing faint green.

The ground shifted. The bones moved. They rose, not as men, not anymore, but as something older. Roots growing through ribs, spines bending wrong, mouths opening wide with soil spilling out.

Elias screamed.

The last thing he saw was the Reverend’s face above him, lit by torchlight, kind and cold at once. “You’re family now, boy. Blood for soil.”

Then the roots wrapped him.

Briar County emptied out after the war. Farms failed, mills closed. The ridge grew wild, pines swallowing the shacks. Folks driving through say it feels heavy, like the air don’t want you there. Hunters still hear singing sometimes, low and steady, when the moon swells fat.

They say if you follow it, you’ll find the stones. And if you lay your hand on them, you’ll feel hearts beating under the lichen, slow and strong.

The Covenant never left. They just went deeper.

And the dirt stays red.