The Legend of Dan Gut

My dad and I went to the family cemetery one Saturday afternoon to look around and just remember. Dad was always talking about the good ole days. About the way things used to be. He told me stories about walking from Elkcorn to Hyden and back. Hoeing in the garden all day for a nickel. There was a sparkle in his eyes when he reminisced about these things.

So I asked him about the holler where the cemetery is. “Dad, does this place have a name?”

He thought for a long time. “All I have ever heard it called is Dan Gut.”

 “Do you know how it got that name?”

“Nope, no one ever told me. Men folk didn’t have time to talk about how things got named. We just had time to work.”

 I left the conversation at that. There was no cute story to tell. No family secret about this holler grandpa once owned. So I felt compelled to make one up.

Many frontier families where visited by a young man that no one had ever seen before. He asked for food and a place to bed down for the night. Some farmers gave him shelter while others shooed him away.

While traveling through the back hills of Kentucky he came upon a house that looked abandoned. He searched in vane for any signs of life. Even the grass was dying. All he found was a half starved black cat sitting in the shade.

He felt that someone was watching him. As if it was piercing through his very soul. Maybe it was the hungry buzzards circling overhead? He wasn’t sure.

There was something about this house that gave him a sense of dread, which made him reluctant to go toward it. Something was off about this place. However, the blazing sun drove him in. The door gave a heavy groan as

he pushed it open with the tip of his gun barrel. He jumped without moving when a bird fluttered out the open door. On the table was a note that read:

James,

Dear husband, I must take the children and leave for alarming rumors have reached us. If we stay, I fear we may meet the fate of other good people. Mary says 3 people are dead already. I am truly afraid without you. See you at my mothers.

                                         I love you,

                                        Sally

 “Ah-feared!” he scoffed. “This here lady have prudy letters, city folk. I gots some news fur’em I’ve walked these here parts, I founds nothin’ to be ah-feared of.” He snorted to himself, “me.” Since these folks ain’t right in the head, I’m taken over. I need vittles.” He searched the house for anything they might have left behind but found nothing. “Nuttin’ ”. He snarled.

He went out side and sat for several hours waiting for something to come along. It was too hot to go hunting. As the sun started to set, something did come by. “You bout the ugliest darn thang I ever did see.” He said to the cat as it crawled between his feet purring. “But ya do.” He picked the cat up and hit it’s head against the porch post. It let out a wild scream then fell silent. “Cats ain’t good fur much.”

The enticing aroma of cooking meat filled the air. After he had his fill of cat, he went outside to find the hide he had discarded through the window. “It be gone!” He proclaimed. “I guess’en sum’ens hungry. Buzzards.”

“There ain’t been a drop of rain in ever,” he said as he settled down to sleep but couldn’t. “A good rain poundin’ on there roof help ah man fall sleep.”

Later that night rain did fall.  Thunder rattled the house and the wind howled. Lightning raced across the sky. He thought he heard chanting but brushed it off as the rain. The sound grew louder and louder with each clap of thunder.

Even with the arrival of the rain, he still couldn’t fall asleep. He would close his eyes and only see the cat. He thought he heard it purr. The chanting came to his ears again over the pounding of the rain. He couldn’t tell if it was distant thunder he heard or the beating of drums. Then all of a sudden he felt something move at his feet.  “Meow!” The cat’s cry brought him out of bed in a dead panic.

“My mind playin’ tricks. Yelp.” He was too shaken to try sleep again.

He sat there in the dark staring toward his feet. A flash of lightning lit up the room, he saw two red eyes peering out of the darkness. Then a blood curling cat’s cry made him race down stairs. “Wind,” he scoffed, panting.

“RRRREOW!” He leapt backwards toward the fireplace. His heart pounding in his chest. The wind burst through the door blowing it back and forth on its hinges as the rain came gushing in.  

He felt something hot and wispy on his neck. As he turned, he froze in his tracks. Before him stood the painted face of a warrior, his eyes glowed yellow like those of a cat. With the next flash of lightning he saw the cat standing in the floor, hissing at him.

The lightning reflected off something shiny. Was it an axe or something smaller? Blows landed on his body, bringing real pain and real blood.

He grabbed a knife plunging it deep into the darkness. Nothing he could do was slowing down the attack. It seemed as if he was fighting air.

Something chopped away at him until he was lying dead on the floor.

Lightning again lit up the house. There he lay in a pool of blood. His clothing ripped to shreds exposing battered flesh and bare bone.

James came home to the hope of Sally bouncing out the door and throwing her arms around him. But she didn’t come out to greet him. His only ‘welcome home’ came from the cat grooming itself on the porch. “Where they at, Dan ole boy?”

He reached down to pat the cat on the head. Who was purring contently. It meowed then curled up in a ball.

When James opened the door, he was hit in the face with hundreds of flies and a rotten smell. On the floor written with what appeared to be guts were the letters D A N. He ran out of the house, jumped on his horse and never

returned to that house.

On his deathbed he told his oldest son of the horror he saw. That is how a small hollow on Rush Creek got the name Dan Gut. To this day people that pass that old house say you can hear a cat meow.

The end.

I originally wrote this story in high school. Overtime, it received a rework. The original story received a B.