The Tailypo: The Appalachian Thing That Came Back for Its Tail
Deep in the folded dark of the southern Appalachians — the tellers always begin this way, and the beginning is half the spell — there lived an old man all alone in a one-room cabin, with one fireplace, one bed, one door, and three dogs: Uno, Ino, and Cumptico-Calico. He was poor, and the winter was long, and one evening his hunting brought home nothing at all. He sat by his fire with his empty pot, and as he sat, something came through the wall . Between the logs, where the chinking had dried and crumbled, there slipped into the firelight the strangest varmint he had ever seen: body like a big cat's, or a dog's, or nothing else in the woods, eyes like two coals — and behind it, a tail. A great, long, thick, furred tail, longer than the whole creature, the most tail any animal ever owned. And the old man, who was hungry past wondering, did not wonder. He took his hatchet, and quick as a snake he brought it down — and the creature shrieked and shot back out between the logs, and...