Clem Jackson's boys (and how a story goes)

Over a hundred and fifty years ago, a man named James Poff was hunting in the woods near a waterfall with only a gun and his two dogs. The waterfall was calm and mostly ran down the side of a hill, but the creek that fed into the falls wound around the forest for miles. Poff pointed his dogs in the direction he thought deer might want to be, and the three set off in high hopes.

After two hours of searching and not finding anything, Poff decided maybe it would be best to steer back away from the creek and see what was going on in the meadows. He called his dogs and threw his gun over his shoulder and tried to enjoy the day even if it wasn’t going to yield a kill. He was just resigning himself to the smell and feel of the Tennessee air in June, and how the thick, wet scent of wildflowers was inescapable, when one of his dogs began to bark from up ahead to his right. He dropped his gun back down and stealthily crept to where the ruckus was emanating. It was coming from a thick grove of cottonwood trees that touched branches overhead and shielded the forest from the sun. In the middle of the grove was an old, run-down cabin with cracking walls and rotting stairs and a rusty swing on the porch. By now both of his dogs were barking and yelping, but neither of them would get too close.

‘Well hot damn,’ he thought, ‘I bet nobody even knows about this one.’ He walked curiously to the front porch and looked in a window. He couldn’t see anything from his angle, so he walked up the steps. He turned and addressed his barking dogs.
“Okay, shut up now!”
The dogs reluctantly obeyed. They resorted to whining with concern and walked uneasily among the trees.

Poff stepped lightly on the porch for fear that it might collapse, but made it safely to the door. For good measure, he knocked. As he expected, no one answered and he turned the door knob, which opened easily enough and he walked in. Inside were the remains of a life that seemed to have been left abruptly. Dishes were on a table that was littered with tools and dust. A fire had apparently been burning in the stove and ashes were strewn across the floor.

Outside, one of the dogs began to bark again, but this time with a sense of urgency. The other dog joined in. Poff shook his head at their disobedience and walked toward the next room. As he entered the room, a living room of sorts, he froze in terror as he saw, in the corner, a man sitting in a chair. At first he was startled because he had intruded upon the owner of the house. Upon further inspection, he realized that the man was in fact dead, and had been for some time. It didn’t exactly make him feel better, but it postponed his fear, made it less present. He got near to the body and saw that it had been an older man, who died drinking something out of a brown glass bottle. Many thoughts raced through his mind. How long had he been here? Who was he? Does anyone else know about him?

Concluding that there was not much he could really do about any of it, Poff turned to take one last look at the house and then get back home, where he would tell people what he had found. He had just walked to the doorway when he heard a raspy, airy voice say “C’mon stay for supper.” Poff froze and his heart jumped up into his mouth and his breathing stopped. He slowly turned and looked back over his shoulder at the dead man, still sitting in his chair.
“S-s-s-sir?” Poff stuttered out.
The dead man sat motionless, as dead men do, and Poff shook his head and swallowed. He turned back to the doorway.
“Supper,” the voice hissed, almost inaudibly under the sound of the barking dogs.
Again Poff froze. He slowly turned back around. Not being one to give into his fears, Poff walked slowly back to where the man sat. He looked down on the man and studied his face, then his hands, his dusty overalls.
“You didn’t just say something, did you?” Poff questioned softly, silently mocking himself for being so unreasonable. Then just as he was about to turn, he heard the chair creak. And then it creaked louder and he saw that the man was shifting forward, moving, putting his hand on the arm of the chair, standing himself up. Poff couldn’t move, he couldn’t speak. The lifeless man slowly rose from the chair and stood up straight, lifting his face to stare with sunken, skeletal eyes into James Poff.
“I said c’mon stay for supper!” the dead man hissed and reached out with his bony hands to grab hold of Poff, and he never let go.

Now, nobody knows for sure what happened to James Poff, except his dogs. Some folks say he did stay for supper and he’s still at supper to this day. Some say he died right then and there of shock. Others say that his mind made it all happen and he went crazy and never returned home. Who knows if the story is true? It’s over a hundred and fifty years old. But some version of the story was told to every child in Kaden Hollow at some point, mostly to keep them from wandering off in the woods. Some story tellers would even make it scarier by turning the old man into a devil worshipper or a gravedigger. One such teller who loved to spice up the story was Clem Jackson, and Clem had three sons: Ernest, William who they called Billy, and Clem Junior.