The tale of Martin Stone
In the winter of 1871, the people of the Cumberland Mountains didn't fear a ghost; they feared Martin Stone. To the valley folk, he was the "Snake and Fiddle Man"-a sallow, unblinking merchant who turned a profit by skinning timber rattlers and playing the fiddle at the graves of strangers. But Martin's cold-blooded business was a mask for a much deeper rot. He spent his days on the Ledge not just to hunt, but to pace the site where his own father had murdered the boy he loved, Jessquoyah.
Driven by a grim mix of greed and madness, Martin believes he can pay off the Stone family's blood-debt with silver and hides. He ignores the warnings of the mountain and the growing horror of his wife, Margot, who watches him slowly transform into a predator as heartless as the serpents he slaughters.
On the anniversary of the murder, the "business" of the Ledge finally turns. The mountain demands its final installment, and the music that once charmed the snakes becomes the soundtrack to a slaughter. This is the visceral, psychological history behind the haunting of Fiddler's Rock-the story of a man who tried to out-trade his father's sins and the woman who had to change her name to survive the fallout.
Before he was a legend, he was a merchant of death. And before the music was a myth, it was a scream for a boy who never came home.
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