The town I grew up in boasted a small restaurant called Uncle John and Aunt Annie’s. It was your typical small-town dinner that served home-cooked meals and was run by a friendly older couple.
What made the place special, however, wasn’t the food, but the drinks. They served a variety of homemade beverages: juices, beers, and a variety of hard liquor.
The most popular amongst them was a reddish fruit liquor called Aunt Annie’s Ale. People were obsessed with it. The stock, however, was always limited, and only a few bottles were available at a time.
People came from all over the area, solely for a chance to taste the ale, because no bottles were ever sold, and it was only served during meals. It was quite a clever strategy.
Occasionally, customers pestered them about how the ale was made, or what ingredients were used to make it, but the couple revealed nothing. It was a family recipe; they used to say.
Things got so bad that someone even broke into the dinner one day, hoping to figure out the ale’s secret. It was crazy, considering it was all about a drink.
But who am I to talk? The ale is exactly the reason that brought me and my best friend back to my old hometown.
After years of saving up, we’d finally decided to fulfill our dream and open our own restaurant. While we worked on the menu, I remembered the ale, and told my friend about it. It didn’t take long before we made the decision to try to get our hands on the recipe.
After getting in touch with some local friends, I learned that Uncle John had died almost a decade ago, but Aunt Annie was still very much alive, living in the same building that had once housed the dinner.
When we arrived, I recognized the place instantly. The old display board was still there, but time hadn’t been kind to it. Its colors had faded, and most of the letters were gone by now, leaving what was left an indistinguishable mess.
While I parked the car, I saw movement behind one of the second-floor windows, and before we even reached the door, a tiny old lady opened it. Aunt Annie had been a crafty, boisterous woman, but now, in old age, she looked frail, and seemed to have shrunken to half her size.
For a moment, she just stared at us.
“If you boys are looking for a place to eat, I’m sorry, but this one here closed down a long time ago. You better try the new place down in…”
Her voice trailed off, and a half-empty look came over her face as she desperately tried to recall the name.
“But Aunt Annie, it’s me, little Jerry, don’t you remember?”
She leaned forward, examining my face before she beamed at me.
“My, Jerry, how nice of you to visit! Come in, come in!”
My friend eyed me curiously, brows raised, but I shushed him.
The moment I’d seen her, and heard her speak, I could tell her state of mind was as frail as her body.
She probably had no idea who Jerry was, but her brain must’ve conjured up the vague image of a random family member. It was sad seeing her like this, but what worried me the most was that she might have forgotten about the ale.
Once we’d made it to her living room, a relic of times past, full of musty air and old furniture, she motioned for us to take a seat.
She’d been talking ever since we’d entered the place, but I could barely understand half of it. I nodded, and agreed here and there, and that seemed to do the trick.
For almost half an hour she rambled on about the good old times, about old friends, before she finally mentioned the dinner. When she did, I lost no time, and asked her about the ale.
The moment the word left my lips, her head jerked in my direction and her eyes focused right on me. All her former drowsiness was gone.
“It’s all gone,” she hissed at me. “Every last drop of it!”
“What are you talking about, Aunt Annie?” I asked, my voice dripping with innocence. “I’m not here to get any of it.”
The old lady, however, didn’t react to my words. She was agitated and mumbled to herself.
“Aunt Annie?” I asked, putting my hand on her shoulder.
“Oh, Jerry… what… what was it we were talking about? I forget so easily these days… I’m so sorry, dear.”
I nodded, smiling, but wondered what had caused this sudden episode. Was it her frustration at people pestering her about it for years?
Then I told her that my friend and I were opening our very own restaurant, and that she’d promised me she’d hand us her recipe book.
“Oh, the book, the book. I’m so sorry, Jerry, I forgot all about it.”
“Don’t worry about it. How about you get it for us?”
She motioned for me to follow her and led me into a small kitchen.
“Now where did I put it again…?”
For the next minute, she just stood there, eying the kitchen, seemingly lost. Then she went to an old drawer and rummaged through it before she discovered a small, old notebook.
The moment she’d found it, she handed it to me with an enormous smile on her face. I flipped through it, but all I found were the recipes for various meals. There was no mention of any drinks.
Dammit, I was growing frustrated.
“Well, that’s nice and all, but what about Uncle John’s notes? The ones about the drinks that made the place so popular?”
Once more, her mood changed, and she began cursing to herself.
“What’s the matter, Aunt Annie? Why are you so angry?”
She just stared at me with wide eyes, but didn’t say a word.
“Is it because they all wanted more of that stuff?”
“More of… what, Jerry?”
The episode was already over, but by now my patience was gone.
“More of the ale!”
“There’s none of it left!” she spat at me. “Couldn’t keep making it, because, because…”
Her voice trailed off, and an expression of misery came over her face.
“Because of what?!”
“Because it was wrong, John! We can’t anymore! I can’t.”
“Why can’t you?” I kept pressing her.
My friend had come over to the kitchen, watching me with a sullen look on his face. I didn’t care.
“Because we used them!”
“Who are they?”
She was panting now, crying, her legs trembling, and had to hold on to the kitchen counter to steady herself.
“It’s wrong, John, all of it! We can never… we can never go down there again!”
“Down where, for Christ’s sake?!”
“The basement, John! It’s… it’s all wrong. Everything down there’s…”
She went on, but by now, she was sobbing so badly, I couldn’t make out her words anymore.
“The hell’s wrong with you?” my friend snapped at me.
All I could do was shrug before I made my way to the stairs.
“I’ll see what I can find down there,” I called out to him.
It didn’t take me long to find the basement door. It was at the back of the dinner’s former kitchen.
When I tried the door handle, I found it locked. My eyes wandered over the kitchen’s many drawers before I turned back around. Fuck it, I thought. After two kicks, the door swung open.
At first, I only stared down into the darkness, but then I hit the light switch and made my way down the stairs. Remembering her words, a strange feeling of unease washed over me, but I quickly shook my head.
Just get the damned recipe, and get out of here.
Yet what I found downstairs was nothing but a mundane basement, filled with old, rusty tools. Then I saw another door that seemed to lead to the basement’s second part.
“Bingo,” I whispered when I opened it, and found myself right in front of Uncle John’s old still.
Next to it stood an old desk, and a giant shelf covered by a heavy curtain.
On top of the desk, I found an old, worn notebook. A smile appeared on my face as I picked it up.
The first page contained the instructions for an herb liquor called Herby Herbert. As I leafed through the pages, I read on. Bobbies Berry Booze, Long Leg Larry’s Liquor, Old Odette’s Ouzo, and on it went, but no mention of the ale.
“Dammit, where the hell is it!?”
In an onset of rage, I threw the notebook across the room before I tore through the desk’s drawers. Once again, I found nothing of interest, but then I stumbled upon a small, hidden space at the bottom.
It contained a small stack of dirty pages, yellowed with age and covered in shoddy handwriting.
After a few moments of trying to make out the words in the basement’s low light, I returned to the dinner’s old kitchen and began reading them. The moment I noticed the word ale, I couldn’t help but grin. I’d finally found it.
Uncle John described how to prepare all the ingredients, and how to let them age, but also mentioned it was a slow and arduous process, mostly because of a so-called special ingredient that was difficult to procure.
As he continued on, the special ingredient was mentioned multiple times, but it was never mentioned what exactly it was. All he wrote was that it was put into a glass jar, let ripe for weeks or even months, depending on a few different factors. The process itself was described in excruciating detail, and as far as I understood, time was the most significant factor.
Once I was done reading, I checked the pages once more, looked for some sort of secret message, but I found no hint about what the special ingredient was.
“Shit!” I cursed to myself.
Then I remembered the covered shelf, and a moment later, I was back downstairs, and pulled the curtain away.
The entire shelf was filled with jars. Most of them were empty, some of them had old, stale liquid in them, but two contained something else.
At first, I didn’t know what I was looking at. Then the realization hit me. My eyes grew wide, and I stumbled back a few steps before my legs buckled and I fell to my knees.
This couldn’t be real, could it? It had to be some sort of sick joke! I blinked, shook my head, but everything was still the same.
I had finally found out what the secret ingredient was, and I was sick to my stomach.
Two of the jars contained a human fetus.
One was small, sprouting a name tag, identifying the fetus as Raphael. The other, however, was bigger, and apart from the fetus, it was filled with a variety of reddish fruits and berries.
I thought back to my childhood, to the times my family and I had visited the dinner, how people had always asked for Aunt Annie’s Ale, how they’d drank it, almost gulped it down, and…
I vomited right there on the ground.
Oh god, Aunt Annie’s Ale. Now the name made sense in the most sick and twisted way imaginable. It was made of something that was a part of her, and came out of here.
As I stumbled from the room, I realized why it was always so limited, and why they couldn’t keep making it. At a certain age, Aunt Annie couldn’t get pregnant anymore. Just thinking about it made me vomit once more.
My god, what must’ve driven them to create something like… that?
Then I thought about our town, its devoted Christian community. Abortions were frowned upon, condemned even. So they must’ve never talked about it.
And yet, why keep them? Why do… this? Animosity? Insanity? Or maybe to get rid of them?
As I stumbled up the stairs, I thought back to Uncle John and Aunt Annie. The boisterous lady, with her happy, stout husband. The thought of these people making a drink out of their own… and serving it to people…
Back in the kitchen, I would’ve thrown up a third time, but by then my stomach was empty, leaving me retching on the floor.
Then I made my way back to the notes, just as my friend appeared in the kitchen door.
“You found anything?”
“Nothing,” I mumbled, and got a hold of the notes, and crumbled them.
“Wait, what’s that?” he asked, eyes narrowing as he reached out for them.
Before he could, I shoved them into my pocket.
“It’s fucking nothing, all right?! Just some shitty drinks that aren’t any good.”
“Anything about the ale?”
I shook my head, not trying to meet his eyes. He stared me down for a moment longer, the frustration visible on his face. I thought he’d press me again, but then he noticed how sick I looked.
“You all right, man?”
“Yeah, just the musty air of that damned basement. Been down there for half an hour.”
We left soon after. I didn’t say goodbye to Aunt Annie. No, all I wanted was to get out of that godforsaken place. Hell, if I’d been on my own, I might have considered burning it to the ground.
—
Our restaurant started out well enough, but during the first months, our customer base slowly dwindled. It was tough competing with other, more established restaurants, and the big fast-food chains.
Even worse, my friend kept pestering me about the notes I’d supposedly hidden from him for whatever reason. He urged me to just try some of the ‘shitty drinks’ the old couple had served, but never wavered.
We fought repeatedly, him accusing me of hiding something from him, and me trying to convince him it was nothing.
It all ended in a falling out, leaving me tackling the heavy debt the restaurant had accumulated all on my own.
Then, one day, I stumbled upon the crumbled up notes I’d found in Aunt Annie’s basement.
I stared at them in disgust, and was about to throw them away, but then I stopped myself.
The restaurant was as good as done, and I was drowning in debt. Right here, in my hand, might be a way out, a way to get the place back on track.
In a small town, there’s only ever a limited supply of that special ingredient, but in a city with a population numbering in the millions, I’m sure you can get your hands on it much easier.
Desperation leads to bad decisions, they say, and I was more than desperate at this point.
I told myself I wouldn’t use them, and I was just going to read through them once more for anything useful. Deep down, however, I knew my decisions had already been made.
I wish to god, I’d thrown those damned notes away back then, because I knew, right now, there was no turning back anymore.
