In Dark Places

by Darryl J Keck

  “I take it you don’t really know who I am.” She just pushed the wrong button. “You must not watch much television. Too many snooty dinner parties and unsuccessful facelifts, I assume.”

  I almost giggle at his last comment because her face has been stretched more times than Burt Reynolds went under the knife during the twilight of this career. Regardless of the repeated attempts to make her face appear younger, they couldn’t pull the bitterness from around her eyes. The day I require that much plastic surgery to face the day, I’ll be swallowing a handful of pills to check out with some fucking dignity.

  “What I do in my private life is none of your concern,” she states, rudely. How does a woman rise to this position without knowing how to diffuse a tense situation?

  “It actually is my affair, at the moment. I cannot believe anyone would leave the power of television programming to a group of arrogant snobs that don’t know what the fuck is going on. You’re like those record company assholes that prematurely drop a great band because they’re not dialed into what’s happening.”

  “Young man,” she says, scowling, “there is no need to use such saucy language.”

  “You are obviously offended by my lack of propriety.”

  “That’s putting it lightly.” She is clueless that he’s setting her up.

  “Let’s see if we can’t remedy that.” Agnew begins to count everyone at the table. “I find it a bit unsettling when the board of directors has an even number of seats. That means that you’d need a five to three vote before any bylaw can go into effect. That hardly seems fair. It’s time to add some balance to this process.” Agnew aims his gun at Edna’s head. Without the slightest remorse, he squeezes the trigger before she is able to flinch. A deafening blast echoes through the room as blood and brain matter splashes against the white wall behind her lifeless body. “Consider this attrition.”

  After a few gasps of terror, the room falls completely silent.

  I’m desperately trying to keep my composure, which is difficult to do with Edna’s blood dripping down the side of Bill’s cheek like a series of crimson tears.

  “Well, Melinda,” Agnew says, callously, “in addition to your flower arrangement, her brains on the wall sure livened up the color in this room. Some might consider this artistry. Wouldn’t you agree that the wall looks like a Jackson Pollock painting?”

  “Actually, it does,” I answer, even though what he asked was probably rhetorical.

  “We’ve got some matters to discuss! Y’all better get comfortable and find a way to ignore the dead woman. I’d hate to get an itchy finger again. Unfortunately for some of you, my finger is already tingling.”

  Chapter 17

  Carmen

  Nothing will blow out a passionate fire quicker than being asked to look up information related to mysterious deaths. That’s hardly what a girl considers as courtship talk. I’d be telling a lie if I claimed this to be the strangest request I’ve ever been asked. Out of fairness, I may be the only one in the room that felt a spark between us. Still, Derek ended the relationship over the discomfort with his ability; he didn’t walk away from me over a compatibility or attraction issue. That’s so hopeful!

  I’ve learned quite a few things regarding relationships that have the potential for longevity. Men can buy me shiny trinkets and take me out to elegant restaurants, but if they are unable to carry on a conversation effectively, it gets boring long before the physical stuff fizzles out. Derek can talk about almost any subject, keeping me very focused on the way his mouth moves. Since he showed up so unexpectedly today, I’m taking it as a sign that he may be entering my life again on a steady basis.

  Unfortunately, I can tell this may not be the day we rekindle the relationship. He has too much determination and confusion around the eyes to be easily sidetracked. I’ve experienced that look too many times just to ignore. He’s on a mission, and I’ll help as much as I can—even sorting out a request about “unusual deaths in Wilkinson Creek.” Hey, even an awkward first step is still a step in some direction.

  As far as unusual deaths go, what used to be considered “weird” may not be all that “weird” by today’s standards. A few decades back, children played with sharp toys and were more daring to seek out amusement in dangerous places. With kids—and many adults—practically attached to their cell phones these days, anything even recognized as “risky behavior” has been at a swift decline.

  Fortunately, most of the materials he requested were locked up tight in my office. The first folder I pull from the file cabinet is the case I mentioned surrounding a drowning victim at Wilkinson Creek’s beachfront park in 1947. How this historical death applies to any open police case is beyond me. The file contains dozens of black and white photos—some a bit gruesome—taken by a professional photographer that was at the event as a favor to the town council.

  Earlier in the day, the dead woman was seen on camera drinking a cup of lemonade near a swing set. From the banners flapping in the background, it is quite clear that the picture was taken during the festivities. The later photos show this same woman floating face down in the water. When the doctor and police flipped the woman over in the creek, her face was stark white—as if she had been floating in the brook for a few weeks, not just for an hour or two. The details surrounding the case baffled the experts.

  When I return to our impromptu session, I turn up the lights a touch and slide the folder across the table to Derek. My folders aren’t organized by “style of death,” so it took a bit to find what he was seeking. At least he didn’t leave from getting impatient with my thoroughness. I do have one folder I’m holding back because it’s a bit mystifying as to how it came into my possession. I will only offer it up when I feel it is pertinent. Derek keeps looking at one image rather closely.

  “Have you given much attention to all of these photographs?” he asks.

  “I have looked at them several times. Do you see something out of place?”

  “Some of the angles are a little weird because the photographer took many of these images from out in the water.”

  “There is a story behind that. According to the facts of the case, the police requested the photographer to take images of the victim as they flipped the body over,” I recall. “I realize those pictures are not full of blood, but I would still file it under a ‘bizarre’ death.”

  “The body isn’t what jumps out at me. The photographer caught some of the onlookers from the shoreline in the frame. Take a look at this here.”

  He points at the rippled water picking up a mirror image of everyone standing on the beach. What doesn’t compute is that the reflection in the water shows a well-dressed woman clasping a polka-dot umbrella. When I glance up at the shoreline of the image, the woman is not standing in that location—I can’t even see her shadow on the sand. The photo can account for everyone else reflected in the water on the beach.

  He continues. “Do you know if the photographer might have doctored these photographs?”

  “I had the photos in this folder made directly from the original negatives. I’ve looked at them numerous times to get the proper images for my book,” I state, baffled. “Why was I not able to see the woman standing on the shoreline before? I’ve shuffled through those crime photos nearly a dozen times.”

  “It’s the same reason you can’t always find Waldo when looking at one of his pictures. Your eyes cannot focus on every aspect of an image at once. Often, we can’t even concentrate on more than a few key colors at a time. With that dead woman’s face being all white at the bottom of the photo, it would quite easy to miss.”

  “Why were you able to see it?”

  “I was specifically looking for anomalies in each image more than what was, you know, on the surface.” He then hesitates.

  I’m suddenly edgy because the inflection in his voice tells me that this picture reminds him of something he saw at another time. He can try to hide it all he wants, but his energy just severely shifted.
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br />   “Derek, what is it? Have you seen a shadow like this before?”

  “You could say that,” he admits. “Did you hear that I was shot a while back by Agnew McAllister?”

  “I read the article in the paper.” What he doesn’t know is that I almost went to the hospital to visit him. I sent flowers but didn’t attach a “get well” card. That’s a secret I’ll take to the grave. “Did something happen that was related to this image?”

  “I will tell you about it since it wasn’t officially part of the case. I was given a gag order regarding this information, so please don’t include it in your book.”

  “You have my word that it will not leave this room.”

  His willingness to reveal specifics about a case shows that he trusts me with delicate details. My attitude is brightening about a possible date in the future with each new tidbit he reveals.

  “The teller that survived the ordeal had sneakily used her phone to snap off four pictures while Agnew was arguing with himself,” Derek says. “My grief counselor and boss concluded that ‘a psychotic talking to someone that wasn’t there’ to be standard behavior for anyone with a propensity for violence.”

  “That’s understandable, I guess.”

  “It would have been, but while I was recovering from my gunshot wound, my partner dropped off the case file to the hospital,” he says. “During a closer examination of the file, I noticed some peculiarities in two of the images. Agnew was standing with his back towards a desk. In the reflection from a mirror mounted on the wall, Agnew was visible as well as a faint outline of what resembled a woman’s arm holding a folded umbrella.”

  “That is very interesting.”

  “I thought so too. The hand was barely visible as if it had been layered in Photoshop at about 25% opacity. I almost shrugged it off, but the umbrella and hand were also visible in another image at a slightly different angle. That was just too peculiar to dismiss.”

  “Did you discuss this with your captain?”

  “Prichard chuckled upon reviewing the images,” Derek adds, apparently not respecting his superior enough to call him by his title. “He quickly dismissed the faded hand and umbrella as nothing more than a shadow emitting from the lights above, forming a mirage in that shape. The transparency shot down my theory. I was not debating the likelihood of it being an optical illusion, but Agnew’s body language projected that he was pointing at someone. I told Prichard it could have been an apparition. That idea didn’t go over so well. He yelled that the Bluff Ridge Post would have a field day with an explanation coming out of our office that a ghost may be a contributing factor in the case. I was forced to talk with a grief counselor twice a month because he felt the stress of the job and the attempt on my life had finally got to me.”

  “Didn’t he find it peculiar that two images had picked up the same shape?”

  “He told me it was a fluke and not some supernatural presence,” Derek recalls. “I know it wasn’t the first time a photograph has picked up a suspicious shape, but I had trouble ignoring it. A supernatural anomaly may have been the only logical explanation as to how Agnew could have escaped from a building with rifles pointed at it from every angle. Somehow, those two images were removed from the actual evidence file and have conveniently disappeared.”

  “You should have copied them onto a flash drive.”

  “In the hospital, a backup drive wasn’t as easy to obtain. I did not expect my hypothesis to be knocked down so quickly. From my memory, I’m unable to tell you if the umbrella contained polka dots, but I do recall that the reflection in the mirror was just as faint as seen in this image from the creek.”

  “I find it odd that neither camera was able to pick up the actual person except in a reflection,” I say. This is almost like a vampire in reverse. What an exciting chapter that would make! “It may be a coincidence, but it feels as if it could also be connected.”

  I’m suddenly torn. I have a file I want to present, but the materials were lifted from the local library. The data didn’t belong to the library; the pages were stuffed inside a reference book. I’m not a big fan of people that willingly break laws or cheat. With Derek being a police officer, this could backfire on me in a big way. I’ll throw caution to the wind.

  “I’m going to show you a file,” I say, nervously. “What I’m presenting here will need to remain a secret between us. I haven’t fully absorbed all that is in this folder yet, so I’m taking a leap of faith letting you see it.”

  I flip open a pocketed folder and push it across the table.

  Before he looks at the contents, he asks, “Does this folder contain another image with the umbrella?”

  “Nothing like that, but what is in this folder may help you understand the truth about the origins of Wilkinson Creek.”

  The folder contains eight handwritten pages and blueprints. Derek skims through the contents like a distracted kid being forced to use the summary section of a textbook. Since what is written here may be important, I state the main points of what lies within the folder. I’m just not sure how it all connects to his query. I can feel that he’s anxious and his time is limited. I’ve only read through the entire document once, so it is far from being memorized.

  This morning, I awoke with this fierce urgency to visit the library—similar to how I’d picture a nicotine addict running for their morning cigarette. The information I went to acquire could have clearly waited for another time, but I still found myself skipping my blueberry muffin and morning coffee to climb the concrete steps of the local library just after 9:00. I went straight to the reference section and looked up information on Illinois in the late nineteenth century. Upon opening the first title, a manila folder was mysteriously tucked in the middle of the book.

  The folder included nine handwritten pages. The top page contained blueprint specs for a machine called “X1741—Prototype.” The pages that followed were about Thaddeus Spencer, a scientist commissioned to build the device. The X1741 needed to harness the power of lightning strikes that were absorbed into these unique rods Spencer designed. After several attempts, he created a working contraption—five years before Edison created the light bulb. The machine stored the energy of the lightning strikes by using a continuous coil.

  Spencer was enlisted after reports had circulated that the souls of many executed witches were haunting their oppressors in Salem. According to this document, a bolt of lightning was the only energy source powerful enough to vaporize a soul. It was believed that a witch’s soul could only be thoroughly destroyed on the first night of a new moon. Serious money was to be made if Spencer became regarded as the world’s authority on witch eradication. I could not believe I uncovered such controversial information within a dreary reference book in our library.

  As I continued making sense of the folder, I learned about the Society of Franklin—a faction of seven individuals assembled to drive out the unwanted elements in the area. They hired a bounty hunter named Artemis to seize the property of the witches and Pagans. Artemis dragged witches from their homes and knocked out the children with the butt of his gun. According to this document, the cold-blooded Artemis executed nearly two-dozen women that refused to leave the town quietly. He either buried them alive or hung them. He then burned each body in the forest following whatever murder method he chose. Although most women weren’t suspected of having any real power, they were still seen as stubborn landowners rumored to have a bloodline linked to witchery.

  From what is written in this document, Artemis was the nastiest of that group. The others seemed to be protecting their financial interests. The Society of Franklin wanted Wilkinson Creek to be a witch-free zone so travelers would feel at ease when staying the night at the new hotels built in town. Many people had a financial stake in keeping Wilkinson Creek free of any element that could hurt the plans of the railroad being routed through town. The facts in the folder would have been damaging to the men mentioned, but the inventor of the gadget was the only full name liste
d. This read like a confession penned straight from Thaddeus Spencer’s hand.

  After recapping the information to Derek, he asks, “How many women supposedly died from his contraption?”

  “It doesn’t say, but it goes into graphic detail about two times when it was used—one was particularly brutal,” I mention, but hesitate. Derek gives me the signal to continue. “When Wilkinson Creek was established, the property along the creek became a hot commodity. After two reasonable offers to Bethalyn—the head witch in the coven—the Society of Franklin got serious because she was being headstrong about vacating her land. Apparently, she was unaware of the X1741. It was likely the first authentic electrical gadget ever invented but may have been too ‘hush-hush’ and brutal to make the history books. When Artemis confiscated the land, Bethalyn and her two daughters were beaten and dragged from their property.”

  “Why didn’t the law intervene?” he asks, clearly not wanting to interrupt, but this information has to sound extreme—even for the late 1800s. “I can’t believe the sheriff would sit back and let such barbarity take place under his nose.”

  “Everyone involved, including the law, was set to gain by seizing her property because of the location adjacent to the creek. The needs of the many outweighed the needs of the few, so any humane treatment went out of the window.”

  “That is just ruthless.”

  “Just wait,” I say, pensively. “The daughters and Bethalyn were chained to the iron fence inside the graveyard to have death facing them. The Society of Franklin used a lightning rod that was intertwined in the chains. The townspeople gathered for the execution as if they were attending a carnival. As soon as the clock struck midnight on the new moon, the box was cranked into full power, sending the stored lightning through their struggling bodies. All as a way to seize her property and rid the area of another family of witches.”