by D A Fowler
Her husband of twenty-one years hadn’t handled his midlife crisis with the greatest of ease. It had been his fortieth birthday, Carol had decided, when the simmering pot finally started to boil. Following a week of severe depression, he had suddenly come to the conclusion that what he needed to lift his spirits was a new sports car. The payments were no problem, so Carol hadn’t given him any hell about it, although she’d been far from crazy about the idea. She knew his ego was suffering; he was going through that universal—and hopefully brief— stage in which he would have to face the fact that he would never again possess the body of a twenty-year old, nor would he accomplish all that he’d aspired to in his lifetime. But Hugh Bremmers became obsessed with cheating fate. Next it was the longer, more contemporary hairstyle. Then the weight lifting, jogging, and tennis lessons. Gambling. Questionable business deals. It was only a matter of time before a mistress entered the picture.
Four months, to be exact.
All at once Hugh wasn’t joking anymore about trading her in on two twenty-year olds. She didn’t know it yet, but he had already done it: he’d compromised, though; his mistress turned out to be only one twenty-four-year old.
Two months later he moved out, after making a torrid confession that Carol had barely heard. Only later was she able to reflect back and recognize the logical chain of events spelling out the doom of her marriage. She should have been well-prepared for the end, but she had denied everything, effectively burying her head in the sand and convincing herself that all was well in her perfect little world. He’d never stopped making love to her, in fact, their sex life had been on the upswing…
Surprise, surprise. That was only because his new little love muffin was teaching him new tricks and refiring his zest. Welcome back to the single scene, Carol. Your perfect little white-picket world was just an illusion.
After three months of mourning, she’d tried to date, but began to shy away from men when she realized how depressing an investment of time they were. Half of it was spent listening to the bitter ravings of men who had been “screwed over” by an assortment of ex’s, the other half defending her position on not going to bed with someone she didn’t love—forget the variety of diseases she might be subjecting herself to. The idea of sex for mere orgasm’s sake repulsed her; she was a human being, not an alley cat. So what if her values were archaic? She was the one who had to live with herself.
She parted the orange curtains with brass kettles printed all over them to observe the activities going on in the backyard. The giant from next door had come over to visit his puppy, and between him and her kids, the little mongrel was being run ragged. The last thing she needed was an unhousebroken Tasmanian Devil who was also teething. Why hadn’t she just put her foot down and said no? Guilt?
Studying Spiro, she became aware that she was gritting her teeth. Maybe he was technically only a boy, but there was nothing about him physically that looked like one. He wasn’t the ugliest thing she’d ever seen, but he was certainly the biggest. His hands looked like hams; his bone structure resembled a gorilla’s. His shoes most likely had to be custom made; his feet were absolute ships. Was he stable? If one of her kids inadvertently (or otherwise) made him mad, would he grab them without warning and snap his or her neck like a dry piece of hickory? She imagined he was capable, if not inclined. Watching him lumber awkwardly after the puppy, she fervently hoped he would not be spending very much time over at their house, and that Lana—her too-trusting, too-generous daughter—never invited him over for lunch. He could probably eat a week’s worth of groceries in one sitting.
Lana was getting bored. What she really wanted to do was cruise the neighborhood in search of a girlfriend; it would be nice to have at least one before starting school on Monday. But she stayed and played Trip the Puppy and Run for Your Heels, fearful that if she left, her squirrel brother would start asking Spiro all kinds of personal, tactless questions; for example, Why do you look so weird? There was a croquet set in the garage, and Lana supposed she could get into a game if they could keep Sam out of the way. She got up and brushed the dry grass from the knees of her faded 501’s.
“I’m goin’ to get the croquet set out. Y’all wanna play?”
“I do!” Luke piped up immediately. “And I get the red mallet. That’s my lucky mallet.”
Spiro looked darkly confused and a little suspicious. “What’s croquet?”
“You don’t even know what croquet is?” Luke guffawed, clutching himself on the ground. “Boy, are you dumb.”
The confusion and suspicion previously displayed on Spiro’s face disappeared, his expression turning disturbingly blank. He pulled himself up and turned to go home.
Behind him, Lana’s voice shrieked, “You moron! I oughta cut your tongue out! Spiro…?” Her words fell uselessly on his back. He kept moving away.
Seeing that he wasn’t going to come back, Lana glared at her brother with raw contempt. “You hurt his feelin’s, you asshole!”
Luke shrugged; what did he know about feelings? “You still wanna play croquet?”
“I think I’ll go get your lucky mallet and smash your brains out with it,” she retorted, and stalked off toward the house with half a mind to actually carry out her threat. How could she be related to someone who had the sensitivity of a dog turd? Much to her disgust, she immediately proceeded to step in one.
Jane clapped her hands with girlish excitement when Cora withdrew the small white book from her sweater pocket. “You found it!”
“Yeah, bottom of that chest, like I thought.” Cora smiled. “Going through all that stuff was a trip down Memory Lane, I’ll tell you. Not a pleasant trip, I might add. Anyway, here it is; be careful with it, it’s about ready to fall apart as it is. Most of what she wrote was personal mushy stuff, gets a little disjointed toward the end ’cause of her…well, you’ll find out. The first entry you’re interested in was written November first, the day after it happened. There’s a little more later on, but I’m not sure where. I guess you’ll find it.”
Jane held the tattered diary like a rare jewel. “Well, I’m due for a break right about now. Care to join me?”
Cora declined. “It’s my turn to help Weaver in the laundry room,” she said, smiling evenly to show how happy she was about it. “Just don’t let anything happen to that book. If old Mr. Dobbs gets hold of it, he’ll eat it.”
Jane laughed. “And ask for seconds. Don’t worry. I’ll read it and get it right back to you.” She turned and headed for the break room.
“Remember now, all that happened a long time ago, so don’t upset yourself over it,” Cora called after her. “Don’t pay it any mind at all, hear? I don’t wanna be responsible for your shrink bills.”
Jane dismissed the warning with a wave. The diary would no more affect her than the articles she read in the National Enquirer, which she admitted to no one— especially Harry—that she bought. It was the same petty curiosity that prompted her to fork out sixty-five cents for the cheap rag with its incredible news stories (REAL VAMPIRES STALK SMALL MIDWESTERN TOWN…WOMAN GIVES BIRTH TO REPTILE) that now drove her to read this diary, or so she told herself. She would dismiss its contents with the same ho-hum she gave the stories in the Enquirer. But she still wanted to read it.
No one else was in the break room. She sat at one end of the rectangular table and carefully opened the small book, realizing then how truly fragile it was; the pages had turned to brittle leaves. Even handling them as gently as she would butterfly wings, occasionally a corner would break off or a page would come loose from the binder, making her feel guilty for touching it at all. But she was almost…
there…
29, 30, 31…November 1. The woman’s handwriting was tiny and precise, and slightly angled to the left. The pages were also badly yellowed, and some of the ink had been smudged in spots, making a few words illegible.
Jane perched the book on the e
dge of the table and began to read, her brain sucking in the narrative like a vacuum cleaner.
Father came home last night long after Winni and I had gone to bed. We didn’t leave our room, for we could tell that he was terribly upset; but though our door was shut, we could still hear what he was saying to Mother in the sitting room. He had gone with some of the men to track down the kidnapper who had taken Sarah Kennedy’s baby. Sarah had heard little Jeremy crying, and thinking it was time for him to feed, went to the nursery to get him. But when she got there, Jeremy was no longer in his bassinet. The window of the nursery was open, and the curtains were blowing in. Sarah said she could hear the footsteps of someone running away, and little Jeremy crying.
She then screamed for her husband, who upon learning of the horrible news, bolted from the cabin with his rifle and a lantern, but could not find a trace of his son or whoever had taken him. He then began to gather neighbors to help him look, and they presently came to induct Father, who did not hesitate to gather his own rifle and lamp and leave with them.
I remember that after he left, I immediately envisioned the strange family who three months earlier had moved into the old Ackley place near the base of Beacon Hill, a couple and a daughter aged about twelve, all of them with hair and eyes like pitch. I wondered at the time why they should have come into my mind, and decided later, when I learned the truth, that an angel must have whispered to me.
And so it was that when I heard Father in the sitting room declare that they had been responsible for the kidnapping, not the girl, but her parents, I was not greatly surprised. But when he told Mother that they, the men, had found little Jeremy pierced through the heart with an engraved dagger, a tool of Satan, I nearly fainted, and Winni got up and joined me in my bed, and we wept together in each other’s arms.
Father said that the baby had been sacrificed to the Devil, that clearly the strangers had performed an evil ritual, an act of witchcraft. They’d killed Jeremy on a stone altar upon which devilish markings had been painted with blood, according to Lionel Coombs. A multitude of candles were burning all around, which was how the scene was discovered.
When Father and the men entered the clearing, the murderers were just standing there over the body, staring straight ahead, like they were waiting for something. Their faces were grave, but their eyes gave hint of some strange, heathenish satisfaction. They didn’t even seem to care that they had been caught; contrarily, it was as if they had expected it.
It was strange, Father said, how the two seemed to cast a host of shadows, a trick of the candlelight, he supposed, but as he stepped through the trees, he could have sworn that there were at least a dozen people gyrating around the altar on which poor little Jeremy lay. And so said all the other men later, after the hanging was done.
As for the hanging, he said there seemed, at the time, nothing else to do; the Obers, as they called themselves, had been caught red-handed. Amos Tulley had brought along some rope, as though he had known beforehand what would have to be done. Tobin Kennedy watched as the bodies were hoisted up, holding his dead baby in his arms, and crying, Father said, like a wounded animal. The wind rose up high and blew out all the candles, and a foul odor could be strongly smelled in their midst. This frightened all the men considerably, but they had to stay and make sure the job was completed; not one of them dared to let the Obers breathe a moment longer. The Obers had said nothing when the nooses were placed around their necks; whatever their last words were, they had already been spoken. Father said they hardly kicked at all.
Jane drew a ragged breath and let it out slowly. There wasn’t much there that Cora, or Jasmine Colter, hadn’t already told her, but seeing it in black and white had served up one hell of a graphic vision. Her fingers trembling slightly, she searched for the follow-up entries Cora had mentioned. She found the first one under November 14:
The jury has been selected for the trial, but Father is certain it will go in their favor, as they had only done what the Holy Word of God commanded, saying, Thou shalt not suffer a witch to live. He told Mother after supper that Morganna, the daughter, has been taken in by the Widow Symes, much to everyone’s surprise, but also great dismay. They fear the girl now, as do Winni and I; is not the branch the same as the tree? She spends every night in the cemetery with her parents’ tomb, which all still wonder how she afforded, speaking strange words to the wind, and few doubt but that she is talking to devils.
The last was under November 22:
Without meaning to at all, I tripped Morganna this morning as she was making her way up the aisle to recite her memorization of poetry. She said nothing to me at the time; only gave me a sore look. But later, at the noon recess, she drew me aside and told me I would be gravely sorry for what I had done. I told her I was already sorry, that I hadn’t meant to do it, but she would not accept my apology, nor believe it had been an accident.
This evening while I was carrying a log to set on the fire, my legs buckled out from under me, and I have since been unable to stand on my feet. Father called Dr. Tippitt over, but he could find no reason for the paralysis. He believes I have been smitten by a disease, but I know what has truly happened. Winni knows too, but I have made her promise not to say anything to Father or Mother, lest something even more terrible should transpire, perhaps to all of us. I am hoping against hope, and praying with all my heart that the condition is a temporary one.
Scanning over the following pages, Jane learned that the writer’s condition had worsened rather than gotten better. Along with the paralysis, she suffered tremors and fever, and nightmares from which she would wake screaming, her blankets soaked with cold sweat. The entries grew shorter, revealing with heartbreaking clarity the tortured girl’s deteriorating mind.
On December 21 the writing stopped mid-sentence.
Jane closed the diary and shuddered. Had the girl died while making her last entry? She carried the grim book to the laundry room, located at the end of the south wing, ignoring the imploring faces of the wandering, discarded souls she passed in the corridor, unaware of their silent pleas for reassurance that they were still worth something. They were only a job to her.
She handed the diary back to its current owner without comment. Cora took one look at her face and laughed.
“Gawd, you’re white as a sheet, Jane. I told you, don’t pay any attention to that stuff, now. My mom’s great aunt died of polio, plain and simple. I’m not saying there’s no such thing as witchcraft, mind you, but the polio was bad in those days, and I’m sure her getting it when she did was just a coincidence.”
Jane nodded numbly. “Of course.” She glanced briefly at Norma Weaver, chief executive of the laundry room, who was eavesdropping on the conversation. Norma gave her a wide smile, revealing ugly black gaps on either side of her eye-teeth; she reminded Jane of a hamster. The rest of the teeth were jagged, rotting protrusions that kept Norma’s breath smelling like an outhouse.
“That li’l story git t’ya, hon?” She turned to pull a wet load of sheets from a front-loading washer, her question required no answer.
Jane grinned weakly and left. As if drawn by an invisible force, she found herself walking toward Jasmine Colter’s room. The problem was, Jane desperately needed to believe the whole Ober thing was nothing but bullshit, but she wasn’t doing a very thorough job of convincing herself. She hadn’t been prepared for all that she’d sat down to read. It had affected her more profoundly than she could ever have guessed.
Jasmine Colter was hardly a logical source to turn to for negative reinforcement—au contraire, she would try her bloody best to sway Jane to the superstitious side of the fence, pump her full of shivering dread and have her dashing to the local Catholic church for some genuine holy water. Still, Jane felt the need to talk to her. There had to be more to learn—actual information, not speculation—and only by knowing all the facts could she lay to rest the rising tempest in her mind.
She quietly stepped into Room 128; Jasmine, a white shrunken husk on the pillow, opened her eyes. Her Bible lay face down on the floor; she had apparently dropped it.
Jane moved closer, apprehension closing in on her like a shroud. Jasmine was much quieter now that her medication included mild tranquilizers, but this afternoon she appeared two miles past the brink of peace, hovering precariously over the chasm between life and death. Only a minute spark in her eyes gave any indication that she wasn’t quite ready to let go.
“Morganna’s comin’ for me,” she whispered hoarsely, barely above a breath.
Jane touched the old woman’s cold, papery hand. “No, Jasmine. Even if she could, she’d have no reason to.”
Terror leapt on the old woman’s face. “But she does, Pammie, you never knew…”
Pammie? Jasmine thought she was talking to her daughter. “Mrs. Colter, I’m not—”
“…what I done,” Jasmine sighed, sinking farther into the pillow. Her lips parted slightly and froze.
Leaning over the bed, Jane saw that the faded blue eyes were fixed, pupils dilated. Jasmine Colter was dead.
Pamela hung up the phone, too numb for the time being to let the tears flow. It was over. She turned to her husband, who was watching an NFL game with their son.
“Harold, my mother—”
“Just a minute, Pam. This is a very crucial play.” Harold Mingee leaned forward on his elbows in preparation to cheer or curse, depending on whether or not the field goal was accomplished by his team. Harold’s looks were at complete odds with his personality. He looked soft, with almost embryonic facial features; a doughboy with bug-eyes and a serious overbite, no chin to speak of, thin brown hair. But within this mushy exterior beat the heart of a barracuda.
Far be it from Pamela to intrude with heartbreaking news on thoughtless pleasure. Her mother wasn’t going to get any deader. And even if Pamela’s husband had allowed her to speak, all his response would have amounted to anyway was something along the lines of, “Jesus, Pam, I’m really sorry. Could you make us some more popcorn?”