Soul Search: A Zackie Story

by Reyna Favis

  “None of the other property owners suffered any deaths in their families during their years of occupancy.” Having answered my question, he bit into his sandwich and chewed thoughtfully.

  In deference to Cam’s need for good manners, I first asked my question and then took another bite. “Could one of the families have brought an attached spirit with them?”

  Cam swallowed and took a drink of cider before answering. “It would have stayed attached and left with them, I would think.”

  “I guess that leaves us with Daniel Clark.” I reached for a napkin and dabbed at the mayonnaise clinging to my lips. Cam nodded his approval at burgeoning table manners. “Why would he hide his face?”

  Cam shrugged. “Maybe he was ashamed of something he did in his life?”

  I tilted my head, putting two and two together. “Maybe something to do with Gretchen’s room?”

  Cam squinted as he thought about it. “Possibly. If that is the case, we’ll need to confront him with it. He’ll need to know that we know, so he can stop trying to hide his identity and own up to his deeds. I need to spend some time researching Daniel Clark’s life before we return tonight. Maybe I can figure out what he might have done.”

  While Cam returned to his laptop, I cleared the table and then stripped off the fancy gloves as I prepared to wash the dishes. In fairness, Cam was best suited to do the necessary searches to find information on Daniel Clark, but so help me, he was going to do the next batch of dishes with his good hand. While I was mulling over principles of justice regarding household chores, I ran out of dish detergent. The sink was retrofitted into older woodwork that might have been only cabinets with a countertop in days gone by. The most likely place to find more detergent was inside the cabinets, so I opened a door and started rummaging.

  The dead hand took the opportunity to clear the stash of sponges, cleansers and dish towels out of the way to expose the bottom of the cabinet. Before I could protest the sudden autonomy of the hand, it forced its fingers into a crack along the boards and lifted a small plank of wood away from the others to reveal a hidden recess. At this point, the hand stopped its activity and left it to me to remove whatever items might be hidden there.

  I called over my shoulder as I sat on the floor and reached into the recess. “Cam! Something weird just happened.”

  “What, again? Can it wait? I’m a little busy here.”

  I pulled out a heavily dusted rectangular item. It was wrapped in a cloth. “No, you better come here. The hand found something.”

  The chair scraped as he stood up, muttering imprecations on being interrupted. “The hand did what, now?”

  “It opened up a secret compartment under the sink.” I carefully unwrapped the cloth as Cam appeared over my shoulder. At the same time, Zackie ambled up to me and stuck her face in my hands to explore the item. Her tail began to wag as I removed the protected contents from the old cloth. “It’s a book.” The book was slightly moldy in places, but it seemed to be fairly intact, so I gingerly opened it and gently thumbed through the pages. “Cam, it’s a journal and look at the first page…It’s dated August 15, 1900.” Squinting at the faint writing, I began to read. “‘I am Lummie Sinclair and I will record in these pages what I cannot share with anyone.’” My lips went numb and I stared at Cam with wide eyes.

  Cam reached for the book and I gave it over. “It’s Lummie’s journal all right. I can’t believe it. She didn’t seem the sort to commit her memories for posterity.” His eyes misted a bit as he spoke. Zackie’s tail continued to thump against the cabinets. “She was one of a kind. Always ready to help, but she was such a curmudgeon. I never met anyone so surly.” I suppressed a smile at his words. Maybe this was a common trait among people like us. Cam handled the journal with great care and turned to the last entry. “Lummie last wrote in this book in 1968. That was a few years before I met her.” As he returned to the book’s beginning, something fluttered out from between the pages.

  I picked up a sepia photograph of an old, bent man with gray hair standing next to a car that looked to be from the 1950’s. The thing that caught my eye was the background of the picture. The farmhouse was in better shape then, sporting a fresh coat of paint and a roof that looked like it could weather any storm. The addition on the back corner of the house had yet to be built, but the wraparound porch was a dead giveaway and there was no mistaking that this was the same house that the McLeans now lived in. I checked the back of the photo to see if there was anything written that would identify the man, the place or the year. No luck.

  I held the photograph up to Cam. “Look…. It’s the farmhouse from this morning.”

  Cam took the picture from me to give it a closer look, also checking the back for any information. “It is the same house.” Scrutinizing the photograph, he declared, “This man is too old to be Daniel Clark.” He walked over to his laptop and I stood up and followed. “But I do see a family resemblance.” Angling the screen toward me, I saw a newspaper story from 1938 with a grainy picture of a dark haired man. The caption said he was Sheriff’s Deputy Daniel Clark. Comparing the photograph with the newspaper picture, Cam was right. Both men had the same deep-set eyes, high cheek bones and square jaw, although the features of the older man had softened with the years.

  I nodded my agreement with Cam’s assessment. “You keep investigating Daniel Clark’s history. I’ll read the journal entries from the 1950s and see if there’s anything that can identify the man in the photo.” Even though the suspense was killing me, I quickly cleaned up the mess under the sink and finished the dishes before sitting across from Cam and beginning my task.

  Slipping on the fancy gloves in case Lucas or the cousins suddenly made an appearance, I rifled through the journal entries until I found the decade of interest. A quick scan of her writing as I leafed through the pages told me that Lummie did not have a large number of social engagements, other than her sin-eating activities. I saw some references to what I thought might be Zackie, but Lummie referred to her as Maple because of her coat color. My guess was that every handler through the ages must have given her an equally inane name.

  The decade opened with thoughts of the new year and a depressing forecast of what the year would hold. More ritual funerary meals were anticipated and she named those who she thought were on their way out. She recognized that more social rejection would be aimed her way because of the sin-eating, but she was in turn philosophical about it and then resentful. Lots of conflict in that woman, I thought. Throughout it all, there was a stubborn will to do what she saw as her vocation, but she was bitter about the cost. As I moved through the entries, there was mention of celebrating her seventieth birthday. At this point, I discarded any hopes I may have harbored about the wisdom of age mellowing the burden of being a handmaiden to a psychopomp. Apparently, it sucked from day one and didn’t get any better, at least for Lummie. I saw many of the same themes from my list of complaints emerge in her writing and I could only hope that the difference in the eras and the cultures that we lived in might have a differential impact in how our lives turned out. Sometimes I think I am foolishly hopeful.

  Lummie’s birthday entry was surprisingly upbeat compared to everything else up until that point. She mentioned getting a letter from Timothy and that he said Daniel was doing well. She was so proud of Daniel. Flipping forward, I searched out other birthday entries and it was nearly the same every year. She would receive a letter from Timothy that lifted her spirits and shining words were written about Daniel. Flipping backwards, I saw the same pattern until 1905. Before this year, the birthday entries were short and seemingly inconsequential. I made a mental note to go back and review events between 1900 and 1905 after I finished my assigned decade. I wished I had the time to do a slow reading of Lummie’s journal, but nightfall was approaching and we needed answers.

  Continuing to read through the 1950s, I eventually found the page where I thought the photograph had been tucked. Timothy had died and Lummie was inconsolabl
e. She pulled herself together and attended his funeral, performing the rites as only she could. Lummie’s only solace was that she was able to witness Maple/Zackie bringing Timothy over the threshold to the afterlife and she knew for certain that he was at peace. There was no mention of any conversations with Daniel or any contact whatsoever and I found that distressing, but mostly sad that they had not consoled each other. The decade finished out with no other major events and if anything, Lummie was more depressed than before Timothy’s death. It was no wonder that Bodean and Parmelia were so dead set against following in Lummie’s footsteps.

  I started reading again from the beginning and marked off the end of 1905 with my finger in the pages. The entries were scant and irregular during most of 1900. Lummie seemed to be using the journal to expunge her anger toward her kin and neighbors, who used her services and then ostracized her once they had what they wanted. This sublimated anger would not have been how I would have handled the situation, but hey, whatever gets you through the night. The pattern changed towards the beginning of the next year when she made the acquaintance of Timothy Clark. Lummie met Timothy in his capacity as local law enforcement. He was chasing a thief who had robbed a neighbor and the thief, not being local, ran blindly towards Lummie’s cabin in the hopes of hiding out. Lummie brained him with a cast iron skillet when he forced his way into her home. She had my full approval on how she handled that situation. Timothy also apparently approved and he began looking out for her, a woman living on her own on the mountain. He made his home in Sylva and was a city man, less inclined to lend any credence to the superstitions of the mountain folk. Still, he must have felt some societal pressures, since something kept him from making his relationship with Lummie public. My heart rose to learn that Lummie was not alone her entire life and that she loved at least one man during her time on earth. Go, Lummie!

  The clandestine love affair went on until 1905 when baby Daniel came. Lummie was almost immediately conflicted by the thought of the little boy growing up isolated and alone. She did not want to give him up, but eventually, even though it broke Lummie’s heart, she let Timothy take the baby to his brother Randall to add to his large family. With a little bit of interpolation, I finally came to realize that Randall Clark and family lived in the farmhouse. It wasn’t clear what story Timothy gave Randall, but the baby slipped in among the eight other brothers and sisters and the neighbors never batted an eye. I would have like to learn that Timothy and Lummie eventually married and lived happily ever after, but I had already read the entries from the later years and I knew that’s not how the story went. Skimming through later entries, I found out that Timothy, in time, moved on and married someone else and had more kids. The fact that he kept in touch with Lummie over the years seemed to be a blessing to her, but I couldn’t imagine it being anything but bittersweet.

  As I closed the book and sighed, I felt Cam’s eyes on me. “Are you ready to share what you learned from the journal? I’m about done here with what I can find about Daniel Clark.”

  “Daniel was Lummie’s son.” Cam’s eyes bugged out when I said this. I quickly filled him in on everything else I learned.

  Cam looked wistful and slowly shook his head after he had a chance to process the information. “So, Lummie had a lover and a son. I met her when she was an old woman and even under normal circumstances, it’s always hard imaging how people spent their youth. I always thought it was just Lummie and Zackie living here from the beginning of time.” A frown eventually crept into his visage and he stared at my dead hand. “I wonder what it means that your dead appendage dug out the journal for us?”

  I had been so engaged in Lummie’s story that I had not given this particular mystery any thought. “Do you think it was Lummie? Lummie controls the hand?” I picked up the hand and stared at it. The fancy glove hid the details of the decomposition, but as always, the hand was a strange, alien thing.

  Cam sighed. “I would like to think so. That would at least be a benign presence, but this reticence in acting is not her style at all. She would not be passive. It appears to me that most of the time, that hand is fairly inert.” He thought some more and then shrugged. “Maybe things change when you pass over.”

  It was my turn to sigh. I put the hand down, deciding that I still did not trust it and would not seek answers from it. To divert Cam’s attention before he grabbed up pen and paper for the hand, I asked about his research into Daniel’s life.

  “Like his father, Daniel was law enforcement. He might have even trained with or reported to Timothy early in his career. Over all, Daniel served as a sheriff’s deputy in this area for over forty years. The thing that caught my attention was that he was a canine handler. He had a successful career tracking down criminals and he was something of a local hero. I saw at least a dozen news stories on how he foiled bank robbers, found missing children and the bodies of murder victims.”

  I sat forward and leaned my elbows on the table. “Well, that would explain why Lummie was so proud of him.”

  Cam raised his eyebrows and pointed to the journal. “Now that I know his true parentage, I tend to think that with Lummie’s blood running through him, he had better intuition than most.” As I nodded my agreement, Cam stood up and poured some cold coffee into a mug and offered it to me first. I declined, so he started drinking before he continued. “Anyway, so as to his career in law enforcement, I think he would have died with his boots on if it hadn’t been for Alzheimer’s disease. I found a newspaper story on his retirement ceremony. He wasn’t shy about sharing his diagnosis and urged people to donate to charities that supported research into this disease.”

  I nodded my approval. “It sounds like he was a really decent guy. I take it you didn’t find anything to say otherwise?”

  Cam shook his head. “Not one thing. This doesn’t mean there wasn’t anything, but there was nothing that made the newspapers. The only thing that remotely resembled trouble was a short report of local police activities. Within a year of retirement, the police were called to the farmhouse by some nieces and nephews. The disease had advanced and Daniel was suffering with something called ‘sundowning.’ For some people who have dementia, there is confusion and agitation that worsens in the late afternoon and evening. It can be physically difficult for caretakers to deal with this, especially when the person is otherwise able-bodied. It got bad enough that the family had to call in the police. I think he was moved to a geriatric facility shortly after this incident.”

  I suddenly straightened as the thought occurred to me. “It’s the same with the Anomaly. Nothing much happens during the day, but all hell breaks loose when the sun goes down. Do you think he’s still sundowning?”

  Cam blinked. “I think you have something there.” He put down the mug and his good hand came up to rub his chin as he thought. “Maybe, just maybe, the lack of a face on the Anomaly is also a symptom of the disease. If he has been stripped of his memories, it is possible that this is reflected in his spirit body by not being able to reveal his face. He might not know who he is.”

  I stood up, excited that we may have cracked the case and I began pacing. “That all seems to fit. It’s logical.” Whirling to face Cam again, I tilted my head as the thoughts formed. “But if he lacks a face because he lacks his identity, then he’s not symbolically hiding his face in shame. So, what terrible thing happened in Gretchen’s room? That event might be completely unrelated to our Anomaly.”

  Cam sat down again and picked up his mug from the table. “We can only ask the question. Maybe the Anomaly, if it is Daniel, may be able and willing to answer it.” Cam took another swig of coffee and looked at me squarely. “Let’s try to stay open minded about the case. This disease aspect all looks good on paper, but it may not be true. We haven’t heard back yet from Lucas about the other occupants of the house. If no one else has experienced paranormal activity, we’re going to have to look harder at Neil and Janie. This might be something exclusive to them or maybe caused by something they bro
ught into the house for one of their projects.”

  I stopped pacing and crumpled into the chair. Cam was right. This might be another case of a perfectly good hypothesis being nailed by reality, so I tried to rein it in and not allow myself to get too excited. But my gut told me we were right. In another hour, the sun would start setting and maybe all would be revealed.

  # # #

  When we arrived at the farmhouse, I immediately pulled Lucas aside and asked him about the other people who had lived in the house.

  “We weren’t able to get in touch with all of the families, but of the three we made contact with, each said that they had some weird things happen in the house. It was all similar to what we’ve heard. They all talked about noises in the back room at night and household items sometimes disappearing. It never went beyond that, though. No one else experienced the nighttime terrors that the McLeans described.”

  I nodded at Cam. These were points in our favor. “I don’t think any of the other homeowners ran this place as an inn, so maybe having strangers in the house is some kind of trigger.”

  Cam frowned. “But when people newly move into the house, they would technically be strangers and that should elicit the nighttime activity.”

  I waved him off, frustrated that we didn’t have a clear line of reasoning that neatly connected everything. “You’re right, you’re right,” I muttered. “Anyway, we should tell Lucas what we’ve found out so far.” Turning to Lucas, I advised him to take good notes as Cam recited our findings from the day.

  Lucas scribbled in his notebook. “But how did you find the journal?”

  I compressed my lips for a moment and then lied. Sort of. It was mostly true. “I was looking under the sink for some dish detergent and I found a loose board.” Before Lucas could ask another question, Parmelia and Bodean made their entrance. Both were dressed in their Sunday best, ready for their television debut. Parmelia looked like she had just had her hair done.