The Calling

by Robert Swartwood

  • • •

  DEAN STOPPED BY The Hill around seven o’clock that night. I was exhausted from my day and was taking a nap when he knocked at my trailer door. When I answered he looked at me, his face hard, and said, “Get your shoes on.”

  Ten minutes later we were at Luanne’s. The place had its diehard regulars, as I recognized most of the men at the counter from my last visit. We even sat in the same booth, only this time Grandma wasn’t with us. As it turned out she wasn’t up for dinner tonight, and though Dean never gave a reason, I knew why.

  He waited until we’d ordered our food before he got down to it.

  “All right, Chris, what the hell’s going on?”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Don’t bullshit me. First that Cunningham kid gets abducted. Then when he’s found he refuses to speak with anyone but you. Now he’s dead and the Sheriff’s got men working round the clock trying to find the bastard that took him. And the worst part is we don’t have any leads. But what really piqued my interest was when Mom told me you went over to Moses Cunningham’s place last night. Then this morning you take off back to Lanton. Why?”

  “I left something there I needed.”

  “Really. Like what?”

  “You wouldn’t believe it if I told you.”

  “Try me.”

  I stared back into his brown eyes and wondered what he thought was going on. He probably had some crazy idea concocted in his mind, nowhere near the truth. Telling him now would throw a wrench in whatever machinery he had going, but when all was said and done I really had no choice.

  “I went back to pick up a book your father sent me a long time ago. It’s the entire Old Testament handwritten by him word for word.”

  Dean stared back at me, his brow furrowing just a bit. “What?”

  “I left it in my trailer if you don’t believe me. You can look for yourself when we get back.”

  “No, that’s okay. But you’re right—I don’t believe you. Why would he do something like that?’

  “Well, let’s see,” I said, and raised my index finger. “One, he was crazy. Do we really need to know anything else?”

  Dean’s face reddened. His hands balled into fists. Images of him lashing out and punching me raced through my head. But he only sat there and whispered, “My father—your grandfather—may have been a lot of things, but if anything, he was not crazy.”

  “Yeah, okay. Then why did he try to kill me? Why was he locked away in that mental institution? The last time I checked, they just don’t put you away for the hell of it.”

  Something broke in my uncle’s face—it seemed to soften a little, as he shook his head slowly.

  “I can’t explain what happened, Chris, because I don’t know the whole story. But I knew that man my entire life. He raised both me and your dad real well, and what they say he did just isn’t something he’d do. He was a good man, a damned fine man, and things really changed after he went away. For a while the Myers name had a stigma to it that I thought we would never live down. And your dad ... he cut off all contact with us. He turned his back just like that and you know, I can’t say I blame him. A lot of weird stuff happened, but I swear to you, your grandfather was not crazy.”

  The conviction in both his eyes and voice asserted the fact that Dean believed it was true. No matter what may have happened, my grandfather was sane in his son’s eyes.

  “Okay,” I said. “So where is he now? Is he still alive?”

  “No. He’s been dead almost four years.”

  I thought of my father and how he’d cut off all contact. When did he find this out? The night it happened? A week later? A month?

  “How?”

  For the first time I saw the hesitation in my uncle’s eyes as he looked away.

  “Suicide,” he whispered.

  • • •

  MOSES STILL WASN’T home by the time we got back to The Hill. Dean stopped his Explorer right in front of my trailer, put it in park, and then pulled out a pack of Winston’s from the glove box. He placed one in his mouth, lit it, then blew the smoke out his window.

  “I thought you gave them up.”

  “So did I.”

  My uncle kept his attention forward, as if he didn’t want to look at me. I undid my seatbelt and got out, was about to shut my door when Dean said my name.

  “You know, despite what may have happened in the past, we’re still family. Just because we haven’t seen or talked to each other in over ten years doesn’t mean we’re not. Both Mom and I care and love you very much. Just remember that.”

  He flicked his cigarette out the window and drove away.

  • • •

  I WAITED ANOTHER hour before Moses returned. By then it was almost nine-thirty. As I met Moses at his RV, I saw Mrs. Roberts at the table in my grandmother’s trailer. They were probably playing cards or dominos. Grandma glanced out the window for a moment, saw me, then quickly looked away.

  Moses had the Metro’s passenger door open. He was bent over and picking something up off the seat. When he turned, he held a stack of newspapers in his arms.

  “What are those for?” I asked, for some reason thinking of Lewis Shepherd’s collection.

  “All the papers in the tri-county area. Every place Joey and I went to we got all the morning and evening papers. Sometimes we’d find clues while rooting though them.” He noticed the Bible in my hands. “Is that it?”

  I nodded, told him he wasn’t here when I got back or else I would have given it to him then.

  “I had to go to the hospital. They’re ready to release Joey’s body. I’d love to take him back to Ohio and have him buried beside his momma, but I can’t leave. So I’m having him cremated. At least then I can always keep him with me.”

  I held my grandfather’s Bible out to him. “Here, take it. Whatever Job 42 says, it’s the only help I can give you.”

  “You haven’t read it?”

  “No.”

  “Why not?”

  “I just ... I think it’s best if I don’t know what it says. I hardly knew my grandfather, and the little I do know isn’t good.”

  Cradling the newspapers in one arm, he took the Bible from me. “How was your trip? Did you end up talking with Jack Murphy?”

  Images of today flashed through my mind: little Patty’s near-violation, Jack Murphy’s lustful wild eyes, that cold knowing feeling I’d had when I turned toward the farmhouse.

  “Not really.”

  “Not really,” Moses said. “What does that mean?”

  “Look, I don’t want to talk about it.”

  “All right. I understand. And thank you for getting this for me. But are you sure you don’t want to read it?”

  I thought about sitting beside Joey on his deathbed, how he’d told me to read Job 42, and I knew deep down it was what I had to do; even Moses knew it. But I just couldn’t. The puzzle was growing bigger piece by piece, and I didn’t want to see what the finished product would become.

  “No,” I said. “I don’t.”

  He stared back at me another moment, then nodded. “You know, Christopher, whether you believe in God or not, you can only run from Him for so long. In the end you’ll tire and have no choice but to face Him.”

  “Take care of yourself,” I said and walked away.

  Chapter 20

  For breakfast my grandmother made French toast and bacon. The coffee she brewed was bitter, the eggs were undercooked, and there was no syrup. But I didn’t complain. I’d been surprised when she woke me a half hour earlier and didn’t want to jinx whatever was happening between us now, even though we’d barely spoken a word to each other besides a simple good morning.

  To drown out our silence, her small Magnavox gave us the local NBC affiliate’s morning news. I didn’t give it my full attention until a picture of a red Celica, with clear plastic duct taped over its rear windshield, flashed across the screen.

  My face must have paled, because Grandma tilted her head and
squinted her eyes. “Christopher, are you all right?”

  The remote lay on the table between us, beside the stack of UNO cards. I picked it up and increased the volume.

  A female newscaster was saying, “... when police pulled over the car just outside of Binghamton late last night. Carmen Alexander, a resident of Reading, Pennsylvania, called 911 when she realized he had kidnapped their five-year-old son yesterday afternoon.”

  The picture cut to a headshot of the man who had walked out of the men’s restroom yesterday. Only in this picture the Hispanic man’s eyes were darker and his black hair was messed up.

  The reporter went on to say how Juan Alexander is being charged with kidnapping and grand theft auto. How police have not yet decided whether any more charges will be filed, as the five-year-old unidentified boy was gagged and tied up in the trunk of the car. How Mr. Alexander claims he wasn’t aware of a hole in the muffler that caused his son to inhale exhaust fumes for almost four straight hours.

  The reporter finished by saying, “When police found the boy, he was unconscious and his pulse weak. He was rushed to Binghamton General Hospital where he’s in stable condition at this time.”

  The picture then cut to the two news anchors. They both stared back into the camera, their eyes full of empathy. The male newscaster shook his head, started to say what a shame, but I turned off the TV.

  “Christopher, what is it?”

  I didn’t realize it until then, but my hand holding the remote was shaking.

  “I’ll be right back,” I said.

  I slid out of the booth and left the trailer and seconds later stood in front of Moses’s RV. I knocked only once—banged, really—before he answered.

  “Christopher?”

  “There’s something wrong with me and whatever it is I want it to stop.”

  I said the entire sentence in one breath and then had to pause, staring back at Moses. He frowned at me.

  “What are you talking about?”

  I thought for a moment, tried putting it in words, but couldn’t come up with anything simple enough. So I just rushed through what happened yesterday. The feeling I’d had when we stopped at Jack Murphy’s place, then what I found inside. And the other feeling at the Sunoco station near Scranton, about something inside the Celica’s trunk.

  “I knew it, too, I knew something was there, but I didn’t do anything about it and now the kid might die.”

  “Okay,” Moses said, “so what do you think is wrong with you?”

  “Just ... this. Those feelings I got, what the fuck were they?”

  “Christopher, don’t act stupid. You know exactly what they were.”

  “But how—”

  “I don’t know. Maybe ... maybe Joey somehow passed it on to you.”

  I stood there, wanting to say more but not being able to think of anything else. I glanced past him into his RV, noticed my grandfather’s Bible on the coffee table. When I looked back up at Moses, I couldn’t seem to meet his eyes.

  “Did you read Job 42?”

  “Yes.”

  “What ... what did it say?”

  Moses stepped back and picked up the book, came back to the screen door and opened it. He held the Bible out to me. “You should read it. After all, it’s essentially a letter to you.”

  Reluctant, I took the Bible from him. Held it with both hands. It felt heavier than it did before, though I knew that couldn’t be possible.

  I whispered, “I’m afraid of what it says.”

  Moses nodded slowly. “You should be.”

  • • •

  I SAT ON the tiny hard bed in my trailer and stared at the picture of me and my parents. I stared for a long time, wondering what I’d tell each of them if I had the chance. But I knew just staring at the picture was putting off the inevitable. I’d wasted an hour already just sitting here, so I set the picture aside and picked up my grandfather’s Bible. Opened it and flipped through to Job 42.

  I stared at the first word—my name—for a very long time.

  Then I began to read.

  • • •

  CHRISTOPHER, IF YOU are reading this, something bad has happened to either one of your parents, if not both. And I’m sure you may be asking yourself why you should even waste your time, because the past you have been told about me is certainly one filled with darkness and doubt. Perhaps you even remember the day I picked you up from school; perhaps you even resent me for my actions. What you do not know, however, is what I was feeling inside myself that day, or even why I came to get you in the first place. But before I begin with what I need to tell you, I want you to know that you are my only grandchild and I love you dearly. I always have and always will. And because of this, I fear your life may now be in danger.

  I do not know exactly where to begin. I have been in this institution for nearly five years. I know I must get this message to you somehow, but writing a letter is simply out of the question, as the people in charge here read everything outgoing. Then again, you may never even get this, which will mean all the effort I have put into this book is for nothing. I had to come up with some way of getting this to you without suspicion, and while rewriting the entire Old Testament by hand is odd and may certainly seem like a large waste of time, believe me when I tell you I had no other option.

  While you may not believe the following (which I have come to think of as a kind of ghost story), a part of me fears that if whoever I put in charge of keeping hold of this book does his or her job, and you are truly reading this, something terrible has happened to both my son and his wife. And if this is the case and your parents are dead, then your own life is in serious trouble now as well. Why do I say this? Because a long time ago, back before I was even born, my father and three men—in their late teens at the time—did something I believe will forever haunt our bloodlines.

  This happened back a little before the turn of the century. In 1897 my father had just turned seventeen. He lived in a small town in southern New York now called Bridgton. Cabins and houses and a general store—the same one that’s still there on Mizner Road, I believe—were built around an area outside Elmira and slowly expanded. Nearly everybody knew each other and got along well and had no real reason to worry, except maybe about how much wood and supplies they needed for winter.

  However this was not always the case. There was a man—some called him a giant—who lived in a stone house in the woods. Nobody knew a great deal about him except the fact that he was a hermit. He kept to himself, and for everybody else that was just fine.

  Then one August morning a young girl went missing. Her parents, friends, and neighbors searched everywhere but to no avail. What they found instead were pieces of her clothing spotted with blood. Some hunters, later hearing what happened to the girl, remembered spotting a black bear roaming the woods and it was immediately assumed she had fallen victim.

  Another month passed before a second girl went missing. The local constable and his men did not search long before the bear was blamed. The town already knew the bear had claimed one life and now another and they all agreed it needed to be stopped. A hunting party was formed of different men throughout town to go after the beast. Only two days passed before they found the black bear and shot it dead. It was brought back into town for everybody to see. They all believed the worst was over, when in reality it had just begun.

  Christopher, what you need to understand is that even though these people may have seemed like simple folk, they were not naïve. They were God-fearing for the most part, and distrusted strangers. According to my father’s journal, which he wrote concerning what took place—and which I found years later after his vicious murder—despite the bear, there was talk that the giant who lived by himself in the woods was somehow responsible. After enough of this talk circulated, the local constable went with two of his men to confront the giant. They returned empty-handed. When questioned what happened the men claimed the giant was just lonely and that everyone should stop worrying about him be
fore things got unruly.

  A series of disappearances followed in the space of three months. First a young boy of five years; second a girl, almost sixteen. Then twins, a boy and a girl, both three years old. Something had to be done. The town was scared. Some who could afford to even moved away into Elmira. There was talk of forming a posse and going up into the woods where the giant lived. But the constable talked them down, assuring them that the hermit was in no way responsible. Whether he knew the truth or not I cannot say. What he and his men found when they first went up to the house nobody knows. But from what my father wrote, the constable believed the giant was innocent. And in a way, perhaps he was.

  For my father and his three friends, it was initially only talk. Then the day came when one of my father’s friend’s sisters went missing. After this they knew something needed to be done. They were young, and angry that this was happening, and wanted to make things right. They knew the giant needed to be stopped and made themselves believe they were the only ones who could do it.

  Early the next morning Benjamin Myers—my father, your great-grandfather—went with Clive Bidwell, Paul Alcott, and Daniel Weiss up to the stone house in the woods. They were prepared, each carrying a rifle and knife of their own. “We were all scared,” my father wrote, “but none of us intended to show it; thankfully, none of us did.”

  When they arrived to the house the giant was gone. The house itself was small, its interior consisting of a wooden table and chair, a fireplace and a long bed against one wall. Nothing to suggest the giant had kidnapped children. As they stood looking like young men in a militia, the four of them realized they were being foolish. Clearly they had overreacted. They decided they should return to town before the giant returned home. But then, before they left, one of them noticed the sundress peeking beneath the bed.