by Ripley, Ron
“The trap door opened, and it fell out,” Mason said, his voice shaking. “I haven’t even looked at it yet.”
He put the item on the truck bed and stared at it. Matthew came and stood beside him.
“Oh damn,” Matthew whispered.
On the heavily scraped and worn bed of Mason’s Dodge pickup, next to his cup of quickly cooling coffee, was a mask. A thin, plastic Darth Vader mask.
Six
Mason sat at the reading table, his back to the graveyard and the library visible through the open doorway of the Gunther Room. It had taken him half an hour to find the earliest records from when Monson was first incorporated in the seventeenth century. These records were written on large pages bearing the King’s stamp, and the paper was protected in archival Mylar sleeves that allowed him to read but not damage the pages. There were cotton gloves in the gray manuscript box that the pages were stored in, but Mason didn’t want to handle them.
He wanted to scan through them, not take in-depth notes. He was only looking for information on the Boylan House.
It didn’t take him long to find it.
“A reformed Papist by the name of Liam Boylan has come to us by the Grace of God. He has begun the construction of a Garrison House along the Road to the Meeting House.” This had been written in 1674 although there was no name attached to the document. The rest concerned unrest amongst the local Abenaki tribe. Complaints about the theft of cattle and the pillaging of corn.
Mason moved to the next page and froze as his eyes rested on a sentence.
“Young Master Goodwin, aged 15 yrs, has disappeared while working on the edge of South Field near Liam Boylan’s home. Several Abenaki were seen watering cattle at the Hassle Brooke earlier in the Day. It is feared that Young Master Goodwin has been taken by them, or murdered by the same.”
Taking his new notebook out of his carry case, Mason flipped it open, set it down upon the table and clicked his pen. He wrote down the information on Boylan and the murder.
Putting the pen down, Mason searched through several more documents, but found nothing of interest.
Until he came upon a page titled, The Boylan House. This had been written in the early nineteenth century and was privately printed by a Frederick Gunther, who was also the author.
The reason Mason had stopped was the first sentence of the first paragraph. “The residents of Monson secured themselves in the Meeting House and in the Boylan Garrison House when the rebellious Indians attacked. Of the two Houses, only the Meeting House would survive the initial attack unscathed. The Boylan House, however, would not be so fortunate.” Mason quickly flipped through the document until he came to another mention of the house, a section headed, “The Massacre in the Boylan House”.
“In late October, when the Indian allies of Philip were making their last raids before the winter snows, the village of Monson was once more attacked. They had barely recovered from an earlier raid on the town, having lost all of their sheep and most of their cattle to the marauding Indians. Their crops, too, had been destroyed, and they were relying on the charity of the other towns and villages in hopes that they might survive the harsh New England Winter. When the Indians raided Monson the second time, it was only by the sheerest chance that the local militia caught sight of the Indians sneaking in through the fields of the Boylan House.
“Liam Boylan held the door for the militia as they came through, and it was through the benevolence of God that all of the militia made it into that home unscathed. The remaining residents of Monson heard the scattered gunfire and fled to the Meeting House, which could hold those few hardy families which had remained in the village following the first raid earlier in the year.
“Little but hearsay is known of what happened in the Boylan House during the twenty hours that the raid lasted. Those who were in the Meeting House were able to hear, in the pauses of their own battle for survival, the fighting taking place at the Boylan House. The fighting did not last nearly as long as it did for the Meeting House folk, for silence emanated from the Boylan House long before the Indians abandoned their efforts to gain access to the Meeting House.
“The next morning, a hardy few left the safety of the Meeting House and made their way to the home of Liam Boylan. What they found outside the home was what can only be considered as normal following a battle for survival. Blood stains could be seen upon the grass, and there were bullet holes, broken arrows and scorch marks upon the exterior of the home where the Indians had attempted to set the house ablaze.
“The men from the Meeting House hailed their neighbors in the Boylan House, but they received no answer. Cautiously they approached and hammered loudly upon the door.
“Still they received no response. One of the men, Kendall Hall, noticed that the trap above the door was open and convinced his comrades to lift him up so that he might see what had befallen those within. Once inside Kendall found himself in near darkness, the inner shutters of the second floor having been secured. He opened the shutters and became sick with horror at the sight which he found before him.
“Two of the militiamen who had been stationed at the Boylan House, were dead on the floor, both of them killed with a small hand ax. The ax, however, was still buried in the back of the one of the men. The two dead men were not what disturbed young Kendall Hall, though.
“Standing near the chimney he saw that at some point Liam Boylan had built some sort of false front around the chimney, faux stones made of clay and attached to a wooden door. This door lay open and within were the skulls of children. A dozen of them.
“After recovering from his horror young Kendall Hall made his way down the stairs and to the front door. He threw back the locks and the bar and allowed his comrades entrance. When they saw his face, they asked him what was wrong but he could only shake his head.
“It was at that point, the men stated, that they heard a noise coming from the rear of the house.
“The four of them raced to the back and found the rear door open. The last of the three militia members who had been at the Boylan House sat in the doorway, blood staining his shirt and three bullets in his chest. The shirt he wore had been burned by the powder of the shots. A brace of pistols lay in the grass near him, as did a musket. His breathing was ragged, and he looked at his neighbors through the veil of death.
“He motioned them closer, and Kendall Hall knelt down beside the man.
“’They only wanted him,’ the man hissed, pain marking each word. ‘They only wanted him,’ he said again and gestured towards the rear of the house before breathing his last.
“Leaving the dead man where he was for a moment, the militiamen stepped out into the rear of the house, looked around the back before one of them yelled in horror and cried, ‘Look!’ and the others did.
“There, crucified to the rear of the house, was Liam Boylan. He had been stripped naked by the Indians and cut open as one would a pig. The remains of his innards lay in a charred pile by him. He had kept his head, but the Indians had peeled back the skin from his skull, leaving it as two flaps of meat on either side, the lidless eyes staring at them.
“The men fled the house and returned to the Meeting House. There they gathered more of the men, as well as the Reverend and returned to the hideous scene. But what they found the second time was even more disturbing than the first.
“Liam Boylan’s body was gone. His innards still a charred pile, the spikes used to nail him to the house still bloody and buried in the wood. The militiamen were still dead. But the skulls were gone as well.
“The bodies were removed from the house, yet all that was Liam Boylan’s, even the precious books he had – and there had been many – were left upon their shelves. The doors were closed, and the people of Monson attempted to burn the Boylan House to the ground. Yet the fire would not catch.
“They tried to take the house down piece by piece, yet nothing they did could separate board from board. Any teams brought close by to try and hitch them to the beam
s fled, and one team brained a man, killing him.
“It was with that death that the efforts to tear down the Boylan House ceased. Since that time, all residents of Monson have given the home a wide berth. Occasionally people still go missing in Monson, vanishing, it would seem, into thin air, but the disappearances are declared to be the misfortune of wandering around late in October, when the mist is known to rise, and one can easily become lost in the swamps and woods.”
Mason sat back and let a deep breath out. He hadn’t realized that he’d been holding his breath. His hands though had become wet with perspiration. Wiping them off on his pants, Mason shook his head.
Standing up, he stretched and thought about what he read.
The date had been 1675 that everything occurred. That was the time of the King Philip’s War. The book was written much later. It could have some serious flaws. The writer, Mr. Gunther, could have taken serious liberties with the tale.
I need to look through more, Mason thought, returning to his seat. I need to see what else is there.
Once more, he leaned over the documents spread out before him and started to go through them. He scanned through decades of documents, the transfer of deeds and the sale of cattle. Farming disputes and the outbreak of the American Revolution. He didn’t find another mention of the Boylan House until October of 1865. A single page in the journal of a young woman.
“My brother Elisha went missing last night. It was said that he was going to walk through the Alcotts’ fields on Meeting House Road.”
Mason jotted the information down and then set aside the document by Frederick Gunther to see if Julie could scan it for him. He rubbed his eyes for a moment before turning to the next set of documents, a collection of letters written by a Mister Elbridge Copp starting in 1899 and lasting until 1922.
He let his eyes rove over each page before flipping it over. Page after page until he stopped at 1910.
“Dear Harold,” the letter began, “another child has disappeared into the wetlands behind Boylan House. There is, of course, the old superstitious fear that it is the house itself which has devoured the child. I think that they should throw up a fence around that house, but, according to Erickson at the town hall that is strictly forbidden by the contract which had been drawn up between the town and the law firm which pays the home’s taxes. Until they do, I fear that people shall continue to think that they can wander at will in a place where even the animals seem fearful to tread.”
Law firm?
Mason jotted the information down. He needed to find out who they were, and if he could speak to them.
He needed to find out how many children had disappeared.
Seven
Halloween. 2005. Meeting House Road.
It was the third time that Mason had come to Meeting House Road to stand before the Boylan House. This was the only time that he had come alone.
He sat on the tailgate of the truck. The same truck that he had five years ago, when Matthew had accompanied him. But Matthew was home, handing out candy while his wife and their two little ones were out trick or treating.
Rarely did anyone come down to the end of Meeting House Road anymore, and that was a good thing. No one had believed Mason back in 1980. All of the adults had pawned his story off as just that, a story.
Mason knew that it wasn’t though. His cousins had been convinced that Kevin Peacock had been snatched by someone. Not some supernatural boogie man that lived in an ancient house.
Mason was the only one who held onto what he saw that night.
And he was back again. Five years had passed since the last time he stopped by to visit his cousins. Mason would see them again in the morning. He had rented a room at a nearby motel. Tonight, though, tonight was for the Boylan House.
Whatever was in the house, if there was something in the house and not the creation of a frightened seven-year-old, seemed to have remembered him. Mason still had the Darth Vader mask, that none too subtle hint that it knew who he was. And, perhaps more than anything else, that bothered Mason the most. Something knew him there.
Something was playing with him.
Maybe it was the house. Maybe it was something else.
Mason didn’t know.
Reaching behind him, Mason took hold of the double barrel shotgun he had brought with him. It was a sawed off. Good for scaring the shit out of someone sneaking up on your porch or thinking that coming into your house was a good idea. Tonight, he had it packed with salt loads. Pure salt from a lick and in shell casings he had put together.
If something came at him tonight, whether human or not, it was going to get a taste of salt that would leave it feeling like hell.
Mason slid off the back of the truck and stood to look at the house.
A single lamp flickered into life in the upper left window. It moved slowly through all four of the front second story windows, stopping finally at the far right.
Mason could feel his heart pounding.
But the shotgun was steady in his hands. Holding it easily, he flipped off the safety and started walking up the slight hill toward the front door. When he got about a dozen feet from the door, the light in the window vanished. Mason stopped. The old childhood fear burst up within him and threatened to send him racing back to the safety of his truck.
For the third time in his life, he encountered the abnormal and hideous silence that surrounded the house. The smell rose up around him, and every sense in his body told him that this was no place for him. That this was no place for anyone.
A creak sounded, soft and subtle, just barely audible but there. The hackles on Mason’s neck rose up, and he stiffened.
In front of him, with only the light of the half-moon to show the door of the Boylan House, Mason saw something come down from the trap. As the item landed on the granite step, Mason moved forward, weapon at the ready. He reached a shaking hand out and snatched up a burlap bag.
It was full but light, and Mason made his way back to his truck. Back to the safety of the Meeting House Road.
When he reached his truck, Mason put the safety on the shotgun, placed it on the truck bed and took up the burlap sack. He opened it and looked in. But he could hardly see anything. Drawing a deep breath Mason put his hand in and fished around. He felt something that reminded him of old corn-silk and wrapped his fingers around it.
Taking it out slowly Mason realized that he wasn’t holding corn-silk.
He was holding human hair. And the scalp that went along with it.
The skin was white.
The hair was yellow.
A flicker of light caught Mason’s eye and he looked to the Boylan House. All of the windows had light shining from them and somewhere, just faintly, he could hear something laughing.
Eight
“How’s it going in there?” Julie asked as Mason walked out into the main portion of the library.
“Better than expected,” Mason answered, smiling at her.
Julie smiled back. “So, can you talk about what you’re researching or is it a big secret?”
Mason laughed, shaking his head. “No,” he said, walking up to the desk and leaning against it, “not a big secret at all. Why, do you get a lot of people in here researching things that are big secrets?”
“Oh yes,” she answered, rolling her eyes. “You have no idea. It’s mostly older people, researching the town’s history and whispering about scandals that they’ve uncovered. Information that will bring down the most influential of the town’s families.”
“Really?” Mason said, grinning. “I didn’t know that Monson was such a hotbed of activity.”
“Lascivious in nature as well,” she winked, nodding.
Mason laughed out again. “Oh,” he sighed, “that’s good. No, my research isn’t about lust and passion in eighteenth century Monson.”
“Shame,” Julie said, “those Revolutionary folks really had some interesting habits.”
“I,” he said, “don't even want to kno
w. I’m rather suspicious that it might involve farm animals and cold winter nights.”
It was Julie’s turn to laugh. “I thought that you said you weren’t researching the town’s most influential families.”
“No,” he said. “I’m not. I’m researching something a little darker, I’m afraid.”
Julie looked at him with interest, the smile fading from her face. “What is it, if you don’t mind?”
“I don’t mind,” Mason said. “Do you know the Boylan House?”
“That’s the creepy house at the end of Meeting House Road, right?” she asked.
“That’s it,” he said nodding.
“Yes,” she said, frowning, “I know it. I’m not a fan of it. A few of my girlfriends went up there when we were seniors in high school. It was May, almost time to graduate and they decided they’d go up to the Boylan House and see what the fuss was about. Mary Ann, one of my friends, even went up there, knocked on the door and ran. But nothing came out. No, boogie man.”
“Wrong time of year,” Mason said softly.
“What do you mean?” she asked.
“Wrong time of year,” he said again, straightening up. He crossed his arms over his chest and smiled tiredly at her. “Things only happen at the Boylan House during the end of October. And, from what I can see by the little research that I’ve done so far, only boys seem to be the victims.”
“So you’re researching the Boylan House,” she said.
“Yes.”
“Why?” she asked. “I don’t mean to be rude, or crass, but that place is, well, creepy as hell.”
“You’ll get no argument from me,” Mason said. “I was there when it something far beyond creepy.”
“What happened?” she asked.
“Do you know anything about the town?” he asked in turn.
“Yes,” she nodded. “I grew up here. Plus, just being around as a librarian, you kind of poke around and see what’s old and what’s new. Sometimes it gets really slow in here, and I read some extremely unusual things.”