by JN Lenz
The ghostly vision Gladys would witness of her father Nelson walking the hallways, his apparition was from a time long before he lived in the great halls of his Largo mansion. The image Gladys would see time and time again was that of a much younger Nelson, just as he looked when Gladys was but a small child and her father returned home from the coal mines. Nelsons face covered in coal dust from the day’s hard work in the mine, his face completely back with only the whites of his eyes and teeth visible beyond his blackened skin.
The maid’s story convinced Clyde, after we had heard the story from Fred that Gladys had mistaken Clyde for her late father that night. The fact that he had clutched her by the wrists as he began to fall back that night may have caused the heart attack that the coroner had determined to be the cause of death. Clyde was convinced had scared the woman to death.
“In that moment when I reached out from the dead and grabbed hold of her wrists that night, I think the shock of the ghost coming to life was more than Gladys’s heart could take. If she believed me to be her father that night, Gladys left this world in good hands”.
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Chapter 8
The Elderson’s only son had lived at home his entire life, whereas the three daughters of Eleanor and Victor Elderson had all moved out and away from home in their early twenties. Mitchell had remained past his twenties, then his thirties, now into his forties and still living at home with his elderly mother. Victor the husband had long ago moved out of the house, albeit not of his own volition having been carried out dead of a heart attack at the age of forty two.
So it was, at the age of one year and four months that Mitchell became the sole male presence and male patriarch of the Elderson family. The daughters of Victor and Eleanor Elderson had been born a decade prior to the unexpected arrival of Mitchell, born some ten years after the last of the three girls. Victor would have very little time with a son he believed would never be born, his influence and male guidance would not be available for a growing Mitchell. The boy found himself raised by four doting highly feminine women, one of the many reasons he found it impossible to get out from behind his mother’s apron.
Mitchell was quiet and jacquard around his school mates and neighbors, with very few friends throughout his youth. There would be even fewer friends for Mitchell in adulthood. Working as an accountant for a small manufacturing firm on the edge of Toronto, Mitchell would return home each evening straight after work. It had been a pattern he would repeat throughout his life, returning to that same house each afternoon for the past forty years. First it was from school, then from work or occasionally from the movies but always returning to the same family home.
When questioned why he remained in the home by relatives and neighbors, Mitchell’s response was always that it was solely for the care of his elderly mother. Despite the fact that Eleanor Elderson had always been healthy as a horse, even now in her mid-eighties she could easily take care of herself. So the two of them mother and son remained together in the first home Victor and Eleanor had built from the ground up. Mitchell returning each night to eat his mother’s meals, sleep in his made bed, his clothes laundered and always pressed the way he liked it.
Eleanor Elderson had become one of Clyde’s “short listers” due primarily to the lavish arrangements she had planned at the time of her death. Eleanor Elderson’s pre arrangements spared few expenses, starting with a casket made of the highest quality materials and trim. Her internment would be in the same mausoleum which was temporarily holding Mr. and Mrs. Harry Winslow, a pair of additional limos to follow the hearse to the Cemetery and a lavish after party at the Shelton House gardens at the edge of town.
Eleanor had planned a very big send off for herself, her one last farewell to those friends and family who were still alive. In her youth Eleanor had met a young Victor in the town of Largo, both on temporary work assignments from their respective employers. When they wed a year later they promised each other to be both buried side by side in the small grave yard of Largo where they had first met. Fred had made the prearrangements for Eleanor shortly after Victor’s death; she wanted to ensure her word would be kept to Victor to join him in the Largo mausoleum. To Eleanor this was to be a celebration of life and that she would once again join her long lost husband Victor, having never married again in the forty six years since his death.
For Clyde it would be his youngest victim, at the age of eighty four she was also far healthier than the other four combined. Clyde had written how his intention from the outset was to murder Eleanor by using a syringe to inject her with poison. There had been a similar plan for Gladys McGovern; instead she simply collapsed dead from fear in Clyde’s hands. The Elderson home resided in a suburb of Toronto, the drive from Clyde’s rental townhouse to the Elderson home was less than forty minutes.
For the next four nights after the frightening death of Gladys McGovern, Clyde would make the forty minute drive out to the Elderson home. Each night he would watch to make note of the movements within the home. This death by lethal injection on Eleanor would be riskier than any of Clyde’s previous murders, requiring him to enter the home with a second person living there.
Clyde observed on all four nights that both the mother and son turned the lights off and went to bed around eleven pm each and every night. After remaining outside the home well past two in morning each night, Clyde watched to see if there would be any additional movement inside the home but there was nothing.
Each night Clyde would watch the home until well past two in the morning before heading back to the rental townhouse, from the outside it appeared the hallways would be clear in the middle of the night. Through the night many of the windows on the main floor remained free of blinds or drapes, this provided Clyde with a clear view of the main floor layout. A large central staircase highlighted the center of the home, the staircase also served as a division between the upstairs bedrooms.
Many of the main floor front windows allowed a clear view of the staircase, from this clear view Clyde easily determined which of the upstairs bedrooms were the mothers and which one was Mitchell’s. Unlike the main floor windows the second floor windows remained covered by blinds and drapes both when Clyde would first arrive while it was still light outside and also at night when the light that escaped around the sides of the blinds outlined the edges of each window .
Eleanor’s room was on the front right side of the house, while Mitchell’s bedroom resided on the opposite corner at the back of the home. The distance between the two rooms should be enough to muffle any noise Clyde thought as he examined the rear of the home searching for the best point of entry into the house.
A large stone patio extended across the back of the home, directly under what looked to be the ensuite bathroom to Eleanor’s master bedroom. The slate covered patio had a cedar arbor that covered the entire area. The slats of cedar were affixed to the home’s brick on one end, while large cedar posts cemented into the stone patio held up the far side of the arbor. The top of this flat arbor resided just inches below the bottom edge of a pair of second story windows. These windows Clyde decided would be his point of entry into the house. Before returning back to the townhouse on the fourth night outside Eleanor Elderson’s home, Clyde decided to climb on to the top of the arbor to have a closer look into the upstairs windows.
The time would be close to three am, Clyde had made his way across the back yard of the Elderson family home after scaling the five foot cedar plank fence. First he scaled the cedar post up to the top of the arbor, before making his way across the flat beams of cedar to the bottom edge of the first window sill. Peering into the window, past the sheers that covered the inside of the window pane, Clyde could see doors leading from both sides of the hall with the window.
At the far end of the hall there was another door which was open; a partial view of the end of a bed could be seen beyond the open doorway. The layout was much the way Clyde anticipated it to be, typical for a two story home
completed in the nineteen forties and fifties. The Arbor and its access to this second floor window on the main hall would be Clyde’s point of entry the following night, the night he planned to murder Eleanor Elderson.
Following his classes the next day, Clyde returned to the townhouse to catch up on some much required sleep. The return to the house where Eleanor Elderson and her son lived would not take place until close to midnight. Within minutes of arriving back at the townhouse from school, and Clyde was fast asleep on the living room couch. He had been surviving on less than three hours sleep for the past four nights and was in no condition to kill anyone unless he caught up on some much needed rest. Clyde set out the small plastic container that contained the same two needles he had prepared for use on Gladys McGovern, but never had the chance to use.
Clyde set the case containing the pair of lethal syringes beside the television remote control unit, picking up the remote he programmed the TV to turn on at ten thirty that night to ensure he would not sleep straight through to the next morning. As a back up Clyde would still set alarms, for those critical times when it was essential not to sleep in, typically though these alarms where rarely required. Clyde had long ago left this task to his unconscious mind, having only to remind himself a couple of times before falling asleep of the time he wished to be out of bed. It worked time and time again without exception, but for this rare mid-day siesta and a plan for murder that night, Clyde would take no chances.
By ten thirty on Friday night, Clyde had been awake for over a half hour. Sitting there on the couch, he watched the nightly National News. Clyde found the news with all its stories of chaos and human suffering would calm his nerves on this particular evening. It was not like him to feel this edgy before hunting anything but until he smoked a small joint and watched a half hour of news he felt as though he wanted to jump out of his skin. The fact that he felt that skittish after waking up, something that he had never felt before began to freak him out even more.
By ten thirty the dube had kicked in and mellowed him out of his brief hysteria, he watched the news to help focus him for the task at hand. Slipping a black leather pair of gloves on, Clyde placed the container containing the deadly syringes into the breast pocket of his jacket, grabbing his bike from the hall and left the townhouse for the Elderson’s.
The Eldridge house sat in complete darkness as Clyde drove the old Ford Pickup past the laneway; he had expected at this time of night the house lights would already be off for the night. Following the road around the block Clyde parked the truck about one block away from the Eldridge’s; he would be a few houses down the block to the adjacent street which included the Elderson home. Walking back around the tree lined street block Clyde entered the front yard of the house which sat directly behind the Elderson’s and made his way back through into the back yard.
From the back yard, Clyde would make his way to the rear of the Elderson property and scale the cedar fence and enter the back of the property, finding a suitable hiding spot among the shrubs and gardens of the Eldridge back yard, Clyde would crouch there motionless watching for any sign of movement inside the house for the next hour.
Nothing happened inside the house in that hour that Clyde could see; the house remained in darkness with the exception of some weak night lights that could be seen on the main floor. There was no movement on the main floor where a few of the blinds had not been drawn shut over the window openings and on the second floor the tightly pulled blinds meant the entire floor remained in complete darkness.
At sixteen minutes past midnight, Clyde moved onto the stone patio at the back of the house and began to climb onto the top of the arbor. As he made his way to the edge of the window pane, he realized that the drapes as well as the sheers covered the inside of the windows. This may have been why he was unable to see any light or movement upstairs Clyde thought, but there had been no movement after eleven thirty of any of the previous four nights.
After climbing back up the same Arbor Clyde had been on the top of the prior night he would use the flat screw driver he had removed from the red tool box that had always been behind the bench seat of the old Ford Pickup. The turn style lock which sat between the two panes on the older wooden casement windows were easy to prod from their locked position with the long thin flat head screw driver.
Clyde pushed the window pane slowly as he edged the window upwards, before climbing through the opening and into the second floor hallway. Here behind the long heavy drapes, Clyde removed a single syringe from the container, and then placed the container back into the jacket’s inner breast pocket. The jackets exterior pockets held the two pairs of latex gloves, both of which he would secure on his hands after he had scaled the Arbor.
Holding the syringe tightly in his right hand, Clyde used his left hand to slowly push aside the thick drapes providing Clyde a view of the hallway. At the end of the hall Clyde could see a distant night light coming from the bedroom at the far end of the house. Remaining for a moment behind the drapes as he looked towards the distant bedroom light, Clyde was surprised to see the old lady walking from one of the hallway doors back towards the bedroom where the light was emanating from.
Clyde wasted no time now as he crept quickly and quietly towards Eleanor, with just over half the distance closed between them the head of grey hair began to turn towards Clyde. The feature that registered first to Clyde was the beard of stubble followed by a male voice whose words sounded incoherent. Momentarily frozen Clyde would write how he stared in disbelief at this man dressed in women’s under wear and a pink night gown. The waves of hair from a grey styled wig hung to the cross dressers shoulders.
There was little time to stare, observe or react to the Elderson boy dressed in drag as he threw himself violently at Clyde, thrusting his body towards Clyde as he lunged at Clyde. Mitchell began taking broad swings with his fists clenched as stumbled slightly while throwing himself towards Clyde. Raising his right arm to deflect the first incoming punch would dislodge the syringe from Clyde’s hand; the next shot came from Mitchell’s left hand.
By now his stumble had pitched him too far forward as Clyde plunged his hands around the back of Mitchell’s neck and slammed his face into the floor, Clyde’s long fingers easily surrounded his entire neck and he squeezed it with all his strength. Clyde would squeeze the neck of Mitchell as hard as he could until he could not stand the pain in his hands for any longer.
Mitchell had stopped moving well before Clyde pulled his hands back from around the drag queens neck. Within seconds of Clyde removing his hands from around the back of the cross dressers neck he could hear a voice at the bedroom door where the light which partially illuminated the hallway.
“Mitchell dear is everything alright, I thought I heard some strange noises. Mitchell dear can you hear me, is your door is locked like it was earlier. Tell me if you feeling OK dear, Mitchell dear do you hear me”.
Clyde had been wrong about which one of the two had been in the bedroom; it appeared that Mitchell resided in the Master Bedroom while his mother used the smaller room in the back of the opposite side of the house.
“Mitchell, can you hear me” Eleanor continued as Clyde made his way to the bedroom door in search of Eleanor. Retracting the last of the syringes from the container, Clyde steadied the needle in his left hand as he reached for the door lock and handle with his right hand.
“Mitchell, what are you up too in there”
Clyde had slid his way tight against the partially opened door to the master bedroom suite before jumping out into the opening of the doorway. The stunned Eleanor who now stood a mere inches from Clyde, all she could do was just stare at him mouth half open as the
“Mmmm” sound as Eleanor was about to call for her dressed in drag son one more time” drifted from her mouth as Clyde slammed the needle into her chest depressing its contents into the chest cavity of the startled old woman. Within seconds the elderly lady began to drop to the floor her eyes lids dropped shut but her mouth rema
ined wide open, Clyde caught Eleanor easily before she fell to the floor watching as the drug would completely paralyze her. The dead body of Eleanor Elderson would be carries over to the bed of her son in the Master bedroom where Clyde would lay her on top of the bed.
Sitting on the edge of the bed beside the lifeless body of Eleanor Elderson, Clyde thought of a service Fred had told the both of us about. The service was for a young man who had been found hanging from his neck dead in a barn; he was dressed in women’s under wear with his penis hanging out. This apparently was a method of whacking off, the senses of which were heightened by the choking effect of the hangman’s noose.
Fred explained how after finding their son, the parents could not bear to come close enough to cut their son down, the sheriff had to do it after he arrived at the farm. That was it! Thought Clyde that combined with a murder could work here as well, Clyde pulled himself up from the bed and made his way to the basement in search of some rope.
Moving through the home Clyde made sure to stay within the unlit areas as he made his way past the windows of the main floor as he made his way down to the basement in search of rope or a length of wire.
After a twenty minute search in the cluttered basement he would secure a length of rope long enough to hang Mitchell, Clyde once again quickly rounded the base of the staircase as he climbed to the second floor. It was here at the base of the stairwell that one could be seen through the main floor windows whose drapes remained open, beyond the base of the stairs and behind the staircase wall the foyer and main stair case itself remained beyond view from the street.
Climbing back up the stairs Clyde returned to Mitchell’s lifeless body., tying a hangman’s noose out of the rope he tied it around the neck of Mitchell Elderson then dragged him to the center of the room where a large wrought iron chandelier hung from the ceiling, throwing the end of the rope up and over the chandelier Clyde would begin to winch Mitchell’s body up by its neck towards the hanging chandelier.