Armed with whatever circumstantial evidence they had, a mob stormed the home Allen shared with Doug. They dragged him out and lynched him there on the front lawn. The police didn’t even attempt to stop it. When Doug came home from his night job at the Donnelley plant, he was greeted by the gruesome site of his father’s corpse hanging from a tree, his bloated tongue sticking out, his thin frame swinging lightly in the cold wind.
The murders stopped in New Castle despite what some detectives thought, especially those in Cleveland, Ohio. In September 1935, an elusive fiend began stalking the hobo jungles in downtown Cleveland. The newspapers called him the Cleveland Torso Killer and The Mad Butcher of Kingsbury Run. By the time Ellen and I moved to our cozy two-story clapboard home in June of 1938, the Cleveland killer had claimed ten victims. However, a handful of detectives thought he’d crossed state lines and struck New Castle proper in 1936, when a decapitated man was found in a railroad boxcar.
The Cleveland Torso Killer was similar to the unknown villain who struck in New Castle only in the manner in which his hobo and lower strata victims were killed: decapitated, dismembered, the bodies completely drained of blood. The difference? The Cleveland killer was making national headlines in the summer of 1938. Our killer’s activities barely made the front-page news in the local paper.
I never paid much attention to either murder series because those were hard times back then. Not only were the victims in New Castle never identified (with the exception of the first two, the old lady and the young girl), but it just didn’t make a lot of sense to put a lot of police effort into solving the murders of what were essentially transients. The police had other things to worry about, as did the rest of us. We were in the midst of the Great Depression. There were no jobs. In some cities, unemployment was 50% or more. We weren’t immune to the horrors of crime. Despite this, Ellen and I were young, in love, and happy. The home we bought on that secluded street in New Castle was intended to be the home we would raise our family in. I’d received the money from an old job I pulled before I became a writer. It was enough to get us in; the money I earned monthly as a pulp writer paid the mortgage and utilities.
Ellen and I settled in quickly. Our neighbors were few and far between. Linda Kenyon lived to our left. Another middle-aged couple with a young son lived in the house to our right. Across the street was a family of six—the Greens. Next door to them, in a large, rambling farmhouse that had a never-used pool house set far back on their property, was Jack and Cathy Henderson and their two small children. The Henderson’s became very good friends. An older woman, a World War I widow, lived in the house on the corner. Behind us was a small group of houses whose occupants I got to know gradually over that summer; a young woman and her two children; Doug Tinker lived in one of those homes as well.
It didn’t take me long to get a basic feel for who lived near us. I cased the neighborhood prior to our moving there. Old habits die hard, I guess, but I was determined to put that part of my life behind me when I married Ellen. Still, the itch arose every so often and I would ease it by taking late night walks. I learned a lot about the people around me this way.
Linda Kenyon and her daughter and granddaughter were the hardest to figure out at first. We’d moved in at the height of carnie season, so Susan and Allison weren’t home much. Linda was on work-relief and had just started receiving social security checks. In addition to moving in to the area from Cleveland, I learned she was born and raised in New Castle, PA, that she’d married and started a family here. Over the course of the summer I learned that her daughter, Susan, was not only a carnie, she was a heavy drinker. Allison was easier to figure out—just from observing her, I correctly guessed she was a troubled child. It takes one to know one.
Because of my occupation, I didn’t get out much. Ellen ventured out all the time that summer of 1938, tending to the garden, piloting our old Ford down the rural road to the grocery. I usually ventured out in the early evening to walk the dog. That was when I first met Allison Kenyon and she learned who I was.
On days she was home from the carnival circuit, Allison was usually outside swinging lazily from the large oak tree in her front yard. Grace would tear away from us and rush at Allison, jump up and lick her face. Allison would fall on her back laughing as the dog bounded over, licking her. Some nights, Allison would come over and she and Grace would play in my yard. They’d chase each other around until Allison was laughing and Grace was smiling that doggy smile. Allison was tall for her age. She had long blonde hair that fell to her waist. She was near-sighted and wore glasses. She was something of a tomboy, but she had her feminine side. I don’t know if she went to school…in fact, I rather doubted it as her lifestyle became apparent to me.
* * *
I thought they would take Susan away that night, but they didn’t. In the end, neither Linda nor Allison wanted to press charges. Both denied that Susan struck them. With that admission, law enforcement’s hands were tied. They had no choice but to leave Susan in their care.
“Are you sure you’ll be safe?” Ellen asked Linda as she and Allison bundled up outside our front door to venture over back to their house. The police had left an hour before and I had gone in to make sure Susan was put to bed so she could sleep off her intoxication. Then I’d gone back to the house and sat up with Ellen, Linda and Allison as they’d talked about Susan’s increasing alcohol problems.
“We’ll be fine,” Linda said. She looked frail, but strong. This setback wasn’t going to wear her down.
“Your daughter said some strange things to me, Mrs. Kenyon,” I said.
“Susan has been very sick for a long time,” Ellen admitted. “Part of this is my fault. I shouldn’t have let it go on this long.”
“Do you want to know what she told me?”
The four of us paused at the front door. Allison stood huddled against her grandmother. Linda seemed to consider it, then shook her head. “I can hazard a guess. Somehow, she has it in her head that I’ve done things that ruined her life. I admit I’ve made some bad decisions. She was devastated when I left her father. Susan had left the house years before and moved to Cleveland, which was where she had Allison. I stayed with them for a few years. Our relationship seemed to disintegrate because of what happened between her father and I, and then he passed away. I came back to New Castle to try to repair the damage that was caused by my leaving but…” She shrugged, and looked outside at the blowing snow. “I could only do so much. I tried to keep my family together. I did everything I could, but it just wasn’t enough.” She looked at Ellen and I. Her eyes shimmered in pools of tears. She shook her head, put her arm around Allison’s shoulders. “You people have been wonderful. Thank you so much.” And with that, Linda led Allison and herself away toward their home.
We got a bad snowstorm the next day, which kept us indoors. The next time I saw Allison, really saw her and had a good talk with her, it was nearly a month later.
Chapter Two:
Cloaked in Crimson
For the first three months of our residence on Fir Lane, Ellen and I only got glimpses of Susan when she made her occasional pit stop at Linda’s home. My initial instincts about her were right when we met her and her boyfriend, James, on the first weekend of September of 1938.
It was a warm, breezy day. Susan, James, and Allison were in town for a brief stay from the carnival season. Ellen and I were already fairly good friends with the Henderson’s and several other families. Ellen decided that afternoon to have an impromptu picnic in our backyard, and went about the task of inviting the neighbors. Everybody except Doug Tinker stopped by. Linda came over with a tossed salad. Ellen made ham and beef sandwiches and Cathy Henderson made potato salad. It was only common courtesy to invite Susan, James, and Allison over.
Jack and Cathy came over with their children, Henry, who was seven, and Connie, who was five. Jack was an executive for the Pennsylvania Railroad, a remarkable achievement for such a young man (Jack was only six years older than
me). Because the Henderson’s had been in the neighborhood for a number of years, they already had a good rapport with Linda. I detected the tension between Susan and Linda pretty quickly. Susan spent most of her time with James, on lawn chairs, nursing bottled beer. They spelled trouble to me. I learned later that Susan rarely spoke to her mother, if at all. Allison and Grace spent a lot of time chasing each other around the yard.
With the exception of Allison, the Kenyon clan was the first to go home. Henry and Allison played with Grace for a bit while us adults talked. When The Shadow came on the radio, us adults hunkered around to listen. We listened to the latest episode on the porch with the late summer fireflies buzzing around the yard, providing the perfect atmosphere.
It wasn’t until after everybody else had gone home that we heard them fighting. Susan and Linda, their voices yelling, shouting vague accusations against each other Ellen and I couldn’t understand. There was slamming doors, banging against the walls. Susan’s voice was loud, her voice slurring with drunkenness. Occasionally James would shout something and I would hear what sounded like a slap or a punch, followed by cries of pain. Riding in the middle of it was Allison, her voice screaming over the cacophony, hurling ugly curses at her mother.
The fight got so bad, I was tempted to call the police. Ellen assured me it would pass, and it did. The shouting and screaming woke Grace, who stood at the second floor window and barked. It took awhile for Ellen and I to fall back to sleep.
The following day Susan and James were gone, back on the carnival circuit. For some reason, she left Allison behind, so I asked her what the ruckus was all about. Allison looked embarrassed. “You heard that?”
“We heard it,” I admitted.
“My mom and James were drunk,” Allison replied. “They’re drunk all the time. All my Grammy was doing was telling her that she wished my mother wouldn’t drink so much.”
“And they got into an argument over that?”
Allison nodded. “They fight about my mom’s drinking all the time.”
Sensing Allison didn’t want to talk about it anymore, I handed Grace’s leash to her. The dog was rolling on her back in the grass, legs splayed out against the sun. “Want to take her for a walk with me?”
“Really?” The morose look of embarrassment was gone, excitement replacing it. “Can I?”
The two of us walked long and far. We traversed a well-worn path through the woods, letting Grace follow various scents through the underbrush and thickets. As we talked, I learned a little bit more about Allison Kenyon and her family situation. Mostly Allison talked about her grandmother. When the subject turned to her mother, her voice dropped. “My mom can be pretty tough. She’s knocked me around more than once, and sometimes it’s scary just to talk to her.”
“I see.” I mused over this. “I take it you’re angry at your mother because of her drinking.”
“She’s a drunk. And she’s a reefer head.”
“Really?” I tried to change the subject. “How long have you lived here?”
“Well, my mom and I don’t really live here. We stay at a lot of different places. But my grandmother’s been living here for about four years.”
“Where do you stay?”
Allison shrugged. “During the carnival season, we’re on the road. Otherwise, my mom has friends in Youngstown and Cleveland, so we stay wherever we can.” The vague way she said this gave me the impression Allison and her mother and James were homeless. And if her mother was the drinker that I believed she was, the two of them probably spent a lot of time at flophouses and run-down motels. I should know. I’ve met plenty of folks from that strata of life before I got my nose clean.
As we reached the edge of our road, Allison motioned to a house set off to the side. The home was painted white, its windows dark, the shades drawn. The woods that bordered murder swamp came to the edge of this property. “Have you seen the guy that lives in that house?”
I nodded. This was the home that belonged to Doug Tinker, son of the man that was lynched in his own front yard. “A few times,” I said. I didn’t want to tell Allison what I knew about Doug and his history. “Ellen and I sometimes pass him when we’re walking Grace.”
“He’s weird. I don’t like him.”
“Why don’t you like him?”
“He’s just weird. He gives me the creeps.”
“Oh.”
We were walking past his house now. I didn’t feel particularly affected by what Allison said.
“He’s a creep and a pervert.”
“Why do you think he’s perverted?”
“He only comes out at night. He wears weird clothing and his skin is too pale. And he gives me these funny looks! In fact, sometimes I think he’s watching me.”
I frowned. Behavior like that, coming from a man whose father was suspected by the townspeople as being the New Castle Butcher, was disturbing.
All I knew about Doug was what I’d revealed before. He’d kept his night job at Donnelley in Pittsburg. He would take evening walks around the neighborhood. If the murder of his father affected him, it wasn’t obvious from his demeanor. If anything, he was quiet and kept to himself.
Sure enough, he seemed to pay a lot of attention to Allison, more so than any of the other kids in the neighborhood. Allison would respond in kind, but then would go in the house. Doug would stand in front of Linda’s home, looking on silently, as if waiting for something, then he would leave.
I thought this was strange.
Throughout the summer and early fall, Allison would be gone with her mother on carnival jaunts, coming home for occasional two-day weekends. During times they were away, we’d sit and have the occasional evening beer with Linda. Sometimes when Jack Henderson was home, he’d join us. Linda was a nice woman. I felt sorry for her. It was obvious she was bothered by her daughter’s drinking problem, that she was worried for her granddaughter, but there was nothing she could do about it.
Chapter Three:
Tortured Souls
I learned more about the situation over at the Kenyon house from an unlikely source.
Jack was out of town on business two months after the incident of January 1939 when Linda ran to our house for help. Cathy brought the kids over and I let them play on the floor in our living room while us adults talked in the kitchen. “Linda moved in two years after Jack and I got married,” Cathy said. “1935. Linda and Allison are dears. Susan…” Cathy paused. I could tell she was struggling to say something nice about the woman. “…Susan is a very selfish woman who cares about nothing but herself.”
Cathy went on to describe a litany of anecdotes; the occasional screaming match between Linda and Susan (“which is occurring more frequently now”), followed by occasional moments when she and Jack see Linda, and sometimes Allison, bruised and banged up. Ellen gasped in surprise. “Susan beats up her own mother and child?”
“What else could it be?” Cathy shrugged. “If you ask them what happened, they’ll tell you they ran into a door or fell down the cellar steps.”
I learned more over the course of the spring of 1939 when Susan and Allison hit the road. When they drifted back to Linda’s for a time, sometimes accompanied by James, Allison would escape to our house. Many times, she wanted to talk to me about the stories I wrote for Dime Mystery Magazine or Horror Stories, which she read religiously. Other times, she talked about her family situation.
Allison was at the house one night when we invited Jack and Cathy over for dinner. Cathy was in the living room with their two small children, helping them put their coats on. Jack and I were sitting at the table, enjoying after dinner cigarettes, talking about building a fence around his pool house to keep his children out of it. “Cathy and I have never used it,” he explained. “And it’s an old building. The kids are getting to the age where they’re wanting to explore, and I don’t need them exploring that old place.”
Allison was in the kitchen with the women talking about her family situation, and I heard
her very clearly. “My mother is crazy,” Allison stated.
All conversation stopped. Ellen had baked a blueberry pie and it sat in the center of the kitchen table, its aroma intoxicating. Jack and I stopped our conversation and turned toward the kitchen. Allison continued. “She not only gets drunk every day, she doesn’t do anything that will allow me to go back to school. I’d rather stay here with my Grammy, but my mother doesn’t want to have anything to do with her. That’s why we’re on the carnival circuit.”
“Where do you stay during the off season?” I asked.
Allison shrugged. “Wherever we can. Sometimes we stay here, but…well, you know how that usually goes. It’s a wonder we’re not completely homeless.”
“If things are so bad, why do you read those god-awful stories Robert writes for those magazines?” Ellen asked. She motioned to the kitchen table. Allison had brought the latest issue of Terror Tales to the house; that issue featured my novelette “Satan’s Torturers.”
Allison shrugged. “Those yarns are pure escapism for me. I know that as bad as things get in those stories, they’re nothing compared to what happens in my life. Besides, in the end, the good guys always win.” She cast a look at us. “It’s nice to think that somebody being tortured will be rescued. You know what I mean?”
Ellen and I traded a glance. Was Allison eluding that she was being tortured? If so, by who? Her mother? James?
“Don’t you have any family?” Jack asked. He’d come over straight from work. Normally he dressed in slacks and a suit, but sometimes, due to the nature of his job as a railroad executive, he had to ride the rails with the conductors. Today he was dressed as if he were a railroad switchman—dark dungarees, black work-boots, plaid shirt.
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