Evil Heights, Book I: The Midnight Flyer

by Michael Swanson

  Like most others of that era, the size of the original estate had been whittled down considerably over the years. From the original grant of more than 1500 acres, only a little more than one hundred now remained. Before the turn of the century a large section of the land had been sold to the PS&Y railroad for the rail yard. Around the same time, a five-acre section where Lee and his family now lived had gone to Lee's great-grandfather.

  But over time, despite having once been the elite section, the whole of this area had become isolated from the main town of Lenoir, the decay setting in at full swing when the railroad moved its main line further north to Burlington. Once upon a time, a number of the finest homes had stood just north of the Cherry Heights estate, but a vast sinkhole had opened up after the storm of 1905, and in less than a year, despite every effort, it had swallowed them up whole. A few crumbling chimneys tilting up amid the scraggly cypress and bald oak, were all that remained to ever hint that life had once thrived there. The resulting swamp running north of Seminole Road from the highway to Spit Creek was called Broaddus Marsh, after a homeowner who resolutely refused to leave and ended up dying of typhus before his foundering house was inexorably drawn under with the rest. The place was now a prime breeding ground for mosquitoes and snakes instead of summer Julep parties and debutante balls.

  Lee pulled at his starchy dress shirt, sweat trickling down his ribs. He couldn't understand how Maggie and Patty could stand it all trussed up in their dresses. Running a finger under his collar he caught Maggie glaring at him and quickly pulled his finger out and looked away. If she was as uncomfortable as he was, he knew better that to give her an excuse to get angry with him. Feigning interest in the swamp he caught site of four distinct chimneys, which still remained and could just make out a fifth and a sixth further back in the gloom. In his mind he could see what he imagined was Mr. Broaddus piling up sand bags and putting in pumps, but to no avail. One of the chimneys was leaning way off of kilter. Who knows, maybe that had been the one at the Broaddus estate, not that it mattered.

  They were coming up on the private road, which led back into the main house. From here, the angle of the rows of cherry tree trunks wouldn't let him glimpse the house at all. But he knew it was there. He knew it. He could feel it.

  After the Yankees had moved out the plantation had gone back to the Wilkes family, but never again prospered. Barton Wilkes was hanged for murdering his young wife two days after their wedding, and he was the last of that family name to ever darken that door. It wasn't until around the turn of the century and after a rapid succession of short-lived owners, that the plantation had not found a willing owner and finally had lain vacant for many ugly years. For a long time the boarded up and abandoned house had served as a hobo hotel for the many transients that came through along with the freight cars destined for storage at the PS&Y rail yard. It was Walter Ballard who recognized a bargain and acquired the house and land in the twenties. After an enormous restoration project that took more than a year, he moved in with his young wife, Petunia, and their two children to live the easy life of a wealthy Southern gentleman.

  Coming around another crooked bend in the road Lee could just begin to make out the roofs of a few of the derelict houses where Broaddus Marsh grudgingly gave way to higher ground. During the boom years, after the end of World War II, a developer had built homes on the land that ran in from the new state highway all the way into the property line next to the Ballard estate. For those bright years of the late forties and early fifties, with this new neighborhood growing, it looked as though the area would finally take a turn for the better. But a tornado spawned in the aftermath of Hurricane Beulah, had swept up from south of the river in the late summer of 1952, destroying almost all of the homes and killing more than fifty people.

  Right after that the state had sent an inspector down from the capitol. He determined that due to the continued subsidence of the sinkhole at the center of Broaddus Marsh, there would be too much danger of a flood if the Yalahalla ever left its banks, and the entire development had been condemned. Only four houses and the defunct PS&Y railway storage yard now occupied all of the land south and west of Highway 57 all the way to the banks of the Yalahalla River and over to Spit Creek. Lee's house, the tiny place the Riley's rented across the street, the Ballard house, and Javier's place down near the creek, were the only residences for miles and miles around.

  Maggie, Lee, and Patty turned off Seminole and onto the main drive leading back into the Ballard house. Lee was already tired of carrying the lunch basket, and Patty's favorite doll dragged along the ground as she walked. Even now that they were off Seminole Road, they still had a long way to go for the legs of a six-year-old.

  The Ballard house was set back almost a quarter of a mile, appearing farther away than it really was in spite of its size. The strange effect probably had something to do with an oddity of visual perspective, a trick played on the eyes by the long rows of enormous cherry trees. The groves had been planted around the time the house was built. And whoever had been responsible had been maniacal about order and precision. Each bole stood in a precise position in relation to the others, like troops guarding the entry grounds. It truly was a shame every one of the great trees were dead. Shortly before Walter Ballard died, he had all the small and medium sized branches lopped off, and the ends of the severed stubs sealed with a black pitch. The result was one of utter desolation, as the trees never recovered, and the beautiful groves withered away into a derelict field of row upon row of wretched sculptures, each with its amputated stumps stuck out crazily into the sky, reminding Lee of an army of darkly cavorting swastika trees, frozen for the moment, but ready to start moving the split second he looked away. Everywhere they cast a patchwork of crooked shadows upon the ground creating a crazy wed-like tangle of thick dark lines across the grass.

  The three uninvited visitors, their faces red and their shoes dusty, at last walked up to shade offered by the balcony's overhang above the front entry. Maggie dropped her Kool on the polished red bricks of the entryway, and mashed it out, grinding it down with her toe. She then blotted her forehead with a handkerchief she took from her purse and looked off over to their house they could just make out under its inviting, green oaks more than two hundred yards distant to the west.

  "Maybe, we will cut through on the way back,” Maggie said, as she mopped her face and neck. Tucking the damp handkerchief back into her purse, she pressed the ivory button set into the frame just to the side of the door.

  Lee knew the doorbell had worked. Lee could hear the doorbell's chimes, echoing softly behind the entryway. He had set the basket down and shoved his hands into his pockets, hoping maybe nobody was home. But, just a short while later the latch clicked, the door pulled open, and they were greeted by a round, robust woman, Brenda, the Ballard housekeeper. She remembered Maggie with a genuine smile and invited them all inside.

  Holding his breath and not knowing what to expect, Lee stepped in behind Patty. He looked about, his eyes wide. He had expected a dark and ghastly place to go along with all the stories everyone told about the house.

  "Brenda must earn her pay,” he thought. The white and red veined marble of the formal entry's floors was polished to perfection, and there was not even the slightest sign of dust or degradation anywhere. Admittedly, the place did smell musty, but no different than the closed and mothballed smells associated with most any home where you might find someone living who was over seventy or eighty years old. To tell the truth it didn't smell even half as tomblike as his Grandma's house had a week ago.

  Almost immediately the effect of the smell was forgotten. Like taking in a fresco on a ceiling of a European cathedral Lee found himself turning around, taking in the sights, his mouth open. To the right and left bright sunlight streamed in through the beveled leaded glass of entry windows and refracted off an enormous crystal chandelier. Coming around on either side a pair of magnificent, curving stairways with blood red marble steps wound up into the dark
ness of what must be the second floor. Oil paintings both large and small were hung tastefully on the rich walnut paneling and followed along at eye level ascending with the rise of the stairs.

  Brenda, Lee knew that was her name, as she was wearing a name badge on her black and white uniform, she allowed them all a moment to look around, then led them in through a set of double French doors to their right. Like the entry, the traditional parlor where she left the three was a showplace, alive with scintillating points of light and splashes of brilliant color from hundreds of iridescent, refracted rainbows cast from decorative pieces of dangling, ornamental beveled glass hanging like mobiles, from the ceiling to the floor, in front of the windows.

  "It smells stinky, sort of like our house,” said Patty, wrinkling her nose and trying to trace an outline of a rainbow cast on a table with her finger. “It's real pretty though. Look at all the rainbows!"

  Lee, still carrying the basket, walked around aimlessly staring up at the walls, captivated by the various old photographs. Most all featured the house, its occupants, and the surroundings countryside and grounds as seen from different eras in the estate's history. One, which appeared tremendously old, since it had chips and flakes missing from the sepia colored paper, especially caught at his eye. The house was in the background, though the trees weren't nearly as large as in any of the other photographs. There was no sky, no clouds; the air was blank and yellow, like smog, from the ground up. Three black men, for some reason Lee was sure they were slaves, wearing only ragged overalls, no shoes, and torn straw hats were standing before a long row of slaughtered pig heads. The detail was incredible. He could see the men's white teeth through their smiles, and one of the pig's tongues was hanging out and lying in the dirt.

  "Don't either of you touch a thing!” Maggie hissed, sitting on the sofa and folding her hands in her lap.

  Lee put the basket down on a table and then buried his hands in his pockets. Returning to the wall he walked along looking at each picture carefully before stopping to call back over his shoulder. “Hey, y'all,” he called out, “come look at this one."

  Patty ran over to see, and Maggie turned around but kept her feet, legs, and hands exactly where they were.

  "Who are those guys?” Patty asked pointing at the picture Lee was looking up at.

  "I think this one's from clear back during the Civil War,” Lee replied wondrously. “Those two are Yankees. See, they have on Union uniforms. They're officers I think."

  Patty squinted, wrinkling up her nose. “What's the matter with the one guy's eyes? He looks weird."

  One of the two men, the one who was cradling a vicious looking saber in his arms, was terribly gaunt, almost emaciated and had one strange, whitish eye that wasn't focused in the right direction. There was no missing it. It was looking off slightly to the left while the other eye was staring straight back at the camera. The other officer, who was grinning like a toothy ancestor of Teddy Roosevelt, was smoking a fat cigar. He was corpulent to the point of being morbidly obese, and he wore incredibly bushy sideburns, which spread all the way down his jaws. The photo was taken with the pair, shoulder to shoulder, standing atop the front entry's balcony. The camera must have been positioned on a tripod on the roof looking north. Behind them, stretching away below was the grove of beautiful cherry trees in full flourish, row after row. Stepping up closer, Lee could just make out in the grayish haze of the far background, some of the ghostly facades and curtained windows of a number of the splendid homes which thirty years or so later would be lost to the sinkhole and the swamp. He'd had no idea that it had all once been so beautiful. The doomed houses looked like a fairy tale picture, lost in the mists.

  "Y'all come sit down,” Maggie hissed, using the exact same tone of voice she used when she was angry with one of them in church for making noise or letting a shoe bump against the back of the pew in front. “Come sit back down. It's not polite to go gawking around in other people's homes."

  Both Lee and Patty were well acquainted with that tone, and they hurried over, Patty sitting on the sofa with her mom and Lee taking a place by himself.

  A few moments later, the door to the parlor wafted opened silently, and the wondrous color of the room seemed to draw back slightly as Mrs. Ballard presented herself to her guests. She was soaked in sweat, her hair plastered to the sides of her head. She wore an old fashioned, tight collared formal dress, as though she'd just come in from a party from fifty or a hundred years ago.

  "Why are you all here?” she asked, tightly.

  For a moment, no one knew what to say. Lee was happy to shrink back into the corner of the big sofa he occupied by the fireplace. This was Maggie's idea.

  Mrs. Ballard, her persimmon face screwed up, eyed everyone in turn and waited for an answer.

  "I don't know if you remember me, Mrs. Ballard,” began Maggie, getting to her feet hesitantly and leaving her purse on the cushion behind her. “I grew up next door."

  Maggie smiled and tried to look bright. For a moment, Lee thought she might actually curtsy.

  Mrs. Ballard still said nothing. She stood fixed, her arms crossed imperiously. If they could have seen her feet under the long, floor length dress, they'd have known her toe was tapping impatiently, just like a tired, old schoolmarm waiting to hear the next excuse.

  "We, uh, just moved back in next door,” Maggie continued haltingly, as though she was asking a question, for which she was seeking Mrs. Ballard's approval. “I, uh, we, thought it would be, neighborly, to come over, and, uh, reintroduce ourselves.” Maggie pointed toward the basket Lee had placed on the table. “We brought some lunch."

  "I've already eaten my lunch,” Mrs. Ballard snapped, casting a quick glance at the basket. Her eyes could have expressed no greater disdain, when they fell upon it, had she known it to contain a dead dog plucked from the side of the road. “What would possibly lead you to the delusion that I am in the habit of or in the need of accepting food from people who've come uninvited to my door?"

  "Oh, I'm not a stranger,” Maggie pressed on, wringing her fingers. “You knew my mother, Kathleen, Kathleen Bonham. She passed away just a little over a month ago."

  Mrs. Ballard's eyes moved in recognition. “Yes, I am aware that Kathleen had passed on. A stroke wasn't it?” As with most people Mrs. Ballard's age, death was obviously a subject she was rather up on. She might not know what was going on in Washington, but she knew who had recently died, when, where, and how. “I don't remember my being invited to the funeral,” she added acidly.

  "I'm sorry,” Maggie took a nervous step forward. “We had a small service. That's what Mamma had asked for. She wasn't much on big to-dos."

  Mrs. Ballard had not moved a step since she first entered the room, but now she floated over to a chair, the hem of her dress skimming lightly across the floor. By the chair was a little table with some unopened mail and a pair of glasses on it. She sat down, and picked up the glasses. Strangely, behind her, a few pieces of the hanging glass in front of the window moved and tinkled like a wind chime, though there didn't appear to be any draft at all. A few of the rainbows began to swing about the walls stretching wide when crossing a corner.

  "You'd be Magnolia, the youngest,” she said, adjusting the wiry frames on her pinched nose.

  "Yes, ma'am,” Maggie exhaled in relief. “And this is Lee and my daughter, Patty."

  "You're the one that married your dead sister's husband, aren't you?” She caught a drop of sweat near her temple and drew it off balancing it on the tip of her long, pink polished fingernail. “As I recall, Kathleen asked you to help with that boy there, when he was just a baby.” Mrs. Ballard stretched the withered finger at Lee. He could see the drop balancing on the edge. “And when your dead sister, Darva's husband finally returned from god knows where, you just stepped right in and took her place?"

  There was no need to interpret the self-satisfied look on Mrs. Ballard's stringy face. She brought the finger down and wiped it on her dress over her knee, never taki
ng her accusing eyes from Maggie.

  Maggie fidgeted, unable to sit still under such a glare. Lee could tell by how her lips drew into such a tight, straight line exactly how angry she was. Too, the way she kneaded her fingers, there was no question she was thinking about having a smoke.

  "Your mother, Kathleen and I, I know we didn't have all that much to do with each other over these last few years,” she continued. “Your late father and my dead Walter were the chummy ones.” The manner in which she said chummy, it sounded like they'd done something awful with one another. “Nevertheless,” she continued, “I know you made Kathleen very unhappy with the way you've behaved, Magnolia. Your mother was a decent woman. The last few times we talked she wouldn't even speak of you anymore when I inquired to her about her family.” Mrs. Ballard, looking away from Maggie for the first time, suddenly changed to an almost wistful tone. “Your sister, Darva, was always so pretty and popular. I remember her. She was a darling.” She looked back to Maggie and her tone changed back. “It's sad how siblings in the same family can be so different. What do they call it? Oh yes, a bad seed.” Mrs. Ballard shook her head and paused, her lips moving as though she was thinking of something else. Finally she came back to herself and added, “So now that Kathleen has died, you've come back to live in her house, is that it?"

  There was utter silence. Lee was conscious that his Sunday shoes felt tight over his big toes, and he didn't know where to look or what to do with his hands.

  "Well, I guess what you people do really shouldn't be any of my business,” Mrs. Ballard offered, breaking the silence, her point well made.

  She switched her attention over to Lee, completely ignoring Patty. “You look a lot like your real mother, boy. You have her eyes and nose. I remember she had a pretty smile, too. Do you ever miss her?"

  Lee felt even more uncomfortable; he was old enough to know exactly what was going on. Women always had such a scary way of fighting with each other. He much preferred fists to sharp words. “I'm not sure,” he said, aware he'd have to be careful if he didn't want to get in trouble when he got home. “I was just four when she died. I don't remember her all too much. But what I do remember was nice."