Scary Creek

by Thomas Cater

  She returned to nurturing her antiques, ignoring me as if I had vanished. I left the hotel and walked rapidly up Main Street to Virgil’s office. I had the distinct impression she knew what she was talking about, and told me that my fate was sealed. Is that how it works? People write novels at unconscious levels about others they can never consciously identify.

  I tried to dismiss that kind of thinking from my mind. I decided to focus on something more redundant, such as the ring’s fate. The fact that it was missing caused me endless moments of discomfort. Not because it was made of 24 carat gold, but for the remote possibility it resembled a ring I saw somewhere once before.

  The courthouse clock said it was 8:15. I was too early and his office was vacant. I had another 45 minutes before life returned to Vandalia. I returned to the van. It started easily enough, but there was an unhealthy, rheumatic sound coming from the engine. I must have been out of my mind to crash into the wall.

  Chapter Thirty

  I cruised down Main Street towards Virgil’s home. I was not sure how or why I was going to annoy him today. He was into me for six percent of thirty thousand dollars and that made me feel as if I were entitled to some satisfaction. His brown station wagon was sitting in the driveway. Morning frost was slowly melting from the windows. A few desiccated leaves were falling from the trees and settling on the hood. Fall was in full swing and it made me think of Halloween, ghosts and goblins, and things that go ‘bump in the night’. I wondered what it would be like at the Ryder house on All Hallow’s Eve, with real critters trying to figure out how to escape from purgatory.

  Within weeks, there would be nothing left but the bleak intimation of winter’s cold. Until then, I was determined to do everything I could to make the best of the balmy Indian summer. Like a bird, I was already picturing myself winging my way along I-71, following the long white line to Florida’s sunshine coast. I imagined myself walking in the sand, courting youthful maidens in string bikinis. It was a delightful fantasy, but I was not enjoying it much these days.

  I tried to open the station wagon's back door, but it was secure. I could see he had thrown a blanket over the skeleton. The imprint was quite clear. Assured about its safety, I went to the back door and rang the bell. It opened directly to stairs that led to the kitchen and basement. Violet answered. She smelled of bacon and coffee, warm milk and toast. I could hear the sizzle of bacon frying in the pan and saw signs of temporal gratification in her eyes.

  “Morning,” I said, “your hubby up?”

  She invited me in. I squeezed through the door onto the narrow landing. We were almost touching, but only for a second. She backed away toward the kitchen and pointed down the basement stairs.

  “He’s down there working out,” she said with pride. “He plays with his weights for thirty minutes a day.”

  I followed the stairs down. I could hear the sounds of iron and steel weights colliding with the concrete floor. He wore shorts and a sleeveless sweat suit soiled with perspiration. The number and size of the weights on the bar were impressive.

  “You do this every day?” I asked.

  He rolled a barbell across the floor with his foot toward a bench.

  “Three times a week,” he said.

  He began to breathe heavily in preparation for a lift. I roughly computed about 175 pounds on the bar. He lifted it without much of a struggle to his waist, snatched it up to his shoulders and pressed it five times before returning it carefully to the floor. I could see the blood racing through the veins in his neck to the thirsty muscles in his arms and legs.

  “Want to try?” he asked, sensing that I was too far out of shape to accept.

  He started toweling off his forehead, neck and arms. “What brings you here so early?” he asked.

  “You remember the ring we found on the monkey’s finger?”

  He nodded and continued to towel his neck and arms.

  “I can’t find it and George says he doesn’t have it. I was wondering if you’d seen it.”

  “Follow me,” he said.

  We climbed the basement stairs to the kitchen. Violet was filling two cups with hot, fragrant coffee.

  “Coffee’s ready,” she said, as we passed.

  I nodded agreeably, but Virgil kept striding through the kitchen and down the hall to the living room. He stopped at an antique wooden secretary, opened the top drawer and fished the ring out. He held it up to his eye in the light from the window.

  “Take a look at the inscription,” he said.

  I wasn’t aware of the inscription when we found the ring, but upon closer examination, I could see why. It was in such small letters, I could barely make it out.

  “You got a magnifying glass?" I asked.

  He pulled one from the drawer. “I had trouble, too, and my vision is 20/20.”

  I held the glass to the ring. Printed in small barely legible letters were the words, “Love, Elinore; April 10, 1923.”

  That was about seven years before the stock market crashed, and the year the great depression began. I wondered what it did to wreck Samuel’s image of himself, or was the ring a gift to someone else? It also sounded like a date memorializing something special: and how did it end up on a monkey’s finger? I turned it over in my hand a few times. It was thick and heavy, decorated with filigree; the finger size I realized was for a large man.

  “What do you make of it?” I asked, hoping he might suggest an amulet, a thought I silently entertained.

  “It looks like a wedding band,” Virgil replied.

  I turned it over a few more times and tried it on one of my fingers. It fit loosely. “Definitely a man’s ring, but what was it doing on that thing in the car?”

  “Oh, yes, speaking of the primate, let’s take it out of the car before Violet sees it. All I need now is for her to go ape over a skeleton in the storage bay.”

  We walked out the front door. I stuck the ring in my pocket. Maybe Elinore had a boyfriend, or possibly a secret husband. Why was there no further mention of it anywhere? Amy Taylor said she had many boyfriends. Had one of them succeeded where others failed?

  We wrapped the skeleton in a sheet and transferred it to my van. Every time I looked at the thing, at its thick, heavy skull, the long canine-like muzzle, and teeth like darning needles, I felt a little sick and worried. It reminded me more of what Janie had transformed into the night before.

  I didn’t check to see if the creature I saw or imagined was wearing a wedding band, or a ghostly image of one. It did wear jewelry around its neck and in its hair. I also saw cameos and broaches, and a full-length evening gown. Kids liked to dress their pets. Could it have been a pet?

  “If Elinore married,” I said, “there ought to be some kind of record at the courthouse.”

  Virgil allowed for the possibility with a nod. “It’s possible, but she could have been married in another county.”

  My next stop, I decided, would be the courthouse. I left Virgil on the porch, forgot all about my cup of fresh perked coffee and drove back to town. Inside the courthouse, I asked the clerk about marriage records. She said they had them going back to the Civil War.

  “We were lucky,” she said. “The Confederates threatened to burn the courthouse down, but Dr. Farnsworth stood on the courthouse steps and dared them to ‘strike our colors’. ‘Not only will we drive you out of the county,’ he said, ‘but we will drive you back into the dismal swamp from whence you were conceived.’ I guess he said it with enough contempt to convince them he meant business,” she said.

  I asked her where she learned the direct quote and she said 'the annual pageant’ and ‘it’s enacted every summer.'

  “The rebels rode right on through without firing a single shot,” she said.

  Yes, I thought, that sounded like the stuff of local pageantry. She led me into a room crammed full of cloth bound books.

  “I am particularly interested in marriages that may have occurred in the early 1920s, or 30s.”

  “What name
are you looking for?”

  “I only know the girl’s maiden name,” I said and told her.

  She thumbed through the book repeating the name.

  “Is that the Elinore Ryder who used to live in Elanville on Scary Creek?”

  I admitted her into my confidence with a nod.

  “She was a maiden lady. I don’t think she ever married.”

  “I would appreciate it if you would check,” I insisted.

  She returned to the book. “Here is Elinore Ryder, married to Frank Harmon on April 10, 1923.”

  “May I?” I asked, not believing my luck. I nearly knocked her down trying to get to the ledger and the entry.

  “Is there anything else about Frank Harmon or where he worked?

  “There’s nothing else,” she said. “They didn’t ask too many questions then. People were farmers, or miners or wood hicks. There weren’t too many jobs then.”

  “What about the name? Are there many Harmons in the area and what kind of work do they do?”

  She was thoughtful, actually causing a thin shallow line to form across her brow, a mini-fault of contemplation.

  “I’ve heard the name before,” she said. “I’m sure there are Harmons around. It is a common name in the neighboring county. More than likely, they all worked in the mines or in the lumber business. They seem to prefer living in the outdoors.”

  I took a deep breath. I could comb through the phone book later and see how many Harmons I could find. If there were too many, I could call and see if any had distant relatives named Frank in the past.

  I thanked her and made another entry in my notebook on Elinore Ryder: Married, April 10, 1923. The more I thought about the date, however, the more I realized something was wrong. According to what I read, she was either too young to marry or the dates were incorrect, or confused. I was reluctant to celebrate my newly found discovery. I was not convinced I was making progress. I may not be getting closer to resolving the problem at the Ryder House, but I was beginning to feel better about my bouts with skepticism.

  With that documented bit of knowledge under my belt and a slight feeling of confidence, I headed for the hospital and Constance. I wanted to tell someone about my find. I also hoped she was as anxious to see me, as I was to see her. Within sight of the hospital, my ears began to ring, which I took as a sign of rising blood pressure, or tintinnabulation, or something about the hospital was having an effect on me. I blamed it on the cold and the humidity. An institution’s reputation couldn’t possibly have that kind of an effect on a person. Still, the pressure never lessened for a minute. It was not painful, only uncomfortable, as if I had descended to a psychic depth mortal men should ignore.

  I entered the parking area. Constance was leaning out an open window and calling my name. The sight and sound of her made me feel as if I still belonged to the human race; even the pressure inside my head abated. I scrambled up the stairs to the office that once provided space for an entire cadre of secretaries, but now promised asylum for only one. It was a strange feeling to see her sitting there among a fleet of empty desks and covered office machines. She had chosen the largest one for herself. It was an executive’s desk with space enough to land a helicopter. She came out from behind it to greet me, like an officer piping a visitor aboard. We were both shy about touching each other.

  “You’re lookin’ fine,” I said.

  She smiled, almost threatening to annihilate me in a blitz of brilliant white teeth.

  “You’re lookin’ pretty good yourself.”

  I thanked her, claimed a kiss on her cheek and squeezed her until I felt her body flattening submissively against mine.

  “Take it easy,” she said, “I’ve got maniacs to inspire.”

  I had decided a long time ago not to take anything too easily. The good doesn’t last long enough, and the bad is always unendurable. It didn’t take long to find out that 'taking it easy’ is always hard on me.

  “How about going to Florida with me this winter?” I asked.

  Her smile flared before it quickly cooled.

  “What was that all about?” I asked, referring to the rapid change of expression.

  She walked back to the desk and sat on its edge. Her feet were nearly six inches off the ground and her knees were poking out from beneath her skirt.

  “I’m glad you asked,” she said, “but then I’m also sorry to hear you’re still planning to go.”

  “The only sense I can make out of that is to assume you don’t want to go,” I said.

  “I can’t go with you,” she said petulantly. “I have a four-year-old son, and a mother who worries about me. I can’t go with you.”

  “We could take them along,” I said lamely.

  She vetoed that suggestion with a look. “Not this year; maybe next year, or the year after, but not this year.”

  She slipped off the desk’s edge, opened a drawer and laid a brown folder at my fingertips.

  “Everything you always wanted to know about insane asylums, but were afraid to ask,” she said.

  I opened the file: The first thirty pages of the complete and unabridged medical history of Elinore Ryder. Every admittance record and every treatment she received, including comments from every doctor and nurse who had ever ventured an opinion or a diagnosis.

  “Where did you find this?” I asked.

  “Just around,” she said. “I can’t tell you how an administrative secretary operates or knows where to look; a lot of it is … magic.”

  “What else have you got,” I asked, delving a little deeper into the sheets of paper.

  I examined Elinore’s record and a computer printout on earnings regarding the Alberichs.

  “The hospital went on-line in the mid-seventies, but I also found older tally sheets and pay records. The Alberichs have been working officially for the state since the 1940s, but I also found undated pay chits on old forms I’ve never seen before. They’ve been here a lot longer than I have. Look at their wages, thirty dollars a month! You know how long that has been going on? No less than fifty years! Thirty dollars! It’s no wonder people aren't making waves. They pay people more to 'stand around and drink coffee’ in this place. They’re probably deathly afraid the Alberichs will ask for a raise retroactive to the time the minimum wage law went into effect, with interest! It would cost the state a fortune. They have probably got them identified as rehabilitative out patients. Can you believe that?”

  There was very little I had trouble believing anymore. Wages were not even a small consideration.

  “So how do they get their pay?”

  “Just like everyone else, I guess; direct deposit.”

  “I wonder if they know, or even care, about their salary.”

  She shrugged. “I can make some inquiries.”

  “Do you know their first names?”

  She shrugged again and shook her head.

  “Anything else?” I asked.

  The next page was something of a trauma. It was a picture of Dr. Ezekiel Grier. I would have preferred not knowing what he looked like. I would have imagined him entirely different. He had a round face, dark, thin hair and a narrow little mustache. His eyes looked a little weak or myopic, and he was definitely cock-eyed. His lips appeared to be pouting and I would have guessed by the slope of his shoulders, the size of his head and his overall appearance that he was probably about five feet three inches tall.

  “So this is the notorious, mind-boggling psycho-surgeon of Vandalia,” I murmured.

  Constance studied his features. “He doesn’t really look capable of driving cold steel into people’s brains, does he?” she asked.

  She could find nothing amusing in what I thought was a very comic appearance.

  “They probably said the same thing about Hitler and Sadam,” I warned, and took another long, hard look at Ezekiel Grier. “Do you see any similarity between them?” I asked.

  “Between who?” she asked, confused.

  “Zeke and Adolph?”

>   Her eyes widened, seemed to penetrate beyond the picture’s flat two-dimensional image and went fishing in a greater depth.“Do you think they may be related?” she asked.

  “We’re all related,” I replied, “especially when it comes to cruelty. Here is a man who made his living sticking sharp objects into people’s brains. So did Hitler and a few other tyrants. Go figure.”

  She tried to be diplomatic. “It wasn’t as bad as you think,” she said. “It was helpful in many cases, and it is coming back as a prescribed medical treatment for obsessive types.”

  A chill ran up and down my spine. “Can you imagine the nightmares that poor bastard had to endure: lunatics with black and bloody eyes invading his sleep every night; zombies wandering in and out of his thoughts. Cripes! I’m glad I never amounted to much. I don’t think I could live with that kind of success.”

  I thumbed my way through Grier’s personal file. “Been in a lot of different places, hasn’t he: New York, Sweden, Germany, Russia and Washington DC, my old hometown. I wonder what he was doing there. Probably teaching at St. Elizabeth’s Hospital. He has more degrees than a thermometer. He was certainly well qualified to do whatever it was he was doing to those unfortunate bastards.”

  In the back of the folder, there were a number of printed pages torn from a magazine and stapled together.

  “What this?”

  “You wanted to know if anyone had ever written a paper on the Alberichs. I found this in one of the old filing cabinets, one I suspect Grier wrote. He even gave their condition a name. He called it ‘Geonlinger’s Disease’. I also found some personal items,” she said.

  She opened her desk drawer and produced four leather-bound books.

  “I think these are his…personal journals. All the entries are in his handwriting, which is a little hard to read, and there is an entry for almost every week he was here. I haven’t read it; I just browsed and thumbed through several pages. I did read a few comments and entries about his patients. How they responded after surgery, did they progress, or continue on the same path. I guess he was trying to make some kind of value judgment, but how can you? Especially after you’ve just carved your initials into someone’s brain.”