A Desolate Hour

by Mae Clair

  She couldn’t help noticing the past tense or the rigid shift to his posture. “Was?”

  His gaze flashed to her face. He waited a beat before lifting his scarred right hand. “You haven’t asked about this.”

  She could have balked at his bluntness but chose to overlook the sting in his words. “It’s none of my business.”

  “That’s where you’re wrong.” He set his fork down. “You see, Sarah, according to my sister, my family is cursed. And this”—he raised his hand again—“is the result of that curse.”

  Uncertain how to respond, she grew abruptly conscious of their surroundings. It was early so the restaurant wasn’t overly crowded, but many of the tables and booths were occupied. Families with children at the end of the workday, or friends gathering to discuss the upcoming week. Point Pleasant was known as an area where activities bordering on the supernatural took place, but how many people made family curses the topic of dinner conversation?

  A comment he’d made earlier abruptly made sense. “That’s why you want to know about Chief Cornstalk.”

  He nodded. “All I know is that he was murdered while he was a prisoner at Fort Randolph.”

  That much was true. “He didn’t originally start out as a prisoner.” In Point Pleasant, most everyone knew the tale. “Cornstalk was friendly with the settlers and a proponent of peace.”

  “I thought the Shawnee fought a battle here.”

  “They did, but that was earlier in 1774. We refer to it as Lord Dunmore’s War. After that, Cornstalk signed a treaty and did everything in his power to uphold the peace. A few days before he was killed, he arrived at Fort Randolph to warn the soldiers the Indians were massing in preparation of a strike. He was supposed to be a guest of the fort, but they put him in the guardhouse, thinking if they had Cornstalk, they held leverage over his People.”

  “So the settlers actually broke the treaty by taking him hostage?”

  “Yes, but they didn’t see it that way. In their defense, they probably treated him well while he was detained, but there was no question he was a prisoner.” She broke apart a piece of bread as she talked, flaky crumbs falling onto her plate. She whisked them aside with her fingertips. “After a few days when Cornstalk didn’t return to his People, his son and another member of his tribe arrived at the fort. They were concerned for his welfare, but like Cornstalk, they were taken into custody and placed in the guardhouse.”

  “The Indians didn’t attack?”

  “No, but what happens next is where things get a little crazy.” Sarah set the bread down. The meal was good but she was much more interested in sharing her knowledge. Talking about history, especially the history of the town where she’d grown up, had always been a favored subject from the time she was in junior high. Maybe it went back to that stormy night outside the TNT when she’d been found wandering with her mother’s pendant in her hand. There were so many unexplained circumstances that had taken place in the small river town through the years. She couldn’t help wondering if Cornstalk’s death was the catalyst for everything that had befallen Point Pleasant since his passing.

  “One of the soldiers was killed outside of the fort. The details are sketchy.” She paused as the waitress arrived to ask if they needed anything else. They both declined, and Sarah took another bite of pasta. “No one knows what happened or who was killed, but somehow the man’s death was blamed on the Indians.”

  Quentin finished the last of his steak. “Which probably didn’t bode well for Cornstalk.”

  “Exactly. There was a riot in the fort and the soldiers rushed the guardhouse. Cornstalk, his son, and the other Indian were killed.”

  Quentin wiped his mouth with his napkin then set it aside. “And according to legend, as Cornstalk was dying, he cursed the town.”

  Sarah nodded. “Some people believe in the curse. We’ve had terrible floods through the years. Devastating catastrophes that claimed lives, and destroyed homes and businesses. There’ve been multiple times when the whole area was underwater. In 1913, the river crested over sixty-two feet. Most homes were only one story at the time, so it gives you an idea of the kind of devastation that took place.”

  “Yeah, I’ve heard the area was prone to flooding.”

  “That’s just one occurrence. There were countless others, including a flood in 1937 that was predicted to be minor. Turns out it was one of our most historically damaging. Thankfully, the last major flood was in forty-eight.” Her parents and grandparents had talked about those floods as though they occurred only yesterday. Sarah had listened wide-eyed to stories of townspeople maneuvering through the streets by boat, others climbing out on rooftops and ledges. Still others, fortunate enough to live in a home with an upper story, hauled furniture up to the second floor and watched the flood waters rise precariously close to their perch.

  “The Army Corps of Engineers finally added flood walls around the city after countless appeals from Point Pleasant to the federal government for aid.” She’d been an infant at the time, but couldn’t imagine the relief the townspeople must have felt. “Now we have a lock and dam system to regulate the Ohio River.”

  Quentin nodded thoughtfully. He took a swig of the beer he’d ordered. “You haven’t mentioned the Silver Bridge.”

  Sarah’s gaze dropped to her plate. “Our greatest tragedy.” The memory still stung sixteen years later. She hadn’t lost anyone in the bridge collapse, but she’d witnessed the scars it left on others. Families and loved ones torn apart, the town battered like something that had been ripped open, then stitched haphazardly back together. It was never whole again, never the shining gem of river glory it had been before that cold December night in 1967. “I saw it go down.”

  Quentin jerked. “What?”

  “My friend, Eve Parrish, and I were walking to the theater.” It seemed an eternity ago, yet everything about that moment had been seared in her memory. From the brightly colored Christmas decorations on Main Street to the bite of cold evening air across her cheeks, and the pungent tang of exhaust from the string of cars waiting to cross the bridge. “We noticed the cars were backed up, none of them moving even when the light changed to green. I remember there were birds everywhere…a great flock of starlings in the sky, like they couldn’t find a place to rest. We heard a loud boom and then the rocker panels on the bridge started to sway. It was terrible. People screaming. Crying. Running from cars. The whole bridge went down in less than sixty seconds.”

  “Did you…” Quentin cleared his throat, obviously uncomfortable.

  “Lose anyone?” Sarah guessed where he was headed. “No. My parents died in a car accident a few years before the bridge fell.”

  He balked. “I’m sorry.”

  “It was a long time ago.” She gave a halfhearted shrug, uncomfortable bringing it up. “My grandparents raised me, but they’re gone now, too.”

  He stared at her as though unable to comprehend what she was saying. “You don’t have other family? Brothers? Sisters? Aunts or uncles?”

  She shook her head. It sounded pathetic when she looked at it like that. “I’m thinking about getting a cat.” Her mouth twitched. A bit of humor to break the tension. Pasta never settled well with a depressing view of life.

  Quentin grinned. “A black one would help ward off curses.”

  She chuckled. “I guess the whole concept sounds stupid. A dead Indian chief responsible for flooding and a bridge catastrophe.” She hooked a strand of hair behind her ear. “But there were other things, too. After the Silver Bridge fell, Bruce Mechanical closed up and left town. They were the primary employer for the area, producing river boats and parts since the early nineteen hundreds. When they left, it put a lot of people out of work. In some ways, Point Pleasant never recovered from that damage. Pile economic ruin on top of a major calamity and there’s limited room to bounce back.”

  “I noticed Main Street is pretty quiet.” Quentin tilted his beer glass to glance inside. He swi
rled the amber liquid before downing the final swallow.

  “The Silver Bridge funneled traffic through Main Street across Sixth to Gallipolis on the Ohio side of the river. Every business on Main benefited from that visibility. With the construction of the new memorial bridge outside of town, a lot of those same businesses have closed their doors and left.”

  “It does sound like a bleak picture.”

  Sarah nodded. She pushed her plate away then folded her arms on the top of the table. “You haven’t asked about the Mothman.”

  “I figured you’d get around to telling me.” He massaged the back of his right hand as if to ease a stitch of pain. “I’ve read up on it. How some people think it caused the collapse of the Silver Bridge, and others think it tried to warn the town of disaster. It haunts the TNT area and some believe it’s here because of Cornstalk’s curse.”

  “Hmm. You have done some reading. Did you know some people believe the TNT is the site of an old Indian burial ground?”

  He cocked his head. “I’ve never heard that one before.”

  “It’s supposed to be crisscrossed by ley lines. George Washington surveyed the area in 1770, and supposedly reported a number of odd findings. He wrote about strange lights hovering over the trees, bizarre sounds that echoed through the woods, and even reports of a creature he couldn’t identify.”

  Quentin raised a brow. “The Mothman?”

  Sarah wet her lips, conscious of how focused she’d grown on the conversation. The din of the restaurant faded into the background. Casual chatter from people discussing work or family, kids babbling about school projects, a waitress relaying the nightly specials to a group of newly seated patrons. All of it had become white noise. “The creature might have been here that long. I found a letter recently.” She told him about the letter she’d discovered in Shawn Preech’s belongings.

  He honed in on that immediately. “Interesting that the letter mentions someone named Jonathan.”

  “I thought of that too, but it was a common name for the time. The odds of the Jonathan in the letter being the Jonathan you’re looking for are pretty slim.”

  “But it’s possible. I met Shawn Preech.” From the tone of Quentin’s voice, the meeting hadn’t left him with a glowing impression of Point Pleasant’s local celebrity. “I didn’t realize his family went back that far.”

  “To the time of Fort Randolph, according to Shawn.”

  “So his ancestor might have been there when Cornstalk was killed.”

  Sarah admitted it was a possibility. “Obadiah Preech was definitely living at Fort Randolph at that time.”

  Quentin tugged his bottom lip between his thumb and forefinger. “You’ve shared a lot of information but haven’t asked many questions.”

  She hadn’t wanted to pry, giving him the space to volunteer what he wanted to share. “You mean about curses?”

  He exhaled through his teeth. “Yeah. Something like that.”

  The waitress arrived and cleared their plates, giving Sarah a moment to collect her thoughts. A Ouija board had maybe predicted his arrival, he was interested in curses and Cornstalk, and he had an amulet with a stone that matched her own. Racking those quirks up to coincidence put too fine a stretch on things.

  They both ordered coffee, with Quentin requesting a slice of chocolate cake on the side.

  “Are you going to tell me why you’re interested in Cornstalk’s death?” Sarah asked after the waitress had left.

  “Fair enough.” He looked uncomfortable, but blundered ahead regardless. “I told you I have a sister.”

  She nodded. “Penelope.”

  “Right. She’s pregnant and recently found out she’s having twins.”

  Sarah hedged. “That’s a good thing, isn’t it?”

  “Yes. She and her husband are excited about becoming parents, but Pen can be, uh…flighty. She consulted a fortune-teller who told her one of the twins will carry a curse that’s plagued my family for generations.”

  Sarah stared. She was used to hearing people in Point Pleasant discuss things like the Mothman, UFOs, and other oddities, but somehow having this articulate stranger—a man who’d studied at Juilliard—talk about twins and curses came across as hard to digest. “Um…”

  The waitress reappeared with their coffees and Quentin’s cake. Sarah smiled a thank you, then busied herself adding cream to the steaming mug. “What curse are you talking about?”

  Quentin swallowed a forkful of the gooey dessert. He slid the plate toward her, motioning her to help herself, but she shook her head. “According to Madam Olga”—he made air quotes with his fingers—“an ancestor in the Marsh line was responsible for Cornstalk’s murder. As a result, any twins born in the family are marked by Cornstalk’s curse.”

  “Why twins?”

  “I don’t know. Madam Olga couldn’t explain that.”

  Sarah swirled a spoon in her coffee. “Do you believe what she said? Do you believe in the curse?”

  “I don’t know.” Quentin rubbed his temple. “I’m tempted to write Madam Olga off as a charlatan, but I can’t deny there have been accidents though the years involving twins in the Marsh line. My great-grandfather died in a car crash. I have a cousin who lost an arm in Vietnam. And according to Pen, there were several early deaths back in the line.”

  “But some of those could be…” Sarah hesitated to use the word coincidence.

  “Bad luck?” Quentin took a swig of coffee. “I didn’t buy it myself at first, but then I thought about this.” He raised his scarred right hand. “The proficiency I had as a pianist is shot. It doesn’t matter how much physical therapy I do or how many hand exercises I employ, I’ll never get that fluidity back.”

  Sarah bit her lip. “What about seeing a specialist?”

  “I’ve been down that road. More than once.” Quentin swallowed another forkful of cake. “My family tends to the affluent side, so I’ve paid for the best. A few tell me what they think I want to hear…years of PT and finger-work and maybe I’ll regain a measure of the dexterity I had, but I’m pragmatic enough to recognize garbage when I hear it.”

  The bitterness in his voice was hard to mistake.

  “It’s my own stupid fault.” He sat back, leaving the cake unfinished as if talking about his hand had killed his appetite. “A friend and I went lake fishing. We were loading his boat on the trailer when it slipped. I wasn’t paying attention and my hand got caught, crushed under the hull.

  “I’m not normally that careless.” He shifted, ill at ease. “If not for what Pen unearthed, I’d be less likely to believe in curses.”

  As unfortunate as the tragedy was, it seemed a typical accident. “But your grandfather and cousin—”

  “I know. It could all be coincidental, except Pen started poking around after her visit to Madam Olga. She was able to trace our genealogy back to the early nineteenth century and found several ancestors who died at young ages. All men, all twins. Freak stuff. One was struck and killed by lightning. Another died in an accident at a saw mill. Still another lived to be 101 but was born without feet. And then there’s this.” He set the amulet on the table. “I don’t know much about it, only that my great-grandfather always had it with him. When he died, it was willed to me without explanation. I thought it was some useless trinket, then I show up here and you’ve got another like it.”

  Sarah fisted her hand around the pendent at her throat, squeezing briefly before letting go. “Did you ever have anyone examine the stone?”

  “Not long after it was willed to me. I wanted to know more about it, so I took it to a jeweler. He couldn’t identify the gem and told me it was probably costume jewelry.”

  “Did you believe him?”

  “No. Especially not when he asked if I was interested in selling the amulet. He tried to act like he’d be doing me a favor, offering a few dollars, but I could see in his eyes it was worth a lot more.” He leaned forward, elbows on the table. “You
r turn. Where did you get your necklace?”

  Sarah lowered her gaze. “It belonged to my mother. She was wearing it the night of the accident.” The memory lingered in her mind, vivid as yesterday. “I was ten years old. We were coming back from visiting family who lived out of town. My dad took a shortcut through the TNT. The weather was bad, but he’d driven that way countless times. I was in the back seat, and didn’t see what happened, but something made him jerk the wheel and swerve off the road. I don’t know if it was a deer, or…” An unvoiced thought hung in her head. The same tremulous speculation that had lived there since the first sighting of a giant winged creature. She swallowed hard. “The Mothman. This would have been several years before he was sighted, but I know from the letter I found in Shawn Preech’s stuff, the creature had to be around then.”

  “But you didn’t see it?”

  “No. I don’t even remember what happened after my dad swerved off the road. All I remember is walking in the storm. A couple of teens were driving through the area and found me over a mile from where my parents’ car went off the road. They said I was drenched and clutching my mother’s pendant. I know it’s silly, but I think of it as her way of watching over me. Sort of like a measure of protection.”

  “It’s not silly. Did you ever have the necklace examined?”

  “You mean by a jeweler?”

  He nodded.

  “No. The value didn’t matter to me. I wanted it because of the connection to that night. To my parents. I can’t explain it—”

  “You don’t have to.” He reached across the table and covered her hand with his. “It seems we’re both kind of at a dead end with this.”

  “Maybe. Maybe not.” She drew a deep breath, uncertain if she was bold enough to venture the idea squirming awake in her mind. She’d never been to the oracle igloo in the TNT. In the past, she’d been too frightened, normally avoiding the entire area altogether. The old ammunitions site carried too many ugly memories of that night when she was ten. “I know a place we can go for information.” She nodded, trying to convince herself she wasn’t making a mistake. “I have to work tomorrow, but I’m free in the evening.”