Peripheral Vision: A Supernatural Thriller

by Timothy Hammer

  Jake Fielding was a man of strong core values and a strict disciplinarian, but he never had to take a belt to his son very often. There were a few times over the years however, that Nick's father would have a bit too much to drink and either get into it with his son, or piss himself and pass out in the front yard. But there were other nights- the really bad nights- where he’d relapse into what Nick thought of as the outsider state of mind. It had introduced itself a few years after Mary skipped town, and only seemed to worsen with each appearance. It was on those nights, Nick found himself out back in the oak tree- climbing and climbing until he couldn't get any higher. It was on those nights, when Nick would dream of living in a big city somewhere. Some where, some city, where he could escape his life. Some where, some life, where he could leave this town and leave behind the outsider who was again wearing his father's plaid work shirt and ranting inside their small house. His father frightened him when he was like this, but even worse, he made Nick feel sorry for him. And Nick hated his father for that. It was something he could never forgive.

  Maybe I could find my Mother… it was this thought that would pop into Nick’s dreams from time to time, but the answer was never what he wanted to hear, and the ensuing feeling would usually cause the air to leak from his dreams like a slowly dying balloon. The balloon would shrink and shrink until he was back on the ground and there he would stay. Homewood, Nebraska, population 2,549.

  His chance of escape came in the Fall of his senior year at Homewood High. The Homewood Eagles were a highly ranked football team and young Nick was the star running back- leading the district in touchdowns. This was the “happy” in the lifeline of Nick Fielding. He wasn't a great student, but he wasn't awful in the classroom either, and an athletic scholarship was almost a foregone conclusion. Soon he would be able to leave it all behind. Homewood, Homewood High, his teachers, his coaches, his father… everything. The dream was real. The balloon, still full of air, was ready to take him to the big city, to the big life, and his big purpose- then the injury happened. One blown out knee lead to one blown scholarship and one blown dream. The balloon had crashed, and this time, it wasn't catching the breeze again.

  After high school, Nick began to work with his father full time. It was good to be doing something he was good at, and for awhile he put the dreams behind him and focused on his work. Being around his father more and not at school, actually seemed to help both of them. Nick thought less about his knee and Jake spent less time at the bar. For the next six months, the two spent more nights eating together and talking business and baseball over the kitchen table than they had in years. But alas, a good breeze only lasts for so long and sometimes it blows in the wrong direction.

  The wrong direction for Nick Fielding ended up being the day he took the call, and drove outside of town to the Bayard Place. An old, two story, white house in need of an all-day scrape and new paint. But some new shingles were the only order on the agenda that day, cheap old hag, he thought. The owner, Elizabeth Bayard, had lived on the small river front acreage for as long as anyone could remember. She mostly kept to herself, having her groceries delivered, and rarely, if ever, venturing into town. Growing up, Nick had heard the town whispers and schoolyard scary stories about Elizabeth Bayard. The “Old River Witch” they called her. But he hadn't thought about the stories in years. That is, until he turned the corner of the winding dirt road and saw the white house standing alone on the hill. All at once, a playground song from his childhood reintroduced itself to his dry, cracked lips.

  “Be goooood, be baaaaaad, just don't loook at the haaaaggg! If you do, so saaaad, so blue...boo hoo, boo hoo for you!”

  Nick felt the chill, and looked down at his arm. The gooseflesh had arisen, and his hands were squeezing the steering wheel with newly sweaty palms. But surprisingly, just as quickly as the chill hit him, it was gone, and by the time he pulled up to the run-down house, the words of the childhood song were starting to fade. And when Elizabeth met him at the door with a smile, and a tall glass of cool lemonade- the chill and the song were completely forgotten.

  She was a skinny, older woman with deep wrinkles and dark, scraggly hair, but in Nick's eyes there was nothing “scary” about her. Nick inspected the roof for her, it was not extensive damage, and so he put up some new shingles and called it a day. Before he left, Elizabeth asked him if he wouldn't mind coming back soon and scraping and repainting the house… and so it began.

  Nick did odd jobs around the Bayard property off and on for almost a year. And to the repulsion of his father, Nick and Elizabeth became close friends. That fact didn’t sit well with the gossipers along Main Street either, but it was already too late. A mother/son bond was forming and that kind of bond was strong. Stronger than gossip, and stronger than the opinions of the outsider that had once again slipped into his father's clothes. And after Nick’s father passed away later that year, there was no further resistance really left.

  Elizabeth comforted Nick and soon began to confide in him about her illness, about her niece, and then about her “religion,” and her need. The blood urge. She needed his help, as her strength, like her health, was on the decline. She needed someone to “handle” her medicine. Nick wasn’t keen on the idea to say the least, but Elizabeth was smart and brought him in slowly, like any good con-artist/cult-leader/prophet.

  “I just need a small amount, just a taste… just help me one time, just this once, Nick, please, I'm dying...”

  Nick, confusedly, finally gave in, agreeing to get her some small animal or something… a rat, or a stray cat or something, he thought. Which is exactly what he did. Nick killed a stray cat and brought it to Elizabeth, thinking the whole time that he would never, ever do that again and he would never, ever drive out to the Bayard Place again. But all those thoughts blew away when he saw the look on Elizabeth's face after drinking the blood. He found himself curious and almost envious of her drink. In time, he tried a little as well. He started to believe what she'd been telling him and he believed a new power was quickly awakening in him… something bigger… something better… a purpose.

  ●

  It was the perfume that finally pushed him over the line. Nick had been delaying it as long as he could. His mind telling him “no” to girl, after girl that he attempted to follow. He was on the hunt for Elizabeth, yes, but he was still unsure if he could go through with it. That was until, she passed him on the stairs leaving the co-op building near the old Fairgrounds. Nick knew her, quite well in fact. She’d been a freshman his senior year. But Jamie Billings wasn’t on the list he’d put together- not even close. But when the sweet familiar perfume of his former high school crush forced its way into his nostrils that September morning, there was nothing left to delay.

  She drove a Volkswagen Beetle. Nick wasn’t sure of the year. A 77 maybe? He wondered as he watched her walk out to the parking lot. It didn’t really matter. What mattered was that Elizabeth got her medicine. Nick quieted his mind. All he needed now was an opportunity.

  It didn’t take Nick long before the opportunity presented itself. In fact, all that it took was a simple staged encounter outside the Home Brew Coffee shop on Main Street. Nick pretended to be surprised to see her, and then charmingly insisted on buying her a hot cup of joe, so they could catch up. It wasn’t hard for Nick. He was good at that sort of thing, and she ate it up.

  Jamie had lost her academic scholarship after sleeping through classes for two semesters at the State College in Bishop. With no other real options, she had moved back to Homewood to be closer to her chain smoking, oxygen tank towing, mother. The former homecoming queen was currently sleeping on the couch at her mother’s old double wide in Lott’s Trailer Court. Her room had been rented out, she told Nick that morning as she sipped her coffee, and so now she was on the job hunt, so she could afford her own place. Nick told her that he had a job for her.

  Later that evening, she died in a wooden chair in the dank cellar beneath the Bayard House. It wasn’t how he’d p
lanned it. The knife hadn’t been sharp enough, and it had been messy… very messy. Nick knew he could do better, and would do better next time.

  Jamie, his first had been the hardest, but after that, it all became routine. He preyed on the loners and outsiders. The girls with few connections, and even fewer potentially worried loved ones. Nick was a handyman. He had always been good at fixing things, so when he discovered the old canning cellar/tornado shelter beneath the Bayard House, and in turn the half-finished escape tunnel, the routine fell into place. He finished the tunnel with a pick ax, careful not to use any power equipment, and burrowed through the dirt, his face covered in his excavator mask. After months of work, he finally dug his way out a new exit. A new exit with a convenient view of the park and its popular jogging trails.

  Elizabeth insisted that Nick not take too many “donors” or too often. I'm not stupid, he thought, I get it. But he still listened to her, and believed her. She knew what she was doing, and she had made a promise to him.

  “When I pass, she will come, and the two of you will rule in my place… a Prince and his Princess.”

  This was the promise, and dream, that kept him going in the early stages, but soon there was more to it than that. What had seemed like strange, foreign rituals to him in the beginning, soon became familiar and what he longed for and craved all throughout his long day. Just a taste, just a taste, please. Soon, Sarah would be here, and soon he would be back in the “happy.” It would be hard to say goodbye to Elizabeth, but she was starting to fade her line of grey, and the medicine was no longer helping. It would happen soon, he could feel it. At least she had canned enough of their medicine that he wouldn't have to go hunting for awhile. He could, in fact, get everything ready for Sarah's arrival. Yes. Everything must be perfect. The breeze was starting to blow once again...

  Chapter 14

  The Bayard House

  The History of Elizabeth Bayard

  The Iktomi River Massacre of 1859 set off a chain of events. The twisting turning river was a path, a dark shape shifting path of anguish and consequences. Echoes and tears flowed through the river valley over the next 150 years- the flood of 1889, the fire of 1919, the tornado disaster of 1949, the blood feud of 1965, and the missing girls of 1990, 2001, 2006, and 2011.

  Every path has a beginning and an end. The grey path of this valley began in 1859, when seven white settlers, including three women, were ritualistically murdered near the Berry Crossing on the Iktomi River in northwestern Nebraska Territory. Second Lieutenant Douglas Wilmington, of the U.S.7th Infantry Regiment, stationed at Fort Connell, responded with a swift, but decisive retaliation against the small hunting party of Lakota Indians that, without any proof, were blamed for the killings. The events that followed have never been completely clear, but the end result was undeniable. One hundred men dead, and a river that was said to have flowed red for over a week.

  Lt. Wilmington, still waiting for official orders, decided that justice could wait no longer, and took it upon himself to organize and execute the attack. The Lakota hunting party was made up of no more than 20 men and included some young boys out on their first hunt. Lt. Wilmington's armed detachment consisted of at least 56 trained soldiers, and another 20 or so armed volunteers from the nearby new settlement of Homewood.

  The detachment caught up with the hunting party about a mile south of the Berry Crossing, near what is now known as Last Chance Ford. The small hunting party, lead by the young Sioux warrior, August Arrow, knew nothing of the murders, and was quickly surrounded. But Lt. Wilmington, in his haste to “seek justice,” had made a critical mistake, and forgot to bring an official translator along with his detachment. One of the volunteers from the settlement of Homewood, Mr. Jonathan Bayard- according to record- spoke a broken version of Dakota, and volunteered his services.

  Unfortunately, for all involved, the translation and interpretation were not as they seemed. According to the story, a lone shot was fired into the band of Lakota, and a young boy was killed. No one could identify who or where the shot came from. At first there was a shocked stillness on both sides, a feeling of surrealness and confusion. Then the silence was split open by a warrior's death cry that rang out from August Arrow. The Lakota warriors attacked with a swift fury and capitalized on the mounted soldiers on-going confusion.

  Gunshots and smoke added to the chaos and shots were fired aimlessly into the growing group of combatants. The screams and blood cries made it impossible to tell one side from the other, as man after man fell to the ground. Although greatly outnumbered, August Arrow's warriors, with the help of the growing confusion, seemed to be winning the battle. The volunteers were the first to retreat and ran to the river, trying to escape to the other side. The mounted Lakota warriors followed and began to cut down the fleeing enemy, but that's when it turned. A wounded Lt. Wilmington counterattacked, leading his men through the whipping current of the Iktomi.

  This is where the story gives way to legend and gets a bit fuzzier. Some say that they all managed to kill each other, and that was that. But the more popular version of the story resembles the supposed verbal account ,given by the lone survivor of the massacre, the before mentioned Mr. Jonathan Bayard. Before he died, a mere seventeen hours after the battle from complications with a gunshot wound to the leg, Mr. Bayard supposedly described the battle to his then fifteen-year-old son, James.

  Shortly thereafter Mr. Jonathan Bayard, father to James Eric, husband to Margaret Ann, and failed translator to Douglas Wilmington, died alone in his bed. It was October 17, 1859. The story, however, was only beginning to grow. The legend, birthed only a few hours before the passing of Jonathan, flew across the Territories like wild fire. Within only a few days, the story had jumped the 40th parallel into the Kansas Territory, and by week's end it had followed Manifest Destiny all the way to the west coast and the Pacific Ocean.

  The “river ran red” story took on a life of it's own, but for many outsiders the focus began to shift from the mystery of the events to the question of “who was to blame?” So much so, that for the rest of young James' life, which ended prematurely in 1889, he spent much of his time defending his father's story. It was a fruitless campaign however, because many blamed Jonathan's loose translation for instigating the battle turned massacre. A book was later written about the ordeal entitled “A Fool's Quest.” The author, Mr. Karl R. Garner, theorized that both the Bayard men fabricated the “river ran red” story in an attempt to take the attention away from the glaring mistakes of both Jonathan Bayard and the 2nd Lt. Wilmington on that fateful day. The book went on to document the life of James, his quest to clear his father's name, and ultimately, his drowning death in 1889. Garner would be the first, but definitely not the last to ask the question, “Was it the twisting river that was cursed, or the man that survived it?”

  The book wasn't widely publicized, or widely read for that matter. The legend of the story became more popular than the analytical version, and by the turn of the century it had been all but forgotten. However, since that day in October when Jonathan first told his son the story, the Bayard family tree seems to have been fed by the cursed waters of the Iktomi River. Not one Bayard man has survived past his forty-ninth birthday. James had one son, Peter, who died in 1900 at the age of 30, from smallpox.

  Peter had twin sons, Drake and Marcus, both of whom were killed on the battlefields in 1918, when America joined the Great War. Marcus was never a father, but Drake, before heading to war married his childhood sweetheart, Rachel Young. The two had one child, Eli, who was born in 1917, without ever having the chance to meet his father. The Great War took many young men and the second took even more, but Eli, who fought in North Africa during WWII, was not one of them. He returned home to his wife, Grace and young daughter Elizabeth, as a decorated officer, and began raising cattle on the previously undeveloped Bayard Family land just south of the Berry Crossing.

  Eli was even better at ranching than he was at being a soldier, and by 1950, he and Grace
were in charge of a very successful cattle ranch. The following year, with the help of his hired men, he built his new family of four, a two story, three bedroom house near the river. A new barn came next. Then the chicken coop, machine shed, and finally they even added a small house for the hired men. It was the “happy” in the life of Eli. Grace gave birth to Elizabeth in 1942, three months after Eli had left for the war. The twins, Michelle, and Jason were born in early 1949, shortly before a massive tornado touched down in Homewood and destroyed three-fourths of the town. Grace was so shaken by the disaster that she insisted that Eli add plans for a deep sub-basement to the blueprints of their new house. Eli went one step further and designed plans for not only the tornado shelter, but for an attached, underground, concrete reinforced escape tunnel as well. The tunnel however, was never finished by Eli, and instead was boarded up to protect against any curious little children from getting inside and hurting themselves. He always planned to finish the tunnel, but once they moved into the house, the tunnel quickly took a backseat to caring for three children, and keeping the ranch going.