by Bob Leman
But the murders were a continuing occasion for brooding and black speculation. What could not be said aloud festered at the back of my mind, and no matter how much I tried to persuade myself that my conjectures maligned Uncle Caleb most grievously, and that he was, after all, hurting no one but himself by his lunacy, I remained prey to grim suspicions. And, although not a word was spoken, I think my mother, to some degree, had the same apprehensions.
The result was that for a long time I did not go to Sturkeyville. My mother visited my grandmother from time to time, but not nearly as often as she would have done under other circumstances, and she never saw Uncle Caleb at all. During this time I completed law school and became a minor cog in a very large firm on LaSalle Street. I acquired a wife, and a house in Winnetka, and a son. Then my grandmother died, and I went to Sturkeyville again after all the years.
Uncle Caleb came to the funeral, an apparition that bore only a remote resemblance to the Uncle Caleb of old. It seemed to me now that he was hopelessly lost. He was emaciated and slovenly in his dress, of course, and afflicted with strange tics; but that was not what was ultimately disquieting. It was his face. His eyes, especially, were strange. He held them open to their utmost, in a round, unblinking stare that seemed to be focused on something other than his surroundings. He held his mouth so that his lips were drawn into thin lines, keeping his teeth always partially exposed. And he was pale, pale beyond belief, with a dead-white, shiny, almost translucent pallor that was faintly disgusting.
"You need more sun, Uncle Caleb," I said. "You're looking kind of bleached."
"Sun," he said. "I don't go out in the sun much. Bothers me. Stay inside most of the time. Too bright right now. It was in fact a dull December day, the sun a watery, weak disc behind a thin cloud cover. "Oh, much too bright," he said. His eyes were turned toward me, but the focus of his enormous stare seemed to be somewhere to my rear. "I'm living out at the Feester house now, you know, Nick," he said. "As soon as all this is over, I want you to come out there with me. Will you do that?"
"Sure, Uncle Caleb," I said. It was exactly what I wanted. I believed that I had puzzled out some of the answers, and I wanted to talk to him, to have the thing out, to satisfy myself that my ugly ideas were only black fictions. I was quite ready, now, to accept my uncle as a harmless lunatic, but the idea of homicidal mania had to be laid to rest.
The coffin was lowered into the grave. The ritual words were said, and everyone hurried to the waiting cars, grief suspended for the moment in the sheer discomfort of the day's bitter cold. The undertaker had assigned Uncle Caleb and me to the same car. My wife was not with me; she had given birth to our second son five days before and was snug at home in Winnetka. In the car he said, "You'll have to drive me back to the lake. I don't have a car that will run any more. Hostettler sent one of these things out to get me this morning." Hostettler was the undertaker.
Sturkeyville still favored funeral baked meats, and there was no way to avoid the customary luncheon at the house, an enormous heavy meal catered by the ladies of the Moravian Church. Uncle Caleb was not at table; he had disappeared upstairs, where, it transpired, he had hidden a bottle, perhaps years before. After everyone had eaten too much and departed, and Mattie Helms and my parents and I were sitting over a final cup of coffee, he appeared suddenly in the doorway. "All right, Nick, let's go," he said.
"Oh, Caleb," my mother said, "I did want to talk to you. It's been so long."
"Next time, next time. Come on, Nick." He was swaying in the doorway, glaring with that great round stare at some indeterminate point behind us, a scarecrow figure in a wrinkled expensive suit that was now several sizes too large for him. I seemed to have no choice. I said, "OK, Uncle Caleb. Let's go."
And so at last I found myself entering the Feester house. We drove in by the lower road, which came within a mile of the lake. The driveway in from the road, impassable for half a century, had been cleared and repaired, but it remained crooked and pitted and had to be negotiated slowly. I concentrated on my driving. The driveway ended abruptly, after making a sharp, steep turn around a limestone embankment, and we were suddenly out of the trees and facing the house.
The years had not improved it: it stood there among the frozen weeds with the same suggestion of paradox and seedy menace I had felt looking at it from the hillside long ago. It loomed blackly above us against the gray sky, top-heavy and brutal, a shuttered receptacle of old tragedy. Smoke was coming out of one of the gaunt chim- nies, a human touch that compounded the paradox. I shivered and said, "Jesus, Uncle Caleb. How come you live out here?"
"Why, it's mine," he said. "Where else would I live?" He seemed to think that the answer was responsive. "Come on," he said. "It's cold out here."
It was anything but cold in the house, at least in the front ground-floor room where he lived. A great cast-iron stove, its pipe plugged roughly into the chimney above the mantel of the old fireplace, was pouring out heat in suffocating quantities. We entered into an oppressive unclean atmosphere of human odors long sealed in an overheated room, a staleness of unwashed bedding and a hermit's cooking utensils. It was pitch-black after the front door closed behind us, and Uncle Caleb led me by the arm into the room and struck a match and lighted an oil lamp. The bloom of yellow light illuminated a shadowy confusion of bulky furniture, with all the paraphernalia of his life scattered upon and among it in incondite heaps: groceries, tools, books, bottles and trash, indiscriminately piled together on table and chairs and floor. The bed in the comer was in shadow; I could not tell whether the welter upon it was part of the same rancid accumulation or only bedclothes long unchanged. I felt a little queasy.
"Have a seat, there, Nick," he said. "I'll stoke up the stove and fix us a drink. I've got some things to tell you. It's time, now." His face seemed to float at the edge of the shadows, the great round eyes staring out of it at something behind me. "That chair there," he said. "Just throw the stuff on the floor." I did as he commanded, but my skin crawled a little when I sat. I refused the drink; nothing could have induced me to put my lips to anything in that room.
"Now, first of all, I've got this for you," he said. He passed me a sheet of paper. I took it with extreme reluctance. I knew very well what it was, but I held it to the light and confirmed it: a warranty deed to the Phillips place.
"Uncle Caleb, I told you twenty years ago I don't want it," I said. "The old promise has been kept long enough. If it was ever made at all. Sell the place, or let the county take it for taxes. This house ought to be tom down."
He paid no attention. "It's your responsibility now, Nick. A sacred trust. Family honor and all. You're bound to keep everything intact. Keep it intact and deed it to one of your sons. And set up a trust in your will to preserve it
for as long as the law allows, in case you die before you can make a deed. I want your word. Your oath."
"Just a minute," I said. "Hold on. I said I didn't want it. I meant it. I'm going to put this thing in the stove. I see it hasn't been recorded, so that will be the end of it."
An expression of really appalling viciousness came over the pale face, and his voice went to the edge of a scream: "You will not. You will accept your responsibility. You are responsible now for four lives. You cannot cast that off."
"My God," I said. "You mean the feesters."
"Why, yes," he said, his voice suddenly quite reasonable. "Of course, the feesters. What else do you think this is all about?"
I took a deep breath. "Uncle Caleb," I said, "let's drop this bilge about the feesters. They're a campfire story to scare boy scouts with, and we both know it. But I do believe you're serious about wanting to keep the place intact and in the family, and I think I've figured out why. Shall I tell you?"
He gave me a sly look. "You're wrong, you know. The feesters are down there, all right. But go ahead. Tell me what you think."
"Here's how I've pieced it together," I said. "This isn't about superstition or curses and slimy things in the lake. It's abo
ut murder and conspiracy and scandal. The murders and conspiracy are a century old, now, but in Sturkeyville the scandal would be as fresh as ever, Sturkeyville being what it is.
"What I think, Uncle Caleb, is that our money — the Scoggins fortune — was founded on blackmail. I think that Elihu Feester murdered his wife and children and was caught or discovered by a couple of pillars of the community —one of them his own father-in-law— who proceeded to strip him of everything he had and then sent him off, a beggar threatened by the hangman.
"What did he have in that wagon of his? More gold coin, maybe, maybe a big box of it. What'll you bet Great-Grandpa and Ezra Stallworth got that, too? And then Great-Grandpa beat Stallworth out of his share, somehow, and got the bank as well.
"But the bodies were buried somewhere here on the Phillips place. I don't think they'd have been put in the lake, because sunken bodies have a way of surfacing eventually. The bodies were buried here, and since their discovery would raise the hue and cry for Feester, who could be expected to talk if taken, they took steps to prevent any discovery. Great-Grandpa bought the place and saw to it that it stayed wild and untenanted. He may even have started the story of the curse and the feesters.
"I guess he must have told Grandpa all about it when he deeded the place over, and impressed on him the importance of keeping those bodies hidden.
Feester no doubt would have been dead by then, but the discovery of the bodies — or skeletons, I suppose — would have raised a lot of questions. There must be no scandal. No, indeed. The Scoggins were one of the First Families. Think what Sturkeyville would do with a juicy morsel like that.
"And then it was your turn, Uncle Caleb, and you continued everything just as it was before, and now you want me to take over. Well, I won't. I don't suppose the events were exactly as I've put them together, but it has to be something like that, and I want no part of it. Scandal won't bother me. I don't live in Sturkeyville, and everybody's got a thief somewhere in his ancestry. Anyhow, everybody involved in this thing has been dead for a long, long time. So I'll say it again: I don't want title to this place. I won't take it."
I was aware that my voice had become very loud and that it shook a little. I leaned forward to peer at him, searching for a clue to the effect of my thunderous pronouncement. And Uncle Caleb tittered.
I am not sure what I had expected, but it was most certainly not that. He tittered and said, "Nick, you're crazy," —which, under the circumstances, struck me as grimly comical. "Do you really believe the reason we've got to save this place is just to prevent gossip?" he said. "Who cares about that? I tell you the feesters are alive under the ice down there. They're alive and they've got to be kept a secret. You've got to see that."
He was passionately sincere, poor lunatic. I said, "Why, Uncle Caleb? Why do they have to be kept a secret?"
"Why, because they're dangerous, " he said. "They kill people. They’ve done some really awful things these last few years. They've got to be watched. But if anybody finds out about it, they'll come down and destroy them."
"Well, why not?"
"Why not? Why not? Because it would be murder, that's why not."
"But they're murderers themselves, aren't they? And not even human?"
He answered quickly and glibly: "Oh, they're not responsible. It's their nature. You couldn't call it murder. Anyhow, they've only killed people who deserved it. If you look at it right, they actually ought to be thanked."
"You're talking about Otis Willing, aren't you? And Gunther Hodge and Tom Stark?"
"Yes, yes. Nobody could say they were any great loss to anybody. Oh, the feesters knew what they were doing. They're amazing, really. Justice is what they’re interested in."
I had to pursue it to the end. "And how about Wanda? Wanda Karsky?"
He did not answer immediately. "Well," he said at last, "That one surprised me. The feesters didn’t even know her. It's kind of a puzzle. But I'll tell you what I think. I think maybe they've begun to like it, that maybe sometimes they can't help themselves.
That’s why they've got to be watched. But don't you worry. I'll watch them. And when I'm gone, you'll have to do the watching. You see that now, don't you?" He sounded, suddenly, frightened and vulnerable.
For better or worse, I made a decision at that moment. I cannot say that I take any pride in it or that it shows a proper and responsible regard for the public weal; but my suspicions were still only suspicions, and he was my uncle and had been the light of my boyhood. I told myself that he was physically in very bad shape, that he could hardly have very long to live, and that to harass a dying man for something that was probably only a creation of my own imagination would be unforgivable. And it is quite possible — little as I care to admit it — that the fear of scandal, which I had just been deriding so strenuously, was the critical influence.
At any rate, I elected at that moment to take no action. I said, "All right, Uncle Caleb. I'll keep the deed. And you keep watch on the feesters. You watch them very carefully, very carefully indeed. Because if they ever get loose and harm someone, I promise you it will be the end of them, and a pretty terrible end, too. Do you understand me? Do you grasp what I'm saying?"
"Oh, I do, Nick, I do," he said. "You don't have to worry about it. I'll be all right. From now on they'll stay in their place, down there in the mud where they belong. I'll see to that. And I'm glad you've decided to do your duty and take on the ownership. I knew you would, of course. You've never been one to shirk your responsibilities. I guess that takes care of everything. You can leave, now."
And that was that. We did not even shake hands. I heard the slam of the door and a clash of bolts behind me, and I stood on the step and took great breaths of the cold air, clearing from my lungs the fog of Uncle Caleb's noisome den. Then I drove back to town and told my mother some lies; that Uncle Caleb was living quite comfortably out there at the lake; that he was neither as drunken nor as crazy as we had supposed; that we need have no fear about his future behavior; and that he had sent his love to her. I think she half believed me, because she wanted to.
***
Back in Chicago the old suspicions continued to nag at me, augmented, I must admit, by stabs of conscience and an uneasy conviction that I had made a tragic error. But the months passed, and then the years, and no dire news came from Sturkeyville. I decided at last that I had after all been right. Uncle Caleb and his troubles became, with the passage of time, matters that I thought about only occasionally, and then not for long. Those rare occasions came when my mother entertained visitors from Sturkeyville, who would, at her delicate but ruthless insistence, reluctantly tell what they knew about how things were now with Uncle Caleb.
They always brought an account of a deteriorating situation, describing a hermit committed to the absolute extreme of solitude, a man upon whom no one had laid eyes for several years. The house and the lake remained inviolate, carefully avoided by the populace. Twice a year, perhaps, the sheriff would send a deputy to ascertain that the hermit Scoggins was still alive. The deputy would thunder at the door until he heard a voice from inside; having heard it, he would report to the sheriff .that the nut still lived, and that would be Uncle Caleb's sole contact with the outside world until the next official visit. It was not a reassuring state of affairs, but no one doubted that it was better than having him locked away.
Then one day I saw on an inside page of the Tribune a story with a Sturkeyville byline that instantly collapsed my rickety defense against facing the truth about Uncle Caleb. Another murder had been committed, an atrocity as bad as the rest. As I read, I realized that I had been expecting it and that I had, without realizing it, already made plans. I knew exactly what I was going to do.
I arrived in the late afternoon. The lake was not frozen, now, and the weeds were green, and yet the house seemed even more forbidding than on the gray, bitter day when I had seen it last. There was absolutely no sign that any human being had ever been here, except for the fact of the hous
e itself. I beat on the door, first with the heel of my fist and then, when that had no result, with a stone. The noise was great.
After a time there was a voice from the other side of the door. "Get out!" it said. “Go away!"
"It's me, Uncle Caleb," I shouted. "Me, Nick."
Silence. I let several minutes pass and then beat again with my stone. The voice said, "Go away."
"I'm not going, Uncle Caleb," I said, " and it's no use your saying 'go away.' I'm not going until you let me in or you come out. I won't go away until you've talked to me."
There was silence again for a time, and then I heard bolts being pulled and the snick of the lock. There was a pause, and he said, "All right, you can come in."
I pushed the door open. I saw no one. The doors to the right and left were both closed. From the darkness at the end of the hall he said, "Close the door."
"For Pete's sake, Uncle Caleb," I said. "Light your lamp, first."
"Close it," he said. I pushed it shut and stood there in total darkness. There was an unclassifiable noise and a creak of floorboards, and then I heard the opening of the door of the room on the left. In a moment his voice came from inside the room. "You can light a match, now." It was a strange voice, thin, flat, and without overtones, not much louder than a whisper.
The flare of the match showed the door standing open. I moved toward it cautiously. As I entered the room I encountered the smell again, so strong that it almost had to be physically breasted. "Lamp on the table," he said. I located and lit it. The wick was almost burnt out; even turned to the top, it was no brighter than the match had been, and I stood in a tiny island of light, surrounded by impenetrable shadow. His voice came out of the darkness: "What do you want, Nick?"