by James Ross
“I guess that one was ruled an accident too,” J Dub replied.
“Actually, no. The family hosted a dinner party. Government dignitaries were in attendance. A foreign diplomat got deathly sick and died. The end came suddenly. A detailed investigation took place and it was determined that the envoy had ingested the poison elsewhere. It put quite a stain on the family’s reputation.”
“As if it wasn’t tainted before,” Julie added.
DeWitt looked out over the river. The fog had become so dense that he couldn’t see the light from the lighthouse. “Look at that!” Lanterns across the road on the river were visible twenty feet away.
“What?”
“A tugboat ran a barge into the bank. That’s going to be a mess to figure out. The river’s so high he beached it on the bank of the River Road.” DeWitt turned right and drove through one of the tiny hamlets that dotted the waterway. The entire economy centered on river-related activity. Bait and tackle shops, bed and breakfast inns, boat dry dock locations, marine insurance companies as well as the local watering holes made the village perk. “We’ll be up on top in three miles.”
“Be careful,” Julie warned. “I just saw a sign that said to watch for falling rock.”
“And deer too.”
DeWitt steered the SUV through a series of winding curves as the vehicle made a steep ascent. A stream close to busting over its bank roared alongside the road. Visibility was poor. “If we can get up on the higher ground it won’t be as bad.”
“You owe me two,” Julie reminded.
“The last ones were close together and occurred at the start of the twentieth century.”
“The early 1900s?”
“Yes. There was some sort of gay quarrel with one of the cousins that was staying for the summer. The third got wind of it and blew the lover away.”
“Murder?”
“No, self-defense.”
“How foolish of me to think otherwise.”
“Look out!” A rush of rocks slid down the bluff and splashed into the creek. The water kept them from spilling onto the road.
“Maybe we shouldn’t be doing this tonight.”
“We’re almost there.”
“I think that I’ve already had enough adventure for one night,” Julie said. She looked at J Dub. “I’m starting to think that this might not be a good thing.”
“Hey, if it helps me keep the golf course then let’s keep going.” He looked at Morgan and Stud who up to this point had been on a laptop and busy listening to DeWitt’s story. “Are you still in?”
“Sure. This is what gets our juices flowing.”
Julie was outnumbered. She looked to the heavens but only saw the ceiling of the SUV. “How about number eight?”
“Prohibition hit the United States. Liquor was banned.”
“Can you imagine? What would Captain Jer have done?”
“The same thing that many others did.”
“What was that?”
“Look for bootleg whiskey.” DeWitt looked into the rear view mirror and glanced at Julie. “The big boys out of Chicago wanted control of the unlicensed market. There was a fight for control of the river traffic. The heat came down here from the big city up north.”
“What happened?”
“What do you think?”
“Somebody died in Purdy Palace.”
The levity broke the tension. Everybody laughed. “You got that right.” DeWitt finished his laughter. “Vaugh-Purdy the third put up a fight. His family had been in control of things for seventy years. They were used to doing things their way. That didn’t sit well with the thugs that were strong arming their way to enormous cash profits.”
“Everything always boils down to money, doesn’t it?”
“You better believe it. And there was big money being made.” DeWitt broke out of the fog. He had climbed to the top of the bluff. The night was thick. No light was emitted from the new moon. “Vaugh-Purdy lost the power struggle. He was shot down in his office on the second floor.”
“And things have been normal ever since.”
“Hardly.”
“What do you mean? The deaths stopped didn’t they?”
“But that’s not normal for the Purdy Palace.” DeWitt turned down a country road. He drove through a farm field. “Don’t worry. I’ve got authority to go on this property.” He pulled the SUV to a stop, got out and unlocked a gate. After swinging it open he returned to the SUV and drove down a dirt trail. He stopped on the edge of a cluster of trees. “Just because the dying stopped doesn’t mean the ghosts quit coming around.”
“Ghosts!” Julie was spooked. “What do you mean ghosts?”
“That’s another story for later on.” He opened the door.
“Here’s the entrance to the back side of the cave.” The headlights hit a small opening in the ground.
“Why is it in the ground?”
“We’re on the high side of it. This leads to the bigger opening on the bluff wall.”
The group exited. “Follow the directions on the map. Get set up a half hour before the meeting starts.”
“I’m not so sure I want to go through with this,” Julie persisted.
“Don’t worry. You’ll get a lot of answers about why people stopped dying in the Purdy Palace.”
“Oh, isn’t that just wonderful. I’ve been up all my life late at night trying to figure that out.”
“Doc and I will be back here at three o’clock to pick you up.” Julie turned to J Dub. “You’re paying me overtime for this, right?”
CHAPTER 84
DeWitt positioned the SUV so that the headlights were shining on the entrance to the cave. The hole was fairly small. J Dub got out of the vehicle, approached the opening and dropped to his hands and knees to peer inside.
He looked over his shoulder. “This is not something for the faint of heart. If any of you want out, now’s the time.”
DeWitt’s window was rolled down, his arm cocked and resting. “It opens up once you get through the first fifteen feet or so. You should be fine.”
“Let’s go,” J Dub said. “I’ll go first. Stud can bring up the rear. The girls stay in the middle.”
“Keep your eye out for the yellow rope,” DeWitt said. “Good luck.”
J Dub ducked down once again to the cave’s mouth. With a headlamp on his helmet and flashlight in his hand he disappeared. Julie turned to Morgan. “You or me?” Morgan extended the invite back to Julie by gesturing with her hand.
“It’s easy once you’re in there,” DeWitt assured her. “You don’t have to repel or climb; it’s a pretty flat walk. Just stay close to the wall and you’ll be okay.”
“As long as the ghosts don’t get me.”
“They’re only in the palace.”
“Oh. That’s so reassuring.” Julie gave DeWitt one of her looks, took a long draw of night air then got on her hands and knees and crawled after J Dub. The first fifteen feet of cool dirt on hard rock tested both their knees and their mettle. Occasionally a helmet or a back rose too high knocking loose a flurry of dirt and sending their imaginations flying, but in a matter of minutes they reached the cavern and stood their full heights. J Dub illuminated the way.
Besides the darkness one of the first things that the foursome noticed was the silence. They had to be quiet. The group realized immediately that if they talked in a normal tone their voice traveled and an echo returned. Quickly they learned to utilize hand signals and quaint whispers.
J Dub shined his flashlight against a wall fifty or sixty feet away. Stud followed suit. Multi-colored stalactites in various shades of orange, red and yellow presented themselves.
“They’re beautiful,” Julie whispered.
Jutting from the floor under the stalactites were hundreds of stalagmites formed by drops of mineralized water that had found their destination. A few of the formations had met and created an impressive column. Four flashlights shined around the cavern from one stellar formation t
o the next, when J Dub called them back to task. “We can’t admire too much. We’ve got to get moving.”
The foursome hugged the wall. J Dub’s headlamp registered on DeWitt’s map. Every few steps he had to duck under a low ceiling. At the first fork they stayed to the left. The same held true at the second junction. All were forced to balance themselves on a narrow rock bridge when the next decision needed to be made. “The map says to stay to the right. Hold hands for balance.” J Dub shined his flashlight on the bridge. A rock was accidentally kicked and splashed into water below.
“You didn’t tell me we were crossing water,” Julie said nervously.
“Be careful.”
The path turned. Morgan and Stud followed closely. The damp conditions and musty smell added to the mystique. J Dub continued in the lead, his headlamp lighting the way while Stud helped the girls by shining his flashlight on the rock floor. A salamander slithered quickly in front of Julie. She jumped and let out an anxious yelp.
Thirty seconds later J Dub came to a sudden stop. To his right was a small waterfall. The water fell a mere ten feet. The pool of water was small and meandered into the darkness. “It’s getting in from somewhere.” He flashed his light to the ceiling and against the far wall.
After the third right turn J Dub flashed his light on the wall and across the ceiling. Thousands of bats hung from above. “That explains what we’ve been hearing since we got in here. It kept getting louder.”
“Let’s get this over,” Julie said.
J Dub shined his flashlight on a wall that was covered with etchings, presumably from the Indians. “We need to take a picture of this.”
Morgan and Stud went to work. They had brought the technology into the darkness. Before them were drawings of horses, buffalo, arrows, teepees, deer, cattle, pigs, eagles, bears, corn, constellations and traces of hands. They were organized in a pattern that made sense only to those who had inhabited the cave long before the foursome had arrived.
“I wonder if this has anything to do with Bighead Southstar,” J Dub whispered.
“It’s obvious now that the Indians lived here at one time.”
Morgan and Stud recorded the petroglyph.
“I don’t know the significance now, but maybe we’ll figure it all out when we get back.” He looked at his watch. “We need to get to the staging area.”
The path to their destination got trickier. They climbed up a series of ledges. At the apex of the climb, according to DeWitt’s map, they would need to crawl approximately ten feet before dropping down a rock ledge on the other side. That led to a narrow passageway that would be the final approach above the staging area.
“We made it,” Julie whispered.
J Dub put his finger to his mouth. He mouthed the words “not yet.” The instructions on the map said to kill the lights. The head lamps and flashlights went to the off position. The rest of the journey would be in darkness. Very faint light came from an unexplained source and helped guide the foursome while their eyes adjusted to the gloom. J Dub pointed to an area that was farther down the path and waved his arm instructing the others to follow.
Twenty-five yards later they reached their resting point. J Dub, Julie, Morgan and Stud had an eagle’s eye view forty feet above the staging area to their left and the antebellum chamber to their right.
The roost allowed them to see outside the cave’s main opening which was the size of a golf green in the side of the bluff. Stars now shined through the broken sky. Fog blanketed the river below. An inviting breeze from the westerly winds slammed into the rock wall.
Inside the cave and farther to the right was the entrance to the brewery. Loading docks, railroad tracks and boxcars could be seen in a larger chamber. Large copper kettles and their newer stainless steel versions sat alongside a maze of pipes.
The main chamber was empty except for a large wire enclosure that resembled a bird cage at the city zoo. On a small platform was a judge’s podium and lectern. The musty smell that they had traveled through earlier was replaced by the aroma of fermenting yeast and processed hops and barley.
Purdy Palace, now a bed and breakfast inn for romance, sat cloaked in darkness on Lighthouse Point. It was located less than one hundred feet from the cave’s main entrance. J Dub and Julie watched as a throng of FOBS members gathered outside the hole in the bluff wall.
Morgan and Stud were preoccupied with a different endeavor. They activated Presto while a half dozen men in the staging area prepared for the atonement.
CHAPTER 85
To form a secret society shrewd capitalists in an American economy that was in its infancy determined early on that they would need assistance to thrive. Businessmen that worshiped the dollar realized immediately that they would have to gain control of the referees—those that controlled the laws, courtrooms and political decisions. The inclusion of the Cloaks and Gavel Society was the ideal solution.
But those same powers wanted secretive rituals and chose to adapt them from those people that occupied the land before them—specifically the Pawnee and Iroquois. The Friends of Bighead Southstar had an interesting start. Curt had done a little research but what he found was limited. There was a lot more to the story.
The Louisiana Purchase introduced the Pawnee tribe to the white man. The Indians ran a large trading post in St. Louis. Other settlements were in Nebraska, Oklahoma, Kansas and Illinois. At one time they numbered ten thousand but an outbreak of smallpox and cholera nearly wiped them out of the annals of time. They sought ground located on the river, lived in mud huts, were avid farmers that grew corn and were adept hunters.
The tribe’s ceremonies mainly revolved around heavenly bodies, and the forces such as wind, thunder, lightning and rain were the messengers. The bringing of life started in the spring with the first clap of thunder and ended around the harvest solstice with the sacrifice of an adolescent girl. The elaborate ritual assured bountiful food, long life and prosperity.
Pawnee tribes were rife with secret societies. Their beliefs centered on supernatural animals. Rites were sophisticated and ceremonies vivid. The purpose of the rituals was to call wild game for food, heal diseases and grant supernatural powers to members of the tribe that carried authority.
In Pawnee lore four major stars represented the gods. The Northstar and the Southstar represented good and evil respectively. However the belief of the tribe was that the Morning Star in the east and the Evening star in the west were what created life. These two stars mated to form the first human being which was a girl. The leaders of the tribe studied the movement of the stars, adopted a sophisticated celestial approach and let this understanding dictate the activities of their daily life. The location of the stars indicated when crops should be planted, cultivated and harvested. Astronomy dictated the direction and construction of their mud huts.
The location of the stars determined when the seasonal rituals would occur and identified the Pawnee role in the universe and their desire to perpetuate life. With these beliefs came ceremonies. With the ceremonies events such as buffalo hunts, planting season, the harvesting of crops, the awakening of the earth and the location of the smoke hole in a hut came into focus.
On occasion a leader in an Indian village would dream that the Morning star would need to be satisfied. The priests were summoned. Star location on the horizon would be examined. If the priests determined that the dream was accurate then a young girl would be identified, captured, isolated and given respect. A five day ritual would cleanse the girl of her earthly figure and prepare her to join the heavenly bodies.
On the final day of the ceremony the girl was tied to scaffolding, touched by flame and war clubs and subsequently shot through the heart with a sacred arrow. The priest in control would cut open her body with a knife and smear blood on his face to fulfill the creation of life. After ceremonial dances the body of the adolescent girl was laid face down on the earth. Her blood was allowed to enter the ground and fertilize the soil.
Symbolica
lly this ensured good fortune to all plant and animal life by guaranteeing success of crops and virtuous life in the Plains thus securing their place in the universe.
Southstar, deemed the god of the underworld, possessed evil and magical powers. It was the opposite of the Northstar which represented all things good. The capitalists wanted to be feared and chose to include the destructive actions of the Southstar god as a symbol of power and mystique.
The FOBS connection to the Iroquois was farther removed. The tribe’s settlements were primarily in New York, Ohio and the Great Lakes region. However their westward expansion took them to the banks of the Illinois River.
With the volatile weather in the Midwest the demonic gods named Bigheads flourished. In Iroquois custom the Bigheads were giant heads that flew around during stormy weather without bodies. These gods searched for men and once they were located found them to be appetizing victims. The powers controlling FOBS wanted to create an omnipotent society that was unstoppable. It was decided to adopt the dark, godlike forces of the Southstar and the Bigheads as symbols of their muscle.
Because of the Pawnee connection to the celestial bodies, the founders of FOBS adopted their own interpretation. The Great Boar in the sky is a tight group of thirteen stars. Celestially they form the image of a charging boar with large tusks. The constellation becomes visible on the 166th day of the year. Any evil activity associated with the constellation had to be completed before June 15th to comply with the wishes of the sinister gods. Those activities would consequently cease for 110 days while the constellation was visible. Occasionally the secret society would need to cleanse its membership to preserve its success. And that explained the urgency for the special atonement meeting.
Dozens of FOBS members dressed in hooded black robes and with antique gold masks over their eyes waited for admittance into the main chamber. To the foursome in the perch it appeared that requests to enter the main chamber involved secret passwords and retaliatory handshakes. Only after successfully performing the ritual was admittance allowed. As members entered each grabbed a battery operated illuminating torch.