by Brhel, John
“Mr. Frick, we’ve made very little headway—we’ll be here all night.” Intoxicated, Frick could care less about his workers but he certainly did not want to be out all night getting eaten by mosquitos.
“Dig one hole then, a concentrated effort.” Frick burped and sat back on the wagon. Two of the men protested, but were quickly quieted by their fellows.
Hours deep into the night the men unceremoniously tossed the six brave men into the cold dank hole in the ground, one on top of the other. A heavy fog rolled in covering the grave. Frick was fast asleep in his own bed before three that morning.
* * *
It was a year before Frick would begin building his house. He had forgotten precisely where he had buried those men as he was inebriated at the time. The tannery was not rebuilt, instead Lester quickly began importing shoe leather ready to press into boots, leading to the loss of hundreds of jobs. So, without a tannery to run, Frick was given free rein of the cigar factory—which itself was struggling due to a Caribbean influx of cheap tobacco product.
The Lester employees held a grudge toward Francis Frick that only intensified the years he spent unsuccessfully attempting to resurrect the North American cigar business. Rumor spread of possible insurance fraud as Lester had gotten a windfall at his factory’s demise and there was only one candidate tying the death of those six workers to Harry Lester’s questionable business practices.
When Frick returned to the boot factory as foreman things were very different. The workers did not respond as they did in the old days. Tools and machines were damaged, product was flawed. Frick blamed it on the unions, the guys in the boot shop whispered that it was ghosts from the past. Productivity fell until he was demoted by the new owner, Lester’s son and heir, Donald.
Francis Frick lived for less than four years in his new home, which came to lie between the company store and the new community cemetery. Donald Lester was not as untouchable as his father and usually made concessions when his workers made noise. A free cemetery was built for the employees and their families as opposed to a golf course and country club as his father had imagined.
Frick was miserable his final years. He could not walk the streets at night out of fear of old reprisal and was constantly harassed when the first telephones were wired. His son would tell the tale long after all the factories were shuttered, how his father was unable to sleep at night—how he would mutter about all the nasty voices over the telephone. In 1910, Mrs. Frick found her husband hanging in the basement of his long dreamt of home.
APPENDIX B: THE BLACK BOOK
The following is a brief excerpt from the Indian translation found among Jerome Javitz’s possessions. His car was found partly submerged in the Quee-hanna River in the summer of ’74. Most of his books and papers were water damaged. His body was not recovered, and he is assumed to have drowned in the river.
A shaman is capable of casting sickness spells on the body. Their power comes from charms—from skins, stones, herbs, animal bones—but more power can be conjured from human bones.
The crow is a vessel which the shaman may use to separate himself from the living world and enter the realm of ancestors and demons. The crow is the spiritual guide between worlds. From the possessed realm a shaman may gain possession and control over other entities and disrupt the path of the natural order.
A shaman only has power directed and absorbed from certain land. The shamanic spirit is bound to land for an indefinite period. Once in possession of a new vessel, the shaman may leave his land for periods of time to do his work but may not venture far from tribal territory.
Burial places, old and new, sacred and accidental, are most often the grounds from which a shaman operates. He will take on the form of a demon or a child or an animal and gather spirits to him to empower his pursuits, private grudges, and tribal feuds.
To break these spells a medicine man should induce vomiting, sing the songs of the incarnate demon spirit, and fire weapons to scare them. The possessed should be submerged in a stream or river until drowning. If disrupted correctly, the demon should be exorcised and the original spirit should return to the vessel.
To separate a shaman from the land where he draws his power is not possible. The goal of the medicine man is to keep his enemy confined to a small area so he cannot pollute his surroundings and impinge on the lives of the living tribe.
APPENDIX C: A CEMETERY GARLAND
by Eric Verlaine
(Friendship)
We counted the stones
and slabs,
from here to the end
and back;
the percentage
of flowered beds,
from fresh to wilty
to inorganic
(Ardor)
That so Night's shadow not fall, unappeased,
I walk with you among the trees,
for when we wend our way back home,
and I find myself by way your cemetery,
I may recall a love felt beneath the sheet,
while you lie, altogether, fast asleep
(Betrayal)
He pinned his cemetery letters
to the sweater in your shadow,
where each note had rung true,
'til the night you came to him
much too warm to the touch;
and it was evident that some body
had kept you occupied that morning
(Separation)
Lazy bones sat in her mausoleum
waiting for her boy to come
and take her to the dance,
never taking it upon herself
to find her own way from the curb,
maybe to the curb and back,
but never all the way to the dance.
Who would he dance with
if he went without her?
-she often wondered
(Resurrection)
I said I'd find my way back to you
by the cemeteries,
I remember the drive to your home
with no maps to speak of,
the soul of each cemetery
in ordered rows to guide;
I found our picnic blanket
in the churchyard,
we'd left it in the rain
under an elmy obelisk
for your home to take me back home,
and if the church is abandoned
we can make it our own
NOTES
Angel Music:
Schicksalslied is the name of a choral work by Johannes Brahms. It is based on a poem by German poet Friedrich Hölderlin. Schicksalslied is most often translated as “Song Of Destiny."
Married, Buried:
The title of this story is taken from a chorus lyric in Nirvana's "All Apologies," which appeared on the rock band’s album In Utero.
This story, in which adulterous characters pay the ultimate price for their infidelity, was inspired by the suspense thrillers of Alfred Hitchcock.
Other Voices, Other Tombs:
The title of this story is a play on Truman Capote’s Other Voices, Other Rooms, a novel about children growing up in the American South listening in on conversations beyond their narrow worldview.
“Bin gar keine Russin, stamm’ aus Litauen, echt deutsch.” is the twelfth line of T.S. Eliot’s The Waste Land. It comes from the section entitled, “Burial of the Dead” and is loosely translated as, “I’m not Russian at all, I come from Lithuania, pure German.”
The “We three brothers” motif is inspired by an Onondaga Reservation translation of the song of the “Younger Brothers.”
The setting and ‘history’ is distinctly Leatherstocking Country of Upstate New York. The Lester Brothers Boot and Shoe Company was the precursor to the Endicott Johnson Corporation. Little is known about the Lester Brothers operation before it was sold.
Cigar rolling was big business in the area before shoemaking. The authors’ hometown, Johnson City, was founded between the Lester Brothers selling their company
to a man named Endicott, and the transition from cigar rolling to shoemaking. The new owners would go on to grow the company into the world’s largest shoe manufacturer and a magnet for thousands of immigrants looking to make a living in America.
The Caretaker:
Drowning Memories was the name of a punk rock band that the authors knew in high school.
The scene in which Zeke turns to wave goodbye to the caretaker, who has suddenly disappeared, is loosely inspired by the legend of The Vanishing Hitchhiker.
A Matter of Course:
This short tale is reminiscent of the interactive stories associated with the “Black Aggie” statue in Maryland and the “Black Agnus” cemetery statue in Vermont. Often, some nonbeliever is challenged to spend the night in the presence of the statue to test whether or not they animate.
All Hallow’s Eve:
It’s common legend that on October 31 the dead are able to mingle with the living.
Knocking Back:
The authors have taken trips to test out legends over the years. The mausoleum with the green door that one knocks on (expecting the ghost to knock back) is quickly becoming one of the most well-known ghost stories in Central New York. If you’re traveling on Route 8 toward West Edmeston and see a mausoleum set into a hillside (not far from the road) why not stop and see if Eunice knocks back?
Out to Lunch:
This tale was inspired by the many legends telling of people finding, stealing, and borrowing items from a cemetery which ultimately leads to their demise. Instead of removing the victim from the cemetery and having trouble follow them home, the victim, in this case a glutton, embraces the cemetery as his place of comfort while he fuels his vice.
Scry the Crow:
This atypical story was inspired by TV shows from the late 1980s and early 1990s, such as Unsolved Mysteries, where disappearances, legends, and murders were presented as news stories for entertainment purposes. Many of these stories would project multiple answers to mysteries and reasons for horrible crimes, including Satanism, devil worship, witchcraft, and human sacrifice. This type of storytelling entered the mainstream news from time to time, and the culture accepted the existence of avowed worshipers of the Christian Devil without scrutiny.
The native shaman as powerful wizard isn’t a strong mid-Atlantic or New England Ameri-Indian archetype. The traditional shaman in American storytelling can be found in such works as The Exorcist and Rosemary’s Baby, where the powerful wizard working in the realm of magic is a Catholic priest or a coven of witches devoted to the Christian Satan and his resurrection.
The tomb with the window is another old tale in Central New York. A young boy told his father he didn’t want to die because he was afraid of the dark, so the man built him a tomb with a window. The authors have visited the grave, near Oxford, NY. In the 1970s, it is said that a “devil worshiper,” and son of a judge, broke into the boy’s tomb and stole the skull, using it for nefarious rituals.
Vermin:
This story features several nods to Stephen King’s Cujo and Alfred Hitchcock’s The Birds.
Dead Can Dance:
The story is named after an English-Australian music group popular in the 1980s.
Eric's fascination with the dead in the cemetery, who had "loves and hates and passions just like him," was inspired by the song "Cemetry Gates" by the English rock band The Smiths.
With overtly evil bullies, alcohol-fueled parties, and references to New Wave bands, the story bears many similarities to 80s teen movies, in particular The Karate Kid.
Easy Prey:
The Vanishing Hitchhiker is a motif that tells of a repetitive haunting where a woman waits for a man to pick her up and give her a ride home. He’s often found entertaining her at a community dance. In this version, the vanishing ghost was married and protective of her living husband. There are versions of the story that reward the person who aids the ghost, and far older fairy tales, such as the young prince who neglects, or even harms, a beggar, only to discover it was a test that he has failed.
Randall's Complex:
The swamp-like creature that stalks Randall was meant to bear a resemblance to a malevolent creature that appears in the Star Trek: The Next Generation episode "Skin of Evil."
Moira’s Homecoming:
The idea of human sacrifice to enrich the land, or return a special quality to the land, can be found throughout Sir James George Frazer’s The Golden Bough, specifically the chapter entitled “Human Sacrifices for the Crops.” It wasn’t enough that Richie helped birth a future leader of the cult, he had to be planted in the cursed land as part of its restoration. The witchcraft and ultimate betrayal in this tale is inspired by David Pinner’s Ritual and the subsequent British and American films entitled The Wicker Man.
One Foot in the Grave:
The Big Sleep is a hard-boiled crime novel by Raymond Chandler. The title is a slang term for death.
The idea of putting a hex on an object to drain life energy from the owner is featured in numerous voodoo and witchcraft stories.
After the Game:
The twist in this zombie tale is inspired by James Rolfe’s short film The Deader the Better where the caretaker’s main task is to kill or contain a graveyard full of newly risen zombies each night. In “After the Game” the ballplayer’s run-in with the shambling old man is anything but routine. Americans are asking themselves more and more what they can, or should do, when faced with violent mental illness.
Pact and Principle:
In the late 1990s and early 2000s, a number of TV mediums were popular with the general public. Audiences in studios, live in gymnasiums and school auditoriums entertained the notion that these psychics could connect them with their deceased loved ones. This was a very lucrative business for a time. Over the past ten to fifteen years, these spiritualists have largely faded from mainstream culture, likely due to the success of skeptics in revealing the deceitful tactics of the mediums.
The generals mentioned, Sullivan and Clinton, swept the remaining loyalists and their native counterparts from the frontier (Western New York) of the nation during the Revolutionary War. The story imagines that a certain loyalist made a deal with a native tribe, for their land, in exchange for aiding their escape from the murderous Sullivan-Clinton Expedition.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
Thanks to Burt, Bryan, Kiera, Pete K., Pete D., Jim, and Jasper’s Minions for reading these stories and providing us with valuable feedback. Special thanks to our wives and wonderful children.