The Thirteenth Child

by David Dean

  Leaning forward from his perch on a small wooden barrel on his front porch (having given the preacher his only chair) he offered an explanation for the absence of permanent settlement in these parts by his near-forgotten brethren. “It was on account of the snow boy,” he had emphatically stated.

  “Snow boy,” the curious man of the cloth had repeated. “Is this some demon that your people once worshipped in these parts?”

  Winsloe had shaken his head at this. “He is a spirit that is to be placated, not worshipped. Yet, in these parts, he would not be still, but was always restless and would not leave the children alone.

  “In good times,” he went on to explain, “and in the good places, the snow boy would provide the fresh snow for us to track the beasts of the forests, so that we might make our kills and feed our people, but here, he would not act as our brother, but tracked us instead, as if we, too, were beasts of the forest.

  “My ancestors offered the sacrifice of our first fruits—the first buck slain in the season—but this would not satisfy him, as he disdained meat, and recognized no taboos. In the grey hours of dusk and in the blackness of night he would hunt out our little ones and remove them from their mothers’ care. Once gone, they were never found alive afterwards, though on those few occasions when their bodies were recovered, they appeared unharmed but for the draining of their life’s blood—empty as the husks of the corn dolls they clutched.”

  Preston sat back in his hard chair, letting out a long breath—here he was, he thought, I have found his tracks, I am not mad after all—he does exist. He had to restrain himself from holding the book aloft and crying out in excitement, “I know this creature… he is my discovery and I have named him Gabriel!” It occurred to him that Christopher Columbus might have had similar feelings upon first sighting the Bahamas and knowing, at last, that he and his crew were not about to sail over the edge of the world.

  He returned to the book and read on.

  The preacher persisted in his questioning, “So, this demon drove your people away from this area, you say?”

  Winsloe nodded his head vigorously in agreement, but then explained, “We tried to make war on him, Reverend, but he would not be found in his resting place, and heard the arrow before it was released from the bow. He came and went like a breeze that turns leaves but does not rustle them, and struck like a serpent at the heels of my people—they never knew when or where the danger might lay.

  “Sometimes he might be glimpsed at the crossings of a deer trail or warrior path, still and white as a column of snow, appearing no older than his victims, perhaps seven years of age, waiting for some young boy hunting squirrels, or girl-child out looking for roots or nuts for her granny’s cook pot. Once he drew close they could not escape him, but simply awaited his touch. This was attested to by frantic parents who had come upon these scenes and called out to their young of the danger. Their cries were unheeded… no one knows why this was so, but it was believed the snow boy practiced great magic on his victims—casting a scent that rendered them senseless.

  “In the first days of this, in the time of my great-grandfather, the snow boy might be accompanied by a woman as white as he, who would remain behind him and many paces away, hiding and watching from the underbrush. But in my father’s time she was seen no more.

  “After many years of this, so my father said, our medicine men conferred with one another, and with every band that hunted south of the Raritan, and declared that this was ‘Blood Ground’ to be left for the evil spirit that ruled here. They ordered the tribe to stay north or west of this area, as we were never a numerous people and could not spare our children. So the people did so and were happy to leave and never return.”

  “But you did,” the minister seized upon this fact, “so you must not have believed in this pagan nonsense?”

  The old man chose not to answer directly, but replied with careful deliberation, “When I decided to come here, my people had long left me behind and I did not know how to find them again, and as the land was cheap and I had no place to stand upon because the government had sold it out from beneath my feet, I came here.”

  According to the preacher’s narrative, here the elder had stopped and glanced from the corner of his eye to see his reaction, then seeing none added mildly, “I had no children and was no longer one myself. Besides, by that time white devils were everywhere.”

  The shocked preacher, feeling by this statement that he had been “tried on” to use his own words, had excused himself of Winsloe’s hospitality, but recorded his tale for posterity nonetheless in the hopes that it had contained some nugget of actual Indian lore.

  The writer of the history that Preston held in his hands added that more modern anthropological research had indeed proven the Lenape belief in the “Snow Boy” spirit was an ancient practice. But, he added wryly, the adaptation of the legend, as told by Winsloe, might also be seen in the context of a Native American parable of the violent encroachment of European culture into the Lenape homeland. He strongly suspected that Winsloe’s tale had been concocted for the benefit of a nosy clergyman, and perhaps better illustrated White/Indian relations of that era rather than shedding any new light on Lenape spiritual practices.

  Preston shut the book and clutched it to his chest, smiling. “Idiot,” he said aloud.

  The head librarian, Mrs. Cohansey, who was making a point of passing by in order to keep an eye on her most troublesome patron, threw him a murderous look, but continued on. She carried a few books in her arms and began slamming them loudly into their places on the shelves.

  Preston glared after her, but was not annoyed. He was too enthralled with his discovery, this evidence that, in his opinion, supported what he already knew… that only he knew. As the librarian moved deeper into the stacks, he fished a pint of bourbon from his jacket pocket, cast a quick glance around, uncapped it, and took a deep victorious swallow. The glorious burn of it rode silkily down his throat and, like a magic vapor, rose from his warming innards to his brain.

  Hearing the clacking footsteps of Cohansey returning he hastily returned the bottle to his pocket. She eyed him as she passed, but Preston let it go, fearful she would smell the liquor on his breath and have him removed from the building. He could not afford to anger her today, he reminded himself—not when he was so hot on Gabriel’s trail. He kept his eyes downcast as she returned to the stairs, descending to the first floor.

  Preston re-read the old Indian’s words, perhaps seven years of age, he had said, while the events he had related were at least three hundred years before. Now Gabriel appeared not much more than thirteen or fourteen, Preston mused. Somehow, he ages much more slowly than we do, his thoughts continued, the years passing like days for him as he matures as slowly, as imperceptibly, as an ancient oak.

  He remembered Gabriel’s evening with him on the beach, his talk of “sleeps,” of “painted people.” He’s like Rip Van Winkle, Preston realized, sleeping for—how long?—years?—a generation?—then rising again to find a new world, even a new people awaiting him. Gabriel not only heals and grows during these hibernations, Preston surmised, but his existence in the memory of man dies away as well—he and his acts fade to nothingness so that he is both new and unexpected when he rises once more. What a marvelous facility, he thought.

  Is Gabriel a member of a species grown incredibly adaptive and successful, he wondered, or the last in an ancient chain of creatures that has somehow survived against all odds? It occurred to him that either answer would be as remarkable as the other.

  The only other reference he came upon that appeared to shed any light on the creature was a thin, flimsy book of local legends. There, sandwiched in between the usual stories of the “Jersey Devil,” and tales of hidden pirate treasure buried along the coast, he found a brief mention of a “Phantom Child” haunting the Great Pine Barrens. Appearing as far south as the salt marshes of Wessex County, but no further north than the Raritan, bounded on the west by the Delaware Bay and
River, the child was a very local, if roaming, ghost. The recounting of the legend lay the brief tale out in the simple, unembellished manner of the pamphleteer.

  The child, so the legend went, had roamed this vast region since some of the earliest White settlements. Its restless travels raised questions amongst those same people as to whether he had been the victim of savage red men, or perhaps murdered by his own parents. In any event, he was a phantom to be greatly feared, as he craved the company of his own peers—when he was known to be in the area, it was a near certainty that a child would soon vanish. He was, as one purportedly authentic colonial witness attested, a ghostly child seen only “twixt dusk and dawning.”

  Preston slipped the slim volume into the jacket pocket that did not contain his liquor, hiding the larger history beneath his shirt. Confident that he would not be searched, he felt justified in his theft by his scholarship and cause. He marched out of the reference section anxious to meet with his daughter and compare notes. Arching an imperious eyebrow when passing Mrs. Cohansey’s desk, he said loudly, “An occasional dusting of the stacks wouldn’t hurt,” before sailing out the door to the street beyond.

  ?

  Pleading a sudden case of nausea, Fanny left work early. It was just past five in the afternoon, but the sun had already vanished behind lowering clouds, shrouding the landscape in a fine grey mist. Fanny felt herself hurrying against the coming darkness, spooked as she was by her father’s strange story of a feral boy, the missing children, and now by the scarlet threads she had found woven into the tapestry of Wessex Township’s history.

  After her afternoon’s research, the small town she had always found so staid and dependable threatened to drift apart like a mirage. Even without the unifying theme provided by her father’s bizarre story of an ageless, predatory child, the history of the region, when viewed through his prism, was dark and unsettling.

  With the darkness and its sheen of moisture, the lawns and porches of the homes around her grew unfamiliar: the harmless ghosts suspended from the trees of front yards, the carved faces of the pumpkins that watched her progress, alien symbols—indecipherable warnings posted along her path. The clapboards of her cottage glowed whitely near the opposite corner ahead, and Fanny hurried to reach her door before the last of the feeble light was drawn down and true night began.

  From the corner of her eye she noticed a movement between the houses. Without stopping, she turned her head in time to see a boy, dressed as a scarecrow it seemed, trotting through the backyards of the homes, matching her pace. Before she could completely take him in he disappeared behind the next house she would have to pass. Without thinking or questioning her own actions, she crossed the empty street between the parked cars and to the opposite sidewalk.

  Clutching her cloth book bag to her breasts, she chanced another look as she overtook the driveway of the house the boy had gone behind. With a start, she found him waiting at the top of the drive. No one appeared home as there was no car parked there, no lights within.

  The boy regarded her in silence and stillness. It was too dark now to see his expression and Fanny had no wish to—her sunroom glowed like a beacon just two houses away. But, before she could tear her eyes away from the apparition, the boy raised a hand, whether in greeting or farewell she was past considering. She broke into a run.

  Within moments she was throwing open the front door. Clattering into the foyer, she was greeted by her father from the back of the house, “Fanny, you’re home at last! Come in here and see what I’ve found.”

  Closing and locking the door behind her, Fanny dropped her bag and gulped down air. Loki sped toward her down the hallway, then slowed and eyed her warily from a distance. After a few moments, Fanny chanced a peek from behind the narrow curtained windows that framed the doorway.

  The boy, whoever he was, had vanished, swallowed up by the wet night, but she could not forget the image of his raised hand, the astonishingly long fingers.

  ?

  Her father took no heed of Fanny’s blanched complexion or the slight tremor in her hands as she joined him in the kitchen. Like a proud storekeeper with his wares, he stood over the books he had stolen. They were laid open on the kitchen table to the passages he wished her to read.

  Filling the kettle, Fanny set it on a burner; then crossed to her father giving him a small kiss on his grizzled cheek. She smelled alcohol, but his words had sounded clear enough. He wasn’t drunk yet. “Hi Pops,” she murmured. Unloading her own findings from her book bag, she set them on the table without comment.

  “You’re home early,” he commented. Then, before she could explain how upsetting her day had become and, more importantly, tell him about the boy who had followed her home, he continued, “All the better! I’ve located some substantiating documents that I think shed some light on this phenomenon of Gabriel. I’m sure you’ll agree once you’ve had a chance to review them.” He shoved the books across the table in her direction.

  “Oh Dad,” she began when she saw that not only had he taken them without permission, but had marked certain passages with yellow highlighter as well.

  “No one will miss them,” he muttered.

  Fanny bit her tongue and sighed, turning back to the stove-top and the now whistling kettle. The kitchen felt warm and comforting, and her recent fears faded somewhat. “I could have checked those out for you, Pop,” she admonished Preston, while brewing her tea. “You didn’t have to steal them… honestly, sometimes …” She left the thought unfinished, adding some milk and joining him at the table.

  As soon as she sat she noticed that the windows that looked out into their small backyard were black mirrors now. She thought of how she and her father must look to someone standing outside in the darkness, framed as they were in the golden glow of the room. Rising suddenly, she pulled the yellow curtains together to shut out the darkness and all that it might contain—the image of the boy hovering like an indecipherable warning in her mind’s eye—the long, attenuated fingers like claws raised in a black benediction, an ominous farewell.

  “What’s wrong with you?” Preston asked, studying her face. Then, pointing to her papers, remarked eagerly, “I’ve been waiting all afternoon for you to get home. What have you got for me?”

  Regaining her composure, Fanny sat once more, spreading out the photocopied pages of her own research. Then, after taking a sip of tea, began to tell him of her findings:

  “There was a series of missing children cases in Wessex County in the 1930s, during the Great Depression which were blamed on tramps passing through the area. And until the disappearance of Seth Busby, those kidnappings, or murders, or whatever they were, were considered isolated events—except that while everything appeared quiet here, there were children vanishing in ones, twos, and sometimes threes, all across the southern part of the state. They were all separated by years, even decades, and so there was never any reason to connect them, and I’m not sure there’s a reason now… I hope there isn’t,” she added quietly.

  Raising his face to his daughter once more, Preston listened to the summation of what she had discovered in the library’s archives. Loki, having followed his mistress into the kitchen, now regarded her owlishly from a perch atop a counter. Forbidden from kitchen surfaces, he instinctively recognized when the normal laws of the household were in temporary suspension. Refraining from purring lest he break the spell, he watched in contented silence with his large, golden eyes.

  “In the next county north there was another series in the 1850s that made the papers of the times and achieved a great deal of notoriety. These disappearances were thought to be the work of Black slaves escaping from the South via the Underground Railroad. Apparently a rumor was started that a settlement of these refugees had brought the practice of Voodoo with them and were kidnapping and sacrificing White children to their African gods. Lynchings were only just prevented by the intervention of federal troops, though they were not able to stop the looting and burning of a number of homes bel
onging to the escapees. No evidence was ever discovered to support the allegations and the crimes remain unsolved to this day.”

  Fanny paused to catch her breath and allow her father to read the supporting documents. Preston snorted in derision several times as he perused the material, and she heard him murmur, “Idiots,” from time to time.

  Taking a long sip of her cooling tea, she selected a copy of an article printed at the time of the events concerning the “Runaway Colony.” Fanny slid it across the tabletop to Preston.

  “I probably shouldn’t show you this,” she said. “What you’ve told me about Gabriel can’t be true, Dad. You must know this… I know it, but…” her fingers remained on the article. “I can’t explain all this either, but it can’t mean what you think it means. It’s just not possible. So when you read this remember what you’ve always told me, ‘Be skeptical.’”

  Preston snorted more loudly, “This from a Catholic, by god! If that’s not irony I don’t know what is!” Snatching the paper from beneath her fingertips, he brought it up to his face.

  It was written apparently by the same reporter who had covered the disappearances attributed to the so-called Voodoo cult, and had been crafted in the free-wheeling, highly-opinionated prose of the 1800s. Preston understood within a very few sentences that the reporter was performing an investigative follow-up on the tragic events he had reported upon earlier.

  “Dear readers,” he began, “as regards the woeful acts that have befallen our small communities of late in this dreadful and, as of yet, inexplicable loss of our children, it has behooved me to investigate yet further than our constabulary seem capable of accomplishing. Firstly, I must report that we, the people, have acted inexcusably in the matter of the Negro colony that has of late been established on the banks of the Wendigo River. Whereas, the Good Book exhorts that all men are our brothers and that it is our duty to aid the poor and downtrodden, we have not just failed to do so in their case, but rather have acted the role of Herod or Pilate, torching their meager shacks and foodstuffs, beating and whipping men, women, and children, and driving off their livestock. The people involved in this outrage were just prevented from heinous and indiscriminant murder! Is this how we fulfill our roles as Christians? These poor folks were better off under the lash of their hated slave masters than while in our barbarous care! Yet more damning, not a scintilla of evidence was found against them! They did not possess our missing children nor were any human remains discovered, even after their homes had been knocked down and razed, and their gardens dug up and despoiled! The only symbol of religious practice that could be found was not of the black arts of Africa, but a small chapel with the cross of Christ Jesus hung above its simple altar!”