Sowing Poison

Home > Other > Sowing Poison > Page 20
Sowing Poison Page 20

by Janet Kellough


  “Whatever or whoever,” Lewis agreed. They moved even more cautiously after that.

  The trail seemed to lead them deeper into the forest, following the contours of the great sand hills that Lewis knew lay underneath. In many places the soil was loose and tree roots lay in a tangle just beneath the surface, waiting to snag his foot and trip him up. He could see how easily someone might have fallen. He became winded as they climbed and then descended the dunes, and his left knee pained him with every step.

  “Do you smell smoke?” Francis asked. Lewis sniffed the air, but could detect nothing until they had travelled another difficult hundred feet.

  I’m too old for this, Lewis thought. My body aches and my senses have all dwindled away.

  The trail appeared to be leading them away from West Lake and toward the windswept shores of Lake Ontario, an area that was unsettled and seldom visited.

  The forest suddenly opened up to reveal another small clearing. In it stood a ramshackle structure that appeared to have been built of old cast-off boards and pieces of log. One side of the structure had collapsed, but a thick plume of smoke rose from the chimney on the side that remained standing.

  The drag marks led straight across the clearing to the cabin door.

  “I think we should be very careful here,” Lewis said in a low voice. “I’m not sure who, or what, we’re dealing with.”

  “Do you think it’s Elliott? Has he been holed up here the whole time?”

  “I don’t know. But whoever it is either attacked Gilmour or at the very least dragged him off. Neither action speaks of anything but a desperate man.”

  “Why don’t we circle around behind and see if there’s another way in? I don’t fancy bursting in the front door.”

  There was no back dooryard, as a small dune pressed its sandy bulk against the rear wall of the cabin.

  “If we can get up on that, we should be able to see the whole clearing,” Lewis whispered.

  Francis nodded and they crept around the edge of the clearing as silently as they could. As they reached the top of the dune, they realized that it sloped sharply down on the other side into a small ravine before it rose again in yet another mound of sand. Stones projected a foot or two from the steep side, and as he slid down the bank, Lewis realized that a heavy oak door had been set into these stones.

  “A root cellar?” Francis whispered.

  Lewis was aware of a nauseating stench that seemed to emanate from behind the door. Something foul was hidden there.

  There was no lock to bar entry; instead the door was held shut by two iron bars that slotted into brackets on either side. Lewis lifted these out and, holding his breath, jerked the door open. A disgusting odour rushed out, making his eyes water, and it took a moment for him to register what was inside. Two wooden barrels, homemade from the look of them, stood against the back wall. A third had fallen over and spilled its contents over the bone-littered floor of the cellar. Crudely butchered hunks of meat strewed from the mouth of the open barrel.

  Lewis stepped inside for a closer look. The bones crunched unpleasantly under his feet. Some of them were very old, picked clean by the insects that no amount of stone wall could keep out. Some had bits of flesh still clinging to them.

  Francis tied his handkerchief over his mouth and nose in an attempt to protect himself from the worst of the stench, and inched into the cellar behind Lewis.

  “My God,” he said, “some of this is human.” He used his foot to flip over one of the chunks of flesh. At one end was what appeared to be the remains of a human foot. Lewis backed away from it hurriedly and slipped on the unstable footing beneath him. He fell squarely on his knee, the one that was already sore from their long trek, and he couldn’t suppress a yelp at the pain.

  “Sshh!” Francis said, but it was far too late for silence to save them. When Lewis looked up he was staring straight into the muzzle of an ancient musket.

  Martha had described the Holey Man, but her childish account had not prepared him for the reality of the man’s appearance. His mouth was a gaping hole and Lewis wasn’t entirely sure that he had any jaw at all, for his flattened, fish-like face seemed to merge with his neck. His eyes were odd in some way, and full of his fury at their trespass. But none of these strange details could divert Lewis for long; most of his attention was claimed by the gun that was pointed at his head.

  He sensed that beside him Francis was shifting his weight cautiously, as if he were making ready to spring. Lewis’s knee protested with a stabbing pain when he moved, but he did the same, preparing to rise at the same moment. They could not both be shot, for it took time to reload the gun. Lewis thought he was most likely to be hit, being the most directly in the line of fire, and he steeled himself for the shock. He hoped that he could move fast enough to avoid injury to anything vital.

  Even though he was ready for it, he was still a second or so behind the younger man when they moved. With a leap, Francis crashed into the Holey Man, knocking him down and sending the musket flying. Lewis rolled to his right and crashed into the corner where a small cascade of bones brought him face to face with yet another horror.

  The skull had been scraped clean and the dome of the braincase had been cleaved in two, but it was still recognizably and unmistakably a human head.

  Lewis had no time to consider the ramifications of his find.

  His first impulse was to locate the gun, which had landed a few feet away from the doorway. He scrambled over to it. It had not been cocked or loaded. He threw it down again and went to help Francis, who was attempting to subdue the Holey Man, who howled and spat and kicked in a frantic effort to get away. Lewis pinioned the arms while Francis gained a stronger hold on the man’s feet. As soon as his limbs were immobilized, the Holey Man stopped struggling and went limp. His howls subsided to a whimper. Francis flipped him over so that he was lying face down, wrenched his arms behind him, and held him immobile with a knee in the small of his back. In one part of his mind, Lewis wondered where his son-in-law had learned such manoeuvres, but it was a question that would have to wait. Right now he had other, more pressing questions to ask.

  Gingerly he picked up the skull he had found and set it down in front of the Holey Man.

  “Oh, my God,” Francis said. “Did you do this?” and he gave his prisoner’s arms a wrench.

  “Found it,” the Holey Man whined. “Old Man say dead meat no good. Not in woods, in marsh. Belly hurt. Not dead long.” But with his horrendous and deformed mouth, this statement was unintelligible to his questioners and sounded like nothing more than a long nasal whimper.

  Lewis cautioned Francis with a glance. “We won’t get to the truth of the matter by frightening him.”

  He crouched down in front of the Holey Man, whose features were truly monstrous, a twisted parody of a normal face, the eyes lash-less above the deformed nose and mouth. The ears were wrong, too; tiny and set forward in a peculiar way. In fact, everything seemed peculiar, and Lewis suspected that the horrendous hare lip was only a part of what was wrong with this poor creature. A number of pelts of varying origin — muskrat, beaver, fox, coon — had been haphazardly sewn together into a sort of cloak that he wore over his shoulders, and a hat of similar design lay nearby. But Lewis did not see much evidence of the “holey” clothing that Sophie had described. His pants were of good quality and intact, and under the furs he sported a brown jacket of very familiar design. The boots he wore were too small for him, but the caps had been sliced so that his feet would go in, and his bare webbed toes stuck out through the slits. Before they had been mutilated, the boots had been first-quality — city boots. Lewis began to get a very uneasy feeling about where these articles had come from.

  “What’s your name?” he asked softly.

  There was no answer. Lewis wasn’t sure if he had been heard so he reached out to turn the man’s face toward him, so that he would understand he was being addressed, but the Holey Man flinched at his hand’s approach, so he let it fall. H
is gesture did, however, gain the man’s full attention, and he repeated his question in a louder voice.

  “What’s your name?”

  “O-ee.” Lewis struggled to understand the words. He realized that the Holey Man’s lips had difficulty closing over the gaping hole that was his mouth. “O-ee. O-ee.” And finally with an enormous effort, “Bo-ee.”

  “Boy? That’s your name? Just Boy?”

  The Holey Man peered at Lewis through the shaggy mass of hair hanging in front of his eyes.

  “Old Man call me …” he seemed to have to think a little, “Old Man call me Idiot.”

  Lewis understood only the last word, and felt a twist of pity for this poor malformed creature.

  “May I call you Boy? Is that the best name?” The Holey Man obviously understood him, for he nodded his assent. “Where did the head come from, Boy?”

  “Ra.” He jerked his head to the right to indicate a place away from the cabin.

  “Are there any more?”

  The Holey Man didn’t answer, but his eyes darted back toward the cabin.

  “I wonder if Gilmour’s in the shack.”

  Francis heaved the Holey Man to his feet and half-dragged him up the dune and down the other side to the cabin. Now that they were closer, it was evident to them that the shack was in the process of falling down. When a portion of the roof had collapsed, it had smashed most of one wall beneath it, causing the entire structure to lean alarmingly. It wouldn’t take much, Lewis thought — a heavy snow load and it would come tumbling down.

  When they went inside, it took his eyes a few moments to adjust to the dimness of the interior, but his awareness of the stench was immediate. It was the smell of half-cured hides and offal and of bedding and pots gone unwashed for a very long time. There was a richer and more immediate odour, as well, one that was far more pleasant, although not nearly strong enough to mask the essential fetor of the room. It seemed to be coming from the iron pot that steamed on the crude hearth in the corner.

  The wall beside the fire was a jumble of broken logs, boards, and bark shingle. No attempt had been made to clean it up or repair it in any way, and there were a number of gaping holes in the rubble where the wind blew through. This would be a sad place to spend a winter, Lewis thought to himself.

  “Oh, my God. Look.” Francis was staring up at the ceiling. There were several joints hanging from the rafters of the shack. Most of them were unrecognizable as anything but hunks of meat, but one shoulder still sported most of an arm and Lewis thought that one piece might be a buttock.

  Francis began to retch. Lewis himself felt the bile rise in his throat. He had seen many terrible sights in his time — from the dreadful wounds inflicted on the bodies of soldiers to the white and bloated dead in the aftermath of battle; he had seen young women strangled and mutilated by an insane murderer and he had seen that same murderer struggle and kick as the life was choked out of him — but he had never seen anything quite like this deliberate degradation and destruction of human flesh.

  He drew his handkerchief to cover his nose, and continued his inspection of the cabin. The fireplace was a crudely built pile of fieldstone with a wooden chimney that had been twisted askew by the fallen roof. A large homemade wooden ladle lay on the hearth beside several stone jars that appeared to be full of a greasy fat. Lewis grabbed the ladle and stirred the contents of the iron pot that had been set to simmer over the fire. Its principle ingredient rose to the top. Like the grisly relic he had discovered in the root cellar, the top of the skull had been cracked in two, but the eyes were still intact and yellowed teeth protruded from underneath a bristly moustache. It was, without a doubt, the missing Mr. Gilmour. Gagging, Lewis quickly withdrew the ladle and the head sunk back into the simmering stew.

  The Holey Man had been watching without expression during this survey of the cabin. It was only when Lewis neared the corner opposite the fire that he seemed to become agitated again, and Francis was forced to restrain him once more.

  There were a jumble of items in a pile against the wall — a ragged pair of man’s trousers and the filthy remains of a woman’s dress. The trousers were gigantic, far too large to have ever fitted The Holey Man. It made no sense for him to have kept the dress. And then a possible explanation struck Lewis — these must be the relics of the trapper and his woman — the people with whom the Holey Man had lived. His parents, he supposed. He wondered how they had died. Killed when the roof collapsed, maybe, and the poor raggedy creature had been left behind to fend for himself?

  There were other pieces of apparel, as well, Gilmour’s orange cravat, some men’s underthings, a pair of leather boots, and another pair of trousers, the leg torn and covered in dried blood — trousers that matched the coat now worn by the Holey Man. No, not the Holey Man, for that was the name others had given him, this was Boy.

  As Lewis shifted the clothing to one side with his foot, Boy began to howl again. There were more treasures underneath the clothing — Gilmour’s gold pocket watch and Martha’s coral necklace. Lewis’s stomach turned at the thought of his granddaughter coming anywhere near this fetid hole, but then he realized that, in fact, she hadn’t. She had lost it when they were playing by the shore. The Holey Man — Boy — must have found it and brought it here to add to his hoard. Lewis hesitated for a moment; he knew he should leave things as they were. Everything was evidence. But the necklace had no bearing on what had happened here, he judged, and so he palmed it and put it in his pocket. He hoped Boy hadn’t noticed.

  There was more — three red buttons, a child’s toy soldier, a marble — things that might have been lost by others along the shore and found by Boy on his trap route around the lake. In addition, there was a brown calfskin folder. Inside was a sheaf of documents, legal papers from the look of them, but Lewis recognized none of the names on them, save one — a handwritten agreement that had yet to be signed. It was a conveyance of property, assigning Nathan Elliott’s share of his father’s estate to his brother Reuben “in exchange for agreed services.” There was no indication of what, exactly, these services consisted of.

  Puzzled, Lewis returned the papers to the folder. Had all of them belonged to Nate Elliott, or only the one? If so, had Boy found it and, unable to read it, stuffed it into the folder with the others? If that was the case, where had the others come from? And did this mean that the skull and rotting meat in the root cellar was all that was left of the missing Nate?

  Lewis was about to replace the papers when he realized that one side of the folder felt much thicker than the other. He pulled at a strip of leather along the side. It slid back easily, revealing a pocket underneath the flaps that had held the papers in place. Inside was a handful of banknotes, all of them American in origin.

  “What do you think we should do?” Francis asked. “Should one of us go for the constable or should we try to take him in ourselves?”

  “Maybe we should try to take him. I don’t think either of us wants to have to stay here and wait.”

  As Francis turned to speak, the Holey Man saw his opportunity. One hard shove and Renwell went crashing to the floor. The Holey Man scrambled toward the door. Lewis threw himself in that direction, and only just closed his hand around the fleeing man’s foot. The Holey Man kicked and Lewis lost his grip, but by this time Francis had regained his feet. He knocked the shaggy figure flat and blocked his escape route. The Holey Man slithered away from them, and seeing his exit barred, lunged toward one of the gaps in the rubble of the caved-in wall. Clawing at the broken logs, he tried to force himself through.

  Francis slammed into him again and the Holey Man went flying toward the hearth. For a moment Lewis was sure he would land in the fire, but, arms flailing, he managed to avoid the flames, crashing instead into the iron kettle that hung above. The greasy contents spilled over the side and splashed over one of the man’s arms. He spun round and round the cabin holding his hand and howling from the scalding pain.

  Lewis tried to stop him. “We’ll
help you,” he said. “Just stop and we’ll put some cold grease on it. It will stop hurting so much then.”

  Francis and Lewis were so occupied with trying to calm this hysterical outburst that they failed to notice that the Holey Man’s wild scramble had knocked one of the stone jars into the fire and dislodged part of the rubble wall. The flame flared as it found the grease, then the tinder-dry cedar shakes from the roof exploded in a flashover that ignited the wooden chimney.

  They had not thought that the Holey Man could make more noise than he had already been making, but now he rushed forward with an ear-splitting scream and began trying to put out the fire with his bare hands. Lewis grabbed him by the shoulders and pulled him away.

  “Get some water. Is there a bucket?”

  There was, just outside the door, but by the time Francis located it and filled it from the lake, the fire had engulfed the entire wall of the cabin.

  “This is useless, it’s gone,” he said. “Let’s get out of here.”

  Together they hauled the Holey Man through the door. They thought he would calm down once outside, but he continued to struggle with them, and then in one frantic, twisting motion pulled away. He went straight back into the cabin, his howls still audible over the roar of the flames.

  Lewis tried to go after him, but by this time the smoke was thick and the heat intense, and Francis pulled him back just as what was left of the roof fell in a storm of flame.

  “You’ll burn, too, if you go in there.”

  The Holey Man’s screams ended abruptly and they knew there was no point in continuing to fill the bucket with water or to throw it on the burning cabin. They could do little but wait a safe distance away until nothing was left but a smouldering heap of charred wood. It was best to leave the constable to sift through the debris and retrieve what was left of the body, Lewis decided, if anything at all remained of Gilmour’s head or the grisly meat that had been hanging in the cabin.

 

‹ Prev