With the timing of Rebecca’s birth, it was more than likely they had conceived on their wedding night (as it should be). The birth became Gerard’s most joyous time. He reveled in being her father. His world seemed complete now. He had a skip in his step as he went about his daily business. Happiness was spelled; r-e-b-e-c-c-a…
. . .
Banger was waiting at the gate of the graveyard. The desolation in his face told the entire story. He had taken the liberty of stringing the perfunctory yellow tape around the entrance of the graveyard. This day, Banger would make sure that none of the curious would enter.
Tom ordered Elias and Howie to guard the entrance as he and Banger would go in alone. As the two made their way through the witch grass and the fallen headstones, not a single word was uttered. As they neared the mausoleum, Tom could see, off in the distance, the pale, lifeless body of Rebecca Hibler laid out on a stone bench in front of the crypt. He stopped for a moment, Banger turned,
“Are you ok Tom?”
He nodded, but inside he was not ready for this. He had witnessed many a murder scene in Philadelphia. In his first year as a detective, he had come upon a drug-induced carnage where three men were shot, and their throats were cut, but this was different. These were now his people, and he knew and had come to care for them. He feared this scene, it would draw him in, and he would have to embrace this child’s death and all the grief that came along with it. Here, he couldn’t simply be detached; Brunswick didn’t want a cold-hearted sheriff. They wanted one who would share in their grief; and now, he was about to experience their anguish and pain firsthand.
Outside, Elias was standing guard while Howie was busy on the phone with Lucy, “Damn-it girl, where have you been all morning.” Her answer didn’t seem to satisfy him, “Goddamn! You could make a preacher cuss! Now listen here, you quit goin’ around your ass to get to your elbow. We got some big hullabaloo over by the old cemetery.”
Before he could tell any more of what was going on to one of the biggest blabber-mouths in town, a familiar Buick Regal came flying down the county road with reckless abandon. Its brakes screeched to a halt only a few feet in front of Howie’s patrol vehicle as he jumped out;
“Goddamn! What-in-the-hell is goin on ahere?” He recognized the driver;
“Well, that now just dills my pickle!”
Gerard Hibler threw his door open and stormed the cemetery gate. Elias caught him as he was charging under the yellow tape.
“Now Please, Mr. Hibler, you can’t go in there.” His emotions were overflowing, “That’s my daughter in there.”
Howie sauntered over, and in a clownish attempt to take control of the situation patted the minister on the back;
“Now we don’t know that as of yet.” He casually took the pack of Camels out of his breast pocket, and seemingly with no hint of emotion, lit a cigarette, throwing the wooden match towards Hibler’s feet.
“Now see here, I know you’re just mad enough for a bishop to kick in stained glass windows. But you need to go on home and let us all do our work. Ya hear?”
“Work? Let go of me, I know damn well that’s my daughter!”
. . .
Banger offered him a small bottle of Vic’s Vapor Rub. Tom shook him off;
“Na, I’m ok, I think I need to keep all my senses about me, but thanks anyway.”
As they neared the mausoleum, Tom slowed his pace. He wanted to take the entire scene in. This one really was going to shake him to the core.
It was nearly eleven o’clock in the morning, but you couldn’t tell that in Pinewoods. The creepy darkness was speared with a single ray of bright sunlight that amazingly shone right down on the body of the little girl. Tom noticed that the air was deadly still and morose. Her tiny body was splayed out on the stone bench directly in front of the crypt. Banger had covered the body with an old Pan Am blanket that was given out on transatlantic flights long before the victim was ever born. As Tom stood a few feet before the corpse, he looked around the area; the spray pattern of blood appeared like a sick attempt at modern art. The blood on the ground created a flower-like pattern; almost as though someone had painted it onto the leaf-covered forest bottom. It made Tom step back momentarily; never in his career had he ever seen anything like that. He was now looking at it as purely a law enforcement officer, and he was admiring the scene in a morbid, detached manner. He removed a small digital camera from his breast pocket and took a few photos of it (just too unbelievable). He put the camera away, removed his cap and brushed his hair back, took a deep breath and reached for the edge of the blanket. He gingerly raised it, just enough, and lowered his head and cocked his neck to peer what lies beneath, and what he saw startled him. Banger took notice to the loud, deep, and labored breath the sheriff involuntarily took. He wistfully shook his head;
“Tiss an ungodly ting…Tiocfaidh ár lá (our day will come).”
. . .
She was lying on her back; her dainty body was a greyish-white, marble-like with small purplish markings. The limbs were waxy and stiff. The sternum had somehow been split open, the edges were jagged, and the flesh was torn (no surgical tool was used here). Her arms lay down towards the ground, her delicate, lifeless hands both lye on the ground. Her head was turned in his direction, her eyes were half opened, and sunken-in; there was no life left to those steely blue eyes. They were grey and lifeless, no longer able to tell Tom what had happened to her. On one side of her face were three jagged lines of blood. He raised the blanket further and peered closer. He wouldn’t touch the body till Joe arrived. He leaned over; there was a sickening odor of raw meat. The blood on her face was just that, the lines were not wounds or even scratches. It seemed as though something had run their fingers (or what?) down her face. Her tiny mouth was ajar; it had allowed that last breath to escape. A stream of dried blood flowed out of the corner of her mouth, there was reddish tinted foam filling her nose and mouth. As he stood, he could hear a commotion coming his way. Banger jolted towards it;
“Now, here now…What in tha blazings.”
Coming from the direction of the front gate, came Gerard Hibler charging his way towards the mausoleum while Howie was trying to put his shoulder in front of him in a futile attempt to slow the grieving father. Banger couldn’t hide his annoyance,
“Tat Howie is a right eejit altogether (Howie is a complete idiot).”
With the butt of the Camel still stuck in the corner of Howie’s’ mug, he gasped for air; “Goddamn Mr. Hibler!” He turned towards the sheriff seeking both sympathy and aid; “I been running all over hell’s half acre with him!”
Tom carefully covered the body and walked toward Hibler. He calmly put his two hands up, halting Hibler;
“Gerard, this is an active crime scene. You have to go back.” He then softened his town, “She’s all of our child now…I can’t imagine your concerns.”
“No, you couldn’t.” Tears began to flow uncontrollably, his eyes peered over towards the body, the horror of the scene was too much for any parent. He cupped both hands over his face and began to wail. Tom put his arm around him and leaned towards his ear,
“Please, let the deputy take you back home. I will be out to you as soon as I know anything.” Hibler, still covering his face, shook his entire upper body in acknowledgement. As Howie escorted Hibler, Tom could see Joe Wouter and an assistant struggling with arms full of heavy equipment coming towards him.
As Joe reached the sight, he dropped the bags with a thud. Banger gave the group a strange look and wandered off.
. . .
The scene was perfectly simple and luridly horrific. It didn’t take any type of skill to observe that it was cold and dreadfully lacked mercy. Wouter and his assistant, silently and with utt
er apathy, went about their business. A multitude of pictures was taken from every angle before they would proceed to the corpse. Joe snapped on his first pair of rubber gloves (changing them every time he touched a different part of the scene). He peered into the cavity; the first thing that caught his eye was that it appeared that the heart was missing. His fingers warily lifted and moved the organs around; he reached in his bag for a tweezer and lifted a thick, animal-like hair from near the liver. He held it up and looked at it sideways, he sniffed it and dropped it into a plastic test-tube and sealed it with a cork. He had fully expected a fair amount of blood to have settled inside the body cavity, there was almost none (curious). He was silent, concentrating on the mass of flesh that lies in front of him. There was a fair amount of huh and hmm’s during this initial examination.
He stood and snapped the glove off and tossed it into the pile.
“Tom, I have absolutely no doubt, these are the same types of injuries that occurred in those old cold cases.”
(Tom thought to himself; I’m starting to wonder if the cases are cold for only this town?)
“Joe, I know; a lot of the details were never made public, but this looks exactly like we have been studying, the same damn lunatic.”
Joe’s eyebrows raised; “Lunatic? Hardly. Tom, there was an animal involved.”
“Post-mortem?”
“No…no, not likely.”
“But Joe, look how the body was opened up, have you ever seen an animal do that.”
As the words left his mouth; and with his thoughts distracted by the tragedy before him, he noticed how eerily quiet it had become. His scenes were alive, but none else. Not a single bird was chirping. Suddenly he could feel eyes burning a hole through him. Its intentions were ominous and foreboding, much like a spider that feels the weak vibrations a fly makes when captured in its web, anxious to dispatch the prey. It frightened the daylights out of him. He looked about, was the beast lurking?
Joe, as detached as he was at crime scenes, could also feel something lurking off in the distance. Joe’s assistant had already gone back to the truck, leaving Tom and Joe alone with Rebecca’s corpse. The two anxiously looked at the body, as though they were expecting the little girl to warn them as to what was circling. There was a quiet gloom, it was midday, but you couldn’t tell it. The air was stale and hard to breathe. Darkness filled the graveyard. A mist had begun to encircle the pair. Their eyes scanned the crumbling assemblage of tombstones. Just beyond their sight; an ear-piercing crack of a branch made their hearts skip a beat. The sound had frightened the pair pale; but now, all they could hear was the thunderous pounding in their chest. Without a word, they looked at each other. These two, educated, professional men, what could they be afraid of? Off in the distance they heard panting, it came from a powerful source, it was heavy and deliberate. The air of the beast forced back and forth over the flicking tongue; savoring the air for a trace of fear. The pair could feel its rage;
“Joe, do you hear what I’m hearing?”
Wouter’s eyes scarily looked sideways at Tom as he nodded.
And then, a sudden deafening shot from the front gate, it pierced the silence, startling not only the men, but also the haunting conundrum. The two sprinted off towards the entrance. Without sharing with each other their juvenile fright; they each quietly thanked God for the jolting intervention. They feared what might have been…they feared the dark.
. . .
When Tom came to where his deputies were parked, Howie had Hibler on the ground; his knee was in the small of his back as he handcuffed him while Elias stood in shock. Tom struggled to gain his breath. “What the hell is going on here?” Before Elias could tell the reality, Howie began his stumbling, jumbled, concocted story, “You see sheriff, it was like this…Mr. Hibler was having a hissy fit with a tail on it.”
“Damn it, Howie, will you speak English.”
Elias spoke-up, “He shot his pistol in the air.”
“He what?”
Elias glanced at his partner, “I’m sorry Howie,” he turned towards Tom, “but he couldn’t control Mr. Hibler, so he panicked and shot his pistol in the air.”
Tom grimaced, “Howie, give me your revolver.”
Howie mightily struggled with his words’ “Bu…but sheriff, it wasn’t like that…I ain’t telling no lie.”
Tom turned his head away while reaching his hand out, “Howie, your revolver. We will speak when we get back to the office.”
Howie huffed in protest; it was like getting castrated. He glared at Elias, how could he?
This situation had been diffused; Hibler was brushed off and told to return to his home and prepare to bury his daughter. This left Joe and Tom to wrap-up the scene. Once Banger returned, the two regained the courage. They looked at each other and nodded, they would share it later…in private.
CHAPTER 17
ABNER ROBERTS
You, dear children, are from God and have overcome them, because the one who is in you is greater than the one who is in the world.
-1 John 4:4
William had convinced Lilly to come home with him. His stepmother wouldn’t be home and it gave them a chance to rifle through her stuff that was boxed down in the cellar. He had burning questions and a burdening curiosity that needed to be fed.
When they got married, Anne had insisted that James lock her personal belongings away in the old root cellar. That part of the cellar had not been touched since Joshua had finished putting the roof on the house (a decade and a half before World War I). It was more a crawlspace than an actual cellar; it was guarded by an old wooden planked door with a padlock, nearly as old. What his parents didn’t know was that the hinge had recently come loose from the wall, making exploring a cinch.
Over the past week or so, William had convinced Lilly that there was something more than just weird about Anne. He had deeper suspicions, but he needed proof. The two tiptoed through the kitchen, with all her faults, Anne kept a clean kitchen. There were odd notes to herself on the refrigerator. William kept diligent about every aspect swirling around her, but he could make neither hide nor hair of these scribbled notes. William grabbed a chair, stood on his toes and reached on top of the refrigerator for a flashlight. William led the way with Lilly’s right hand on his shoulder, with her left-hand keeping her Hello Kitty backpack safe. In the house’s utter silence, William took notice how loudly the cellar door creaked, he lit the bottom of the stairs, took a deep breath and ventured down. With the ear-splitting creak of each step, William winced. Lilly was anxious, she kept patting William on the back, “Come-on…come-on.” When the pair got to the bottom, William reached for the string that hung from a single bulb that was meant to light the rest of the way. He stretched as the string swung back and forth, he pulled it, and Lilly was startled by the life-sized reindeer that graced the Willowsby lawn during each Christmas season. Next to them was a collection of two lawn mowers, the layers of caked on grass told you that they were on-the-fritz and James needed to tend to them. It was probably nothing more than spark plugs, but this was one of his household chores that James detested. On the work table, there was a half-torn box that once held toilet paper, it now held a tangle of old extension cords that seemed like yellow-colored snakes; writhing and threatening to grab one’s arm as he passed.
As they tiptoed deeper into the cellar of the house, they heard creaking from above, Lilly gasped for air. William raised his hand, “Shssh!” He listened further, “It’s na…nothing. Ho…house ju…ju…” She interrupted him mid-sentence by patting him on the back. He needed not struggle any further and flashed him the cutest smile she could muster. The door to the secret space, as William referred to it as, was in the deepest recesses of the root cellar. A maze of spider webs festoone
d the basement, some spread from corner to corner. Since his wife’s death, James did not have a moment to come down and work in his tool shop. The thick blanket of dust on nearly everything testified to his absence. William crouched in front of the portal; in this part of the cellar the floor was pure dirt. With one hand, he grabbed the bottom and the other the top, and gingerly pulled the door forward, using the padlock as a hinge. It scraped along the floor, he cringed again, not wanting the imaginary parent upstairs to hear. He wedged the door back and lit his flashlight. The ceiling was too low even for these adolescents to stand, so the two got on all fours. There was a cardboard box filled with soaps taken from an array of motels (odd thing since William couldn’t recall the last time they stayed in a motel). Next to it were the first mountain of boxes, they were all filled to the brim with newspapers. He reached in and pulled out a few, oddly they were all from vastly different years. He flashed the light on a few of the headlines;
HANS SCHMIDT FIRST PRIEST TO BE EXECUTED
RADIO FAKE SCARES NATION
DR EINSTEIN DEAD AT 76
He wondered what these papers had in common? William crawled deeper, towards the boxes that were stacked up in the far end of his secret space. He turned to see that Lilly wasn’t following, “Co…come-on.” She couldn’t hide her apprehension; she nervously brushed her golden hair back, “But I’m afraid.” He waved her in.
These boxes were all wooden and ancient, with the tops attached by tiny brass hinges. They turned the light towards the side of the first box;
Dr. Kilmer’s Swamp Root
Kidney Liver & Bladder Remedy
Binghamton, New York
The box next to it had a small chicken on the side and read;
A Wistful Tale of Gods, Men and Monsters Page 16