by Lewis Wolfe
Without waiting for her answer Arthur said, “You must have come a long way. It must have been very difficult. But I will be honest with you, Ellie. Hitchhiking will kill you. Maybe not today, maybe not tomorrow. But there will come a day when you meet the wrong man and your life will end. I do not want your life to end. Do you?”
Of course she didn’t. Everything she had done up to this point was driven by a survival instinct so powerful that it had been impossible to ignore. Death would have been easier on some occasions, but somehow she had fought through those moments all the same.
Arthur said, “I want to make a deal with you. Are you interested?”
“What deal?”
Arthur smiled. “You will stay here, with us, in the mansion. We will provide you with clothes, food, and shelter.”
This sounded too good to be true. If Ellie had learned one thing about life, it was that good things came at costs she was never able to afford.
She asked, “And in return?”
“In return…you will go to school here in Brettville. You will commit to building a life for yourself.”
Mary spoke up. “Now, listen here. Building a life for yourself isn’t an easy thing, and it gets much harder the longer you wait to do it. This isn’t a free ride. It will take effort on your part.”
Ellie didn’t know what to do, or even to say. Last night she had expected to have sex with the old man only to be discarded the next morning. She had grown accustomed to being a tool, an instrument of solace for lonely or frustrated men.
Now something was being offered to her from a place of kindness. Warmth. Ellie hated the fact that she couldn’t bring herself to trust any of it. Life had made her cynical at far too early an age.
If she wanted to run later, she always could, right? It wasn’t like she would be stuck here forever. If she didn’t like what was happening, she just had to wait until nobody was looking and be on her way.
So what did she have to lose?
(April 12, 2019)
Ellie came home from school only to find a bunch of expensive-looking cars parked in front of the mansion. None of the cars belonged to Arthur, so she knew there were visitors.
Before walking up the stone stairs leading to the front door Ellie turned to her left. Edging the mansion lay a large, fenced field where the horses roamed freely.
Ellie stopped at the fence and called out to the horses. The two animals looked up at her and quickly made their way over to the girl. They knew there was a good chance of treats in the shape of carrots or sugar cubes in their near future.
Soon two beautiful snouts competed with each other for the girl’s attention as she petted them.
Standing like this, connecting with the horses, made Ellie feel peaceful. It was a relationship that was free from judgment. The affection of these horses felt unconditional to her and in these precious moments Ellie could escape the judgment that was part of her daily life. Judgment that not only came from others but, most destructively, that which she passed on herself.
“I’m sorry, guys,” she whispered to the horses. “I’m all out of treats today.”
Ellie knelt and pulled some grass from the field. When she rose she held her hands up for the horses to see.
“Will some grass do, just for today?”
The horses chewed away at grass all day. They were very familiar with its bland flavor and certainly did not need the girl to feed it to them. But they took it from her anyway and, just because it came from her hands, it tasted much better than usual. Such was the relationship between human and horse, when handled respectfully.
Ellie stayed in the shared solitude with the horses until Mary’s voice called out from behind her.
“Ellie! We didn’t know you were back!”
Ellie turned around and watched as the middle-aged woman approached her. She wore her business clothes today, which told Ellie that the visitors to the mansion had to be important.
Mary reached the fence and together they petted the horses.
“Why didn’t you come inside?” the woman asked.
“Just chilling with the horses a little. Who are the people visiting today?”
Mary looked over to the cars as she said, “Big people today. Very powerful, most of them.”
“Why are they here? Is it business?” Ellie asked.
“It’s about the Southeastern Reintegration Project.”
Ellie had heard the term many times throughout her short stay at the mansion. It was as if Arthur and Mary’s entire existence revolved around it.
“That’s the job thing, right?” Ellie asked.
“It’s a little more than that,” Mary answered. “The Black Belt region is very vulnerable, economically speaking. Crime is a likely alternative for many people. The project creates jobs and housing for youths at risk, and even ex-cons.”
Ellie didn’t know what the Black Belt region was. She vowed to Google it the first chance she got.
The girl asked, “Youths at risk…. Kind of like me, huh?”
Mary nodded. “You’re not the first person Arthur has tried to help. You won’t be the last, either.”
Ellie had known Arthur for almost two months now and in that time she had come to see him as a warm and generous man. His words were always calm and collected, and never hostile.
“Why does he do it, Mary? Why does he spend so much money on that project?” she asked.
Ellie watched as the middle-aged woman hesitated. It wasn’t doubt born from weakness; Mary Holsworth didn’t know the meaning of that word. The doubt came from loyalty—the respect she had for her employer and his privacy.
Eventually Mary said, “Arthur’s family got rich from the slave trade. Slavery…. Ellie, it is a vile and bloody aspect of America’s short history. Arthur is just trying to do some good with the money he has inherited.”
Ellie said nothing. Her love for the old man that had picked her up from the highway that cold February evening grew larger each day. It grew from the kind words he always reserved especially for her and it grew now, in the company of Mary Holsworth.
Good men were very rare, Ellie knew. She was beginning to believe that perhaps she had found one. Or rather, that one had found her.
All the more reason that Arthur’s frantic screams during the night worried the girl. Those screams sometimes echoed through the dark mansion and forced icy shivers down her spine.
2
(May 9, 2019)
Arthur took an afternoon stroll through the private museum he had built over the years. It had started as a small collection that would easily fit into one room, and slowly turned into a museum that was housed in three adjacent rooms of his mansion.
It was a personal monument to the ugliness of his family’s past. One he’d erected to remind himself of where he came from and where he wanted to go.
There stood several mannequins in the dark corners of the rooms, all outfitted with various and authentic Ku Klux Klan robes. The walls were decorated with ritual swords and knives used by real Klan members; Arthur had certificates of authenticity for each and every item in his museum. The most expensive weapon he owned was a 1920s Knights of the Camelia sword. It was in exceptional condition, with most of the black paint on the handle still intact.
Today Arthur was interested in the centerpiece that stood in the middle room of his museum: a glass case that housed various old books, pamphlets, forms, and photographs. Documents of hatred and bigotry.
Arthur knew the propaganda of fear firsthand. His family hadn’t been members of the KKK in any official capacity, but they had always funded several factions. Apartheid, racial segregation, had somehow been his family’s obsession.
After the Act to Prohibit the Importation of Slaves had come into effect in 1808, slave owners started to breed their blacks and sold them nationally. The stronger and faster the slave, the more he was worth. At times the stud fee alone for a black man was worth a small house.
Arthur knew all of this because
the Toaves family had made its wealth as the middleman between breeders and farmers looking to procure new workers.
“Like cattle,” Arthur whispered to himself. “They treated them like cattle.”
When slavery was outlawed and money could no longer be made, capitalism turned into pure and irrational hatred.
Arthur’s eyes fell on a black-and-white photograph in the right corner of the glass case. It featured a small boy in a white robe, surrounded by grown men in their ghostly KKK costumes. An initiation ceremony, Arthur knew.
The boy was smiling, was excited. That was how these organizations lived on from generation to generation. Children were taught to hate, systematically and strategically, and witnessed violence against black people at the earliest age. Those little boys, sometimes girls too, never stood a chance.
Another girl Arthur wasn’t sure stood a chance was Ellie, he mused as he walked away from the glass case toward the door. She had skipped school quite a bit last month and Arthur wasn’t sure how to proceed with her.
If only she could see what he saw in her, maybe she would be willing to invest more in herself. Arthur understood, almost intuitively, that Ellie suffered primarily from self-loathing. She did not truly believe that she was worthy. Valuable.
He stepped into the hallway, greeted one of his maids, and set course for the main front door. What had happened to Ellie back in Cleveland? He had an idea, of course, but the girl refused to speak of it. She was fourteen, that uncomfortable age where boys were still afraid but men could already fall in love. Her pale blue eyes and lightly tanned skin hinted at her mixed heritage as much as they added to her natural beauty.
Arthur hoped she wouldn’t run off again. That she would stay. That she would let him help her. He repeated this prayer to himself as he stepped outside and walked toward the garage. If she let him help her, anything was possible. He believed that. He had to believe it. If he didn’t put stock in hope and redemption, what good was all the work he put in with his charities and the reintegration project?
He opened the garage and stepped inside. Of the six cars he owned, the Jaguar was by far his favorite. His only vice, Arthur thought, was that he loved to drive. Fast, sometimes even dangerously. Three years ago that had almost cost him his life.
Arthur shook his head and opened the door of his Jaguar. He had spent enough time in the past for one day.
3
(September 22, 2019)
Darkness was already falling on Brettville when Ethan stepped outside. He had just finished his late shift at Brooks Mechanical and was exhausted.
“Stealing shit sure was less work,” Ethan mumbled to himself as he started to walk off the terrain and toward the main road running through Brettville.
“Nah, nah, man,” Ethan corrected himself as he passed the factory’s outer gate. “We don’t think like that anymore.”
He greeted two guys that passed by. They were coming in for the night shift.
It had been two years now since his parole officer had made Ethan aware of the Southeastern Reintegration Project. He had agreed to it then because he had nowhere else to be, anyway. If it didn’t work out, he had told himself, he could always clean out whatever factory was dumb enough to employ him.
But it hadn’t worked out that way. His parole officer sent him off to Brettville and Ethan had met the old man himself.
Ethan thought back to that first meeting with Arthur Toaves as he walked along the main road toward the center of town. The old man had been soft-spoken and kind in ways Ethan hadn’t known before. It wasn’t the weak kind of kindness, Ethan had realized. The old man knew exactly what he wanted and why he wanted it. Difference was, he had wanted it for Ethan.
The old man had said, “You’ll be a great fit for the project. I believe in you.” Over time Ethan had started believing in himself, too.
Now he worked at Brooks Mechanical, had done so for almost two years, and he helped make pressure vessels. Ethan Walker was an honest man. He put in an honest day’s work for an honest wage. He shook his head in mild disbelief. His years as a burglar almost seemed like a distant dream now.
That dreamlike state seemed to follow Ethan on his walk home. He knew the feeling of being followed, of being stalked. His time on the streets had educated him in ways he didn’t care to remember. That feeling was with him now and he turned around to see who wanted any of his business.
He saw nothing. Only the main road stretched out next to Brooks Mechanical, running off toward the farmlands, chasing the town’s border in the dark.
Ethan shook his head, turned around, and upped his pace. Other men would have blamed themselves. They would have said that they were tired and had to be imagining things. Not Ethan. He had survived year after year on the streets on nothing more than his instinct and common sense. If that instinct told him now that somebody was following him, then somebody was following him.
The center of town came into view and Ethan was all the happier for it. Of course, nobody was out at this time.
A few men were drinking their sorrows away at Ray’s Liquors, the local bar, but other than that the town streets were abandoned. Should he go in there? Seek the company of men he didn’t really like just to escape the dread building up inside of him?
Before Ethan could make up his mind a strange sensation crawled up on him. It started in his toes and quickly ran up toward his knees. An itch, but not on the outside of his body, not anywhere he could scratch.
It worked its way toward his chest, where it extended to his shoulders and neck, and for a moment Ethan thought he was having a heart attack. But the itch passed along from his neck to the inside of his head and roared through his skull.
The feeling was maddening and in desperation Ethan clawed at his head, hoping to relieve himself of this undefined torture. It didn’t help.
“Yo, Ethan!” The voice that called out to him was familiar. Ethan had known it for years and, yet, it couldn’t be him.
It couldn’t be Billy. It couldn’t be the boy he used to work the neighborhoods with. The only one he had ever considered a friend. The friend that had gotten shot when they were stupid enough to run from the cops. Shot by the bullet that had missed Ethan by mere inches and pierced Billy’s chest instead.
With the itch raging inside his head, Ethan turned around and saw a shadow standing a short distance away from him. The shadow stood hunching underneath a streetlight, eerily immovable in its presence.
Ethan squinted his eyes to make out the features of the stranger’s face. He found himself unable to focus.
Just as the torture inside Ethan’s skull rose to new heights, the shadow raised its hand and waved at him slowly.
“Yo, Ethan!” The voice rasped along the main road until it reached Ethan’s ears. From there the message fought for attention with the itch inside his head.
The shadow dashed forward and then it was all just instinct. Ethan ran as fast as he could along the main road.
Tears filled his eyes. The torment inside his head was almost as unbearable as the anxiety building up inside the pit of his stomach. Where could he go? Where could he run? Who in this town would help him? Barely able to think, Ethan realized there was only one answer. The old man!
Ethan turned left off the main road and ran as fast as his legs could carry him. The itch in his head had made room for a burn, rivaled only by the feeling of his lungs ready to explode.
He passed the Pineview Baptist Church on his right and knew that he was nearing the west border of Brettville.
Ethan shouldn’t have looked over his shoulder. He knew it the moment he did it. The shadow was close on his tail and was now chasing him on all fours. Galloping toward him as its ugly panting poisoned the air around it.
Ethan left the church behind him and passed the border onto a sandy road covered by an arch of enormous pines. They lurched over him as he ran along the road toward the Toaves mansion.
Pines as far as the eye could see, their branches clawing over
Ethan’s head as if extending hands in a dance of cold and malicious chaos. Pines to his left, pines to his right.
With the roaring shadow close behind him, Ethan ran along the sandy road and hoped, prayed, believed, that he would make it to safety.
The end of the road came into sight and Ethan saw the iron gate to the mansion rising up behind the pines. It was closed.
Ethan prepared himself for the climb of a lifetime and passed the barrier with three strong jumps. With a loud thud he landed on the other side of the gate and looked back at the shadow.
The pain in his head was nearly unbearable and yet his shock was greater still at what he saw. Without any effort the shadow moved through the iron gate and pursued him with its rough and enraged gallop.
Ethan shook his head in disbelief as he started toward the dark mansion that was only a short distance away.
“Mr. Toaves!” he yelled at the top of his lungs as he ran. “Mr. Toaves!”
Ethan could feel the shadow’s burning breath on the back of his neck now.
“Mr. Toaves, help me! Help me!”
The lights in the windows of the mansion went on and Ethan knew he was saved.
And then the shadow crashed into his back and Ethan went flying toward the cold, hard ground. It was all he could do to turn on his back before the shadow lunged at him a second time.
The shadow landed on top of him. Ethan could see its face clearly—it was Billy. It was Billy’s zombified face, parts of its skull missing, maggots crawling in its skin.
The shadow bit at him and clawed at him and consumed him. It ate his face and his hands and swallowed his tongue.
4
(September 23, 2019)
Arthur Toaves stood in the doorway next to Dr. Stewart as he looked at the young man strapped to the hospital bed.
It hadn’t even been a day since that young man, Ethan Walker, had climbed the gate to his mansion and screamed for help. Arthur couldn’t forget the desperation in the voice he heard that night. Calling his name.
“We keep him sedated. There isn’t much we can do for him here.” Dr. Stewart turned toward the old man next to him. “I need to send him to Bryce.”