Faces in the Night

by Thomas Conuel

  As he walked, he felt the presence of the entity. The entity had been upset but now he was pleased. In the dark woods to his left, a blue light bounced in and out of a clump of trees several feet above the forest floor before spinning out of sight. For a moment he thought the entity might actually appear, but instead a fierce wind from the north rose and tore through the Quabbin woods scattering loose branches in a flurry and swaying the tops of the thin pines. The entity was nearby, but not ready to appear

  Back at the storage hut, the door hung from its broken hinges, casting a shadow like a giant crippled bird, and creaking in cadence with the wind in the otherwise still night. Inside the storage hut, a blue light appeared and hovered briefly over the remaining coffins, spinning slowly counter-clockwise in the darkness.

  * * *

  Chapter 24

  Later that night, Lester Carlson arose from his bed. It was 2 a.m. He flipped on the light in the hall and carefully made his way downstairs. In the living room, he turned on one small table lamp and set about pouring himself a large Chivas Regal scotch over ice—the only real cure for his insomnia. Forget the pills, all of them—the Nytol, Sominex, and Compoz. None of them worked for him. Forget the meditation and deep breathing exercises—a whole earth natural-living fantasy. Forget the sleep masks and the soothing music—that worked about as well as putting a pillow over your head.

  Scotch. That did the trick. Reliable, dependable, always available scotch. Just pour and sip and sit back and relax. Good-old scotch.

  The house was dark except for the two lights--the hall light casting shadows on the stairs leading up to the second floor, and the light from a table lamp in the living room, a dim white lighthouse beacon overlooking a sea of darkness.

  He must be getting old, he thought. Perhaps Emily had been right. His nerves were starting to go on him. A sad memento from his years at the top. But dammit all. For a moment back there in the late afternoon when the two journalists were interviewing him, he’d been scared. Weak knees. Roiling bowels. The swift grip of clamminess around the chest that presaged a sour sweat--the type of body failure that you couldn’t even begin to explain to a 20-year old who’d never had his body rebel or refuse marching orders.

  He’d been staring at the hearse carrying the body of the dead Marine as it waited in the driveway of funeral home when he’d felt a loss of control as if hypnotized. And then a cold hand had come out of nowhere, had taken him by the elbow, and pulled him toward the hearse. The hearse itself had filled his field of vision and blotted out the rest of the landscape.

  The two journalists were still talking, and he was standing with them on his porch, but he could hear nothing except the hearse’s engine which seemed to be screaming with the power of a jet fighter about to take off, or perhaps the sound of a helicopter hovering overhead. And the hand on his elbow kept tugging at him, urging him to move off the porch; urging him to follow the hearse. A great chill enveloped his body and he shivered. All the time the sound of the hearse’s engine filled the space around him revving up with a high-pitched roar that was unlike any automobile engine he had ever heard, and the hearse itself looked like a swollen black beetle crawling across an artist’s canvas rendering a dark land. The hand had gripped him harder and he actually stumbled back in resisting its insistent hold on his elbow. Far away, behind the awful roaring of the engine, voices called and screams alternated with small popping sounds of gunfire.

  He had shaken the spell off, but not before the journalists noticed. He had seen it in their eyes. The old guy drinks a bit. Must have some pretty rough times of it. Maybe feeling a bad tremor coming right now.

  The odd thing was that now he did drink a bit. Never used to. But did now. But that feeling he’d had there on the porch had nothing to do with scotch.

  Lester Carlson pondered this as he now poured another large slug of Chivas Regal swirling the ice cubes first clockwise and then counter-clockwise. The porch incident kept flitting about in his mind—the urge to follow the hearse, the roaring engine so close, but only he could hear it, and the voices, screams, and gunfire blending into that roaring. So here he was at 2 a.m. in the living room of his house in Belton, Massachusetts, drinking scotch. The two journalists, if they could see him now, would think their suspicions confirmed.

  He was thankful that the town officials had not thought to invite him to the prayer ceremony for the dead Marine. His first public appearance in the region would be at the Memorial Day ceremony at Quabbin Park Cemetery this weekend. And there he would apologize for his part in Vietnam. So many years ago. The long and winding road that leads to tomorrow. Maria would be with him, and in some way he would start to put the past to rest. But not today.

  For years, in his official capacity as Under Secretary of State for Asian Affairs, he had attended services for dead soldiers, and the ceremonies always left him feeling cold and empty. He was, he admitted only to himself, bored by this display of pomp for the dead. Vietnam was after all a waste. And to atone, you mumbled a few prayers for somebody who was beyond pain, joy, or help.

  But the real reason he hated to attend those ceremonies was the survivors--pale, gaunt, shells of people now filled with a grief so profound it could never be assuaged. Their faces still swam through his mind on occasion unattached to any specific ceremony or funeral or person--the faces of desolation that his war had left behind.

  There was an irony at work here, he thought—that he should retire to Belton to leave his memories behind, and on his first day here a service is held for a dead Marine, killed over 25 years ago in Vietnam. Twenty-five years ago, he had been near the top.

  * * *

  Chapter 25

  Standing now, sipping his drink in his darkened living room, Lester Carlson remembered the meetings with the President, and McNamara, and the Cabinet chiefs.

  He would do his presentation tapping the wall maps and tracing troop movements with a polished wooden pointer, no such thing as a laser pointer back then, while the President pondered chin in hand, a characteristic gesture often captured in photos, and the others nodded firmly in agreement. Any day now common sense and logic would prevail. It was a no-brainer; a given. The soulless enemy would be swept away, flung into oblivion, tossed aside like a bunch of beach umbrellas and lifeguard chairs at the mercy of a hurricane-force wind, scattered and shredded into unrecognizable forms in the sand by the mighty wind that was the U.S. military.

  Lester Carlson smiled at the memories. It had all seemed so promising and well thought out. A sure thing—the Vince Lombardi led Green Bay Packers against a junior college football team in a tune up for the Superbowl. But then, somehow the junior college football team won—pulling out a victory without ever mounting a scoring drive; playing defense, giving ground but not surrendering a touchdown, getting lucky on a few turnovers, and capitalizing on the mistakes of the stronger team and holding on until time ran out.

  He moved away from his desk and toward the living room window. The living room was large and tastefully furnished with an orange and blue Persian rug, two powder-blue, Danish sofas, a marble coffee table and three ladder-backed chairs. The windows were in either corner of the room, large bay windows looking out over a dark lawn and barren maple trees that separated the property from the cemetery. The lamp was the only light in the room, placed strategically on the coffee table. He was sipping his scotch and thinking about Emily and how she had always stepped out of the shower and while naked wrapped her wet hair in a towel before proceeding to dry herself with another towel--a habit he had watched with delight and fascination for over 40 years of marriage.

  He was still smiling at the memory when his eye caught a movement in the darkness outside the window. Without thinking, he quickly pivoted and snapped off the light on the coffee table. He drew a deep breath and threaded his way between a couch and a chair to reach the window. There had been something moving out there. He was sure of it. From the corner of his eye he had seen a shadow flicker briefly across the window. A prowl
er?

  He leaned forward to cautiously part the white curtains. It was dark but the stars were bright and clear overhead. Lester Carlson pulled the curtain back further and, standing slightly to the side, bent lower to press his face against the window. In front of him, bathed in a misty white light from the moon, lay his own rolling yard with long shadows blending into darkness, and in the distance, the cemetery and church.

  The face came out of nowhere, its mouth open in a scream, its eyes bulging against the window. Time stopped and Lester Carlson stood rooted to the spot, his face still pressed against his living room window.

  On the other side of the thin pane of glass, a horribly deformed face pulsed against his face. He stood for several seconds like this face to face—seeing the face, its mouth open, teeth missing, blood streaming from a bulging eye; a face that seemed to be suspended in the night, hovering on the wind, and straining to form itself more fully. Behind the apparition, he could see the shadowed lawn.

  He was unable to move; unable to pull his face away from the face at the window.

  The face bore in on him. Deep inside the eye sockets a dark blue light appeared and began to spin in a slow counter-clockwise motion, compelling him to look, fixing his gaze, drawing him inward, hypnotizing him.

  He pressed against the window glass, watching the blue light rotate within the skeletal eye sockets--spinning in the casual manner of a yo-yo sleeping at the end of a string. All the guilt; all the bad feelings; all the problems that never got resolved--they would all go away when he joined with that light.

  He bent forward wanting to say something to the terrible face; to explain his life; his errors, his problems; to make sure it understood; and then he could become a part of the blue light. That joining with the light seemed essential and vitally important to him. He pressed forward against the window, but the blue light pulled back and faded.

  Lester Carlson stood for a moment gasping for air, and then he fainted. Scotch and ice spilled over the orange and blue Persian rug where he dropped his glass.

  * * *

  Chapter 26

  Father Philip DiMarco, S.J. put down the book he was reading, On Nietzsche by Georges Bataille, the early 20th-century French philosopher who helped reclaim Nietzsche from the Nazis, who had tried to appropriate Nietzschean principals to justify the ugly violence of National Socialism. In reality, Nietzsche had been a tolerant thinker hostile to the “humbug of races” that Hitler used to in his extermination campaign against Jews and gypsies. Father Phil had always liked Bataille, a relative outsider in the philosophical circles of the 20th century that produced Sartre and others.

  In 1917 Bataille had joined a seminary with the intention of becoming a priest, and then spent some time with the Benedictines at Quarr, on the Isle of Wight. But then came a loss of faith and a rejection of religion. Father Phil often wondered about that--hard not to picture where his own life path would have carried him, had he defied the Pope, left the church, and stayed in politics.

  The United States Senate?

  Not improbable.

  The wind was high tonight. Father Phil put down his pen and moved to the window. Something moved in a gliding motion at the edge of the field that ran from the monastery’s back door to the pine woods a hundred yards to the north.

  A coyote?

  Probably.

  There were several families of 6-8 adults in the area. Savvy predators. Tough on the cats in the area. Stray cats and fox pups—a favorite meal for the coyotes who would begin howling at twilight and then sweep through the woods and fields searching for small game. Out here, on the edge of Quabbin, the accidental wilderness, you could see the connections between predators and prey. When the coyote population was high, the fox population fell back; shrinking as their young were pulled from their burrows and eaten by the coyotes.

  But something about the shadow out there was different. Father Phil didn’t think it was a coyote. He opened the wooden door that led from his reading room to the back porch of the monastery. As he did so, he felt a chill, and then a feeling of being watched. The wind kicked up and he saw the shadow again, now gliding toward him coming out from the edge of the pines. He was not a fearful man, but for an instance he felt a deep unbidden, unexplained and primitive fear. He reached inside his black priest’s shirt and gripped the silver crucifix he always wore around his neck. A gift from his mother when he had first entered the seminary.

  When he touched the crucifix, the shadow turned and glided away vanishing back into the pines. Father Phil squinted after it. The field was empty. He stood quietly on the back porch concentrating on breathing deeply and regularly until the fear passed.

  He turned to look at the sky. The clouds scudded away from the moon and the night sky cleared. The high wind vanished and the woods and fields were quiet. He stepped off the porch and walked slowly across the lawn until it gave way to field. When he reached the tree line he stopped and peered into the woods. Mostly white pine here with a few tall red oaks and a scattering of gray birch. But not a deep, tangled woods.

  He stood for a moment watching and listening. Nothing. Not a sound; not a sight. Father Phil turned and was about to start walking back across the lawn when he felt the chill and the feeling of being watched roll over him again. He whirled, but there was nothing behind him; nothing was following him.

  He peered into the dark woods. The chill deepened in his upper body and he shivered. He scanned the woods, but without moving forward. There was something there. Some sort of light. There it was again. A blue light bobbing about among the dark pines; perhaps 4 or 5 feet off the ground, and maybe 25 yards into the woods. A deep blue light weaving and bouncing among the dark trees—flitting about like a hummingbird. Certainly not moving like a person with a flashlight. The blue light was small—perhaps the size of a chickadee, but there would be no birds flying about in the woods after dark. And besides, birds did not light up at night.

  He stared at the light unable to turn away for several seconds as it spun and bounced in the dark woods. Could it be making its way toward him? Yes, it seemed so. He reached inside his shirt and again gripped his crucifix. The chill left him, and the feeling of being watched and followed vanished. Then a wind rose again from the north and rustled through the woods. The blue light bounced once or twice more among the trees and then vanished like a snuffed candle.

  Father Phil stood still and counted to sixty before exhaling deeply. It was a trick he’d learned years ago when he was in politics. Always worked to calm the nerves and help assess the situation.

  He was alone here on a dark lawn outside the Franciscan’s monastery on the northern edge of Quabbin Reservoir. There was nothing else here. There had been a strange, small blue light bobbing about in the woods just moments ago. He had no idea what it could be. Father Phil stood and looked all about him and then turned and walked back to his rooms.

  Inside, he opened a closet and took out a roll of maps, a dozen or so all rolled together and held into a loose cylinder with a large rubber band. Father Phil spread the maps flat on his desk and peeled back each map starting with the top one. He found the map he was looking for half way into the pile and pulled it out from the others. This map he spread out on his writing desk and held in place with two brass paper weights, given him, if memory served, at his retirement party from Boston College Law School. The other maps rolled themselves back into a cylinder.

  They called him the “The Map Master” at the Quabbin Historical Society. He was vice-president now of the society. No big deal. They practically had to beg people to fill the positions. He’d joined when he first came here in exile.

  He’d always loved history and this area was rich in it, with the giant Quabbin Reservoir and the lost towns of the valley. But now he was thinking of Father Baker’s manuscript. A Jesuit priest had died in this region in 1800. And then 130 years later, another Jesuit priest, supposedly writing a book about the mysterious death of the first priest had also died here.

 
Father Phil studied his maps. Both priest had died in a part of Quabbin Reservoir called the reservation lands; lands that surrounded the reservoir and created the sprawling watershed. There were also islands scattered about the reservoir, several of which were clustered near each other in the deepest parts of the reservoir in what used to be the town of Enfield. The Jesuit priests had died in the Enfield area close to, and maybe even on, what was now Mt Pomeroy Island.

  * * *

  PART VII: Memorial Day

  Chapter 27

  Hudson Richardson stood off to one side of the large reception tent that had been erected near the Enfield Civil War Monument at Quabbin Park Cemetery across from the main gate of the great reservoir in Belton, Massachusetts. They had been holding Memorial Day observances here for nearly half a century, ever since the reservoir had replaced the lost towns of the Swift River Valley, and he had covered and written about the ceremony for the past decade.

  Some years, if the weather turned cloudy and gray, there was a small turnout—maybe 100 people or so counting all the old people from the displaced towns, the Quabbin survivors they were called. Today there was five times that number. The day was fine with cloud-filtered sunlight and a soft breeze, and the presence of Lester Carlson had drawn many.

  The last several days had been strange, Hudson reflected as he stood under the shade of a large old maple near the caretaker’s house looking out over the grounds where the ceremony would be held.