Faces in the Night

by Thomas Conuel

  Hudson climbed into his car and drove the 10 miles back to his apartment in Amherst. Blake was leaning on a cane standing in the front door when he arrived.

  “It’s official,” Hudson said. You weren’t bullshitting me. Kevin Flanagan was shot seven times-probably with an M16.”

  “Like I told you, there was a massacre that day,” Blake said simply. “Kevin tried to stop it. Some of our own guys shot him. Now you have your big story.”

  Both Hudson and Blake turned to look at the street. A red Taurus sedan that had been slowly cruising down the street checking addresses had stopped in front of them. Hudson rented a small house near the center of Amherst, close to the University campus, and stray visitors seeking directions were not uncommon. But Hudson was mildly surprised at the driver of this car. A tall, thin blonde woman in her mid-40s leaped out of the car. She was wearing jeans and a bright green sweater and had fine features and large expressive eyes.

  “Honey,” she called and came running over toward them. Hudson turned to look at Blake.

  “Katherine,” he said. “I told you I’d be fine. You didn’t have to come?” The two embraced, and Hudson noted how passionately the woman kissed Blake.

  * * *

  Part VIII: Grandfather Red

  Chapter 34

  The entity was angry.

  Furious.

  He could feel the wash of its hostility, wave after wave of it, as if it were standing right next to him as a physical presence. “Now wait a minute,” he said aloud, his voice a muted squeak. “You can’t blame everything on me. I tried.”

  “You tried,” a voice screamed back at him, coming from nowhere; coming from the air surrounding him. “You tried...you tried...you tried...here, I’ll show you ‘I tried’.” He felt a physical jolt like a slap in the face and looked up to see a single oak in a cluster of red oaks bend suddenly from a blast of wind.

  The entity did not like it when things went wrong; when plans were not executed to perfection, when orders were not obeyed. The entity had started their relationship years ago by sending images roiling through his mind—as if a video were playing full of vivid and telling details that only he could see. That was before. Now that the entity was almost here--hovering and waiting for the door to swing open, things were getting more physical. He preferred the videos. He’d always been a watcher. That is how he came to know the whole story of the entity—even his name. Grandfather Red.

  Today, he was walking down Enfield Road, trying to listen to the voice of the entity and at the same time deflect its fury. When he had come first to the Quabbin region the entity had often greeted him here. He had begun his meticulous readings of the Quabbin town histories by then, and the entity had guided him through this landscape.

  He had started with a visit to the Jones Library in Amherst shortly after moving to the region. That first day had been almost cathartic. There was a treasure of history in the books about the Quabbin region. He read all day, eager to consume all the books. Beside him a long-haired older man in a trench coat noisily rustled through the pages of The NewYork Review of Books, mumbling angrily to himself and shaking his finger at the pages. Get a life, he thought, looking at the old man. Loser. It was the first time in his life he had ever had the temerity to call another person a loser—even silently. But the excitement of reading about the Quabbin region gripped him with an anticipation he could not explain.

  In front of him at the stained oak table there in the reading alcove, lay several old history books devoted to the Quabbin towns--histories of Dana, Enfield, Prescott, and Greenwich. There were delightful stories sprinkled through the books. The story of Popcorn Snow who was buried in a casket with a glass window on top and lay perfectly preserved for many years—staring up at visitors to the Dana cemetery. Some local boys broke the glass and Popcorn Snow turned to dust before their eyes.

  But there were other stories—not so delightful. Somewhere in the books the name Grandfather Red appeared. He couldn’t remember exactly how or when he first became aware of the name. The stories in the books about him were all sketchy and apocryphal, full of the windy, euphemistic prose of the day. But scary.

  He had left the library that day and begun his first jaunt in the Quabbin woods—and there the entity had joined him and guided him. And now he knew. Now he could see the stories played out as if he were standing there--watching on big-screen television events that had taken place over 200 years ago.

  Grandfather Red’s real name was Elija Durman. He had come to the Swift River Valley sometime around 1782. Several young women in the valley, who found his wispy red hair unattractive, had bestowed on him the nickname Grandfather Red. And in truth he looked like somebody’s grandfather—wizened and creaky with bad teeth and a sour disposition, a man who had never been young.

  Nobody knew exactly when or how he had come into the valley. He had simply appeared one October day a year or so after the defeat of the British at Yorktown, and the beginning of the end of the War of Independence—thin, bony, taciturn, balding on top of his head with long red hair on the sides that looked as if it had been pasted in place. A soldier it was thought, a homeless veteran of the bloody fighting against the British who drifted into this green valley west of Boston looking for land and a place to settle after the turmoil of the past decades. Or perhaps a Tory from Boston, now looking to escape his neighbor’s wrath. Nobody knew and Elijah Durman never said a word about his past.

  But he brought turmoil to the valley. The history books described some of it--how a series of horrific crimes at first brought shock to the valley’s residents and then united them in suspicion against Elijah Durman. What the books didn’t describe, what they couldn’t know, were the details of his crimes. The pictures playing in his mind showed that. It was the entity’s way of sharing; of bringing him into the exclusive club of those that dared to take life; of showing him the past to prepare him for the future.

  The young man and woman, both about 18, alone by a pond in the woods, were stripping out of their clothes in broad daylight and diving together into the cool waters of the pond. The images were so clear, so vivid, so obviously factual and true. The woman was tall and statuesque and pulled her long cotton dress up and over her head. She had on some sort of cotton bodice that she removed revealing small apple-sized breasts. And then she stepped out of a long white petticoat. She wore no underwear. He had never thought of it, but back in those days women didn’t wear underpants. She bent now--slender and almost naked and pulled off dark stocking that came to her knees. The boy had pulled off his shirt and stocking and then his long cotton breeches. Both stood for a moment admiring each other’s bodies and then dove into the water.

  It was strange to see this scene so vividly 200 years later. Of course, when you thought about it, why should it surprise? Men and women in their late teens and as young adults in Colonial times were every bit as lusty and sexual as their counterparts today. One just never really pictured that part of their life. But of course, they were sneaking off into the woods, undressing for each other, skinny-dipping, doing sexual things, though probably not much actual intercourse. The penalties were too great if a pregnancy resulted.

  He saw the whole scene that day—the two young people, naked and frolicking, kissing on the grassy bank, he guiding her hand down to his groin as they lay together drying off, the sexual arousal, and then the interruption--a shadow standing over them.

  Grandfather Red had been watching from the shaded woods. And now he was upon them. The boy looked up in surprise as Grandfather Red slashed at him with a long knife. The girl screamed and tried to stand, naked and beautiful. Grandfather Red slashed her also until she fell and stumbled to the ground bleeding heavily. And then Grandfather Red was gone and two naked bodies lay unmoving in the grass near the pond.

  * * *

  Chapter 35

  The old history books told other stories. Reading about it was all so stale and stilted and boring. But when you could actually picture it--actual
ly see it happening as it played out on a big white movie size screen that popped up in your mind—that was different.

  On another day—out walking somewhere in the Quabbin Reservation, the entity had come again to show him scenes from the past. First the young couple at the pond died and then he was watching the Gogans.

  The Gogans were an elderly couple who, around 1785, farmed a small plot of land near Pottapaug Pond in what was later became the town of Dana. Elijah Durman lived nearby on a farm that abutted the Gogan property.

  One day a dead cow clogged the stream that the Gogans used for drinking water on their farm. Old man’s Gogan’s brows knitted together. It was one of his cows—missing the other day. Now he knew what had happened. Elijah Durman had killed the cow when it strayed onto his property, and dumped the dead animal in the stream upriver of the Gogan farm fouling the water. It was a warning and a lesson--stray animals were not welcome on his property.

  Joseph Gogan, the old farmer, was a cantankerous sort himself. Shaking a cane, he confronted Elijah Durman.

  “I’ll have you arrested, you black hearted scoundrel,” he thundered when he encountered his red-haired neighbor that Sunday.

  What Elijah Durman had done was not only unneighborly, but also downright unlawful—one of the worse things a man could do to a neighbor. That stream was his family’s fresh water supply.

  Elijah Durman had scowled back at old man Gogan and cursed him.

  Old man Gogan had gone to the town constable and sworn out a warrant against Elijah Durman for theft and destruction of the cow and for blocking a waterway—a crime in that day and age.

  Now, 200 years later, he saw the scene in slow motion, almost like it was on his TV screen at home when he was watching a video. Old man Gogan and his wife were in bed, old man Gogan snoring heavily, his wife had on one of those nightcaps that look so ridiculous. A shadowy figure moved slowly and deliberately around the edge of their home and then a burst of flames was licking at the front door. Old man Gogan and his wife came stumbling out the back door, bleary-eyed and confused by the heat and flames. A shadow was waiting for them. It swung an axe and knocked old man Gogan to his knees, another swing flattened Mrs. Gogan. Old man Gogan struggled back to his feet and tried to grapple with the axe man. The figure pulled back and raised the axe straight over its head and then swung and split old man Gogan’s skull almost in half. The figure then dragged both Gogans back into the kitchen as flames engulfed that section of the house.

  The Gogans had died in a fire at their home. That was all anybody in the Swift River Valley could conclude. Old man Gogan’s body, burned to a crisp, was a puzzle though. The skull seemed to have been split. How that had happened was anybody’s guess. Perhaps he had fallen down the stairs as he tried to flee his burning home.

  But there were skeptics.

  Greg Richardson was a blacksmith in Dana and he was free with talk of his own theory on the deaths of the Gogans.

  “Downright coincidental that old Joe Gogan swears out a warrant against that red-haired bastard Elijah Durman and dies in a fire couple days later. If you ask me, Grandfather Red smacked em on the head and then torched the house.”

  Greg Richardson made free of his opinion for many months, until he too died an untimely death.

  * * *

  Chapter 36

  The old man in a gray sports coat with a big ketchup stain on the lapel was leaning on a cane and standing in the doorway of the Quabbin Visitor’s Center. The visitor’s center was a single large room on the ground floor of the main administration building--a two-story stone building tastefully sculpted into a public area that included a parking lot and manicured lawns all looking out over the eastern edge of Quabbin Reservoir.

  Lester Carlson knew the building well--he had helped build it. In 1938 when the reservoir was almost complete and the public access area under construction, Lester Carlson had been in college, and home for the summer working as part of a small engineering team that drew up the site plans for the building and the road that funneled traffic either to the lookout tower a mile higher up or back out onto the highway.

  Later, architects for the state had bustled around the spot for many months and finally designed and supervised the construction of the actual building that now served as the public face of Quabbin Reservoir. It was massive and official looking; it’s great slabs of granite a stolid contrast to the ever-changing Quabbin woods and water that it fronted. Yet it remained a source of pride for Lester Carlson. He had on a fall day some 56 years ago stood on this very spot and suggested the idea with the simple statement: “This would be a great place to put the public building for this reservoir.”

  He paused for a moment by the door as he exited the visitor’s center. The old man had been standing there beside the open door. “Carlson,” the old man now said, seeming to recognize him. “Carlson. I know you. Knew your whole family. You’re an old family here. Ayup. Knew your dad I did. Not a saint by a gosh-darn long shot no matter what your mother said.”

  Surprised. Lester Carlson stopped and looked at the old codger.

  “You know me?” he asked. “I mean, I thought everybody around these parts had forgotten the Carlson’s.”

  “Well, I’m just seeing that name tag,” the old man said pointing at the paste-on name tag Lester Carlson had forgotten he was wearing on the lapel of his gray sports coat. “Long time since you’ve been here to the valley. Me, I never understood why you took that state job and helped move us all on out. After all--it was our home.”

  ‘How do you know me?” Lester Carlson said. “And besides, if I didn’t do it, somebody else would have. The battle was fought and lost. Boston wanted its water and the reservoir was going in. Nothing I could have done.”

  “’True,” the old man said smiling for the first time and in the process exposing yellow-stained teeth. “Boston gets what Boston wants. Folks out here in the western part of the state just supposed to accept that.”

  “I suppose,” Lester Carlson said. “Three, four thousand people had to move. OK—sad, but not a big deal. Think it out. A few give up a couple old homes and get better places to live. Why are people like you always going on about the way the reservoir was built?”

  “It was built the way it was built,” the old man said, turning his gaze upon Lester Carlson for the first time--watery blue eyes in a heavily veined face that had collapsed in on itself with age like a ruined pie in a baking dish. “No changing that now.”

  “Are you here for the Tuesday Tea?” Lester Carlson asked pointing beyond the old man’s shoulder to the long, rectangular room just beyond the doorway where a dozen old people mingled.

  “It’s a tradition,” the old man said. “These here Tuesday Teas is the only time we all get together and see each other.” The old man paused for a moment. “Or see who’s missing, who’s passed on. Seems we lose somebody every month. Lost Eleanor Grist last month. One of the original Quabbin survivors. Knew all the old stories.”

  “Eleanor Grist,” Lester Carlson repeated the name. “You know, my father knew her. They were both on the Board of Selectman in Enfield back in the last days around 1932 or so.”

  “Yup, I remember them days well,” the old man said. “I’m a Delaney myself. Dave Delaney from West Prescott.”

  Lester Carlson nodded.

  “You coming to the tea?” the old man said.

  “Actually, I’m just leaving.” Lester Carlson had driven over to the afternoon tea and had spent the last half-hour mingling with the guests. They were mostly old, though Terry, the Quabbin hostess was a middle-aged lady with a wide smile and an infectious laugh.

  “Everybody,” she had called out to the room when he had introduced himself to her. “Everybody, come meet our new celebrity. Lester Carlson is here.”

  He had spent the last half hour dutifully shaking hands and listening to these gaseous old folks, most well into their 80s by now, telling him how they remembered his father in Enfield, or the wonderful breads his mothe
r had baked and sold at the country store in Prescott. He had nodded and smiled and said he remembered too, but mostly these memories were beyond him. He had grown up, gone to college at Harvard, and returned to the valley only briefly to work on the reservoir in the summer of 1938. And then the reservoir was finished and filled with water and the valley vanished.

  * * *

  Chapter 37

  Lester Carlson had not come to the Quabbin Visitor’s Center for a social visit. No, indeed! A series of Quabbin visions had recently filled his life—quiet visions almost like finding an old and faded black and white photo in a forgotten chest stored away in the attic. They had started the morning after the terrifying face at his window. Hudson Richardson had left, and Lester Carlson had gone deep into his closet and found hiking boots and an old red hunting jacket. He had driven to the main gate of Quabbin Reservoir, parked in the spacious visitor’s lot, and simply plunged off into the woods.

  Now, he woke each morning at dawn in the grip of a pleasant compulsion, picturing in vivid, precise detail some part of Quabbin Reservation. He would rise and take out his maps of the area, some going back to before the construction of the reservoir, and trace a route for the day. And somewhere in the course of his walk that day he would come upon the scene he had pictured that morning, etched into his consciousness--an apple orchard overlooking an old field near North Dana; the high rocks of Rattlesnake Ledge looking down onto the valley floor; an old cellar hole that had once been a white farmhouse where his boyhood friend Johnny Young had lived, or, his all-time favorite, the sweeping vista looking out over Prescott Peninsula from Soapstone Hill.

  It was compulsive and fascinating looking into the past like this—flipping page after page in an old photo album always eager for the next picture.