Faces in the Night

by Thomas Conuel

  * * *

  Chapter 59

  “Where was the old Durman homestead?” Katherine asked.

  Father Phil smiled. He turned and reached behind his chair to an old oak desk for his stack of maps. He stood and opened several maps spreading them on the table and thumbing through the maps like a card dealer riffling a deck of cards.

  “Durman was from Enfield. This woman he married—a widow, Flanagan, well the Flanagan’s were mostly from Greenwich.” Father Phil pulled a map from his stack, and spread it out flat separate from the rest on the oak table. “Right here,” he said, pointing a finger. “Elijah Durman lived right over here near the railroad line.”

  Katherine bent over the map. Hudson was not interested.

  “Of course there was no railroad back then,” Father Phil continued, “and keep in mind that old man Durman just appeared out of nowhere after the Revolutionary War, but he lived right about here after he came to the valley.” Father Phil moved his finger down the map tracing the route of Old Enfield Road.

  “On Old Enfield Road,” Katherine said with a catch in her voice. Both Father Phil and Hudson turned to look at her.

  “That was a main road in the valley back then,” Father Phil said. “Old Enfield Road was a highway practically. Connected Springfield with the valley. Lots of houses there too.”

  “And this Durman man lived there?”

  “Well, he built his house there, married the widow Flanagan there, and died and was buried six, seven miles northeast of there out by Pomeroy and Curtis Hill. Here, I’ll show you.”

  Once more Father Phil’s hand glided over the map. “You’ve got the gate to Old Enfield Road here. Right. So you walk down the road about a half mile and you pass the town storage hut right here,” Father Phil’s long index finger swept to a stop at a spot on the map. “Now you keep going another half mile from the town storage hut and on the left you’ll come to a big old clump of five maple trees. It’s maybe 600, 700 hundred yards up from the water.”

  “That’s it?” Katherine asked, her voice quiet and without inflection.

  “That’s it. Right behind those maple trees is the cellar hole. The home of Elijah Durman. Nice big cellar hole, too.”

  Katherine looked hard at the map. The sheer physical terror she felt that evening on Old Enfield Road as the face hovered in the Quabbin woods once more briefly enveloped her body. She had stood in front of those five ancient maples transfixed with stomach-churning fear. Finally she looked up at Father Phil and forced a smile. “Yes, I guess I have seen those old maple trees.”

  “They’re hard to miss,” Father Phil said. “A real good landmark on the road.”

  “Where did Old Elijah Durman die?” Katherine asked.

  “You know the story on that?” Father Phil asked.

  “He was in jail. They were going to hang him and he set himself on fire.”

  “You got it,” Father Phil said. “And he was supposed to have left a curse that he would return. Even had a special ornament that he wore that he wanted put on his headstone after he died. That’s the blue cross that supposedly goes back to the time of Sebastien Rale. And then the whole thing about the timing. As I was saying, there is some professor who has a theory about the summer solstice and old legends. Who knows?”

  “That could be.” Katherine said. “The summer solstice could be a special event. The sun at its highest northern point from the equator. Why not?”

  “But,” Father Phil paused and tilted his head slightly to the side. “They moved all the bodies including old Elijah’s when they built the reservoir. Even if he could come back like he vowed, he’d need a body. There’s nothing out there anymore.”

  Katherine paused for a long moment. Of course, she thought, the original bodies had all been moved when they built the reservoir some 60 years ago.

  “Where did they take his body?” she asked.

  “Give me a day or two. I’m wondering that myself,” Father Phil said. “I’ll track it down. You’ve got me interested now. Most of the bodies were dug up and reburied at the Quabbin Park cemetery in Ware when the reservoir was built. But the Flanagan’s, the last link to Elijah Durman, had moved to Belton. So Belton might have the remains of old Elijah Durman.

  “And I’ll tell you something else,” Father Phil said. “There aren’t really any remains like bones or skulls in the old Quabbin graves. When they came to move the graves back in the 1930s sometimes they’d find a button or a belt buckle, or something like that. Sometimes just a patch of dark earth and a small piece of rotted wood from the coffin. But most everything had decayed by the time they came to move the graves. They moved the headstones. Really, that was all. Just the headstones.”

  Katherine stood lost in thought. “But he was originally buried out there, wasn’t he?”

  “That’s right,” Father Phil said. “The town cemetery was right at the foot of Curtis Hill.”

  “Where on Curtis Hill?” Katherine asked.

  “Here, I’ll show you.”

  Father Phil took out another smaller but more detailed map and spread it on top of the first map. “Here’s Shaft 12 up here in Hardwick. From the shore looking straight out is Mount Pomeroy. From Pomeroy you can see Parker Hill to the east and Curtis to the north. The cemetery was right here on the southern edge of Curtis.”

  Katherine bent close to look.

  “Now I’ll tell you something else that might be of interest,” Father Phil said. “The only building left in the entire reservoir area is on Curtis Hill. Of course, you have that town storage hut on Enfield Road, but that’s not really part of the actual reservoir and that was built in the 1930s.”

  “I’ve seen it,” Hudson called over. “On the eagle census, when the ice was thick. That stone building right on the edge of the island.”

  “That’s it all right,” Father Phil said. “The only building left standing in the whole reservoir.”

  “Why was that?” Katherine asked. “Why did they leave that one building out there all alone on Curtis Hill?”

  “Nobody really knows. It was a beautiful stone building used as a clubhouse for the golf course that was right here,” Father Phil pointed down at his map. “The cemetery was right next to the golf course and some people think the workers just didn’t want to fool around anymore with old graves and the Durman legend. So, what the heck. Leave one building. It’s so remote out there. It’s on an island. It can’t ever be used.”

  “Curtis Hill,” she said finally looking up at Father Phil. “It’s in the middle of nowhere. Just an island in the middle of the reservoir.”

  “Yes, you’re right about that,” Father Phil nodded. “Really one of the most inaccessible islands out there.”

  “I wonder if you could get to Curtis Hill from Old Enfield Road?” Katherine said.

  “Oh sure. If you had a canoe,” Father Phil said. “Really you could just paddle out by the end of Prescott Peninsula and follow the general direction of the old Boston and Albany railroad line west of Little Quabbin Mountain here, and then go due north, and let’s see…” Father Phil reached into his pants pocket and brought out a black plastic map meter. He peered at the face, set the dial and then traced the meter across his map.

  “Well, let’s see here. You said from Old Enfield Road, right? That’s about seven miles straight across the water. So sure you could theoretically paddle out there. Course it’s illegal to have boats in that part of the reservoir.”

  “Off limits,” Hudson said.

  “Yup. No fishing, no boats.” Father Phil moved his hand on the map. “Now Shaft 12 out here by Curtis is where they collect the water for Boston. Big, big tunnel there that starts the water on its way to Boston.”

  “One old building, still there on a remote island,” Katherine murmured almost to herself. “How very interesting.”

  Hudson yawned and looked at the clock.

  “So, where are the bones?” Katherine asked. “That’s the question, isn’t it?”

 
“I can probably track those down for you,” Father Phil said. “I’ll be here tomorrow. I’ll check it out.”

  * * *

  Chapter 60

  Father Phil used his key to open the heavy wooden front door of the Swift River Valley Historical Society building. He had the place to himself this June morning. In the gravel parking lot, when he parked his battered Volvo station wagon, a large red fox dashed from behind the juniper bushes in the front of the building and vanished around the back of the white-shingled structure. Father Phil liked it here in the early morning. He liked the quiet; he liked the woods and fields that surrounded the building, and he liked the foxes and wild turkeys that strutted about in plain sight.

  The fox, with its gleaming thick fur, looked well fed. Probably it had been stalking a wild turkey. The wild turkeys were all over the Quabbin now, brazen and tough, large black and bronze birds, four feet tall, with white wing bars, bluish-gray to red heads, and on the male toms, beards dangling from the breast bone.

  In early colonial times, they had ranged from Cape Cod to the Berkshires in Massachusetts, but as the hardwood forests were cut and farms and fields replaced woods, the wild turkeys, birds of the forest and forest edge, died out. By the early 1800s turkeys were rare in the state. The last known native bird was killed not far from this place in 1851.

  But the wild turkeys had made a prodigious comeback in Massachusetts. State game officials captured 37 birds from New York and released them in the southern Berkshires between 1972 and 1973. By 1978 there were 1000 birds. Now there were many more—perhaps as many as 30,000. From the Berkshires they spread throughout the state with the Quabbin reservation now one of their favorite grounds. Massachusetts was gradually reverting to large tracts of forest, and that encouraged the turkey population. At the monastery, and here in New Salem, Father Phil often saw flocks of wild turkeys foraging at their signature stately pace, like geriatric old men playing slow motion tennis, the birds slowly strutting forward on their long, stick-like legs, scratching in leaf litter or bending and pecking at the plants at the edge of the forest looking for acorns, hickory nuts, wild grapes, skunk cabbage, berries and the occasional unlucky grasshopper or spider.

  In early May, he had even discovered a wild turkey nest at the edge of the monastery property, a shallow, leaf-lined depression on the ground containing a dozen light tan eggs with brownish dots.

  The eggs hatched after 28 days, and he had watched as the brood followed their mother about the fields and woods near the monastery. Several of the young poults, as they are called, didn’t survive. One early morning, Father Phil saw a large gray bird, a goshawk he found out later from his bird identification book, swoop out of the sky and grab a skinny poult. And a fox that lived in the woods near the monastery had probably taken several others of the original dozen poults. Young turkeys remain with their mother for at least 4 to 5 months, his bird book said. So he would have some time to study and observe the remaining turkeys as the summer progressed.

  Father Phil liked the wild places of the Quabbin area, and he liked the sense of the past that permeated the old house that now served as the Swift River Valley Historic Society—one of the small pluses that came with his exile from Boston College. Father Phil turned on no lights when he entered the building—the morning sun was streaming through the high windows. He went to the small business office in the back of the house and settled into a pine, ladder-back chair, dating back to the 1870.

  First he opened a three-hole-punch binder that listed all the Historical Society records. Father Phil rose from his chair and after glancing once more at a page in the binder, moved over to a tall pine bookcase. One by one he picked up and placed three long, rectangular storage boxes on the surface of the antique maple table near the back of the library room, and then he sat down.

  This was one of his favorite moments—the beginning of a historic documents search. Everybody he knew who loved original-source research, felt the same way—the moment when you opened a box of historic documents was a keen, fine, even thrilling, moment. You never knew what awaited you on the other side of history, what treasures the box contained—often just boring, mundane and irrelevant papers; other times shocking, new, and insightful records and letters. But even the mundane and everyday opened a window into the past.

  While researching the early works of Father Baker, the Jesuit priest who vanished in the Quabbin area in the 1930s, Father Phil came upon lists that the missing priest had compiled—one paper held a grocery list of items found in an abandoned home in Dana scheduled for destruction—6 cans of tinned sardines, a tin bucket full of unbleached flour, several empty gallon milk jugs, 3 flannel shirts with holes in the sleeves, a pair of woman’s eyeglasses missing the left lens. This was the true stuff of history—the minutia of existence, the details that showed how daily life was lived in the past. Father Phil loved these finds. It’s what made historic research exciting and imaginative.

  He opened the first box and started to sift the documents inside; town records of births, deaths and marriages in the Swift River Valley. He was looking for dates. During the construction of Quabbin Reservoir from 1928 through 1939, homes and businesses had been moved or bulldozed, and the cemeteries emptied. Much of the actual destruction occurred in 1938-1939. Bulldozers roamed the area; work crews comprised of a few locals and dozens of unemployed laborers from Boston trundled out every morning to clear the debris left by the bulldozers. Whole cemeteries were moved—the graves dug up and the remains removed to be reburied either in family plots located elsewhere, or at the new special Quabbin cemetery in nearby Belton.

  Each of the four towns in the Quabbin Valley had been discontinued and demolished at different times. Father Phil was starting with the records of Enfield—first incorporated in 1816 and discontinued and abandoned to create the great reservoir in 1938.

  He had just started to sift through the first box of documents when a shadow fell across the open door and startled him. He had thought he was alone in the old building. He looked up. It

  was David Scone, the Belton town clerk, not really one of his favorite people, Father Phil thought. Couldn’t really say why, but the guy just seemed a bit off. An odd little fellow. Small and neat with a bald head and dark piercing eyes that seemed a bit shifty to Father Phil, as if the guy was always looking around for an exit. David Scone came to every single meeting of the historical society, though, and had been the elected treasurer of the organization for years.

  “Morning Father,” David Scones said, stepping tentatively across the thresholds, his dark eyes scanning the room a bit like a shoplifter checking the aisle.

  Father Phil stood. “Hello, there David,” he said, trying not to sound unwelcoming. “What brings you here, this morning? Thought I’d have the place to myself. Though company is always welcome.”

  “I need to look at some donor records for taxes,” David Scone said. He wore neat, pressed blue dress slacks and a long, tan cloth jacket. He moved closer to the table and to the side of Father Phil, one hand in his jacket pocket. Father Phil looked at him closely. The man seemed a tad nervous. Father Phil drew a deep breathe. He didn’t want to seem peeved at this interruption, though he was. He loved the solitary aspect of historic research and discovery. Now, at least for a time, that was gone.

  “What are you looking for?” David Scone said, eyeing the open boxes on the old table.

  Father Phil paused and looked at the table where he had just begun to sort through the cemetery records of Enfield. Nothing to hide here. “I’m doing a bit of historical backtracking. Looking into the old days when they discontinued the four towns and moved everything.”

  David Scone slid around the table and peered at the boxes.

  “Must be interesting work,” he said. “You’re a priest, but you’re some sort of historian too, aren’t you?

  “Well,” Father Phil said. “I’ve written as few books, some on theology and the law. Things like that. No history, though. Did most of my best work ba
ck in the days when I was teaching at Boston College.” He looked closely at David Scone who seemed to be staring at him with that shifty nervous look of before. What was this guy up to, Father Phil thought. Bit of a creep.

  “History’s my passion,” Father Phil said. “Yours too, from what I understand.”

  David Scone moved around the table and stood next to Father Phil. His right hand remained deep in his jacket pocket. Father Phil looked at him. Such an odd duck, really.

  “Sometimes,” David Scone said in a flat voice, “bad things happen to good people. That’s just the way it is.”

  “Oh, here we go again,” Father Phil thought, though he didn’t say it out loud. It was an occupational hazard of being a priest. People were always grabbing on to you at social functions, or sporting events to explain in excruciating detail why they had left the church; or why they disagreed with the Pope, or why they had lost their faith. And now, on this fine quiet morning, David Scone seemed to want to discuss whey bad things happen to good people. Just last week, Father Phil had been pinned at a dinner table for 40 minutes by a couple in their 40s ramblings on about the very same topic.

  He had accepted an invitation from Nancy Lennon, the ebullient chair of the Selectboard, to attend a library fundraiser where a local Massachusetts Audubon expert on tropical bird migration was to speak. The talk on the birds had been fine, but just before the pot luck supper, the couple in their 40s had cornered Father Phil to tell him why they no longer went to church.

  Father Phil managed to keep his “I’m greatly interested in your problems” smile pasted on, his face but he actually felt like saying: “Hey, come talk to me during normal business hours. I’m a priest but, you know what? I’ve heard your story hundreds of time before. I feel bad for you. But you know what? I don’t have the big answers you want.” But he didn’t say that either. Instead he held the couples gaze and waited them out as they recited a litany of complaints; a callous parish priest offering no consolation after a miscarriage; the outrage that the Catholic Church refused to let woman celebrate Mass or become priests; the opulence of the Pope and the Vatican; the lack of accountability in the just burgeoning priest sex scandals, and, of course, the Church’s stand on abortion. On and on they went. Father Phil never got to try the eggplant lasagna or talk to Jim, the tropical bird expert, about the Scarlet Tanagers that were nesting in an apple tree on the monastery property.