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Faces in the Night

Page 28

by Thomas Conuel


  Lester Carlson had come back from college for summer work in 1938 and taken the only job available—working for the state testing soil samples at Quabbin Reservoir and later supervising a surveying crew. Jobs were scarce and several other young men from the Quabbin towns also worked for the state. There was no overt resentment. Most of the other workers where from the Boston area. They would form up the work crews in the morning and then ride out in an old truck for the day’s work. Occasionally, they would come across a disaffected former resident who would scowl or curse. But that was all. Most of the valley people were gone. The battle to keep their homes and lives in the four towns was over. Quabbin Reservoir had replaced the Swift River Valley on the map of Massachusetts.

  Later, people would ask why there was so little opposition to the plan. There were no groups like the Audubon Society or the Conservation Law Foundation to lead the opposition to the reservoir. The slogan of the 1960s “Question Authority” had not yet become the mantra of the young. It was easy to forget how much the times had changed. The state wanted his family’s home and his father’s store so it could build a reservoir. So his father gave up his property. It was the way things were done back then—no fights, no rancorous protests, no public clashes with authorities. You might grumble, but you did what the state asked of you.

  Lester Carlson sipped more scotch and continued to look out the kitchen door into the darkness. Hard to say when that attitude of unquestioning respect for authority began to change. Certainly by the time he was in the State Department. Derision for the President and his assistants had been the norm. Columnists and cartoonists lined up to belittle the men who ran the country. Vietnam had done that, but looking back you could see the seeds of disrespect for the Presidency taking root in the 1960s. The people and the press had adored John F. Kennedy, and the people were unaware of his foibles. He had great style. Perhaps the press, feeling guilty for the free pass they gave JFK, were harder on Lyndon Johnson. Johnson was an easy target—big, talkative, a bit crude and miles behind his predecessor in style. And after LBJ it was open season on the President, whoever he was.

  * * *

  Chapter 78

  Lester Carlson turned away from the screen door and locked it. Thinking about the past made him lonely. He had known and worked with presidents and cabinet members—powerful demanding people who determined the fate of countries. Now, everybody was either dead or disgraced, including himself. He shrugged and poured himself another large Chivas Regal scotch over the remaining ice cubes in his glass.

  He had outlived his times. It happened to the best and it had now happened to him. You stayed around too long and pretty soon instead of respect you engendered sympathy, and at first you couldn’t even tell the difference. It was a good thing that he had retired and left Washington when he had. At least here in Belton he had his privacy and his memories.

  The wind was blowing hard outside with a sharp whistling sound. It hadn’t been that way a moment ago. The feeling of nervous expectation that had tugged at him all evening rose with the sound. He pivoted to look behind him. The house was dark except for a light in the kitchen and a light here in the living room.

  No point running and nowhere to run to. He’d lived his entire life with a core belief in rational, clear thinking. But, Katherine had been right. There were parts of the universe that defied the rational and the logical.

  The Summer Solstice was near—the longest day of the year; the doorway between light and dark. On one side of the door, the light, the rational, the world as he knew it. On the other side of the door, the deep darkness of the unknown, the possibilities of terror and evil and powers that humans could not understand.

  Something was going to happen here; perhaps something was coming through that door, the door that separated the light from the dark; something was coming back to this world. It was out there now—testing and pushing at the doors of perception; nudging aside what people thought of as the real world.

  Lester Carlson drew a long deep breath and forced himself to stay calm. He sipped his scotch, but hardly tasted it. The wind rose and tore at the house. He waited. And then he knew it was out there again, waiting on the other side of the living room window.

  OK, Lester Carlson said to himself, screw it. If I’ve got to check out tonight, then I’ll do it with my head held high. He took a long slow sip of scotch before slowly putting the glass on a table, snapping off the living room light, and stepping over to the window, knowing already what he would see.

  The face was there as before—head suspended in mid-air, eyes bulging against the glass, blood and pus oozing from holes in the forehead. Lester Carlson had been prepared, but even so he gasped and fell back. He didn’t faint though.

  When he first saw the face back in May, it had shown itself for several seconds and then vanished. Tonight was different. Lester Carlson sensed that right away. He staggered back to the window and looked again. The face was still there pressing against the glass—more permanent than before. The rising wind swirled at the apparition’s back and tore at the house. Lester Carlson moved gingerly forward a small, hesitant step. The face hovered there, screaming noiselessly, the wind at its back.

  Lester Carlson inched closer. This was the clearest he had seen the face. Its bulging eyes hypnotized him and drew him closer and still closer until he stood with his face pressed against the inner window pane while the face molded itself against the outside window.

  Up close, the face was that of a young man. A young man killed in battle to judge by the gaping wounds in the forehead that looked like shrapnel punctures. But the eyes were different, ancient and non-human orbs that glowed like coals pressed into the eye sockets of a human face.

  For several more seconds, Lester Carlson stood with his eyes locked onto the other’s eyes, feeling utterly powerless to move or disengage. And then, in the far depths of the coal black eyes, a small hard blue light began spinning and gliding forward in both eye sockets. The gaze of the apparition held him in a grip as tight as any vise. Those eyes blazed with the ferocity of a being that willed itself to return to this world. The head bobbed crazily about in the wind, but the eyes never wavered.

  Lester Carlson moved his head to follow the bobbing face, but the eyes stayed locked on his. The thought occurred to Lester Carlson in a detached way that he could have a heart attack; he could die from stress and fright and nobody would know. Maybe Katherine. She would suspect something.

  The eyes of the non-human being outside his window bore in on him, fixing him to the spot, trying to burn into his soul through the glass. Lester Carlson remembered a fleeting image from childhood. He and his father standing in his father’s workroom; his father using a solder gun to burn Lester Carlson’s initials into the balsam wing of a model airplane, and the two of them chuckling and nodding at how well the wooden plane looked. The eyes across from Lester Carlson seemed to be trying to burn into his soul like the solder gun into soft wood. I wonder Lester Carlson thought, if I’ll just collapse here and this thing outside will burn the soul right out of me.

  He jerked his head back trying to break away, but the eyes held him fast. He tried to study the rest of the face, but so great was the power of the apparition’s gaze he could not look away. He looked into the deep coal-black spaces that passed as eyes. As he stared, the hard blue light glowed in the blackness of the irises. It appeared to be expanding, moving forward, growing into a larger orb.

  The wind gave a last howl and died down to a thin whisper. Out of nowhere a body formed beneath the face—a body that appeared to Lester Carlson to be a collection of shadows with no solid parts. The body wavered outside the window while the face on top of it screamed silent imprecations. The eyes glowed more fiercely as if to will the shadowy body into full life. The body had arms. Lester Carlson watched stupefied as the thing raised its arms and shook the window. The glass trembled and for a moment seemed about to break.

  Lester Carlson was unable to move. The blue light rotating in the
dead eyes grew in intensity. The apparition raised its arms again and this time they showed the heft and sinew and greater form of human arms. It reached for the window just as a fierce wind rose again at its back. Like a leaf blown away in a storm, the body vanished, leaving only the face with its ink-black eyes hovering outside the window.

  As Lester Carlson watched in horror and fascination, the dead eyes broke their hypnotic gaze, the hard blue light in their center retreated, and then the eyes snapped shut like an elevator door abruptly closing. The face floated in the dark outside the window for an instant longer, and then vanished into the night with the suddenness of a puff of smoke from a midnight campfire. The wind died down and Lester Carlson staggered back from the window.

  * * *

  Chapter 79

  Katherine shuffled through a stack of old photographs, pausing to rotate the occasional photo placed upside-down into its proper alignment. She was sitting in the local history alcove of the Jones Library in Amherst. Outside it was a bright June morning with long shafts of yellow sunlight pouring into the room from two windows high overhead. It was early, but Katherine had been waiting for the library to open its doors since before 9 a.m.

  She had not slept the previous night, not after the blue light had come for her and almost sucked her into perpetual darkness; almost separated her body from her soul. Only the chance ringing of the telephone and Blake coming to find her to take the call allowed escape. She had held Blake tight and kissed him hard, and then gone downstairs and sat with him throughout the rest of the night.

  “Kath, Kath, please,” Blake kept saying. “There is nothing to be afraid of. You had a wicked bad dream. You were breathing when I got there. I wanted to wake you real quick, though. You were white as a sheet. I gave you a little CPR, that’s all. But nobody is out to get you. That guy in the pickup truck was probably just another drunk out trying to pick up a coed. You’re going to be OK.”

  Blake had poured them both a Spanish brandy, put on a pot of coffee, and tuned in a late movie. Katherine put on her robe and a pair of Blake’s heavy athletic socks and sat on the couch with her feet tucked underneath her. Blake had not heard the wind or felt his soul drifting up and away from his body or seen the hard blue light focusing with hypnotic intensity. He was gentle with her but puzzled. The blue light had come close to pulling her soul out of her body. It was nothing you could explain. It was beyond rational, human explanation. It had to be experienced. Something was out there.

  Something that had come near her very soul and almost whisked her off.

  And then the phone rang at 2 in the morning. Lester Carlson calling—abashed but lucid. The face had come for him again. Something was out there trying to break through and possess him.

  In the morning, Katherine dressed and shook Blake awake for a moment. She and Lester Carlson were getting together at the Jones Library to look at old photographs and search for connections. Blake nodded and closed his eyes again.

  Katherine had lingered for a moment in the kitchen—when she felt it. A strong presence. Somebody or something in the kitchen with her. Not bad—but insistent. She closed her eyes. A child’s face floated into her mind. She opened her eyes.

  It felt like the good presence that Lester Carlson described; the presence that came and took him on hikes over the Quabbin landscape. An older child’s face—or perhaps even a young teenager--hovering now in the kitchen, but nudging her to go outside; compelling her to go—to seek out something or somebody. She closed her eyes to try and visualize the face in greater detail, but the image vanished.

  Now in the Jones Library, after a half hour, she found what she was searching for in an old, water-stained brown binder, one of about 50 occupying a shelf and labeled as having come from the files of the Metropolitan District Commission, the state agency originally in charge of the creation and maintenance of Quabbin Reservoir. Organized by town and date, each binder contained pictures, letters, and memos from the years prior to the destruction of the four towns and the creation of the giant reservoir.

  In one folder labeled “Enfield: 1936—1938”, she found a picture. It was a group photo of a work crew of 10 men, all ages. They were dressed in the loose, floppy dark pants, and long-sleeved white shirts of workmen of the day; most wore soft hats or bandannas on their heads. The caption of the photo read: “One of the surveying and demolition crews that helped build Quabbin Reservoir at work near Enfield center.”

  Katherine studied the picture. She recognized the young Lester Carlson immediately. He was standing in the middle of the group with a soft, dress hat pushed far back on his head showing wavy dark hair, and the big confident smile of a person obviously in charge. Even back then, he had the habit of command. Four other men knelt in front of him. The others stood beside him, looking deferential. Lester Carlson stared, head held high, a bit arrogantly, straight at the camera.

  Katherine put the photo aside and continued looking through the binder. There were other photos of other work crews, memos detailing survey results, work orders with demolition dates and property descriptions, and photos of the homes already demolished or moved. One photo held her attention. It showed a cemetery and a work crew moving tombstones and disinterring bodies. An open-bed truck stood to the side of the cemetery. Three men leaned against the truck, spades and shovels in hand. A wooden box, probably a casket sat on the ground at their feet filled with remains disinterred from a grave.

  She flipped through a stack of photos of the old homes glancing quickly at the names until she came to one of an old, wooden frame house in bad repair. The caption underneath said simply: “Durman-Flanagan—mid-19th century wooden frame—two out buildings—lot size 5 acres—located off Old Enfield Road—demolition—April 1938.”

  Katherine looked closely at the photo. Judging by its age, the house could not be the original dwelling of the terrible Elijah Durman who had died over a half century before its construction in the mid-19th century. But it could have been one of Lester Carlson’s assignments to survey the site and supervise the demolition of the house. The Durman name had died out with the death of Elijah Durman. The widow Flanagan and her progeny would have inherited the property and decades later a new house had been built on the site.

  Katherine held the picture up and studied it further. In front of the house was a clump of trees. She looked hard. There were five trees in the clump, and though the photo was an old grainy black and white, the trees were obviously maples—the same clump of maples behind which she had seen the face at twilight while walking Old Enfield Road. The trees in this picture were over a half century younger than the maples she had seen, but still gnarled with age. Katherine shivered briefly as she remembered her walk on the road in the deepening dusk and the appearance of the hovering face behind the maples and how it had followed her almost to her car.

  Katherine replaced the photo of the old Flanagan home and flipped through the rest of the material in the folder. She pulled out an old newspaper clipping from the “Springfield Morning Union” that described the demise of the town of Enfield.

  Under circumstances as dramatic as any in fiction or in a movie epic, the town of Enfield passed out of existence at the final stroke of the midnight hour...A hush fell over the Town Hall, jammed far beyond its ordinary capacity...the orchestra, which had been playing for the firemen’s ball throughout the evening, faintly sounded the strains of Auld Lang Syne...”

  The story went on to recount at some length the final moments of the town of Enfield as it concluded its last Town Meeting and officially ceased to exist at midnight 1937. Katherine looked up from the story. Lester Carlson stood in front of her looking haggard, like a man who hadn’t slept. Katherine realized she probably looked the same.

  “Doing more research?” Lester Carlson said with a smile. “What’s new?”

  “Lots of interesting stuff here,” Katherine replied. “Here. Maybe you remember this.” She handed him the newspaper clipping.

  He glanced at and nodded his he
ad. “Sure. A well-known story. Crops up in all the histories of Quabbin. I was there you know.”

  “I thought you might have been. The last town meeting and all. What was it like?”

  “Strange. Lots of tears. Lots of sadness. It’s not too often that you get to see your home town closed down for good. Erased. Officially discontinued and gone.”

  Silently, Katherine handed him the photo of his old MDC work crew.

  “Good grief. I haven’t seen this photo in 60 years,” Lester Carlson smiled broadly. “I was a handsome young stud then.” He studied the photo turning it to catch the best light and slowly nodded.

  “And there’s this,” Katherine said handing him the photo of the work crew in the cemetery. “You and your crew were digging up graves. Old graves, I bet.”

  Lester Carlson nodded. Katherine handed him the photo of the old Durman-Flanagan homestead. “Here’s the Durman house, but not the original.”

  Lester Carlson picked up the photo of the house and studied it intently. “I remember this house,” he said. “I remember the Durman legend. We all joked about it. A real crock, we all said.”

  “You tore the house down, I bet,” Katherine said. “I mean your crew took it down. Your crew that you were in charge of.”

  “Probably,” Lester Carlson said. “You’re probably right. Tell you what. Let’s take a ride out there and I’ll show you where this house was and tell you what little I remember of the last days of Enfield.”

  * * *

  Chapter 80

 

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