Faces in the Night

by Thomas Conuel

  “The priest in your dream?” Lester Carlson asked. “The hit man for God. He couldn’t do it, so we have to? But what?”

  “Stop whatever is going to happen out there during the Summer Solstice,” Katherine said. “That’s what that girl was trying to tell us.”

  “What is going to happen?” Lester Carlson asked.

  “Maybe I’m wrong,” Katherine said. “Maybe there is no blackness trying to get back into the world. Maybe this will all go away, and we’ll never know why we saw the things we saw. The faces in the night.”

  She paused again then rushed on. “But tonight is the Summer Solstice. The hinge of the year. Whatever is going to happen is going to happen tonight.”

  Lester Carlson nodded. He had straightened his shoulders and managed an almost cheerful smile. “Ok, so let’s do it. How do we go find out what is happening out there on the Summer Solstice?”

  “You have a canoe,” Katherine said. “Elijah Durman lived right here and he was buried out there;” she gestured towards the islands off in the distance. “And somebody took the Flanagan coffin from here and the police chief died here too. Lots and lots of coincidences, right here.

  “That’s for sure,” Lester Carlson said.

  “We have to find that coffin—tonight,” Katherine added.

  Lester Carlson nodded. He looked at Katherine and she stared back at him. The same thought occupied both their minds. Finally, he spoke. “If somebody around here took and moved that coffin way out there, then somebody else knows all about the Elijah Durman legend too.”

  Katherine nodded. “Who? Who would get involved in a thing like this?”

  Lester Carlson frowned. “And why does anybody want to get at me so bad? It’s crazy.”

  “Maybe it’s not you so much,” Katherine said. “Maybe it’s a summons of some sort, a summons from whatever is out there on the other side, and they need you in some way to help bring them back.”

  “Let’s go out to those islands,” Lester Carlson said. “Like my father always said, you might as well kill a man as scare him to death.”

  “Let’s get out of here,” Katherine said. “Let’s get your canoe and go find Blake. He’s good with a canoe. And let’s talk to Father Phil and find out how to get to those islands. We’ll paddle out to those islands. That’s where the coffin is. It has to be.”

  “And the cross?” Lester Carlson asked. “Somebody took that cross from the Belton Cemetery. I saw it yesterday.”

  “Some sort of ceremony with the coffin,” Katherine said. “They need it out there where Elijah Durman was buried before you dug him up 60 years ago. A ceremony at midnight on the Summer Solstice.” Katherine stopped talking. “It’s crazy in this day and age, but it has to be.”

  “Christ,” Lester Carlson said. “Anything makes sense these days. And to think I used to say the only thing I didn’t understand was the music kids play these days.”

  * * *

  Chapter 85

  Pottapaug Pond near the old Dana Town Common, the only Town Common from the Quabbin towns above water.

  Nice place—old cellar holes lining the Town Common visible reminders of the past.

  Over there stood the old Eagle Hotel, a favorite overnight stopping place in the late 19th century, not opulent, but comfortable.

  And across from that spot, you had the Dana church shared by three different denominations for over a century and was now marked only by a large weed filled cellar hole.

  The Town Hall had been near the eastern edge of the Common, its sidewalk was still visible, though clogged with weeds filtering through the cracks. The building had been sold at the final auction for $500.

  The Common itself was still here, a long open field covered now with tall grass and wildflowers. Pottapaug Pond was nearby down an old dirt road to the left. The pond was once a big attraction for out-of-state fishermen who built vacation cabins along its shore—before the reservoir, of course.

  He hadn’t been here in a while. This was what they called North Quabbin. He mostly walked the other side of Quabbin—where Enfield once existed. But the entity had summoned him here to deliver a message.

  He walked from Dana Common down the dirt road for 500 yards until he reached the water and Pottapaug Pond. He felt the old sensation of a video playing in his mind. The entity was showing him scenes from the past. A bulldozer with steel treads like a tank and a steel roof sheltering a tiny figure inside was pushing down the Old Stone Mill in Enfield its roof already gone and the ground littered with piles of stone from the collapsing structure; another image, a truck preceded by a car, 1930s vintage, was pulling a two-story wooden house with a flat roof along an abandoned winter road, moving the house from Greenwich to a nearby town; in another scene, far away in a barren landscape small figures burning brush along the west branch of the Swift River with smoke rising over the denuded earth, These were the last days of the Quabbin towns in 1938.

  And then, in a final scene, a young man standing right here at Pottapaug Pond. The young man is waiting for somebody. He paces back and forth along the banks of the pond in a deserted spot with rocky ledges. He is agitated, obviously scared, talking to himself, gesturing, explaining out loud, preparing his defense, and then another person appears, walking along the road leading from the Dana Town Common heading toward the young man. The young man freezes in place.

  Here in the video playing in his mind he sees the young man’s face, and feels a quick jolt of recognition. The young man is another of the entity’s helper’s just like him. He can tell by the eyes, a distinctive furtive yet cold gaze. The entity has been passing on this torch of responsibility for many, many years to his chosen few. But something has happened here and the entity is angry. This young man is in big trouble. The entity has sent yet another helper to fix things.

  The approaching stranger is huge—a massive giant of a man who despite his size moves with a catlike quickness, closing fast with the young man, bounding off the road and jumping to the rocky ledge. The young man is backing up now, pleading his case as the giant comes near, appealing for understanding. The giant ignores his pleas and grabs and lifts him like a rag doll.

  He doesn’t really want to see this, but the entity forces him to watch—the stranger with his huge hands quickly twisting the life out of the young man and tossing his body into the water so it appears he has drowned. The entity does not tolerate mistakes; the entity does not listen to excuses. That is the message. But he knows that already. And he has a plan.

  The way to do what the entity needs done tonight is to park here on the Petersham side of the reservoir away from Old Enfield Road—and then walk the roads over to the main gate and help himself to a canoe there. That way the Quabbin police will not spot his truck parked near the main gate and come looking for its owner. He cannot afford or tolerate any interference tonight. He does not intend to end up like the young man the entity has just shown him—dead and a failure.

  He checked his Quabbin map again. Handy thing—put out by the Swift River Valley Historic Society for just $7. The map was in color and showed all the current roads. He’d be swinging around Pottapaug Pond and hiking west toward Great Quabbin Mountain—really just a 3-4 mile walk. He’d be in position by sunset near the administration building where they kept several canoes tied to the launch dock.

  He reached into his pants pocket and checked yet again for the object—the stone cross with the strange blue stone. As long as he held that, he held all the cards. The entity needed him and would guide him. He hefted the cross in his pocket. Not heavy at all. An old stone icon that held great power, and now he held that power. He mattered again; his assignment for tonight mattered greatly. He was close to the core center of true power. And that was good.

  As he started down the road leading from the Dana Town Common to Pottapaug Pond and beyond, an unsettling vision interrupted his focus. Somehow the entity had been pushed aside and for a long moment he saw another face. A face he didn’t recognize.

&n
bsp; A child’s face with big blue eyes.

  A face that was somehow opposed to him and dangerous.

  Why was she here?

  What did she want?

  * * *

  Chapter 86

  Blake cursed as the bolt he was tightening snapped and broke off from the frame of his Harley. It was that kind of day. He was not particularly handy with tools, but the good thing about motorcycles was they were easy to get at, everything was accessible, and you could work on them with success without being a top-notch mechanic. But not today. The carburetor of the Harley lay in pieces at his feet. He wiped perspiration form his brow and stood. He had awoken late after Katherine had left for her trip to the library. Bad dreams had flitted through his sleep—almost like the old days when he couldn’t sleep and so he drank and did all sorts of drugs. No more of that, not with Katherine here. But today he felt shaky.

  Alan Ambrose, the bully from North Junior High, had been in his dreams, and now he kept thinking back to some of the mean and bullying things he also had done. This was so many years ago—it was crazy. Why was he thinking about things that had happened in junior high school?

  There was David Hine, whose only sin was he wanted to be a farmer, and who wore baggy dress pants to school instead of dark chinos, and was thus labeled a faggot, Blake had hung out with a half dozen others who had tormented David Hine in the hallways, placing a sign on his back that said “kick me” and then kicking him in the rear--his blue dress pants soon marred by innumerable dusty footprints. Blake had gone along with the fun—unwilling to defend David Hine, but also unwilling to actually kick him in the backside.

  They’d harassed David Hine for several days and then Mr. Stanowicz, the basketball coach, put an end to the fun, confronting Blake and several others in Mrs. Defino’s English class, ordering them to stand, calling them a gang of cowards, shaming them in front of the whole class.

  After Mr. Stanowicz stormed out of the class, Mrs. Defino stood silently for a long moment and then said. “I’m very surprised by the behavior of all of you, but I’m most surprised that one of you in particular is involved.” Nobody had to ask who she meant. Blake, who loved to read, and had already read through the complete Edgar Allen Poe, was a great favorite of Mrs. Defino’s. And now he shamed himself further.

  “I didn’t actually do anything,” he said as the others looked at him with contempt. Mike Delmonico, a good friend stood next to him sadly shaking his head. If you got caught, you took your medicine. That was the rule.

  “I didn’t actually do anything,” Blake pleaded.

  “But you were there, and you went long, and you could have stopped your friends,” Mrs. Defino said. “I’m very disappointed in you.”

  “But I didn’t actually do anything,” Blake pleaded again, morosely repeating himself.

  “Loser,” somebody mumbled under his breath. If Mrs. Defino heard that last comment, she said nothing.

  After that, they left poor David Hine alone.

  Every once in a while, Blake wished he could just go back and apologize to various people in his life for his careless and unseemly behavior. He had never been a bully, but he had gone along with others who were, wanting badly to fit in. Until Vietnam, he’d never given much thought to how he’d acted in the past. The past was past and not an indictment of character. Every kid he grew up with had done some mean things—that was par for the course.

  But after Vietnam; after huddling in that helicopter, after losing Kevin Flanagan, he’d been troubled by his past. He’d never really acted the way he thought he was capable of behaving. He’d always dodged to the sidelines and let someone else take the heat.

  He remembered another incident. He and his older brother, Warren, were sitting on a bench at the West Memorial playground when a group of older boys, his brother’s age, began chasing and tripping a younger boy who was new to the neighborhood, taunting him, letting him get up and run for a few feet before tripping him again along the dusty base paths of the softball field, kicking his new baseball glove full of sand when he fell. Warren watched this for a long moment and then jumped up without saying a word to Blake and ran onto the ball field pushing several of the bigger boys away, shoving the ringleader, a kid named Zorbo, hard in the chest, and putting a stop to the bullying of the younger boy. Nobody had pushed back against his brother—bullies seldom did.

  It was the type of simple decisive action that forever eluded Blake.

  Blake looked up from his motorcycle maintenance when Lester Carlson’s Mercedes pulled into the driveway, a bright yellow canoe strapped to the roof. Katherine hopped out from the passenger side.

  “Blake,” she called, “how about it. Let’s go canoeing tonight.”

  * * *

  Chapter 87

  Father Phil and Lester Carlson had met once before, at one of the last big peace marches, held in Manhattan on a cold and rainy Saturday morning--April 22, 1972. John Lennon and Yoko Ono made a surprise appearance at the rally after the march walking out onstage to the delight of the huge crowd. “It may be raining raindrops on you people, but it’s raining bombs on Vietnam - so let’s give peace a chance.” John yelled into a microphone before launching into his anthem “Give Peace a Chance” as thousands joined in singing and cheering.

  Father Phil had been out in front with the marchers, and later stood to one side of the platform as John and Yoko pleaded for peace. He noticed a well-dressed man in an expensive trench coat standing close by. The man turned and looked at Father Phil and for a second or two they both struggled to place the other in memory. Then Lester Carlson wagged a finger at Father Phil and said: “Hey, Congressman, I testified before your committee last year.” Father Phil recognized him—the Assistant Secretary of State for Southeast Asia.

  Lester Carlson had worked his way through the crowd and come over to talk to Father Phil.

  “What are you doing here?” Father Phil asked.

  “I’m for peace, too,” Lester Carlson said. “Give peace a chance, on both sides.”

  “The end of war. It always sounds so good,” Father Phil said.

  “Sounds good, but hard to do,” Lester Carlson said.

  They hadn’t spoken much after that. The rain and the cold dispersed the crowd after John and Yoko finished, and Lester Carlson had offered a quick handshake to Father Phil, who was after all, still a member of Congress and somebody of political importance.

  Now, some 25 years later, the two men stood facing each other, a bit uneasily, on the wooden porch of the Franciscan Monastery where Father Phil occupied an office and a bedroom. Katherine had introduced them and both old wanderers from the 1970s shook hands and made awkward small talk before Katherine brought the conversation back to basics.

  “We’re going to canoe out to the Quabbin islands,” she said to Father Phil, gesturing vaguely toward the surrounding woods. The reservoir was out of sight. “We want to find that old cross you told us about, and we want to do it tonight before the Summer Solstice.”

  “Ah ha. The Summer Solstice. The hinges of the year,” Father Phil said with his small smile. “The time when the evil spirits try to come through.”

  “You’re a priest and I’m sure you don’t have any belief in ghosts and devils, but we want to be sure,” Katherine said. She shrugged. “Something is out there. We both feel it.” She pointed at Lester Carlson, who nodded.

  “Oh don’t be so sure about what I believe these days,” Father Phil said. “The Catholic Church still conducts exorcisms, so somebody in the church still believes in the evil one.”

  There was an awkward silence. Finally Father Phil spoke again. “Come. Let’s all sit on the porch and I’ll get out my maps, and we’ll figure out the best way for you to paddle out to the islands.” A moment later he was back with an armful of rolled up maps.

  “The other day, at the historical society, you told us old Elijah Durman was buried on Curtis Hill,” Katherine said.

  “That’s true, and then his bones were moved an
d reburied over there in Belton, where you found the old grave,” Father Phil spread open a map as he talked. “The town cemetery was at the foot of Curtis Hill.”

  “So we paddle toward this big hill straight ahead, Mount Pomeroy, and then Curtis Hill is to the north. I think that’s what you said the other day,” Katherine remarked.

  “That’s it,” Father Phil said. “Good you’re being careful. You don’t want to make mistakes this late in the game.”

  “Katherine and I have both seen this blue light,” Lester Carlson said. “The face that comes after me, hallucination or not, has this hard, bright blue light in the eye.”

  “The blue light. I believe you,” Father Phil said quietly. “It’s in all the old historical stuff I’ve been reading all the way back to Jesuits and Father Sebastien Rale. The Jesuits have been chasing that blue light and the stone it originates from for at least 2 centuries. So yes, I believe you.”

  Later when they were leaving, Lester Carlson paused on the monastery porch. He looked over at Katherine for a long moment like a man about to admit he had just broken the family’s antique teapot and then he turned abruptly to Father Phil.

  “Ok. This is probably crazy, but I wonder, it’s been 40 years, will you hear my confession before I leave?”

  Katherine started to laugh but stifled it quickly. Lester Carlson was dead serious. Father Phil looked nonplussed like an adult handed a child’s toy that he had no idea how to use. But Father Phil recovered quickly.

  “Of course, I can. It’s been years since I’ve heard confession, but I still know the drill.” He smiled. “Let’s go inside.”

  He turned to Katherine. “We’ll be 15 minutes, or so. You can sit here on the porch. Thanks.”

  * * *