Everyone Dies in the End

by Brian Katcher

  I began to put everything back into the box, more or less in the right order. When I picked up an ancient accordion file, something brown with many legs popped out and skittered across the table. Steph saw it and let out a sitcom-esque squeal.

  I swatted it with the folder, causing the papers to shoot out like confetti. As I stacked them back up, a yellowed sheet caught my eye.

  I think I noticed it because it had been banged out on a manual typewriter. All the Gs were faint and all the Ls were half a line too low. It was dated 1935, though I couldn’t make out the month.

  Professor Louis Roebuck

  Department of Sociology

  University Of Missouri, Columbia

  Dear Louis,

  It looks as if the authorities are not going to investigate the fire. I’m not sure if they couldn’t find you-know-who’s body, or if they CHOSE not to. I think we would all do well not to mention what we discovered to anyone. I’ve spoken to Sammy and Sgt. Knowles and they agree.

  Thank you for everything. Please be careful. Contact me if I can help you in any way. I believe we did a good thing, and I pray that we are not punished.

  Yours,

  Rev. David Gowen

  Holiness Church

  Columbia, Missouri

  I stared, unbelieving, at the page for several minutes.

  Fire? Body? A police cover up?

  “Hey,” said Steph. “Close your mouth before you start drooling.”

  I grabbed a clean-looking folder, emptied it, and placed my find carefully inside.

  “What’re you so excited about?” She had closed her Bible and was looking at me oddly.

  I tried not to let my giddiness show.

  “Just a little something I found.”

  “More dirt?”

  Pay dirt, more likely.

  “I gotta run.” I abandoned my box on the table. Stephanie tried to say something, but I didn’t stay to listen.

  This was big.

  Columbia, Missouri, May 6, 1935—It was 4:30 a.m. Dr. Louis Roebuck was alone on St. Francis Quadrangle on the University campus. The professor stopped to admire the six huge limestone columns in the middle of the quad, all that was left of old Academic Hall. He had been a mere undergraduate the night an electrical fire gutted the main campus building. He remembered rushing into the inferno with everyone else, grabbing whatever he could save. He and six others had just deposited the stuffed African elephant onto the snowy field when an explosion tore the roof off the building. That had been the magazine of the Missouri National Guard, inadvisably stored on an upper floor. Salvage operations stopped after that.

  The campus had changed since then. It had grown from eight buildings to over twenty. When Roebuck graduated there had been six thousand students; now there were over 15,000. There was even talk of allowing Negroes to attend.

  The University had changed, but Dr. Roebuck had not. He had gone from a promising undergraduate, to a bright young graduate student, to a hard working teaching assistant, to a learned professor of philosophy and sociology. He’d never lived outside of Columbia. He’d married a local librarian and lived in a house within walking distance of campus.

  Seeing the chubby, bearded Dr. Roebuck wandering about at night was a typical campus sight. Some claimed he was an insomniac. Others figured he was just plotting new ways to make his exams more difficult. Others had darker suspicions. No one ever guessed that he simply enjoyed being on campus. He loved the college.

  Dr. Roebuck headed towards home, taking a shortcut through the trees behind the Engineering Building. He could recall when there were deer in the woods and visitors arrived on horseback.

  The professor was so deep in remembrance than he almost didn’t hear the whimper. If the night hadn’t been so still, he might not have. Somewhere in the darkness. Something moaning. Muffled.

  Dr. Roebuck had never considered himself a brave man. Aside from his amateur firefighting years ago, he’d never been called upon for heroics. He’d been too old for service in the Great War. The last thing he wanted to do was wander off in the darkness, searching for whatever was crying.

  The noise came again. Louder. Human. Female. He could no longer pretend it didn’t concern him.

  He paused to pull out the electric torch he carried in his coat for emergencies, then took off in the direction of the noise. He cut a path through the trees, struggling to see what lay ahead of him in the light of a half moon. He nearly stepped on the girl before her saw her.

  She was gorgeous, no more than twenty, with auburn hair and freckles. She lay in the grass, her left arm awkwardly twisted beneath her. She wore not a stitch of clothes; those were piled off to her left, torn and discarded. The beam of the flashlight revealed blood streaming out of her mouth and nose. Even in the darkness, Dr. Roebuck could see the whites of her terrified eyes. The girl groaned again, the voice of sheer terror.

  Roebuck had covered her with his overcoat before he’d fully processed what he was seeing. Gingerly, he knelt beside her.

  “It’s going to be all right,” he whispered, knowing damn well that it wasn’t. He moved to take her hand, then thought the better of it.

  The girl stared blankly at him until he looked away. “Who did this to you?”

  “Him…”

  “Who? What’s his name? We’ll find him. We’ll make him pay for this.”

  “HIM!”

  Dr. Roebuck narrowly missed a heavy boot to the back of the skull. With surprising agility for a man of his age and weight, he leapt up, standing between his attacker and the prostrate woman. He shone the light at the man, as if its beam would hold him back.

  The man was about thirty, with thinning hair, cauliflower ears, and a pinched face, like a turtle’s. The professor noticed with disgust that the man’s pants and shirt were unbuttoned and his suspenders hung loose around his knees. The rapist wore a strange medallion around his neck and carried a large hunting knife.

  “Just keep moving, fat ass. This don’t concern you.” His voice was phlegmy and his teeth were brown.

  It’s times like this that show what kind of a man you are. What kind of a man you REALLY are. While Dr. Roebuck could never forget the horror of what he’d seen, he could take small comfort in the fact that his opponent would sport a broken jaw for the next month or so.

  The criminal hadn’t expected the blow, which is probably why he lost his grip on the knife. The professor slammed his porky fist into the man’s face again, and watched him go down.

  He paused to grope for the attacker’s weapon, but couldn’t locate it in the dark. In retrospect, that might have been for the best; he would have done something rash. Roebuck simply contented himself in watching the rapist stagger to his feet and run off into the night, clutching his face.

  The fight fizzled out of the professor. He flopped down, wheezing, next to the woman. Her eyes were now closed, but she was breathing shallowly. Once he regained his breath, he’d find the night watchman at the University Clinic.

  As he forced himself to his feet, he noticed something on the ground. At first he thought it was the knife, but it was actually the attacker’s medallion. It was difficult to make out what was engraved on it. It looked like two letters: a three pronged figure and an X.

  The woman, as it turned out, was a cook at the dining hall on her way to work. When she got out of the hospital a week later, she refused to speak to the police about the attack and moved back home to Ohio.

  Dr. Roebuck never took a nocturnal walk again.

  – Chapter Three –

  I trotted across Lowry Mall, staring intently at the screen on my phone, dodging the occasional summer session student. Every search engine I tried came up with nothing relevant for a David Gowen or a Professor Louis Roebuck. Had they been involved in some sort of a scandal, surely there’d be some mention of it, somewhere. Of course, this was about eighty years ago, back when Columbia was a relatively small town. I needed to dig deeper, make sure I wasn’t researching something that h
ad already been printed and forgotten.

  Massive Ellis Library loomed, gray and imposing, over the center of campus. Trying to remember the directions from the map of campus, I circled the building until I found the neglected, glass-fronted door. MISSOURI HISTORICAL SOCIETY

  I scanned their hours. They closed at five during the summer, and it was ten till. I’d probably have to come back tomorrow, but decided to check things out anyway.

  A smug portrait of Harry Truman, the only successful Missourian since Jesse James, greeted me. The office was dimly lit, reeking of old newspaper, stale air, and dust. Political cartoons lampooning decades-dead politicians and university presidents lined the walls. The requisite photograph of the Academic Hall fire of 1892 hung over a bank of file cabinets.

  “May I help you?”

  The girl behind the counter was as young as Steph, shorter than Steph, and probably weighed twice as much. She did, however, carry a lot of that weight in her chest, so it wasn’t necessarily a bad thing. She had hair as kinky as steel wool and as red as a box of McDonald’s french fries. A proliferation of freckles covered her apple cheeks. Thick lips and a turned-up nose completed the picture.

  “Yes, um…” I glanced at her name plate. “Christine?”

  “Call me Charlie.”

  “Charlie, um, do you work here?” She seemed awfully young. I was hoping for someone a little more experienced to help me.

  She raised an eyebrow. “No, I’m actually heiress to the throne of Moldavia. Today I switched places with a lowly peasant girl to see how the serfs live.” She then squinted her eyes and bared her teeth. It took me a moment to realize that was how she smiled.

  I found myself grinning in return. “Sarcasm. I learned about that in English lit.”

  “Yes, Einstein, I’ve worked here all summer. I’m going to be a freshman next year, so I figured I’d read all the books in advance. What’s your story?”

  “Sherman. I’m a Youth Scholar.”

  She laughed. I wasn’t sure if it was over my name or my academic pursuits. “Aren’t you a good boy, spending your summer vacation learning.”

  “Look who’s talking!”

  “Hey, at least I’m getting paid. Now what did you need, I don’t have all day.” She then glanced around the gloomy, silent office, as if noticing the neglected state of things for the first time. “Oh, I guess I do.”

  “I’m looking for information on a couple of names. A Reverend David Gowen, he was a minister at the Holiness Church here in Columbia in 1935. Also, Louis Roebuck, he was a professor at MU around the same time.”

  She copied down the names, asking me to spell ‘Roebuck.’ “Tried Googling it?”

  I frowned. “That’s no way to research.”

  She shot me her grimacing smile again. “Good answer, Sherwood. We’re about to close, but I’m here tomorrow. Why don’t you stop by and I’ll give you a hand?”

  That was one way of going about it, but I didn’t want to waste time digging through more old files, not if I could help it. “I don’t suppose you could take a look for me, Charlie?” I gave her my most charming smile.

  She rolled her eyes. “You know, earlier this summer, I had every jock on campus here, asking me to do the homework for their remedial classes. But somehow, you’re different.”

  “Smart?”

  “Scrawny.”

  We locked eyes for several seconds. I think we were both trying not to laugh.

  “Tell you what, Sure-thing, I’ll see what I can come up with this week. Stop by sometime. Maybe we can make some popcorn and read some of the old agricultural yearbooks.”

  “Thanks, Charlie. I’ll make this up to you.”

  “I’ll send you a bill. So why are you interested in these guys, anyway?”

  I thought about telling her, but decided to keep it to myself. If there was a story in this, it was all mine. Plus, the whole conspiracy theory thing might sound kind of weird to someone else.

  “It’s boring.” I headed to the door.

  “Kay. Hey!”

  I stopped.

  Charlie stood. “I’ll be done here in about five minutes. You want to grab a cup of coffee or whiskey or something?” She was smiling, but for the first time since I’d come in, she didn’t look utterly self-assured.

  I briefly considered her offer. After all, she was the first intelligent person I’d met on campus, and the flirting was kind of obvious. But she also had the beginnings of a double chin, and part of her shirt was tucked into the rolls of her stomach.

  “Sorry, got to get back for dinner. Thanks for everything.”

  She nodded. I saw her hand briefly touch her belly, but that might have been my imagination.

  “See ya round, Charmin.”

  I sat alone in the Mark Twain dining hall, my chicken cacciatore growing cold as I composed messages on my phone. On every Missouri-themed bulletin board, Facebook page, or historical society, I left a request for information. It was doubtful anyone there knew anything about Professor Roebuck or Reverend Gowen, but I had to check all avenues. In the end, I’d left over fifty messages. I might have done more, but my dad kept trying to call.

  I pulled the letter out of my case and reread it. It certainly sounded interesting, what with that talk of a missing body, a fire, and some kind of cover up. But what if the truth was much more mundane? Or this had already been sorted out during the depression? Or what if I broke some amazing story, but Mr. Hopkins didn’t care because it had happened so long ago?

  One thing was certain, I had to have a lot more information than I did now. Charlie might turn up something; I’d stop by and see her in a couple of days. Or maybe Gowen’s church might provide a lead. A little searching revealed that the building, at least, was still around, though it now housed a Baptist congregation.

  “Hey, roomie!”

  Shit.

  My annoyance turned to flat out dismay when I realized not only was L.J. approaching my table, but he was accompanied by John Doe and Aaron, that wannabe soldier. The three of them sat down without asking, Aaron shoving some of my stuff aside.

  John was finishing a story. “Correct me if I’m wrong, but once you’ve committed to the lederhosen and pineapple, it’s not like the circus animals are a big surprise. I mean, Ypsilanti, Michigan! I guess the standard deviation just isn’t enough for some people.”

  L.J. and Aaron nodded. “I hear you, man.”

  I was almost, but not quite, tempted to ask them what they were talking about. What I really wanted was privacy. Unfortunately, I had barely touched my dinner, so I couldn’t just get up and leave.

  Aaron was already stuffing his face. “So what workshop did you go to this afternoon, Sherman?” His tray was covered with dozens of sausages. I’d have to ask Steph what Freud would say about that.

  “I didn’t.” Some of us had work to do.

  “Ya should of. We got to hear this old sailor who fought at Guadalcanal.”

  John was picking at a salad. “Hey, my great-grandfather was there.”

  “You ought to go see that guy. Maybe they knew each other.”

  “I doubt it,” mumbled John.

  “Why not?”

  “Because great-grandpa was in the Japanese navy.”

  L.J. laughed. “Hey!” he said suddenly, turning to me. “Did you ever play quidditch?”

  “Quidditch?”

  “Yeah, I’m trying to get together a team for the summer.”

  “Quidditch?” I repeated. “Like from Harry Potter?”

  “Yeah. You ever play?”

  Many sarcastic comments bounced around in my brain. “No, L.J., for the simple reason that I do not have a flying broomstick.”

  It didn’t faze him. “Oh, we just hold the broom between our legs. You should come tomorrow, it’s fun.”

  “So you’re asking me to prance around pretending to be a witch, with a stick crammed up my ass?”

  “Thank you!” said Aaron, who obviously shared my opinions. “Football or fag
gotry, one or the other.”

  I began to collect my utensils. Why did I think the Scholars’ program would be some kind of intellectual Mecca? It was just high school all over again, same dumb shits who wanted to waste time playing sports and telling stupid jokes. It was like hanging out with my dad’s poker buddies. Well, I had a plan, and it didn’t include hanging out with these guys.

  “I’m going back to the room,” I said, picking up my tray.

  “We’ll be up there in a minute,” said L.J.

  “Lovely.”

  L.J. had set up his laptop on his bed and was streaming an episode of ‘Three’s Company.’ He sat on the floor with John and Aaron, laughing like baboons at the sitcom shenanigans.

  I stared at my own laptop, accessing more Columbia history sites, trying to track down the reverend and the professor. I had the creeping suspicion maybe there was no information out there. Even if the incident in the letter was important, if it had been covered up successfully, then I was wasting my time.

  “This show is so gay!” barked Aaron. I made a fist around the pen in my hand. Didn’t these guys realize I was trying to work? Didn’t they notice how annoying they were being?

  Granted, I could have popped in my earplugs, or gone to the lounge, or actually asked them to leave. But I refused to show weakness. I held my ground, venting my displeasure through a series of loud sighs and angry glances.

  “Hey, who’d you rather go with,” asked L.J., pointing to the screen. “Janet or Chrissy?”

  “Chrissy, no contest,” said Aaron, taking a swig of soda, then belching.

  “I dunno,” said John. “She’s cuter, but kinda dim. And probably high maintenance. Janet would probably look better in the morning.”

  Bunch of god damn monkeys.