Authors: Thomas Cater
I could see the Stamper's were not overwhelmed with
the prospect of hosting my van. I excused myself again and tried to catch up.
They were already out the door. Mrs. Holmes caught me by the arm.
“Be careful, son.” She whispered. “I don’t think
wickedness has a lasting chance in this world, but there are a few people who
attract it, especially republicans. They are usually strong enough to handle it
themselves, but sometimes the people around them get hurt. If you’re one of
that kind, please, be careful. I don’t want any of my family scarred or living
the rest of their lives in fear of dreadful things that could happen.”
I could see she was genuinely concerned. I tried to
put her mind at ease, though I harbored doubts. “I promise you that if it is
my turn to draw fire, I won’t let anyone get hurt on my account.”
She shook my hand and pulled my cheek close to her
face. In the pretense of kissing me, she whispered another message in my ear.
“Thank you, and don’t be afraid; I’ll be praying for
you every step of the way.”
I never thought I actually had anything terrible to
face until that moment. I thanked her, backed out the door and caught up with
the Stamper’s, who were waiting on the sidewalk. I smiled at Violet.
“She’s a fine lady, but I think she takes things too
seriously.”
Anger was still smoldering in Violet’s eyes, which I
took to mean agreement, but I sensed it was nothing extraordinary. Everyone in
the family, I suspected, came with short, highly combustible fuses. Violet sat
in the back seat with the kids and I crawled up front.
“The house that burned down, the one the mason lived
in, is any part of it still standing?” I asked.
Virgil shrugged a shoulder. “That house burned down a
long time ago,” he said. “There may be a few foundation stones still standing,
but nothing else.”
“Do you know where it stood?” I continued.
He thought for a moment. “I know where several ruins
are located. It’s bound to be one of them, why?”
“I want to take a look,” I said. “You can’t tell; we
might be able to learn something just by looking. Didn’t you ever get a feeling
about a place just by being there?”
Virgil frowned. “Yeah, I have, but I don’t have time
to go poking around in ashes that have been cold for more than half a century.
I got a mortgage payment this month, several in fact.”
I don’t know why it didn’t occur to me that I might
have to make the journey alone. I could picture myself cutting grass, caulking
windows, repairing shingles and painting eaves, but instructions on how to
track down illusive ghosts were not included in most homeowner’s manuals.
Chapter Eight
I was up early Saturday waiting in the parking lot
when the Grover Gibson Library opened. A gray-haired librarian led me to the
local history section on the second floor and removed a copy of Henry Morgan’s
book from a locked glass cabinet. It was exactly as Violet had described it,
600 typewritten pages, including corrections, deletions and typos bound in
leather. The cover, I suspected, would far outlast the text.
The book included a table of contents, an index and
several genealogical studies, including the Ryders. It was a well-organized
labor of love. I didn’t need to read the entire 600-page tome to find what was
available on the family. A cross reference with a list of family names and page
numbers accompanied the book. The author had been assiduously careful with his
facts and footnotes. He quoted local newspaper articles and gave the dates and
page numbers in every case. He knew as much or as little about the Ryders as anyone
did.
Samuel came to Upshyre County in the 1880s with a
considerable fortune acquired from mining claims in the West; he re-invested in
the community. He spent his newly acquired fortune exploring for minerals and
timber property and bought everything that appealed to him. The land on Scary
Creek was one of the purchases and originally consisted of several thousand
acres of tall timber and low-grade coal. All that remained was the house and 26
acres.
Nameless artisans and laborers imported from Germany and
other eastern European countries -- though no one knew for sure which ones -- built
the house. The blue sandstone, which constitutes the house’s foundation and
walls, came from a nearby stone quarry, while the bricks were made on sight. The
window glass came from Clarksburg, while artists traveled from ‘far distant
countries’ to paint murals.
There were reminiscences about fabulous balls attended
by everyone of importance, rumors of great extravagances on the part of Samuel,
trips to exotic lands, big game hunting in African jungles, pilgrimages to
far-off secret and sacred India, and clandestine voyages to remote and
forgotten islands in the East and West Indies.
I had to concede that Samuel was an intriguing and
enigmatic man of diverse interests. In another entry, a famed writer of mysteries
and a guest of Mr. Ryder was rumored to have been banished from the house for
making improper advances to Elinore. The few references to her indicated she
was a lovely fragile figure with large dark eyes, which she covered with shaded
or ‘rose colored’ glasses on most occasions. She was usually observed clinging
to her father’s arm, uncertain of being left alone. There was no mention of a
Mrs. Ryder.
“
Mr. Case?” The
voice whispered.
The book slipped from my hand and fell with a resounding
crash to the floor. In my mind’s eye, I had been imagining the Ryders, standing
together in the house’s foyer greeting guests.
“You gave me a start,” I said, retrieving the book.
“I noticed you were alone, so I thought I’d join you.”
It was the stonemason, whose accident at Scary Creek brought
us together. He pulled a chair from the table and sat down.
“What can I do for you?” I asked.
“Our conversation made me think of a few things I’d
forgotten,” he said. “I don’t have much in the way of formal training, but I do
like to read. Medieval builders believed that blood and bones of men, mixed
with the mortar of castle walls, could strengthen them. The walls would also be
safe against invasion by men and spirits. If a wall was continuous, or unbroken,
they believed that spirits buried behind them could not escape
and
were not
even free to journey to the other world.”
“I hope you’re not taking those claims too seriously,”
I replied.
“We’re talking about an unusual wall,” he replied.
“Once I tried to knock a section of it down. I didn't mention it before, I was too
embarrassed. I used a sledgehammer. I couldn’t dislodge a single stone. It was
as if the materials in the wall were made of steel.”
His sincerity was disarming. He seemed to have a burning
obsession with the wall or with something about its construction, or something
was struggling to reveal itself through him.
“And you think the wall at Scary Creek is
indestructible because…?”
“… Because I believe the blood and bones of men, women
and children were ground up and mixed with the mortar.”
It was a gruesome thought. I was well acquainted with
human aberrations and customs, and I could respect the possibilities. The
belief that a wall constructed with blood and bone is impregnable is as plausible
as the belief that a sword tempered in blood is stronger than a sword tempered
in water.
“Why would anyone go to that much trouble?” I asked,
concerned that he might -- if given enough incentive -- adopt similar primitive
building codes for his own structures.
“I have heard that Mr. Ryder was a superstitious man,”
he said. “He trusted no man and lived in fear of losing his fortune.”
I could see the compulsion in his eyes. “It’s hard to
believe that someone would encourage that kind of workmanship?”
“I know,” he said. “That’s why I’ve come here to see
if I could find the book.”
I also wanted to see it. The more I thought about it,
the more I began to realize that walls were something more than barriers to
define geographical limitations. The Great Wall of China is supposed to be the
only structure on Earth visible from the moon, though I can’t imagine what it
looks like. I wondered what kind of message it conveyed to our astral neighbors.
“If you find the book, Mr. Kepler, I’d like to see it.
If I knew for a fact that Ryder was superstitious, it might explain some of his
decisions.”
He turned to the shelves of books. “There are so many;
I don’t know where to begin.”
“Try the card catalog,” I suggested.
He nodded and left as abruptly as he had arrived. I
returned to Henry Morgan’s “Memoirs of Upshyre County,” Kepler had given me
something different to think over. Could blood and bone mixed with mortar create
a structure that could survive damage from a sledgehammer? Could a man, wealthy
and powerful, actually hide behind a structure that even spirits could not invade?
No, it was just another one of those incredible fantasies. There had to be a more
logical explanation.
I returned to Morgan’s book, browsing through the
pages, stopping to read an occasional sentence. ‘In 1863, Major Farnsworth
stood on the courthouse steps and inveighed against a company of Confederate
soldiers who tried to strike Old Glory and fly the Stars and Bars. His courage
won him a seat in the new state legislature. ‘In 1880, the publisher of the
Republican Record, Colonel Merriweather, dropped dead of a heart attack on Main
Street. Nude swimming in the river was a growing concern in 1890, and women
walking in the vicinity of the opera house were being offended and asSamuelted
with unsavory language by youthful scalawags idling away their time on street
corners. There were recollections about nickelodeons, opera houses and an
Orient Buckboard, the first motor-driven vehicle to reach Upshyre County.
On page 397, I discovered a section devoted entirely
to a curious event that occurred in the 1920s and affected half the county and most
of Elanville. Buds blossomed early that spring and everyone anticipated a good harvest.
Pears and apples were hanging from the trees in such glorious profusion that the
local basket factory prepared extra berry baskets to handle the excess. Before
the first fruit harvest, however, something went wrong.
There were no significant changes in the weather, but
a foul bitterness crept into the air and into every growing thing to the point
that the smallest bite of some fruits induced sickness. Water wells became
stagnant, streams filled with moldy lichen and the very limbs of trees grew
gnarled, as if infected by some virulent palsy. Efforts to locate the source of
the problem were unsuccessful. It did however appear as if Elanville suffered
tragically from the unfortunate event.
Hunters scouring the woods for game near Elanville
reported bagging strange and peculiar looking “critters.” Rabbits changed in a
way that frightened and disgusted hunters and they discarded their flesh. Squirrels
took on enormous proportions from eating and drinking the poisoned food and
water, but they also developed a form of mange that ruined the quality of their
fur.
Deer displayed gnarled racks that looked more like the
roots of trees, and the county’s foxes grew more villainous and bold. Chickens
stopped laying eggs and killed each other in battles for tainted seeds. Pigs were
born deformed and the snouts on swine grew skewered and infected, eventually
resulting in the animals’ deaths.
I found it difficult to believe what I was reading.
Cattle also suffered that year. Dairy cows went dry, beef cattle grew so
morbidly thin they couldn’t stand up, horses went mad and ran into trees and
barns killing themselves. No one, veterinarians, doctors or professors from the
university’s department of agriculture could explain the strange occurrences.
Mad cow disease, I suspected.
Portions of the county, however, were spared from the
blight, while neighboring counties were not the least bit affected. Few human
lives were lost, though no one knew how many eventually died from lingering
after-effects.
I turned the page, but that was all Morgan had to say
about that fateful event. I wanted to read more and decided that I would everntually
track down old back issues of the newspaper later.
I knew I wasn’t going to find news of a stone mason
“grinding bones to mix with mortar” as interesting as I’d already read. My
values were becoming corrupt.
Mrs. Holmes did say she saw the stonemason poking
around the local cemeteries. Grave robbing might have made the papers back
then, but it did not seem likely. The Kirkwood fire might have made headlines, especially
since the bodies were set on fire and their bones and ashes scattered or buried
in a makeshift grave.
My thoughts turned once more to the house, and I
experienced a sudden conviction. I felt compelled to enter the house. I decided
to take a sledgehammer along to test Kepler’s theory. I wanted to find out if
the wall could stand up to the swing of a 190-pound weakling. Kepler, I
decided, had strong hands, but looked a little frail.