Authors: Thomas Cater
I climbed back into the van and drove south. Two miles
and a shopping center later, I saw the makings of a traffic jam. Cars parked
helter-skelter in every available space. I pulled as far of the road as the
berm would allow. About four feet of the van extended onto the road. Smaller cars
were taking up more room.
I could hear the thunderous roll of drums and marching
music. Ear-splitting blasts of cheers confirmed that the home team was
performing favorably. It was close to half time. I decided to wait and pocket
the price of admission, a pecuniary tactic I chose to resort to since my hasty
departure from D.C.
The Vandalia Vikings were doing an excellent job of
routing their opponents. They were a tough and intimidating farm team known
throughout the state as the Plow Boys, a real pleasure to watch. Predictably,
the coaches were loud and truculent and on several occasions, verbally
and physically
abusive
to their players.
I wanted to believe that controlled aggression was
good for youth, but there seemed to be something inherently inferior with that
kind of derogatory abuse. If it made them better men, gentler fathers and
husbands, the mechanics of the theory evaded me.
The stadium was small but crowded. It would have
presented no problem to find Virgil. I decided to wait by the gate on the home
team’s side and watch the second half of the game.
Vandalia had three good running backs,
but the
quarterback handled the ball like a pumpkin. It was a running game; the kind
OSU’s Woody Hayes would have gloried in. Straight up the middle and damn the
torpedoes! Three yards in a cloud of dust and a hearty heigh-ho! Silver,
Vandalia had taken an early lead and held it playing
control football for three quarters. Somewhere along the way, the Minutemen
, their opponents,
lost heart and gave up. It was a disparaging defeat. In the last five minutes
of the fourth quarter, Vandalia had replaced their starting lineup with third
string players, and they were running, fumbling, and gleefully recovering. The
momentum stayed with them.
I stood at the gate waiting for Virgil while the crowd
dispersed. It never occurred to me that he might leave through the opposite
gate. I waited until the crowd thinned and then I returned to the van.
Screaming and cheering fans careened down the highway
honking car horns and shouting profanity and victory slogans. A carload of
teenagers sprayed me with a can of beer and told me what to do with my
reproductive organ. I could do without the advice; the beer, however, would
have tasted good if it came in a glass.
I tried to talk myself into a celebratory six-pack,
but it was too late and I was deliberating on whether or not I would return to
the Ryder house tomorrow and examine the graveyard. I was curious to know how
deep the coffins were buried.
There was a phone in the parking lot not far from
where I parked the van. I made another call to Virgil’s home. The phone rang
twice and Violet answered.
“He just walked in,” she said, anticipating my
question.
“Sorry I missed you,” he said, “What did you think of
the game?”
We chatted for a few minutes about the “legend” the
coach was building.
“Have you moved into the house yet,” he asked,
laughing wickedly.
“Not yet,” I cautioned. “There are a still a few
cobwebs that need to be swept away. I called to tell you that I spent the day
at the hospital reading old files.”
That seemed to wet his interest.
“What did you find?”
“Not much. A little bit about the wall, an old doctor
named Grier, and I met three little gnomes named Alberich, ever hear of them?”
“Can’t say that I have; what do they do?”
“They work at the hospital in the boiler room. They
keep the fires going.”
“No, I don’t know them,” he said.
“Did you know there is a coal mine in the basement of
the hospital? It starts in the furnace room and runs all over the county.”
“I may have known something about it, why?”
“I think they’re mining my coal,” I said.
“What makes you think that?” He asked.
“If they’re not, they have in the past. If those mines
run all over the county; they could be burning my coal.”
“Could be,” he said.
“Those Alberich boys are dwarfs,” I said, casting
about for some kind of reaction.
“Dwarfs?”
“Yeah, does that ring any bells?”
“None,” he said.
“Also, I figure they are about 70 or 80 years old.” I
was exaggerating, but I felt I could adjust my estimates later.
“Jesus; and they’re still working? You’d think the
state’s mandatory retirement laws would have kicked in by now.”
“Are you going to be busy tomorrow?” I asked.
“No, nothing scheduled. As you are probably very much
aware, high interest rates have slowed down the housing market.”
“Would you like to go back to the house with me? I’m
going to open a grave.”
There was a prolonged and painful silence at his end
of the line.
“Whose?” He finally asked.
“I don’t know,” I said. “Anyone buried in the family
plot over the hill.”
“Uh, I don’t know. You going to wear your dead man’s
suit?” he asked.
I told him I would since it appeared to have some
bearing on the situation.
“Call me tomorrow at the office. I’ll think about it.
Oh, one more thing; you got some mail today from your bank.”
“Later,” I said, “the next time we meet.”
Chapter Twenty
I drove slowly through town. There were still celebrants
blowing horns and spinning tires, but the novelty was wearing thin. It was a
high school game. There was no need to become manic. The local cops were
growing weary of festivities. They reached their threshold of tolerance and
were now ticketing noisy teenage
drivers
.
I drove behind a row of buildings on Main Street and found
a vacant space, just as I had left it. Rain was beginning to fall. I locked the
van doors and windows before I turned off the headlights. The wind was kicking
up; I sensed an impending downpour.
I don’t know why, but I was exercising caution. It was
atypical of my behavior. I was usually negligent of my safety, especially in a
town that considered spray painting stop signs and siphoning gas from parked
cars the most abused crimes against society.
I turned on the interior light, put water on to boil
for coffee and dug notebooks out of a drawer. Strangely enough, the writing pad
with the most curious notation was the one that warned,
“He is coming!”
on
top. In letters less faded than preceding pages were the words,
“Please
Hurry.”
I wondered why I didn't noticed them before, and why I thought they
were addressed to me, when I knew they were written at least 75 years ago.
“Please Hurry.”
I read the words over at least a dozen times. I also felt compelled to read
them. “Probably because I hadn’t noticed them before,” I conceded.
I knew that kind of thinking was desperate. Maybe it
was, but it was right there in front of me,
“Please Hurry.”
I flipped through the pages of the notebook. The words
were becoming clear, due in part to my mind’s willingness to fill in the blank spaces.
I was so desperate for answers that I made things up when I could not see or
understand. I was beginning to suspect that I was reading a lot of my own
anxieties and frustrations into Elinore’s notes, and I knew it was wrong. She
deserved to be read, but not misinterpreted.
I closed one notebook and tried another. I was not at
all familiar with any pages in this one. Notwithstanding the effects of time,
many of the words were clear and legible. It was still her handwriting, still
blissfully ignorant of the lines and tending to overlap other words. Now and
then, there had been attempts to achieve lucidity.
“The gate is open in the cellar,”
a line warned, for the ‘spinx’ to enter. Gates in the
cellar, maybe sphinx, or stinks? I had forgotten about the house’s massive basement.
It would be an experience in itself. I returned to the notebook. ‘He enters
through the cellar.’ Some of the words held fast, but others had faded. I could
see the words ‘he brings
‘knives or lives’
or
‘gloves or loves’
to
‘fear’
or
‘for me”
out of one desperate entry, and
“infest
or infect”
and “
the odor of sulfur
and
rashes
or “
ashes on
his close or clothes,
” in another.
If I didn’t know the basement was built into a coal
seam, I might have been inclined to think she believed in demons. I paused for
a moment to reflect upon the suggestibility of the mind. In a city like Los
Angeles or New York, someone might suspect I had stumbled on a witch’s codicil.
For the little knowledge granted to me by this small coal-mining town, I, too,
would have been so inclined.
I turned the page. The sentences, but for a few words,
had faded and the gist of her thoughts were lost. I tried to continue reading.
The words
‘colour’
and
‘dress
‘ half way down the page caught my
eye.
From my interpretation of the entry, I gathered that
she and Samuel quarreled over the color of her dress. She could not understand
why he didn’t care for the color.
‘They’re all the same to me,’
she
said. He accused her of being
‘ungrateful and disobedient.’
She wept and
claimed she wasn’t disobedient,
‘I just don’t know what you mean by color!
She
wrote.
My mind was reeling and apprehensive. Elinore’s
organic weakness wasn’t just failing eyesight, she was also color blind! My unspoken
thoughts had arrived at the same conclusion. In my dream, I had also viewed
objects through multi-faceted eyes that trapped light waves in different
spectra with the help of a magic glass.
I took the glass, the prism and the crystal out of the
drawer, held them to the light, but nothing happened. My eyes were not
multi-faceted, or like a bee's, such as Elinore’s. I wondered what they might
see through the magic glass: all the colors that rise above or below that
narrow spectrum to which most men
were
confined.
My eyes were beginning to ache from the strain. I
decided to turn in for the night. The notebooks would keep. I had other fish to
fry and cakes to bake. I pushed the curtain from the door and peered into the
darkness once again.
His eyes were staring at me a few inches from the
glass. His hair was ringing wet against his forehead and the rain dripped from
his glasses. There was a desperate look in his eyes, as if I were to blame for
his plight.
I stumbled back and away from the door, but held the
curtain in place. He raised his hand to indicate that I should open the door. I
stared at him defiantly not sure which way to move. His mouth and eyes twisted
into a troubled sneer. He gestured again with his hands that he wanted to talk …or
eat, hopefully, not me. I opened the door.
“Who are you and what are you doing?” I asked.
He stepped into the van and wiped the rain from his
glasses and face. His hair was wet and plastered down around his eyes. He wore
a cheap clear plastic raincoat and his shoes squished when he moved. Rivulets
of water poured from the coat and formed tiny puddles on the vinyl kitchen
floor.
Beneath the plastic coat, he wore an old wide-lapelled
suit and tie, fashionable maybe in the late 50s or 60s. The pants were glossy
with age. He pushed the wet hair from his forehead and mopped it with a cloth.
“Mr. Case, my name is George Thacker. I heard you were
in town, but did not know where to find you. I have been walking all day looking
for cars with out-of-state tags. I finally tracked you down here. I’m glad to
meet you.”
I took his offered hand reluctantly. “What do you
want with me?”
“You’re from Washington, right?”
“Yes, but I’m not a federal employee. I can’t help you
with a pension or anything like that.”
“I’m from Pittsburgh, P.A.,” he said. “I was called by
the Lord to work in Vandalia. I didn’t know why, until I arrived. Now, it’s
safe to tell you. This entire county is under Satan’s control. The minute I
drove into the county, I knew why. It’s because of the mental hospital; crazy
people are the unwilling minions of Satan. His power is reaching out from
behind those walls and into the very heart and soul of this community.”
It was not much of a revelation. In a few more days, I
would probably be ready to concede the same facts.
“What’s that got to do with me?” I asked.
“I sense in you, Mr. Case, a willingness to resist
what is happening.”
“Did Virgil put you up to this?” I asked grinning. I
was beginning to sense a gag or a ploy of some kind.
“I’m sorry,” he said, “I don’t know Mr. Virgil.”