Authors: Thomas Cater
The darkness beyond the house looked hungry. I was
glad once again to be conscious but outside the wall. I bade farewell to the
house, which seemed to be waiting for me to re-enter and try again.
I picked myself off the ground and started limping
down the road. I realized the hospital was much closer than town, but it would
involve traveling over an abandoned gravel road with few prospects of expecting
anything but a footpath. Still, the van was there. To leave it sitting over night
in the parking lot might not be the best idea ever.
I followed Scary Creek around and beyond the house. I continued
in the dead of night for at least three miles down an orphan road not fit to walk,
much less drive.
I remember reading recently in a historical account that
the county, at one time, was home to 160,000 souls, but now it contained less
than 20,000 …’ and ‘more than 70 percent of the population were on some sort of
government subsidy. I could not imagine
what kind of calamity happened,
but then maybe I could.
*
Another hour passed before I discovered the far end of
a hospital service road closed to traffic. Thirty minutes later, I saw my van
sitting in the parking lot, a vision of familiarity. Connie’s car was nowhere
in sight. There was a note stuck beneath the wiper blade: ‘Don’t forget to feed
your
cat! Love, Connie.’
Where was that damned cat? It was living with me in the
van, but I couldn’t find it. It was just another shining example of my extraordinary
skills as a preternatural investigator.
I managed to hang on to the van’s keys, but didn’t
know how. I fished them out, opened the door and crawled inside. I stuffed my soiled
clothes in a garbage bag and tried to wash my face in the van’s tiny sink, but
it did not work. I was spreading coal dust and debris over everything. I stepped
into the tub and stood there until my limbs were water soaked. I toweled off,
evaluating the extent of my injuries. Finding only a few scratches and bruises,
my anxiety began to lessen. I began to enjoy the subtle feeling and thrill of
success. I prepared a cup of hot tea that I would waste an hour drinking.
It was after 2 A.M, a pitiful time to be up and around
and parked near a mental institution. I could think of a few places I would
have preferred -- Miami -- for one. I had not been there since the last
hurricane, whose name, I think, was Zelda. I figured if I were in Florida, I’d
probably want to be here in the primeval beauty of West Virginia’s haunted
hills and valleys. Who knows, maybe I could learn to like ‘ghost spotting’.
Poorly rationalized excuses, I thought, and poured boiling water over a chamomile
tea bag.
I sat down with Grier’s journals and started thinking
about Elinore and those who had gone before her, and the new and unexplained
business regarding eyes. “They had no eyes,” the Alberichs had repeated over
and over again, which led me to believe that during autopsies, Grier must have
removed brains and everything connected with them. It made sense for a
neuro-surgeon to take an interest in brains.
“They had no eyes.” Since Samuel Ryder was his patron,
I suppose it would not be jumping to conclusions to assume he may have coerced the
good doctor into performing experiment
s
to benefit Elinore’s sight. It was even possible to
assume that a man like Grier, years ahead of his time, may have been planning an
eye transplant. Is that a possibility? I am sure it was, or might have been,
even if medical science wasn’t ready.
The answers to those questions, I hoped, might be in his
journals. Another supposition occurred: that remote possibility may have been
the sole basis for Elinore’s prospects to see. On the other hand, why did the
Alberichs lead me through the mineshaft to the Ryder mansion and then ditch me?
Did they imagine I was going to wander around in there forever? Even if I did
not break through the coal seam to the house, I would have eventually found my
way back to the furnace room, unless there w
ere
other unfriendlies
wandering in the
underground.
Someone had also knocked me out. What was that all
about? Who or whatever it was that put me to sleep in the dark certainly was
not a blind girl. Then again, who knows what blind people are capable of doing,
especially dead ones.
Grier had mentioned the ‘screaming things’
in his notes
. I
was about to concede they might be dangerous when I turned the page and the
words i jumped off the page: A
s
defined by Helena Petrovna Blavatsky. “T
he Klikouchy are afflicted with strange disorders. The clergy and the
people attribute their possession to the devil. They are miserable creatures drawn
to the entrance of holy places. Where the bones of canonized saints abound, screaming
and howling things will always be around. They fear controlling demons will tear
them to pieces if they transgress. One can always find them congregating in
hideous groups and hanging about the gates. With the celebration of Mass, or
the beginning of prayer, these maniacs crow like cocks, barking, bellowing and
braying like animals or fall down in convulsions. They cannot bear to hear prayers
spoken. Some charitable souls administer to the afflicted and distribute alms. Occasionally
a priest performs an exorcism, for the sake of love. The miserable creatures
also prophesy and see visions. Common sense suggests they are victims, but demons
control their actions. The worst that can happen is for a priest to douse them
with holy water. Klikouchy, left to the will of god, will survive. They belong
to no age or country; they form attributes of every man.”
I gathered we were both on the same page, but I still did
not know why screaming maniacs from the asylum were haunting the buried bones
of men occupying my home in Upshyre County. In the future, I decided to wear the
murdered man’s suit at all times especially if the slightest possibility I
might enter the house existed. There, I said, and I did not feel any worse.
I sipped tea slowly and tried to make a few
assumptions from the new information I had discovered. After fifteen minutes of
silent reflection, I was finally ready to concede the house on Scary Creek was demented,
or a house gone mad. Yes, I could live with that. It was easier to believe than
the truth, or whatever form it chose to take.
Elinore said, “He
is coming?”
Without going
through too many literal interpretations, that could possibly mean she was
expecting someone or something, or maybe even me.
“He must never know … I think he knows…”
He,
being Samuel
?
That scandalous declaration may have portended dire
consequences for a girl in Elinore’s delicate condition, and for Frank Harmon.
It would help if I knew.
There were plenty of Harmons living near Elanville.
They seemed to be as prolific as Mayflies. It was possible that one of the
Harmons may have been related to Frank in the early 1900s. That possibility, I
decided, would be tomorrow’s objective.
I closed the journal and stuck it in a drawer. Even if
I wasn’t close to finding answers, it felt good to know I could remove myself
from the problem simply by closing a book. When Connie inquired about my brief absence,
I would ask her to call the Alberichs and ask if they knew my whereabouts. I’d
like to know what kind of alibis those little gnomes were capable of
concocting.
Chapter Thirty-Five
To climb out of bed was becoming more difficult than
I imagined. My spine was convulsing. Arthritis and rheumatism were setting up
branch offices in my joints. I was saddened by my image in the mirror. My face
was red and scratched and my eyes were swollen and blood-shot. I looked like a
baby harp seal that had been unmercifully bludgeoned.
Even though I looked terrible, I felt better than the
broken capillaries in my face and eyes were willing to concede. My mind was
still functioning, or so I thought, and I was honestly trying to stay aware at
all times. I could not help but try to believe events were coming together for
me. For the first time, I felt as if I were actually in a position to solve one
of life’s basic riddles: ‘Does life after death proceed in a cyclical manner,
according to the wisdom cultures of the far East, or in a straight line as
expressed by the West’s ‘desire for direct and immediate gratification?’
I could not wait to tell Connie what the gnomes had
done to me. I wanted her to help me check them out, test their credibility. I
had to know if they were scheming, or did they just operate on a very different
program than others.
When she arrived for work, I was waiting. I gave her some
of the details of my research and my anxious encounter with the Alberichs. Then
I started issuing instructions.
“I want you to ask them if they know where I am, and do
they remember talking to me? I want to see if they are honest and reliable
witnesses.”
“Witnesses?” she replied, “to what?”
“I want to know if they have integrity and know the
difference between truth and falsehood. They said a lot of strange things to me
and I want to know if they can be trusted.”
“Trusted? How can you trust them? They tried to bury
you in a mine.”
“They may have tried, but not very hard. Maybe they did
and maybe they didn’t; I don’t know. They are not very clever guys. They
probably took it for granted that I would find my way out.”
“You want me to go and talk to them?”
“They won’t come up here,” I said.
“How do you know?”
“I know because they are funny looking little men who
would more likely scare hell out of everyone, including your patients, or
whoever sees them out of their natural habitat, the boiler and furnace room.”
Constance was thoughtful, but deliberately difficult.
“They’ve got a phone down there, can I just call
them?”
I shrugged. It was too easy to lie on the phone, but
at least it was something. She dialed three numbers and the phone rang for a
few seconds before a voice replied.
Connie set the phone to ‘speaker’ so I could hear the
conversation, but they spoke too low.
“Mr. Alberich, this is Connie Pennington in
administration. Could you tell me what happened to the man who came to visit you
yesterday? Is he still in the building, or what? He never signed out.”
I called that the direct approach. I held my breath.
He spoke so softly I could barely hear. I wandered away from the desk and
conversation.
“Thank you, Mr. Alberich. No, thank you, if I need any
more help, I will call.” She hung up.
“What did he say?”
“He said they took you into the mine, and for all they
knew, you may still be wandering around down there.”
I was confused. Their reply was as direct as the
question. Apparently, they weren’t concerned about my welfare. If someone
turned up missing under their watch, they weren’t going to lose any sleep over
it.
“He also asked if I wanted him to go and fetch you out.”
“What did you say?” I asked.
“I told him it wasn’t necessary and if I needed help,
I’d call.”
“Thoughtful of you.”
She pushed a pencil and several paper clips into an
open desk drawer.
“So does that answer your question about their credibility?”
“I guess it does. They tell the truth after a
fashion.”
“Are you going back?” She wanted to know.
“I don’t think so.”
There was a hard edge to her voice this morning. I
couldn’t help wonder if it was because I stood her up the previous night.
“Don’t you want to know what happened to the ‘ones
without eyes?’” she said.
“I think I know what happened to them,” I replied. “I
don’t have to go back there to find out.”
“You don’t?” She asked.
That was the response I missed, a voice filled with
respect and amazement.
“Yes, of course. I may be slow, but I’m not a fool.”
Her eyes were trying to pin me down.
“Well, tell me what happened?”
I tried to get comfortable on the edge of her desk,
but the position cut the circulation off in my leg.
“They’re all buried in the Ryder family cemetery. That
is why the graves appear to be so shallow. They are not shallow; the coffins
are stacked one on top of the other. There are probably three or four coffins to
a grave.”
I wasn’t showing off, or being mischievous. I could
see the obvious conclusions coming together, but I didn’t have a clue as far as
the haunting was concerned.
“If you know for sure, do you also know who they are?”
“I don’t know who, that’s not important, but I think I
know why. They were Grier’s patients, wards of the state, homeless waifs, poor folks
without families or money, but all with mental problems. Grier treated them and
operated. For one reason or another, he autopsied the ones who didn’t make it.
“He also removed their brains and eyes. I think he was
conducting a test or research in preparation for performing an operation on
Elinore. He didn’t plan to do it, unless he knew it was going to be a success. I
get the feeling Samuel was not far behind and looking over his shoulder. If
anything went wrong, if anything happened to Elinore, Samuel was going to make
Grier’s life miserable. Mind now, this is just idle speculation, but I may be
able to find something in his journals to support my theory.”