Authors: Thomas Cater
I locked up for the night, turned the lights out and
listened in the darkness for a sound; particularly the sound of a cat, but nothing
stirred. For the umpteenth time in my life, I was feeling fear, real fear,
deep down inside, working its way around in my body like a hungry worm, gnawing
at my guts, my heart, my soul. How long was I destined to live with that
feeling and those age-old dreams that have been haunting me for more years than
I cared to think about?
Sleep was getting hard to find. I felt as if I had
spent the night writhing in a pit. The Alberichs dominated my half-waking dreams.
I was dreaming of wandering through subterranean caverns, seeing things that
should not be seen.
Elinore’s orange
eyes kept coming out of the darkness and burning into
my brain. I wondered what it was she could see that was “coming again!” Some
subliminal horror, or was it some primitive impression made upon a mandrill’s
eyes and brain? Something, undoubtedly, that delighted in tearing mandrill’s
apart and devouring them slowly, a piece at a time.
Chapter Forty-Two
The next day I struggled through a cup of unsweetened
coffee. My face hurt when I tried to wash, and the bristles on my hairbrush
felt like nails. The van nearly drove itself to the Upshyre County Courthouse.
I went along for the ride. I tried to get a grip on the situation. I. likened
it to a stage play with living actors and a spiritually dead audience. What
happened in the limelight wasn’t real, but it seemed real, and the empty eyes
and skull of that silent motionless audience was terrifying.
I fed a few quarters to the meter and hoped it might
choke on them. I tried my best not to trip on the broken pavement, but it was
probably predestined. Signs pointed the way to the record room.
The basement stairs, I noticed, were meant for
stumbling. I held tightly to the handrail and it saw me through. I took a deep
breath and made my way into the records room, which occupied several offices in
the basement.
The girl behind the desk was myopic, a little obese
and suffering from a mild skin condition that reddened her cheeks. She was also
pleasant and anxious to serve, which was probably more than I had a right to
expect. I asked her about birth and death records on that fateful day in
history. I sounded and looked like I needed medical help. I was surprised when
she didn’t ask me to leave.
“Do you have a name?” she asked.
Ah, yes, the all-important name. I told her my name
and tried to make it sound important.
“I mean a name you want me to look up?”
I wasn’t sure what name they might have put on the
certificate. They could have named the baby after any patient. I tried to
explain my dilemma, but she insisted on a name. I gave her the names of Mr. and
Mrs. Frank Harmon.
“The child was a boy,” I said, “a bouncing baby boy.”
She smiled and excused herself and headed for a row of
ancient green ledgers. She delved into one and did not surface again for
approximately ten minutes, which gave me plenty of time to familiarize myself
with the records room.
It consisted of three offices, a wall of khaki-colored
filing cabinets, several dozen leather-bound ledgers and three wooden desks and
one solitary secretary.
“You run this place yourself?” I murmured, trying to
assure her I was human and merely recuperating from a bad night’s sleep.
“Mr.
Bunner is in charge and he has an assistant. I just
answer the phone and help out when available,” she said, and dived back into
the ledger, thumbed through some more pages and examined another book that lay
open on her desk.
“Is this the child you’re looking for?” She said. “It
says he was a no-name infant, and was born January, 28, 1924, at six-pounds,
five-ounces to Mr. and Mrs. Frank Harmon, Elanville, West Virginia.”
That was baffling. I hadn’t thought about it, but that
child and I were born on nearly the same date, only more than 50 years apart.
“Who was the attending physician?” I asked.
She followed her fingers over the document and finally
stopped. “Dr. Ezekiel Grier.”
Somehow they managed to get Frank’s name from Elinore,
or maybe it was part of public information in those days. Everyone knew everyone
else’s business. Like the proper gentleman Frank was, he may have stepped
forward and demanded to see his wife, which probably did not bode well for him.
“Does it give the mother’s maiden name?”
She shook her head.
“Anything else of interest?” I asked.
She began to speak of possibilities “There were lots
of people there in the old days, especially murderers and suicides; lots of
people committed suicide.”
You’re quite a student of the ledgers,” I said. “Do
you know any other dark history?”
She thought for a moment, but drew a blank.
“No, but if you like, I can make copies of these
documents.”
I agreed with a nod. While she was making copies, I
asked about death certificates.
“Let’s start with Samuel Ryder and then Ezekiel Grier,
Frank Harmon, and let’s see if there is anything on infant Harmon, particularly
during the month of January 1924.
She cringed and made a face of protracted ugliness.
“You think the baby died soon after its birth?”
“Could be,” I said. “It would be helpful if I knew how
and when.”
In less than ten minutes, she returned with Samuel
Ryder’s death certificate. It stated heart failure as the cause of death. Dr.
Ezekiel Grier had died suddenly in his sleep of unknown causes. There was no
death certificate for Frank Harmon, but there was one for infant Harmon, January
3
0
,
1924. The cause of death was listed as ‘natural’.
I was sadly disappointed, but not surprised. I hoped
that perhaps Zeke had been successful in his attempt to save the child.
“Natural,” I said dubiously. I asked for a copy of the
babies’ death certificate. While she was copying, I asked if it provided interment
information.
“Good Shepherd,” she said. I examined the form but found
no such name.
She pointed to the name of a funeral home while
explaining that everyone they buried at that time wound up in Good Shepherd.
“It once belonged to them, but it’s abandoned now and belongs
to a de-sanctified church.”
I drove to the Good Shepherd cemetery. It was a barren
overgrown field on the side of a hill speckled with ancient gray stone
monuments moldering with age. There was no caretaker, no gatehouse and no gate.
I examined each stone marker, trying to group them according to dates. I was
standing in the midst of the 1790s and 1800s.
There were a few small monuments chewed up by shotgun
shells and bullets, but not so that you couldn’t make out names. Groundhogs had
also moved into the cemetery. There holes were everywhere. Not, I hoped, in the
coffins or vaults, if they constructed vaults in those days.
Among the markers dated in the 1920s and 30s, I
started reading names: Wards, Leeches, Browns, Griffins, Carrs, Steeds, Clarks,
Hamners
and
Hamiltons. After two hours, the date on a tiny marker caught my eye: ‘Infant
Harmon’ it declared in very small letters, Jan. 3
0
, 1924.
I couldn’t believe it! I had found Elinore’s baby. I
don’t know what I expected to happen, but I knew that something should have
happened.
I would never know if Grier had acquiesced to Samuel’s
wishes and murdered the baby, or if Samuel Ryder had taken care of it. It may
have
actually
died of natural causes
and remained in the care of a benevolent deity.
The grave was removed from the main area of the
cemetery, which led me to suspect Samuel had something to do with the site selection.
There may be records of the purchaser, but that would make little difference
now.
I stood there for several moments wondering if Elinore
had ever known her child, felt it at her breast, nursed it or, even heard it cry.
Was she trying to see through failing eyes what fate Grier had provided?
Somehow, it didn’t seem right. The child belonged with
its mother, even in death. I speculated upon the difficulties that would be
involved in trying to have a
7
0 to 80-year-old grave opened and the remains
transferred to another cemetery, another abandoned bone yard.
I knew nothing about local politics, but if I had to
explain, I would spend the rest of my life in Vandalia’s infamous mental health
resort.
I decided to do it; take full responsibility. Even if
I were caught red-handed, but from appearances, it would not be likely. Weeds
were growing well above my knees and there were deer and possum droppings on
the overgrown footpaths.
I could open the grave at high noon and not be seen,
but decided to wait until dark, before it got late. I put some weight on my
feet, testing the ground. It was not dry or compact. In fact, the earth was
soft; it would be easy digging.
*
I drove to the Stamper house. Both cars were gone. I
parked in the drive. I noticed previously there was a garden in the back yard
and that meant more tools. The garage door was open. I let myself in and began
ransacking the corners for a pick and shovel. I found them and started back to
the van when Virgil drove up. I waved with my free hand. He frowned, gave me a
distasteful look and fixed his eyes on the tools.
“No, don’t tell me,” he said
There was a lot of nervous energy in my response.
“Yeah, I’m going to open up another grave,” I said. I
was not sure how he would respond.
“What are you, some kind of ghoul?” He asked, the
patience gone from his voice. “Whose is it this time?”
I told him what I had read last night, and re-discovered
this morning.
“What do you expect to gain by digging up that dead
baby?” He asked. “It doesn’t sound right. In fact, it sounds illegal.”
I wasn’t sure what I stood to gain, but I knew the
body of that dead child did not belong anywhere, but with its mother.
“Maybe a few points with Elinore,” I said. “She’s
never seen her child, never known it; I think they belong together.”
He shook his head.
“You’re crazy, you know? You really are.”
“I’ve got to protect my investment,” I said, trying to
lighten the impact of his accusation.
I loaded the tools in the van and climbed into the
cab.
“Want to come along? I could use some help,” I said in
an effort to redeem myself rather than placate him. He shook his head, as I
knew he would.
“You’re going to do it now, in the middle of the day?”
“No, not right now; I’ve got an appointment with a
Harmon on Orchard Street. If you want to help, I’ll come back.”
I could see there was no chance of him taking me up on
the offer, so I made it easy. “I’ll return at 7 pm and blow the horn.”
He nodded, relieved to be rid of me. It had to be done;
there was no other way. Everything now relied upon getting the baby and its
mother together.
Halfway out of the drive, a pickup pulled in behind
me. Walter jumped out and ran to the front of the van waving a book in his
hand. I rolled down the side window.
“Here it is,” he said. “This book has everything in it
about stone walls, castles, prisons, ancient and modern. I turned the corners
down on pages I want you to read.”
He passed the book to me through the window. I flipped
through while stopping at several dog-eared corners to study pictures of masonry.
There were striking similarities between the pictures: an ancient fort in Peru,
a wall in Mexico, a prison in France, a bunker in Germany and a wall in Berlin.
My eyes were unable to see distinctions.
The photo of a man standing beside a laboring mason
was Walter Ulbricht, a dictator in East Germany and surrogate for the Russians.
He was watching a mason install a massive stone for the Berlin Wall. The date
was 1949, the man with the elevated trowel was short and possessed a head full
of black kinky hair and dark eyes; he looked like a gypsy.
Ulbricht…Alberich…?
“I’d like to keep this book for a day or two, Mr.
Kepler. I want to show the pictures to Mrs. Abacas.
“Keep it as long as you like,” he said. “It’s a
library book and due back in two weeks.”
I placed the book on the seat and backed into the
street.
Chapter Forty-Three
Orchard Street was near the abandoned railroad
station. It was a small, narrow street rapidly becoming Vandalia’s only
inner-city slum. There were four houses and a Southern State Cooperative
standing side-by-side. Two of the houses were derelict. One was a tenement and
the other, number 34, was Louis Harmon’s residence.
I knocked on the door and heard a child stampeding
across the floor to the front door. The shrill voice of a girl growing old too
quickly shouted for him to “Stop running!”