Authors: Thomas Cater
I wearily hauled myself off the ground to a sitting
position, while balancing my weight on one arm. Sun kissed breezes washed over
my skin. I struggled to my feet and walked cautiously to the grave I had opened
the night before. The child’s tiny coffin was empty and Elinore’s cadaver was nowhere
in sight. The lid on her coffin was undisturbed and back in place. Pick in
hand, I reached into the grave to open the coffin once again, but decided
against it. Instead, I began the less arduous task of refilling the grave.
There was a powerful clarity in the sky and a sweet
fragrance in the scent of the earth, one I had failed to notice previously
, o
r one that had
not existed before. It created a wild anxiety inside me, unlike any I had ever
known. For the first time, I felt as if I had accomplished a meaningful act with
my life; it was as if I
were sentenced to penance and been granted a
reprieve. I wanted to sing out while I completed the task of restoring the
earth to its former condition. Music however was no longer in my head and heart;
it had found a greater depth in which to celebrate. I ladled shovels full of
dirt back into the ground, delighted with my efforts.
*
Peace has found its way to the Ryder house and land. I
know because there have been no more incidents. Elinore, the source of the
disruption, has joined her long-lost child; the love child she lost
eighty
years ago.
Not by a cruel and selfish whim of her father – as I once assumed -- but to
more complicated causes.
Samuel, too, is at peace. He has reconciled with
Elinore and
Frank
. The transgressions committed by all appear rectified.
He no longer walks in guilty torment through the protective prison he built
around his family. He sleeps now in a deep and peaceful grave.
When
Samuel threatened
to close the mine, he deceived
Frank into going underground and
setting off
explosives.
Frank was unable to escape and reportedly died in the mine. An underground fire
raged out of control for years, poisoning the mine water, earth and air with
sulfurous ash and carbon monoxide gas. The fires scorched and baked the surface
of the earth from within, while deadly fumes from the burning coal escaped to
the surface and drove sheep, cattle and wildlife mad.
“Elinore, my lovely Lorel
ei
, will never
abandon
me to
sleep in a coal miner’s hovel!” Samuel had warned. “I’d rather see her wed to
that baboon!” At that moment, the ring that bound the two
wayward lovers
together wound up on the animal’s finger. I use the word
wayward
for
good reason, which I will explain at a more appropriate time.
As for Grier and the other spirits trapped within the
walls and land, where have they gone? No one knows. They absconded the moment the
music and Orphic blasts from my van’s diesel horns breached the indestructible
walls.
There is another, however, who wanders among us. I am
not sure who it is, but his presence brings a great deal of pleasure to
Elinore. I think it is Frank, or their child. When I ask about her baby,
who has since vanished
, Elinore assures me that
‘her little boy has finally returned.’
There is a strong resemblance, they say, between the
two of us, Frank and I. We even share
a
common destiny
. The similarities amuse
everyone, even the baboon. It surrendered its tormented eyes to Elinore and
saved me from
an uncertain fate
when I strayed into the Klikouchy’s attic nest.
All is calm now that the Klikouchy -- those crazed
screaming things -- who built their walls of living flesh and bones, have
scattered to the far ends of the universe.
“They meant no malice,”
Elinore says.
“They have always lived in abject fear.”
I regrettably have not yet had the good fortune to
meet the mansions transient
guests
. Elinore is however my link between both worlds. She
keeps me advised. We sit on the porch at night and watch the stars shine
through the trees surrounding the house.
She has also confided to me
the family’s
deep
est
and
dark
est
secret. She is
not the ‘love child’ of Mary Cadle and Samuel, as I suspected. She is Samuel’s
wife. They met and married in California, She was previously
married to a mortician, the mother of three
sons,
Quilp, Ballsitch and Scratch. She taught her youthful sons and her new husband
how to mine gold from the teeth of dead men. All but Samuel were accursed with the
dreaded DNA gene that transmitted Geonlinger’s disease.
Elinore’s enterprising sons eventually earned their
fortunes working underground on abandoned mining claims. The three sons would
delve ferret-like into dark caves and tunnels, while retrieving lumps of gold and
silver. When the minerals ran out, they turned to scavenging, while Samuel and Elinore
panned for gold.
When Samuel and his new family returned to Vandalia, he
managed to secure work for his stepsons in the hospital’s boiler room, Because
of their strange affliction, they soon made good use of coalmine shafts to
burrow into country graveyards and mine gold from the teeth of dead men and
women.
Because of her youthful appearance, everyone believed
Elinore was Samuel’s daughter. Eventually she tried to run away with Frank. It
was a desperate attempt to rescue her sons from a ghoulish life of crime and
drudgery.
Her
plans failed after Frank’s death, and she reunited with Samuel.
Her sons, however, preferred life underground. They eventually
decided to live in darkness and forego the menacing lights and troubling gazes of
Vandalians.
*
I have been living in the house with Elinore now for
more days than I ca
re to
remember. Sometimes at nigh
t,
I have a deep
sense of her presence. That is when she can most easily access my mind,
stimulate my imagination and provide me with strange and often wonderful
pleasures,
unlike any I have experienced
.
She has the most extraordinary eyes. She can see a
great distance through time, backwards and forwards, and distances in miles
means nothing. She has also regained the ability to perceive color; not just
the narrow band of visible colors most people have been able to access, but the
true elemental colors, including ultra-violet, infra-red and those amusing gamma
rays.
I have given up all thought of travel, now that I have
moved into the mansion.
Even the grizzly
old tomcat I accused Myra of setting free in my DC townhouse has adapted to its
new surroundings. The cat, I am told, is home to the spirit of my beneficent
benefactor R.C. Dangerfield, who managed to
‘occupy its body’
while
being devoured by his pets.
My RV is still sitting on the side of the hill near
the graveyard
, but t
he tires are flat. I never go anywhere, so I don’t
really need it. Besides, the battery died long ago and it does not want to be revived.
This does seem like such a wonderful place to live.
George says that Satan has loosened his grip upon the
county. I told him I was pleased. I said it is so because I breached the wall
and now everything is fine, as long as Satan does not know the battery in my
van is dead.
A few local acquaintances did occasionally visit, but
since I hung the gate back on its hinges, they stopped coming. No, I did not
mix blood and bones in the mortar, but I must admit it would have cut down on
maintenance.
The Alberichs provide some assistance and irregular
maintenance. They have opened and repaired the tunnels from the hospital to the
house. They are still secretly smelting precious metals in the hospital’s
basement, and Samuel’s treasures, his stocks and bonds, are safe and secure buried
in a vault deep inside the earth.
Oh, yes, the stone mason, Nicodemus Thanatos. I found
out from Elinore all there is to know. He is alive and working for International
bankers in developing Third World countries. She speaks of him with pride and
pleasure.
They often walked and spoke together in the garden
while he was working on the wall.
‘His head and hands are as hard as the
stones he works with,
’ she says,
‘but his heart is warm and tender.’
‘The walls he is working on now,’
she explains proudly, ‘
will stand as a monument to
his genius for generations to come. The walls are much stronger and far more
durable than his earlier efforts,
especially the Berlin Wall’,
which came tumbling down decades ago.
‘There’s
only so much you can do with stone’
she warns.
‘The new wall,’
she says,
‘will stretch for a thousand miles and divide nations from
each other. It will not only enclose the bodies of the living and the souls of
the dead, but it will also enclose the minds of those who struggle to live
free.’
*
Recently, I have heard even stranger rumors. I do not
know from whom, Elinore, I suspect, or perhaps from other mendicant spirits
that occasionally visit. The stor
ies claim
that a new owner has acquired the Scary
Creek house and property
.
I don’t know how that could have possibly happened. I
took special precautions to see
the house
and land would
never
again
f
a
ll into the
wrong hands. I established a
trust
that provided
and secured succession to everything I possess. I left all my worldly
possessions to
the first child to issue
from the
inhospitable
womb of my estranged wife, Myra, the Polish poetess.
What is even more disconcerting is that I have often heard
a repeated
statement
that
I,
the previous owner, set fire to the mansion and burned
it to the ground …twenty years ago! How could that be? I am still here and
haven't aged a day! Under Elinore’s constant care and supervision, the house has
once again become a
haven and respite
for disenfranchised souls …or so it would seem.
Epilogue
It was purely by chance that I stumbled upon a lost missive
addressed to me. It was during one of my nightly peregrinations through the house
on Scary Creek. I have no recollection of ever having seen it before. It was sealed
and unopened and had been secreted among my few possessions.
The letter, signed by an executor of Dangerfield’s
estate, was an official of the First National Bank of Washington DC. I suspect he
also acted on my behalf as an agent of the courts years ago. I neglected to
open it because I thought it was a threatening letter from Myra, my ex-wife and
her solicitors, so I quickly thrust it away and then proceeded to forget about
it. The letter states:
Mr. Charles Case;
You will be delighted to know that the wishes contained
within the last will and testament of your belated benefactor, Mr. R.C.
Dangerfield and his spouse Mary Alice Cadle, a member of this bank’s board and
the executors of the estate of Samuel and Elinore Ryder of Vandalia, West
Virginia, have been satisfied to this bank’s satisfaction.
It gives all of us great pleasure to advise you that as
the sole surviving descendant of Samuel and Elinore Ryder, based on documents
provided by attending physician, Dr. Ezekiel Grier and Mr. and Mrs.
Dangerfield, you are the acknowledged heir and entitled to the Ryder estate. The
document also includes a trust fund, property and dwelling in Elanville, West
Virginia, and an additional dwelling in Washington DC, previously occupied by
R.C. Dangerfield. We trust this informal communiqué finds you firmly
established in your recently acquired home.
The letter contained only one bank officer’s signature:
Mr. Nicodemus Thanatos.
THE EN
D