21C and Other Sordid Tales

Foley opened one eye and saw it was just after one-thirty in the morning. He heard sirens off in the distance. Reaching out, he turned on his bedside lamp before placing his hand on the phone. He lifted it after the first ring.

Getting out of bed, he threw on his jacket and drove the few blocks over to Upham’s Corner, where he arrived upon a familiar scene.

Flashing lights from emergency vehicles lit the intersection jaundice yellow and rose red. In the middle of the intersection, a compact car was crushed and jammed beneath an eighteen-wheeler. The truck bore the familiar markings of a chain supermarket about a mile down the road. Firefighters were bent low beneath the truck preparing the Jaws of Life. EMTs hovered nearby with gurneys.

When Jaworski approached, the two men nodded grimly to each other before the sergeant began to speak.

“Driver’s dead,” he began. “Young girl, age twenty or so. The two male occupants are in bad shape, but they appear to be alive.” He paused before adding, “We hear groans, anyway.”

The sergeant glanced at his notebook. “The usual. Claims he had the green. The car blew through the light.”

“Nothing obvious,” Jaworski replied. “Truck driver blew clean. Even volunteered to have his blood taken.”

Their conversation was interrupted by the chainsaw sound of the Jaws of Life starting up, followed by sounds of breaking glass and crunching steel. When the machine stopped, a brief stillness overtook the scene, until moans from the car began to fill the air. Foley nodded to his sergeant and let him get back to work.

As a patrolman, Foley had done his share of scraping people off this stretch of asphalt. He had done more than his share of knocking on doors in the middle of the night. He had, in fact, watched this scene play out dozens of times over the years. On this night, he stuck around only long enough to watch the injured men be removed from the vehicle before heading home to a fitful sleep.

The next morning, as he often did after such evenings, Foley pulled into the church parking lot across from the intersection, to sip his coffee and watch traffic pass by. Bits and pieces of the demolished car not swept away by the highway department still glittered on the roadway here and there. Painted white and orange markings evidenced the no doubt recently departed accident reconstruction team.

Looking up, Foley saw mourners had already placed bouquets of flowers on a stone wall that abutted the intersection. A framed photo of a young girl leaned against it. When a car pulled over to add another bouquet to the growing memorial, he looked away.

The intersection of Bynum and Chambers was the most dangerous in town. It was often listed as the most dangerous in the state. Over the years, highway engineers had been called in, the road widened and regraded, vegetation cut back, and blind spots removed. The accidents continued.

Only after a horrific crash seven years ago killed a mother and her infant son were lights finally installed, and the accidents continued. If anything, Foley knew, they’d only gotten worse. And from where he sat, sipping his coffee and watching cars go by, none of it made any sense.

Of the two streets, Bynum was the more major thoroughfare, though it was mostly residential and not heavily traveled. Chambers was residential too, but was often used as a cut through from the state highway just down the road. Maybe that had something to do with it. But aside from that, there was nothing unusual about it at all.

A long abandoned rail bed ran parallel to Chambers, visible now only as a low depression by the side of the road. Nondescript middle-class houses occupied three corners of the intersection. A non-denominational church the fourth. The sign out front today read:

Foley glanced again at the framed photo of the young girl and thought that was damned good advice. He poured out the last of his coffee before starting up his car.

When he arrived at his desk, Foley saw lights blinking on his phone, but elected to ignore them for now. Accidents at Upham’s Corner were always followed by someone or other calling to ask what more could be done. Twenty years on the force and three years as chief had brought no good answer to that question.

Waiting on his desk was a thin manila folder, the preliminary report from last night’s accident. He opened it and began reading.

The car was a late model Toyota. Red. The girl’s name was Marcia Wallace. Twenty-one, she was a sophomore at the local college who had been driving friends home from a party. There was no evidence she’d been drinking. Her driving record was clean. Further tests would be conducted, however the stoplight appeared to be in working order.

The truck was making its weekly overnight run to the supermarket. The driver had been making the same run for more than ten years without incident. He had a squeaky clean record. His breathalyzer blew clean. Results of his blood test were pending. The injured passengers were expected to survive.

Moments after closing the folder, his phone rang. He pondered letting it go to voice mail, but decided he’d eventually have to say something. He picked it up on the third ring.

“Foley,” he said gruffly, hoping to forestall a long conversation with whoever it might be.

“Marvelous! Chief, you don’t know me, but my name is McPhee. Dale McPhee? Perhaps you’ve heard of me.”

“Oh, that’s alright,” the man replied cheerily. “Not everyone has. Anyway, I live right here in town, over in Brookdale? I’ve written a number of books about the town and its history.”

He paused as if that might jog Foley’s memory. When it didn’t seem to, he went on.

“The reason I’m calling is … well … I understand there was another accident last night.”

Foley’s eyes narrowed. “Mr. McPhee …” he began, not sure where this was going.

“Now, Chief,” he said. “Hear me out. Believe me, I wouldn’t bother you if I didn’t think it was important. I wonder if you have a few minutes to meet with me. I have some information you are sure to find fascinating. Say, two o’clock at the diner?”

Foley took a deep breath. “Mr. McPhee, as you can imagine, I have lots of–”

“Chief,” the man interrupted again. “Trust me on this. You are going to want to hear what I have to say. I’ll see you at two.”

He hung up. Foley held the phone to his ear another moment before putting it in its cradle.

Leaning back in his chair, he stared at the folder a while before curiosity got the better of him. Reaching for his keyboard, he called up a search engine and got 1,824 results. He clicked on the first few and began reading about Dr. Dale McPhee.

It didn’t take long to figure out that his dozen or so what looked like self-published books were geared mostly to the tinfoil hat crowd: investigations into UFO sightings, strange hauntings, prehistoric beasts, and the like. A few of the sites showed the same photo of a bow-tied and gray-bearded author smiling into the camera. Sighing, Foley closed his browser and went to work.

There were some knocks on his door around noon asking him to lunch. He said thanks, but no thanks. It was after one o’clock before he finally listened to his messages.

A reporter called to ask about the recent spate of vandalism. A salesman called asking if he cared enough about his officers to use their brand of Kevlar. The Boy Scouts called asking for sponsorship of their popcorn drive. That same reporter called back to ask about the accident. Someone from the Board of Selectman’s office called to ask about it too.

Finishing his messages, he leaned back in his chair and took a long stretch before glancing at the clock. It was ten minutes to two. His stomach rumbled. What the hell, he thought.

Sitting alone in a booth in the far corner, the bow-tied man was easy to find. When Foley approached, McPhee smiled widely, revealing bone white dentures that contrasted starkly with his ruddy complexion. The shoulders of his suit were adorned with wisps of dandruff. His longish gray hair was pulled back behind his ears.

And yet, despite his initial hesitation, Foley found lunch with the author surprisingly pleasant. Mentioning that he’d looked him up on the web, Foley said in a neutral tone that McPhee’s work looked “interesting.”

Catching the subtle disbelief, McPhee smiled. “Now, Chief,” he said. “You of all people know we have to keep an open mind about things. Examine all possibilities before arriving at some version of the truth. Separate things that are provable from those things that aren’t. Isn’t that what police work is all about?”

While they ate, McPhee told stories about his recent investigations into mysterious sonic booms up in Maine, and ghostly apparitions at the Mount Washington hotel in New Hampshire. He’d looked into sightings of a pterodactyl-like creature in the western part of the state and found nothing. The jury was still out on a Bigfoot-like creature rumored to roam the woods of this very town.

While McPhee spoke, Foley noticed a stack of paperwork on the booth beside him, but said nothing, figuring they’d be brought up in due course. But by the time they finished their pie, he was wondering if the man had any information at all.

Foley pushed away his plate, in signal he was preparing to leave. Before he could make a clean getaway, McPhee asked him a question.

Foley shook his head, knowing only that the Pequot were a local Indian tribe who had long ago vanished.

“Fascinating bit of history,” McPhee said. “In fact, did you know this town encompasses one of the Pequot’s largest known settlements? Alas, it was destroyed in 1637 by an alliance of Puritans and Mohegans, who burned the village to the ground. Of the two hundred Indians in the village that day, mostly women and children, only seven managed to escape.”

Pushing his own now empty plate aside, McPhee reached for the stack of paperwork beside him and lifted it onto the table.

“Now, Chief, before we begin, I warn you that you may think what I am about to tell you are just the ravings of an old man.” Glancing at Foley, he winked. “And maybe they are.”

“But before you jump to hasty conclusions,” McPhee continued, “I ask only that you hear me out fully and try to keep an open mind.” With that, he reached into a folder and produced a series of black and white photos. “Let’s start with these.”

Looking down, Foley saw the first photo was of a railroad station. The word “Chambers” had been carved into an elegant wooden plaque above the door. McPhee waited for Foley to take that in before uncovering the next.

It was of the same station, taken perhaps some time later and from a further distance, at a place where two roads crossed. In this photo, two gargantuan locomotives belched steam, while well-dressed ladies in long skirts and fashionable hats disembarked the trains. Only then did Foley comprehend what he was looking at.

It had shifted a little, changed over the years. The tiny saplings in the photo were mammoth trees now. But there was no doubt about it. It was the intersection.

It became clear then too that the railroad station once stood on the same corner where the church stands now, where he’d sat only that morning drinking coffee and watching traffic pass by. When satisfied Foley understood, McPhee set that photo aside.

The next photo was taken from a similar angle, showing a group of soot-faced and tired looking men in overalls posed in front of what looked like two stories of wrecked metal and twisted steel. The station was gone. Most of it, anyway. You could still see a floorboard here and there. Scorched sections of a rear wall. But the rest had been reduced to cinders.

“The Wreck of the Old Colony,” McPhee intoned sadly. “It ran between Providence and Boston three times a day. The … bottom part there is what was left of the passenger train. A freight came through moving too fast and derailed. It leaped from its tracks and landed on the passenger train.”

He paused before going on in a low voice. “July 14th, 1912. Ninety-eight people died that day, forty of them schoolchildren on their way to a summer outing.”

He let that photo rest awhile before gathering them all up and putting them back in their folder. Then, he reached into another folder and brought out a stack of yellowed newspaper clippings.

Foley glanced at the first, headlined, “Plane Crash Kills 2.” It was dated December 15, 1948.

A commercial plane crashed and burned last night off a quiet street in town, killing at least two men on board. Two others are missing and presumed dead. Eyewitnesses have given conflicting reports regarding engine trouble.

Local resident Felix Gomes of 112 Bynum came within 10 feet of being killed in the crash. Getting out of his car at his home, he looked up at the sound of a low-flying plane coming straight for him.

He ducked behind his car and next heard a booming crash followed by a loud “plop.” Peeking over his vehicle, he saw a headless body on the pavement just before the explosion shot clouds of black smoke and flames into the air.

“Most horrible thing I ever seen,” he said. “Thought I was dead for sure. Couldn’t clean up all them brains spattered on my windshield.”

Setting that clip aside, Foley moved on to the next. It was dated February 8, 1955, and related the story of a home explosion at 212 Chambers that killed a woman and her two children.

The next was dated March 14, 1952. A school bus crash killed twelve. Faulty brakes were suspected.

The next was dated June 29, 1966. The disappearance of a toddler from his backyard. His mother said she turned her back for only a second. The boy was found the next morning in a nearby creek.

There were dozens more. Foley simply flipped through the rest before setting them aside. He’d had enough.

The din of the late lunch crowd subsided for a moment. Foley watched a blush rise in the old man’s cheeks. After a few seconds, he collected his clippings and put them back into their folder. He then seemed to weigh something in his mind before coming to a decision. Removing an oversized, yellowed piece of paper from the stack, he began unfolding it.

Looking down, Foley saw it was a topographical map of some sort, showing woods and ponds and brooks and fields. Marked up considerably, there were red lines running this way and that, and clumps of black spots marking something or other. Curious sets of numbers appeared in various places throughout.

Glancing up, he saw McPhee was waiting for him. Foley nodded. A moment later, McPhee took a deep breath and began to speak.

“Chief, this isn’t easy for me. I told you on the phone I wouldn’t have bothered you if I didn’t believe it was important. Recall, I also acknowledged there are things that can be proven and others that can’t. I said those things to you for a reason. Do you understand?”

“Good. Because contrary to what my wife might have you believe, I’m not a total nutcase.”

“Do you want to go on with this, Chief? We can stop right now, if you like. Go our separate ways. No harm, no foul, as the kids say. You can chalk it up to the lunatic ravings of an old man.” He stopped to catch the chief’s eye. “Do you … want to go on with this, Chief?”

Foley looked away, unable to hold the old man’s gaze. The truth was, he very much wanted to leave. But he also knew there was something here. It couldn’t all be a coincidence. Looking up at the old man, he nodded.

“Good. Okay, then. Now, Chief, here is where we are now,” he began, pointing to a spot on the map to the north. “Main Street runs east-to-west this way. And here’s the right turn onto Bynum. You with me so far?”

Foley nodded. Though difficult without streets as markers, he knew exactly what he was looking at. He recognized Fielder Pond to the west, and Springhill Brook running through the south of town. Things were starting to make sense.

“Now, let’s continue down Bynum,” McPhee said, dragging his pen across the map. “Here’s Andy’s Food Mart … and here’s the elementary school …”

He dragged his pen deeper into a wooded area, tracing the path of the modern-day Bynum Road, moving closer to a denser area marked by black spots and intersecting red lines. Foley knew they were nearing the intersection, but something was wrong. Something shouldn’t be there.

McPhee had been waiting for it. He looked up and smiled. “They moved it, Chief. Moved the whole bloody river after the Civil War. Dammed it thirty miles upstream.”

Looking down again, McPhee continued his pen along Bynum Road, toward the cluster of black marks. He stopped at a U-shaped bank of what Foley knew must once have been an impressive river.

“And here, right where you’d expect it to be, on the banks of a rushing river, was the Indian village itself.” McPhee paused to let Foley digest that before going on.

“Now, few accounts of the attack itself survive, of course, but what we can piece together is that the Puritans and their allies approached the village from the south and surrounded it, here.”

He pointed to a semicircle of red dashes against the river itself, then moved his pen across the river to another semicircle outlined in red on the far bank.

“And here is where their Mohegan allies lay in wait for anyone attempting to escape across the river. Dozens were cut down as they tried to cross.”

He waited another moment before taking his pen to the map and drawing on it, completing the circle. Foley watched as it encompassed and fully encircled the cluster of black marks, realizing only then what they were. Places where planes crashed and trains derailed. Where buses lost their brakes and toddlers disappeared. Where trucks crushed cars.

McPhee wasn’t done. Taking his pen, he drew a line down the middle of the circle, then drew another line across it, making an X. He put the point of his pen down in the center of the circle, at the place where the two lines crossed.

After a few moments, McPhee withdrew his pen and began carefully folding the map, putting it back in its folder. That done, he stacked all his folders neatly on the table, folded his hands, and waited. After a while it came.

“What do we do?” Foley asked. He could deny no more there was something to what the old man said. While he sat there waiting for his answer, he realized he had understood all along it was true. It was the reason he’d left orders to be alerted any time there was an incident at the intersection.

It was why reports from those incidents were to be on his desk first thing in the morning.

It was why he always made his way there, if only to spend a few minutes wondering just what the hell was wrong with the place.

He glanced over at McPhee, who appeared for once to be having trouble putting his thoughts into words. After a while, he spoke.

“I don’t know what to tell you, Chief. Maybe you think because of my background, or what I do, that I have some answers.” He looked up and smiled without mirth. “But you know what, Chief? I’m going to let you in on a little secret. Ninety-nine percent of what I do is crap. Pure, unadulterated crap. But I do have a talent with words. I can make the mundane sound mysterious, the pedestrian, supernatural, and the everyday, well … just plain weird. And people eat it up! There’s an insatiable appetite for the stuff. Who knows why? Maybe it allows people an escape from their own boring lives, allows them to forget for just a few minutes the real horrors, the everyday horrors …”

“Like car crashes. And plane crashes. And missing children. That’s why I’ll never write about this, why I’ll never attempt to make money on it or otherwise seek personal gain. Because this is real, Chief. Those people are real! I tell you, it has taken many years to put together what I’ve shown you today, and damned if I know what to make of it either. Who can tell? Maybe the Indians are taking their revenge, reaching out across time to wreak the same havoc that was so unmercifully wrought upon them. Or maybe there’s a kind of magnetic force at work, something cosmic or quantum that we don’t yet understand. Maybe, it’s a portal to another world or another dimension, something akin to a black hole. But do you know what I think, Chief? What I truly think? What sixty-seven years on this Earth has taught me?” He paused to again catch Foley’s eye. “Some places are bad, Chief. Just plain bad. They are to be avoided at all costs.”

McPhee sat there another moment before grabbing hold of his papers and bum-shuffling his way out of the booth. He stood outside the booth for a moment to look down at Foley before nodding once.

Some of the late afternoon diners turned their heads, to stare at him with embarrassment before turning back to their meals. McPhee stopped halfway to the door and turned around.

When he did, he looked to Foley nothing like the kindly professor who smiled back at him from the websites earlier that morning. He looked now like just another stooped old man, who for some reason carried a heavy burden of paperwork that made him stand lopsided.

He also looked like a man who had seen too much of the world, one who knew that for him, at sixty-seven years of age, it wouldn’t be long before the answers to these and all other mysteries of this world and the next would be revealed.

For Foley, what followed was a week of fitful sleep and waking nightmares. He hardly ate and barely slept. In his waking hours, he found himself more and more drawn to the intersection, spending most of his free time there, sipping coffee and waiting for … something.

He knew intellectually there was nothing he could do about it. For him to even discuss what he’d learned from the old man, let alone share with anyone that he might believe it, was a ticket out of office, or worse.

Still, he caught himself cringing while watching school buses pass by, almost got out of his car anytime neighborhood kids crossed the road, especially those traveling alone. He was once jarred out of a much needed slumber by a squeal of brakes, not daring to open his eyes until he was certain it wouldn’t be followed by the sounds of crunching steel, and later, desperate moans. From the lucky ones, that is.

On a subconscious level he barely acknowledged, while at the intersection, he found himself delving into the supernatural, trying to invoke the cosmic or karmic or whatever the hell forces were at work or play here that caused so much pain and loss throughout the history of his town, and for all he knew, further back than that.

He dared them to make an appearance, even dared them to take him. But his gibberish incantations, sacrilegious prayer, and appeals to forces both holy and unholy went for nothing. No matter how hard he tried, it still felt like just any other place.

A week after his meeting with McPhee, he again found himself at the intersection. It was a gray and cloudy day, with spittles of greasy rain landing every now and then on his windshield. He watched the wind blow the crisscrossing street signs hanging above the intersection like flags whipping in the wind. The sign reading “Upham’s Corner” by the side of the road flapped in the breeze, while the sign out in front of the church on this day read:

Foley smiled to himself, not just at the typo, but also recalling his recent profane attempts to summon the forces of darkness. Sitting alone in his car, he realized how silly it all was. There were no forces of darkness. Or light. There were no bad places either. Only bad people. In fact, the further removed he became from his meeting with McPhee, the more he realized how ridiculous the whole thing was.

As if to affirm his thoughts, he looked up and saw the gray skies begin to part. Rays of late afternoon sunshine now peeked their way through the clouds. The temperature too had risen in the time he’d been sitting there. The uptick in humidity had caused a foglike mist to spring up from the ground. It would be a beautiful evening, he knew.

He thought back to all the time he’d wasted sitting in this lot waiting for something to happen, and not just this past week either. What a fool I’ve been, he thought. Boy, did the old man take me for a ride. But Foley couldn’t blame the man entirely, for he had bought into it hook, line, and sinker. He smiled cynically to realize the old man had been right about one thing. He did indeed have a way with words.

Shaking his head, he reached down and started his car. It was time to put all this foolishness behind him, time to let go of silly supernatural things and get back to work.

While putting his car in gear, he noticed the mist rising up from the ground had thickened. The sunlight breaking through the cloud cover created a strange, prism-like effect, causing the vapor in the air to explode in a whorling vortex of purples and greens and reds. The mist was no more than five or six feet off the ground, and above that was now bright sunshine. Foley smiled to think there would be a lovely rainbow somewhere once the fog cleared.

He drove to the entrance of the lot. Turning left toward the intersection, he lowered his visor against the brilliant sunlight and looked up just as the light turned from yellow to red. He stopped at the stopline. The fog was swirling now, glowing all colors of the rainbow. He squinted against the sunshine coming through his windshield, and happened to be rubbing his eyes when he felt his car start to move. It had already gone three or four feet before he realized it; even then, he thought it a trick of the light.

Still, he stepped more firmly on his brake as the misty colors danced and pulsed, but there was no mistaking it. His car was being pulled into the intersection. His panic rising, he glanced into his rearview thinking there might be something pushing, but saw nothing there but whirling colors reflected in the mist. His gorge rising, he jammed both feet on his brake and half-stood. The car was almost in the middle of the intersection.

An unholy sound escaped his throat. He reached for the door handle. It flapped this way and that, feeling somehow fleshy and clammy in his hand. But the door didn’t open.

The glowing mist enveloped him now, but the sun shone through, creating dancing shadows of darkness and light. He stared helplessly out his windshield through holes in the mist, toward the crisscrossing signs marking Bynum Road and Chambers Street. Below them was the sign reading Upham’s Corner. To the left of that was the church sign. But the shadows and the twirling mist made the signs only partly visible, and from left to right, Foley saw what was now being revealed to him and began to giggle.

He had asked for it. Even prayed for it. And his prayers had been answered. He was in the intersection now, boy. Paroxysms of laughter overtook him when he thought this was the longest light known to man. Tears streamed down his cheeks as he turned his head and saw lights approaching, lights that were curiously far above the ground, and seconds later, words appeared out of the mist, huge black words on a yellow background. He saw them for only an instant.