The old well looks much the same as it always did except some of the stones have tumbled around the perimeter like so many missing teeth. Moss has crawled over it, resembling a loathsome disease, some of it sickly green and some of it a curious brown. Once upon a time I recall a rusted metal cover over the top to keep hapless children from falling in, but as the farm fell into disrepair, no one visited the place anymore, so there was no one to worry about a possible accident.
Except me.
I come here often enough and wander through the deserted house with its filthy floors and leaking roof. Part of it collapsed long ago and filled one of the bedrooms upstairs with debris and stains have grown as the ceilings downstairs rot from the moisture. The rusted stove sits in bored abandonment, and the kitchen smells like old grease and it is obvious raccoons and other scavengers have made themselves welcome, though as shelter, I must admit it is less than adequate for human beings.
The bloodstains in the living room are no longer visible, but as they say, everything fades with time. However, I remember everything clearly. That day is as luminous in my mind as if it had happened only minutes ago.
That is why I visit.
I enjoy reliving it.
The night had been quiet.
The usual noises had kept him awake, but nothing disturbing happened and Jon finally fell into a fitful sleep with sporadic dreams that he didn’t recall and he had the impression might not have been too pleasant. When he woke and looked around the bedroom with the plain knotty pine walls and simple dresser, plaid curtain covering a single window, he was drenched in sweat and in desperate need of a cup of coffee.
It was a gray day, overcast but still, with leaden clouds gathered in low hanging banks. The kitchen floor was ice cold beneath his bare feet. He fumbled in the cupboard, shivering, looking for the special cups to put in the coffee maker. He popped one in, and naturally, the expensive thing decided not to work. It sputtered, the light on the display went out, and he said an uncivilized word.
“Connie probably stood in a room last night chanting and wearing a pointed hat to curse me,” he muttered out loud, wondering how much he had paid for the contraption. Luckily there was a gas station about ten miles away. He made a mental note to buy a regular simple coffee pot of the reliable variety, went into the tiny bathroom to brush his teeth, and pulled on his jeans and shirt from the day before. It wasn’t until he went outside he realized maybe he’d had a visitor after all.
The gravestone was propped against a tree by the woodshed. It was worn so badly that the etched words on the surface were almost obliterated by time and weather, Small patches of insidious lichen speckled the stone. Jon stopped dead on the way to his car and stood there, his chest tightening.
It started to rain, a drift of moisture brushing his face and dampening his hair.
As a joke, the marker was definitely lacking in the humor department and he was hard pressed to think of who might decide putting a gravestone next to his cabin would be funny. George maybe, but he doubted it. George wasn’t into exertion and he’d guess it was damned heavy. Troy? It was possible since there was no love lost between them, but this was more of an intellectual kind of prank and Troy was the physical type. He would gladly use his fists, but it was doubtful he’d do something like this.
Other than Alicia Hahn, he hadn’t really seen anyone else since his return and she certainly wasn’t capable of moving it.
Reluctantly Jon walked closer and squatted down in the pine needles, trying to make out the inscription. The name was lost but he could make out a date, or at least most of it.
1853.
From the position, it was a birthdate but the date of death was gone, the stone worn enough there might be a suggestion of it, but at least under the canopy of trees and gloomy skies he couldn’t see it.
Not the finest way to start the day so far. Unfortunately, the ground was so covered in springy pine needles there were no tire tracks, and when he stood and tried to move the marker, he could barely lift it and he was in pretty good shape, so no one could have carried it any significant distance.
Yet it had arrived, unwanted but there, somehow.
Jon straightened and wiped his hands on his jeans, uneasy and disturbed, his gaze scouring the surrounding woods. No movement, no sound.
Until he heard it.
Soft, distant laughter. Light and brittle, like the sound of shattering glass, rushing like a stream tumbling over stones, the lilt familiar enough his stomach tightened into a solid knot.
Whatever he expected, it wasn’t that. He turned around ridiculously in a circle, looking for the source and all he heard was the laughter moving, and then dying away.
There couldn’t be children in these woods.
The surrounding cabins were empty, closed for winter, the musty interiors filled with braces for the roofs that would hold too much snow, the lanes unplowed and deserted. Everyone was safely in the suburbs where they belonged and even if they were here, they would never be allowed to run free…
Or he wouldn’t allow it. He tried not to think of his own children roaming these woods and it made him go cold all over because the idea was horrifying.
He might have imagined it.
He stood there, a knot twisting in his stomach, attempting to make sense of it and failing. It wasn’t a secret to him that he had teetered more than once on the slippery edge between sanity and the alternative. He’d concealed it well; no one in those stifling boardrooms or boring-as-hell cocktail parties would ever guess, or if they did, they were even a better actor than he was. Once Connie had caught him in a full blown panic attack, convulsively washing his hands over and over, sweating so profusely his face looked like soapstone in the bathroom mirror.
What the hell is wrong with you?
Flu.
Being Connie, his lovely, self-centered wife had fled lest she contract the same ailment, not even asking if she could get him an aspirin.
She’d dodged a bullet. Literally. The loaded .38 he kept in the dresser drawer had been talking to him, urging him to come at least for a good long look, and if he had decided to answer that lethal summons and blow his brains out, he easily might have taken her out with him if she’d conveniently walked into the room. It was her lucky day.
Not his first black moment by a long shot.
So it was impossible not to wonder if he’d put that gravestone there himself and just didn’t remember it. The blackouts were rare, but happened now and then.
Which was worse? That he did it for some macabre reason that he couldn’t comprehend when he was lucid, or someone else had delivered the unpleasant gift?
One hell of a question, that one.
Fifteen minutes later he pulled into the gas station, the dark skies spitting tiny droplets all over his windshield.
He really needed that cup of coffee.
* * * *
George regarded Mason Fowler with a jaundiced look caused by both years of acquaintance and a general skeptical view of the logic of the world he lived in. The man was his supervisor but he was an idiot.
Where was the justice in that?
“Enrollment is down, but my classes are full,” George pointed out, quite reasonably in his opinion. “An across the board percentage-based salary reduction seems unfair all the way around, but more so to those of us who still have the same amount of papers to grade and lectures to give.”
Fowler adjusted his—hideous in George’s opinion—tie. It had sickly green specks against a tan background. Enough said. He replied, “Of course no one is happy about this, but there have been many meetings and this has been deemed the best course of action to protect this learning institution’s reputation for fine academic standards.”
Oh yeah. As an institution of higher learning, they weren’t exactly considered Ivy League. Some of the professors were good, he’d like to think he was one of them, but could just be fooling himself. Either way, his damn classes were full.
The equation was: same work, less pay.
George could argue, or he could just fold his tents and accept it because bureaucracy was going to win anyway. Story of his life. Two choices. Accept or fight for change, and he was an acceptor. He stood to leave, his smile stiff. “I feel confident those that made this decision will also be taking a pay cut? Wait. Don’t bother to comment, as I already know the answer.”
The exit he made from the room was probably not as dignified as he would have preferred since he bumped into the doorjamb, but at least he’d given his opinion.
So he’d keep the thermostat a little lower this winter and give up on the idea of a new car. He’d been eyeing a sporty SUV, but hell, that was not going to make or break his life. He was disgruntled, but his attention was elsewhere.
The stairs to the library were wet and he went up carefully, because he did almost everything that way, cracked the door and smelled the odor of decaying paper and old leather and was instantly at home. George usually spent almost every free moment in this place, just reading and working in solitude, pretending the scholarly façade concealed an intuitive mind, but this particular afternoon he had a goal.
He could remember clearly when Jon’s mother had died but he hadn’t gone over the details in many years.
This seemed an appropriate time to revisit the past because his future wasn’t improving, that was for sure with the salary cut. Besides, there were vague details he needed to remember.
He’d been waiting for this a long time.
The tables were long and narrow and had been obviously harvested from another learning institution from the scratches, but they were functional and there was free wireless connection, so he didn’t bother to pay for it at home and just came here.
Could afford it less than ever now, he thought with resentment, so the least the college could do was give him one perk. He sat down, took out his laptop, and booted it up.
Isabelle Palmer—he liked the spelling of her first name, he always had—was found dead on October 16th. Cause of death was asphyxiation. Manner of death was undetermined.
Exact translation: cause of death was how someone died and manner of death was why they died.
George had an issue there. The coroner’s notes included an insinuation she hanged herself and implied suicide. That was supported by the lack of any official investigation. George had known even back then it wasn’t so simple. The anniversary was really right around the corner.
He dug up the article.
Grisly stuff. Her son had found her dangling from the rafters of the garage and cut her down, and that had interfered with the investigation. The reporter had tried to be kind and spared the details for the most part but George doubted that had been an easy day for Jon Palmer.
She’d been beautiful, like her son.
He clearly remembered her, of course. Most of the teenaged boys that were his contemporaries had an adolescent fantasy or two about Mrs. Palmer. Twenty years now…he sat there and wondered if Jon’s return was tied to his mother’s murder.
Because there was no doubt that’s what Jon believed had happened and George didn’t disagree.
Black Lake was not the healthiest place to live.
George saved the article to his hard drive and opened up a different file. Inspiration would not be difficult to find this afternoon. Between Jon’s arrival and his interview with that prick Fowler, his literary work in progress would flow from brain to fingers. He knew that sense of power, and it trickled through him now as he wrote:
Chapter Ten.
Braxton Mays knew he was under suspicion. He’d hidden the axe under a pile of brushwood and it was safe there, or so he thought, but now it was inexplicably missing. He stood there, his hands scratched from the sharp thorns, a drop of blood rolling off one finger, and felt a flicker of panic. It wasn’t so much getting caught, as it was that getting caught would stop him.
That he couldn’t allow.
He really needed that axe. He had plans for it.
An hour later he realized he had a class in five minutes. George hit ‘save’, and then forwarded the file to his sister, Lillian. She’d give him feedback by five o’clock if she followed her usual course, and while no one really looked forward to criticism, her insights were usually spot-on. She loved to criticize, and was really good at it. He listened to all of it and used some of it.
He meticulously packed up his computer, made eye contact with a student he should probably recognize and nodded just in case, then left the building.
The first pain came on as his foot hit the top step.
Vise-like, fist knotted in his chest, enough to make him drop his precious computer case and stumble.
He went down hard, groaning, rolling all the way to the sidewalk, and landed on his back, determined his last vision would not be of depressing leaden skies.
The rain was cold as hell on his face.
Goddamn Minnesota. He’d been born cold and he would die cold and there was absolutely no justice in it at all.
George wheezed and tried to grab his cell phone.