The Coldwater Haunting

by Michael Richan

  “They’re chained up,” Jake offered. “We can get around them.”

  “Not the dogs,” Ron replied. “That van. I recognize it. I talked to her before, passed each other on the road. She yelled at me.”

  “For what?”

  “She thought I was going too fast. She seemed really crabby.”

  “Were you?”

  “What? Going too fast? I don’t remember.”

  The dogs were barking continuously, straining at their chains. Ron looked at the one nearest his door; he wasn’t much for detecting breeds, but its wide face made him think he was looking at a pit bull, or a mix that contained a lot of it. Its large mouth, rapidly opening and closing, exposing wide rows of sharp teeth, made him wonder if tracking down this woman was really such a good idea.

  Jake got out of the car and the dogs reacted, focusing on him as he walked to the front of the vehicle. As Ron got out, one of the dogs lunged against its chain, stopped three feet from him, straining so hard it rose up on its hind legs.

  “Jesus Christ,” Ron said, looking up at Jake as he hugged the side of the car until he joined his friend. When they turned around to face the house, an old woman was already on the wooden porch built onto the side of a blue, triple-wide trailer. Her brunette hair was perfectly coifed around her head without a spec of grey; again he had the impression she was Patricia Neal. He half expected to see a gun in her hands, but instead her arms were folded, watching them avoid the dogs.

  “Mrs. Hughes?” Ron called.

  “That’s me,” she called back, her voice raspy. “And that’s Harry and Sally,” she added, nodding toward the dogs.

  “Beautiful animals,” Jake said.

  “What do you want?” she called, unimpressed by Jake’s observation.

  Ron stepped forward. “I just bought the property at…”

  “I know who you are,” she said, cutting him off. “Pinedo Road. We talked already. You drive like a lunatic.”

  “Yes, well, I’d like to think I took your suggestion and have slowed down.”

  “Good, I don’t need my grandkids run over by city slickers. What do you want?”

  “We were just down at the county building. I was trying to dig up some information on my property.”

  “So?”

  “So, well, I found most of the information back to the ’30s. I mean, they’re sending me the information, but I understand you’re an authority on the history of the mountain. Before that.”

  “Who told you that?”

  “I…I don’t remember her name.”

  “So what if I am?”

  “I was wondering if I could pick your brain a little. I have…questions.”

  “What kinds of questions?”

  “Well, everything really. I’d like to know the history of the place. Of this mountain, specifically.”

  “You mean you want to know the history of your property. Your house.”

  “Yes, that’s part of it.”

  She turned, her arms still folded, looking into the forest that began not more than twenty feet from her trailer. Ron got the impression that she was considering whether or not she really wanted to deal with him, weighing something, trying to decide.

  “I don’t mean to take up your time,” he added. “I was just hoping you might be able to share a few things. I could really use your help.”

  Finally she turned back, dropping her arms to her side. “Well, you better come in, then.”

  They walked to the trailer, the dogs still barking furiously. She held the door open for them as they stepped inside.

  The trailer seemed much larger on the inside than it looked from the outside. The furnishings were modest, but clean and orderly. It exuded a sense of routine cleaning and obsessive straightening.

  “You like some coffee?” she offered, motioning them to a small kitchen table, covered with a tan plastic tablecloth containing faded images of utensils and pans.

  “That’d be nice,” Ron said.

  “Not for me,” Jake replied.

  The table was arranged against a wall. One of the seats appeared to be the one most used, with a small stack of mail and other papers arranged around it; Ron chose one of the other seats, as did Jake. She placed coffee in front of him and sat with her own, steam rising from the mug, and then returned with the entire pot, which she sat on a cork trivet in the center of the table.

  “Sorry, I don’t have any cream or sugar, I drink it black,” she said, sitting in the chair and running her hands over the apron that covered her dress, straightening any wrinkles.

  “Black is fine,” Ron replied.

  “So, Mr. Costa. What do you want to know?”

  “You remembered my name.”

  “I remember everything,” she replied, smiling a little. “Although if you expect anything I say to hold up in a court of law, I’ll tell you right now, you’re barking up the wrong tree.”

  “Why is that?”

  “Courts of law can’t always deal with some of the facts of life. They like to think they can, but they can’t. Not always.”

  “I suppose that’s true,” Ron replied. “Not everything is purely black and white.”

  “Not exactly what I meant, but never mind.”

  Ron took a sip from the mug. “Excellent coffee.”

  “Go ahead, asked me whatever it is you came here for.”

  Ron cleared his throat. “Well, for starters, I was wondering if you could tell me about the history of the mountain. Generally, I mean.”

  She smiled at him. “Working your way up to it?”

  Ron was surprised by her directness, but before he could reply, she continued.

  “The Hughes family has lived on this mountain since it was settled. My great-grandfather owned three quarters of it, but before he died, he sold off everything but the plot we’re sitting on right now. He needed the proceeds to pay off debts he ran up with bad investments in lumber. How anyone could go wrong with lumber in those days is beyond me, but according to my grandfather, Josiah had a knack for believing any old song and dance.”

  She stopped, taking a sip of her coffee. Ron found the raspiness of her voice to be oddly soothing, and when it stopped, he found himself wishing she would start again, just so he could hear more of it.

  “Anyway, half of what he sold was bought by the Coldwater family. Most of their lots were sold off over the years, bought by people who thought they owned it once they paid for it.” She smirked a little.

  “Thought?” Ron asked. “They didn’t? Own it?”

  “They thought they did. They moved into whatever house was there, thinking it was theirs.” She stared down into her coffee.

  Ron waited, hoping she’d explain, but she seemed to have come to a stop. “Was there some problem with the deed?” he asked, prodding her to continue.

  “Oh, no, no problem with deeds. Or anything legal. Nothing like that. If you went to the county, they’d say it had been sold, fair and square. But…well, it was really still the Coldwaters’. Even to this day.”

  Ron shifted uncomfortably in his seat as she looked up at him.

  “If I asked you if you believed in Bigfoot, what would you say?” she asked.

  Ron looked at Jake, unsure how to respond.

  “I believe in Bigfoot,” Jake offered, smiling.

  “Of course you do,” she answered, turning back to Ron. “But what about you?”

  It felt like some kind of test. The last thing Ron wanted was to fail it, to cause the woman to shut down and not share more information. Still, he didn’t want to lie…perhaps that was the test, to see if he’d be truthful.

  “Well,” he finally answered, clearing his throat again, “this is Bigfoot country, that’s for sure. Lots of speculation.”

  “Lots of sightings,” she added.

  “Yes, there seems to be,” Ron replied. “And I hate to claim that someone is a liar, that they’d just make something up when I suppose there’s a chance they actually saw something, maybe
not a Bigfoot per se, but something else that…”

  She reached forward and patted his hand. “Let me spare you the gymnastics. I was just asking if you believed in it or not. You obviously don’t, which is fine. I don’t either. But that doesn’t explain why the market at the junction is named Bigfoot Gas and Go. Or why half a dozen businesses in McLean have Bigfoot in their name.”

  “Marketing?” Ron offered. “Bigfoot sells. It attracts tourists.”

  “That’s part of it. But why does it attract tourists? There’s more to it than that. Beliefs are powerful things. If they are powerful enough, they can cause things to happen. Make things that aren’t real become real.”

  Ron didn’t reply.

  “You look skeptical. I guess my Bigfoot analogy didn’t really work for you, eh?”

  “I should have just told you I don’t believe in it.”

  “That’s fine, but what I’m getting at is that your disbelief in it doesn’t mean that other people’s belief in it doesn’t have consequences. Real, physical consequences. There are people in McLean for whom their livelihood is dependent upon this completely bogus belief.”

  “You could say that about religion,” Jake added.

  “So you are not a believer?” she turned to him.

  “I don’t know if I’d say that or not,” Jake answered. “It’s just that there’s a lot of business built up around it. All the televangelists and all. Tons of money.”

  “I see what you’re getting at,” Ron said. “People create physical manifestations of things based on beliefs. I can agree with that, even if it’s something they do unaware, or subconsciously.”

  “Alright,” she replied, and rose from the table. She walked out of the room and returned a moment later, carrying two old books.

  “This one belonged to my grandmother, Margot. She married my grandfather, Hal, in 1928, at the age of seventeen. It’s her diary.”

  She sat at the table and opened the book.

  “I don’t think I can explain it any better than her.”

  Chapter Seventeen

  Hal has been gone for over an hour, and I’m frightened. What if he doesn’t come back? They might fight, something bad could happen. He was certainly angry when he left.

  I can’t blame him. Our goats looked as though they had been mercilessly slaughtered with a machete, hacked apart in a most gruesome way. We know it was them, on account of their complaints last week. The fact is, their property is too far away to ever hear them, and the wind blows from their side to ours, so they can’t smell them, either. They just like to complain, to push their nose into other people’s business.

  I wish my father hadn’t sold to them. The mountain was such a peaceful place before that. I remember the day I first saw people moving onto the hill; I told my father we had squatters. He informed me that they had a right to it, because they had bought those parcels from him. I remember feeling confused; the mountain had always been ours. I could wander anywhere over it and never encounter another soul, other than the deer and possum. And the occasional bear, which father would run off with his shotgun.

  I know it’s the memories of a silly child. I know the Indians had the land before we ran them off. Now I find myself feeling a little like they must have felt – as though others are infringing, ruining our lives and our privacy, trying to…I don’t know, intimidate or force us to do things against our will. We’ve had goats as long as I can remember. They keep the undergrowth down and provide milk, as well as an occasional slaughter. People can’t just force you to give them up, can they? Can people invent reasons why they don’t want them around, and force you to get rid of them, even though they’re really of no consequence to them at all?

  I was proud of Hal for standing up to him. Mr. Coldwater has a way of speaking that makes it sound like he will bring holy hell down if his demands aren’t granted, but Hal remained patient and repeated over and over that the goats had been with us for years, they weren’t bothering anyone or anything, and that, no, we would not be getting rid of them.

  Apparently Coldwater decided to do it himself. Or, I’ll bet he hired men to do it, those workers he uses on the other houses. The savagery of it still makes me see red, and the indifference shown by leaving the butchered carcasses, meat that could have been used, speaks to his morals. I’d rather he’d stolen them than just ruined them as he has; the waste of it makes my blood boil.

  It’s not the first time he’s thrown his weight around to get what he wants, he and that entire family. He’s encroached on our land with his buildings, costing us the wages of a surveyor to correct. His wife, pretending aristocracy she doesn’t possess by doting on her stable of expensive horses, instructed her stable boys to dump their muck on our property. And the man’s nephew, Larry, caught red handed by Arlo years ago, playing with matches behind our shed. It was the middle of summer, and everything was dry! He would have burned it down had he not stumbled upon the kid. I know most young children do not understand the idea of property boundaries but a fish rots from the head, and his disregard for our rights is a direct result of his uncle’s attitudes and instruction. Now that he is older, he is no better.

  What bothers me even more is how they subdivided and leased to other families that now live here, all of them loyal to the Coldwaters in one way or another. Before my father died, he warned me of what would happen, sorry that he had sold so much land. He never would have sold it all to one person. He thought the other individuals who bought, as he continued to whittle away at the mountain to address his insolvencies, would retain their properties. When he learned that the Coldwaters had bought out a number of them, he realized a coup was underway, a coup to take over the entire mountain. My father told us we’d need to be strong to withstand them, to maintain our way of life and what we’ve built here.

  His concerns bore out. Now it seems the Coldwaters own most of the land that surrounds us. He’s tried to cut us off, blocking the roads in various ways, claiming they’re on his property, but county law is clear on that, and his efforts have failed. He doesn’t have the sheriff yet, although he donates a lot of money in the elections, and is bound to wind up with a sympathetic one at some point.

  If Hal isn’t back in a half hour, I will have to go check on him myself. I pray to God he isn’t already dead, or lying bleeding somewhere between here and that man’s house.

  - - -

  Mrs. Hughes stopped and flipped to pages deeper in the book. Then she continued.

  - - -

  I found a couple of odd things today, in the woods just behind the house. If it had just been one, I would have thought it strange, but the fact that I found three of them makes me think something is underway, some kind of attack from Candace, their eldest daughter.

  I assume this because of the things Amy has said. She lives a mile to the west, and works up at the Coldwaters’ as a maid, cleaning most of the time. Amy and I go way back; I do not think the Coldwaters would have hired her were they aware of our long friendship. She and I have met for tea and cribbage twice a week for many years.

  Amy told me that Candace has become much worse. The teenager has not appeared to the staff for weeks, remaining locked away in her rooms at the west end of the Coldwater mansion. Amy has been forbidden to clean those rooms, and instructed to not speak of them outside of the house, but she has always told me of the comings and goings of the place as we peg our way down the streets. She told me all about the odd change in Candace’s demeanor and how, after several weeks of increased hysteria, the parents decided to sequester their daughter.

  Amy gave me the most queer look when she explained the frequency with which Mr. Coldwater enters Candace’s rooms, remaining inside for long stretches of time. Disturbingly, he often looked disheveled when leaving, tucking his shirt into his pants.

  With the mystery of what has happened to Candace deepening within the ranks of the staff, speculation has run rampant, and several of them have tried to learn more.

  Amy said she
recently placed an ear to one of the doors to Candace’s room, and heard low, guttural grunts and laughs, then the rapid recitation of a strange language, a phrase repeated over and over with varying intensity. “Very strange rantings,” Amy said, her left eyebrow cocking when she told me.

  I replied that it sounded like Candace had gone mad. I was half joking, but to my surprise Amy quickly agreed, saying that what she heard through the door did, indeed, sound like the ravings of insanity, and that upon hearing the sounds, she had the most evil and ominous feeling, as though she was hearing words concocted in hell.

  That was when she came over last Thursday, and I presume the events she witnessed were in the days just prior to that.

  Anyway, I mentioned the items I found today to Hal, and my suspicion that Candace might be behind it. He seemed skeptical, but he was not aware of what I had seen the other night, something I hadn’t told him.

  The night before last, I woke around 3 AM, thinking I had heard a sound. Hal remained asleep, quietly snoring; a parade could be marching through the bedroom and he’d never wake up. I rose and investigated, coming finally to the kitchen window that looks over the back yard.

  There, her white skin reflecting the moonlight, was a woman who I thought was Candace – naked as the day she was born. Although I hadn’t seen her since she was ten or eleven, her face was still the same, even though her hair was much longer and her breasts and hips had grown as they do during the teenaged years. She appeared to be in a trance, walking gently through the trees at the far end of our clearing, unaffected by the cold. She stopped once to squat, almost disappearing from view, but then stood again and continued on. I remember standing there at the sink, wondering if I should wake up Hal or not. The girl seemed to wander aimlessly; she didn’t appear up to any type of mischief, she was just meandering, giving the trees a kind of bewildered stare. Eventually she continued on and made her way beyond my line of sight.

  I wrote it off to sleepwalking. It was odd, yes, and I considered mentioning it to Hal. I even thought of bringing it up with the Coldwaters, but with things so acrimonious between us, it seemed easier to just ignore what I’d seen. They were not a family I felt any sense of obligation to help; in fact, just the opposite. Had the girl seemed in distress, I might have reacted differently, but, given how she behaved, I felt no compunction to inject myself into whatever malady accounted for her behavior, instead blaming poor oversight of her habits upon the Coldwaters themselves, which is the truth. The blame, as it usually does, lies with the parents.