‘Oh Jesus,’ I said and noticed that my hands were trembling. It was the same man, the same thing that had attacked me in the barn.
August 30, 2015
I don’t know how much longer I can cope with this.
September 1, 2015
Lizzy still hasn’t appeared and I’m really struggling to accept that I’ve failed, even though I know that not every ritual is successful, something I’ve learned from personal experience. But I wanted this one to work so bad I convinced myself that it would succeed.
I’ve been thinking about her constantly, looking at my memorabilia and watching her movies. It hurts. I’ve decided to burn everything. Maybe that will help and stop me from thinking about her.
The demon – for that is what he is – still torments me. I’m seriously thinking about suicide. I just want him to leave me alone. Perhaps death is the only way I can escape him.
September 4, 2015
I burned all of Lizzy’s stuff. That was very, very hard to do, but now I have nothing to look at so perhaps I won’t think about her so much.
September 7, 2015
He’s coming to me at night now, in my bedroom and in my dreams. There’s nothing I can do to escape him.
I can’t stop thinking about Lizzy. Burning the stuff I’d collected and deleting her movies from my PC didn’t make any difference. I’m devastated that the ritual didn’t work, or perhaps I should say, that Aritenkhede chose not to honor his side of the deal. Not only did I give him Robin but I also gave him Kathryn. I did as he asked, more than was laid out in the grimoire and he hasn’t done a goddamn thing. I’ve sunk into a deep depression and I can’t go on any more. It’s also occurred to me that sooner or later the law is going to figure out who killed Robin and Kathryn and they’ll come after me. Especially as I didn’t hide Robin as well as I should have. Can’t believe that I forgot to move her. Jesus. With today’s technology it’s just a matter of time. Why I didn’t think of that and how I assumed that life would just go on normally, but with Lizzy at my side, is beyond me. I can’t believe I was that stupid and gullible. If I can’t have Lizzy and I’m in danger of going to jail, what’s the point of going on?
September 8, 2015
I’ve decided that I’m going to do it: I’m going to commit suicide. I’d originally thought about shooting myself, which would be the quickest and easiest way, but I don’t want to risk the chance of someone in the future performing the ritual to resurrect me and succeeding where I failed. I don’t want to come back. Ever. I want peace. Death. I figured I’d need to make it impossible for that to happen by destroying my body by covering myself in gasoline and burning myself to death, like that monk did in 1963, although I’ll try and make it as painless as possible by overdosing with painkillers first. I don’t regret what I’ve done. I did it for love. Maybe I’ll see Lizzy in the spirit world. Perhaps that’s the only place we can be together.
I turned the page, but this was Gary’s last entry.
‘Of course it didn’t work, you twisted sonofabitch,’ I said as I shut the journal. ‘Resurrecting the dead is pure fantasy and you were a deluded fool to believe you could do it.’ I reached for my phone and then paused, Robin’s voice echoing inside my head.
You’ll need it for a while and you’ll know when the time is right to give it to them.
I had intended to call the sheriff’s office, but as I recalled my conversation with her and the emphatic way Robin had shaken her head, I also recalled that she had not wanted me to do so until I instinctively knew the time was right. I couldn’t understand why Robin felt this way, but I had to respect her wishes.
This is nuts, I thought. I talked to a ghost in the local cemetery, which is such a fruit loop cliché it’s laughable, and I’m withholding vital evidence from the law because she wants me to. Maybe Gary isn’t the only crazy member of the Kain family.
My view of the universe, a mishmash of religious and scientific laws, began to fall apart after seeing Robin. It unravelled at a greater speed while I read Gary’s journal. Three days after finishing it, my beliefs fell apart completely and with their destruction came terror.
CHAPTER TWELVE
The first two days gave no hint of what was to come. I thought about Gary, Robin and Kathryn a great deal and constantly battled the rage that erupted within me, which in turn caused my work to suffer. I spent more time fixing my mistakes than I did making them.
On the afternoon of the first day, I drove into town via Redwood Hill Cemetery. I’d gotten into the habit of visiting the Dashwoods’ graves once a week, arriving at their plot with a bag of gardening tools in one hand and a bouquet of white lilies in the other. After digging up a few weeds, I’d take two lilies, lay one on Lizzy’s mother’s grave and one on her sister’s, then prop the rest of the bouquet against Lizzy’s headstone. Paying my respects to her family felt like the right thing to do. I didn’t want them to be forgotten.
When I’d finished, I stood back and studied Lizzy’s grave. Even though Gary had experience of cutting, removing and laying sod, I was still surprised and impressed by his handiwork. How he had managed to fill her grave and reinstall the sod before the cemetery opened amazed me.
Two days later, as the sun slowly sank behind the mountains, I rode Gus, my palomino, back to his stable, performed his daily visual health check, looking for bruises, puncture wounds, cuts and scrapes, refilled his hay net and water, patted Gus on the neck while telling him what a fine fella he was and then trudged wearily up to the house. After making dinner and kicking back in front of the TV for a while, I checked on Gus again before going to bed. It had rained heavily while I was inside and a dense fog now covered the valley, reducing visibility to a few feet. As I closed the stable door I sensed that something was looking at me. When you live out in the boonies, inquisitive wildlife is routine, although working on the ranch can sometimes feel unnerving when you know that a predator is nearby. I’d regularly seen cougar, coyote, black bear and bobcat tracks since moving in and like most ranchers had gotten into the habit of putting my rifle within arm’s reach and wearing a sidearm as backup. Apart from the danger posed by local wildlife, two other possibilities occurred to me. Three years earlier, Gary had confronted sturgeon poachers who were fishing at night from his section of the river and a week ago, a string of burglaries in Carrabin and Harkinen had put the communities on high alert. I wondered if the poachers had returned or if I was dealing with the burglars. Whoever, or whatever, it was, they must have seen me exit the stable and had ducked behind a tree or one of the outbuildings. I performed a slow three hundred and sixty degree scan of the ranch, the fog accentuating my Maglite’s powerful beam, turning it into a long narrow cylinder of light that I shone upon the stable, tack room, the home office and the trees beyond. There was no sign of an intruder. However, the feeling that someone was watching me remained and I began to feel uneasy. I had locked the house and had no fear of someone sneaking inside and the weight of the Glock 20 10 mm on my hip was reassuring, enough to make me feel that I could confront whoever stood nearby.
‘If someone’s out there,’ I said, ‘you’d better come out. I’m armed and perfectly within my rights to put a bullet in your ass.’ I waited, then tried again, this time taking the Glock from its holster and chambering a round. ‘Hear that? That’s a ten millimeter round that’s now ready to make a nice big bloody hole inside you and I’ve got fourteen more.’
Silence.
‘Okay, if that’s how you want it, but if I see or hear you I’ll shoot first and ask questions later.’
Keeping the Glock in my hand, I turned and walked towards the house and within the familiar nocturnal sounds that were one of the joys of living on a ranch and the light clack-thud sound of my boots on the blacktop, I thought I heard the distinctive footfall of bare feet on wet asphalt. I stopped, turned and shone my torch from side to side but saw nothing except for the familiar trees, outbuildings and the long driveway that Gary had in
stalled soon after moving in.
The footsteps had also stopped.
It’s just your imagination, I thought. You’re still jumpy after that thing attacked you in the barn and now you’re hearing things.
My attempt at reassuring myself didn’t fool my senses. After living on the ranch for two months, I had gotten used to every diurnal and nocturnal sound and could detect even the minutest variance and my instincts insisted that the footsteps were real.
I swept the area again, my breathing shallow and fast, beads of sweat forming on my scalp and torso, the Glock’s muzzle following the torch beam as I wondered if I was dealing with someone other than a burglar or poacher; someone who posed a greater threat, such as the entity. If that were the case, then my pistol would be useless. I saw nothing but trees and buildings and after standing completely still for a moment while analyzing every sound, I turned and walked on, keen to return to the house.
I had covered only a short distance when I heard the footsteps again.
An invisible fist pushed up underneath my ribs and grasped my heart. I spun around, sweeping the torch erratically from side to side, the beam shaking as it flitted from stables, to driveway, to trees, to home office and finally the second barn.
Someone, or some thing, was definitely following me.
The footsteps stopped again and I heard only my heartbeat, its fast rhythmic pulse seeming to vibrate throughout my body.
‘Who’s there?!’
Silence.
‘I’m warning you, I’m not fucking around! I’ll put an entire magazine into you if you don’t get the fuck off my property!’
Still no answer.
‘Get off my property now! I’ve got my cell in my hand and I’m gonna call the law, so you’d better fuck off!’
I stood there for a moment staring into the fog, then turned back towards the house.
Don’t run don’t run don’t run, I thought. If you run, it’ll see that you’re scared and it will chase you, and then …
I walked unsteadily on legs that had lost all feeling, forcing myself to stay calm, resisting the urge to bolt for the house. Behind me, the footsteps resumed their slow, stealthy rhythm. I looked over my shoulder and that’s when my tenuous grasp on self-control vanished and I felt suddenly and acutely afraid.
A dark female shape was moving towards me. My legs, now intent on acting upon their own volition, ignored my intention to remain calm and propelled me like a racehorse towards the house, over the gate and up the porch steps. I yanked the door key from my belt, my hand trembling, causing the key to skitter around the lock casing until eventually, and with a tremendous feeling of relief, I managed to slide the key inside. I turned it and the door swung open but I didn’t walk inside. I couldn’t. It was as if my feet had bonded themselves to the porch floor.
It’s behind me oh Jesus Christ it’s behind me!
Slowly, I turned around, not wanting to see but compelled to do so by a force greater than myself.
Standing in partial darkness just beyond the full reach of the security lights was the woman. She was naked, had long light colored hair and I could see that she was gazing intently at me.
Her eyes were glowing.
A fierce orange-red as if they were literally on fire.
‘No,’ I said. ‘No. You’re not real. You’re not … real.’
I stared at her, transfixed, feeling like a deer cornered by a mountain lion, expecting her to walk across the driveway, up the path and then the porch steps, her dead fleshless face growing closer, closer, until she stood before me and stretched out a skeletal hand …
A sound drifted through the fog and was it …? No, it couldn’t be? Was she crying?
She turned and walked back the way we had come and I watched her go, my mind refusing to accept what I was seeing and hearing. I stood on the porch for a long time, staring into the fog until coldness drove me inside and then I wandered around the house in a daze, my body going through the motions of my usual bedtime routine while my mind attempted to accept the impossible.
Unable to sleep, I lay in bed gazing at the ceiling, the Glock lying within easy reach on my bedside cabinet, until eventually tiredness dragged me down into a light, fractured slumber punctuated by surreal dreams that I couldn’t remember upon waking.
The following morning, the events of the previous night felt more like a vivid nightmare than an actual event and by lunchtime I had almost convinced myself that it was a dream.
Then I watched the news.
When the gray haired male anchor started the lead story, I nearly dropped my plate on the floor.
‘This is WRHB Midday Action News,’ he said. ‘First this afternoon: the body of the late actress Elizabeth Dashwood, who starred in Alfred Hitchcock’s The Shallows of Man, was dug up and stolen last night from her grave in Harkinen. The desecration happened at the Redwood Hill Cemetery and Hank Copeland is live in Harkinen with that story. Hank.’
The screen changed to show two live feeds positioned side by side, the news anchor on the left and on the right, a young sandy haired reporter standing in front of Redwood Hill’s main gates.
‘Yeah Tom, it’s an extremely disturbing mystery here in Bronson County. Sometime before it opened this morning, thieves did the unimaginable: they dug up and stole Elizabeth Dashwood’s body. The sheriff’s office and employees of the cemetery are now trying to figure out who did it and why? Bronson County Sheriff’s Office combed the area but are unwilling to disclose what evidence they found and if it would lead to a suspect. And as you know, Tom, just four months ago, a twelve year old girl’s body was discovered in woodland just a few hundred yards from this cemetery, which poses the question: are these two crimes related?’
The scene changed to a prerecorded segment, during which they showed clips from Lizzy’s movies, the sound muted, while Copeland summarized her career, wartime service with the Red Cross, the Sabatino-Johnson murders, her suicide and then the ongoing investigation into Robin’s murder and Kathryn’s disappearance before returning to the live report from Redwood Hill Cemetery.
‘The close-knit community here in Harkinen, who are still in a state of shock over the murder of Robin Ashmont and the abduction of her sister, Kathryn, are now trying to comprehend why someone would wish to steal the remains of its famous former resident. Unfortunately, the cemetery does not have security cameras and so the sheriff’s office is asking for any witnesses to the desecration and theft to please call the number on your screen.
Live in Harkinen, Hank Copeland, WRHB Action News.’
‘Oh God,’ I said, my voice hoarse. ‘It wasn’t a dream. He did it, he actually did it.’
~
I spent the afternoon in a state of shocked agitation, constantly looking over my shoulder and expecting to see Lizzy’s corpse standing behind me. As soon as I got home, I turned on the TV. Lizzy was still headline news.
‘Also this evening,’ the good-looking female anchor said, ‘a developing story at the Redwood Hill Cemetery in Harkinen where Golden Age actress Elizabeth Dashwood’s grave has been dug up and her body stolen. WRHB Action News reporter Hank Copeland looks into why this particular grave was targeted sixty-five years after Elizabeth Dashwood’s death.’
The prerecorded story started with a shot of Harkinen’s town sign, then a panorama of the cemetery, a close up of Lizzy’s open grave and her headstone before cutting to Copeland walking through the grounds and talking to the camera. After repeating the main points from his previous report, the scene changed again to show Larry McFadden. As always, Larry was sporting his faded, oil stained John Deere baseball cap, three-day beard and habitual expression of mild bemusement.
‘Larry McFadden has watched over this cemetery for nearly forty years, never with any problems,’ Copeland said. ‘He tells me he stumbled across the open grave and was at first confused and then startled but says he felt this grave was chosen deliberately and strategically dug into. McFadde
n called the sheriff’s office who agreed with his theory and tell me they are now investigating the discovery.’
‘I started here back in 1978 and nothin’ like this has ever happened before,’ McFadden said. ‘Not even any vandalism.’
The scene briefly returned to the graves, the camera alternately resting on each of the Dashwoods’ headstones as Copeland talked.
‘But sometime last night,’ Copeland said, ‘someone went beyond vandalism, broke into the cemetery and dug up Elizabeth Dashwood’s grave and took her corpse, leaving her sister’s and mother’s graves untouched. It’s an act that horrified McFadden and others in the town.’
‘I couldn’t believe it. I pay Lizzy a visit every week or so. Fans and folks from town that knew her sometimes come and pay their respects. Leave flowers an’ stuff. I clear ‘em away when they get old. When I got here, I seen that she’d been dug up. Was a mild night, so wouldn’t’ve been that hard to dig down. The casket’s still there, although it’s now all smashed up, but otherwise everything’s gone. She’s gone.’
‘McFadden says all that was found five and a half feet down in this grave was an old rotten dress and a pair of shoes that the sheriff’s office believe Dashwood was buried in. McFadden told me that he is unaware of any surviving relatives that visit the cemetery and there was certainly no reason to disturb Dashwood’s grave sixty-five years after her suicide.’
‘She took an overdose of sleepin’ pills. Tragic, jus’ tragic.’
‘For McFadden, this is a malicious, premeditated act in a place meant for tranquility.’
‘It’s a downright shame.’ McFadden shook his head. ‘After bein’ in the ground for that long, an’ somebody jus’ …diggin’ her up, eh, for no reason? It’s jus’ heartbreakin’, y’know? I mean, who steals a body from 1950? What kind of person would dig Lizzy up and take her away? Why?’ McFadden shook his head again. ‘Desecration of a grave, desecration of a human body, it’s beyond my comprehension. Jus’ … gotta be crazy people. Whoever did this I would love to meet ‘em, any time in any place.’
Black Rite Page 9
