by Dale Young
“Fuck you,” Chip said as he pushed Joel’s hand away. “I’m gonna kill that city fuck if it’s the last thing I do. And then I’m gonna take what I want from Colby, the little fucking tease.”
Joel and the rest of the young men standing around the table knew that Chip had a temper. They didn’t doubt for a minute that he would carry through on his threat.
“Yeah, you do that Chip.” Joel nodded towards Chip and then Ethan. “You go right ahead and do that and you’ll end up being somebody’s bitch in prison.” Then Joel and the other men walked away from the pool table to the other side of the bar. They knew better than to be around Chip when he was in this kind of mood. But Chip’s brother Ethan was a different story. He shared his brother’s temper and wouldn’t mind at all if Chip taught Logan Shaw a lesson or two. And he wanted to spend a little time of his own with Colby as well. He had been dreaming about her ass in a pair of tight jeans ever since high school. But he had never let on to his brother about it. Ethan knew that Chip considered Colby to be his property and even though they were brothers, Ethan knew that Chip was probably the meanest person he had ever known. Sometimes Ethan had his doubts that sharing blood with his brother would be enough to temper Chip’s anger if he ever made a move for Colby. So over the years he had kept is affection for her a secret from his brother.
“Rack ‘em up, little brother. Give me a chance to win back my twenty,” Ethan said as he began to rub chalk on his pool cue.
“The loser does the racking,” Chip said as he tossed the triangular rack towards Ethan.
Ethan was able to win his twenty back from his brother, and also to win an extra twenty in the games that followed. The more Chip drank, and the more he thought about what he was going to do to Logan, the less he was able to concentrate on beating his brother at pool. By the time the afternoon rolled around, Chip was good and liquored up and had settled on a plan in his mind. But he didn’t tell his brother Ethan. Chip knew there were some things that a man had to do alone and he didn’t want Ethan tagging along and getting in the way.
***
Colby pushed the small shopping cart down the aisle at the grocery store while Logan followed along beside her. The store was small and was nowhere near as busy as the grocery store Logan shopped at near his trailer park in Wilmington, nor was it as large. Once they left the potato chip aisle, where Colby had promptly grabbed a bag of her favorite chips, they moved to the aisle that contained the refrigerated items.
Logan placed bacon and sausage in the cart, along with a gallon of milk. Then they walked down the freezer aisle where Colby grabbed a half gallon of ice cream. She had already placed everything else she needed to make peach cobbler in the cart.
“We’ll have peach cobbler on the porch tonight while we watch the moon rise.”
“I doubt we’ll do much moon watching if I get you on the porch but peach cobbler sounds great. I don’t know what a cobbler is but I’m sure it’s delicious,” Logan said.
She rolled her eyes at Logan and grinned. “You city people are savages.”
Once back at the house Logan and Colby put the food away. Then Logan had an idea.
“Say, how about I get a hammer and a few tools and we go up in the attic and see what’s in that old trunk? I’m sure I can find something around here to use to get inside that thing. I forgot that I needed to buy bolt cutters when we were in town.”
“I’m game,” Colby said. “Let’s look through all the kitchen drawers. There’s bound to be a junk draw that might have a hammer in it.”
It didn’t take Logan long to find an old hammer. It wasn’t in the kitchen but he found it in the downstairs bathroom in the bottom drawer of the cabinet under the sink.
“Follow me,” Logan said as he motioned to Colby as he came out of the bathroom.
Once in the attic, they sat down in front of the old trunk. Logan began to examine the lock to see if he could yank it open without hitting it with the hammer. But the lock was sound and would not open. But it only took three hits with the hammer to get the lock to give way. As he removed the lock from the trunk he looked over at Colby, whose eyes were as big as half dollars as she watched him remove the lock. Neither of them knew what was going to be inside.
Logan blew the dust off of the top of the trunk and then slowly opened the lid. The dim light from the solitary bulb spilled down onto the trunk and cast a yellowish glow over the contents.
The trunk looked like it was mostly filled with small boxes. Colby picked up a box and opened it. It held several old pieces of jewelry, including two rings, a broach and a necklace.
“Looks like something a floozie from the Roaring Twenties would wear. Very gaudy.”
“I think they’re pretty. I love jewelry. Especially old estate jewelry like this,” Colby said as she tried on one of the rings.
“Consider it yours.” Logan patted Colby on the knee.
“Really?” She raised her eyebrows at Logan, who only smiled and nodded.
Most of the other small boxes in the trunk held trinkets of various types – more jewelry, a few bracelets, an old pair of reading glasses and several hat pins. One small oblong box held an old pair of shoes that looked like they had belonged to a little girl.
“I wonder who these belonged to.” Logan said as he examined the old shoes. “They still have dried mud on them.”
“Whoever it was did a lot of walking. They look worn out.” Colby took the shoes away from Logan and looked at them. Then she sat them down beside the trunk.
The next thing Logan found in the trunk was an old brown envelope. He opened the envelope and slowly removed an aged black and white photo of a family standing in front of a train. The station could be seen in the background of the photo.
“That’s our train station, the one I took you to see yesterday. That’s what it looked like in its heyday.” Colby pointed to the building in the photo. Logan looked at the photo and then recognized the station.
“Well I’ll be damned, it is the station. Look at that train. It looks like something out of the Old West.” Logan gently handed the photo to Colby. It was very old and he didn’t want to tear it.
“So who are those people?” Colby asked.
“Hell if I know.” Logan looked at the photo of a man and a woman standing behind two young girls.
“Those adults are not Rosemary and Carson,” Colby replied.
“I know.”
“Wait a minute.” Colby turned over the photo and looked on the back.
Someone had penciled the date on the back of the photo. It had almost faded completely away but Colby was able to make out the date – 1929.
“Holy shit that’s old,” Logan said. “Damn… So who could those people be?”
Colby grew silent. She frowned at the photo as she held it in between them.
“Wait a minute. I know what that is. Look at the kids in the background standing on the platform of the station. And you can still see some of them in the windows of the passenger cars.” Colby took her finger and pointed to the windows of the cars behind the locomotive.
“So?”
Colby’s eyes grew wide. “I’ll bet that’s an orphan train. It has to be. Why else would there be so many children in the photo? And the year on the back seems about right. Those trains stopped coming sometime in the 1930’s.”
Logan looked at Colby and raised an eyebrow. “You sure know a lot about this stuff. How is that?”
Colby continued to stare at the children in the photo. “Like I said, my family has lived in this town since it was founded. The stories get passed down through the years.”
He took the photo and stuck it back into the envelope and then set it aside. Then he reached down into the trunk and pulled out another item. This one was wrapped in cloth. Colby drew in a breath as Logan removed the cloth to reveal a child’s doll.
“Look at that,” Colby said. “I’ll bet it’s handmade. You can always tell by the stitching.”
The doll was stuffed
and was dressed in an old plaid skirt and had hair made out of brown yarn. The face was smooth cloth with no eyes, nose or mouth and the arms ended as nubs instead hands. Small hand-sewn cloth shoes were stitched onto each foot. Logan held the doll and then tried to straighten out some of the tangles in the yarn.
“It looks like it has seen better days.” Logan pulled at a few tufts of stuffing that were coming through one of the seams.”
“Looks like somebody loved it. I had a favorite doll when I was little. It was a Raggedy Ann.”
“I was more the G.I. Joe type.”
“Let’s see if we can find a name on it. I wrote my name on my doll. Lots of little girls do that.”
Colby took the doll and looked it over in an effort to find a name somewhere on the doll.
“There,” Logan said as he pointed to one of the doll’s feet. In faded letters was the word “Clara”.
“So this was Clara’s doll.”
“But who was Clara?” replied Logan as he took the doll from Colby and stared into its blank face.
20
Logan was lying on his back in bed. The clock on the nightstand read a few minutes before midnight. The moonlight coming through the windows made Colby’s naked body seem to shimmer as she moved slowly up and down.
The lovemaking was slow and passionate. Colby leaned forward and Logan took her face in his hands and kissed her just as he felt her body tremble. She slid her arms around Logan’s shoulders and pulled herself to him as he began thrust deeper into her. The moonlight cut sharp shadows through the room and the only sound in the house was the sound of their lovemaking. Then Colby cried out as the orgasm ripped through her body. Logan followed quickly and then both of their bodies went limp, completely spent and exhausted.
***
Logan bolted awake just after two in the morning and the house was eerily still.
He knew something was wrong. He knew there was a reason he had been jolted awake and that there was no way he could go back to sleep until he found out why. He turned and looked at Colby sleeping soundly beside him and then decided that he needed to get out of bed and have a look around the house.
Once out of bed Logan walked slowly across the bedroom until he came to the door to the hallway. The thought of Chip McPhale breaking into the house flashed hot through his mind again, but Logan knew that Chip was the least of his problems when it came to the house. There were far worse things right now than an angry redneck wanting to settle a grudge.
There was the attic, for one thing.
He looked down the hallway towards the door that led to the attic. But this time the door was closed. Logan felt a wave of relief wash through his body when he saw that the door was closed and not cracked open like it had been in his nightmare. This gave Logan enough courage to step into the hallway.
The floors creaked and groaned and Logan moved slowly down the hallway. When he reached the attic door, he placed his hand on the knob but then thought better of it. He suddenly felt like he was being watched. Logan stared at his hand on the doorknob and then slowly released it. Then he turned and looked down the hall towards the master bedroom where Colby was sleeping.
Someone was standing in front of the window at the far end of the hall.
He swallowed hard as he stared at the silhouette of the person standing in front of the window at the end of the hall, the dark shape highlighted against the moonlit drapes covering the window. It was obvious to Logan the silhouette was that of a tall and muscular man and that he was wearing a brim hat. He was holding something in his hand that dangled by his side.
He took a step backwards until his back touched the attic door behind him as the dark figure slowly began to walk down the hall towards him. Logan thought about Colby in the bedroom all alone but the dark figure did not seem to pay any attention as he passed by the master bedroom door. He seemed to be focusing his attention on Logan as he moved towards him from the other end of the hallway. The shoulders of the man were so wide that it almost seemed that they were about to touch the walls of the hallway.
Logan could hear no sound as the figure moved towards him. The wooden floorboards were silent as the man slowly closed the distance between them. Logan felt his heart racing in his chest and he wanted to escape, but knew that he had nowhere to go, and even if he did he knew that he could not leave Colby all by herself.
The man stopped within a few feet of Logan and was close enough that Logan could see he was holding some sort of leather strap or belt in his hand. But before Logan could move, the man lifted his hand and then brought the leather strap down violently across Logan’s chest. Logan screamed out and fell to the floor as a white hot bolt of pain shot through his body. He raised his arms in an effort to shield himself from the next blow. Then he instinctively curled up into the fetal position in the anticipation of more strikes from the leather strap. His eyes were shut and his jaw was clenched as he tried to absorb the pain from the first strike, while readying himself for the next strike that he knew was coming.
Logan waited for what seemed like an eternity but there was no second strike from the leather strap. Terrified, Logan slowly opened his eyes.
The man was gone.
He pushed himself up onto his elbows and then he sat straight up and leaned his back against the attic door. There was a burning hot stripe across his bare chest. The pain was unbearable and when he reached up and touched the welt that had formed where the strap had hit him, a sharp pain knifed through his chest. Logan felt his head begin to swim from the pain and then his world went dark as he passed out and fell sideways back onto the floor.
***
Logan was unsure of how long he had been lying on the floor of the hallway. His eyes were closed and the skin on his chest felt like it was on fire from where the leather belt had blistered his skin. It was dark in the hallway and Logan wanted to open his eyes but was afraid to. He squeezed them shut tighter as the pain from his chest continued to rage. Then through his clinched eyelids, Logan could tell that all of a sudden there was light in the hallway. After a few seconds passed, he slowly he opened his eyes.
The lights in the hallway were off, but there seemed to be some sort of light coming from the bedrooms that lined the hallway on the back side of the house. Logan pushed himself up onto his elbow and stared down the hallway towards the door to the closest bedroom. A greenish-yellow light was pouring through the doorway and into the hall. Logan squinted and tried to focus on what he was seeing. After a few minutes, he slowly pushed himself up until his back was against the attic door behind him.
As Logan looked down the hallway, he could see the greenish-yellow light coming from each bedroom door. Slowly he got to his feet and gathered what strength he had. He knew Colby was in the bedroom at the other end of the hallway and he wanted to go to her so that he could protect her. But what he was seeing was surreal, and for all he knew he was just dreaming. But when he reached down and touched the welt on his chest and felt the pain needle every muscle between his neck and his waist he knew that he was not dreaming. No one could sleep through that kind of pain.
To Logan it felt like he was in another world, a world trapped between the physical world and what lay beyond. The greenish-yellow light seemed to shimmer on the walls opposite of the bedroom doors as he slowly approached the first room. Once there, he stood in the doorway and looked into the bedroom. The light he was seeing was pouring in through the windows and even though it was the middle of the night, the fields he saw through the windows were bathed in the harsh noonday sun. But the sunlight had a strange color to it and gave the landscape of the tobacco fields an ethereal appearance.
Logan walked slowly over to the window and looked out into the tobacco fields behind the house. People were working in the fields, walking between the rows carrying armloads of tobacco leaves. To Logan the people looked like they were from a different era, with clothes that seemed out of date. On the far end of the field, Logan could see a mule pulling a cart loaded with tobacco.
In the rows he could see adults along with children moving aimlessly down the rows picking the leaves as they went.
He studied the scene below him as his mind raced to find a conclusion. He realized that he was looking back in time to what the Shaw Fields had probably looked like a hundred years ago. Unable to process what he was seeing, Logan began to move slowly backwards away from the window. He stopped when his back touched the edge of the doorframe of the bedroom door. Then he moved around the doorframe and back out into the hall. Just as he did, the windows in the bedroom went dark. Then after a few seconds, they turned silvery-white again from the moonlight.
Behind Logan was a closed bedroom door. It was across the hallway from the door he was standing in. Logan turned and looked at the door and could not remember if it had been closed when he had first saw it on his way to the attic door earlier in the night.
Logan placed his hand on the doorknob of the closed door. He knew he had to look inside. This was the only bedroom door that was closed in the entire hallway. He turned the knob and slowly pushed the door open.
The bedroom contained only one piece of furniture and two small beds that looked like they were sized for children. The room had only one window. Logan could see a small door in the corner that he knew was probably the closet. His eyes scanned the room until they settled on the bed. At first he thought the bed was empty but when his eyes focused on it in the dim light he could see that someone was sleeping in it. The small outline of the shape under the blankets told Logan that whoever it was they were not nearly as large as the man that had hit him with the leather belt.
He gathered his strength and stepped into the room. He paused to see if the person in the bed was going to stir. But there was no movement under the blankets. Logan took a few more steps towards the bed and then froze solid in his tracks when a board in the floor suddenly squealed under his weight. But there was still no movement under the blankets.
