The Calling

by Robert Swartwood

  “And what can I do for you today, young man?”

  “Today,” I said, “I was hoping you could tell me a story.”

  Chapter 12

  We sat on the second floor, where the old man lived. It was small, almost quaint, and just as dusty as the downstairs. The scent of mint and whiskey was strong. An old television was set up against the wall, with a few framed pictures placed on top. Lewis Shepherd sat in a worn recliner facing the TV. I sat on a threadbare couch that’d had piles of old newspapers and Life and Time magazines on it, which were now stacked on the floor.

  I told him John’s version of the Beckett House’s history, highlighting what seemed to be the important parts. Then I asked, “Does any of that sound right to you?”

  Lewis Shepherd had been staring down at the ugly throw rug almost the entire time. Now he blinked and looked up at me. He shrugged, his face apologetic, and said, “To tell you the truth, I don’t remember much. I do remember it was 1953, because I had been fourteen at the time. And I remember Devin Beckett. I guess I’ll always remember him. Your friend got it wrong, though. The man wasn’t a serial killer running around the state. No, his full title was Reverend Devin Beckett.” My mouth must have dropped open, because he chuckled and said, “I know, not quite what you were expecting. But that’s who he was. Besides that ... well, like almost everyone else, I’ve managed to erase what happened from my memory. Because, truth be told, I didn’t want to remember.”

  He paused then, and I thought that was where the conversation was going to end. Then his brow furrowed, as if he was working out an impossible equation. A second later his dry face lit up and his eyes met mine again. Clapping his hands just like he had yesterday, he hoisted himself up out of the recliner and said, “Follow me.”

  There were three doors in the hallway, two that were already ajar. Those I could see were the bedroom and bathroom, both looking as cluttered as the living room and the downstairs. But it was the third door he brought us to, the third door that was closed. He gripped the knob, hesitated a moment, then turned it. He pushed open the door and instantly the tang of mothballs and old newsprint hit my nose.

  After flicking on the light he winked at me. “In case you’re wondering, I’m a packrat.”

  I’d thought the pile of old newspapers and magazines on the couch had been a bit excessive; that was nothing compared to the boxes and boxes that littered the floor and that were stacked against the walls. Except the room was only half-filled with boxes; everywhere else were stacks of newspapers and magazines, so much so that it made it nearly impossible to walk through.

  I said, “You’re kidding me, right?”

  The old man chuckled. “Told you I was a packrat. But it’s really not as bad as it looks. I didn’t save every paper. Only the ones that needed saving.”

  He stepped farther into the room and began rummaging through one of the first boxes, removing full newspapers, until he grabbed one. I barely glanced at the headline when he handed it to me. I recognized the colored photograph on the front page at once and understood just what Lewis Shepherd meant by papers that needed saving.

  ACT OF WAR the headline shouted, but it was the plane hanging in the air less than an inch away from the second standing World Trade Center tower that really caught the reader’s attention. Its twin was already coughing black smoke.

  “All news is important,” he said, taking the paper back from me, “but some news is just more important than the rest. Say, which do you think people remember more—good news or bad news?”

  “The bad?”

  “Personally I believe people remember the good news more. Can you guess why? It’s because while the bad news can tear a person’s heart apart, that person eventually forgets. Not because it’s a normal reaction, which it isn’t, but because they force themselves to forget. Think about it this way—our minds are filled with doors. With everything that happens to us, we put those memories behind different doors. Some are good memories, and we make sure that those doors can be opened again. But other memories, the bad memories, we shove right back as far as we can and lock those doors so that they’ll stay shut forever.”

  He looked around the room, his old eyes scanning each stack of boxes or newspapers.

  “And I don’t think that’s good for us. Keeping all those bad memories locked inside our heads like that. We need to remember sometimes, no matter how much it hurts. So that’s why I’ve been keeping these, every time something bad happens. Because it’s not good to forget. We need to remember. We need to ...” He stepped forward, hesitated, then glanced back at me. “It happened so long ago, but I know it’s here someplace.”

  It didn’t take him long. He looked through a half dozen boxes or so, then opened up the closet and began rummaging through the boxes in there. Finally he clapped his hands, announced, “Found it!” and stepped out with one of the oldest newspapers I’d ever seen in his hands. He stared down at it for a long time, squinting his eyes as he read the tiny print. His head went through intervals of slight shaking and nodding, until he sighed and looked up at me.

  “I hate to say this,” he said, handing me the newspaper, “but some of it’s coming back to me now.”

  It was The Advertiser, dated Thursday, August 20, 1953. I don’t know when the change came in the layout of the majority of newspapers, but by this time they were still using eight thin columns across the page. The column that caught my attention was one of the middle ones, with a black and white picture of what was obviously the Beckett House. The photographer had probably taken the shot early that morning, with hardly any light, because the house seemed even more deviant than ever in the shadows.

  The headline read LOCAL MASSACRE SHOCKS TOWN, SIXTEEN DEAD. The article went on to detail how fifteen innocent people lost their lives in Bridgeton. The sixteenth person was Devin Beckett, a reverend of Light Hill Church, who in a seemingly strategic series of events murdered eight adults and abducted seven children, forcing the latter to a stone house in the woods where a standoff with police later ensued. Two hours of directionless negotiations led police to try to force Beckett from the house. As a result the entire house was set on fire, killing Beckett and the children inside. The children’s ages ranged from seven months to eleven years old.

  William Grieves, a constable for Horseheads, was quoted as saying, “We are not happy with how things ended. However it was apparent that unless that man was not stopped, more lives would have been lost. We did the best we could.”

  Only four families suffered in the massacre, the article said. Each of the families’ husbands and wives were murdered in bed, while all the children but the firstborns were drugged, gagged, and taken to the stone house. Why the firstborns of all four families were untouched was a mystery to Constable Grieves, who said, “My only guess is that God had his hand on each of them.”

  The article went on to talk about Devin Beckett, how he had come to Bridgton early in the year and was only expected to stay until Light Hill found another permanent replacement in the wake of its former reverend, Colin Edelston, going on sabbatical. It ended mid-sentence, a small note informing the reader it continued on to page three. I turned the page, turned another page, then looked up.

  “It’s missing,” I said.

  “I beg your pardon?”

  “The article continues onto the third page, but the third page is gone.”

  Lewis Shepherd frowned. “Are you sure?”

  I handed him the paper, which he immediately began rooting through. He flipped two pages, then four, then six, until he glanced back up at me, a deep frown creasing his face.

  “Now where the hell did the rest of it go?”

  He sighed, shaking his head, and set the newspaper down. “Doesn’t matter. I read enough of it to ... to open the door I had locked long ago.” Something in his raspy voice cracked, causing him to sound as if he might at any moment begin crying. I realized then that he was nothing like the petulant old man he’d seemed the other day. Just li
ke Sarah had a front, so did Lewis Shepherd.

  “Listen, I’m sorry,” I said, beginning to feel real pity. In my mind, I imagined an endless field of green grass, innumerable wooden doors marking various spaces across the distance. “I didn’t mean to—”

  “No, it’s not your fault. I’m more to blame than you. I ... I should have known better.”

  Silence fell between us then, and in that room filled with years upon years of newspapers and magazines and boxes (not to mention silverfish), the silence was thick. The scent of old paper was still strong in the air, invading my sinuses.

  I knew I’d asked too much already, that this man had been forced back to a dark time in his past. But still there was more I wanted to know, more I needed to know, and so I asked.

  “What made him do it? Did anyone know? What made Beckett just ... snap?”

  He looked up at me, his old eyes scrutinizing, and shook his head. At first I thought it meant he didn’t know, or that he wasn’t going to tell me. But then he sighed and said, “Nobody knows, really. Even back then nobody knew for sure. But there was speculation. I suppose no matter what happens, there will always be speculation.”

  He stared down at where he’d set the paper.

  “Thing is, nobody could have foreseen what happened. Reverend Beckett ... he was a good man. He was in his early forties and wasn’t married, so of course there was talk. A few had ... well, his sexuality had come into question. Or at least that’s what I remember hearing later, when some of the locals had nothing better to gossip about. But that summer, a month or so before the Massacre, rumors started floating about. Supposedly Reverend Beckett was involved with one of the local girls.”

  He glanced up at me.

  “Supposedly she was a minor.”

  I took a moment to let this all sink in, then asked, “So was he?”

  Lewis Shepherd shrugged. “To be honest, who really knows? God maybe, but after what happened later that month, not many people in Bridgton trusted him all that much anymore. But those rumors, they started, and they hurt Reverend Beckett and his church. From what I can remember, Light Hill was packed every Sunday. Then, once those rumors started, the congregation began dwindling, until there was hardly anybody else left.”

  “So that’s what made him snap,” I said, for some reason disappointed by the denouement. I’d expected something more.

  The old man stared back at me a moment longer than he probably needed to, before nodding his head slightly. His face looked more worn than it had earlier when he first invited me inside, and his eyes ... they looked so scarred, so lost.

  I did that to him, I thought. I asked for the key to unlock that door and now it’s too late to shut it again. It’s too late to go back.

  But the thing was, there was no going forward either. I could think of no other questions to ask. Just as I’d suspected, John Porter’s story was a touch of truth, a lot of bullshit, and now here was the real deal. But the problem arose that after everything I’d heard, what did it change? Joey was still missing, the Beckett House was still a crime scene, and I was still going back home to Lanton tomorrow afternoon. Nothing had changed, so just why had I even bothered in the first place?

  Can you feel it, Chris?

  No, I didn’t feel it, I didn’t feel anything, and that’s what was bugging me.

  “I will tell you one more thing,” Lewis Shepherd said, and when I looked up out of my thoughts I saw him staring back down at The Advertiser. His voice was lower than before, and as he spoke I realized he wasn’t speaking to me so much as to himself. “It was pure hell for those surviving firstborns. They were boys, all four of them. I was good friends with one, and I remember a month after the Massacre, we were talking together and he ... he suddenly looked up at me. I forget what our conversation was about, but he just looked up at me and I could see it in his eyes, the understanding of what had happened to him. He started to shake his head, he started to cry, and he said one word to me. He said, ‘Why?’ I didn’t know what he meant then, and I still don’t. Did he mean why was his entire family murdered? Did he mean why only he survived? Or did he mean why did Reverend Beckett place that terrible mark on his bedroom door?”

  Something inside me gripped my soul and squeezed it tight.

  “What”—I swallowed—“what was on his bedroom door?”

  “Not just his door,” Lewis Shepherd said sadly, “but all their doors.”

  At that instant I saw myself the morning I found my parents’ bodies—as I backed away from their bedroom and reeled toward my own room.

  “In their own parents’ blood.”

  As I ran toward the thing that had been painted on the door in their blood.

  “A cross.”

  A cross.

  • • •

  I INTENDED ON telling Dean. Like Lewis Shepherd said before I left the bookstore, not many people nowadays knew what truly happened that summer night fifty years ago. Mostly because those who lived then wanted to forget, but also in not relaying those events, the story itself would die out just like Devin Beckett and those children as they were burned alive in that stone house.

  I wondered if my grandmother knew. I had no doubt she did, having lived in Bridgton her whole life. I wondered if she had known any of the children who were taken, if she even remembered Devin Beckett.

  When I returned to The Hill, the deputy’s cruiser was still parked in its place beside the Rec House. The deputy inside the cruiser had given up his duty and had instead nodded off. I banged on the window where his head leaned and he jumped, his head jerking around wildly until his eyes focused on me.

  I waited until he’d rolled down his window before I said, “I just wanted to let you know I’m still alive.”

  “Right,” the deputy said, wiping at the trail of drool on his chin.

  It was as I passed Mrs. Roberts’ trailer that I heard the flies.

  Only a few, but I heard their familiar buzzing and had to pause to determine where the sound was coming from. Then I realized it was coming from underneath the trailer, and for a moment I knew that’s where Joey’s body lay. Whoever had taken him had killed him and stuffed him among the sun-neglected grass and weeds, where he’d become food for field mice and stray cats and home for maggots.

  “Stop it,” I whispered, closing my eyes. I knew better. I knew that it wasn’t Joey, was instead the corpse of some stray animal or bird. Still the thought lingered, leaving a very unsettling image, and as I continued toward my grandmother’s I wondered if Joey would ever be found.

  Chapter 13

  Early Tuesday morning on June 10, 2003, around seven-fifty a.m., a local woman drove along Route 13. Her name was Ellen Gordon and she had just dropped off her two daughters at Horseheads Elementary. She was headed back home toward Sullivanville, timing it so that the whites she had put in the dryer would be finishing up on her arrival, when she spotted something lying in the grass beside the road. As she would later tell police, she at first thought it was a dog. Only when she was less than fifty yards away, already going forty-five miles per hour, did she realize what it actually was.

  The cup of coffee that she always brought with her on her morning drives almost spilled on her lap as she cried out and swerved into the other lane. Thankfully nothing was coming in the other direction, or else she probably would not have been alive to pick up her daughters from school later that day. Moments passed before she again managed to gain control of the wheel and pulled off along the berm. Later she would dutifully tell police how she kept a cell phone in her Caravan only for emergencies, and how she didn’t hesitate at all in calling 911.

  She waited perhaps five minutes before the first car arrived. By then a trucker—the paper listed his name as Edward Borrow—noticed the same thing as her and had stopped as well. He pulled his tractor-trailer along the opposite side of the road Ellen was parked, got out, and ran to what lay in the grass. He could tell just by looking that the thing was dead, but still he checked for a pulse ... an
d almost cried out when he felt one. He backed away, almost stumbled, before jogging across the highway to where Ellen waited. He asked her if she was all right. She simply stared past him, tears in her eyes. Her body was shaking. (Two days later, an interview in the Star-Gazette informed its loyal readers that Ellen Gordon had continued shaking for the next six hours.)

  Once the first police car arrived, things began happening fast. Another car showed up a minute later, followed by an ambulance. A crime scene had begun to materialize along that particular patch of Route 13—what the woman unlucky enough to have driven past that spot called “a nightmare”—but at the time I knew nothing about it. At that time, I was still asleep in the tiny bed of the trailer I had graciously been allowed to stay in.

  At that time, I was busy with a nightmare of my own.

  • • •

  I’M STANDING WITH Joey in the Beckett House. It’s late at night. He’s talking to me, trying to tell me something, but I can’t hear a single word he says. In fact, I can hear nothing—even outside, through the open ceiling, the trees make no noise from the wind, and there are no insects singing out in the grass.

  What is it, Joey? I ask, but of course I have no voice. It seems in this dream all sound is restricted. But still Joey talks to me, trying to relate something that he deems important. And still I stand there and listen, hearing only silence.

  I glance over his head, notice four motionless shadows standing behind him. I think of the shadow that’s stalking me, that’s still waiting for the right moment, and I think, Are they demons? I look back down at Joey, wanting to warn him, and notice his eyes are no longer looking into mine. Instead they’re staring at something behind me. Before I can even turn to see (and really, with the restriction of sound, what makes me think I can move an inch anyway?), Joey opens his mouth and screams. A second later he bursts into flames.