Shock Totem 7: Curious Tales of the Macabre and Twisted

by Shock Totem

  For the parson’s part, his countenance took on a weighty expression. Then he asked the question which he said would decide it for him. “When did you come by that walking stick, Emile? I don’t believe I’ve seen it ‘ere last week.”

  Emile informed the clergyman he’d purchased it at an out of the way curio shop a week ago Monday, and, come to think of it, the shop keep struck him as more than passing strange. When Emile had asked after the price, the owner had replied in answer, “Pay what you think it’s worth, kind sir,” and refused to quote any amount. Curiouser still, unlike in most bartering situations, Emile’s first offer was accepted.

  Parson Harper rose, crossed to the halltree where the walking stick resided and took it up for closer examination. The oaken shaft had been polished to a high dark gloss, but the round ivory head was the point of interest. On one side was depicted an open, laughing visage, and on the other side a similar face frowned disparagingly.

  The clergyman quickly returned the walking stick to the halltree then stared at his hands in such a fashion one might think he’d sullied them with cow dung. A moment later, he retrieved a cloth from the kitchen and scrubbed vigorously at his palms. Without hesitation, he then flung the rag upon the fire where it smoldered and smoked.

  “I should have warned you at our last meeting,” he said in an apologetic manner. “I truly should have, but there was no way of knowing for certain, and I feared speaking of such profane things aloud might actually serve to bring about more ill luck. It seems, though, ill luck, having found you in the first place, has no intention of being easily brushed aside.”

  “Parson, whatever are you saying?” Emile wondered with no little confusion.

  -9-

  It was the parson’s turn to tell a tale, and he spun the dark yarn of a dwarf who once dwelt in Chapel Landing many years before. Sometimes known as Stumpy Joe and at other times called Digger. Parson Harper said Emile’s description of his height and an ear so deformed it appeared as though a sort of fungus grew alongside his head confirmed his identity.

  No one knew from whence the ugly toad of a man hailed originally; it was only known he showed up one day on the doorstep of a prominent townsman, asking for what food could be spared. The townsman took pity upon the deformed man and found work for him—a job no one else should want since the last person held office...that of gravedigger.

  After a time, however, a shadow of suspicion fell over Stumpy Joe. He seemed to enjoy his work overly much, and children and animals—both of which are always uncannily astute in their instincts—seemed to take particular care to steer clear of him.

  “On the street,” Parson Harper said, “they gave him a wide berth, though he had done nothing to that point to raise alarm. He was merely odd and solitary, and so was left to his own by and large. The town afforded him a little money for his service and in some years, he abandoned his shanty, building in its stead a humble home somewhat apart from the rest of the town.

  “Your home, Emile,” the parson said with especial emphasis. While he let this knew bit of information sink in, he continued his story.

  It happened that something like a plague swept through Chapel Landing in seventeen-hundred-and-fifty-three. Whole families—husbands, wives and children alike—were found in their beds with their necks puffed up big as bullfrogs’ and their skin darkening to the color of char. At first, panic ensued. The physicians at that time were stymied, as no one complained of prior illness; the families simply turned up dead.

  By and by, the dark cloud of doubt trailing after Stumpy Joe became conviction. His carriage house was searched while he was out, and three sacks of a certain poison, commonly used against river rats, were discovered. How simple-minded Stumpy Joe must have taken the townsfolk for. Anything of value was missing from the homes of the victims—a too coincidental fact, if they’d truly fallen prey to a plague—and the furnishings of Stumpy Joe’s home were certainly richer than one might expect him to afford on a gravedigger’s salary. Too, the poison in his carriage house was the very same as had been reported missing from the town stores the previous month.

  It took the townsfolk no great effort in deducing Stumpy Joe must have crept into the homes by night and put the poison into cooking flour or perhaps directly into well water. When the families partook of either contaminated food or water, they no doubt felt an overwhelming nausea and lethargy, which drove them to their beds rather than to seek out a physician; no time for that!

  A mob of a dozen or so men tracked Stumpy Joe to the cellar of the funeral parlor. He had no formal training in preparing bodies, but it was his practice to cake the deceased in lime before planting them. It was said when the men found Stumpy, he had with him three bodies which had been awaiting burial—victims of the fabricated plague. Stumpy Joe himself had not a stitch of clothing on, and it was plainly apparent he’d been doing...unnatural things with the deceased. Not only had the bodies been interfered with carnally, but various organs were missing, never to be found afterward.

  Terms exist—ghoul, murderer, necrophile, cannibal—but all fell short in defining those acts committed by Stumpy Joe. Such atrocities were an affront not only to God but to any who learned of them.

  The men were outraged, as one might suppose. They at once took Stumpy Joe—who kicked and screamed and spewed all manner of profanities—and beat him with birch switches until he fairly died from loss of blood. Then they hung him from the neck until death finally did take him. Afterward, deeming him unworthy of burial in hallowed ground, they interred him in a deep hole on the far side of the Muskingum, laying him in, not turned toward heaven, but face down, toward hell. And there he resides still; as to the exact location where he rests, none can say.

  -10-

  “Such an amazing story,” Emile marveled, sipping at the heady port. “And so strange I should never have heard of it ‘ere now.”

  “Do you really think so?” The pastor rose to add a fresh log atop the glowing embers. To be sure, a chill had seemed to grow within the room, despite the warming effects of the wine. “You are not from these parts, Emile, and there are stories aplenty not to be found between the covers of your history books. But this is not a tale of which any in Chapel Landing are proud to share. That it survives at all is because it has been passed down by word of mouth. Do not forget, many founders of this fair city originated from Ipswich...where some of the witch trials were held.”

  Emile recalled as much. He also understood superstition ran deep here, the beliefs being handed down from generation to generation.

  The Pastor continued. “Given that, it is no small wonder, what with Stumpy Joe’s appearance and preoccupation with ‘knowing’ the dead, in the Biblical sense, that folk should come to suppose him a confederate of Satan. And believing thusly, it stands to reason why they should not want his name writ on any record. No account exists of him, save, as I have said, what has been passed down through verbal word. His is a whispered memory, surviving only as a warning to children to behave, lest Stumpy Joe take them in their sleep. Such are the ways of local legend.”

  Emile had indeed read of the short-lived “plague,” but little reference was made to it. It was only mentioned the thing ended abruptly and nothing more.

  “But the dreamland which I’ve chanced to enter...” he swirled the wine in his glass in thought. “Whatever can that be, and how is it possible to enter such a place which exists neither in time nor space?”

  The clergyman pursed his lips. “You may trust, Emile, that I have given that no small consideration. Your account leads me to believe you have somehow become tied to Stumpy Joe, and you are entering the skewed reality of a madman. Rather his skewed perceptions when he had lived. Your residing in his very home, for whatever reason, has caused you to enter the inherent memories of an insane, albeit deceased, man. You are entering the salacious dreams of a ghost, if you will—slipping into the reality Stumpy Joe might have wished for if still he lived.”

  Emile shuddered at the tho
ught, his hackles rising. Though quite fantastic, the parson’s reasoning followed a logical path.

  “But what of my walking stick?” he asked. “You’ve said nothing of it, though you seemed to take especial interest in it just after serving the port. What bearing does it have in all this?”

  “Ah, yes.” The clergyman nodded with a satisfied, if sardonic, smile. “There is that. The story goes the great oak from which Stumpy Joe was hanged was chopped down, the roots pulled up, and all was set aflame. All save...well, I’m sure you’ve guessed by now. Jonathon Shively—the same townsman who originally took Stumpy Joe in—crafted himself a walking stick from a bit of the timber. I suppose it was a memento of the event to prove, in a macabre sort of way, that justice had been served, and perhaps as a constant reminder to Shively to not allow kind intentions to cloud good judgment.”

  “And you believe my walking stick and this Shively’s are one and the same?”

  “The cane was described to me as having two faces turned in opposing directions. This would seem very specific to me, and the whereabouts of Jonathon Shively’s original walking stick is unknown. It fell out of his possession at some point and was never seen again. Heed my advice, Emile, cast that staff away, and be quick about it! No doubt it is the catalyst which has brought upon you the waking dreams of dead Stumpy Joe.”

  Without further prodding, Emile stood and took up the walking stick. He brought it up as though to fling it upon the crackling fire, but the clergyman stayed his hand.

  “No, Emile, not here! I’ll not have even the smoke from that blasphemous thing sullying my chimney. Be off with you, but take care to destroy the infernal object as soon as you are able.”

  -11-

  It took Emile no time at all to decide what was to be done with his walking stick. He walked two miles from the parson’s home to the river. He raised his arm and cast it, as one might a javelin, into the choppy waters of the Muskingum. Better to have it travel on to the Atlantic than chance it somehow escaping destruction here.

  Emile watched the dark shaft bob upon the water for a time, and when it dwindled in the distance—a mere dot too small to see without straining the eye—it felt as though a giant weight had been lifted from his heart. If Parson Harper was correct, and the memento of Stumpy Joe’s destruction reposing in the home in which the fiend once dwelt truly were the catalysts behind the opening of the gate, this would surely sever any connection, and Emile would be troubled no further.

  -12-

  When Emile Plimpkin awoke the next morn, it was to the cooing of mourning doves beyond his window. Sunshine streamed through the bedroom panes, warming the room and letting him know the hour to rise had already passed.

  It felt sinfully slothful, rising at such an hour.

  Once dressed, Emile was about to break fast when his eyes befell a sight which made his blood surge. The walking stick he had cast into the river hours before leaned against his doorjamb as though it had never left his possession!

  Emile now had to recheck his sanity. Did the staff have the power to return to him? Was it possible it had some will of its own? Had it perhaps overpowered his mind, hypnotizing him into only believing he had discarded it? Ridiculous though these thoughts might have once seemed, the events of the last two days caused Emile to not toss such ideas so quickly aside.

  Once his initial anxiety subsided, anger gripped Emile. The stick was indeed a tool of Hades. How else to explain its reappearance? Before God, he would destroy the thing this time. He would reduce it to splinters, soak the shards in lamp oil, and set it all ablaze. Then, later, he’d salt all earth where any ashes touched.

  But no sooner had Emile donned his boots and opened the door, but another shimmering portal formed in the instant he was stepping through. Too late, he realized, for he was already being sucked through to the far side. Too late to alter his step! A slight muffling of all sound—as though cotton batting had been tamped into his ears—was followed by the familiar caress of frost across his flesh.

  -13-

  In the dreamland, it was night again. It might have even been the same night Emile had left last time. The moon was in roughly the same position as before, looming large over the same vast plain of graves.

  “Hello again, Doddy,” came the voice Emile now recognized. “All ready for another row, I see.”

  The dim figure was silhouetted a short distance away.

  Would that Emile had had the forethought to better arm himself for the occasion. Had he only the presence of mind to have kept either a pistol or flintlock on him, this matter would be settled presently. Phantom or no, he had felt Stumpy Joe’s paws about his neck as surely as he would have had they been formed of real bone and blood, and if Stumpy Joe gave the impression of having substance, it in turn seemed likely he could suffer harm the same as any other man.

  “I want no trouble from you, friend,” Emile told him. “I tell you, I have no gold to give, but I also have no desire to quarrel. Allow me to pass unmolested and all shall be fine between us.”

  “You suggest I’ll come to a bad end if I prevent you from leaving, Doddy? How would you hope to accomplish that? This is my world here. All the townsfolk of Chapel Landing sleep the long sleep, just as they should, and I have free reign to come and go where I please and when I please.”

  “Never mind that. Suffice to say, I’ll make good on my threat if you dare to accost me.”

  “Brave words, pretty Doddy. Who are you, anyway, and how came you here? I have been wondering, for I’ve not seen a soul aside from yourself in a very long time.”

  Emile wished he were as fearless as the front he sought to put forth. In truth, his blood coursed faster at the mere thought of being here once again. In the end, though, he supposed it was more important to keep up a brave appareance. “I,” he said, “am Emile Plimpkin. As for you, sir, I have no need to ask who you might be, for your reputation precedes you. You are Stumpy Joe—or Digger, if you prefer.”

  Stumpy Joe seemed taken aback by the mention of his name, no doubt not having heard it aloud for some decades. But how his expression changed Emile couldn’t say, for his face was full in shadow.

  Emile continued, “As to how I came to be here, it would seem I am the witless pawn of some greater power which wishes me here, be it God or devil I don’t know as of yet, but I hope such information will be revealed to me soon.”

  Though Emile could not see Stumpy Joe’s loathsome face, he would have sworn a smile broke within the shadows beneath that slouch hat. “And what of this place? I have learned it is of my own making. Do you not understand I can change things at will, alter the appearance of anything I wish to match my design. You speak of God, Doddy, but do you not comprehend the only god here is me?”

  “I admit,” Emile replied, “this land is the product of your diseased mind. But you are a mere phantom, and I doubt you have much sway beyond these dreams. You, sir, have been dead these many years.”

  The figure shook in rage at this. His wide shoulders trembled and his hands fisted at his sides at the revelation. Perhaps here in this fantastic land of his own design he did not—or could not—recall his own torture by birch rod and subsequent execution. Perhaps, in death, all such memory had been wiped clean from the slate of him mind. Or, more likely still, such ill recollections had receded over time.

  For whatever reason, Emile’s statement had seemed to have rent open old wounds, and the dwarf let loose a straggled cry of pure anguish. “Noooooooo! You lie! ‘Tis not true. I breathe as I stand, I eat when I hunger, drink when I am thirsty. I am no more dead than you. And less so than you will be anon.”

  With that, the squat man came hurtling toward Emile. In keeping with his boasts of being capable of altering appearances of the land around him, tombstones moved like liquid to one side to allow a straight path for Stumpy Joe. He ran at Emile with all the fury of a baited dog, ready to rake Emile’s very eyes from their sockets.

  Instinctively, Emile threw up a hand to ward off th
e attack, and what happened then amazed them both. Before Emile’s outspread fingers came ripples of motion through the air, and when the ripples reached Stumpy Joe, they grew in proportion and sent him hurling backward as surely as if he’d met with solid matter.

  Dazed, Stumpy Joe rose slowly to a sitting position.

  “What be you, some demon sent to usher me on to hell at last?” He shook his addled head, while Emile stood, looking quizzically at his own fingers and wondering what new power was this he’d just discovered.

  He assured the blackguard he was no more a demon than an angel—though in his own mind he again questioned his role in all this.

  “If from neither heaven nor hell you were sent, you’ll still see one or the other ‘ere this night is done,” Stumpy Joe vowed, yellowing teeth bared. Beneath his cloak, he unsheathed his wicked-looking dagger, which he threw with both unerring accuracy and uncanny speed.

  Emile made to deflect the missile with the same gesture as before, but too late! The knife was already on its way. He succeeded only in keeping it from sinking into his skull by giving it something else to pierce. When next he glanced down, he saw the blade had been hurled with sufficient force as to cause six inches of the sharp steel to pierce his palm and extend from the back of his hand.

  The pain was exquisite. It gripped Emile, radiating past his wrist and up his arm as blood coursed freely from the wound.

  Knowing seconds were precious and there was no time to dwell on mere discomfort, he brought the back of his hand down firmly onto a nearby vault. This forced the knife nearly free; he wrested it the rest of the way, then let it fall to the ground.

  Regaining his senses, Stumpy Joe rushed at him again.