Scary Creek

by Thomas Cater

  When we entered the wooded land surrounding the house, the temperature dropped fifteen degrees. Sunlight barely trickled through the overhanging leaves. In fact, it seemed darker than usual. I hadn’t noticed, but the trees were intimidating, covered with thick tangled vines and a deadly bark blight.

  “There seems to be something different about these trees today,” I said warily.

  Virgil made a cursory glance out the car window. “Yeah, a lot more walnut than I thought. Two of those trees could pay off the balance.”

  “But it wouldn’t be the same if the trees were gone,” I said.

  Virgil parked at the gate, stuck the car key in his jacket pocket and waited for me to slide out. Slamming and locking the doors, we paused and stared at each other in our borrowed suits with bulging pockets and old slouch hats.

  “Since you’re an old hand at this, I’ll defer the lead to you,” he said.

  I straddled the wall, allowing one leg to swing over, wondering if it was going to come back in one piece. Virgil planted one hand firmly atop the wall and swung both legs over, stumbling and crashing to his knees on the other side.

  “I made myself a promise,” he said getting up, “and I’m going to keep it.”

  “What’s that?” I asked.

  “I’m going to make some changes in my life,” he vowed. “From now on I’m going to live as if every day were the last and to hell with the consequences.”

  There seemed to be more at stake in this real estate transaction than either of us realized. His attitude did not reinforce my belief in a world of shining exactitude, but one of creeping paranoia, where healthy minds gave up the struggle for sanity every day.

  “Watch out for the dead birds,” I said. “There seems to be a few more every day.”

  “Phone Company must be spraying the lines from the air with a new pesticide,” Virgil said.

  His explanation was assuring, until I spotted two dead moles at the base of a tree.

  “You bring your piece?” I asked.

  “Damn right,” he said. “I wouldn’t think of coming here without it.”

  The narrow indented trail to the house was becoming a familiar path. I found comfort in the recognition of certain obstructions, swollen flagstones, fallen tree limbs and rotting boughs. They signaled a widening periphery of personal experience with the house.

  I could hear Virgil following close behind, but breathing heavily for one so accustomed to physical exertion. I waited for him to catch up.

  “Are you going to be all right?”

  He took a deep breath. “I don’t know. Maybe I have an allergy, or there is something in the air. I feel like I’m climbing Everest.”

  We continued, but his breathing became more labored. He loosened buttons on his shirt. Something was wrong, but I couldn’t explain it. I suggested he return to the car.

  “I’m not going back,” he said firmly. “Let’s stop and rest.”

  He slumped against a tree in a near faint, perspiration beaded on his forehead and face.

  “I’m burning up,” he said. “This place is hot, like a jungle in Nam. I’m so dizzy I can’t see straight.”

  I thought maybe the murdered man’s suit worked that way, or hoped it worked that way. It was clear he couldn’t continue. I told him to rest and I would go in and get what I came for, Elinore’s notebooks. I also wanted to look again at Samuel’s room. I thought it might open a few more possibilities. Virgil shook his head and staggered to his feet

  “Nothing doing; I came this far to get a good look, and I’m going in.”

  “Good,” I said, but with uncertainty. “You’re not going to believe this place; it looks like a house in Southern Living magazine.”

  I had to carry him up the steps. I felt like a Judas goat leading the fatted calf to the altar. Every step I took filled me with more apprehension. His body was growing weaker by the minute.

  “Maybe you should go back,” I said.

  “No!” He shouted. “I’m going in!”

  The door was still ajar from my previous visit. It swung open. Once inside an ancient odor of must, mildew, dry rot and decay struck like a fist.

  “Wonder where the bad odors came from? They weren’t here a day or two ago.”

  I helped Virgil into the hall. Where it had once been light and airy, it was now gloomy and nearly impossible to see the end of the hall.

  “Give me the flashlight,” I said anxiously.

  I flicked it on and the beam sprang across the room to a patch of badly stained and scaling wallpaper. I moved the beam around the room. It was not the same room I encountered the last time I was here. The furniture was sagging, worn and rotten. Not a shred of material was intact and most of it smelled of mold.

  “Southern Living?” Virgil said. “What part of the south you come from?”

  “Two days ago this house was a showplace,” I said. “Someone must have come in and trashed it.”

  Virgil heaved a weary sigh. “It would take years of trashing to make a place look like this,” he said.

  “I don’t get it,” I said. “This house looked fine the last time I was here.”

  He wasn’t paying much attention to my words. It took most of his strength just to stand erect. I swung the light around the room again. The photos on the table I had so easily identified were indistinguishable. No matter how hard I tried, I could not identify a single person.

  Virgil was becoming a burden. I was unable to accomplish that which brought me back to the house. I tried to reposition him higher on my shoulder, but his sagging weight resisted.

  “I can’t get you up those stairs,” I said.

  He was coughing, nearly choking on the mildew in the air. It was also beginning to aggrivate my sinuses.

  “You’re going outside,” I said, “you need some fresh air.”

  I shouldered him out the door and onto the porch where fresh air smelled and tasted better. I lowered him to the top step, propped his back against the banister and sucked in a few lungfuls of oxygen.

  “You wait here until I get back,” I said, “or if you feel up to it, start back to the car; I’ll catch up.”

  I wanted Elinore’s notebooks, but if the downstairs was any indication of what the attic was going to be like, I couldn't have Virgil complicating my departure.

  He rolled his head back and forth against the banister. “I feel lousy,” he said. “I’ll rest here for a few minutes and then start back.”

  I risked a grim smile and went back into the house, followed the main hall to the stairs that led to the second floor, instead of the kitchen. There was a shadowy gloom gathering inside the house. It was so stifling it took on a solid shape. The heat, I sensed, seemed to follow me through the hall and up the stairs. For a moment, it felt as if Virgil was still on my shoulder and I was shouldering his weight. I thought it might be the tight odiferous dead man’s suit taking its toll. With every step I took, I could feel it gathering weight around my shoulders. By the time I reached the top of the stairs, I was nearly crawling on my hands and knees. I tried to straighten up, but the odor held me down. For several seconds, I could feel a dank, humid presence, and then quite suddenly, it was gone. It spilled like water upon the floor and flowed off in the direction of Elinore’s room. I heard a distant whooping and howling, a wicked tittering, but it was far from human.

  Doors started slamming throughout the house, not one but several, two or three at a time, until I thought every door in the house was going to fly off its hinges. It was a moment I preferred to share.

  “Virgil!” I shouted, but he was too far away to hear. If he heard the doors banging, he would have also found the strength to leave.

  I tried to sniff the air like an animal for anything suspect, while I worked the painful kinks from my back and shoulders. Even though the mildew was strong, there was also a distinct fragrance coming from the attic.

  I walked as quickly as I could to the stairwell. The attic door was ajar, and waiting. I could no
t remember whether I had time to close it previously. There was a breeze flowing from the window and coming down the attic stairs. Warm and sweet, it reminded me of a tacky little carnival on a hot summer night. I could almost taste the cotton candy and caramel-coated apples.

  I took the attic steps two at a time. The vague possibility occurred to me that I might possibly surprise whatever was waiting at the top of the stairs. I turned the corner toward Elinore’s desk and ran toward it.

  I caught sight of a faint translucent glow, like someone moving around the desk. A fading light was slanting through the window and falling on the chair. In one all-encompassing sweep, I gathered up the three pieces of magic glass and every notebook in sight. A few tablets, yellow with age, were in good shape, as if they had been in use within the past few months. I scooped them all up and without hesitating, turned and made for the stairs. The air had taken on a curious property. It was no longer cool or fragrant. I could feel a slithery arm pushing through the dead man’s jacket and down my back, reaching for my spine and the back of my skull. I trembled in its icy grasp.

  The flashlight flickered. I thought it was going out. I kept moving, reached the stairs and took two, sometimes three lifts at a time, hoping I wouldn’t fall on my face.

  I made rapid progress through the hall and to Samuel’s room, when I collided with … something. I sat motionless on the floor while chilling vapors churned the air. A small table in the hall began to tremble. An empty vase sitting on it toppled to the floor, and then the vapor vanished like condensation.

  The suit, I assumed, was working, though I did not know how. I continued down the hall.

  Daylight filtered through a stained glass window above the landing I sprinted down the dusty stairs, through the dinghy hall and once more onto the front porch. I was overflowing with confidence, convinced I had outfoxed the spirited occupants of the house.

  Virgil however was not where I left him. I hoped he had the good sense to return to the car. I also heard a low moan. There was something painfully humble in that sound. I knew it could only be human. I stared toward the gate and saw Virgil lying near the overgrown flagstone path circling around the trees. He was writhing in the grass and moaning. I ran to his side, but was not ready for what I saw. His face was contorted and it looked like a grinning skull.

  He was convulsing. I stumbled back, caught my heel on a raised flagstone and fell. My instincts made several recommendations, such as ‘haul ass’ and ‘scream like a banshee,’ but in all conscience, I couldn’t leave him.

  He moaned and the sound rumbled as if it came from deep within the earth and not his body. I took one of his arms in both hands and tried to lift and drag him out of the woods. Before I could stand him on his feet, he began to vomit. I tried to give him room, but again I was unprepared.

  Instead of partial bits of digested food, he began to vomit snakes. Not the common domestic variety, but the long and deadly species found in a well-provisioned serpentarium. The frightening exception was that these were far more active. With every gut-wrenching spasm, he spewed green and black mambas, vipers and other venomous reptiles that vanished into the weeds. I thought it was never going to end.

  I grabbed Virgil by the belt from behind and dragged him toward the car. He was indifferent to the discomfort as his head bumped over fallen limbs and stones. Once I felt his hand on mine crawling up my arm, like a serpent trying to stop or slow me down. It was as cold as a dying man’s curse. I could feel dry scaly skin and sharp teeth against my flesh, but I kept pulling, unwilling to acknowledge or accept the fear.

  At the wall, I refused to look at his face, at those dark, empty eye sockets. I propped him up, lifted and tried to roll him over the top, but something held him tight. I pulled and pushed repeatedly, but still he would not move. I suddenly noticed several thin bony hands protruding from the wall. Not just one or two, but several hands grasping and pulling at his head and hair, his jacket, arms and legs, refusing to release him, and the number of hungry grasping hands were growing. Hungry, snapping jaws and teeth were also emerging from the wall. I grabbed Virgil by the lapels and pulled him back and away. The skeletal hands and teeth vanished into the wall.

  I picked him up, carried him on both shoulders and threw him on the other side. He landed with a bone-crushing thud and a groan. With one hand on top of the wall, I made a leap and hurtled over.

  Virgil lay quietly on the ground. The spasms had ended and his breathing returned. I did not want to look at his face, but when he rolled over, his color had returned. His eyes opened and they were again nestled neatly in their sockets.

  I grinned. He made an effort to respond, though I could see it weakened him to do so. There was no evidence of the reptile-like effluence he had recently disgorged, and the hands extending from the wall had vanished. I chose not to mention them to him either.

  “How do you feel?” I asked.

  “Like I been corn-holed by a grizzly,” he replied. “How do I look?”

  “Like you been corn-holed by a grizzly. You want a cigarette?”

  He examined the suit, pressed the fibers between his fingers. “I don’t know if this outfit works or not.”

  “You’re alive,” I said, “that ought to be some consolation.”

  His eyes turned to the notebooks in my hand. “Is that why I went through this friggin’ nightmare?”

  I grinned and nodded. “I think I got them all, unless she has more hidden away. I’ll know as soon as I start reading. We can always come back now that we know how it’s done,” I said, feigning certainty.

  He shook his head and thumbed through a notebook. “Not me, I’ll never come back, not anymore.” He stared at a page in a notebook. “Besides, whoever heard of a blind girl keeping a diary?”

  “Not so strange,” I said, “Have you ever heard of Greek guy called Homer?”

  Chapter Fourteen

  We drove to town. I dropped Virgil at his office and settled down in the RV with Elinore’s notebooks. Why a blind girl wanted to keep a notebook was a mystery to me too. I tried to establish a chronological order, starting with the earliest date, but wasn’t making much headway. My eyes were playing tricks on me. I thumbed through one tablet and scanned several references to Samuel.

  I learned Elinore was not without faith, even though she thought Samuel was a godless republican. He was a man who believed in the work of the head and not the heart. Samuel’s problems were foremost among Elinore’s concerns. Competitors were nibbling away at the corners of his empire. More and more railroads were competing for the outlying businesses. Fisks and Goulds came in all sizes. No matter which way he turned, he was unsure of how much was enough?

  He delighted in calling his competitors devils, demons, bloodsuckers, parasites, greedy, devil-worshipping, God-hating fiends straight out of hell, and they were destroying him and the world he created. It was the kind of twisted rhetoric that went straight to the head and heart of a young woman. All the knowledge of the external world siphoned through a suspicious old man who lived by the rule of fear, and an old black woman unable to recognize evil.

  Elinore believed Samuel’s words because he spoke Gospel truth, which is all he ever spoke, nothing but the Gospel truth. Specters were lurking in the shadows of finance and trade.

  Amy Taylor’s influence changed Elinore for the better. She plucked the teeth out of that threatening and dangerous world that had imprisoned her. Amy brought it all back into perspective. Amy helped Elinore tackle problems of love and anger, god and the universe, heaven and hell. She believed someday she might see again. For the most part her adolescent musings were a painful experience. Another element was a disturbing, superstitious note. She appeared to be exercising wit and intelligence, but her content was subjective. It was as if she were revealing the working of a clever, excitable mind in a state of eager anticipation.

  It must have come as a shock when the stirring of passion came. He told her it was the devil creating mischief. She preferred to keep it sec
ret.

  She wrote frequently of secret longing she wished to share. It was growing inside her, getting bigger every day. Samuel was not able to satisfy those deep and tender yearnings.

  It was not an easy script to decipher. Between the lines and during breaks, I digressed. I tried to imagine what it was like living in a house in the middle of a forest surrounded by a grasping grotesque wall with very few intimate friends.

  I returned to the notebooks and began picking through them. On the open page of a comparatively recent book, I saw words that seemed to be upside down. I could not decipher the meaning. Something about it made me feel uneasy.

  I thumbed through other pages looking for more of the same. Everything else was yellow and faded. It all seemed so difficult to understand, and yet it was compelling. Sometimes the words looked more Cyrillic than English. They stayed in my head like other mesmerizing words I’d discovered: “Tza ba di jia.”

  I decided to concentrate more intently on the notebook. It could just possibly have been the last one written. The dates were not legible and words were often imposed one upon the other. The writing had a desperate quality about it. I couldn’t help wonder if Elinore had the integrity and will to continue making notes, even after she lost her mind.

  I could imagine the inner struggle it must have taken her to put the words on paper. The words would vanish from the page to be renewed somewhere in the middle or the next page. They struggled for some kind of coherence, but the words were on occasion not related one to the other.

  There were screams and sighs within those pages and dark dry stains where I suspected tears had fallen and etched their own message. In the middle of one page in great gasping, groping letters, I saw the words “I could love a baby girl!” It was undoubtedly part of an exhortation, a plea for help 70 years ago. I was alone, hearing it, seeing it perhaps for the first time. It was a cry that had gone unheeded. I tried to make sense of it. A baby, whose baby? The gravedigger said she had given birth to a child, even though she never married, and it vanished from her arms. Could it have been illegitimate?