by Thomas Cater
“You mean, right now?”
She nodded and did something sexy with her mouth and eyes.
“Is this some kind of ‘damned if you do and ‘damned if you do not’ quiz?”
She shook her head, and I decided to give it my best shot.
*
It was after nine when I began to feel restless. I think she felt it too, my restlessness. Like a curtain call on a high school drama, everyone tried and deserved a standing ovation, but the end was anxiously awaited; it was not the real thing.
“I’ve got to go,” she said, “Jeffrey will have exhausted his sitter’s patience.”
“Where does a woman, who is not the mother, find the patience for another woman’s child?”
“She’s his grandmother,” she said.
“Then you are fortunate. Grandparents make better parents than their children. Does she live in?” I asked.
“Yes, and she is a ‘grand’ parent.”
“Like her daughter,” I suggested, but it sounded too insincere, which it was, so she ignored it, for which I was grateful.
“Will you be back this way?” she asked.
The question was so direct and to the point that I had difficulty speaking. I was accustomed to more subtle and evasive dialogues filled with innuendo. I had to pause and search for the right words.
“I’ll be back,” I said, sounding like a retreating McArthur. “I’ve only begun my investigation. I will be back in a day or two. I want to talk to those little people in the basement. I think they might be able to provide background on Samuel and Elinore.”
Her legs were dangling carelessly over the edge of the bed, while she guided one foot after the other into her panty hose.
“I could use some help,” I said, “especially from someone who knows how this place works.”
“Are you asking me to become a snitch?” she replied.
“If it’s no skin off your nose, why not try?”
“What do you want me to do?”
“See what you can unearth about Samuel Ryder and what’s available on Elinore. I read her file, but it is incomplete. Could there be more? Is it possible that some student may have misplaced them?”
“Isn’t that the truth,” she said slipping into her skirt. “No one ever questions anything and there is no accountability. You could load up a dozen patients and put them to work painting red and green stripes through the center of town and no one would ask why.”
“Can you help me?” I asked.
She thought it over for a moment.
“Sure, why not? You helped me.”
“I did?”
“You helped me resolve my identity crisis.”
“Of course I did.”
“Should I call you?” she asked.
“I’ll return in a day or two and you can fill me in. I would also like to know more about the Alberichs. You say they have a disease that prevents them from growing old. Is someone researching, or keeping records?”
“There was a grad student in Morgantown interested in them years ago. He was taking blood samples and glandular secretions all the time, weighing and measuring. I think he wrote a paper and sold it to Psychology Today. I think his research ended up on the back pages of a supermarket tabloid. He has not been back in awhile. I guess he got his Ph.D. and decided to make money, not history.”
She was nearly finished dressing, standing by the bed, holding one shoe in her hand.
“Do you remember his name?”
“I can get it,” she said. “We keep records on those who use our facilities when connected with the university.”
“If you can find a phone number, I would appreciate it.”
“So would I,” she said. “He was a good looking guy.”
She put her shoes on, checked her clothes and makeup to see what she had overlooked. As an after-thought, she said, “I don’t see what the Alberichs have to do with the Ryders, or the wall?”
“I don’t know, either, but I think it’s related. If it is not, there is no harm done. Where do the Alberich’s live?”
“They live in the basement,” she said, sounding as if another location would have been unimaginable.
“Do they ever leave, go shopping, or take a vacation?”
“No, I don’t think so.”
“That’s what I mean. That particular wall was raised to keep something out, not someone in, or so I have been told. The Alberichs may know more than we do, especially about the Ryders.”
“Now you’re starting to worry me,” she said, folding her arms. “Are you sure you didn’t come here to commit yourself?”
“Give me a helping hand with this, Connie, and I won’t forget you.”
“Does that mean you’ll send me a Christmas card every year?” she said testily.
I was trying to think of ways I could express my gratitude, something I wasn’t good at doing.
“New Years and Easter, too,” I promised.
“Thanks,” she replied, taking a few short and impatient steps before turning. “I know you mean well, so I’ll help. Besides, I’m anxious to see the inside of the Ryder house. I’ve heard a lot about it.”
I wanted to kiss her, to take her into my arms and tell her how much I appreciated her, but I was afraid of what might happen, so I nailed down our agreement.
“You help me desacrilize that mausoleum and I’ll give you a guided tour on Halloween.”
Chapter Nineteen
It was early evening when I reached the parking lot behind Virgil’s office. All the lights were off, not only in the building, but also in town. I owed Virgil at least the courtesy of a phone call. I walked to the booth in front of the courthouse and called his home. Violet answered. Virgil was attending the high school football game.
“We’re undefeated this year,” she said. “We’re a shoo-in for making the playoffs.”
She wanted to know if I was a football fan. I lied and said I was, without going into details over my armchair injuries.
“The school is two miles out of town going south. You can’t miss it, cars will be parked on both sides of the road and you’ll see the field lights.”
I climbed back into the van and drove south. Two miles and a shopping center later, I saw the makings of a traffic jam. Cars parked helter-skelter in every available space. I pulled as far of the road as the berm would allow. About four feet of the van extended onto the road. Smaller cars were taking up more room.
I could hear the thunderous roll of drums and marching music. Ear-splitting blasts of cheers confirmed that the home team was performing favorably. It was close to half time. I decided to wait and pocket the price of admission, a pecuniary tactic I chose to resort to since my hasty departure from D.C.
The Vandalia Vikings were doing an excellent job of routing their opponents. They were a tough and intimidating farm team known throughout the state as the Plow Boys, a real pleasure to watch. Predictably, the coaches were loud and truculent and on several occasions, verbally and physically abusive to their players.
I wanted to believe that controlled aggression was good for youth, but there seemed to be something inherently inferior with that kind of derogatory abuse. If it made them better men, gentler fathers and husbands, the mechanics of the theory evaded me.
The stadium was small but crowded. It would have presented no problem to find Virgil. I decided to wait by the gate on the home team’s side and watch the second half of the game.
Vandalia had three good running backs, but the quarterback handled the ball like a pumpkin. It was a running game; the kind OSU’s Woody Hayes would have gloried in. Straight up the middle and damn the torpedoes! Three yards in a cloud of dust and a hearty heigh-ho! Silver,
Vandalia had taken an early lead and held it playing control football for three quarters. Somewhere along the way, the Minutemen, their opponents, lost heart and gave up. It was a disparaging defeat. In the last five minutes of the fourth quarter, Vandalia had replaced their starting lineup with thir
d string players, and they were running, fumbling, and gleefully recovering. The momentum stayed with them.
I stood at the gate waiting for Virgil while the crowd dispersed. It never occurred to me that he might leave through the opposite gate. I waited until the crowd thinned and then I returned to the van.
Screaming and cheering fans careened down the highway honking car horns and shouting profanity and victory slogans. A carload of teenagers sprayed me with a can of beer and told me what to do with my reproductive organ. I could do without the advice; the beer, however, would have tasted good if it came in a glass.
I tried to talk myself into a celebratory six-pack, but it was too late and I was deliberating on whether or not I would return to the Ryder house tomorrow and examine the graveyard. I was curious to know how deep the coffins were buried.
There was a phone in the parking lot not far from where I parked the van. I made another call to Virgil’s home. The phone rang twice and Violet answered.
“He just walked in,” she said, anticipating my question.
“Sorry I missed you,” he said, “What did you think of the game?”
We chatted for a few minutes about the “legend” the coach was building.
“Have you moved into the house yet,” he asked, laughing wickedly.
“Not yet,” I cautioned. “There are a still a few cobwebs that need to be swept away. I called to tell you that I spent the day at the hospital reading old files.”
That seemed to wet his interest.
“What did you find?”
“Not much. A little bit about the wall, an old doctor named Grier, and I met three little gnomes named Alberich, ever hear of them?”
“Can’t say that I have; what do they do?”
“They work at the hospital in the boiler room. They keep the fires going.”
“No, I don’t know them,” he said.
“Did you know there is a coal mine in the basement of the hospital? It starts in the furnace room and runs all over the county.”
“I may have known something about it, why?”
“I think they’re mining my coal,” I said.
“What makes you think that?” He asked.
“If they’re not, they have in the past. If those mines run all over the county; they could be burning my coal.”
“Could be,” he said.
“Those Alberich boys are dwarfs,” I said, casting about for some kind of reaction.
“Dwarfs?”
“Yeah, does that ring any bells?”
“None,” he said.
“Also, I figure they are about 70 or 80 years old.” I was exaggerating, but I felt I could adjust my estimates later.
“Jesus; and they’re still working? You’d think the state’s mandatory retirement laws would have kicked in by now.”
“Are you going to be busy tomorrow?” I asked.
“No, nothing scheduled. As you are probably very much aware, high interest rates have slowed down the housing market.”
“Would you like to go back to the house with me? I’m going to open a grave.”
There was a prolonged and painful silence at his end of the line.
“Whose?” He finally asked.
“I don’t know,” I said. “Anyone buried in the family plot over the hill.”
“Uh, I don’t know. You going to wear your dead man’s suit?” he asked.
I told him I would since it appeared to have some bearing on the situation.
“Call me tomorrow at the office. I’ll think about it. Oh, one more thing; you got some mail today from your bank.”
“Later,” I said, “the next time we meet.”
Chapter Twenty
I drove slowly through town. There were still celebrants blowing horns and spinning tires, but the novelty was wearing thin. It was a high school game. There was no need to become manic. The local cops were growing weary of festivities. They reached their threshold of tolerance and were now ticketing noisy teenage drivers.
I drove behind a row of buildings on Main Street and found a vacant space, just as I had left it. Rain was beginning to fall. I locked the van doors and windows before I turned off the headlights. The wind was kicking up; I sensed an impending downpour.
I don’t know why, but I was exercising caution. It was atypical of my behavior. I was usually negligent of my safety, especially in a town that considered spray painting stop signs and siphoning gas from parked cars the most abused crimes against society.
I turned on the interior light, put water on to boil for coffee and dug notebooks out of a drawer. Strangely enough, the writing pad with the most curious notation was the one that warned, “He is coming!” on top. In letters less faded than preceding pages were the words, “Please Hurry.” I wondered why I didn't noticed them before, and why I thought they were addressed to me, when I knew they were written at least 75 years ago.
“Please Hurry.” I read the words over at least a dozen times. I also felt compelled to read them. “Probably because I hadn’t noticed them before,” I conceded.
I knew that kind of thinking was desperate. Maybe it was, but it was right there in front of me, “Please Hurry.”
I flipped through the pages of the notebook. The words were becoming clear, due in part to my mind’s willingness to fill in the blank spaces. I was so desperate for answers that I made things up when I could not see or understand. I was beginning to suspect that I was reading a lot of my own anxieties and frustrations into Elinore’s notes, and I knew it was wrong. She deserved to be read, but not misinterpreted.
I closed one notebook and tried another. I was not at all familiar with any pages in this one. Notwithstanding the effects of time, many of the words were clear and legible. It was still her handwriting, still blissfully ignorant of the lines and tending to overlap other words. Now and then, there had been attempts to achieve lucidity.
“The gate is open in the cellar,” a line warned, for the ‘spinx’ to enter. Gates in the cellar, maybe sphinx, or stinks? I had forgotten about the house’s massive basement. It would be an experience in itself. I returned to the notebook. ‘He enters through the cellar.’ Some of the words held fast, but others had faded. I could see the words ‘he brings ‘knives or lives’ or ‘gloves or loves’ to ‘fear’ or ‘for me” out of one desperate entry, and “infest or infect” and “the odor of sulfur and rashes or “ashes on his close or clothes,” in another.
If I didn’t know the basement was built into a coal seam, I might have been inclined to think she believed in demons. I paused for a moment to reflect upon the suggestibility of the mind. In a city like Los Angeles or New York, someone might suspect I had stumbled on a witch’s codicil. For the little knowledge granted to me by this small coal-mining town, I, too, would have been so inclined.
I turned the page. The sentences, but for a few words, had faded and the gist of her thoughts were lost. I tried to continue reading. The words ‘colour’ and ‘dress ‘ half way down the page caught my eye.
From my interpretation of the entry, I gathered that she and Samuel quarreled over the color of her dress. She could not understand why he didn’t care for the color. ‘They’re all the same to me,’ she said. He accused her of being ‘ungrateful and disobedient.’ She wept and claimed she wasn’t disobedient, ‘I just don’t know what you mean by color! She wrote.
My mind was reeling and apprehensive. Elinore’s organic weakness wasn’t just failing eyesight, she was also color blind! My unspoken thoughts had arrived at the same conclusion. In my dream, I had also viewed objects through multi-faceted eyes that trapped light waves in different spectra with the help of a magic glass.
I took the glass, the prism and the crystal out of the drawer, held them to the light, but nothing happened. My eyes were not multi-faceted, or like a bee's, such as Elinore’s. I wondered what they might see through the magic glass: all the colors that rise above or below that narrow spectrum to which most men were confined.
My eye
s were beginning to ache from the strain. I decided to turn in for the night. The notebooks would keep. I had other fish to fry and cakes to bake. I pushed the curtain from the door and peered into the darkness once again.
His eyes were staring at me a few inches from the glass. His hair was ringing wet against his forehead and the rain dripped from his glasses. There was a desperate look in his eyes, as if I were to blame for his plight.
I stumbled back and away from the door, but held the curtain in place. He raised his hand to indicate that I should open the door. I stared at him defiantly not sure which way to move. His mouth and eyes twisted into a troubled sneer. He gestured again with his hands that he wanted to talk …or eat, hopefully, not me. I opened the door.
“Who are you and what are you doing?” I asked.
He stepped into the van and wiped the rain from his glasses and face. His hair was wet and plastered down around his eyes. He wore a cheap clear plastic raincoat and his shoes squished when he moved. Rivulets of water poured from the coat and formed tiny puddles on the vinyl kitchen floor.
Beneath the plastic coat, he wore an old wide-lapelled suit and tie, fashionable maybe in the late 50s or 60s. The pants were glossy with age. He pushed the wet hair from his forehead and mopped it with a cloth.
“Mr. Case, my name is George Thacker. I heard you were in town, but did not know where to find you. I have been walking all day looking for cars with out-of-state tags. I finally tracked you down here. I’m glad to meet you.”
I took his offered hand reluctantly. “What do you want with me?”
“You’re from Washington, right?”
“Yes, but I’m not a federal employee. I can’t help you with a pension or anything like that.”
“I’m from Pittsburgh, P.A.,” he said. “I was called by the Lord to work in Vandalia. I didn’t know why, until I arrived. Now, it’s safe to tell you. This entire county is under Satan’s control. The minute I drove into the county, I knew why. It’s because of the mental hospital; crazy people are the unwilling minions of Satan. His power is reaching out from behind those walls and into the very heart and soul of this community.”
