by Thomas Cater
I tried to direct their reminiscences to more fruitful events.
“Did Elinore ever marry?”
I could tell by the way Clarence’s eyes wandered and blinked that this was a doubtful area as far as conjecture was concerned.
“Let me tell you what I know,” he continued. “She was a beautiful girl, but her father kept her tethered like an animal and away from everyone, especially young bucks. He thought he was protecting her, or protecting his wealth and position. There was plenty of talk especially after little Miss Amy Taylor began to accompany her. She introduced her to many boyfriends. They used to swarm around her like flies. Now mind, when I say boyfriends, I don’t mean what they talk about nowadays. I mean boyfriends who, if they managed to steal a little kiss, paid for it with the price of a slap in the face. I was younger then Amy, but I knew most of the young men in town, the ones who liked and wanted to spark her. I was one of ‘em, until I got married to Mame. Amy would bring her into town, to the ‘opry’ house or dances, while her daddy was gone. She would not object to a boy sitting next to her, talking to her or holding her hand, but Amy would not let that girl out of sight for a second.
“There was another part of her life we knew nothing about. It was the people in Elanville, the miners. They all worked for her daddy. There might have been some contact, but it was not much. The Ryders didn’t mix with off the boat immigrants who went to work in the mines. It just wasn’t done.”
“Before we go to George’s room, let me ask one more question,” I begged. “You know the wall that surrounds the Ryder house? I heard an immigrant built it. Do you have any memories at all?”
His eyes narrowed and his thoughts began to sift through the past. Then I saw a smile settle over his lips. He turned to Mame.
“It was in the 20s, do you remember, Mame? We were in this place since 1910-15. We; bought the house from a dentist who wanted to move back east. He said he wasn’t doing any good at all, and country people didn’t care enough about their teeth for him to make a living. If you give me a few minutes, I could name you every guest we had that year. We only had two rooms. We didn’t build the new addition until ‘25’. Let’s see, where was I?”
“You were going to tell me about the man who built the wall?”
“Oh, yes, August 1920 or 30. He was a gypsy. I could tell by the color of his skin. It was light brown and he had a lot of black, curly hair. He carried his tools in a big cloth bag and his clothes in a cardboard suitcase. He was a clean little man, wanted fresh flowers put in his room daily, and he paid in advance.”
“Gypsy? How do you know he was a gypsy?”
“We had a lot of them in those days; remember mother.”
Mrs. Abacas nodded. “They came in wagons and sold copper goods, pots and pans, gold and silver necklaces. He always ran out to greet them, as if he belonged to their clan. They talked in their language. I think it was Russian or something close to it. I never understood a word. He only stayed in the hotel for a week or two, and then he moved to Elanville to work on that wall. I think he stayed with a widow woman and her daughter.”
“Those are the best damned walls in the county,” Clarence chimed in.
Coming from him, I suspected it was high praise.
“Ask anyone, they’ll tell you, the best damned walls around. It would take a Sherman tank to knock ‘em down.”
“Do you remember his name?” I asked.
“What was his name?” he asked Mame. “Demetrios, Demos … something like that. I can find out if you want. It will take a while, but we have every registration card from the first day we started business, ain’t’ that right, mother, every card. They are all stacked away in boxes in the basement. It might take a while, but we can do it, right mother, we can find it.”
She nodded and glanced at the big clock over the desk, another piece of lobby furniture that was a genuine antique. A pretty 1940s female with a blond marcelled hair-do informed everyone who entered that it was time for a Coke.
“Mr. Thacker is going to be disappointed if we don’t show up on time,” she said. “He’s been trying so hard to get a good crowd. Hardly anyone came last night, only me and Clarence, and Janie the waitress from the Old Town Tavern, and Eulah and her boyfriend, Bob, the dog.”
I wanted to ask about Bob, the dog, but knew it would lead far astray of the point.
“By all means, let’s go see George.”
There was a tiny elevator in the hotel built to accommodate about two persons uncomfortably. We squeezed in. Mrs. Abacas pushed the button and the lift rumbled and groaned to life. It slowly ascended to the second and only other floor, resurrecting as if from some subterranean depths.
“It goes very slow,” she said, “and it takes a lot longer than walking, but if we tried to walk, we might not make it.”
Chapter Twenty-Six
The door opened slowly, changed direction and started to close again. Clarence jammed his cane into the opening and the door stopped. I pried my way through the narrow opening and helped the Abacases out. George’s room was across the hall from the elevator and his door was wide open.
Eulah, Bob and Janie had already arrived. They were a frightfully pathetic lot. Bob, the dog, was a lifetime loser. He was about to be kayoed in a deadly bout with alcohol. His mind had departed a long time ago for parts unknown and would never be able to find its way back.
Janie was his female counterpart. She chain-smoked and drank spiked kool-aid without stopping. I suspected she was spiking it with something other than alcohol, such as embalming fluid. Eulah, Bob’s girlfriend, was thin, bland and going bald. She was the adhesive that kept him from immediately disintegrating. She wiped his hands and mouth, smoothed his hair and pushed food down his throat. It was a pathetic and doomed group.
George Thacker sprang out of his chair to greet me. There was a remorseless piety in his eyes and a powerful reassurance in the grip of his hands. He was out to save these people and in doing so, save himself. He led me around the small room introducing me to his congregation.
“Bob, I want you to meet a man in whom the lord has taken a special interest, Charles Case.”
Could he have meant me? Yes, he did. I smiled and took Bob’s hand in my own. It was cold and felt more like a clammy fish than flesh.
“Janie, say hello to Mr. Case.”
She was shaking like a leaf in an updraft.
“And this is Eulah, Charles; she’s Bob’s special lady.”
She was as thin as a rail and the first two fingers of her right hand were discolored brown and yellow from nicotine and cigarette burns. She was blind in one eye and as clichés go, could not see out the other. Her glasses were so thick they completely distorted any possibility of looking into her eyes -- eyes that looked like two alien species swimming around in miniature fish bowls. Her thin hand felt like a broken branch. I thanked God for my mental health no matter how questionable it was.
I was glad when George finally directed me to the tiny card table in the center of his room. Red Christmas wrapping paper was serving as a tablecloth, and pictures of Frosty the snowman and red-nosed Rudolph where everywhere. There were also cookies on cardboard plates and paper cups containing a few swallows of grape kool-aid.
“I’m glad you came,” George said. “I wanted to invite you, but I didn’t think you really wanted to hear about this.”
I nodded. “I don’t, George. I know all I need to know about salvation; I once attended a church bazaar. I just came by to talk to you.”
“About what?” he asked.
I wasn’t sure if this was the right time to talk about a séance. After all, he might consider it pagan, holistic or New Age.
“It’s about something that will help me into my house; something that may require our presence at the Ryder house.”
“Jesus, don’t tell me you want to open another grave!” he screeched.
“No, George, something more important. I want you to help me communicate with Elinore.”
> “Communicate?” his eyes bulged.
“A séance,” I said. I had forgotten that George was a lawyer. He probably knew as much if not more about these things than I did.
He rubbed the gray stubble that was growing on his cheek and chin. “It would be a challenge, wouldn’t it? I never felt so close to Him before. It’s almost as if all this were predestined.”
I nodded casually. “You could say that.” If someone told me a month ago that I would be running around in a rural West Virginia county trying to communicate with the spirit of a woman who died in the 1970s … I paused. What made me so sure it was in the 70s? I had to review my mental records. My imagination was out-flanking me.
My foster mother had reportedly died in the 70s, but she had nothing in common with Elinore Ryder except ... age. Her eyes were, if not perfect, unique. She had eyes in the back of her head, so to speak. She could even see through walls into other rooms, sort of. She knew what was coming days in advance, and she used to wake me up in the middle of the night screaming; I shuddered.
What else did my mother have in common with Elinore? The only daughter of a domineering and absentee father, married to a lifetime bureaucrat who was a closet alcoholic, a woman who never knew her child and sickened herself to bed after she gave birth, but that’s where the similarity ended; thank God.
My father also believed that supernatural power and wealth went hand-in-hand. He believed in his divine right to possess more wealth than others did. I could not believe in such nonsense. I was and still am a person who considers belief in a supreme being a form of treason to the human race.
No, Elinore’s death and my mother’s death occurring in the same decade could be nothing but chance and circumstance. I am here because a strain of avarice I inherited from ancestors dictates that I try to profit from a piece of real estate. At least, that is what I desperately want to believe.
“When do you want to hold this…séance?”
“Tonight,” I blurted.
George nodded. “It will be dark when we get there; it’s darker there than it is in town. There are no lights in the house and the trees refuse to admit moonlight.”
“I know,” I said, “I’ve been there. I know it gets dark sooner out there then it does anywhere else.”
“When the sun goes down, it becomes a very dangerous place,” George said.
“I know, George, I know.”
“We’ll need more than just the two of us.”
“I’ll call Virgil. He’ll give us a hand.”
“Why call him? We have enough here to conduct a séance.”
“You mean with these people; your friends?”
“Why Not? Their minds are pliable. Besides, they get so few opportunities to interact. It will be good for them to meet new people.”
“George, are you forgetting? The people we will be meeting are dead.”
“That’s irrelevant,” he said. “Sooner or later, we’ll all end up that way.”
I felt apprehensive. “I cannot …will not be responsible. I can’t ask them to risk their lives. They don’t look responsible enough to make that kind of decision.”
George turned, walked to the front of the room and clapped his hands. “Listen up, folks. Mr. Case has a very important assignment to carry out and he needs our help. Are we going to let him down?”
“No,” the crowd murmured solemnly and without conviction.
“I can’t hear you,” George said.
“No,” they murmured again.
“Good,” George concluded, while he was still ahead. “Instead of holding service right here tonight, we are going to a fine old house in the country. We’ll be driven there by Mr. Case in his beautiful recreational vehicle, and we will be guests in a house he has just purchased.”
No one really seemed to care, except the Abacases. They scooped up the last of the Christmas cookies and drained their cups of kool-aid. Mrs. Abacas buttonholed George by the door.
“I’m sorry; Mr. Thacker, but Clarence and I won’t be able to join you; we’ve got to stay with the hotel. We haven’t been out of town in forty years, only to visit ... I can’t remember who. I don’t know what it would be like to take an evening off. I hope you won’t forget us in your prayers.”
He clasped her to his bosom and kissed her shiny forehead.
“You’ve been family to me, Mame; I’ll never forget you.”
He kissed her goodbye and began directing the small contingent of people down the hall to the stairs. “Come along, Janie, Mr. Case is a very busy man. He has many things to do. We don’t want to be responsible for holding him up now, do we?”
When Janie walked, her entire body revolted. Her legs marched to the tune of a different drum than did her arms, hips and head. She looked like a windup toy whose mechanism had gone askew. There was no assurance that she would make it out of the room much less down the hall and out the building.
Bob walked into the door and walls two or three times, before he finally made it to the hall.
“I’ll get the van and meet you out front in about five minutes.”
“Make that ten,” George said. “I’ve never tried to get them out the front door before.”
I nodded and squeezed back into the elevator.
“Damned Kaiser,” Clarence snarled. “Any man with a lower lip that touches his friggin’ chin can’t be trusted,” he warned.
“I agree, sir,” I replied.
He gave me a long hard look and then turned to Mame. “Do we know this young man, mom?”
“Mr. Cash, dear,” she said. He looked again, carefully evaluating my lips. “Good sermon, preacher,” he said, “but a little long winded.”
“I’ll work on it,” I replied.
The elevator bounced to a stop and the door took forever to open. I helped the Abacases through the narrow portal, holding it open lest it crush them in its steel jaws before they got out. I could see there was something she wanted to say, but didn’t know where to begin.
“What is it?” I asked.
“Young man,” she said, “I don’t want to tell you what to do, I’d never do that, but Clarence is not always right about the things he says. Sometimes he is wrong. Oh, I know he sounds right when he’s talking, but sometimes he just gets things mixed up.”
“Mrs. Abacas, your husband has been more help to me than anyone else in this town. The details are not that important, not yet, anyhow. I just need to know the general direction. If you can find that registration card and the name of the gypsy stone mason, I will be forever in your debt.”
She nodded. “I’ll find it. I have been keeping the records in this hotel for fifty, sixty … no, seventy years. I know where everything is. I’ll find it.”
I pressed a quick kiss on her forehead. For an elderly woman, she invited affection. For a moment, I thought she blushed, but that would have been impossible. Blood could not have circulated that quickly through those antiquated arteries. The roman aqueducts were probably in better shape.
“Thank you and goodbye,” I said.
She waved with her free hand while lowering Clarence into his chair in front of the TV.
Chapter Twenty-Seven
It was a long quiet ride to the Ryder house. I could see Janie’s cigarette glowing in the darkness through my rear view mirror. Bob and Eulah had passed out from too much grape kool-aid. I wondered about their purple dreams. George was smiling deeper and wider than ever. I was growing more and more apprehensive.
“George,” I said, “I have one question.”
“Okay,” he said, “ask.”
“Why do they call your friend, Bob, the dog?”
“Because he bites,” was his reply.
I nodded.
It was amazing how much darker it was in the country than in town. I had to turn the interior lights on half way there. By the time we reached the dirt road, TV lights were glowing in Elanville. I could not have seen a thing without them.
“What time you got, George?”<
br />
He squinted at his oversized LCD with too many gadgets.
“Half past eight.”
“Night comes early in the mountains,” I said.
“I told you,” he replied prophetically.
“I know you told me, but why? It almost seems unnatural.”
He nodded slowly. “The days are shorter and the nights are longer.”
I decided not to encourage his ghoulish outlook. We sat silently watching dark shadows glide by or leap from tree to tree in advance of the headlights. I stopped at the gate and left the headlights burning. I tried to spot the Ryder house amid the darkness beyond the trees, but it was impossible. I hoped that perhaps just this once, Elinore had left some ‘will of the wisp’ behind to guide me, but there was nothing but deep, dark impenetrable night.
“I forgot to get those damned bones from Virgil’s car. I hope no one steals them,” I said.
“Who would want to steal the skeleton of a whangdoodle?” George asked.
I took a deep breath, swung out of the seat and into the back of the van.
“Well, ladies and gentlemen, this is it. This is home.”
I noticed Bob and Janie were shaking more than usual. I chalked that up to the cool air coming from the creek and the heavy growth of trees, and not some paranormal knowledge of events.
Eulah was straining through thick glasses to see anything at all. I knew she hopelessly blind in the dark. She was -- George had assured me -- in every sense of the word, ‘blind as a bat’.
We helped them out and lined them up beside each other. There were three of them and two of us. By ‘we,’ I meant George and I, the living fearful, as opposed to ‘them,’ Janie, Bob and Eulah, the walking unconscious, or those who needed help to fall down a flight of stairs.
“I feel like a Judas goat,” I told George as I unpacked a flashlight and a kerosene camping lamp from the van.
He smiled, almost laughed. “Don’t worry about them,” he said. “They are God’s children. He’s not going to let anything happen to them before their time.”
