by Isaac Thorne
“The black bitch,” Patsy interrupted. “And then I brought up Mr. Gordon. I’m so sorry, dear. We can find someone else to talk to if it’s going to be a problem. Like I said at dinner, there are dozens of old ghost stories around Lost Hollow.”
Afia shook her head. “No, no. It’s fine. The constable didn’t murder my dad, even if his father might have. I actually kind of want to talk to Graham now. I have a few vague memories of him from school down here. Seemed like a quiet kid, but was always bruised up. I didn’t interact with him a whole lot. I don’t think he liked me very much. I remember there being some kind of tension between us, maybe because of our fathers. I don’t know. I’m not sure what I think I’ll discover that I don’t already know about what happened, but I feel like maybe he can tell me something about what happened back then, give me some closure.”
“You think that after all these years the constable might remember something that points to his father as the murderer?” Staff asked. “I don’t know, Afia. Making an accusation like that when you meet what amounts to a total stranger after all this time seems dangerous, especially if that stranger works in law enforcement. You said yourself that you wanted to keep this story light-hearted.”
“Maybe. But at the very least he should be able to tell me where his father is and what he’s doing these days. He doesn’t have to know that I suspect him. If I know where he is, I will at least know where the police can find him if I can ever find proof that he did it. That doesn’t have anything to do with our story.” She glared at Staff. “I am quite capable of keeping my personal and professional life separate.”
Patsy winced. “Oh dear. You won’t need to ask Constable Gordon that. I can tell you exactly where his father is these days. Lee Gordon is buried in a plot in our haunted cemetery that I mentioned earlier. He’s been there since the mid-1990s, at least. I never met him, of course, but from what I understand he was widely regarded as the town drunk back then. They say he was mostly fueled by Budweiser and blind rage near the end, always taking it out on whoever happened to be nearby. Most of the time, his target seemed to be poor little Graham, uh, the constable.”
“People knew Lee Gordon was beating his son. Somehow I think even those of us who were kids at the time knew it. But why the hell didn’t anyone ever say anything?”
Patsy shrugged. “Small towns. All of them have secrets. Who knows? I mean, the whole town was run by baby boomers back in those days. Most of them grew up together around here, and those that had kids would have been physical disciplinarians. Bruised bottoms were the culture at the time. And since everybody knew everybody else, maybe Lee Gordon had as much on the rest of the town as they had on him. His sins were just so much more visible than everyone else’s.”
Afia folded her arms. “Well, that would certainly help explain their unwillingness to investigate my father’s murder, wouldn’t it?”
“I’m afraid so. But don’t take my word as gospel on that. I don’t know anything about what happened back then other than what I’ve picked up from the gossip of a few townsfolk over the last fifteen years. You know how gossip is. Most of the time there’s only a grain of truth to it, and the rest is filled in by the gossiper’s personal agenda. I’m sure there were plenty of people around here besides you and your father who didn’t like Lee Gordon.”
At the kitchen sink, Staff added the last of the dinner dishes to the drying rack and pulled off the rubber gloves. He dabbed up all the droplets of water that remained along the edges of the sink and then draped his dish towel over the neck of the faucet to drip-dry. He pulled up a chair of his own and joined Patsy and Afia at the table. “So, this Lee Gordon, how did he die?”
“Word around town is that he broke his neck falling down the stairs into his cellar. Drunk when it happened, most people think. Graham was already a young man in his twenties. He told the sheriff that his dad had been unwell for a long time, but refused to get treatment. He said that he had been bringing him food once a week after work. Then one day he showed up with a few bags of groceries and his dad was nowhere to be found even though his car was parked where it usually sat. So Graham goes to search the house when he notices that the cellar door is unlocked. He pulled the door open and flipped on the light, and there was his dad lying with his face smashed against the cellar floor and the lower half of his body sprawled on the steps at the bottom of the staircase. Graham says there was a broken bottle of Budweiser right beside him, so he must have been trying to negotiate that staircase while he was full of brew and sick to start.”
“Dear God,” Staff said. “And this man is constable now? That’s pretty impressive. I doubt I could pass any kind of psychological evaluation for law enforcement after enduring all the abuse and then finding my dad like that.”
Patsy laughed. “Constable isn’t that much of a law enforcement position here in Lost Hollow. There’s no psych exam. You won’t see Graham tracking murderers or even stopping speeders. I don’t think they’ve even approved him to carry a firearm yet. The sheriff’s department has historically treated our constable role as a kind of Barney Fife to their Sheriff Andy Taylor. Most of Lost Hollow’s constables have just tried to keep the peace between neighbors without having to call in the sheriff’s deputies to take over. The guy before Mr. Gordon once had to break up a fight in the high school parking lot, but that was only because he happened to be passing by and saw these two young punks screaming at each other while a girl sat crying on the hood of a car. Young lust and some jealousy, I guess. He sent them all on their way home and followed the girl to her house, just to be extra safe, and that was the end of that.
“Besides, Mr. Gordon was the only person on the ballot for that position last month. The previous guy, Mr. Roberts, had been constable for pretty much his entire adult life. Thirty-five years. He died back in the summer. Ticker. At first, the town council wasn’t even going to bother replacing him, but then Graham threw his hat in the ring because he was trying to impress that girl, so they decided to have a special election to find out if anyone, uh, more qualified, wanted the job.”
“Girl?” Afia asked.
Patsy smiled. “Yes. I asked him why in the world a quiet young man like him who does computer work for a living would want to take on a nothing elected position like Lost Hollow constable. He told me that he was talked into running for it by some woman he’d met online. Said she liked a man with some prestige and a uniform and figured she could help him get both. They dated for a little while, but then I guess she got bored with the lack of drama in this small town and left for greener pastures. Poor Graham. Just like a man, I think. Give him any reason to think he’s going to bed a lady with big blonde hair and even bigger boobs, and he rushes in without thinking. Tries to make a big impression and then gets stuck in a situation he didn’t want, and without the lady he wanted for it. They don’t understand that they’re not buying a girlfriend when they bend over backward to impress us.” She glanced at Staff. “No offense intended, dear. I’m sure you’re much smarter than the average bear where the ladies are concerned.”
“None taken.” Staff and Afia exchanged knowing grins. He wasn’t a bear, but he did not plan on mentioning that fact to either Afia or Ms. Patsy just now. Nor did he expect the older woman to understand what the term meant to him.
“So, Ms. Afton,” Patsy said, and stretched out her hand across the table to take Afia’s. “I certainly didn’t intend to dredge up any old horrors for you. I didn’t know about all that stuff. If you don’t mind my asking, though, where was your mother?”
“That’s the other mystery. My dad told me he thought she just ran off, had had all of life in a racist small town like Lost Hollow that she could take. I was very small when she disappeared, so I only have a few vague memories of that time. It’s kind of strange. There were only four years between my mother’s disappearance and my father’s murder, but for me, the span between them feels like it lasted a lifetime. There was some attempt to locate my mother when I went into
the foster care system, but I don’t really know the extent of it. I’ve always wondered how much of what my dad told me was a partial truth, him attempting to protect me from something else.”
“Have you ever looked for her yourself?”
Afia rolled her eyes. “If she’d wanted me in her life she wouldn’t have left dad and me in the first place. So, no. I haven’t. The most I ever did was search local newspaper archives for obituaries or stories about missing black women from the time. Never found any that had anything to do with my dad or Lost Hollow, though. That always made me think he was telling me most of the truth, that she had run off on her own. Otherwise, you’d think someone would have gone looking for her. Well, you’d think that if it was any town other than Lost Hollow, I guess.”
Patsy gave Afia’s hand a squeeze and then let it go. “Oh, my dear. Well, just so you know, you’re not the only one around here with a nose for news. If you ever want me to look into it, I can ask around and try to find out what happened. Someone somewhere in this town has to know something about what happened to your mother.”
“Thank you, but that won’t be necessary. In spite of everything we just talked about, I’m not in town to spend the weekend focusing on me. I’m just here to do a job, not stare at my navel. Right, Staff?”
He pounded the table lightly with a closed fist. “Right!”
Patsy yawned just then and blinked wearily from behind her Coke-bottle lenses. “I don’t know about staring at navels,” she said, “but I’m starting to feel the need to stare at the backs of my eyelids. Thank you, Mr. Staff, for all your help in the clean-up tonight. You don’t know how much an old woman appreciates that. And you, Ms. Afton, get yourself a good night’s sleep. You had a long drive after a long day’s work and then relived some bad memories on top of it all. If you’re someone who takes Xanax, I believe this is an evening that would call for one.”
Afia laughed and put up a halting hand. “I try to keep my medicines as natural as I can. I have some melatonin with me. If I can’t get back to sleep after this, I’ll just take one of those. I’d also love a glass of water to go if you don’t mind. I run my mouth so much for work that it tends to get extra dry during the night.”
“I have some bottled water in the fridge. You can have one of those if you want.”
The two women rose from the table simultaneously. Once Afia had her bottle of water in-hand, she bade the other two in the kitchen a good night and trudged upstairs.
“And good night to you, Mr. Stafford,” Patsy said. “I always leave a light on here in the kitchen, so if you need any water or anything for yourself in the night, you can find it easily enough. My room is across the hall, near the base of the stairs, if you need me for anything.”
“Thanks. And, please, just call me Staff, if you don’t mind.”
“I’ll do that, Mr...uh, Staff. Feel free to call me Patsy. Good night!”
On his way up the stairs, Staff heard the older woman switch off the ceiling lights in the kitchen. They were shortly replaced by the bright white glow of what were probably under-cabinet LEDs. He found his way back to his room, switched off his own lights, and flung himself prone and fully clothed onto the still-made bed. He propped his head on one elbow and stared out the window into the darkness of the backyard beyond. Patsy was right. He could see a little bit of the town square from here, including the pyramidon segment of the phallic obelisk in its center, even in this darkness. He was glad that it was him in this room rather than Afia, and he hoped it was true that she would not be able to see the square at all from her place in the house. The trip was supposed to produce a fun little ghost story for the Channel 6 News. So far, it had instead resurrected some ancient demons for the station’s hardest working field reporter and, as far as Staff knew, no one in the house or at the station was Catholic or had any idea where to get their hands on some blessed water. Well, maybe Patsy did. He couldn’t know for sure. She claimed to not be the gossiping kind, but she had those substantial eyeballs and most likely some equally large ears under all that fluffy silver grandmotherly hair. He wondered, too, how much of Patsy’s knowledge about hauntings and happenings in Lost Hollow was really knowledge, not her own imagination filling in holes where she thought they should be filled to turn a buck for her little adopted hometown. If the decor of her bed and breakfast was any indication, Patsy was adept at finding something, anything, to fill a void. It was true of her walls, and most probably true of her narratives.
He rolled onto his back and pried off each of his sneakers with the toes of the opposite foot. The air felt good on his sock feet. His mind continued to race for a time, trying to remember how much he might have seen of the “black bitch” Patsy believed they had seen. He tried to process what had happened to Afia so long ago and how it might affect the rest of their weekend in Lost Hollow, tried to remember whether he’d locked the topper on the S-10 before turning in for the night.
Just when he thought sleep was never going to claim him, it did.
CHAPTER SIX
Minutes, hours, or days? How long had he lain there in broken agony on the cellar floor? Graham’s tongue felt thick and dry. His throat was sandpaper behind his cracked and blood-caked lips. It felt too narrow and lined by shards of broken glass whenever he attempted to swallow. In the darkness, with the Maglite switched off to preserve battery but attached to its loop in his belt so he could take comfort in the fact that it was still there, he had swum in and out of consciousness more than once. He wasn’t sure how many times now. Even if he could figure out how often he’d drifted, there was no way that the count could reveal to him how much time had passed outside the cellar walls, so it was a pointless thing for him to worry about.
He was cold now, he knew that much. The air in the cellar around him felt cooler on what little of his skin was exposed to it. Conversely, his uniform felt tighter against him, even though he hadn’t had a meal in...well, who knew? It felt like his clothes usually did when he’d spent too long outside in Southern summer humidity, which is to say that the dampness caused his clothes to cling uncomfortably to his skin. He wiped a palm across his brow. It came away clammy and wet. He probably had a fever, then, some kind of immune system reaction to everything his body had been through since he’d fallen down the stairs.
But I didn’t fall, he remembered. I was struck. He dabbed at the back of his head with two fingers to verify. Yes, it was still tender, though not as wet as it had been when he’d last checked. The thinning hair back there felt sticky and matted to his scalp, a result of the blood having coagulated in it.
On a few of the occasions he had bobbed up from unconsciousness, he thought he had heard the sound of footsteps coming from somewhere upstairs. Heavy ones, like those made by his father’s work boots back in the day, the days he was trying like mad to shove back into the recesses of his memory. Each time he heard that old familiar clomp, he was once again a frightened child, trembling against the darkness of the cellar in the hope that his raging father was too drunk and exhausted to remember to check for him there. Once, he thought he’d heard the cellar door swing open. He’d even thought he’d seen light from it spill down the broken cellar staircase and across the floor in front of him. In the middle of that light, there was a shadow, the silhouette of a man, maybe, staring down at him from above. Before he could summon enough courage to call out to whoever it was (his father was dead, after all, right?), the image faded, and he’d drifted back into the cottony folds of mindless blackness.
Completely awake now, the rational part of his mind—that part that knew that the darkness of the cellar that enveloped him was not eternal darkness, but merely a small box of it in the middle of a very much lighted world—could dismiss the image of the man in the cellar door. It was a product of the situation and his injuries, a fever dream perhaps. Along with that image, the rational Graham said, he could also dismiss the obnoxious voice of his dead father that he thought he’d heard in his head when he was searching for the Magli
te. It had to be a product of panic, no doubt brought on by the total darkness and his own history in this environment. Whose mind wouldn’t be playing fucked up games with them in this situation, right? Right? It had to be that.
“And the concuthion,” he said aloud, automatically wincing as the sounds came out of his mouth. He waited, but his words were not answered by the abusive and sarcastic sonic boom of his father’s voice in his head. “Good.” Good.
There was the dog, too, the fearful part of him reminded, the dog with the strange human face that scared you and made you fall the second time. Yes, he thought. There was the dog. But if the man in the cellar door and my father’s voice were products of a fever, I’m betting the dog was too.
He pushed the thoughts away, then grabbed the Maglite from his belt and switched it on. The beam immediately fell across the broken staircase and the splintered scrap that lay beneath it. He scanned the wall behind the staircase with the beam of the Maglite, crawling along it until it illuminated the closed cellar door above him. He was five foot nine, short for the line of males in his family. The cellar had a ten-foot ceiling. If he leaped for it and yanked with enough force, he could probably pull down the remainder of the staircase above him, which would open up the foot of the cellar door for use as a hand-hold. He wondered if he was strong enough to then grab hold of the transition, if he leaped for it, and hoist himself up through the door. Breaking down the stairs might use up what little remained of his energy. He also risked another fall, given how sore and broken he already was, and that might kill him. He supposed he was lucky to have survived the initial tumble after being struck on the back of the head and falling down the stairs. After all, the exact same thing had happened to his father. Everyone thought it had been an accident. And why not? Lee Gordon was a drunk, an abuser, and in the 1990s lived alone in a Victorian Gothic house on a dead-end road. Over time, in fact, Graham had even been able to convince some part of himself that it was an accident, never allowing the vise grip of guilt to clamp down on his heart. It’s much more difficult to feel guilty over an accidental death than if you intentionally commit murder, or so he surmised.
