Dreams and Reality Set 3: Cannibal Dreams and Butchered Dreams

by Hadena James

  He watched all this with annoyance, as he chewed his food, not tasting it or enjoying it. Their presence had ruined it for him. Another girl walked in. This one caught his attention and kept it. Unlike the others, she wasn’t boisterous. She wasn’t obnoxious. She was demure, moving with hesitating steps as she wound her way to the table of younger kids.

  In his mind, he imagined Aislinn and Nyleena had been like that. Hesitant, quiet, unsure of whether socializing was a good thing or not. This last was probably more of an Aislinn trait. She had never been one to socialize. Patterson had been glad when she found Malachi. He wasn’t the most stable fellow on the planet, far from it, but he loved her as only a psychopath can love. Patterson had seen all the signs. Malachi had been in love with her from the day she gave him that baseball. Of course, Malachi didn’t understand it as love and Aislinn, while she did love him, it wasn’t the same sort of love. Sometimes, it irritated Patterson, for as long as Aislinn was alive, Malachi would never settle down, have a family, know the pleasures that could be gleaned from a stable life. He wasn’t mad at Aislinn for this, he was mad at himself. If he hadn’t lost control, Aislinn might have been different and then Malachi might have had his happily ever after. Aislinn might have as well.

  Unfortunately, he couldn’t take it back. Aislinn was who she was. Malachi was who he was.

  An argument arose at the table the young girl had just sat down at. It escalated quickly. Another girl grabbed the younger’s hair and jerked her head back before punching her in the face. Patterson just reacted, not thinking and came to the defense of the younger lady who reminded him of his precious Aislinn. He grabbed the arm of the aggressive girl and stared at her. She let go and stared back. For a moment, she acted like she might attack Patterson, but something stopped her. She attempted to jerk away, but Patterson was still strong and held her wrist tightly.

  “Whatever offense she’s committed that you think is worthy of beating her up, is imaginary. In ten years, when you’ve become an adult, you’ll regret this moment. If in ten years, you don’t, you haven’t really grown up. Picking on weak doesn’t make you strong, it makes you weaker than they are,” Patterson informed the aggressor.

  “Go away, Grandpa,” the girl sneered at him.

  “Bullies always find someone who is bigger than they are, someone who won’t take their nonsense. Are you a bully?” Patterson asked, ignoring her order, and refusing to let her go. The diner staff had now crowded around to watch. It was worth a gaping stare or open mouth. An old man restraining a young woman to keep her from beating up another young woman.

  “Old man, let her go,” one of the drunkards stood from his table.

  “I don’t believe this involves you, young man, go back to your food.” Patterson shot him a warning glare that the idiot was too drunk to notice. He stepped towards Patterson, sucking in air, flexing muscles to make himself appear bigger. Patterson rapped him smartly on the shoulder with the head of the cane. He stopped, immediately grabbing the injured spot. His wails were loud, his drunken bravado quelled. Patterson rolled his eyes at this display. He was far outdoing it. The love tap wouldn’t have done more than leave a small bruise.

  Sirens sounded outside. Patterson frowned. He’d just made a huge mistake. If they ran his fingerprints, he was sunk before he got to finish his work. He shouldn’t have intervened. He should have let someone else handle it. He let go of the girl’s wrist as the first officer came through the door. A man in a cook’s uniform began gesturing wildly and pointing. But he didn’t point at Patterson, he pointed at the girl Patterson had been holding.

  “And the boy?” The cop asked.

  “The old man was defending himself and rapped him on the shoulder with his cane,” Patterson’s waitress told the officer. “I think he’s being overly dramatic. He didn’t hit him that hard.”

  “Sir?” Another officer had come in as the waitress had started to speak. He now walked over to Patterson. “Can you tell me what happened?”

  “Yes, sir,” Patterson smiled and gave a small nod. “This girl,” he pointed to the older looking of the two, “grabbed the other by her hair and began hitting her. It seemed unnecessary, so I stepped in. I grabbed her arm to stop her and held it, while the cook called you. As I did, this boy here,” Patterson pointed to the still howling college student, “stood up, told me to mind my own business and began advancing on me. He’d puffed up his chest and clenched his fists. I took that to be threatening. When he got within a foot or so of me, I hit him with the handle of my cane. Not too hard, just enough to make sure he didn’t come any closer. I might be able to restrain the wrist of a teenaged girl, but I can’t imagine I would fair too well with an older male. I‘m too old for that fight.”

  “I see,” the officer looked at him. “Do you have any ID?”

  “Of course,” Patterson pulled out his wallet and handed a driver’s license to the officer. The officer frowned as he read it.

  “Mr. Clachan, why are you in town?” This turned some heads in the dinner.

  “Please, call me Virgil. I was called by my great-nephew and told about what had happened with our family. So, I drove up from Florida to see if there was anything that needed to be done. I’ve been hiding from my sister and my brother for years. With both of them now in custody, I figured it was safe to return.”

  “He’s listed as a missing persons,” the other officer confirmed. Patterson gave a small chuckle.

  “I was never missing, my sister Nina knew where I was, as did one of my brothers, who has sadly passed away. My father sent me to live with relatives, out of the state, in 1935. This is my first time back in the state of Missouri.”

  “We’re still going to have to take you to the station and clear all this up,” the second officer handed him back his license.

  “Of course,” Patterson led the way out the door. As long as they didn’t fingerprint him, it would all be ok. “Please make sure the girl who was assaulted gets home safely.”

  Fourteen

  I put my phone down and stared at Malachi in disbelief. He stared back, wanting to ask questions, but waiting for me to offer up the answers he sought. However, I didn’t know where to begin. My great-uncle, who had to be older than dirt, had miraculously arrived in Columbia, Missouri and one of my cousins had gone to collect the old man.

  The impression had always been that Virgil Clachan was dead. To find him alive and kicking, was a shock. It was even more shocking that someone in the family knew Virgil Clachan wasn’t dead.

  The story, as I had heard it, was that Virgil had been killed when he was fifteen years old. The manner of death had never been discussed and I had assumed he was killed by someone in the family. To learn that he had been shipped to relatives out of the state because Gertrude, at six years old, had accused him of molesting her was a shock. An even greater shock was that no one believed Gertrude, even then. For the first time, I wished I was closer to someone in my father’s family so that I could call them and find out the details. So, I called my mom instead.

  “What do you mean Virgil Clachan is alive and in Columbia?” My mother asked after I had told her. Malachi danced in his seat across from me. It was another layer in the sordid Clachan family that he was curious about.

  “I mean he was picked up at the Broadway Diner after helping stop a fight and Chub’s son, Carl, went to the station and collected him.”

  “That’s not possible.” My mother scoffed.

  “He told the police that he was sent away because Gertrude made his life miserable, despite being only six years old.”

  “That I believe. She accused all the boys of molesting her, even Fritz.”

  “Who’s Fritz?” I asked.

  “Uncle Chub,” my mother answered. So, he did have a first name. That was good to know. “Fritz was the most well-adjusted of the bunch.”

  “So, why is it impossible?”

  “Because Virgil wasn’t killed for messing with his sister,” my mother stopped. “Trust m
e, he’s dead.”

  “What do you know?” I asked.

  “It’s just gossip, honey, but that isn’t Virgil. I don’t know who he is, but he isn’t Virgil.”

  “Mom.”

  My mother gave a long, heavy sigh and hung up on me. I stared at my phone. It was always surprising to be hung up by my mother. She was strong, determined, and willing to protect me, but she was also very kind, very easy going and very, well, mom-ish.

  “Well?” Malachi asked.

  “Mom says it cannot be Virgil.”

  “The police checked out his story, it all checks out.”

  “I cannot help that. Mom says Virgil is definitely deceased. I do not know why or how, but she was fairly adamant about it.”

  Records indicated that Virgil Clachan had started a construction company in 1946 in Las Vegas, Nevada. He’d retired to Florida in the late 1980’s. He was worth millions. He’d never married, never had children and my cousin had vouched that he was indeed Virgil Clachan. Malachi pulled something up on his tablet. He turned and showed it to me.

  The driver’s license picture was of an older man with dark hair, blue eyes and smile lines. His ears were normal sized, his nose was normal sized and while he didn’t appear to be 94 years old, that was common in my family. Gertrude looked old because she was frumpy, but even with liver cancer, Nina hadn’t looked more than sixty, despite being in her eighties. Dark hair and blue eyes also ran in the family. I stared at the picture for few more minutes and sighed, there was a problem.

  “It’s not Patterson,” I told Malachi.

  “Why?”

  “I have brown eyes,” I answered. “My mom has blue, which means my dad had to have brown. If you look at pictures of my grandmother, she also had blue eyes. That means that Patterson Clachan has brown eyes. However, Uncle Chub, Aunt Nina and Gertrude all had blue eyes, so it does run in the family. The man posing as Virgil has blue eyes, he cannot be Patterson. But if he is not Patterson and he is not Virgil, I do not know who he is.”

  “Could you have another great uncle you don’t know about?”

  “No.” I answered. “Nina and Gertrude were the youngest. Sometime in the early 1940’s, someone walked into my great grandparents’ house and shot both of them. They then took a knife and stabbed my great grandfather seventy-two times. Nina was suspected, she still lived at home, but no one could prove she’d done it. Or find a motive for the killing. Everyone else was married by then. I suspect it was Patterson.”

  “But are you positive that Nina and Gertrude were the youngest?”

  “As positive as I can be.”

  “Why would he resurface now?” Malachi stretched out his long legs.

  “Because Gertrude’s in custody. It could bring out lots of whack jobs. Virgil was never found, he was officially listed as a missing person for the last eighty years. The Clachans have money, lots of it, squirreled away in a trust to be used by one generation at a time. With Gertrude in custody, the money would pass to the next generation, but if Virgil is alive, he gets to draw on it. But why would he if he’s worth millions?” I thought about that. “And how did the trust get as large as it has gotten? The family was dirt poor during The Depression, they were eating people to get by.”

  “You want to follow the money?” Malachi asked.

  “Yeah, I think I do.” I answered. “It seems illogical for there to be money after The Depression, but not before.”

  Malachi began working on his tablet. He wasn’t as good as Michael had been, but he was better than me at using government databases. His fingers swiped the screen, making no noise, just moving quickly. There was something to be said for that, it wasn’t nearly as annoying as the clacking of keys on a keyboard.

  “Interesting,” Malachi leaned back in his chair. “The trust was started in 1942, by a Bernard Clachan.”

  “He was a great uncle, dead now.”

  “He started it with nearly $500,000.”

  “That is a whole lot of money for a soldier. Especially in the ‘40’s.”

  “It is, but he seems to have used his wages well, investing in the recovering stock market, mostly in munition companies. Then in 1946, regular deposits start getting made by none other than Virgil Clachan. At first, the amounts are small, a thousand here, two thousand there, but after 1957, the amounts start getting much larger, $200,000 or so at a time. Then Fritz begins making deposits during the 1970’s after investing in a start-up department store. It seems he got in on the ground floor. The conditions of the trust are as such, money is doled out to people over fifty-five, anyone disabled, or a one-time withdraw can be made with two approved signatures for anyone in the family. So, if you needed money, let’s say $300,000 you could get it, if you got two of your cousins to sign off on it.” Malachi shook his head. “Virgil is well off, but there’s about a hundred million dollars in this family trust. And other people have been making donations as well, including Nyleena, most of your cousins, and your mother. It actually looks like a tithing. Everyone seems to be donating ten percent of their yearly income.”

  “Wow,” I settled into a chair and thought about that. “Does Patterson have access?”

  “No.”

  “So, that’s not how he’s getting his money.”

  “I think we should pay your Great Uncle Virgil a visit. We’ll get you released from the hospital and head to Columbia. Maybe he can shed some light on Patterson.”

  “In 1935, Patterson was nine years old.”

  “And Nina said he was already a killer.”

  “Huh,” I hadn’t considered that. “There’s the motive for the murder of my great grandparents, although it kind of eliminates Patterson as a suspect.”

  “Yes, and it makes Nina the prime suspect again.”

  “All things considered, maybe patricide was not such a bad thing in this case. If he was using Patterson to kill the farm hands, it would sort of justify someone killing him.”

  “Why not kill him at the time?”

  “Because they were all too young. Virgil was the oldest and he was born in 1920. Chub and Bernard were next, then a girl I don’t know, then Patterson, then the twins; Gertrude and Nina.”

  “What unknown girl?” Malachi asked.

  “She died when she was only a year or so old,” I told Malachi. “I do not even know her name.”

  “That’s a lot of kids in eight years.”

  “There are a few with less than a year between them. Bernard and Chub were ten months apart. The girl and Patterson were only eleven months apart. I think there was sixteen months between Bernard and the girl.”

  “Why’d they stop after the twins?” Malachi asked.

  “Female problems arose,” I shrugged having no idea what that meant, but that’s what I had been told.

  “Well, Virgil would be in his nineties. We should go before he keels over.”

  “Bernard was in his nineties,” I frowned. “The ages do not line up. Virgil cannot be the oldest, Chub was in his eighties when he died and I was a teen then. Bernard died of complications from surgery a few years ago. What the hell?”

  “A case of misdirection? Who told you how old everyone was?”

  “Nina,” I sighed. “Ok, so Bernard was in his nineties when he died. Chub was in his eighties. They would have to be the oldest boys and at least one would have had to have been born before 1920.”

  “Your family is an enigma.”

  “My family is the epitome of dysfunction. They hide everything, reveal only a few tantalizing clues, and leave the rest to the imagination. See if someone can find birth records on them.”

  “I’m not your flunky.”

  “Fine, see if Rollins can find birth records on them. We should probably fly to Columbia, we’ve already wasted a lot of time here.”

  Fifteen

  It seemed unfair that my great uncle Chub had named his child Carl Christopher Clachan. However, he had. Carl was older, like a lot older. It had never dawned on me how much older Carl seemed t
o be than my father. I’d say there was a good ten years between them, if not more.

  He was in his seventies, frail with a slight build. Short with almost no hair, but what was left, hadn’t lost its color. My dad’s family didn’t seem to age. Very few went bald, even fewer had grey hair, their faces had lines, but not wrinkles, few became stooped and bent with time, even terminal liver cancer hadn’t aged Nina more than a few years.

  Next to him sat an even older man. This was theoretically, my great uncle Virgil. He had dark hair, not black, but a deep, rich brown that could pass for black in the right lighting. His eyes were a shocking blue, almost like a husky’s eyes, but this was a genetic trait carried in my family, several people had blue eyes or very light blue eyes. The family seemed attracted to others with blue eye as well, people like my mother and my grandmother. His face and hands had a few liver spots on them, but that was to be expected. My mind was trying to impose what we knew about Patterson and draw conclusions of his looks based on Virgil’s bone structure and facial features.

  “You look like him,” Virgil said to me.

  “Like who?” I asked.

  “Patterson,” Virgil answered. “More than I thought you would.” Rollins was standing near us. Malachi and I had taken seats, Rollins had insisted on standing.

  “I don’t suppose you have a picture of Patterson?” Malachi asked.

  “No one has a picture of Patterson,” Virgil answered. “The boy was camera shy, the man was camera phobic. If they hadn’t needed soldiers as bad as they did, he wouldn’t have been able to enlist. As I understand it, when they went to take his picture, he had a meltdown. Eventually, they gave up on getting his picture and just shipped him overseas to die with the rest of the foot soldiers.”