A Wistful Tale of Gods, Men and Monsters

by David Ruggerio

  “We’re looking for great places to see for Halloween.”

  “Why don’t you go out to the country road, the William’s farm has hayrides and from what I hear; the best corn maze in the area.”

  Bobby got more to the point, “Does the town have a haunted house.”

  “The big pumpkin patch up on the Northside of town put one up.”

  “Is Martha your name?”

  “Well yes, it is, that’s my name right over the door.”

  “Martha, we’re looking for a real haunted house.”

  “Real huh” She turned back to check on the grits; and after pondering it for a few minutes came back to him, “Well, don’t tell anybody around town that I’m telling you this.” All four leaned forward; Barbara’s breasts were resting in a bowl full of butter; “You know where there is…wait one moment, I’ll be right back.” Martha returned carrying four humongous dishes laden with artery-clogging fare over to the table. Although there was no one left in the café, she lowered her voice to a whisper, “People around here would kill me if they knew I told you. Over on Checkerberry Lane is the old Hade’s Mansion. Been boarded up for years. Twas a funeral home back at the turn of the century.”

  Barbara’s eyes widen with angst, “A funeral home! Count me out.”

  Gina chimed in, “Me too, I’d rather go and pick a pumpkin, a small one; you know a really cute one.”

  Bobby got angry, “Will you stop with the cute pumpkins already. Martha, I apologize, what about the funeral home?”

  “Well most say that it is a place of ill-will and evil.” She hesitated for a moment, making sure no locals were in earshot, “Old Man Hades ran the town’s funeral home forever. Now mind you, the place has been closed for years, long before I was a youngin.”

  “What…what?”

  “Well they said that Hades would steal body parts and give them to a witch that lived up in Bald Mountain. Legend had it that with a person’s body part, the witch could control the dreams of that family.”

  Joey was bubbling over, “Holy shit, what a story!” Bobby waved him down, “Will you shut up, Martha I’m sorry for my brother, please go ahead.”

  “Oh, that’s fine. Well seems that there was an evil dwarf who worked along with Hades, the dwarf did something that angered the witch, and in return, Hades daughter was murdered. Poor old Hades was so distraught; he flung himself from the top of the mansion.” All four of their eyes widened.

  “Wow, how do we get in?”

  “You don’t, its private property. Although the descendants of Hades never come, the sheriff still patrols it.” She then seemingly looked off into the distance and under her breath added, “Don’t know of anyone in Brunswick who ever dared to go in there.”

  As the four wolfed down their breakfast, each brother quietly contemplated what the next move should be; while each girl kept silent because they feared what these two daredevils were up to.

  They thanked Martha and went off, meandering through the town much like most tourists do. Martha smiled; she had sent them off to an evil place that needed satisfaction (good riddance).

  As they made their way down Main Street, the window of St. Paul’s caught the girls’ eyes, “Say what are apa…apo…apothecaries?” Bobby ignored Gina and looked over to his brother, “At dark, you know what we’re going to do, don’t you?”

  “Skinny-dipping with the girls?”

  “I think you really didn’t get enough oxygen when you were born…Stupid, we’re going to the Hades haunted house!”

  “Oh yeah!”

  “Man, oh man, let’s get some new batteries at the five and dime, and send the girls back to the motel…and then my little brother…we’re good to go!”

  . . .

  When the four were sufficiently out of sight, the hooded form entered the café, it glided towards Martha; their conversation was in a hushed tone, “No, no I swear I did as you asked. They’re definitely going tonight; they were so excited; I’d be surprised if they don’t go right now.”

  The entity became grim and menacing, even though Martha had empathy for the hooded figure, she was frightened and uneasy, “No, I’m sorry…I didn’t mean they’d go right now! It’s a, you know, just a simple matter of speaking. I…I assure you they’ll be there tonight…you’ll see, I promise.”

  . . .

  “You two are going where tonight?” Barbara was incensed, “Another night alone. Well fuck that, we’re going out on the town.” Bobby was amused, “Town? You mean that hillbilly bar on the outskirts of the village?”

  Gina chimed in, “Yeah, maybe we’ll meet a handsome farmer with a corncob in his pocket.”

  “More likely you meet a middle-aged truck driver who hasn’t showered in a week and is so drunk he can’t get it up. You know what, go ahead. Whatever spins your top, but you can’t have the car, you two will have to walk.”

  “Maybe we should just take the bus back to Jersey, what do you say Gina?” The two girls just shrugged their shoulders, it was all hot air, the bar it would be.

  CHAPTER 12

  JOSEPH WOUTER

  A voice is heard…Rachel weeping for her children and refusing to be comforted, because they are no more

  -Jeremiah 31:15

  The little boy’s family lived on Clinton Avenue in the well-to-do neighborhood of Arbor Hill in Albany. They were the only household around that had a maid, and the house was large enough to provide that maid with her own quarters. His father had been a popular legislator at the seat of power in the state. He sent the youngest of his three boys to the hoity-toity Arbor Hill Elementary. His eyesight was poor from childhood, but his grades signified to his teachers that he was a gifted child. The boy excelled in all his studies, except when it came time to dissect his first frog in science class. The adolescent had a queasy stomach. When Mr. Adams, the science teacher, insisted that he slice open the pickled frog that had just been conveniently removed from a large jar of formaldehyde-well, that’s all it took. He turned three shades of green just before the entire fourth-grade class got a glimpse of his partially digested breakfast of pancakes and Jimmy Dean sausages. Angered, Mr. Adams sent the little boy for disciplinary actions in the principal’s office. No student at Arbor Hills would defy him! Alas, the punishment was nonexistent; the principal took one look at the pathetic youngster and feared that any type of severity might cause the child to barf again right in his office. The child was sent off with a pat on his back, and with time he graduated to Bishop Maginn High School. Eventually he found his way to NYU Medical School.

  Buried intensely in his studies and living on cans of Dinty Moore Beef Stew and peanut butter and jelly, he excelled in medical school. The only bump in the road was as a sophomore he fell hard for a girl from Charleston West Virginia. She was a senior and although he wasn’t a virgin (if prematurely ejaculating upon contact with Rosemary Walters when they were both sixteen in the backseat of his father’s station wagon counts), her freewheeling sensuality (she also professed to be a lesbian) opened his eyes up to what he had been missing all his life.

  Still single, he sat in the local Starbucks, trying to make his latte macchiato last as long as possible. He muttered to himself, how can a coffee that I practically can’t pronounce be worth six dollars? For Christ sakes, no. Joseph Wouter had come a long way from that frightful frog in the large green jar, ironically becoming the county coroner for Troy and its surrounding areas. From vomiting over an amphibian to now being paid over a hundred grand a year to dissect bodies; isn’t life grand? Truth be told, as much as he did love his work, at times he still had to catch himself; at times swallowing back his queasiness.

  The new sheriff of Brunswick had sent over three f
iles to Wouter, he needed him to review these cold cases that he was reopening. He brought the files home, there just weren’t enough hours in the day with all the paperwork that came along with his grand title. He had made copies of them, and while lying in bed, he’d used a felt tip pen to mark up any anomalies. At first glance, these crimes were horrific, but were they done by human hands? As he dove deeper, he eliminated standard categories of homicide. These certainly weren’t crimes of passion, and taking into consideration the youthfulness of the victims, they indeed weren’t about jealousy, and at the same time, out-of-control madness was too convenient. Each attack was identical, methodical, raw, but at the same time wildly savage; if this was done by a man, it was Jeffrey Dahmer type of stuff. He couldn’t wait to meet the sheriff involved, by God he was fascinated and consumed by the cases.

  They met at a Starbucks in Troy near the Medical Examiner’s Office.

  “Please call me Joe.” They disposed with all the niceties and got right down to business. Tom had been shocked at first glance how all the families fought the autopsies that were ordered by the medical examiner at the time.

  “That’s right Tom, respecting the families, and taking into considerations their religious beliefs, the coroners restricted their examinations solely to the chest cavity which unfortunately had already been opened during the commission of each enumerated crime. With the extensive wounds these poor girls sustained, there was no necessity to proceed any further.”

  His bluntness shocked Landtmann. Joe went ahead and pulled a few files from his bag, grabbing one in particular, “This is the file you sent me on Alice Bovenizer. I looked further into her family’s history, it wasn’t difficult, some of the old timers around knew of the family, her father had been somewhat notorious around the area. Her grandparents had emigrated from Germany in 1862. Her father was a door-to-door snake oil salesman.”

  “Did you say snake oil?”

  “Just a common term used back then. He hawked all types of healing potions, predominantly spurious products that had been fabricated in backroom bathtubs. Back then, unfortunately, the people could be very gullible. He and his wife didn’t have Alice till they were in their forties, and from what I can ascertain, he might have sexually assaulted her. Seems some of the old timers remembered that Sunday afternoon gossip at times accused the father of committing such heinous acts. But it’s a long journey from sexually assaulting your daughter to murdering her and tearing her heart out.”

  Two young girls who were sitting just next to them, who had been doing their homework on a laptop, became visibly disturbed. It was too late for Joe to put the genie back in the bottle, “I’m sorry ladies; I hope I didn’t upset you too much.” They both shook their heads in disgust as they stormed out of the store. Ignoring the situation, Tom wanted to get to the heart of the matter,

  “Looking at these reports, was there a common denominator?”

  “Denominator?”

  “Well, what the hell could have done this to these little girls?”

  “It doesn’t appear to me through what is represented in these files that there were any manmade injuries, say made by a knife or an ax. Instead, these wounds appeared to be jagged and tooth-like; it looked as though very large canines involved. With what I have to go on, and since we don’t have any sharks swimming in the creeks, I’d have to conclude that it seems like a large carnivore.”

  “A bear?”

  “No, no, the wounds are not consistent with a bear; there was the absence of large claw marks. Instead, I would lean more towards a wolf-like animal.

  “A wolf?”

  “It would have to be a huge animal, I researched it a bit. Say a grey or even a timber wolf. But what mystifies me is the extended period of time that these murders…”

  “MURDERS?”

  “Yes, these were definitely not simple animal attacks. The way the body was laid out, or more specifically displayed after mutilations, screams intelligence. There was a pattern here with each occurrence. Normally an animal such as a wolf stalks a prey that enters its territory, these girls were kidnaped from the safety of their homes and brought to the identical area, that being the Pinewood Cemetery and ravaged.”

  “But Joe, is it possible that someone murdered these girls, dumped the body’s in the cemetery, and then the animal in question did further damage to the body?”

  “No, these mutilations didn’t occur post-mortem. The types of wounds sustained occurred while these girls were still alive.”

  “Holy Mother of God.”

  “Yes, I agree, with the presence of such great amounts of blood and the absence of the victims’ heart, these were committed on location. But what mystifies me is that these murders occurred during such a vast expanse of time, and if we are to attribute these attacks to such a beast, how is it that no one ever saw neither hide nor hair of such an animal?”

  “I searched the hunting records dating back to the 1860’s. In the initial fifty years I researched, there were such animals in the surrounding mountains, but they were somewhat rare. In the second span of fifty years, they were nearly nonexistent. The closest thing that I came across were coyotes.”

  “I would find it hard to believe that a coyote could do such damage, and that’s just not in their DNA.” Wouter thought hard, “You know I have a friend; we played softball together a few years back. He has a bookstore in Brunswick and has a good knowledge of not only the history but also the comings and goings of the townsfolk.”

  “Oh, yes. You mean ole Jessup Homel, he’s been a tremendous help to me since I took the job a few months ago.”

  “I’ll give Jessup a ring, how about we meet for breakfast at Martha Rodenbecker’s Café this coming Saturday morning for breakfast?”

  You know Rodenbecker’s Café?”

  “Oh my God, everyone for miles around knows of Martha, she makes the best lumberjack flapjacks in Eastern New York. I’m sure it will be fine with Jessup.”

  “Well then… Saturday it will be. Joe, I really appreciate all your help.”

  Tom put his arm around the Sheriff’s back, “I feel terrible for the children, but these cases are simply scintillating,” he lowered his voice to a bare whisper, “something I can really sink my teeth into.”

  . . .

  “Brrring, brrring,” the loud sound of the end-of-day bell allowed William to escape from Mr. Joseph’s boring class just before he fell into deep REM sleep. He fumbled with the combination on his locker; as he turned with his book tucked under his arm; he ran smack dab into Rex and his sidekick; fat Ralphie Walters, “Hey there Billy-boy, tell me, what did you and your pip-squeak little friend see when you left me and my friends flat the other day?”

  “S…se…see?”

  “Yeah, in that freak-a-zoid haunted house. I know you two went in there.”

  “Oh, th….tha…that! No…”

  “Just spit it out you stuttering freak, I’m not going to hurt you.”

  (Oh, that’s reassuring, I wonder how long this truce will last?)

  “W…w…we d….did…didn’t see anything, p…pi…pinky swear.”

  “Oh, the ole pinky swear, I guess that tells it all.”

  William turned, glancing over for a second to see if Rex was going to hurt him. Just at that moment, Mr. Joyce, the math teacher came into the hallway,

  “Mr. Herkimer, a word please.”

  William took a deep sigh of relief. When he got to the exit of the school, he could see Lilly waiting for him at their tree.

  “Lilly, p…put this b…book in your b…back…pack. I wa…want to sh…show you wh…when we g…get to your h…house.” Lilly secured the book in Hello Kitty and off they went. Jane was waitin
g for them with a snack of canned chicken noodle soup. It was William’s favorite. After the two slurped it down, they escaped into Lilly’s room. William couldn’t wait to show Lilly the book. He went right to the pages concerning the Sky Woman, “Y…you see, l…look at th…the p…picture.” Lilly grabbed the book with two hands and squinted, “Hmm, she looks familiar.”

  “F…fa…familiar! Th…tha…that’s my st…step-mother.”

  “Holy smokes, you’re right. That must be why she’s so mean to you.” William read aloud the part that told how the Mohawks had been cannibals, and that the Sky Woman had to feed on the flesh of children. “William, you better stay here with me; Anne for sure is going to eat you! Hahaha, hahaha.”

  “I th…thought y…you were m…my friend.”

  “I am, but William, she is a real meanie, but eat you, come-on.”

  William was crushed; he angrily closed his book and took off for home. Lilly would call him later to apologize. Jane was inquisitive, “What was wrong with him today?”

  “Oh William? He thinks that his stepmother is going to eat him so she can stay young.”

  Jane was no fan of Anne, “You know, he might just be right.”