Sixty-Five Stirrup Iron Road

by Keene, Brian

  “Not a moment too soon,” Arrianne said. Dickey wagged his tail in response and Arrianne scratched his back. “You understand me. Don’t you, boy?”

  He wagged his tail even harder and licked her hand before walking over and lifting his leg to water the rosemary and sage growing along the walkway.

  The morning was dreary and gray. Nimbostratus clouds blanketed the sky, threatening rain and hiding the sun, holding the city in perpetual twilight. Arrianne walked along a path through the greenbelt at the end of the block. As she walked, she thought about the house. All her odd behavior had begun the day they moved in. Perhaps the house is haunted?

  Once entertained, the thought took on increasing weight, the weight of truth. The sales agent had denied that anyone had died in the house, and they had taken the agent at her word. They were so happy to get such a great deal they hadn’t thought to question it further. Stupid. It was time she did her own research. Something was definitely not right at Sixty-Five Stirrup Iron Road, and now that she thought about it, they’d only asked whether or not the former owner had died in it, they hadn’t asked whether anyone else had.

  Arrianne cut the walk short and hurried home to get back to the computer, hoping she wouldn’t find anything gross on it when she booted up, but even that was beginning to feel like a normal part of her day. Wake up, cook breakfast, see Chuck off to work, watch bums fucking and puking on each other.

  The puppy still didn’t have a name. She opened the front door and let both dogs back in the house. Dickey was holding his paw close to his chest again. She had to get him to the vet and get that leg checked out. First the puppy needed a name. Lucy. The thought entered her mind like a voice, whispered between her thoughts.

  “Here, Lucy!”

  The puppy wagged her tail and jumped up on Arrianne’s legs.

  “Lucy it is then. Let’s go see what’s on the computer, okay?”

  Arrianne felt her stomach tighten as she walked into the study. The screen saver was on. Soap bubbles bounced harmlessly across the screen. Arrianne moved the mouse. Predictably, the screen came to life with the image of a platinum blonde with breasts larger than her head, wearing garish showgirl makeup and nothing else, being sodomized by a llama. A fucking llama.

  It looked like it was killing her. The woman’s anus was distended to the circumference of a soda can. She tried valiantly to smile through the pain, repeatedly glancing off camera, obviously taking cues from the director or cameraman or both. She imagined she could hear their voices. “Smile. Act like you’re enjoying yourself. Stop grimacing! You’re ruining my masterpiece!”

  The llama ejaculated deep in the woman’s loins and abruptly withdrew. A steady flood of semen poured from the woman’s vandalized rectum like melted vanilla ice cream, and a woman who looked like she’d been sleeping under a bridge for weeks was shoved into the frame by someone off camera. A hand, presumably the cameraman’s, forced the disheveled woman’s face between the blonde’s ass-cheeks, where she dutifully lapped at the waterfall of llama sperm gushing from the big-titted whore’s well-traveled asshole.

  Arrianne stared at the screen for several long seconds before hitting the escape button and closing the website.

  Licking llama cum from a woman’s asshole? What the fuck is wrong with people?

  She typed “Sixty-Five Stirrup Iron Road” into the web browser and got more than a thousand matches. Her dream house apparently had a long and sordid history. The reports of rapes and murders in and around her new home went back more than eighty years. The most recent was a man named Samuel Forrestal. A news article said he’d been “mutilated and dismembered.” His sister, Nicci Forrestal, a convicted prostitute and drug addict, had been found at the scene, covered in her brother’s blood and raving about vomit and sodomy. That was a little too familiar. Nicci had been suspected of the crime until the medical examiner confirmed it would have taken massive upper-body strength to wrench Forrestal’s limbs from their sockets and literally tear the flesh from his bones. The frail, slight of frame Nicci Forrestal would have been incapable of such a feat. She was declared innocent but insane and was committed to an asylum. Everyone suspected she’s somehow been involved.

  The very first murders known to have been committed in the house were perpetrated by the couple who’d built the place, Harold and Lucy Pearson. Lucy had been half the age of her wealthy husband, a barrel-chested man, well over six feet, with a handlebar moustache. He was said to have been fond of wearing bowties and a black bowler hat and was renowned for his tireless work ethic and remarkable strength. There were rumors that he could lift two bales of hay at once, one in each arm, and carry them for hundreds of yards. Even after making a success of himself in banking, he never shied away from manual labor and was said to have worked every morning on the small farm attached to his house, which at that time sat on ten acres, before heading off to the bank. When he married his young bride, she was no older than seventeen while he was already in his mid thirties and experienced in the ways of the world. They had not even celebrated their third anniversary when she’d begun sneaking out of the house to carouse in the local red-light district.

  Reports from witnesses claimed that she drank and smoked and gave herself to men and women alike, including Negroes, Chinamen, and even the Irish! She was spotted on South Street on numerous occasions. Then, South Street was an open-air sex market where sailors, railroad and dock workers, hobos, and other denizens of skid row had relations with prostitutes in dark alleys and beneath the pier. In the weeks before her husband’s murder, she was said to have frequented the Dragon Den, a brothel and opium den run by the Chinese mafia that catered to the sexually deviant. There were even rumors that she’d started working there, selling her body to strangers for the sheer thrill of being used and abused by men whose extreme perversions excluded them from the normal whorehouses.

  Lucy cavorted openly with the dregs of society, ostensibly to embarrass her husband, who she made no secret of loathing, but also to quench what was rumored to be a ravenous sexual appetite. She was described, by the psychiatrists who later examined her, as a wanton nymphomaniac. When she infected Harold with a case of syphilis, he beat her terribly and locked her in a chastity belt. That’s when Lucy had reportedly begun to poison her husband with mushrooms she’d foraged from the woods near their home.

  Over the course of several days, according to the news report, Lucy fed her poor husband poison mushrooms ground up in his food and even steeped in his tea. He died in terrific agony as his liver and kidneys shut down. It took him several tortuous days to finally expire. While she was poisoning him, Lucy kept her dying husband locked up in the attic and brought one of her lovers into their home to free her from the chastity belt and keep her company on her death watch. The coroner confirmed that Lucy had begun torturing her dying husband as he lay helpless. There were rope burns around his wrists and ankles from where she’d restrained him while she burned him with hydrochloric acid. There were burns over 60 percent of his body when his corpse was finally discovered, stuffed in a trunk in the attic.

  It was believed that Harold Pearson had managed one last act of vigor before finally succumbing to the amatoxin in the mushrooms, during which he’d escaped his bonds and taken his revenge on his wife’s lover, tearing him limb from limb with his bare hands. The mutilated corpse of Lucy’s lover had been found torn apart in Harold’s den just one day before Harold Pearson’s own body was discovered.

  The paper described Lucy’s lover as a local quadroon named Livingston Rousseau who was of mixed French and Negro blood. He was described as a comely young mulatto who had been known to woo white women and had been accused of pandering and prostitution. Lucy was believed to have made his acquaintance at one of the brothels she’d been known to frequent. Several local houses of ill repute catered to whites who preferred their meat dark or slightly tan. Livingston was reported to have moved into the Pearson house after Lucy’s husband had been so incapacitated by repeated poisoning tha
t he couldn’t protest. They had kept Lucy’s husband locked in a room in the attic, leaving him there to die while they fornicated freely in the man’s house, soiling the marital bed with sin. Mr. Pearson must have escaped his attic prison and discovered them in the act when he flew into a murderous fury and tore the man apart.

  Arrianne shuddered. Lucy was the name of the woman who had built the house, and Lucy was the name that had come to her when she was trying to think of a name for the puppy. Lucy had been a nymphomaniac, fornicating with bums and hobos, just like the women in the websites that kept popping up on her computer. The last article about Lucy Pearson talked about her trial and subsequent death sentence, and then there was a mention that her sentence had been overturned on appeal and she was found “Not guilty by reason of insanity” and was committed to an asylum. After being locked up for two decades, she was pronounced cured and released. After being let go, she made her way back to the house where she’d murdered her husband. There she took her own life. Journalists were uncharacteristically vague on the details, but it apparently involved some sort of sexual act.

  Arrianne scanned through several more newspaper reports about Lucy and Harold Pearson before stumbling upon something that caught her attention. Someone was auctioning off what they claimed was the diary of Lucy Pearson. Arrianne had to have it. It might help explain what—or “who”—had possessed her as she was beginning to suspect Lucy Pearson was not yet done getting her jollies and had been using Arrianne’s body to do it. Arrianne clicked on the auction site and put in a bid. She watched the site for most of the day, increasing her bid whenever anyone bid against her. The bidding was at $300 when she finally won. She hoped it was worth it, but she’d been prepared to go up to a thousand if she had to.

  By the time Arrianne finished bidding on the diary, Dickey and Lucy were sitting beside her, whimpering and whining. They were hungry and probably needed to go out again. Arrianne was happy to get out of the house. Something in that house smelled terrible. Besides, she needed to buy some dog food and didn’t want to be home when Chuck returned from work. She didn’t trust herself around him. There was no time for a repeat of last night. Getting that diary had become her most urgent priority. She had told the owner that she would pick it up herself. He only lived in the next county, an hour’s drive, and the mail would have taken two days. She couldn’t wait that long. A road trip might even help clear her head. Or so she hoped.

  Chapter Twelve - Wrath James White and Ryan Harding

  It had taken Arrianne less than an hour to reach the home of Wally Ochse. Wally’s “home” was a double-wide trailer that looked like it had barely survived the last tornado that whipped through town. The roof had been torn off and replaced with several sheets of corrugated metal. The wheels were gone. It sat directly on the ground, embedded in several inches of mud.

  A fence surrounded the trailer, and between the fence and Wally’s home was a maze of what could only be described as junk: broken Barbies, baby dolls, and weather-beaten, sun-bleached teddy bears; rusted bikes and automobile parts; broken furniture and cabinets; and appliances of all sorts, including old washing machines, dishwashers, gas ranges, televisions, stereo equipment, and old computers littered Wally’s front yard.

  Arrianne wondered if she had the right place. A skinny, wrinkled, pockmarked man in his early forties wearing a shoulder-length mullet, cut-off jeans that were frayed at the ends, flip-flops, and a wife beater with mustard stains on it stepped out of the trailer and met her at her car. From the backseat, Dickey snarled as the man approached.

  “It’s okay, boy. It’s okay.” Arrianne rubbed Dickey’s head and allowed him to lick her face before opening the door and stepping out.

  “Wally. Wally Ochse. You Aryan?”

  “Arrianne.”

  “Ain’t that what I said? Aryan?”

  “Yeah, Aryan. Close enough. Look, not to be rude, but I’m in a bit of a hurry. Can I get the diary please?”

  Wally spit a dank stream of brown tobacco and saliva onto an old piss-stained sofa and held out his hand. Arrianne smiled and turned her head away like she was looking for something behind her, trying to politely ignore his outstretched hand for fear of catching something from it that soap and water couldn’t remove.

  “If you don’t want to be rude, then don’t be. What’s your hurry? Can’t wait to get home and bump uglies with the hubby?”

  Arrianne didn’t know what “bump uglies” meant and didn’t have to. Wally punctuated the statement with a few pelvic thrusts to illustrate the colorful colloquialism. He leered at her openly, staring at her breasts like he was waiting for her to whip one out and offer it to him. Lately, it felt like everyone she met either wanted to fuck her or hurt her or both. She’d heard women say that before but had never felt it until recently. Now it awakened all her feminist ire, and it was a struggle to keep it in check. She had to remind herself that she was in the middle of nowhere with a strange man and that Chuck, or anyone else for that matter, didn’t have the slightest clue where she was. If things got ugly, she was on her own and would be for a very long time.

  “Do you have the diary?”

  “I got it, but you ain’t paid me yet. I only take cash … unless you got something you want to trade?” His gaze crawled over every inch of her skin like a bath full of leeches.

  Arrianne quickly reached into her purse and pulled out her wallet. She withdrew exactly $300 she’d gotten from the ATM prior to leaving the city. “I brought cash.”

  He reached for the money but she snatched it away and shoved it back in her purse. “The diary, if you don’t mind.”

  Wally smiled, and his teeth looked like he’d been subsisting on a diet of nothing but candy and meth for the last ten years, which was probably not far from the truth. His dental work had been torn up. The few teeth that remained, clinging stubbornly to his bleeding gums, had blackening holes in them the size of bullet wounds.

  Arrianne wondered if this was the type of man Lucy would have spread her legs for. The thought made her stomach threaten to revolt.

  Wally pulled his lips back together, thankfully hiding that orthodontic necropolis he called a mouth. “I got your diary. You stay right here, ’kay?”

  “I came all the way out here, didn’t I? I’m not going anywhere.”

  The words came out harsher than she’d intended. Wally glared at her, eyes narrowed, obviously not accustomed to having women sass him. He looked like he wanted to hit her, which would have likely led to much worse. Sometimes being an attractive woman was a severe disadvantage. Arrianne tried to discreetly fish in her purse for her pepper spray. There was a pistol in her glove compartment, but that seemed a mile away, and as brave as Dickey was, she didn’t think the old dog would be much help to her if Wally started getting frisky.

  Wally looked past her into the car, presumably to assess the degree of threat. He scoffed when he saw the old dog with the injured limb and the little puppy wagging its tail and yapping excitedly. Then Wally looked at the money gripped in Arrianne’s hand and that seemed to convince him to let the comment slide.

  “Be right back. Ya hear?”

  “I hear.”

  He walked back through that labyrinth of junk and into his trailer, leaving Arrianne alone just long enough to take the gun from the glove compartment, check to make sure all cylinders were loaded, and transfer it to her purse. The bulge was noticeable, but she didn’t care. Maybe the outline of the Remington .357 would be enough of a deterrent.

  Dickey and Lucy began barking and snarling as Wally came back out carrying an old, leather-bound book encased in a clear plastic slipcase. He obviously took care of things he thought might make him a profit far better than he did his own abode.

  “Here you go; that crazy bitch’s memoirs. Enjoy.”

  She turned it in her hands and looked at the name stamped into the leather. Lucy. “Do you mind my asking where you found this diary?”

  “The Pearson family still lived here up until ’
bout four or five years ago. They didn’t live in that house though. No Pearson done lived there since the seventies. Not since the last Pearson murder. Way back, his crazy niece, Margaret Pearson, murdered old man Pearson with poison mushrooms just like Lucy did in this here diary. I hear she used to whore around with niggers and kikes just like Lucy too. Naw, they built themselves another big mansion clear across town and rented out the old Pearson place to whoever was stupid enough to pay to live there. Then the Depression came and those rich assholes lost everything, had to sell it all and move. They had a big estate sale. I went up there out of curiosity, but they had everything priced so high like it was some fancy furniture boutique or something instead of a goddamn garage sale. I couldn’t afford none of their fancy furniture. But I saw this here diary and I … purchased it.”

  He grinned again, and this time Arrianne smelled the rot wafting out of Wally’s open pie-hole. It made her eyes water. She somehow doubted the man had purchased the diary. The Pearsons would have been smart enough to know what something like this was worth, and if they had everything else priced high and were desperate for money, they would have auctioned it off to collectors. Wally had probably gone to that estate sale and grabbed the one thing small enough to fit under his shirt.

  “You mind if I open it?”

  “Sure. Go ahead. I ain’t no liar. It’s her diary all right.”

  “I’m sure it is. I just want to check its condition,” Arrianne lied. She didn’t trust Wally as far as she could smell the man.

  Arrianne slipped off the plastic book cover and opened the diary to the first page. The handwriting inside was so neat it almost looked like calligraphy. It began with an entry from 1935.

  Dear Diary,

  What drudgery my life has become! Why did I ever marry this oppressive bore? He would have me spend my days among the gardens or in the house, ordering the servants about until day’s end. I should have defied my father and gone to university in Cambridge like other modern women. Now I am a slave to domesticity. My one joy is the freedom to read. I have discovered some positively scandalous French literature and have been devouring it in my spare time. At night, when my brutish husband takes me to bed, I try to pretend that he is a count or an abbey from one of de Sade’s tales, but the unimaginative lout refuses to play along. He is tired all the time and just wants to spill his seed in me as quickly as possible and shuffle off to bed. I cannot stand this!