The Journal of Edwin Hale (Silver Thorn Book 1)

by Gene Baker

  On his infrequent visits to Janelle in the hospital, he played these and other songs for her. He knew what her favorites were because, when played, a hardly noticeable lifting of the corners of her lips would occur. In his mind, it had to have been a smile elicited by the music recalling their time together. Each visit to the hospital, he held her hand and talked to her while the tunes were in the background of a one-sided conversation. He also sat with his mother and Penny in the chapel and prayed for her recovery, but it was all to no avail. So now he played “Janelle’s Music” for the small gathering in that same chapel. He didn’t even notice the cold, wax-like feel of her hands as he placed his over them. Not even when he bent over and planted one last kiss on her lips and a single tear dropped from his eye and onto her cheek. Edwin knew she was finally at peace in a place far away from where he would have to spend the rest of his life without her. And that made him feel a tiny bit better.

  ***

  The fifty dollars that Mrs. Baldwin had paid Cody for his contribution to the history of the Hale House was virtually burning a hole in his pocket. He knew exactly what he was going to do with it when he and Harley arrived in town. Pa’s Grill would be the perfect place for an unofficial first date.

  “We can coast downhill from here!” he shouted to the girl on her bike next to him. Officially, the pair was to meet with Cody’s great-grandmother, Odette. She was the only person still alive that had grown up with Edwin Hale and would be happy to talk to them. At seventy-five years of age and widowed many years before, Odette Taylor had not had many visitors. Her small shotgun-style house was virtually hidden from view by the tall wax leaf hedges that surrounded it. Only Cody came by every-so-often to look in on her and do some work in her yard. When he called and told her the reason that he was coming over, and that the girl who had moved into the Hale mansion would be with him, Odette was thrilled. She put on her best dress and made cookies.

  As the two youngsters came to a stop in front of Odette’s house, Cody leaned close to Harley.

  “Before we go in, you need to know that Mee Mee had a stroke a few years back and not everything she says will make sense,” he whispered.

  Odette spread the black and white crime scene photographs out on her table.

  “These I got from my father, Doctor Lewis, after he died, and I’ve kept them hidden away all these years.”

  “I really appreciate you bringing them out now, Mrs. Taylor,” Harley said as she took one of the pictures in particular off of the table.

  “That there is the last picture of Edwin Hale, his body anyway, as he was when the cops found him,” the elderly woman said as she quivered, trying to hold back tears. Cody looked over Harley’s shoulder.

  “Why is it all blurry?” he asked. “You can’t see anything.”

  “Don’t know why,” Odette answered. “The negatives looked like that too.”

  Harley noticed a single tear sneak past the woman’s emotional defenses.

  “You really cared about him, didn’t you, Miss Odette?” she asked. Smiling at the memories that had been brought to the fore, Cody’s Mee Mee replied.

  “He was such a sweet boy. And a naturally good kisser, too!”

  “TMI, Mee Mee!” Cody laughed.

  “Well . . . he was!” the woman grinned slyly.

  Harley carefully hid her eyes as she noticed Odette’s glow waver between steely grey and dark blue. Harley decided to try a different line of questioning.

  “When was the last time you saw him, Mrs. Taylor?”

  “It was the night before . . . at the theater. He was with that girl. She was nice enough, I guess, but a little stand-offish.”

  Harley smiled broadly.

  “You were jealous of her weren’t you?”

  “Hell yeah!” the woman declared loudly. “That mean ole son-of-a-bitch Edgel Hale kept Eddie and Penny separated from us townies. His kids were too good to associate with us. I guess he got his comeuppance sure enough!”

  “Do you know what that girl’s name was?”

  “Um . . . I think it was . . . oh yeah, it was Mary Lee Anderson. The cops put out an all points on her, but no one ever saw her again after that night.”

  MVA. Harley thought about the carving on the attic rafter.

  “Was she nice?”

  “Yup, sure was. I often wonder whatever happened to her. You could sure tell she was head-over-heels for that boy, and him for her! They musta snuck out to be with each other, because there was no way they coulda been together otherwise.”

  “Why do you say that?”

  “Eddie’s daddy wouldn’t have gone along with his son courtin’ a sickly girl like that!”

  “Whatta you mean ‘sickly’, Mee Mee?” Cody asked before Harley could.

  “She was a very pretty girl and all. Long black hair, pretty face, and she filled out that blouse she was wearing pretty good for her age. Cody, your Great-Granddaddy Mark noticed it too! She was just so thin and pale lookin.’”

  Harley laughed.

  “Leave it to a man to fixate on that sort of thing!”

  Cody crossed his arms and huffed.

  “Can we move on here?”

  Watching the boy as he stood up to look out the window, Harley dropped her smile as she continued her questions.

  “That was the night before . . . Edwin did what he did?”

  There was a long pause before Odette’s response, which coincided with her aura turning a deep blue.

  “Yeah, the night before he killed his dad and Bobby.”

  Cody tapped Harley on her shoulder and passed a photograph of a girl wrapped in a Sheriff’s Department blanket.

  “Miss Odette, do you know what happened to Penelope Hale?” Harley asked as the image of intense sadness and shock she held in her hand reached through her eyes and touched her soul. The elderly lady bent over and when she rose back up, she placed a thick, ragged, and worn manila file folder on the table.

  “She was placed in a home for unwed mothers run by Catholic nuns. She died there nine months later in childbirth.”

  Harley felt as if she lost her breath and couldn’t express the shock she felt. Cody didn’t have that problem.

  “Holy shit!” And then he quickly apologized. “Sorry, ladies, I said it without thinking.”

  Odette was too busy exchanging knowing looks with Harley to notice the expletive. She answered the girl’s next question without being asked.

  “It was a little boy and he mercifully passed a few hours after Penny. Mother and child were buried next to Annie.”

  “Whose…?” Harley stuttered.

  “Edgel Hale’s.”

  “That is all kinds of messed up!” Cody shouted.

  After a minute of suffocating silence, Odette carefully opened up the file and removed a small piece of aged paper.

  “Mark’s older brother, Martin, was a deputy at that time, and when he passed, he let me have this file. It’s everything the investigation found.” After she unfolded the note she had taken aside, she handed it to Harley. “This was found tacked to the front door of the hospital. You can have all of it, I ain’t got no need for it all anymore.”

  My Dearest Penny,

  Please do not fear for me, for I will return. You might not recognize my new incarnation, but you will know it's me. I will be in the flutter of featherless wings outside your window on a silent, moonless night. My presence revealed in the swirl of the fog not caused by your own passage. You will glimpse my shadow out of the corner of your eye as it disappears when you turn to look at it directly. You will feel my hand as it caresses your beautiful, loving heart and leaves behind warm memories where hopes and dreams have gone to die.

  You are the best sister anyone could have and I will love you forever,

  Edwin

  “Someone was playing a sick joke on that poor girl!” Cody said loudly after reading over Harley’s shoulder. Odette lifted a single eyebrow and turned her head in Cody’s direction.

  “That is wh
at most people thought until one of Edwin’s teachers, who Marty was dating at the time, showed him a paper Eddie had written when he was still very much alive. He took it, years later, to a friend at the FBI. They analyzed it and came to the conclusion in an official report, that it was exactly the same handwriting.”

  “He could have written it before he died.” Harley’s voice was almost a whisper. Odette shook her head slowly.

  “He could have, but . . . ”

  Harley’s voice was only a few decibels higher than it had previously been.

  “But what, Mrs. Taylor?”

  “Well . . . I just remember that Edwin’s body disappeared from the morgue and was never seen again, so . . . there are some who think that he is still alive.”

  Pa’s Grill was probably the single most important building in the small, downtrodden town of Silver Thorn. The new owners had restored the three-quarters of a century old diner and had gone to great pains to present it as it was in its 1950s heyday, right down to the fully restored 1952 Seeburg jukebox that had been relegated to a cobweb and dust filled barn in 1970. Cody chose to play “Sh-boom” by the Crew Cuts while he and Harley waited for their meal.

  “It’s from 1954, and I like to think that maybe Edwin and that Mary girl had been here and listened to it,” he explained as he sat down in the booth across from Harley. The girl he had addressed was too involved pondering the notes and pictures in front of her to respond to Cody except with a muffled, “Mmhmm.” After a few moments, Harley looked up at the nervous boy across the table from her.

  “What’s the deal with The Blue Light Cemetery?”

  Cody went wide-eyed and spoke quietly as he looked around the room as if to see if anyone else had heard the question.

  “Don’t even think about going out there! That place is dangerous as Hell!”

  Seeming to ignore the warning, Harley continued.

  “Well, what makes it so dangerous? Are you afraid of the ghosts of the dead buried there?”

  “It ain’t no ghost that you have to worry about out there. It’s where druggies hang out to meet and smoke and shoot up.” Pausing long enough for the girl serving their food to complete her task and leave, Cody continued. “A lot of people have disappeared out there too. Never to be seen or heard from again.”

  Harley narrowed her eyes.

  “Well then, why do they call it ‘Blue Light’?”

  Cody sat back and exhaled a heavy sigh of exasperation.

  “You ain’t payin’ a bit of attention to what I just said, are you?”

  “Sure I am! Just moving on, that’s all.”

  Cody fumbled with the salt shaker.

  “Okay. The reason it is called the Blue Light Cemetery is because blue balls of light have been seen moving through it and the woods around it at night.”

  “Anybody know what they are?”

  “Of course most folks say it’s ghosts, but the most likely thing is some kind of glowing gas from the rotting plants in the swamp near there. On foggy nights, you could probably see them sometimes from the front porch of the house off to the northeast.”

  “In the same direction as the churchyard where Annie and Penny are buried,” Harley observed. “It would be a shortcut through the BLC to get to it. It should not be too dangerous to go there during the day and we still have a few hours left before sundown.”

  “Are you serious?”

  “Serious as a heart attack!”

  Cody’s shoulders fell and he sighed so loudly, it almost sounded painful.

  “Even if we left right now, at full speed, we couldn’t get there before night. Besides, I promised your mom that I would take care of you and get you back home safe and sound before dark.”

  “This weekend then?”

  “I’ll call ya early in the morning on Saturday and let ya know if I can get away.” Cody mumbled with a look of abject surrender. Then, seeing the sly smile spread across Harley’s face, Cody added, “And I want you to promise me that you won’t go out there without me, no matter what!”

  “You got it!” Harley agreed while looking at the burger and fries on the plate in front of her. Cody noticed how the young Miss Baldwin turned up her cute little nose at the meal before her.

  “You were so involved in those papers Mee Mee gave you that I went ahead and ordered for you. Did I do something wrong?”

  The girl managed a slight smile and looks up at her companion across the table from her.

  “It’s okay, you didn’t know. Mom and I are vegetarians,” she said quietly.

  “Really? You’ve never eaten meat?”

  “I tried it once. When the neighbors had a party and grilled some steaks. Their son kind of liked me, so he offered me a piece off his plate, and I put in my mouth. It hadn’t been there a second when I tasted sadness . . . fear . . . and I threw up so hard that blood started coming out. Haven’t done it since.”

  “I guess that would be a good reason to have a meatless diet.”

  Harley dropped her smile and grumbled.

  “You haven’t got a clue!”

  “What? A clue to what?”

  “How I would give anything to just be normal!”

  “You’re not normal?”

  “Normal people eat meat, right?”

  Cody shrugged his shoulders.

  “Not necessarily. Lots of really great people are vegetarians. Mahatma Gandhi, for instance.”

  “Gandhi?” Harley raised a single eyebrow of incredulity.

  “Yeah, and others.”

  “Well, if it was just the meatless thing . . .”

  “I haven’t known you and your mom long, but I seriously believe that you could be anything you want to be. Including normal.”

  “I guess it all depends on what your definition of normal is.”

  Cody looked at their plates then turned his attention to the waitress behind the counter.

  “Hey, Crystal, these taters are fried in vegetable oil, right?”

  “Peanut oil,” the owner’s daughter said, almost inaudibly. Cody turned back to Harley, who had a knowing smile stretched across her face.

  “There, ya see? I’ll trade my fries for your burger.”

  ***

  July 23, 1952

  Today was a good day. Mother, me and Penny went shopping for new school clothes. We had a lot of fun. Mother says we are growing so fast that we will soon outgrow clothes we bought today. While we were in town we met Howard Grant. Father had given him some money to buy tools since he is going to be our gardener. Howard lives in the old caretaker house and sometimes works for the county. Since his house is near the blue light graveyard I asked him if he was afraid. He said that the dead did not bother him. That it was the living he had trouble with. He seems to be very nice.

  Edwin immediately took a strong liking to Howard Grant. On the outside, he appeared very similar to the farmers that came to town monthly for supplies. A sweat-stained cowboy hat creased in the middle sat atop his head. Faded denim bib overalls, round toe work boots, and long-sleeved red flannel shirt buttoned all the way to the top. Most of his face was hidden behind a full beard that was neatly shaped and trimmed, brown, with streaks of grey. Annie noticed the man as he was loading his World War II era Jeep with gardening supplies at the back of the Ag store. From Edgel’s description, she was fairly certain that he was the man hired to replace the deceased previous gardener, Mister Hull. She wanted to make sure of it however, and stepped quickly across the street with her children in tow.

  “Hello there, sir! Are you Mister Grant?”

  The tall, muscular man lifted his hat off his head with his left hand and placed it over his chest.

  “Yes, Madam. Howard Grant at your service,” he answered with a slight, gentlemanly bow. Taken aback by the chivalrous gesture she had not seen since she was a small girl in Prague, Annie automatically held out her hand towards Grant. A calloused and weathered palm was placed under hers and the touch of it sent a childish thrill through the woman.


  “I am glad to meet you sir. I am Anezka Hale, and these are my children, Edwin and Penelope.”

  Nodding his head in the direction of Penny as she moved to put her mother between herself and the stranger, Howard said to her, “Very honored to meet you little lady.” After replacing his hat, Grant held out the same hand he had presented to Anezka and turned it sideways towards Edwin. “Young Master Hale, it is an honor to meet you as well.”

  Eddie was used to people showing him such deference because of the elevated station of his father in the community. The genuineness of the warm and firm handshake he received from Mister Howard, however, was unquestionably different.

  “Might I have the distinction of treating the Hale family to lunch? I understand that the burgers and fries at that restaurant down the street are the best around!” Howard asked with a twinkle in his dark eyes. It capped off a perfect day when Edwin’s mother graciously accepted the invitation.

  Walter “Walt” Smith had seen a lot of strange things in his time as owner of Pa’s Grill. Nothing before that time, however, could have prepared him for the sight of Edgel Hale’s wife and kids walking in accompanied by the scruffy, yet intimidating, stranger. He almost acted on the brief thought to slap himself out of the weird dream he was apparently having. Owner and patrons alike stopped eating in mid-bite and talking in mid-sentence as the sight stunned them. They barely were able to physically and mentally pick up where they left off when the tension was broken by the big man stepping to the soda bar to place his orders. Annie Hale refused to let the stares and whispers from the other people in the restaurant dampen her absolute joy of the moment. It was as if she and her children had been transported to another world. A place where people could be themselves and not have to worry about appearances. Anezka had to restrain herself from laughing as she scolded Edwin for teasing Penelope. Her daughter had lifted one of the strange slices of fried potato and was examining it. Mister Grant noticed the little girl’s quandary. Still holding the ketchup bottle after slathering his own food with the contents, he offered it to her.