by Beca Lewis
*******
Both Hank and Melvin slept until noon. Something neither of them ever did. However, they both knew that rest was one of the best recovery tools, and they needed every ounce of strength they could gather.
They both stumbled into the kitchen at the same time, noticed the clock, and without talking about it made sandwiches, grabbed a beer, and headed out to the picnic table.Hank broke the silence with the simple question, “Want to talk?”
Melvin stared at his beer for a minute before answering. “Yes, but not now. Let’s talk about the schedule for Emily’s hill. In fact, I would like to see it. Can we take a trip there? And I would like to see the bike trail.”
“Sure,” Hank said. “I’d like that. Let’s go to the hill first.”
“Okay,” Melvin said as he grabbed the last of his sandwich and stood up. “Let’s go.”
Startled, Hank laughed, grabbed his sandwich and headed to his truck. Melvin stopped at the house to get a few bottles of water and lock up. He never thought it necessary to do that before, but Ava had given him a scolding last summer when she found out he didn’t bother, so now he did it for her.
“Do you want to go through town or take the bumpy shortcut,” Hank asked.
“Give me some bumps!” Melvin answered, surprising even himself. “I’m on a mission of some sort, so I guess I’ll go with the flow, or in this case, the bumps.”
Hank looked at his friend and thought he must have done something right somewhere to have ended up with a friend like him. Melvin’s eyes always twinkled, and he never lost his patience, or ability to listen. “Melvin,” Hank said, “you are the man. Whatever you want, I’ll do it.”
Melvin reached his wrinkled and spotted hand out and touched Hank on the shoulder. Hank looked over and knew what Melvin was telling him. They smiled at each other, started laughing, and kept on laughing the whole way to Emily’s hill. Enjoying ever bump along the way. At some point, Melvin started saying, “Whee,” as they flew off the bumps, and when Hank joined him, they filled the cab of the truck with laughter.
“Now that is the perfect way to hide in the light.”
“Did you hear that?” Melvin asked Hank.
“Hear what?” Hank answered.
“Oh. Must have been Sally,” Melvin replied.
Hank didn’t need an explanation. He just kept laughing.
Fifty-Three
Craig thought maybe they had it all wrong, and he was going to prove it. Just because Joe knew Frank, Harold, and Grant when they were younger didn’t mean anything. Plus, there was nothing wrong with buying property out from a trust. People did it all the time.
As for all Joe’s assistants being dead, well all the records showed them as natural deaths. It was just a string of unfortunate circumstances. If you looked at it that way, Dr. Joe was the victim.
Then there was the case of not having any records for his business. Joe was old. He had been running his practice for a long time. Things get lost, floods happen. And as Dr. Joe readily admitted, he was a terrible record keeper.
As far as Craig was concerned, too many assumptions were being made. It was time for Joe to set the record straight. Craig intended to let Joe know that strange ideas were being floated around about him, and give Joe a chance to refute them.
Craig also knew that a search warrant was being issued, along with a request to dig up Joe’s wife. And that just proved Craig’s point. There was a grave.
So what if the papers that registered her death were missing? He would ask Joe for them, and that would clear that up.
He had texted Joe earlier to let him know he was coming. Joe texted back that he would have the coffee on. He was looking forward to seeing Craig, he said. He remembered some information about the commune that might be helpful.
Dr. Joe greeted Craig with a big hug, looking fit and spry. The house smelled like a good brew of coffee and a hint of lilac fragrance coming from the bush growing outside the open window. It was homey and welcoming, just like Dr. Joe.
They each poured themselves a cup of coffee and chatted about the beautiful Sunday morning. Craig followed Joe into his office with a smile on his face. Everything felt normal. He knew that the pieces weren’t pointing them in the right direction.
“So, young man,” Dr. Joe began. “You look like something is troubling you.”
Craig paused and put down his coffee, leaned forward and said, “Some people are confused right now. Some of them are my friends. In researching the bodies on the hill, you keep popping up. I think they are making a bunch of assumptions that don’t point to you, but to someone else. Perhaps, someone you might know.
“So I am here to get some help from you. And to let you know about these assumptions. The police are working on a search warrant right now. I’m sorry.”
“Oh dear, boy,” Joe said patting Craig on his knee. “I’ve been around long enough to have many charges leveled against me for the same reasons. I was a common factor in something that went wrong. None of them have been proven true. As for the search warrant, the judge is a friend of mine. Don’t tell anyone, but he gave me a heads up that he was issuing one for later today. It won’t be the first time. And as long as I live here, it won’t be the last.”
Craig gave a little a laugh and looked at Joe in amazement. “I see I have a lot to learn from you about letting things be.”
“Well, you might have to learn them from a long distance,” Joe said. “I plan on leaving as soon as possible. I know my patients are already comfortable with you, so you don’t need me here to convince them to use you as their doctor.”
“Of course, Joe,” Craig said. “I can handle it even though I will miss our talks. But is there a reason you want to go sooner?”
“Honestly, those bodies on the hill have disturbed me quite a bit,” Joe said. He paused and leaned back in his chair, as if afraid to say more.
“I think I need to tell you something I have been keeping to myself. I know I did wrong. I should have told you and the police when it happened.”
Again, Joe paused, and Craig took a deep breath afraid to hear what Joe was going to say.
“I knew those women,” Joe said. “It took me a little while to put it together. But I used to go up on the hill to teach a little self-healing, and basic first aid. It was a long time ago as you know. But as I thought back on that time, I realized those women were part of the group.
“That was a strange group. They were studying mind healing, which of course I am very interested in. Mind over matter kind of thing. A little woo-woo at the time, but now it seems to be part of the culture.
“Anyway, it was a small group of women. I think there were more than four, maybe eight or so? Sometimes when I went there to teach, I brought Harold with me. He did chores for them.
“Poor boy. I hope he didn’t have anything to do with those women’s deaths.” Joe paused and took a deep breath before continuing.
“I guess he wasn’t a boy anymore, was he? But to me he was always that boy I watched grow up. I couldn’t help feeling terrible when he got sick. Does anyone know how he died?”
“Not yet. The idea keeps floating around that Harold might have been poisoned, but so far nothing has been found.
“About the women,” Craig asked, switching the discussion back to the bodies. “Did you know them well? Didn’t you wonder where they went?” Craig asked.
“I did, actually. But Harold told me that everyone on the hill had packed up and left. They had only built a few A-Frame houses and hadn’t done that very well. The buildings started rotting away within a few years, so I had them cleared off the land. I loved looking out the window at that beautiful view. Just as I do now.”
They both looked out Joe’s office window at what everyone now called Emily’s hill. In the distance, Joe knew if he had
binoculars he would be able to make out the barn and the beginning of Emily’s dance deck. Joe would have had a perfect view of the commune when it was there. Of course, he would want to clear rotting homes off the land and let it return to nature.
Joe looked back at Craig.“By then, I had purchased the property from the trust. I dismantled the trust to make it easy to get to all the different pieces of land held within it. I realized that over time I would probably sell them off to fund my retirement. Which, as you know. I have done.
“So to answer your question, I’m leaving because I am tired of all of this. I am ready to lie in the sun, and maybe write a book.”
“What would the book be about, Joe?” Craig asked.
“I think I would like to take the idea of mind over matter to the next level. It’s an interesting subject. I’ve been studying it for a long time. Trying out ideas. If we can learn how to heal just using thought, think what could be done.”
Craig nodded. Joe answered all his questions, even ones he didn’t ask. It was almost as if he knew what was being used against him. Which, Craig mused, would be natural. Joe knew how the community worked, and how people thought. As Joe said, he has been around a long time, and this kind of awareness is something he had been studying and practicing his whole life.
Although Craig smiled at Joe and they continued to chat for another half hour or so, Craig couldn’t shake the feeling that Joe hadn’t told him everything, or perhaps Craig had forgotten to ask him something. It didn’t matter really. Sadly his friends were wrong. But Craig knew they would listen to reason. It was someone else. Now they needed to point their attention elsewhere.
As the talk petered out, Craig rose and shook Joe’s hand. “Thanks for everything,” he said. “When are you leaving?”
“If all goes well,” Joe said opening the front door, “tomorrow morning. No reason why it won’t go well. So it might be a while until I see you again. Perhaps a hug this time?”
As the two hugged in the open door, across the street, Sam was watching and thinking that things were not as they appeared to be.
Fifty-Four
Joe watched the last of the police leave his house. It had been a long day, and he was dead tired. Much more tired than he would ever admit to anyone. A lifetime of doing for others, now he had to ask himself if his work was done. Could he let himself rest? Had he done everything he had set out to do?
Joe thought back to the first time he had the feeling that he would do great things in the world.
He was only eight years old, and his mom was sick. She had been ill for almost a week, and instead of getting better, she was getting worse. He did his best to do all the things for his mom that she did for him when he was sick, and it always worked. He always got well. He couldn’t figure out why it wasn’t working for her. He was terrified that he would lose her.
The day she took sick had been a beautiful sunny day and the two of them had just come back from the park. They often went places together. Both of them never said why they didn’t stay home, but Joe thought it was probably because his dad was always angry. Whatever the reason, Joe was always happy to have his mother all to himself.
They had a special bond. They created a world for themselves where all things were good. And then that day she had stumbled in the door, held her head and said, “I need to lie down, Joe. I don’t feel well.”
He had helped her to her bed and then sat beside her holding her hand and singing little songs he made up, just as she did for him.
When his dad came home, he was angry that his wife was sick. Joe remembered him yelling that he wasn’t going to spend good money taking her to the doctor, she could damn well get better on her own.
After one day of not having his wife make him dinner, and wash his clothes, he left, slamming the door behind him after yelling that she was useless and that he wished Joe had never been born.
That week, Joe had lots of time to think while he held his mother’s hand, helped her to the bathroom, and got her water when she asked for it.
He didn’t know what else to do for her until he had an idea. What if he could convince her that she wasn’t sick? He had no idea why people got sick. He imagined that some monster came along and told them they didn’t feel well. That monster gave them reasons why it was true. That’s what he believed had happened to his mother.
Joe had never learned any other reason for people not feeling well so he decided that if that was true, he could be a superhero like the ones he saw in the comic books that his dad sometimes left lying around.
So Joe pretended he was a healing superhero and he was stronger and smarter than the monster. He started telling his mom that she wasn’t sick. She was strong. She was beautiful. She was his mom. She didn’t want to be sick. She wanted to play with him.
He sang those ideas to her. He said them to her over and over again. He talked aloud, and when he got tired of talking, he just spoke to her in his mind. He didn’t know how long he did this, but he had only fallen asleep once before his mom opened her eyes, and said she was hungry.
She was well. Joe never told her what he had done. But he knew even then that he had found power, and he was never going to let it go.
He practiced it everywhere. He said things to people to see if he could convince them of something. Even stuff he made up.
His ability to make people think what he wanted them to think and see what he wanted them to see, became more and more refined. It helped him raise him and his mom out of the cycle of poverty that his dad had put them into.
Joe decided to become a doctor once he learned what they were. He would learn the traditional and accepted ways of healing because it would provide the perfect cover to practice healing by suggestion. His suggestion. That would give him the license to heal, and people would love him for it.
By the time Joe reached high school, he had discovered that he could do more than heal people with his suggestions or make them do what he wanted them to do. He could also harm. It fascinated him. What thoughts would people accept as their own? How far could he take it?
Healing and harming became the same to him. The only thing that pleased him was watching the outcome of what he was doing. When he became a doctor, he allowed people to see the healing he did. It was expected. He just never told them how.
However, if he didn’t like someone, he used this art to hurt them. It all felt the same to him. It was the power that motivated him. It resulted in people loving him, and believing everything he said. It was a legacy that he was leaving. A legacy that no one was going to take away from him. Including the people that Grant had called the do-gooders.
Joe knew that they suspected what he was doing. And, unlike most other people, they were able to block his suggestions. Actually, everyone could if they were only paying attention and knew that there were people like him purposefully manipulating events and people just because they could.
Oh, yes. Joe had met them. They always recognized each other. Usually, it was because they would feel someone else inside their mind, and then realize that the man standing across the room was trying to make you do something. You’d stop him and give it right back. When that happened, they would merely nod at each other and go their own way. There was plenty of opportunity for all of these mental malpractitioners. It was an unwritten agreement to stay away.
Someday Joe thought that there would be someone who didn’t follow that rule, and then perhaps all of them would need to unite against him. He hoped it wasn’t while he was still alive. However, if there was someone like that around, he wasn’t too worried. Joe thought he would win anyway. He always did.
*******
The search at Dr. Joe’s house was revealing nothing. Joe was kind and gracious. He had even provided food and drinks for everyone. Some of the police took him up on it. No one expected to find anything. The jud
ge had been upset about being bothered on a Sunday. No one was happy. Did I really think this would work? Sam thought.
After all, it was Dr. Joe. What were they looking for anyway? Did they expect to find records that somehow he had killed four women and buried them on the hill? Murdered them in a way that no one knew how they had died? And got away with it for forty-five years? And to keep his secret, killed his wife and all his assistants without anyone knowing it was even murder? It sounded ridiculous, even to Sam.
Then there was the question of how would he have killed Harold? And why? And what about Frank and Lenny? How did he get to them? Assuming, once again, that it was Dr. Joe that did all of that. Without a single shred of evidence.
Sam wondered why they even bothered. There would be no records. Joe knew they were coming. If there were any evidence at all, it would have been destroyed. Every single thing they had that pointed to Dr. Joe as a killer was circumstantial. Not even that. It was a suspicion. A feeling. If there was anyone who knew what Joe had been doing or could do, they were dead. Yes, suspicious. However, not something that could convict him.
How do you find and convict someone that can manipulate what you see, feel, or think? Sam asked himself. Even if he had proof, was there anything he could do about it?
On the other hand, would it be better if left untouched? Joe was retired and moving away. Sam was beginning to think that maybe it would be best to let him go. Messing with someone like Dr. Joe could be more dangerous than anything he had ever done before.
However, it burned inside of Sam. He had always needed to speak out against injustice. If he could find a way to prove what had happened, he would do it, no matter how long it took. Nevertheless, for now maybe he needed to stop pursuing Joe. That might be the better way to protect his friends. Perhaps the council would be able to help him decide what to do next. Assuming he had a choice about what would happen next. Sam wasn’t so sure that he did. That’s what made it all so terrifying.
