by Ron Ripley
Harold felt a chill settle into his spine.
“He took the swamp path?” he asked, looking at John.
“Yes, sir,” John said. “We saw him right on it.”
Mrs. Henderson looked at Harold. “I’ll get on the party line, Harold,” she said, softly. “Will you wait?”
“No,” Harold said. His anger at the boy’s tardiness vanished, replaced by a cold fear that started eating at his belly. “But thank you for making the call.”
She nodded. “John,” she said, turning to her son, “take Mr. Philips to the swamp trail’s opening in the yard, but don’t you follow. I’ll want you and your brother in the kitchen.”
“Why, Mom?” he asked.
“We have a mess of hot coffee to make,” she sighed. “Now take him, please.”
“Lead the way,” Harold said, his voice rough and harsh. “I need to find my son.”
Bonus Scene Chapter 4: 6:00 PM, October 31st, 1945, The Swamp Trail
The sun was rapidly setting, and Harold wasn’t going to have much light to track his boy with.
But he was going to try.
He moved along the path quickly, following the deep indentations left by his son’s tennis shoes. The boy had been running, hell bent for leather. Afraid of being late for dinner.
Harold bit back the fear that this was his fault. That if he hadn’t been such a hard ass about being on time then the boy wouldn’t be lost.
The boy couldn’t be lost.
The boy’s trail stayed on the swamp’s own. It never deviated.
Within ten minutes, he was halfway through the swamp, the trail winding and cutting back, disappearing at times, but each time Harold found it. And Michael had as well. His footprints were always there.
A hundred yards from the end of the swamp, Harold came to a stop. Because Michael had come to a stop. His footprints were solid, shoulder length apart in the soft mud and grass. There hadn’t been a hard frost yet, so the boy’s marks were easy to spot.
Michael must have waited a few minutes. The footprints were deep. Then the tracks started again. But there was no rush to them this time. Now the tracks were normal, still sticking to the trail.
Harold swallowed drily, loosened his .45 and continued on.
Something wasn’t right.
The birds were going quiet. The frogs had lapsed into silence. Nothing rustled the leaves, and no animals made any sort of song which Harold could hear.
And Michael’s tracks led on.
Harold followed them until they emptied out into a large stretch of wooded land. In the woods, it was harder to track his son. The earth was soft, but there was a lot of ground cover. Broken branches and fallen leaves.
Still, though, Harold could see the trail his son had left.
A slight impression of a shoe. A bit of khaki string fluttering from a broken branch.
Harold followed them all, through the wooded lot and into the long grass of the Boylan House’s backyard.
Harold stood for a moment, right where the trees made the gradual transition to the grass. He could see Michael’s trail through the grass. Bent and broken stalks moved in a disturbingly straight line to the back door of the house.
Harold stared at it for a long time, and then he saw something.
A bit of light in the far, upper left-hand window. A light which grew brighter and stayed bright.
Harold ran for the door.
The light never moved. No voice called out.
Gripping the door latch, Harold ignored the sudden bite of cold that drilled into his hand as he touched the iron. He ripped the door open and raced into the house. Dust flew up from his feet, and he looked around frantically. On the far left wall was a set of stairs leading to the second floor and Harold was racing up them in a minute, his feet thundering in the painful silence of the house.
Yet when Harold reached the second floor, there was no sign of Michael or any sign of the light.
And no one could have gone anywhere.
The stairs were the only way that someone could have left. All of the windows were closed.
The dust on the floor was pristine, an unbroken blanket of light gray.
Harold shook with rage, fear and sickness. He held them all in, though. He kept them all tightly reined in.
A short distance off, he heard the sound of feet and men calling out to their dogs, the animals howling as they followed the trail of both Harold and his son.
Bonus Scene Chapter 5: 4:45 PM, September 21st, 1946, Monson
Harold poured himself another cup of coffee and finished it quickly. He didn’t have much left in the Thermos, but that didn’t matter.
That didn’t matter at all.
He looked at the back end of the Ford at the brake light that was conveniently broken.
No, Harold thought, it didn’t matter at all.
He finished off the last of the coffee, took a napkin out of his lunchbox and wiped the cup dry. He closed up the empty Thermos and screwed the cap down tightly. Harold put both the container and the napkin away, looked at the sandwich that was still wrapped up and shook his head.
He wasn’t hungry.
Was rarely hungry.
He closed the lunchbox and locked it down.
Picking up his .45 from the seat he once more made sure that the safety was off. Seconds would count. He felt that deep in his gut, that place that had kept him alive through months of combat.
And the door to city hall opened outwards. Three men walked out, each in their mid to late forties. Men who hadn’t fought in either war.
Men who felt no loyalty to anything but themselves.
They wore obviously expensive suits, carrying themselves well, their very postures speaking of quality upbringing and education. As a group, they advanced to the Ford and climbed in. The car started up, pulled away from the curb and drove down Main Street. Harold watched the Ford turn left onto Route 122 before starting up the cruiser. He shifted into gear and picked the .45 up, steering with this left hand.
Harold drove easily up the street, letting go of the steering wheel once to wave at Doc Mathias as the man walked out of Sean’s Bar. Doc, a little wobbly on his feet, waved back happily.
Signaling, Harold turned the cruiser left onto Route 122. Far ahead, he could see the Ford, watched the brake lights flash and was pleased to see that the left brake light was out.
Speeding up a little bit, Harold was soon only thirty yards behind the Ford. He could see the three men having some sort of animated discussion. They didn’t seem to notice him at all.
And why should they? Harold thought with a hard smile. They weren’t doing anything wrong. They weren’t even breaking the speed limit.
He followed them for a short way as they took a few turns. Eventually, they turned onto Meeting House Road and he passed by them, continuing up the road before backing into an abandoned logging road. He left the nose of the cruiser just a little visible. The people driving by would slow down and keep their heads straight, pretending that he wasn’t there. Those who did look would be those who knew him. They would think that he was either out of the car taking a piss, or looking again for signs of Michael.
Either way, no one would bother him.
Harold left the keys in the ignition and got out of the car. He shut the door, adjusted his grip on the .45 and started walking into the woods. There was a small game trail that he’d be able to find in the dark. The moon would be nearly full as well, and the leaf canopy wasn’t so thick as to blind him.
He kept a steady pace along the path.
The three lawyers came up once a quarter to inspect the house; to make sure that all was well with it, and to ensure that no one had put a fence around it either. They generally spent a good half an hour in the abomination.
More than enough time for Harold to get there.
Bonus Scene Chapter 6: 6:20 PM, October 31st, 1945, The Boylan House
Harold stood on the second floor of the Boylan House, his heart thunderi
ng and his stomach a twisted knot.
In the pristine evening air, he heard the men and the dogs. His friends and his neighbors. Men coming to search the swamp for his son. To search the woods for his son. A few would see the trail to the Boylan House. The old stories would leap to mind.
The old stories.
Everyone seemed to know someone who knew someone who had disappeared around the house. Vanished into the swamp, never to be seen again.
The swamp was a killer, they said. The swamp was dangerous.
But beneath those stories was another. That of some beast lurking in the shadows of the Boylan House.
Are they real? Harold suddenly thought. Are all of those nightmares actually real?
He knew what he had seen. Michael’s tracks leading directly to the back door. The door which had been unlocked, even for Harold.
Yet there had been no sign of his son. No sign at all, though a light had been lit on the second floor.
Of that, Harold could be sure. He knew what he had seen.
The men and dogs were getting closer, following the same trail that Harold had followed. The trail would lead them to the house, and then they would search around it, none except Harold would enter it. Harold knew this as surely as he knew that the sun would rise in the east and set in the west.
It wasn’t their son who had disappeared into the Boylan House.
Harold turned around and around, looking for some sort of sign of the light. Some sign of his son. He forced his hand to relax its grip upon the pistol.
Something cold whispered across the back of his neck, the faintest of touches, yet still Harold snapped around and he heard a soft, faint chuckle, as though the one he heard was far from him.
“Oh I hear you,” Harold growled.
The cold came back, raising the hair on his neck and arms.
“You do, don’t you,” the voice said. “I’m impressed. So very, very few men do. It’s only the boys, you know, who usually hear me.”
The voice moved to the left and Harold moved his head to follow it. The unknown speaker laughed gently, obviously pleased. Outside, Harold could hear men calling his name, scolding dogs that nipped at one another.
“Where is my son?” Harold demanded, his voice shaking. “Where the hell is my son?”
“Mm, yes, that delicate boy,” the voice said, purring from some place behind Harold. “Well, your son is with me,” the voice said, a silky tone drifting into its voice as it came to rest in front of Harold, “and he and I are going to have such a wonderful time.”
Screaming, Harold fired his .45.
Bonus Scene Chapter 7: 7:30 PM, October 31st, 1945, Harold’s House
Doc Mathias wasn’t too drunk to be able to administer a sedative to Martha, or pour a healthy glass of whiskey for Harold.
Toby Purvis put the glass in Harold’s hand and sat down across the table from him. Doc left the room to check on Martha, escorted by Mrs. Henderson, who had taken over the house with her two oldest boys.
“Drink it,” Toby said.
Mechanically, Harold obeyed the order, barely noticing the burn of the whiskey racing down his throat.
He drained his glass and set it on the table.
“I’m sorry,” Toby said.
Harold looked at him. “Why?” he managed to ask after a moment.
“Because I don’t think that they’re going to find Michael.”
That was the first honest statement that Harold had heard since the men had dragged him screaming, dry firing his emptied pistol, from the Boylan House.
“No?” Harold asked.
Toby took the glass from where it stood in front of Harold, opened the whiskey, poured another large drink for Harold and took a pull from the bottle before capping it. He slid the glass back to Harold.
Harold took a sip and said again, “No?”
Toby shook his head.
“Why not?” Harold asked, his throat tight with fear.
“When you were gone,” Toby said, “in ‘42, a boy from Hollis disappeared in the swamp.”
“So?” Harold said between clenched teeth, “what the hell does that have to do with Michael?”
“People don’t tell the whole story about that,” Toby said, looking uncomfortable. “And there are a few who do.”
“What are you talking about?” Harold asked, taking a larger drink.
“I was home, my ship had been shot out from under me,” Toby said, pulling at the cuff of his shirt, “and me and my cousins, we were out looking for fisher cats. The Hendersons had lost a few chickens. Same thing with the Halls up the road. Well, we were near the Boylan House, and it was October 28th.”
“October?” Harold asked.
Toby nodded. “Late October. We saw that boy, maybe sixteen, or seventeen. We learned, later on, that he was doing a march through the woods because he was getting ready to go down to the recruiter in Nashua. He wanted to make sure that he would do alright marching with the Army. Well,” Toby cleared his throat, “we were in the woods when we saw him walk out of the field across from the Boylan House. We figured he would go wide around it, but when he got across the road, he paused and looked to the house.”
“Why?”
“I don’t know for sure,” Toby said. “It looked like he heard something, something from the house.”
“You didn’t hear anything?” Harold asked.
“No,” Toby answered. “We didn’t hear a thing. Next, we knew that boy was making a bee-line for the front door of the Boylan House. We just sort of watched. You know, we’d never gone in. Never even heard of anybody going in.
“Well,” Toby continued, “when he got to the door, it opened, and we lost sight of him as he stepped in. Next thing we heard was the door slamming and a short, terrible scream.” Toby shook his head. “I’ve heard men like that scream a few times, Harold, and I know you have, too. It’s when they know that they’re dying. When they know that they’re dying badly.”
Harold nodded. He knew that sound too well. “Did you go up to the house?” he asked, looking at Toby.
“I couldn’t,” Toby said softly, lowering his eyes. “God help me, Harold, I couldn’t. There’s something in there, isn’t there?”
Harold waited until the man had raised his eyes once more before answering. “Yes, Toby,” he said, “there is. And I don’t know how to kill that damn thing.”
Bonus Scene Chapter 8: 5:05 PM, September 21st, 1946, The Boylan House
The Ford with the broken light was parked on the dirt road in front of the Boylan House when Harold came out of the trail and into the back yard of the house. Calmly, he walked around to the front, went up to the ancient door and gave it a solid knock that would have woken the dead.
A moment later, the door opened and a man with dark hair that was slicked back gave him a confused look. “Good evening,” he man said. “May I help you?”
Harold smiled pleasantly, “Yes, my name’s Harold Philips, I’m the Monson sheriff.”
The confused look slipped away, and the man smiled, “Ah, Sheriff Philips. We’ve heard nothing but good things about you. I’m Frederick Gunther. What can I do for you?”
“Well,” Harold said, “I’ve had a few complaints about a Ford driving recklessly and, quite frankly,” he said in a confidential tone, “I think that it’s a load of shit. But it was Mrs. Kenyon, the mayor’s wife who complained.”
Frederick nodded in understanding. “How can I help you with this?”
“I’d just like to speak to you about the driving so I can honestly say to her that I did.”
“Come in, Sheriff,” Frederick said, smiling and stepping back. “I wasn’t driving, my friend Charles was. And we wouldn’t want you to have to lie to the good mayor’s wife.”
“Thank you,” Harold smiled. “That would be greatly appreciated. The woman can sniff out a falsehood a mile away. I once told her that I’d speak to the Henderson boys about throwing rocks at the old barn on Route 122, and I didn’t. She knew it as
sure as if she had been standing beside me all day.”
“Yes,” Frederick said. “My mother was the same way. I thought that she could just tell if I was lying, but it turned out that she was unusually adept at discovering what was true and what was false in a person’s voice. I, however,” Frederick sighed in mock exaggeration, “did not receive that boon.”
Harold smiled and nodded, waiting as the man closed the door and then following him towards the stairs at the far right.
“My two colleagues are on the second floor,” Frederick said. “Evidently, someone fired a weapon in here just before winter, and we’re finally getting up to Monson to inspect it. It’s part of our job, physically inspecting the Boylan House on a yearly basis, or more, if necessary.”
“Yes,” Harold said, “I remember the incident. A father was distraught. His son had disappeared into the swamp.”
“A terrible place,” Frederick said. “Too many people die in places like that.”
“Yes, they do,” Harold agreed.
They reached the second floor and found Attorneys Gunther and O’Connor standing in front of one of the wooden walls, examining eight bullet holes.
“Gentlemen,” Frederick said, “this is Sheriff Philips of Monson. He has the unfortunate responsibility of scolding Charles for his driving.”
Charles was blonde, and he turned to look at Harold in surprise. “For my driving?”
“Yes,” Harold said apologetically, “the mayor’s wife. I have to.”
Charles smiled in understanding. “Quite alright, Sheriff.”
“Yes, she said that you were driving recklessly where the Henderson family lives, and seeing as how the Hendersons seem to have a new child every other weekend,” Harold sighed, “she would like it if you drove a little slower.”
“I am quite sorry,” Charles said formally, “please inform the Mayor’s esteemed wife that I shall drive accordingly.”
“Excellent,” Harold said. “Excellent.” He dropped his hand to the butt of his .45 and pulled the weapon, the false smile he had been wearing, vanished. “Get on the floor and on your goddamned knees!”
