“I hope you don’t mind me for prying,” Owen carefully started, “but what happened to that skull you purchased at the Turner estate auction?”
Chandler grinned. “I just now remember that you were one whose interest was captivated by that skull.”
“It’s a peculiar piece.”
“Indeed,” Chandler nodded, “and I have peculiar reasons to be obsessed with the thing. Come with me.”
Chandler flipped a switch hidden beneath the small kitchen’s counter, and air hissed from unseen seems before a panel slid open in the interior wall to reveal the chamber Owen suspected rested in the center of the Raymond estate.
A skylight provided ample illumination in the interior space after the panel closed once more when Owen followed Chandler into the chamber. Wooden masks carved in a hundred expressions of suffering and anguish hung upside-down upon the crowded walls. Owen admired the workmanship of the masks. His interest in the exotic and strange appreciated the varied woods displaying a medley of artistic styles. Owen easily recognized that deft hands had chiseled and carved each mask of moaning. But he couldn’t stare too long at those wooden faces before he imagined he too felt a sliver of the hurt those terrible, wooden faces conveyed. Owen closed his eyes to break his gaze at so many upside-down faces, and his ears filled with a mumbling of whispers and moans that Owen thought made the chamber more horrible.
“The skull in the center of the chamber is the last piece to complete my collection.” Satisfaction smoothed Chandler’s voice. “It took me a very long time to collect so many masks. I travelled so very far to find them all. But that skull there was always meant to be the centerpiece. It was so close to me, and I had to wait longer for it than anything else. But I waited long enough. I outlived my rivals to put that skull beneath that glass.”
Owen stared at that dark skull set upon a pedestal in the very center of the chamber and encased in glass. Though it had no lower jaw, Owen knew it grinned at him.
Owen closed his eyes as he realized how intently he gazed into the skull’s empty eye sockets. Once more, whispered moans of anguish and suffocated wails of suffering floated into his ears.
“All those masks hanging on the walls are screaming at the skull,” Owen opened his eyes and heard his voice tremble. “Those masks are pieces of that skull’s cage.”
Chandler nodded. “I knew you could appreciate what I’ve gathered into this chamber. You spend enough time chasing a collection like this, and you develop a sense to know who else can feel the influence when so many of these pieces are brought together. All who carved those masks believed those faces were enough to shelter them from ghosts.”
Owen knew well the ghosts Chandler Raymond feared. “Can the faces protect against curses?”
“They can on a couple of conditions,” Chandler answered. “First, one has to possess the item to which the curse has been bound. Then, one must surround that item with enough such masks all twisted upside-down.”
Owen peeked at the skull. “And so that skull does hold a curse?”
“A very terrible one, Mr. Masters.” Chandler paused to consider his words. “One that twists the soul. That is, if you’re one to put stock in such things.”
Owen felt grateful when his host displayed no interest to loiter in that inner chamber, and he was fast on Chandler’s heels as they returned to the first floor living room orbiting that hidden, inner chamber. Chandler again flipped a switch beneath the counter, and the panel slid once more shut.
“Are you a person who puts stock in curses, Mr. Raymond?”
Chandler’s eyebrow arched. “I’m surprised you have to ask me that after just viewing my collection. I’m sure you’ve heard all kinds of explanations for my decline in Flat Knob. People, especially the ignorant, think of so many things. They would all cower in their broken homes if they knew the truth. I could never overcome the powers that cursed me so many years ago.”
“Are the Turners responsible for that curse?”
Chandler’s face turned to stone. “What do you know of that family? Of that name?”
Owen feared he had pushed too far. “A guess, considering where you purchased that skull and how much you paid for it.”
Chandler’s eyes peered deeply into Owen’s. “You’re an observant man. No wonder Flat Knob hates you as much as it hates me.”
“Why would Homer Turner want to put a curse on you?”
“Because I took their place on top of the food chain,” Chandler snorted. “Attracting the kind of capital needed to build a plastics plant in Flat Knob was nearly impossible when I was a young man. Flat Knob was as far as removed from the hub of industry then as it remains now. The work force in those days was no more attractive than it remains today. Try selling a business plan for a plastics plant in the center of Flat Knob to any banker or investor. It wouldn’t take you very long until you came up against some very hard, brick walls.
“So I turned where I needed to turn for my seed money. The Turners were the only people in Flat Knob then with the kind of money and clout I needed to break ground for my plastics plant, and they didn’t earn that money through respectable means. I offered them my loyalty. Promised them a slice of the pie. I forced myself not to flinch when they called me ‘brother.’”
“And they gave you the money you needed?”
Chandler shook his head. “They did not. They just strung me along, pushing me into one shady errand after another. I lured the brothel girls trying to turn straight with whatever drugs those brothers supplied me. I ran heroin down from upstate. I helped forge all kinds of papers. Played a part in all kinds of cons. I knew my plastics plant was lost the moment I was caught, or the moment the Turners forced me to pull some ploy on Flat Knob that would cause me to be made. But I thought I needed the money. For a long while, I couldn’t figure out what to do.
“The Turners just pushed me too hard,” Chandler’s eyes glazed as he stared out of his home’s glass walls. “I delivered so many frightened girls to Yancy Turner then. The fathers of those girls would be waiting for me when I drove that black, Turner car up to their drive. Those fathers never said a word to stop any of it, and they’d push their daughters into the car when the girls cried. I just drove them all to Yancy Turner. He did his work in shadows where no one could see. He did his work in a place everyone else in Flat Knob could trick themselves into thinking never was. Yancy did his work, and I drove many a broken girl back to fathers, to family, and to boyfriends.
“I did it until I fell for one of those girls,” Chandler sighed. “To this day, I wonder if I truly fell for her, or if I just cracked after driving so many women out to Yancy Turner. I don’t know if it matters. I vowed to find a way to punish those Turners when I saw what was left of that girl when I helped her back into the car. I vowed I would drag all the Turners down. Maybe I thought it would somehow put her pieces back together.
“So I waited, and I planned. I made an anonymous tip, and federal agents killed Ulysses Turner in a drug raid. I whispered something into a zealot of a husband’s ear, and Hiram Turner bled to death in his brothel. I suggested to busted gamblers that Rawlins Turner fixed all of his basement casinos games, and an arsonist’s flames devoured that foul brother’s flesh. And Yancy was the easiest. I just threatened to name names, and all of those fathers who pushed their girls into my car grabbed hold of Yancy and lynched him from a massive, old tree. You can see that tree from where you’re standing, Mr. Masters.”
Owen held a breath as he followed Chandler’s pointing finger and gazed at the trees outside of the glass wall. He had failed to notice the tree. Owen guessed there had been too many others crowding around it. But Owen’s mind pulled it out of that tangle of wood after Chandler suggested the tree to him. It was a massive, wide oak. It must have been ancient. Yet Owen doubted the tree had bloomed green since the night the mob hung Yancy Turner from one of the oak’s strongest branches.
“I actually thought I did it for a broken girl,” Chandler sneered, “b
ut I did it for myself. I would’ve walked away if I saw those Turners ruined for that girl. But I didn’t. I only inserted myself into their vices. The Turners had corrupted my soul, and I so easily reaped the money of all the old Turner gambits. My plastics plant was no longer my dream. It became only a front. Just a way to hide how I truly gathered my wealth.”
Owen remembered the picture of that dark-haired woman in Mac Reynold’s photo album.
“Whatever happened to the girl?”
Chandler’s thin and old shoulders fell. “I promised to marry her. But I only strung her along just as the Turners strung me along. I was too far lost. I never wanted to mend her. I only wanted to possess her before tossing her away. I’m sure she waited as long as she could before she sent a bullet through her brain.
“I often wonder if the Turners ruined me, or if I was ruined well before I met any of those brothers,” Chandler whispered. “That girl killed herself, and yet to this day, my only regret is not realizing that those Turner brothers had another of their kin in Flat Knob. By the time I knew, Homer Turner had his curse twisted all over me, pulling me down to finish the damnation the rest of his kin had started. I would drive to town and just stare through his home’s front window each night upon that dark skull while Homer Turner just smiled at me. I know that skull was the source of all of my ruin. I waited so long, but I have that skull now. I’ve trapped it in my cage.”
For a moment, Owen considered informing his host about that camera at that very moment still slung around his neck, about the shadows he had summoned in those black and white photographs, about his suspicions that those risen brothers had followed him to Mr. Raymond’s estate. Though he knew the Turners still worked for a revenge that placed his host in dire jeopardy, Owen remained silent. He possessed no desire to be anyone’s savior.
“Forgive me,” Chandler turned away from the glass. “I’m an old man who loses himself in old thoughts he can hardly any longer distinguish from memory and dream. It’s poor manners for a host to spook his guest with talk of ghosts and curses at nightfall. You must think me, if not mad, then at least a crazy eccentric. I hope you can forgive an old man for his charms he keeps in the center of his home.”
Owen soon excused himself to his upstairs chamber. He set the camera upon the nightstand and gave himself to the dark. He was too frightened to look out of the glass walls into the surrounding woods, too frightened to see the faces Owen knew lurked within those shadows. So Owen turned away and did his best to ignore the anguished wailing he heard rising from the center of that home whenever he closed his eyes.
* * * * *
Chapter 14 – A Swarm of Shadows
Once more, the clicking of that camera’s shutter woke Owen from fragmented sleep. Owen instinctively slung the camera around his neck as he stumbled out of bed, the floor cold to Owen’s naked toes before he slid his feet into a ready pair of shoes.
Strange shadows stretched upon the floor and inner walls in unnatural proportions that failed to match the light penetrating the exterior, glass walls. The shadows darted about the hallway, fluttered up and down the stairs. Though his eyes were no longer closed, Owen still heard the anguished wails and moans that had shrieked through his dreams. He had known so much fear since first peeking at that skull, since bringing that camera home. Yet the fear that clutched him was more powerful than any Owen had before experienced. It controlled him. It pushed him down the stairs leading into the first floor’s main room. It willed his hands to lift that camera around his neck. It guided Owen to center that viewfinder upon the shadows swirling in Mr. Raymond’s home.
Voices spoke above the anguished moans filling Owen’s mind. Those voices belonged to none of the upside-down masks gathered in that inner chamber. Those voices belonged to the Turners, and they promised Owen that it all would belong to him, that a simple flip of that switch hidden beneath the kitchen counter would allow Owen to trade places with his host.
The camera clicked over and again of its own accord as Owen reached for that switch. He didn’t doubt the camera would find the photograph it desired. Owen knew he had no need to twist any of the camera’s dials, or to peek through the camera’s viewfinder. He had only delivered the camera where it needed to be. The shutter would click according to its own mind.
That secret panel to the home’s inner chamber hissed and opened. In the moment before Chandler Raymond could draw the breath to scream, the shadows gathered into a swarm and rushed into the secret room. Owen swooned to his knees as all those upside-down, wooden faces screamed in agony and fear. But their pained expressions could do nothing as that swarm of shadow constricted upon its prey, pulling Chandler Raymond into the main room in a cocoon of blind dark. Owen realized that the screaming victim trapped in the middle of so much shadow could not see how his guest had betrayed him. Owen knew the shadows had again rewarded him by saving him from such shame.
Through all the noise crowding his mind, Owen never heard a single dog howl.
A panel of glass wall exploded outwards towards the woods. The camera tugged, and Owen followed the dark swarm into the barren trees. Thorns and brambles scratched at his face. Limbs cracked and snapped as they tried to entangle the camera cord slung around Owen’s neck. He pushed through a last, tight wall of trees and tripped into a clearing, at the center of which waited that massive oak tree from which Yancy Turner had swayed.
The shadows swirled about the tree, a cloud of buzzing, stinging hate that betrayed to Owen only a glimpse of a flaying and crying Chandler Raymond before lifting the body into the tree’s high branches. Owen heard a short, choked scream a fraction of second before the shadows abandoned their weight and let Mr. Raymond drop through that oak’s wide canopy. Owen heard the neck pop as a rope jerked the spine before that body reached the ground. The legs twitched. The woods were silent as Owen stared upon Mr. Raymond’s corpse swinging from a wide limb.
Owen didn’t resist the urge. He pointed the camera and clicked.
* * * * *
Chapter 15 – A New Monster
Hardly more than a month passed before Owen called the old Raymond estate home.
Just as Mr. Raymond hinted, the county school district cut Owen a very large compensation check to avoid lengthy and embarrassing litigation concerning the damages the district helped inflict on Owen’s career and reputation. Owen thought that had he been more patient that he may have been able to twist more out of the school. But the check had held enough numbers to give Owen more than enough funds to purchase Chandler Raymond’s home when the glass, modern building arrived upon the auction block. Owen had no reason to doubt that the remaining funds would provide for a very comfortable life for many years to follow.
Flat Knob hated him, would always hate him. Yet the sentiment no longer bothered Owen in the least. Rumors spread that Chandler Raymond had died at Owen Masters’ hand, and the fantasies of such violence had a strange effect of dispelling the ill will the village of Flat Knob had expressed towards Mr. Raymond during most of the man’s lifetime. While the police and the homicide investigators could find scant evidence to ever convict Owen of Chandler Raymond’s murder in court, they also found scant evidence to prove Owen’s innocence. Thus the rumors exploded about Flat Knob that cemented Owen Masters as the village’s newest incarnation of monster.
Owen didn’t mind playing the part of the boogieman at all. He knew that such a role in Flat Knob set him atop the food chain.
Nor did Owen fear that anyone from town would intrude upon his new estate with any aim to set him and his property to flame. For he owned all of Chandler Raymond’s dogs, as well as those sinister charms held in that innermost chamber.
It was into that chamber that Owen Masters retreated. He thought it a room as fine as any in which to waste away the years chained to a town such as Flat Knob. And he knew those shadows that fluttered about his home, those darks wisps of Turners whom he had summoned with a simple camera, would continue to protect him as long as he snapped a photograp
h of whatever haunt they craved to visit.
* * * * *
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About the Writer
Brian S. Wheeler calls Hillsboro, Illinois home, a town of roughly 6,000 in the middle of the flatland. He grew up in Carlyle, Illinois, a community less than an hour away from Hillsboro, where he spent a good amount of his childhood playing wiffle ball and tinkering on his computer. The rural Midwest inspires much of Brian's work, and he hopes any connections readers might make between his fiction and the places and people he has had the pleasure to know are positive.
Brian earned a degree in English from Eastern Illinois University in Charleston, Illinois. He has taught high school English and courses in composition and creative writing. Imagination has been one of Brian's steadfast companions since childhood, and he dreams of creating worlds filled with inspiration and characters touched by magic.
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