Billy Whistler

by Bill Thompson

  In a remarkably short time, he had skyrocketed to fame as a TV personality. Wherever he traveled, people stopped to ask for an autograph or a selfie. His fans called him the ghost hunter, and publicity for the Bayou Hauntings series portrayed him as a stellar investigative reporter with a bright future.

  He’d fallen for his own hype. He wanted to be all those things, and he confessed to himself that he loved every minute of his newfound stardom. Yes, he’d made amazing discoveries that proved the paranormal to be as real as the things we take for granted, but this time he’d gone way off course. Not every old graveyard yielded paranormal activity. The Sons of Jehovah was a cult with bizarre rituals and practices, but nothing more.

  Am I missing something? I thought I’d find answers here — the cult’s secrets, a clue about Billy Whistler, and perhaps even more — but this is just a regular cemetery. Decades of intermarriage between close relatives has spawned people the Sons of Jehovah call the Strange Ones, but there’s nothing eerie about that. I’ve wasted enormous effort on a wild-goose chase.

  The great Landry Drake had failed. Failure was no stranger earlier in his life, but it seemed bitter and dark now. He smugly talked his boss into this project without doing enough research. Other people made mistakes, not the infallible Landry Drake. But he wasn’t infallible, and now he stood in a ghost town that promised to take him down a notch or two.

  Part of him wanted to pull the plug now, pack up the equipment, fire the laborers, and walk away. But only a few grids remained. It wouldn’t cost much more to go all the way. After this he might write a history of Asher Cemetery. It would be a far cry from the Bayou Hauntings, but perhaps that would bring an overambitious man back to reality.

  He would finish this project and then he’d take Cate away for a long weekend. She would help him assess things and decide what to do next. Willing himself to concentrate on the project instead of his own thoughts and fears, he returned to the cemetery.

  The diggers worked in grid square forty-six, and only three remained. So far this morning they had unearthed three bodies — two of them Strange Ones — and now they moved to the next grave. The medical examiner had time for only one more body today. Regardless of what turned up, everything would end tomorrow.

  Filled with melancholy, he watched the crew work and thought about his incredible journey in just twenty-nine years. He might get a job in Galveston to be closer to Cate. That would be one positive thing out of the mess he’d created.

  “Landry! Landry, you gotta see this!”

  He snapped out of his despondency and ran to Phil, who knelt over a headstone. He did that with every grave marker, getting a good shot before they moved it and unearthed what, if anything, lay beneath.

  “Look at this! This is different from anything we’ve turned up.”

  You have no idea, thought the man in the forest who watched them.

  This stone bore the first complete date they’d come across, and the words set it apart from the rest.

  666

  Son of the Devil

  May 26, 1880

  A little light-headed, Landry knelt and ran his fingers over the stone. This grave dated to the night this all began. Supposedly several cult members died, but this one had been no friend. This was a person so despised by the Sons of Jehovah that his grave marker called him the devil’s own son.

  Em said they’d caught the worst vigilante and hanged him that night. Could this be his grave? Given the inscription, he could think of no other explanation.

  Like many of the others, the coffin lid had rotted away. The workers removed the body — most of its exposed flesh had rotted away or been eaten by worms, but there were remnants of a black beard and mustache. After so many years, he still wore a flannel shirt, heavy denim overalls and Western-style boots.

  The medical examiner found the clothes interesting. “Of all the cadavers, this is the only one wearing store-bought stuff,” he said. “The pants even still have a label.” He finished examining the bodies from this morning and turned to this peculiar one.

  The work crew moved to the next grid and brushed away a stone inscribed Justice, 1890. Here lay another odd stone, next to the Son of the Devil. The excited crew opened the grave and found the body of a man dressed in similar clothes to the last corpse.

  All those bodies, and only two wearing store-bought clothes.

  This would be the last body for today; the examiner wanted more time on these two. Two grid squares remained, and if nothing unusual happened, they’d wrap things up at Asher tomorrow morning.

  The doctor finished and called the group together. Long since accustomed to viewing dead bodies, they gathered close to hear him explain about the “666” body.

  “In addition to the store-bought clothes, there are two significant things about the body. First, look at these.” He pointed to grooves in the neck. “Ligature marks, consistent with being hanged. I can’t say that caused his death, but whatever killed him, he had a rope around his neck at some point.

  “Here’s the other interesting thing. If he didn’t die from hanging, this likely killed him.” He pointed to the eyes. “See the damage around the eye sockets? In my opinion someone gouged his eyes out with a stick.”

  Holy shit, Landry thought. There’s no doubt who this is. The examiner’s next words confirmed it.

  “I found this in his pocket,” he said, handing Landry an 1846 ten-dollar gold piece with the letters AWD carved into the reverse. Both sides of the coin were worn almost smooth.

  An exhilarating high replaced the despondency that had engulfed Landry less than an hour ago. Landry pulled out a notebook, thumbed through pages of research notes, and read several entries before he spoke to the group.

  He knew who AWD was, and he understood why his gravestone said “666 — Son of the Devil.” He’d been the only vigilante captured by the cult that night. Lee said they’d hanged him while his friends rowed away. Em revealed the man they lynched had poked out a girl’s eyes. The body itself proved someone gave him a taste of his own medicine.

  They had unearthed the corpse of Auguste Dauphin, a blacksmith and one of those who torched Asher on May 26, 1880. From his research, he recalled that Auguste was thirty-four and therefore born in 1846. Over many yearsof rubbing it, the gold good-luck coin he always carried in his pocket had worn smooth.

  “He would have been the most hated man in the cult’s history,” Landry said. “The ones I spoke with who knew Auguste said he did awful things that night. Those things earned him the title ‘Son of the Devil’ and the number 666 — the Mark of the Beast — on his tombstone. What a way to be remembered.”

  The tall man hiding in the trees listened as Landry explained his theories to his captivated group of colleagues. He could have walked into the clearing and they wouldn’t have noticed. That would happen soon, but not today, because she wasn’t there.

  That grave the best-known one in the cemetery. Every Remembering Day his people gathered around this stone marker and performed a ritual that honored the dead and relived the horrors inflicted on the Sons of Jehovah that night. It was at this grave that the sacrifices were made.

  Elder Johnson regretted that there would be no more Remembering Days, but he’d always known it would end someday. One day a person would find a piece, then another, and solve the puzzle. It saddened him that it happened while he was leader — the secret had been kept for fourteen decades — but this was the day, and Landry Drake was the man. If it were possible the elder would stop him, but things had gone too far. They had discovered too much. Perhaps they wouldn’t discover the rest, but if they did, so be it. Everything would be revealed and it would truly be over.

  Landry and his crew listened to the doctor’s report about the second body, the one buried next to Auguste Dauphin. Like the first, this man’s eyes had been gouged out. Perhaps that would explain the markings on the gravestone — Justice, 1890.

  He thought a moment and realized the meaning. Although they didn�
�t know the man, the words made sense. Remembering Day came every ten years. The Asher debacle happened in 1880, so theoretically the first Remembering Day happened in 1890. The man lying on the table before them had been the first victim, a person sacrificed in the name of justice.

  The doctor had tallied each body and Landry created a spreadsheet. He examined one hundred fourteen bodies, and all but the last two appeared to be cult members. Fifty-eight of the one hundred twelve were female. Eighty-one of the dead were Strange Ones, mostly females. An astonishing seventy-one percent of the bodies in the cemetery bore the tragic deformities resulting from decades of inbreeding.

  Tomorrow would be a short day. They would finish the last two grid squares, pack up their stakes and lines, break down their camp and do a final cleanup. Landry called Father Paul and asked him to bring Em down for the last time.

  From his vantage point in the forest, Elder Johnson smiled when he learned the girl would be here. The discoveries they made today saddened him. Perhaps tomorrow would be different — a day of rejoicing for him and his followers.

  Landry called Ted and explained about the two important graves. “Send the news crew up here tomorrow, but don’t tell them what it’s about. If we can keep this quiet, Channel Nine can have this story all to ourselves.”

  Sheriff Conreco’s deputy reported in that evening. “They were excited about two graves,” he told his boss. “One was a guy named August or something. The other one didn’t have a name, but Landry said neither was a cult member.”

  Junior couldn’t stop things now even if he wanted to. For the last time, he fulfilled his duty to the Conclave. He called Joel Morin.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-SIX

  The crew felt a sense of accomplishment as they congregated for the last morning at Asher. Everyone moved at an easier pace because the remaining grids wouldn’t take long. All the other bodies were back in the earth, their stones placed on freshly turned dirt.

  Instead of sending a deputy, the sheriff showed up today. He seemed in a good mood, chatting with some of the laborers and asking Landry if he considered the project successful. Landry admitted after finding the graves of the vigilantes yesterday, things finally began to fall into place. Junior agreed the new graves made things interesting.

  His attitude surprised Landry. This was the first civil conversation between them. He seemed different — calm and cordial, as if he wanted to stop the battle. Landry wondered why.

  When the final grids produced no bodies, the cleanup process began in earnest. As the men worked, Em and Father Paul walked around the grounds. The elder waited and watched, hoping for an opportunity to snatch her away, but the priest stayed beside her.

  It infuriated him to watch her walk to a patch of grass a few yards away. Damn the girl! She was going to reveal the last secrets, and he decided to snatch her even with the priest close by. This would be the end of everything, and he must try to stop it.

  But Elder Johnson tarried too long. As he prepared to spring from the trees, Em pointed to the ground, said something to Father Paul, and he yelled for Landry to come.

  He cursed himself for his indecision. It seemed they might miss the other graves, but the wretched child had ruined that possibility. Elder Johnson calmed himself. That impetuous move would have been suicidal with so many people around. He would capture her soon, and she would pay the price for this sin and her others.

  “There’s more graves there,” she announced, pointing out a group of stones in the tallgrass. “I forgot about them. I’m not sure why they’re away from the others, but they were part of Remembering Day too.”

  Landry assembled the crew; they thought they were finished, but here were more graves. He only had a few days left on his exhumation permit, but it appeared this small plot wouldn’t take much time.

  Before the diggers began, Landry examined each grave, taking notes and pictures. He found eleven stones unlike the ones in the cemetery proper. Identical in size and shape, each bore a single inscription — a year. The first read 1890, and there was one almost every ten years afterwards from 1900 to 2010. Three years in the sequence were missing, and by the time he’d finished, he understood why this place existed. No grave markers existed for 1930, 1950 and 2000 because those dead girls had been dumped on the shore to be found. The eleven graves in the tallgrass belonged to eleven girls who vanished without a trace.

  His men must stand down; there would be no digging here. Landry couldn’t allow it because the court ordered exhumations didn’t apply. These weren’t deceased cult members. These graves contained eleven girls who were kidnapped, mutilated and murdered by a creature called Billy Whistler. This was the last piece of the puzzle. He conferred with the sheriff, who radioed for help.

  Remembering Day happened every ten years on May 26, a memorial to the burning of Asher. With three exceptions, a body lay in this plot from each Remembering Day since 1890.

  Elder Johnson moved silently through the trees, getting closer to the group to hear them. Landry asked Em about Remembering Day 2010, the only one she attended.

  “Do you remember a frightened girl, maybe a prisoner?”

  She didn’t question how he knew that. “Yeah, the girl who died wasn’t one of us.”

  The girl who died? “What happened to her?”

  “Elder Johnson gave her to Billy Whistler, same as every other Remembering Day.”

  “And what did he do?”

  Em stood in silence a moment and then she walked a few feet. She pointed to the ground.

  “He dug her eyes out and then they buried her right there.”

  CHAPTER THIRTY-SEVEN

  Junior’s life spun madly like a whirlpool toward a deep, dark hole at the bottom. Three personas lived in his body, each pulling him in a different direction.

  First, he was a human being with a conscience, a clear understanding of right and wrong, and a genuine desire not to create pain and suffering for other people. He wanted to do the right thing, but his other roles pulled him away from decency and civility.

  He also served as a member of the Conclave and Joel Morin’s errand boy. It embarrassed him to be involved with a group that should never have begun, much less been perpetuated all these years. So what if his great-grandfather did some despicable things a long, long time ago — what did it matter? He wondered if people would hold him personally responsible for things that happened a hundred and something years ago. Surely the voters wouldn’t run him out of office if the truth came out.

  He told himself that often, although sometimes when he couldn’t sleep, he realized he must answer for the sins of the fathers, because they were his sins too — his and the other Conclave members.

  Lastly, long ago Junior put his hand on a Bible and swore to uphold the laws he then violated over and over. People in Abbeville considered him a decent man. How surprised and disappointed they would be to learn the truth.

  The truth would be revealed soon because of what the cult girl showed Landry today. People had died on Junior’s watch, and those deaths could have been prevented if a Conclave member with decency and courage stopped this long ago. But no member exhibited those qualities, and the horrors continued.

  Even though he was chairman, Joel and David Hebert had lesser roles — they merely kept the secrets. Junior’s involvement was much greater. The family of a missing girl had come to him in tears, trusting him as sheriff to do the right thing. But he maneuvered the facts, steered them in the wrong direction, and kept the secrets intact. They would never find their daughter, but he had done right by the Conclave.

  Governor Ferrara had reason to worry about the truth coming out, because his great-uncle had been the sheriff in 1880. The man responsible for law and order in Vermilion Parish was an accessory to seven murders, and he did nothing to stop Auguste Dauphin from raping and blinding a girl. The cowardly perpetrators swore an oath of silence because their lives would have been over otherwise.

  That sheriff, the governor’s ancestor, kept the se
cret when Auguste’s wife reported him missing. The man witnessed the hanging but said nothing. To compound the crime, he eliminated the wife too.

  Each of those men had been responsible for the atrocities that awful night, just as the Conclave was responsible today. None of them had the guts to step forward and confess what had happened and who had been there.

  The day Landry Drake came to Vermilion Parish was the day everything started to change. Junior had been furious when Landry showed up in Abbeville, but in a rare period of self-examination, he admitted he was afraid of being found out. He’d carried the burden for twenty-seven years, since the day his father lay on his deathbed and passed the awful mantle of secrecy to his unwitting son.

  Junior lay in bed, again unable to sleep because of living nightmares he carried inside. But this night was different. He had an overpowering premonition that something was about to happen. Things were coming to a head, and there was nothing he could — or would — do to stop them. Landry Drake had come for a reason, but he also had done something else. He had opened the floodgates that would put an end to all this.

  Junior decided he would write everything down tomorrow — what he knew about the Conclave and its members then and now, the truth about that night in Asher, and why he was ready to come clean. That document might well become his life insurance policy.

  The phone rang next to his bed. The hour was late, and a powerful feeling swept through his body. If he answered, it would be an irreversible decision. The person he had been yesterday would be no more.

  Junior felt a calmness sweep over him; it was time. He answered and a familiar voice said, “Sheriff? This is Landry. I need your help.”

  CHAPTER THIRTY-EIGHT

  On his way back from Asher, Landry got a call from Darlene at Caldwell House. Someone had dropped a letter addressed to him through the front mail slot. By now people knew where Landry stayed when he came to town, so it didn’t surprise him. He stopped by and picked it up.