Nightcrawlers

14

Kenney, of course, had more questions and wasn’t too polite to voice them, but he got nothing from either Godfrey or Hyder. They hopped in the sheriff’s cruiser and took a ride maybe a mile down the road past a few abandoned farms and their requisite decaying buildings until they found a small farmhouse with a wisp of smoke coming from the chimney.

They stood on a dilapidated porch that groaned and creaked, pounded on a door that shook and trembled. Tarpaper flapped in the wind. A crow cawed mournfully in the sky. The door finally opened just a crack and then exploded wide as if it had been kicked.

“What in the name of Christ do you want here?” an old woman’s shrill, grating voice demanded of them. She couldn’t have weighed much more than a hundred pounds dripping wet and probably not even that much. Even though she was as frail as a bag of twigs, she was grizzled and hard, her face a toothless maze of wrinkles. Two yellowed, bony claws held a twelve-gauge Ithaca pump nearly as big as she was. “You’re on private property, you sonsabitches, so get on your way and get now!”

Godfrey said, “Miss Elena… it’s me, the sheriff.”

She scowled, adjusting the spectacles on the plug of her nose. The shotgun lowered maybe an inch. “So it is, so it is. And that there… yes, it’s Daniel Hyder, Carolyn’s boy. And not one stick brighter either.” She looked to Kenney. “And you… hmm… nope, you ain’t from around here. You don’t have the look of a local. I can smell the city on you, son.”

They followed her into a cramped, but tidy living room. An ancient Jungers double-burner oil stove percolated in the corner. The air was warm and greasy. The furniture in there had been old forty years before. To call any of it “antiques” would have been gracious.

“How you doing, Miss Elena?” Godfrey asked, because with old people you always had to ask that even though you very often regretted doing so.

She offered him a very stark laugh. “How am I doing? Shall I catalogue for you the ways this old body has shat on my doorstep in recent years?” She laughed again. “How am I doing, he asks. What a thing to ask an old bat like me.”

He swallowed. “Well… how are you doing?”

“I’m doing for shat, you idiot. But every day above ground is a good day, my father always said. And I’d rather be looking at the dandelions from above than the tree roots from below.”

“That’s funny,” Hyder said.

“Well, sit the hell down,” she commanded. “You fancy a drink? Something hard and hairy?”

Kenney was going to say, no, not on duty, but the sheriff’s look told him it wasn’t wise to decline what hospitality the old woman could provide.

“This is Lou Kenney,” he told the old lady. “He’s the chief investigator with a crime scene unit from—”

“I don’t give a fancy shat if he’s your goddamned lover, Mathew Godfrey,” she said, leaning the shotgun in the corner by a stack of yellowed papers and surveying the lot of them with an evil, impatient look like the devil deciding on whose soul to harvest first.

“Lou, this here is Elena Blasden.”

Kenney was just looking at her, thinking this old girl was really something.

“Pleased to meet you,” he said.

She scowled at him. “Like hell you are.”

There was a smell of wood smoke in the air, a sharp and bitter odor ghosting just beneath it. Kenney watched Elena Blasden cross the room and pull aside a set of dark curtains he assumed led into a bedroom. But it was no bedroom. Just an alcove with stacked, fresh-cut kindling and… a still. It sat atop a homemade rock firebox, a capped iron boiler with coiled metal tubing leading into a wooden barrel. There was a drain tube at the bottom of the barrel, a quart milk jug under it filling with a steady drip. The old lady took out four jelly jars and put about two fingers in each.

“Have a taste, gentlemen,” she said. She took a good pull off her own and color swam into her pale cheeks. “Good stuff. A little weak, I’m supposing, but it’ll put iron in your pants.”

Kenney raised his glass, studied it. The smell was enough to peel paint from metal. He took a swallow and his stomach badly wanted to throw it right back out, but he held it down deep while it burned there in a knot of acid, sending out hot fingers in all directions. And the longer he held it, the better he felt. It was like a broom inside him, cleaning up, sweeping away anxiety and uncertainty and fear. It did a body good.

Hyder gagged and the sheriff winced like something with teeth had hold of his privates.

“We’re here,” he managed, “to, to—”

“I know why you’re here, Sheriff. I might be old, but I ain’t blind and I surely ain’t deaf nor stupid. Soon as I saw that tractor plowing a line through Ezren’s fields, I knew there would be trouble same as you did. Progress.” She turned and spat into a bucket by the stove. “That’s progress for you.”

While Hyder smiled dumbly and perhaps numbly, Godfrey said, “I want you to tell Mr. Kenney all about it, Miss Elena. He needs to know what we know.”

“We? Since when do you know anything?”

Godfrey shook his head and smiled thinly. “It’s time,” he said. “This had to happen sooner or later.”

“I suppose it did,” she said. “I suppose it did at that.” She fixed Kenney with a hard stare, and then she looked back at Godfrey. “Now you want me to unburden my soul to a stranger. You want me to open the trapdoor of Haymarket and let him look upon all those dark, dirty things we hide from the light of day… is that it?”

“Yes.”

She considered it. “Well, maybe it is time. God knows, it’s been going on far too long.” She sipped her ‘shine, set it aside, and folded her hands primly on her lap. “Well then, Mister Kenney. Listen good. I’ll tell you some things you won’t wanna hear nor believe, but I’ll tell you. I won’t see ninety again, so it’s time I unburden my soul maybe.”

She ran skeletal fingers through her thinning white hair that looked like bits of blown cotton stuck to a pale pink balloon. “First off, you need to understand that the land over there—a good piece of it out here on Bellac—was owned by a godless clan called Ezren. That farmhouse out there, it was built on the foundation of something much older. A well of sorts, I guess you’d call it. According to local Ojibwa tradition, a huge flaming stone… a piece of star… fell from the sky many centuries ago and burned itself down into the earth. It glowed for sixty days and sixty nights. In fact, they say, at night it not only glowed but shot a green beam of light straight up into the heavens like a beacon to where it had come from.”

“A meteor?” Kenney asked.

“It would seem so.”

“Meteorite,” Hyder corrected them. “When they hit the earth that’s what they’re called. I had a telescope when I was a kid and—”

“And nobody’s interested,” Miss Elena said. “The Ojibwa shaman considered it a holy object and they piled stones around the hole it made. They worshipped at it long after its glow had winked out. Story has it, many of them died. And it was here that this holy object becomes an evil object. It becomes taboo and all the tribe give it a wide berth. Going so far, I understand, as to move the tribe itself several miles away…”

Kenney listened as she went on and on about half-remembered Indian superstitions and tribal traditions. He supposed there could have been a germ of truth in all of it. Perhaps a meteorite had fallen and perhaps it was radioactive. That wouldn’t have been so surprising. That would explain the deaths in the tribe and the need for them to move far away from it. He had never heard of a meteorite being dangerously radioactive, but he figured it was possible.

“Now how much of that Ojibwa folktale is truth is anyone’s guess. That brings us to the Ezrens. The last Ezren—Luke Ezren—died off thirty years ago. God save the Queen, what a blessed event that was. He lived in the farmhouse with his mother and his daughter. He was of direct lineage to the ones that built that dead town yonder in the toolies. The blasphemous place, as my mother called it. Old-timers used to call it Hell’s Half-Acre and with good reason. It was built by settlers from out east long before the Revolutionary War with the Brits. See, they came out here, following a British contingent that built a fort out in these parts. Fort’s long gone. It fell to the Yanks after the war and slowly went to seed. But the town, it survived, if you wanna call it that. There was a puritan preacher name of Clavitt who founded that place. They called it Clavitt Fields. Him and the Ezrens and the Cooks and Blakes—they were the original occupants. But it was a fella name of Corben—Irish or Welsh or some such thing—that came to that town just before the war and started tapping into the darkness that seeped from that well. Before him, well, it wasn’t a good place even then, but afterwards? It got that much worse.”

“We were out there,” Kenney admitted. “Last night.”

Her eyes narrowed. “Were you? Then it’s still there, by God. And at night? Well, you’re either a brave man or a damn stupid one.” She took another drink, cleared her throat. “Now, as the years past that town got worse and worse and there were stories of devil worship and whatnot. But that was probably horseshit. Those people back then, when they didn’t understand something, they started going on about spirits and witches and goblins. You know the type. I believe a Hyder was among them,” she said, glaring at the undersheriff. “Anyway, by then other towns had sprung up around here, after the war. Well, things happened—awful things—and on around 1820, 1830, people had had their fill. A group of them from Trowden—Haymarket now—destroyed Clavitt Fields. They shot down who or whatever lived there, knocked down the houses and buildings with cannons from the fort, burned the rest. Seeded the ground with salt. Thought they were done.”

Kenney had to remember to blink now. “But they weren’t?”

“Hardly. Those that lived in that evil place, they still lived out there. Maybe in the ruins or below like rats, like worms they were. See, they had become… degenerate, physically degenerate. They were a tainted lot. Weren’t exactly human no more before the town was razed, but afterwards… dear God, horrible. That’s what, horrible.”

“How do you know all this?”

“These are tales handed down through my bloodline. My great-grandfather was one of the men who raided that town. I have his papers.” She finished her ‘shine and sat there, eyes gone filmy with dark memory. “Now, like I said, the town was in ruins, but… things still lived out there. Wasn’t long before graves was being opened and rifled through, bones found scattered about. Children turned up missing. Men and women, too. Bad business all around. The local Ojibwa wouldn’t go anywhere near that place. They bury their dead same as us, but with what was happening, they started burning ’em. Burning ’em so that whatever haunted those ruins wouldn’t dig ’em up and gnaw on ’em. Anyway, as you might suspect, a lot of the towns around here folded up. Farms were built and abandoned and it’s carried on to the present day. Farms still don’t do well around Bellac Road. County people have tested the soil, say it’s just fine. But don’t believe ’em none. It’s just plain bad, particularly over towards the Ezren spread. At night, surely, at night it sometimes has a funny shine to it. Course, livestock disappears and people, too.” She looked at Kenney with a penetrating, unflinching look. “Sheriff tell you about French Village? Yeah? Okay, then, you know.”

But Kenney just shook his head. “No, I still don’t know a damn thing.”

That made Elena Blasden laugh. “Nobody really does, son. Around the turn of the twentieth century, maybe shortly before, another Ezren from out east showed up and claimed the family holdings. Bought up a lot of acreage. His name was Charles Ezren, Luke’s father. Common consensus was that he was insane, dangerously insane. Figured he had to be to live out there with them that haunt the shadows. And Luke? Yes, I knew him as well as any around here. He was crazy, too. He was in league with them from below.”

“What about the mother and daughter?”

Elena sighed. “Daughter was named Rose. She fled after Luke’s death, it was said. But as to his mother… well, I don’t know. Gossip had it she had passed long before he did. One thing was for certain. No one ever saw her, but gossip had it she was not something of this world.”

Hyder was just shaking his head. “C’mon now, Miss Elena, I—”

“Shut your damn hole, Daniel Hyder! You don’t know your dick from a willow twig!” she snarled at him, shaking one thin knobby finger at him. The tip of which looked sharp enough to spear an eyeball. “Fantasies? Dreams? Is that what? Ramblings of a senile old woman? Horseshit. If you’ve been out there and at night, you know I speak the truth. For it’s no horseshit that a group of copper miners not six miles from here disappeared down in a lower shaft. And when they went down to look for ’em, they found the walls honeycombed with holes. Same way this whole countryside is honeycombed. And it ain’t horseshit that when I was a girl, something came wandering out of those ruins, something that was struck down by a car not two miles from here. Something white and blind, had more in common with a grub than a human being. Something that was burned, lest anyone dare dig it up to take a look.”

Hyder didn’t say anything more. Nor did the sheriff or Kenney.

“Maybe, maybe if the sheriff here feels particularly talkative,” she said to Kenney, “he might tell you about Genevieve Crossen’s child.”

Godfrey just swallowed and looked at his feet.

“If you’ve been out there, boys, then you know,” she said to them, darkness behind her words. “And if you’ve been out there, can you deny that something lives there still?”

But no one could.

Elena Blasden seemed to grow angry then calm, agitated then serene. She began to ramble on about “obscene heredity” and “diseased blood,” “genetic blasphemies” and “nameless things that walk like men but should creep like vermin.” She went on at some depth, her mind drifting in and out of the fog of senility. But at her advanced age, God knew she had the right to lose it a little.

“Think I’m crazy?” she said to Kenney. “Think I’m just plain mad, do you?”

Kenney was going to say that he didn’t think that at all, but she just laughed. And that laughter was not a good sort, but bitter and tormented as if she carried the pain of her lineage upon her.

“No matter, Mr. Hotshit Detective. No matter. I say what I say and you can laugh… surely, you can laugh… but I bet you weren’t laughing last night, now were you?”

The way she looked at him made Kenney squirm. It was almost like those gray, rheumy eyes could see right into his soul. See all the dark truths and terrible things he couldn’t even admit to himself.

“What,” he began finally, “what caused this business? What degenerated those people? That meteorite? Some kind of radioactivity?”

Elena Blasden just stared at him. But she was looking through him and beyond, at something very, very far away. “No one can rightly say, son. Only that it’s ancient and it’s been here for Lord knows how long. The Ojibwa might have a story or two, but they’ve never shared it with whites. Only thing I ever heard was something in my family papers, a reference to some old Ojibwa who said that what was down there was from some place where things aren’t as they are here.” Elena shrugged. “But that was given just a brief mention and no more. Them injuns is sensible folk. They knew enough to leave whatever it was alone.”

Kenney wanted to laugh all this off. Jesus, he’d come here to handle a crime scene investigation and now he was getting tangled up in shit that was just beyond him. Beyond any man’s experience. But there was no humor in him. He’d seen things out there last night and, much as wanted to, he just couldn’t dismiss all this as local folklore.

Elena Blasden said that—according to the papers of her ancestor, a fellow named Elijah Willen—what was in the well had never been properly named nor classified. Whether it was flesh or spirit, no one could say or no one wanted to say. Just that it was bad, a cancer, a blight, a malignance that had sucked the blood out of the soil over there and from the people of Clavitt Fields.

She said there was only one story in Willen’s papers about it. Something concerning a drunk named George Gooden, who claimed to have seen something coming out of the well one night. Something he described as being made of “eyes and squirming parts, lights that that coiled and slithered and screeched.” Elena said that this George Gooden stumbled over to Trowden, just about out of his mind, ranting and raving, telling anyone that would listen what he had seen. How it had seemed to glow and flicker, how it had burned his eyes just to look upon it.

“Maybe that George Gooden was just a crazy drunk back then,” Elena said. “But there was no getting around one thing.”

“What’s that?” Kenney asked.

“That what he had looked upon had robbed him of his sight, had burned his eyes near out of his head. That he spent the rest of his days stone blind.”

Maybe it was radioactive, Kenney got to thinking. But right away, he chastised himself for it. Christ, he was a cop. He couldn’t let himself be swayed by stories handed down for two hundred years. What was he thinking? Sure, he’d seen something out in those fields last night, but that didn’t mean he had to start swallowing every old wives’ tale dumped in his lap.

Be sensible, for chrissake, he told himself.

But being sensible was easier said than done.

“No,” Elena Blasden said, “we’ll never know about that which was down that well. It may be long gone now, but its legacy is still out there. I know that much.”

She told them that according to her great-grandfather’s papers, it was thought by locals that what was in the well was dormant before Corben came, that he was the one who “stirred it up.” Got that thing or whatever it was all riled.

Hyder and Sheriff Godfrey both looked bloodless by this point. Kenney had been watching them, looking for some sign that most of this was sheer nonsense. But he got no such impression. If anything, Hyder and Godfrey looked disturbed, scared maybe. Like little boys afraid of the dark.

Kenney sat there thinking about what he’d seen in those fields and told himself, kept telling himself that no, no, it wasn’t possible. Maybe two hundred years ago when Wisconsin was huddled with black, encroaching forests and Indians and settlers… but surely not now? Not in this day and age.

Elena grinned like a skull. “Let me make it plain for you, son. What you’re after… what’s responsible for them bodies you’re finding… it’s not above, but below.”