CANDLELIT CHRONICLES: HISTORIC HAUNTS

March 13_Free Reads 1447 word count

from The Phantom Logging Operation





Chapter 2





         I decided it was not yet time to start playing possum, nor to wimp out and be cowardly. Rennald was closer-the turnoff to the Rennald Road only 5 miles to my east-so I turned left and headed east first. Right then it was only about 2 o'clock of the afternoon, plenty of time to check Rennald and then turn back toward Knox and The Big Forest beyond, and still be home, parked in my driveway, and inside my cabin before dark. For some reason, the thought of being abroad tonight just skittered me.





         I could drive all the way out to Rennald and back in near the time it would take me to go to Knox. Just the idea of driving toward The Big Forest skeered me-just skeered me today-but then if I did drive to Rennald first, when I came back this way it would be later in the afternoon-and maybe I wouldn't have the courage to try for The Big Forest-I was not sure now that I ever would.





                   Then I remembered how my Daddy had braved the Hun Hordes in the Big War, and how he had died keeping my country safe. I remembered how Mamma talked to me about how Daddy was so brave during the Great Depression too, working at menial maintenance jobs, travelling whenever and wherever Testament Corporation told him he had to, being away from Mamma and me, just to keep our roof over us and keep us fed and clothed-and I knew I couldn't be such a weakling and disrespect everything my Daddy ever stood for.





                   I sat no longer resisting at the end of the drive. Instead, I put the Merc in gear and headed right, to the west, toward Knox and The Big Forest which I now so feared.





Chapter 3











                   I sped in the direction of Knox, knowing the faster I arrived the faster I could conclude this investigation and head for home. There were 3 more borders of perennials to plant, after all; wood to chop-nights were still cool and would be through June; and I needed to work on insulating the cabin. I had just finished constructing it, as the property had held only one very old, shabby, collapsed house, sitting about a half mile farther back into the land than did my cabin. I had looked it over when I first arrived, and deemed it not worth the extreme efforts of trying to repair it, nor the extensive cost of materials. Hardly enough lumber was left intact to reconstruct one wall of a single room, the flooring was almost all the way through, the foundation only dirt, and the chimney in several chunks of charred brick. Seemed a shame to waste the site, already laid out as it was, but then I was only one person, and a job that size-repairing and virtually replacing and entire homestead would have been more than I thought I could handle.  So I decided to leave that site alone, and instead I chose a plot a ways back from the road, and to the East a bit, to build my cabin. I pitched the tent I'd brought along from Champaign, rolled out my sleeping bag, and on the nights that were just too chilly-which were most nights, curled up in the back seat of the Mercury.





                   All of this passed through my mind as I sped on toward The Big Forest, and all of it faded away as an old black Chevy truck passed me in the opposite direction, driven by a dead black man, and came to a stop in the middle of his lane, waiting while a scrawny white hound crossed the road.





                    “Rory,” I reminded myself. “You already know this guy-by sight-you've seen him passing up and down the road a hundred times since you first started work on the cabin, remember? Many times he's even thrown up his hand at you.”





         That was right-but this is the first time I'd noticed he was already dead. Maybe he wasn't earlier-on the other hand, maybe he had been all along. That truck, I would say, was about 9, maybe 10 model years old. Geez, my own Merc was 8 model years old. His Chevrolet was older than that, I thought.





         He must be coming from Knox, I thought-or maybe (though I really hoped that wasn't the case) from The Big Forest. Nothing else lay out this way, on this road. To get anywhere- to any bigger town-you had to go east and then south to Collins Junction, and from there, gee, you could get to Trenton, Troy, even eventually Madison Mills! But on the virtually untravelled highway on which I lived, it was Knox and then The Big Forest to the west, the turnoff to Rennald (another tiny town) a little east of me, and then east of that, the road to Collins Junction. I couldn't even remember any farmsteads or isolated houses on this road-that is, houses sitting out by themselves without farms. Far as I could think, it was just my new cabin as far as housing, unless I had missed some houses set back up in the woods somewheres.

















Chapter 4





                   Just about as soon's as I had passed the Dead Man in his black Chevrolet truck, a roar behind me made me spin to see. I glanced first toward the sound, then toward the lane, hopin' that scrawny white hound had moved on. No squealing rubber, no bawlin' dogs, so I guessed he'd made it on across okay. That dead black Chevrolet was out of sight already too. Gee, the road sure was fillin' and emptyin', fillin' and emptyin', somethin' fierce this afternoon.





                   The source of the racket pulled into the far lane and roared up beside me. A flatbed truck loaded with an old, old Chevrolet sedan-what used to be called a “gangster wagon”-my Daddy would surely have recognized them on the streets of Kenosha when he worked maintenance for Testament Logging Corporation-flashed by me, but not before I saw the driver, yet another burnt husk, leaning forward and lookin' toward me. Despite there bein' no flesh on that skull, I swear I could feel it smilin' and glowin'. As it sped up and passed, I saw the sedan had been badly burnt too; it looked like a blowtorch had played over it and blistered off all the paint.





                   This had really been a bad day for me all around, and it was barely three o'clock. Thankfully I had planted my perennial beds; I doubted I would accomplish anything more today. A storm threatened to be breaking over The Big Forest, so I determined to ride only as far as Knox, stop in at the small general store there for some provisions, and then get myself back home.





                   The next few miles were uneventful, but the approaching storm darkened the day considerably. The little store stood on the opposite side of the road, just the near side of Knox, and as I glanced in both directions to pull across the road, I saw that the tall-sided wooden bed truck loaded with tree crowns and pulp wood castoffs was parked at the far end of the gravel lot beyond the store. At an angle to the road, all I could see was the end of the truck and a peek at the side. I hoped-strongly hoped-that the burnt driver was in the truck, or gone, or just a hallucination, and that I would NOT encounter him in the store.





                    I parked on the near side of the store, climbed out, and strode toward the door. As I approached, it opened and an old geezer walked out, nodded his grizzled head at me, spat a chaw out into the lot, and clambered over to the old rocker at the far end of the porch. Inside was shady and musty-smelling, and a layer of dust seemed to overlay all the shelves and merchandise, even the plank flooring. Well, no matter; the canned goods I could wash at the pump before opening them, and as long as the flour and sugar and corn meal came in canisters, they should be safe enough to use. I selected the cans and canisters I needed, added some hardware and tools, and carried the load to the counter where I began to lay it out while checking around for the clerk, nowhere to be seen. As I glanced toward the back room's doorway, a woman rose up right in front of me, behind the counter, as if she had just lifted up from the floor on a trap door with spring.