CANDLELIT CHRONICLES: HISTORIC HAUNTS

March 28_and free read 4739 word count

Today's Writing brings me to 74,165 words for MarNoWriMo, with only three more days to go. My Goal of course was 77,500 words-2500 /day. So no problem there, Gentle Readers. Book Three of The Testament Logging Corporation Chronicles, Child Puppets of The Testament Logging Corporation: Children Who Kill has now been written through Chapter Eleven. Each book in the series I think has been more graphic-certainly Child Puppets deals with some very serious issues, aside from just the pure horror and evil entities.





Today's free read: continuing from Book One of this series, The Phantom Logging Operation, the story that started it all:

Chapter 26

         I had been so certain in my heart that the prolonged and strenuous manual labor, coupled with devoting my every waking thought to accurately planning out the construction and the dimensions, would send me securely into sleep and at an early hour. But such  proved a pipe dream. The new series of horrors began as I sat alone at the kitchen table, chowing down a quick dinner after dusk. I had fried up the two trout the butcher had saved for me the day before, which I had stored in the ice house since early yesterday afternoon. It would have made a tasty meal, if not for the sudden roar of a motor beside the cabin, and the sounds of mud clots splashing against the near wall. I leapt up and rushed out the back door, eschewing stopping at the window, and ran to the corner, looking up and down the drive in both directions. I still could hear the motor's roar, still hear the pound of mud against the wall closer to the drive, but no vehicle was visible, no ruts showed up in my newly smoothed drive, no mud splashes appeared on my cabin wall. Nothing to show for the sound, which disappeared as suddenly as it had arisen. I threw up my hands in stunned exasperation, and returned to my dinner. No longer was I hungry, but Mamma had taught me well “waste not, want not,” so I finished the last half of the second trout and got up to clean up my plate, wondering what would happen next, if anything at all. While I washed the dishes, I realized how gratified I was that I now had an indoor facility and did not have to cross my yard into the abandoned lot and walk the distance beyond the old ruins to the outdoor privy. I really was thankful to avoid that on this night of all nights, just as on two nights ago during that horrible unexpected thunderstorm.





         Dishes finished and stacked in the drain without event, I cleaned out the percolator and readied it for the morning, which would come early enough-especially if the twins arrived at the crack of dawn hunting a sturdy breakfast! As I briefly showered, over the cascading stream I once again thought I had heard a train whistle, and remembered the sound rippling through the distance as I ran the dishwater. I yanked the water faucets to off, but heard nothing-the whistle had dissipated immediately, just as while running the dishwater. I hurriedly finished my shower, toweled off, and headed for bed, where I fell asleep within seconds, it seemed. But a peaceful rest was not to be for me this night, any more than last night's spell.





         I must have been deep in sleep for a few hours when I suddenly startled awake, convinced a piercing train whistle had sounded in my ear. I opened my eyes to a dark bedroom, expecting the blazing single eye of a locomotive headlight, but nothing was amiss. I heard crickets, an owl hooting nearby, a night hawk's screech; that was all. Rolling over I checked the old alarm clock my Mamma had used for years: nearly midnight. I lay back down and closed my eyes, headed once more for a deep and restful sleep, and was nearly there when the night's peace was interrupted once again, this time by the unmistakable noise of a semi-truck's engine climbing a steep grade. Now as I mentioned in an earlier chapter, my part of the County is relatively flat. There are no grades-to the North beyond The confines of The Big Forest is a range of hills, but to the best of my knowledge, no roads there were open to truck traffic, and I could not have heard an engine from that extended distance anyway, not even in the quiet of the night. Yet the labored groan of a loaded semi sounded clear, and now in addition I could hear the rattle of chained logs as the semi's load shifted from side to side. Oh my, what had I encountered now??





                   Feb. 15:





         I rolled to the right to look out the west window, next to my bed. Empty countryside as far as the eye could see, nothing passed on the road to the west, toward Knox and The Big Forest.


So I leaped out of bed and headed for the front window facing the south; still nothing, but that engine grind was that much clearer. I went on into the living room and peeked around the curtain at the picture window: here it came-faded red painted cab, older model, hauling a clearly overpacked load of shifting, rolling, bouncing logs-and these were packed all wrongly, for the crowns showed at both ends of the flatbed trailer. That is, instead of the logs being loaded all end to end, with the crowns at one end, at the back of the trailer, and the cut stump ends all together, towards the cab, this load resembled the wreck a child makes of his Tinker Toys, when he is tired and sleepy and needing his sleep but unwilling, and tosses them all askew and asunder.





         No wonder the log load reeled and rolled, like a batch of drunken sailors on leave from Great Lakes Naval Training Camp. For certain, that load was either going to begin slippin' loose, log by log, or that truck was going to flip on the grade-wait! Grade! What grade? Knox Road was smooth and flat from


about 13 miles east of my cabin, where the road turned beside open farmland and meadow and headed south to Collins Junction, the County Seat, along past my cabin 12 more miles west to Knox, and beyond that about 2-3 miles distance to the eastern point of The Big Forest, which opened up like a light bulb from that point on, West and North, and where Knox Road ended. There was no grade; yet here in front of me, as I looked to the east, I saw-a grade. About 7 percent, I adjudged, but the immense overload on the flatbed made the difficulty on that engine probably more like 12 percent with a steel load. Certainly the grinding worsened each moment, till it seemed as if the pistons would knock themselves silly, bust loose, and fly on out of the engine, off into space just to gain some relief.





         But no, the raggedy old logging truck continued to climb the grade toward me (Grade?? my brain called) and by now I could see around the curve (Curve??) to the rear of the trailer, where black smoke belched out. Clearly not only the pistons were in need, but the oil situation as well. That truck surely could not run much longer, and I sure hope it didn't falter to a halt-right here in front of my land-right here in the road opposite my cabin—right within sight of my big picture window of which I stood so proud-and yes it did-exactly that. That steep grade had proved too much for it (What Grade??? insisted my mind) and the engine shook, rattled, belched, coughed-and died.  To the east, behind the trailer, the grade had now mutated to about 12 per cent-steep-and the road on which the log truck had stopped had also raised, so that from my viewpoint standing at the edge of the window, my eyes were on a level with the cab's wheels, but I could not see inside. The passenger side faced me, and I saw no movement by the window-no surprise there, after the events of the last few days.





          (Rory, I said to myself, you're a skilled diesel man and a good one-if this were an ordinary situation you could go out there and offer to help out what you could. But this is no ordinary situation and you'd do best to just stay put, and go on back to sleep.)  Already I had forgotten that just a moment before, when I thought about the grade being more like 12 per cent than 7, it had indeed changed into 12 per cent; and sure enough, just as I thought about how I would offer to try to help, if the circumstances outside had been normal, I heard the driver's door chunk, and heavy boots clomp down onto the asphalt. I could see under the cab to the other side, and I watched two boots hit the road, then turn toward the front of the cab, where they disappeared from my view. I knew I really, really, should not continue to stand in front of the picture window. Instead, I should drop the curtain and run back to my bedroom, locking its door behind me and cowering under the covers. Thinking of this, I checked immediately that the front door was locked and bolted, then raced to the back door and checked it too, and the three kitchen windows. All were fine. Back into the front room, I could hear the stomp of work boots hitting asphalt, then silence as the driver stepped up onto the grassy lawn. I halted, knowing once more that I needed to run for the bed and hide; but that would be just so childish, would it not? After all, I was a man (even though Leill's treatment of me made me feel more like a mouse or a worm) and men don't hide and cower and cringe. My Daddy faced down the Huns in the European Theater and I could face whatever this was. So I thought, until I pulled back the edge of the curtain once again and faced what approached my front door.





         A man from the boots up to the chest, two feet in dusty scuffed-up boots, two legs in faded dirty jeans, black belt, jean jacket over black t-shirt, soiled red bandanna tied around the neck. Oh, the neck! It was present, as it normally should be on any usual human being, but on the neck, where ought to be attached a head, with a face and eyes and mouth and ears and nose, sometimes hair-was not a head, but a-a stump, like a tree leaves after cutting, if the stump had been shorn of bark and then whittled at and smoothed and scraped until it resembled a cypress knob in the swamp, all beige and fibrous and rounded and horrifying-


I dropped the curtain and sped for the bed, slamming and locking the bedroom door, and was in a flash up under the bed, no not under the covers, beneath the bed, reaching for the 12-gauge I kept there for emergencies or potential fall season deer hunting (though that was not likely for me), grabbed on to that grip like it was life's end for me, and shivered and shook to the pounding on my front door-the infernal, eternal pounding that seemed to go on and on to the end of life-though it probably lasted not more than a minute; then the silence, except for a swishing of boots dragging across the grass, then the clomp-clomp of boots on asphalt, silence again, then the clunk of a door. And incredibly, an engine fired, coughed, belched, backfired, belched again (I could taste the oily black smoke!) and labored off, grinding gears, misfiring pistons, chugging away and beyond-to where? Only one place I could think of-to The Big Forest, to the East. Yet I remained under the bed all of the remainder of the night-and in the morning, could not peel my fingers loose from the shotgun's grip for a very, very, long time. It was only later, on the verge of sleep, that I recalled the name I had seen scratched across the passenger door:

Property of


Testament Logging Corporation


Madison Mills

and written across the bottom of the metal frame of the log-bed trailer was the phrase “Murder Log.”

Chapter 27





         Naturally, by the time I pried loose my fingers in the morning, checked to make sure the shotgun wasn't still primed, and crawled out from my hiding place, the Toddley twins roared up the drive and parked behind the cabin. I figured they were as eager for breakfast and they were for manual labor and a hard day's pay, so I opened the back door and motioned them inside and to the table.

“Put the coffee pot on boys, and fetch some butter out of the ice house, will you? Did you bring the flour? And I'll quick get a shower and be right out to fix you all some breakfast goods.”

Well, I needed that coffee as much or more than I needed that shower, though a night of persistent fear-sweat meant the shower was an essential too. So I headed that way, dropping my soaked pajamas in the bedroom and made the water as hot as I could stand. Or that is what I told myself, imagining hot scalding steam and spray; without electricity, I had no use for a water heater, so most of my showers were lukewarm. Come this fall, though, it'd be icy showers, or either warming up pots of water on the stove to carry into the stall with me.





         The boys had returned by the time I dressed and brought more butter than necessary, but I just thanked them softly and fried up sausages and flapjacks. I wasn't hungry myself, but I could tell by their hound-dog imitations they wanted more of my butter biscuits, so I rustled up a couple of batches. The first one disappeared down their throats, as I knew it would, and I laid out the second batch to the side to cool, with a dry clean towel over top of it, just in case of the advent of a rare early summer fly.





         When we headed out back and started up the slope (the slope? When did that happen? Oh no!) I asked the boys to lift off the tarp from the stacked lumber they had brought up yesterday and begin pulling some boards over to the low frame we had constructed yesterday. I wanted to raise the walls and roof before I worried about putting in the floor, because no way did I have enough tarps to cover the floor in case of another storm, or even a light spring rain. So walls and roof first it would have to be. While they jogged to the lumber pile, I started around the corner of the building; what a relief! No grade in front of my cabin. Walking down to the end of the drive, I looked in both directions, west and then east. The road looked fine-that is, it looked like it always had since I had moved back up this way. Then from the east I heard an engine, exactly like the roar that had accompanied the destruction of my driveway during the storm. Yes, here from the direction of Knox came that old black Chevy, racing as it came into view, revving and speeding up, passing me in a blur, but the driver's head turned and leered at me-not a dead black man any more, but a grinning skull with a tight cap of gray kinks. Oh, how I had begun to hate my life!





         I turned and RAN up the driveway, and around to the lumber stack, where the boys informed me that the tarp had already been pulled off before they got to it-removed, folded into a square, laid neatly on the ground, its one corner tucked under the lumber so as not to blow away in a storm. This was just about-all too much. I just nodded and told them not to worry about it, we'd just get on with building. “At least I didn't lose the tarp in a wind!” So we began on the building and I showed them how to start, then, as if impelled by forces guiding my feet and mind, I headed around the pine copse on the far side of the driveway and into the land on the other side, toward the ruined homestead.





         This was property that belonged to me also, though I had not realized it when I first went to the County Tax Assessor's office to lay claim to the property that Mamma had left me. I refer here to the property on which I had built my cabin, and was beginning construction on my Plant Nursery. I thought all I owned was the land up to the pine copse on the east, next to where I put the drive, and a goodly distance west and north.





         When I walked into the Assessor's office, that information was all I knew. I had been up to the property looking it over before I drove back to the County Seat at Collins Junction to file claim and get the plat records. When I came out, I knew I owned vastly more land than what I had thought; and that was before I discovered the two additional pieces I now actually owned, according to Attorney Squires. Well, I might as well make use of all this expanded coverage, I thought, and as I crossed up the slight rise beyond the pine copse (where did that come from? This was all smooth, flat land yesterday and before!) I considered the placement of my Greenhouse. Yes, just ahead of me-there was the obvious and perfect spot-neatly installed atop the charred ruins of that old burnt farmhouse.

Chapter 28

         I vaguely remembered that yesterday I had decided to construct the Nursery's Greenhouse-an essential component if I was to grow my own plants as well as sell seed sacks, smaller seed packets, and plants ordered in from big-city nurseries such as Kenozsha and Madison Mills-against the East wall of the Nursery itself, running the length of that building from front to rear. That plan had made perfect sense to me yesterday, while the layout of the perimeters and deciding the size of the entire structure had gone so smoothly. The Toddley twins and I worked together like a three-horse draft team, and all was fine. Well, that was then and this was now, as my Daddy always said (repeated to me often by my Mamma) and now told me to get across to the next section of my property, past the pine copse, and over to the charred old ruins of that farmstead. I still didn't know what kind of home that had been-cabin, farmhouse, perhaps not that at all but a barn or woodshed-but then there was an outdoor privy, and surely that presence indicated a house? But all that didn't matter right now, nor did it matter whose home it had been, why it had burnt, when it had burnt, or anything at all, except that I walk that way and start pacing out the perimeter of the ruins! I was impelled-no I was compelled-to walk this side of the land, while the Toddley twins toiled away at whatever task I had set them to do-whatever that would have been. I no longer remembered, I no longer-not at this moment-particularly cared, my mind was suffused only with vagueness and one clear shining thought: I MUST walk the perimeter of the charred ruins because THAT would be the location on which I would construct my Greenhouse; THAT would be the foundation on which the Greenhouse would rest; THAT would be what was right. And no, I knew the Toddley twins, eager as they were for lucrative work, would not help me at all with this portion of the job; this one I would have to do all on my own, and without them being around. I decided that, and then, relieved, I turned and walked away, back to the slope (slope?) behind my cabin, where the two boys labored away on framing the west wall of the Plant Nursery.





         As I crossed through the pine copse and walked down its slope, one of the boys, Jackie, called out to me.

“Is this lookin' right, Mr. Rory?”





“Looks good, Jackie, hold on just one moment and I'll come over there and help you.”

         I walked into the house and poured three glasses of lukewarm lemonade, and piled up some of the morning's second batch of butter biscuits onto a china plate which I covered with a towel; then placed it all on one of Mamma's good serving trays and carried it out on outside. The boys, of course, were ecstatic, and more than ready to stop. A midmorning snack break was just as welcome to them at their age as was the evening's daily pay. While they ate and I sipped lemonade and stared through the pines at the adjacent section and thought about the Greenhouse and its compelling hold on me, we all heard a truck engine-a pickup-heading up the drive. I was startled that the boys also heard it and turned in that direction; but more startled when I saw the old black Chevrolet, and their welcoming smiles and waves. Sam stood up and brushed his hands on his jeans, but Jackie, waving, kept eating and made sure he retained possession of the biscuit plate.  I simply stood as if paralyzed, watching the driver's door open and a slight, wiry, black man climb out onto the drive. I knew full well this was the same faded black Chevrolet pickup which had torn up my drive, the same one which had stopped to let the scrawny white hound cross the road near my cabin, the same one that had raced by my cabin this morning driven by a grinning skeleton. Yet here was a seemingly alive man, smiling wryly, aloof but courteous, waving and speaking to the boys, and asking me if he could approach and shake my hand. Speechless, I just nodded, and he walked up to me, shook (his hand felt alive enough, a little cool and dry) and introduced himself, or tried to but Jackie, the more verbal of the twins, interjected.

“Mr. Rory, this here's Mr. Jenks, Mr. Clyde Jenks, he lives down at Guilford Hollow.”





“That's right, sir, I live off out there way out in the country a far piece, out beyond Farmer Jennell's land.”





“You've lost me now, sir, I'm pretty new here-I don't know where either of those places is.”





“Oh,” Mr. Jenks said slyly, “you are not so new here as you think. Believe you have roots here-that sink way down into our soil. Anyways, Farmer Jennell's land is the piece you pass when you go out to the east end of Knox Road here (and he pointed back) where you turn South to head toward Collins Junction. Jennell farms all that land up and down that section of the County, near all the way to maybe 15 miles before the Junction.


“Now, maybe you haven't noticed, but as you pass on East here beyond your own very extensive piece of land, on your left, which is to say the North, just a short pieced before you swing South toward the Junction, there be a tiny narrow little dirt road that ain't ought but mud in a rain-like the storm we had three days ago. “

         The boys looked bewildered at this. Apparently that tremendous sudden rainstorm had been only a Knox Road phenomenon. But they had butter biscuits and lemonade to occupy them, and wisely realized that the more the grown-ups conversed, the longer would be their own break from labor, so they returned to the food and dug right in, no doubt well preparing their stomachs for a big lunch meal too.





Mr. Clyde continued,

“Well, down that lil' dirt road a fur piece is where I live, on a little plot of land about 50 acres that was left to me by my Grandpappy when he passed.” He looked down at the grass sadly: “it was meant to be my Pappy's, but he went on and went to that Europe War and he died on over there, in 1944.”





“I'm very sorry,” I told him. “My Daddy died over there too, in 1941. It all was a tremendous waste of lives.”





He nodded back at me, and added, “So that land came on to me when my Grandpappy passed, and I got to keep it up; it's family land, you know? Just like all  this is yore family place too.”





I was way past understanding any of this, but chose not to interrupt, so I just let Mr. Jenks talk on as he would-and he did seem to like to talk. Certainly he was a far nicer companion than he had seemed while dead, much less when skeletal this morning, and a portion of my mind insisted on wondering whether there were TWO old faded-black Chevrolet trucks driven by TWO old black gentlemen. Perhaps this friendly and polite Mr. Jenks had a twin, as the Toddley brothers were twins, but at the opposite end of the age continuum and of a different shade of pale.





The old man was still talking when I tuned back in:





“Been meanin' for a spell to get on over here and speak to you, Mr. Rory,” he told me. “Meant to come by and hep when you was puttin' up this cabin,” he gestured toward my home, “but right after you begun I had to go into hospital up Collins Junction way. Had a bad ticker near all my life, what took my Grandpappy too.”





(Yes, I thought to myself, and I'm certain next you're going to tell me you didn't survive your heart operation, aren't you? I smirked mentally but tried to smooth my expression.}





“'N then, I had to recuperate up at my home-and by the time I's able to get up and stirrin', wal, you was all done! But NOW I see that you'ah buildin' all over again, so now's I'M here to hep!”





         Well, this was an unexpected surprise. I squinted at him, considering how to respond, and noticed he looked down at the two boys. Before he could speak, they both jumped up, and Sam took the biscuit plate and the tray and all three lemonade glasses and ran into the house. Jackie headed back over to the construction and picked up one end of a 2 x 8 and his hammer. Sam came running back out with two full lemonade glasses, and handed one to Mr. Jenks and one to me. The old man thanked him, took a sip, and turned to me while Sam hurried over to life the other end of the 2 x 8 so they could nail it into place. At a good steady rate, we'd have that West wall erected by dusk. Edging a little closer, the old one whispered to me,

“The boys are fine as far as they'll go. Use them to finish up THAT building,” and he pointed to the Nursery construction. “I'M here to help you,” (pointing across the copse of pines} “to build the GREENHOUSE.” He turned all the way around and looked to the East, as if peering through the pines to the old ruins, then muttered over his shoulder, “the boys won't work that. They won't cross that line of trees, no they won't, not none of them townspeople would. But I will-and I'll help. That Greenhouse-it needs building.” He turned back around and in his eyes I saw the grinning skeletal face from this morning, and the rip-roaring pickup tearing apart my driveway, and I knew-I had bit off more than I wanted to chew.