The Innswich Horror (9 page)

“Do you really think so?” he asked with
excitement.

“Of course, if you remain diligent and
continue to practice. When you’re older, you’ll need to train with
a real bow, but I’m sure a careful boy such as yourself needn’t
have to wait much longer for that.”

“My mom said I could have a real bow when
she makes enough money to buy one. But I can only use it when she’s
watching.”

“That’s good advice, son. ‘Honor thy
mother,’ like it says in the Bible.”

“Are you here… to see her?” he asked. “She’s
still at work.”

I didn’t want to lie to the youth, yet I
couldn’t very well tell him I was pursuing a stalker nearby. “No,
Walter, I was merely having a nature walk when I happened upon you
and your house. These woods are quite a treat for me, for I spend
most of my time in the city. In Providence.”

“Oh. I walk in the woods a lot too, sir.” He
pointed just behind the house. “There’s a neat trail right over
there that goes all the way back to town through the trees. That’s
how my mom walks to work every day.”

“Why, I’m grateful for your advice, young
man,” I enthused. “I’ll be sure to take that trail back myself.
But, tell me. Why are you out here all by yourself? Surely you have
brothers and sisters old enough to play with.”

His eyes blankened, as though the question
were a stifling one. “I have to go now, sir, to help my
gramps.”

“Of course, and what a
fine young man you are to be so attentive to your grandfather.” It
was all I could say, for it seemed that to press him about my
previous question would only put him on the spot. Still, I had to
think,
Mary’s got seven more children. Are
they all in the house?
“But before you’re
off, Walter, let me give you a present.” I was probably out of
bounds by doing this, yet I couldn’t resist. “And I’m sure your
mother and gramps have quite wisely advised you not to take gifts
from strangers, but we’re not strangers, you and I, are
we?”

“No, not really, Mr. Foster,” though the
mention of a present had clearly throttled his attention.

“What I’d like you to do is take this and
buy yourself a better bow,” and then I gave him a ten-dollar bill.
“And with what’s left, wouldn’t it be nice to buy your mother some
flowers?”

“Oh, yes, sir, it would!” he almost shouted
with glee.

“And when your mother asks where you got the
money, just say her friend, Mr. Morley.”

“Thank you, sir! Thank you a lot!”

“You’re quite welcome, Walter. I hope to see
you again.”

I smiled as he scampered off to the squat
house, entered a barely seen door, and disappeared.

What harm could there be?
I only hoped I’d made the lad’s day. I set to locate Walter’s path
just behind the house, but again found myself thwarted… as more
questions occurred. Where exactly
were
the other children? And why had
Walter been so reluctant to answer my inquiry?

I skirted round the back of the house,
toward the clearing, yet while doing so I deliberately kept an eye
out for windows. The last window that would be available to me
before I made the clearing was almost entirely ivy-covered.

What could I possibly say for myself should
the stepfather see me peering in?

Yet peer in I did, unmindful of the very
awkward risk, and why I did this, I’ll never be sure.

I only know that I wish I hadn’t.

Through the bleary fragment of available
glass I first spied a close, brick-lined middle room surrounding a
modest fireplace, an additional woodstove, and furniture that I
must describe as makeshift. If anything I was glad that they’d
improved the utility of their poverty by reusing items—such as
boxes, crates, and unattached bricks—for alternate purposes.
Several crates, for instance, formed the foundation for a bed and,
evidently, a great sack of burlap, stuffed with dried leaves,
sufficed for the mattress, over which typical sheets had been lain.
A cupboard housed not drinking glasses but reused tin cans for the
same purpose. A table, whose top was fashioned by wooded wall slats
of irregular length, had legs actually made from stouter tree
branches. This glaring squalor injured me…and in my mind I was
already calculating how much my wealth would be able to help this
destitute but fully functioning family.

I ducked back, when in the moment previous,
a door within had opened. Young Walter first appeared, and what
followed at his side was a faltering figure and a tap-tap-tapping
sound. It was only the sparest daylight through the minute windows
that afforded any light at all. The figure, as I squinted, seemed
to be using crutches, and though it was through a wedge of darkness
that this figure walked, my detection of long, grey hair told me
that this could only be Mary’s stepfather; Walter was helping him
along, toward the makeshift bed.

The oddest noises of protestation resounded
when he finally got to the bed and, with great difficulty, managed
to lie down in it. I could make out almost nothing in the way of
details, but the broader scope of his afflictions—some massive form
of arthritis, I presumed—were quite clear by the crookedness of his
limbs. Was the hand that picked up the piece of cardboard to use as
a fan… missing fingers?

“Here’s some water, gramps,” Walter said and
brought him one of the tin cans. My angle showed me little, only
Walter carefully tilting the can for him to drink out of. The
over-loud chugging sound caused my brow to rise.

“Um, gramps,” Walter began. “There was this
man, outside. He’s a friend of mom’s and his name is Foster
Morley…”

The horrendously palsied figure seemed to
lean up, and in doing so I saw a tragically unnatural curve to his
spine. But it was Walter’s words that had caused him to lean
closer.

“And-and… he gave me this,” the youth
hesitated, then showed the ten-dollar bill. “To buy mom some
flowers.”

The stepfather’s reaction to this
information is something I’m sure I will never forget.

He lurched forward, deepening the arch to
his back, shot out a hand that clearly was deformed, and then
emitted a vocal objection in no language I’d ever heard: a high,
almost bearing-like squeal underlain with suboctave grunts and what
I can only call a mad tweaking, rising and lowering, and an
accommodating sound that reminded me of something wet spattering
somewhere.

The suddenness—and
unearthliness
—of the
man’s vociferous objection affected me almost physically, akin to a
ball bat across the chest. I lurched backward, yet my eyes remained
on that partial window-view and all I can say about what I
think
I saw is
this:

Something
shot
forward from the
haggard mass of shadows that comprised this infirm man. What
that
something
was I cannot accurately delimitate. It was either a length of
rope, or a whip, flung forward with a clearly stated maliciousness
toward the boy. That’s all I can say: it reminded me of a
whip.

This whip, then, snapped
out with a moist but resolute
crack!
and seemed to take the
ten-dollar bill from Walter’s hand, then draw it back to the
afflicted oldster.

An attendant gush of a mix of those
dreadfully low suboctaves, and the squeal, and then that awful
phlegmatic splatter followed this action, after which the boy,
paling before my eyes, turned and dashed from the room.

A tremendous malady, indeed, had accursed
this poor elderly man, not just in body but also in mind.

I could witness it no longer, and then I
fled myself to the clearing behind the house, fairly bursting into
sunlight and a flurry of butterflies, and ran outright
until—half-crazed—I spotted the nature trail the boy had apprised
me of.

Of congenital defects and progressive
disease mechanisms I knew precious little, and though my sense of
pity and empathy was sound, I had to forcibly banish the image of
this demented and inauspicious man from my mind…

As I tramped down the lad’s path, I was
scarcely aware of its features for several minutes. My heart seemed
to hammer in the aftermath of my witness, and my breath grew short.
Eventually I slowed to regain my senses, then stooped, hands on
knees, to rest.

The rapid exodus from the maledict house
left me in a dirt-scratch of a trail lined by man-tall grasses.
Insects chirruped and the sun blazed.

It was the darkness of the
huddled house,
I thought,
and the potency of suggestion that so grotesquely
appended what I saw.

Of all people, I thought
again of Cyrus Zalen and his all-too-true implications regarding my
status in life.
A rich pud.
My unearned station of privilege had shielded me
from such tragic realities heaped upon the less fortunate, and
this, simply, wasn’t right. I needed to
know
these direful
realities—
and
their consequences—to be the better man that I’m sure God
wanted me to be. My empathy must not be staged, nor my pity
manufactured. I fancied myself a philanthropist—a willful
contributor
to those who
had sorely less than me.

I knew that I must
contribute
more
,
and more, too, than simply money.

Soft voices severed my thoughts. When I
turned my head, a great glimmer flashed in my eyes; through the
tall grass, I saw a modest lake full of floating sunlight. But the
voices…

It was necessary to shield my eyes to annul
the glare. There, sitting at a short pier’s end, were two women,
one honey-blond and the other obsidian-haired. Both were naked,
chatting animatedly as they rowed their feet in the water. I saw a
small bottle serving as a buoy farther out in the lake.

The girls’ bare white
backs gleamed in the sun, but the tranquil scene did not parallel
the apparent mood of the coal-haired one, who snapped, “I
just
hate
it,
Cassandra! It sickens me—their condition, I mean. And I have to go
again tonight. Oh, God, I dread it
so
much.
”

“So you’re not in the way yet?” queried the
other.

“No, I don’t think so. They make me go—every
night—until they’re sure.” The girl seemed to hack. “And I have to
be with several of them! One’s not enough! It’s got to be at least
two each night, and I heard they’ve gotten two more. What’s that
now, seven all together?”

“Six, I think. Remember, the one died, and
that curly-haired man couldn’t… you know. You never know when one
might not be any good all of a sudden. Sometimes they wind up like
Paul.”

Paul!
the name immediately struck me. A common name, yes, but could
they be referring to Mary’s invalid brother?

“Well, shit!” exclaimed the black-haired
waif with a surprising profanity. “One per night should be
enough!”

“It’s like the doctor said, Monica. The more
you do it with, the better chance of success…”

What on earth are they
talking about?
I wondered, puzzled. And…
the
doctor?
Did
they mean Dr.
Anstruther?

“That’s why he tests them every so often,”
the honey-blonde continued. “To make sure they haven’t lost their…
I forgot the word. Portense? Er—no, potency!”

I stared at these strange words, my face
lengthening.

“But they’re just
so
ugly
like
that!” the dark-haired one, Monica, nearly squealed in objection.
“It gives me nightmares.”

The honey-blonde,
Cassandra, took Monica’s hand to offer a consolation. “It’s like
they say, you’ve got to get the right frame of mind. It’s not about
pleasure, it’s about something much more important. To think like
you’re thinking is to be selfish. And they
have
to be the way they are—for
safety’s sake…”

“Ugh! It’s just
awful…
”

“You don’t have to tell me, Monica. I’ve had
six babies so far. It’s just the way it is here. It’s better for
the future.”

“I don’t know how you
could’ve done it
six
times!
”

Cassandra answered
dreamily. “You just close your eyes and think
nice
things, Monica. You pretend
you’re with someone else, someone handsome and strong and sweet
and—”

“Someone normal!” Monica
upheld her complaints. “Not all girls do it
their
way.”

“No, but their way keeps us in their favor,
like the doctor says.”

Monica seemed to be near tears. “God, why
can’t I have a real man just once? Sometimes I’m tempted to
leave.”

“Shh! Don’t talk like that!” chided
Cassandra. “We both know what happens to girls who try to
leave…”

I couldn’t have been more bewildered as I
listened to the arcane discourse…

“I better check the trap,” said Cassandra,
and she hopped down into chest-deep water. She was wading out
toward the makeshift buoy. Meanwhile, Monica stood up to stretch,
hands behind her back. She did so turning, which afforded me a
side-glance of her physique. She bore a stunning, willowy beauty in
her youth, and couldn’t have been more than eighteen. Next she
turned more, and was facing me as she continued to stretch. The
shining black hair rose in a brief breeze off the water. She was an
exotic sight, petite-breasted, long-legged, and flat-stomached. I
meant to turn away, for my inadvertent glimpse of her seemed
invasive, but then Cassandra returned. She climbed up the pier’s
ladder to the deck, hoisting with her a small wire trap filled with
crayfish. Unlike Monica, Cassandra was nine months pregnant if she
was a day.