Edward Trimnell Books

At least the repair of the Bonneville went smoothly. But something happened immediately afterward.

We drove home and Dad went to work installing the new gasket. 

I briefly offered to do the job. But we both knew how that would have gone.

“Better let me do it, son,” he said.

I didn’t argue. “Yes, Dad, maybe you’d better.”

My dad, his tee shirt stained with grease and oil, slid out from under the car. 

I had helped him, for what it was worth, as best I could. I handed him tools when he asked for them. 

Only once did I inadvertently hand him the wrong tool.

“You shouldn’t have any more oil leaks,” Dad said, now that the job was finished. 

“Thanks,” I said. I had already thanked him multiple times, but I was sincerely grateful.

“Next time, don’t let a problem go on like that. Ask for my help when you need it.”

“Sure thing, Dad. Thanks again.”

We were just about to take the car down from the jacks. My dad was putting his tools away, hanging them on the pegboard above the workbench.

I had the sense of someone watching me. In recent days this feeling had come to me when I was near the woods at night. 

I had also felt it while alone in my room. 

But now I was standing in our open garage, in the company of my father, in broad daylight, in the middle of a bright summer afternoon.

The most un-spooky setting you could possibly imagine. 

Above the sound of my dad clanging tools against the pegboard, I heard the sound of someone whistling.

I looked in the direction of the sound. Standing at the end of our driveway was Banny. Now he was wearing a pair of jeans and a tee shirt; but he also wore his now usual smirk. 

He looked at me and waved his hand in a beckoning gesture. 

“Come on, you bugger, if you’re up to it!”

“Steve?” my dad asked. “Could you help me pull the big toolbox out from underneath the workbench?” 

I turned toward my dad. “Sure, Dad. I’ll be right there.”

He saw me hesitating.

“Anything wrong, son?”

“No, Dad. Nothing’s wrong,” I lied.

I looked back at Banny. 

But Banny was gone. 

Just as I had half-expected would be the case.

Chapter 40

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View REVOLUTIONARY GHOSTS on Amazon!

“Sure,” Jane said. There was no point in denying this, no point in feigning ignorance. For generations, Thailand had had a reputation as the chief fleshpot of Asia. Prostitution of the most blatant, open kind was widely tolerated here; and the economics of the situation had long made Thailand’s red-light districts a bargain for the pleasure-seeking Western male.

Even in the corporate realm, where talk of such subject matter would ordinarily be the ultimate taboo, there were whispers and innuendos about Thailand. Jane had noticed that some of the male engineers at TRX had shown a suspicious level of interest in visiting the Thai branch. This might have been nothing more than a coincidence. But well, as they said: circumstantial evidence…

“Things are so free and easy here,” Khajee went on. “So many women available. So many options for men. It’s hard to find a good man in Thailand.”

“Hard to find a good man in America,” Jane replied, by way of commiseration. 

Of course, she had found a good man, hadn’t she? Jane thought of David Haley, the man she had been seeing. Her boyfriend, she supposed.

Until five months ago, when she met David, Jane would have largely agreed with the sentiment that she had just uttered. Jane was tall, fit, attractive, and well-educated. But she had seemed incapable of finding her Mr. Right.

She had gone from one semi-serious relationship to another, dealing with Mr. Not Ready, Mr. Keeping His Options Open, and their various friends. Already well into her thirties, Jane had begun to resign herself to an inevitable spinsterhood. At least she still had her work! And her cat! 

She had enumerated such considerations with a sort of gallows humor. She also reminded herself that she worked a lot of hours. Maybe that was part of the problem. Perhaps she needed to change her entire life, she thought, before it was too late.

Then a friend had dragged her out one night to a party that she really hadn’t wanted to attend. At that party she’d met David Haley. Her life had been different since then.

And then David had left—but not for long. David was presently working on a corporate assignment in Germany. The distance had not seemed to dim his ardor—or hers. Jane was eagerly looking forward to David’s return, now just a few weeks away.

Khajee seemed very interested in David, Jane had noticed, although the two had never met. On several occasions, Khajee had asked to see David’s picture, pointedly noting how handsome he was.

“Yes,” Khajee said now, “but you’ve found one—a good man, I mean.”

“For a long time, I didn’t. Couldn’t.”

“But the point is, you did. Things are very different in Thailand. Also, the country is changing because of globalization and economic development. Fewer people getting married and having children all over the country. Very different now, even compared to my parents’ time. Did you know that Thailand has the lowest birthrate in Southeast Asia?”

“No, I didn’t,” Jane replied. 

“Well, it’s true. Lower than Vietnam, Laos, Cambodia, or Malaysia. The birth rate here is about the same as in Japan.”

“I see.” Jane had read and heard about low birth rates in Japan. A dwindling, aging population now threatened the long-term vibrancy of the Japanese economy.

“Anyway, with so many childless women, there’s now a market for dolls that contain the souls of dead children.” Khajee shrugged, as if not sure what to make of that herself, as if realizing just how bizarre that sounded.

Jane felt an involuntary shudder ripple through her body, despite the heat. She looked again at the doll—the luk thep. The “angel doll” or “spirit doll”. What had Khajee named her? Lawan. 

“And think about the other side of the equation,” Khajee continued. “There are so many little ones who have died young, especially in this part of the world. I like to think that my little Lawan contains the soul of a sweet little girl who never knew a proper mother.”

Jane found herself seized by a sudden desire to change the subject. She didn’t want to speculate about the nature of the spirit that might inhabit the doll. She glanced again at the doll’s macabrely realistic face, its artificially cherubic smile. 

Jane shuddered, and hoped that Khajee wouldn’t notice her reaction. 

Although Jane wasn’t superstitious, she also hoped that the central sales point of the luk thep doll—the supposed spiritual infestation—was the myth that she (for the most part) believed it to be. For if a spirit were inside that doll, Jane suspected that it would not be angelic in temperament.   

“You can never be sure about such things, can you?” Jane replied. (What else could you say to a notion like that, uttered by a colleague whom you didn’t know all that well, late at night in an office thousands of miles from home?) “Well, it gave me a little bit of a start, that’s all. Come on, we’ve almost finished going through the data. Then we can both call it a day—and hopefully get some sleep.”

Khajee took the hint; and for that matter, the Thai woman was probably tired, too. It had been an awfully long day. Khajee leaned forward in her chair, clutched the mouse once more, and the two women resumed their confirmation of the data.

Khajee said no more about the doll—Lawan—but Jane remained aware of it. At one point Jane considered asking Khajee to cover it, for the simple reason that it was distracting her. But there was no way to make such a request politely—certainly not in another person’s office.

Chapter 7

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We finished breakfast without further outbursts. My mother’s pancakes were delicious, as always.

As we were all clearing off the table, my father’s mood visibly brightened.

“How are things going with the Bonneville, Steve?” he ventured.

I decided that the time had come to eat crow, to come clean.

“Not so well. To tell you the truth, Dad, the car leaks oil, just like you said.”

“I have noticed the puddle on the concrete, over where you park,” he said. “Tell you what. What say you let me take a look at the situation, then the two of us can head over to Bauer’s Auto Parts?”

I felt my own spirits lift along with my father’s. I had been at a loss in regard to the Bonneville. And now it seemed that my father was going to bail me out.

“Yes, Dad,” I said. “That sounds like a good idea. Please.”

We opened the garage door, and Dad and I put the Bonneville up on jacks inside the garage. My dad slid underneath the car on his rolling creeper. He needed only a few minutes underneath the car to diagnose the situation. 

“Well, son,” he said, as he stood up from the creeper. “You’re in luck. The oil pan isn’t cracked. That would have been a fairly major repair. What you’ve got is a leaky gasket. We should be able to get a new gasket at Bauer’s Auto Parts.”

Once again, I felt the clouds lifting.

They would not remain lifted for long.

We drove over to Bauer’s Auto Parts. Much like the Pantry Shelf, Bauer’s Otto Parts was an independent store, not affiliated with any national chain. The auto parts store was located inside a long, grey building constructed around the turn of the twentieth century. The building had originally been a small factory or a warehouse.

Otto Bauer was around my father’s age. A second-generation American, he was the son of German immigrants. Otto had also served in the Second World War—on our side, of course—as a battlefield interpreter. 

Otto was standing behind the counter when we walked in. He hailed my father and me, but he seemed distracted, maybe a little glum. 

“Where do you keep the oil pan gaskets?” my dad asked. 

Unlike the surly clerk at the Sunoco station, Otto was immediately helpful. He walked us back to the location in the dusty store where the oil pan gaskets were kept. 

“You should find what you need here,” Otto said. “I’ll be waiting for you at the counter. Let me know if you need any further assistance.”

As Otto walked back to the front of the store, I turned to my father. 

“Something wrong with Otto?” I said in a low voice.

My dad shrugged. “Can’t say. Maybe.”

Otto also had a ne’er-do-well son, who was a former classmate of my brother. Jack and Dan Bauer had even run around together from time-to-time. Unlike Jack, Dan had managed to avoid military service completely during the Vietnam conflict, by staying enrolled in classes at UC, and keeping his grades barely above the passing level.

Maybe Otto was having similar problems with Dan, I figured.

We—or rather, my dad—selected the particular gasket from the ones hanging from pegs. An oil pan gasket, in case you don’t know, is a long, oddly shaped piece of rubber that seals the oil pan to the engine block. On the way over to the auto parts store, my father had explained to me that the gasket currently on the Bonneville was warped and cracked, hence the slow, constant leak. 

As we headed toward the counter, I started to remove my wallet from my right rear jeans pocket. My dad put a hand on my arm.

“No, son. This will be my treat.”

“Really? Dad, you don’t have to—”

“I know I don’t have to. But I want to. Next time, though, please take my advice on automotive matters.”

“Sure thing, Dad. Thanks.”

Otto was waiting for us at the counter, looking sour-faced and distracted as ever. 

“Find the one you needed?” he asked. 

We both told him that yes, we had, and Otto rang up the purchase on his mechanical cash register. 

Now my father had taken notice of his mood, too.

“Anything wrong, Otto?” Dad asked. “You don’t seem quite yourself today.”

“Yes, now that you mention it,” Otto said. “Dan.”

I figured that Dan was involved in some kind of predictable trouble. He had been arrested for drunk driving or drug possession, maybe. But that wasn’t it.

“Dan’s gone missing,” Otto said. 

“Missing?” I said. 

“Ja,” Otto said. Though Otto spoke perfect English, he had grown up speaking German at home. “Dan took off on his motorcycle three days ago,” Otto went on, “leaving his girlfriend’s house. And he hasn’t been seen since.” 

“You’ve reported him missing, of course,” my father said, more a question than a statement.

“Yes.” Otto nodded. “They already have their hands full with another missing persons case. Those two other young people.” 

“What other young people?” my dad asked. “Someone else is missing?”

“Yes,” I inserted. “Two twenty year-olds. Robert McMoore and Donna Seitz.” Dad looked at me as if to ask: How do you know? “I saw a missing persons flyer,” I added.

“Oh,” my father said. “So we now have three missing young adults in the area.”

Otto paused to think. “I wonder if they’re connected. I hope they’re not connected. I hope that my Dan has simply gone off on a binge somewhere, and that this McMoore fellow and his girlfriend have eloped. Not an outcome that their parents would like, perhaps, but much better than some of the alternatives.”

“I hope so, too,” Dad said. “Good luck finding Dan, Otto. We’ll keep your family in our thoughts and prayers.”

We were driving home in Dad’s pickup truck. Otto’s bad news had put a damper on my relief at discovering a simple solution to the problem with the Bonneville. 

“Now you see, son,” Dad said, “you see how much is going wrong with our country. When I was in my early twenties, we had the war, of course; but we didn’t have serial killers. Young men weren’t found in the woods with their heads cut off; and if young people did go missing, it was almost always temporary, and it was almost always because they’d eloped or just run off. Do you know when those other two were last seen?”

“More than two weeks ago,” I said.

“That means they probably didn’t elope, then. It also means that there probably isn’t going to be a happy ending for them and their families.”

Chapter 39

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I made it to Sunday morning without any further incidents.

I wouldn’t have described my parents as especially devout, but they were regular churchgoers. In the morning, I accompanied them to services at the small Lutheran church we attended.

I daydreamed through the service. When I left the church, I would not have been able to recount a single sentence from the pastor’s sermon to save my life.

My mind was otherwise occupied.

When we arrived home, our Sunday copy of the Cincinnati Enquirer had arrived, too. I took my time skimming through the paper, pausing only briefly on stories about the ongoing national headache of stagflation, and the upcoming presidential election.

Then I saw a story that did catch my attention.

“Headless bodies found near Zanesville”

In the wake of several young men going missing in the area, Zanesville authorities made a grisly discovery in a wooded area just beyond the city limits last Thursday.

The partially decomposed, headless bodies of two young men were found in a ravine…”

The story went on to include quotes from local law enforcement officials. There were speculations of a serial killer, or perhaps organized crime.

Zanesville was a small city in central Ohio. No more than a few hours from Cincinnati.

How many more coincidences do you need? I asked myself.

“Looks like an article there has your attention,” Dad said. Sitting on his La-Z-Boy, he was busy reading the sports section. The Cincinnati Reds were going gangbusters this year. The local sports media was already hyping the possibility of them winning the World Series (which they did, in fact, win in 1976—though I would have little interest in baseball that year).

I told my father the gist of the article. His reaction caught me off guard.

“What else can you expect?” He practically shouted. “With the way so many kids are using those damn drugs today, losing all control, it’s no surprise that things like that happen!”

I didn’t know quite what to say. We had not discussed Jack’s visit the prior night. Nevertheless, no major feat of interpretation was required to discern that my father’s words were a reflection of his frustrations and disappointments with Jack.

And I, for my part, was no fan of Jack’s lifestyle, for the rest of the hippie drug culture. But I wasn’t sure that I could so easily ascribe those headless bodies in Zanesville to the ongoing problem of young people getting high and dropping out.

More and more, I was coming to the conclusion that Harry Bailey’s article might have an element of truth to it.

But this was a conclusion that I was still fighting.

My mother had been in the kitchen, making the three of us pancakes, as was our usual after-church Sunday ritual. 

She walked out into the living room, drawn by the sound of my father’s outburst. 

“Is everything okay?” She asked.

My father smiled at her, obviously struggling to calm himself down.

“Everything is just fine, Marge. Steve and I were just talking, that’s all.”

My mom looked over at me for corroboration.

“Just a disturbing article in the newspaper,” I said. “Some young men murdered in Zanesville.”

“Do they know who killed them?”

“Not yet.”

“Oh,” my mother said. “Yes, that is a shame.”

My mother didn’t bother to ask why such a news report would have provoked my father to shout.

Thanks to Jack, yesterday had been a stressful day for them, as well as me.

Chapter 38

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At several points in this narrative, I’ve alluded to Jack’s service in the military—such as it was. Perhaps now would be an opportune juncture to tell you exactly what happened.

Jack was eighteen in 1967, which made him prime draft material. Jack wanted no part of either the military or the war in Vietnam. Despite his lackluster academic performance, he perceived that a student deferment offered him the best chance for avoiding all that.

He could have attended the nearby University of Cincinnati; but he convinced my parents to fund his enrollment at the Ohio State University, located two hours away in the state capital of Columbus.

Jack was no more of a scholar in college than he had been in high school. Freed from all sense of restriction and structure, he was worse, in fact. To make a long story short, my brother required only two semesters to flunk out of OSU.

Jack returned to Cincinnati. He bummed around for a while at odd jobs. Without his student deferment, he knew that he was draft meat. He tried desperately to secure a spot in the Ohio National Guard or the U.S. Army Reserves. (During the Vietnam War—unlike the more recent wars in the Middle East—the National Guard and the reserves were not deployed abroad.)

Finally, Jack decided to take classes at the University of Cincinnati, with the hope of acquiring another student deferment. But by then it was already too late.

There had been complaints throughout the country that the very concept of the student deferment was unfair. The result of the student deferment system was to place the burden of fighting the war disproportionately on lower income youths, while exempting the sons of the wealthy.

In 1969, President Richard Nixon signed legislation that made all incoming male college students eligible for the draft lottery. So Jack couldn’t escape the war simply by signing up for classes at UC.

Shortly after that, Jack’s draft number was called. 

Jack briefly toyed with the idea of going to Canada. But while my father might have been willing to bankroll Jack’s abortive attempts at scholarship, there was no way he was going to finance an illegal flight to Canada. 

Bowing to the inevitable, Jack enlisted in the U.S. Army. In the days before he left for basic training, Jack seemed to turn over a new leaf. 

Maybe he would even like the Army, he said. In a rare moment of self-reflection, he went so far as to say that the discipline might do him good.

That attitude, however, didn’t last.

Jack was sent to Vietnam. No big surprise there. But he wasn’t sent out into the jungles, hunting down Vietcong. Jack had—with uncharacteristic wisdom—selected the Quartermaster Corps, which handles the Army’s supply and logistics operations. 

The U.S. Army sent Jack to Vietnam to serve as a low-level warehouse clerk in Saigon. He was stationed at Tan Son Nhut Air Base, just outside the capital city of South Vietnam. 

The assignment might have afforded Jack an opportunity to serve out his enlistment in relative peace and safety. But this was Jack; and with Jack, things could never be simple or easy.

He became involved in a scheme to export narcotics from Southeast Asia to the United States. By this time, an illegal market for recreational drugs was already booming in the U.S. Jack’s role in the Quartermaster Corps placed him in an ideal position to transport the Southeast Asian contraband to U.S. destinations. (Keep in mind, this was before drug-sniffing dogs, and the draconian airport security of the post-9/11 world.) 

Jack wasn’t the only one involved in the scheme. There were two other conspirators from the Army, and at least two from the Air Force. But this assembly of halfwits didn’t equal one full wit, apparently.

Once again, I’ll make a long story short: The scheme was exposed before the cabal ever sent a single shipment of hashish, heroin, or other intoxicating substances to a single American port. All of the men were arrested, placed in the stockade, and told to prepare themselves for court martial procedures.

Then someone in the Army hierarchy learned who Jack was. Or rather—who his father was. That changed everything for Jack.

By the early 1970s, the nightly news was filled with footage of antiwar protests. Public sentiments about the war in Vietnam had reached a low point. Several incidents, moreover, made the situation even worse. 

In 1970, we learned that a rogue group of U.S. Army soldiers had massacred over three hundred Vietnamese civilians in the South Vietnamese village of My Lai in 1968. (We also learned that another group of American soldiers, members of a helicopter crew, intervened on behalf of the villagers. The helicopter crew threatened to turn a machine gun on their fellow countrymen, should they continue to murder civilians.) 

That same year, a raucous student protest at Kent State University, in northern Ohio, took a tragic turn when National Guardsmen fired on rock-throwing protestors. Four students were killed and multiple others were wounded. 

One of the dead, an ROTC scholarship student from Cincinnati, wasn’t even involved in the protest. He was on his way to class when he was killed by a stray bullet.

These were dark days for the American military—for the entire country, for that matter. 

But the men who had fought in World War II were still largely revered as heroes. Especially the ones who had participated in the big, historic battles. All of the men in my dad’s division had been decorated for their actions on June 6, 1944. 

In the atmosphere of the Vietnam era, the last thing the Army needed was a news report of a decorated D-Day veteran’s son being court-martialed for engaging in a conspiracy to transport illegal drugs to the United States. 

Or that, at least, was the conclusion that the Army brass eventually reached. The Army dropped Jack’s court martial and sent him packing with a dishonorable discharge. 

This was a mixed outcome for Jack, but it could have been much worse. On the plus side, Jack avoided a lengthy term in the United States Disciplinary Barracks at Fort Leavenworth, Kansas. The Army, meanwhile, avoided yet another lurid public scandal.

But Jack was not truly a veteran, in the sense that my father was a veteran, in the sense that all the other young men returning from Vietnam were veterans. He had been drummed out of the Army under a cloud of disgrace. 

Jack returned to Cincinnati. Where else was he going to go? 

There were inevitable questions and suspicions about Jack’s hasty return from the service. But the story of Jack’s debacle never made the papers. We were therefore able to get by with vague explanations. No one outside the family knew the whole story—so far as we knew—but I’m sure that plenty of people suspected something near the truth.

You might now ask me why my parents didn’t simply disown their elder son at this point. Jack had, after all, disgraced them, even if that disgrace never made the news.

I didn’t understand their forbearance at the time, but I understand it better now, since I’ve had children of my own. 

My son Mark, and my daughter, Patty, never sold drugs or engaged in other forms of criminal behavior. But they did at times disappoint me, and try my patience in various ways.

Even if they had done worse, though, I don’t believe that I could have truly disowned either of them. That is a difficult step for any parent to take.

Chapter 36

Table of contents

My heart was still pounding. But at least I had reached our neighborhood now. 

I saw no sign of the skeletal figures that I had seen in the bushes, no sign of anyone on horseback. 

I permitted myself to wonder if I had imagined it all—what I had seen and heard on the drive home. 

Today had been an emotionally charged day, filled with various circumstantial evidence of the weird and supernatural. 

I had foolishly allowed Keith and his friends to goad me into taking a hit on the reefer. 

I didn’t believe that a single hit of regular marijuana would have altered my senses. But how did I know what was really in that joint? I had heard stories of people lacing ordinary marijuana cigarettes with LSD and hallucinogenic mushrooms. 

If that had been the case, then there was, indeed, a logical explanation for that most unusual drive home from McDonald’s.

Keith Conway had set me up. Maybe I would deck him the next time I saw him, consequences be damned. 

Then our house came into view, and I forgot about Keith Conway and the last five miles I had driven. 

Jack’s red Corvair—the one that Leslie and her girlhood friends had been so fond of—was sitting in the driveway. 

Or to be more precise, Jack’s red Corvair was parked in the pull-off space, the one that Dad and I had made—for my car.

I was immediately tense. But tense for an entirely new set of reasons.

I parked on the street. Otherwise, I would have to move the Bonneville again in order for Jack to leave. And I didn’t want to delay his departure by even a minute. Hopefully, he would be on his way out already.

But Jack wasn’t on his way out. Jack had just arrived, in fact. 

My brother was sitting in the spare recliner in the living room. Dad was sitting in his La-Z-Boy, Mom on the couch. 

The television screen was dark. In 1976, there wasn’t much to watch late at night. Most of the networks signed off around midnight. 

And anyway, my parents had a visitor—an unwelcome one, I thought.

Jack was wearing blue jeans and a black tee shirt. He wore his hair and his beard long.

Jack had never been much for cracking the books. But as a high school student during the 1960s, he had been a respectable baseball player. Back then he’d been clean-cut. Now he looked like a cast member of the musical Hair. 

“Hello, little brother,” Jack said. 

Jack smiled at me through his dark, heavy beard. I recall thinking that there was something wild and dangerous in my brother’s eyes; and that was the impression I had had of him since as far back as I could remember.

Jack had never laid a hand on me—with the exception of some harmless roughhousing during our brief time together in our parents’ house. But I was afraid of him, nonetheless.

That might have been the moment I first faced that realization head-on. After a day of so much that was unbelievable, I was facing up to a mundane truth of my childhood, a truth that I had lived with my whole life—and yet—evaded to the best of my ability.

I feared my brother. 

And I hated him a little bit, too. 

“Hello, Jack,” I said. 

Jack appeared to be moderately intoxicated. But Jack always seemed to be intoxicated back in those days. 

“A little late for a casual visit,” I said.

“Really?” he asked, an edge in his voice. “Might I remind you, Steve: I was here ten years before you were. If one of us is the interloper here, it’s you.”

I felt a tide of rage welling up inside me. I wanted to tell him off, to tell him to leave. 

But my father intervened before I could.

“That’s enough of that kind of talk,” Dad said. “Your brother was out working tonight, Jack, which is more than I can say for you.” 

“I have been working,” Jack said. He looked away from me, dismissively, and back at our father. “I’ve been working as an assistant at Hal’s Body Shop, over in Batavia.”

“You’ve been doing that about five hours per week,” Dad scoffed. “You spend the rest of your time screwing around, getting drunk, getting high. Which is why you’re twenty-seven years old, and still unable to support yourself.”

Although Jack thought nothing of using harsh words with me, he knew better than to attempt a frontal assault on our father. His tactic was always to make some allowances for Dad’s criticisms, before attacking stealthily from another angle.

But this time Jack’s modus operandi backfired.

“I know I need to do a better job of getting my act together,” Jack conceded, with what I took to be contrived humility. “I’ve been working on myself. Try to have some sympathy, for me, please, Dad. Some understanding. We’re both veterans, after all.”

I saw the color rise in my Dad’s face. My mother’s eyes went wide with alarm. 

Jack shouldn’t have said that.

“Please, Jack,” my father said, with an obvious effort to control his sudden anger. “Don’t say things like that. I served my country in combat, including D-Day. As you well know. Your time in the military wasn’t anything like that.”

“I know,” Jack said, hanging his head dolefully. “I was just saying—”

“Well, don’t say things like that.”

Jack raised his head again. “Everything you’re saying is true, Dad. Every word of it. I really need to work on myself, like I said. But I’m in a jam. I’m behind on my portion of the rent out at the farmhouse.”

This was the living arrangement that Leslie had mentioned, which I had dismissed as a “hippie commune”. Jack shared space—probably not much more than a cot and a corner of a room—at a farmhouse farther out in the country. He lived with a group of six or seven other guys, all of them dropouts in one way or another.

“And so now you’re here for money,” my mother said.

“I’m here with the sincere hope that my parents will be willing to help me out when I’m in need.”

“Jack,” Dad said, “your mother and I have already given you handouts, or ‘tide-me-overs’ as you like to call them, on numerous occasions.”

I had heard versions of this conversation multiple times in the past. Today had been a long day. I was tired and shaken by the events of the day (though partly buoyed, too, by my pleasant interactions with Diane Parker.)

Under ideal circumstances, I would have liked to have talked to my parents about my day, to have made them understand—if it were possible to break through their understandable skepticism—what I had experienced since noon.

I was almost certain that I had seen something in the bushes. Those hoofbeats, moreover, I had heard for at least two miles. 

Could all that really have been mere figments of my imagination?

But Jack was here, and so Jack’s needs, Jack’s deficiencies, Jack’s addictions, were going to dominate the conversation.

“Excuse me,” I said. “I’m going to head to bed now, if that’s okay.”

“Of course, Stevie,” Mom said.

My father echoed a similar sentiment. 

I headed toward my bedroom.

As I was leaving, Jack gave me a sardonic, “Goodnight, little brother.”

I didn’t answer him.

Chapter 35

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Most of the route home consisted of secondary two-lane highways that cut through farmland, woods, and open fields. Country roads, in other words. 

I passed the Sunoco station where I had stopped for oil. I wondered about the clerk. Was he sitting behind the counter now?

And what had he seen, that provoked such anger in him when I asked him about hoofprints, and seeing a horse?

I rolled down the window on the driver’s side. The Bonneville was equipped with an early version of air conditioning; but I didn’t want to overly tax the car’s capacities until I had the oil leak fixed—another worry on my mind that night.

The wind blowing in through the open window was sharp with the smells of cow pastures and tilled fields. I glanced to my left: I saw a field of early corn, still less than knee-high, and behind that the dark hulk of a wooden barn. There was a three-quarters moon tonight, and I could read the words, CHEW MAIL POUCH TOBACCO painted in white against a black background on the side of the barn that faced the road. 

This sure was a lonely spot, I thought. I passed a farmhouse. The little white clapboard structure was at the far end of a long gravel driveway. A single light burned in what appeared to be the kitchen window. 

But for all practical purposes, I was alone out here. 

When I first heard the distant clatter of hoofbeats, I immediately went into denial mode. I told myself that I was hearing nothing more than the echo of the radial tires against the blacktop. 

Then the hoofbeats grew louder.

I pushed down on the accelerator pedal. This two-lane country road was narrow, and the narrow berm left little margin for error. But at least I was on a straightaway. 

The hoofbeats faded.

And they grew louder again. 

I took a quick look at the speedometer. I was driving 60 mph in a 40 mph zone. If a cop happened by, I would be more than deserving of a speeding ticket. 

That would be fine with me. Red flashing lights in the rearview mirror would have been a relief. 

But when I looked in the rearview mirror, I was looking for a horse. 

Which made absolutely no sense. There was simply no logical explanation for my being pursued by a horse along this road, at 11 p.m. on a Saturday night. 

The sound of the inrushing wind was so loud that it wouldn’t have been possible for me to converse with a passenger, if I’d had one. 

I pushed the accelerator again. 66 mph. 

I was almost home. Only a few more miles to go.

I was coming up on the secondary road that led to our neighborhood. A sharp left turn. 

I could still hear the clattering hoofbeats behind me.

I released the gas and touched the brake—just a little. 

I pulled the steering wheel to the left. Hard. Tires squealed on the pavement. 

As the Bonneville made the sharp turn, I overshot the far side of the road by a good foot or more. 

One of my tires slid on the gravel that covered the berm. 

I had only a split second to correct the car’s trajectory, lest I take it into the ditch. 

My only option was to pull the steering wheel to the left again. But that meant the risk of overshooting the road in the opposite direction. 

Somehow, I managed to yank the wheel to the right. But not too far to the right. 

The car swerved back and forth for a short distance until I was able to stabilize it. 

This road was heavily wooded, and curvy. A speed of 65 mph simply wasn’t an option here, no matter what was on the road behind me. 

I slowed the car to 25 mph as I neared a sharp curve that sloped upward. 

I looked behind me. Nothing in the rearview mirror.  

I sighed with relief. I was only a few miles from home now. 

And I couldn’t hear the hoofbeats anymore.

Something caught my attention at the side of the road—to my right.

There was movement in the thick underbrush at the front of the tree line. 

I saw manlike shapes, bearing long rifles.

No—muskets. 

At least, that was what I thought I’d seen. But that wasn’t the worst of it.

I thought that I’d seen a flash of the manlike shapes’ faces, five or six feet off the ground. 

Their faces were a bony, bleached white.

Skulls. 

I remembered what Harry Bailey had written, more or less:

“These soldiers appear as skeletal ghouls, as might be consistent with their undead state…” 

This could be a dangerous road at night, even at a slow speed. Nevertheless, I felt compelled to look backward, at the spot where I had seen them.

There was nothing back there now. 

I looked straight ahead, gripped the steering wheel with both hands, and continued home.

Chapter 34

Table of contents

Diane, as a new employee in the training phase, wasn’t asked to stay for the “closing up” procedures. Jenny Tierney and I had that covered. Two was more than enough for the cashiers’ portion of the closing. 

We retrieved fresh boxes of condiment packets from the back storage room, and restocked the supply beneath the counter. In the customer dining area, we filled the straw and napkin dispensers. 

I walked out at not quite 10:45 p.m. My earlier estimate had been right on target. 

When I saw the boys gathered in the parking lot, under one of the big halogen lights, I groaned silently.

I had avoided Keith Conway for the entire evening since our initial conversation. But I was to avoid him no longer.

Keith was there with Jonesey and Scott Thomas. They were smoking a marijuana cigarette, passing the reefer back and forth between them.

They hailed me almost as soon as I came out through the main door.

“Yo! Stevie, buddy! Come here!” Keith Conway, of course. 

“Have a good night, Keith,” I said, as I approached them. I was about to veer toward the Bonneville. “I’m going home.” I nodded curtly at Jonesey and Scott. “I’ll see you later.”

There was nothing about my response that struck me as humorous, or even mildly ironic. It nevertheless occasioned giggling from Scott and Jonesey. They knew that Keith and I were not exactly best friends, and they saw this as another way to curry favor with him. 

“‘See us later’?” Keith said. “I was thinking you might want to toke up with us. Come on, Stevie. The Carol Burnett Show is already off the air.”

Jonesey and Scott found this hysterically funny. I recalled that Louis had said something similar. Why did everyone seem to think that I watched Carol Burnett? 

“I don’t think so,” I replied. I turned away from them.

“Ah, man. Can’t you ever just be one of the guys?” Keith said. “I mean like…for once in your whole life?”

I had no desire to be one of this particular group of guys. Under different circumstances, I would have told them so.

I was in turmoil, however. I couldn’t rid my mind of all the unusual events of the day—despite my conscious intention to focus on pleasant summertime thoughts.

It had occurred to me: If Louis has been having strange experiences, too, then it can’t be all coincidence. 

In the midst of that inner conflict, the needling from these three knuckleheads caused my temper to snap suddenly. 

They wanted me to be one of the guys? Fine. I would show them.

I spun on my heels and walked up to them. I saw Keith’s body tense. He was likely wondering if I was going to hit him.

And for a second, I was wondering about that, too. 

“Here,” I said. I snatched the joint from Jonesey’s hand. I put it to my lips and inhaled.

I had never smoked marijuana before. I had only smoked regular cigarettes on a handful of occasions, and I hadn’t liked the experience. One thing you may have noticed about the children of smokers: They either automatically drift into their parents’ tobacco habit, as a matter of course, or they quickly decide that they want nothing to do with the products of RJ Reynolds and Philip Morris. I was firmly in the latter group. 

I wanted to cough out the lungful of acrid, oddly sweet marijuana smoke. But that would give them undue satisfaction. They would have themselves a good laugh at my expense. 

So I willed myself not to cough. I exhaled the smoke slowly, luxuriantly, as if this was something I did every day. 

“Are you happy now?” I said to Keith. 

I handed the joint back to Jonesey, and then turned and walked in the direction of my car.

Now I had to drive home. I was feeling light-headed. 

Surely a single hit from a joint hadn’t affected me that strongly, I thought.

Nevertheless, I could see a little field of stars swimming before my eyes. I had experienced this feeling once before, when I’d played touch football, and another kid had tackled me from my blind side.

The placebo effect, I told myself. One hit on a joint is nothing. Keith and his moronic friends, after all, seemed to smoke bales of it. And they somehow managed to drive themselves around. 

I started up the Bonneville, backed out of my parking space, and began my journey home. I had a feeling that I hadn’t yet exhausted the day’s surprises. 

And I hadn’t—not by a long shot.

Chapter 33

Table of contents