But I’m not his goddamn brother. I don’t understand any of this shit and there’s no way in hell I would have sat on my hands and did nothing while this problem got worse and worse.
Despite his bluster, though, he wasn’t so sure of that. What if these were his people? What if he was born and bred in Haymarket and these people were his own, his roots tangled with theirs, and their history his own? Then what? He just didn’t know.
Hyder cleared his throat and said, “One of the search parties just got back, Sheriff.”
“And?”
“Nothing. Same as the one I took out earlier today, didn’t find shit.”
Hyder told them they had tried doing some digging out near the area where he thought the trouble had happened the night before. But it was pointless—every time they got down a foot or two, all that rain just washed the muck back in. Even a backhoe couldn’t cut through that mess, he said. They got near the village and the dogs went crazy, yelping and snapping and whimpering and chasing their own tales. Even the handlers couldn’t get them near to that god-awful place.
“Let’s take a walk,” Godfrey said.
13
They pulled on their slickers and knee-high Sorel boots and walked out in the chill, damp grayness. Rain pissed down from the sky in whipping sheets. The farmyard was a flowing, sucking mire of mud. The drainage ditches at the sides of the dirt drive were threatening to overflow. Saturation point had been reached—fourteen inches of rain in the past week right on top of ten the week before. Rivers and lakes were overflowing and northwestern Wisconsin was turning into a flood plain like New Guinea during monsoon season.
The crime scene techs labored on in the downpour. Sixteen sets of remains had now been discovered and there was probably no true end in sight. Spivak, the coroner, was out there, lighting from one tarped set of remains to the next like a flower-hopping bee.
Kenney watched them out there as rain blew in his face and the trees groaned in the wind, tarps flapping like flags and rusty rain gutters creaking on the upper story of the farmhouse. He’d been at countless other crime scenes, but this one was far worse. It was down inside him, gestating, making him feel worse by the hour. He hated the wetness and the muck and the wind and the mist and that horrid, mephitic odor of violated graves that clung to everything and everyone.
“Come on,” Godfrey said, leading them towards the leaning hulk of the farmhouse itself.
It was huge and sagging, weathered gray as old bones. It leaned precariously to one side and the porch overhang had been shored up with 4 x 4s, but still it hung forward like the brim of a tipped hat. Shutters had been nailed over the upper story windows as if they were trying to hold something in or keep something out. The siding had popped free, planks nodding in the wind. Bitter seasons of snow and wind had peeled the shingles free and they were spilled over the wild grasses like the scales of prehistoric fish. There were gaping chasms in the roof, the walls. The kitchen at the rear had entirely caved in.
Kenney thought it looked like a house of cards ready to fall. It hadn’t been occupied in over thirty years, but it must’ve been a real dump even then.
“Watch your step,” Godfrey told them. “Porch is gone all soft.”
Kenney saw fingers of moss climbing between the warped planks underfoot.
They went in. The atmosphere of the place was odious and oppressive. There was a smell of age and rotting plaster, a desiccated stink of ancient animal droppings. It was pungent and almost gagging. Cobwebs were strung in the corners like netting and birds’ nests were visible through great rents in the slouched ceiling. Autumn leaves—brown and curled like the tiny mummified corpses of mice—were blown across the floors. The house creaked and groaned and swayed around them as if it were ready to fall into itself. But beyond that, it was soundless and still in there like the belly of a sarcophagus.
Hyder looked from the black mouth of the leaning stairwell to a stained archway that led into a deserted parlor. He licked his lips. They were gray and tight, his face grayer yet, constricted and compressed, corded muscles jumping beneath the skin. “Damn place,” he said. “Gets under your skin, don’t it?”
Godfrey led them down into the cellar.
It was just as black down there as the inside of a body bag. Kenney forced himself down the steps, flashlight trembling in his fist. He saw the hunched shapes of crates and old nail kegs, antiquated furniture and mildewed cardboard boxes—
He started, thinking he saw something—some hunched-over figure—hobble away from the light.
Hyder was breathing hard. “Sheriff, the men… the search parties… they’re concerned about being out after dark. I told ’em you’d call it quits at sundown.”
“Sounds good to me,” Godfrey said.
There was a brick cylinder blotched with water stains that rose up from the floor. It stood about four feet high, about twice that in circumference. It looked like an old cistern if anything. A flanged lid of rough-hewn planks was nailed in place.
“You wanna know about this place, the things that go on here, Lou, but I can’t help you. Later, maybe, we’ll go see an old woman who lives up the road a piece—” he said, staring into Kenney’s grim face “—but for now, I’m gonna tell you a story. It’s a story that I don’t want the others to hear.”
Hyder looked like he was going to have a stroke.
“You might wanna call this one a horror story,” Godfrey said, grinning with a mouthful of yellowed teeth, his face ghoulish and shadowy in the reflected gleam of the flashlights. “We’re going back about twenty years now. I’d been on the job a good bit then, long enough to know the sort of shit that pops up out here pretty well. On the far side of Ezren’s property, maybe three, four miles from that deserted town out there, there was a little place called French Village. I say was on account it ain’t there no more. You can find it, all right, but you won’t find no people there. Anyway, it was out on a county fork, stuck straight in the middle of nowhere. It barely passed as a village, more of a hamlet than anything, I guess. Old fellow that lived there—Buckner, I think—called and said he heard some screams coming from a little farmhouse across the way. I was in the area, me and a deputy, so we stopped and had a look. We didn’t find shit. Place was empty. I mean completely empty.
“It was eerie, I’ll tell you. The evening meal was put up on the table, but no one around to eat it. These were farm people and there was quite a spread—corn and chicken and taters and beans and you name it. Lot of it still warm. A few dinner rolls had been bitten into and some chairs had been pushed away from the table as if the family had gotten up together to take a look at something.
“And that was it. A family of six had slipped into thin air and all they’d left in passing were a few screams. Even the family dog—a big shepherd—was missing. He’d been chained outside and Buckner said that sumbitch was just as vicious as you please. We found the chain—it had been snapped.”
“Jesus Christ,” Kenney said, lighting a cigarette. “No signs of forced entry? Blood? Anything?”
Godfrey let out a long, low sigh. “Nothing like that. We found some muddy footprints in the living room. The front door was hanging wide open in the wind. There was a muddy handprint on it. But these prints… well, they weren’t from what you’d call human feet or hands.” Godfrey looked pained. “I had Buckner go through the whole thing a dozen times. I asked him why he hadn’t gone over there, farm folk being clannish and all. You know what he told me? He said he didn’t go out after dark, not with how things were. Said he locked his doors and windows and slept with a twelve gauge on his lap.”