While Hyder smiled dumbly and perhaps numbly, Godfrey said, “I want you to tell Mr. Kenney all about it, Miss Elena. He needs to know what we know.”
“We? Since when do you know anything?”
Godfrey shook his head and smiled thinly. “It’s time,” he said. “This had to happen sooner or later.”
“I suppose it did,” she said. “I suppose it did at that.” She fixed Kenney with a hard stare, and then she looked back at Godfrey. “Now you want me to unburden my soul to a stranger. You want me to open the trapdoor of Haymarket and let him look upon all those dark, dirty things we hide from the light of day… is that it?”
“Yes.”
She considered it. “Well, maybe it is time. God knows, it’s been going on far too long.” She sipped her ‘shine, set it aside, and folded her hands primly on her lap. “Well then, Mister Kenney. Listen good. I’ll tell you some things you won’t wanna hear nor believe, but I’ll tell you. I won’t see ninety again, so it’s time I unburden my soul maybe.”
She ran skeletal fingers through her thinning white hair that looked like bits of blown cotton stuck to a pale pink balloon. “First off, you need to understand that the land over there—a good piece of it out here on Bellac—was owned by a godless clan called Ezren. That farmhouse out there, it was built on the foundation of something much older. A well of sorts, I guess you’d call it. According to local Ojibwa tradition, a huge flaming stone… a piece of star… fell from the sky many centuries ago and burned itself down into the earth. It glowed for sixty days and sixty nights. In fact, they say, at night it not only glowed but shot a green beam of light straight up into the heavens like a beacon to where it had come from.”
“A meteor?” Kenney asked.
“It would seem so.”
“Meteorite,” Hyder corrected them. “When they hit the earth that’s what they’re called. I had a telescope when I was a kid and—”
“And nobody’s interested,” Miss Elena said. “The Ojibwa shaman considered it a holy object and they piled stones around the hole it made. They worshipped at it long after its glow had winked out. Story has it, many of them died. And it was here that this holy object becomes an evil object. It becomes taboo and all the tribe give it a wide berth. Going so far, I understand, as to move the tribe itself several miles away…”
Kenney listened as she went on and on about half-remembered Indian superstitions and tribal traditions. He supposed there could have been a germ of truth in all of it. Perhaps a meteorite had fallen and perhaps it was radioactive. That wouldn’t have been so surprising. That would explain the deaths in the tribe and the need for them to move far away from it. He had never heard of a meteorite being dangerously radioactive, but he figured it was possible.
“Now how much of that Ojibwa folktale is truth is anyone’s guess. That brings us to the Ezrens. The last Ezren—Luke Ezren—died off thirty years ago. God save the Queen, what a blessed event that was. He lived in the farmhouse with his mother and his daughter. He was of direct lineage to the ones that built that dead town yonder in the toolies. The blasphemous place, as my mother called it. Old-timers used to call it Hell’s Half-Acre and with good reason. It was built by settlers from out east long before the Revolutionary War with the Brits. See, they came out here, following a British contingent that built a fort out in these parts. Fort’s long gone. It fell to the Yanks after the war and slowly went to seed. But the town, it survived, if you wanna call it that. There was a puritan preacher name of Clavitt who founded that place. They called it Clavitt Fields. Him and the Ezrens and the Cooks and Blakes—they were the original occupants. But it was a fella name of Corben—Irish or Welsh or some such thing—that came to that town just before the war and started tapping into the darkness that seeped from that well. Before him, well, it wasn’t a good place even then, but afterwards? It got that much worse.”
“We were out there,” Kenney admitted. “Last night.”
Her eyes narrowed. “Were you? Then it’s still there, by God. And at night? Well, you’re either a brave man or a damn stupid one.” She took another drink, cleared her throat. “Now, as the years past that town got worse and worse and there were stories of devil worship and whatnot. But that was probably horseshit. Those people back then, when they didn’t understand something, they started going on about spirits and witches and goblins. You know the type. I believe a Hyder was among them,” she said, glaring at the undersheriff. “Anyway, by then other towns had sprung up around here, after the war. Well, things happened—awful things—and on around 1820, 1830, people had had their fill. A group of them from Trowden—Haymarket now—destroyed Clavitt Fields. They shot down who or whatever lived there, knocked down the houses and buildings with cannons from the fort, burned the rest. Seeded the ground with salt. Thought they were done.”
Kenney had to remember to blink now. “But they weren’t?”
“Hardly. Those that lived in that evil place, they still lived out there. Maybe in the ruins or below like rats, like worms they were. See, they had become… degenerate, physically degenerate. They were a tainted lot. Weren’t exactly human no more before the town was razed, but afterwards… dear God, horrible. That’s what, horrible.”
“How do you know all this?”
“These are tales handed down through my bloodline. My great-grandfather was one of the men who raided that town. I have his papers.” She finished her ‘shine and sat there, eyes gone filmy with dark memory. “Now, like I said, the town was in ruins, but… things still lived out there. Wasn’t long before graves was being opened and rifled through, bones found scattered about. Children turned up missing. Men and women, too. Bad business all around. The local Ojibwa wouldn’t go anywhere near that place. They bury their dead same as us, but with what was happening, they started burning ’em. Burning ’em so that whatever haunted those ruins wouldn’t dig ’em up and gnaw on ’em. Anyway, as you might suspect, a lot of the towns around here folded up. Farms were built and abandoned and it’s carried on to the present day. Farms still don’t do well around Bellac Road. County people have tested the soil, say it’s just fine. But don’t believe ’em none. It’s just plain bad, particularly over towards the Ezren spread. At night, surely, at night it sometimes has a funny shine to it. Course, livestock disappears and people, too.” She looked at Kenney with a penetrating, unflinching look. “Sheriff tell you about French Village? Yeah? Okay, then, you know.”
But Kenney just shook his head. “No, I still don’t know a damn thing.”
That made Elena Blasden laugh. “Nobody really does, son. Around the turn of the twentieth century, maybe shortly before, another Ezren from out east showed up and claimed the family holdings. Bought up a lot of acreage. His name was Charles Ezren, Luke’s father. Common consensus was that he was insane, dangerously insane. Figured he had to be to live out there with them that haunt the shadows. And Luke? Yes, I knew him as well as any around here. He was crazy, too. He was in league with them from below.”
“What about the mother and daughter?”
Elena sighed. “Daughter was named Rose. She fled after Luke’s death, it was said. But as to his mother… well, I don’t know. Gossip had it she had passed long before he did. One thing was for certain. No one ever saw her, but gossip had it she was not something of this world.”
Hyder was just shaking his head. “C’mon now, Miss Elena, I—”