19
Kenney took that in, finding revelation. He imagined that most people around the country who read it at the time were either nutty enough to believe it or had too much common sense to give it any credence. He was beginning to feel that he was a mixture of both of those extremes because he had to believe yet his rational mind told him he had slipped a gear, that such things could not be. Paper-clipped to the photocopy was a little ditty from the Journal of the Wisconsin Folklore Society. With a heavy heart and a need born of practicality to dismiss it all, he read it over.
20
What is particularly interesting is the age of these tales. There seems to be a cycle of myth extending back over two hundred years in Bayfield and Sawyer counties. A cycle that continues to this very day. An absolute belief among locals of a race of nocturnal underdwellers that apparently come up out of the earth through mud and sinkholes to raid graveyards and feed on corpses. One is greatly reminded of the Arabic folktales of the ghul, which supposedly haunt lonely burial grounds and devour corpses and the unwary…
21
Kenney sighed, shoved all the papers back into the envelope and just shook his head. He lit a cigarette, ignoring the signs forbidding such things, and just stared at Godfrey. “Okay, you’ve lived here all your life… have you ever actually seen one of these individuals? I mean in the flesh?”
“Yes, but only briefly. I don’t doubt they exist, though. There’s no doubt that they’ve been here for a good many years.” Godfrey sighed. “I don’t bother adding to that file anymore and when I told you that cemetery caretakers around these parts tend to hush up grave robbings and the like, I meant it. But I will say that in the past twenty years or so there have been fewer reports of activity from these things. Maybe they’re dying out and maybe they’ve just gotten smarter. I don’t know. Don’t honestly care to know.”
What kind of attitude was that for a cop? Kenney got to wondering, but then he knew, he honestly knew that if he were in the shoes of Godfrey or any of the other county cops through the years, he would have probably taken the same attitude. What else could you really do? If you started nosing into it, you were bound to face the ire of the locals and you wouldn’t get any help from other cops that knew because they were in denial. Which meant you’d have to go to the state authorities for help… and what did you do after they stopped laughing at you?
“Elena Blasden was telling some pretty wild tales,” he said to the sheriff. “I guess I’m wondering how much of that is true.”
Godfrey shrugged. “It’s anybody’s guess. Most of what she was talking about was before my time. But that bit about one of them getting run down by a car… that’s true enough. At least my predecessor, Albert Susskind, seemed to think so. He didn’t actually see any of it firsthand, before his time, but he has the autopsy reports in that file if you care to look.”
“I don’t care to,” Kenney said.
So Godfrey told him. “That happened back in the early twenties. Some fellow named Haynes or Hines was on his way up to Ashland on Bellac and something stepped out in front of his car. He hit and killed it… at least one of them.”
“One of them?”
“There were two,” Godfrey said with a dry voice. “An adult female and a child. The child was killed instantly, the female only injured. Legs broken, I gather. The child was a male and in its death throes, it vomited up what the coroner later discovered to be human remains…”
Haynes or Hines suffered a mild heart attack and was taken to the hospital where he made a complete recovery. The body of the child, after the post, was cremated. The adult female was taken away to the Central State Hospital for the Criminally Insane, placed in a private, secure ward.
“She lived almost a month,” Godfrey said. “And then she died during childbirth.”
Kenney almost fell out of his chair. “You mean that fucking thing was pregnant?”
Godfrey nodded. “According to Comp, the sheriff at the time, it gave birth to something that looked like a larva… something white and slimy that mewled like a cat. It died within a week. Comp never actually saw the child. But the doc up there, all he would say is that some things were meant to walk and others were meant to crawl.”
Kenney sucked on his cigarette, realizing that by coming to Haymarket and Bayfield County, he had just opened up the biggest, ugliest can of worms in state patrol history. He had a feeling he’d never get the stink of this one off him.
22
Years back, when her sister Mae was still above the ground and not out feeding the worms at the county cemetery, Elena Blasden would get together with her and a few of the other old girls—Mamie LaRoche, Dorothy Palequin—once a month and have themselves what her mother had long ago referred to as a “tea luncheon” and her father had called “a hen party.” Elena always figured it was less of the former and more of the latter because before they were done, the private lives of just about everyone were pecked to death and no dirt was unexposed. Little sandwiches were served, tea and coffee drank, and the local situation was discussed in some detail. When Elena was feeling particularly charitable, she sometimes even invited Renny Fix, but not often because she was of the mind that Renny was a fool as all her people were fools.
Somewhere during the proceedings, the subject of the Ezrens usually raised its somewhat well-worn head and oft-repeated tales were repeated yet again and usually in low voices as if the ladies were afraid of being overheard. Whenever Renny was present, she would repeat the same story her grandmother had told her so many, many years before when there was still a bloom of girlhood in Renny’s cheeks. You stay away from Ezren field if you know what’s good for you, little miss, Renny would say, recalling her grandmother’s words and imitating her intonation the best she could after those many long summers and longer winters since her girlhood. Those from below come out under the light of the moon like nightcrawlers after a good rain. They’re always looking for children to take down below into their lairs and barrow pits. See that you’re not one of them or you’ll become like them… creeping in the black earth and feeding on dead things. If you see ’em looking in your window some windy night, do not meet their eyes or they’ll take you with them and you don’t want that, now do you?
That was the story she would tell as Elena held court and the old women listened, mouths pursed and eyes wide, the children within them scared again as they had been scared so long before. It was a cumulative effort. Once the subject was broached—Elena figured the only reason she invited Renny was because she was fool enough to broach it every time—it was added to, built upon, framed and finished with a combination of twice-told tales, local gossip, and utter fabrication.
Mamie would practically drool over every deranged and grisly detail, while Dorothy would need to step out for air because her heart would be hammering so painfully and her head reeling with dizziness. That was to be expected, Elena knew, for she was every bit as dramatic at seventy-four as she had been at fourteen.