The Cult at The Cantilever Bridge

Leece Fordyce, a journalist for the Harrisburg Herald, noticed the peculiar funnel cloud in the distance as he drove along the Pennsylvania Turnpike.  He had just finished a news assignment and was on his way back to his office. The funnel cloud began to swirl closer and closer as he approached the next off-road ramp.

The sudden strong wind gusts pushed against his vehicle. Fearing the worst, he swerved his car hard onto the ramp trying to avoid a skid. This ramp led him onto a secondary road. He quickly turned onto a lone side road. It was off the beaten path of the main artery.

Trees swayed violently overhead. Leece struggled to keep his late model sedan steady, his eyes intent on the single lane dirt road ahead. By all appearances, the funnel cloud appeared to follow his path. He realized he needed to get to safety in a hurry.                                                        

            A half-mile ahead, an old, rough hewn stone, cantilever bridge loomed. With dust already flying everywhere, he turned on the windshield wipers to get a better view.  The clouded image of the bridge reminded him of one he'd seen in England.

That one, like this bridge, had four stone turrets at each point of the structure and slim, vertical stone suspensions connected to towered turrets. It stood high over a narrow, muddy looking, dark green river with a river bank lined with a heavily forested banquette of elms, scrub pines and tall oaks.

At first glance, the size of the bridge appeared too small in length for the wide expanse of river, almost as if it was intentional and a warning not to try to cross it.

But, Leece reasoned, this was probably an optical illusion from this vantage point. He could see the arc of the span indicated it was higher over the water than normal. 

The width of the bridge was in precise proportion to its narrow length: barely one car length wide.

It was obvious the use of this bridge was designed for horse drawn carriages or those on horseback.

Leece wondered if the bridge was once part of an old mine road. In this part of the state, mine roads were often closed when mining businesses moved on.

            He drove toward the bridge with utmost care to insure his vehicle wouldn't get stuck in a mud hole or rut in the road. He noticed the road soil seemed wetter, even though the storm had yet to dampen the ground.

He slowed his speed to a crawl, as it begun its climb upward onto the bridge. When he reached midpoint, the downward slope was daunting.

He slowed his speed until it seemed the vehicle hardly moved. The slope of the bridge was steep enough to make Leece hold his breath until he reached the bottom.

            It occurred to him, a little late, that the bridge might not support the weight of his car. Still, he kept a wary eye on the funnel cloud overhead.

            Having navigated the treacherous bridge system, he breathed a sigh of relief as he reached the other side. On this side of the bridge, he saw a single road with thick trees on either side, so dense they obscured what lay beyond.

What lay ahead of the bridge and beyond the trees, as Leece would soon discover, was a small village.

The formation of the village was an exaggerated cul-de-sac with one or two stores directly at the entrance of the ingress road, followed by a smattering of primitive looking cottages encircling the rest of the village perimeter like beads on a necklace.

            Leece looked skyward again as he slowed his car at the bottom of the bridge. He sensed the wild, swirling black clouds that whipped through the canopy of trees were a warning of potential danger. He knew he had to take cover.

A car wasn’t the best place to be when a funnel cloud becomes this ominous, he reasoned. 

            He parked his vehicle as soon as he reached the opposite end of the bridge. A cantilever bridge made of stone could make a great shelter, he thought. He reached into the back seat of his vehicle for his black rain slicker and large golf umbrella and wriggled his way into the vinyl slicker while inside his car.

Slowly and cautiously with his left hand, he opened the car door and umbrella at the same time. With his keys in his right hand, he locked the car door and headed for the underside of the bridge.

            He felt the muddy soil sink his loafers deeply in the muck of the river bank. The mud made a sucking sound with each step he took. Still, he plodded onward until he was safely beneath the arc of the bridge. The river water came rushing westward. He’d never seen a river flow run on so powerfully before.

It would be easy enough to get carried off in that, he mused.

            Beneath the bridge, there were two stone benches cemented to the bridge walls on either side of the river bank.

Must be a few avid fishermen in this place, he ventured silently.

            He sat down on the bench and stretched his legs, gazing at his muddy shoes and socks, now caked nearly to his ankles. He planned to drive all the way to Harrisburg, non-stop, easily a three hour stretch. But, he’d barely driven more than one hour when he saw the onerous black funnel heading toward him.

            Trees bending nearly in half along the river bank were a testament to the gale force of the wind that whirled around and around in a seemingly endless vortex. Tucked safely beneath the bridge, he wondered whether his vehicle would be carried off or embedded in the muck left by torrential rain pounding the earth like a herd of angry cattle.

            He’d always been morbidly terrorized by a fear of drowning and here he was sitting on a stone bench with river water that could at any minute carry him away. He forced himself not to think about that possibility. He kept one eye on the rising water level just inches from his feet now.

            The sound of trees cracking along the river bank startled him. One of the younger, tall oaks fell hard into the river and was instantly carried westward in the direction of the river’s main tributary.

Leece parked his car as near to the side of the bridge as he could maneuver in the thick mud.

Now, he realized another possibility: The first cluster of trees that lined the river bank was less than fifty feet from the car. Those trees were stout enough to turn any car into a flattened pancake.

            Leece heard the growling roar of wind and knew within seconds, the funnel would cross his and his car’s path. He decided, just in case, to crouch beneath the stone bench and hang on tightly to each side, should the funnel claim any part of the bridge.

            River water rose quickly and in less than a few minutes, was within four inches of the stone bench Leece was using for protection. In hindsight, he wasn’t so sure this was a good idea after all.

            With one mighty roar, the wind swirled in a conical shape passing around the bridge and into a copse of trees east of the river bank.

It was as if the funnel was playing a bizarre child’s game, where it swirled in one direction one minute; then, in an entirely different direction the next.

            When the danger was over, Leece started to walk back up the river bank to assess the damage to his car. Something else, more sinister caught his eye. At first, he thought it was a small twig poking up from the edge of the river bank. He walked closer toward it to get a better look.

            “Oh my God! It’s a human finger,” he said aloud. He bent over and peered at the macabre sight in front of him. He reached down to touch it and quickly withdrew his hand. The finger was hard and brittle. From the joint nearest the fingernail, it was sharply pointed toward the bridge like some wayward directional signal. He stepped back in horror, wondering what he should do.

            Had someone drowned and the body was washing up in small segments along the river bank? Or, is the rest of the body buried beneath the muck somewhere along the muddy bank?

            As quickly as the flash tornado came, a brilliant, late autumn sun suddenly shone overhead. In the distance, Leece thought he heard the clip, clop of horses’ hooves.

Who rides a horse these days?

He listened more closely. The sound of hooves grew closer and closer and then abruptly stopped just at the foot of the bridge.

            He turned quickly and saw an elderly man with a black wide-brimmed hat pulled down over his eyes peering into his car. Two horses and a wooden, planked buggy with a black canopy were stationed a few yards away.

The man was inspecting Leece’s car. He walked around to the rear of the vehicle, as if he hadn’t seen a car his entire life.

            Leece suddenly felt as if he had been dropped into a time warp.

            He hurriedly walked toward the old man.

            “Your tires are deep in river mud,” the old man said.

            Leece walked around the car to survey the damage and saw the old man was correct.

            “I’m Leece Fordyce. I work for the Harrisburg Herald. I seem to have gotten sidelined here at the bridge when that flash tornado hit,” he said.

            “Tornado? What tornado? Weren’t no tornado in the village. Everything there’s just as calm as a sylvan glade in a forest,” the old man said.

            “Name’s Josiah Vester. Looks like you’re going to need help…if you plan to be moving on soon,” Josiah said, his eyes covertly glancing at Leece in hopes of agreement.

            “Well, I have traveler’s insurance and service. I’ll call them on my cell phone and have them bring out their tow truck,” Leece said.

            “Won’t do to bother. No heavy weight vehicles will go near the bridge. Can’t afford for it crumble as they pass over it. Villagers won’t help them if it does neither.”

            “Well, is there a tow truck in your village?” Leece asked.

            “None I know of. Never has been. Only two shops in the whole village. The smithy and a feed store. Folks here don’t need outsiders and...don’t want ‘em,” Josiah said.

            “Well, can you hitch your team of horses to pull me out then? I’ll try to gun the engine in reverse to free the tires,” Leece said.

            “No sir. No horse of mine is going to pull a car. And, if you gun your engine, you’ll only get in deeper,” Josiah Vester responded.

            “How will I get my car out then?”

            “Looks like you going to need patience and wait for the mud to dry up. With the sun out so bright and all, shouldn’t be more than a day or two…is my guess,” Josiah said.

            “I have to be in Harrisburg today. I can’t wait till the sun dries up the river bank. And uh, now I think about it, I want to show you something,” Leece said.

            “Ayuh and what would that be?” Josiah asked, his eyes narrowing on Leece.

“Come. I’ll show you. You won’t believe your eyes,” Leece said.

            The two men walked back down the river bank to where Leece saw the skeletal remains of the hand.

            “It’s just a few feet from here,” Leece said, urging the man on.

            When they reached the spot where he’d seen the bony finger, it was gone.

            “Don’t see a thing. One of those river fish sometime climb ashore for a few seconds and then disappear,” Josiah said.

            “No. A skeleton of a bony finger…in the water…not more than five feet from the river bank,” Leece said emphatically.

            Josiah scratched his head. He tugged on his wide brimmed hat and gave Leece a look of disbelief.

            “Don’t see a bony finger there. Where is it you say it was? Maybe… it was the backbone of a dead fish? Got plenty of those round here. Specially, when the water goes real muddy after a heavy rain” Josiah said.

            “I tell you it was a finger. My guess, from the shape and slim shape of it, it's a woman’s finger.”

            “Well if that isn’t strange. First, you see a woman’s finger poking through river mud and now it’s gone. Well, that does seem peculiar, doesn’t it?” Josiah said.

            Leece recognized the man’s patronizing tone of disbelief.

            “Look. I know what I saw,” Leece demanded.

            “Think maybe that you were just seeing things? Like that tornado?”

            “No. I was not seeing things. There was a flash tornado and there was a bony finger pointed toward the bridge,” Leece insisted.

            “ Maybe a hot meal and a day’s rest might help you.  Suppertime’s not too far off and I’ve got plenty of venison stew for two,” Josiah said.

            “What about my car?” Leece asked.

            “I’m sure you’ll be able to get it back on the road just fine when the mud dries. That old river does rise high now and again,” Josiah said.

            Leece saw his predicament. And, he was feeling a bit peckish. Venison stew? He wondered what he had ventured into with just one single turn off of a main road.

            Leece climbed aboard Josiah Vester’s buggy. He had to admit he’d never ridden in a horse and buggy before. He’d been horseback riding many times and was even been on his college’s equestrian team. But now, he felt as if he had been delivered into a bizarre world in a lost age.

            As Josiah directed his team of horses on the road into the village, Leece was shocked by the attire of the villagers and more shocked at how all the men seemed to dress in the same way: flannel shirts, black vests and trousers with cuffs and the black hats. He noticed one other thing. Women were either all at home, or the village was like some kind of historic monastery populated solely by these men in black.

            Josiah drove to the end of the cul-de-sac shaped village. His house was identical to all of the others. It reminded Leece of the early prairie homes in the Midwest. Board sidings, a pitched roof built entirely of wood shingles and a single window and planked door at the front of the each house.

            The land surrounding each of the homes was approximately two acres in size. This gave the village an unusual appearance of homes closely knitted together by resemblance, but a safe distance apart by land size.

As the buggy continued past several homes, Leece saw large rows of corn, grain and patches of tomatoes and other vegetables. So, this must be one of those self-sustaining, religious communities of Quakers, he thought.

            “Here be my land,” Josiah said, reverting to a stricter Quaker form of speech.

            “It’s really quite an amazing village. Do all of the villagers here produce their own foods?”

            “Yessir, they do. Our meat comes from the regular hunts we carry out. Villagers all have salt store houses. No electricity here. The salt preserves all the meat we need to carry us through winter,” Josiah said.

            When they climbed the wooden steps to Josiah’s house, Leece notice the steps were immaculate. Not a single autumn leaf blown askew anywhere. The tornado really hadn’t hit this village.

How odd, he thought.

            Josiah held open the wood-framed screen door and wood-planked front door, with its odd pane of glass. He noticed the peculiar etching on the window glass. It reminded Leece of hex signs he’d seen in some of the Amish villages east of this place.

            When he stepped into the entry way, there was a short hall, with the parlor off to the right, and a set of old pine stairs that led up to an enclosed loft.

From the hall, Josiah led Leece into the kitchen. It was like walking into an old fairy tale.

There was a wooden table with long, vertical planks for the table top and two short, planked benches. The sink was made of wood and the stove was a large fireplace carved in the wall. Two metal rods hung over a hand-wrought metal grate in the middle of the fireplace. From this, were hung two black kettles.

             The waning fire in the grate left a few red burning embers. Josiah walked toward the wood bin and took two seasoned logs and placed them atop the embers.

            “We will have supper in a short while,” Josiah said.

            “So you are a news man?”

            “Yes. I’m a reporter for the Harrisburg Herald, as I said.”

            “How did you find your way to Elgin Bridge?”

            “Is that the name of the old bridge back there?” Leece asked.

            “Ayuh. Been the Elgin since my own grandfather and his father before him settled here and built it,”

            “Been here that long, have you?” Leece asked.

            “Ayuh and I am all’s left of Vesters in the village. Young people don’t want farming all their lives. They move away and all’s left are older men and a few of their sons working and farming,” Josiah said.

            “Where are the women? I noticed there were no women in any of the shops as we came into the village,” Leece asked.

            “Best not ask that question in this village. Men here don’t talk about their private business. Don’t like strangers asking private questions much either. Womenfolk have their own ways. Hard living in a small village for them,” Josiah said.

            “So, the men here are basically a dying breed?” Leece asked.

            “Oh no, sir. Plenty of good, strong men. Plenty of men working their farms and producing for the good of the village,” Josiah said, indignantly.

            Leece realized he somehow touched the wrong nerve when he mentioned women. The more he thought about having to wait to rescue his car, the more he felt resentful of his host. This only added fuel to his frustration and an edge to his curiosity.

            They ate supper in total silence. When supper was through, Josiah immediately washed the two plates and wood goblets from which they’d drunk pure, whole cow’s milk...a first for Leece Fordyce.

            It was barely eight o’clock when Josiah showed Leece his sleeping accommodations...a pallet of hay in one section of the loft. Josiah slept on a second pallet nearby.

            “You go to sleep at this early hour of the night?” Leece said.

            “Morning chores come early. Five o’clock. I’ll wake you then. I’ll be wantin’ return on my generosity for your meal and sleeping pallet,” Josiah said.

            Leece would have groaned aloud if not for his manners toward a host.

So, I’m to help with “morning chores”, am I, he thought as he dozed into a sound sleep.

            He slept restlessly most of the night owning to the low ceiling of the loft and the stifling hot air aided by the heat from the massive stone fireplace.

            At one point, though, he did drift off. His dreams were chaotic. He dreamed he was in the loft with hundreds of men and the crowding was so bad, he felt as if he was suffocating. He imagined he saw Josiah rise from his pallet and rifle Leece’s trousers.

            Leece awoke from this dream feeling oddly sick and nauseated. It didn’t surprise him. Lord only knew what was in that “venison stew.”

Still sleepy, he tried to stand to climb down from the loft to find the bathroom. Instead, he woke Josiah.

            “You are right on time. Nearly five. You are looking poorly, if you don’t mind my saying it,” Josiah said.

            “I need to use the bathroom,” Leece said.

            “Don’t have a bathroom. You can use the outhouse out back if you need to,” Josiah said.

            Leece rolled his eyes and hurried to put on his trousers and shirt and hastened out the door.

He found the outhouse a few hundred feet from the back of Josiah’s house. The problem was the outhouse was guarded by a skunk. He knew not to shoo it away lest he end up getting skunked and his clothes ruined.

He headed out toward a hedge at the side of Josiah’s property where he relieved his nausea in a violent, retching spasm.

            Leece felt weakened from the experience. He made his way back to the house.

There actually is a back door to this place, he noted.

But for some reason, it was boarded up.

            He entered through the front door.

            “Feel better, now?” Josiah asked.

            “No,”

            “I expect you might have gotten a bug or two. You and I can get to our chores after breakfast. The outhouse is near if you find you need it again,” Josiah said.

            “I didn’t even get near the outhouse. There was a skunk out there barring the door,” Leece said.

            “Ayuh. There would be this time of year. Outhouse needs a good cleaning and skunks are attracted to that smell,” Josiah said, plunking down a bowl in front of Leece.

            “I don’t think I can eat anything this morning,” Leece said, eyeing the bowl of mush in front of him suspiciously.

“That be so? Shame to waste it,” Josiah said and poured the bowl contents into his own dish.

            Now, Leece felt even more nauseated than before.

            Josiah was as good as his word about Leece repaying his host’s generosity. First, they collected eggs from the hen house. Then, it was time to milk the two cows Josiah owned. Fortunately, Leece had experience milking cows as a child when he visited his aunt and uncle’s farm in Indiana.

            Once the hens were allowed to roam about, Leece was given the job of filling their food troughs with cracked corn and filling up the water trough while Josiah tended his horses.

            To Leece’s surprise, Josiah had two horses and two tow mules. Tow mules?  What on earth did Josiah use those for?

            Leece was thinking quickly. If Josiah had towing mules, they could tow his car out of the river mud, he thought.

            As if he was reading Leece’s mind, Josiah glanced furtively at the reporter.

            “Mules can’t tow no vehicle. Too much weight for their backs. No need giving that much more of your time or thoughts,” Josiah said.

            Am I that transparent? Leece wondered.

            He continued emptying the remainder of the bucket of cracked corn into the six foot long trough.

            “Ayuh. The chicken will be needing their water trough cleaned out and filled again,” Josiah said.

            Leece had the idea Josiah meant to keep him around as long as he could. Leece knew he had to speak up or he’d never get to Harrisburg in his lifetime. An amused smile came over his face.

            “Nothing to josh about. Water poisons pretty fast after laying out in the sun all day. Can’t have that. There’s a long-handled brush over there to clean out the water trough. The rain barrel is still full up. The bucket is hanging nearby to fill up that trough,” Josiah said, more sternly.

            Long-handled brush? Rain barrel? Bucket to fill up the trough? What century are these people living in? Haven’t they ever heard of rubber garden hoses?

            Once again, as if Josiah was reading his mind, he smirked at Leece.

            “Rubber hoses mean modern plumbing. That wastes more water. Don’t see the need to waste good water,” Josiah said.

            “Look, I do have a news piece I need to get to in Harrisburg. I’ll fill this water trough for you. But then, I’m going to get my car out on the road before noon of this day,” Leece said, adamantly.

            Josiah remained stony silent as he went about his work.

            It took another hour and a half before the water trough was scrubbed clean enough to meet Josiah’s standards and another hour before Leece toted what seemed like at least thirty buckets of water, which by the way, he had to pump from a jack-handled pump.

After the first dozen carried to the trough, he stopped counting. Each time, he’d look down into the trough and it was only one-third full of water. He felt completely daunted.

            His shoulders and back ached like they never had before. He realized that farm life was definitely never going to be in his future. The cities might be dirty, crowded and congested by traffic. But, at least, it didn’t cause shoulders and backs to ache and throb.

            Josiah wasn’t satisfied with a half-full water trough either. Leece thought about dumping his next bucket of water over Josiah’s head and making a run for it as fast as his legs would carry him.

He wasn’t really sure of how to get back to the bridge. He was certain he would find it if he had to spend a week to do it.

            When the trough was nearly overflowing, Leece announced his departure.

            “I was plannin’ on stopping at the Fervermore Farm to see to old Malachy. Man’s gettin’ on in his years and village men take care of their own. You can ride along, if you have a mind to. It’s along your way,” Josiah said.

            Leece wasn’t sure he was up to a long walk to his car with his newly borne ache and pains.

            “I’ll be finishing up here and hitch the horses to the wagon,” Josiah added.

            Leece wasn’t certain whether Josiah was taking his time getting the horses ready, or if his slow pace was due to age. Either way, Leece felt anxious to be on his way out of this strange place.

            He boarded the wagon with every muscle screaming for mercy. It bumped along for about a quarter mile, as near as Leece could tell, passing the few houses in the village, until Josiah brought the wagon to a stop at the general store.

            “Got to bring Malachy his tonic,” Josiah said.

            Leece gritted his teeth at yet another seeming delay.

And…just where was old Malachy’s place? They’d already passed most of the village homes.

            Josiah’s business done at the general store, the horses and wagon trotted on in a slow gait.

Leece noticed there was a flat-roofed building topped by aged shingles of gray and the same wooden siding as all the other houses, just ahead.

The only difference in this building was that it didn’t look like a residence or place where anyone lived. There were two windows on the front unlike the other village houses and a wide, center door of heavy lumber planks with two cross planks that formed an “X.”

In the days of the old west, this might have been a jail. But in this ultra-strict, religious community, a jail would be unnecessary.

            And another thing, Leece thought as Josiah slowed the wagon in front of the odd looking building, what kind of general store hasn’t a single woman buying food or other necessities?

There weren’t even those old men who love to sit outside the store watching their lives pass before them.

            As the wagon came to a full stop, Leece realized why he never noticed the place the day before. It was set back about forty feet from the rest of the village houses and two stores on the main road of the village.

           

            “What is this place?” he asked.

            “I already said, haven’t I? This is where old Malachy is,” Josiah said, indignantly.

            Leece remained in his seat in the wagon.

            “Well? Are you coming?” Josiah demanded.

            Leece felt hesitant. He jumped down from the wagon, looked around, then followed behind in Josiah’s footsteps slowly and carefully.

            “Mind the heavy door,” Josiah said.

            Leech noticed the door opened the wrong way. The wrought iron handled pulled the door toward the outside, instead of pushing it inside as most doors do.

            He wasn’t prepared for what he saw. The interior of the place was like a hollowed out cave with a long altar table. It was a single room with curved ceilings, no kitchen, no bed nor any semblance of a home. 

How could it be so hollow if the roof was flat? he wondered.

            Josiah walked the length of the middle aisle of the room with Leece following behind. There was something top the long altar table. As Leece got closer, he was aghast. There was a skeleton lying atop the table.

            “Malachy? Meet Leece Fordyce, a stranger to the village,” Josiah spoke to the mummified body.

            “This is old Malachy? This is a dead old man’s skeleton! Why hasn’t it been buried?” Leece asked, in a shocked tone.

            “Old Malachy was buried. The river flooded and his body washed right back out of his grave. We knew it was a sign. Old Malachy needed our help. Village men make sure he gets his tonic,” Josiah said.

            “I want you to take me to my car. This is too macabre to be believed. You actually think your elixir will keep Malachy’s body from disintegrating like all dead bodies do?” Leece asked.

            “Evil men never believe good, honest men like Malachy never die,” Josiah said.

            “How long have the village men kept this body here?”

            “Long before I was born. Malachy died almost a hundred year ago. It’s his tonic that keeps him so well,” Josiah said.

            “So well? Look at that dead body! If it’s ever moved even an inch, the whole thing will be nothing more than dust,” Leece said.

            “Don’t intend to allow Old Malachy to become dust. Was Old Malachy kept our faith and community together. Don’t expect strangers to understand that kind of thing,” Josiah said.

            Josiah poured a small white thread of powder into the mouth of the skeleton. Then, he walked around the altar until he was facing the head of Old Malachy. Josiah raised his arms and his dark eyes heavenward. Then, he knelt on two knees with his forearms crossed over his chest, as he bowed his head two times. He arose and walked toward Leece.

            “We will see about that car of yours now,” Josiah said.

            “You can’t seriously think that skeleton will actually digest that “tonic” you just poured into the mouth?” Leece asked.

            “Old Malachy has special powers. Wasn’t his mouth empty? How did he do that if he hasn’t been taking his tonic?” Josiah asked.

            Now, Leece Fordyce was certain he was in a village of insane men.

            They rode the rest of the way to the cantilever bridge in silence. Leece thought perhaps he imagined the last half hour, that old man’s mummified body and all the rest of the strange things he’d seen and heard.

            He saw the bridge just ahead. But, he saw something else. His car was gone. Josiah pulled the wagon to a stop and Leece jumped out quickly. Like a man possessed, he looked under the bridge and walked into the river up to his waist to see if the car had been somehow submerged. There was nothing to indicate the car had ever been on the bank of the river. Not even tire tracks.

            “Alright, what’s going on here?” Leece asked, angrily.

            “Looks like the river swallowed up your car,” Josiah said.

            Leece quickly reached into his jacket pocket for his cell phone. It was a long shot; but, if there was a cell tower in a twenty mile range, he could call....he felt again in his pocket...it was empty. His cell phone was gone!

            “It’s gone. My cell phone is gone! I know it was in this jacket pocket yesterday when I rode home with you, Josiah. What happened to my cell phone?”

            “Don’t know. Can’t lay my hands on such evil things lest I be shunned or cast out of the village,” Josiah said.

            “Best you come back with me now. No point in wasting time looking for your car or your phone,” Josiah said.

            Leece took off running in the direction of the bridge. He ran as fast as he could. Josiah turned the wagon around and headed for the village calmly and slowly.

            Leece ran until he reached the opposite side of the bridge. He knew he was being watched. He realized what he saw back there in that building—that dead old man’s skeleton—put him in serious jeopardy. Those village men wouldn’t want anyone to know he’d seen it. Why did Josiah bother to show it to Leece?

            He felt so winded and out of breath that he sat down on a tree trunk felled by that strange flash tornado the day before. He scoured the river bank and the copse of trees on both sides of the river. There was no real reason; but, he still felt he was being watched.

            He rose to check once more under the bridge for his car.

It had to be here. It can’t have just disappeared into thin air, he thought.

Frantic, he reached into his trouser pockets for his car keys. Like his cell phone they too were gone.

            For the first time, he was unnerved. His car was gone...so were his cell phone and his car keys.

What did Josiah want with him? Why was he trying to keep him in this village?

            Leece was never a religious man. His parents, Iris and Leonard Fordyce, were born in the Midwest to deeply religious parents of the Methodist faith.

Iris and Leonard attended Sunday services, though Leece was certain his father did so only to please Iris. When he was old enough, Iris made certain Leece enrolled in Sunday school.

            Leonard died when Leece began his freshman year at Huntington College where he studied journalism, his first love. Iris, broken-hearted at her husband’s loss, died just two years later.

Leece had no siblings and no desire to be a farmer. He sold it to his maternal cousin, Amos Harding. Amos and his wife and four children were well-suited to farm life. Both were born and raised on Midwestern farms.

            Iris and Leonard had only their land and home to leave to Leece. So, during the last two years of his college education, he worked at various jobs to pay his tuition. He successfully managed the college’s weekly newspaper, a job that felt more like his dream of one day becoming the editor of his own newspaper.

            Shortly before his graduation, Leece was approached by several major state newspapers. He settled on an internship at the Harrisburg Herald. He worked his way up from gathering research for journalists’ articles to the position he now held as a senior journalist.

            Wynn Laskey, the Harrisburg Herald’s editor, was pleased as punch to have a young, inquisitive journalist like Leece Fordyce.

From Leece’s very first days on the job, he was virtually insatiable to know how the presses worked, the duties of each staff member and even asked to be taught some typesetting. Wynn was definitely impressed.

            And, it wasn’t as if Leece Fordyce was trying to win points with his constant poking around all of the Herald’s departments. He certainly managed to boost the morale of the pressman and typesetters with his curiosity and willingness to pitch in when they needed help.

            Wynn saw the conviviality between Leece and the rest of his newspaper staff. That, to him, was a definite sign of a great future journalist. Wynn decided to take Leece under his wing and make him a journalist apprentice.

            Leece walked timidly into Wynn Laskey’s office certain he was about to be sacked for some infraction or other.

            “Fordyce, I’m not a man who is generous with praise or easily impressed. But I must say, your job performance at the Herald has been nothing short of amazing. I’m intrigued though. Why on earth did you want a chance to learn typesetting and the presses?”

            “It’s been my dream since I was a young boy to be the editor of a large newspaper,” Leece said.

            “I see. So should I worry you’ll try to become editor of the Harrisburg Herald, then?” Wynn asked.

            “Oh no, sir. There’s no finer paper in the state than the Herald,” Leece responded.

            “Glad to hear that. Now, I called you in here for a specific reason,” Wynn said.

            Leece held his breath. If Laskey thought his performance was nothing short of amazing, there could only be one other reason to be called into his office. Leece crossed his fingers and waited on baited breath.

            “I think it’s time you learned what it’s like to be a real journalist. Can’t do that, my boy, unless you are a journalist, right?” Wynn said.

            “You mean? Are you...” Leece started

            “I mean, I am promoting you to junior journalist. You’ll work with Lorn McKay for a few months and then, I mean to cut you loose on your own. I’d like you to handle any of the assignments McKay can’t get to. His plate is usually always overloaded anyway,” Wynn said.

            “Oh thank you. I am so thrilled with this news,” Leece said.

            “I hope so. Now...best you go check with McKay and see what bees are under his bonnet,” Wynn suggested.

            Leece and Lorn McKay worked as a team for over a year, even though Leece kept his enthusiasm in balance. McKay gave him several assignments, like the one about the fire department and its scrambled fire budgets no one but fire fighters could make sense of. 

            No matter which assignments McKay threw at Leece Fordyce, Leece turned them into a winning, eye-catching story.

            “I swear I give up on you Fordyce. I have to admit I was sure you wouldn’t be any competition. Now, I’m sure you’ve gone way beyond that,” McKay said, laughing.

            “I tried not to be competition,” Leece responded with feigned contrition.

            “I’ve already suggested old Laskey give you your own shot at senior journalist. You’re way too much for me to keep pace with.

I admit you have a very unique writing style. More than that, you manage to get your subjects to say things on the record, more times than off,” McKay said, scratching his full head of dark curly hair.

            The following day, Laskey called Leece into his office and before he left, he was a senior journalist on the Harrisburg Herald.

            He loved the kind of assignments that required him to uncover hidden details. His trips took him to places he’d never seen before.

Now, it appeared this village was a place with many hidden details.

            Leece Fordyce was not a man to be restrained when desperation set in. He had the calm, cool head of an ace reporter under the worst of circumstances. He paced back and forth along the river bank. Then, a few feet ahead he saw it again...exactly where he’d seen it the day before...that figure that appeared to be a human finger. He walked closer for a better look.

            Something in this village just didn’t add up. No women anywhere in sight and this human hand that appeared to be pointing toward the village. He searched for a small spade-like piece of wood and used it as a shovel. He began digging at the base of the site where the finger poked out of the sand.

            “Oh my God!” he exclaimed, when he’d unearthed about a half inch more of river sand.

            “It is a human hand. A woman’s hand,” he said aloud.

            Leece Fordyce didn’t remember what happened next. He barely remembered being at the river bank and he most certainly didn’t remember being driven back to Josiah’s house where he now lay on the hay pallet.

            “Took quite a spill back there, young man. What was it you were lookin’ for anyways?” Josiah asked.

            “What do you think? My car, for starters. My cell phone as well. You wouldn’t by any chance know where either of them have gotten to, would you?” Leece asked.

            “Most certainly do not. Good thing I came by when I did. Those waters by Elgin Bridge are tricky this time of year. What if you’d fallen in?” Josiah asked.

            Leece ignored the older man’s question. He eyed Josiah Vester as if he had just met the man. If he was going to find a way out of this bizarre village, he had to assess the possibilities to defend himself.

            Josiah Vester was only slighter taller than Leece, who at six foot, wasn’t built nearly as sturdy as his adversary. By all appearances, Josiah, though somewhat stooped in posture and proportionate in girth, could be a problem if it came to that, Leece thought.

            Josiah watched Leece carefully. He knew when a man was desperate and when he was looking for an escape. Leece Fordyce could never escape now he’d seen the hand in the river mud.

            Josiah would have to meet with the elders before Leece escaped and revealed what he’d seen to the rest of the outside world. That just wouldn’t do to have a bunch of strangers poking into village business.

            “Uh, Vester? How did I get back here from the bridge?” Leece asked.

            “How do you think?” Josiah answered.

            “I know what I saw out there at the river bank,” Leece continued.

            “I can’t imagine what you think you saw,” Josiah responded.

            “A human hand...a woman’s human hand to be exact,” Leece said.

            “That’s absurd. Aren’t no womenfolk in this village. Why would there be a hand in the riverbank then?” Josiah asked.

            “Well, let’s see now. Maybe all the women didn’t leave the village? Maybe they were forced to leave and those who wouldn’t, suffered the consequences?” Leece said.

            “Think perhaps that bump on your head has scrambled your thoughts,” Josiah said.

            “I was hit from behind, wasn’t I? To keep me here against my will? I’m a journalist. If the Harrisburg Herald starts searching for me, what do you think will happen to your little village then? Every paper in the state will descend on this place,” Leece said, threateningly.

            “Which is why you won’t be leaving. This village is all we have left. You can’t think we’d allow the likes of you to leave our village wide open for destruction do you? Do you know how old this place is?” Josiah asked.

            Leece breathed in deeply and exhaled loudly. He wasn’t especially interested in a bunch of relics of the past or their dinky village. Somehow, he knew Josiah would not miss the opportunity to advise Leece of village history.

            “This village has been here since my great-great-great granddaddy. Run the same as then. Was originally known to villagers as “Bawrnaclaughda.” The name got buried with each generation of men,” Josiah said.

            “If there were generations, there had to be women in the village. What did you do with the women?” Leece asked.

“Didn’t do nothin’ with ‘em. Some just vanished into the woody copse out by the bridge. Like I said, that old river is tricky.”

            “When was that bridge first built?” Leece asked.

            Never one to miss asking questions like a true reporter, he knew there was more to the need for a cantilever bridge in a tiny, obscured village like this. Josiah was omitting several historical facts on purpose.

If these village men had women here once and that bridge appeared to be fairly old, something just didn’t fit. Why build such an ornate bride in the middle of no where when you don’t want strangers crossing it to get to the village?

            “Can’t say the exact date for certain. Before my time,” Josiah answered.

            “Whoever built it had no intentions of hiding your village. What else is a bridge for if not to transport travelers across it?” Leece asked.

            ‘Men here would tell you different,” Josiah responded.

            “That bridge is too narrow for more than a horse drawn carriage or a couple of horseback riders,” Leece conjectured.

            “Like I say, men here would tell you different,” Josiah insisted.

            “Tell me what differently? That the design of that bridge is typical of ones you’d see in England? Scotland or Wales?”

            “The village man who designed it died days after it was complete,” Josiah said.

            “How do you know that if you don’t know when the bridge was actually built,” Leece asked.

            “Village men talk amongst themselves. That’s folklore…comes up whenever we meet,” Josiah said.

            When did these village men meet and where? They seemed to all keep to themselves most of the time. Barely more than a nod of their heads at each other as they passed by. Or, was that nod of the head some kind of sign only they knew and understood?

            There was something much too freaky about this place. Josiah acted too aloof when he went to “give old Malachy his tonic,”

These loonies attempt to preserve a hundred year old skeleton. Yet, they don’t know when that cantilever bridge was built?

            Leece realized there was something about the bridge that connected the village and the villagers. More of his concern was how to escape. If he could find his way over the bridge again…even if he had to do it on foot…he felt sure none of the village men would follow after him.

            Josiah eyed Leece again. He saw the desperate look in the man’s eyes. More than that, he sensed Leece’s fears. That was a good thing for the village men. If Leece Fordyce felt fear, he would be too afraid to take chances on escaping or would he?

            Josiah knew he needed the counsel of the village elders. He knew they had to have a meeting this very night. 

            “I got to finish up my farm chores now. You go on and rest a while. I’ll be back to get you some supper,” Josiah said.

            Leece watch the man leave. Then, he peered out the window and watched Josiah untether his horses. So, he isn’t going to finish his farm chores. He’s walking his team so I won’t hear him leave, Leece thought.

            Josiah Vester went directly to the bridge, tethered his horse team to the tall black elm on the river bank. He walked along the muddy bank until he found what he was looking for. He glanced around furtively before he walked to the bridge and began to direct his steps toward the first stone turret that faced the center of town.

The sun was going down. Josiah reached for the brass plate on the bridge’s east turret and turned it until the symbol engraved in the plate, a sunburst on a horizontal horizon, was completely upside down.

            The village men used the turning of the brass plate to warn of a problem. In Josiah’s mind, the problem was the stranger Leece Fordyce and he knew something had to be done soon.

            As he drove his team back toward the center of the village, he saw Abraham Whichert on his horse. Josiah nodded before speaking. Abraham nodded in response. Josiah was sure Abraham would call the others to meeting this very night. He would have to administer a sleeping powder to the village stranger to keep him from discovering where Josiah had gone.

            Leece ate dinner sparingly and in silence. He glanced from time to time at Josiah.

            “You realize you can’t keep me in the village?” Leece finally said.

            “Ayuh sir. Don’t expect to keep you. Got to meet with the elders ‘ere long to know what their wishes are, don’t you see? Village men don’t do things here without getting proper authority before they do it,” Josiah said, chiding his guest.

            Leece hadn’t finished his meal more than a half hour when he had this ungodly urge to sleep. He walked outside leaving Josiah to clean up the dinner remains. He came back inside and started up the loft.

            “You needin’ sleep already? Didn’t work you that hard this day,” Josiah said.

            “I feel as if I won’t make it up the ladder to the loft. I feel as if I’ve been...” Leece started.

            He realized suddenly why he was so sleepy. He’d been drugged by Josiah. He had been so careful to inspect every morsel on his plate and the hand-pressed tomato juice Josiah served in place of cider. There was no sign of any peculiar mixture.

            He reached the top of the stairs with Josiah staring up at him as if waiting for him to fall asleep.

What could that creepy old man have put in his food? He glanced one last time at Josiah from his hay pallet in the loft. In his foggy state of mind, he thought he heard the creaking of the door. He struggled hard to raise himself from the pallet, but realized he didn’t have the strength. He was sound asleep within five minutes.

Each of the eight village men gathered in the building where Old Malachy lay atop the altar. All wore their traditional small black tams on their grey or whitened hair and long indigo robes trimmed with gold fringe at the shoulders.

They formed a circle around the altar. The eldest member of the village, Samuel Howell, stepped up to where the mummified body of Old Malachy lay. Two of the elders, Lyden Browerd and Silas Pherson, lit two tall candles that stood at the head and foot of the mummy and returned to the circle.

            Samuel Howell lifted his arms toward the mummy and placed white powder in the mummified mouth. He stepped back and raised his arms again and the eight village men began to chant:

“Arno vaella, necro vaella, nolathe, nolathe sinya lathe.”

            As if expecting the mummy to rise and stand, the eight men waited for the miracle of the white powder they knew would disappear, as it had since the day of Malachy’s death nearly a century ago.

            Samuel Howell lit a small vessel at the front of the altar and the acrid scent of myrrh filled the air.

            The small group waited for Samuel to speak.

            “The order of Bawrnaclaughda,” Samuel said.

            All eight of the men genuflected and bowed their heads.

            “Brother Vester, what is your urgency?” Samuel asked.

            “I require counsel,” Josiah said.

            “It is the stranger for whom you seek our counsel, is it not?” Lyden Browerd said.

            “Tis truth you speak,” Josiah said

            “And where is the stranger now?” Samuel asked.

                                                                                                                       

            “He is asleep as I intended him to be,” Josiah said.

            “What concern have you? You well know, Brother Vester, the laws of Bawrnaclaughda require no strangers enter our village,” Samuel said.

            “Ayuh. I do know that, Elder Father Samuel,” Josiah responded.

            “How will the Brotherhood speak to this dilemma,” Samuel said.

            “To the bridge! To the bridge!” the eight men chanted in unison.

            “Say to the brethren, Brother Vester, what knows the stranger of our village?” Lyden asked.

            “Only what he believes he has seen,” Josiah answered.

            “And what does he believe he has seen?” Samuel asked.

            “He believes he has seen Eudavia’s hand and Malachy’s Altar,” Josiah said.

            “How did it happen he’s seen Malachy’s Altar, Brother Vester if you had not given him entrance?” Lyden asked.

            “It was my duty to provide sustenance for Old Malachy. I dared not leave the stranger to wander the village alone, lest he escape before we came to a decision about him,” Josiah said.                

            Samuel Howell knit his bushy brows together. Then, he glanced toward Lyden Browerd and the others.

            “What know ye of this stranger?” Samuel Howell asked.

            “A question of wisdom, Brother Vester. He is a journalist with a newspaper. It is the reason I dared not allow him to escape and the reason for this meeting.

He arrived here when the Dervel whirlwind blessed our village. His car has been removed and his speaking phone. He has now only the clothes on his back and few items in his pockets...a small notebook, a writing instrument, handkerchief and a money purse. Shall I destroy those?” Josiah asked.

            “No need. No one will find him. Raise Eudavia’s hand. If he believes what he saw, perhaps Eudavia will rise from the river bed and carry him off,” Samuel Howell said.

            Josiah worried Eudavia would not render kindness to the village that once gave her birth.

            The men in the village kept silence about much. It was the only way they would survive.

Winters meant men locked themselves away in their cottages. Their fully equipped storerooms kept them fed until late spring and the salt room had meat enough for them to share.

            Josiah secretly thought of Eudavia. She had been the most beautiful woman brought to the village. Too beautiful. So beautiful, village men believed she was evil disguised by her platinum hair and porcelain face.

They all knew it was women who had to be sacrificed. Josiah couldn’t remember the last woman to leave. The women just disappeared and each time they did, Old Malachy was able to remain in their presence.

            Like monks of ancient religions, village men made the enormous sacrifice of their wives and daughters. It was the way of their fraternal belief that the bloodline of men should never be broken by any woman.

            Now, the men were communally certain the stranger must accept his fate at the hands of Eudavia like others before him had. That was the price of entering their village without invitation. The truth was, no one was ever invited.

            Village days ran together like links in a chain, one after the other, in endless sequence. It was only when Old Malachy needed sustenance that worries about him made man hunts necessary.

            These hunts were pre-arranged to bring what the village men couldn’t supply to keep Old Malachy preserved.

Only Samuel Howell made decisions when they became necessary. Now, Samuel was resolving the issue of the stranger who ventured into their town.

            Silently, the village men placed their robes along the wall as they proceeded to return to their cottages.

            “Remember Brother Josiah, the stranger must return to the river bank. Eudavia will take care of him. You must leave him there and quickly return to your work,” Samuel Howell said.

            Josiah nodded and moved silently to his team of horses.

Leece Fordyce awoke before Josiah returned. His head felt as if someone had hit him with a jackhammer. His eyes were unfocused for nearly five minutes. When he tried to stand, his legs wouldn’t budge more than a few steps. He knew he had to get out of this place before Josiah returned. That was the only thing he was certain of.

            He moved slowly toward the door. He noticed the glass on the wooden sink and lifted it to check its content. A white powdery residue lay in a few, tiny grains at the bottom. He rubbed his finger against the residue and then wiped it onto his handkerchief. He would need proof this guy was trying to kill him.

            In his haze, he tried to think of how he could get out of the village without being seen. Wherever Josiah was, he was sure to return any moment. Leece had an idea.

            He took the rough wool blanket off the straw pallet and folded it as small as he could. He tucked it into a small gunny sack he found near the pile of wood Josiah used to keep the cottage warm. No way was Leece planning to ever return to this place without at least a handful of witnesses. He wondered if anyone would even believe him that it existed.

            In this part of Pennsylvania, small groups of religious sects often found seclusion from the outside world. None kept a mummified body or believed it was capable of ingesting some magic powder, like these village men did.

            Leece noticed a black book inside the gunny sack, as he stuffed the ends of the dark gray blanket into it. He didn’t bother to open it. Josiah’s cottage was dark. If he lit the oil lamp to read it, Josiah would know he was awake.  He would read it later and use it as proof of what happened to him for the last three days.

            To his dismay, Josiah had locked the door of his house from the outside. Leece remembered the single window. It wasn’t locked. He threw the gunny sack out the window and then squeezed himself hard through the opening. He closed it again carefully so Josiah wouldn’t suspect he was gone.

            He crept along the back of Josiah’s property and then, along the rear of each cottage north and west of Josiah’s. He hoped if he remained concealed in the wooded area behind these cottages he would be able to get out of the village.

            When he was far enough away from Josiah’s cottage, he saw a grey clapboard building through the copse of trees and brush. He headed toward it. This building wasn’t part of the village. It appeared deliberately set outside the rim of the rest of the cottages. It was clear it wasn’t intended to be seen.

            As he moved closer toward it, he wondered if this was yet another trap. Unlike the village cottages, this grey wood hewn building was older and had more windows. The windows reminded him of those he’d seen in the pages of a comic strip once. The roof was pointed and hung far below the first row of glass panes of the windows, almost as if to keep trespassers out and someone or something in.

            He peered through the darkness of the window. He saw movement, though he was certain it must be a stray woodland animal. It must have climbed atop a shelf inside the building. The animal’s green eyes glowed at about Leece’s eye level scaring him enough to back away from the window.

            Jeesus, what the hell is that? he wondered.

            If this old shack was abandoned, it might be the perfect place to hide until he could get deeper into the woods and onto a main road.

            “Oh, God! Please let there be a main road,” he whispered to himself.

            Something moved inside the shack. He walked around to the front of the structure and saw that the door had a crossbar that was intended to be removed from the outside only. As odd as the building where they kept the mummy they called Old Malachy’s place, the door to this place pulled out, rather than in, like most doors.

            The crossbar was a four feet piece of lumber about 4 inches thick. Leece saw it was quite weathered. Like every else in this village, he thought.

            He considered whether he should open the door to the shack. If there was an animal inside, it could be dangerous. He stopped for a moment to consider what he should do. He glanced around looking for some sort of thick branch in case the animal inside the shack lunged at him.

            Again, he heard a noise from inside the shack. He banged his hand hard against the outer surface of the door. He thought he heard a coarse sound from within.

Again, he rapped hard on the door and heard the same low sound. Whatever was inside the shack couldn’t be an animal. Most wood animals try to escape from unfamiliar, threatening sounds.

            He glanced around to see if anyone was near. The woods were silent. This time, he scratched at the door’s surface with his fingernails three times. If there was an animal inside, it would now assume another animal was trying to gain entry.

            There was no response. He scratched again and this time, he heard what sounded like scratching coming from the opposite side of the shack door.

            “Is someone in there?” he asked in a strong voice.

            “I say, is someone in this shack?” he repeated.

            He heard only the light scratching on the inside of the door.

            This could go on all day and there isn’t much time before Josiah and the other village men discover I’m gone, he thought.

            He slowly removed the crossbar and grabbed the wrought iron door handle to pull the door open toward him. The inside of the shack was dark; but, the glowing green pair of eyes seemed to be located near the far right wall of the shack’s interior.

            “Who is here?” Leece asked.

            “I’m not going to hurt you. Come forward slowly and quietly and show yourself,” he said.

            He watched as the green eyes moved closer and closer. What he saw in front of him shocked him...it was a woman!

            “Who are you?” Leece asked.

            “Eudavia Hodge,” she answered.

            Leece could see the woman’s clothing was covered in a thick layer of dried river mud. The mud covered her face and hair making her skin tone and hair color totally indistinguishable.

            “What are you doing in this shack?” Leece asked.

            “I am Old Malachy’s prisoner,” she answered.

            “Old Malachy is a skeleton. He can’t hurt you. Who locked you away in this shack?” he asked.

            The woman gave no response.

            “Are you locked here against your will?” he asked.

            “I am Old Malachy’s prisoner,” she repeated.

            “I tell you the men in this village are crazy. Old Malachy is nothing more than a dried out old mummy. He can’t hurt you,” Leece said.

            “The elders...do they know you have found me?” the woman asked.

            “No. They do not. They don’t know I’ve left Josiah Vester’s cottage. But, they will, if I don’t get away from this village tonight,” Leece said.

            “There is no escape. They will do to you what they did to my own husband and to me,” she said.

            “Do what? Why are you locked away here? Why are you covered in river mud,” Leece asked, rapid fire.

            “They will lock you away until you die. Then, they will use the very marrow of your bones to keep Old Malachy alive. There are many women and men who come to this village. None ever leave. If you do not follow their teachings, they will kill you. It’s the law of the village,” she said.

            The white powder that Josiah placed in the mouth of Old Malachy...was it desiccated marrow?

            “Where are the others you speak of?” Leece asked.

            “They keep me locked away until they need to capture others. Then, they try to drown me in the river. But, I am smart...I make them believe I am dead,” she said.

            “How do you do that?” Leece asked.

            “I breathe under the water. When they learned of this trick, they used me to signal the arrival of strangers,” she said, her voice in a low croak.

            “I’m not understanding you. How can they use you that way?” he asked.

            “They know when the whirlwinds come across the river bridge it always brings strangers. They know the river mud is too thick to escape. They hide me beneath the river bridge. I swim to the depths near the bank and signal them. They lie in wait of the signal whenever a whirlwind comes.

If it’s a woman who is lost, I drag her body down river to them. If it is a man, the sight of a human hand usually brings one of the village men to the river to claim the man who has been lost by the whirlwind,” she said.

            Leece was sure this was the woman whose hand he thought he had seen the first day he was stranded at the bridge. He realized now he couldn’t stay in this shack for even a single hour.

            What kind of bizarre ritual were these men practicing? A mummified male body? A woman they sink into deep river mud to trap strangers? Bone marrow to keep a dead mummy alive? Leece had heard only once before about such a peculiar rite in South America by an aboriginal tribe that believed they could preserve a human body by sacrificing infants and using their bone marrow as a preservative. But here? In the Pennsylvania woods?

            “Look, I don’t know who you are. I’m leaving. I am going to get as far away from here as I can. You can come with me, if you wish,” Leece said.

            “Oh no. I can’t leave. The elders would kill me. You can’t leave either. These woods are full of animal traps. If they catch you, your punishment would be severe,” she said.

            “You mean to say you will not leave this strange place with its strange rituals and beliefs?” Leece asked.

            “I can not leave and neither can you,” Eudavia Hodge answered.

            Leece realized now the woman was not sane.

            “Eudavia...how long have you been locked in this shack? When did you come to this village?” Leece asked, trying to assess the state of her mind.

            “I came with my father when I was a child. Like you, my father and I were stranded at the bridge. When rescue came, I was separated from my father. I never saw him again. I was given to Samuel Howell to be raised,” she said.

            “Have you never tried to escape?” Leece asked.

            “Each time I ran away, I was punished. I was punished by Samuel Howell by beatings every morning in the middle of the village. Each of the village men took turns until one hundred lashes were spent upon my back. The last time I tried to run away, the village men planned to burn me alive.

Instead, they burned my back with their fire rods and locked me away in this shack. If you try to escape, they will hunt you down as they do their winter meat. They will punish you as they punished me. There is no escape from this village. Old Malachy demands the law be kept: “Strangers who enter must not escape” That is their law,” she said.

            “If you will not come with me, I go alone then. I will come back for you with more strangers who will put an end to the madness in this place,” Leece said.

            “You must lock the door to the shack as you found it. You must not go back to the river or the bridge. They will capture you again, or they will force me to lead you into the Pool of the Dead” beneath the river bed,” the woman said.

            “The Pool of the Dead?” Leece asked.

            “Yes. The river has a deep, swirling pool not far from the river bank. The elders never venture on the other side of the bridge. That is where the Pool of the Dead lies,” she said.

            She backed deep into the shack from whence she’d emerged. Leece barred the door as he found it. He knew she would not leave with him and he knew he couldn’t stay. He saw he had no choice but to leave the woman behind.

            He remembered her warning about the animal traps in the woods. To the village men, they served two purposes: keeping their captives from escaping and hunting their supply of animal meat.

            Leece trod carefully along the most densely wooded area. It felt as if he was going around in circles. He thought about what Eudavia Hodge told him. The woods were now pitch dark and avoiding those leg traps was not going to be a simple matter of vigilance alone.

            Leece thought if he had to sleep out in the woods, at least he had a wool blanket in the gunny sack. This was an area of Pennsylvania that experienced sporadic bear sightings. At least, they weren’t so many sightings to scare him.

When his eyes grew heavy with sleep, he looked for shelter in a huge old elm with a split trunk about five feet from ground level. He climbed the trunk and shimmied his way into the base of the split. It wasn’t exactly the most comfortable bed he’d ever slept in; but, at least he felt safe for the night.

            A man on the run doesn’t sleep soundly and Leece Fordyce didn’t either. Between being cramped between two trunks of a single tree for the night and the sound of hawks cawing loudly in the trees, awakened him just before daybreak.

            He thought he heard the sound of twigs cracking and hurried down the tree trunk and began to run without thinking about the leg traps set in his path.  He hurried onward about a sixteenth of a mile without encountering a single one and counted himself fortunate.

            A bright morning sun made it easier to see the path ahead. He tried to remain inside the perimeter of the wooded area. He saw a small clearing ahead and wondered if it was a main road out of the village.

            It wasn’t. It was a most peculiar looking cemetery with weathered tombstones. He paused to note engravings in the tombstones.

Most were nearly one hundred years old. All were women. He reached into his trousers and removed his notepad and ballpoint pen. He made several notes of the names on the tombstones. Lydia Howell, Cornelia Browerd, Letitia Pherson, Thalia Wyatt and Araminty Harkens, all placed in order of the dates of their deaths.

One of the women’s tombstones was the largest in the arc of stones. It was at least six feet tall and included a small iron apron fencing around the border of the gravesite. The name on the stone was Eudavia Hodge. On this tombstone, there was only the woman’s name.

            Leece felt as if he had entered a strange dimension in alien space. Had the Eudavia locked in that shack lied to him? He noted the names of some of the other women and then, saw a tombstone set about twenty feet from the others. The stone was set flat into the ground unlike the others that stood erect at each grave site.

He figured out quickly this was the village men’s version of “unhallowed ground.”  He leaned over to get a closer look at the name on the stone, “Zebulon Hodge.”  There was no date of birth nor death on the stone, just the name. Leece thought that odd since the tombstones of the women had birth and death dates.

            Why give the wife of a village man a huge tombstone and then banish her husband to unhallowed ground? What could Zebulon Hodge have done to deserve that? Leece wondered.

            He hurried back toward the thickly wooded area. As he took a single step, he heard a sharp snap, felt the crunching of the bone in his ankle and fell over in excruciating pain. The jaws of a trap was firmly embedded in his ankle bone. He knew his ankle was broken. He could hardly bear the pain. But, he knew he had to remove the trap as best he could.

            He reached over for a small stone the size of a goose egg and tried to wedge it between the upper and lower jaws of the trap. He could barely get the upper jaw to move and with the added pressure of the stone, the bottom jaw of the trap seemed to embed itself further.

He winced in pain, held his breath and used the broken limb of a tree scattered on the forest floor nearby to begin the torture of removing the trap.

            After nearly ten minutes, he was finally able to trip the trap’s release spring and remove it. He remembered from his boy scout days how to splint a broken bone in an emergency. He used two thick branches for splints he placed on either side of his now broken ankle. He twisted his handkerchief into a makeshift tourniquet to stem the long, thin rivulets of blood pouring out from the wound where the trap’s teeth had been.

            He tried to stand, only to crash to the floor of the forest. With his soulful brown eyes forcing away tears, he searched for a branch strong enough to use for a walk stick. The nearest one was about ten feet away. He raised himself up and used the palms of his hands and upper forearms to drag himself toward it. His determination to escape was matched only by the excruciating pain in his leg. He had no desire to return to a village of crazed men. He would crawl to a main road and walk as best he could, until he found signs of normal human life again.

            He hooked the walking stick into the crook of his left armpit and slowly raised himself to stand. The relief from the pain was barely minimal and soon his good working leg began to tire and the muscle ached from bearing his weight unilaterally with only a few steps.

            How am I to get anywhere in this condition? he wondered.

            He would soon need a doctor to sterilize and suture his wound. If the village men were going to find him, now the blood from his wound would make that easier, assuming the wood animals didn’t get to him first.

            With the pain in his leg deterring his pace and his ability to make any progress in travel, and the sun high in the noon sky, he stopped at a stream and drank his fill. His empty stomach made him feel all the weaker. Being an amateur camper in his youth, he knew he could find something in the woods to eat to stave off the hunger pangs he now felt with ferocity.

            He found a small patch of wild onions. He cleaned the soil off the roots and ate what he could. He had to admit he felt somewhat stronger. In the back of his mind, however, he knew it was just a matter of time before Josiah or one of the others would find him and take him back to their village.

            If Leece Fordyce had known how close he had come to the fork in the road that led away from the village, he would have found his escape.

            Just as he’d done before the storm carried him into the village, he chose the wrong road. Shortly ahead he saw the cantilever bridge and three village men dressed in black trousers, long-sleeved shirts and short black vests. He also saw one of them turn the medallion on the bridge. He looked toward the river and saw Eudavia’s hand poking out of the shallow end of the river bank.

            Leece didn’t know what to do. If he remained quiet, the village men might not notice him and return to their village. If he tried to turn and retreat to the correct road out of town, they would see him and capture him.

            He decided to remain stock still. He watched the men from a crouched position behind a thicket. As if they were possessed of some lightening-speed vision, they searched the perimeter of the river bank. Then, they summoned another man in a wagon. It was Josiah. They followed Josiah’s wagon back into the village. He wondered if it was a trap to make him leave his hiding place in the woods.

            Leece felt the pain in his leg growing worse. He worried that the trap wound might be infected. He glanced down at it and saw his ankle had swollen to twice the size it was. He considered his options for survival. He had no car and his cell phone was gone. It was of little use now anyway. There would be no contact with anyone. He knew he wouldn’t make it further from the village than a quarter mile and before he made it to the main road, he’d be recaptured by one of the men.

            In the dark recesses of his mind, he felt as if he was in a kind of vise squeezing him tighter and tighter. He dragged his bad leg as best he could toward the opposite side of the thicket of woods nearest the bridge.

This had been the direction from whence the funnel cloud had originally come. In his mind, he thought he could try and swim across the river in the hope he’d remain unnoticed. He was only a mediocre swimmer; but, he thought trying to swim across to the opposite side of the river might be a way to get further from the view of the village men.

            He stood at the edge of the river bank. It seemed relatively stable and much drier than before the storm. He knew that rivers depths could be deceiving. He glanced around and heard a voice calling to him.

            “Stop there! Don’t go in the water. It’s not safe, I say.”

            The voice repeated the same warning again as it began to come closer to the river bank.

            “Who goes there?” the voice asked.

            “Leece Fordyce. Journalist for the Harrisburg Herald. I’ve injured my leg. Who are you?” Leece asked.

            “I am Liam Ronish. I live yonder,” he said.

            “In that village?” Leece asked.

            “No sir. Not the village. You don’t want to end up in that village, I say,” Liam answered, coming nearer to where Leece was standing.

            “We best get you back to my place. Don’t have just a single horse. You think you can manage to ride? It’s only a short distance into the woods,” Liam said.

            When Leece was mounted firmly on the man’s horse, Liam trotted the horse in a slow gallop about two miles into the woods on the opposite side of the bridge. It was dark; but, the man seemed to know the woods even without much light.

            “Whoa there Hero, Whoa!” the man called to the horse when they reached a small wooden shack. It was barely visible in the dark of the evening.

            The horse slowed to a stop. Liam leapt from the animal’s back quickly and helped Leece to the ground. Liam made his way to the shack with Leece limping behind.

            When they entered the shack, a slow fire was burning and the place inside was neat and organized.

            Leece wasn’t prepared for what he saw when Liam finally faced him. The man was blind. A long, ugly scar ran from his right temple to his jaw.

            “I expect you are shocked by a blind man living all alone in these parts? Come on. Sit ye down. I’ve got rabbit stew enough for two. Hunted it myself,” Liam said, proudly.

            The man was about fifty years old, as near as Leece could figure. He wore a red flannel woodsman’s shirt with work trousers and suspenders. His skin was ruddy, as if he spent a lot of time outdoors. He was taller than Leece by at least three inches putting him at around six feet and three inches tall.

            “Might I ask how you injured your leg… so I know which balm to use to make sure your blood don’t poison from the wound?” Liam asked.

            “I accidentally stepped into a trap in those woods out there,” Leece said.

            “Can’t be one of my traps. Must belong to one of those crazy religious men in the village. You didn’t go near that village, did you? You couldn’t have. For certain, they’d not allow you to leave. They never do. You best stay here a day or so till that wound heals. I’ve got some balm will close the wound and make sure your blood don’t poison,” Liam said.

            “You know about those village men?” Leece asked.

            “I should say I do. How’d you think I was blinded? See this scar?” Liam asked, running his hand the length of the scar on his face.

            “Yes. How did that happen?” Leece asked.

            “Put your leg up on this little bench. Keep it stretched out.

I’ll tell you how it happened...I’ve lived here in this shack ever since my left me. I decided I’d had enough of life out there in that big, confused world. So, about 1979, I sold everything I didn’t need and found me this place in the woods. Don’t own it you see...But staties know I am squatting. They just don’t really care about shooing me off anymore. Done that too often with not much success,” Liam said, laughing with a nearly totally toothless grin.

            Liam plodded around the shack until he found the medicinal balm he was looking for. He bent over Leece’s now outstretched limb and felt for the open wound. He applied a black gummy balm.

            “What is that stuff?” Leece asked.

            “Sulphur gum. Get it right out of the trees in the woods here. Best medicine for cuts and wounds. Good thing I was in the Army and took basic training. Learned how to survive in Viet Nam jungles. Now, your wound may start to sting,” Liam said.

            Liam wasn’t fooling about the stinging. He winced the minute the balm was applied first at the pain from the wound, then from the stinging.

            “Stinging is it?” Liam asked.

            “Yes...and not a little I might add,” Leece said.

            “Well, there ya’ go then...It’s already doing its job healing that trap wound. Bone’s not broken. Not by much though. Can feel it might be fractured and you walking round on it didn’t help much. How you’d get to Landesbury anyway?” Liam said.

            “Landesbury? Is that the name of this place?” Leece asked.

            “No. It’s got an old Celtic name, but land maps say it’s “Landesbury.”

            “I actually was on my way to Harrisburg nearly five days ago. Some kind of funnel cloud blew up and I parked my car near the bridge and waited on the bench under the bridge for the funnel cloud to move on,” Leece said.

            “That about when that old man Josiah showed up?” Liam asked.

            “Yes. How did you know?”

            “That’d be the way they usually snare another victim,” Liam said.

            “Josiah Vester invited me in. But I’ve got to tell you. I saw something in that river that scared the hell out of me,” Leece said.

            “Eudavia’s Hand?” Liam said.

            “Yes. It was the skeleton hand of a woman,” Leece said.

            “Josiah take you to that place with the mummy, “Old Malachy” in it…their meetin’ temple?” Liam asked.

            “Yes...Josiah put something in the mummy’s mouth…white powder. Josiah swore it was “sustenance,” as he put it, for the mummy. That crazy old man believed the mummy would actually ingest it,” Leece said.

“Truth be told? That mummy does...what did you call it? Ingest? Ingest it,” Liam said.

            “How can that be?” Leece asked.

            “That powder is some kind of preserver made from bone marrow. Let’s have some food. I can talk better on a full stomach than an empty one,” Liam said.

            Liam scooped up a ladle of rabbit stew and placed it in front of Leece without spilling a drop. Then, he filled his own bowl and sat down in the old rocking chair opposite Leece, near a river stone fireplace with an old black stew pot hanging in the center.

            Leece realized those wild onions he ate left him wishing he had a nice hot meal. Now that he had the rabbit stew, he couldn’t believe how much stronger he felt.

            “Feeling a bit stronger now?” Liam asked.

            “Yes. You said earlier those village men blinded you and scarred your face?” Leece asked.

            “Yessir, they did. I was out hunting wild turkey just before Thanksgiving Day, first year I lived up here.

For some reason, they don’t ever cross to the other side of that bridge...just so you know. Almost like they fear falling into some far off place they’ve never been. Anyway, I lost my sense of direction and ended up near that old cemetery of theirs.

I walked not far beyond that when I heard a woman’s scream. She was locked inside a shack in that woodland near their farms. I ran to open the door and saw another woman standing over the body of a dead woman.

Eudavia...she sacrificed the last remaining village woman, old Araminty Harkens. You best be careful not to wander near that village or to that shack where they keep Eudavia Hodge locked up.

Been a crazy since she was a small child. Saw her wandering near here once when she was no more’n ten years old. Vicious little monster she was.

            Anyway, once they found me near that shack, several of them surrounded me and tried to scalp me. I struggled as hard as I could. Almost bested them…until the oldest one slammed a timber into my back. I was bloodied and barely able to stand up again. Must have knocked me unconscious.

            When I came to, I had no eyes and this scar. I listened hard to figure whether they were still inside the meeting hall. All I found as I stood up was some kind of dead body on that altar. I waited for a while. Then, I escaped from that meeting hall by hiding beneath that altar and running fast as my legs could carry me back into this side of the woods.

If they saw me escape, they must have allowed it knowing I’d never see again nor venture anywhere near their village,” Liam said.

            Leece couldn’t believe what he had heard. He was afraid to trust Liam Ronish. He had the same kind of quaint accent as Josiah. Yet, he was sure the man was telling the truth about his injuries. 

            Liam sensed the stranger’s silence meant he wasn’t sure he could trust him.

            “Son, I don’t have reason in the world to trust you either. How’d I know you mayn’t be one of them? You know they look for younger men they can teach and train to their strange ways.

Josiah Vester and Samuel Howell hoped I’d come back to get my revenge on them so they could make me like them. You know they are all pretty crazy old men, don’t you?” Liam asked.

            “Yes. I am certain of that. Not even the old Mennonites, Quakers and Amish had the strange ritual these village men have. I don’t understand one thing,” Leece said.

            “Yes. And what is that?” Liam asked.

            “If there are no women left… that crazy woman in that shack…why is she allowed to remain?”

            “You’ve got to factor that these are crazy religious men first of all. They’ve got their version of “evil” mixed up with strange ideas.

Eudavia Hodge is the daughter of Zebulon Hodge. I take it you saw his grave in that unhallowed ground yonder?” Liam asked.

            “Yes. Tell me. The women buried there...looks as if they all died within a half decade or so and the graves begin in order, with the first woman’s death to the last to die. Is that a fair assessment?” Leece asked.

            “Near as I can figure, Zebulon Hodge must’ve done something these village men considered evil in his time. He can’t be dead so very long when you realize his daughter is now only late middle age. I’m guessin’ round about maybe forty-five years ago he was killed. Mind you. Village men believe they can punish. They don’t believe in murder. That explains why they didn’t kill me and instead maimed me,” Liam said.

            “I’m not sure I understand,” Leece said.

            “I’m simply stating they get someone else to do their murderin’ business. Someone they know would never try to escape, nor be sent to jail,” Liam said.

            Leece believed he knew what Liam was now telling him.

            “Eudavia?” Leece said.

            “Eudavia.” Liam answered.

            “So they keep her around to murder those who refuse to bend to their religious practices and murder strangers who might expose their crazy religious cult?” Leece said.

            “That’s about right,” Liam said.

            “What about you? Aren’t you worried they will eventually get “rid” of you too?”

            “Not if my guess is right. You notice the day you came how they change around that brass medallion on the old cantilever bridge out there? Or, how they seem to have a human hand appear whenever a stranger is about? You notice how they avoid the opposite side of the bridge and river bank? They never go anywhere near the west side of that river. Never could figure why,” Liam said.

            “Unhallowed ground too?” Leece asked.

            Liam scratched the scraggly whiskers on his chin and nodded his head.

            “Could well be. It wouldn’t be so different than where they buried Zebulon Hodge,” Liam said.

            “Why do they worship that old mummy in their meeting hall? Who was Old Malachy?” Leece asked.

            “I went into Lanceboro to pick up some supplies. That’s a place no villager ever goes. There are a lot of old timers there who know about these crazy men. They don’t talk loud about them, mostly only in hushed tones.

I went into the mercantile store to pick up flour and a few other things. There were two old timers sitting outside the opened door…talking about “the old days.”

You know how old men do? One of them asked if the other remembered someone named Malachy the Hunter. They talked about how he fed a whole village with his hunting skills. The other old man said he did. Then, he asked if his crony knew what happened to Malachy and what the religious villagers did to his enemy.

In those days, that village land was owned by their religious leader. At that time, it was Samuel Howell’s father. Howell parceled out the village land to various men in their religious community and each would produce enough food supplies to avoid having to leave the village.

All except Zebulon Hodge. From the sound of it, Zebulon had “other” ideas about the parcel he was granted by Howell and defied the religious leader by bringing in an evaluator to assess the value of the land he was granted.

It turned out that their religious leader, Howell, never owned the land or had any rights to it. It was part of the original land deal of Commonwealth of Pennsylvania with the Indians, who sold it to the state back in the late 1700's.

Naturally, Howell was angered by what Zebulon Hodge did and convinced those in the religious community Hodge and his daughter had to be banished from their holy village. For a time, all of the villagers lived in fear they would be put off state land because of what Hodge had done to expose them.

            The only one allowed to roam in the woods to hunt was Malachy. Since the villagers had yet to begin planting crops that year, they had little food to eat.

            During one of the worst blizzards in Landesbury, Old Malachy braved the storm and brought back whatever he hunted for the starving community. Samuel Howell named Malachy a saint for keeping the villagers from starving to death.

            When the state deeded land to Hodge on the opposite side of the river, the villagers were forbidden to go near that area of the river, woods or river bank for any reason.

To add to their fury, the bridge the elders built way back before Zebulon and Eudavia were banished was owned by Hodge. He knew when river waters swelled or overflowed, he’d need the rights to it to get into Lanceboro for supplies. The staties gave half ownership to Hodge and half to the village.

According to the old men, Zebulon hoped to sell his rights to the bridge to the railroads, eventually to connect other towns with the village. That would have meant the discovery of the village to outsiders. The villagers knew the railroad would claim the entire bridge, not just Hodge’s half. Obviously, they were horrified at the idea of any outsiders. They grew to hate the outside world and became more secretive and isolated from the world,” Liam said.

            “So that’s why they don’t go near the bridge except to use that brass medallion as a warning?” Leece asked.

            “Exactly. Over time, their religious beliefs grew less and less sane. They knew they had to do something about Zebulon Hodge before he turned their remote little clan into a big to do with strangers coming and going. The railroad lost interest. But, the villagers still lived with the threat...and a deep hate for Hodge.

They plotted ways to get rid of Zebulon without actually committing the sin of murder. Their opportunity came when his daughter, Eudavia, ended up lost in the wrong side of the woods near the village. She was named for her mother, you see.

The child’s mother must’ve died when she was pretty young. She never attended school and was what most would call “backward” in her mind, if you know what I mean,” Liam said.

            “When she went missing, Zebulon was heartbroken and searched and searched for her for weeks. He thought she’d might have been carried off by a bear or other wood animal. She was kept locked away in that meeting room by Samuel Howell, who must’ve taken her into his cottage.

That’s about when Old Malachy’s hunting accident happened. Villagers raised him up as a saint, laid his body on that altar and began to try and keep him “alive” the only way their thought they could...daily doses of blood or bone marrow. When they realized the blood and marrow of animals wasn’t keeping the body, they turned to human blood and marrow.

            At some point, Eudavia Hodge must have gone mad. They laid out traps in the woods in hopes Zebulon would be snared in one of them. When that didn’t happen, they sent out Eudavia to murder her own father by setting a trap near the door to his cabin on the other side of the river.

The village men considered her madness “evil” and figured it was okay for her to commit evil against her own father…long as it suited their purposes. Zebulon bled to death nearly like you would’ve if I hadn’t come along when I did,” Liam said.

            “You mean she murdered her own father for his blood and marrow?” Leece asked.

            “I’d not be much surprised at that. Then, by coincidence, the following spring, Lydia Howell, Samuel’s wife, went missing. The village men claimed she wandered into the woods and they found her body mauled by a bear. She was the first woman buried out in their “holy cemetery.”

People in Lanceboro whispered about the goings on in that village. Most were too afraid to venture out there to see if what they heard was true. By the time most of wives of the religious men in that village disappeared, the population of Lanceboro forgot it existed. So…they were free to do as they pleased these last two decades,” Liam said.

            “Did they know you had become a squatter here in these remote woods?” Leece asked.

            “When they found out, it was certain they couldn’t be pleased ‘bout it. They didn’t bother with me for a year or so and I didn’t care to go bothering with them neither. Until I saw that shack and realized I was on the wrong side of that river bank,” Liam said.

            “You say they never cross the bridge? Why is it so narrow?” Leece asked.

            “Zebulon Hodge’s joke on them. He rebuilt his half of the bridge himself, stone by stone and mortar block by mortar block, mostly to get even with the villagers. Hodge was no expert mason. According to old timers in Lanceboro, when he finished, he realized he had mistaken the width and the height on his side. It’s why when you start from Hodge’s side it’s narrow and widens on the village side slightly. The deep drop on the village side is caused by Hodge’s mistakes. The center point of Hodge’s bridge meets the village half higher.

Hodge knew that bridge wasn’t going to fit more than a single horse and wagon, nor more’n two men on horseback. Hodge knew the villagers would never cross it for all of its dangerous flaws.

Ghost lovers tell how they still hear Zebulon laughing out yonder in the woods. Could be what scares off those religious village men,” Liam said, laughing aloud. 

“Sure is a strange story. I...uh...It’s just so hard to believe it happened in this modern century,” Leece said.

            “You have to remember people who live in these woods don’t want “modern” in any way. They want nothing to change. Strange though that over the last decade, even those old village fanatics have changed in the extreme and don’t even notice it themselves,” Liam said.

            “That human hand I saw...It can’t really be Eudavia’s hand? She had two of them in full sight when I saw her,” Leece said.

            “No...It’s not her hand. It’s her mother’s. That’s who’s supposedly buried out there under that tall tombstone,” Liam said.

            “Wait a minute. Her mother? When did the mother die?” Leece asked.

            “As I said before, I believe it was when her daughter was just a child. You want my personal opinion? That clan in the village likely got her to accept their way of thinking. I don’t really know the real story of how the first Eudavia Hodge died, except she couldn’t have been more than her daughter’s age now at her death.

Of course, if she had sided with the village men, she would be buried in their cemetery to show her fealty to their beliefs. They don’t believe in modern medicine. She likely died of some illness…could’ve been cured easily by modern medicine. But, she likely refused modern medicine…maybe to keep in line with their beliefs. Just my guess,” Liam said.

            “I don’t understand. These village men do away with their women more than men. Why?” Leece asked.

            “Women give life when they give birth. It figures these crazy men would think that was some kind of powerful gift that would have great value to keep a mummy preserved.

Can’t say for certain. Just another guess.

Now look, fire’s dying. I’ll bank it for the night and then fix you a place to sleep. You can think about what you want to do in the morning… after you’ve had time to rest and a full breakfast. Don’t have much to offer, just a bit of buckwheat kernels you are welcome to,” Liam said.

            Leece watched the blind man move around his cabin as if he had full sight. He brought two heavy blankets out of an old chest and plopped a horse blanket on the floor in front of the fireplace.

            “Ought to do for you till mornin’. Good night to you.  If you need anything more, let out a holler,” Liam said.

            Leece snuggled down under the blanket and felt the warm fire on his feet. Liam Ronish slept soundly a few feet away in a hand carved log frame bed.

Leece only awoke once in the night to the sound of the blind man’s snoring loudly. He glanced around the room from where he lay and felt safe for the first time in nearly a week.  He didn’t want to think about what he should do until he had some rest. He was amazed that the pain in his leg subsided. He could tell the wound was healing because it began to feel itchy. He dare not try to scratch it for fear of opening the drying wound. Momentarily, he fell into a deep sleep.

            Leece Fordyce awoke somewhat disoriented with a bright sun shining through Liam Ronish’s cabin. Liam was already moving about the fireplace putting heavy logs on the fire. He had already filled an old coffee pot with freshly drawn water, ground chicory and a bit of actual coffee grinds. Leece couldn’t remember when coffee smelled so heavenly.

            He stood up and stretched, reaching toward the wound in his leg. Then, he bent over and folded up his bedding and placed it on an old blue wing chair near the fireplace.

            “Buckwheat cakes will be ready in just a few minutes,” Liam said.

            “I can’t thank you enough for your hospitality,” Leece said.

            “No need. Haven’t had a single visitor since...since…well, your buckwheat cakes are ready.

Sit ye’ down and enjoy ‘em while they are hot. Don’t have butter, like in fancy eatin’ places. Just some molasses if you want it,” Liam said.

            “Molasses? How do you get molasses out here in the woods?” Leece asked.

            “Lots of sulphur sap. It’s good for lots of things...like dryin’ up that wound of yours,” Liam laughed.

            Leece smiled broadly while he ate voraciously. He had to admit the buckwheat cakes were better than he expected. Not what he might order in a diner…but, satisfying for certain. He barely munched down two of them before he felt his belt line grow tight.

            “Liam, don’t you think, with all you know about those village men, that it’s a little dangerous for a man to be living here all alone?” Leece asked.

            “No sir. I don’t. What have I got to fear? I live here because I lost my fears a long time ago. What little fear I might’a had left, those crazy men in that village ridded me of pretty fast when they attacked me,” Liam said.

            “That’s what I meant. You are all alone without your sight and they know that kind of handicap is an advantage, if they wanted to get rid of you, especially now they know you’ve taken in a stranger they want dead, namely, me.” Leece said.

            “Mr. Fordyce...is it?”

            “Just Leece. I owe you a lot for coming along when you did,” Leece said.

            “Leece, I knew they were up to something. I saw them from a distance gathering at that bridge near the medallion. I knew they’d be sending out that warning signal, Eudavia’s hand, to the rest of their village men that you were gone and they hadn’t as yet captured you,” Liam said.

            “Did you know they sunk my car in that river?” Leece asked.

            “Yes. That river has more’n your car down in the depths of that drink,” Liam said.

            “What are you saying?” Leece asked.

            “I’m sayin’ that the river has quite a few cars sunk in it by those men. The minute strangers lose their way and cross that bridge…if they even dare to try that...those village men know it first off,” Liam said.

            “But how? How can they know it so quickly? That village is at least a tenth of a mile from the bridge,” Leece said.

            “Echoes. I take it you didn’t notice the echo when Josiah carried you off into his wagon when your car was stuck in river mud?” Liam asked.

            “No, I didn’t,” Leece responded.

            “That’s because there’s a peculiar thing about that bridge. If you are on the wrong side of it, meaning the village side, there’s an echo can only be heard by the villager in the first cottage. That’s where old Silas Pherson lives. He’s the “Village Watchman,” Liam said.

            “There aren’t too many cottages in that village. Was that always so?” Leece asked.

            “Yes. The village never had more than those ten cottages you see there now,” Liam said.

            “I’m trying to recreate how this group of men got together in the first place,” Leece said.

            “That’s something I’m not sure too many really know around here. Could be one of those old religions they broke away from. You know how that is. Don’t agree with each other on their beliefs and a few of ‘em just pick up and start their own religion somewhere remote,” Liam said.

            “Were you ever a religious man, Liam?” Leece asked.

            “For my woman, I was. Given my own choice? No. I’m not inclined to practice any religion. Don’t get me wrong. I’m a God fearin’ man just don’t have need to be on my knees praying every hour of the day. Nor, spoutin’ Bible verses. Those are good for people who have lots to fear in life. I don’t even fear death. Been through enough life to know it’s got to end sooner or later. No point in fightin’ yourself over it,” Liam said.

            Leece liked the way Liam expressed his feelings. They were natural and very articulate, even though he obviously didn’t have much schooling.

            “I have to ask out of curiosity, as much as anything...How on earth did you manage all alone after you lost your sight?” Leece asked.

            “Spent days broodin’ and angry, wanted to go right back to that village and kill ‘em all. I wasn’t afraid of them. I was more afraid of going to prison for a massacre,” Liam said.

            “Have you ever been to a prison?” Leece asked.

            “No sir...I haven’t. Had a few brothers who did…back in the city. That was another reason I left all that behind. Once my woman was gone, I looked round the city and realized it would be me next to go to jail like my brothers.

Oh now, I don’t say they didn’t deserve their punishment. To me, thieving is more’n deserving of jail. I’m no thief. But, big city people? I’d watch ‘em spend nights awake thinkin’ up ways to rob others of their money or their life savings. I just had enough and picked up and left. I kept going and going until I found this place. Didn’t really care who owned it at first. Then, I saw in Lanceboro state ledgers.  It was property belongin’ to the state. I really didn’t care about being a squatter,” Liam said, with a laugh.

            “What about that cantilever bridge?” Leece asked.

            “I think the state must’ve decided to let village squatters alone since they were a religious sect. Didn’t want to get a bad name in the newspapers, maybe. After Hodge’s death, there was no reason for the state to step in and dismantle the bridge. So they declared the entire area part of their state heritage land. Pretended as if those religious never existed, the state did,” Liam said.

            “How long has it been since the state bothered to even send out their game and parkland wardens?” Leece asked.

            “Been none…long as I’ve been here,” Liam said.

            There was a long, pregnant pause in their conversation as the two men drained their second cups of Liam’s home brewed coffee.

            “How’s that leg of yours feeling’ this mornin’?” Liam asked.

            “Much better than it did yesterday, though I still don’t seem able to place my full weight on that ankle,” Leece said.

            “Won’t be able to for at least a few weeks. I suppose you want to be movin’ on real soon?” Liam said.

            “I was supposed to be at a meeting six days ago in Harrisburg. By now, my editor has probably sent out the National Guard looking for me,” Leece said.

            “No chance they’ll find you in a place like this,” Liam said.

            “Even if they did, they’d find it hard to travel over that bridge and I’m not sure I want any of my fellow journalists or anyone for that matter ending up as captives of that bunch of religious villagers,” Leece said.

            “Look, Leece. I’ll be honest with you. If I take you into Lanceboro on horseback in daylight, we could both end up dead before we get across the bridge, if you know what I mean. We have to keep an eye on the comings and goings of those village men if we want to get you out of here safely,” Liam said.

            “What’s your best guess then?” Leece asked.

            “Lay low for a few more days or at least until the village men figure you’re dead or drowned by Eudavia. Because you know, that’s how it will end if we aren’t careful.

She may be a woman. But, she’s also a very mad woman. No one can imagine the kind of ideas that come out of the mind of the craziest people,” Liam said.

            Leece knew Liam was right. It was just that now that he found some sense of safety, his next inclination was to get as far away from this place as possible.

            “What say ye on this matter?” Liam asked.

            “I know you are right. I don’t have much choice but to try and get them off my trail,” Leece said.

            “Well then...Can’t say as I won’t enjoy having some company for a few days. It will only be a few days, rest assured. A week at the very most,” Liam said.

            “What say we go out and feed old Hero some buckwheat for his breakfast? That old horse is purely mean when his meals are runnin’ late. Just keep your eyes wide open and your ears perked for the slightest sound. That’ll be Eudavia come scoutin’ for ye,” Liam said.

            “Liam, may I ask you a question?” Leece said.

            “Certainly. What is it?” Liam asked.

            “Sometimes, you speak with the same kind of accent as those religious village men. Why is that?” Leece asked.

            Liam laughed heartily.

            “Well, course I do. That “accent” as you call it, it’s a gift from my mother and father. I wasn’t born here in this state. My father moved here during the great coal mining boom when the railroads were running new track everywhere across the state. My father and mother were born in Massachusetts in the heart of Pilgrim country in a town no bigger than that village yonder,” Liam said.

            “Your father was a miner then?” Leece asked.

            “Oh, no. My father was a second generation railroad engineer. And proud of it he was, too. He came on board the Pennsylvania Railroad when I was nearly a grown up young man,” Liam said.

“That’s something we both have in common then. My father also worked for the Pennsylvania Railroad when I was younger. He was a railroad conductor. I loved seeing him in that dark blue uniform with his dark blue cap. My mother always joked he was her “man in uniform for life. When the railroad retired him, he took up farming in the Midwest,” Leece said.

            “Strange isn’t it? One minute we were strangers and the next we have the railroad in common. World is really pretty small when you think about it,” Liam said.

            “In the case of these villagers, maybe their world is too small,” Leece said.

            “Not getting’ your meaning,” Liam said.

            “They are so small no one knows they exist and no one knows their dark secrets either,” Leece said.

            “Sometimes, you got to realize, we can’t know everything all of the time,” Liam said.

            Leece wasn’t sure he knew what Liam was trying to say.

            Liam saw Leece’s puzzled expression.

            “I’m just sayin’…if the world knew what these religious had been up to a decade ago, we would never have met in these woods. Likely, the woods would all be gone and some new fangled roadway would be in its place. That’s all I’m sayin’,” Liam said.

            Leece realized how important Liam considered his privacy and seclusion to be. Here was a man who had been savaged by the place he loved and considered his home. This solitary life was all that was left of this blind and maimed man’s existence. He wondered privately what would become of a man like Liam Ronish.

Surely, Liam understood that sooner or later all things do change, perhaps not always for the better but, at least, for the sake of change. As he watched Liam perform the duties that kept his existence viable, Leece knew that this man would likely die in the only place on earth that brought him some sense of connection to nature and his reason for being.

            What price a man’s existence, if he loses his right to privacy? Leece pondered this thought all day. It was one he wrote down in his notebook. When he looked up after that evening’s dinner, he realized that Liam had no idea he was writing in a book other than through the acute sense of hearing he’d developed when his sight was taken from him.

            “What’re you writin’ bout? I don’t want you writin’ nothin’ about me. To you, I’m just your imagination,” Liam said, with an edge to his voice.

            “I was writing about nature and the reason for being,” Leece said.

            “Good. Don’t want no writin’ about me in those newspapers. Won’t amount to any good,” Liam said.

            “I know. You like your private little world here. I won’t spoil that for you. But, surely you can’t mind if I write things you say that I want to remember for the future?” Leece asked.

            “And just what could those things be? You’re a reporter. All reporters want to be the top reporter in the country. They get that way by writin’ news no one knows about. What I have to say isn’t news,” Liam said.

            “Actually, you’ve said things that are full of wisdom. I like that. I guess I never took the time to really hear the words people speak to me. Now, I have time and I’m hearing words that have much deeper meanings,” Leece said.

            “I don’t mind you writin’ these things down for yourself. I just don’t want it in the papers, hear?” Liam said.

            “I’m sorry, Liam. I didn’t mean any offense,” Leece said.

            “None intended, none taken,” Liam answered, in his quaint way.

            “See if you can locate a small wooden crate for me. Should be near the top of that fireplace mantel. There’s something in it I want you to see,” Liam said.

            Leece looked around the fireplace mantel for the wooden crate. He was amused when he realized the word “crate” in Liam’s thick accent meant “box.” He found a box about the length and width of a shoe box and handed it to Liam.

            “No. No...I meant for you to open it,” Liam said, rocking in his chair by the fireplace.

            Leece opened it and saw a woman’s pendant with a small locket on the gold chain.

            “Well? Open the locket. I want you to see my Annie,” Liam said.

            Leece opened the locket slowly as the music box inside the back of the locket played, “Goodnight Sweetheart,” an old tune from the past. There was a black and white photo of a lovely, lithe woman in a long dress in the style of the 1940's. Her dark hair was pulled back at the nape of her neck and she wore a long, long length of pearls and a bracelet on her right hand, though it was somewhat indistinguishable to Leece.

            “Annie was the love of my life,” Liam said.

            “Why did she leave you?” Leece asked.

            “Got the polio just after we were husband and wife. It was contagious. They took her off to some big city hospital in Cincinnati. Said she had to be quarantined. Last time I saw her, I boarded a bus bound for Cincinnati and went up to her hospital room. She was lying in a huge iron lung. Could barely breathe, my Annie. I tried to look strong; but, I know she saw the fear in my eyes,” Liam said.

            “I thought you said she left you,” Leece said.

            “She did. She died not more’n a few hours after I was with her. I think it broke her heart to see what her illness made of me. I wasn’t the big, brave man who was going to protect her. She saw that in my eyes and figured she didn’t want to hurt the man who promised to protect her from anything that might hurt her,” Liam said.

            Leece realized he uncovered yet another part of this strange little world where men dominated reality and existence. Here was a big man who could withstand torture and blindness and yet, his heart softened at the thought of the woman he once called his wife.

            “I’m so sorry Liam. I thought you meant she just picked up and left,” Leece said.

            “Not my Annie. She and I had big plans. We were going to buy a farm in Indiana and have a dozen children. Never got to Indiana or the children. I just wanted you to see my beautiful Annie as she was.

You know? It’s strange when I think of her now, she is never a day older than the day we became husband and wife. She is always young and always my beautiful lady. Never could find anyone to replace her. She was good, maybe too good and that’s why the Good Lord took her. What was an old buzzard like me doing with a beauty like Annie? Funny thing, I always knew when men were giving her the eye. She did too. She had this funny habit of always looking up at me with her adoring brown eyes, as if no other man existed. Oh, I loved Annie...the one woman in the world who had a heart of gold.

            When those village men attacked me, I think it was cause my angel Annie was looking down from up there on her man. I wouldn’t have had the reason to run away as fast as I did, if not for her. I was running back here to die with her locket in my hand. But my Annie, she wouldn’t have it that way for nothin’. Don’t know why she’d want me to go on so without her. She and the Man Upstairs know that better’n I, for sure,” Liam said.

            Leece listened to what Liam was saying intently.

            Abruptly, Liam said, “Leece go fetch me my shotgun. I keep it in that cedar chest near the fireplace.”

            “What is it? What do you hear?” Leece asked.

            “Rustling out yonder beyond the cabin’s clearing...Hear it?” Liam asked.

            “No. But, I trust your hearing. Do you want me to go out there and check to see who it might be?” Leece asked.

            “Stay put. If it’s Eudavia, she’ll be wanting to do the bidding of those village men. She’s out there. I know it. Good thing I locked Hero in the tool shed for the night. I know that crazy woman would destroy that beautiful animal if she could,” Liam said.

            “You mean she’d kill your horse?” Leece asked.

            “As soon as the crazy thought gets into her head, she would.”

            “Will he be safe in that tool shed?” Leece asked.

            “Safe for sure. There’s a leg trap set inside that door. If Eudavia isn’t blind to it, she’d either end up caught or figure a way to snap the spring. Either way, the sound would scare Hero and he’d start to bolt and kick at her,” Liam said.

            “For a man with absolutely no sight, you, Liam Ronish, are as smart as they come,” Leece said, with a laugh.

            “Have to be young man. Let this be a lesson to you. When you have to best a crazy woman, you have to think like she thinks and act as she acts to protect yourself,” Liam said.

            “Why don’t the elders come looking for you instead of Eudavia?” Leece asked.

            “Can’t. Remember? We’re on the wrong side of the river. Too close to what they consider “unhallowed ground.” In their minds, they’d be suspicious of a curse on them by old Zebulon Hodge. They’d rather send round his mad daughter to do their evil bidding,” Liam said.

            Liam rose from his rocking chair quickly, sniffed the air and then yelled to Leece.

            “Hurry up, grab a water bucket near the dry sink and one of those horse blankets. I think that mad woman may have set the shed afire. I smell smoke,” Liam said.

            When the two men ran out of the cabin, Liam guessed correctly. Eudavia set the door afire. The two men hurried up to fill the water buckets from the rain trough near the shed and were able contain the fire to the small area near the door.

From the distance, they heard Eudavia cackling like a witch. When she saw them douse the flames, she became enraged and ran screaming from the woods into the clearing toward the two men.

            “No! No!” she screamed over and over, lunging first at Leece and then at Liam.

            As she began to claw at Leece’s face, Liam grabbed a full bucket of water and douse the screaming woman with it and than swung it at the side of her head. She fell down in a crumpled heap.

            “Good work, Liam. You may not be able to see…but your aim is deadly,” Leece said.

            “She’s out cold. She’s covered in river mud. I can smell it,” Liam said.

            “Yes, she is. Even in the dark, I can see she’s been out near that river again. What do we do with her now?” Leece asked.

            “You grab her under the shoulders and I’ll take hold of her legs. We’ll toss her back into the woods from whence she came,” Liam said.

            “She’ll only come back again if we do that,” Leece said.

            “Well, you want to get rid of her permanently?” Liam asked.

            “Alright. Have it your way. You’re right. I can’t knock her off and dump the body. It’s took dark to get her back to the river anyway,” Leece said.

            “If we don’t move this mad woman pretty quick, we’ll both have to deal with her again tonight,” Liam said.

            Leece lifted the woman under the shoulders, while Liam maneuvered to grab her legs.

            “You lead. I can’t see in the dark,” Liam said, laughing.

            Leech smirked at Liam’s little joke.

            “Nothing like a blind jokester when you are hauling a dead weight, mad woman’s body into the woods,” Leece said, impertinently.

            “Aw, stop complainin’. She could have rearranged your entire face with those claws of hers. She moaning already. Startin’ to come around. Hurry...run if you have to. I’ll keep up,” Liam said.

            The two men carried the body toward the edge of the clearing and deposited Eudavia’s body inside a woody area of thatch. Then, they hurried on back to see if Liam’s horse, Hero, was injured.

Liam warned Leece to watch out for the trap at the foot of the door inside the shed. Leece used a small twig to snap the spring. The sound reminded him all too clearly of the reason for the pain in his leg, which was now barely there. Liam’s horse was shaken, but not injured in the least.

            “Sorry, old boy. Mad woman at your doorstep tonight. You get some sleep and we’ll keep our eyes out she doesn’t come back,” Liam said.

            “You mean she might try this again tonight?” Leece asked.

            “Not likely. She wasn’t able to spring that trap I set. At least, now we know she isn’t so mad that she’s smarter than a leg trap,” Liam said.

            When they returned to the cabin, both men were exhausted. They prepared for bed, although neither one was able to rest easy. Several times Liam jumped out of bed thinking he heard something out in the clearing. Leece also rose several times and checked the area of the cabin outside.

“Try and get some sleep. This is going to be a long night; but, the mornin’ will be useless without some sleep,” a sleepy Liam said.

            “Sure, all we have to worry about is some mad woman burning us alive while we sleep,” Leece said.

            “She’s in no condition at the moment to do more than return to her shack out there,” Liam said.

            “Thanks to your dead aim at her head,” Leece said.

            “Get some sleep. You’ll regret you didn’t in the morning,” were the last words Leece heard before he dropped off into a deep sleep.

            When they awoke, Leece saw the fire burned down very low. Liam was still asleep. He shuffled the remaining logs and embers and added four logs. He peered out the window at a sight he hadn’t expected at all...snow. The entire area was covered in a blanket of thick white snow.

            He groaned. The sound of his groaning must have roused Liam out of his sleep.

            “Something wrong?” Liam asked.

            “Snow. There’s a whole lot of it out there. That’s what’s wrong,” Leece said.

            “Well, for this time of the year, that’s about right. We have enough supplies to last us all winter. Nothing to worry about. Least of all, a little snow,” Liam said.

            Leece looked out at what Liam referred to as a “little” snow. It was easily two feet deep. The snow must have started just past midnight to be this deep already. He had no snow shoes or boots and no winter clothing. He was beginning to feel as if he had been dropped off in the Arctic Circle without a shred of clothing.

            “If it’s clothes you’ll be needing, I’m sure I have some old winter things that’ll do just fine. I didn’t always have this pot belly, you know. Look in that cedar chest. I believe I have an old buckskin jacket in there. It has a nice thick lamb’s wool lining. You’ll need to wear my fishing boots. That’ll keep your feet dry at least,” Liam said.

            Leece opened the cedar chest as he did the night before when he retrieved Liam’s hunting rifle. He wasn’t a very good shot himself, but he could shoot if he had to. He knelt down when the pain in his ankle began to throb. On his knees, he saw Liam Ronish threw nothing away.           There were old socks that needed darning, several flannel shirts and undershirts and those long old men’s one-piece underwear suits. The inside of the cedar chest looked like a second-hand store.

            “You best consider givin’ up your vanity for a pair of those “long johns,” lest you freeze when the temperature drops tonight,” Liam said.

            “You really think the temperature is going to drop that much?” Leece asked.

            “In the deep of these woods? You want to bet your soul on it,” Liam said.

            Strange that Liam would use a word like “soul” when he said he had already said he only attended religious services to please his wife, Leece thought.

            Leece Fordyce was beginning to feel as if his wrong turn was more than just a misjudgment. He began to see an entire winter stuck inside Liam’s cabin, as if he no longer existed. The Harrisburg Herald’s editor surely by now thinks I am dead and has already replaced me.

            “Liam, do the state police or the forestry wardens ever come out this way?” Leece asked.

            “Haven’t seen ‘em here for a long while. Why do you ask?”

            “I was just wondering...in case my editor at the Herald should send out the state police to look for me,” Leece said.

            “I should say the state police wouldn’t see your vehicle and now not even the tracks at the river back would be seen in this white stuff. I don’t like to throw ice water on your campfire. But, your best chance to get out of these woods is my horse. Try to be patient. Your ankle isn’t fully healed, though the trap wound might seem so. I wouldn’t want us to get sidelined by those village men. We’d have to take the bridge to the state road. In this weather, Hero wouldn’t make it. Danged bridge is slippery as a sheet of new blown glass about now,” Liam said.

            Liam watched the younger man’s expression of despair.

            “Now, now…I’m not all that hard a man to live with. Annie would tell you that if she was here,” Liam said.

            “It’s not that I don’t want to stay here with you while my leg heals. It’s that I could lose my job. Newspaper jobs are hard to come by these days,” Leece said.

            “Go look in the cedar chest. At the very bottom, Annie left some writing paper. If you have to stay, write. It’ll keep your mind off your troubles. For now, we have to see to feeding my horse and bringing in the fire wood or it won’t be dry enough to burn. These early snows never last more’n a day or two, guaranteed. We’ll be able to defend this place from mad Eudavia Hodge better then,” Liam said.

            “You think she will return then?” Leece asked.

            “If that blow I gave her hasn’t knocked sense back into her, yes. She will return. You saw her. Does she look like she can be reasoned with? I say she is all those village men have left of a supply of marrow for Old Malachy now you’re here on the wrong side of the bridge,” Liam said.

            “Liam? Can I ask you something? You told me you only attended religious meetings to please your wife. Before, you said, “You bet your “soul” on it. Strange word to use, “soul” from a man who isn’t religious,” Leece said.

            “It’s just a sayin’ and I probably say it ten times a week. You know…like when I say, “Blast my soul!” or “Drat my soul!” They’re just sayins’ I used when Annie was still living. She didn’t like a dirty mouth. Women mostly don’t,” Liam said.

            “Why you worried about it anyway?” Liam added.

            “I guess I’m waiting for you to turn into one of those village men. This whole experience has been nothing short of absurd and to say the least, bizarre,” Leece said.

            Liam Ronish roared with laughter. This was a sound Leece hadn’t heard since the day he entered this strange place. He had to admit laughter seemed foreign in such an alien existence.

            “What do you do here all by yourself, Liam?
           

            “Those village men and Eudavia are enough to keep an army on their toes most days. Still, I do a little bit of gardening, hunting…which you already know and tending to my animal. Course now, I do like to read. Those books in that bookcase been all I have to keep my mind active. A man gets old and he finds the best travel is reading books,” Liam said.

            “May I?” Leece asked, pointing toward a free-standing, handmade bookcase near the fire place.

            “Sure. Look through ‘em. Most aren’t what I imagine you’d be interested in. Mostly books on fishin’ and huntin’…a few magazines on building. My eyes are getting’ weaker with each day. I need a pair of spectacles. Maybe, when we go back into town, I’ll drop by the doc’s office and get a pair then,” Liam said.

            “When we go back into town? What town would that be? Lanceboro?”

            “Yessir. When this snow’s melted, we’ll see if we can get across that bridge without letting on to those village men. There’s a doctor in Lanceboro. You don’t plan on livin’ here in these woods forever, do you?” Liam asked.

            “I should say I don’t. You think I’ll be able to make some connections in Lanceboro?” Leece asked.

            “Don’t see why not. Lanceboro isn’t so backward as the village, you know. There’s plenty of telephones and even a bus depot. Although, the bus that runs through Lanceboro isn’t much reliable. It comes into the town only about once or twice a week and runs up to the next big city only,” Liam said.

            Leece was already hoping for a quick melt of the snow.

            “I wouldn’t get your hopes up for a quick melt of that snow out there,” Liam said.

            “Why is that?” Leece asked.

            “All those trees shade the natural sunlight and the one place the snow melts first is the bridge,” Liam said.

            “Well, that’s good for us then, isn’t it?” Leece asked.

            “So long as those villagers don’t get desperate to keep Old Malachy well preserved, yes,” Liam said.

            “I don’t get your meaning,” Leece said.

            “You have to factor that those village men will do anything and I do mean anything to make sure they have enough blood or bone marrow to keep Old Malachy preserved. Been enough dead women to prove that and of course, Eudavia is their main source for blood,” Liam said.

            “What are you saying? That they use blood letting on Eudavia Hodge? But, that’s positively ghoulish. It’s the next thing to using her as a vampire source of blood,” Leece said.

“You mightn’t have noticed her color for all that mud she wears all over her. She’s as white as a sheet. I’ve seen her when she wasn’t covered in river mud. You are right. She looks like what you called it...ghoulish,” Liam said.

            “Why didn’t she just run away when she was younger?” Leece asked.

            “You can run from those village men. You just won’t get far. She was living with Samuel Howell since old Zebulon Hodge died. Child that age doesn’t just up and run off,” Liam said.

            “No, I guess not. It was hard enough for me to get away from them. Still, how long have they used her as Old Malachy’s source of blood?”

            “Can’t say really. I’m thinking when she was a young woman just out of her teens,” Liam said.

            “Why didn’t they just find a husband among the village men for her?” Leece asked.

            “The daughter of Zebulon Hodge was considered untouchable because of what her father did. Besides, Samuel Howell acted the great savior of Old Malachy when he offered Eudavia up as their blood supply. That’s when they started to hide her away in that old shack out there in the woods,” Liam said.

            “Has anyone else ever ventured into the village the way I did?” Leece asked.

            “I suspect maybe they have. Who’d know that for sure? What with those men using a dead woman’s hand for a signal that there’s a stranger about and Eudavia scaring bejeesus out of any stranger who veered off course, it would be no surprise a stranger would attempt to cross the bridge and never get to the other side,” Liam said.

            “So they use humans to extract blood and bone marrow? What do they do with the rest of the remains of bodies?” Leece asked.

            “That river likely has more than just a few schools of fish in it, if you know what I mean,” Liam said.

            “Yes. I wish I didn’t know what you mean. That’s a disgusting thought. Hasn’t anyone ever come looking for their missing loved one?” Leece asked.

            “Like I say, that river has more’n just schools of fish down there in that river mud,” Liam said.

            Leece had warm under clothes, writing paper and a bookcase from which to begin reading. He stood up, arched his back and stretched. He felt that familiar pain in his ankle and pulled up his trouser leg to assess the healing.

            “That leg still painin’ you?” Liam asked.

            “Not as much as before,” Leece said.

            “Shouldn’t. As I say, it might’ve been a fracture. You were pretty lucky. Could have had to take that leg off if the trap had bit any deeper into your leg bone,” Liam said.

            Leece knew Liam was right. The thought occurred to him that if he leg didn’t heal as it should, it could have been a much worse situation.

            “Best that it healed as it has. Don’t need to spill any extra blood in these parts. Not with those village men so crazy and all,” Liam said.

            “Liam, how long have those village men been like that? I don’t remember anything in the Quaker or Mennonite religions that was remotely as peculiar as some of the rituals these village men practice,” Leece said.

            “They aren’t practicin’ religion. Least of all Quaker or Mennonite beliefs. Truth be told, these men started this because they hated the rest of the outside world. It’s why they chose such a remote place to settle. Some were already married and had children like Zebulon Hodge and Samuel Howell,” Liam said.

            “When I first saw that old shack where Eudavia is locked away, she said she was a child. She said she and her father were stranded near that bridge and never saw him again,” Leece said.

            “She was very young when Zebulon Hodge came to the village. There may be some truth to them being stranded, though I doubt it very much. But, it was Zebulon who masterminded the rebuilding of the bridge.

Her mind must have been seriously gone. The village men never wanted that Hodge to own any of that bridge. They were terrorized it would bring more and more strangers into their remote little haven. Zebulon was castigated by the village men. It’s more likely they were behind his death. Her mother, the first Eudavia is venerated by that huge tombstone out in that cemetery in the woods. Her mother sided with the village men and even tried to kill her own husband so he wouldn’t continue with the plans to restore the bridge,” Liam said.

            “Was the first Eudavia a mad woman like her daughter?” Leece asked.

            “That, I cannot say. I only know the stories the old men tell in Lanceboro about the village. It’s possible the original Eudavia Hodge was a crazy as her daughter is now,” Liam said.

            “Was Eudavia lying when she said the village men made her husband disappear?” Leece asked.

            “Again, her mind is muddled. Eudavia was never married. It’s one of the reasons the village men consider her untouchable. She consorted with one of the younger village men, as young girls do sometimes. When she was found out, Anson Wyatt, Eudavia’s lover, and eventually, his mother both “disappeared.”  

That’s about when Eudavia the younger began to go mad. That’s also when Samuel Howell gave the order to lock her away in that shack,” Liam said.

            “If the older men in Lanceboro all know about these crazy village men, why haven’t they told the police?” Leece asked.

            “If you told police a bunch of older men were keeping a mummy, using a woman for the blood supply like vampires and capturing strangers before they crossed the bridge into what these strange men consider “unhallowed ground,” would you be inclined to believe them? Or would you assume they are victims of some elder dementia?” Liam asked.

            “I see what you mean. Still, in every town there are stories old folks love to tell. Many are based on the truth,” Leece said.

            “Police in Lanceboro have their hands full what with poachers, thieves, gamblers and drunks. They’re a small force of maybe five. They don’t spend money on such bizarre tales told by old men,” Liam said.

            “If they had, they’d have a story no one is likely to forget for a very long time,” Leece said.

            “Well, didn’t you say you are a writer? Maybe, you’ve found a story to tell that will make you a star reporter,” Liam said.

“You mean you’d want me to tell what I know and jeopardize your seclusion here?” Leece asked.

            “I’ve not got too many years left. I’m thinking maybe another ten if the village men don’t get me first,” Liam said.

            “If they do “get you,” what do you imagine they’ll do to you?” Leece asked.

            “It won’t be pretty and they will make sure any trace of me disappears. That includes you.”

            “Once I return to Harrisburg, what can they do to me there?” Leece asked.

            “I’d be careful, was I you. There have been a few of their sons and daughters who have run off. They know what these village men do. Just because they don’t talk about it to anyone, doesn’t make them feel less guilty for all those who went “missing,” Liam said.

            “I don’t think they’d want to be associated with these backward religious minds,” Leece said.

            “Religion is a funny thing. It breeds strange alliances between men and women,” Liam said.

            “Of that, I am certain. From what I’ve seen of these men, silence is at the core of what keeps anyone from discovering them or their evil deeds,” Leece said.

            “Ah yes. But you see, they don’t believe what they do is evil. They believe what they do is for the good of the whole village and for Old Malachy. It’s that single mind they all have that keeps them going for so long now,” Liam said.

            Distracted by movement outside, Leece glanced out the window of Liam Ronish’s cabin briefly.

            “If we’re going out to that shed of yours, we’d best do it. Look! It’s snowing again,” Leece said.

            Liam rose and peered out the window at the snow falling.

            “Looks like it could be a bad one. Small, compact flakes and a steady fall. That’s a sure sign of a blizzard.

            “How can a blind man tell the size of flakes and the snow fall?” Leece asked.

            “Can’t see them, that’s for sure.  I’ll show you how in case your sight goes one day. Put your ear close to the window. Hear that wind? Now…can you hear the break in the way it’s blowing?”

            Leece leaned his ear closer to the window pane. He still couldn’t hear what Liam was hearing.

            “Hearin’ wasted on the sighted,” Liam said, with a laugh.

            “Keep listenin’…there’s a pattern to that sound. Tune your ears to the sound of the patterns in the wind. Tells you all you need to know ‘bout what’s about to come,” Liam said.

            Leece remained silent straining to hear what Liam had heard without much success. Liam shrugged his shoulders and turned toward Leece.

            “I’ll tend to my horse. You bring in more fire wood, at least a half a cord. We could be stuck inside for a long while,” Liam said.

            Leece groaned. All hope of getting away from this place was growing ever more impossible.

            “No point in complainin’ son. Just do what we have to. Take that shotgun with you. I’ll need some cover…just in case,” Liam said.

            Leece reached into the cedar chest for the shotgun and headed out the cabin door with Liam just a few feet ahead. The snow was blinding but the blind man was not in the least afraid of leading the charge.

            “Are you expecting Eudavia to be out in this?” Leece asked.

            “With a crazy woman, you never know. She could already be inside the shed. And take care as you step outside the door. Those village men keep Eudavia in enough leg traps to provide a half decade of hunting meat,” Liam said.

            Leece opened the cabin door slowly with Liam just behind on his footsteps. He first checked the foot of the door outside the cabin.

            “No leg traps. Looks clear,” Leece said.

            “Snow’s piling up already. I’ll make my way to the shed. You get on to the fire wood. Don’t forget some kindling for starter. Don’t believe there’s much left inside the cabin,” Liam said as he began to walk toward the shed.

            Leece collected the splits of wood and slowly built a small pyramidal stack just outside the cabin door.

            “You okay in there, Liam?” Leece called.

            He could barely see through the snow fall to the shed door. Liam didn’t answer.

            “Liam? You alright in there?” he called again.

            He plunked down the last pile of wood against the cabin door and grabbed for the shotgun.

            He walked slowly toward the shed, watching for small bumps that could be snow-covered leg traps. When he got to the shed door, he saw the figure of Liam Ronish lying in a pool of blood with a gash wound to his head the size of a half dollar.

            “Liam? Are you okay? Can you talk? What happened?” Leece asked.

            He heard a low groan. Liam tried to form words that didn’t come.

            “I’ll carry you back to the cabin,” Leece said.

            He tried lifting the older man; but, his body was dead weight. The blood pouring from his wound was somewhat profuse. Leece knew there wasn’t a doctor around for miles. He’d had to do what he could on his own.

            He held the shotgun in left hand and hoisted Liam up onto his shoulder and half-carried and half-dragged the man back to the cabin.

            Inside the cabin, he lowered the man to his bed. Then, he raced around the cabin looking for that black gummy sulphur paste Liam had used on his own leg wound and some rags. He reached for the water can and heated it to boiling over the open fire and cooled it with snow from outside the cabin door. Then, he applied warmed water to the rag. 

            He placed this compress on Liam’s wound. He applied the sulphur paste. He looked for the bottle of whiskey Liam kept in the bottom of the cedar chest. Now was the time for Liam to use it, Leece thought.

            He tried to get Liam to drink a sip of the whiskey. Most of it poured out the side of his lips onto his coat. Leece removed the bloodied coat.

            He waited nearly an hour before he heard Liam moan again. He was sure the man would die.

            “Liam? Can you hear me? What happened? Was it Eudavia?”

            “Eudavia…my horse…go…my horse,” was all Liam was able to say.

            “You want me to go and check on your horse? I don’t want to leave you here in the cabin alone,”

            He saw the look of urgency in the man’s eyes and hurried back out to the shed with the shotgun on his arm ready to aim at whatever moved in that shed.

            He checked the area where Liam had some of his tools stored and then moved toward the horse’s stall. The horse was cowered toward the back of the stall.

            “Come on Hero…C’mon boy. What happened?” he asked.

            He patted the horse for a few minutes until the animal seemed calm enough to inspect for any injuries. Eudavia tried to burn the shed down once with the animal in it. Leece wasn’t certain she wouldn’t maim the horse in some way. He patted the horse’s flanks on the right side and then did the same on the left side.  He saw several bales of hay inside the shed and realized Liam must have been tried to feed the animal and clear away old hay. The hay rake was lying on the floor of the stall.

            Leece fed the horse and cleared the hay and added two fresh bales to the floor of the stall. He stopped for a second and remained stock still. He thought he heard something…a sort of rustling sound.

            He resumed his work and then stopped again. There was something in the shed…or, someone.

            “Who is here?” he called aloud.

There was no answer. Then, he heard the slight rustling sound again.

            “I say…Who is here?” Leece repeated.

            He checked the inside of the shed again. He pulled off the canvas covering Liam kept on his large garden tools. As he neared to the wall of the shed, he heard the rustling sound again.

            He realized the sound wasn’t coming from inside the shed but from the outside rear wall. He quickly poured water into the horse’s trough, grabbed the shotgun and barred the shed door tightly. He crept slowly around the side of the shed and peered around the corner at the rear wall.

            Lying against the shed was Eudavia. Like Liam, she had a gash on her forehead and appeared dazed and covered nearly completely in snow. Leece didn’t know what to do. He had to get back to Liam.

Something in his conscience told him he couldn’t just leave a woman out in a blizzard to die. But, he also knew he couldn’t move her into Liam’s cabin or the shed. Besides, the piling of the snow seriously impeded his mobility.

            He ran to the wood bin and emptied out what remained of the splits. The wood bin was small and it might be cramped. It was little more than the size of a large doghouse. Still, Eudavia could be locked into it and at least she wouldn’t freeze to death.

            When Leece returned, Eudavia was gone. He glanced around quickly to make sure she wasn’t lying in wait of him. He hurried back to the wood bin and replaced the splits and sealed the door.

            He unbarred the door of the shed and hurried around the inside to make sure she hadn’t slipped back inside it or injured Liam’s horse. All seemed to be as it was before he found her.

            He barred the shed door and made his way to the cabin.

            “Liam? Liam? Are you alright? I know what happened out there in the shed. Your horse is not injured. It was Eudavia, wasn’t it? She was lying at the back of the shed covered in snow and I was going to lock her in the wood bin,” Leece said.

            The ailing man moaned softly. He raised his hand slightly to the bloodied bruise on his head.

            “No. Don’t. I’ve dressed it. It doesn’t look deep. It is a good size gash though. Let’s hope your sulfur balm helps as much as it helped my leg,” Leece said.

            He poured Liam another ounce of the rye whiskey and the man drank it down quickly this time. Then, he sighed and seemed to fall into a deep sleep.

            Leece paced back and forth in the cabin with one eye on the shotgun and the other on Liam. In his entire life, he’d never been in such a bizarre predicament. Leece didn’t sleep at all that night. The sound of the fire in the fireplace crackling made him jump out of his makeshift bed. He looked out the cabin window into the dark. The glistening, white ground made it appear to be much lighter outdoors than it really was.

            Probably a good thing, he thought. I can see any strange figures moving around out there more easily. This snow is really something. I wonder if they are having snow in Harrisburg tonight. Being here in such a remote place makes my job in the big city seem like ancient history. I’ll never look at life the same way again, he mused.

            The snow was still falling when Leece woke at the crack of dawn to hear Liam call out to him.

            “Well, you’re making a little more sense this morning,” Leece said.

            “I…what happened? One minute I was clearing the hay on the stall floor and the next …I …Eudavia! I remember now. I think she was crouched near the back of Hero’s stall. I’m sure she was about to injure him. I grabbed the hay fork and threatened her with it. That’s how I know it was her…I heard her wail.

That horrible sound I’ve heard whenever she is in the woods and has one of her spells. She and I struggled. I think she was holding onto the tines at the end of the rake. I kept shaking it and shaking it at her. The next thing I knew Hero was startled and knocked me silly. Must have clobbered me on my noggin. I ended up on the floor of the stall. Can’t say what happened to Eudavia,” Liam said.

            “She was also injured. She had another gash on her head in addition to the one you gave her a week ago. Hero must have knocked her down too. She was barely coherent and lying outside the rear of the shed covered head to toe in a blanket of icy snow,” Leece said.

            “What did you do with her?” Liam asked.

            “I...uh...I didn’t do anything. I was going to lock her in the wood bin until morning. But, when I went to empty the last splits of wood from the bin, I came back to get her and she was gone,” Leece said.

            “Couldn’t have gone too far,” Liam said.

            “I don’t think she went on her own steam,” Leece said.

            “I don’t catch your meaning,” Liam said.

            “There were footsteps in the snow back near forest…two sets and a third set looked like they were dragged,” Leece said.

            “I don’t doubt those village men set her loose. They may have known what she was up to, let her wander to this side of the river by herself. They’d never cross to this side. They just wouldn’t do that without risking their own sanctity and end up violating their sect’s laws,” Liam said.

             Liam appeared worn and exhausted again. He had gotten quite a good jolt.

            “Can’t blame the horse. He must have startled when he saw me’n Eudavia struggling. I’m feeling sleepy again,” Liam said.

            “Well now, you just rest and take it easy. You may have a concussion. It’s best you stay put for a day or two,” Leece said.

            He waited for a response; but, Liam was already asleep. He put a few more pieces of wood on the fire. He didn’t know what time it was. Liam never kept a clock in the place. The older man rose with the sun and went to sleep after sun down. He cleared away some of the ash debris from the fire place and poured himself a cup of coffee from the pot that hung perpetually from the metal hook inside the fireplace. He felt drowsy and yet, knew he didn’t dare fall asleep. If that crazy woman could take the trouble to hide out in the shed in deep snow, she would have no problem trying to light this place ablaze, Leece thought.

            He sat down in Liam’s rocking chair by the fire. He stood up quickly again when something in his back trouser pocket felt uncomfortable. He reached into the pocket and retrieved a black book no bigger than the little notebook he made his notes in and kept in his shirt pocket. He’d forgotten completely about the black book.

            He sat down again in the rocking chair with the black book in his hand. He removed it from Josiah’s cottage and tucked it into his gunny sack. He must have put in it this pair of trousers and forgotten it was there.

There was no title on the cover of the book. The outer edge of each page was coated in gilt. He opened the book to the inside cover. There was an inscription that read,

“Be he the man who dares to defy the honor and sanctity of Our Malachy,

Suffers in his life the horrors of the Brotherhood of Bawrnaclaughda.”

The lines beneath were written in a peculiar old Celtic style Leece didn’t recognize. Or, at least, it seemed to be Celtic. He couldn’t be certain.

He turned to the next blank page and then to the first page. There were a series of descriptions in the same cryptic style. Leece could barely understand more than a few words here and there. It appeared as if the book was a ritual directive or religious missal. He flipped through several more pages. The printed words on these pages appeared to be lines from prayers.

            He strained to remember if Josiah ever referred to the black book. To his knowledge, Josiah hadn’t. So what was this book really for?  He rose from the rocking chair and put the book in the Liam’s bookcase. He made a mental note to ask Liam if he’d ever seen the book.

            He grabbed another of Liam’s travel books. If he intended to be alert, a travel book certainly would do the trick. He looked at the title of the book, “Seven Scenic Rivers of Rural Pennsylvania.”

            This was a book he would likely not be in a hurry to grab off a book shelf. He wondered why Liam was interested in it. Then, he noticed a small slip of paper inside it. He thumbed through to the page with the paper insert.

            The title of the chapter was “Rivers and Streams of Little Renown.” He read about several of the tributaries that flowed westward from the larger rivers back east into the Susquehanna River. He found himself nodding into a hazy sleep with the sound of the fire crackling nearby.

            He shook himself violently to rouse from a semi-conscious sleep state. He started to read again. He read through the first page of the chapter about small pocket lakes in the western part of Pennsylvania and how they were formed hundreds of millions of years ago. He tried to stay focused on what he was reading. Now and then, he heard Liam moan in his sleep. He hoped the man would be alright when morning came.

            He refocused his attention to the next page of the book. On the inside left page, there was a map of an area the author of the book referred to as “Rivers that flow to the Susquehanna.”  One of the rivers caught his eye. It was named the “Lost Rule River.”

            He looked more closely at the map to see where this river was located in proximity to Harrisburg. It appeared to flow downward from the central part of the state. Leece strained to remember how legends on maps calculated distance from one point to another. This map had no legend. So, he devised his own method.

            He located what he believed to be Harrisburg and then backtracked, with his thumb and index finger spaced apart about one inch. the Lost Rule River had to be the same river beneath the cantilever bridge.

            He flipped through the rest of the book to see if there was a chapter on bridges in the state. He spent the better part of an hour and a half scanning each page for some information on the cantilever bridge.

            There was no mention of it. Josiah said the bridge was built by his ancestors. Liam said Zebulon Hodge rebuilt the bridge to get across the span to get to Lanceboro for supplies. But, Liam also said Hodge also intended to sell his half of the bridge’s right of ownership to the railroad eventually.

            Leece was like a man possessed. He thumbed through the book’s contents page to see if there was mention of a cantilevered railroad bridge. It might explain why the bridge was so narrow in width on Hodge’s side and wider at the bottom on the other side.

He visualized tracks and a freight car traversing the span of the bridge. It would have cut a huge swath into the woods on either side of the river bank. The noise from the regular train routes every day would have exposed the village men for sure.

            Leece rose from Liam’s rocking chair and looked for that sheaf of blank paper Liam mentioned. Maybe, Liam was right. There might be a story in this mess he’d gotten himself into with these villagers after all.

            He reached for the papers and started to write. As always happens with journalists, they outline their writing projects before they write content. Leece worked on the outline without realizing it was nearly daylight.

            He heard Liam moving about in his bed. He hurried to the older man’s side.

            “You stayed up all night?” Liam asked.

            “I guess time got away from me. I started to read a book and then decided to write. I lost track of time,” Leece said, meekly.

            “I want to try and get out of this bed today,” Liam said.

            “I’m not sure that’s a good idea. That snow out there is likely four feet deep by now. I’ll make us some breakfast and get the coffee going for now,” Leece said.

            Liam was beginning to grow fond of the stranger. He wondered what would happen when the stranger made his way back to his city job in Harrisburg, after being lost in this remote area of the state.

            “Ya know? In just the past two and a half weeks, you’ve practically become a resident of this part of the state,” Liam said, forcing a half smile through his pain.

            Leece groaned.

            “Seems I’m the one in pain and you’re doin’ the groanin’” Liam said.

            “It’s not that I don’t appreciate your kindly hospitality or anything. I just don’t want to make a wrong turn in the road a new way of life,” Leece said.

            “You go on and publish that book you’re plannin’ and see if those village men don’t do to you what they did to me,” Liam said.

            “I’m sure once I leave here, I’ll never come back,” Leece answered.

            “Not even for the funeral of the man who opened his door to you when you needed help?” Liam asked.

            The expression on Leece’s oval-shaped face and the silence he kept afterward told Liam that this stranger was as fond of him as he was of Leece.

            “Tell me something, Liam. Why did you stay here when you knew those village men didn’t want you…even after what they did to you?” Leece asked.

            “Who’d have believed an old man’s wild stories about a group of villagers with souls so evil they’d rip out a man’s eyes? They’d have said I was torn up by a bear,” Liam said.

            “But, they’d have done a thorough investigation. They’d have seen Old Malachy’s skeleton and found Eudavia locked in that shed,” Leece said.

            “You have to remember one thing. There’s more to this group’n you see before your eyes. It’s an old, old religious order of men that go back to before the Native Indians settled this land. I don’t know how much truth there is to it. But, their ritual sacrifices and blood letting and all that chanting in that foreign tongue was part of the tongue of mariners who sailed off course and ended up in the lower North Atlantic. They likely beached up near barren lands near Newfoundland or Labrador and made their way into this part of the world,” Liam said.

            “Chanting? You mentioned their chanting,” Leece said.

            “Yes. Chanting. When they captured me and took me to their meetin’ place, before they….before they took my sight…they gathered round that altar they keep that body on. They were dressed in long purple robes and chanted louder and louder to drown out my screams for help as they…” Liam’s voice trailed off.

            It was clear to Leece that the man’s suffering at the hands of those village monsters was still all too fresh in memory.

            “Do you remember the words they were chanting?” Leece asked.

            “I’ll remember them the rest of my life. It went like this…“Arno vaella, necro vaella, nolathe, nolathe sinya lathe. Must’ve repeated it at least twenty times each time it grew louder and louder until I wanted to die from the excruciating pain,” Liam said.

            “Was Eudavia present during this ritual?” Leece asked.

            “No. Not at first, I don’t think. I must’ve passed out at some point. When I awoke Eudavia had blood around her mouth and chin. Her dress was covered in blood. I was so sickened by the sight of it. I must’ve passed out a second time. That’s when one of them must’ve brought me back here to my cabin to die. They even took the trouble to leave the cabin door open. Hopin’ maybe the animals would smell fresh blood and finish me off and make it look like it was them that done me in,” Liam said.

            “Could be they left the door to your cabin open so Eudavia would have access to fresh blood for that mummy in their meeting room,” Leece said.

            “Could be. I don’t like to think about. I must’ve laid in my bed for more’n a week before I came to and realized I had no eyes and this scar on my face you see now,” Liam said.

“No one knew you were here. It’s a reason to not live all by yourself so far off the beaten path,” Leece said.

            Liam nodded his head in agreement and then realized that wound in his head was still not healed. He felt the dizziness returning.

            “Uh...maybe you’re right. I don’t think it’s a good idea to be up and about just yet,” Liam said.

            “But you do have to eat. You need all the strength you can muster to fight off the effects of that wound,” Leece said.

            “Damn horse. Couldn’t tell the difference between the hand that feeds and the hand that was out to get rid of ‘im,” Liam said.

            “I don’t think you can blame Hero. All horses get skittish when there’s a commotion. You know that. Here, have some of these little eggs I found in your cooler,” Leece said.

            “Those are bird’s eggs…hawk eggs to be exact. I get ‘em when they leave their nest for a few hours a day looking for food,” Liam said.

            “Hawk’s eggs? You’d best not go tampering in a hawk’s nest,” Leece said.

            “What’re they gonna do to me? Rip out my eyes I don’t have?” Liam said.

            “If that was a joke, it wasn’t funny,” Leece said.

            “You’re not having any?” Liam asked.

            “You need the protein. I’ll settle for that grain cereal instead,” Leece answered.

            “In that cupboard over by the dry sink, you’ll find some of that canned milk. Cut it with some water and pour it over your cereal if you want,” Liam said.

            Leece admitted he’d never eaten his high fiber cereal dry or with canned milk. He did as Liam suggested and found that it wasn’t half bad.

            “You know, I think I should make some kind of a snow path out the cabin door to check on your horse and feed him. I know you put in some extra food and all. But, it can’t hurt to check on him. He is our only transportation it appears,” Leece said.

            “I wouldn’t advise that just yet. Wait till later this afternoon. The sun may come out and melt some of the snow and make it easier to shovel to the shed,” Liam suggested.

            Leece felt as if he had cabin fever. Snow drifts had piled up against the cabin windows leaving only half panes for visibility.

            “If you’re worried about Eudavia coming back this way, don’t,” Liam said.

            “Why’s that?” Leece asked.

            “Snow’s way too deep even for her shenanigans. She’d never make it from that shack to this cabin without getting’ frost bite within a matter of five minutes. Temperature’s a lot colder than it may seem,” Liam said.

            “If you’re lookin’ for something to do, why don’t you go back to that busy bee writin’ you were at when I first woke up this mornin’?” Liam asked.

            Leece Fordyce knew he could become quite cranky when he was bored or suffering from cabin fever. He saw the sense in Liam’s suggestion.

            “Is there anything you need before I start working on my writing?” Leece asked.

            “Another cup of that fine coffee would do me,” Liam said.

            Leece poured the man another cup of coffee and placed it on the small wood night table near Liam’s bed.

            “You made all this furniture in this cabin, didn’t you?” Leece asked.

            “Yes. Little by little though. As I saw a need, I’d go out and chop down some trees and limb them and remove all the bark. Then, I’d let it sit out in the hot summer sun for a few weeks and by fall, I had wood seasoned enough to use for cabin furniture. Not bad for a man who never was a carpenter, right?” Liam asked.

            “Actually, it’s quite good. There are people in the big city where I work that would kill for such handmade furnishings like these,” Leece said.

            “I expect that’s true. But, not everyone wants handmades. Most want store bought,” Liam said.

            “Well, get some rest, now.” Leece responded.

            When he looked back at Liam, the man was already soundly asleep.

            The poor guy, Leece thought, he’s been through hell and back. What makes a man like this stay here in these woods when danger is so near?

            He put a few more logs on the fire before he sat down to write again. The wood in the fire burned down to a low flame. So, he added a little kindling wood with the logs. Within minutes, the fire burned steadily with a large flame. He stared into the flame from the rocking chair. One fireplace kept the entire cabin as warm as toast. Idle thoughts ran through his mind like these while he hoped his writing momentum would return.

He hadn’t realized he was also pretty tired, owing to his lack of sleep the night before. He fell asleep with the sheaf of papers in his lap. He awoke to the sound of a shutter on the outside of the cabin window banging in the wind. Apparently, he had slept through noon and the snow stopped. But now, the wind was beginning to sound like a raging animal.

He was about to go check on the shutter when he heard Liam’s warning.

“No. Leece. It’s not the wind howling out there. It’s that howling harridan out in her shed. In the distance, it’s hard to tell, I know. Don’t go out there just yet. That shutter won’t come off in the wind. It’s hinged with heavy cast iron,” Liam said.

“Is the wind always this bad in winter?” Leece asked.

“Only after a snow storm. You might hear a few trees coming down, if that snow is as heavy as I think it is,” Liam said.

“You mean those tall trees in the woods will start falling from the burden of heavy snow?” Leece asked.

“Yes. Not to worry though. Makes some really good firewood for next season,” Liam said.

Leece didn’t want to think of “next” season. He hoped he’d be gone in the “next” few days. Now, with this wintry weather, he realized he may not be going anywhere for a long while. What on earth could a journalist do caught in the middle of a remote area with no cell phone, no car and snow as deep as his waist?

In winter in Harrisburg, the town was bustling with activities even when the snow fell. There was always an article to write, an item to follow up on or some other event about to break wide open. In the rare moments when there was a lull, he interviewed celebrities in the political, entertainment and religious world to present a fresh, current perspective on life on planet earth.

He found himself missing his associates on the Herald. He wondered if they thought he was dead. Who could possibly consider the idea that a journalist could take a single wrong turn in a road and end up being all but forgotten?

It was certain no one sent out a search party for him. If they had, they were looking in all the wrong places. He did take a less used roadway back to Harrisburg he realized now was a pretty foolish idea. Though the state had a very good highway system, there were threads of roads that didn’t always connect where they were expected to.

He thought about Wynn Laskey and wondered if he gave up on Leece after a week had passed. He felt a peculiar furor rise inside his mind. He had lots of reason to be angry. But, he knew it wasn’t possible to be angry at Laskey.

He could be most angry at Josiah Vester, who set him up to be a victim of some bizarre religious cult, located in the remotest part of Pennsylvania’s woods.

Leece Fordyce suddenly felt pangs of homesickness for the life he had before this nightmare ever occurred. Here he was a thirty-three year old man at the most promising point in his career stuck in a hell hole of a place. When he arrived at the cantilever bridge, it was the shank of autumn. Now, winter fell on this place like a dark hawk with enormous wings. Not even the comfort of Liam Ronish’s warm cabin could shake the overpowering desire to just run and run until he was over the bridge to the outlying road.

Liam was aware of the stranger’s growing restlessness and realized he’d have to help the younger man get through a long, cold, snowy winter here.

“How’d you feel about doing a little bit of tool sharpening today?” Liam asked, after two days of being snowed in.

“Might as well. There’s just not enough to write and a journalist has to feel fresh enough to write,” Leece said.

Liam Ronish was feeling somewhat stronger and the dizziness was beginning to lift. When he tried to get out of his bed, Leece was having none of it. Now, his old legs felt as if another day in bed might make him a serious handicap in more ways than just being blind.

“I believe it’s time for me to get out of this bed. Soon as wash up, I’ll show you where the grinding wheel is. I don’t keep it out in sight. You might’ve noticed that I remove almost anything in sight that crazy woman could get her hands on to attack me with in my darkness,” Liam said.

Leece had noticed that most anything that could be used as a weapon was out of sight. He thought the reason was more to do with Liam’s being blind than worries Eudavia might sneak up on him. He had already given her quite a whack to her head. Leece found it amazing that a blind mind knew just where to strike an attacker.

“Yes. I did notice that. Could you tell me how you managed to know where to slam Eudavia in the head without seeing your target?” Leece asked.

“When you can’t see, you hear twice as good as ever before. I heard her wheezing when she was breathing. You just have to listen really careful,” Liam said.

Liam rose from his bed without protest from Leece. He bent over a bowl in the dry sink. Felt for the ever-present water pitcher and dumped the water into the blue metal spatter bowl. He proceeded to “wash up” as he had said.

He then ran his two hands through what remained of his hair. Leece noticed the deep scar in the center of his skull through the thin strands of grey and white hair.

“What is that scar from?” Leece asked.

“I told you already. Those village men intended to scalp me. That’s when I managed to wrestle free enough to run for my life,” Liam said.

“Let’s get to the sharpening wheel. See that coverlet over there near the fireplace? It’s not there for show. Remove the coverlet. The sharpening wheel is underneath it. Looks kind of like one of those ladies spindle wheels, don’t ya think?” Liam asked.

“Yes. As a matter of fact, that’s what I thought it was. You know…maybe something that once belonged to you wife,” Leece said.

“My wife did know spinning. Annie was the typical country girl. Long legs, sturdy back and a face prettier than a blue bird in flight. But, she was also a woman who liked being a wife. When we first married, she sewed most of my clothes with an old treadle sewing machine I bought for her. What she couldn’t sew, she knitted and when she was relaxing by a fire, she’d pick up that crocheting and make all kinds of pretty lace things,” Liam said.

Leece could tell that of all the things Liam missed most, Annie Ronish was likely always first.

He heard Liam clear his throat as if he had choked up at the thoughts of Annie.

“Now, roll that sandstone sharpening wheel over here to the table. Are there tools on the hanging rack near the door?” Liam asked.

Leece looked toward the door. The hanging rack Liam mentioned had his and Liam’s coats and further on, a short-handled axe, a hand saw and an axe with a longer handle. Leece walked over to retrieve them.

“See that wooden pedal on the bottom? Just push it up and down a few times until it gets a good speed at the wheel end. Then, run the axe heads against it till they are bright and shiny,” Liam said.

Leece did as Liam said. He had no idea that it would take the better part of a half hour to get a single axe head honed and polished to a blade so sharp it could cut through paper.

He worked on the next axe head since these seemed less of a challenge than he imagined that hand saw would be.

“You afraid of that hand saw, are you?” Liam asked, with a grin.

“No sir. I am not. I just thought it’d be easier to sharpen these simple axe blades first,” Leece said, sheepishly.

Now, Leece wondered how Liam knew which of the tools he was sharpening.

As if reading Leece’s mind, Liam said, “It’s all in how close you listen.”

“Liam, I have to ask…How do you know what I’m thinking? This isn’t the first time you’ve been right on target knowing what I was thinking,” Leece said.

“Some folks just know things. Others don’t. I never noticed I know what you re thinkin’. Maybe, I just pick up things by the way you move. I’m sure I wasn’t this sensitive before I lost my sight,” Liam said.

“Now, mind you. I’m not saying I’m glad for being blind. I know the dangers too well all around me,” Liam said.

By late afternoon, Leece finished his tool sharpening for the day. He mostly had taken over the cooking duties since Liam took ill. He rose to prepare their dinner. He opened the door to the cupboard to assess the possibilities for that evening’s menu. It amazed him how it was possible to make substantially satisfying meals from canned, dried, smoked or salted foods.

He found two large cans of tomatoes. He’d had a hankering for Italian food for a week. Problem was that Liam didn’t have any pasta in his cupboard. Liam spied the potatoes.

“What you plannin’ on making this dinner meal?” Liam asked.

“Spaghetti. If I don’t get some pasta down me and soon, I’m libel to be as mad as Eudavia,” Leece said, laughing.

“I see. I don’t buy that Italian stuff. If you really do want that, use up the smoked rabbit. It has a little fat remaining. It’ll add flavor to your tomato sauce. What you plannin’ to use for spaghetti?” Liam asked.

“I’m going to make it from potato dough,” Leece said.

Liam started to laugh until he realized the stranger was serious about making potato dough into spaghetti.

Leece remembered how his mother made potato dough for her small meat pies. It was just some flour, water and little oil and an egg. He’d have to use a hawk’s egg. He pulled out a small bowl from the dish cupboard and began to mix the ingredients.

“So far, so good,” Leece said.

“What does that mean?” Liam asked.

“It means so far the hawk’s eggs, ground up potatoes and flour are holding together as they should. We ought to have a spaghetti dinner in less than a half hour,” Leece said.

Leece dumped the cans of tomatoes into a pot while he boiled water in the fireplace in which to cook the spaghetti he was about to prepare. To the tomatoes, he added salt and pepper and some dried chicory and a dab of oil. He put the small bits of smoked rabbit into the tomato sauce and replaced the pot of boiling water with the pot of tomato sauce.

He formed the potato dough into long strands and rolled them until they were narrow like store-bought spaghetti. Then, he cut the thin strands and dumped them into the pot of boiled water and put the pot back inside the fireplace. Now and then, he gave the spaghetti and tomato sauce a stir.

“Nothing ever smelled this good in this cabin before,” Liam said, laughingly.

“You don’t like Italian food?” Leece asked.

“I guess I do. Just never bothered to fuss over the work to make it,” Liam said.

When the meal was ready to serve, Leece drained the spaghetti and added the tomato sauce and stirred until it was coated.

“I don’t suppose you have any kind of cheese in here, do you?” Leece asked, hungering for Parmesan.

“Look in the ice box outside. There might be some goat cheese. I bought a few weeks ago from the Lanceboro supply store,” Liam said.

Leece opened the door to the cabin and felt his way to the icebox near the door. He had to remove snow from the top to get the icebox door opened. Once inside it, he found a round of goat cheese and a bunch of dried chokecherry berries.

He set out the dishes and utensils and spooned the spaghetti onto two plates. Then, he used the hand grater to shred a little of the goat cheese onto the spaghetti.

“I found the goat cheese. See if you like my spaghetti,” Leece said.

He had to admit it wasn’t the spaghetti he would have ordered from Tony’s Italian takeout. But, it was better than stew or soup every night.

Beggars can’t be choosy, he reminded himself.

Liam ate and asked if there was more. Leece felt reassured of his newfound cooking skills.

“This is so good. Too good. You opened that door to get the cheese. If the smell of this doesn’t make Eudavia raving mad, it’s sure that the village men are going to rule your cooking as some new evil they must avoid,” Liam said.

“I ate at Josiah Vester’s house the first night I was captured. The food they eat isn’t all that bad. But, it not worth giving up your freedom for either,” Leece said.

“I should say it isn’t. Leece, I don’t want to get used to you being here. That can be a very bad thing for me…” Liam started.

“In what way?” Leece interjected.

“An older man has to be able to take care of himself if he expects to survive in this neck of the woods,” Liam said.

Leece remained silent while Liam explained.

“The thing is, I’ve come to rely on you to be my eyes. Sure, I can hear a bit better’n you. But, a man with sight is always quicker than a man without when danger lurks,” Liam said.

“I won’t be here much longer. As soon as the weather makes the roads passable, I want to leave. I wish you’d come with me. There are a lot of places in Harrisburg that would make life so much easier for you to bear,” Leece said.

“I do appreciate your kindliness and all. I’m a believer in life. Death is a part of life we can’t always live in fear of,” Liam said.

Leece shuddered at the thought of what those village men would do to Liam Ronish once he returned to Harrisburg.

“You ever watch hens in a henhouse? You ever see what they do to a hen gone lame or ill? That’s what those village men will do to me. I’ll accept it as my way of keepin’ my life’s promise to die when it’s my time,” Liam said.

Leece didn’t like to talk about death. The loss of his parents had already left a scar he hadn’t quite gotten over.

“Everything is this life is a lesson…like you learn in schoolbooks,” Liam said.

“What possible lesson can be learned from being tortured by a bunch of religious mad men and a woman they keep locked up like an animal?” Leece asked.

“Why….that’s life’s greatest lesson…survival. The longer I survive, the harder is it for those village men to avoid admittin’ they are the evil souls they really are,” Liam said.

Leece wasn’t sure he understood.

“I may not have been near as God-fearin’ as my Annie. But, this I know. That which you can’t kill, grows ever stronger. You can’t kill a granite mountain without some part of it crumbling down on top of you,” Liam said.

“So you think that so long as you are a constant reminder of how strong your survival instincts are, they weaker they will believe they are?” Leece said.

Liam remained silent for quite a few minutes.

“Something like that,” Liam responded.

“You ever serve in the military?” Liam asked.

“No.”

“I have. I can tell you war isn’t pretty no matter how many pretty ornaments they try to dress it up with,” Liam said.

“You served in World War II?” Leece asked.

“No. Korean War. You want to see brutality? There were American soldiers in that war tortured like they weren’t human beings. Never saw such inhuman cruelty in my life. Don’t know many soldiers who sleep nights…even forty years after being in Korea. None of us talk about what we saw and heard there.

That’s why I’m not afraid of these village men or Eudavia. You survive a prisoner of war camp in Korea and you know it can never be as bad anywhere else,” Liam said.

“But Liam, you are an older man now. This kind of life is hard. I’ve not been here more than three weeks and even I know I couldn’t last as long as you have. And, certainly not with those crazy village men intend on getting rid of you,” Leece said.

“They got rid of lots of men, women and even children when they saw fit to. Doesn’t mean they own the right to exist on state property more’n I do,” Liam said.

“It means they’ll keep trapping humans like they do animals they claim Old Malachy hunted to keep them alive. But, these village men are long removed in their minds from the days of Old Malachy and Zebulon Hodge,” Leece said.

“No so far removed as you might think. Why do you suppose it’s so important for them to keep that old mummy? Or Eudavia? I tell you this…Not all of their sons and daughters are dead. Oh no. They are just as likely to become as mad as their fathers are. It’s in their blood, don’t ya see?” Liam said.

“What do you mean Liam Ronish?” Leece asked.

“When Old Malachy died, every part of him was considered sacred by those he left behind. They believed his blood was the only hope they had of salvation. Every drop of his blood was drained from his body after he died,” Liam said.

“What did they do with it?” Leece asked.

“It was their sacred ritual to share Old Malachy’s blood among themselves and feed it to their children in the hope their children would be like Old Malachy,” Liam said.

“You mean that because Old Malachy saved them from starvation and hunted down forest animals for food, that’s their reason for torturing and blinding you, killing their own wives and some of their children and keeping that old mummy on an altar?” Leece asked.

“May sound purely simple to a stranger. It was Old Malachy who discovered Zebulon Hodge’s plan to expose the group to the outside world. Old Malachy put the price on Zebulon’s life. It was Hodge’s wife who betrayed her own husband and turned her own daughter over to Samuel Howell as a child. No one was ever sure Zebulon’s wife wasn’t sacrificed and buried in that huge tomb you saw in that cemetery. It’s been more’n half a century these present day elders escaped punishment for their evil murderin’ deeds,”

Leece felt a shiver down his spine.

“It isn’t just a matter of sons and daughters of these men wandering around out there or being nourished by the human blood of Old Malachy from birth. It’s a matter of blood that’s thicker than water that will make them do what they were raised to do...keep the secret of their murderin’ parents and grandparents,” Liam said.

“You said something earlier about being able to survive. What about the village men? How can they survive without women to reproduce more of their kind?”

“There’s more bodies of women in that muddy river than you think. You aren’t the first one to drive off course into this part of the woods, you know. You are the first though to live this long after being captured by them. This has to be a new situation…even for them. You are the first to outwit them and escape,” Liam said.

“When you built this cabin, did you know those village men where settled across the river bank?” Leece asked.

“Not at first. You have to factor…they don’t ever come across the bridge, nor the river bank on the opposite side they believe is tainted by Hodge evil. If my memory is right, the first time I saw them was when they were sending out that warning signal at the foot of the bridge…that metal medallion…you saw it, remember? Silly isn’t it? They believe it is okay to use that to warn each other of strangers.

Yet, it was Zebulon Hodge who fixed that medallion to the bridge post,” Liam said.

“Why do they think it’s okay to use it then?” Leece asked.

“Superstition---like all religious crazies. They believe every time they turn it upside down to warn of strangers, they reverse any evil old Hodge might turn on them,” Liam said.

“Did Eudavia ever try to escape?” Leece asked.

“After her mother “died,” as she was told, she was already on her way to being a young woman. All young women take a liking to a man in their midst. It’s the way of life. Eudavia did too. It was the son of Josiah Vester, Jeremiah,” Liam said.

“Josiah has a son?” Leece responded.

“Had a son. Jeremiah Vester was a strong, sturdy young man who served the village well. His strong back worked hardest bringing in crops than the aging men around him. They appreciated that...until he and Eudavia were found together out in the fields one night.

Like always, there was a meeting of village men. That’s when Jeremiah Vester “disappeared” and Eudavia was locked in the shack they built to keep her from temptin’ any other men.

Mind you, Jeremiah was only one of three younger men left. Two of the sons of Silas Pherson escaped in the middle of the night a few days after Jeremiah Vester disappeared,” Liam said.

“How do you know Jeremiah Vester didn’t just run away?” Leece asked.

“Those woods are full of traps. Jeremiah wouldn’t have escaped. Pherson’s wife was blamed for her lack of discipline of her sons and she was also sacrificed. Rumor told she was dredged in the river until she was dead. Must have provided plenty of marrow and blood for Old Malachy is what I’m thinkin’ happened,” Liam said.

“You mean to tell me that these religious men have been farming human marrow and blood because of the mummy they think they’re keeping alive?” Leece asked.

“That is what I’m telling you. That’s a pretty amusin’ way to put it. The village men are farmers and they farm blood and marrow for a dead thing,” Liam said, laughing.

“I don’t see the humor in that,” Leece said.

Before either man realize it, dark of night had come. They’d been talking for nearly two hours. Leece cleared the dishes and poured each of them a second cup of coffee.

“Do you ever keep tea in this cabin?” Leece asked.

“Just chicory tea and sometimes eucalyptus leaves when I can find them,” Liam said.

“I love coffee. But now and again, I like a hot cup of tea,” Leece said.

“Don’t have much hankerin’ for tea myself. Use the chicory leaves for a light tea if you want,” Liam said.

It wasn’t really tea Leece wanted, but a chance to leave the cabin and go back home. He usually drank two cups of a coffee a day and two cups of tea after dinner each night.

He thought about his apartment back in Harrisburg. His landlady, Mrs. Rogers, was sure to be flipping out now that the first of a new rental month had come and gone. He did warn her though that he sometimes was away for a week or two on assignments out of state. That was usually the only time Wynn Laskey, the editor of the Harrisburg Herald, was willing to allow his journalists to spend money on travel. Those assignments had to be really big and very worth it.

Leece slept fitfully that night. It was obvious life in a cabin was definitely not the peace and quiet he imagined it would be.

It didn’t even matter that he took extra precautions to keep Eudavia from burning the place down while they slept. She’d only find some other torture to get rid of them. He saw now the sole purpose of the village men keeping Eudavia barely alive was to use her to get strangers to show themselves.  Then, the elder men used her to kill them. She’s like some kind of mechanical killing robot they program somehow to do what they won’t: murder others for their benefit.

So long as she was the one doing the murdering, the village men felt their souls remained pure and holy.

Leece lay in his bed after waking several times during the night. It was still dark outside. He reasoned it must be no more than four o’clock. Another hour or two and it will be sunrise.

He thought about the holidays that would soon be arriving one after the other—first Thanksgiving Day, then Christmas holidays and finally New Year’s Day. He fiercely hoped he wouldn’t be here another two weeks.

He didn’t mind missing Thanksgiving Day dinner at his friend’s house. But, he knew he would mind a whole lot missing Christmas holidays. It was always a time of the year when people were a little nicer to each other and the colors of the season somehow energized him.

Unlike some, he loved Christmas shopping and didn’t mind the crowded stores in the least.

He sighed deeply and fell back to sleep. When he awoke again, the sun had come up on a winter whiteness that was blinding. He hurried to the fireplace and tossed several logs onto the grate in the center of the fireplace. Then, he walked to the dry sink, filled the coffee pot with water from the water bucket and put the pot on the fire. He planned to get breakfast ready for himself and Liam.

Curious, he thought. Liam is still asleep.  He checked Liam’s bed. The man was gone. He must have risen early and decided to tend to his horse. Next, he checked the dead bolt lock on the cabin door. It was unlocked. Liam must have gone outside.

Leece had a dark feeling of foreboding. He wished Liam hadn’t gone out by himself. He hurried to put his boots and outerwear on. He was horrified by what he saw.

Liam had been nailed hands and feet to the shed door. Leece ran back to the cabin and reached for the shotgun. When he returned to the shed, he saw Liam Ronish was dead. He looked around to make certain Eudavia wasn’t still about. He noticed something else. None of Liam’s blood lay on the ground as it should have been.

Now, Leece Fordyce felt a fury surge through every vein in his body he’d never felt before. He wanted to kill Eudavia for what she did to Liam. Now, she had the older man’s blood and there was no doubt she’d eventually try to hand over Liam’s marrow to the village men for Old Malachy.

Leece felt sick to his stomach as he gently removed Liam’s body from the shed door. Liam’s face was a white as the snow that surrounded him. How long had he been out here? Why didn’t he take the gun with him? Leece felt remorse for the man as he hadn’t since his own parents died.

Leece figured out the reason Eudavia didn’t come after him was because those crazy village men had what they wanted---for now. Leece knew he’d be next.

It was now or never. He had to get revenge. He couldn’t allow these crazy people and Eudavia to continue this murderous spree they’d been on for over half a century. He brought the body of his friend into the cabin and placed it on the man’s bed. He didn’t dare bury him anywhere near the cabin. That crazy woman would just dig up the body and hand it over to the village men.

He looked around the cabin. The door! He forgot to lock it. He ran quickly to the door and pushed the dead bolt against the interlock. Then, he took the safety off the rifle just in case Eudavia returned to finish her evil deeds.

Now, more than ever, he knew he had to get out of this place and report these people to the police. He watched the shed carefully to make certain Eudavia wasn’t lurking about. Then, he began to pack up Liam Ronish’s belongings in the cedar chest. There weren’t many: a few candlestick holders, his handful of kitchen utensils, his few pots, pans and glassware.

As he was packing Liam’s things into the chest, he caught a glimpse of that box that contained Annie Ronish’s locket. There were other things inside it Leece hadn’t paid much attention to. A few papers were included like Liam’s military discharge, his and Annie’s birth certificates and Annie’s death certificate, a couple of photos of Liam in his army uniform and  their wedding photos. He found a letter that looked quite old. It had no name or address on the envelope. Only a note inside and a land deed of some kind.

Leece stopped his packing for a moment and opened the note. It was written with an old style hand and addressed to Micah Ronish. It was dated June 1941. The note read:

“Micah Ronish, you are warned. Do not ignore this warning. Relinquish the property you claim to own with Zebulon Hodge forthwith. This is holy ground according to the will of our servant Malachy Newcombe. Failure to comply will result in danger to you and your family. This is by decree of our village elders. You have been warned. You and your family are herewith considered evil apostates.”

The letter was signed by Samuel Howell, Silas Pherson and Lyden Browerd.

Next, Leece opened the hand-folded land deed. It was drawn by the state’s engineering and land development office. Leece had seen these kinds of deeds many times. Most were written shortly before, or just after, World War II.

On the land deed, there was a large area someone circled, as if to indicate the extent of the land holdings. Was this the land over which Malachy Newcombe and the village men were fighting with Zebulon Hodge and Micah Ronish?

He walked over to the window to get a better look. The deed map clearly showed Micah Ronish owned the land upon which his cabin stood. So…that’s why Liam was so stubborn about leaving it behind. His father, Micah, realized what the village men were doing and refused to hand over his land to them.

Leece watched the shed carefully. He knew if he was going to escape, it would have to be with Liam’s horse and, as soon as he could.

Liam knew too well what the village men were capable of…because his own father had once settled here with them. That’s how Liam knew about Eudavia, Samuel Howell and Old Malachy. He was told all by Micah.

Absently, Leece stuffed the letter and deed into his trouser pocket.

He went back to packing Liam’s belongings, until the cedar chest was nearly stuffed to the brim. He moved as in some inexplicable, mystical motion.

Leece knew he had to go back out to that shed. He had to make sure the horse hadn’t been tampered with. But, he didn’t want to leave Liam alone. He sat down in Liam’s rocking chair.

He had to have a plan of action that protected him from danger and removed him from the village men’s plots to kill him. Liam was dead. They planned to kill him next.

He grabbed for the shovel he’d used to clear a path to the shed. He walked to the left of the fireplace. He pushed aside the hooked rug and removed several of the floor boards of the cabin. He dug and dug at the soil beneath until blisters rose on both his hands.

He dug a hole in the floor of the cabin wide enough to bury Liam’s cedar chest with all his belongings in it. He placed the rocking chair atop the chest momentarily to secure it tightly. Then, he replaced the dirt as quickly as he could. He removed the rocking chair after all the dirt was compacted over the chest.

He hammered the floor boards back into place using the flat headed side of the axe he had sharpened. Then, he replaced the hooked rug and placed the rocking chair atop it.

Now, no one would know the chest was buried there but himself.

He searched for the matches Liam always used to light a fire or his candles. Leece stuffed them into his pocket. Then, he took the blanket on Liam’s bed and covered the man with it completely.

He banked the fire a last time. Then, he grabbed several days’ worth of canned goods and stuffed them and a few blankets into a gunny sack. He put a box of rifle bullets into his pocket.

He took the letter to Micah Ronish out of his trousers and placed the deed into the travel book he’d started to read. He placed these in the fold of a blanket in the sack.

That book’s a first edition and quite old. Something I want to remember Liam Ronish by, he thought.

The inside of the cabin looked now as if someone abandoned it. He’d taken care to store in the chest those items a long lost Ronish relative might want to claim some day.

Someone had moved out…Liam Ronish, son of Micah Ronish. Leece vowed those village men would never get their hands on Liam’s property. He’d go back to his job and write a story that would hypnotize readers and put an end to the murderous villager men and Eudavia.

He knew what he was about to do would cause some questions when he returned to civilization. What was the choice? Leave Liam to become Old Malachy’s preservative? That isn’t going to happen if I have a breath left in my body, Leece vowed.

He lit a match and threw it on the small mat on the inside of the cabin door. Then, he closed the cabin door tightly. He gripped the rifle and the gunny sack loaded with supplies as tightly as he could. Then he turned to see the cabin going up in flames quickly.

“Sorry Liam old friend. I know I’m doing what you’d have wanted. I can’t allow those village men to do a single thing more to torture you. I am so sorry Liam,” Leece said, aloud.

Leece headed toward the shed with Liam’s rifle at the ready. He opened the door slowly and carefully, in case Eudavia was hiding inside. He opened the doors wider and wider until the sunlight illuminated the interior of the shed clearly.

He held his breath wondering if Liam’s horse, Hero, had managed to remain unhurt by the fiendish Eudavia.

He walked carefully toward the horse. Hero stood tall and didn’t flinch while Leece checked for any signs of bruising. He dressed the horse for travel with blanket, bridle, saddle and reins. It had been a long time since he rode a horse by himself.

Hero smelled the smoke from the burning cabin and nearby tall trees and reared back slightly. Leece calmed the animal by placing a horse blanket over his eyes as he led him out of the shed. He headed Hero in the opposite direction of the smoke.

Once out of the deep of the forest copse where Liam’s cabin had been, he removed the horse blanket. Hero remained alert and ready to travel. It had been quite a few weeks since Liam had taken the horse out for exercise. Leece was thankful for the horse’s eagerness.

He knew the ride to the other side of the cantilever bridge was not going to be easy. He had to avoid animal traps that could ensnare Liam’s horse.

Odd, he thought, I keep calling him “Liam’s horse.”

Leece figured it was approximately two miles in fairly deep snow. He hoped Hero would make it unharmed to the bridge. Hero seemed thrilled by the experience of galloping at a half fast speed through snow that was nearly as high as the horse’s stomach at times.

The hardest part of the horse’s ordeal was getting him over the river to the bridge. There simply was no way around it. He knew to go over the bridge would signal his escape to the lunatics in that village.

Leece hadn’t seen the river since he escaped the village and Liam found him. He had no idea what to expect when he got to the river bank. Would it be covered in ice? That would probably make it easier for Hero to get across. Or, would it be a raging torrent neither he nor Hero would be able to navigate?

That cabin fire was sure to come to the attention of the village elders. The smell of the smoke alone would waft rapidly through the bare trunks of the forest trunks. Would the elders even bother to run to see where the fire was? It was certain the fire would set off the attention of forest rangers who monitor fires in this kind of weather.

Leece hoped it would. All he needed was a fire ranger with a utility vehicle and he was home free.

He and the horse cautiously trekked another mile in the snow. One good thing was that if there had been traps, the depth of the snows fully covered them. He recognized the path the village men used to set Eudavia on her murderous course to Liam’s death. He had to avoid that path or end up back in their part of the woods.

Hero seemed intent on going in a different direction completely. For once in his life, he felt he needed to trust the animal’s instincts. He found himself and the horse on a course that seemed to go around the woodsy copse completely. He tried desperately to recall if he’d seen this before. He drew a blank.

Yet, the horse kept going at a slower pace. He followed where the horse was determined to lead. Leece calculated they had gone another two miles, at least. He couldn’t believe what he saw ahead of him…The other side of the bridge!

Somehow, Hero avoided the hallowed ground of the village side of the river bank completely. He was free and all thanks to Liam’s horse…or maybe to Liam himself.

He pulled the horse to a stop.

“Whoaaa boy…How’d you know this way around that bridge?” he asked the preening horse.

He gently patted the horse’s flanks.

“Just enjoy my praise. I’m free…all we have to do now is get back out to the road and flag someone down for help,” Leece said.

He reached into the sack and gave the horse a treat of a spoonful of Liam’s molasses. Liam never kept sugar in the cabin. Before he left, he grabbed two bottles, one of which was molasses and the other Liam’s sulphur medicine and stuffed them into the sack. Now, he was glad he did.  

The horse was delighted with the treat. The sugar in the molasses would give the horse energy. Leece looked around for a watering hole. The best there was to water the horse was some ice that formed when tree limbs dropped their melted snow onto snow mounds on the ground. The horse wasn't interested in ice.

“Where can I get some water for you, boy?” Leece said.

The horse nodded his head as if he understood the question put to him. Leece chuckled. He realized it was the first time he’d laughed in nearly three weeks.

For sure, we aren’t going back to the river or the bridge, Leece thought.

He felt relieved that his way out of this strange place was near at hand.

Hero must have thought they were taking a familiar path to Lanceboro. Leece directed the horse toward the ramp that led to the main highway.

In the far distance, he heard the sound of automobiles. Cars! He couldn’t believe it. The sound of engine motors running and soon he’d be heading back to Harrisburg.

It was almost mid-afternoon by the time Leece and the horse found their way to the main highway.

Leece had an idea. He could get assistance more quickly if he rode to the nearest forest ranger station along the highway. There were always those small fire ranger alarm boxes in some of the small park and eat stations set back from the road. If he couldn’t find a box, someone with a car was sure to drive by soon and help him.

He reminded himself not to appear too wild-eyed, even after all he’d been through. It would put off anyone who might be of help.

When he arrived at the next park and eat station, it was empty. But, there was a forest ranger box. He pushed the red button and lifted the receiver. He put the receiver to his ear and waited.

“Forestry Services of Lanceboro, how can we help?” the voice said.

“Yes. I’m out here on the highway. I’m on horseback. I think there’s a fire out in the woods. I can smell the smoke. Can you help? I’m worried it might be a friend who has a cabin out there,” Leece said.

“Where are you right now sir,” the female voice asked.

“I’m about three miles east of Lanceboro,” Leece said.

“There’s a forest ranger on his way out there to help you,” the voice said.

“Thank you. I really appreciate that,” Leece said.

           

            “No problem, sir. That’s what we’re here for,” she said and rang off.

            Leece waited about a half hour before he saw any sign of a forest ranger vehicle.

            Finally, he could make out in the distance, the dark green color of the ranger utility vehicle. It slowed as it near him.

            “You called about a forest fire?” the ranger said.

            “Yes. I have a friend, Liam Ronish. This is his horse. I was trying to get help. I think there was a fire in his cabin. I managed to get the horse out, but Liam was trapped inside the cabin and it was ablaze in minutes,” Leece said.

            “Can you show me where the cabin is quickly? I’ll call for backup. Leave the horse, we’ll arrange for its care later,” the ranger said.

            “Yes. But, it’s pretty deep in the woods. Near the Cantilever Bridge. I think the village there is called Bawrnaclaughda or something like that,” Leece said.

            “Get in. We’ll see if we can find your friend’s place. How long ago was this?” the ranger asked.

            “Probably about an hour or so. The snow was so deep in some places and the horse wasn’t too fast,” Leece said.

            “Don’t know how you even got that far on horseback,” the ranger said.

            The vehicle was sturdy, but the deep snow was not a match for the small paths that were still covered over. The ranger had a difficult time trying to find a safe path to Liam’s cabin.

            As he drove, he encountered the Cantilever Bridge.

            “No. Not that way. It’s the other side. Go around the river bank,” Leece said.

            “Why can’t we just go over the bridge?” the ranger asked.

            “It’s very narrow and with that ice on it, it’s too dangerous. The incline coming off the bridge would have your vehicle sailing into the river,” Leece said.

            “How do you know that?” the ranger asked.

            “That’s where my car is now. Been there a few weeks. It’s a very long story. I’m a journalist from the Harrisburg Herald. I got stuck out in these woods and Liam Ronish found me and took me in. But, then the snows came and I couldn’t go anywhere. My cell phone is also gone,” Leece said.

            The ranger remained silent keeping his eyes on the road ahead of him.

            Leece had an uncomfortable feeling about this ranger. He wasn’t sure why. The ranger seemed intent on traveling across the Cantilever Bridge.

            “This is dangerous. It’s easier to go around the river bank to the wooded copse on the west side of the bridge,” Leece said.

            It was as if the ranger suddenly went deaf and hadn’t heard a word Leece had said about the bridge.

            The vehicle approached the foot of the bridge. It was at this point Leece knew something was wrong. The ranger intended to get to the other side. Leece had to stop him.

            If they managed to get over the bridge safely, the village men would capture Leece and the ranger.

            “What are you doing!” Leece demanded.

            “I think the sun has probably melted the ice on the bridge by now. Don’t you?” the ranger asked.

            “We can’t go over the bridge. Please. I was nearly held captive by the men in the village on the other side of the span,” Leece said.

            “Held captive? What village? I don’t recall any village near this part of the country,” the ranger said.

            He continued to drive over the bridge. At midpoint, the ice on the bridge made a smooth sail to the bottom. The vehicle landed with a thud.

            “See? We made it over the bridge just fine,” the ranger said.

            “Who are you? I demand to see your credentials,” Leece said.

            “Oh now, let’s not get into any dramatics here,” the ranger said.

            Leece felt desperation setting in. This wasn’t a ranger at all. He felt certain of it.

           

            “I’m afraid I left my “credentials” back in my locker at the office,” the ranger said.

            Leece knew he had to do something to prove to himself the ranger wasn’t who he claimed to be.

            “Liam Ronish’s cabin is to the left of the bridge. Those crazy villagers don’t go there. They consider it “unholy ground,” Leece said.

            The ranger ignored Leece’s remarks.

            “Didn’t you hear me? I said that Liam’s cabin is to the left of the bridge. What are you waiting for?” Leece asked.

            Leece knew what the ranger was waiting for. This must have been what Liam Ronish meant when he said there were villagers’ sons and daughters “out there.”

            “I’m just going to make sure no damage was done to my vehicle, is all,” the ranger answered.

            “Is all?” Leece took note that this was the same type of colloquial language Josiah Vester used when he first met him at the river bank.

            Momentarily distracted, in the distance Leece heard the sound of horses. It was now or never. This ranger was one of them. He had to get away as fast as he could.

            If these village men found him, he’d never leave again.

            “You aren’t a forest ranger at all, are you?” Leece said.

            “Sure I am,” the ranger said.

            “You ARE NOT a ranger. Which of those village men are your kin?” Leece asked.

            “I told you. There isn’t a village anywhere within mile of here,” the ranger said.

            “Look. Any minute now the sound of those horses hooves are going to mean the village men will be here ready to take me back with them. I won’t go, I tell you. I won’t go back to that hellish nightmare,” Leece said.

            The ranger turned toward Leece. His brown eyes seemed to have become a single shade of black.

            “Oh, but you will. You never should have tried to leave. The elders will be here soon and you will be returned as you should be,” the ranger said.

            “NO! I won’t!” Leece said.

            In a split second, Leece elbowed the ranger in the ribs; then, swung his fist as hard as he could, knocking the ranger unconscious.

He leaned over to open the door on the driver’s side of the vehicle. He gave the unconscious ranger are hard shove. He heard the horses’ hooves growing louder. Quickly, he turned the vehicle around and headed back over the bridge, taking care to avoid the patches of ice at midpoint.

            He saw Josiah Vester and Lyden Browerd through the rear view mirror. They jumped down from their carriages. Josiah saw Leece in the vehicle heading to the bottom of the bridge on the opposite side. He shook his fist at Leece angrily.

Leece kept driving. The incline on the opposite side of the bridge wasn’t nearly as sharp as the side nearest the village. He looked back again through the rear view mirror and saw the two village men helping the ranger to his feet.

            Leece didn’t look back again. He took the road out toward Lanceboro. He thought about stopping at the forest ranger station office and then thought again.

            “How do I know the rest of the forest rangers there aren’t all village kin?” he said aloud to the empty vehicle.

            He kept driving until he found his way to the main highway to Harrisburg. He glanced down at the gasoline gauge. It was nearly on empty. He stopped the vehicle on the shoulder of the highway, glanced around quickly to make sure no one was following him and reached into his back pocket for his wallet. He searched through for his gasoline charge card. He hoped that the newspaper hadn’t cancelled it in his absence.

            He turned the key in the ignition and drove about five miles until he found a gas station. He held his breath while the station attendant ran the charge card through for validation. It went through. He was home free.

            It would take only another three hours and he’d be back in Harrisburg. His first stop would be Wynn Laskey’s office.

            As he drove along, he had a sense that the last several weeks was a bizarre nightmare. He wondered if it was real or imagined. He glanced down at the gunny sack. No. It wasn’t imagined. The sack was proof of that.

            It was nearly six in the evening when Leece Fordyce finally arrived in the big city he called home.

“Home,” he thought. What a wonderful relief to be able to say that word.

            He drove directly to the newspaper building. He parked the ranger’s vehicle in is usual spot.

The newsroom was always alive with busy people getting out their news stories. He opened the double glass doors at the entrance and was greeted by two of his fellow journalists, Crowley Ashton and Dennis Winant.

            “Oh m’Gawd! Look what the cat finally dragged in. Where on earth have you been Leece Fordyce? Old Laskey sent out cops, detectives and ….” Crowley Ashton started.

            “It’s a story you will not and are never going to believe,” Leece said.

“Old man, you look as if you’ve had a working over. Are you sure you’re alright?” Dennis Winant asked.

            “Lee…Dennis…I’ll explain it all after I speak to Laskey,” Leece said.

            “Well, do take care, fella. See you tomorrow?” Dennis said.

            “You sure will. I just need a good rest tonight and I’ll be on the job first thing in the morning,” Leece said.

            The two men walked past Leece, shaking their heads in disbelief.

            Leece approached the entrance to Wynn Laskey’s office.

            “Mr. Laskey?…” Leece started.

            “Leece? Oh my Gawd! We thought something horrible happened to you,” Laskey said.

            “It did. I still have trouble believing it happened. Do you want to hear all of the details now?” Leece asked.

            “Yes. Sure, if you are up to it. You look as if you’ve been through a major military crisis. What the hell kind of story were you working on, anyway?” Laskey asked.

            “The story of a lifetime. Here goes…Almost a month ago to the day, I was heading back here with the story I was working on then…You remember it? The one on the robbery near Pittsburgh.

Anyway, I was driving back and took a wrong turn in the road.  I ended up on some remote road that led to a Cantilever Bridge in the middle of nowhere…or so I thought.

That bridge is ancient and has to be seen to be believed. I navigated toward the bridge. As I did, I saw this threatening funnel cloud headed from the east toward the bridge. I stopped my car at the bottom of the bridge and parked it near the river bank. The wind got really wild. I parked my car and walked beneath the bridge thinking it was safer there.

            When the storm passed, I tried to back up to get back on the correct road. In doing so, my car got stuck in mud. After about ten minutes of trying to get it unstuck, an older man, named Josiah Vester, pulled up in a wagon with his two horses. The guy was dressed like an old time Quaker…black hat, short black vest and long sleeved flannel shirt. He seemed harmless at first. He said I wouldn’t be able to get my car out of the river mud until the sun dried it.

            That’s when he invited me to come back to his cottage in this bizarre little village. You can’t see it from the bridge for the forest all around it.

There’s just a well-worn road and two supply stores as you enter the village. The rest is a cul-de-sac with small cottages. Behind each cottage are several acres of farms owned by village men.

            I stayed for dinner and Vester convinced me to try to get my car unstuck the next day when the sun was out. I didn’t realize then this was the most peculiar bunch of religious fanatics I’d ever come across.

            The next day, he had me doing some of his farm work to pay him for his “help” and then I saw something I’m not likely to forget in a long time. He took me to the village “meeting house.”

These lunatics keep a near century’s old body of a village elder, Malachy Newcombe, on an altar in that meeting house. They feed it human marrow and blood to preserve it. I saw Josiah put some white powdery stuff in the mummy’s mouth. I didn’t know it was human marrow. They call that mummy “Old Malachy.” They literally worship the guy as a saint or something,” Leece said.

            Wynn Laskey wasn’t sure he was hearing Leece correctly.

            “Are you saying this religious cult keeps a dead body on an altar and they try to preserve the body with blood and marrow?” Wynn asked.

            “That’s exactly what I’m saying. Remember, this place is so remote, not many in the nearby city of Lanceboro even know they exist. So, they live as they believe Old Malachy would want them to,” Leece said.

“Leece, I can’t help but feel that something happened while you were away that has changed you. Your disheveled appearance aside, it’s like you’ve been through a war or something,” Laskey said.

“I am not sure I’m ready to tell you what I’ve seen. But, I do need your help. The only reason I escaped was that I had to knock out the forest ranger who picked me up after I left Liam Ronish’s cabin.”

“Liam Ronish?”

“I escaped the village men by a few minutes and some quick thinking. You have to understand the way these village men think. They don’t cross the bridge or go west of the side of the river where their village is located.

They think it’s “unholy ground.” That’s a long story I’ll tell you another time. After, I escaped with no car, no cell phone and nothing but the shirt on my back and my wallet in my trouser pocket. 

As I ran and ran, I came upon an old cemetery where women were buried and there was an old shack. When I opened the shack door, which by the way, was barred, a woman of about middle forties lunged at me in the dark. She told me her name was Eudavia. She was as mad as a hatter. I left her there in her shack, as she insisted I do, lest the village men “come and punish her.” I kept moving.

When I looked at the names on the tombstones of the women in the cemetery, the tallest one was etched with the name “Eudavia” on it.

Wandering through the thick woods behind the river bank, my leg got caught in a trap the village men put there to trap humans and animals. A

An older man named Liam Ronish found me and took me in.

At first, I was naturally suspicious of him. Then, I realized he was living on what those village men considered “unholy ground.”

“You keep saying “village men”….Were there no village women?”

“No. The village is comprised entirely of men between the ages of forty to seventy. Though I can’t be certain…they could appear older than they really are.”

“Where do the village women go Leece?”

“Those that didn’t run off ended up “sacrificed” to help preserve Old Malachy. I told Liam Ronish I thought their religious practices bordered on ghoulish. I was to find out just how ghoulish as the weeks passed.

When I first met Liam, he was blind. Not just blind…his eyes were torn from his sockets and he had a large scar on his face. He later told me the village men “punished” him.

I didn’t find out until after Eudavia nailed him hands and feet to his shed door that he was the son of Micah Ronish who owned the land the cabin was built on,” Leece said.

“Wait…back up a minute here. “Nailed” him to his shed? Is that what I heard you say?” Laskey asked.

“Yes. The village men couldn’t do evil...being so holy as they think they are. They release Eudavia from the shack. She’d gone mad as a younger woman around the time her mother died. Her mother gave her away as a very young child to Samuel Howell.

Apparently, she tried to run away several times. Each time she was returned…just like they tried to do to me. I have no doubt they use her as a ready supply of blood for Old Malachy,” Leece said.

“But, she nailed this man they’d already blinded and tortured to the shed?” Laskey asked.

“Yes. She’s not what you’d call a very small woman. In fact, she is about my height and as strong as a man. She knocked Liam out when he went to the barn to feed his horse. I have no doubt that’s what she did again when she ….” Leece voice trailed off.

“You mentioned you thought you needed my help…” Laskey started.

“Yes. I had to knock that forest ranger unconscious to escape. He wasn’t a forest ranger at all. He was one of them. When he found me on the off ramp, I got into his vehicle and left Liam’s horse tethered to a tree. I was on horseback you see to get away from Liam’s cabin,” Leece said.

Wynn Laskey stared at the newsman before him. Leece Fordyce had always been the soul of impeccable dress and now he appeared as if he’d exited a Neanderthal cave. His story seemed unbelievable. Leece caught the expression of lack of credibility on Wynn’s face.

“I know this all sounds unbelievable. But there’s something else…” Leece said.

“Yes…what is it?”

“I was afraid Liam Ronish would become more “preservative” for Old Malachy. I knew the minute I left his cabin Eudavia would return. She’d already drained him of every drop of his blood. He was as white as a sheet when I found him hanging there on the shed door. I knew she be told to come back for the body and drag it to the bridge where they’d do God knows what to his body.

I buried Liam’s things in a cedar chest he used to story his belongings. Then, I buried the cedar chest deep in the ground under the floor boards of the cabin. It’s under the rug by the fireplace. Before I left, I burned the cabin down as Liam lay dead in his bed. I know he would have wanted it,” Leece said.

Wynn Laskey was stunned and surprisingly speechless. The two men sat there in silence for the better part of at least five minutes.

“What do you think I should do now? Report it to the police?” Leece asked, finally breaking the silence in the room.

“Well, I should say yes to that. Is there anything to prove what you’ve said about those villagers?” Laskey asked.

“Yes. As a matter of fact, there is,” Leece said.

He reached down for the sack on the floor at his knees.

“Look…here’s the deed and a letter to Micah Ronish.  I kept it in this sack to prove Liam owned that property out there in the woods.”

Wynn Laskey examined the letter and the deed and handed them back to Leece.

“I have a few other things I stuffed into the sack… in case I didn’t find help soon enough. Just some canned goods and Liam’s travel book.

Funny isn’t it? The things you think a dead man would want the living to keep for proof of the lives they’ve lived.”

“The first thing you need to do is inform the police here in Harrisburg. They are the county and state seat of law enforcement. They’d be the ones to go out there to that village. What did you say the village men called it?” Wynn asked.

“Bawrnaclaughda” at least that’s what the old men in Lanceboro say these village men used to call it,” Leece said.

“Sounds Old Celtic to me,” Wynn said.

“I think maybe the religion is some aberrant sect of the old Druids. They all seem to speak with a funny accent, half old English and half slang New England English,” Leece said.

“Well, my man. You do have a book to write, don’t you? Do you want to call the police or shall I? After all, I did have them searching high and low for you,” Wynn said.

“You mean I still have a job here?” Leece asked.

“Of course, you do. In fact, as soon as the police business is taken care of, we’ll get on to a story in the Herald. I have some contacts I can use to go out there to…” Wynn started.

“No…don’t send anyone else out there. That river is dangerous and loaded with enough bodies stripped of blood and marrow. I’m sure now old Josiah Vester knows I’ve escaped. They’ll have a meeting of the elders. They’ll send out their kin to hunt me down,” Leece said.

“Hunt you down? You can’t mean that,” Wynn said.

“They use Eudavia as their spy and murdering accomplice to do evil they won’t do for themselves.

When I first got stuck in the mud during that storm, I saw something in the shallows of the river…a human hand. They use it like they do that bronzed medallion on the bridge…to warn of strangers.

Then, Eudavia lures them with that human hand close enough to the water’s edge to distract any unwanted visitors. That’s when they capture their victims,” Leece said.

“This has to be one of the most bizarre tales I’ve heard in all of state history,” Wynn said.

“You do believe me, don’t you?” Leece asked.

“Of course, I do. Your appearance tells the whole story. Let’s get the police involved in this now before the story gets too cold,” Wynn aid.

Leece knew Wynn Laskey was not the man to shirk his responsibilities to his paper when it comes to reporting fresh news.

“You go on and get something to eat and when you get back the police will have arrived,” Wynn said.

“Thanks. I could do with some really hot soup. I’ve never felt so cold in my life,” Leece said.

“Well, go on then. I’m sure old Chief Royston will be over here in his own good time to get your story,” Wynn said.

Leece walked across the street to the large chrome diner named “Hot Cakes.” The scent as he walked through the door was hypnotic. He sat down at a booth near the door. A waitress he knew fairly well from the number of lunches and late night dinners he and his fellow newsmen ate here didn’t recognize him.

“Didi? You don’t know me anymore?” Leece asked.

“Leece? Leece Fordyce? The Herald’s star reporter? What on earth happened to you? We haven’t seen your face in here in almost a month. We thought you moved to another paper or something.”

“Not another paper. I was lost in another world,” Leece said.