Tag Archives: Someone Knows Something

A Faraway Song (Part 10)

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Maybe I should have been surprised, or insulted, or mad even at that point but I really was not that put off by this revelation.  Enough odd things had happened that I guess a lie about the mine’s location was not that remarkable.

“So, do you know exactly where it is?”

“I do.  I’m a bit of a hiker and stumbled across it on one of my early walks around here.  Don’t feel too badly about whatever resistance you are getting about collecting information.  I haven’t got a straight, or even a partial answer, about that place from anyone around here either.  I picked up a few details here and there I guess, but mostly all I know is that it is an old mine.”

“That’s about all I know too.  I did a little research on the area before I came up here but not enough to locate it myself.  Would you show me?”

“It’s a bit of a struggle to get back to,” the Reverend replied.  “Are you sure you’re up for it?”

“Yes.  Can we go now?”

He smiled back at me but shook his head, explaining that he had another appointment to keep in about thirty minutes.  He offered to go with me the next morning, an offer I eagerly accepted.  I had thanked him and was almost out the door when I turned back.

“Can I ask you something else?”

“Sure.  What is it?”

“That old woman told me that no one ever moves here.  That she was the last one.  Is that true?”

He paused before answering, looking past me to the trees that framed the property.  Then he replied.

“This is a bit of a static community.  Not much change, not many new faces.  They seem to like it that way.”

“And children?”  I explained to him about the pictures Eyebrows had let me look at and also that I so far had not seen any children in the area during my explorations.  He was turning away from me, walking back toward his office, as he replied.

“Yes, there certainly aren’t many children.”

That was obviously going to be the end of our conversation for the day, so I called out another thank you in his direction and returned to my truck.  It was later now, too late to do much of anything else, so I parked my truck in a pull-off near Cemetery Road and sat in the bed, eating granola bars and just absorbing the evening.

double crested cormorant

double crested cormorant

It was calm and cool, the sky kind of a dusty blue with a few clouds hanging near the western horizon.  Bird sounds were everywhere and I could pick out the calls of loons, cuckoos and woodpeckers.  A flock of cormorants flew by overhead looking in flight like a formation of futuristic aircraft.  The air was clean and fragrant, full of all kinds of outdoor scents; pine, rosemary, grass, and that musky smell that water gives off when it is jammed up with old wood and debris.  It was peaceful and relaxing to me even as my mind was racing through all of the new information I had collected during the day. It was right then that I heard it, the most unexpected sound.  I heard the shout of a young child.

I stood up in the bed of my truck upon hearing it, turning slightly to face the direction I thought it had come from.  I waited for several long moments and then I heard it again.  This time it was more than a shout, it was a series of sounds, just like you might imagine a child making as it played outside.  The sounds seemed happy, the usual youthful excitement of being outdoors and feeling free.  It stopped and I waited again, two minutes, then five but it seemed to be gone.  I did know though that it had come from somewhere down Cemetery Road and I jumped out of my truck to head in that direction.

I walked rapidly but stopped at every piece of property I passed; waiting for about a minute, listening, trying to peek around buildings, and watching for movement.  At the home of Mr. Shotgun I made sure that I was standing near a tree, just in case I needed it for cover, but even there I managed to get a fairly good inspection done.  At Brown Suit’s house I walked stealthily over to the rabbit enclosure, figuring that might be something a child would be excited about.  Ultimately I found nothing at all, no trace of a child and no more youthful sounds.  I did not even see a toy, a swing set or any other item that would indicate a child was in the area.  I was still very sure of what I had heard though, and I stood at the end of the road, right in front of Brown Suit’s driveway, wondering just what this new piece of strange information meant.

The sun was in my eyes, dropping quickly toward the horizon to set, so I turned and started pacing back and forth, waiting, hoping that I would hear the child again.  Eventually I knelt down at the south edge of the road, back to the sun, looking toward the trees that surrounded Brown Suit’s property.  I was preoccupied but my mind registered something out of place.  It was a flash of color, a faded red, something on the side of a very old building that was buried behind scrub trees and scrawny bushes.  It was difficult to make out any details, but it looked like a sign maybe, or a picture that had been painted on the building.  I was contemplating whether I should walk over to investigate when I heard a vehicle on the road.  Turning around, I saw the Colony Park Wagon coming toward me.

…to be continued

A Faraway Song (Part 9)

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The animal was a fairly large one, at least from my experience with rabbits.  It was light brown in color and of the kind I would call floppy-eared, although I am certain they actually have a much more official, scientific name.  He was holding it by the neck and its elongated hind legs were kicking feebly against the air.  Brown Suit crouched down with it, stroking its head and muttering something which I could not make out.  Finally he placed the rabbit onto the ground and let go of the neck.  I thought it would bolt away, happy to be free, but instead it just hopped two times and then looked back at the old man.  They stared at each other, the rabbit with its nose-twitching, Brown Suit shooing it away, until finally the animal turned and disappeared into the brush and leaves.  I waited, tucked under the branches and shadows of that white pine, until he had walked past me toward his car.  I then went over and examined the spot where he had released the rabbit.

I do not know what I had expected to find there, or really why I walked over there, except for my own increasing curiosity over everything having to do with this strange place.  I of course did not find anything and had started walking back toward my truck when a sudden rustle in the bushes caught my attention.  I looked over toward a small group of saplings and caught a glimpse of a light brown, floppy-eared rabbit peeking out at me.  Shaking my head, and trying to convince myself that it was a different rabbit then the one released by the old man, I started walking again.  It was about four minutes later, just as I was breaking out of the last part of the forest, that a thought occurred to me.  Could the old abandoned mine be around here?  I was not completely certain of where I was but did know I had come a fair distance from Brown Suit’s house.  He had told me I was off by thirty miles, although no direction was ever mentioned.  I decided to pull the atlas out from behind the seat of my truck and see if I could get a better idea of my location.

Knowing I had passed through Mississippi Mills a short time before we stopped gave me a fairly good idea of where I was, and it did in fact turn out to be a little over thirty miles from Clyde Forks.  Considering myself a super-sleuth for having connected this information together I set off back into the woods to explore for the mine.  Four hours later, and after having stumbled several times into the backyards of a neighboring group of houses on a cul-de-sac, I sat down exhausted on the tailgate of my truck.  At this point, having come completely unprepared for such a prolonged adventure, I was extremely hungry and thirsty.  Two hours later, and after a very good meal at a place called Kettle’s Cafe, I was back in Clyde Forks and searching for a local church.

I found it, tucked rather surprisingly behind a thick row of trees directly across the road from Eyebrows’ bungalow.  Somehow I had driven right past it twice, although it was rather hard to see from the road which gave my detective ego some small relief.  The church was simple and small, sided in white wood and with a roof in need of repair.  I walked in through an unlocked back door and was met promptly by a man of medium height and build, soft-spoken but with an earnest face.  He asked if he could help me.

“Hello Father.”

“Reverend, I’m Reverend Currie” he interrupted me but then waved me to continue.

“Sorry, Reverend, I am trying to find out some information about this place and was hoping someone here could help me.”

He smiled a little at my question but did not explain why, responding instead with, “Of course, what did you want to know?”

That seemed like the perfect opening, especially considering how full of questions my head was, so I unloaded my story on him.  He listened to the whole thing very patiently, his eyes twinkling a little in amusement as I described my interactions with the locals.  When I was done, having ended with the rabbit looking at me from the bushes, he reached over and gently grabbed my shoulder.

“You do indeed seem to have picked up quite a few observations about Clyde Forks.  It’s an interesting place as you already figured out.  I might be able to give you a few answers but think I may not be exactly the person you were looking for.”

I gave him a questioning look and he continued.

“Something tells me that you went looking for a church because you were hoping to find an old priest who had been around for decades and could tell you his own history of this area.”

“Yes, I guess I was but I knew when you met me at that door, well you weren’t exactly going to be that guy.  You’re way too young.”

“Yes, that too, but more importantly I’ve only been here for a few months.”

I did not respond immediately as something was struggling to make itself known from my subconscious.  It finally came through.

“So you just moved here a few months ago?  That’s weird because that old lady I spoke to this morning said that no one had moved here in forty years or so.  She said her and her husband were the last ones.”

“Ah yes, well I think she was basically telling you the truth.  The people around here do not exactly count the church ministers as among their population.”

“Really?  Is this not a very religious place?”

“It’s not that.  It’s just that they have been rotating ministers in and out of this place for almost sixty years, not one of them spending much more than a year here.  I guess the locals think of us like some kind of interchangeable knick-knack.  It makes it a challenge to minister to them but I guess the church brought that struggle on itself.  I just keep smiling and trying to do my best.”

“So, I guess you don’t know much then, huh?”

He paused before answering, considering me I guess, or whether he wanted to share things with me.  Then he spoke.

“Well, maybe not everything you want to know, but I do know a few things.”

“Like?”

“Well, for one thing, that mine is not thirty miles from here.  It’s just a couple of miles west.”

…to be continued

A Faraway Song (Part 7)

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I felt the pause that followed, and the silence that accompanied it.  It mirrored my own mind, which I think had actually blinked in shock when she said that.  This certainly seemed like an out-of-the-way place but for no one to have moved here in forty years seemed almost impossible.  Maybe she was just exaggerating for effect, or pulling my leg.  I mentioned both but she just shook her head slowly in reply.

“Seriously?”

“Yes indeed. Curious isn’t it?”

“You know I ran into a guy who lives down Cemetery Road, kind of a big guy.  He lives in a trailer over there.  He didn’t seem to be more than thirty or maybe thirty-five.”

“Was that you he was shooting at yesterday?”

“Well, yes.  But still, he seemed younger than forty for sure.”

Eyebrows got up and refilled both of our coffee cups, her hands trembling a little bit as she did.  It seemed to offend her that I noticed so I looked back out the window toward the side yard which was lined with Large-toothed Aspen’s that framed a magnificent Chestnut tree.  I heard the kettle click against the stove top as she set it down and turned my attention back to her.

“He was born here, right in that same trailer.  In fact his father died right on my kitchen floor here a long time ago.  He’s not a very friendly type is he?”

I shook my head and she continued.

“You know, I expect that you think maybe all the folks around here aren’t so friendly, and in that you might be right.  But I would caution you against judging the lot of us too harshly.  This is a strange place to live and it kind of turns you into a rascal after awhile, even if you set out to avoid it.  Do you believe that?”

“I hadn’t really thought about it other than what I told you about this being a spooky and weird place.  I don’t think I am judging you all as one.  I mean you seem nice enough.”  I gave her what I thought was a convincing smile to back that up but the old woman did not seem to buy it.  She stirred her coffee for several long moments after that and then spoke.

“So, you want to know about this place then?”

“I do.”

“Well, let’s go look at some pictures.”  With that she led me into the living room area and bent over to pull a large chest, covered in chipped yellow paint, out from underneath a table.  I made a move to help her but caught the look she gave me and backed off.  This was a woman who was both strong and also unwilling to deal with whatever frailties may have crept in on her over time.  She sat down with a small grunt on the yellow and green sofa and motioned me into a armchair.  As she opened the chest I expected to catch a hint of mothballs or old paper but instead smelled rosemary, which was quickly explained by the sachet the woman pulled out from the inside.  She waved her hand toward the chest.

yellow-trunk

yellow-trunk

“Go ahead, look around in there.  I keep all my pictures in this chest, every one I ever took since we moved here.  It might help you understand this place.”

Reaching down I picked up a few of them, mostly three-by-five inch black and white photos, many of them posed images of people.  I turned one toward her.

“Who’s this?”

The old woman's husband

The old woman’s husband

She smiled.  “My husband.  Doesn’t he look grand in that suit?  He only ever had two, the one he married me in, and that one.  He had just bought it about two weeks before the picture was taken.  That’s later of course, back here about ten years after we moved in.  He’s standing on a pile of railroad ties that we walked past one day when they were doing repairs.  Isn’t it silly how you can see my shadow in the picture too?  I wasn’t much of a photographer, was I?”

I had not even noticed that so I turned it back to look again.  “Oh, well, I wouldn’t feel too bad about it.  It’s nice picture.  What was he all dressed up for anyway?”

She sighed before replying.  “He always wore a suit on Sundays.  I buried him in it too of course.”  She was rubbing her hand along the arm of the sofa, another awkward silence building, so I returned to the pictures.  I went through the entire set of them, hundreds if not close to a thousand, and asked questions once she seemed to be paying attention again.  I got a lot of information but it was mostly just people’s names and sometimes  a reference to how they knew someone else, or were related to them.  I pressed several times for more details, asking about the few pictures that showed old buildings, or large groups of people, but Eyebrows usually deflected those questions with stories about her husband.  When I had finished I could tell that she was tired, her eyes closing slowly a few times before jumping back to focus on me.  I was about to shut the top of the chest when something struck me, a fact which had been skipping around at the edges of my mind while I poked around in her pictures.

“You know, I didn’t see one single picture in there of a child, at least not a young one.  I mean, all the younger people in those photos must have been at least sixteen I think.  What is that, some kind of other rule around here?  Don’t take the kid’s pictures because you steal their soul or something?”  I laughed but stopped when I glanced over at the old woman.  She looked angry and was standing up now, very straight, her angular features darkened by the shadows from the partially closed curtains.  I took two steps back toward the kitchen and stopped, caught in-between fear and incredulity.  We remained there, locked in a stare-down, for a full minute before she collapsed back onto the sofa, clearly exhausted.  She said something but in a voice too low for me to hear.  When I failed to respond she motioned me closer, which I declined to do, instead eyeballing the distance to the door.  I looked back at her and she looked so frail, so old and weak, that I obeyed her second summons, kneeling down next to her.

“Do you know where the red crow goes?”

A Faraway Song (Part 5)

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A flicker passed across the man’s face, something more than sadness.  It was anguish I thought, or some deeply personal pain.  Then it was gone though and I was not sure if I had judged it correctly.   He did not reply at first but just stood up and walked a few steps away.  Then he turned and spoke.

“So now you know the story.  You need to stay away from that mine.”

“What about the sixth person?  Who was that? Someone you knew?”

Again there was just silence although I could not see the man’s face this time.  He had turned to look out the window where the cat was sitting.  I pressed on.

“I hear what you told me but it doesn’t change my mind.  Sure those people disappeared but I mean, how many people do you suppose have been at that mine in the past fifty-plus years?  How may people worked there?  How many have just been near there?  I mean,  even I heard about someone who went there and came back.  It isn’t like everyone disappears.  Those people all probably got lost, or attacked by some wild animal, or injured,  or something, whatever else that might happen to a person out here.  They just died in the wilderness and no one ever found their bodies.  I wouldn’t call that exactly a mystery.  I figure my chances are pretty good and I’m not going to take any crazy risks.  I’ll be careful, I promise.”  As I said that I did not even know why I was taking the time to make promises to this old man.  It was not like I owed him anything in particular.  But he did seem very intent on keeping me safe, or away from the mine anyway.  Maybe I just wanted to try to make him feel better.

Brown Suit turned back toward me slowly and removed his fedora.  Even though he had a fair amount of hair left for his apparent age, I could still see a long scar that ran across the left side of his head, crossing over his temple and then bending behind his ear.  It looked faded and worn, but must have hurt like hell when it happened.

“It’s not that I care about you in particular young man, but I don’t want to see anyone else taken away by the presence that haunts that place.  It is an evil thing.  Evil and hungry.  It doesn’t matter how careful you are, it will get you if it finds you there when it is hunting.”

I could feel that B-grade horror thing edging back into my conscious mind.  This guy seemed to have a talent for giving me the creeps.  His story still bothered me enough that I needed to take another shot at getting an answer from him.

“So, the sixth person, the one that you obviously don’t want to talk about.  Is there something else I need to know about what happened to that person?  Something that might convince me to stay away from the mine?  Because with what you told me so far, I’m not convinced.”

I finished with a partial wave of my hand toward Brown Suit, almost an offer to have him tell me whatever it was that was going to make me change my mind.  I was not sure why, right in that moment, I felt like maybe I needed to be convinced to stay away from it, but I did feel that way.  He just stared at me though, and my stubbornness returned.

“Fine then, I’m going now.  Someone will tell me where that place is.  Thanks for the water though, and for trying to warn me.”

As I turned a savage growl erupted in my ear and I jumped to the side, wildly flailing out with one arm at the unseen thing behind me.  Crashing into a chair, I caught myself on a small, blue table and looked over at the man.  He stood exactly where he had been, a good fifteen feet away from me.  He had dropped his hat; however, and now his hands were extended before him, fingers arched out like he was trying to strangle me from a distance.  His face seemed clearer, less full of crags and crevasses, and he was staring right at me.  I heard his voice, angry now and harsh, clearly in my ear.

“You, boy, do not know the power of that place.  You do not  understand it’s ability to reach out and take away from you what you care about, to take away life.  It is dark and evil.  And it is very, very hungry, all of the time.  Hungry for spirits that it needs to quench its desires.  It cannot be kept always at bay.  Eventually it strikes out and takes someone.  Stay away!”

I ran at that moment, overcome by the horror vibe, and even managed to get the door open with only a few shakes of the handle.  In my haste to get away, I turned the wrong way out the door and had made it to the back edge of the house where I stopped short before running into a tall chicken-wire fence.  It was not actually the wire that stopped me, as I was running too fast to really register its presence in my head.  It was the rabbits that did it.  The wire enclosed a space that was about one hundred feet square, basically taking up the entirety of what would have been a sizable backyard.  Within it, there were hundreds of rabbits of all colors and sizes.  There heads were in profile, ears up and alert, seeking out the danger that was only me.  It was an eerie feeling as my hand reached up to catch the edge of the fence before I ran into it and I noticed all of those small, dark eyes staring at me, one each from the side of every rabbit’s head.   I stood there for a moment, until the old man came busting out of his back door, yelling at me to stay away, not from the mine this time, but from the rabbits.  Taking in a few deep gasps of air I jogged back onto the road and kept running until I was back up at the Clyde Forks Road intersection.   Turning to look back down Cemetery Road, it seemed much more eerie than it had just a few hours ago.

 

…to be continued

A Faraway Song (Part 4)

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“Do you like history?”  The man asked me this while refilling his glass at the sink.  He had gestured toward mine also but I had waved him off.

“I guess so.  It usually interests me anyway, if it’s useful.  Not boring stuff, but a good story about something or some interesting details, yeah, I like those.”

“Ok.  So, this will be a little history lesson for you about that mine.”

“For the purpose of keeping me out of it, I suppose?”

Brown Suit just raised his eyebrows in reply, then drank half of his water.

“That mine goes back a ways, basically to around 1918.  There was a family up here at the time, the Caldwell’s, kind of prominent in business and politics.  They made some decent money by investing in the Wilbur mine and the son, Boyd, he came over this way and put in stakes for what became the Clyde Forks mine.  He didn’t stick around for long though, just enough time to dig a few holes and put in his claim.  Probably didn’t even pull one ton of barite out of that ground.  That family wasn’t really the type to spend a lot of time in the field, if you know what I mean.  He basically went back to Lanark and got comfortable, bought some more businesses, mostly mills and the like, got elected to Parliament and we never heard from him again.”

“We, meaning you were here?  In 1918?”  I was skeptical of that claim but thought it might just be possible given how old this man looked.

He finished his water and continued on.  “So it just sat there, with not much happening to it, and eventually his claim ran out and then someone else picked it up, and then that all repeated itself for decades.  Claims, a little fuss, no action.  Then a few locals up here decided to take a crack at it in the late 1950’s. That’s when the first person disappeared.”

I raised an eyebrow at that.  I kind of felt like this story was going to end up being about some reason not to go to the mine, but I had not quite expected it to go this way.  I guess I was expecting tales of people dying in the mine, not disappearing.  Me and the old man stared at each other for a few moments and then he continued.

“They spent three years on it, surveying and taking samples and drilling, all for nothing much.  They were closing up shop, getting the equipment out, when one day a guy just isn’t there.  Five men had gone out to clear the site and the four guys that were left were just as confused by the whole thing as everyone else was.  They said they woke up one morning and he was gone, and they figured he had given up and gone into town on his own.  They got back to Flower Station  and couldn’t find him and that’s when everyone realized he was missing.  Not one trace of him was ever found either, except for his hat, which they found hanging from the lower branches of a tree about five hundred feet from the mine.”

“Yeah, that seems a little strange.  There couldn’t have been many places he could really go I suppose, not around here.  I mean, these are all pretty small towns.  Someone would have probably noticed if he turned up nearby.”

“Yes, they would have, and he never did.”

I stretched a little and looked around the kitchen.  I had not noticed before but there was a cat with thick black and white fur sitting on the inside ledge of a window by the stove.  It yawned when it looked at me and then turned its attention back outside.

“So, that’s one missing guy.  Who else?”

“Six other people.  Two working men associated with mining operations, a local who drifted between towns, an old woman, and a young boy.  All of them were in that area right near the mine for various reasons and all of them disappeared completely.”

“How much searching was really done for these people?  I mean, this is a whole lot of water and trees around here and I expect it’s pretty easy to get lost.  Really lost.  And dying out here, well you probably wouldn’t be found unless someone stumbled right over your body.”

“That’s a good question but I can assure you that all of these people were searched for extensively.  By us, by police, by dogs, over and over again, sometimes for months.  Nothing was ever found except a few personal items.”

He stopped talking and was looking at me expectantly.  Or maybe it was just hopefully, figuring I would give in now.  I was going over his story in my head as something did not seem right, some detail was wrong or missing.  I finally thought I had it.

“So, I might see how most of these people, well how the last location of most of these people might be known.  You said they had all been in the exact area around the mine, right?”

“Yes, they were.”

“Well, I guess I buy that except for your drifter.  How would anyone know where a person like that had been before they went missing?  You said he just drifted around between the towns up here.”

“She did.”

“She?”

“The drifter was a woman.”

“Oh.”  That gave me a moment of pause to reconsider my assumptions about a few things.  Then I continued.  “Still, woman or man, how would anyone know?  Maybe that person just died under some big tree and rotted away.  It might not be part of your great missing person conspiracy about the mine.”

Brown Suit rubbed his wrinkled face and blinked back at me several times, his bright, deep-set eyes seeming to turn on and off in the shadows of his brow.

“Her campsite was found right at the old entrance of the mine.  The cooking fire was out and there was a full cup of cold coffee sitting on a nearby rock.  She took off her shirt before she disappeared.”

“Huh?”

“Her shirt was found on the ground by the coffee cup.  It was tangled up in a branch but I think that was probably from the wind blowing it around a little.”

“So she left a shirt behind?  Big deal.  I don’t think that says anything about her taking it off before she left.  Maybe it was just a random shirt from her backpack, or whatever she carried her stuff around in.”

“She only had one shirt.”

“Really?  How do you know that?”

“I gave it to her because she didn’t have one.  She only ever had one set of clothing and her shirt had fallen apart when I saw her sitting on a tree stump just up the road from here.”

“Maybe it was already off when she went missing?”

“Doubtful.”

“Hmm, well maybe.  That’s a strange detail if true.  So, these six people,” and that is when it struck me.  The thing that was really off about the old man’s story.”

“You know, you said that six people went missing. But then you only mentioned five specific people?”

…to be continued

A Faraway Song (Part 3)

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Feeling a little unnerved, I walked slowly toward the man who now stood with his hands clasped behind his back.  As I approached, a few more details about him became evident.  He was old. Very, very old, or at least looked that way.  His face was deeply wrinkled, in a way that made it difficult to distinguish his exact facial features.  It just looked like a huge mass of deep valleys and ridges, with stark black lines marking the boundaries.  His nose was strangely unwrinkled and looked odd jutting out from the crags of his face.  Blue eyes, almost midnight blue it seemed and wiry grey hair poking out from underneath a fedora were the last things I noted before I stopped about ten feet away from where the man stood.

“Were you talking to me?  Was that actually you?  Because it sounded like you were standing right next to me.”

The man did not answer, but just cocked his head a little bit to the side.

“Can you hear me?  I asked if that was you talking to me?”

“Where did you come from?”  That was his reply, delivered in a soft voice that still sounded like it was being spoken right into my left ear.  It actually made me turn my head, looking for someone else standing next to me, even though I could see his lips move with the words.

Finding no one there I replied, “How do you do that?  It’s really freaking me out.”

“Where did you come from,” he repeated, this time turning to face me completely.

I rubbed my ear in reply, some weird reaction that I suppose was my attempt to get his voice to seem farther away.  It did not work.

“Are you afraid to tell me where you came from?”

“No.  This place is just weird.  Really weird so far.  And your voice in my ear isn’t helping.”

He just kept staring at me, so I told him the whole story about coming to find the mine, getting lost, and my adventures up the road with the two people I had now nicknamed Window Man and Mr. Shotgun.  It was at that point I realized that people must have real names around here.

“What’s your name sir?”

No reply, just the stare.  Finally he turned and said, “Follow me.”

He walked toward the side of the house and I followed.  It was apparent that the front door of this place was not in use as it had a large dead tree branch blocking access to it.  From the fact that the branch was very decayed, and that the tree which is apparently had belonged to was now just a withered trunk, I figured that entry had not been used in a long time.  As the man opened the door and stepped into the house, he waved his hands in front of him quickly.  I thought I heard a chair push back inside, but when I also stepped through the door the room was empty and all was quiet.  We had entered into the kitchen, and it’s neat and clean appearance was a surprise given what I had observed outside the house.  The appliances were old but well-kept, and the small table was set with placemats and silverware for four.  The man opened a blue and green Westinghouse refrigerator and pulled out two empty glasses from the top shelf.  Filling them from the faucet on the cast iron sink, he put one down on the table and pointed at it.

 

westinghouse-refrigerator-1950-ref-tradingpost-com

westinghouse-refrigerator-1950-ref-tradingpost-com

“Drink some, it’s plenty warm out there.”

I raised an eyebrow at that, as I actually thought  it was a little cool out, but I was thirsty anyway and complied.  Placing the glass back on the table half-empty I tried moving my head around to see into some of the other rooms.  Had someone else been in the kitchen before I entered?  And if so, why had the brown-suited man shooed them away.  Brown Suit.  That was apparently going to be my nickname for him, as it appeared he was not going to give me his actual name.

“So, can you help me find the mine?  Is it nearby or was I way off?”

“The mine is closed and dangerous.  You need to stay away from it.”

“I know that.  It’s the whole point of why I want to go there.  You know, cool old mine, explore the darkness, you get it right?”

“It’s closed.  And dangerous.  You need to stay away from it.”

I sighed.  “So, I guess that means you aren’t going to tell me how to get there?”

Brown Suit started repeating himself again but I cut him off.

“Fine, I get it.  I’ll go ask someone else.”   I stepped toward the door but suddenly the man reached out and grabbed me, his long fingers wrapping around my forearm in a tight, vice-like grip.  As he did so, a shiver shot through my body, like when you touch a live electric wire, and I almost lost control of my bladder.  I yanked my arm but the man’s grip held.  His voice, still soft but hissing now, was loud in my ear and each word was accentuated very clearly. As he spoke he stood up, his wrinkled face coming very close to mine.  His eyes seemed to be sparking as he spoke.

“You must stay away from there.  It is dangerous.”  His grip got even tighter on my arm and I started yanking again, pushing back at the man’s narrow chest.

“Let me go!  Let go!”

Finally he did and I staggered toward the door, my balance upset by his sudden release.  I turned the knob but the door would not open.  The voice was in my ear again.

“Have a seat.”

 

…to be continued

A Faraway Song (Part 2)

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Out on the road again I assessed my situation.  Although I had been a little spooked by the man in the window,  I also was determined to not let that be my sole attempt at getting some directions.  How bad could this place really be?

I did a quick check of the surroundings as I rubbed my arms against a slight chill I was feeling.  As far as I could tell, the entire area that comprised Clyde Forks stretched out before me down the short distance of Cemetery Road.  That thought matched up with the rather old map I had brought with me for the trip, which basically had two roads on it and nothing else for quite a distance.  Just a lot of trees and water.  There were some more houses further down the road though and I started to slowly walk that way, taking in the place as I went.

The first thing I noticed was that the properties in the area basically fit into two categories.  Neat and tidy was the least prevalent, although there were some very well-kept yards.  The one I was nearest to was the best example of this, looking like it belonged in a photo shoot for some kind of lifestyle magazine for senior citizens.  It was a split-level brick home with accented corners, a wrap-around white porch complete with rocking chairs, neat planters full of petunias and perfectly manicured grass.  It even had this magnificent maple tree that shaded the porch and one perfectly bent limb that arched over the sidewalk, tendrils of maple leaves slightly obscuring a clear view of the home’s front door.  After my previous experience, you might think I would have run up to such an inviting place; however, it had a strange aura about it also.  It was set back quite a way from the road, and although the yard looked nice, it also had several rows of off-set cedar bushes that wrapped it in a protective embrace.  While I was contemplating that contradiction, I assessed the other, far more prevalent category of property in the area.

Still to this day I call these kinds of yards a small-town special.  I’m not sure if it is the lack of local ordinances on blight, a natural inclination of locals in these areas to collect things, or just a lethargy that infects people in these places.  Whatever it is, it always results in the same scene: scattered rusty cars, old pieces of farm equipment, broken pottery, overgrown yards and out-buildings bursting at the seams with clutter and junk.  There were several of these in Clyde Forks, and somehow, almost impossibly, they seemed more inviting than the nice brick house with the pretty porch.  I decided to walk on down the road toward one of these less attractive places and see what I could find.

 

old cars

old cars

I passed on the first one, which also had an open garage full of automotive parts, because there were no vehicles in the driveway.  The property almost directly across the street though had two pick-up trucks parked right in front of the door to a double-wide trailer.   The north edge of the driveway had two moss-covered old cars standing guard.   Everything seemed quiet as I walked up, a slight breeze making the seed pods at the top of the foot-high grass dance back and forth.  As I neared the trailer I could hear the television playing inside.  With a deep breath I knocked on the door. And waited.  The sound from the television went away and then a true silence settled on the place.  I could hear someone inside grunt and the low squeak of protesting sofa springs.  A few shuffled footsteps and then a click, but not of the door, it was something else inside the trailer.  About thirty seconds later the door did open and I was greeted by a very large man with a double-barreled shotgun.  He was both tall and overweight, dirty blue t-shirt hanging out sloppily at the sides of his overalls.  He was unshaven, with small dark eyes and long dirty-blonde hair, and his breathing was raspy and loud.  I raised my hand in greeting, which he returned by reaching into his pocket and pulling out a shotgun shell.  I took a step back, after which he flipped the lever that broke open the breach on the gun.  That was enough for me, and I took off running for the road, which I managed to reach without a shot being fired.  I looked back at the trailer then and saw that the man still stood there at his door, the gun now raised up and pointed not in my exact direction but definitely out toward the road.  My mind thought “He wouldn’t,” just as he fired, causing me to instinctively duck down.  The shots were well wide of me, rustling up some bushes across the road and kicking up gravel.  Then he calmly walked back into his trailer and I got up, shaking with fear and adrenaline.

Dusting myself off, I kept my eye on the door to the trailer as I also considered what to do next.  This was obviously not the friendliest place in the world.  I think that if I had been older I would have taken the hint, but twenty-something is not an age known for that kind of good judgement.  Instead, I looked around and was a bit startled to see a man, tall and dressed in a faded brown suit, standing at the end of his driveway.  The house behind him was old and tattered, the sides covered with what appeared to be roofing shingles, and the yard overgrown but otherwise clean.  His house was the last one I could see, and the road seemed to end by meeting up with his driveway.  It was maybe two hundred feet away and the man was beckoning me with a small wave of his hand.  I glanced back over at the trailer door and then heard a voice, which I took to be the brown-suited man, although it sounded like it was a person talking right into my ear.

“He’s done with you.  Get on down here before you get hurt.”

 

…to be continued

A Faraway Song (Part 1)

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k and p trail looking north at clyde fork road

The first part of this story happened awhile ago, back when there was still time in my days for aimless wandering and random missions seeking adventure.  Reading my notes from that time I almost feel like scolding myself, reaching out to slap my own face, some version of, “How could you just stop looking into what happened up there?” flashing through my mind.  It makes sense that way now, but I have to give back a little credit and kindness to my younger self.  Life got busier, my free time vanished and the mysteries of Clyde Forks became vague nighttime memories, haunting ones for sure, but just memories.  They were almost always beaten into submission by my own tiredness, and they would be gone in the morning.  I can honestly say that I would likely have left it that way except for two things.  One was a podcast I happened upon randomly in my search for audio accompaniment in quiet times.  I won’t name it here but you can find it without looking very hard.  The second was the re-reading of my tattered journal from back in the time when I first ventured up to the Clyde Forks mine.  That podcast had spooked me and my notes only made it worse.  Was there some part of what I knew, some piece of the odd and unsettling time I had spent in that area, that related to this mystery of a missing boy?

Back to the beginning…

I went there initially for a simple, if slightly dangerous, reason.  Having run out of other interesting ways to tempt death, I was planning on crawling around inside the abandoned Clyde Forks mine.  This was just another one of those places that you hear about among your adventuring buddies, some strange place way off in the Canadian brush-land.  So I went, driving well past what seemed to be the middle of nowhere, into a never-ending patchwork of water and forest.  Tired of traveling by the time I had located Clyde Forks itself, I pulled over on the side of the gravel road for the night and slept in the back of my truck, wrapped up in a light sleeping bag.  Two days later, frustrated by the apparently poor information I had on the location of this mine, I wandered back into Clyde Forks.  I guess it would be more accurate to say that I wandered  into what remained of it.

The town of Clyde Forks had been robust enough at one time, at least for a place that was located in the lumber and mining country of eastern Ontario.  Back then the Kingston and Pembroke railway ran past the town and the area was alive with all the usual activity of an active operation.  Boarding houses for the teams that pulled lumber out of the nearby forests surrounded Clyde Forks and the town itself had a decent sized population and quite a few stores and other buildings.  There was also a mine in the area of course, one which contained barite and small amounts of other useful minerals such as gold and silver.  The remains of those glory days still stood for the most part when I got there that day, covered in moss and overgrown bushes, grey buildings peeking out from behind foliage.  It was not a ghost town but it was definitely headed that way, with just the occasional modern house scattered around a small area along the Clyde Forks Road.  I had gone back with the intention of asking someone for assistance in finding the mine; however, once I arrived I found such a stillness and silence that I just stood there looking around.  It did not just seem quiet. It seemed vaguely hostile in a way I could not put my finger on.  Like walking into a local bar on a day when all the regulars are present and there are not many open places to sit.  You would be tolerated, but just barely.  Finally I shook my head and walked toward the nearest house which was down Cemetery Road, a label that did not improve the general feel of the place.  The house was made of red brick, various additions having been made over the years, all of them also in brick, but in colors that did not quite match the original.  Although it had a crumbling chimney and rotten wood window frames, the roof appeared to be brand new and the porch had been recently painted.  An odd feature that I noticed as I approached was that the ground floor windows were almost level with the scrubby grass that surrounded the home. They were also tall enough that an average-sized man could have stepped straight through the opening if the glass had not been in the way.  They made it seem as though the house had been slowly sinking into the ground over the many years it had been there, one day to be swallowed up with only its uppermost chimney stack sticking out to mark its location.

As I approached, it was obvious that someone was inside, as I could hear a radio playing and saw a few shadows behind the opaque window glass on the front door.  I knocked and the first strange encounter in Clyde Forks happened.

As soon as my first rap echoed through the house the shadows stopped moving.  The radio still played, a soft blues melody carrying through the humid air, but other than that there was nothing.  I stepped back and attempted to look into one of the windows; however, they were covered by thick, dirty white drapes.  I knocked again and this time the radio stopped playing and the silence of the area sprang back at me.  It was indeed an eerie kind of quiet.  I waited several minutes, wondering why no one was coming to the door.  I suppose you could attribute it to the remote nature of the place.  People in those kind of areas probably do not get many visitors, and when they do I expect they know they are coming before they arrive.  They probably like to just be left alone.  But if someone knocks on your door, and you know how obvious it is that you are home, well, you just answer it.  It is the polite thing to do.  Figuring that I needed to explain why I had intruded upon their seclusion, I knocked once again and called out.

“Sorry to bother you, but I just need some quick directions and I’ll be on my way.”

Again nothing happened.  Stepping back again to look toward the windows I almost jumped right out of my shoes.

Standing inside the window farthest away from me was a tall, angular man, grey-skinned and with a pinched face that had a long scar going over the right eyebrow.  He was dressed in a poorly tailored black suit and wore a battered grey derby with a red feather in the band.  The drapes, which still hung behind him shielding any view of the interior, made his dark clothing seem all the more stark. One of his hands rested on the window frame and the other was tucked inside his suit coat.  After I recovered my wits I gave him a half-hearted wave but was met with a stony look from his green eyes and nothing else.  As I stood there, with my heart still beating faster than usual in my chest, I felt that something other than the man himself was odd about this moment.  I soon figured out that this was little more than the window situation again, as I could see almost the entirety of the man in the window, all the way down his long legs to a point right above his feet.  Apparently those windows really did go all the way to the floor.  I glanced back at the man again and he remained as he had been, blinking only occasionally, expressionless and still.  His look reminded me of the way I imagine people stare at headstones of long departed love ones; somber and grieving but distant from their emotions, like it does not matter so much anymore.  I raised my hand to knock again but then thought better of it and walked off the porch, back toward the road.  As I did the radio clicked on in the house again, and that same blues melody followed me off the property.

 

…to be continued