Paskagankee Page 7

  The professor cleared his throat and sipped his drink. He had offered refreshments to the officers but was unsurprised when they turned him down. “I’m sorry about that, Chief McMahon, but if I told you what I had to say over the phone, I’m afraid you would have hung up on me before I even half-completed my story.”

  “You’re not doing much to establish credibility with me so far,” the police chief told him. It was obvious the two officers weren’t in the mood for idle chatter, having just completed a hair-raising fifty mile trek along extremely icy roads. The chief had done all of the talking for the two officers to this point, and Professor Dye wondered what, if any, purpose the young female officer’s presence served.

  “Let me just launch into it then,” he said.

  “Good idea.”

  Dye took another nervous sip and noticed a look pass between the two officers. “I know what you’re thinking,” the professor said, “and yes, I do enjoy my sour mash. After you hear what I have to say, you might just reconsider and have a belt or two yourselves.”

  “Get on with it, Professor, please.”

  “Okay. Yes. Well, I came to this country four decades ago to research Native American folklore after graduating from Oxford University. I’ve made the study of that subject my life’s work, and I am convinced it has a direct bearing on what has begun happening in your town right now, Chief McMahon.”

  The police chief frowned. “You’re saying a Native American kidnapped Harvey Crosker and tore an old lady’s dog apart? How? And for what possible reason?”

  “No, Chief, that’s not what I’m saying.” Dye took another drink with a shaking hand, the whiskey sloshing down one side of the glass. “This is even more difficult than I had imagined,” he mumbled, more to himself than to the two police officers.

  “Listen, Professor,” McMahon interrupted, clearly out of patience. “We came a long way in lousy weather because you said you could help with a missing-persons investigation. Is that the case or is it not?”

  Dye took a deep breath and said, “Yes, I can help you. Are you familiar with the history of the Roanoke Island settlement in what eventually became the state of Virginia in 1587?”

  “I only know what little I learned in school and that was a long time ago. Wasn’t that where the English colonists disappeared without a trace?”

  “That’s right,” Dye answered, nodding. “The leader of the settlement, a man named John White, returned to England to procure supplies when they became scarce. When he arrived back in Europe, he was forced by the British to assist them in their war against the Spaniards. By the time White managed to return to Roanoke, three years had elapsed, and he found that the colony had simply vanished, seemingly into thin air. No trace of any of the inhabitants, either living or dead, could be found anywhere although all of their personal belongings were left untouched.”

  “That sounds more or less like what I learned in school,” Mike said. “It’s all very interesting, but what does any of this have to do with an ongoing police investigation in Paskagankee, Maine?”

  “The geographical area in which your town is located is home to a legend somewhat similar to the Roanoke Island mystery, although much more obscure.”

  “Go on.”

  “In the early 1800’s, when the town of Paskagankee was established, it was nothing more than a tiny village. But back then the town didn’t exist in its current location. The original village of Paskagankee was constructed on a piece of land some distance east of where the town square currently sits.”

  The chief gazed at Dye quizzically. The professor was glad to see he had at least gotten the man’s attention. He continued talking, his drink forgotten on the end table next to him. “The settlement existed in its original location only for a matter of perhaps a year or two, then things started happening to the residents, of which there were only a few dozen.”

  Officer Dupont spoke up. “Things? What sorts of things are you talking about?” It was the first time she had spoken since being introduced at the professor’s front door.

  “Bizarre, inexplicable things,” answered Dye. “Things like animals being massacred in horrific ways. Remember, in those days, animals weren’t necessarily pets, they were much more important than that. They were a critical element of survival, forming much of the village’s food supply, and so the deaths were taken quite seriously, as you might imagine.

  “Eventually, the massacre spread to residents. Villagers began being murdered; their bodies ripped apart in horrifying fashion. The surviving members of the village, and remember there were only a few, abandoned the settlement, eventually picking up stakes and reconstructing Paskagankee where your town exists today.”

  Chief McMahon shook his head. “That sounds utterly ridiculous. They moved a whole town because of a couple of ritualistic murders? I don’t think I’m buying that one.”

  “No, it’s true,” the young female officer interrupted. “I’ve lived in Paskagankee my whole life, up until a year or so ago that is, and there have been stories whispered for as long as I can remember about things happening hundreds of years ago in the area—things very similar to what Professor Dye just spoke of.”

  “Okay,” Mike said reluctantly. “But were the perpetrators ever caught? Was the town massacred by Native Americans? Is that what you’re getting at? And I still don’t see the relevance to our situation today.”

  Professor Dye hesitated. “Well,” he said, “here’s where it gets a little hard to believe.”

  “You mean up until now you’ve been telling us the believable part?”

  “Now you understand why I drink,” the professor said with a crooked grin.

  Neither of the two officers returned his smile, so he shrugged and continued. “I told you I’ve studied Native American folklore my entire adult life. Well, my research—and believe me when I tell you it has been extremely thorough—suggests that a deadly confrontation took place in the exact location of the original settlement of Paskagankee. It occurred in the late 1600’s between a group of traveling missionaries, working to convert Native Americans to Christianity, and a local tribe of Abenaqui natives.

  “As the legend goes, there had been a tryst between one of the missionaries and a young Abenaqui girl, who subsequently got pregnant and eventually gave birth to a baby girl. The missionaries returned to the area a couple of years later, and the young man who had fathered the baby discovered he had a daughter.

  “He made the determination that no child of his was going to be brought up as an Abenaqui and somehow attempted to kidnap the child. A vicious battle took place between the missionaries and the Abenaqui villagers, a battle in which nearly everyone from both sides was killed.

  “As the Abenaqui tell it, one of the missionaries, who had guns and used them against the Native Americans in the heat of the battle, shot the young mother. Whether it was accidental or intentional depends upon what version of the story is being told and will undoubtedly never be known for sure. In any event, the big lead musket ball ripped through the baby and then struck the mother, basically tearing the infant’s head right off her body.”

  Professor Dye paused, drinking from his glass of Jack Daniel’s. His hand had stopped shaking and his voice was strong.

  The chief had been listening, clearly spellbound. Now he said, “That’s quite a story, Professor. But I still don’t see the connection between a Native American legend from three centuries ago and a disappearance yesterday in my town.”

  “Yes, well, I was just getting to that,” Dye explained. “You see, I said almost everyone was killed and that is true, but there were a couple of survivors. The legend has it that one of the missionaries, the man who shot the mother and her baby, survived, albeit suffering horrific injuries. The missionary, incredibly, managed to walk out of the forest. He was suffering grievously from his wounds but did, in fact, survive and eventually returned to England, never to see America again.”

  “And?” said Chief McMahon.

&nbs
p; “And there was one other survivor. According to the Abenaqui legend, the medicine man from the doomed village, an ancient warrior possessed of powerful magic, leveled a curse upon the location of the massacre, a curse which allows the spirit of the grieving mother to possess the body of a human host, provided that host spends sufficient time in that specific location. The mother’s spirit will then have the ability to use that human host to extract retribution for her child’s tragic death.

  McMahon looked skeptically at the professor. “Retribution?”

  “Yes. People will be torn apart, literally limb from limb, exactly as her child was torn apart. Legend says the spirit will possess tremendous power, far beyond what is understandable either through physics or physiology.

  “This legend dovetails perfectly with the events which occurred in the original village of Paskagankee, which had the extreme misfortune of being constructed on the exact location where the massacre had taken place almost two hundred years prior. The young Abenaqui mother’s spirit managed to inhabit someone from that town, perhaps more than one person, and caused the horrific deaths of numerous settlers, eventually forcing the panicked abandonment of the town. The granite foundations of some of the buildings from that haunted settlement still exist today. I know they do because I’ve seen them.

  “I believe, in fact I am nearly certain, that you will find this is what’s happening now in your town.” Professor Dye looked up at the clock hanging on his living room wall. Nearly two hours had passed since the two police officers had pulled into his driveway.

  Chief McMahon studied the carpet at his feet. Ken could see he was trying to decide how to proceed. “You expect me to believe that a three-hundred-fifty-year-old Indian woman is haunting my town?”

  “Not haunting, exactly; at least not in the classic definition of the term. Rather, her tortured spirit has taken possession of some unfortunate citizen’s body. That person, whoever it is, is under the influence of the curse and is not responsible for his or her actions. But here’s the thing, Chief McMahon. The killing is not going to stop until the curse is neutralized. Until that happens, things are only going to get worse in Paskagankee. Much worse, I fear.”

  The police chief shook his head. “I’ve never been much of a believer in ghost stories,” he said. “In my experience, it’s always a flesh and blood human being that does the damage.”

  Now it was the professor’s turn to shake his head. “That’s exactly the point,” he protested. “It is flesh and blood that’s doing the damage. The spirit is helpless until she finds a host she is able to possess. Once that possession occurs, though, she becomes increasingly powerful and dangerous.”

  “I don’t know,” Chief McMahon said skeptically. “I appreciate you making the effort to contact us, and that’s one heckuva story, but I have to be honest here. I’m not convinced that the spirit of a brokenhearted Abenaqui mother is kidnapping people in my town.”

  “Oh, no, no,” said Professor Dye, shaking his head vigorously. “I didn’t make myself clear. She’s not kidnapping anyone. I told you, she’s killing them. She’s tearing their bodies apart.”

  At that moment, the chief’s portable radio squawked to life. All three people in the room jumped at the same time. “Chief McMahon, come in.”

  McMahon pressed the transmit button. “Yeah, Gordie, go ahead.”

  The voice of the dispatcher came through, strained and upset. “You need to get back here now,” he said. “We’ve found Harvey Crosker.”

  “That’s great news,” the chief answered. “Is he okay?”

  “Not exactly. Just get back here ASAP.”

  14

  THE WATER HAD BEEN falling from the sky virtually nonstop for nearly three full days. At times it came down as mostly sleet with the occasional fat snowflake mixed in, at other times it took the form of freezing rain, and on very rare occasions the atmosphere warmed just enough to turn the whole mess back into plain old rain. But at no time did it actually stop, and now several inches of ice and frozen slush covered the ground, with more being added to it continuously.

  The return trip to Paskagankee from Orono took Mike and Shari nearly thirty minutes longer than the drive south had taken, not because there was more traffic on the road; in fact, there was even less. But conditions had worsened to the point where even with a four-wheel drive SUV, Mike could not coax a speed of better than twenty miles per hour out of the Explorer without fearing he would lose complete control of the vehicle, and even that was achievable only on the straightest and most well-sanded portions of Route 24.

  Darkness fell long before Mike and Shari finally limped into Paskagankee, bypassing the police station and driving straight to the location where a passing jogger—A jogger? In this weather? Mike wondered what the hell people were thinking sometimes—had reported the gruesome discovery of a disembodied human head lodged high in a tree. The jogger had been forced to run almost all the way back to her home before reaching an area where cell phone coverage was sufficient to permit a call for help, and she had been panicked and near tears when she finally managed to contact Paskagankee Police dispatcher Gordie Rheaume.

  The moment Mike and Shari had reached the SUV after making their hurried departure from Professor Dye’s house, Mike called Gordie Rheaume on his cell phone and received a briefing on the few details currently available. What he heard made him glad he had stayed off the radio. Gordie advised him that Officer Jimmy Hadfield had answered the call from the hysterical jogger and could verify that the severed head did, indeed, fit the description of the missing Harvey Crosker.

  Mike told the dispatcher to ensure Hadfield had secured the scene—being careful not to disturb any evidence—then to call the county medical examiner, as well as the entire Paskagankee police force, including those officers at home on their days off, and instruct everyone to meet them at the location where the gruesome discovery had been made.

  It was now six-thirty p.m., and Mike and Sharon were hungry, tired and wired from coffee and raw nerves when they pulled the Explorer to the side of Mountain Home Road. The only access to the crime scene was via a more than two mile hike into the forest. An excited Jimmy Hadfield was waiting to escort them as they clambered out of the vehicle. “Chief, you’re not gonna freakin’ believe your eyes when you see this! It’s a goddamn head in a tree!”

  Mike raised his hands for Hadfield to stop, shaking his head and telling the young officer, “Don’t say anything else, Jimmy, I want to see it for myself when we get there, okay?”

  Hadfield turned sullen, saying, “Fine, whatever. I’ve been getting rained on out here for two hours waiting for you, that’s all.”

  Mike looked at Hadfield’s rain gear, still relatively dry, and said, “Well, you’ve been in your cruiser, right? I mean, you haven’t been standing outside this whole time, have you?”

  “No, of course not, it’s just . . .ah hell, never mind. I’ve just never seen anything like this in the five years I’ve been on the force, that’s all. It’s unbelievable.”

  Mike asked, “You left someone at the scene, I assume?”

  “Hell yeah, everyone’s there by now, including the ME. They’re all standing around waiting for you. What took you so long, anyway?”

  Mike raised his eyebrows and looked up at the dark sky, freezing rain falling into his face. “You may not have noticed Jimmy, but there are rumors of a pretty serious storm in the area. We ran into part of it.”

  “Oh. Yeah. Right.”

  They started into the woods. Mike hoped Jimmy hadn’t inadvertently destroyed evidence tramping around up there before anyone else reached the scene. The kid seemed to be a decent cop and a hard worker, but Mike had already discovered Hadfield might not necessarily be the smartest guy in the room, even when he was in the room all by himself.

  Officer Hadfield started out ahead, picking his way carefully along the narrow, rutted, ice-covered trail. Mike could not believe that less than four hours ago a woman had been running alone through this
remote and treacherous area. Judging by the hazardous condition of the trail, he decided she had been extremely fortunate not to have fallen and broken a leg in her desperate rush to get help.

  They had only been in the weather for a few minutes and already Mike could feel the damp chill seeping into his bones. He wondered if Shari felt the same way and figured she must. They were dressed in heavy all-weather gear stored in the back of the vehicle, so there was a measure of protection from the elements, but the dank blackness seemed a perfect match for his mood. Mike had come to Paskagankee, Maine, to get away from kidnappings and murders and horrific inhumanity. Now here he was, less than two weeks into his new job and he was waist-deep in . . . who knew what?

  The little group slogged along the narrow path as the freezing rain continued to fall, soaking them and slowing progress to a crawl. All around them, good-sized branches littered the rudimentary trail as trees were simply unable to support the extra weight of the ice. Gigantic firs sagged against their neighbors, uprooted but lacking the necessary room to fall to the ground. Several times the officers were forced to abandon the path and pick their way around blockages caused by the storm.

  Mike McMahon wasn’t a guy who put a lot of stock in myths and legends. He had seen plenty of evil in his fifteen-plus years of police work and knew that spirits and demons weren’t necessary to produce it; mankind was quite capable of gross inhumanity all by itself. But as he moved slowly through this vast, desolate forest, Mike found himself reconsidering Professor Ken Dye’s incredible tale.

  Was it really possible these woods had been the scene of a bloody massacre more than three hundred years ago and that the restless spirit of a grieving Native American mother was wreaking havoc on his newly adopted town? The idea had seemed ludicrous sitting in Professor Dye’s warm and cozy living room, watching the man sip whiskey as he calmly and rationally spoke words that amounted to utter nonsense. But now, Mike discovered he was not so certain. What had seemed ridiculous and even laughable a couple of short hours ago now seemed, if not likely, then at least not entirely outside the realm of possibility.