I shall shift
the scene to 1980 and 1983, and tell you how, of all places, this epode in my
life has an indirect link, I hate to jump from the 50s, to the 60s, and early
70s, and right on into the 80s, and I hope I do not have to end my book with
this last story, but it belongs to
Donkeyland, even if the folks involved were not original inhabitants of the
Donkeyland, and when in essence, the neighborhood was not any longer considered ‘Donkeyland’, the
old passé neighborhood took on a new look, and a new era had started, but some
of the originals like Doug and Larry L., and the Juneau’s were still
living on Cayuga Street, or streets
nearby, and the Yankovec’s; when
this became a part of my life. It is a story about a haunted house, and how
spoilsports, or miseries –those so rebellious lovers, led to the cunning taste
of the devil’s pleasure, in a tragedy which occurred in that very house, my
grandfather’s house, that my mother inherited after he passed on. The very house
on Cayuga Street that I was raised in
with my brother Gunner also known as Mike, up to the age of eighteen to which I
left, in 1965 to marry a girl from Johnson High School, lasting but fifteen
months. And these two young lovers, perhaps both, if not just the male gender
in this case, ends up on the edge of a psychological breakdown. And although in
this tale of sorts, I will not mentioned this again: the house and the folks
whom purchased it later on, after this event, or incident, or melee took place,
they sold it dirt cheap, feeling it was haunted and would remain haunted
forevermore, then it got burnt some, once and repaired and sold again dirt
cheap, and burnt down a second time total, for that very reason, the reason you
are about to read. There is two sides to every coin of course, and to every
story, I will try to even it out, even if it is agonizingly possible, so take
heed in your selection in spouses is all I got to say as far as advice goes,
which is no saying much at all, and that is the best I can do in that area, and
both sides of the coin as I said, meaning: his and hers will surely be
lopsided. As Buddha says, “… Who sees in unawareness the fearful, goes,
burning, like a fire, the fetter subtle and gross?” (The Dhammapada)
He heard his
wife approaching, he was hidden in the basement at 186 Cayuga Street, and she
was to him the enemy, and he was to her the bastard, he beat her and was
insanely jealous, finally she found the courage to leave him. He had taken a two-week sick leave for this
very purpose, tuned the lights off in the cellar of his house—he was in his
early thirties, she in her late twenties, no kids, and there he waited or his
wife—now separated from him, living another life, with another fellow, on her
way to return for her clothes. He had parked his car a few blocks away from the
house; he had plans, diabolical plans, and savage realities.
He was handsome, tall, very tall, slim, and strong looking, and
appearing pleasant; my brother being a truck driver, he knew this fellow, and
that he was looking for a house to buy that is how my mother got to selling her
house. Likewise, the young woman, she was lovely to look at, shapely, and tall,
very tall, they complimented one another in the physical sense.
She had watched the house for days, it was dark, no lights on in the
upper attic bedroom, or floor, nor the main floor, nor the basement, to which
there was windows on all four sides of the house. No car was visible in front
or alongside of the house, she felt safe, today would be the day. Matter of
fact, it was the tenth day in a row she had not seen him, the car, and that she
had noticed the blackout of the house, plus he was not at work, he must have
went out of town she deliberated, — knowing he liked to hunt with his buddies
up north at their cabin, do some wild drinking and so forth.
‘Sure, he’s gone she said,’ convincing herself, telling her boyfriend,
‘I’ll pick up the clothes quickly and be in and out of the house in a matter of
minutes.’
I have called the couple Mick and Mindy to mention their real names is
not necessary, yet for those with a more curious appetite, who wish to check
the background of this story out, need only backtrack in old newspapers for
their real names and accurate details, I do not wish to disclose that part of
the story, be that as it may, it is my prerogative, knowing good and well they
are public figures, and allowable, but one way or the other doesn’t add or
subtract from the story. This is the very house Chick Evens, this narrator, was
raised in, and was introduced to Mick and Mindy whom seemed to be a very loving
couple.
The Day Mindy picked out to enter the house to bundle her clothes
together, the first day of winter let’s say of 1983, for it was cold, windy,
and dark and snow heavy on the ground, not unusual for a Minnesota wintery day.
Mick was under alcohol and drugs usage, sad, depressed and strangely sitting in
the cellar counting hour after hour, he had been going on ten-days, knowing his
separated wife would return, he had borrowed a hand gun from Doug, who lived
down the street, he was fiddling around with that to occupy his boredom, and he
reasoned if he couldn’t have her, no one could.
He heard a car pull up in front of the house, then steps alongside
the house, he could hear the unpaved hard snow and ice crackle, for he had not
shoveled the path around the house purposely so she’d not detect his
footprints. He drew his gun and a long butcher’s knife he had on the table, one
he had sharpened over and over and over, to which it could cut through
bone, he sat in front of this old hard
wooded table left by the previous owners, put the gun tucked between his belly
and belt, and the knife in his right hand, and quietly walked to the wooden old steps that lead up to the kitchen:
step by step, he crept up the basement stairway, with a little crackle and
crunch, and snap to each step, to meet her on her way out, in the kitchen
holding a bundle of clothes he immediately—opening the basement door—sighted
her, he struck his wife holding the bundle of clothes on the right-side of the
her neck, as quick as the clap of an eye,
severing the jugular veins and
arteries of her neck together with her uvula, as far as the glands; and
as he withdrew the blade he laid open, as she twisted about, the spinal marrow between two vertebrates, to
which she fell down dead, collapsed on the ground, her ghost inside of her
leaving the body in disarray. Then he
cried “Oh God what have I done!” Bowing his head, commented in despair, “I
surrender to all the devils…” as if his wife was his sacrifice to them.
He remained sanding looking at her for a long time without speaking or
eating—hours, and uttering this and that. A voice in his head saying, “What do
you have to say? …What do you have to
say?”
He turns around, as if awakening from a dream, passing his fingers
slowly across his lips and forehead, in a mournful voice. Her eyes appear insensible to momentary grief.
Her scattered hair entangled. In front of him, her spirit stood, although just
a shadow, it was trying to reach beyond the light, trying to grab back her
form.
“Hush! Hush!” his mind tells him. And he says to himself “Ah! What is
coming over me?” Vanquished by his own rage and terror, he flung himself into
the waves of a dance of madness. He has on him the odor of the corpse. In his
madness, if he could have, he would have, walked on the clouds, and assumed the
appearance of the devil himself.
His mind folds; tugged from its watery prison and thrown on land, like a
sea creature, now fit to abandon man’s rule. A mind subdued brings ease, if
only he could. How does man restrain this mind, it should not have been left to
roam alone! Whose stillness is aimless, with all wisdom lost, he is not in the
wide-awake a-day world, the healthy and the favorable left behind. His body a
form of drift wood, inside, like a useless chip of clay. Now the reader will
see what a foe may do to a foe, a hater to a hater, — and worse than that, the
mind of the ill detained, may do to another.
Then with the
butcher’s knife—after regaining his composure some, and counting the cost of his transgression—he
started to slice her up like a deer, putting each part, piece by piece in
plastic dark bags. The head he took special interest in, cutting the skull over
the temple bone, separating the two parietal bones, and the sagittal suture,
and most of the frontal bone to the point he cut through the membranes now you
could see the lobs of the brain, the cranium on the left side hung, touching
the wet bloodied floor…
After his drudgery and feat, he followed the direction which he had for
long days and nights planned, but his mind was so diminished from the enormous
slaughter once the body was efficiently packaged and complete in plastic bags,
he took them by car, and buried them three miles away, off highway 94E, under a
pile of snow—a blunder—told his coworkers at work, his wife left him for
another guy, perhaps in another state now, he got all the sympathy he’d ever
get, then and there. And then came spring.
The winter snows were melting, and the highway cleaners were out picking
up the garbage and trash the winter snows had covered, and thus, discovered
these plastic bags loaded down with body parts. And my fair readers, the left
is left for your imagination. But you can assume it was the obvious.
No: 1095/7-5-2015 / Note: This is a
reconstruction of the author’s mind, of an actual event, although the
reconstruction is his imitative events. The person was killed and butchered up
like a deer, and set on a highway island, covered under snow. The happening took place in the 1980s, and
the house was said to be haunted. The author did meet the people, but considers
this historical fiction because of his makeup. The names are changed for that
very reason also. The author knowing the house well, filled in what he figured
must have transpired, and whatever the case may be, the end results are more
truthful than untruthful.
