Tax Sale

Personally I love going to sales…any kind of sales. My favorite though are garage sales, storage shed auctions and the best of all – tax sales of local properties. I have bought a few properties that range in price from $200.00 for a small one bedroom house to $8,790 for a three bedroom house in one of the best parts of town.

In addition to getting properties at extremely low prices, when the previous owners leave they pretty much always leave stuff behind. I have found hundreds of books, furniture and tons of money. My best find was over $30,000 in the attic of a house I paid $1,000 for. Pretty good day’s earnings for just paying off taxes that somebody else couldn’t afford. But, when I bought the house at 678 Spicer Street I got more than anyone could ever imagine.

I searched the house right after I bought it. From the looks of the inside it had been empty for quite a few years. Everything was covered in a thick layer of gray dust. I mean that it was so thick that there was a mahogany dresser the previous owners. It had beautiful a beautiful dark brown and gold finish to it but there was no way to see until I took a heavy sponge and washed it clean. When I first saw it I swear to God that it was dull and worn but that was an illusion created by the dust. Once I cleaned it and everything it was beautiful. I knew at that moment that I was looking at a sale price of almost $2,500 dollars.

The bedrooms were full of what they call “vintage” clothes. Every outfit in the closet came from the late 1970’s. I could not believe all of the polyester suits, bell bottoms and a few gunny sax dresses. It was like taking a trip in a time machine back to a time when good fashion didn’t matter.

Then I walked back down to the first floor and then down the thirteen stairs to the basement. There was so much there it was mind boggling. The strange thing was everything in the basement was antique and was used in medical treatments as well as medical experimentation. Oh my God, I thought. This place looks like the shop Dr. Frankenstein had in that old horror film I saw when I was a kid. The walls were lined with old lead covered bottle. It was hard to see but I saw that each bottle had a different body part inside.  There were brains, lungs, hearts and everything else. Each bottle was marked M or F and then a date. Each one also designated what blood type the organ was. “What in the hell is this,” I asked out loud.

Places like this were common back in the 18^th and 19^th centuries but not in the last hundred and fifty years or so. I knew that because of some documentaries on the Discovery Channel. Doctors and not quite doctors set up operating rooms in their basements for people who didn’t want to be seen in a hospital. God knows how many people were treated here and better yet…how many people died here.

I looked around a little bit more, especially at the jars that held the organs. There was a code of some kind written. The one with the brain has this written on a white, well yellowed, paper…the code read “Fe-MT3-22-46A.” Okay, I figured the “Fe” meant female. The MT3 could mean the third Tuesday of March and lastly that last piece of the 46. I could only guess but I thought it meant 1946. That had to be it. Every jar had a different code but they were all the same format.

On a desk in the corner of the room were a desk and a lamp. I reached over and turned the light on. It cast a strange light…seriously strange. It was like the light you see in an old color photograph in your mom’s photo album. It was a white light but not quite white. It was more of ivory. Yeah, it gave the area a really cool look but I would not want to have to live with it.

The drawers were unlocked. I opened the bottom one on the left side. It was full of small jars and vials. I looked in them and found that each one was a vial of blood and each had the same codes as the jars with the organs. I quickly closed that drawer and open another. Inside was a book. It was the “doctor’s” notepad. Inside was page after page of the codes that I had been finding. I leafed through the pages until I found “Fe-MT3-22-46A.” It was a woman named Anna Louise Bailey. She was 22 years old and she came in on March 19^th 1946 for an abortion of twin girls. That was all the information that was in the book but there was one thing, from looking at the book that “doctor” had a massive business in abortions

Taking the book with me I went back up to the living room, opened my laptop and ran a Google search for Anna Louise Bailey. I really wasn’t expecting anything but there were more than a thousand site dedicated to that woman and what happened to her. I looked over a few of them and they all told the same story. Miss Bailey disappeared on March 19^th. There was an investigation but the cased was closed after no trace of her could be found.

“Oh shit,” I yelled. It echoed through the room as clear as if I was standing at the edge of the Grand Canyon. “What in the hell did I stumble into?”

I sat there for a good forty five minutes or so taking in everything I had seen and read. What went on down in that basement. I had to look around some more so I went back down stairs. I ignored the jars and the desk. I was interested in what was behind door number one. I walked slowly toward the door.

Did you ever get a feeling of total horror…the one you get when you are watching a really good horror film? Well, that was the way I was feeling and it got stronger as I approached the door. By the time I reached for the doorknob my body was shaking so bad that I could barely stand up.

The door opened slowly, held back by decades of rust and dirt. There were no windows in the room and no ventilation so the air was thick, heavy and smelled of mold and fungus. There was also no light so I felt my way along the wall until I found a light switch. As soon as I turned it on I saw what I kind of expected but I didn’t want to see. There were bodies, a hundred bodies at least. They were set into different positions. The one closet to me was holding a rugby ball and was placed in a running pose. Others were posed as ballet dancers, trapeze artists, soldiers and pin-up models. The one thing I noticed that on every body the skin was completely removed. All I could see were their muscles, tendons and some of their bones.

Honestly, I had no idea that such a thing ever happened but the thing was I was not shocked to see them. They were strangely beautiful and very, very artistic but I knew what I had to do. I took my cell phone and called 911. I wasn’t quite sure how to report it or what to say. I just explained it the best way I could and within minutes police, EMT’s and the media showed up and the tedious job of matching DNA and other ways to match the bodies to their internal organs and skin, which I found behind door number two. There was a third door but I didn’t open it and I didn’t want to be there when anyone else opened. I may have been a coward but after all that I had seen I didn’t want to see any more.

I walked up the stairs half sick half frightened. I laid down on the floor. My mind was swirling as they carried up one body after another. All of the, once they were in the light, seemed almost natural…almost alive. The jars were next and then the vials of blood. Honestly I couldn’t watch. It was just way too disturbing for me so I closed my eyes until they were gone.

A little more than seven months went by before I heard from the authorities. They had found 135 bodies in the basement. Every one of them died back in the early to mid 1940’s and every one had some kind of surgery done when they died on the table. Yet, not one of the families notified the police of a missing family member and there were no records of their deaths. Then they said something that shocked the hell out of me…of the bodies they identified all of them had gravesites at one of the local cemeteries. Right after that they added something to the story…all of the graves had coffins buried in them and every one of them had a department store mannequin inside.

“How many did you identify,” I asked.

“Out of the 135 we found we could only identify 131,” one of the officers said. “The rest are at the morgue. We have no idea what to do with them.”

I thought a minute. There was an idea I had and I wasn’t sure it was going to work. I excused myself and went out and made a call on my cell. A few minutes later I had my answer and it really felt like it would work.

“Well,” the officer asked as soon as I walked in the door.

I explained my idea and asked permission to claim the final four bodies. He called someone…God knows who and a few minutes later he came back and he told me that they were willing to do anything to get those bodies out of the morgue. Then he added that the lab techs down there were getting freaked out just knowing that they were there.

The next morning I arrived at the morgue. The bodies were waiting for me. I loaded them into a truck and drove over to the local art museum. They unloaded them and then placed them in a sealed glass display area. It was the first time ever that deceased human bodies were used as sculptures. The exhibit is still on display for the public to admire so, never ever again, will these people be forgotten.

Gnomesworth

I have heard strange noise whenever I fell asleep. They range from beeps and bangs to musical tones playing all night long. Now, normally I am a solid sleeper. Nothing can wake me not even my wife when she calls me for breakfast but one night it was different, so different that I will never forget it!

I was lying in bed under my favorite Cleveland Browns blanket. My wife was next to me wrapped up in her black and yellow Pittsburgh Steelers blanket. The room was dark except for the light coming from the bathroom.

I was lying there for about an hour when the music started. It was kind of fun music like you heard in the 1970’s. I didn’t know what the tune was but it was so good that I couldn’t help tapping my feet to it.  It was strange but suddenly I heard feet, little feet tapping to the music the same as I was. They were keeping a good rhythm and that made my feet move even more. The thing is, whoever it was could not only dance but they could talk.

“It has been a while since we have been here,” one of them said. “We used to very well here. King Leonard will be proud when we show him what we found tonight.”

“I heard the female talking earlier,” another one said. “I think she was saying that she bought some new ones today.”

The king will be proud,” the first one said. “I think that his highness is getting tired of getting those smelly ones we usually give him. Remember when we took Shaquille O’Neal’s, the poor king couldn’t breathe for a week. We have to find the new ones…at least four of them.”

I was still in bed listening to all of this. Four of what I wondered. I decided that I had to look. I had to find out who or better yet what they were. I slowly crawled to the end of the bed keeping as quiet as I could. I looked through the darkness and saw four tiny little men climbing up the front of my dresser. I watched them as they went about climbing and opening the bottom drawer.

“Is this it,” the first one asked.

“I don’t think so,” the second one replied. “It is full of the female’s underwear.” He looked down and smiled. “It smells like flowers.”

“I don’t care what they smell like…we don’t need those,” the first said. “What drawer were they in the last time we were here?”

“That one,” one of the others said as he pointed at the second drawer on the other side of the dresser.

I started to sit up. It was kind of fun to watch these little people scamper around. I watched them climb down from the open drawer they were checking out. Rather than all of the climbing to the other drawer one of them climbed up, opened to drawer and climbed. It was then that I heard the sweetest little giggle I had ever heard. Then all four of them climbed up and into the drawer. I thought a minute as I heard a few more giggles…what was in that drawer? Then I realized that my socks were in there and yes, my wife did buy me new ones today.

I stood up, still remaining totally quiet. I walked over to the dresser and I saw the four people sorting my socks. I guessed they were looking for the new ones. “They are right here,” I said I as pointed to a small pile of socks. Immediately they all froze. “You do not have to be afraid,” I said as I handed then one of the socks.

“Our king will be grateful Milord,” the first one said. I asked them who they were. “We are part of a kingdom called Gnomesworth. It is a small land in the garden right behind the round red plants.”

“You mean the tomatoes,” I asked.

“If that is what you call them Milord. Then our land is behind the tomatoes.” I asked them why they needed my socks. “They are sent to our king. He takes them and spins them into gold so that we may buy things in the market.”

I watched as they took four of my new socks and scampered into a crack in the baseboard. I never saw them again but when my wife buys me socks I always have her buy an extra pair which I leave laying out by that crack. I figured that would save them the effort of having to climb and search the dresser.

One night I left an extra pair of socks near that crack. In the morning the socks were gone and in their place was a pile of gold. I guess that was a thank you for the socks and I never got to say “you’re welcome.”

When Dragons Saved The Unicorns

In the northern part of Agoria was a valley. It has never been on any map and very few humans ever wander through the forests that covered the floor and spread up onto the sides of the surrounding mountains. Because of its isolation many of the creatures that modern man consider mythological have survived and thrived. The most numerous are the unicorns. Their numbers, although started out as low, have bounced back with one thousand adults and nearly as many babies.

The last humans to see this land were hunters from the local farms who were hunting for meat to feed their families. Oft times they would spend weeks or even months searching the valley for an animal that was suitable for food.

In desperate times, like when snow covered the area for weeks, they would eat their cows and pigs but when thing got bad they often killed and ate their prized horses and when the horses were all dead they needed the local wildlife was hunted to fill the need. Once the local wildlife was exhausted they had to go to even more extreme measures which meant spreading out to find food.

A small pass was found in between two mountains was found during one of those times. It was just barely enough for a small man to fit through but they knew that it had to be done so they did what they had to and they entered the pass and found themselves in the plush valley.

The hunters covered the area but all they could find that matched anything they knew was able to be used as food were the unicorns…female unicorns to be exact since it was thought that their meat would be more tender and more flavorable. There were only a few taken at a time but because of the hunting the unicorn population was slightly on the decline.

On one trip the hunters killed a dozen of the unicorns. They were hauled back to the farms, cut up and served for their meals for more than a month.

On the last trip a group of hunters cornered a herd of unicorns against the side of a sheer cliff. They aimed their crossbows at three of the females in the herd. There was a panic within the herd and their screams could be heard throughout the valley.

The hunters pulled their bow back and when they released all three of the unicorns fell. However, not being satisfied with their kill they reloaded and aimed again.

In the distance there was a roar that sounded more like the eruption of a volcano rather than an animal.

The sky darkened as several dragons began circling in the air above them. Barely above the treetops they flew, their eyes locked on the hunters who stood in fear beneath them. In one quick movement a large black dragon landed between the hunters and the unicorns. Spreading its massive wings it completely shielded the unicorns. Its eyes were locked on the men, following every movement they made. A second later, while the other dragons circled above, the black dragon raised his head and shot blue flames into the sky.

The hunters, in a pure panic, ran screaming back into the pass, going home without their kill.

The black dragon followed them growling and spitting fire as it moved. As soon as the men rushed into the pass the dragon stopped and looked at the rocks surrounding the opening. It let loose with an horrendous growl as if it was issuing a warning to the hunters.

All the dragons landed around the first one. They looked at each other as if they were communicating. The black dragon looked at the pass. It growled again and all the other dragons followed suit. Suddenly each dragon opened it massive mouth and blue flames covered the pass.

They were not trying to kill the men who had already made it through. Their combined heat melted the surrounding rock and fused it over the entrance.

That was the last time human could ever invade the valley. It may have been fear or it made be the stories that became fairy tales to scare children into behaving but no one ever went to that pass again and the animals in that valley lived peacefully and are still there if anyone has the nerve to look.

The Quilt Of Elsabeth

There is a long history in America of people getting together, sewing hundreds of small pieces of cloth together and creating a beautiful piece of art. Quilts have been found going back to the first settlements on the North American continent. Then they were used for warmth but even then there was an artistic touch to them. Now, there are shows and exhibits all around the world and some of the pieces they present are worth thousands, if not millions, of dollars. However, there are still hundreds of thousands of quilts still hiding in closets, attics and basements. This story is about one of those…

There once was a cabin just outside the city of James Fort, Virginia. It was not part of the settlement. For some reason the person who built the cabin was chased from the colony immediately after the settlers made landfall. Whoever they were they did something to offend everyone in the town because, for some reason, their name isn’t listed among those who made the trip. It was ripped from the pages and possibly burned.

The cabin’s stone foundation and some of their possessions were all that were found when a group of students discovered the site in the early 21^st century. They did do the right thing and report the sight to the university who did a complete archeological study of the site, removed everything they could find and mapped the site as well as they could. But, once they left the students returned and did their own expedition.

They did not stay at the site of the foundation. They knew that was picked clean so they started searching farther and farther away. They did decide one thing. They knew where the colony was set up and they thought that there would be no way that whoever built that cabin would do anything back in that direction. Besides that…most times when someone built a cabin they often built a second smaller building where they stored the things that were of no use in the main house.

The colony was to the east so they started searching to the west of the site. Eileen Withrow, a senior at the university, seemed to be the one who took charge of the others. She led them into the forest and to a clearing about fifty yards from the site. It was almost as if she had radar or something because she led them to the far edge of the clearing where a large black rock was setting on the grassless ground. “Dig here,” she said. “Dig right next to that rock.”

They dug down about three feet and then, when they didn’t find anything, they started digging in a wider and wider circle. Eventually, they had a hole about fifteen feet across and three feet deep. “Go back to the center and dig deeper,” she said. “It is here. I know it’s here somewhere. I would stake my life on it.”

There was a sense of urgency in her voice so they did as she said. They dug another three feet down and started spreading out when suddenly there was a sharp clanging sound. It was a very distinct sound. They heard it before when they dug in one of their backyards and found a really nice metal box that was filled with rings, necklaces and bracelets. It wasn’t a big box but they sold the contents to a local jewelry store for a little over $200.

“There…keep digging there,” Eileen yelled. “That has to be it.” All of the people there were either staring into the hole or they were already starting to celebrate the treasure that they just found. But, the celebrations were not long lasting.

The first thing they hit was a small iron pot. It was sealed with a lid which was a surprise. They brought the pot to the surface. It took a couple minutes to finish pulling it out. For being as old as it must have been it was in surprisingly good condition. They pulled out a butter knife and pried the lid of. Pretty much everyone expected to see something, maybe some gold, hid inside but rather than gold the pot was full of dried bones. “Hell…,” someone said, “…at least we got here in time for dinner.” This made everyone laugh and lightened the mood for pretty much everyone.

Two of the people jumped back into the hole and started digging again. It was just about another two feet until they heard that sound again. This time all of them were more cautious with their celebrations. They dug slowly around the edges. It was a lot bigger than the pot that they had found and it was a rectangle rather than a circle.

They dug around the edges. It was big…really big. It took about an hour for them to dig down along the edges. There were a lot of guesses about what they had found. A number of them involved treasure but no one was actually willing to say anything for putting a curse on the find.

The more they dug the more of the box they could see. It was a dark wood…possibly a walnut. At one time there must have been a luster to it but the age dulled it. The wood was smooth and engraved with a cross that spread from one side of the box to the other. At each tip of the cross there was a brilliant red stone. They could see silver handles and hinges. The box, even though still half buried, was showing its beauty and the excellent taste of the person who owned it.

“Get it up here,” Eileen yelled. She wasn’t 100% percent sure it what she was looking for but her heart was beating hard and her breaths were shorter and faster than normal. “I want to see what it is.” Her voice was insistent and a bit scary but they did as she said and brought the chest up and set it on the grass next to the hole. “Open it,” she said as she walked over to it.

There was a big lock on the front. It was old and rusty so it should be easy to open. No one had a key, hell not one of them knew where to get a four hundred year old key so one of the men walked over grabbed a rock and smashed the lock into pieces. The whole chest shook as it was hit. They were nervous to do any more but they removed the lock and started opening the lid. It moaned and creaked as they lifted it but they did what they had to do to get it open. Once they lifted it up so far it fell backward. The hinges were strong and they held the weight of the lid.

“What’s in it,” a girl in the back asked. The same question echoed through the kids as they all moved closer trying to see what was in the chest. “Is there money,” she asked once again echoing what everyone was asking.

Eileen and a couple of the others walked over and looked carefully at what was before them. There was a leather pouch. It was black leather and had a little silver chain. Eileen opened it and found a piece of paper inside. It was aged and brittle and it had writing on it that looked a lot like the quill writing they used on the Declaration of Independence. The ink was no longer black as it was originally written. It was kind of a rusty brown. They knew that it was real and it was old. There were enough TV shows that had old signatures being sold that they knew what to look for.

Eileen took the paper gently in her hand and she started to read it. “To anyone who may find this may God bring all of his blessings upon you. I know that God is calling me and I have less than a fortnight to finish my business. I was cast out for not believing in the Holy Mother. I do understand their feelings although I do not understand their wisdom. I am leaving this chest for the daughter who was taken from me upon her birth. Please deliver this to her and have her complete the mission God has given me to perform. Other than that I have no other requests. If you honor me by doing the small task I ask of you then I shall be able to rest in Heaven in the arms of God.” It was signed Elsabeth Clarke-Worthington.

The paper was folded neatly and carefully and placed back into the pouch. They would take it to the university the next day after they found out everything about the chest and everything that it contained. They looked in and there was a wooden box that filled nearly half of the bottom of the chest. Two of the guys brought it up and set it next to the chest. This box was plain. It was walnut just like the chest but it didn’t have the silver pieces that the chest had. It has simple wooden handles and nothing else on its surface.

It opened easily. There was no sound or hesitation with the hinges. It just fell open. Inside was a quilt or maybe it would be better to say and half of a quilt. It was dark violet and black and the design was one called in modern day as a log cabin. A very basic design to say the least but it did have a strange beauty to it. Beside it were strips of material. There were dozens of stripes of linen with the same violent and black colors as the quilt. Along with all of that were homemade bone needles and the thread that must have been used on the quilt in the state it was in.

The rest of the chest had clothes, several cooking tools and yes, there were some coins. They were shillings and they were silver….tarnished beyond belief but they were still silver and they may be worth some money. A few had the face of King James I on them and then there were others that had the portrait of Queen Elizabeth I.

The only thing Eileen was the box with the quilt and the material in it. There was some connection to it that she didn’t realize and she wouldn’t have been able to understand if she did. Anything else…anyone there could split and do with what they wanted.

Eileen grabbed the letter and the box that held the quilt and she walked home. The others called to her but she just kept going.

Once she got home she read the letter. There was something about it and something about that box. She didn’t know how to sew so why in the world would she take a quilt? She always claimed that when it came to art she didn’t know a t-square to piece of chalk. Why did she take what she took? She wasn’t going to think about it. She was dirty and tired so she put the box and the pouch under her bad and then she went, took a nice long hot bath and, at last, got ready for bed.

The next morning she woke up late. There was no school so she had the whole day with absolutely nothing to do. The first thing she did, even before getting dressed, was that she dug out that letter and read it over and over again. Then she took the quilt out and looked at each stitch. She counted the stitches, looked at when they were sewn to get the pieces to fit and lastly she studied the pattern the material was sewn in. She looked at the quilt and the pieces again and thought to herself, how hard could it be?

She packed everything away, lifted the box and took it over to her grandmother’s house. She knew that she couldn’t sew by hand but maybe with a machine she just might be able to carry this off. “Grams,” she said, “I have to borrow your sewing machine.” Grams asked what Eileen was up to and Eileen’s answer was that she had a school project to finish before the following Monday. Grams agreed and gave Eileen some tips before she left for the day for a bingo tournament down at the church.

Eileen was all alone with a quilt that was well over 400 years old, some pieces of cloth and the faintest idea what to do next. She took two pieces of material. It was so fragile she didn’t put any pressure on it. She placed it under the presser foot. She decided that the old thread may be too fragile to be used so she loaded the machine with linen thread.  The first few stitches went well. The material flowed beneath the presser foot just like a new piece she would have bought at the Walmart.

Piece by piece they went together a lot easier and a lot faster that Eileen would ever have expected. The pattern seemed to make itself as she kept sewing. It was so beautiful she couldn’t take her eyes off of her work. By the time she was starting to feel hungry for lunch she was down to the last few pieces. She did stop to go down and make a cup of Ramen noodles. It was all she wanted. She wanted to hurry, finish and get back to work.

She went back upstairs after finishing her lunch. She sat at the sewing machine. There were only ten pieces left in the box. By now she was good enough to sew those pieces in less than ten minutes. She stitched each one so carefully. There was no way she was going mess it up…not now. The last few stitches went into place. The corners were perfect. The seams were all ¼ inch just like that woman on TV said they should be. After more than four centuries…Elsabeth Clarke-Worthington’s quilt was finally finished.

Eileen held the quilt up in front of a mirror smiling. “Elsabeth, I know you can’t hear me,” she said. “I know that I am not the daughter you wanted to fulfill your dream but I am the next best thing.” She started folding the quilt up to put it away when someone touched her on the shoulder. Eileen stood up and turned around. There was a woman standing just inches from her. She was dressed in period clothes. Although they were dirty it was easy to see that she was nobility.

“Young lady,” the woman started. “I do not know how to thank you. I have waited so long for that quilt to be completed. Now my wandering soul may finally be at rest. Please know that I will be watching you, protecting you…being the mother I wish I could have been to my own daughter. You are blessed my child.” Then she just faded away.

The next day Eileen took the quilt, the letter and the story over to the Jamestown museum. Once they heard the story of Elsabeth and how she was run out of James Fort they were more than interested in the quilt. They took it, restored the parts Elsabeth sewed and it currently hangs in a museum in Richmond where Elsabeth Clarke-Worthington is given the respect that she deserves.

An archeological project was started at the site of her cabin and the site where the quilt was uncovered. So far they have found enough eveidence to tell the entire truth about this woman and he missing daughter whose great-great-great-great granddaughters are expected to attend a ceremony at Jamestown to make Elsabeth a citizen of the Jamestown colony, an honor too long overdue.

Eitan

There were so many times when people would move from Allegheny Heights. Lot of times it was because it was a small town and there were opportunities in the larger cities. Other times it was just that the young people heard about so many other things to do in other areas and others just didn’t like the idea of being in a small town isolated from the rest of the world by the mountains that surrounded the town. It wasn’t very often though when someone actually left the outside and moved in the town.

On June 12th 1994 a young man named Ralph Ferry moved from San Francisco to Allegheny Heights. He was just 25 and, according to the women in town, his looks made him the desirable man in the valley. He was memorable because not only was he good looking and smart but he was the first person to move into town in over forty years.

Ferry set up a shop right on Main Street. It was strange for a young man but his shop, after a few weeks, started baking some of the best pastries and desserts in three states. He became one of the most popular people in town and he made every person he met feel special even to the point of buying food for a few of the neediest people in town. Eventually he married a local girl and had two kids…a son and a daughter.

One day, just as the sun was rising, he got a strange phone call asking if he knew where his brother was. “I don’t have a brother,” Ferry replied. The caller insisted that yes Ferry did have a brother named Eitan. Again and again Ferry said the same thing, “I don’t have a brother,” and then the caller got more vocal about it. Finally Ferry hung up and tried to go back to sleep. It took a couple hours but he finally drifted off and he slept well until the alarm went off at 7:30.

The morning was just like any other. Ferry got up, showered, had a piece of toast for breakfast and then he went to the shop. Most of the employees were already there and working hard when he got there. They had to be they had an order from a shop in Pittsburgh. Right away he started dipping doughnuts in his special jamocha/white chocolate spiral frosting but as he did he could hear some of the workers talking.

“Did you hear Diana Fergusin was found dead this morning,” one of them said. No one said they had heard anything so the story continued. “She was found in her bed. I heard them say that her face was ripped apart so bad they hardly recognized her. She was fully dressed and there were no signs of a rape and nothing was stolen. They don’t know what to make of it.” Ferry didn’t say a word. He just did his thing and he didn’t want to hear any of the gossip that usually took place but he was interested in the story about Miss Fergusin.

By noon all of the order had been baked and sent out and the usual customers had come by to get their usual treats so Ferry decided to take the rest of the day off and maybe walk out to the pond at the south end of town and do some fishing.

Hr was walking down the street when an old man of about ninety years of age walked up to him. Ferry never met this man but he was polite and he stopped to talk to him.

His name was Paul Friedrich. He moved to town back sometimes in the 1950’s and he always kept to himself in a house out off of Shannon Drive. “Mr. Ferry, how are you this bright day,” he asked with a very thick accent.

Ferry said that he was doing well. “And how might you be sir,” he asked.

“I am a bit troubled,” he replied. “I have heard troubling news about your brother and I don’t want to share it with you.”

“What is this,” Ferry asked. “You are the second person today who has asked about a brother I do not have. I am an only child and I have been since birth.” He was starting to get frustrated so he calmed his mind, bid the old man farewell and he once again started for the lake.

Before he got thirty feet away he heard the old man yelling, “Eitan, needs you.”

He stopped just for a second and yelled back, “I don’t know any Eitan and I don’t have a brother. I am an only child!”

All he heard as he walked away was the old man saying the Eitan needed him. Ferry ignored it the best he could but he was really upset before he got out of earshot. He did make it to the fishing hole but he didn’t enjoy it much. Even the five pound bass he caught didn’t lighten his spirit. He was there about an hour give or take ten minutes before he started home. Luckily the old man was nowhere to be seen but as he walked by this one house he felt a strange, almost magnetic, attraction to it. He didn’t stop. He just rushed by and got into his house as quickly as humanly possible.

On the way in he grabbed the day’s mail. It was the usual stuff, bills, ads and a letter or two from his mom and his uncle. They kept in touch by writing a letter so he would get it every Thursday. It always told the same stuff…how the family was doing things like that. He read them but usually when he went to bed. Those letters were better than taking pills to put him to sleep. He took his mom’s letter and went up to bed and, as usual, he was out in less than ten minutes.

The next morning he woke up and went through his usual routine but since it was bill time and the grocery ads were there he stopped to look at the mail. There was the gas bill and the cable bill. That one was thicker than usual.  Ferry thought maybe he should cut down on his pay-per-views. Then he saw something strange. There was a letter in a yellow envelope. It was addressed to Eitan Feiglin. It was the right address but there was no one living there by that name and as far as Ferry knew there was no one in town with that last name. “What in the hell is going on here,” he asked as his wife came down the stairs.

“What is it honey,” she asked with a smile. No one knew why but for some reason Ferry’s wife always had a smile on her face.

“There is some guy named Eitan and for some reason everybody thinks he’s my brother,” he said in a steady tone.

“But you don’t have a brother,” she said as she walked up to him.

“I know,” he said as he ducked a kiss. “I am an only child and always have been.” The conversation for another couple of seconds and then it switched to something less irritating to Ferry. That seemed to let him relax some because he was actually looking forward to getting in the car and driving to work. He had his regular radio show he listened to on the way and that actually made him smile at least until the news came on.

“Police report that the call came in at 3:15 AM. On reaching the scene the body of Marjorie Bachmann was found in her living room. A police spokesman said that Ms. Bachmann’s face was ripped to shreds as if it were clawed by an animal. The rest of the body was untouched. They are searching for a link between Ms. Bachmann and Diana Fergusin who was killed less than twenty four hours before,” the announcer said before they went back to talk show Ferry was listening to.

He knew that was going to be the talk of the office so he prepared for it by mentally tuning it out. If you ask him there was no such story and there was nothing on the radio except the normal talk show about paranormal site in the Grecian Islands. He was right. He opened the door and that was the first thing he heard but there was something new…the police had found another, unidentified, body under a bush in the center of town. From what he heard the body was in the same condition as the others. Another new bit of information that was not on the radio was that all of the three bodies were completely drained of blood kind of like a vampire would do but Ferry had never heard of a vampire that mutilated his or her victims. But then again the only vampires he had seen looked like Tom Cruise or only fought werewolves. This stuff didn’t seem right even in a Hollywood movie. Once again he put it in the back of his mind and got to work.

Ferry went on with his day and when the shop closed he locked up and started for his car. When he walked the block to the parking lot he saw that the Allegheny Heights police had his car surrounded and they were searching in the trunk and under the seats.

‘What are you doing,” Ferry yelled as he walked up to the car.”What are you doing with my car?” They went on to explain that they had a description of the man who was going around killing the women in town and that he fit the description to a T. “I was here all day,” he screamed as the police walked over and placed Ferry in handcuffs.

They took him to the station and locked him in one of the interrogation rooms. He was in there at least six hours before one of the detectives walked in and questioned him. Again and again they asked him if he knew any of the murdered women. Of course he denied any knowledge of them. They measured him, weighed him and finally took pictures of him. Then for some reason they walked in and just let him walk out but on the way out they asked him one more question…they asked him if he knew  a man named Eitan Lonbroso.

“No, I never heard of the man until today,” he said. Since then I have been getting phone calls about him. I got a piece of mail for him and I have been asked a lot if I knew him. They say he is my brother…I never had a brother.” He was visibly upset and tired. It was hard for him to control his anger but he also knew that the police station was no place to let loose.

He decided that he was too shaken to drive home so he started walking. About a mile from the police station he heard an old man’s voice in the darkness. He could tell where it was coming from. It was that house he passed earlier in the day…the one that had something about it that was drawing it to it.

“Eitan,” the voice was yelling. “Eitan boy where are. I want you to come home right now.”

Ferry stopped right where he was and he turned toward the house. It was that man, that old man, he had met earlier. What was his name, he thought. He couldn’t remember but he could fake it. He turned and walked to the gateway in front of the house. The fence was black wrought iron with huge silver spikes on the top of each post. It was covered with ivy which was in bloom with flowers that shone bright blue in the dim night’s light. He walked through and didn’t have the chance to say anything g before the man opened his mouth and started talking.

He looked directly into Ferry’s eyes. His eyes were grey and deathly cold. The wrinkles on his face were deep, so deep that he almost looked as if his face was covered in fur rather than skin and his hair was short but messed up and it was pure grey, not a lick of color anywhere to be seen.

He pointed at Ferry and said, “Eitan, you have done more than you should have today. I am proud of you now come into the house and get some rest.”Ferry walked up to the steps and stopped. “Eitan you come in this house and I mean right now.” He walked down and took Ferry by the arms and walked him into the house.

The house was dark inside. The windows were covered with aging black paper and the paper itself was torn in places and covered with a thick mold in other places. The house wasn’t well lit. Ferry looked around and guessed that that wasn’t one light bulb that was over 40 watts. The furniture was a mix of 1950’s deco and Victorian. There was one thing Ferry did notice…there was a wall of books and every one of them was somehow related to the German side of WWII.

The old man walked across the room and sat down on a chair that looked more like a throne than a chair. “Eitan, come here,” he said. “Come and sit so we can talk.”

It was then that Ferry noticed that the old man had an accent. It was an accent that he had heard before. He thought for a minute. This man sounded like his grandmother. His grandmother was was born in Breslau Germany and his accent matched her’s exactly. He was a German and he knew just about where he was born because of the accent. He was born in Silesia…most likely in the same town as his grandmother. He knew some German so he decided that he would check. “Wurden Sie in Breslau geboren,” Ferry asked as he looked into the eyes of the man before him.

“Ja, aber wir müssen nur Englisch sprechen,” the old man said while showing no emotion on his face.

“I know what you mean,” Ferry said with a smile.

“Eitan, you have done very well for me,” the old man said. “I have more than I need for a while so you can stay here if you like. I have food in the kitchen if you’d like or you can read some of the books I have. I want you to learn everything you will need to know. You know that someday you will take his place.”

“Yes sir, I realize that,” Ferry said not quite understanding what was going on. “If I may I would like to go out for a short time before I begin studying.” The old man said that it was fine for Ferry to leave but he wanted to show him something first. He took Ferry by the hand and led him to the basement. There Ferry saw dozens of refrigerators covering two of the walls with an operating table in the middle complete with leather straps, bright lights and everything. The old man walked over and opened one of the doors. Inside were a dozen or so bottles, each containing a half of a gallon of deep red blood. Oh my God, Ferry thought, what have I gotten myself into?

“Tomorrow we start,” the old man said. “If this works for you then we will try it on others until we get the desired result.”

Ferry wanted to ask but he didn’t want to know what was going in that basement. Whatever it was he was no part of it and he liked it that way. He got out and started running, not walking, down the street to his house. The minute he got inside he locked the doors behind him. Closed the windows and sat down to call his mother. He had a question that only she knew the answer to.

It didn’t take long for his mother to answer and, after the general chit chat that takes place between a mother and son during a phone call, he got around to asking the question. The minute he asked if he was a twin the phone went silent except for the sound of breathing and the sound of his mother starting to cry.

“I never wanted you to know,” she said through her tears. She was getting old and her mind wasn’t the way it was so many years ago so it took her longer to answer and it was possible that her mind was what she remembered but it wasn’t necessarily right.

‘Never wanted me to know what,” he asked as he tried to calm both him and her down.

“Yes, Ralph you are the oldest of a set of identical twins,” she said. “Your brother was taken from the hospital just hours after the two of you were born. We lived in a small town in Pennsylvania…if I can remember back that far I think it was called Allegheny Heights. I loved that town.”

“Okay mom, what happened,” Ferry asked. He was getting impatient but after all this was his mom and he didn’t want to upset her more than he already had.

“They searched for months but they never found anything,” she said. After a couple years you, your dad and I moved out of town, changed our names and started all over again. I am sorry I never told you about him before.” She was bawling her eyes out and her voice was really strained so he thanked her and started to let her off the phone after he wrote a note reminding him to send her a couple dozen roses in the morning. But, before he hung up he asked one more question. “Mom, what was our name before you changed it?”

“Our name was Feiglin,” she said. “Yes, our name was Feiglin. It was a long and honorable Jewish name.” He gasped when he heard the name. He told her that he loved her and said for her to take care.

Ferry had no idea that he was Jewish much less that his entire history was wrong. He had a brother; he wasn’t the Baptist he thought that he was. He wondered what else about his past and his present life wasn’t true.

Then his thoughts went to the old man. That accent, he was German. Ferry was sure of that. His age…he was old. Maybe he was old enough to have been a Nazi? Could he have been a Nazi? They arrested all of them over the years, didn’t they? Wait a minute didn’t they find one in Cleveland a few years back? Yes, I am sure they did. He got deported to Israel didn’t he? Ferry’s mind was spinning. So much information, so many questions asked with no sure answers. Ferry didn’t like the feeling so he left his house and went down to the corner bar where he finished off a half of a bottle of cheap whiskey before he went home, hugged his wife and passed out on the couch.

In the morning he woke up with a huge hangover. His wife was standing above him with a big cup of coffee. “Are you okay darling,” she asked with her usual morning smile.

He gulped down the coffee, kissed his wife without answering her and then he rushed into the den to look up that strange old man. The computer took its time booting up. Ferry was squirming in his seat the entire time. He entered the name that he remembered. It took him a minute to figure out the right spelling but he finally got it…Paul Friedrich.

A results page flashed on the screen. Ferry clicked on the first one and it opened a page of Nazi war criminals who were never found. Friedrich’s name was the second on the list. It had a link attached to it so Ferry clicked on it and when it opened the first thing he was a photo of an SS officer…a captain he thought.

“Holy crap,” he said as he stared at the screen.

Another link on that page led Ferry to Friedrich’s military records. He read it in close detail especially when he saw that the old man served at Mauthausen under Dr. Albert Heim. A quick look at Wikipedia showed that Heim was working on experiments on prisoners, mostly the Jewish prisoners from the prison camp but he also experimented on people from the disposed countries who refused to behave to Nazi standards.

Another “holy crap” came from his mouth as he shut down the computer, after printing everything out. He would need information if he was going to go to the authorities and have that man, no matter how old he was, pay for his crimes. He knew that there wasn’t much they could do to a man but he knew he had to do something. First though he had to find Eitan and see what was going on.

He left for work but on his way he passed that house again. He wasn’t sure it was stupidity or just an overwhelming curiosity but he pulled the car over, got out and walked over and into the yard. The second he opened the gate the old man was out on the porch.

“Eitan,” the man said. “Come on up.”

Ferry walked up onto the porch and just stared at the old man. He must have stood there for a good five minutes before the man started walking toward the door. “Kapitan,” Ferry said in a darkly cold voice. “Kapitan Friedrich.” The old man turned. His look was as if he had seen a ghost or even a demon. There was that much fear coming through from his voice.

“Eitan, why did you call me that,” Friedrich said. “Why did you call me kapitan?” He stood and stared at Ferry as if he was trying to think of something to say or something to do. Then he realized that the man in front of him wasn’t Eitan. “Who are you he screamed! Where is Eitan?”

“No I am not Eitan,” Ferry said. “He is my twin brother and I want to find him.” The Ferry asked what was going on and he told the old man that he was not leaving until he got an answer.

The man was reluctant until finally he seemed like he was just giving up. He sat down on a chair on the porch and he started talking. “I came here after the war,” he said. “it was safe hear. No one was looking for me so I came to this town and settled here. I have lived quiet until a few years when I heard that a Jewish family lived not too far from me. She got pregnant. I knew when she gave birth so I took one of the babies when they were born. I wanted to experiment to see if I could turn a Jewish baby into a baby that the Reich could be proud of.”

“What do you mean,” Ferry asked.

“Being a Jew is a disease. I knew it was and I knew that if I tried I could turn a Jew in a perfect human being. I spent years giving a Jew baby new blood to purify his system and get all the Jew out of him. Eitan was my victory. He was a Jew and now he is exactly what I wanted.”

“You’re crazy,” Ferry said as he stood in shock. What kind of mind could ever think of anything like that? Then he remembered that he was talking to a Nazi. No matter how old they became they still had the twisted ideas they were taught in the good old homeland.

Just then the gate swung open and Eitan walked into the yard and up to the porch. “Who is this father,” Eitan asked.

“He’s here asking about our work,” Friedrich said calmly.

“Eitan, I am your brother,” Ferry said interrupting the old man. “I am your twin brother.”

“I have no brother,” Eitan said as he looked at Ferry and then he looked at the old man. “I am an only child and he is my father.”

“No Eitan. You are my brother. We are identical twins,” Ferry said.

“No,” Eitan screamed. “I do not have a brother.”

“He kidnapped you when you were born,” Ferry yelled back. “He’s doing an experiment on you. He’s changing you from what you are…what you were meant to be.” Eitan just stood there and looked between Ferry and the old man. There was confusion in his eyes and also a touch of anger and hatred. Ferry could see what was happening so he kept pushing. Eitan…go look in the window. Go look at yourself. He did like Ferry said and he looked at his reflection. “Now Eitan, look at me. We look too much alike for it to be chance. I am your brother. I am telling you the truth.”

“I have a brother,” he said. There were tears in his eyes and his sadness was reflected in his voice. “Why didn’t you tell me?” He turned and walked toward the old man. “Why didn’t you tell me,” he screamed. All of the anger and hatred now had a target. “Why didn’t you tell me,” he screamed again. The old man just sat silently, ignoring everything that Eitan was saying.

“Eitan, look at your chest. There should be a birthmark there,” Ferry said as he lifted his own shirt. There was a small brown mark on his chest just to the right of his left nipple. Eitan did as he was told and he lifted his shirt. There, to the left of his right nipple, was the exact same mark.

Eitan’s fury was well beyond control. He wasn’t listening that either Ferry or Friedrich was saying or what they were going to say. At that moment all off his Jewishness was gone. He was experiencing the feelings that the Nazis felt toward anyone they caught. He walked over behind the old man who was crying for his life. He grabbed the bad by both sides of his head and with one movement he twisted and snapped Friedrich’s neck. His head fell to the side and his eyes glared forward still showing the fear that he died feeling.

Eitan looked at his brother and smiled a smile that hid all the anger he was feeling. He walked slowly toward his brother. “What is your name,” he asked with a new shyness. Ferry told him that his name was Ralph. Eitan, without thinking, rushed over to Ferry and got him in a bear hug that even a bear couldn’t survive.

Ferry called 911 and reported what had happened. The coroner came and pronounced Friedrich dead at the scene. The police talked to Eitan and Ferry. Once they found out what had happened they realized that Eitan did everything because he was suffering from a mental disorder from being held a basic prisoner to Friedrich. They met with the DA and Eitan and Ferry once again explained and she ruled that he would not be prosecuted under the Stockholm Syndrome.

A few days later Ferry and Eitan flew to meet their mother who welcomed her lost sun with open arms. They spent the rest of their lives getting to know each other and, after all those years, Eitan was welcomed into a local synagogue as a full member.

And after all the hell that Eitan, Ferry and the townspeople of Allegheny Heights went through…the Nazi threat was over.

The White Rose

Many thousands of years ago, before the Roman and Grecian Empires, a country named Agoria was a minor power in ancient Europe. It was not an empire as the later cultures would be. The peoples of this land were all consulted before the king or his cabinet made any decisions. It was wealthy with buildings made of the purest white granite with gold and silver lining the windows. The granite was imported from quarries more than one thousand miles away.

No one ever had to suffer or want for anything. Not one person was without a home and every citizen always had more food than they could possibly use. They had a large port on the modern Balearic Sea. From there they established trade with cultures from as far away and Asia and the Americas.

In the center of the capital city was a monument but it was not a memorial for any warrior since the Agorians never fought wars. It was not a monument for any one king or queen. They had their memorials in the forest where the bodies of the leaders were given back to the goddess of nature who provided for all of the citizens. It was a monument built to protect a single plant…a rose plant which lived for more than two hundred generations.

The king or queen had one main duty…they would go before the rose bush everyday at sunrise escorted by a specially trained squad of gardeners. They would kneel to offer prayers and a healthy feeding of water and fish blood to keep the bush alive. If the rose bush died…the king or queen would be executed on the spot as would his family. Fortunately no king or queen was ever executed because of the loss of the plant.

The leaves of the plant were as black as the darkest pitch with a slight edge of midnight blue. The flowers of the bush were also black, a velvety black that absorbed any light that came near. However, the flowers were the magical part of the plant. Although rare, sometimes a single white rose would sprout from the blackness. It was found that whenever a white rose sprouted the king or queen would die within weeks. Needless to say the people and the royal family kept a close eye on the rose bush waiting for a white rose to appear.

Raynor, son of Trisda, was king when Agoria was in its prime. He had reigned for more than eighty years without a challenge or conflict to speak of…until the weather of Agoria changed for the worse. The warm, wet breezes that blew off of the sea suddenly changed direction so they blew in for the mountain of the north. The air cooled and dried to a point where the climatic changes could not go unnoticed. This caused the crops, which had always been plentiful, to wilt on the ground and the animals died in the pastures. Despite that the rose bush produced hundreds of black roses which were picked and given to the children of the country as a gift from the king.

“Why would the gods turn their backs on us,” Raynor asked of his priests in a weak cracking voice. “They have always been so good to my people.” His voice was one of serious concern. Nothing like this had ever happened to his people in their entire history.

“The gods are not speaking to us your highness,” the chief priest replied. “They seem to have left with the breezes of the sea.”

“Have I or have I not been a good king,” Raynor asked. “I have tried my best and that is all I can do.”

“Sire, the gods are not angry with you…the priest said, “…they are pleased with you and they have granted you a long and beneficial life have they not?”

“That they have.”

“The white rose has been held back for so long. Perhaps the gods have more plans for you than you may know. After all they are gods and you are just a mortal man…a king but still just a man.”

The king knew that everything they had said was true. It had been a very, very long time since the white rose came. Raynor was six-years-old when the rose last appeared and he was getting tired and maybe the gods knew it. Every day Raynor made the walk into the city to care for the roses and everyday he saw nothing but black roses covering the plant and everyday for the last four years he sat on the stairs of the monument and he cried.

During his reign Raynor had seen his children being born, he watched as they married and when they died. He had fathered 21 children from three wives, only six were still alive. He had sixty plus grandchildren and more than a hundred great-grandchildren but, even with all that family he lived alone in a castle with no one but servants to care for him.

The drought came in his eighty fourth year as king. He struggled as much as he could to solve the problem but to no avail. His health was too bad to face a problem such as that. Gone were his strong arms and legs. His breath was short and painful and his mind was wandering between his real life and his life in a world his mind created. There were so many times when he prayed for the gods to take him and there were many times that his physicians told him the gods would be calling him but he held on, fighting the gods, fighting his body and fighting his mind. It got to the point where he had men carry him down to the rose bush in a litter so he could do the duty he was born to do but after a time even that got to be too much for the king.

“Why can’t there be a white rose…just a single white rose,” he asked. His eyes were nothing more than slits and his breathing was so shallow it could hardly be felt. No one answered his question.

One day one of Raynor’s guards walked into the king’s chamber. He was solemn and he kept his voice just above a whisper. “Your highness,” he said as the king opened his eyes ever so slightly. “Your highness, there has been a white rose.” This pleased the king so much that he managed a smile. Weak as it was it was still a smile.

“Are you sure,” the king asked.

“Yes, your highness. The entire plant is covered white roses. There is not a black one to be seen. I picked one and brought it to you so that you may see that I am telling the truth,” he said as he held the brose in his hand.

The king took the rose. He was barely able to wrap his fingers around it but he held it and brought it up to his face, He smiled a smile bigger than he had ever had. “There are more of these,” Raynor asked happily. The guard said that the bush had hundreds of them just as beautiful and as pure a white as the gods themselves could ever create. Raynor smiled again and said, “The gods have blessed me. Please tell my people that I am now happy.”

“Yes your highness I will make sure everyone knows,” the guard said.

Raynor lowered his head on his pillow and as he smiled the king took his last breath. After so many years Raynor was now at rest.

The guard was standing the crying as Raynor’s eyes glazed over. He reached over and closed the king’s eyelids and straightened out his clothes. The king must always look his best. As soon as he finished one of the princesses walked in.

“Is he gone,” she asked.

“Yes your grace,” he replied.

She stood there quietly. Maybe she was thinking what to say. Maybe she was so awe struck that she was speechless but that only lasted a minute. “I was down at the monument today,” she said. “I sat on the stairs for hours for the gods to help my grandfather. I looked and looked but I never saw a white rose.”

“Would you like the truth your grace,” he asked shyly hoping she would say no but that didn’t happen. She wanted the truth and nothing else. “Your grace, I have seen his highness suffering years after years. His body was done but he held on to fulfill an ancient philosophy. His highness was dead but his mind would not allow it.”

“I understand,” she said.

“I went to the coast and took a boot to the other side of the sea and I bought a single white rose. I knew that he would let go once he believed that the gods had granted him with permission to die.”

The princess didn’t say a word for quite a while. She was thinking. It was so much to absorb. Finally she took the guard by the hand and told him to sit next to her. “Young man, you brave young man,” she started. “I proclaim that the gods did give him the white rose. It took a god blessing for you to have the courage to take a chance as you did. I just have one thing to say…thank you on behalf of my father.” Then she kissed him on the cheek and walked with him out of the room to get a physician to verify that the king had passed.

It was an orderly transition. The princess was made queen and the guard who she met the day the king died…he was made the new queen’s personal bodyguard.

After Raynor’s funeral a miracle happened. The rose bush that gave all black flowers for centuries sprang forth after a few days and there was not one black flower among them. It continues to bloom until this day and until this day there has never been a single rose that wasn’t the purest virginal white and experts in roses hear the story and the flowers are called The Raynor’s White Princess.

The Vampire Brittiania

One of the things Allegheny Heights’ kids loved to do on cool autumn nights was to go and hang out in the cemetery. Their favorite wasn’t the big cemetery in the center of town. The one they liked to go to was outside of town. It was on the Pennsylvania historical site listing and because of that it was fenced in but the few stones that remained were visible through the fence. The gate itself was purchased from the estate of a mass-murderer and, outside of very few exception, the gate remains locked at all times.

The cemetery is old, older than the town itself. There are graves there with half rotten wooden grave markers with dates from the 1720’s. Others came from the revolution and the War of 1812. Unfortunately, the names of the dead have long since worn off from years of snow, rain and wind.

The kids found a way around the locked fence. The fence that surrounds the cemetery is always at ground level and the area around the cemetery is houses, yards and woods so the kids are free to do what they want and not be disturbed. They simply find a soft spot of ground in the woods next to the fence and then they dig down and simply crawl under the fence.

They have been doing it ever since the cemetery was found about seventy five years ago. Most of the times they go in and look around, maybe have a few drinks and party into the late night. Others went in and used it as a place of contemplation and yet others used it as an outdoor bedroom where there were more babies created than there were bodies buried in the ground.

One day a group was digging just outside the fence. They dug for a good twenty five minute. The ground was soft and, for some reason, they decided to dig a lot deeper than they needed to get under the fence. There were a few rocks that they cleared away quickly and then they kept digging. Suddenly they heard a hollow sound and when they looked down they saw the wooden lid to a very old coffin. It was wet and rotten but it was still strong enough to hold one boy’s weight. Just as they started to talk about what they had found the wood crumbled and they were looking at a centuries old body.

“Look at that,” Frank Mancini said as he looked into the box. Then he looked out of the hole and saw that he was the only one who hadn’t crapped his pants and run home to hide under the bed.

After Frank pulled the pieces of wood from beneath his feet he finally saw the body. It was a young man. He looked like he was maybe twenty five years or so. The boy figured that there was no way he was much more than that. He was dressed in a red army outfit. It was a little dirty but it wasn’t in bad shape. It was covered with gold and silver and he saw the last few threads of a red, white and blue flag. Frank thought a minute and put two and two together. A red outfit and red, white and blue cloth, he was looking at a British soldier…probably an officer. The thing was he noticed…the body was buried face down with a rock placed on its back.

“What in the hell is that,” Frank asked. It was like he was talking to the body. “Why would they do that to you? I have been to a lot of museums and never saw anything like that.” His confusion was easy to hear. “I wish I knew your name.”  He climbed out of the hole and sat on the side. “Well, my friend,” he said with a smile. “I think I am going to call you Benedict…you know like Benedict Arnold. You remember him don’t you? Nah, maybe not.” He laughed as he got up, walked over to a tree and tied a red cloth around the lowest branch. With that he took the next half hour to fill in the hole making sure to make it look undisturbed. After all he didn’t want any of his so called friends to bring their parents, or worse the police, back and ruin Benedict…at least not until he was done with him.

Frank went home and went right to sleep. He didn’t tell his parents how his day was. That was rare for this thirteen year old boy. He usually bragged about everything and anything and usually showed his dad some new rock or something he had found on his wandering but tonight it was nothing…nothing at all.

He crawled under his blanket and another one he grabbed from the closet. They were pulled up around his neck and held tight but as warm as he was headed for a long night with dreams and nightmares which centered on Benedict and how he might have died. Each dream was very graphic and had increasing levels of violence so he was happy when the sun came up and the alarm let him know that he was going to have to go to school.

The boys asked him what happened after they left but Frank kept his mouth shut as to what he found but he knew that after school he was going to go back and see what else he could learn about Benedict and his grave.

The final bell rang and Frank and his group gathered onside the school. “No you aren’t going with me,” Frank yelled as the boys started hassling him about the grave. “You guys couldn’t handle it yesterday why would I think it will be any different now.” The boys begged and begged but Frank got increasingly angry until he just stormed off toward his house with the boys right on his tail…still asking, begging to go back with him. Ignoring them he went into his house and ate a snack…which took about an hour…and then, once the others were gone, he went back to the grave site and started digging.

The ground was wetter than it was the day before and it wasn’t the same color as the soil they dug up the day before. Frank didn’t notice but the surrounding ground was different too. It was newly disturbed to cover an area far beyond where they had dug earlier. That wasn’t the only thing he noticed. There was a large dog…a German Sheppard if he was to guess right. It was lying dead about ten feet from where the hole was. It was torn apart and its blood covered the grass and leafs.

Frank looked a little closer at the dog and went back to where the hole was. He sat down and when he took his hand from the ground. It was red, covered with blood that hadn’t clotted yet. “What the hell happened last night,” he asked. Then he thought there are some big hawks and eagles, as well as other animals that wandered through the woods. One of them must have attacked the dog and then took off before devouring the body. That thought both soothed and terrified the boy. What if it was still in the area and was coming back. He put the thought to the back of his mind. It wasn’t easy but he did it and then he went back to the grave.

He started digging and it wasn’t long before he had dug down to the wooden lid. The body was there just the same as it was the night before. He started digging on the sides and ends of the hole. He was going to make it big enough to see the entire body.

Once he got the body uncovered he was sure that it was indeed a British soldier from the Revolution. He had his gun and sword buried with him. His class was studying the Revolution and their book had plenty of pictures so it wasn’t a guess any longer…he knew what he was looking at.

Building up his courage he reached down and slowly and carefully turned the body over. It was very well preserved. There was not a bit of decomposition either in the clothes or the flesh which looked like it had just been buried the night before. Even the eyes were still there. They were bright blue with flakes of gold but still dry as if they were dehydrated but they were there and they were staring out at him. It was almost scary but he thought for a minute that maybe the soldier wasn’t dead after all…just sleeping but that was impossible. He stayed at the graveside the rest of the afternoon and well into the evening before he went home for his dinner and some desperately needed sleep.

A storm came in sometime around 2:00 AM. It was loud, bright and dangerous. The news said the next day that Allegheny Heights had three inches of rain, along with hail and damaging winds of up to 75 miles per hour. But by then Frank was sound asleep.

Sometime during the night, Frank didn’t look at the clock; he felt a strange feeling on the side of his neck. He said later that it wasn’t painful or anything. He said that it was kind of a tickle. A very intense tickle but it was a tickle.

Waking up he jumped up, the grogginess of sleep wasn’t there. His eyes were clear and he saw a small bat flying around his bedroom. He didn’t scream or anything. He walked out of his room, went to the closet and got a broom. Now, he was awake but still a bit, a wee bit disoriented so when he swung the broom he took out his lamp, the clock on the dresser and a small statue that his grandmother had given him the Christmas before. He never did hit the bat. It swerved out of the way each time he swung. He was so frustrated that he threw the broom, smashing a hole in his window. To make matters worse the bat followed the broom out of the small hole. After picking up the mess and putting some duct tape on his window he went back to sleep.

The next morning he woke to “Highway To Hell” blaring out of his alarm clock. He had the usual reaction of jumping up; pulling on the clothes that smelled the least out of a pile he had in the corner of his room…right next to his empty dresser…and then he rushed to the bathroom to shave the few whiskers he had and comb his hair. That morning the routine was the same until he looked in the mirror. There, where he felt the tickle the night before was a deep red rash. It looked like a brush burn but it wasn’t quite as red and although there were scars it did not show some but not a lot of bleeding.

“What in the hell,” he asked in a frightened voice. His mom was walking by and heard Frank so she stuck her head in and asked what he was talking about. “I don’t know mom. I woke up and there’s a rash on my neck. I don’t know where it came from.”

She looked at it and put some salve on it, gave him a kiss and told him to hurry down for breakfast. “Honey, it isn’t anything serious,” she said as she stepped through the door. “You probably got into some poison ivy. You know how that stuff is around here. You can’t get away from it.” He said he did and he went on with whatever he had to do. He took about an hour total. He had to figure out a way to cover the rash. He ended up stealing some of his mom’s makeup and covering it that way.

On the way to school he decided to swing by the grave site to see how it was. The ground was drenched. It was so wet that every time Frank took a step he sank into the mud up to his ankles. It took a lot of time and effort to move the hundred or so yards to the site. That gave him time to think and it was then he started to worry. Was the body okay? Did the rain and everything do anything to ruin it? He knew that it would be dirty. After all he opened the casket and never reclosed it. How could he have been so stupid?

Once he got there he was in for a shock…the grave was completely open…the dirt scattered all over the area. The edges of the grave were sharp and straight. That was something he never could have expected. The body was intact and yes, it was dirty…filthy as a matter of fact. The thing was it was out of the grave…almost ten feet away. He thought that it must have been the rain that moved the body until he saw a set of footprints moving away from the grave and back to where the body was laying.

Looking at the body he got a serious look on his face.  “Benedict,” he started. “Who was here playing with you last night?   Maybe you don’t know but I have to find out and soon.”

He dragged the body back to the grave and, not very gently, tossed it into the hole but before he did he smartly checked out the pockets in the uniform. He found a pocket on the inside of the coat’s breast. There he found a piece of paper. Opening it he saw that it read, “Darling Elizabeth, I will be coming home at the end of the month. I look forward to seeing you and the children. Here’s some news, we have driven the rebels back at a ridge in the west of the Pennsylvania Colony. It is such a primitive land. Bugs here are the size of bats at home. I was bitten by one a fortnight ago and it healed properly so I am not afraid. Please my loving wife…take care and care for the young ones.  Your loving husband, Michael.”

Frank looked down at the body. He was facing the sky and his eyes were open so Frank could look him deep into the missing soul. “So, your name is Michael,” he said. “It is nice to meet you Sir Michael. I hope to get to know you a lot better before I let anyone else know about you.”

Frank either didn’t see or couldn’t see that there was a twitch in the corner of the body’s mouth. It looked as if it were trying to smile or something.

“I have to go to school now,” Frank continued as if the body could hear him. “It’s kind of funny that we are studying the revolution.” He paused for a second as he kicked a small rock into the grave. “Somehow I doubt that you were any one important were you? Nah, you couldn’t have been anyone.” Kicking another stone in, he turned and walked away. He yelled back, “See you later Michael. I hope you’ll still be here.” He laughed and took off running.

He didn’t stop at the grave after he got out of school choosing instead to rush home and call his friend to invite him for an overnight campout. He said that it was going to be in his backyard but he knew better. He and his friend Charlie were going to campout over by Michael’s grave. His friend of course said yes. He showed up just before sunset and they started out. On the way Frank told him the whole story about how he had found the body, dug it up and was now finding out who that man was.

When they got there his friend wanted badly to see the grave, the body and hear some more about the stories. Bullshit or not it was good listening on a warm summer’s evening and it would look really good if he could remember enough to tell his friends and maybe, just maybe sit down and write a short story or maybe a book about it.

Charlie walked close to the grave and glanced in. Michael was still there looking into the sky. His dead features and blank eyes terrified the young man to no end. He was shaking and nearly peed his pants as he scampered away. “Wha – wha – what is that,” Charlie asked.

“That’s Michael,” Frank replied with a laugh in his voice. “He’s dead and has been for a couple hundred years.”

“Bu – bu - but he looks so alive,” Charlie said as he back up further.

“I know. Ain’t it cool?” Frank took Charlie by the shoulders and walked him back to the grave. “Look at him,” Frank commanded. “I have been here with him for days now and he hasn’t moved or said a word. He is deader than that doornail they keep talking about.”

Neither boy looked directly into the face that was in the ground looking at them. Michael’s eyes had changed. They had turned from the dry lifeless they were a few moments before into bright shiny eyes you would expect to see from a teenage boy. As a matter of fact, if you looked carefully, there was a trace of a tear in the corner of Michael’s right eye and there was a feeling of pain barely hidden in their blank stare.

After calming Charlie down to where he didn’t want to run home to his mommy the boys went up on a nearby hill and set up camp. They spent the next couple of hours trying to gross out each other and talk about the hot sixteen year old with the 48dd boobs. They both had a thing for her but neither had the guts to say anything so the just talked to each other and fantasized about what they’d do if they ever got the chance.

Then, after all the girl talk, they decided to go down and look at the grave again before they went to sleep. On the way down Frank told his how Michael was ten feet away from his grave that morning but he made it sound like a joke. It sounded like a joke and Charlie was light hearted about everything until they got to the grave and Michael was not in his coffin.

“Look around,” Frank yelled.

The two of them covered an area of about 600 square feet without finding anything except their footprints and one other set they could not identify. Yeah, they were in a panic but they managed to control themselves as they searched. After about thirty minutes they stopped searching and it was at that moment Frank realized…someone stole Michael!

They didn’t stay after that. Both Frank and Charlie hurriedly packed up their stuff and headed back to Frank’s house where they spent the rest of the night camped out in his backyard. They talked about a lot of things that night…everything from cars to baseball and once again girls but never, not once, did the discussion go anywhere near missing dead bodies. The boys could tell exactly who was coming.

Sometime around 4:30 AM the boys, along with most of the neighborhood, were awakened by the sounds of sirens coming closer. Charlie called them out as he heard them, Allegheny Heights Police, state police, local fire trucks and lastly the town’s ambulance. The each drove by Frank’s house and it sounded like they stopped no more than a half mile away. Being a normal small town everyone, including Frank and Charlie, ran down Maple Leaf Rd. to see what was going on.

They got there a couple seconds before the crowd. One of the EMT’s working the scene was talking to a state cop describing what they had found. He whispered as not to panic anyone but Frank and Charlie were close enough to hear every word.

“I can’t imagine what happened,” the fireman said. “That was Mr. Falconer. Someone showed up and managed to get into the house. I don’t know how but he or she attacked Falconer and killed him. It was funny there were no signs of violence anywhere and the body was just laid out. It was as if the killer wanted to show her some respect after he or she killed them. The funny thing was…there was no blood. Not a drop anywhere to be found. Even the body was almost chalk white. That’s freaking huh?” The cop agreed and then they both went back into the house.

“You don’t think…,” Charlie asked in a voice so quiet he could hardly be heard.

“Nah,” Frank replied.

“Then where…,” Charlie started asking before Frank shut him up.

Before Frank could answer they heard a call come over the fire truck’s speaker. There were two more bodies discovered on the other side of town. Responders were warned to proceed with caution that there may be a murderer in the area. With that the police and fire truck left under full lights to see what was going on.

Frank turned to Charlie. There was a strange seriousness in his face. Both he and Charlie were thinking the same thing at exactly the same second. Could the man they Frank dug up…could he be responsible for what was happening? Could he somehow be alive enough to be killing people? “We have to get back,” Frank said. “We have to see…we have to find Michael and find out what is going on.”

They rushed back to Frank’s backyard, gathered up their stuff and they headed back to the grave. Charlie was understandably scared and, although Frank would never show it or admit it the thoughts of what they might find was too horrible to think about.

By the time the made it back the moon was full and was hovering almost directly above them. The blueness of the light and the high contrast of the shadows made their way look like something out of a bad horror movie but they kept walking. As the moved deeper into the woods the canopy blocked all the light from the moon. The path was totally black and it took awhile for their eyes to adjust to the darkness and when they were able to see they saw a man standing beside the grave looking into it.

“Michael,” Frank asked as Charlie hid behind the trunk of a large tree.

The figure turned toward them. He was still wearing the uniform. “I beg your pardon,” Michael said as he stepped away from the grave.

“Are you Michael,” Frank asked more directly.

“I am named Michael,” he replied with a thick accent. “My name is Captain Michael Frances Worthshire of His Majesty’s Second Battalion stationed in Boston in the Massachusetts colony. Frank reached out to shake the Captain’s hand but pulled it back just a quickly as he asked how he ended up in Pennsylvania. “We were sent by order of the king to travel to Fort Littleton. On the way we were supposed to trade with the natives to gain their allegiance to the crown.”

While Frank was standing there talking to him, he wasn’t paying attention to the fact that Charlie had snuck away and headed back into town.

“What happened to you,” Frank asked.

“I remember we were in a battle and there were a lot of bug around…big bugs and something bit me on the back of the neck. At the same time I felt a sharp pain to the back of my head and I was knocked out. When I woke up I was the only one left alive. It was terrible. Bodies, limbs and entrails littered the ground for miles. I started walking until I found a small settlement. They treated my wounds, except for one. There were a pair of small wounds on my neck and that caused the people to panic. As soon as I was able they carried me out of town and left me on the side of a road. After that I wandered for days until I collapsed where you found me. Some of the people from that settlement followed me. They beat me and tied me to the ground. When they finally decided I was dead, or near death they buried me.”

“What happened then,” Frank asked as his interest increased.

“I realized when they threw the last pile of dirt on my grave that I was not dead. Then I realized that the wounds on the back of my neck were something more than an insect bite.”

“What were they?”

“I heard stories when I was back in England about creatures in Europe who drink blood and, if they didn’t kill their victim, they became like them. We called then vampires.”

“We still call them vampires but they are nothing but legend and myth.”

“I am here. Am I a legend? Am I am myth? Vampires are real and I am one.”

“Then why aren’t you drinking my blood,” Frank asked as he started backing away. It was strange but Frank wasn’t feeling the fear he should be feeling. He was more curious than anything so he stopped in his tracks and looked directly into Michael’s eyes. He didn’t see the look that vampires had in the movies…Michael had a look of affection and friendship. Maybe that wasn’t really there but that was what Frank saw. “Did you feed on those other people?

Michael lowered his head as if he were ashamed or maybe he had a feeling that he did something that he really didn’t want to do. “Yes boy, I did feed on those people,” Michael said. He sounded almost apologetic when he talked about what he did. “I…my kind can’t survive on animal blood, It is not nourishment for us. We need to feed on human blood. Now that I have fed I will not have to for many years.”

“Why didn’t you feed from me,” Frank asked again as he stepped face to face with the vampire. It was only then that he saw traces of blood on the corners of Michael’s mouth and then he was hit by the sweet smell of fresh blood coming every time Michael took a breath. The combination of the sight of blood as well as the smell made him sick to his stomach. It was hard to keep from throwing up…there was a couple times when he had to swallow his own vomit…but he managed to keep his composure. “Why,” he asked again.

“When they buried me…” Michael started, “...they lined the coffin with silver. That held me in my tomb. When you opened the lid and you turned me to face the moon that released me but I have to return before the sun rises over the mountains at the end of the valley. If I do not return to the soil of my tomb…I will die an agonizing death.”

Just then Frank heard noise in the distance. He heard people yelling. It sounded like a lot of people, maybe the entire population of Allegheny Heights. Charlie did what he thought he did. He went to town and told people about Michael, the grave and how Michael was killed and rose as a vampire.

“Michael…,” Frank said. “…you have got to get out of here.” He knew what was going to happen. The people of the town had to deal with things like this before. Allegheny Heights, for some reason, was a center point for the paranormal. Some said that a cave in the mountains was a gateway to another dimension or maybe an entrance to Hell itself.

“I can’t leave,” Michael said. For the first time he was losing his calmness and he was starting to feel fear.  Even in war he was the one who remained calm and did his duty to the king. “The sun is going to rise soon and I have to stay on this soil. There is nothing I can do.”

Frank looked at the horizon and the sky was a bright orange. It would not be long before the sun was over the mountains and Michael would die in a ball of flame and smoke.

The sounds were getting closer. Frank thought about how stupid he was to bring Charlie there…how he should have kept Michael and everything a secret. By now they were close enough so the both Frank and Michael could see the glow of their flashlights.

“You have got to go,” Frank yelled. “You have to run away!”

“I can’t,” Michael replied. His voice was no longer smooth and unshaken. He was in the beginnings of a strong panic and Frank had no idea how to calm him.

Suddenly he came up with an idea. He only had a few minutes but he thought that it just might work. “Michael, you have to go bad into the grave. You have to be quiet and pretend to be dead again. That is the only way to save you.” Michael did as he was told, climbing down into the hole. “Whatever you do…do not move…do not breathe.” Michael laid down on the wooden floor. He looked restful as Frank replaced the lid and shoveled more and more dirt into the grave. He didn’t have enough time to fill the grave but he did the best he could.

It was just seconds after he finished that the crowd surrounded him. There were more than five hundred people surrounding him. Charlie was at the front standing next to the grave.

“Where’s the vampire,” a man yelled.

“Where is the killer,” another screamed.

Frank stood there silently. He wasn’t going to tell. He hoped that they would just up and go away but they didn’t.

“He’s here,” Charlie yelled as he pointed at the grave. “This is where Frank was when he showed me the monster.”

A group of men rushed and started digging. Another group stood at the side with knives, gun and clubbed.

“Get him,” the crowd was screaming.

Frank ran to the grave and jumped in trying to stop them from digging deep enough to find the soldier. The police were there but they were not there to help. They were there to stop anyone from interfering and that meant they were there to stop Frank. They grabbed him from the hole. They were not gentle as they dragged him out and handcuffed him to a nearby tree. He was crying and begging for them to stop but no one wanted to hear that.

The ground was soft from being freshly disturbed so it only took them a couple minutes to dig down to the coffin. The lid was shut tight but a couple of crowbars and four men lifted the lid easily. Michael was there lying perfectly still. His eyes were open and staring straight ahead. One of the men looked into Michael’s eyes and he saw something he could not describe when he was asked about it later. He was scared…so scared he stood there and shook. He stood there until Michael’s mouth twitched just a bit…barely noticeable…but it was still enough to be seen. “He’s alive,” the man yelled. With that he pulled out a twelve inch butcher knife and drove it through Michael’s chest and heart.

“No,” Frank screamed as the knife ripped into Michael’s body. The cops who handcuffed Frank to the tree and ordered the boy to be silent or else. “Why are you killing him,” Frank screamed even louder.

“I warned you kid,” the cop yelled as he slapped Frank and put a gag in his mouth.

This was too much for Michael to take. He jumped from the coffin yelling, “you leave that boy alone.” He reached for his chest and pulled the knife out. He stepped away from the grave and slashed the knife back and forth striking four people. “I said leave that boy alone.” He lunged toward the boy leaving space between him and the ground. “I will kill you all,” he yelled as he got close to Frank who was still gagged but crying and struggling against the handcuffs.

The cop was the first one to fire his gun. The bullet ripped through Michael’s side, throwing him off balance causing him to fall in a ball on the ground.

Immediately Michael was back to his feet in a crouching position like a wild animal stalking its prey. His face didn’t show any humanity at all. He was a blood thirsty beast and there was nothing going to stop him from protecting the boy. As he rose to his feet one shot and another rang through the trees. Within second every person who had brought a gun was firing. Pistols, shotguns, rifles and a few high powered weapons all filled the air with bullets and the sound of the shots combined into a roar.

In the end more than three hundred rounds were fired and Michael was laying in a puddle of black fluid that flowed from his veins.

Charlie was nearby crying and in shock from what he had seen. How could the people he grew up with turn like that he thought.

The cop went over to check the body to make sure it was dead. There were no heartbeat but there was a smell. The cop later said that it was the smell of death. After he said that in fact Michael was dead he went over and released Frank who immediately ran over to Michael’s body. He was crying and one of his tears touched Michael’s face and with that Michael twitched and his eyes opened. Frank said that there was a smile on Michael’s face.

One of the townspeople saw the movement and, without warning, ran over with a machete he used to clear brush and he took Michael’s head off with just one swing.

Frank screamed as the “blood” splashed all over him. Then he did something no one expected. He turned to the people and started at them. His eyes were deep and cold. His eyebrows were tightly squeezed together creating furrows that look as threatening as any boy could. He had turned into just as much of an animal as Michael was. It was a blood lust and that scared the hell out of everyone. Then, as if by a miracle Frank turned and run off into the woods and he was never seen again.

Michael’s head was burned and his body staked to the ground in a new unmarked grave in a local cemetery. The sacred ground was there to hold the body and keep his soul from finding his body.

Frank was never seen again although there were stories from towns as far as ninety miles away of bodies being found drained of all their blood. No one was sure if it was Frank or not but then again…no one could ever be 100% sure.