Blackened Spiral Down (8 page)

I stood up, gasping for breath myself at the outburst of rage.  She looked as if she were sleeping peacefully in the bed.  The same bed we had used as our playground for the sordid affair.  I knew I did the right thing, but I felt horrible about it.  I took a few deep breaths so I could formulate a plan to get rid of the body.  Thankfully, in the shed behind the cabin, was a variety of supplies that would come in handy.  I came back into the cabin with some rope, a black vinyl tarp, and an old rusty boat anchor.   I laid the tarp on the floor and put Rosemarie in the center, rolling her tiny body into it, and then using the rope to wrap her up, I attached the anchor.  I hoisted her up over my shoulder and walked down to the pond.  There was still not a sound as my gaze scoured the horizon, making sure no one else was in sight.  Thankfully, I saw no one.

I set her down at the shore, while I stripped off my own clothes, so I could wade out as far as possible before tossing her body into the water.  I made sure to go into an area of the pond that was thick with vegetation, which no one typically used for fishing or swimming, and tossed her as far as I could.  The tarp must have had too much trapped air, because it took a good minute to sink, even with the weight of the old anchor.  That was when I thought I saw the tarp move, as if Rosemarie was breathing inside!  I knew she was dead, or at least I thought she was.  As the tarp slowly went under, I saw what I thought were a few bubbles rise to the surface.  The idea that she was still alive inside the bundle gave me the chills, but I knew there was nothing I could do about it.  It was unfortunate, but I was not willing to surrender my family fortune, my marriage, and my standing in the community over this young girl.  Yes I had grown to love her, but it was not enough.  I realized then that I had done something horrible, and there was no turning back from it.

The bubbles eventually stopped, and I made it to the shore, where I got dressed before anyone would miss me back at the farm.  Beatrice spent the entire day asking everyone if they had seen Rosemarie, since she had not shown up at the cookout.  I did my best to avoid her, because the image of the bubbles rising to the surface of the pond was all I could think about when the subject came up.

3

The next two months were difficult as the search for Rosemarie went on, with the police coming out to the farm to talk with me, my wife, and our employees.  Her family was nearly hysterical with worry, but there was nothing that turned up at the farm, and thankfully no one said anything that would have tipped the police off about our affair.  I spent many sleepless nights those first two months, worrying that someone might have noticed the two of us had become closer than we should, or that an employee might have caught a glimpse of us coming out of the hunting cabin.  No one did. 

Beatrice became ill, likely from worrying about her niece, and from her advancing age.  At Christmas of 1924, she put in her two weeks’ notice and decided to retire.  I was relieved, actually, since seeing her every day made it nearly impossible to not think about Rosemarie.  We gave her a handsome bonus and set her up with a nice apartment in Danbury, where she lived close to the rest of her family.  I figured it was the least I could do after what had happened.  My wife always liked her, so she didn’t seem suspicious at the gesture.

The following 4
th
of July is when things began to change.  We had just cleaned up after our annual cookout, and the last of the guests had gone home.  Amanda had gone to bed early, as a busy day in the hot July sun had gotten the best of her.  The boys were also asleep, and I was drinking a beer on the back porch, enjoying the solitude, when I heard a distant sound that put the hairs on my neck standing at attention.  It was an eerie high-pitched laugh that came from the direction of the old hunting cabin.  I noticed that it was almost midnight, so I knew it was unlikely that any of the guests could still be around.  As I sat there holding my beer, the laughing continued.  It sounded like it was getting closer!  My eyes were fixated on the blackness of the woods that surrounded the back yard, but I couldn’t see a thing.  I noted that the usual choir of crickets and typical night sounds were strangely silent.  Then I noticed a horrible odor that almost made me gag.  It smelled like rotting meat, or a dead animal of some sort, wafting my way.  It was faint at first, but then it got increasingly stronger.  Now I stood up, not knowing what direction the smell was coming from.  It seemed to almost surround me from every direction!

Suddenly there was a hand on my shoulder, forcing me back down in my chair!  It was ice cold and wet.  The rot smell was never stronger as my body froze in fear at what was behind me.  I closed my eyes tight, hoping that this was all a dream and that I would awaken and be in the comfort of my own bed, with Amanda sleeping next to me.  When I did open my eyes, the horror show that unfolded before me made me cry out.  It was a terrible sight to behold!  It was Rosemarie.  She was dead, but I knew it was her.  She was standing before me, dripping wet, her rotting flesh gone in places, leaving bone visible.  Her face was eaten away from being underwater all this time, and her body was as lithe and lean as I remembered.  The black tarp that I covered her in was mostly gone, and some of the rope I tied her up with remained.  The dress she had been wearing was falling off her in places, exposing a sickly, molded grey flesh that was stretched tightly to her frame.  Her eyes bore gaping holes into me, as I could not take my glance away from them.  Those once gorgeous blue eyes were now black pools of hate.  She let out another one of her high-pitched laughs, exposing a mouth full of rotten teeth and black tongue, and a whiff of that rancid breath brought tears to my eyes.

She told me that I was cursed for what I had done.  Her voice was different than I remembered it.  It was inhuman.  It was rough with a gravelly texture, as if she had been gargling with broken glass for the past year.  As she stood before me, uttering her hate-filled words about what I had done, she told me that my life would now be plagued with horrible cursed events.  I tried to respond, but I was frozen.  I found myself unable to retort, and it was probably best, because the sooner she would go back to her watery grave, the better.  The image of her rotten face and cackling laugh haunted my dreams every night since that one year anniversary of her murder.  From that night forward, as soon as I closed my eyes, I would see her.  I could not escape her clutches to me in the dream world.  Some nights I would wake up screaming, covered in sweat and praying for the sun to come up.

4

It was almost a month after Rosemarie’s return in 1925 when the curse began to show itself.  A strange parasite attacked the apple orchard at the farm, and we lost an entire crop of apples.  This was strange, since that had never happened since my father started the orchard part of our business.  Since this was approximately 15% of our business income, it did hurt us financially and did cause me to have to let go eight employees who I hired to pick apples and tend to the trees.  Then in September, we experienced a series of strange occurrences at the farm. We had a majority of our cows, hogs, and chickens die from some inexplicable disease that no one was able to diagnose.  I knew what it was, though.  I knew it was Rosemarie and the curse she told me about on the 4
th
of July.  With all of these uncanny events happening, the farm was in real danger unless things improved in the spring.  I could only hope that the curse would not continue, but I could not have been more wrong.

As if the bad things we had experienced were not enough, then we had several bad accidents that resulted in deaths of our staff.  One of our long term employees, Sammy Ray, who ran the hog farm, died from a fall when repairing one of the hog confinement roofs.  Another employee who worked in the dairy was killed by lightning just before Thanksgiving, and one of our housekeepers was found hanging in the back yard for no apparent reason.  A series of strange things happened around the house too – such as electricity going on and off, water pipes bursting for no reason, and doors that would lock on their own.  Amanda was convinced the house was haunted.  I knew she wasn’t far off with that assessment.

In January 1926, the curse ratcheted up even more.  Amanda had been feeling tired all the time and finally decided to go to the doctor.  Our local family doctor set her up with some tests in New York City, where they had the best technology available.  She was diagnosed with pancreatic cancer.  She got bad quickly and was bedridden in less than three months.  Elijah and Christopher took it hard, not understanding why their mother was not able to play with them, read to them, or do much of anything as the cancer took hold and refused to let go.  Her constant crying and moaning in pain was maddening, and I did my best to keep my composure, despite the overwhelming guilt, knowing that it was because of my terrible sin that she was looking death in the face.  Amanda died in May of that year in a fit of incredible agony, that caused her to scream out for pain medicine that couldn’t come fast enough.  To watch her die slowly was my penance, and I knew it.  To see the pain in the boys’ faces was almost enough to push me over the edge with guilt.

Just when I thought the curse couldn’t get much worse, the apple trees began to wither and die.  As spring came, one by one the trees died.  I hired the best arborists on the east coast to come to the farm and try and save them, but it was no use.  Each one that came out said they had never seen anything like it.  I had the same problem with my livestock.  I brought in veterinarians with the highest pedigree to try and save the animals, but, like the tree experts, they were equally baffled.  I lost 90% of my animals before the 4
th
of July.  Due to the dire circumstances at the farm, and my wife’s recent passing, it was the first year we decided to not have our annual cookout.  I also found it difficult to imagine enjoying myself at the cookout, knowing that the anniversary of that dreadful day would bring with it a visit from Rosemarie.  I knew she would come to see me again, gloating with the knowledge she had brought such pain in my life.

It was close to midnight on the 4
th
of July, and this time instead of waiting on the back porch, I locked myself in my bedroom on the first floor.  I did my best to stay awake, but with the lack of sleep I had been getting, I began to doze off sitting in my rocking chair.  I kept a loaded shotgun at my side, as if that would help me against the undead lover from my past.  I was partially in a dream state when a pungent odor woke me up.  It was the familiar putrefaction that I experienced a year ago when Rosemarie first made herself known.  As my eyes began to adjust to the darkness, her horrific face was only an inch from my own.  Her mouth was agape, black and rotten teeth bared, and a hideous, cackling laugh reverberating.  I was unable to move, terrified at the sight of her once again.  She told me that she knew of my pain, and all the misery that had descended upon my family, and there would be much more to come.  She also told me that this visit on the anniversary of her death would be a regular thing between us.  I was so fearful of her presence that I forgot all about the shotgun at my side, although I knew it was useless to me against the apparition.  Within moments she was gone, and only the lingering odor of her rotting corpse would allow me to reminisce on our encounter.

5

It was two weeks after our last meeting that I decided to confide in a priest.  I was concerned about anyone local knowing about the situation at my farm, but already the rumor mill was going around.  Almost all of my employees were gone, with only a bare-bones crew left that helped me keep the house in shape and to watch the boys while I did what I could to save the business.  Thankfully, I had other sources of income from rental properties, and the trust fund my father had established, providing a monthly stipend that now was vital to keep the bills paid and to meet payroll.  To avoid further rumors going around the county, I decided to talk to a priest in the small town of Bethel, Connecticut, which bordered Danbury. 

Through an old family friend, I learned of Father Dominic Caruso, a retired priest, who might be the right person for me to explain the curse.  Of course I could not tell him about the murder, for fear that he might break the seal of the confessional, if I were to bare my soul about every detail.  I knew I couldn’t take that chance. 

I met with Father Dominic in a small apartment in the rectory at St. Mary’s Church.  He was very old and somewhat hard of hearing, but he was willing to listen to my story.  I told him about a young girl who had died at my farm, that I believed was haunting the grounds.  I detailed all the bad things that had happened with my wife, employees, crops, and livestock, and that in my dreams, the girl said it was due to a curse.  The old priest listened intently and told me that he knew of something he thought might help.  He told me that when he first entered the priesthood, he went to a seminary at a secluded institute, St. Bede Academy, in Peru, Illinois.  He said that there was a very devout sect of monks there that grew crops to feed the staff and students, and that he remembered a terrible plague that wiped out their crops for two seasons.  He remembered that they were able to ward off the plague with a special holy tree that was called the Jesus Tree.  He said the tree was blessed and watered only with holy water until it was strong enough to grow on its own.  Father Dominic believed that the monks at St. Bede could grow me a Jesus Tree and have it shipped to my estate in New York.  He performed prayers for me with a rosary and promised he would contact them on my behalf.  It sounded a bit far-fetched to me, but in my desperate state, I was willing to try anything.  I gave the priest a sizeable sum of money to have this tree shipped to my estate and asked him to keep me informed.