Reanimators (28 page)

Much was made of the events that occurred that September when Keziah spent nearly an hour going through the accounts of several local tradesmen. That the accounting showed that the men had been systematically cheating the Kingsport Mercantile Company was apparent, Roger had suspected such a thing; but when Keziah transcribed her mental calculations on to paper, it revealed the most curious of things. While Keziah seemed perfectly capable of handling series of arithmetic calculations including addition, subtraction, multiplication and division in the most normal of ways, it was not the method that she preferred. Going through her notes, Roger would find characters wholly unknown to him. When he confronted the girl about the strange symbols, Keziah was fearful at first, but demonstrated to her adoptive father how each symbol functioned to integrate several mathematical operations into one. That using such notation allowed her to indicate the summation of vast sets of numbers hinted that she was what we would today call a prodigy. Roger and his wife recognized it as a fabulous gift, but warned her not to let any strangers see her use it.

In the fall of that year Captain Mason went to sea, leaving his wife and children behind. It was then that some women of the village complained to Elizabeth about the children’s education, particularly in the areas of cooking, sewing, and farming. Without such skills Keziah would never gain a husband, and never have children. When Grace Watkins mentioned as much to Keziah, the girl smiled and shook her head, scrawling out a note that indicated since she never planned to marry, she saw no point in learning such skills. The Watkins woman berated Elizabeth on the subject, and a few days later, after much cajoling, Keziah joined her sisters in household chores, including preparing food and cooking. It was in the process of learning how to cook that the next step in Keziah’s development was made, for it was while making a stew that the pot boiled over and scalded Keziah’s hand. Thus it was quite by accident that Keziah Mason found her voice and began to scream. Within a week of the accident Keziah was speaking, albeit haltingly. By November, Keziah had joined her family in singing several hymns at church services, and that very same week engaged the Reverend Phillips in an extensive discussion, covering subjects best left to advanced seminary students. That the debate occurred in both English and Latin became the subject of whispered gossip throughout the village. When Roger returned in December, he was greeted by a chorus of song from all three daughters.

By the end of August 1653, the twins had reached their sixteenth birthday, and with them Keziah celebrated hers as well. Over the course of the next several months the girls began working side by side with Roger at the Kingsport Mercantile Company, acting as clerks and doing odd chores about the office and public store, and on occasion with Elizabeth as midwives. The first few weeks of this venture were fraught with issues, the foremost of which were the twins’ lack of skill and speed in handling numbers and the inventory. This changed rapidly, and more so than Roger Mason would have thought possible. When Roger discovered that the twins’ progress was primarily a response to Keziah teaching the two her strange but efficient mathematical system, he was not surprised in the least.

In September the twins became afflicted with their first bout of the curse. Now normally, such an event wouldn’t be worth mentioning in polite company or otherwise, but in this case it had a profound impact on Keziah, who seemed both perplexed and irate over her own failure in the same regard. Both Elizabeth and Goodwife Hillstrom tried to explain the situation to her, and went so far as demonstrating the use of clean rags to capture the flow. Unfortunately, the demonstration seemed to enrage Keziah who grabbed one of her sister’s wasted rags and ran from the house. Her family searched for her all that night, finding her just as dawn broke in the woods that dotted Kingsport Head. She was asleep, feverish, and her face and mouth were bloody. She slept the next day away, occasionally moaning and muttering in some strange language. Dr. Hillstrom recorded some of these utterings that he could not identify as any language with which he was familiar, “Ygnaiih thflthkh’ngha n’grkdl’lh buggshugog.” The next morning Keziah woke with no memory of the night before but with severe abdominal pains. By noon she had joined her adopted sisters as a woman.

Of what occurred amongst the Masons over the next decade is subject to much rumor and little fact. That each of the sisters became betrothed is well documented. That early in 1656 the Cordelia Ys set sail for Jamaica, bearing all three sisters, their parents, the three young men they were meant to marry, and the parents of those men, can also not be disputed. That the vessel reached Port Royal and that the marriage of Abigail, Hepzibah and Keziah Mason to Simon Prinn, Jeremiah Watkins, and Robert Cummings seems also well documented. What happened next is a mystery, for in the fall the Cordelia Ys failed to return to Kingsport, and no word was had from any port along the American coast.

It was on the sixteenth of October, 1658, that a black ship sailed into the harbor of Kingsport and a rowboat manned by a short dark-skinned man with wiry hair brought three cloaked figures to shore. Abigail, Hester and Keziah had returned, but the Cordelia Ys, her crew and all the rest had been lost. According to the sisters, the ship had encountered rough weather and been forced to seek refuge along the coast of Florida. What had happened there the Mason sisters would speak only in the vaguest of details. Of the Xaeha Indians who they claimed had seized the ship, and of the years they had dwelt amongst them, the sisters would not expound upon. Indeed, when pressed on the issue, the Masons did nothing but turn stone-faced and give quiet thanks to the strange swarthy figure that had brought them to shore, a man whom they fondly called Brown John.

Within weeks of their return, the Masons sold off their properties in Kingsport and moved to Arkham, to the house on Parsonage Street. Here they lived, the three of them; widows at the age of twenty-one, alone save for their man Brown John, a stocky man with brown skin and black eyes, who tended the house and modest garden. Brown John only spoke a little English, but the Masons seemed to speak some of his language too. There was much speculation in the village about where Brown John had come from. Some thought him an African man, and others said he was a hindoo, but according to old Captain Holt, who had traveled some and seen more than others, Brown John was none of these. Holt said he was from a people called the Chau-Chaus, which were little better than savages, living deep in the wilds of central Asia, on a mountain plateau called Liang.

Brown John was not the only addition to the Mason household. In the parlor of their home the sisters had installed a small tree encased in a large masonry pot. Around the tree was erected a cage of thin wrought-iron rod. Amongst the branches of the tree dwelt Brown John’s pet, a small grey-furred monkey that they claimed was from the distant land of Sumatra. Those few who saw it up close claimed it to be in many ways like a large rat or possum, though the hands, face and eyes were peculiarly like those of a man. The sisters affectionately called the beast Brown Jenkin and when the weather was warmer, the beast could be seen traveling about the village playfully riding on Keziah’s shoulder.

It was in the fall of the next year that Eliza Abbott sent a letter to her sister detailing the public rebuke of the villagers by one of the town elders, her uncle Ambrose Abbott. The women of the village had noticed that the widows, who had always been slightly built, had all gained weight, and rumors abounded that they were each with child. Some went so far as to point fingers and suggest that Brown John was more than the servant he was made out to be. Whether it was Abbott’s chiding, or the sudden onslaught of a bitter winter, little else was made of the Masons, and when May came and went with no birth, all rumors of illegitimate pregnancy were quelled.

That said, there are some curious records that suggest some occurrence that yet still remains unexplained. That spring, James Anable recorded an agreement for a monthly standing order for a significant amount of meat and sundry items. The orders were to be paid by and delivered to Keziah Mason. Now this in itself is not unusual, but that same month, a similar arrangement was made with Harlan Fisher of Kingsport, to be paid for and received by Goody Watkins. Today, the term “Goody” is unused, but in those days it was short for Goodwife, and you would use it like we would use Missus or Ma’am. Thus it is with some assurance that Hepzibah Mason, known in Kingsport by her married name of Watkins, arranged a standing order for large quantities of fish and shellfish to be supplied on a monthly basis.

Over the next years, the Mason sisters entrenched themselves with the citizens of Arkham, Kingsport and Innsmouth, not only as good neighbors and customers to the merchants of all three villages, but also as midwives, a profession they seemed to excel at. They were particularly sought after by some of the older families in Kingsport, the Courts and Fishers, who seemed reluctant to seek medical attention under even the worse conditions. In 1660, much was made of their success in the birthing of Eliza Burke, whose mother had collapsed and gone into labor during Sunday services. The birth had been a breech, causing considerable injury to both the mother and child, which caused some concern amongst the family. That both lived and after several days readily improved seemed near miraculous, and earned the Masons the deepest of gratitude from both parents.

Afterwards the sisters were much in demand, regularly servicing most of the more well-to-do families in the area including the Carters, Pickmans, Whateleys, Marshs, Gilmans, Potters, Latimers and Phillipses. By some estimates one out of every three children born in Arkham was brought into the world by the Masons who, despite the fine quality of their work, charged little if anything for their services. Twenty years would pass, and the Masons began serving as midwives to the very children they had brought into the world. Arkham had begun to swell in size and began to lay down the roads and structures that would guide its growth into a thriving city. The sisters were in their forties and had lost much of the weight they had gained so many years ago. Brown John had left them the summer before, though when exactly, no one in particular could or would say. When pressed on the issue, the Masons would simply say that it was time for him to go, his services were no longer required.

It was the spring of 1685 that the first sour note between the village and the sisters was raised. Arthur Marsh, owner of the Kingsport Mercantile Company, aged but still spry, had come to Arkham to visit family, and after a chance encounter with one of the Masons related the most curious of tales. It was round about 1670 when he as captain of the Sandra D took shelter from rough weather along the coast of Florida, and was attacked by natives of the area, which the crew of the Sandra D was able to fend off. After some discussion, a militia was formed and the surviving raiders were tracked back to their crude settlement. There the good captain was to behold such sights and acts of indecent barbarism and crimes against God that he quickly ordered the entire village slaughtered. That these natives were the same as those that had seized years earlier seized the Cordelia Ys, Marsh had no doubts, for scattered amongst the village were timbers, crates and sacks that still bore the marks of that ship. That the villagers themselves regularly feasted on human flesh, and that this had been the fate of those aboard the Cordelia Ys, was for Captain Marsh a foregone conclusion, and it was for this reason that he had ordered the massacre. That he did these things to prevent the villagers from ever again preying on ships in distress seemed to his crew a prudent and wise thing. What they could not understand is why he had taken a sledgehammer to the crude shell-rock temple and collapsed it to the ground. Nor could the crew understand why he had ordered the bodies, the village and the temple doused with kerosene and burned beyond recognition. The crew could not understand these things, for they had not entered the temple and seen the tableau that decorated the walls within. They had not seen the crude but blasphemous paintings that showed the villagers carrying out their religious rites. They had not seen the image of the villagers kneeling before sanctified figures who were gleefully feasting upon human corpses. Marsh had seen these things and he shattered them and burned them in an attempt to blot them from his memory where they glowed like a horrendous beacon. For the figures that feasted in that tableau were a black man and three women dressed in white gowns all with eerily identical features, which despite the crudeness of execution Marsh recognized as belonging to the Abigail, Hepzibah and Keziah Mason, and the fare on the table was unmistakably the crew of the Cordelia Ys!

The rumors of Marsh’s tale swept through Arkham like a cold wind, turning the town bitter and mean. A summer drought hit the villages hard, crops withered, cows went dry and sows took to eating their own. Food, particularly meat, grew scarce. Rumors spread about strange sounds and violet lights emanating from the Mason house. In September the Derby household woke to the screaming of young Matthew, who had been roused from his sleep, he claimed, to find one of the Masons grabbing at his feet with her claw-like hands. When over the course of the next week Lucy Anable and Jeremiah Upton reported similar nightmares, the townsfolk became restless and there was much talk in the square. Farmers and shopkeepers throughout Arkham refused to do business with them, and it was not unusual to see the three walking on the Innsmouth or Kingsport roads, their backs laden down with dry goods and fish. In late October tragedy struck when Lamar Holt, a boy of just seven years living with his family on the road to Kingsport, vanished. The boy’s parents had been called to the barn to attend to a sick horse for several hours, and when they returned, the boy was gone without a trace. A desperate search throughout the night and next day in the surrounding woods found nothing. The parents, fearful and desperate, demanded that the Masons be questioned. The search party quickly became a mob that marched toward Arkham with obvious intent. Only the sudden intervention of a dozen well-armed men prevented the mob from storming the house and forcibly seizing the sisters.