The Silver Key

1958

A fist pounded impatiently on the front door. Someone yelled, “Let us in, Levi.” Angry men with guns paced in anticipation, and the front porch ached under their weight. Levi sat in his favorite chair a few feet from the fireplace, which was the only light in the room. He knew why the men had come and nothing he could say or do would sate their anger. These were his final days or hours. He held a small human figure made of straw in one hand and recited the words he had learned as a child from his “crazy” Louisiana aunt, words he believed contained power and magic.  The door flew open with a wall-shaking crash and police fell into the house, waving their weapons, expecting, maybe hoping, for resistance. Levi tossed the doll into the fire and stood, hands raised in the air, his shadow on the wall looking like a performing circus bear.

2014

Winter nights in the upper Midwest, beyond the meager yellow glow of the small prairie town of Brereton, are as cold and black as the bottom of a covered well. A lone pair of headlights bounced up and down on a rutted gravel road, capturing swirls of snow as they strained to cut through the heavy darkness. The driver, Josh Helms, grimaced after a swig of whisky from a bag handed to him by Gavin Larson, who gladly took back the half empty bottle and tilted it up for another gulp. The truck’s side windows were frosted, and Josh lowered his a few inches to gaze into the raw black void of a North Dakota night.

“Damn, it’s hard to see. Why didn’t we just do this in the daylight?” asked Josh.

“What fun would that be?”

“It’s snowing, dark as shit, and about 20 degrees outside. Somehow ‘fun’ doesn’t quite capture the moment.”

“Hey, I brought whisky so shut up.”

“And the key. Your old man’s gonna be pissed when he sees it’s gone.”

“He’s passed out by now. I’ll put it back on the counter when we get back. Besides, there was nothing on the envelope. It could have been meant for me.”

“Look. There’s the house up on the right. Damn dawg, it’s creepy.”

Captured in the bluish white lights of the truck was a farm house, at least the skeletal remains of a farm house, it’s clapboard siding dark and moldy with age, windows covered in grime, and vines crawling up it’s two story exterior like the tentacles of some terrestrial octopus. Josh pulled his truck to a stop and grabbed the bottle from Gavin.

“Why is there even a lock on the door? A person could just break a window and crawl in,” said Josh, wiping his mouth with his sleeve. “Surprised no one’s done it.”

Gavin looked down at the silver key in his palm with the name “Hastings” engraved on it. “I don’t know, but it’s like some kind of invitation. There was a photo with it, but my old man took it before I could see what it was.” He smiled at his friend and adjusted his tan UND baseball cap. “It’s all just too damn crazy to pass up.”

The young men stepped out of the truck into the frigid night air. Gavin turned on his flashlight and inspected the drooping remnants of a front porch. “Nobody’s lived here for a long time.”

“Like out of some horror movie. Maybe this—.”

“Don’t you wuss out on me now, Josh.” Gavin walked cautiously up the steps to the front door. “Weird. It looks like the lock is brand new. Come on.”

Reluctantly, hands deep in his jacket pockets, Josh joined his friend next to the door. A sudden gust of snow swirled around the two, perhaps a subtle warning, but Gavin slipped the key into the lock and turned it with a click. Flashlight in hand, he pushed the door in and signaled for Josh to follow. After the two disappeared into the darkness, the door slammed violently shut behind them, violating the deep-space quiet of a moonless prairie night.

Winnie Larson wiped the kitchen counter with a sponge in one hand and held her cell to her ear with the other. The plump, rosy-cheeked woman wore a concerned expression.

“I know he’s twenty years old, and I don’t normally keep tabs on him, but he’s usually good about texting me if he’s not coming home. I don’t know where he went. He was with Josh. I’m not trying….”

She paused at the kitchen window. In the middle of the freshly frosted front yard was what looked like a snowman, although she couldn’t make out any details. Whatever it was, it wasn’t there last night.

“I’ll have to call you back, Sis.”

A down coat pulled around her ample waist, untied boots plodding across the yard, Winnie approached the strange sculpture cautiously. It was a crude replica of a man with a frowning face. A knife was buried into one eye with red dye dripping down from the wound like blood. Confused, Winnie finally noticed the cap on the snowman’s head. It was a tan UND baseball cap stained with dark red blood. Her screams sent a tree full of blackbirds flapping skyward.

Beneath a grim charcoal sky, a procession of cars with their lights on made its way slowly down Main Street in the direction of Skjeberg Cemetery at the southern edge of Brereton. In the third car behind the hearse sat a somber Scott Schuster, a gifted young native of Brereton who left town three years earlier to attend law school at the University of Iowa. He’d grown up across the street from Gavin and the two had been closer than most brothers. Scott had been in a black state of confusion ever since his aunt called him to tell him that Gavin and Josh had both been murdered, their bodies found in a barren corn field east of town. In the 134 years since the town’s founding there had only been one murder, and in a single night, two young men out of a population of 800, were killed. On top of that, there were the horrific methods used. Gavin had been stabbed repeatedly, with the knife left stuck in his right eye socket. All of Joshes fingers were hacked off as well as his penis, and he was left to bleed to death. As intelligent as he was, Scott could not conceive of this level of brutality.

            Wisps of snow began swirling down during the graveside ceremony, coating the shoulders of the mourners and providing one additional layer of cold gloom to the proceedings.  On his way back to his rental car, Scott heard a familiar voice behind him. He turned to see former classmate Cindy Brule approaching wearing the first smile he’d seen since he arrived. Despite the circumstances, she betrayed a vibrancy and youthfulness that brought a small bit of warmth to a bitter day.

            “I was wondering if you’d be able to make it,” she said, putting a welcome hand on his arm. Hazel eyes, waves of autumn red hair framing a pale, freckled face, Scott was already thinking about rescheduling his flight out of Grand Rapids the next day.

            “Cindy. Wow, it’s great to see you. When did you get in?”

            She lowered her eyes and her cheeks flushed. “I never left. I manage Dell’s Café now.”

            “I didn’t mean—“

            “No, it’s okay. I’m really glad you’re here. We’re all in a state of shock so it’s nice to see an old familiar face.” Unexpectedly, she put her arms around Scott and hugged him. “Sorry. I’m feeling pretty emotional.”

            “Don’t be sorry. It’s an unbelievable tragedy. I was trying to talk Gavin into coming to Iowa City...” His voice trailed off.

            “Scott, I know this is forward, but have dinner with me tonight. I want to hear stories about when we were kids. We can go to Jackson’s Landing.”

            He nodded yes, knowing that they both needed to avoid being alone.

            The two reminisced over dinner, shared wine at Cindy’s house and had awkward, healing sex. Cindy was gone to work when Scott got up at 10:00. She left a note on the kitchen counter describing where to find the coffee and bagels, and ended it with a small heart. This was unexpected.

            Coffee gurgling, a bagel in the toaster, Scott sat down at the kitchen table with his phone ready to change his flight when he noticed a pile of mail on the table. On top were a square blank envelope and a silver key etched with the name “Hastings.” The name was familiar to him, as it was to most long-time residents.

            Levi Hastings was a recluse who lived in a house on the edge of town during the 1950s. Many in Brereton assumed Levi was mentally ill and kept their distance from the hulking, mysterious man. Children were cautioned by their parents not to be out late at night in case you meet up with Levi Hastings. In the summer of 1958, the battered body of a young girl, Alice Cumberland, was found in brush in the vicinity of Levi’s house. She had been molested numerous times and beaten to death. Suspicion immediately turned toward the hapless hermit and, despite his claims of innocence, he was arrested by local police based solely on the proximity of the body to his house. The parents of the young murder victim were well liked and well respected, and a palpable anger boiled up among men in the town as they nursed beers at The Lounge. This ugly disruption of the American dream could not be allowed to stand, and the next day, as the sheriff drove Levi out of town heading south to Grand Forks, his patrol car was stopped by a group of ten men with rifles. They took Levi out of the car, forced the sheriff to turn around and go back to Brereton, and then marched the resigned suspect into the brush. Levi’s body was never found, and no charges were ever filed.

             Dell’s was almost empty when Scott walked in and he wondered how Cindy could keep the doors open. Small town America had been decimated by the 2008 financial crises and it wiped out a lot of local businesses like Dell’s over the ensuing years. Looking stressed as she talked to one of the teenage waitresses, Cindy’s posture changed immediately when she noticed him walking to the counter and sliding onto a stool. She set a coffee cup in front of him and filled it.

            “Good morning,” she said with a knowing smile.

            “It is good, isn’t it?”

            “You going to be able to stay a little longer?”

            “Yeah. I got that all straightened out. Hey, I hope you won’t get pissed at me for being snoopy, but I noticed the key that had “Hastings” etched in it. What’s that all about?”

            The smile disappeared and Cindy busied herself adjusting the salt and pepper shakers on the counter. “It was in my mailbox a few days ago. I don’t know what it means. Do you?”

            “No. Well, we all know the story of Levi Hastings and the little girl, but—“

            “You know they found the real killer,” said the young waitress in passing.

            “What?” asked Scott.

            Ignoring Cindy’s scowl, the waitress went on. “After Pastor Gains died a couple of years ago, someone found stained gloves and a child’s hair barrette hidden in his house.” Cindy took the coffee pot to the lone table with a customer. “They checked the DNA and it belonged to the little girl.”

            “Pastor Gains?” said Scott with a confused look. “But isn’t he….”

            The girl smiled slyly and nodded in Cindy’s direction.

            Scott didn’t bring up the subject until that evening as he cleared dinner dishes from the table.

            “Cindy, I’m sorry about all of this Hasting’s stuff.”

            She rested her elbows tiredly on the table. “It was a shock. You can’t imagine what it’s like finding out your grandfather, a Lutheran minister no less, is a child killer. And that an innocent man…”

            Scott came over and knelt down beside her. “I know, but it’s ancient history. Damn, I just seem to be stirring things up. I probably should have stayed in Iowa City.”

            “Don’t say that,” she said, resting her hand on his. “I’m glad you’re here.”

            At two in the morning, Cindy’s phone rang. She went into the bathroom to talk, but Scott was awake when she returned and sat on the edge of the bed, holding her knees to her chest.

            “Cindy? What’s wrong?”

            “You remember Doug Willits?”

            “Sure. Played basketball. He got Wendy Larchmont pregnant senior year and…last I heard he was working his father’s farm.”

            “My cousin is a deputy sheriff. They found Doug’s body tonight. It was hanging from the limb of an oak tree in Heritage Park.”

            “Did they find—“

            “Yes. There was a snowman in his mother’s front yard, complete with a noose around its neck.”

            Having the morning free while Cindy worked, Scott began searching the Internet for something that might shed light on what was happening in his hometown. He found a pad to start mapping out the bits of information he was uncovering, but needed a pen. He looked around and started rummaging through Cindy’s junk drawer in the kitchen. Digging towards the back his fingers found a photograph. He pulled it out and set it on the counter. The photo was of a group of men in hunting clothes holding shotguns. The clothing had Scott guessing it was the 1950s. In the foreground were more than twenty dead pheasants lined up on the ground. It was obviously the bounty of a day’s hunting. It took a minute, but Scott recognized most of the men in the photo from his childhood. There was Karl Larson, Pastor Glenn Gains, Ed Willits, David Berglund, George Helms, and on he went mentally ticking off names. Between the two individuals he couldn’t identify was a man in the back caught in another hunter’s shadow and unrecognizable. Scott turned it over and there was a short handwritten note.

            Guess who’s back in town, Cindy?

            He glanced over to the pile of mail and noticed the key was gone. A sudden sense of panic clenched around his throat and he dressed quickly and drove to the diner. It was nearly deserted and worse, he did not see Cindy.

            “She came in for a little while, but said she needed to go see someone. Didn’t look too good…like she was coming down with something.”

            Scott started his car and pulled out onto Main Street. The connections between the Hastings incident over fifty years earlier and the key and the photograph were still hazy but slowly beginning to come into focus. There was a connection that ran threw the recent murders leading to the Hasting’s house.

As if just waking up, Scott found himself parked in front of Cindy’s place, although this wasn’t his original destination. His heart rate shot up and his palms grew damp when he noticed the snowman the middle of her front yard. He got out of the car and approached the effigy warily. This latest creation was another human figure, but where the face would be there was only a large red stain. Lying next to the monstrosity was a shotgun.

            Overcome with panic, Scott ran to his car and steered in the direction of the Hasting’s house, tires squealing as he made his way out of town. The car bounced violently on the rural gravel road, but he soon caught site of the dark house in the distance and pressed the accelerator down even further. Reaching the crest of a small rise, he caught site of something lying in the road. He slammed on his breaks and slid to a stop in a cloud of dust and flying rocks only a few feet from the object. He got out and went to the front of the car. It was Cindy’s lifeless body.

            “Nooo,” he moaned in disbelief, putting a hand to his forehead.

He was suddenly sick to his stomach, in shock, and as much as he didn’t want to, he walked slowly around the body. Just as with the snowman, Cindy’s beautiful face had been blown off and there remained only a bloody, raw mess.

            Scott sat on the back step of an ambulance, his head buried in his hands. The lights of several squad cars swirled around the flat, desolate landscape, as officers photographed Cindy’s body and searched the area for clues. A deputy sheriff approached Scott with a cup of coffee.

            “Here,” said dour officer, holding out the cup. “Warm yourself up.”

            Red-eyed and pale, Scott looked up and accepted the coffee.

            “Thanks. Anything yet?”

            “Nothing conclusive, but we checked the shotgun at her house and it had been fired recently. We should be able to get prints off of it. Did she own a shotgun?”

            Scott shrugged. “I don’t know. We were just starting to…get reacquainted. There’s a lot I don’t know about her.”

            “How about you? Own any weapons?”

            Scott scowled. “No.”

            “Haven’t found her car yet. So you wouldn’t know why she’d be out here by herself?”

            Scenarios flew around Scott’s head like startled bats in a cave.  “No,” he decided. “I don’t know why she’d be out here.”

            “Why were you here?”

            “I was just taking a drive. That’s all. Trying to visit some old haunts from when I was a kid.”

            The sheriff’s expression made it clear he didn’t like the answer, but after a few more general questions he told Scott he was free to go.

            That night, Scott sat in a chair in the dark living room of Cindy’s house, a hand clutching a bottle of vodka, his thoughts lost in the blackness surrounding him. Although he hadn’t put all of the puzzle pieces together, Cindy’s death made him realize that the Hasting’s house was the epicenter of the horror his hometown was experiencing. Someone or something was luring people to the house with the key and the photo, murdering them, and then torturing their loved ones with the snowmen. The “why” was still the maddeningly elusive question. A quarter of the bottle now coursing through his veins, Scott settled on a solution to the dilemma, and he rose unsteadily to his feet to carry out his plan.

            A half hour later, Scott pulled up in front of the empty, crumbling Hasting’s house. He stumbled to the trunk where he grabbed a five-gallon gas can, carried it to the porch of the house and began splashing gasoline around the front door. After emptying the can, he stepped back a bit, struck a match on the side of a box, and threw it onto the porch. Orange blue flames instantly flared up and Scott had to move back even further as the fire intensified. The weathered dry wood burned quickly and soon the entire front of the house was engulfed in flames.

            Back in his car, he watched the inferno grow for another moment, put the vehicle in reverse and drove back to Cindy’s house. Fifteen minutes after his return, he heard the wailing siren of the town’s only fire truck heading in an easterly direction. The house would never survive, he assured himself, and neither would the killer. He showered and went to bed not really caring if the local cops could put two and two together, which he highly doubted.

            It wasn’t the worst hangover he’d ever had, but the headache was distracting as he packed his bag for the flight back to Iowa that afternoon. Cindy’s relatives would have to deal with house, and he wasn’t up for another funeral. It was a cold, oppressive day with low grey clouds a person could almost reach up and touch. Scott threw his bag into the trunk of the rental car and started backing out of the driveway. He was out into the street about to shift into drive when he noticed the little faded red flag on Cindy’s mailbox was up. Okay. There was a choice here, he knew, to either drive off and put the ugliness of this visit behind him or…. He pulled the car over and went to the mailbox. Inside was a small square blank envelope. Hands shaking, he opened it and removed the silver key and the photo. The photo was the exact same one that Cindy had received, only the man whose face was in shadows was now circled in red. Reluctantly, his body perspiring despite the frigid temperatures, Scott turned over the picture and read the note.

Grandpa Gavin Schuster. Not the ringleader, but a willing participant. August 3, 1958.

Participant? He read the date again and it suddenly all clicked. This was the group of men who had kidnapped Levi Hastings and killed him. His uncle was one of them. They murdered an innocent man.

Dust and gravel flew up behind Scott’s Forerunner as he struggled to keep it on the road. For some unexplainable reason, he didn’t go into a state of head-exploding shock when he came over a crest in the road and saw that the Hastings house was exactly as it had been before the fire. It was just another bizarre event in a long sequence of bizarre events. He turned and braked to a wheel-locking skid in front of the house, finally stopping a few feet from the porch. Scott got out and went to the rear of his vehicle, reemerging with an axe in one hand, the key in another, and a face creased by rage. He stood at the front door for a moment, then briefly looked back over his shoulder as if saying goodbye.

The lock clicked and he walked into the darkness.

The door slammed shut behind him.

            Soft morning flakes drifted down and settled on the town of Brereton. An elderly woman wrapped in layers of clothing against the cold walked tiredly up a path through the middle of Skjeberg Cemetery. She stopped at a grave and bowed her gray head, praying silently over a lost loved one. On the slow journey back to her car, something caught her eye and she left the path to inspect the headstone of Gavin Schuster, who died in 1989. Someone had built a snowman just in front of the marker. It was the form of a human, but the round snowball head lay on the ground, and next to that was a blood-covered axe.