PART 2

Elsie had received her first taste of murder from her father, the experience of which would later serve her well. It was on an Indian summer, October afternoon, with a breezy golden light filtering through the rustling trees. It was the kind of day where even Frank and Elsie Meyer were happy to be alive and in each other’s company. It was the kind of day when death likes to pull the rug out from under the living. Elsie sat idly as her father tended the still, playing with a hand tailored rag doll, the only tangible remaining remnant of her mother’s love. In the scrub brush nearby, a white-eyed vireo repeated its chattering song, “chip-oh-wee-ree-ree, chip-oh-wee-ree-ree, chip-oh…”, and then abruptly took wing. They both had heard the snapping branch at the same instant and Elsie peered up in time to witness a whirlwind of kinetic motion. The Treasury Man came lunging at her father, pistol drawn and in that same swirling second her father blindly swung out with the flaming iron poker, burying the blunted, grabbing tip, deep in the revenuer’s temple. The pistol went off with the shot splintering the bark on the tree Elsie reclined against, not six inches above her head. The Treasury Man slumped to the ground, right foot dancing a solo mountain jig, gurgling and sputtering like the monstrous blue catfishes she watched her father pull from the river to leave gasping on the bank. He was still rasping horribly when Father dragged him to the hastily dug, shallow grave, tossed the pistol in after him, and threw the first shovelful of earth upon him. Elsie stood fascinated, watching until she could no longer see the tips of the man’s boots; until the now muffled groans grew fainter and finally ceased.

Now here it was a few years later with a bedful of nightmares and daydreams behind her and graduation coming soon for her and her fellow Eighth Graders. Back in the schoolroom that had become both refuge and prison, she sat watching, silently stone-faced as her giggling ninny classmates passed their notebooks around for autographs, praising each other with overwrought flattery and preening affectations of camaraderie, as they scribbled trite sentiments on the pages. Elsie clutched her own notebook tight to her chest, never daring to present it, knowing the rejection that would surely follow. She grabbed her shawl and quietly went behind the schoolhouse, with pen and ink and notebook in tow and the thought of decorating the pages with salutations of her own creation. There she sat alone and silently repeated as a memory exercise, the picturesque bromides the other girls had recited aloud. Pen in hand, she began. 

Oh, how she hated that Ruth Presseisen. She hated everything about her from her expensive dresses to her blue eyes and strawberry blond curls. But most of all she hated her silly last name, which Elsie had always struggled to pronounce properly and which Ruth would in turn annunciate for her with exaggerated precision and condescending ridicule. Neatly in her steady hand she wrote, “I hope you’ll lead a happy life, and make some man a cheerful wife!” She read it back and hated it. She didn’t want a man in her life ever again, certainly not a husband. She wished nothing but agony for her father and the same for most all the doltish boys at school. She methodically erased the second line and replaced it with, “And never cut our friendship with a knife.” Better, much better Elsie thought as she envisioned the long sharp blade of the carving knife first removing Ruth’s pretty braids, before finally plunging deep into her milky bosom. With that image dancing playfully in her head she resumed, “When you are grown and chance to look at this book, don’t forget to pronounce my last name. Pre-si-sen. Ha, Ha.” The laughing continued in Elsie’s head long after her pen stopped writing.

“Who wants to sign my book next?” she thought. Hester Mayer was at one time haltingly kind to Elsie, once even pointing out the similarity of their surnames. “We are like sisters,” she said, “separated by just one letter.” Elsie hoping for a confidant allowed herself to believe maybe she had found one in Hester but once the other girls made it clear to her that Elsie was a pariah, Hester’s kindness soon turned cold. Very often after that she would be loudest and most hostile amongst them when berating poor Elsie, as if she had to erase in the other girls’ minds any memory of her ill-conceived civility. For cowardly Hester, Elsie wrote,

“Love many, trust few,
Always paddle your own canoe.”

Lovingly,
Hester Mayer.

Just then she heard the obnoxious hee-haw of that braying fool, Katherine Monteith come pouring forth between frame and sill from the slightly opened schoolhouse window. “She might be the worst of them all, for she is dumber and uglier than I,” thought Elsie, “yet she treats me like I am her inferior, only because her father is a wealthy and respected merchant in town.” Katherine never missed an opportunity to boast to Elsie how pretty, well respected and loving her own mother was, even if each point were roundly debatable. No matter, she would concoct every manner of mother/daughter intimacy to relate to Elsie, for no other purpose than to remind Elsie of that which she was missing. “I despise her!” Elise murmured, simmering as she neatly penned,

“The best luck I ever knew,
Was when I made a friend of you.”

Sincerely yours,
Katherine Monteith.

That left remaining only Madeline Schaffe. Of her primary tormentors Madeline was the most timid, the least venomous. “That shall make her easiest to kill.” thought Elsie as she scrawled one last message in her notebook.

“When you are old and cannot see,
Put on your specks and think of me.”

Your sincere friend,
Madeline Schaffe.

With that she closed her notebook along with her eyes and leaned back against the schoolhouse soaking up what warmth she could from the cold, January sun. What would it be like to make them all just go away?

Many of Elsie’s classmates would continue their formal educations in High School but nearly as many would not and she was among the latter. Now, at the ages of fifteen and sixteen, they were big enough to help full-time on the family farms or for the boys to take jobs in the mills. An education limited to the 8^th grade was not uncommon in the rural counties of these Ozark hills and an 8^th grade education was all Elsie could or would endure. With the very end of her tortuous schooldays in sight, something inside of Elsie, something that had been straining and slowly unravelling without interval for years, finally snapped. That very next day she got busy. 

After carefully following her movements with no real intent of genuine malice other than to confront and scare her, she took Madeline by surprise down by Terrell Creek. What happened next was the sudden onslaught of a blind urge that theretofore had only been an inkling. All that it took to trigger the urge into action was Madeline’s unkind reaction to Elsie’s appearance. “Oh, it’s just you Elsie. I can’t be bothered now; I’m looking for my dog.” “She went chasing after a rabbit, her name is Biscuit. If you see her call her to you and hold her for me.” “Sure I will,” Elsie replied pointing. “I saw a dog playing along the bank not long ago, just down yonder.” “Show me!” demanded Madeline. And with that they walked toward the water’s edge, Madeline pacing frantically while shouting, “Biscuit! Biscuit!” 

“I’ve got your Biscuit.” Elsie whispered to herself as she came up quietly behind Madeline. Easily overpowering her, Elsie wrapped her scarf tightly around her neck, pushed her down the slippery bank and held her head under the icy water. Madeline thrashed wildly as Elsie knelt on her back but she could get no traction in the cold, wet mud and eventually her obliterated air stopped bubbling to the surface. Still, she held her in place till both Elsie’s hands and Madeline’s face turned purplish blue. Hauling her under the arms she dragged her sodden body a ways down the shoreline, stuffed her into a muddy shelf overhang and gathered driftwood and dead leaves to cover her up. “The ground is too frozen to bury her and anyway I have no shovel,” thought Elsie, “but perhaps she can winter here.” “If the coyotes and coons don’t make a meal of her she will keep until the spring rains carry her remains down to the river.” “Never mind anyhow, the deed is done,” she said aloud. Wet and shivering but burning inside she started the long trek home. Her mind raced as she alternated between hysterical bouts of tears and laughter and her body convulsed involuntarily. The bitter cold coupled with the glorious release of the deed had inflicted a state of shock upon Elsie. She later recalled little of her journey home.

A few weeks later on a frigid February afternoon, the community still shaken with disquietude over the abrupt disappearance of young Madeline Schaffe, it happened again. Elsie was returning from a visit to town, driving their one horse and rickety wagon (Applesauce being blanketed back home in the barn), with a load of meager provisions to sustain Father and her throughout the remaining winter. There, in the road up ahead she spied Katherine Monteith, who was also returning home after a visit to her own father’s mercantile store. Elsie avoided the mercantile whenever possible, not wanting to patronize the Monteith family, preferring to gather her goods from Eckler’s Hardware at the other end of Main Street. Katherine heard Elsie’s wagon in the road and turned to see who was coming. She paused chomping on her peppermint stick a moment, long enough to thrust a bony finger at Elsie’s rig and shouted loudly, “I do declare, I don’t know who is more skinny, sickly and pathetic, you or that Godforsaken beast pulling the wagon!” Elsie slowed the wagon to a halt and sat in the road watching as Katherine threw her head back with a hearty guffaw and resumed working on her candy. She sat there for what seemed like minutes as Katherine continued on her way. Elsie looked over each shoulder to make sure the road was clear behind her and without saying a word whipped the old nag with hideous ferocity, driving the wagon straight toward Katherine, who turning too late, let out one baleful yelp from her twisted, sugar smeared mouth. 

The last thing she saw before being crumpled, broken and torn under shoddy hoof and heavy wheel was Elsie’s determined glare accompanied by an ever so slight, tight-lipped smile. Right to the end Katherine remained loud and obnoxious, wailing loudly in her death throes just as she had in life. Her muddy, bloody petticoat was twisted up around her head and upon slowing and turning the rig, Elsie saw glistening in the cold winter sun, the stark white flash of Katherine’s shin bone, protruding through the laces of her boot. Elsie whipped the horse again and kept whipping, holding tight the reins as the force of the second impact nearly threw her out of the buckboard. Katherine was no longer screaming. She lay face up in the road with a split in her skull like a watermelon that was fumbled and dropped from a height. Her eyes stared blankly up at the sky and a dribble of blood, or was it peppermint?, oozed stickily down her chin. Elsie thought for a moment, “If I drag her into the roadside scrub she is certain to be discovered. For this road is well travelled.” Elsie was small but mighty. Years of doing all of the chores on her own and fighting off her father’s sodden advances had made her so. She chopped wood, she plowed their small plot, she carried stones from the field and water from the well, so lifting the slight, ridiculous child of privilege into the back of the wagon was not so much of a challenge. And beside she wasn’t exactly concerned about the further bumps and bruises applied to Katherine’s silly noggin that were required for completion of the job. Once in the back of the wagon she wrapped Katherine in the soiled old quilt she had brought along on the journey for warmth. 

Upon returning home she knew her father would be blind drunk, either in bed or up in the hills. She was little concerned with him discovering her as she dragged Katherine’s body down into the root cellar, a place her father never ventured. Elsie prepared every meal and her father never seemed to be hungry much anyway. He got most of his meager sustenance from the jug. It was cold in the root cellar and Elsie felt no great sense of urgency in disposing of Katherine more permanently so she propped her in a darkened corner with the bloodied quilt draped over her.

She went about her daily routine for some weeks without any human interaction expect for that of her loathsome father and an occasional visit to Katherine to check on the yawning gap in her skull. She had taken a keen interest in the slightly shifting shape, color and smell of the wound. She was fascinated by the transformation of this once lively, foolish creature that now looked more like one of the trapped possums her father would hang, bleed out and gut. What was once pink was now turning green, what was once crimson had turned black and Katherine’s eyes, still opened in mesmerized horror, had a blue, gray film that gave her an unnatural and directionless gaze. Elsie knew she couldn’t lodge here forever. With the coming of spring she would start to thaw completely and the reek would reveal her residency. She knew enough about the dead things of the woods to know that.

One early Sunday morning, with the slightest hint of Spring in the air, Elsie, knowing that her father would be snoring away last nights drink for hours to come, got busy. She carried the long carving knife, the boning knife and the cleaver and spread them out on an old table in the barn. The saw and the ax were already nearby. She next went to the root cellar and fetched Katherine, who was stiff as a board and somehow heavier than she remembered. At first she tried to pull her up the few short stairs by her hair but it came out in two clumps in her hands when Katherine’s crooked leg caught on the bottom steps. Elsie was pulling hard when the roots gave way and she ended up tumbling backwards from the cellar on her rump. She let out a laugh and scattered the dry, mangy locks to the cool morning breeze. Grabbing her now under both arms she pulled the wretched girl up and out. Katherine’s lips were now drawn back in a ghastly smile and Elsie swore she caught the sunlight glistening on peppermint shards stuck in the teeth and gums where she had bit down hard upon initial impact of the wagon. Real or imagined, she even thought she had caught the scent of that Christmas candy she had only ever enjoyed on one occasion, long ago when Mother was still alive, back when her home was a happy one. 

Little Elsie had cleaned enough fish, skinned enough varmints and even helped dress a deer now and again that her father would somehow manage to stay sober enough to fell with his rifle, so that the blood and the gristle and the sweat of the task bothered her little. Working with her back to the penned animals she ignored their uneasy murmurings, bemused at their instinctual perception that something entirely unnatural was afoot. With routine chore like detachment she kept at it until she had everything neatly arranged in small bundles and bucketsful. She first carried the buckets to the hog pen where the three skinny inhabitants almost lost their swine minds in their frenzied, gluttonous delight. In fact, they disposed of the sticky wet slop of Katherine so quickly that Elsie wanted to see what work they would make of the bigger pieces. She started with an arm that disappeared, bone and all, in a voracious tug of war that lasted no more than five minutes. “This is going to be easier than I thought,” smiled Elsie. 

It was now early March and here and there the happy yellow crocuses began to push through the pungent, matted winter debris. The entire county was now in an uproar over the two missing girls but little homesteads like Elsie’s were scattered all over the hills and valleys and the gossip and hysteria of town seldom reached their isolation. Her father upon hearing tell of the rumors from his corn whisky customers, summoned some remnant of concern for the girl and forced Elsie to start carrying a little pistol in her skirt pocket whenever she ventured out for chores or necessities. He was not so far gone to not realize that his miserable existence was dependent on her constant foraging and resourceful energy. 

Elsie didn’t necessarily consider herself a cold-blooded murderer, not yet anyhow. After all she hadn’t specifically planned the killings of Madeline and Katherine, they had pretty much just occurred. Like a sudden thunderstorm or finding a penny on the road, they had just happened. But now Elsie began to worry about Hester. Sure Hester was gutless and Elsie despised her for not having spine enough to stand against her paltry friends but Hester was also the smartest of the bunch and she was beginning to make her suspicions known. It was only a week ago that Elsie, feeling bold and robust, was returning on the road from town and passed Hester and her little sisters playing in the meadow near the spring. Upon seeing Elsie, Hester bolted upright and started repeating louder and louder, “What have you done with them?” “What have you done with them?” The faintest of smiles passed over Else’s lips as she walked by without ever looking over or acknowledging Hester’s wails. By the time Elsie rounded the bend Hester’s query had reached a hysterical pitch. This gave Elsie a warm feeling of satisfaction but as she traversed out of earshot of Hester’s fanatic moan, worry of further discovery began to creep into her mind. “She has no proof but she knows and she like the rest of them is a blabbermouth. Something must be done.” 

Hester happened to be madly in love with the older brother of another of their classmates, Sally Ann Washburn. Austin Washburn was as dumb as a post in Elsie’s mind but he was industrious and graced with a strapping physique and rugged good looks that served him well in all of his endeavors. Together with his father, Mr. Eli Washburn, they ran a thriving lumber mill on their patch of land near an inlet to the river. 

It was no secret to anyone that Hester was mad for Austin, as she would pine openly and endlessly about his wavy blonde hair and kind blue eyes. She would write poetry flush with longing and tender devotion. Even Austin himself was aware of her affections but did little or nothing to either encourage or discourage her feelings. He was simply too busy at the mill and too keen to blow off steam in town with the other young men of the community to pay Hester much mind. So it was with a bewildered mind and a hopeful heart that she awoke one pretty spring morning to discover the bright blue ribbon with a note pinned to it, tied to the branch of the blossoming crabapple tree just outside her bedroom window. She threw open the sash and almost fell to the ground while grabbing at the note but it was too far from her reach. So she ran out the door, still in her nightclothes and climbed the short distance to where she could untie and unravel the ribbon from the branches. She was still in the tree when she tore open the note and read,

“Meet me up at Oden’s Point at 4:00 pm this afternoon. I would like to speak with you of my intentions and my hope of our future together.”

Affectionately yours,
Austin Washburn

Giddy and flush with excitement Hester nearly toppled from the tree before skipping and twirling back to the front door, carefully composing herself and tucking the ribbon and note up the sleeve of her nightdress before entering. Her mother called from the kitchen, “Hester? What on earth are you doing outside in your nightclothes, have you lost your mind?” Hester replied as she passed back through to her bedroom, “Oh Mother, I saw the most beautiful bluebird on the branch outside my window and just had to have a closer look but he flew away.” 

“Never mind that, wake your sisters and get dressed for breakfast, it will be on the table soon,” said Mrs. Mayer. 

That morning and afternoon dragged on endlessly for Hester as she finished her chores and fretted about what dress to wear and how to fix her hair. She rebuked herself for her over eagerness and fretted about her arrival time but finally erred on the side of early. Better to appear anxious than chance missing him with a coy, late appearance. As she climbed the winding footpath to their meeting place her head swiveled fore and aft hoping to catch a glimpse of Austin on the trail. Oden’s Point is a wide limestone plateau reaching 90 feet above a bend in the river with tracks of the Missouri Pacific Railroad running directly below, a popular spot for picnics and courtship but likely to be abandoned on a late afternoon in March when the high breeze still blew with a chill air and the sunset came early. The sun was in fact dropping on the far horizon, bathing her surroundings in the golden light of late afternoon. She had arrived only slightly early and expected to see Austin coming up the trail and through the greening canopy of trees any minute now. She sat down on the smooth seat of a boulder, overlooking the valley below and waited.

Elsie had herself been lying in wait for more than an hour, indistinguishably tucked behind boulder and brush off to the left of the trailhead with a clear view of the stage like platform of the plateau. She had quietly checked and rechecked the cartridges in the diminutive break-top .32 caliber, Iver Johnson pistol her father had given her to carry. She stoically permitted the intrusion of crawling insects in her hiding place without commotion, but nearly revealed herself when of a group of three boys almost ruined her plans. They came bounding up the trail noisily in a footrace to the top and once reaching the summit set about collecting a pile of stones. Arsenal at hand they laid on their stomachs peering over the edge, waiting for the next passing train. Tossing rocks onto the boxcars below had become one of their favorite diversions with particular honors bestowed if you timed one just right to drop on the engine or caboose. Even greater distinction was rewarded if you managed to rile a conductor from the cabin out on to the end rail platform, looking upward and maybe shaking a fist. After about ten minutes of enthusiastic (inane in Elsie’s view) prattle, without any sign of a train one of the boys finally said, “I think we missed the afternoon train, If I’m not home in time for supper I’m gonna get whipped. Lets come back on Saturday and try for the two o’clock.” The other two boys had grown bored with the waiting and happily complied and just as quickly as they came, went loping down the opposite path that led down to the tracks where they would cross and head for home. Their loud chattering was barely out of earshot at the time Hester arrived up the opposite trail.

After a five-minute wait, during which Hester spent nervously smoothing her hair, pinching her cheeks and generally tittering about on her perch, both girls heard the distant toll, laboriously pealing four bells. As the last chime echoed, rolled and faded through the hills, Elsie emerged from her den revealing herself and startling poor Hester mightily. 

“Ugh, it’s only you,” Hester sneered, “please remove yourself as I am expecting a very important visitor and we do not wish to be disturbed!” 

“I know who you’re expecting,” replied Elsie, “and he’s not coming.”

“What do you mean, he’s not coming?” 

“Did you really think that Austin Washburn would be interested in a mealy-mouthed, little prig like yourself?” “Silly girl, he doesn’t even know you exist.” 

“That’s not true!” bellowed Hester, “He loves me, what have you done with him?”

“Done with him?” I’ve done nothing with him. It’s what I’m going to do with you that you should be worried about.”

Too furious to register that she was also suddenly very frightened, Hester stood up and stalked towards Elsie. Simultaneously Elsie withdrew the pistol from her skirts and pointed it directly and steadily at Hester’s forehead.

Hester recoiled in horror, “I knew it! I knew it all along from the day Madeline didn’t come home that you had murdered her! Her and Katherine both! You wicked, wicked girl, what did we ever do to you to deserve this?”

Elsie had been over it so many times in her head, the speech with which she was going to admonish Hester, the details of her duplicity, her indifference…her utter meanness. But in her eagerness for revenge and her unwillingness to reveal her hurt, she replied simply, “You didn’t do anything to me, or anything for me, or anything with me. Ever. Maybe you should have been nicer to me.”

“Now step backwards.”

“What are you going to do?” wailed Hester, “If you shoot me someone is bound to hear and come running!”

“Well if that isn’t a town girl for you”, Elsie smirked, “Do you have any idea how many gunshots go off in these woods on any given day?” “You see we hill folk don’t go to market for our food, we eat what we raise and we shoot the rest.” “No one round here is going to give the sound of a gunshot any thought at all.”

“Why me Elsie?” “I tried to be your friend, you’re just so… so different.” 

“You didn’t try very hard, now did you?”

“No I suppose I didn’t, Oh Dear God, please don’t shoot me in the face! My mother…”

All the while Elsie had been advancing on Hester, the muzzle of the pistol growing ever nearer Hester’s head. Hester was stepping, backwards now, glancing furtively at the ground beneath her feet, trying to gauge the distance to the edge. Hester’s mention of her mother had sparked a fury in Elsie where before there had only been calculated determination. “You look at ME Hester or so help me I will shoot you in the eye.”

With that Hester let out a barely audible whimper. “I am going to give you a choice that I didn’t give your two cow friends. You may stand there while I shoot at your silly pumpkin head and you may or may not die instantly but your poor mother will surely shriek at the sight of the hole I leave behind, or you may simply throw yourself off the edge and be done with it.” I estimate that you are about five feet away from the precipice right now.” Hester stole a quick glance and still saw the rocky earth between her feet, taking two baby steps backwards as the barrel of the modest black pistol, looking now the size of a cannon, inched ever closer. She could now smell the metal of the thing mingling with the gunpowder residue of its last discharge. Desperately she pleaded, “It wasn’t me, it wasn’t me! It was Ruth who hated you so! I don’t know why she did but I tried to be your…”

The word friend never came as Hester suddenly disappeared from Elsie’s gaze. The next sound was instead the horrible clomp of teeth smashing together as Hester’s feet dropped out from under her. She fell straight down like a sack of grain dropped from a barn loft but her retreating steps had been so short that on the way down her chin caught and smacked the outermost rim of the cliff’s edge. After that it was a tumbling summersault and the long free fall to the tracks below. 

“I lied when I told you that you were five feet from the edge Hester, you were much closer than that,” Elsie quietly corrected herself.

Setting the pistol on Hester’s former perch she got down on all fours, eased herself to the rim and peered down the yawning gap into the darkening depths below. She could make out the rumpled clump of yellow that was once Hester in her finest dress lying directly between the two faintly glinting rails of the railroad tracks. Those three boys on their best day couldn’t have dropped their shot any more squarely center than Hester did herself on those tracks, Elsie thought. 

She was about ready to push herself up and dust off when something off to her left, pink and wet, caught her eye in the last rays of afternoon sun. She admired it quizzically wondering if it were a baby bird that had dropped from its nest or some regurgitation of one of the forest creatures but presently it came into focus and registered. She let out a small snort of laughter when she realized that she was looking at about an inch and a half’s worth of Hester’s bloodied tongue that she must have bit off when her chin smashed the edge on her way down. Righting herself Elsie reached out the toe of her boot and gingerly flipped the stray piece of meat over the side. “Your cruel tongue should accompany you to the afterlife Hester. You may find more souls to torture with it in Hell.”

Turning now, Elsie retrieved her gun and tucked it in her pockets along with the discarded note and blue ribbon she found lying next to the boulder. With that she headed down the path and along home to prepare the supper for her despicable father.

At round 7:00 pm that evening Engine No. 267 of The Missouri Pacific line was running fifteen minutes behind on its run from Nassau to Carthage to Crane. The conductor was Stephen Napier, a twenty-two-year veteran of the rails. He was aggravated with the delays taking on water back in Monteith that had put his train behind schedule and he was determined to make up the time. He had managed the bend at Oden’s Point countless times before but even so he always slowed the engine a good 15 to 20 miles per hour to navigate the long blind curve. Tonight he didn’t feel like slowing down and he ordered his fireman to shovel on a little more coal. He was mad at his fireman for missing his mark over and over again at the little brass spittoon in the corner of the cab, he was mad at the incompetence of the tenders back up the line and he was mad at the memory of stones raining down on his engine and cars the last time he came through the pass. He held the throttle open steady at 40 miles per hour, a speed that bordered on careening on the old and sparsely maintained tracks. As the light of the big engine came off the tree line to his left and settled back on the track ahead it fell on a black shape not a hundred and fifty yards down the line. As his eyes made their adjustment it seemed to him that the shape was actually moving and he felt certain there was a wayward cow or wild hog lingering on the track, perhaps stuck or just plain stupid. He let out a prolonged blast on the steam whistle and the shape immediately shifted, with scattering portions peeling away. He could see clearly now it had been a huge flock of Turkey Buzzards feasting on a carcass and he could only hope as he applied the brake that the cattle catcher out front would do its job as advertised. He knew certain that the hurtling two hundred plus tons of iron had no chance of stopping before impact. As the last of the buzzards peeled off, he braced himself as the brakes whined and squealed in protest, and in the commotion he caught a bloody glimpse of yellow up ahead and thought at first deer, but then as the gap quickly closed, “God no! Oh dear God no!” 

As he recalled the incident later the fireman’s scream was even higher pitched than the shrieking brakes. When the roaring beast finally came to a stop they immediately leapt from the cabin, lanterns in hand on either side of the track and traced backwards, all the while peering into the dark underbelly of the train. Along the way they would catch a sickening, glistening smear of red on the rails or a lump of flesh and hair, twisted in stained yellow cotton, until finally alighting on the bulk of the clump that had once been Hester Mayer. Alfred the fireman immediately threw up his coffee and beans and Stephen Napier finished out his working days, clerking in a hardware store back home. He never again climbed into the cockpit of an engine and from that day forward, felt sick and sweaty every time he heard the blast of a train whistle coming through town.

The whole community talked about how Hester had been sorrowful, if not outright hysterical over the disappearance of her friends. How she sought the love of young Austin and how between that unrequited love and her missing classmates she must have just been overwhelmed to a degree where she flung herself off the point. Even her grieving parents settled on this scenario as the most likely. What pieces of Hester could be retrieved and arranged were wrapped in linen and placed in a mostly empty coffin. She was prayed over and placed in the ground up on Sycamore Hill not far from the empty graves of Madeline and Katherine. Not too far from Carra Meyer. And no one ever knew, not Hester, not Elsie and not Stephen Napier, of the massive old barn owl, whose once keen eyesight now greatly diminished, mistook Hester’s detached tongue for a field mouse and made a midnight snack of it.

Most everyone accepted that Hester had either purposely jumped or had stumbled over the edge. As for the other missing girls there were still rumblings of foul play but it was also understood by everyone that this was still rough and dangerous country. Had the girls been swept out by swift currents into the river channel, well, they wouldn’t have been the first. Their bodies could remain lodged under a treefall for months while the catfish and gar slowly picked away at them. The hills too were riddled with caves where an adventurous child might have entered a winding passage never to be seen again. There were even a few panthers and bears still roaming these parts though their numbers were greatly diminished. Either could have pounced and made a meal of Katherine or Madeline. Adding to the speculation, there was an old Cherokee woman down in the valley that swore it was the work of Kecleh-Kudleh, a man-beast of Indian folklore. Other folks told tales of The Ozark Howler, a giant mystical cat, up to his old devilry again. 

What most people could agree on was that no matter the manner of disappearance; they were gone, never to be seen again. Ruth Presseisen however did not concur with the prevailing theories as to the girls’ vanishing. She and Hester had on numerous occasions shared their suspicions of Elsie. They had noted how Elsie was the only one of their classmates to not show herself at the funerals of either Madeline or Katherine and as Ruth alone now noted, Hester’s either. They had both recalled Elsie’s frightful, evil stare whenever their paths had crossed. They had both recognized their horrid treatment of Elsie while in school but whenever Hester might express remorse or regret; Ruth would quickly admonish her and reiterate her own vile, consuming hatred for Elsie. Now all alone, she loathed her all the more. 

Too ornery to acknowledge fear, too superior to admit vulnerability, she was determined to expose Elsie and bring her to justice. One April morning she marched boldly into the office of Sheriff Maddox and revealed all of her collected evidence, most of which was pure speculation and vitriol. The sheriff listened patiently as Ruth, often bordering on hysterics, espoused how Elsie was responsible for all of the recurring carnage and mystery in the community. She even blamed Elsie for the recent mutilation of her neighbor, Old Miss Hennessy’s dog. When in reality that had been the work of nearsighted Elijah Seeger driving his new Model T pickup through town, who innocently enough thought he had hit a sizable rut in the dirt road when it had in fact been Miss Hennessy’s Cocker Spaniel, Duchess. Sheriff Maddox listened intently and without criticism until at long last Ruth had exhausted herself. And then he spoke plainly, without emotion but in a calming tone that further enraged Ruth, “Listen to me very carefully, that poor girl has had an extremely hard life and I don’t want you pestering her in any way. You leave the sheriffing to me.” Maddox had had more than his share of run-ins and dealings with Elsie’s drunken, corruptible father and had learned to tolerate him, not from dereliction of duty necessarily but more from sheer exhaustion of the matter. That and his enduring sympathy for Elsie skewed his thinking. He had once been quite in love with Elsie’s beautiful mother in their younger days and was dismayed when she married Elsie’s father who was at the time a decent enough man on the surface but of somewhat dubious character. It didn’t help matters that Elsie bore a strong resemblance to her mother.

Now Ruth was screaming again, “Leave the sheriffing to you? Leave it to you? Why you haven’t done a thing to solve these murders and that’s what they are you know, murders! And I’m next; I’m next I tell you! You watch and see; only I’m not going to stand around waiting for it to happen! If you won’t do something I will!” 

Maddox took her, gently but forcibly by the shoulders and led her out of the jail. “I’ll say this just once more Ruth, you leave that girl alone. She doesn’t deserve this. Please don’t make me involve your parents in this discussion.”

“She doesn’t deserve this? Well, I don’t deserve to die and you don’t deserve to be sheriff if you won’t do something about it! As for my parents I’ll involve them myself and maybe you’ll listen to them if you won’t listen to me! My father has influence in this town and….”

She was out on the porch and still yammering when he gently closed the door on her. A voice from the back of the jail called out, “Maybe she’s on to something Sheriff, there’s an awful lot of squirrely business goes on up at that Meyer place.” The voice was that of the town drunk, woken from his stupor by the racket and commotion that was Ruth Presseisen. 

“You pipe down Boone or find somewhere else to sleep it off, I don’t want any sheriffing advice from you either.”

The next morning began with a warm spring breeze, very much welcome after what seemed to even the old-timers as the coldest, most bitter winter in memory. Ruth woke early with a productive day in mind. She had never laid eyes on the Meyer place and never dreamed she would have to, but she knew the road that led up the mountain that accessed the smattering of farms of the dirt poor, and hideaways of the ne’er do well that lived up here. It was a frightful and ominous cut that zigzagged its way along steep cliffs with precarious drop-offs, so vertical in climb at times that she couldn’t imagine how car, horse, mule or wagon could ever navigate it. Ruth was on foot however and determined not to be detected as she conducted her investigation. Only once did she have to step off the road when she heard the approaching footsteps of a lumbering mule. She peered from her hiding place deep in the brush as some old mountain coot came down the road, looking half asleep as his tired old beast traversed the long familiar path. Two long cane poles were tied to his pack and they whipped back and forth with every careful step the mule took. Between the whoosh, whoosh of the rods and the whip of the tail they created an effective defense for both weary animal and slumbering man against the horseflies. Ruth thought he were more likely soused than asleep, like so many of the mountain people always seemed be. Probably heading to the river to try and catch what would hopefully become breakfast, lunch and dinner. 

Ruth continued her laborious climb, all the while peering over her shoulder and carefully approaching every bend. She knew if she were to be seen she would stick out like a sore thumb. Very few had business up on the mountain and those that did were well known to its inhabitants. Usually they came to trade goods from the valley below or fill a jug. Certainly a fifteen-year-old girl from a good family in town had no business here. She was counting, somewhat naively, on the industrious nature of the not very industrious hill folk. She figured those not still sleeping off last nights corn liquor would be off in the woods hunting or tending to their sickly, stilted crops in their little clearings of open rocky ground. She was hoping that once she found the Meyer place she would recognize the battered old, jerry-rigged wagon that Elsie often drove to town. The first home she came upon was nothing more than a makeshift shack with a path so narrow it looked as if no wagon could fit through the overgrowth. She inched ever closer to see a brace of squirrel hanging just outside the slightly ajar door. As soon as she noticed the wisp of smoke coming from the chimney and heard a rattle from within, she almost gasped and ran screaming from the spot, but she managed to compose herself and retreat slowly and stealthily. Back on the road she hadn’t walked much more than a hundred yards when an opening yawn in the deep timber revealed itself to her right. She peered up the crudely cultivated, deep-rutted road and saw an open patch at the end with billowing clouds revealing a sizeable clearing. She walked carefully amongst the roots and rocks not wanting to turn an ankle and find herself hobbled here in this horrid place.

As she scrambled up to the end of the lane she was shocked to find a rather tidy, if somewhat overrun little farm. It didn’t look altogether different than the much larger, older family farms along the valley road. There was a well-kept red barn tucked almost into the tree line and other than the need of a new paint job and the one door hanging awkwardly on its hinges, it looked perfectly functional, almost proud. The little home with the stone foundation was a bit more ramshackle with several shutters missing and those that were, either leaning against the frame or lying where they fell. There was a lovely patch of well-weeded coneflower, aster and primrose pushing up outside the front door to the left of the steps, a border of limestone neatly encircling it. Off to the right and behind the house were several acres of harvested field that looked as if they had been tended and still awaiting the spring planting. Ruth looked for any sign of life but saw none other than the pigs in the pen behind the barn, downwind from the house, and a dozen or so chickens pecking around the yard. Near the house she saw a well and pump and thinking there was no possible way this cozy farm could be the Meyer place entertained the thought of quenching her considerable thirst after the long climb up the mountain road. “If someone should come upon me, I’ll just say I got lost in the forest while walking and was desperate for a drink.” Even these universally guarded and fractious residents of the mountain would not deny a wayward, thirsty child a drink from their well. 

She knelt down, manning the pump handle with one hand and holding her pretty blonde hair away from her face with the other, drinking deep and long until satisfied. She had been thirstier than she realized and worked the squeaky pump handle long enough for a lone figure to have time to exit the barn and approach her from behind, unheard. She was wiping her mouth on the apron of her dress but quickly bolted upright as if yanked by strong arms, when she heard the familiar voice almost directly in her ear. “Hello Ruth, how nice of you to visit at long last.”

“Oh Lord have mercy, you startled me so!” Ruth’s brain was racing and she started sputtering words. “It was such a beautiful morning and I went for a walk and I just kept walking and walking until I was lost and I came upon your well and was ever so thirsty! I’m sorry I didn’t ask before drinking but I thought no one to be inside and I had no idea that this was your quaint little home!”

“Do you mean to say then that you didn’t come to visit me Ruth?” Elsie inquired.

“Oh dear no, I would never come calling without an invitation,” Ruth lied.

“Lets not pretend you’d ever come calling at all,” replied Elsie, “unless to snoop on me. You know you despise me as much as I despise you. It is too bad that you have no friends left to accompany you on such a lovely morning walk.”

“You treacherous little beast! If I have no friends left it is only because you‘ve murdered them all!” spat Ruth.

“You’re right Ruth, I did murder them all and now I am going to murder you. The only difference is that I will feel absolutely no remorse when I’ve killed you.”

Elsie had been in the barn working on the wagon, trying to secure the gate with bailing wire when she glimpsed a passing figure through the narrow opening between the barn doors. Not knowing if it were her father or worse still, one of her father’s frequent moonshine customers, she grabbed the first tool that came into view and carried it with her to go see who had entered the yard. When she recognized Ruth’s familiar frame at the pump, her grip on the tool tightened to a white-knuckled grasp. Her heart raced, “She couldn’t possibly be making it this easy on me”, she thought. 

Ruth was so alarmed when she heard Elsie’s voice and turned to see her standing there, that she had never even noticed the fearsome tool Elsie had carried openly in her right hand. If she had noticed it she wouldn’t have know what it was for, having never been asked by anyone to do a hard days labor to earn her keep on God’s green earth. But she was noticing it now, as Elise, gripping the long wooden handle with both hands now, raised the corn sickle high over her head. Aghast, Ruth turned away and let out a deafening wail as Elsie swung downward with maddening strength and buried the long-curved blade deep in Ruth’s left shoulder. Elsie’s arms shuddered fiercely as the blade met the resistance of Ruth’s collarbone, snapping through and digging ever deeper, shattering ribs and slicing lung, all along its invasive, murderous path. 

Elsie would never have believed it possible to shut Ruth Presseisen up but shock, horror and the realization that she was dead at this point no matter what happened next, managed to do what neither her parents, teacher, classmates or the sheriff had ever been able to do. Instead of hateful words Ruth was now reduced to redoubling blabber and incessant moaning. The blow had taken her wind and the gaping injury made it nigh impossible to recover it. Elsie extracted the blade with a careless yank that drove Ruth to her knees and without hesitation took another horizontal swing, striking Ruth just below the right shoulder, breaking her arm and all but removing it completely. Ruth now lay on the ground in shrieking agony. “So help me Ruth, if you wake up my Father I will really hurt you!” “Stand up and walk,” Elsie demanded, “there is nothing wrong with your legs…yet.”

“I can’t, I can’t,” Ruth loudly moaned, “You’ve killed me.”

“Here, let me help you,” said Elsie with abrupt deliberation, grabbing Ruth by her hair and dragging. 

Somehow Ruth managed to gain her feet and was half running, half falling as Elsie pulled her for what seemed like a mile but was only fifty or so yards to the hog pen. Elsie propped her against the fence while she undid the latch. Ruth now looked like a broken porcelain doll, arms detached and askew, that but for a few remaining stitches would have dropped cleanly from her sides. Her indigo cotton dress was now stained black with her own blood. She wanted to collapse in a heap but any movement at all brought the raging pain to full bear. She managed to remain upright against the fence murmuring, “Why, why?” Ignoring her Elsie swung open the gate and swiftly grabbed Ruth by the waist, almost lifting her off the ground as she steered Ruth and heaved her backwards into the slop. The hogs, now accustomed to their newly familiar diet were rabid with anticipation. 

“You should have been nicer to me,” Elise dispassionately replied. 

Ruth didn’t hear Elsie at all. Her senses were a dark, deepening pit of pain and nightmare flashes of fat pink flesh, gnashing white pig grins, black mud and the last torn remnants of beautiful blue sky she would ever lay eyes on. Mercifully even the colors started to fade to a blinding red and finally to black unconsciousness. For a short while after that she remained alive but unfeeling as the pigs made quick work of her.

Elsie walked directly into the house without a backward glance. She was washing herself at the kitchen sink when from the back room she heard her Father stirring and then with a shout, “What you been screeching about and what’s got them pigs all riled up? I swear to Christ if I don’t get some peace there will be hell to pay!” 

“I fell while I was feeding them hogs and one came after me but don’t you worry about me Father, I’m just fine and you’ll have your peace soon enough.”

“I better damn have it right now, you smart, clever whelp!”

“Yes Father.”