Whether it makes complete sense has yet to be evaluated. I'm turning it in on Monday to be assessed by my up-and-coming Gothic writers.
The Last Door Knocker
"That's just fibs, Miss Avery. He's just trying to scare you."
"Papa ain't no lying man, mister; he's upright and honest. He said it was Hank's work."
"No."
"Same year. Same day," Miss Avery smiled for a moment, then upon deeper reflection frowned. "I don't think Papa was lying. Three people went missing that year, he said, and on that same day the tally appeared, that young woman was gone."
* * *
The sun shines today. In the fields casting straw in the midst of Angus, I see it, an old loosed piece of metal, embedded underneath clay and grass. I pick it up and pull away the dirt. The top hole of it has a screw still loosely placed. Unsurprised, I place it in my pocket. I find a number of trinkets in the fields, mostly deer horns or old hammers and socket wrenches, so I don't think much of it until I find another smaller curved piece of metal. The farmer's daughter Miss Avery mentioned a while back her father used to tell her stories of an old shack back in the woods where he'd play as child.
* * *
"He once went there." Miss Avery was weaving a piece of wheat strand through her fingers and shuffling her feet from side to side. "It was not fifteen minutes before he was supposed to be back home for supper. He said he wouldn't have thought twice about the dusk that was encroachin' except that odd noises seemed to creep up on him, and the place just wasn't the same, not at that time of the evening."
Miss Avery looked up expectantly. By then she had captured my attention, but I distanced my interest as best as possible.
"This shack was known for having markings on it all around the base of the interior. It was empty of course, but he said he'd never forget the twenty tallies engraved in the base of it. As he remembered there had been twenty that year, and that night when he went back, there was twenty-one."
"No."
"Yes, sir. Said he ran all the way home and didn't ever return. Said it was Ol' Hank's stomping grounds. Said now he knows why there was an old door knocker on the door of that old shack."
The most imaginative of her father's daughters, Miss Avery was hard to believe. Perhaps she too had spent time out in the shack in the back of the woods and perhaps it had let her own mind run wild. Anyway, I had an itch to figure it out - the date I mean - whether her father had been there at that shack the same day Ol' Hank got his last victim and made his last mark. Whether his truth was real. Whether this story wasn't just created to inspire fear. And then there it was:
Thursday, February 23, 1922
21 Murders Linked: Hank Arnett Arrested
They call him the door-knocker killer. Hank Arnett, 74,
of Coral, Illinois, has been caught and admits to all
21 cases of murder, including the abduction of Ella McGavern,
24, just two weeks ago.
Allegations were confirmed when a neighbor was reported
to have found door knockers of each murdered person over the
span of 30 years buried beneath the neighboring fence in the
back corner of his yard. Each door knocker includes
tallies, numbering 1 through 20. The 21st door knocker has yet
to be found.
Police searched Arnett's home and found the bodies of
McGavern along with 17-year-old Truella Jameson and
27-year-old Andy Rickers, both of whom went missing
earlier this year...
* * *As I stand I take out the metal slab from my pocket and flip it over again, the back now clear from my thumb having rubbed away the dirt. There on the back are twenty-one notches, and I believe, thought it cannot possibly be true, I behold it - his last door knocker.
