Clive Barker - Everville

As things went, there was more to see below than above, for after a little while people began visiting the vallev that lay in the shadow of the peak. Noah knew their lives were trivial things, but he studied them nevertheless, his gaze so sharp he could pick out the color of a woman's eyes from his lookout on the mountain. There were many women in the valley in those early days, all of them robust and well-made, a few even beautiful. And seeing that this stretch of earth was as good a place a.,; any other to settle, their admirers built houses, and courted, and mwficd and raised families. And in time there grew and prospered in the valley a proud little city called Everville.

'Forgive me, Evervffle." The words were written in fading sepia ink on paper the color of unwashed bed sheets, but Erwin had read texts far less legible in the sixteen years h6'd been dealing with the will and testaments of Everville's citizens. Evelyn Morris's final instructions for instance ('Put the dogs to sleep, and bury them with me'), written in iodine on a table lamp beside her deathbed; or Dwight Hanson's codicil, scrawled in the margin of a book on duck decoys.

Erwin had read somewhere that Oregon had a larger percentage of heretical thinkers per capita than any other state. More activists, more flat sts, more survivalists; all happy to have three thousand miles between them and the seat of govennnent. Out of sight, in a state that was still comparatively empty, they went their own sweet way; and what better place to leave a statement about their individuality than their last words to the world?

But even by the high standard of eccentricity he'd encountered in his time as an attorney, the testament he was now studying was a benchmark. It was not so much a will as a confession; a confession which had gone unread in the @ or so years since it had been written in March of 1965. Its author was one Lyle McPherson, whose goods and chattels had apparently been so negligible upon his passing that nobody had cared to look for any indication as to how he had wanted them divided. Either that, or his only son, Frank, whose sudden demise had brought the confession into in's hands, had discovered it, read it, and decided that it as best kept hidden. Why he had not destroyed it completely ly the dead man knew for certain, but perhaps somewhere in his soul McPherson the Younger had been perversely proud of the claims his father made in this document, and had toyed with the possibility of one day making it public.

True or not, the contents would have certainly claimed the cover of the Evel-i,ille Tribune for a couple of weeks and perhaps brought McPherson-who had lived a blameless but dull life running the city's only Drain Rooter and Septic Service-a welcome touch of notoriety.

If that had indeed been his plan, death had foiled it. McPherson the Younger had passed from the world with only a seven-line obituary in the Tribune (five lines of which bemoaned the lack of a replacement Drain Rooter and Septic Service now that good ol' Frank was gone) to mark his exit. The life and crimes of McPherson the Elder, however, were waiting to be discovered, and now, sitting by the window in the heat of the late August sun, their discoverer pondered how best to show them to the world.

It was certainly a good time to find himself an audience. Every year, at the last weekend of August, Everville had a festival, and for three days its otherwise quiet streets became thronged, its population (which had stood at 7403 at the previous November's census) swelling to half that size again. Every hotel, inn, motel, and lodging house in that region of the Willamette Valley, from Aurora and Molina in the north to Sublimity and Aumsville in the south was occupied, and there was scarcely a store in town that didn't do more business over Festival Weekend than it did in the three months preceding it. The actual substance of the festival was of variable quality. The town band, which in fact drew players from as far afield as Wilsonville, was very capable, and Saturday's parade, featuring the band, floats, and a troupe of drum majorettes, was usually counted the highlight of the weekend. At the other end of the scale were the pig races and the frisbee-throwing contests, which were ineptly organized, and had several years ended in fistfights.

But the crowds who came to Everville in their hundreds every August didn't come for the music, or the pig racing. 'I hey came because it was a fine excuse to drink, dance, and enjoy the last of summer before the leaves started to turn. Only once in the years Erwin had been a resident of the town had it rained on Festival Weekend. This year, if the weather reports were to be trusted, the entire week ahead would be balmy, with temperatures climbing to the low eighties by Friday. Perfect Festival weather. Dorothy Bullard, who ran the offices of the Chamber of Commerce when she wasn't accepting cash for water bills, fronting the Tourist Board, or flirting with Jed Gilholly, the city's police captain, had announced in last week's Tribune that the Chamber of Commerce expected this year's Festival to be the most popular yet. If a man wanted to drop a bombshell, there could scarcely be a better time to do it.

With that in mind, Erwin went back to the pages on his lap, and studied them for the fourth time.

Forgive me, Everville, McPherson the Elder had begun.

I don't much like having to write these things that I'm going to write, but I got to put down the truth while I still can, being as I'm the only one left to tell it.

The fact is, everyone in town knew what we did that night, and they all was happy we did it. But there was only me, Verl Nordhoff, and Richie Dolan who knew the whole story, and now Verl's dead and I guess Richie got so crazy he killed himself, so that leaves me.

I ain't writing this to save my soul. I don't believe in Heaven and Hell. They're just words. I ain't going any where when I'm dead except into the dirt. I just want to say all of it straight, just once, though it don't show Everville up real pretty.

What happened was this. On the night of August 27, 1929, me and Nordhoff and Dolan hung three people from a tree on the mountain. One of them we hung was a cripple, and I feel more ashamed for that than I do about the other two. But they was all in it together, and the only reason he was crippled was he had bad blood in him...

The phone rang, and Erwin, wrapped up in his study, ju mped. He waited for his answering machine to pick up the call, but it had been on the blink for weeks, and failed to do so. He let the phone go on finging till the caller got bored, returned to the confession. Where was he? Oh yes, the t about the bad blood.

... and the way he jerked around on that rope, and hollered even though he couldn't breathe, I believe all the things folks were saying about him and his wife and that animal child of his.

We didn't find no human bones in the house, like we thought we might, but there was other weird stuff, like the pictures painted on the walls, and these carvings the cfippie had made. That's why we set fire to the house, so's nobody would have to see any of that shit. And I don't regret none of that, because the son was definitely going after innocent children, and the mother was a whore from way back. Everybody knew that. She'd had a whorehouse fight here in town, only it had been closed down in the twenties, and that's when she'd lost her mind and gone to live in the house by the creek with her crazy family.

So then when Rebecca Jenkins disappeared and her body was found in the reservoir, there wasn't nobody doubted what had happened. They'd kidnapped her on her way from school and done whatever they'd done to her then thrown her body in the creek, and it had been washed down into the reservoir. Only there was no proof. People was talking about it, and they were saying it was pitiful that the police couldn't pin it on the whore and her son and her damn husband, because everyone knew they'd been seen with kids before, kids they'd found in Portland, and brought back to the house at night, and if they got away with it again, with a kid from fight here in Everville, nobody's kids were going to be safe.