Ferocious

18. Broken and Chipped

John paused to drink some coffee. "Mr. Federmann was born in the area, the son of German immigrants. He established the farm with his young wife around 1850. In 1852, when she was near term with their child, he threw her down the well during a fit of rage and let her drown."

"I've heard that one before," I said.

"Then you know when they pulled her body from the well, she had given birth there, but the baby's body was never found."

Kaylee grabbed my hand. "No, I didn't know that."

"They tried to suppress it at the time. It was bad enough that a townsman killed his pregnant wife." He sipped his coffee. "And the story of Mother Goodie and her five children?"

"There's a rhyme about them," I said. "Mother Goodie and Old Man Feros who carried off her kids."

"You know that one?" He recited it anyway. "Old Man Feros carried the five away; Tail pinned on and donkey voice a bray; But how should I remember them by? Poor Mother Goodie cried out in dismay; To which Old Man Feros did quickly reply; The right hand o' each for yourself, I say! In 1910, she reported her children missing. After several years and much searching, they were declared dead. It was only in 1955 when she was moved to a hospice to die that the buyers of her house found a macabre altar in her attic. It was decorated with the mummified right hands of her children, but she died before she could go to trial for murder."

"But the bodies were never found," I said. Another town legend.

"Do you know who Old Man Feros is?"

"Alicia said he was a..." The confused memory of Confederate soldiers talking about Feros mixed with the poem and Alicia's voice.

"A donkey," John said, finishing my sentence.

"A donkey?" Kaylee asked.

"No. No, he's not," I said.

"Oh, but he is. Or was. Feros was the name of Mother Goodie's donkey she last saw walking off with her five children."

I thought I might be sick. Something was very wrong here.

"There is also the story of Jeff Smith and Lisa Walker. Todd's best friend and Jeff's girlfriend, last seen driving into the lake off a steep hill in the summer of 1977. Bodies never found in a car with the windows up and doors shut."

"Weird things happen over a couple hundred years in any town?" I asked, searching for a reason.

"Some weird things, perhaps. You don't need me to tell you the Walters brothers' story, but there are at least two more neither of you know about. During the Civil War a small group of soldiers who were probably scouting established camp outside of town limits. The town was much smaller then. I tracked down the mayor's wife's diary from then and she mentions soldiers staying by the Tobacco Crick."

We shook our heads. We'd never heard of it.

"The stream doesn't exist anymore, but it ran along 12th Street right past the Apple Mart and high school. The whole area was swampy, and it became a pond when it reached Cherokee Street. They had to drain the land to build the mental institute."

"And the soldiers?" I asked. "Confederates?"

"Yes. According to records I was able to dig up and some town gossip the mayor's wife faithfully noted in her diary, this group stayed a couple of days waiting for orders from their regiment. But when the orders came, the soldiers had disappeared. How's your coffee?"

Neither of us had touched it.

"Want the last story?"

We both nodded slowly.