A Memory of Heath

I don't remember his face. He’s lost to me behind a veil of dark memories. He’s nothing more than a shade. A violent deliverer of our sins. A breath of smoke and fire. He was once human, once named-

Heath was his name, something I do remember. He was not one of the outgoing boys in school. He was quiet, shy; someone who would perpetually go unnoticed; a face you wouldn't remember. Like a transient in the subway. You could have sworn you knew what they looked like until that image was eaten up by a tidal wave of memories. The ocean of thoughts was not really made up with anything that important.

I personally didn't know Heath. I never talked to him. Actually, now that I think about it, no one really bothered with Heath until he was found tits-up in the Snake River. But that’s how little shit-towns like Pomeroy were. Everything eventually goes tits-up in the Snake River like poor Heath. Poor Heath who’s face I forgot. He was like a shadow. Something that is always there, has a shape and form, yet we don’t know what they hell it is. His face was plastered all over the TV after they found him like one of those floaty toys. Even with all the airplay I still can’t remember his face.

I had almost completely forgotten about Heath until I heard his name the other day at my work. I had been working in this apartment building, Black Crow Apartments, for a few weeks as the repairman. It was one of those old shitty rundown two-story motels that they converted into semi-permanent living spaces that eventually became home to most of the local druggies. It was not a bad job. I did a lot of different things there. I fixed sinks, toilets, showers, ranges, refrigerators – you name it, I did it. There was even a pool that I cleaned during the summer. This place would probably be paradise somewhere else. But not here, not in Pomeroy. Nope, it’s a crackhead haven. An escape for the deranged and demented. A spot for all the local prostitutes to come make a few bucks. It was a menagerie of all the twistedness that you could find in a Dali painting. People came here to get their lot in life. Yet it was at this shitty apartment building that I was reminded of poor Heath Herbert.

It was Old Larsen who lived up in 208 who mentioned Heath’s name. I had been dislodging a giant turd that the old man had launched in his “throne room”.  In his old ramblings about the different types of motor oil there was, he had asked if I knew Heath Herbert. I had explained to Old Larsen that I did not know him directly but knew of him. That’s what a lot of people say when they don’t want to admit that they saw you everyday from kinder all the way to your senior year of school. They would say “I know of them.”

“Well, you remember how they found that Chubby Kid?” asked the old man.

“He was found drowned in the Snake River, something like a swimming accident.”

“No, that is what they want you to think, and how the hell does a swimming accident happen in the middle of Goddamn winter, Jesus Christ!”

“Don’t know, and don’t want to find out, some shit jus’ happens that way,” I replied. The old man looked pissed at me for not knowing what had happened to poor Chubby Buttons, but I didn’t know, didn’t care. I had a car loan to pay off, my rent on my own shitty apartment space, and utilities. There was also my tab at Bill’s Place that I had been working off; I was in the hole there for some 200 hundred dollars that was spent on cheap beer and cheap whiskey. That 200 dollars took me a long way there and many long nights.

“Well, what really happened to Fat Kid was he was strangled somewhere else and then dumped there.”

I continued my plunging of the toilet I had been working on. It was taking some time breaking everything apart and thought it be better if I listen to the old man. Let him ramble on a bit, finished my work, then leave.

“He had been strangled. There were the marks left from a rope or something on his neck. Deep marks that looked like a razor had been drug across it.”

I flushed the toilet, and the water went down smoothly. The water looked clean, looked like someone could drown decently in it. I wonder if the old man fell face first into the bowl if he would drown. I looked over at him and he was standing over by his little kitchenette staring at me.

“All clear, Mr. Larsen,” I said.

“Ahh good, you’re a good man, would you like a cup of coffee?”

“Maybe one, then I have to go down to 106.”

“Ahh those junkies, what did they do now, singe the carpet cooking crack?”

“Broken shower head, the usual, but I don’t know what is going on here lately with all the plumbin’?”

“Well sit down, sit, sit.”

The old man turned to the white chipped cupboards and pulled out a coffee mug with a picture of a chihuahua on it. He filled the small mug and handed it over to me. I took a long sip and could barely stand the taste. It was the flavor of real cheap coffee, dirty glass, and city water. It was a god-awful taste, with a repugnant odor.

“You know what they say really happened to that Herbert boy?” he asked me.

“You know, all I remember is that Heath was a decent kid in school and that he had drowned in the Snake River. Beyond that I don’t remember much, I don’t even remember his face.”

“I remember Heath, he was a rather chunky.” The old man was talking, but something else had caught my attention outside the window. It was a shadow of something. I couldn't tell, a human shape hovering. It had to have been hovering, there was no other way for it to be out there. There were no ledges, nothing to stand on. Then I thought of Heath Herbert. I couldn’t remember his face.

“...Yep, he was a decent boy, I had some old newspapers laying around here, I used to keep a bunch, but my bastard kids came through here, saying I was hording this and that and those little fuckers threw everything out.”

I looked at the old man. I never noticed that he wasn’t really an old man. He was just aged beyond age from heavy smoking, drinking, and by the shape of his teeth, meth. He was a user alright, but a nice man, a human. A human with problems. That’s what Black Crow was, a place with normal humans who let themselves go. They had all left themselves to this endless rambling like Old Man Larsen. They all had stories like him. They weren’t like those hicks that live out in the country, making millions off hops. Those guys were a bunch of political know-it-alls. Always down at the tavern, always getting mad about which democrat was now in this position or that. But the people here, they weren’t like that. They didn’t talk like Old Man Larsen did, about the philosophical differences in viscosity breakdown in motor oil and mysterious deaths of fat kids. Every room in this building has someone like that. The druggies down in 106 had a whole philosophy on which household cleaner was the best – Fabuloso.  And they would list all the reasons for its greatness and break it down to a science. They would talk about the pleasant atmosphere it created and how the floor felt on their feet after a good scrubbing; there only qualm with it was that it was highly poisonous. But the stronger it was, the better it should be to kill all the germs from all the foot traffic they had going in and out of that place.

I thought for a second about Heath Herbert, and his face I couldn't remember. Would Heath have been one of these guys at the Black Crow or would he have been one of those political buffs. There was not much choice in Pomeroy of what you could be after a certain age. The people at the Black Crow were all broke and addicted to something. The hicks from the sticks were for the most part farm boys who had money, thought they were on the right about everything, and clung to their political views like flies on horseshit. Then there were people like me, in the middle somewhere, making money and getting by and trying not to bother anyone. A lot of us were like that. Didn’t want to hear about politics or mysterious murders. We just wanted to earn our money, go home and relax. Then repeat.

I had been deep in my own thoughts when I realized that Old Larsen was still rambling on.  “They even threw out my old coffee cans, you know how long it took to collect that wall of Folgers I used to have in here?” He looked me squarely in the eye as if it was the most important thing in the world.

“I don’t know Mr. Larsen, but I best be getting down to 106,” I said.

“Well, thanks for the visit, anyway, next time you’re up here I will tell you about my cousins Jedidiah and Zedidiah. Jed, as they called him, went missing under mysterious circumstances, and his brother Zed went looking for him and never came back. That one will really get you thinking.”

“Good, another mystery for another time Mr. Larsen, thank you.”

I waved goodbye and went down to 106 to fix their shower head. Not really much of anyone said anything when I went in. They were all quiet as a mouse. Two guys and two girls. I assumed they were together as couples. One of the guys I know as Hank, he pointed me to where the problem was. Apparently, the showerhead wasn’t working. I took off the old one and screwed the new one on tight. I turned the shower expecting nice flow, but nothing came out. I took the shower head off and took out this little grabber I kept in my tool bag. I used it for all kinds of things. I pushed the grabber down only a foot when it was stopped by something.

“What seems to be the problem?” asked Hank. He was watching me with suspicion and fidgeting a hundred miles a second.

“I don’t know, something is stuck in this pipe.” I wiggled the grabber around until it was stuck on whatever was in there. I pulled and pulled until a pile of black sludge came out. A good amount of stinky black mess dropped to the bottom of the bathtub.

“Holy shit, that stuff is gross,” said Hank. I had seen stinker and grosser messes I thought to myself.

“I think im gonna puke.” Hank ran out of the room and I could hear him dry heaving off somewhere and a girl’s voice asking if he was ok.

I looked at my grabber that had that tangle of sludge in it. It was sure odd. I yanked at it and pulled whatever it was off my grabber. I turned on the bathtub and rinsed it off and saw what it was. A pile of black hair and a tooth, which was odd. I’d never seen anything like that ever plugging a mainline.

“Holy shit, is that a tooth and hair?” I heard the girl say behind me, startling me in the process. I turned and looked at her. It was Sheila. One of the girls that lived there. She was younger than me but going five years stronger than her age from using meth.

“Sorry to startle you, I just wanted to see what was grossing Hank out.” She looked at the clump with disgust. “Is that normal?”

“Nope, I’m gonna have to show this to Jimmy with the city.” It was odd for this to even be in here, in the mainline. I took a piece of toilet paper from their role and I wrapped the black hair and the tooth in it.

I finished my job, putting the shower head back on and then I tested to see if the water ran. The shower worked perfectly fine, no obstructions now that the strange object was dislodged from the water line. That was the second thing today that happened that was strange, the shadow outside Old Larsen’s window, the hair and the tooth in the water line, what would happen next?

The mention of Heath Herbert. That still lingered in my mind.

I always thought Heath had drowned, but Old Larsen threw some light on the subject. I never knew about the marks around his neck – that he was murdered, and the killer was never found. I was completely ignorant of the whole situation. It never crossed my mind to question why anyone would swim in winter. It was one of those moments of childhood selective memory. I knew a little and that’s it. Yet what bothered me more and more was that I couldn’t remember the kid’s face for my life. Poor Chubby Buttons and his chubby red cheeks. Were they red?

Old Larsen’s mouth was running, but I could not hear what he was saying. The old man was trying to tell me about him, about Heath. But I didn’t hear anything. I was too concerned with the shadows playing tricks on me. Shadows floating outside of two-story fucking buildings.

The old man did say something about the brothers Jed and Zed. That is another weird story in itself. Jedidiah Ripple was a farmer who was a murder suspect for awhile. People were saying that Jed had murdered his wife Kate and daughter Helen some ten years ago. Jed was acquitted cause they found no evidence. But Jed went missing five years after the murders. Shortly after, his brother Zed went missing as well. Strange things happen in Pomeroy. Even stranger at Black Crow.

I had finished my rounds for the day. Mostly sprucing the place up. Collecting trash and such. I left work with that itch in the back of my mind. That itch for knowledge. The itch you get when you can’t remember something or someone. You only have a vague picture of that person — a blur. But you are left grasping for straws. Nothing more, nothing less.

After work, I stopped off at Pomeroy City Water Works to talk to Jimmy Thomas about that tooth and hair that came out of the water line. Jimmy was generally a decent guy. You helped him, he helped you. You didn’t help him, he still helped you. He did not hold no judgement against anyone, save the people that didn’t pay their taxes.

I found Jimmy out on the side of the building piling up old scrap metal with a loader. The sound of the metal grating on metal made me cringe. It was like a fork on a chalkboard. Or running a cat across a chalkboard. Maybe worse than that, put a cat in a blender.

I looked at Jimmy. He was focused intently on his pile of fun until I caught his eye. He smiled and shut down the loader. He popped his head out with a wide shit eating grin strapped across his face.

“What’s the news?” he asked.

“Found something in the water line. Thought you should take a look at it.”

He walked over to me. Dust rising from his clothes. Jimmy looked like pig pen out of Peanuts with all that dust rising off of him. I held out the piece of toilet paper I had the hair and tooth wrapped up in.  

“That’s odd,” he said looking at the toilet paper’s contents, then he looked up, straight at me. “You really found this in the mainline?”

“Yep, was changing out a shower head for some people and I pulled that out with my snake.”

“Well shit, there goes the neighborhood. Tell you what, i’m gonna have to check the tower and the lines to see if there is anything funny going on.”

“Well Jimmy,” I paused looking at him. Something was off about him. “thanks, I will just leave this with you and if I find anymore of this stuff I will let you know, sound good then?”

Something was really off.

“Sure does, thank you for bringing this to my attention” Jimmy said, folding up the pile of hair and tooth. He patted me on the shoulder and went back to his loader. He started the machine up again and the scraping started again. That god damn scrapping.

I started walking away and I could hear the rumbled and scraping of the machines dance it was doing. I turned for one last look and saw Jimmy deeply focused, a deep focus that any man in intense work gets. Something was off. I couldn’t tell what it was. Jimmy almost seemed flat, surreal, like he was there, but really wasn’t there. He seemed almost as if he were just a meat puppet taking commands from somewhere else. Like he was a robot. Void of a soul. An organic machine.

I turned back and walked back to my car. It was time to head down to the pub and have a few cold ones I thought. That usually was the ticket after a day of work. Most of Pomeroy was there after work. At least most people I thought that mattered. The bar flies.

Ralph Huston was the bartender at the Little Dutch Inn. It was a small little building on the south side of town. Wasn’t like town was that big anyway. Only took five minutes to drive from one end to the other. The majority of what was considered Pomeroy was wheat fields, corn and pastures for grazing animals. But at the epicenter was this little bar, with Ralph Huston serving up ice cold beer.

I was a regular at the LDI. People knew me there. The farmers all knew me, and they thought I was one of the druggies at the Black Crow. Ralph knew me from high school. We used to play football together. But now we both work and ignore the fact that we once wanted to be great. We had those football dreams that every little shit town manufactures for its youth. Dreams that are bullshit. Shit, I think that poor Fat Shit, Heath Herbert, lucked out. At least he wouldn’t have to face the fact that coaches and parents filled our minds with pipe dreams. We never really amounted to shit. They thought we would make it if they pushed us harder into a sport. They thought one of us would make it into the pros. But the fact of the matter is, the two best players in Pomeroy history were both at this bar, one of them serving up ice cold beer and the other taking that beer and drinking them.

“You found a what?” said Ralph, after I told him about the dark hair and the tooth.

“Yeah, I had been talking to Old Larsen about Heath Herbert and went downstairs to Crackhead Hanks apartment and pulled it straight out of the water line with my snake.”

“No shit, and Old Bastard Larsen is still alive? Shoot he used to be a school teacher a long time ago.” He paused and shined some shot glasses. “Talking about Heath Herbert. That is some bad mojo,” he said with his mind on his work.

“Bad mojo?” I asked. “I don’t even remember what the kid looks like. I thought he had drowned the whole time until the old man said he had been strangled.”

“No, Heath was not strangulation,” Jimmy took out a pack of Camels from under the bar and lit one in his mouth. He took a hit off his cigarette and blew out a small curl of smoke that wafted up in front of the TV. I watched as it went up in front of the Packers Game and then I caught something. Something in the reflection of the television set. Something that shouldn’t been there. A figure, a shadow, standing in front of the Jukebox.

I swung around to get a look at what was there was now gone. It was just the Jukebox, blaring Johnny Cash’s “Ring of Fire.” It was a song that seemed to repeat itself over and over in this place. I still couldn’t figure out which of these duds in here was feeding that machine over and over again.

“You ok there slick?” Ralph asked me.

“Yea, sure, just thought I saw something.”

“Well, that often happens when you start talking about things you shouldn’t be talking about, if you catch my drift,” he leaned on the bar and winked at me.

The wink had caught me off guard. Ralph never winked. Something was off.

I watched him as he turned back to washing glasses. Ralph suddenly seemed flat, like Jimmy did. Flat and unreal. Maybe my mind was playing tricks on me. Maybe he was right. All this talk about mysterious deaths, and the find in the water line didn’t sit well with me. What was even worse was I started to wonder where all my old year books were from middle school. I had to have one somewhere. One with a picture of Heath in it. It was probably in my old trunk where I kept a lot of my old keepsakes.

“Would you like another beer?” Ralph asked.

“Probably not Ralph, hey can I use your phone.”

“Sure thing pal.”

“And do you got a phone book?”

“Your pushing it slick,” he said to me, winking at me again.

Ralph pulled out an old clunker of a phone from beneath the counter. He dropped it on the counter and the thing made a dinging sound. It was one of those old rotary phones. I had not seen one of those since the last time I was at my Aunty Vina’s house. But that was some twenty years and some change ago.

“And here ye have the white pages,” he said slamming down the phone book in the same fashion.

“Thanks ralph.”

He turned back to cleaning glasses and running his rounds at the bar. It was that wink that stuck with me. That flatness that he seemed to have. I shook it off and turned my attention to the phone book.

            I started thumbing through the ancient thing and before I knew it I was at the letter H and at the last name Herbert and there was only one between the last name Herb and Hert, how odd I thought. I wrote it down and looked at it for a few seconds. The name listed was Pam and Frank Herbert. They were Heath’s parents.

I did not linger too long on the name and I turned to P for all the Pomeroy local listings. I found what I was looking for Pomeroy Library. I turned the rotary for every number in the listing. Why did Ralph have one of these old damn things anyway.  It seemed like it took an eternity to enter the number but I eventually got every digit turned on the dial. The phone rang four times before someone picked up on the other end of the line.

            “Pomeroy Library,” said a lady’s voice.

            “Hello, uuhh, what time do you close today?” I asked. I didn’t know the time of the library. I had never been in the damn place.

            “We close at seven tonight,” she said.

            “Ok thank you,” I said.

            “Is there anything else?”

            “No, no, that will be it.”

            I heard her end of the line click. I was going to hang up the damn thing until I heard something. Someone else was talking on the other end of that phone. I could barely make out the sound of two people talking, but the sound was so faint that I couldn’t tell what it was. I lingered on the sound of the talking for a minute. The voices were faint, but I could have sworn I heard the name “Heath” spoken. I tried cupping my other ear to see if I could hear any better, but that didn’t work. Then it came screeching out. Like the grating of that loader. One word. Shade!

            “Shit,” I said hanging up the phone and pushing it away. I stood up and backed away from the bar and started for the door.

            “Is everything ok,” Ralph asked.

            I didn’t respond, I walked out of that place as quick as I could. As I was walking out the door, I could feel Ralphs flat stare beating down on my back of my neck as the door closed behind me and I returned to the sunlight. To the real world.

“With real people” is what I told myself.

End Part I

            The library was an old courthouse conversion. A small brick box from the early 20th century. They said the tree in the front yard was where they hung the convicts that were sentenced to death there. They also said, that even before that, back in the Civil War ear, a group of soldiers had taken it upon themselves to hang over 200 Indians there. A whole tribe. I didn’t really believe that though. It sounded more like urban myth used to scare the shit out of kids.

            When I talked to the librarian, she seemed nice at first. She directed me to the microfiche off in a little corner.  She said a lot of places were phasing out microfiche in favor of something called the internet. I never heard of the internet before and I did not bother questioning her. Sounded like more mumbo jumbo to me. The more I looked at this lady though, the more she gave me that off feeling that Ralph and Jimmy did. She was wrong.

Too wrong and three quarters and some change shy of right.

            I walked over to the stack of microfiche and started in the early 1980’s. I could’ve swore Heath’s death happened around 1984. But it didn’t hurt to cover all my bases.

            The microfiche seemed to go on and on. I was deep into 1983 when I found the obituary for Heath, an obituary without a picture. The obituary read: By all accounts Heath was a good boy…

            “What the fuck?!?!”

I scrolled up and down the paper making sure my eyes were not playing tricks on me. But what I saw was true. A one-line obituary minus the picture. I went forward a few more issues and found an article about him in the Pomeroy Herald. All it had was a picture of the sheriff standing next to the Snake River with two deputies and an EMT. These guys were probably all old by now. Aged, retired and reclusive. I didn’t know any of them personally, but the captions by their names read:  Sheriff Eddy Wright, Deputy Gabe Garcia, Deputy Justin Weeks, and EMT Emelia Gregg. They were all posing as if they were doing something important and from the looke of it , they loved the spotlight that the Herald gave them. The article was not that detailed either. Just a couple of paragraphs saying that it was an “accident,” and “all Pomeroy resident should be cautious around the Snake River.”

I felt a tap on my shoulder and looked up to see the librarian standing over me.

“Were closing up now,” she stated flatly. Flat like Jimmy and Ralph.

“Ok, thank you,” I said, trying not to shudder.

She moved closer to me and asked “did you find what you are looking for?” She was

Close. Closer than I would have liked her to be. She seemed even more different now. I could smell her perfume. I don’t know if it was a perfume or what it was. It created a miasma. Something I did not want to further guess as to what the scent was. Almost like death.

“I best be going,” I said pushing up from my chair and heading straight for the door, not even missing a beat. I could feel her eyes bearing down on me. Like the eyes Ralph laid on me when I left the bar. Those same eyes that hid something else. Something dark. Something dead.

“You can come back anytime,” I heard her saying as I walked out into the unlit town.

I climbed into the driver's seat of my truck and a thought went across my mind. I may as well drive out to where Heath had died. It was a stupid idea, but I am sure that I had done stupider things. I didn't have to be into work tomorrow and in this little shit town, who would really care?

I decided to make a stop off at the O’K Mart and grab a bottle of R&R and a six pack of Coke. The guys down at the pub called it Rezervation Romance because all the Indians drank that shit. I told them that I must be part Indian then and they would erupt in a roar of laughter. “Only an Injun would drink that shit,” they would say. But I liked it, it went good with Coke and was cheaper than Crown Royal.

After I retrieved my goods from this pimply kid that worked at the store, I drove down the old highway. This would put me at the Snake River in a few minutes. I pictured myself stylized like the Sheriff in that picture. But I would be there holding my bottle of R&R and the caption would say “the game is afoot.” I thought that it sounded like Sherlock Holmes or something like it.

The Snake River was not that far off. I stopped short of Hanging Rock road. My headlights illuminating only a portion of the dark forest line. Just down Hanging Rock road, about half a mile, that’s where they found the body. I did not want to drive all the way down. You never knew if you would get stuck out there. And I didn’t want to be stuck in the middle of the night in the middle of nowhere. So, I drove down the road a little ways and pulled off into the brush. I parked far enough away as to leave the main road in sight. I took out my brown bag which contained my drinks and I grabbed a flashlight from behind my seat.

I walked down the dark road, my mind replayed what happened today. The old halogen lamp burned gently, illuminating only a small portion of what was in front of me. I could hear the breeze rustle through leaves. The smell of the river let me know it was not too far off. Water always had that cleansing smell. Maybe that’s why they baptized people in it. Maybe not, maybe John was really trying to drown Jesus. Or maybe John was trying to waterboard him. Who really knows?

I almost twisted my ankle walking down that road but I had made it to where Heath Herbert had been killed. It was lighter down by the river. The give in the tree canopy allowed the moonlight to pass through and bounce all around. I sat on a nearby rock and made myself a drink. I popped open a Coke and poured most the contents out until a little was left in the can. I filled the rest with some R&R. I sipped this while I surveyed the placid scene before me. It was as I imagined it in my fantasy. All I needed was Sheriff Wright here and his goons.

I leaned back and looked up at the night sky. I tried finding the big dipper and couldn't find that. I looked for Orion, and usually this time of year it was in plain sight but I couldn't find that either. The stars were all wrong. The sky was all wrong. I looked around and then it caught my eye. A shadow, a human shadow off in the distance, on the other side of the river.

It must have been the alcohol playing tricks on me. I took a swig straight off the bottle and shook it off. There, it’s gone I thought. I stood up and walked the bank of the river. I could’ve easily gotten hurt on the rocks out in the dark. I walked a little farther up and then something caught my eye again. Something glinting in the distance. A shiny object and that shadow figure again. This time I knew it was real. It started moving up-river and I moved fast. I followed it as close as I could. There was a small hill leading up river and I traversed it in the dark. Clinging at roots. Holding onto my drink and bag with all my life, I grabbed the base of a tree and hauled myself up the small embankment. I sat down catching my breath at the base of the tree and took a hard swig off the bottle. And I looked up river and there it was. Hidden by the small trick of the eye, a water tower.

There it stood right before me. Pomeroy’s water supply. The place that Jimmy said he was going to check out. A place I knew existed in my mind, but after thirty-some years had never bothered to see.

I wiped the whiskey from my mouth and walked towards the water tower. Maybe I would find more hair and teeth up there? Maybe I would find some clues that the good Sheriff and his boys missed? Then again, maybe I should come back in the morning. It made no sense to be crawling up that thing half-shot. But really, what did it matter.

I finished off the bottle of R&R before I started up the spiral staircase that led to the top of the damn thing. The rigging felt steady, but I was cautious anyway. The guard rail jiggled a little here and there. The higher I got up the staircase, the clearer view I had of all of Pomeroy. To the north was the forest where the Snake River came from. To the west the hills spread and grew into steep peaks. And to the south and east were the farmlands of Pomeroy.

I looked up and could see that I was about twenty feet from the top. This tower was almost shaped like one of those little beer cans. I wondered if I got to the top if there would be a spigot I could drink from. I was laboring for breath. I was either out of shape or just shit faced. I really couldn’t tell at this point.

I made it around the last of the spiral to the top and to my surprise the top of the water tower seemed normal. I sat down and surveyed Pomeroy out to the south-east. A small little town that was nothing but a dot on the map. I looked up to the sky and looked for Orion. I still couldn’t find him. The sky seemed all wrong. I looked for Ursa Major and Ursa Minor. They were not there either. The stars were all wrong. They were wrong like the Librarian, like Ralph, like Jimmy and then that’s when I heard it. The CLANGING! Almost like the sound that a wrench makes when you bang it on a metal barrel. CLANG! CLANG!! CLANG!!!

I knew that the only place that sound could be coming from was inside the tower. I looked around and at the north end of the tower was a hatch. A hatch that probably opened into the tank. I didn’t want to investigate. I went to the spiral stairs and looked down and saw them. They were at the bottom. All three of them and more, many more, with flat stairs looking up at me. The Librarian, Ralph and Jimmy were among them. Those flat stairs with those flat looks. I didn’t see the crackheads or Old Larsen among them. Go figure, all the weirdos weren't there.

 “Hey ya’ll, I was just up here looking at the view,” I said to them nervously.

They didn’t budge.
            CLANG! CLANG!! CLANG!!!

It was too late before I realized it. The Librarian was already halfway up the steps.  I could smell the miasma her perfume created waft up to me. The smell of death, the smell of decay, the smell of pustules and open sores.

She made it to the top and did not even acknowledge me. She walked past me and opened the hatch on the water tower.

“Come’on now,” she said, but not to me. She was talking to Ralph and Jimmy who were  at the edge of the water tower. They held something, a shadow between them. It was an unconscious child, one I had never seen before. I watched in horror as they dragged the unconscious child towards the hatch. Then another voice I heard. One that sounded familiar from the television. One that I heard long ago. It was the man that looked like the same one from the microfiche. Then it hit me, holy fuck it was Eddy Wright, the Sheriff! I looked at Ralph and realized that he was a spitting image of Gabe Garcia. Jimmy also looked familiar, like Justin Weeks. And the Librarian, she looked like Emelia Gregg.

There was something seriously wrong here. I then looked at the child in between Gabe and Justin. I knew that child.

Holy shit, it was Heath Herbert. A young boy I knew when I was a child. The Librarian had tightened a steel wire around Heath’s neck. I heard a slight gasp from Heath. Ralph and Jimmy then dropped him into the hatch. Into the icy cold water. They all did this not noticing me. Hours earlier they had noticed me. They had even talked to me and pretended to be friendly with me. But now they were flat, they were somewhere on the outside of my existence.

I couldn't move. I felt paralyzed from what I had witnessed. They had dropped Heath into the water supply of Pomeroy. I moved towards the steps when they had stopped me. Eddy Wright looked me squarely in the eyes.

“Grab him,” he yelled to the rest.

Ralph and Jimmy grabbed me quickly and out of nowhere there was another force there. Something dark. A shadow. It was holding me. Holding on to me tightly.

“For the harvest,” is all I heard Emilia Gregg say as they pushed me into that black abyss. That dark murky watery place where they had shoved Heath only a few moments before.

“Shut the hole,” I heard Gregg call out.

The last moonlight from the hole was closed away by those maniacs. They were a group of crazies, monster, killers!

Then it finally hit me. The weirdest thing of all. Why was Heath here? He died a long time ago. It didn’t make sense, nothing did. But I didn’t have time for such thoughts. I had to look for him. I tried to fight the whiskey back a little and focus.

I dove in and searched for Heath with my hands by I couldn’t feel anything. That is when my hand found its way around some wire. It was the wire that was connected to Heath that they had strung him from. The wire was taut. He must have been all the way down at the bottom of the water tank, dead.

It was strange thinking that a weird day like today would be the day that I would drown in this water tower, and among all things I would die drunk as a skunk. I would die just like Heath did, tits-up. Then, one of those strange hillbilly epiphanies it hit me, maybe that tooth and hair I found today were my own.