concept art from an unfinished novel (The Place of the Skull: Volume II in The Strange Life of Ronald Fairfax) done in Clip Art
Mr. Hunter looked at
the clock and dropped his lecture voice.
“Ok. So it’s Halloween season, right? Do you know Huntington has its own history of
ghost stories?”
“Like Mellonheads?” Horrowitz ventured.
“That’s a rather
newer one, but ok, so you’ve heard of the Mellonheads.” Mr. Hunter leaned back against the wall. “Anyone else?”
“Hannah Cranna?” One of the boys in the back piped up.
“Yep,” Mr. Hunter
nodded, “ that’s one from Monroe. Now,
how many of you know about Sigismund Chesterville?”
To his surprise,
Ronald found that his hand was in the air.
“Fairfax?” Mr. Hunter turned to face him. “Evidently, we’ve got a connoisseur of local
history.”
Ronald’s mouth felt
dry and his mind went curiously blank.
He had a sudden sense of panic at the thought that he might be asked to
say something more.
To
his relief, Mr. Hunter went on. “Ok, so
see how much of this you know, Fairfax, and the rest of you can learn something
new.”
Ronald
swallowed hard and the saliva returned to his mouth. There was a slight pressure on the right side
of his face, but his thoughts began to return.
“Back
about a hundred years ago, they used to call Chesterville ‘the wickedest man in
New England.’ He’s supposed to have used
divination to find gold that the British buried during the Revolution and used
it to buy an immense house along the banks of the Housatonic River, not far
from here. That house burnt down when he
died and no one’s been able to build on the property since. Two men working for the W.P.A. in the 1930s
went digging there looking for his treasure and reported being chased off by
wolves –wolves haven’t been seen in Connecticut for two-hundred years. According to his own claims while living,
Chesterville drove his wife mad, conversed regularly in his parlor with the
spirits of the witches who died at Salem, killed six men by black magic, and
started World War I. Talk about an
egoist. Now, if you check in the town
hall records, which I did once when I was down there doing some genealogical
research, you’ll find that he died in a hunting accident. What local legend says is that he tried to
swindle the Devil at a game of lawn bowling one night and they were picking
pieces of him off the trees the next morning.
Supposedly the pieces were still shaking so his friends cremated him and
dumped his ashes in the river.
Now,
here’s the interesting part: Chesterville’s tombstone is in the old Cemetery about
ten minutes drive from here. When I was
a kid, they used to say that you could light a candle on Chesterville’s grave
and if you blew it out and said his name three times then his spirit would come
and re-light the candle. Lot of rubbish,
right? Well about a year ago last
September, when we had all that rain, I was driving home –and it was coming
down cats and dogs, wind howling- and what did I see in the cemetery? There was a candle up on Chesterville’s
grave, burning strait and clear.”
He
stopped, and there were a few awkward chuckles across the room.
“Well,
anyhow, the bell’s about to ring, so there you go. No homework tonight.”
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