Date: Tue, 15 Oct 1996 14:46:04 MDT From: Robyn Meta Herrington Subject: SUB:CONTEST: HUGO'S JUSTICE What a turn out we're having this year! Critique to me: rmherrin@acs.ucalgary.ca Voting will run from October 16th - 30th. I will then tabulate the votes, and announce the results on October 31st. TO VOTE: 5 points for first place, 4 points for second place 3 for 3rd, 2 for 4th place, and 1 point for 5th place. Confused? Email me. ------------------------------------------------------------------ HUGO'S JUSTICE When Jarvis tried to suppress his yawns, Mossy said, "Looks like all the fresh air is gettin' to you, Ray. This'd probably be a good time to draw a key out of the hat to see which one of these reprobates you'll have to bunk with tonight." Jarvis blinked in surprise. "I thought you had four rooms available. One for each of us." "Oh, yeah," Mossy agreed. "After tonight, you each get your own room. But nobody sleeps in Hugo's room on Halloween night. Since you're the new lad in the group, you get to be the one who sleeps on the rollaway cot." Jerry snorted a cloud of cigar smoke. "Better hope you don't get Andy's key. He snores like a pack of wolves fighting over a rabbit." "Hey," I protested. "My snoring is a Brahm's Lullaby compared to the chainsaw imitation you produce." "Wait a minute!" Jarvis was leaning forward in his chair, eyes glinting in the light from the huge fireplace to his right. "What's this about Hugo's room'? Who's Hugo? I thought we were the only ones booked into the lodge." "We are," Bacon assured him. "But old Hugo used to sleep in that bedroom right over there." He jabbed the stem of his pipe toward the door behind Jarvis. "The original house consisted of this main room and the bedroom. Mossy and Nadine added onto it after they bought the place. The other three guest rooms are all in the new' wing." George Moss, our host and long-time friend, explained, "An old boy by the name of Hugo Gunter built this place around the turn of the century. He died in that room and it was an ugly death. He always comes back Halloween night, which is why nobody can sleep in there." Mossy smiled. "Seems fair enough. Just one night out of the year." Jarvis grinned and leaned back in the chair. "Okay, boys. I didn't fall off the turnip truck just yesterday. This is some kind of prank, right? An initiation for the new guy?" He sneered. "You didn't really think I'd swallow a ghost story, did you?" Jerry grabbed the fifth of Crown Royal from the coffee table and freshened his ice cubes. He was chuckling as he sat back. "Hey, Ray, you can sleep in the room if you want to. At least, you can try. We're just trying to save you from having to change beds in the middle of the night." "Right," Jarvis said. "I go to bed in Hugo's room and you guys try to scare me with sound effects and stuff. Right?" "Hunting season opens tomorrow, Ray." Bacon said. "We'd a whole lot rather get a good night's sleep than have to re-locate you when you find out nobody's doing anything in Hugo's room except Hugo." Mossy raised a hand when Jarvis opened his mouth to retort. "Wait a minute, Ray. Andy, here, is the one who can give you the story on Hugo. Why don't you listen to what he has to say and then make up your mind?" Everyone looked expectantly at me. It was true. I'd done a lot of research on Hugo Gunter some years before. In talking to some of the local old-timers, I'd become interested in the history of the area. One thing led to another and I ended up doing a regular column in our weekly newspaper. "I don't know how much of what I'm about to tell you is fact," I cautioned Jarvis. "Some things we know for sure. We know he arrived here from Europe and that he had money. He was pushing fifty and seemed pretty frail. A diary entry I read described him as tall and gaunt, with fly-away grey hair and a long beard and dark, wild eyes. He was a loner and eccentric, talked a lot to himself, in a language nobody understood, and spoke heavily accented English to others only when he absolutely had to. "When he homesteaded this place, he hired some men to build his house, paid them well and told them never to come back. Rode his mule into town once a month to pick up supplies and mail. Apparently there were always lots of packages for him from Europe. Some of it was books. He had hundreds of books when he died." "Ah, yes," Jarvis said. "Now we get to this horrible death." He had that oily grin on his face that always pissed me off. "Not quite," I said. "Hugo lived like a hermit up here for something like ten years. In that length of time, I guess it was natural that he became almost legendary. Gossip and barroom tales embroidered the basic facts of what, on the surface, was a pretty simple life. Apparently Hugo was quite a talented violinist. Hunters and miners in the area told of nights they could hear him, standing out on the bank of the river, playing that violin like the devil was driving him. "You have to understand," I said, "he wasn't entirely isolated, even though that seemed to be what he wanted. Every now and then, someone passing by, either on horseback or on the river, would drop in to spend the night. It was a full day's ride to town from here. A lot of what was told about Hugo came from those occasional visitors. "He never turned anyone away but he never made them welcome, either. Some of them felt more comfortable braving the elements than dealing with his dubious hospitality. But, from those people came reports of the strangeness of Hugo's character. Like the impressionistic paintings he would furiously brush onto canvas and then burn in that fireplace beside you. Or the bones he would continuously cast on the hearth, muttering away in a language the visitor could not understand. Or the nights he would sit outside and howl in a perfect imitation of the coyotes that used to be plentiful in this area. People swore he talked to the coyotes on those nights and that they talked back." Jarvis was smirking, shaking his head. I decided to cut to the chase. "It was a matter of record that money from someplace in Europe was deposited in Hugo's account at the bank. He always drew on that when he went to town for supplies. But, somehow, in the course of time, the idea grew that Hugo had a secret gold mine up here. There were tales that he paid his bills with nuggets. This wasn't true but a couple of thieves, new to the area, didn't know that. "The only name we have for the dominant one of the team was Boggs. The other thief was called Ferret Thompson. They figured an old man living alone was easy pickings and they decided to drop in and force him to tell them where the mine was. "They arrived here on the evening before Halloween. It was raining and blowing much like it is tonight and they had no trouble pretending to be exhausted travelers needing shelter. According to what Ferret said later, Hugo let them in, as he always let visitors in, and left them to their own devices while he went about his business. He was in one of his painting frenzies that particular night. "It didn't take Boggs and Ferret long to determine there was no one else around and Hugo didn't even have a dog as a companion or guardian. They overpowered the old man, tied him to his bed and set about torturing him to determine the location of the mythical gold mine. According to Ferret, it was Boggs who did all the dirty work and enjoyed the doing. That may have been true. "It's certainly true that Hugo died before daylight. And the only thing he told them, in his broken English, was that they would suffer horrible deaths for that night's work. He further stated that the bones had told him it would be his duty, his mission, to come back every year on Halloween, when the veil between the living and the dead is at its thinnest and most fragile. At that time, anyone with a guilty conscience within his sphere of influence would be punished. "Ferret arrived back in town the day after Halloween. He was alone and frightened out of his mind. The first thing he did was buy a bottle at one of the waterfront dives. By the time he was well into his second bottle, he was babbling and begging for protection. The sheriff was called in and Ferret told him the whole story. Told him they had buried Hugo back of the house and then spent all of Halloween day ransacking the place, looking for nuggets or a map to the mine. He said Boggs slept in Hugo's bed that night while he, Ferret, curled up in front of the fireplace here. He was awakened just after midnight by horrible screams. It sounded like somebody was hammering at the bedroom walls and there was a crackling sound like lightning, just before it strikes. Then, abruptly, there was no sound at all. "Ferret huddled in this room until daylight before he dared open the door to the bedroom. Boggs was lying on the bed, tangled in the blankets, face frozen in a rictus of horror, eyes staring at nothing. Ferret bolted for town, nearly killing his horse in the process. "The sheriff deposited the weeping drunk in the city jail and took a posse upriver to check out the story. It was as Ferret said. They found Hugo's horribly mutilated body in its shallow grave. Boggs was dead as his dreams of gold. There was never any trial because, by the time the posse arrived back in town, Ferret had hanged himself in his cell." Jarvis chuckled, shaking his head. "That's a good story, Andy. And now you're going to tell me that anyone sleeping in there on Halloween will get the booga-booga laid on them by old Hugo, right?" Mossy smiled. "Not exactly. Hugo doesn't let anybody get a good night's sleep in there but he doesn't harm anyone who doesn't have a guilty conscience." "What's that supposed to mean?" Jarvis bristled. I held my breath. Mossy raised his eyebrows. "Just what I said," he responded mildly. "Over the years, before Nadine and I bought the place, it went from owner to owner. However Hugo judges folks, apparently, if they pass, he just serenades them with his violin music. Most people that happened to were uncomfortable enough with the experience that they put the place on the market right after Halloween. There were a couple of folks, though," Mossy said wryly, "that I wouldn't want to buy a used car from. They were supposed to have died of heart attacks." "Have you slept in there on Halloween night?" Jarvis asked. "Sure. Me and Nadine both." He grinned. "It was mighty good fiddle music but too loud and wild to allow for any sleep." Jerry nodded. "Andy and I tried it too. We didn't believe Mossy when he told us. He's right. The music is definitely stimulating." "What about you, Bacon?" Jarvis wasn't smiling any more. Bacon just looked at him. "I never slept in there. I have enough on my conscience that I wouldn't care to take the chance." Bacon is retired from the Air Force and he never talks about his war experiences. He's never been at peace with what he had to do. "Well," Jarvis said, slapping the arms of his chair and standing up. "If you'll just give me the key to old Hugo's room I'll see if I can pass your little high school initiation." That sneer was back on his face as he stretched out his hand to Mossy, palm up. Mossy sighed and lumbered over to the desk, where he pulled a key from its hook on the wall. "Here you go, Ray. But if you change your mind, I'll leave the rollaway out here for you." He dropped the key in Jarvis' hand. "Not a chance, boys." Jarvis went over to where our luggage and gear was piled by the desk and selected his bag. Then he sauntered to the bedroom door and opened it, reaching in to turn on the light. He looked around and nodded, then looked back at us. "Whatever you plan on doing, you'll have to do from out there," he said, "because I'm locking myself in." The last thing we saw before he closed the door was that smug smile. We listened intently. The key turned in the lock. "He went for it," Bacon said softly. "The bastard actually went for it." I got out of my chair and put fresh ice in everyone's glass, pouring generous helpings of whisky. We all looked at the big picture propped on the mantle. It had been taken a couple of years earlier by Dave Jenkins, the member of our group who would never be with us again. The member whose dying wish was the reason we had brought Ray Jarvis, a man we despised, this year. The picture showed all of us, Mossy and Nadine included, standing on the porch of the lodge. Dave had set the camera on a tripod and tripped the delay switch so he could be in the picture too. His lopsided grin looked back at us in the dim light. Lanky, easy-going Dave, who consistently shot more pictures than game. His newest toy, before his death, was a camcorder. No doubt he'd have made an epic documentary of this year's hunting trip, had he lived to be with us. We raised our glasses in a silent toast to our fallen friend and drank. None of us could find anything to say for awhile. We listened to the fire pop and crackle. We heard the wind gusting and driving rain against the sturdy lodge and blinked when a gust of smoke bellowed back out of the chimney from time to time. The grandfather clock across the room ticked quietly, measuring the night with its cadence. Bacon was the first to break our reverie. "Does Nadine know?" he asked. Mossy shook his head. "Nope. No use tellin' her. She would sympathize but no way would she approve." We nodded. That was Nadine. She scolded and mothered all of us but I suspected Dave had been her favorite. She had gone to bed earlier, leaving us to, as she called it, our "guy thing". Our twenty year-long tradition of a Halloween night spent smoking and drinking, telling tall tales and falling into bed for a few winks before the ritual opening day of hunting season. The day we invariably hit the woods hungover and miserable, trying to track the deer who were smarter than we were. Great fun. Or it had been, with Dave. Jerry twisted around to look at the clock. "It's getting on toward midnight. Do you think Hugo will show? It's been a lot of years since anyone tried sleeping in there." "He'll show," Bacon said. "He's a man with a mission, remember?" As we were, I thought. Men with a common mission. For the first time I began to wonder if we'd be able to go through with it. Mossy seemed to read my mind. "Now's the time to say so if anybody wants to call this off," he said. We all looked at him for a long moment, thinking our own thoughts. I was thinking of the day Dave's widow had called us over to their house. Faye had aged ten years in the month since Dave had died. But that day there was anger as well as grief etched on her face. "I have something to show you," she said, after she'd settled us in the living room. "I don't understand it completely but Dave was sure you would." We had looked at each other, mystified, as Faye turned on the television set and then the VCR. The picture that came on the screen was a slow pan of the old Morrison place. I had felt the first intimations of disaster in that moment. Dave had been felled with a massive heart attack at the Morrison place. He and Faye had discussed buying either that or another house in town. They were just about decided on the country home when Faye made a trip to see her ailing mother. Dave decided to go ahead and buy the place as a surprise for her. On the day he died, he and Ray Jarvis were supposed to meet out there for a final walk around and the keys. Jarvis was a new realtor in town and struck us all as being someone who wanted to be a big frog in a small pond. According to Jarvis, afterward, there was a breakdown in communication. He'd understood Dave would meet him at the place in town. Claimed he'd waited there nearly an hour before giving up and going back to the office. In the meantime, old Mr. Tomlinson spotted Dave lying in the yard as he drove by. It was already too late. At the funeral, Jarvis made a big thing of saying what a terrible thing he'd gone to the wrong house. If only he'd been there, he might have been able to help. Faye told us, "I didn't even think to see what Dave might have been filming until last night." She reached out for the volume button. "We're almost at the part you need to see." Dave's voice came out of the speakers, bringing a lump to my throat. He was narrating for Faye as he filmed. Then we could hear a car engine in the background and the crunch of tires on gravel. "Uh oh," Dave's voice said, "Here comes our hot shot realtor, honey. But I won't spoil the film by putting him in it." Then the picture went briefly blank. It started again almost instantly but the angle was wrong and everything was jumping around crazily. We could hear agonized breathing and a car starting up. The camera steadied and focused, obviously from ground level, aimed at a car backing and turning out of the driveway in a spray of gravel. Ray Jarvis' car! And then Dave's voice again, straining. "Get this, honey. Understand. I'm having a heart attack. It's bad. It's really bad. The prick just panicked. He has a cellular phone, f'Christ's sakes...told him to...911. He just...ran. Wanted you to see he ran. But don't tell cops. Tell the guys. Just the guys. Tell em...Hugo." We sat there frozen, not even breathing. The camera slammed to the ground, still filming, picking up a bug's eye view of the driveway and lawn. Dave said a few more things. Things for Faye. Then the picture went blank. Dave had nothing more to say. There was nothing more he'd needed to say. A pact was made that day ... a pact to present Ray Jarvis to the tender mercies of Hugo Gunter. We'd do whatever it took to get him here, even pretend to want him to join our hunting group. I was jerked out of my memories by the chiming of the grandfather clock. We all jumped and turned to look. Midnight. Jerry stood up from his chair, his usually jovial expression replaced with furrows of worry. "I don't know, guys. Maybe we'd better call this off..." He was interrupted by a sudden series of sharp rapping coming from Hugo's room. It sounded like nails popping out of boards, first on one wall, then another. Bacon tensed, rose from his chair. "Well, we know up front, Mr. Ray Jarvis isn't gonna pass Hugo's test. No violin music tonight." "Let's get him out of there." I didn't know I was going to say the words until I spoke them. All I knew was I was filled with a sudden awareness that we were all going to regret this night. We looked at each other, wavering. Bacon nodded, grim. "You're right. We have to stop this now." By the time we reached the bedroom door, the rapping noises had given way to louder thuds and booms, the sounds echoing in every direction. I felt the vibrations in my bones. Mossy got there first, automatically trying the door knob, and began pounding on the door. We could hear voices inside...two voices...but we couldn't make out any words. There was a rapid, terrified babbling that was clearly Jarvis but there was also a harsher, stronger voice...a voice speaking in the gutturals of another language. "Ray!" Mossy raised his voice above the din. "Ray! Open the door! Open it, man. You have to come out of there right now!" He rattled the door knob and kept pounding on the door. It was as though, to the pair inside the room, the outside world didn't exist. Even the storm had abated, as though giving way to the greater storm contained within the four walls closed to us. "The hinges!" Bacon said. "No good," Mossy shook his head. "They're on the inside." "What's going on? What's happening?" Nadine, wakened by the noise, ran into the room, bathrobed and disheveled In a babble of explanation we got across to her that Jarvis was locked inside with Hugo and we couldn't get him to unlock the door. Nadine ran to the desk and shuffled around in a drawer, then hurried back with an object in her hand. "Spare key," she muttered, bending over to try to jiggle the other key out of the lock so she could insert the spare from this side. The volume of noise from the room increased. Jarvis sounded completely panicked by now We were edging on panic ourselves. While Nadine worked the keys, we all crowded around and pounded on the door, yelling to get Jarvis' attention. Just as I heard Nadine say, "Got it! The other key dropped!" there was the most bone-chilling scream I've ever heard in my life. We all dropped back from the door as though physically assaulted. Then ... silence. Nadine, hand trembling, turned the key in the lock. Her hand hovered over the door knob, then drew back. Mossy reached out and opened the door, pushing it in to reveal the scene. Through heavy, swirling bands of what seemed to be a reddish fog, we could see Jarvis twisted up against the headboard of the bed, frozen in a contorted parody of horror. His staring eyes saw nothing. His gaping mouth, still dripping saliva, uttered no sound. Even from across the room we knew to the core of ourselves the man was dead. And then there was someone else there, someone who was not visible and yet their presence was as solid as the polished planks upon which we stood. I gasped as I realized there were eyes focused on us...great wild dark eyes, suspended in the red glow of the fog. "Hugo's still there," I said. My voice was barely audible. Nadine reached in and closed the door, then turned to face us. On her face was all the sorrow she was feeling, sorrow as old as Eve's when Cain slew Able. "We have to leave poor Ray until tomorrow." She looked at each of us. There was no judgement in her eyes, only the terrible knowing of the invisible line we had crossed this night. "None of you are safe in there on Halloween, not ever again." -- -------+++++++-------+++++++ +++++++-------+++++++------- Robyn Herrington Operations Manager, Microforms Services University of Calgary, MacKimmie Library Ph: (403)220-6903 http://www.ucalgary.ca/~rmherrin rmherrin@acs.ucalgary.ca -------+++++++-------+++++++--------------+++++++-------+++++++-------