42.
“The Initials”While it was bright with mid-day sun outside, the inside of the cottage was dark and dingy. The windows were small and cluttered to prevent much light from entering.
The place seemed less dirty than haphazardly. It looked more like a storage shed than a home, with things littered about randomly.
There were carved figures of every kind sitting anywhere you might look. There were also dusty boxes stacked everywhere. When inspected the boxes contained books, almost all of which had no front cover. Books that are not sold are often “stripped” like this and discarded, once the cover has been returned to the publisher for a refund. Pappy knew this from working in the college bookstore while at school. Wiley, it appears, had been collecting free books for quite some time. From the layers of dust it was doubtful he had read them, at least in a while.
There were also empty pill bottles everywhere. None of them had prescription labels on them, but each had been stripped of that evidence well in advance of the asking. What was not in question was that someone here had been ingesting quite a bit of chemical fortification of some sort.
The place didn’t stink as one might expect. There was no evidence of food gone bad, or garbage laying about. In fact, in the fridge there was no food at all. Neither was there any evidence of open or un-opened cans of food in the kitchen area. You would be hard pressed to find anything resembling food anywhere within these walls.
The small stove looked like it had never been used for any purpose. It looked very much as though Wiley Earl did not eat. At least he did not eat here.
The bathroom seemed, while not overly clean, reasonably well maintained.
The bedroom was just a small space with a cot, a single window and a couple of stacks of boxed books. There were books on either side of the single chair in this room. An inspection of the cot would say that this room rarely saw Earl sleep either.
It was out the back door that Pappy found the discovery.
Here were cords of wood stacked high. In the midst of the wood was a bent wood chair. Before the chair was a stump of a tree that perhaps served as a table or foot stool. Stuck in the stump was a large carving knife. Wood shavings were all around this area. Wood chips were on the stump, on the chair and on the ground for 20 feet in any direction. And within that circle were carved figures, at least forty of them. They were of a variety that was astounding.
There were deer, turtles, a bear, a couple of birds, some figures that might have been gnomes, and several chunks of wood that were obviously unfinished.
Most of the work was of amazing simplicity and subtle beauty.
Pappy took out his handkerchief and used it to pull the knife out of the stump. He then wrapped it around the cutting tool.
“Tooley,” He called, “Can we get Evan Turley over at the ‘Troopers’ to have someone look at this, maybe get fingerprints and blood, if there is any?”
He doubted this was the knife used in any of the killings, but it was worth a shot.
He turned to find the Sheriff, and saw him, ashen faced standing at the door.
“Pappy,” the man said, “Come look at this.”
He walked with his friend back into the cottage. Tooley led him to the door jam in every room, where they found the initials “B.O.U.” carved in the same gothic style, over and over.
There were at least 12 occurrences of the initials.
It was a pattern they found carved in a table, on a window sill, in the arm of a chair and inside a cabinet door.
Then Tooley led Pappy to a wooden head figure. This one had been under a pile of books, so Pappy had missed it before.
There, on the face of the head, a face carved to look like a young boy, the initials displayed on both cheeks of the face.
B.O.U., carved into a young boy’s face.
It was something chilling to see.
“I suddenly remember what it means,” Tooley said. There was no blood in his deathly white face as he said it.
Pappy thought the man looked as if he might pass out.
© 2005 by C. Wayne Owens
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