Dead Men (and Women) Walking (5 page)

Even shut up, rumors still
managed to spread. Seeing an insurrection of some sort, police and
British soldiers had gathered in force. They tried to kill Tim and
his crew, but failed utterly. Their bullets and bayonets had no
effect. The men didn't know how to fight corpses, and many were
killed: more than a few deaths occurred as they stepped into their
comrades lines of fire in their haste to escape. In brighter days,
news of this defeat being suffered by the British would have
brought rejoicing. Instead, it only deepened our fears.

Even worse than the
solitude, I felt, was the lack of a drop to drink. The dead had
taken it all, and were residing in Bobby's pub. Whenever some fool
who hadn't heard, or didn't believe, the news came with a new load,
it was quickly taken from them. We thought it might be the only
thing keeping them alive, but every attempt to take it back from
them failed; so even had our idea had weight, we were never able to
find out.

The days dragged on.
Eventually, my mum went to bed one night, and never again woke. I
went out of my mind with grief at her loss. She had been the only
thing I had during those days. Unable to see those few people I
knew I could rely on after my stint in the jail, I was left utterly
alone.

So that night, I began
writing this, my testament, and hatched a most daring scheme. I
left my mother outside, for to be taken in by the dead. My father's
old gun sits here beside me. Soon, I will hear them coming. When
the tramping of their feet sounds, I know what I must do. After
tonight, I'll be back with my mum, and truly, I'll finally be able
to once again have a drink....

By Jeff Brown

They say it’s time for me to
confess my sins. Confess what sins? I’ve done nothing wrong.
Besides, I’m not Catholic and this isn’t some confessional I am in.
Though, quite a few inmates do their confessions in these concrete
walled rooms to other inmates who are just as “innocent” as they
are. That doesn’t really matter, though. You see, I am innocent.
For some reason they say I’m lying, they say I’m as guilty as the
next “innocent” criminal behind bars. That just doesn’t make much
sense to me—I passed four of them liar’s tests they give to us
“innocents before proven to be guilty’s.” They have no evidence
against me. Nothing at all. No weapon, nothing. Worst of all, they
don’t have a body. I know. I know. People who say they have no
proof are usually guilty of the crime they are being tried for. Not
me.

But, here I am in this gray,
chalky 8’ x8’ jail cell staring out of a window just a wee bit
bigger than my head. I’ve been in prison for the better part of
sixteen years now. For the most part I have been in this isolation
ward in a part of the Lee County Correctional Institution that they
put the head cases like myself. Presumably.

I’m not crazy. I know what I
saw that night seventeen years ago. I know what happened. Hell,
they did tests on me to see if I was sane—and I am. They even did
one of those ink blot tests—the ones where they pour ink onto a
piece of paper, fold it, and make shapes that look like grisly
looking butterflies, or big black blood splotches. You know, things
that some four-year-old kids could do. And, more than likely they
have four year old kids create the blotches for those head
shrinks.

They—the psychiatrist—said,
and I quote: “He’s as sane as the next person.” However sane that
is.

Never-the-less, I am sitting
in a damp and musky jail cell with an open jon, steel sink and an
old cot with piss stains (at least that’s what I hope they are) on
the thin cushion they call a mattress. They said the cot was new
when they brought it in about a year ago. But those stains were on
there then, and I don’t believe I have added to the mess. The
prison was relatively new when I got here in 1993, having been
transferred from another facility. I was one of the first people
that they sent here when it opened. I must say they do treat me
pretty damn good, all things considered (especially since they
don’t let me around too many other inmates). But, all’s the same
when they don’t do a lot of cleaning around this joint. One time I
saw a rat the size of a small cat—not a kitten, but a
cat.

Oh, wait a minute—I haven’t
introduced myself, yet. I’m Jonathon Clary. I was a truck driver
for Overnite in Columbia, South Carolina, making trips back and
forth, up and down, and all around the great U. S. of A. I was a
truck driver, mind you. Until all of this happened. Until all of
what happened, you ask? Why, I never thought you would
ask.

All of “this” is about Bobby
“Buster” Lennon and his death. We called him “Buster” when we were
kids because of the Buster Brown shoes his mother always bought
him. The name kind of stuck, and it didn’t seem to bother him too
much. Buster was, for all practical purposes, stupid. He wasn’t
retarded nor did he have any mental problems, he was just plain
stupid. He had the common sense that is comparable to sheep. Well,
no, sheep have a little more common sense, I guess, than Buster
did. Matter of fact there are quite a few animals and people out
there who have more common sense than Buster did.

Buster was also my best
friend. He had been since the third grade when we got into a fight
over who was going to play on the monkey bars first—him or me.
Turns out neither of us got to play on the monkey bars. Sammy
Johnson got to when Mrs. Grable yanked us both up by our ears and
led us to the principal’s office. It was seventeen years that we
had been friends. Seventeen years ended in the Coachi
Swamp.

Coachi Swamp. Now, there’s a
place I highly recommend taking the wife and kids for a family
outing on the weekend. It sits about thirty or so miles outside of
Sumter, South Carolina. It isn’t very big to be honest with you,
maybe two miles in length. At one time Coachi Swamp wasn’t even a
swamp. It was a lake. Well, not really a lake but it was called
one—Lake Coachi. But, that was way back when, in the early 1800’s
(I think it was back in the real late 1700’s that it got its name.
But, I’m not entirely sure).

The lake was, from legends
and lore and probably a little bit of urban myth, a place of
splendor; grace on Earth; beauty in all its ways. The lake was a
crystal blue with blossoming flowers all around it. Sycamore and
oak trees stood tall and erect as if they were guarding some hidden
treasure. The lake was full of fish. Fish that I guess were bream,
bass and probably some of those ugly catfish. I don’t know if they
had names for the fish back in those days. It doesn’t really matter
anyway—fish are fish, and if you can catch ‘em, be it with a pole
and a line or by hand, then it was some good eating. That is, if
they are cooked properly.

I’m babbling, aren’t I? I’m
sorry. I do that from time to time.

Well, they say when the sun
would set in the evenings its rays would glisten on the surface of
the lake. It would look like the sun was sinking right into the
water, like one of those greeting cards you could find in those
visitors’ stations at the borders of every state in the
country.

Even with the lake’s beauty
and its surrounding woods the main attraction at Lake Coachi was a
wishing well. The well was built in 1798, by Samual Coachi. That’s
where the lake got its name from, as if you couldn’t figure that
out for yourselves. He built it for his daughter, the lovely Miss
Catherine. It was a red clay brick well that stood four feet tall
and was easily four feet wide. A wood frame had been built with a
pulley attached to the top to make retrieving well from the water
easy. A hand crank had been installed on the frame with a rope
attached to it. The rope was strung through the pulley’s base and
had a bucket attached to it. Engraved into the wood at the top of
the well were the words “Miss Catherine’s Well.”

People came from miles
around to see the lake and its well. Often times they would toss
coins in the well and make wishes as if some genie was going to pop
out and grant them what they wanted. But, from what I understand,
the majority of the wishes did come true, though most of the wishes
back then were unlike the wishes of today. I’m sure there were no
huge house wishes or wishes for a BMW or even a million
smackeroos.

Some people say that old man
Coachi somehow or another had the well dug so it actually connected
to the lake.

“
That would mean that the
water in the well came from the lake,” Joey Hilliard once said. If
that were the case I wonder if they ever hauled up a fish or two
when they pulled that pail up from the well? I don’t know but I’ve
always wondered about that—pull up some water for your lady friend
and give her a fish dinner in the process.

The legend tells it that
young Miss Catherine and her lover were down at the lake one
evening and it seems they got into a little spat. The quarrel led
to her slapping him. She turned and began to walk off, or so they
say. Lover boy didn’t seem to take a liking to that and pushed her
to the ground where she hit her head on one of those pearl white
rocks by the water’s edge. It busted her skull wide open. Killed
her dead. That’s kind of redundant isn’t it? Killed her dead. Yep,
that’s definitely redundant.

Seeing his beloved on the
ground, dead, with blood gushing from a wound he had given her
caused the poor boy to panic. From what they say, he hauled her
body to the wishing well and down she went. She probably hit the
water with a big splash. Then again, maybe she didn’t. Does it
really matter?

He ran. Damn near ran out of
his leotards or pants or whatever they called the male’s clothing
back then.

The town’s people searched
for them for a couple of days. They never found her. They never
found him, either. They say that someone did find a letter that he
had written telling what had happened, leaving out the part of him
throwing her into the wishing well. Supposedly it was written in
blood. His blood? Some people even say they found a trail of blood
starting at the desk where the letter had been found that led to
the door of the barn, which was swung wide open. A puddle of blood
was on the ground at the entrance. Muddy footprints about the size
of a young lady’s were trailing away from the barn.

Did she come back and get
him?

After the couple’s
disappearance—that’s what they all called it, a
DISAPPEARANCE—people stopped going to Lake Coachi. They said the
water they baled out of the well was a rusty color, the color of
mud and blood. The lake’s water also started changing from crystal
blue into a yucky brown color. Many of the fish died and floated to
the top of the lake. They were all a faded red color, almost a
blood red. The tall erect guard-like trees began to slump and fall.
It was as if the lake and its surroundings had died along with Miss
Catherine.

Not too long after that
people started to disappear. Some of them they dismissed because of
circumstance. Like the colored slave who escaped his master and ran
into the wooded area that surrounded the lake. They never found his
master, who chased him into the woods. Well, that’s not totally
correct—they did find an eyeball, tendons still attached. The
townspeople hung the slave right there at the lake, saying he had
murdered his master. It’s been said that the slave pleaded with the
angry mob, telling them a woman did it.

Two teenage boys disappeared
after beating up another boy that was half their size. Police found
a bloody shirt that belonged to one of the boys and a shoe that
belonged to the other one. His foot was still in the
shoe.

In 1908 an entire family
disappeared on a picnic outing. Six people, gone. No trace of ‘em
anywhere. After that family disappeared they closed the lake off
completely. Long wooden fences, not too unlike the privacy fences
you see around some folks’ yards, were built for the entire
two-mile length of the lake. There was only one entrance to the
lake, and that was through the gate they had also built.

Still, in 1942 a man wanted
for robbery disappeared in what’s now known as Coachi Swamp. “At
least we found the money,” one police official was quoted as
saying. What a compassionate bastard he was.

In 1957 and again in ’59
people disappeared when they went into the swamp through its lone
gate—a thirty footer that had pretty much began to rot away by that
time. The gate was on a dirt road that would take you closer into
Sumter, some twenty-five miles away. They tore up that road and
paved a new way into town.

The last known disappearance
was in 1974. The girl was in her late teens. I think her name was
Missy. She was pregnant and didn’t want the kid. They found her
body, but it was mangled awful bad. Her stomach had been completely
ripped out. She didn’t have to worry about the baby
anymore.

I was 10 then. I thought she
had been torn asunder by some wild dogs or something like that. The
police never would speculate on what happened to her. I didn’t
believe in the curse of Coachi Swamp, even though since the first
death at the lake over 190 years previous, 67 people in all had
disappeared or died there.

I’m much older now. Not much
wiser, but I know the curse is real. The bogey man does exist. And
I’m not some crazy truck driver who’s had a little too much to
drink. I didn’t even drink that day. I passed the Breathalyzer and
the walk-the-white-line-boy test. It wasn’t even a white line—it
was yellow.