"This is a very, special week at The Literary World of Tom Raimbault; for this is Halloween week! And like we do every year, new stories written just for the holiday are featured throughout the week. This year we roll out some brand-new Mapleview material in the form of a mini novella titled The Friendly Fort. Be sure to visit each day for a new chapter. The Friendly Fort will be featured from Sunday through Saturday."
***
In case you are unfamiliar with
Mapleview; it's a fictional town—the very setting of my Mapleview series of
novels. And those who visit Mapleview all agree that it's the rural sort of
town that one passes through while driving on vacation; the peaceful, historic
sort of town that is typically surrounded by miles of forests, lakes, mountains
and untouched wilderness. But despite its days-of-antiquity charm and God's
country location, Mapleview and surrounding area is surprisingly a thriving
community complete with every convenience and luxury one would expect to find
in the city or suburbs.
Downtown Mapleview has a
population of some hundred thousand people. That should tell you as to how much
this historic town, which was originally established in 1831, has grown. The
center of town has a main road that runs north and south that is rightfully
called, Mapleview Road. Continue traveling north, you soon enter a heavily
wooded highway which marks what many refer to as the historic section. Homes that
would have been built in the 1800s—such as the legendary, haunted Trivelli
house—continue to stand on their heavily wooded properties of an acre or more.
These private properties, in turn, are embedded within the neighboring
wilderness.
Continue traveling north,
Mapleview Road eventually curves and transitions east. If one remains traveling
eastward, they will soon reach an intersecting road called Creek Highway. This
marks the unofficial border of Mapleview and its neighboring town, Sillmac.
It's a fuzzy region that doesn't quite belong to Mapleview or Sillmac. It's
simply referred to as the Mapleview Township. And it's the location of one of
Mapleview's most shameful chapters of history that would have occurred sometime
in the 1800s.
The Friendly Fort (Chapter One)
This is the location where wind
turbine investor, Spencer Doiler, had set up temporary residence during the
summer of 1997. (Bear with me in these
next few paragraphs as I disclose the boring details of his reason for setting
up residence in Mapleview.) At the time, corporate and government planning
was in the works to install a multi-billion dollar wind turbine infrastructure
for the town of Mapleview and surrounding areas. But the plans were
unsuccessful. To this very day, the region continues to receive power from a
combination of fossilized fuel and nuclear energy. You see; at the time,
residents and farmers throughout rural Mapleview and Sillmac had strongly
opposed the installation of a wind turbine infrastructure. There was
significant evidence that wind turbines were harmful to farm animals. The
turbines, after all, would have been installed in open areas of land that would
have been near farms. In addition, large portions of farmland and even private,
residential properties were proposed to be acquired for this project through
eminent domain. Needless to say, residents of Mapleview and surrounding areas
were not happy with the intrusion of wind turbine power.
Investors, however, remained
hopeful. They believed it would only require diligent lobbying along with
significant donations to representatives to make the dream of wind turbine
energy a reality. For that matter; co-investor of Winds of Change Energy,
Spencer Doiler, had been deployed to the Mapleview region to begin the
acquisition of land, as well as educate the public of how helpful wind turbines
could be. With the assistance of a local Realtor, he would find a corporate
rental home and set up temporary residence.
It was a rental property; a
simple, three-bedroom, brick ranch built in 1947 that sat on two acres of
mostly-wooded land right off Creek Highway. The two acres connected with the
forested and mountainous back country of Mapleview.
Spencer believed he would only
stay in that house for six months to a year. There was so much momentum behind
the development and installation of wind turbine infrastructure that it was
nearly a done deal. Often he would stand outside on the old, wooden deck—say—in
the late afternoon and look out at the surrounding wilderness. He imagined
monstrous wind turbines generating power for Mapleview and surrounding areas.
As for the small house that he rented, it was old and would probably be plowed
down along with neighboring houses to make room for the turbines.
Next door to Spencer's home was
a two-story that looked to have been renovated and built-upon since its
original construction. The surrounding property, however, was larger; about
three and a half acres with a noteworthy half-acre clearing of trees some
distance behind the house. Spencer speculated that at one time this mysterious
clearing might have been a large garden. Personal farming was a way of life
once-upon-a-time.
This home next door was vacant
and for sale when Spencer originally moved in. It was like this for a few weeks
until Spencer momentarily went out of town for the Fourth of July weekend, and
then returned to Mapleview. His return was on a late, Sunday afternoon.
Immediately, Spencer noticed that the "For Sale" sign had been
removed from the front lawn, and there were now occupants living in the home.
And they were such a peculiar bunch of people; about a dozen of them living
under one roof and of various ages which suggested that perhaps a few
generations of one family now resided there. And they dressed so strangely in
old-style black clothing that appeared to be something that maybe Amish people
might wear.
"Amish people?"
Spencer softly asked out loud upon studying his new neighbors through the side
window of his house. "I have Amish people living next door to me? Too bad
the Realtor didn't warn them that all of this land will soon be acquisitioned
for wind turbines."
The more Spencer thought about
it, the more he speculated that perhaps his new neighbors were real estate
savvy, and wished to cash in on the eminent domain advantage. Homeowners could
get up to three times the appraised amount when losing property to government
acquisition. But it just didn't seem like something that Amish people would do.
Amish people were religious and Puritan-like, not aggressively seeking ways to
make money. Still, there was just something odd about them. Spencer's new
neighbors weren't right.
***
On Tuesday
morning following the Fourth of July Weekend, Spencer sat at a desk in the
front room of his rented home. The front room had been converted to a
make-shift office, complete with business phone and PC on the desk. He was in
the middle of a conference call and discussing the progress of acquiring land
throughout different locations of America, including Mapleview.
Suddenly, Spencer
had a flashback from the previous evening of what could possibly have been a
session of sleepwalking. He had no memory of this throughout the early part of
the morning, but now remembered it with such clarity.
He recalled lying
in bed in a partial state of dreaming while desperately contemplating as to
what phase the Moon was in. Was it a new, waxing-crescent, full, or
waning-crescent? It was a peculiar thing for Spencer to be concerned about, for
he usually cared less about the Moon.
An overwhelming
urge caused Spencer to rise out of bed and over to his bedroom window. From his
vantage point he could see no Moon in the sky. You see, the Moon was a waxing
crescent on that particular evening which was about eight percent full. It
would have been long under the western horizon shortly after twilight. But
Spencer did see something quite alarming through the window. Across the yard and
into the next door neighbors’—from the half-acre clearing of trees some
distance behind their house—a large fire could be seen. Was there a forest
fire? Or maybe the strange neighbors were having a late night bonfire?
Spencer's vision
was blurry at that moment, and he couldn't make out the details. He staggered
over to the bedside table for his glasses and happened to glance at the clock
which read 2:12 am. Still in a half-sleep state, he returned to the window with
glasses on. It was difficult to see, exactly, what was happening next door. You
see, the half-acre clearing was partly blocked by trees. But from what Spencer
could gauge, the large family of strange, Amish-looking people all stood around
a large bonfire while gazing into it with blank faces.
"What
the...? What are they doing?" Spencer asked out loud. "It's two
o'clock in the morning!"
The light from
the flames danced along their faces and contorted their expressions to appear
grotesque. One of the women held a book in her hand and appeared to be reading
out loud.
"That is
just weird..." commented Spencer. "What kind of people moved in next
door to me?"
And this is what Spencer
recalled while listening in to the conference call the following morning. The
phone was on speaker mode to allow Spencer to shuffle through documents or make
adjustments to spreadsheets throughout the meeting. This freedom allowed him to
momentarily stand up and quickly sneak over to the window to hopefully catch a
daylight glimpse of the neighbor's half-acre clearing of trees. But the front
room window did not yield enough view. He would have to wait until after the
call to go to another window.
"Spencer,
did you have anything to add?" asked the conference chairperson over the
phone.
He rushed back
over to the desk. "I've visited a few local real estate offices and had
them do appraisals on the ideal regions of land that we need..."
Ten minutes
later—the conference ended—Spencer returned to his bedroom and looked out the
side window that he had gazed out of the previous evening. He had his contact
lenses in and could see fairly well from a distance. But nothing outstanding or
unusual could be seen at the half-acre clearing of trees; just some trash cans
and a wheelbarrow full of old dirt.
Spencer just so
happened to have in his possession a pair of binoculars to use when surveying
prospective land to purchase. They were in his front room make-shift office. With
a need to verify what he had seen last night, Spencer dashed into to the front
room for them and returned to the bedroom window. But upon studying the area
where the strange Amish-looking people had stood the previous evening, there
was no evidence of a fire having been there. There were no burned logs or
circle of ashes. Perhaps Spencer only dreamed and hallucinated while sleeping
walking last night.
***
Later that night—nearly twenty
four hours after sleeping walking and seeing the strange Amish-appearing people
standing around a fire—Spencer tossed and turned in bed. He had been sleeping
fairly well throughout the early part of the night. But now he was having a
nightmare.
"Oh no..." called out
Spencer in his sleep. "They're coming... We have to run and hide... I'll
take Gwendolyn with me... No! They do horrible things when they catch us...!
They're monsters...! We cannot stay...! Hurry...! Oh no, it's too late! There's
too many of them!"
Spencer awoke upon jumping out
of bed. His heart was racing, and he was covered in sweat.
To be continued...
No comments:
Post a Comment