“It wasn’t a bonfire, it was the former Maxon Rifle Works, once the largest blast furnace in the South. It was closed down in the 1820s after superior facilities were built in North and South Carolina, but before that time, Maxon produced more rifle barrels than any other metal works south of the Mason-Dixon. It was a technological marvel during its heyday—the coal bed was fifty feet in diameter, and it possessed a high-efficiency bellows system that was operated by a water wheel.”
Collier’s mind filled with confused murk. “So the detainees were slaves, laborers forced to work at the furnace?”
“No,” Sute informed. “It was Gast who refired the barrel works, but not for weapons production. He built an entire railroad to Maxon and refired the furnace solely to incinerate the innocent.”
Collier felt tinged with evil. In a sense, it explained everything he didn’t know, all at once. If…
“Why would he do that?”
Sute sat back down, fingering the old checks. “Either because he was insane, or because it was part of the deal. Riches in exchange for service. Mr. Collier, ritual atrocity and the sacrifice of the innocent are nothing new in the history of the occult. An oblation to the devil by the spilling of innocent blood is a powerful brew. Maxon was the Auschwitz of the Civil War…and almost nobody knows about it. The furnace’s obscure location kept it in operation even for weeks after the war ended. How’s that for evil, Mr. Collier? How’s that for Satan protecting his flock?”
Collier wanted to leave. He’d heard enough. If it was all true, or all bullshit, he was done.
“Toward the end, the coal stores gave out,” Sute went on. “Union troops were only a few days away, but there were still a hundred or so detainees awaiting incineration. So with no way to burn them, a slaughterfest ensued…”
Collier stared at him.
“It was a grim scene indeed that awaited the federal forces. They discovered locked prison wagons that had been set aflame with their charges still inside. But children had been pulled aside and beheaded, the heads left in neat piles for the troops to find. Dozens more were pitchforked to death, or simply hanged. Heaps of bodies were found rotting in the sun. It was a celebration of evil, Mr. Collier. Truly the devil’s jubal.”
Collier finished the strong drink, craving a good beer now, but before he could bid a curt farewell, Sute asked:
“But back to your nightmare. Is that the only nightmare you had at the inn?”
The recounting of atrocities made Collier forget the actual reason he’d come. “Well, no. You don’t seem surprised or suspicious that I’m having dreams that detail past events that I was previously uninformed of.”
“I’m not surprised,” Sute said as baldly as his pate. “I’ve spoken to many people who’ve had similar experiences there. Transpositional dreams are commonplace in haunted-house phenomena, Mr. Collier…if you believe the technical mumbo jumbo that’s often affixed to it.”
Collier tried to synopsize in his head: Gast burned innocent women and children to death in a giant blast furnace…to pay his debt to Satan…
“One thing I forgot to mention,” Sute intervened, “is how Gast spiced up his supposed reverence to the devil. The railroad was finished on April thirtieth, and even minutes after the final spike was driven, the first contingent of captives were transported to Maxon. Before Gast and his men returned to town, however, there’s the matter of the slaves who worked so devotedly for him.”
“You’re going to tell me that the slaves sold their souls, too?” Collier couldn’t help the sarcasm.
“Not at all. Gast promised them their freedom when the job was complete, but he executed them all instead, a fitting final touch. His security team opened fire on all the slaves at once, firing low body shots so they’d be incapacitated rather than killed on the spot. He wanted them alive for the furnace. It’s ironic that the slaves who built the railroad were among the first into the coal bed, Gast’s first payment to his benefactor.”
Collier sat numb. He felt as though he were sinking into a morass of distilled putrefaction.
“Sorry, I’ve strayed,” Sute admitted. “You were going to tell me about another nightmare?”
Collier had no good judgment left. “Last night I dreamed I was in the house. I was a woman—I was a prostitute.”
“One of Bella’s, no doubt. Bella Silver, but nobody knows her actual last name. She was the madam at the town bordello.”
Collier nodded, gulping. “I went up to the house, and the marshal was there—”
“Braden.”
“—with a deputy. We were the first to discover Gast’s body hanging from the tree out front—”
“Then this would be May third.”
“That’s exactly the day, and I know that because I saw it on a calendar at Bella’s—” Collier wheezed choppy laughter, knowing how mad he must appear. “There was a hole in the front yard, and shovels, and anyway the marshal ordered me to help him search. We were searching for Mary and Cricket Gast.”
Sute sat large and immobile, listening.
“You told me about Cutton yesterday, and how Penelope was murdered, and also about Gast hanging himself,” Collier continued almost breathlessly, “so that part of the dream could’ve been suggestion, but I didn’t know about the other two suicides—”
“Poltrock and Morris—”
“Yes, yes, but last night I dreamed what you told me today, and I’m positive I hadn’t heard it elsewhere.” Now Collier’s fingers were digging into his thigh. “In this goddamn nightmare I went inside and saw the same thing—I saw Morris with his throat cut and I saw Poltrock with part of his head blown off, and then I went upstairs and I saw Cutton in the washroom where someone drowned him in the fucking hip bath, and then I looked in another room and saw Penelope lying naked on a blood-drenched bed with an ax in her privates—”
Sute looked alarmed. “Mr. Collier, relax. These kinds of tales can get under anyone’s skin. Let me get you another drink to calm you down.”
“I don’t want another damn drink,” Collier harped. “I want to know what was in the children’s room, the room I’m renting now. In the nightmare I went to open it and it was locked. So the marshal’s deputy kicked it open, but they wouldn’t let me look! Mary and Cricket were in there dead, right?”
“Correct.”
“But they weren’t killed in that room—you already said so. So where were they killed? And why were their dead bodies moved to that room after the fact?”
“For an obscene effect, I’m sure.” Sute’s voice seemed to vibrate in a grim suboctave. “It was Gast. He wanted horror. He wanted the children to be found, don’t you see? Read some of the excerpt…”
Collier’s eyes surveyed the italics:
. . Gast and his first team had already arrived back in town a week ago, according to the station master. There was no difficulty in discernment, after I’d spoken to Richard Barrison, a plowman, who testified that he saw several of Gast’s men digging a large hole next to the front court. Not thirty minutes later, when returning, Barrison reports that he saw the same men refilling the hole. This was shortly before one o’clock in the afternoon. Further deliberation was hardly necessary when we discovered the bodies of those poor girls…
Collier rubbed vertigo from his eyes. “My God…You mean he—”