What Hunts Me

Chapter 5

Chapter 5Two days later, Phil and I landed in State College, Pennsylvania, which was the nearest airport to our final destination, and from there we drove into Houtzdale, a borough in Clearfield County. It was evening by the time we arrived. The quaint downtown was picturesque and the epitome of beautiful small town life, its only distraction a construction crane looming just outside the downtown area. We made our way to the only B&B, which fortunately had a double occupancy room available. Since we'd gotten into town in the evening, we found a diner, had something to eat, and turned in early. Our plan was to hit the library first thing in the morning.

The local library was a relatively new building—the borough having been too small to support one previously—but was fortunate enough to have a citizen whose lifelong goal was to create a full service library for the locals. When we entered, the librarian was overwhelmed by a group of school-age children and was unable to assist us, so instead she quickly directed us to the yearbook and town history sections.

I pulled the Houtzdale High School yearbook for 1915, and low and behold, there was the senior graduation picture of George Sinclair. My dad really did look like this guy, especially at that age. I flipped through the yearbook, looking for anything else relating to 1915 George, and found a picture of him holding a baseball mitt, his arm draped over the shoulder of another young man who was holding a well-used bat. According to the caption it was Jimmy Bets, George's best friend.

Phil had gone over to the town history section to look at the census books. He whispered, “Psst, George! George!” I looked over at him; he was waving frantically for me to join him. I shelved the yearbook and wandered over to a table on the far wall, where he had several ledgers spread out.

“Check this out.” He pointed to an old ledger he had open on the desk. The year 1900 was typed neatly at the top of the page, followed by three vertical columns entitled: Family Name, Address, and Household Information. He followed the first column until he reached the “S's” and then pointed at the name Sinclair. A street address was listed in the next column, and in the third column it noted that Henry Sinclair, a widow, and his two children, George and Lydia, had moved to town March of 1900. A side note stated that 1915 George's mother had been killed in a horse and carriage accident in January of 1899.

The census data had been collected on a quinquennial basis and recorded in December of those quinquennial years, each ledger holding twenty-five years' worth of information. Phil flipped to 1905 and 1910 respectively, discovered nothing had changed with the family's status, and continued on to the 1915 section. It had updated the ages of the children, and noted that 1915 George had moved out of the family home and the town in August of that year. Phil continued to the 1920 section. An additional column had been added to this section, titled “Extended Family,” and the Sinclair family slot listed “none.”

“If they didn't have any extended family, then I guess it's a dead end,” I conceded. That was disappointing…I was really hoping to find a definitive connection to 1915 George and the man that had adopted my grandfather.

“Don't get all down and out, check this out.” Phil had another ledger open, and he pulled it forward. This one was dated 1925 to 1945. He flipped the pages until he reached the “S's” for the year 1925. Henry and Lydia were listed as still living in the same house, but George was listed as having died in 1921. He would have been only twenty-four. Phil continued flipping through the ledgers, discovering the death of 1915 George's father, the marriage of George's sister Lydia, and the births of her two children. Further investigation showed that Lydia's husband died in 1952, her son died in 1988, and she followed shortly thereafter. Lydia's daughter, Angie, however, appeared to still live in the original family home as recently as 2015, which was the last time the census was recorded.

“Maybe she's still there and we can go talk to her…maybe she knows something about her uncle. There's something else too; the population of Houtzdale took a steep dive in 1915. There were almost fifteen-hundred residents in the beginning of the year, but if you look at the family information column, a lot of people died that year, and more specifically they died from April to June 1915, then it stopped. What if the town had a ghost problem in that time period, and George killed them all?”

“Okay, that's possible.”

Phil stood up. “Let's go see what the librarian might know about these mysterious deaths, and we'll ask her about George too.”

“Why would she know anything about George? Besides, if she did know anything, wouldn't she have said something when you first talked to her?”

Phil sighed in exasperation, like I should already know the answer. Sometimes Phil forgets to share things, which often leaves the rest of us in the dark.

“Okay, first, the woman I spoke to on the phone had a youthful voice, so I'm pretty sure our septuagenarian librarian isn't her. Second, this is a small town, and small town people tend to know a lot about each other. So there's a good chance she knows the family and their history!”

I'd forgotten that Phil had grown up in a small town, so naturally he'd know something about the social inner-workings of small towns, whereas I'd had somewhere around a hundred-thousand neighbors growing up, and we barely knew the people down the block.

He closed up the ledgers and returned them to their shelves, then we went in search of the librarian.

The children had dispersed and the librarian was alone at the desk. She introduced herself as Mrs. Golrith, and proudly informed us that she was born and raised in Houtzdale, emphatically declaring she loved every minute of it and would never live anywhere else. She was the quintessential elderly grandmother type, complete with flowered dress, matching sweater, support hose, and sensible shoes. Her hair was silver, short, and tightly permed into perfect curls, and her grey-blue eyes were bright and vibrant behind her rimless bifocals.

“Well, I can't say I know too much about the plague or whatever it was that happened in those days.” Her hand fluttered in dismissal. “I'm not that old, you know,” she winked mischievously. “But Bartholomew over at the newspaper can probably help you. His family has owned and operated the Houtzdale Standard since it first came out, which was sometime in the late 1800s, I believe. His daddy was very involved in the town goings-on, and if I recall correctly, he recorded just about everything that happened, newsworthy or not. And I'm supposing that a bunch of folk dying off in such a short time period was probably pretty newsworthy.

“Now, as far as this Sinclair boy is concerned, again, I wouldn't have known him. But I knew Lydia's daughter…Lydia was his sister, you know.” We both nodded and she continued. “Well now, Angie, that's Lydia's daughter, she passed away just last week.” Mrs. Golrith's smile faltered and her eyes misted up as she made the sign of the cross. “God bless her soul.” She took a deep breath, then continued. “But her friend, Hope, is still in the house. They moved in together back in….” She paused and tapped her index finger against her chin. “Oh, I think it must have been 'round 1990 or so. They'd both lost their husbands and had been the best of friends, so they decided to consolidate costs and become roommates. Angie inherited the family home, so that's where they lived. Maybe Hope can tell you something.”

We thanked Mrs. Golrith and headed back to Hannah Street, where the newspaper had its office. It was lunch time and I was starving, so we decided to stop at a nearby cafe first.

Phil had brought the diary in with him, and was scanning the few photographs to see if any had been taken in Houtzdale. It had been over a hundred years, though, and places changed—a lot. When the waitress stopped to take our order she glanced down at the book, looked up, then glanced back at it, focusing on the open pages. One held a photograph of two men standing on a sidewalk; their clothing indicated it was taken in the early part of the twentieth century.

When she looked up again, she blushed lightly. “Sorry, didn't mean to pry, but that man…,” she pointed to one of two men, “I think he was in here just last week.” Her forehead wrinkled. “But that photo looks really old.”

I didn't know who the man was, but I knew something she didn't…I knew about the longaevuses. And if the man in a hundred year old photograph was in her diner just last week, that's most likely what he was. Longaevus means “long life” in Latin, but in our world the term is used to describe a type of person…usually they're good, but not always. They are the result of a supernatural confluence of events involving a powerful demon, its victim, a powerful ghost killer, and perfect timing. If a ghost killer kills a demon at the same moment its killing its victim, the victim doesn't die, causing a third reaction, thus the confluence. Instead, the victim absorbs some of the demon's power and a little of the ghost killer's power too, which in turn gives them a great deal of physical strength and allows them to live a long, long time with very little aging. The only problem was, longaevuses did age, just slowly, and if the man in the diary photo still looked the same, over a hundred years later, I wasn't so sure we were dealing with an ordinary longaevus.

Phil glanced at me, then smiled at the waitress and closed the book, saying, “You said he was in last week? Did you catch his name?”

She was thoughtful for a moment. “No, can't say I did. He was an odd fellow, didn't talk much, didn't smile once, and to be honest, he sort of gave me the creeps.” She looked a little embarrassed.

Phil smiled reassuringly and gave her one of his toothy grins. “Do you know if he's still in town?”

“Haven't seen him. I do remember him asking for directions though…let's see….” She stared upward as if the answer was written on the tin ceiling tiles, then snapped her fingers. “Right…he wanted to know where Clara Street was.”

After she left to fill our orders, I leaned in and in a low voice, said, “That's the street Angie Sinclair lived on.”

“Yeah, and she died suddenly just last week?” Phil's eyes bulged dangerously.