THE EVANSPORT LEDGER

In hindsight, I should have read the disclaimer about possible side effects on the prescription bottle. Not doing that was my first mistake. The warning label probably didn’t say anything about speaking Aramaic, heads spinning 360 degrees, or levitation, but there likely was at least an admonition against taking the pills with alcohol or a hint about possible memory loss. Oh well, nothing washes down meds better than Jack Daniels, and hindsight is 20/20, right?

The question about a toxic mixture was central to my predicament. You see, I was sitting in a small cell in Nowhere Ohio covered in blood but didn’t know how I got there. I didn’t remember one thing about the previous 72 hours. I didn’t have any idea whose blood was all over my clothes. The cops identified it as blood, and I checked myself for wounds in case it was mine. It wasn’t. And Ohio? I’m a New Yorker. I had never set foot in Ohio before. I’m not even sure I could have pointed out Ohio on a map. To me, everything west of the Hudson River is rectangular and boring until you get to California.

The authorities weren’t buying my story. I can’t say that I blamed them, but I genuinely was not faking it when I tried to coax some info out of my jailers.

“So, where did you say you picked me up again?” I asked.

“Evansport,” said a cop, rolling his eyes.

“And that is where?”

“Ohio.”

“I mean, where exactly?”

“There’s not really anything exactly in Evansport, fella. It’s a tiny hamlet between small towns, surrounded by farms in every direction for about four counties.”

“How big is the place?”

“Big might not be the right way to put it. The last census said the population was 379, but old Doris Vanisacker, well, she passed on right before Labor Day, so that would make it 378 souls now, I suppose.”

“You are nothing if not exact, officer. Is there an airport there?”

“That’s sheriff.”

“Huh?”

‘I’m the sheriff, not an officer, so you should call me Sheriff.”

“My bad, sheriff. I’m sorry. Is there an airport somewhere nearby?”

“Now you’re just messing with me, mister. There ain’t no airport for at least a couple hours. I reckon the closest one would be Fort Wayne.”

“And that is somewhere in Ohio, too?”

“No, that would be Indiana.”

“Well, that doesn’t help. I’ve never been to Indiana before.”

“How would you know if you don’t remember nuthin’? You said you had never been to Ohio either, but here you are.”

“Alright, fair enough, I’m just trying to piece together how I go here. Where is the nearest big city?”

“Like I said, that would be Fort Wayne. In Indiana. Right over the state line.”

And on and on it went. The repartee continued like that for almost a day. It was like a game of chicken when both sides are sure the other will pull away first, but both are committed to driving full speed ahead into oblivion. Geography had never been a strong suit, which I think we covered already, and that made communication with Barney Fife extra tiresome, but he was a thousand times better than dealing with his deputy who worked the night shift.

“So, why’d you kill those people?” the deputy asked as the sun set outside the barred jail windows.

“What people?” I asked.

“The people’s whose blood you got all over you.”

“I don’t know whose blood this is, or even if it is blood for sure, but I know I didn’t kill anyone.”

“That is what I would expect a murderer to say.”

“Look, I’m not a violent person.”

“That is what I would expect a murderer to say.”

“If Evansport is so small and I killed somebody there, don’t you think your crackerjack police department would have figured out who it was after a whole day?”

“It’s a sheriff’s department. What does crackerjack mean?”

“Bahhh! It means exceptionally astute, er, competent – just really good at your job.

Again, don’t you think you would have found the dead person already?”

“Not person. Persons. There is DNA from five different victims on you.”

“Five? There is blood from five people on me? The other officer didn’t say that.”

“You mean the Sheriff.”

“Yes, yes, yes, The Sheriff. Sorry, Sheriff, sheriff, sheriff, I will try to get that right, but I have never had much interaction with law enforcement so excuse me if I don’t get all the terminology correct right off the bat. I am processing a lot right now.”

“Like processing why you kilt those people?”

“I said I didn’t kill anyone.”

“And I said that is what I would expect a killer to say to the law.”

“I’m trying to figure this all out just like you are, but I am sure I didn’t kill any people.”

“So, Mr. Amnesia, let’s go over what we do know, shall we? You don’t remember your name. You don’t remember how you got here. You don’t remember how you got the blood of five people on your clothes. And this little detail cannot be avoided… you do have a noticeably strong New York accent. This has mafia hit written all over it.”

“The Godfather meets Evansport, Ohio, population 379. That sounds really plausible.”

“You mean 378.”

What?”

“The population is 378. It was 379, but Doris Vanisacker…”

After two nights of no sleep and conversing with these morons, I could fully understand why innocent people confess to crimes they didn’t commit. I was tempted to say I perpetrated anything they claimed I did in exchange for five minutes of peace and quiet and a little shuteye. Life without parole had its appeal as a fair trade for getting moved out of that one-cell, no-saloon outpost.

However, there were two minor wrinkles: 1) I didn’t know if the Buckeye State had the death penalty. It seemed like a place that could expedite that kind of thing quickly without the inconvenience of a cumbersome appeals process. And 2) I needed to figure out whose blood was all over me and make sure that I didn’t in fact kill anyone before copping to something to get out of a small-town lockup. Surely any halfway decent lawyer could later claim a confession was coerced.

But I am getting ahead of myself, so let’s dial back the story to the beginning, or at least as far back as I can recall.

Sigils

The last day I remember clearly was Friday afternoon, October 30th. It had been a tough couple of months. I was dumped by my girlfriend, lost my job, and started a new position with terrible ogres that I hated, which I quit after a few days. On top of it all, the landlord said he was going to renovate the building, which would take ten months, so gave me thirty days’ notice to get out of the place I had comfortably called home for seven years.

There was not a single aspect of my life that was not in complete upheaval. Grasping for straws, I set up an appointment with my ex’s shrink looking for information, but instead, Dr. Seabrook was professionally circumspect about his longtime patient and sent me away with a prescription that would “get my head right.”

I typically avoided the Brooklyn scene, but when Jack and Diane called to recruit me for a trip to a new, creepy underground club in Bushwick, I jumped at the invitation. Maybe I would meet someone for some rebound action. Better yet, maybe I would meet someone with an angle on a three-story walkup on the Upper West Side not too far from the park, or maybe even a not entirely miserable job. I was a man with many needs, after all.

Seabrook’s prescription said TAKE ONE EVERY 24 HOURS in bold letters, so I gulped down three with a shot of Jack and waited for my friends to pick me up.

“This rave is only going to be open around Halloween,” Diane said, twisting around from the front passenger seat of the Uber. “The staff are supposedly all dressed up as horror figures and interact with patrons in-character. Sounds pretty neat.”

“I hope there’s a hot Catwoman there,” Jack piped in.

“Catwoman isn’t a horror figure, you idiot,” Diane said laughing.

“Sure, she is,” countered Jack. “She’s like an enemy of Batman, who is a superhero, which makes her a bad guy.”

“A villain isn’t ipso facto a figure of horror,” said Diane, throwing around a legal term, as was her wont when she wanted to shut down her husband.

The tactic usually didn’t work because although she did graduate from law school, she never passed the bar exam, so it wasn’t entirely obvious how much of the law she actually knew. I was never into comics or horror and didn’t care about the distinctions either way so decided to keep out of the lovers’ quarrel. As the chatter faded and wove into the music on the radio in the background, I sunk into the back seat and embraced a comfortable numbness caused by the psych meds. I felt alone but okay as I watched neon lights flash by the other side of the car window.

“We’re here,” yelled Jack, punching my shoulder and jostling me out of a trance.

We tumbled out of the Prius and shuffled to the back of the entrance line as a delicate snow began to fall.

“Snow in October, how lovely,” said Diane. “It’s going to be a great autumn.”

“It can’t get much worse,” I mumbled, and being mildly superstitious, instantly regretted saying it.

We got to the front of line and paid a hundred bucks to get in, when a woman in a cat suit approached with a stamp.

“You need a barcode to enter,” she meowed.

“I told you,” Jack hissed to his better half, making contorted cat ear shapes on his head with his fingers.

We each rolled up a sleeve and held out a hand to get stamped.

“Welcome to Sigils. I’m Cat,” she said loudly over the thump of techno music behind her. “There are two simple rules: Don’t venture into the staff areas in the back of the club, and never, under any circumstances, leave with anyone here who says they work at or own this establishment. These rules are for your own safety.”

Cat waved us to the left where she said the Wolfman would scan us in.

“I’ll go get the first round,” Jack announced as soon as we were on the fun side of the velvet rope.

Diane and I moved into a dark corner to get away from the cold air blowing through the front door.

“I’m really glad you came. You need to get out more. Jack is worried about you,” she said. “Oh hey, almost forgot, I got something for you.”

She reached into her leather jacket and fished something out of the inside pocket.

“Here you go,” she said, holding up a small capsule.

It could have passed for Sudafed, but the strobe lights flashing across the room made the pill pulsate like it had magical powers.

“What’s that?” I asked.

“Just some Molly to get things going,” she shrugged.

“What about you?”

“We did it before picking you up,” interjected Jack, deftly carrying three drinks in his paws. “Just do it, loser. Three’s Company.”

“I really shouldn’t. I already took… ah, what the hell?” I said, and down it went.

Shortly after this is when my recollections started to get a bit fuzzy. The night bled into the morning and mostly continued to exist as a series of hazy snapshots in no discernable order.

While still on our first drinks, Diane noticed that all of the stamps we got at the bouncer’s station were different even though Cat smudged us with the same gadget. Each was in the shape of a circle, but the details inside the round stamps contained different symbols and geometric shapes. Diane’s seal had a series of squiggly lines and what looked like a sun and stars. Jack’s had overlapping diamonds that gave the appearance of an unruly argyle pattern. And mine…

“All hail Satan,” someone whispered coldly into my ear from behind, making the hairs on the back of my neck stand up.

I turned around abruptly, but no one was there. A baby cried over the speakers.

“Wow, dude, you won the stamp lottery,” said Jack, pointing to the pentacle on my hand with the number 31 inscribed inside of the five-pointed star. “You’re gonna have to scrub hard to get that off before work on Monday.”

Diane elbowed Jack in the ribs to not-so-subtly remind her husband that I was unemployed.

At that moment, the music stopped, all the lights went out in the club, and the speakers blared a Westminster chime gonging twelve times to mark that it was midnight. The lights flashed back on, and the packed crowd all yelled “Happy Halloween” in unison after the clock finished striking the hour.

“At least the 31 on your hand will help you remember what day it is,” said Jack, seeming as if he couldn’t come up with anything more insightful to add.

“It is not a date, it is a room,” interrupted a raven-haired woman with blood-red lipstick, edging herself into our circle. “And it’s not 31 but 13. Turn the pentagram upside-down and you will see.”

The details of the rest of the conversation are sketchy, but the interloper, whose name was Clarissa, explained that the stamps on our hands were sigils, or secret signs, that called up chaos magic. The instrument that Cat used to mark everyone generated symbols randomly, and certain sigils were invitations to corresponding rooms back in the staff only area.

“You have been chosen,” Clarissa said to me solemnly.

What happened next is a blur. I remember feeling woozy and wanting to go home but Jack and Diane egged me on, saying it would be fun to know what was behind Door No. 13. Clarissa said they weren’t allowed to join because their sigils didn’t invite them, but she promised to take care of me and would make sure I got out in one piece.

The secret room held a ceremonial ritual of some kind where everyone wore black robes and chanted around an altar, led by a short, bookish man with round spectacles. There was the sound of a baby crying that rattled in my brain, but at some point, it stopped. I was handed a gilded chalice and told to drink, and a warm, salty liquid washed down my throat. That’s about all I remember, Halloween theatrics gone a bit overboard, but I suppose they wanted to give a few customers their hundred buck’s worth for the cover charge to get in.

Oh, and there is one more detail I am just now conjuring up. Before the subsequent three days faded to black, Clarissa bit my ear hard and snarled, “Now, cousin, it’s time for you to go home to Evansport.” I decided it was best not to share that tidbit with the sheriff.

Every 33 Years

The deputy sheriff knew how to make an entrance and leave an impression.

“Well, scumbag, the pieces are starting to come together,” he sang, kicking the barred jail cell door. “We’ll have a needle in your arm to finish you off in no time. It’s a crying shame this great state don’t have the electric chair no more because I would pay to see your hair on fire.”

The gleeful copper said that a rental car from Detroit Metro Airport in my name was reported missing after not being returned on time, and that the vehicle was found in the parking lot of a Holiday Inn Express in a town named Defiance just fifteen miles from Evansport. A room rented under my name there had been trashed, and hotel guests reported that someone fitting my description was seen roaming the halls naked, ranting about how the devil made him do it, and swinging a steak knife around wildly.

“It’s just a matter of time until we find out who you carved up into cutlets, killer,” he sneered.

“There’s no murder without a body, right?” I spat. “I watch ID Channel. Wake me up when you have a body.”

“Bodies, plural” he corrected me, as I made a pillow out of my forearm on the cement bed in the holding cell.

I awoke to the blare of a baby crying and murmurs of a serious-sounding discussion on the other side of the open door to the sheriff’s office space.

“You say this happens exactly every 33 years?” I heard the voice of the sheriff inquire earnestly. “Why doesn’t this department have any record of it?”

“Well, it only occurs twice in the average person’s lifetime so it may simply come off like random violence,” offered up a crusty old voice. “But it is anything but random. When Amos Evans cleared out the Indians to plat the land in 1837, a Miami chieftain put a curse on the town that blood of the settlers would be exchanged for native blood every 33 years.”

“This doesn’t add up,” said the sheriff. “This is just old legendary mumbo jumbo.”

“That’s not all the legend holds,” intoned the gruff old voice. “The curse maintained that the murders would be perpetrated by ancestors of old man Evans himself. His own descendants slowly killing off his town, as it were.”

“Where’s your proof?” asked the sheriff. “This sounds like an old wives’ tale.”

“This is my proof,” came the answer, which was followed by the thud of a very heavy book being dropped on the lawman’s desk.

“This ancient ledger lists all the incidents – both victims and assailants – going back to the 1800s. In most cases, the homicides involved a raving husband or wife massacring their families, so they look like horrible domestic disputes with a dose of cabin fever mixed in. Given the hardship in these remote parts, a handful of these tragedies over two centuries almost seem expected. Except the murders always happen on November 2, which is All Souls Day. And the legend holds that a cult within the family hands down the tradition from generation to generation.”

“Okay, I’m listening,” said the sheriff. “Keep going.”

“This old ledger is kept in the archives section of our free library,” said the man, taking off his round glasses and wiping them with a handkerchief. “As far as I know, I am the only one who has a key, but look here – fresh entries have somehow been added for this week. It looks like they might even be signed in blood.”

There was a sound of rustling pages before the sheriff put out an urgent APB for all available squad cars to do a welfare check on unit 13 in the Indian Hills trailer park in Evansport.

“There is a bloodbath here, sheriff,” came the crackled response over the radio a few minutes later. “There appear to be five victims.”

“But how is the mouthy cat we have in custody related to this theory?” the sheriff asked the librarian. “Just listen to his voice for half a minute. He ain’t from around here. His New York drivers license, which we retrieved from the hotel, says his name is Gerald Kenneth Snave.”

The country sage thought for a moment and delivered his answer: “Things aren’t always as they appear. Reverse the letters and you will see that Snave is Evans backwards. Evidently, this out-of-towner came back to the land of his forebears to fulfill the Evans family curse.”

The sheriff shrugged in acknowledgment that the case was evidently closed.

“You seem to have all the answers,” he said and reached out to shake his informant’s hand. As he did so, he noticed smudged ink on the top of the gentleman’s hand. It was in the shape of a five-pointed star.

I found out some of this later because, right about the time I heard my real name was Evans, I was conked on the back of my head and passed out. Just what I needed – a blow to the noggin.

The Kicker

I was stretched out on a couch in a darkroom. Dr. Seabrook’s round face hovered over me like a harvest moon. He swung a pocket watch in front over my eyes. It swayed back and forth.

“I am going to count to ten, and by the time I get to ten, you will fall into a deep sleep. In that sleep, you will recall everything that happened to you this year in exact detail. One... two... three...”

The silver watch gleamed in the reflection of a single candle lit on coffee table two feet away. Back and forth the watch moved. Back and forth.

“Four... five... six...”

The sound of the secondhand ticking was like thunder rattling inside my skull, booming. I wanted the noise to stop. My head was shaking from the loud, incessant beating.

Tick, tick, tick, TICK, TICK...

“Please stop, I can’t take anymore,” I screamed.

I heard Seabrook’s soothing voice in the background.

“Eight... nine... ten...”

“Now, Jerry, you are back in the fall of last year. November 2nd, to be exact. It is late morning. Eleven o’clock. Look around and tell me what you see. Where are you?”

“Hospital room… Everything is white. So white. Bright fluorescent lights. So bright. The glare hurts my eyes.”

“Who else is there?”

“A doctor. A couple of nurses. They are bent over a bed, moving frantically. The beeping on the heart monitor is speeding up. They seem nervous. The doctor is shouting.”

Seabrook’s soothing voice sounded like a messenger from Heaven, emanating from above even though I couldn’t see him. Through a haze, all I could see was the hospital room. I was back in that hospital room. My hands were shaking, clasped in prayer, fingers pointing upwards in the direction I was hoping my unspoken pleas would be sent. Please God, I thought, but nothing else came out.

“Jerry, can you tell me how you feel?”

“I feel nothing. Nothing at all. I feel dead.”

“Jerry, now listen to me, this is very, very important. You suffered severe trauma from the death of George and Samantha. But you are not responsible. You did not kill them. You did everything you could. Do you understand?”

“Yes, but....”

“No buts,” cooed Seabrook. “You got your baby to the hospital as soon as you figured out he wasn’t breathing. He stopped breathing in the middle of the night when you were asleep. There was no way to know...”

“But... But if I hadn’t...”

“No buts, Jerry. There was no way for you to know his body would react that way to the vaccine. Less than one percent of...”

“But Samantha...”

“It is important that your self-destructive behavior come to an end. You have experienced severe psychological trauma. It is not easy losing a child and a partner within 24 hours. No one is saying this is not an incredibly hard situation, but it was not your fault.”

“But I killed them. I am responsible.”

“You didn’t kill anyone. You didn’t kill little Georgie. You didn’t kill Samantha. She took her own life. She couldn’t face the world without your son, but you must face reality, no matter how hard it is. You must live for them. You must live your life for all three of you now. Do you understand?”

“I understand.”

“It is time to heal and move on. Are you ready to heal and move on?”

“I am ready.”

“Now Jerry,” the headshrinker whispered. “This is critical. You have to stop drinking alcohol and using recreational drugs. These substances are counteracting the effects of the psychoactive medication I prescribed for you, and it is very dangerous. You are mixing a toxic concoction inside your brain that could combust at any time. There is no telling what could happen. If you short circuit your nervous system, you would have no control over your actions. Do you understand the danger?”

“I understand.”

“Do you agree to stop drinking alcohol and taking illegal drugs during the course of your pharmaceutical regimen?”

“I agree.”

“Then will you repeat after me, ‘I promise not to drink alcohol or use illegal drugs’?”

“I promise.”

“Okay, Jerry, very good. We are making important progress, but there is one more topic we have to tackle, and it will be difficult to comprehend. Are you ready to continue?”

“I am ready.”

“It is about these people you say you murdered. You didn’t do it. You didn’t kill anyone.”

“But I did do it! I did do it!” I screamed. “I butchered them. It felt good. I enjoyed doing it. I felt... I felt...”

“You felt what, Jerry?”

“I felt... I felt... I felt alive. Alive for the first time since, well, since you know when.”

“The recollections of these murders are a delusion, Jerry. Mixing alcohol and drugs with your prescription is making you see things and remember things that are not real. You read about those grisly murders on the Internet. In your subconscious, you are making up these stories because a horrible fiction is easier for you to approach than the truth. Your overpowering sense of guilt is prodding you to invent reasons that justify the contention that you are a bad person, but you are not a bad person. Amidst your delusional state, you created this murderous alter ego as a twisted coping mechanism.”

“No, no, I didn’t. I went back to Ohio to...”

“To what, Jerry? To murder a family of strangers in a Midwest trailer park 600 miles away as part of some satanic conspiracy? Listen to yourself. It makes no sense. You never went to Ohio, Jerry. You didn’t kill anybody. There was no satanic ceremony. Your friends took you straight home from the club on Halloween because you weren’t engaging with anyone. It was all a delusion. It is important that you accept these facts if you are to heal. Do you accept these facts?”

“Yes.”

“Then say it.”

“I did not kill anyone. I have never been to Ohio.”

“Say all of it.”

“I am not responsible for the death of my child and partner. The baby had a freak reaction to a vaccine, and Samantha hung herself out of grief. But I am not responsible.”

“Very good.”

“That doesn’t sound very good to me,” I protested. “That is all very bad, doctor. Very, very bad.”

“Jerry, you know what I mean. You are making very good progress towards seeing the world as it really is. Now, when I snap my fingers, you will wake up, and you will retain and believe all of these principles we have discussed. Do you understand?”

“I understand.”

[Snap!]

“Now wake up.”

I woke up in a fog, which had been my usual state for a while at that point. I spent the day wandering around Manhattan in the rain. There was only a light drizzle, but I embraced the grayness of my existence. An image stuck with me from the hypnosis session that I couldn’t shake. When he snapped his fingers, there was something stamped on Dr. Seabrook’s hand. I only glimpsed it for a fraction of a second, but it looked like a pentagram. Probably just my imagination again.

I got a chili dog and a can of kiwi Celsius from a food cart and sat down on a park bench to watch ducks swimming in a pond. A homeless woman asked for some change. Through broken teeth and dirty lips, she gave me the most earnest smile I remember ever seeing. I dug a five-dollar bill out of my pants and gave it to her. As I did, some slips of paper fell out of my pocket onto the ground. I picked them up. They were receipts for a flight from LGA to DTW, a rental car, and a room at the Holiday Inn Express in Defiance, Ohio.

Brett M. Decker is a New York Times bestselling author who has written for The Wall Street Journal, New York Times, and USA Today. Currently the Endowed Chair of Leadership at Northwood University in Michigan and a Fellow of the Royal Society of Arts in London, he received his doctorate from the University of Southern California and is completing a master’s degree in creative writing at Harvard. Dr. Decker’s fiction focuses on horror and individuals grappling with whether the supernatural is real or a product of the imagination. His most recent book is Crypto Witch (2024).