The Legend of Peg Powler
(A Sewing Box Mystery)
Chapter 1: Friday, November 1, 1991, 1:51 am
Chapter 2: Saturday October 29, 2011, 11:37 am
Chapter 3: Sunday October 30, 2011, 10:30 am
Chapter 4, Monday, October 31, 2012, 8:01 am, Halloween
Chapter 15: November 1, 2001, 6:46 am
Jean carefully placed the razor blade back in it’s paper sheath.
Just a tiny slit. No one would notice. No one would know.
She then picked up the rolled piece of paper, mashing it as flat as she could, before slipping it beneath the shiny pink satin lining of her sewing box.
The poem.
It had been coming to her in bits and pieces in the dreams. The voices, three in number, like a Greek chorus, weaving in and out and over one another, but she’d finally deciphered the last bit. Now, for some strange reason, she had to keep it safe. But from whom?
A veil of secretiveness seemed to have fallen over this particular vision, causing Jean to operate with the utmost caution.
She knew better than to share it with Terri, that’s for sure. Jean wasn’t sure what had gotten into her best friend, but something sat between them these days, when it came to Jean sharing her dreams. Terri had made it very clear that she did not want to hear about it and kept encouraging Jean to seek professional help.
Professional help? Like that was an option?
Jean had also stopped sharing with her daughters. Helen, her oldest, had become so brittle and concerned about appearances that anytime Jean shared the slightest detail, Helen would abruptly change the subject. And Jeanette felt lost to her. Oh, she was always johnny-on-the-spot in a crisis, swooping in and taking care of whatever ailed her mother, be it the furnace, taxes, or issues with a family member, but her middle daughter was never available to simply chat or share a cup of coffee. She was busy - with what, Jeanette wasn’t quite sure, for she kept her personal life very close to her chest at all times. Jean was certain that it wasn’t a man, and was fairly certain it had something to do with her daughter’s work - whatever that was; something about some kind of women’s shelter or social work? Jeanette was always so vague.
And Dorie? Ha! Jean wasn’t even sure where in the literal world her youngest was living these days. Most likely not on her own. Probably thanks to some man. Jean tried not to judge, but Dorie didn’t make it easy.
Nope, the only one who still had time for her was little Missy motormouth, who had grown up to be a lovely young woman. Missy still came round once a week or more, just to chat, just to check in. And Jean still shared tidbits of her dreams with Missy, now and then.
But not this story.
For one thing, it was too violent.
Jean had seen things on television and at the movies which caused her to shut or avert her eyes, but nothing like she’d seen in these dreams. And in these dreams, she didn’t have the option of looking away.
It was back in that field, with the girl in pale blue patterned dress. With the preacher standing over her, pointing and condemning… that man wore a horrible face, wracked with hate and bile. Spewing words as he looked out upon his flock, all gathered on the edges of the field. When not pointing, his hands were clenched fists, pounding the night air for emphasis. Then, as if in a plea, he raised his chin and looked skyward, his arms opening up, as if to beckon the stars to bear witness.
Then there was blood, blacker than the midnight blue sky above, the splitting of flesh, the crunch of bone, the dull thud of rock, created eons ago, piercing tissue. It rained down upon their silent, helpless victim with relentless force. The crowd, which had clung to the perimeter of the field had now formed a tight circle, their faces twisted with outrage as they flung stone after stone.
But then there was a scream. It shot through the noise of the crowd. A woman, her baby, her child - gone. “Someone’s taken my youngest, my dearest, my Elizabeth!”
The crowd’s face grows slack, as the rocks they hold clenched in their hands drop to the earth at their feet one by one. There is a pause, a cleansing of the air, but it does not remain so for long, so quickly replaced by a new outrage. Their hands form fists and their mouths roar as they run toward the woman and then in the direction she is pointing - the river, the river bank. The crowd streams forward, snaking it’s way through the brush and trees, into darkness, their only light the stars and moon above.
But not all have abandoned the broken, battered girl in the pale blue patterned dress. From the edges of the woods surrounding the field, three clandestine figures emerge. They scurry forth like mice, to the center of the field where the poor girl lay, their identities hidden by the hoods of their cloaks. But they comfort not, offering no aid, for they assume the worse. Instead, scissors are produced, as they begin to cut swaths of fabric from what remains of the bloodied dress. Their task almost complete, their attentions are suddenly diverted and then riveted.
Was that a gasp? Surely nothing more than air escaping lungs which breathe no more.
But no, there is more. Moaning. The girl… she’s still alive! The three figures look to one another, as if to try and decide what to do. The tallest among them takes the lead, and begins to drag the girl to the edge of the woods. The other two help as best they can and soon the three have managed to lift the not-so-lifeless body from the ground, carrying her away into the night.
Another shriek. And Jean now finds her attention shifting, as well. To the river. She’s behind another figure, a man? A woman. Following, frantically weaving their way through reeds, brush and the youngest of trees.
There is scream after scream, an endless stream of horrified discovery, followed by the sobs of surrender.
Jean stops dead in her tracks. It is the river’s edge, a stretch of sand… and there, at the water’s edge, on the sand…
Three pairs of shoes, the tiniest shoes, those of children, neatly lined along the river’s edge as if to say, “See… see what I have done, see what you are powerless to end.”
Women collapse to their knees as others move in to comfort and console. A wailing assails the air, consuming it, wiping the very stars from the sky.
Jean wakes, drenched in sweat, as if she’d actually been running. The pain of those women seeping into her bones, an ache she would carry it into her morning, shrouding her day like a spirit.
What could posses people to behave so? What madness, to take place in a single night?
She never learns what becomes of the girl in the pale blue patterned dress. The three figures carry her off into the shadows of the forest and are seen no more. And she’s certain the three children, those belonging to the shoes, are lost to the river, wild, heaving and contorting like a rush of black snakes, rolling over and under one another. Swept away, gone.
Jean shared none of this - not even with Missy. It was too painful, too visceral. Instead, it lived at the top of her heart, pressing down, the hurt growing with time, a burden should could not lay down.
She never kept secrets, she thought them poison, but this… this she would take to her grave.
She carefully closed the lid of the sewing box before placing it next to her bed. Everything in its place. Everything as it need be.
These things she buried.
Just as, one day, they would be buried with her.
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