They Come When You Sleep: 16 Tales of Horror and the Supernatural (Stories for Late at Night), page 6
Firstly, Van der Sloot believed great misfortune lay ahead if the stone was not returned to its resting place within the Sri Lankan earth. Shortly after Heppostall’s death and the disappearance of the Heart of the Island from history, the Batavian Revolution overthrew the Republic of the Seven United Netherlands, the British replaced Dutch rule of Sri Lanka, and the Dutch East India Company, which stood as the most successful company in the world for over two hundred years, went bankrupt and was dissolved. Curse or coincidence?
The second piece of circumstantial evidence surrounds Lieutenant Friedrich von Drieberg, Commandant of Mullaitivu. Heppostall was apprenticed to Von Drieberg’s father at the time of his encounter with Van der Sloot and his subsequent travels to Sri Lanka.
Nothing suggests that Von Drieberg had any responsibility for Heppostall’s demise; however, he may have come, at least temporarily, into possession of the Heart of the Island. After a rise in fortunes, Von Drieberg suffered a series of crushing defeats at the hands of the famed Tamil chieftain, Pandara Vanniyan.
Even after the British took control of Sri Lanka from the Dutch, Von Drieberg stayed and continued his pursuit of Pandara Vanniyan. Is it possible that Von Drieberg came into possession of the Heart of the Island, only to have it liberated and secreted away by Pandara Vanniyan? The only existing clue may lie in a line written to Von Drieberg’s paramour in Amsterdam upon his decision to remain under British rule.
My love, I promise you will remain only so long until I have recaptured the Heart of the Island.
Is Von Drieberg speaking of strategic matters or something more? I’ll let you decide.
The Tall Man’s Disciple
The Tall Man’s booted feet made no sound as he stepped to the edge of the forest and stared at the two men seated on the break wall of the bay. The moonlight showed down on the wide, flat brim of his black Planter hat, casting his unearthly pale face in shadow. A light Pacific breeze blew off Commencement Bay and rustled the branches of the pines against his black frock coat and dark trousers. As he watched the two men lean in close as they talked, he flexed his long, boney fingers and then balled them into fists so tight his long nails cut grooves in his thin, bloodless flesh. He exhaled a breath colder than the night’s fall air as he moved out of the shadows of the forest and into the dim lighting of the deserted parking lot behind the men.
The two young men were engrossed in conversation as he approached soundlessly. A raccoon hunting among the rocks of the bay recoiled as the deathly pale man passed, its dark eyes wide and glinting in the moonlight.
The man’s light blue eyes narrowed as he watched the dark-haired man touch the blond man’s shoulder in a gesture of tenderness. The night air carried their voices to his ears as he closed the distance between them.
“It’s beautiful out here at night. It’s my favorite place in Tacoma.” David let his Columbian accent come through heavily as he said Tacoma. People always liked the exoticness of his accent, so he laid it on thick when he was trying to catch someone’s attention, and he most definitely wanted to hold the young blond man’s attention.
“That’s Vashon Island, right?” Jeremy pointed across the bay to the sparse lights of the darkened island.
“Yes, that’s Vashon Island.” David smiled as he pointed to the island and then gestured over his shoulder at the forest. “That’s Point Defiance, and right in between is us.”
“Seeing the water reminds me of home.” Jeremy brushed a strand of hair away from his blue eyes.
“From that twang in your voice, I’d say you’re from the South.” David let his desire for the man show in his eyes.
“Alabama, born and bred.” Jeremy smiled sheepishly. “Have you ever heard of the local stories about the Tall Man?”
“Oh, that urban legend.” David waved a dismissive hand. “That’s for the Nickelodeon crowd.”
“They say he’s the ghost of a dead minister that walks the shores of Commencement Bay looking for sinners.”
“I’ve heard the stories. Tacoma is a sketchy enough place for people to disappear without some undead Bible thumper being the reason.”
“No, really, I’ve researched it.” Jeremy stared over at the shadowy tree line of Vashon Island. “He was a Baptist minister named Gideon Hayes that came here from Mississippi in April 1855 during the Puget Sound War. Hayes believed the Second Coming of Christ would only occur after all the world’s sinners either became Christians or were put to death. He saw the Native Americans as heathens that needed to convert to Christianity. Any Native Americans that did not convert or settlers that did not repent of their sins he put to the test.”
“What kind of test?” David slid closer, enjoying listening to Jeremy speak.
“He would throw them off the cliff Point Defiance. He believed God would make them float safely down like a feather if they were innocent, but if they were sinners, their bodies would break upon the rocks.”
David grimaced at the thought of the agonizing fall and bone-shattering impact of bodies upon the rocks.
“He was instrumental in relocating the local tribes from Vashon Island to Fox Island in January 1856. However, one night some of the savages escaped from Fox Island and chased Hayes through the forest at Point Defiance. When they caught him, they tied him to a tree, sliced him open, and filled his body with straw so that his spirit could not pass into the otherworld.”
“Sounds to me like that man got what he deserved.” David brushed some dirt from the leg of his dark blue skinny jeans.
“Hayes was described as unusually tall for the time, just like the Tall Man. The description of the clothing the Tall Man wears matches what a frontier minister would have worn in the 1850s. I believe there are so many disappearances between April and January along Commencement Bay because that is the timeframe Hayes arrived in the area and was subsequently murdered on Point Defiance. The cycle repeats yearly, and there are never Tall Man sightings between January and April.”
“Well, if that’s true,” David put his hand tenderly on Jeremy’s shoulder and gave the young man his most mischievous smile, “you will need to protect me because a sinner like me would break like glass if he threw me down on the rocks.”
“I was thinking that, too.” A coldness filled Jeremy’s voice and eyes as he swung his arm and brought the fist-sized rock crashing into the side of David’s head.
David opened his mouth, but no sound emerged as he snapped forward and then back at the force of the blow. Blood poured down the side of his tan face from the devastating wound on his temple as his eyes rolled back in his head. Jeremy shrugged the man’s hand off his shoulder and pushed the man forward over the break wall.
David’s body striking the ground below reminded Jeremy of the sound a slaughtered sow made when it dropped from the meat hook on the farm back home. He stared down at the body; the young Latin man’s head and leg lay at an odd angle as the tide began to dislodge him from the rocks. Soon David would be dragged beneath Commencement Bay, food for the five-gill sharks.
As David’s body slipped beneath the waves, a wicked smile crossed Jeremy’s face. Beside him, the long shadow of a man in a wide-brimmed hat stretched along the floor.
“It’s done; he’s been judged.” Jeremy smiled like a child awaiting his parent’s approval as he looked into the pale face of the Tall Man.
The slightest hint of a smile touched the thin, colorless lips of the thing that had once been Gideon Hayes. The figure nodded his head in approval.
“He was a gay. I knew he would break on the rocks.” Jeremy slid the deer bone pocketknife out of his pants and flicked open the short, sharp blade.
He pulled down the neck of his shirt to reveal three red, raw-looking cross-like cuts on his chest in various states of healing. Jeremy gritted his teeth into a sneer of half pain and half ecstasy as he slowly drew the tip of the knife against his pale chest, adding a fourth cross-like wound. The blood felt warm on his skin, juxtaposed against the chill of the night air. He let go of the neck of his shirt and followed the Tall Man as the dark figure turned back toward the woods.
Jeremy first heard of the Tall Man from a classmate back in Cullman, Alabama. That night he spent hours on the internet reading stories of Tall Man sightings and his supposed victims. Prostitutes who serviced men in their cars, teens fornicating on the rocks, homosexuals, and drug addicts. As far as Jeremy was concerned, the Tall Man was no evil specter; he was an avenging angel doing God’s work. The Tall Man was doing the kinds of things Jeremy only dreamed of doing.
When he came across the story of Gideon Hayes, a righteous man slaughtered by heathen savages, it all became clear in Jeremy’s mind what he needed to do. He worked all summer and saved his money, then one September morning, he got in his beat-up red Ford pickup and drove the forty hours from Cullman to Tacoma, Washington.
Jeremy slept in his truck during the day and wandered along the shores of Commencement Bay at night. Sometimes he sat in the forest watching men and women sneak down by the beach to do drugs or have sex, and he waited for the Tall Man to come and deliver the Lord’s justice, but he never did. He was ready to give up and go back to Cullman the night he spied the tall figure, barely visibly in the shadow of the Silver Cloud Hotel, as he stared out over the waters of Commencement Bay.
The Tall Man paid little attention to Jeremy as he walked past him, trying to get up the nerve to speak to him, though he could see the pale blue eyes in the shadows following him as he walked by.
“Gideon Hayes.” Jeremy turned back to the shadowy figure. “You’re Gideon Hayes, right?”
At the sound of the name, the Tall Man’s head slowly turned to look at Jeremy. The Tall Man’s face was translucently white beneath the wide-brimmed hat, and his eyes were beady and pale, icy blue. Jeremy felt his insides tighten as the figure stepped toward him out of the shadows. Boney hands with long white fingers protruded from the sleeves of the black frock coat as the figure reached toward Jeremy.
“I think what those heathen savages did to you was terrible.” Jeremy’s knees felt weak as the Tall Man closed the distance between them. “You are the Lord’s servant on Earth. You bring God’s wrath on the wicked. I came here to help you.”
The Tall Man grabbed Jeremy by the front of his jacket and pulled him close so that his face was inches from his own. Jeremy felt his body shake with fear as the Tall Man’s eyes seemed to study his face. The figure’s breath was icy cold and stank of rotted leaves and wet straw.
“I… I can help you. And I can continue your work when you leave in January until you come back in April.”
The Tall Man let go of Jeremy’s jacket and took a step back, his eyes running over Jeremy appraisingly.
“I can help you.” Jeremy tried to force some strength back into his voice. “I can be your disciple.”
A tight-lipped smile crossed the Tall Man’s pale face that reached nearly his high cheekbones.
Jeremy looked down at the body of the red-haired prostitute; her eyes were vacant, but her mouth still moved as if she was trying to speak as she lay broken on the rocks below Point Defiance. Some of her blood speckled his cheek, and he resisted the urge to wipe it off with his thumb and taste it.
He slid the pocketknife from his pants and unzipped his heavy winter coat, eager to carve the ninth cross into his skin. The Tall Man stepped from the woods into the clearing, illuminated by January’s full moon.
“Put up a bit of a fight at the end.” Jeremy smiled at the ethereal form.
The Tall Man froze as a high-pitched animal cry sounded in the distance. The cry was almost dog or wolf-like, but the pitch sounded way off to Jeremy. A second cry echoed in the distance, and then a third, much closer than the first.
“What is that?” Puffs of warm vapor rapidly escaped Jeremy’s mouth into the cold night air as he felt his breathing quicken.
Sounds of strange cries and running feet filled the forest. Jeremy gripped the pocketknife tightly in his hand, his eyes darting left and right, trying to see what was happening in the darkened woods. The Tall Man seemed to be backing away from him, moving to the far side of the clearing.
“Gideon, what’s happening?”
Suddenly, the forest went deathly quiet. Jeremy could only hear the pounding of his own pulse in his ears. The Tall Man slowly turned his head to the forest as ethereal forms materialized out of the darkness.
The forms of twelve buckskin-clad Native American tribesmen began to step out of the forest, each gripping a tomahawk or deer bone knife in near-gaunt hands. Jeremy gasped as he looked into their faces. Their desiccated skin pulled tightly over their skeletal heads so that their lips pulled back from their teeth. Their noses were sunken holes in their face, and coal-black orbs sat where their eyes should have been, so dark not even the moonlight reflected off them.
“Is this why you disappear every January?” A horrible dawning filled Jeremy. “Do they kill you again every year?”
The tribesmen looked from the Tall Man to Jeremy as they spread out, blocking any escape into the forest.
“Gideon, we can fight them.” Jeremy held his pocketknife toward the tribesmen and balled his other hand into a fist.
One of the tribesmen looked down at the body sprawled on the rocks below. His skeletal face was expressionless as he looked back at the Tall Man and shifted the grip on his tomahawk.
The Tall Man looked at the skeletal tribesman and raised his arm, extending a pale, boney finger toward Jeremy. The tribesman turned those black eyes toward Jeremy and slowly pointed his tomahawk at him.
“Gideon, what are you doing? Help me.” Jeremy raised his pocketknife as two of the tribesmen rushed toward him.
One of the skeletal tribesmen easily batted the small knife out of Jeremy’s hand as the other landed a stunning blow to his forehead with the flat side of his tomahawk. Jeremy reeled from the blow as blood flowed down from the gash in his forehead into his eyes. Skeletal hands gripped his arms with vice-like strength, holding him fast.
Jeremy tried to struggle free of their hands, but they only tightened their grip until he fell to his knees and cried out in pain. Blinking blood and tears from his eyes, Jeremy saw the Tall Man starting to walk toward the woods.
“Gideon!” His voice sounded hoarse as he called out, but the Tall Man never even looked back as he moved toward the woods.
It suddenly became clear to Jeremy that Gideon Hayes had only accepted him so he could take the Tall Man’s place on this fated January night. He, not Gideon, would be tied to the tree, gutted, and filled with straw this night.
“Gideon, don’t leave me.” Tears of pain, fear, and betrayal ran down Jeremy’s cheeks as he cried out to his mentor in futility.
Jeremy watched through the blood and tears as two tribesmen blocked the Tall Man’s path to the woods. The wide-brimmed hat moved back and forth as if he was shaking his head, and the tribesmen grabbed him. The Tall Man tried to pull back, but the two tribesmen forced him to the ground.
His hat tumbled away as the tribesmen began to drag him toward a tree, a third following behind with a length of rope. The Tall Man violently shook his pale, bald head as they pulled him across the cold ground. His mouth contorted into a moan, and a sound like “no” escaped his lips, the first sound Jeremy had ever heard him make in the three months they had spent together.
The tribesmen dragged the Tall Man up to a standing position with his back to a tree, yanking his arms roughly behind him as they bound him to the tree. The moonlight illuminated his pale face, now a mask of terror, as a long strand of drool dripped from the corner of his mouth.
A tribesman with a long-bladed deer bone knife stepped in front of the Tall Man as one of the others tore open his frock coat and shirt to reveal a pale, sunken chest. His icy, blue eyes followed the blade as the tribesman raised it high up into the air and then sliced the knife down the Tall Man’s body from neck to crotch in a deep cutting motion.
The Tall Man screamed and howled in pain as the blade cut him wide open, and the tribesmen reached into the wound and pulled it open wide with a sickening tearing sound. Jeremy vomited as foul-smelling black blood and rotten innards poured forth from the Tall Man and sloshed to the ground. A long, blackened string of intestines hung from his open bowels to the rotted pile of organs and blood. The Tall Man’s head bobbed lifelessly as a tribesman stepped forward and shoved handfuls of straw into the empty husk of the Tall Man.
Relief flooded Jeremy at the thought that Gideon’s plan to trade places with him had failed. He would get in his pickup truck and drive straight back to Cullman this very night.
Globs of bile and vomit hung to his lips as he looked up at the tribesmen holding him. They stared back down at him with those blackened orbs and then looked up at their leader, who was studying the Tall Man’s corpse.
He poked his tomahawk at the Tall Man’s head, making it loll from side to side. Then he cast his black eyes toward Jeremy and the two tribesmen and jerked his head. With remarkable strength for such skeletal limbs, the two tribesmen effortlessly heaved Jeremy upward into the air and off the cliff.
Jeremy screamed as he fell backward through the air, the cold wind rushing past his body as he hurdled toward the jagged rocks below. The impact was jarring as his back splintered against the rocks, the agonizing pain of his shattering limbs suddenly replaced by a lack of sensation.
His broken body lay strewn and unmoving amidst the rocks, the black eyes of the tribesmen staring down at him from the cliff above. The waters of Commencement Bay rushed over him, filling his mouth and lungs. Jeremy gagged and spat, expelling the water and gasping for air as the water receded. A second wave broke over him, filling his mouth.
Jeremy’s eyes opened wide with fear as his lungs burned with the effort to gasp for air as wave after wave broke over him as the waters slowly rose above his face, stinging his eyes. He stared at the bubbles coming from his mouth, breaking the water’s surface as a skeletal hand brushed his cheek and closed around his chin.
