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Old Bones

By Russ Hobbs

            A full moon stood in a nearly cloudless sky as it hung directly above the 1800’s sand stone parsonage at 1980 Coleman Hills Pike.  The house, a masterpiece of craftsmanship, had been built to withstand time and storms.  The dwelling had been the home of pastors and their families since its completion.  The men and women who had been privileged to call the house their home had enjoyed a spacious and roomy retreat with a kitchen, dining room, living room and study on the first floor.  The second floor contained three bedrooms and a bath.  A large attic and basement provided more than ample storage for the families treasures and stuff that could only have meaning to those who were called to a life of ministry service.  There was plenty of room for boxes of outdated books and journals, old clothes and furniture, golf clubs and all of the other things that a family acquires over time.

            The house was surrounded by beautiful lawns, shrubbery and majestic maples and chestnuts that graced the property with a lush elegance.  A few steps to the south set the chapel where the residents of this home served the congregation of the Colebrook Memorial Chapel.  The chapel had been constructed about the same time as the parsonage.  Every Sunday a group of 50 or 60 people would assemble to sing, pray and listen to stories and sermons about God and His goodness. 

            The house and the chapel were synonymous with love, laughter and music..some times.  But, there were death and dying secrets that people knew about the house at 1980 Coleman Hills Pike.  There were stories and rumors about what had happened on a chilly October evening in 1935.  People don’t forget things like you wake up on a bright Sunday morning, go to church, worship God, talk to your preacher and by 10 O’clock that night he and his wife have seemingly vanished off the face of the earth! 

            In October 1935 there were a lot of stories of what had happened to David and Carol Jones.  Some of the church folk claimed that financial ruin and embarrassment had spurred the Jones to runaway in the night and that they had moved to live with family in Spokane.  Pauline Davis, a young woman in her 20’s who had attended the chapel since she was a child,  had been heard to say that she over heard an old elder claim there had been foul play and that the couple had been kidnapped.  Some of the chapel members believed that David and Carol had developed marital problems and that Carol was having an affair with a younger man in Lebanon.  Then there was the rumor about the stranger who had visited Colebrook Chapel that Sunday morning.  No one recognized him, knew who he was or where he had come from.  He disappeared the same day, the very same day that the Jones did.  It was odd, you know, maybe just a coincidence, but it was odd.  The church and the community had no knowledge of what had become of the couple but that didn’t stop the rumors.  Every new rumor had a different spin and somehow became more frightening as they were told over and over again in the diner, clubs and town gatherings.

            The chapel had a long history of ministers and their families coming and going.  But, nothing quite as dark and disturbing as what had happened to the small church since that October incident.  Throughout the years the old parsonage had been entered and vacated so many times that people stopped thinking about the old house.

            Tonight, the full moon seemed brighter than usual.  The house was empty, dark and foreboding in its appearance.  The parsonage had now been vacant for a decade, the only inhabitants, thousands of little brown bats who had taken up living quarters in the attic.  A house standing empty for ten years deteriorates rapidly.  The plaster walls were crumbling and in need of repair, the ceilings were in need of painting and professional care.  The floors and the old staircase had been abused by previous occupants, windows creaked and groaned and the whole house was drafty when a cold north wind blew.  The mansion of another era looked more like a place where ghosts would assemble to prepare for a nightly haunt. 

            There had been reports from some of the neighbors that “crazy things” could be seen and heard as you passed the house late at night.  Andy Harper and his wife Lonna, both in their 30’s, had seen some things that they didn’t talk about much.  Andy, 5’9” with a round belly, dark hair and a friendly smile, would tell you that people wouldn’t believe that there were unexplained flickers of light and moving shadows that could be seen in the windows late at night.  Lonna had heard something subhuman one afternoon while standing under a maple tree in the back yard behind the parsonage.  The Harpers didn’t talk about what they saw and heard because the house already had a reputation for paranormal activity by some of the town’s people.  This was a place where ministers were to live and lead people to God.  As caretakers of the property for the past couple of years they didn’t want to be spreading more rumors or talking about matters that could not be proven.  Sure, they had heard some of those “30’s” stories, but nothing had ever been proven or resolved to this day and that was more than 50 years ago.

            Nonetheless, there was something incredibly wrong at 1980 Coleman Hills Pike and there were dark secrets to be revealed, but would anyone ever learn what had become of the Jones family so many years before?  On this night, the old house seemed to creak and groan more than usual, there were more bats flying around the house and chapel than the night before and the odor of bat excrement filled the air.  Beneath the maple tree the ground was saturated, wet as if it had been raining, but not a drop had fallen in more than a week.

            Andy Harper stepped out on his back patio, looked up at the moon and gazed across the field behind his house before taking a quick glance at the house.  There were three intertwining shadows on the back patio of the house, he had never seen anything like that before.  Shadows and light flashes in the house, but never..he looked up at the moon again and said, “ I didn’t see a damn thing, to hell with that old haunted wreck and whatever lives in there.  Maybe that new minister whose suppose to be here tomorrow can deal with some of this mess.”  Andy stuck a chew of tobacco in his left cheek and stepped off the patio for his nightly walk.

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            Russ and Darla Daniels were scheduled to arrive at Colebrook Chapel and its parsonage the following morning.  Russ, a man in his late 40’s, had a professional background that involved pastoral, education, counseling and broadcasting ministries. He was bald, slightly over weight for his 5’8” stature and goal oriented. He loved the pastorate and counseling and was looking forward to the new challenge and call at the chapel.  Darla, slender, a pretty smile with silver hair, was a natural born organizer and caretaker.  Problems were seldom obstacles to Darla but opportunities to grow through.  Russ trained leaders and established ministries.  Darla talked and supported her husband in ways that only a wife with a heart for her family and lost souls could do.  Both her love and skills would be needed soon enough in a place where misery and confusion had become a devilish cocktail of the damned.  It was going to take more than ministry know how to help the congregation of Colebrook Memorial rid its soul of shadows and lights.

            The Daniels who fell in love on their college campus in Lancaster twenty years earlier were still in love and knew how to celebrate life.  Good food, travel, lighthouses and the shore, fishing, cooking, long walks, golden sunrises, deep red sunsets, cabins and fireplaces were some of the ingredients of the rich life and love the Daniels shared since God brought them together.  The love and romantic getaways the couple had enjoyed over the years was like the chocolate syrup, whipped cream and cherry on the top of a sundae.

            The family believed that their lives and ministry were to glorify God!  That’s exactly how they lived, worked and preached.  It was a formula for success that they had seen work time and time again.  Every community has lost and troubled souls, everyone knows that.  It’s just that some of the loneliest people any of us will ever meet live next door or in the apartment upstairs or maybe even sitting on the park bench at two O’clock in the afternoon.  The Daniels wanted the families they worked with to learn how to live with hope for the present and future, and  not drown in despair.  Despair and fear was part of the congregational life at Colebrook since the 1930’s, a few members were praying for change.

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The floor boards were sagging and creaking in the hallway as if a great weight were moving across them.  Windows on the first and second floor were rattling.  The stench of bat excrement filled the old house.  A rat sat on a kitchen counter that had not been dusted for years.  In the basement half a dozen more rats congregated on an old work bench.  It was dark, it was hostile, an unfriendly environment for anyone but the rodents and spirits that had come to dwell at 1980 Coleman Hills Pike.  There had been no human presence in the house to live for more than a decade.  But there was a presence in the house and more than one inhabitant who spewed a poison deadlier than cyanide within the walls of this old tomb. 

It was midnight and the spirits were coming into the dining room.  Flash, flash, flash.  The room filled with a greenish mist followed by the smell of rotting flesh.  Howls, groans, utterances of unspeakable profanity filled the room.  The spirits seemed to fuse together in the room where the temperature had just dropped twenty degrees.  A spirit spoke; “The secrets of this house will never be revealed in the light of day.”  A second apparition cried, “Kill them, kill them all”. Then the third, “By god, they can all go to hell, every last one of those sonsobitches.”  The first spirit spoke again; “The secrets have remained within and without this house, they have been hidden and buried beneath the maple.  No man knows or may find what lies near the roots of that tree.  We will see to that!”  The second of the creatures blurted out, “There will be a lot of trouble coming this way in the morning.”  “Murder is our game, it’s what we do best”,  the third spirit answered.  There was howling and laughter, not of this world.  The spirits lifted through the ceiling and upward to the attic where they peered through windows at the chapel drenched in the moonlight of a summer night. 

A breeze started to blow through the leaves of the red maple in the backyard.  The ground began to moisten as if wet with dew.  Within twenty minutes the grass was soaked five feet around the tree.  But it was not the nighttime dew that was forming, the saturation was blood and it would be gone before the first rays of light of the new day.  The bloody dew of night had been beneath that tree since October 1935. The attic was quiet, spirits looking at the tree and nodding a sinister approval of the nightly remembrance that haunted a church and its people.

If truth is stranger than fiction then Colebrook Memorial was about to get a rude wake up call with the arrival of Russ & Darla Daniels.  It’s a powerful spiritual force that is unleashed when you learn to confront fear and hatred with words of love and healing.  Demon presences aren’t looking for love or healing and hatred abounds when seeds of discord have been planted. The seeds of destruction had been sown at the rural community church years before.  The harvest of bitterness was about to bloom.

To be continued..