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Two months to the day of Wicked Willie's execution, and Ian Jeffreys had had yet another strange night. The phone woke him at two in the morning again and, even though he'd taken the phone off the hook from then until seven, he didn't sleep a wink.
There had been no tone, no voice, not the slightest sound on the other end of the line. Just the eerie silence that had been his caller a month before, when Wilhemina Morecroft's court appointed attorney had died of an unexpected heart attack. Somehow, Ian knew what it meant.
That morning, he didn't even bother going to the paper's offices straight away. His first point of call would be coroner Doc Henry.
"You look spooked, son. What's got you pale?"
"Did anyone ... I mean to say, was there any deaths last night ... this morning ... during the night?"
"Well no, none that you'd be interested in. Why do you ask? You look awfully shaken, boy. You want a whiskey?"
"No, no thank you. I'm fine, really. I'll ... I'll be going. Just give me a call if ..."
Just as Ian was about to accept that he was going insane, Doc Henry's assistant knocked on the door.
"Excuse me Doc, good morning Mr Jeffreys. We've had a couple of arrivals, thought you might like to sign for them considering ..."
"Considering what?" Doc Henry and Ian asked in unison, the latter's voice spooked.
"Well, it's just that Joseph Wells and Hank Howell both died last night."
Silence followed before Doc Henry finally waved the assistant coroner away. "Thank you Thomas, I'll be right out." When Thomas had left the room, Doc Henry turned to Ian. "Now I'm a man of science, Mr Jeffreys, but I'll be the first to admit that the realm of science contains many things that can't be explained. I would dare say that the sudden deaths of these particular people - District Attorney and the Senior Warden to one Mrs Wilhemina Morecroft - would be one of those unexplainable things, especially since it's been not too long since her lawyer died suddenly. What would you say?"
"I would say I expected to find the unexpected when I came in here this morning, Doc."
Ian Jeffreys sat at his desk in a near stupor. The typewriter looked back at him, its keys daring him to type more, but what? He'd already plotted out the basics - the DA that had more or less damned Mrs Morecroft to the gas chamber and the man who had dropped the pellets were both gone, just like that, by a stroke and a heart attack respectively with very little to have predicted either tragedy.
It was all echoed so horribly to a month before when her lawyer had died, and Ian written that as well, paraphrased of course.
They were murdered.
From beyond the grave.
Would they be the last?
That's what he wanted to say, but how ridiculous and paranoid would that sound? He was sure all the other people who had anything to do with Wilhemina's trial and execution would not want to read their deaths
prophesized. It was eerie enough as it was.
Just the basics, that's all he could muster. He would let his readers join the dots, and if they couldn't, all the better for them. Besides Doc Henry, Ian was the only one who could see what was happening, and if Wilhemina was really exacting her vengeance from beyond the grave, surely he would be one of her victims. He who had coined the term 'Wicked Willie' for the enjoyment of his readers, and for the eternal disgust of the woman herself.
He wondered if he would ever sleep again.
(c) Cynthia M. Piromalli 2003
©2003 StoriesByEmail.com
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