Blind Vigil

PART 1 


THE SHADOWS OF DEATH 


In the dark and cobwebbed recesses of a man’s mind, lie strange evils. And the most brilliant light may not reveal what lies in the dark; except perhaps, the shadows of death. 
  
November 1964 

5:42 A.M. 

Osprey Cove, ME. 

CHAPTER 1 

View To The Bridge 

A path of brilliant light streaked the black morning sky, flickered and dropped to the dirt road in front of Kenneth Mills. It cast a shadow that towered twice his six foot frame. Moments before, in the darkness, he had stumbled on a rock not yet fully covered by last night’s snowfall. The pain ran from his big left toe up his back to his lower neck. His face twisted with the pain. He turned his face back to the house. The spotlight again flickered, zigzagging skyward and then back down. The light now steadied on his face. Pain was etched in the deep furrows of his forehead. 
Esther briefly smiled at his grimace. 
It was an icy, bone-chilling morning, as Kenneth made his way down the rock hardened path to the covered bridge. Through a light snow flurry, Kenneth could see the graying structure awaiting him like a giant dinosaur. He knew the old bridge presented no danger, as he prepared to cross the frozen river into Osprey Cove. 
Kenneth Mills, a thin, gawky, and pitiable man, had lived on the outskirts of Osprey Cove all his life. Now at thirty years old, he wondered if he would ever escape its cold grasp or that of his bitter grandmother, Esther. 
Kenneth had been a sickly child whom his grandmother watched over with an iron-fisted control that became the gossip of Osprey Cove. He lived in mortal fear of Esther Mills and of the townsfolk, who were also critically savage. 
Osprey Cove was fifty-one miles north of East Quaco, which in turn was another forty plus miles northeast of Bangor, Maine. The rocky coastline lay nearby. The small seaside cove had changed very little over the past century. At the onset of winter, November 1964, Kenneth felt it could just as easily have been 1864. 
His face now flushed in anger. Kenneth recalled their earlier argument: “Why can’t you let me go about business and try to be a man?” Kenneth argued. “Cause you don’t act like a businessman, like your Pa, and you never will!” Esther yelled back. 
“Maybe that’s because you never give me a fair chance at it. You know, I never had the full benefit of knowing him like you did.” Kenneth said. 
“Wouldn’t have mattered much. You will never replace him. Your Pa was as near perfect as they come; and, you’re as worthless as they come.” Esther slashed back. 
“Suppose that’s why I never became a doctor like I always wanted...’cause of you and your putdowns on me?” Kenneth half asked. 
“You couldn’t have been a surgeon anymore than old Sam Bronson, down at the funeral parlor; who by the way, takes advantage of you all the time. Why you waste your life working for him is beyond me!” Esther exclaimed. 
Kenneth didn’t answer. He thought of Sam Bronson and the small handful of other townsfolk...not many...who believed in him. There was Ms. Duboir, his biology teacher, who still believed in him even though he hadn’t gone on to become a doctor. And Kenneth remembered Dr. Joe Walters, the town’s general practitioner whom he so wanted to be like. Kenneth loved and worshiped Dr. Walters. Kenneth believed that the good doctor was earnest in his praises and support of him; that Dr. Walters truly believed in him. 
Then there was Mack of Mack’s Pub, who Kenneth felt might possibly believe in him. Although, Mack had on more than one occasion played Kenneth for the fool that everyone else in Osprey Cove believed Kenneth to be. 
Kenneth paused on the gray covered bridge where his parents had died when he was ten. Kenneth felt that his parents, if alive today, would certainly believe in him. 
A shiver ran through him as he recalled their frozen bodies in the car. He grappled with other details of that wintry night, but to no avail. “I feel so terribly alone; deserted, unwanted. Why did you have to go away and leave me with your mother?” Kenneth whimpered. 
*********************************** 
Esther’s view to the bridge was becoming clearer. She carefully wiped away the innermost frost from the glazed window. The frosty moisture soaked her yellowed handkerchief. The handkerchief began to form cold droplets that fell to the cobwebbed and dust covered windowsill. She reached above shoulder-level to readjust the spotlight. Its metallic hinge grated and with a shrill refused to give way to Esther’s wiry arm. 
“Damn piece of junk,” she screeched, giving it a more determined tug. It shrilled and finally gave way. Esther, with trembling hand, grasped the stiff yellowed handkerchief and wiped away the new frost from the windowpane. Her withered arm, still hanging from the spotlight’s iron handle, tightened and twisted the lamp to cast a new path of light. The right quarter of the gray bridge came into full view. “Aha, now I’ve got you good and clear,” she laughed. 
Kenneth stood motionless, partly hidden inside the bridge’s opening. There was the shadow of a much smaller man in a raincoat and a fisherman’s hat, just to one side of him. “Who is that?” Esther heard herself ask. “Who are you talking to, Kenneth?” 
The shadow shrunk as the fisherman stooped in front of Kenneth. Rising up, the shadowed figure handed Kenneth a large knapsack. “Lousy old eyes, can’t focus any good,” Esther thought. 
Straining, nose against the icy window, she screwed her eyebrows to force a sharper vision. Kenneth was opening the knapsack. The other man knelt next to Kenneth and pointed into the sack. Esther saw Kenneth stand and strain as he tried to lift the knapsack by its drawstrings. It refused to budge. “Come on you weakling. Hell, if you can lift my eighty-five pounds of skin and bones, you sure as hell can lift that wet sack of who-knows-what.” Esther shook her head in disgust. 
Kenneth held the knapsack closer to its neck to gain better leverage and with a second effort, raised it. Esther could see the small fisherman, now hunched over, slyly moving away from Kenneth. Kenneth looked back to the house and to the window where Esther’s nose and eyebrows traced the only clear glass on the iced windowpanes. His eyes squinted at her window, through the brilliant path of the spotlight. 
He turned back to speak to the fisherman who was steadying himself at the bridges’ corner pillar, before the fisherman began to descend down the steep riverbank. 
Esther wrapped at the window with her knotted knuckles. “What’s going on down there, Kenneth? What are you up to now?” 
Kenneth knelt, as the fisherman had done moments before. He tied the knapsack’s drawstrings to his right ankle and began to drag it to the bridge’s corner pillar. He crawled on his belly like a wounded soldier with desperate troops clinging to his ankles.