E. W. Farnsworth is widely published online and in print. He has two collections of horror stories to his credit. For further information, please see www.ewfarnsworth.com.
THE CREATURE RETURNS TO ITS MAINE MURDER TABLEAU
by
E. W. Farnsworth
He stepped inside, shook the snow from his jacket, and realized that everyone in the room was staring at him. How alive they seemed, including the twinkle in two old women’s eyes! All ten were frozen stiff in place, their heads turned toward the door.
The sheriff moved as if he were on sacred ground, checking each corpse for vital signs and finding none. He knew each well. They had disappeared during the last three years, vanishing without trace. Here in this wood cabin on a rise in the woods they might never have been discovered except he had harbored a hunch.
He found no wounds, no blemishes—nothing to indicate a violent death. In fact, he had never encountered a scene remotely like it except in Madame Tussauds wax museums.
Here Old Man Maxwell and his wife Claribell sat gesturing toward the door as if saying hello. There the three Anderson children looked up, surprised but delighted too, as was their dog Mounty. The region’s beauty Maxine De Trail sat with every hair in place and her blue eyes glistening and her mouth half open with a smile in greeting.
Breathing white on account of the cold, the sheriff made a cursory search but found no sign of a malefactor. He ran through the details he remembered about each person’s disappearance, but nothing made sense.
He thought, These people could never have gathered in this configuration because they disappeared at different times. The Anderson children vanished over the space of six months. Yet here they sit in a 3-D tableau as if they’ve been posed for a purpose.
He used his cell phone to summon his deputy and the forensics team. They might take two hours to find the cabin. In the mean time, he decided, he would search for anything that might account for what he saw as he surmised this discovery might make or break his reputation.
While he waited, he struggled to make a list of names of the people to whom these bodies belonged. He was amazed at his ability to recall each one because he had mounted the vain searches and called them off when, after weeks, they were deemed fruitless.
He sat on the empty bench against the wall to gather his thoughts. His brain was gyring out of control. Only when he heard the sound of a knock did he become fully alert. The door opened slowly, and a familiar huge green, reptilian Creature stepped inside, shaking the snow from his shoulders and, looking up, just grinning. Then the Creature spoke. Was that possible?
“You’ve come. I thought you would. Relax. Resistance will not avail you. Do you recognize me? Of course, you do. I can tell by your faint smile.”
Struggle was useless. The sheriff felt paralyzed. His body was becoming cold and solid. He thought a large webbed hand was searching for his pulse. The Creature’s bulbous green eyes looked into his own, the left and the right. The Creature may have nodded, but by then the terrified sheriff could not think. He had become part of the Creature's impossible Maine murder tableau.