The Strange Story of Walter Keech by Jan Darrow

Out beyond the city in small towns where trees grow tall along fence lines and roads become dirt, meadows of wildflowers gaze up at the sun until the sky shifts downward and spreads autumn like wildfire.

Walter Keech lived out there in one of those small autumn towns.  In school he was a bully; he beat up kids just for fun.  On Halloween he stole their candy.  He got in trouble for slashing tires and throwing eggs.  He earned a reputation. 

 

By the time he was old enough though, he married, but it didn’t take.  Someone said his wife left him for a traveling carnival.

He did odd jobs for a while but soon stopped and lived in a rented room at the back of a gas station.  His main career was petty thievery but took to riding an old bike around town picking up pop bottles.  He rode it every day until his arms and legs ached.  Everyone noticed.  He became a novelty.

  

Walter Keech would have liked to stop riding, but he couldn’t.

Ms. Vander Meer lived in a white house on top of a hill outside of town.  She raised flowers to sell at the farmer’s market - snapdragons, peonies, lavender and zinnias.  Her sunflowers did nicely behind the barn.

And so, it was on one very cool October morning that she found several pots of zinnias and lavender shattered on the floor of her heated greenhouse. Walter Keech smelled of alcohol and was stretched out nearby snoring – his ratty beat-up cowboy hat covered his face. She called the sheriff and when he got there, he arrested Walter.

Maybe it was the alcohol, who knows, but Walter apologized to Ms. Vander Meer all the way to the police car including one last time before the sheriff shut the door.

 Ms. Vander Meer had more to say.

“He needs to be locked up for good!  I know what he’s capable of.” 

Ms. Vander Meer knew what everyone was capable of.

The sheriff had a calm look about him.  “I’m arresting him for being drunk and destroying property.  Not for murder, Jean.”  He liked to call her by her first name because almost no one ever did – her being a retired teacher and all.

And Jean Vander Meer knew it.

Then, one night when the sky was stained purple and the leaves blew off the trees like rain, Jean heard a rattle on her side porch.  Upstairs getting ready for bed, she peeked out the window.  In the gloom she saw an outline of a cowboy hat.

“Why is he back?” 

Her heart beat wildly as she crept down the stairs.  She wanted to call the police but, in the darkness, couldn’t find her phone. 

And then she hesitated.  Maybe he just wants food or to ask if he could sleep in the greenhouse again.

 

With trembling hands Jean Vander Meer unlocked and opened the heavy wooden door.  A storm door stood between them.

   

It only took a second for her to see, under the dim porch light, a gaping jaw and sunken eyes glaring.  There was no flesh, just dark smoke curling around its hairline beneath the cowboy hat dripping down, filling the wooden floor.  In the gloom it reached up and swiped at the storm door handle with its inky fingers but was unable to grab anything.

Jean Vander Meer screamed and slammed the wooden door shut, and in the dark hallway clutched her chest.  In that moment. Without air.

 

Walter Keech was never seen again.      

Jan Darrow is a poet from Michigan who connected with the natural world at an early age.  She has been published online and in print and finds abandoned places utterly beautiful.  You can see more of her work at jandarrow.blogspot.com