Beneath the Surface

 

A Vulture Sunbathes

The Haunted Landscape

The Pain of Anger

6 Killed In Weeping Water Fire

Beneath the Surface

by Graham Swanson

The heat rose to over 99 degrees in the town of Weeping Water, Nebraska. Thunderstorms and winds crossed the land but they missed the small valley town. The sky became clear and cloudless and the humidity rose to 100%. Despite the harvest season summer temperatures remained. Dozens of vultures swarmed from the horizon and landed on grain silos before the green yard along the creek. They lifted their wings and sunned in the dissipating fog. 

Frank backed his truck in. He hauled the wood and concrete he needed to begin the project. His truck bore his name on all sides. In his vehicle he carried 6 tool bags, 4 power drills, 3 power saws, and a set of blueprints for a picnic shelter to enliven and beautify his hometown. Frank had everything a man could want. A house he inherited from his father. Several CDs and land he inherited from his grandfather. He went to college, travelled the world, had many beautiful girlfriends, and ran his own successful contracting business. 

Before Frank got out and started he decided to finish his coffee and listen to his favorite talk radio show. He sighed in frustration and poured some liquor into his cup. His leg still hurt from a skydiving accident from years before. His collar bone hurt from a mountain bike crash years before that. The doctors cancelled their vacations and dinner dates to attend his wounds, and he never forgave them for recommending he quit performing these dangerous hobbies. 

Frank laid back in his seat, letting the anger simmer in his stomach as he lit his morning cigarette. He listened to his Talk Show. 

“...That’s what they think! The lizard people are in charge, people! They commit incest, they inbreed, and they control every facet of our lives from the food we eat to the chemicals in the water. When Musk betrayed us to the technofascist!"

It made Frank laugh. His favorite part was coming up. He turned it up louder so he could hear.

“...Every senator who has ever taken bribes, cocaine barrons, warlords should be sent to prison during the State of the Union! Every cop who has ever shut off his camera should be fired! Soon China will colonize the entire world!”

Frank nodded his head in approval with a salty smile on his lips. He turned sour only when the show ended and he had to begin his day. He set up saw horses and went over the blueprints. Behind him, his employee, Calipso, arrived in an old beaten up truck. Together they unloaded the lumber and concrete. Once on the ground Frank took a smoke break and Calipso enjoyed some water from the public faucet. 

Calipso didn’t speak a terrible amount of English but he tried his best. He came without his family, and became so desperate for a job that he lied to Frank about his qualifications. He told the contractor that he ran his own contracting company but it failed, forcing him to seek work. “I will stay three steps ahead of you. I’m very good with numbers. I'll be your best man."

None of what Calipso said was true. He was broke. He quit school in the 7th grade. He needed money or he’d become homeless in the middle of rural Nebraska.

Frank spent his break naming off the things he hated. Stars Wars- he always called the fans fat incels.  Football. When he worked in a bar in downtown , whenever their team was losing he’d play GOOD OL’ Nebraska on the jukebox and laugh at the sad fans. Elvis. 

“Elvis stole Rock n Roll. I hate him.” Frank said. The crueler his thoughts became, the more it made him happy. 

Calipso always thought of Elvis when he thought of America. He decided to interrupt his boss’s tirade. 

“Elvis had an old style, it’s not very punk rock, but he lived around African Americans, he learned to sing and dance from them. He didn’t know how to read or write music. He couldn’t have stolen anything.”

“You’re not wrong. Elvis was hillbilly trash, but he knew he was taking music from black people, he could’ve done something about it, but he did nothing!”

“He couldn’t even fire his manager. He wanted to travel the world and have diverse shows but his manager wouldn’t let him. How could he do anything?”

“I guess you’re the expert then!” Frank wobbled his head and waved his hands in the air. Then began to mimic Calipso’s voice. “He couldn’t even fire his manager! Why don’t you shut up and start clearing the ground!” 

Calipso put on welding goggles and gardening gloves. Frank rolled his eyes at him. He grabbed a shovel and began to dig. 

“God Damn! What do you think you’re doing?”

“I'm clearing the ground like you asked.”

“Is that my shovel?”

“Why yes, I assume this is the right tool.”

“Never Fucking touch my tools!” 

“What do you think I should use then?”

“Fine, use my equipment, because apparently you can’t be relied on to bring your own!” 

Calipso scowled, but held his emotions in. Speaking out now would only make things more difficult, so he compressed his frustration and began to work. 

“Put the dirt there!” Frank commanded.

Calipso obeyed. He filled a refuse can with with dirt and grass, carried it over to a vacant space and dumped it out.

“Not there, THERE!” Frank screamed without gesturing to any specific area.

“Boss, I can’t read your mind.” 

“I have to explain EVERYTHING?” 

Calipso sighed and started putting the dirt back into the bucket.

“Now what are you doing?”

“Moving the dirt.” 

“No, you’re wasting time! LEAVE IT THERE!” 

Frank limped around the area. His support sock darkened with speckles of blood. Vultures kept swooping down into the work site to scratch at the land. He shooed some away but they kept dropping down, so he reached into his bucket of tools and hurled a hatchet across the work site at them. “Pests! We can’t work if these birds keep messing with us”.

Calipso enjoyed the early morning. It wasn’t yet too hot to work, and the birds provided a splendid beauty over the valley. He kept digging, forcing the blade through the dewy grass and the moist earth. He almost filled a second bucket before the shovel blade hit something hard. He forced the shovel down again, but the blade bounced off the hard thing again. 

The vultures flew unharmed back to the top of the silo where they all gazed down at Frank. He left his blueprints to limp over to the silos with a level. He beat it against the metal walls until it shattered into pieces. The birds remained up high, undisturbed, their peaks and talons hanging over his head. “If I see anyone of you, you’ll regret it.”

Calipso Stepped on the blade of the shovel, the ground cracked, and he lost his balance. He held the handle of the shovel, but the blade snapped off and lay in the exposed earth. It wasn’t a rock. It was a blanket. He got on his knees and wiped away the dirt. The rotten blanket contained something underneath. He tried to scoop it out but it seemed rooted into the ground. When he unfolded it he gasped. 

“WHY IS MY SHOVEL BROKEN? THAT WAS A NON SPARKING SHOVEL! ITS FOR GRAVEL! ITS A 100$ SHOVEL YOU IDIOT!” 

“Boss, look.” 

“I don’t care!”

Calipso unraveled the blanket and a human skull rolled out. 

“We need to tell the police.” Calipso said reaching for his phone.

Frank took the phone away and leaned his gritted teeth against Calipso’s face.

“We tell no one. If the cops come here we’ll have to delay the project for god knows how long. I’ve already lost too much money ordering this wood from China and the city council wants this done in time for Limestone Days. Now bury it.” 

Frank picked up the pieces of shovel and walked back to his truck. Calipso shivered, put a hand over his stomach. He breathed slow and peaceful to hold back the vomit constricting in his guts. A tear went down his cheek. He took one more look at the skull, then the blanket. A poison feeling dropped from his guts into his bladder. When he saw it he remembered seeing dead animals on the road, and stories of death cults that murdered anyone who tried to bring justice to his own hometown far away. 

Calipso grabbed the fabric and saw faded cartoon characters on it. He looked back the skull, and notice the eye socket close together and a tiny set of teeth. The small cranium, the narrow jaw. It was a child. He wrapped it back up, and buried it. While his boss wasn’t looking, he stuck a strip of wood into the loose soil.  He finished his work for the day with a heavy frown permanently fixed to his brow. They worked throughout the heat of the day. They ate lunch from a gas station, drank Gatorade, school got out and kids walked all over. 

“We need to place this concrete now.” 

“Boss, that will take all day.” 

“I want that cement mixed and poured. I’ll pay you extra just do it.” Frank pulled the strip of wood out from the soil. 

Calipso poured the concrete powder into a wheelbarrow and mixed it with water. He spat through his gritted teeth, strained his back and neck as his muscles tightened around his stomach. The vultures lifted off and circled around the work site. One landed on the hood of Frank’s truck. It stared at the blood stain on Frank’s sock. 

When Calipso poured the concrete all color left his face. All the friendly old folk taking walks, the teenagers coming home from school, the plumbing trucks and heavy work trucks all rode by as if nothing happened. He took a flat metal spreader and smoothed out the concrete. Despite his best effort, bubbles rose in the mixture. It looked like the dead body beneath struggled to breathe. He watched the bubbles rose and pop on the surface, then sink down. 

Frank kept running off to his shop, and came back each time more irritable, but calmer, slower, reeking of old dirty beer. 

Calipso worked until the final hours of sunlight. The heat and humidity rendered his clothing sticky and overheated. He chugged water from the faucet while Frank prepared to lay support columns but his elbow snapped and he dropped the heavy beam. He called on Calipso to help him. Calipso took one end of the beam and let Frank take the other with his good arm. 

They guided the beam into place and poured concrete around it. 

“Careful now, we need this to be level.”

“You broke the level.”

“I’ll break you! Set it up right!” 

‘Boss, how do I check if we have no level?”

“Well, I guess I shouldn't have smashed my level! FUCK!” 

“We’ve gotten a lot done. Maybe we should pick this up tomorrow.” 

“Be here at 5am. He have to place all these beams. Then we can move on to the pearlings on the roof.” 

“What’s a pearling?”

“All this lumber here, what do you think? I need to go back to the shop and do desk stuff. 5am tomorrow.” Frank lit a cigarette and walked back to his truck.

“No, man. I quit. You’re crazy.” 

“What did you say?”

“You’re insane. I will have nothing to do with you.” 

“If you tell anyone, I’ll break your teeth and shove a rock in your mouth.”

“I don’t think you’ve won a single fight in your entire life. Good luck. I’m sure you can find some help.” Calipso jumped in his truck and left the site.

Calipso left town and left all the tools Frank lent him at a gas station. He drove for four hours thinking and thinking. He didn’t eat dinner. He didn’t shower. He didn’t drink water. He didn’t sleep. He kept thinking about the remains he uncovered. He didn’t want to lose his job, but he kept thinking about all the rude things Frank said, all the nihilism, all the resentment. He remembered working construction with his brother. He wanted to build a small house in El Salvador and unlike Calipso, his brother had a way of getting everything he ever wanted. He was always happy, until he didn’t get what he wanted. Then he shouted and bullied anyone he deemed responsible until someone appeased his whims. 

Calipso didn’t have a phone now, and not a single phone booth remained throughout the dusty streets. In the morning he went into the library and called the Cass County Police Department. He started crying and spoke so low they barely heard what he said. 

“There’s remains under a work site in Weeping Water, Nebraska. The contractor working there told me not to report it. It’s where the vultures are. In the park by the creek between downtown and the high school. It's under the concrete. I can’t show you myself because its a small town and I fear he may harm me.”

As soon as they asked him a question he hung up. 

Frank returned the next day and examined the workload. His elbow swelled up and the joints popped whenever he had to press a saw over the lumber. Even the strength to rip a staple out of the wood drove hot nails of pain into his joints. The vultures returned above him. They lifted their wings to sun, and let the cleansing light purge them of mites. Frank understood now, these creatures, when they lifted their wings, it was to communicate with his foes. The meth heads that wanted to steal his stuff, the bullies from High School who still hated him, Elvis plotting against him from a throne in hell, selling his secrets to the CCP. Everything he heard in the radio shows was coming true. 

The State Patrol showed up and kicked over his little traffic cones. Frank told them to leave but they began putting up tape despite his protests. 

“What are you guys doing on my worksite?”

“We have an investigation to do. Why don’t you just sit in the back of the squad car.” 

“Investigation? Investigate what? I’m a busy man. You all need to leave.” 

“If you don't get into the back of that goddamn car right now I’ll place you under arrest.”

Frank noticed their tasers were unsheathed. The sheriff and other cops pulled up behind them. The began tearing down the beams, and pounded the concrete to pieces, then started to dig. Frank watched in horror as they pulled out not just one skeleton, but another, and another. The vultures descended from the misty sky to surround the worksite. They all stared at Frank, than all at once, they stared into the plot of upturned land. 

Three morgue trucks came all the way from Omaha to recover the bodies. Frank kept telling the police that he had nothing to do with it. He told them in the back of the car, he told them in the interrogation room and he kept shouting it from his jail cell until he finally got word that the rest of the remains were found in his grandpa's farm. 

“No, no that’s not true.”

“You’re grandpa was a serial killer, Frank. You knew about it, and you thought you could cover it up.”

“You… you have to respect me!” 

“We don’t care what you think, Frank. We want to know how many bodies you’ve disposed of, and where you hid them.”

“I’m not a murderer.”

“We don't know that yet. Seems that people went missing in this town until your grandpa finally passed.”

“It was Calipso. He controls those vultures. He made them report the bodies. You have to shoot those vultures They’re planning against me. He killed those people!”

“What did you know about these victims? We want to help you, Frank. We can’t help you if you’re hyperventilating and telling us stories about magic vultures. Are you a good guy?  Then you’ll help us, but maybe you're not, maybe you knew all about this. We can't help you if you won’t tell us the truth.” 

They repeated the questions over and over until Frank curled up in a ball in his seat. In his mind the vultures still pecked at the ground and peeled the flesh from a freshly carved scalp. When the police left him in the interrogation chamber, two men clad in black masks took their place. They took Frank by the shoulders and lifted him from his seat and dragged him out by his heels. The hallway they dragged him down hooked in crooked directions, then sank deep into the earth. At the bottom a vehicle awaited. 

Frank begged them not to take him, but they only hissed and yapped. The men shoved him into the back seat and drove him deep into the country. So deep that no radio signal could find them. They pulled him out into a field, where a fully built picnic shelter stood surrounded by vultures. The masked men dragged Frank into the center, stripped him naked, and washed him with faucet water. 

First they tied him to a heavy piece of lumber, and pushed the lumber onto the pavement. Then they drew sledge hammers and drills. The started knocking down the beams and unscrewing the bolts. The vultures watched from their perches as the picnic shelter collapsed, and then the men in the black mask lit the wreckage on fire. 

The town of Weeping Water spiraled into chaos. Word reached far and wide of a secret cult that acted in the town for generations. In the unrivaled seclusion of the family farmlands, they practiced ritual cannibalism, drank the blood of children to sustain their lineage, and summoned vultures as their familiar spirits. The folk of Weeping Water stayed in denial. Anytime anyone asked them about the violence, they will tell you its all fiction, that some resentful discontent made it all up. They point at the sign in the entry of the town- 1980 Class D-1 Runner Ups. Little do they know that blood drips down that sign, and the vultures lap it up. 

Maybe this is fiction, maybe it isn’t. If you really want to know, seek the forlorn valley of Weeping Water. Dig under the concrete of the depot pavilion, and discover for yourself what lies beneath. You will find the truth where the vultures sunbathe on the silos. You will see where the devil stamps his hoof.

Ghost stories about Weeping Water

https://hauntedplacesofusa.blogspot.com/2009/09/witchs-bridge-weeping-waternebraska.html

https://ghostsandstories.com/haunted-places-witches-bridge-in-weeping-water-nebraska.html

https://www.ghostsofamerica.com/6/Nebraska_Weeping_Water_ghost_sightings.html