8 minute read
“Events on a Halloween Night during the Bicentennial of 1976 in Stone Mount” M. Macdonald
Dr. Martha Macdonald College English instructor (Ret) author, and performer. doctorbenn@gmail.com
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On Halloween Night in Stone Mount, a celebration has taken place for years. After all, who does not like to wear costumes, trick or treat, dance, and hear ghost stories? Well, some people, for one reason or another, do not. That particular night, the moon was pale, and a wind stirred in the trees, a few maples pattering to the ground, portending rain. I wasn’t sure, nor did I know that two rapes would occur while the crowd gathered on College Avenue to hear music and dance, the choir of Stone Mount Presbyterian singing, “We Plow the Fields and Scatter, the Good Seed on the Ground,” hoping to drown the chants of witches on the street and their invitation to partake of the stew with an “eye of newt” bubbling in a black cauldron
Two rapes? One to an octogenarian, the other to a recent college graduate: both teachers, one retired, the other in her first year. What would we make of them? What would you make of them? Both in the small college town of Stone Mount in the hills of South Carolina, at twilight?
Hannah Smith had gone to bed early that night, tired from an afternoon tea and a cold, and she’d left her bedroom window slightly raised to combat the sultry air. Drowsing, she did not hear the intruder, the wizened garbage collector, enter. But when he began removing her nightgown, she screamed. “I wouldn’t do that,” he whispered, stuffing her mouth with a dirty handkerchief. She protested, but he conquered. “Sleep well. “I remember when you didn’t give me no money for shoes at Christmas.” She stared at him, at his face that reminded of her of a cow in their manger set of long ago, as he crept through the window, closing it. The air grew stuffier and stuffier. Miss Smith twisted and twisted, finally falling onto the floor from her antique four-poster bed. She tried to scream, but could not.
No one found her until late the next afternoon when a doctor’s wife wondered because the newspapers still lay on the sidewalk. Cathy fished out her key from her purse and unlocked the front door, found Miss Smith squirming on the floor. Cathy’s husband arrived and pulled out the dirty handkerchief, while, she quickly put a night gown on the victim. Together, they lifted the old woman to the bed. Lloyd took her vitals. “High blood pressure, and high fever. She needs to go to the hospital in Rutherford.”
“No, please, let me just rest,” Miss Smith begged. “I remember my mother died when they took her to the hospital.” Against his better judgment, Lloyd agreed. “Lloyd, she’s had lung cancer,” Kathy reminded him. He nodded.
They waited, watching Hannah breathing. Within the hour she breathed her last.
Cathy felt anger rising, but resisted saying anything.
Lloyd called 911 and waited for the ambulance to arrive, wondering if other neighbors had figured out what happened. Cathy would be telling them. He also wondered if the town had learned about the rape on the other end of College Avenue, not far from the Presbyterian Church. Tolly Brown was the victim. When her husband, Jamie, a prominent young attorney in town, had come home during the dancing the evening before, he’d found the window open. Tolly was heaving. Looking at blood all of the sheets, Jamie vomited. “Who would do this?” He called Tolly’s gynecologist/obstetrician. He agreed to meet at the hospital. “Call 911,” he had ordered. Tolly resisted. “My baby’s dead,” she sobbed. That brute raped me. I want to die.” She remembered his laugh, bovine, dull eyes. The medics arrived and took over. Fortunately, there were no sirens. Tolly cried hysterically as she was strapped to the gurney and lifted into the back of the ambulance. Jamie rode with her. “Who did this?”
That vile man, the garbage collector, Fergus Whittaker, because our garden club decided not to give his family money last Christmas. I was the one who told him. He never forgot, the evil man.”
“I never liked him, the wizard. We had trouble with him at the bank.” The medics got Tolly into a bed and began preparing her for surgery: hooking her up to IV’s, giving her blood, despite Jamie’s questions. The nurses wheeled her to the operating room where surgical techs gave her what he asked for. But Tolly died on the table. “She’d lost so much blood, Jamie, and I am very sorry.”
Jamie called the chief of police and the sheriff who arrived. “I want that man dead,” Jamie said, this time quietly, kissing Tolly good-bye. “We’ll find him. We’ll put out alerts.”
“I am so sorry, Mr. Brown,” one of the officers said, adding that he’d called the Coroner.
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The harpoon of death at a snail's pace and the cigarette snail.
Did you know that these beautifully patterned Cone Shells are capable killing machines - killing a human in less than 30 minutes – with a “poke”!
Instead of teeth these snails use a venomous harpoon for hunting food which is a hollow, barbed and very deadly tool much like a doctor’s hypodermic needle – but this needle injects death!
Cone shells feed on sea worms, fish and even other Cone shells. Because they are slow moving they use their harpoons to capture a faster moving prey. The harpoons have to be strong enough to penetrate the scales of fish, but they can also penetrate the gloves a human might be wearing searching the water for other "edibles". Handling the
live snail can have tragic consequences and be deadly to humans.
The Geographic Cone shell is so poisonous that it has been called the cigarette snail in the belief that the victim
has only enough time left to smoke a cigarette before death. Now you know the rest of the story.
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