The Talbot Sisters’ Vengeance

It was a cold December night when it happened again. The air was glacial, and you could barely feel your fingers, even with fur-lined gloves on. That day, I had been fixing my sink for the third time this month, thinking about how long it had been since I had last taken a vacation.

At five minutes past ten on that night, a forty-year-old clerk named Winton Carline, on his way to his lazy, good-for-nothing kids and his apathetic wife, began screaming. By the time the neighbors came out of their houses, Carline had disappeared and would never be seen again.

The next day was dark and sullen, and the people of Mount Barnhill went about their day as unnerved as kids on their first day of school but eager to hear the town gossip. Burning questions were on everyone's lips: What happened? Did you know him? Was he kidnapped? Do you think it was the ghosts? And the inevitable who's next?

It was the third disappearance this month, and some people had started making provisions and shutting themselves up in their houses. Parents kept their children at home. They were afraid and rightly so. The town had every reason to believe that what had come to be known in Mount Barnhill as the Talbot Sisters' Vengeance was repeating itself all over again. The legend went that, every forty years or so, two ghosts would appear in the small secluded town with one goal in mind: vengeance.

Of course, many people didn't give attention to folktales, and I was one of them at first. The legend was nevertheless revived following the first disappearance when an eight-year-old schoolgirl named Marisa Waters asserted that a lady in a white dress, her skin glowing so intensely it was almost transparent, had tried to grab her. Shaken by the experience, she barely came out of her bedroom for a month.

Half a dozen police officers were sent to the crime scene. Most of them, just out of the police academy, had never dealt with such serious cases. I was stopped on my way to work, and a cop began asking me questions.

'Is it about Winton Carline?' I asked.

'That's none of your concern. Just answer the damn questions,' he retorted, impatient.

That night, I went to the bar to have a couple of beers with Hanley Daniel, the town librarian. I had known him for eight years, and we had gotten into the habit of meeting for drinks every Friday night. The bar was unusually quiet. Han was a firm believer in ghost stories and he spent the whole night talking with exceptional enthusiasm about the vengeful Talbot sisters.

'Did you hear about what happened to Winton Carline,' he asked, as if it were possible I hadn't.

'I did,' I replied, laconically.

'This story about the vengeful ghosts makes a lot of sense to me, you know that?' He asked. Yes, I knew.

'Oh yeah?' I replied.

'Yeah. Are you familiar with the story?' He asked, itching to tell it.

'A little bit,' I answered, resigned to let him talk.

'So, according to the legend, two sisters died on a cold December night over three centuries ago, when their carriage slid into the river, and the girls were drowned. They've been coming to the town periodically ever since to transform people and quench their lust for revenge.'

'What do you mean by “transform people,”' I asked, faking interest. 

'They absorb their souls, and the victims become ghosts in turn and haunt the town until the sisters' return. Have you ever noticed how there seems to be some kind of evil looming over Mount Barnhill?' Han inquired.

'I… I had never really…' I stuttered, fairly uninterested and bored at this point.

'It's the ghosts of the victims, condemned to wander for four decades,' he interrupted in a booming voice. ‘Only when the sisters return and transform new people can they find peace.'

'As a man of science, you know I can't believe that, right?'

'Can you imagine? It's like their souls are trapped,' he continued, emphasizing the last word. 'And it's actually not forty years, but forty-two. It's the sum of both their ages when they died: Laura was 22, and Isabelle was 20. I looked at the town records and couldn't believe my eyes! Every 42 years on the dot, the disappearances start again. Why hasn't anyone ever mentioned that before? It's because the people of this town are controlled... haunted by the ghosts of the victims.' He took a sip of his beer.

'Some of the bodies are found,' he continued, 'most are not. But their souls, Ray—that's the important part—their souls are wandering, lost…' He was looking fixedly at the wall, an inquisitive look on his face. 'How do they choose their victims, you might ask,' he added suddenly, startling me.

'I wasn't gonna…'

'It's actually fascinating,' he interrupted again. 'They target people who have caused some kind of road accident with severe consequences, because of how they themselves died. The first victim, for example-- what was his name again?’

‘Damian Yates,’ I answered.

‘Yeah, that’s right. Damian killed two people while driving under the influence. He was never brought to trial. Did you know that?’

‘Nope’. I had barely known the guy.

‘And Winton was involved in a car crash that killed his own girlfriend back in 1990. And he's now dead… or worse than dead,' he said, in a mysterious tone of voice. I didn’t like the direction this conversation was heading.

'So, when it comes to guessing who the next victim will be, it's really a matter of--' I was no longer listening to him.

He continued talking about his crazy theories for another hour, stopping every now and again to sip at his beer. I went home that night worn out and drowsy.

***

We all knew Phyllis Rowe. She had been one of the most prolific members of the Town Council for twenty years and a member of the Children's Defense Association. She was beautiful and smart, too. According to Hanley, she had been involved in a major car accident in her early twenties that had left one person in a coma.

She disappeared ten days after Winton Carline. The press from all over the country began converging on Mount Barnhill, seizing the opportunity to write something their publisher might find decent.

There was a frantic false alarm a week after Mrs. Rowe's disappearance. A fifteen-year-old boy was reported missing after he failed to return home after school. As it turned out, he had tried to run away from his controlling mother and his violent father and was found three hours after the alert was given, numb with cold.

Two days later, the frenzy was back as the police found a scrap of cloth. It belonged to the second victim, Paul Garraway, a thirty-five-year-old science teacher who was taken because he had provoked a crash between a motorcycle and a car by crossing the street at the wrong time, causing the driver to steer his car toward the bike. That’s according to Hanley, of course. There was a statement in the local paper the next day: 'The police have convincing evidence that these atrocious disappearances are the work of a serial killer who knew the victims personally. The connection between all the victims has yet to be established.' Hanley Daniel was furious with their ignorance.

I walked into Angela's Luncheonette the next morning, smiling at people awkwardly and saying hi with a little more intensity than usual while studying their faces closely as they were studying mine, trying to detect the darkness behind one of them.

Three days later, the police arrested a thirty-two-year-old bachelor named Stanley Montgomery. They had found a shovel full of dirt in his basement along with an unusual quantity of hydrofluoric acid they believed he had used to make the victims disappear.

The disappearances ceased, the town was happy, and the Police Department was relieved. Yet, I felt terrible. As much as I tried to convince myself of Stanley's guilt, I couldn't seem to believe it. He didn't have an ounce of spite in him; he was just an underdog.

As days went by, I found myself thinking more and more about the Talbot sisters and what my friend Hanley had said. A memory was bothering me, haunting me in my dreams: I was 21, I was behind the wheels of my Thunderbird, driving a little too fast, daydreaming of sand beaches and clear water… The little girl I hit that day—Selena—never walked again. As for me, I was sentenced to 90 days of community service. I saw her once in the distance five years ago, sitting in her wheelchair in a park, looking at the sky.

***

My time came on a cold January night. I was driving home from a long day at work when I saw her—saw this figure floating toward me. Despite the brilliance of her body, the whiteness of her skin, she was only darkness, an agent of death. An icy chill that had nothing to do with the cold of the night ran through my body at the sight of the familiar face that was staring back at me. She looked just like my mother... Could it be that I was related to the Talbot sisters, somehow?

A flash of recognition passed through her face. She looked at me a moment longer, studying me, before turning around and drifting away into the darkness. I felt like screaming.