- James O. Cannon
The Narrative of Dr. Jonathan Archer
By James O. Cannon
The most terrifying sense of dread fills my heart as I pen these words, for the simple act of recalling the story of that dark night is enough to soak my clothes with a cold sweat and send my flesh writhing with shivers. I had been investigating a local myth for the small newspaper I print weekly, and it was an unusually cold, damp night. A heavy mist had settled in and my companion, the famous Dr. Rosencauf, whom has published many articles on the supernatural and the occult, had become uneasy and insisted on pacing the dock.
This local legend had been proven to hold to some true events that were revealed during my research. A young boy had been murdered, though his name was unknown, and a woman had taken her own life in grief. Her story was truly the source of inspiration for my curiosity. The woman’s name had been Shelly and the story tells that the boy’s name was Bobby. Their last names were irrelevant and had been changed in every variation spoken around a campfire.
The woman, Shelly, had been out for a long stroll along the beaches of a small town in costal Florida, not far from the settlement at Jacksonville. She is said to have been distraught and depressed because of an abusive relationship with her husband and had been in a fit of rage when she came upon the lonely child playing with the carcass of a dead crab. It must have been obvious that the boy was a homeless runaway, as he was clothed in dirty, torn rags and the sun had been long set with the bright orb of the moon raised high in the heavens.
Her anger had not quelled when she reached the child and she tried with all of her might to restrain herself, but the boys disgusting appearance and rude, undisciplined manner did naught to help stay her hand. When he spoke, his accent was akin to the northern settlers who still retained much of the British influence in their tone, which reminded her of her husband. A single word had left his lips before she began to choke the life from him and that word, which was never recorded in any of her journals, may have been the key to her suffering all along.
After a short time, the body of the boy was limp in her lap and she began to panic. According to several loosely knitted stories, the dock I stood on was the only location that any of them had in common. It was supposedly the place that Shelly had disposed of the body of “Bobby”.
Shelly’s journals required months of deciphering through troves of gibberish and insane ranting’s, but eventually the pieces fell together. When she had returned home that night, her husband had changed in such an evil manner that he terrified her even more than before. It was as though he was never the man who beat her. Everything was dreadfully perfect and out of the area of her comfort. He treated her as though she were a delicate flower and she was happy with him, but at the same time she knew something was horribly wrong. There was something dark and hideous in his smile that hid just beneath the surface and reminded her of that dirty child whom she’d killed. Her writings became more and more deluded as time passed and she was plagued by unholy nightmares depicting her death in various gruesome fashions. Most of the time, “Billy” was her tormentor, but on occasion it was her husband.
The dreams were alluding to her overall fate, though, because in the end she killed herself, or at least the final entry in her most recent journal said she would, which coincided in the timeline with an old newspaper article I stumbled across. From that article I learned that she had been widowed, which wasn’t mentioned in her journal. I mistook it for a sign of guilt, possibly indicating that she was responsible for his death, but that was not the case. To Shelly, the man she loved died the night she murdered that abhorred child whose fate shall forever remain a mystery to his lost family.
Much of the story I have relayed is composed of local legend that I have verified with the occurrence of events from newspapers and articles of the time, but much is still unknown as the even took place in an era where even the settlement (which is now a major city) was still young and the news was more concerned with the wealthy affairs of the northern states.
Now, onto the events of that evening, that so scarred my soul with irreparable horror. We were performing simple research, waiting for the promised apparition to appear. Our instruments were measuring the humidity, temperature, and even the magnetic fields that passed through the air. How insane we must have looked to passing locals! It is almost enough to make me laugh at my obsession.
The hours passed slowly and we uncovered very little in our time on the dock until the early hours of the morning, when the moon was on its steady decline into the west. My watch told me it was three-o-clock, but my body’s aches insinuated that it was much later. The mist was just as thick and the air just as cold when the first stirrings of movement rippled the waters surface. Dr. Rosencauf and I rushed to the edge of the dock and stared into the murky, black abyss.
“Oh, by the gods!” Dr. Rosencauf’s voice was almost a dry rasp, “Jonathan, look there!” My eyes followed his finger to a small dark object bobbing on the surface of the water. When my eyes fully adjusted and I focused intently on the object, I realized that it was someone’s head, submerged in such a manner that only the eyes showed through a curtain of black hair. “Dr. Archer, I believe we have finally discovered a true haunting!”
I was unable to reply, as I was in complete shock. The fact that we had proven the existence of such a dark, unpredictable being was almost sickening. The only thing that comforted me was the fact that I hadn’t created it, but merely discovered it and proven its existence. As all of these thoughts swarmed my mind, a sudden seizure came over my companion and he began convulsing on the deck. I pulled his flailing body closer towards the center of the deck and held him as still as I could; trying to comfort him with memories of our studies together in collage, back when the supernatural hadn’t held any interest for either of us, but the only thing that stilled him was death.
That horror of a child was then standing behind me, reaching his hands out to grasp my throat, but I was able to slip away in time to escape. Never shall I forget that night and never shall I rest until the spirit of my good friend is avenged. In truth, I know not what destroyed me. It could have been my obsession with death and the occult, or it could have been my spectating of the murder of Dr. Rosencauf that unraveled my mind and reduced me to this. I now sit in the desolate halls of my father’s home. The walls are bare and little furniture remains, but the ghosts are silent here, and they bother me not.
