Day 216 – Writing Exercise

…

I remember the days when our town was like a sleepy hollow surrounded by prairies and mountains. 

We had everything we needed, and the town grew at the pace that matched the natural population growth.  It was quite literally that sort of town where everyone knew everyone else.

The Murphys ran the sheriff’s department, the Watersons were mayors or civic officers, the Ravellers ran the bank, and Blacks started as the blacksmith and now took care of the farm machinery and engineering.  We were, for all intents and purposes, self-sufficient.

Then, little by little, that autonomy started to disappear.  The fast food outlets came; a shopping mall was built, and then realtors came and built estates, claiming our town was just the place to live, away from the city rat race.

Then times changed, and the economy failed, and people found themselves struggling.  It was not just us; it was everywhere.

That’s when the Montgomerys came.

…

My father was conservative, not exactly against change, just change that radically affected his way of life.  He and a few others opposed the mall, the resort being built on the old Anderson ranch, and the radical redesigns of the main street.

He had watched the fast food places turn the children away from the people food, the new hotels turn the people into gamblers and drinkers, and the out-of-towners who were moving into the new estates increase the crime rate.
.
And the new people brought the drug scourge.

In five years the sheriff’s office had gone from a shop front with the sheriff and two deputies to ten deputies and three detectives, and a modern two-story building with a compound and jail space for twenty.

In those same five years, the original families that built our town started leaving.

My father deplored what was happening, even more so when there was nothing he could do about it.  Our Sunday family gathering had turned into a gathering of the so-called founding fathers, dwindling rapidly.

Most had either died out or sold out.  And in the case of my generation, with the advent of the internet and the ease of getting information, most have left to seek their fortune in the big cities, tempted by the fortunes that could be made.

He also resisted the buyout offers of his land, now very prime real estate, and held up a multi-million-dollar new resort being developed by the Montomery Corporation run by Archibald Montgomery.

A self-made man, he was quite literally larger than life.  No one knew why he left New York, only that he landed in our town by mistake and took a shine to it.

His foothold started with building a castle on the old Herbertson ranch, the first of the old guard to sell out.  From there he regaled the old founders with parties and then offers, buying up properties for cents on the dollar, legally and sometimes not.

He went from hero to monster in the blink of an eye.  About the same time, it was realised he had bought half the town and surrounding farms.  And with that sort of influence, he all but owned the mayor and the sheriff.

Then there was Archie Montgomery junior.

I finished high school with him, the eldest son, and the heir apparent.  He believed he owned the town, and everything else, and everyone was his slave to do his bidding.

Those who didn’t found themselves on the wrong end of the stick.

That’s how the Thompsons, my family, became the thorn in the side that neither the father nor the prodigal son wanted or needed.

And both were the subject of conversation at lunch.

…

I looked around the tables at the twenty-two members left from the founding fathers group.  The latest casualty: the town sheriff for the last 20 years, just getting voted out and replaced by one of Montgomery’s acolytes.

He was glad to retire, just not about who replaced him.  The mayor, or ex-mayor, was sitting next to him, having been deposed on the same election day.  Politically, the wind had shifted, and the representatives in Congress that had protected us for so long had been swept away, replaced by, well, my father had an expression that wasn’t repeatable.

Montgomery had finally won, as he said he would.

Jacob Waterson, sixth-generation resident, the last of a long line of town mayors, was sad.  He had seen what was happening, and like the rest of us, could do nothing about it.

“It’s time we all just left and left them to it.  We can only hold out so long.  I mean, if torching the Franz property was a message, then who will be next?”

Old man Franz had refused to sell.  Then suddenly his place burned down with him in it, and the investigation came back that old man Franz had basically caused the fire himself.  Old wiring and out-of-date appliances.  He had been warned.

The thing is, he had the wiring replaced.  He just didn’t tell those who needed to know except us.  It was like he knew what was going to happen.

“That fire was not caused by an electrical fault.”

The ex-sheriff was adamant and was checking the crime scene himself.  No one in the county was interested, a measure of how far Montgomery’s influence had reached.

“That would be me, I’m guessing,” my father said.  “Those hundred head of missing cattle turned up on the other side of the country, sold to a meat processor, with our brand overstamped.  It was very cleverly done, almost unnoticeable.”

I’d seen the photos sent by the meat works when they noticed an irregularity.  Too late to stop the slaughter.  Too late to do anything about it.

“It’s time.  We’re retiring in Florida.  We got just enough to buy a condo and spend a few years cruising.  Take the offer and get out, Jake.”

The sheriff was still recovering from an ambush attack that left his deputy dead and him a hospital case.  He would have gone back to work if he was fit, but then he lost the election.

The campaign to depose him was very dirty.  Politics was threaded through even the minor elections, and that was driving the politicised landscape, a problem we never had before the developers and new arrivals.

Pity.

I guess it was time for all of us to retire.

The conversation focussed on who was next, not what we could do about it, and I think that was the measure of our impotence.  There was just not enough of us to make a change.

That’s when a lone voice at the table spoke, my sister Marianne. “They haven’t won; they were never going to win.” 

An odd ethereal silence fell over the room.

“In a sense they have,” our father said.

“Not where it matters, as they will soon discover.”

“What do you mean?” Her mother looked worried.  Marianne had suffered a bad few months recently with the Montgomery juniors’ bullying.

The daughter was as bad as the son.

“I put a curse on the whole family “

That was something else about Marianne that had worried me.  A week or two ago I had accidentally walked in on her and four of her friends sitting inside a pentagram chanting what sounded like Latin.

Several books around them had what were supposedly spells, one she said would bring down hellfire and damnation on the Montgomeries.

Wishful thinking, I’d said, but if it made her feel better…

“Yes, dear,” her mother said.  She was going to, as she had in the face of increasing agitation, just ignore it as a phase.

Then added her two cents’ worth to the conversation, “Perhaps it’s time we moved on.  Nothing lasts forever, as much as we hoped it would.”

I was sure a few of those sitting around the table hoped the curse would work.

The silence lasted about another minute and a half before Harvey, one of the ranch hands, came bursting into the room and went over to our father.  I heard him mutter in his ear, “There’s a fire in the town, it’s bad.”

Several of the men around the table were volunteer firefighters, surprised they hadn’t got the callout.

In a matter of seconds, Marianne and I were the only two left in the room. I would have joined the exodus, but I suspected there was more to this curse thing.

She had a curious, if not demonic, expression.

“What did you do?”  A very bad feeling came over me.

“We ensured that Montgomery will never forget that despite his blind faith in his invincibility, he is as vulnerable as anyone else.  Wealth and power cannot prevent the inevitability of moral justice.”

Now she was scaring me.  Her conversations were scathing at best, every sentence starting or ending with a like or but.

She stood.  “Come.”  She held out her hand towards me.  “Let us go and witness the very essence of retribution.”

I found it impossible to resist the invitation. 

Perhaps she was a witch.

…

A crowd had gathered.  Deputies had put up a tape line to keep them back.

As we got close, we could see the smoke billowing into the air, and on the breeze, that acrid aroma of the smoke.

The fire was in the library, attached to City Hall, old sandstone buildings built at the turn of the last century, but they were a fire hazard, so much wood and paper.

Flames were coming out of the windows and the roof.  Three fire engines were fighting a losing battle, fire hoses snaking in all directions and men running, dressed in fireproof suits and breathing apparatus.

As we took up a position between two of the new families, their kids more interested in the fire trucks than the fire, we were joined by several of her friends, the girls who had been with her in the pentagram.

None spoke, but I got the feeling they knew something about what was happening.

Then we all heard a shout, coming from outside the front entrance to the library, where a firefighter in full protective gear stumbled out the doorway. “There are people inside. I heard the screams; there’s nothing we could do.  It’s horrible.”

He collapsed, and two other firefighters came over and helped him over to the ambulance.

I knew then that it had to be a member or members of the Montgomery family.  How they got in there, why they were in there, if they were in there, was a question more than just me would be asking.

Especially if they died in that fire.

And whether it was proven that the fire was not from natural causes and was started by someone.

I looked at my sister.  Her expression was unreadable, the sort of expressionless face one would expect from a poker player.  Her friends were not so good at hiding their feelings.

“You called this retribution,” I said quietly beside her.

I watched two suited firemen go into the building, and the come back out just as flames leapt through the door after them.

It was followed by a heavy cracking sound, and I think that was the roof crashing down.

No one was going to be saved, whoever was in there.

“God answered our prayers.  The Montgomerys are a scourge on the landscape.  If it was them, then it’s good riddance.  I’ve seen enough.”  She looked at the other girls.  “Let’s go to the church and pray for their souls “

…

It was two days before the fire died out and the investigators went in.  It took a week after that for a partial report to be leaked to the townsfolk.

Apparently my sister’s only fault was that she had cursed the family, and everyone knew she was not a witch, so she was taking credit for something she hadn’t done.

The problem was, there wasn’t anyone who could be found in the residue, as it had been expected they’d find bones or partial bones.

The firefighters had sworn he heard cries for help behind the wall of flames.

The thing is, they couldn’t find anyone, missing or otherwise, in the wreckage.  But missing people there were: the whole Montgomery family.

Their cars were missing, and key possessions were missing, and their bank accounts were emptied.  There was just no reason why they should leave now.

The thing is, people who had been aligned with the Montgonerys took a step back and then decided they were no longer aligned with them, and came to the former mayor and asked him to reinvent the town, back to the way it was.

No, we didn’t exactly get our town back; we had gone down a path there was no coming back from.  We just had to live with it, and keep going.

And for a while it was good.

Then rumours circulated that the Montgomerys had died in the fire, all of them.  Despite reports that the Montgomeries had been seen in the next County the day after the fire was extinguished.

Nothing made sense, and it became town folklore.

Until…

…

I was sitting in the lawyers’ office; the one overlooking the park outside city hall.  The one they had renovated after that eventful fire sixty years ago, almost to the day.

Robert Penthaven, son of the son of the man who tended my father’s affairs, had called me and said there were details about my sister’s passing that needed clearing up.

The last time I had to sit in the chair was after my father died and my sister and I inherited the ranch.  She wasn’t interested, having long moved away, but retained her interest in it. 

I thought it was to formalise the passing of her interest to me.  I was passing mine to my son, who thankfully wanted to be a rancher and not relocate to the city.

I’d waited almost a half hour and thought I’d nodded off because, as softly as he tried to close the door it woke me with a start.

“Sorry,” he said, dropping into the more comfortable chair behind the desk.  “Simple things take much longer these days.”

He opened a drawer in the desk and pulled out a file, a quite thick file.  An envelope was clipped to the cover.  He unclipped it and slid it across the table.  “For you, after she died.”

“Words from the grave.”

“Or grave words, maybe.  She was a curious one, your sister.  I never quite knew when she was joking or when she wasn’t.”

“Did she tell you she was a witch?”

“Among other things.  She once said she was the keeper of secrets, and one in particular, one that she said she would take to the grave.  We are all a bit like that; things happen, and we wish to forget.  Perhaps that letter might shed some light.”

“Or tell me it’s time to stand on my own two feet.  Older siblings are like that.”

I picked up the envelope and held it in my hand.  One sheet, three at the most.  The question was whether I wanted to read it.

I shrugged and opened it.  Robert stood.  “I’ll be outside if you need me.”  He went out and closed the door behind him.

I unfolded the sheets.  Two.  Written in her spidery writing, almost illegible.  She had wanted to be a doctor and settled for nurse practitioner. 

She would have made a great doctor.

Kyle,

There are beginnings, there are endings, and all the rest is the consequences of life.

Sometimes it is not the life you wanted, but simply the life you get according to your choices.

I never knew what I really wanted, but it wasn’t to be raped by Archie Montgomery.  Nor did any of my friends.  We became The Five, who could have become victims.

We did not.

We decided to rid the world of a problem.

This is not a confession.  We did not sin against natural justice.  A thoroughly bad person was tried in God’s eyes and received the punishment he was due.

He burned in hell.

The shame of it was that his family tried to save him, and died in vain.  It was not what we wanted; we had nothing to do with their deaths, and had they left well alone, they would have lived.

I can’t say they’re in a better place.

I can’t say we ended up in a better place, but as far as I’m concerned, I have atoned for my sins.

He never hurt another girl.

That family never hurt another soul.

Our town did not miss them, as they did not miss The Five.  It was no longer our town. 

If they ever pull down the library and dig new foundations, they will find them, all seven.  Let’s hope that it’s not in your lifetime.  It won’t be in mine, or the rest of The Five. 

We have all moved on, hopefully to a better place.

Keep the secret or not, it’s up to you, but I suspect that age-old statement ‘let sleeping dogs lie’ might be appropriate here.

May your life be happy and content.  The ranch is yours to leave to Kyle Junior, as it should be.

Meg.

I think I sat there staring at the pages without seeing them, feeling the tears running down my cheeks, now understanding the enigma my sister had become.

If she had told me that fateful night we were standing outside the burning library, I would not have believed her, and I don’t think I did now.  There was a long list of those who wanted all of the dead.  It would be easy to claim responsibility now when I couldn’t cross-examine her.

But what’s done is done. 

The sleeping dogs would lie.

…

©  Charles Heath  2026