What follows has been edited for content and relevance to the ongoing investigation
into events in Sugar Creek, Ohio on the night of September 26-27, 2015.
into events in Sugar Creek, Ohio on the night of September 26-27, 2015.
December 31, 2013
I am in a state of what may be the closest I will ever come to pure bliss in my entire life. I am sitting in the comfy chair in my office, dressed in my New Year's best, including my brand-new slippers and smoking jacket my dear, darling wife gifted me with for Christmas. I am sipping twelve-year-old Glenfiddich, a present from one of my old colleagues who still speaks to me and even kind-of still likes me. I'm not smoking a damn thing in spite of the jacket, because I actually want to taste this fine elixir with all of its peaty goodness before I get too buzzed to taste anything. I hear the laughter and the jollity of my friends and family in the next room as we count down the minutes to 2014, but only faintly, as I am also listening to my gift from my dearest jewel of a daughter: Disc Two of The Corries boxed set playing a 1976 concert version of "Loch Lomond." Listening to Roy Williamson's sad, wistful rendition of this shamefully abused tune melts even my flinty Caledonian-American heart, although I'm sure the scotch helps.
Two things you may have noticed: one, I am, as the kids like to say in their text-speak, "Scottish AF," at least on weekends and holidays. Two, this famous folk duo's name happens to dovetail with my own. Tell me about it: I first noticed this when I was ten, and I've been a fan ever since. It's some beautiful stuff, and dear, sweet Randi took pity on her technology-challenged old man and bought it all for me on compact disc. I'd say my cup runneth over, but I keep emptying it too fast. (Rimshot!) I wish so badly that this feeling could last longer.
But the clouds outside just parted. The waning moon is like a searchlight, illuminating the frozen lawn like daytime. Through the window, I can see all the way down it to the Creek, which, unlike the lawn, refuses to freeze. I'm imagining that sluggish current, oozing from the that black hole in the woods like pus from an infected wound. That black hole, into which my beautiful music and delicious tipsy joy disappears. That f_____g unknowable abyss, which this week became just a tiny bit more knowable.
I am in a state of what may be the closest I will ever come to pure bliss in my entire life. I am sitting in the comfy chair in my office, dressed in my New Year's best, including my brand-new slippers and smoking jacket my dear, darling wife gifted me with for Christmas. I am sipping twelve-year-old Glenfiddich, a present from one of my old colleagues who still speaks to me and even kind-of still likes me. I'm not smoking a damn thing in spite of the jacket, because I actually want to taste this fine elixir with all of its peaty goodness before I get too buzzed to taste anything. I hear the laughter and the jollity of my friends and family in the next room as we count down the minutes to 2014, but only faintly, as I am also listening to my gift from my dearest jewel of a daughter: Disc Two of The Corries boxed set playing a 1976 concert version of "Loch Lomond." Listening to Roy Williamson's sad, wistful rendition of this shamefully abused tune melts even my flinty Caledonian-American heart, although I'm sure the scotch helps.
Two things you may have noticed: one, I am, as the kids like to say in their text-speak, "Scottish AF," at least on weekends and holidays. Two, this famous folk duo's name happens to dovetail with my own. Tell me about it: I first noticed this when I was ten, and I've been a fan ever since. It's some beautiful stuff, and dear, sweet Randi took pity on her technology-challenged old man and bought it all for me on compact disc. I'd say my cup runneth over, but I keep emptying it too fast. (Rimshot!) I wish so badly that this feeling could last longer.
But the clouds outside just parted. The waning moon is like a searchlight, illuminating the frozen lawn like daytime. Through the window, I can see all the way down it to the Creek, which, unlike the lawn, refuses to freeze. I'm imagining that sluggish current, oozing from the that black hole in the woods like pus from an infected wound. That black hole, into which my beautiful music and delicious tipsy joy disappears. That f_____g unknowable abyss, which this week became just a tiny bit more knowable.
What stares back?
I went looking for that man in my dream. I didn't want to. I wanted to take everything I found and chuck it all into that filthy water and go back to corroding away on my front porch. I wanted to. But I also wanted to f_____g sleep through the night again and for my wife not to move out of the house, so I went looking. I Googled, I Binged, I might have Ask-dot-commed in a moment of weakness. I talked Rachel into a Take-Your-Husband-To-Work Day and searched through newspaper archives, which only reliably went back to 1901 and unreliably back to 1869 and didn't help at all. I went to our tiny, pathetic library, whose sole librarian gave me the bright idea of going to the town archives, which I should have done in the first place. I went and I searched all the way back to the town charter itself, drafted in September 1815, with its register of founding families. One name, a solitary man among all those nuclear clusters, stood out against that ancient yellowed page as if written in blood.
Owen Hollister, Sergeant, Regiment of Riflemen. Part of a unit attached to Andrew Jackson at the Battle of New Orleans. Mustered out March, 1815. Joined a party of settlers heading north from Cincinnati into the wild hinterlands of Ohio, and signed his name more obnoxiously than John Hancock on the document that birthed this place into being.
And then...? No death was recorded for this man in the register. All there was next to his name was the following cryptic statement and date:
Lost, October 1815.
I went back to the library and adjusted my search to anything resembling a history of the town. The librarian brought me a tiny little book that looked as if it hadn't seen the light of day since it was printed. The catalog record confirmed this, saying the book had not been checked out once since the library bought it in 1986. The book was a self-published light history of the town written, to my shock and amazement, by a local writer! The idea that Sugar Creek had produced anyone of literary merit was as insane an idea to me as mammaries on a male bovine.
"Lovely, Dark and Sweet: Stories from Sugar Creek" was the title, and it shared selected trivia and folktales from the town's founding up to 1985. The very first story was about "The Lost Founder," a sullen, melancholy war veteran for whom the town's founding was nothing less than a chance for redemption after years of killing. If that's what Owen Hollister wanted, though, it was pretty clear he didn't get it, and he withdrew from his fellow townsfolk almost before the ink on the charter had dried. The last time Hollister was seen was early one fall morning, plodding slowly and sadly along the Creek Road, now Logan Road, toward the woods.
The book didn't speculate on the man's fate, but the tone of the story implies suicide. It makes some sense of the cursory verdict in the register: they would have wanted this handled discreetly. But I think of my dream, and I wonder...could lost literally mean lost? For all intents and purposes, he just vanished without a trace, his true demise unknown.
Until three and-a-half weeks ago, I suppose. When I got to watch him get ripped limb from limb through the eyes of his murderer.
Godd__nit! I feel like a f_____g idiot for even putting this to paper! Everything in me revolts against this woo-woo psychic bullshit idea forming in my head. Yeah, these dreams are spawning a lot of wild coincidence, but that's all it is. This is all coming from somewhere in my subconscious, something I saw out of the corner of my eye, or read and dismissed, or heard in passing. Or something other than f_____g ghosts screening their home movies in my godd__n sleep!
Three minutes to midnight. My buzz is long gone, the music seems dissonant in my ears. I'm cold and uneasy and I want to be in a well-lit place among people again. I checked the book out*, and it lies on the desk in front of me, daring me to read more. Maybe next year.
Owen Hollister, Sergeant, Regiment of Riflemen. Part of a unit attached to Andrew Jackson at the Battle of New Orleans. Mustered out March, 1815. Joined a party of settlers heading north from Cincinnati into the wild hinterlands of Ohio, and signed his name more obnoxiously than John Hancock on the document that birthed this place into being.
And then...? No death was recorded for this man in the register. All there was next to his name was the following cryptic statement and date:
Lost, October 1815.
I went back to the library and adjusted my search to anything resembling a history of the town. The librarian brought me a tiny little book that looked as if it hadn't seen the light of day since it was printed. The catalog record confirmed this, saying the book had not been checked out once since the library bought it in 1986. The book was a self-published light history of the town written, to my shock and amazement, by a local writer! The idea that Sugar Creek had produced anyone of literary merit was as insane an idea to me as mammaries on a male bovine.
"Lovely, Dark and Sweet: Stories from Sugar Creek" was the title, and it shared selected trivia and folktales from the town's founding up to 1985. The very first story was about "The Lost Founder," a sullen, melancholy war veteran for whom the town's founding was nothing less than a chance for redemption after years of killing. If that's what Owen Hollister wanted, though, it was pretty clear he didn't get it, and he withdrew from his fellow townsfolk almost before the ink on the charter had dried. The last time Hollister was seen was early one fall morning, plodding slowly and sadly along the Creek Road, now Logan Road, toward the woods.
The book didn't speculate on the man's fate, but the tone of the story implies suicide. It makes some sense of the cursory verdict in the register: they would have wanted this handled discreetly. But I think of my dream, and I wonder...could lost literally mean lost? For all intents and purposes, he just vanished without a trace, his true demise unknown.
Until three and-a-half weeks ago, I suppose. When I got to watch him get ripped limb from limb through the eyes of his murderer.
Godd__nit! I feel like a f_____g idiot for even putting this to paper! Everything in me revolts against this woo-woo psychic bullshit idea forming in my head. Yeah, these dreams are spawning a lot of wild coincidence, but that's all it is. This is all coming from somewhere in my subconscious, something I saw out of the corner of my eye, or read and dismissed, or heard in passing. Or something other than f_____g ghosts screening their home movies in my godd__n sleep!
Three minutes to midnight. My buzz is long gone, the music seems dissonant in my ears. I'm cold and uneasy and I want to be in a well-lit place among people again. I checked the book out*, and it lies on the desk in front of me, daring me to read more. Maybe next year.
*Note: Records confirm the book Lovely, Dark and Sweet: Stories of Sugar Creek by J.L. Preston (see above) was checked out of the Sugar Creek Public Library by James Corrie on December 18, 2013 and never returned. After multiple searches of the Corrie property, it has yet to be located. Due to its relative obscurity, duplicate copies are not known to exist, and the historical accounts Mr. Corrie relates from it cannot at this time be corroborated.
RSS Feed