Orenda - Chapter One

CHAPTER 1

The sleek red Porsche veered effortlessly off the interstate highway, barely slowing at the foot of the exit ramp, and flowed onto the hole-pocked, two-lane asphalt road, which would carry it into the middle of the deserted village of Zoar, Ohio.

The driver, Paul Neiderhaus, felt as if he were slipping backwards in time, entering another millennium. The sophisticated sports car seemed out of context with its surroundings, and Paul imagined himself to be piloting a time machine back into another, simpler age.

Neiderhaus, an assistant professor of Political Science at Ohio State University, was in Zoar to do research towards his PhD. Zoar interested him for many reasons, but his academic interest was perked by the fact that the little Utopian experiment had succeeded for many generations. He wanted to find out why it had suddenly failed just as its success had been crowned with the ability to send its scions off to distant colleges.

It was late afternoon as he steered the Porsche through the well kept but deserted streets. He halted in the shade of a large Elm tree, which had somehow avoided the blight, which had rendered virtually all of its kind extinct in this part of America during the 1950’s,that still guarded this corner of the old town square. The square showed signs of neglect.

The decorative bushes were untrimmed, and sent their now leafless branches in every direction imaginable. These bushes formed a wall entirely around the square, broken only once on each side to allow entrance, and seemed to Paul to form a second line of defense, after the stately row of Elm trees. Inside the two boxes, a thick covering of red and yellow leaves lay as a blanket that had been carelessly tossed down; lumps here and there where the leaves had drifted against, and over, unseen obstacles.

Paul stepped out of the Porsche, and strolled across the square. He enjoyed the crunch of the leaves when he stepped on them, and the scuttling noises they made when a breeze stirred them. He tried to visualize what life must have been like here two hundred years ago when the small band of German idealists, who would now be called `Communists', had settled here among the rolling hills and verdant life of the Tuscawarus River valley.

His ancestors had been among those settlers, which was another of the reasons he was interested in doing research here. Most of his life he had heard about life in Zoar, and it was almost as if he had entered a foreign country of which his ancestors had spoken reverently of, as `the old country'.

Johann Neiderhaus, Paul’s grandfather, had left the village for college, and upon graduation had opted not to return. Instead, he migrated to Buffalo, New York, where he established a successful pharmacy. He had never forgotten the rich heritage he had inherited from the German commune, and had spent countless hours passing the legends that grew from the early settlement on to his two grandsons. Paul often wondered why the old man never went back, for he seemed to miss it so.

Johan had never accepted the demise of the commune. He considered himself unique in leaving. But, according to Paul's father, who knew of Zoar through more than just the old man’s tales, the young people who were sent off to college invariable refused to the return to the rigorous, boring lifestyle. Consequently, as the older generations died off, the town slowly faded with them.

The village was, however, a historical novelty, so the state of Ohio had taken over what land it could, and purchased what it could not obtain for free, and turned the remnants of the failed experiment in communism into a tourist attraction. All that was left, really, were the empty shells of buildings, which would have long since followed their builders, were it not for the meager maintenance program paid for by the state.

Paul wandered among the empty buildings, wondering how they had kept the generations here that had stayed. He knew that he judged the commune harshly, and wrongly, because the world in which he lived was quite a bit different than the one the settlers had occupied.

As the sun dipped over the horizon, the temperature began to nosedive. Paul, with only a flimsy windbreaker for warmth, shivered. He walked quickly back to where he had parked his car.

Paul had originally hoped to find a hotel or boarding house in Zoar proper, but as he examined the town he realized that there was absolutely no place for him to rent a room. He was surprised and a bit disappointed, because he had not expected to find a ghost town. He had passed a modern motel, one of a large chain, a few miles north on the interstate. He decided to go out to it for the night. Slowly, he drove out of town.

As he passed the last block before entering the two-lane asphalt road, which would carry him back to the interstate highway, a flashing red and blue neon sign caught his eye. It was located about a block off the main road. He could see that it was a cafe, dingy and run down. The false front, which had been erected to give the impression of a second story, now leaned precariously outward toward the street. Paul marked the shabby looking place in his memory as the spot for some coffee, and with luck, some information in the morning.

Just in glancing at the cafe, he knew that it was one of those Ma and Pa businesses which existed solely because the land they sat on and the building they occupied had been paid for many years before, when times were better. With an almost non-existent overhead, a diligent couple that worked from sun-up until dark, seven days a week, could still glean a small profit from such an operation. Try as he might, Paul could not see much difference between that existence and one confined to a prison cell. He felt sorry for the people who lived for a small business, but at the same time, he admired their strong wills.

Paul was a teacher, and the main reason he liked the profession was because of the freedom it provided. Many told him that they found the teaching profession too confining, but Paul saw it differently. Certainly he had to spend many hours in a classroom, going over the same boring material term after term; but weekends and summers were his to do with as he pleased. He also enjoyed, and felt at home in, the academic atmosphere of the large campus, where people constantly surrounded him. He found conversation with students and other members of the staff intellectually stimulating, even titillating, and could not imagine spending his life doing anything else.

His father, of course, had wanted him to go into the family pharmacy business. But Paul had made it clear in his teen-age years that he simply was not interested. His father had taken this news hard. It had been nearly as severe a blow to the old man as when Paul's elder brother, Carl, had been killed just on the verge of attaining manhood. He had fussed and carried on so much that Paul had nearly relented, smitten with the fervent loyalty of adolescence. His mother had rescued him by pointing out to his father that this was probably the exact way that old Johan’s father had reacted to the news that the young college graduate was not returning to Zoar.

His father had given up after that, and now, with plenty of money to live comfortably on, kept the business open mainly in the hope that Paul would someday marry and produce a grandson who just might be interested in a well-established, profitable pharmacy. He never missed a chance to urge Paul on to matrimony and fatherhood.

Paul pulled into the motel's well-lit parking lot. He stepped out of the Porsche, retrieved his suitcase from the trunk, and leaned against the hood of the small car, letting the chill north wind wash over him. He shivered slightly, as if in a cold, mind-clearing shower.

Nights like this made him homesick. In the large old farmhouse on the outskirts of Buffalo, a fire roaring in the main fireplace, the Neiderhaus family would feel a special bond. It was the same bond of mutual security that their cave dwelling ancestors had felt when the freezing, arctic blasts came whistling in from the north, but could not enter their fire-warmed haven. The family would absorb themselves in the cheerful pop and hiss of the life sustaining fire, and listen as the cold winds soughing across the lakes from Ontario, picked and scratched; probing for cracks in the sturdy old house. Sometimes, the wind would bring with it the mournful howling of hungry wolves; and that soul-chilling sound would make them heap extra wood onto the already roaring fire. Not that any additional heat was required, but for the sense of safety and security the leaping flames brought.

Before Paul's grandfather, Johan, had died, he filled these winter nights with stories of Zoar. The whistling wind would act as a backdrop, sighing around the farmhouse, as if to add emphasis to a colorful phrase, or punctuate a strong or frightening statement. His tales were rich with Germanic names, interwoven with deeds often bordering on the mystical. On particularly nasty nights, when it seemed as if the wind would somehow crack the sturdy house open and let the shrieking banshees of winter in, Johan would tell horror stories that had been passed down through the generations of Zoar. The two young brothers would sit cross-legged on the floor beneath and in front of Johan’s creaking rocking chair, and listen, wide-eyed; accepting all that the old man said as gospel. There were many such frightening tales, which had been used by the pioneering parents of Zoar to keep children in the safe confines of their cabins after dark. They worked the same magic on the two Neiderhaus boys as they had on the scions of Zoar two centuries earlier.

Paul had dearly loved the old man, and could still visualize him clearly. The nearly round face, perched atop his thick German neck, crinkled constantly with smiles. His nose was shiny, usually red, and contrasted sharply with his sparkling blue eyes, which peeped out of thick white whiskers that covered all but those two features, and his heavily lined forehead. The passing of Johan had been the second most tragic event of young Paul's life.

The most tragic had been the trauma of Carl’s death. It had affected the entire family in ways beyond the normal flow of life and death. In Johan's case, death seemed a natural, if sad, link in the series of events that make up a normal lifespan. Carl, however, was struck down at the end of adolescence, the beginning of life. That fact made the tragedy worse, for not only did they mourn the loss of a son and brother, but also they mourned the fact that young Carl had not yet fully lived.

To his father, it was the loss of his hope, his first son and heir to everything he stood for. He had never really gotten over it, and his method of raising his remaining son, Paul, changed dramatically. Paul had not been allowed the freedom, which Carl had enjoyed. He was not allowed into the wilderness by himself any longer, or even with his friends. If he went to the woods, he was accompanied by his father, who insisted on being heavily armed after what had happened to Carl.

Paul's mother grieved for her lost first-born, but soon had transferred the special love she felt for Carl over to Paul. She had not forgotten Carl, but had found a way to alleviate the suffering his death had brought to her.

Paul missed his staunch playmate and protector. He was lonely on the farm without Carl. He took to spending more time reading instead of playing outside, because there was no one to play with. He had not fully understood the controversy that raged around Carl's violent death.

Police officials said that Carl, as well as the boy accompanying him, had been killed by a hunger-maddened bear. A search for the dangerous rogue was launched, but the animal was never sighted. Paul's father accepted the bear explanation, but Johan tended to see something darker in the death, and subscribed to another theory. It was not completely unfounded, because there was a darker, evil speculation that ran in crosscurrents to the bear theory; begun by some of the men who had helped to recover the mutilated bodies.

There were some who thought that the two boys had not been killed by an animal at all, but by a man or men. The basis for this idea resided in the fact that human, albeit barefoot, prints were found mingled with those of the bear tracks. But the most convincing evidence for this dark theory was the fact that Carl's penis had been mutilated. Although the coroner confirmed that Carl had died as a result of a broken neck, the mutilation of his genitalia and the disturbing fact that a decapitated dog was also found at the scene led many to believe that the murders had been committed by a sexual pervert. More disturbing to the community was the idea put forth by Waneka's town constable, that perhaps the two boys had been killed ritualistically by one of the Satanic cults which were popping up at the time.

Paul’s mother refused to accept any theory other than that of a crazed wild beast. She could not bear the thought of her child being purposely mutilated by another human being. She would not even listen to the various theories being bantered about concerning the deaths, because the images they called forth into her mind were too painful. She could stand the idea of hungry, wild beast, attacking her Carl; but could not bear the idea that his death had been calculated to serve some maniacal purpose.

It had taken the Neiderhaus family many months to overcome the grief and torment of losing Carl. But they had great strength, especially as a unit, and eventually life resumed a normal flow.

For Paul, normalcy gradually changed, and he became more introverted. The loss of Carl had shattered his life-long belief in a merciful, benevolent God. In fact, in the simple black and white world of adolescence, God became the villain who had brutally torn Carl from this world. After all, the youngster reasoned, if God were to get the thanks for the blessings of this world, it necessarily followed that he should get the blame for the tragedies. Paul rebelled against his family's strong religious practices in small ways at first; refusing to bow his head during the nightly saying of grace; playing hooky from Sunday School. Finally, in his junior year of high school, he openly declared himself an Atheist.

This attitude was not acceptable to his immediate family, who insisted that he spend some time talking to their minister. The Reverend Silas Barker tried to counsel the young man, but realized that he could not dislodge the implicit logic in the boy's reasoning. Instead of preaching at him, or threatening him with everlasting hell, Barker suggested that the boy study some philosophy.

Paul was soon immersed in the study of the great minds that had sought to explain the unexplainable. It kindled in him a new interest in academics, and he developed a keenly analytical viewpoint. Quickly and methodically, he could pick to pieces any argument not based on logical deduction, and render it ludicrous. Then he discarded it on the dung heap where he placed any idea based wholly or in part on the supernatural. If a concept could not be validated through the five senses, Paul simply did not consider it worth discussing.

His father’s insistence on going into the wilderness only if heavily armed also colored the youngster's outlook. The carefree and boundless joy Carl and he had felt in the woodlands around them changed to an alert fearfulness. Gradually, he came to dislike the out-of-doors. Through the years this unacknowledged fear grew, until Paul subconsciously tried to never allow himself to be placed in a position where he would have to venture far from the clusterings of buildings and people of civilization.

On those occasions when going into the out-of-doors for an extended period were unavoidable without publicly acknowledging his fearfulness, Paul would begin to tense. His senses would go on alert. His eyes, constantly scanning the alien territory, missed very few of the movements around them. His ears would pick up sounds that others overlooked, and his head would cock to clarify their source. When finally he got back to the security of the city, he would feel totally drained, absurdly out of proportion with the amount of energy he had expended.

This made him somewhat of an oddball among the farm bred, outdoor oriented youth he went to school with. But the change had come over him so gradually that any of his old schoolmates, if questioned about him today, would remember Paul only as a studious, quiet boy, obsessed with some strange ideas about religion; having completely forgotten his free-spirited and rough-house antics when he and his elder brother Carl had romped gleefully through the woods and playgrounds of pre-adolescence.

Carl shook his head, consciously bringing himself back to the present, and realized that he was freezing. Quickly he walked into the brightly lit lobby of the motel, went to the front desk and registered. Then he strolled into the bar for a nightcap before retiring.