Hogsback trail and Vampire Valley -The Curious Disappearance of Jeremy Morton

Reader: I was not a man that believed in ghost stories.  I was what you might call “true unbeliever.”  Even when I was a kid, sitting around the campfire with my two older brothers and younger sister as they tried their best to scare me.  When they told me about the by-now overdone bloody hook hung from the handle of the passenger-side door story, I just laughed at them. 

I never thought much about UFO’s, ghosts, the supernatural, or anything the goes bump in the night.  For me, a straight as an arrow Police recruit, the only malevolence I ever saw was in the heart of evil men.  That is, before I spent the last two years digging into a supposed closed case of Jeremy Morton.  It was four years ago, and two before I took over the reins of the Reeseville, Indiana police department that he had disappeared. 

I'm sure you heard about it at the time.  It was in all the papers.  We even had the television people come down to visit us for a spell.  

This is the entire text, handwritten and found on a park bench two years ago.  

To whom it may concern,   

It’s been one long, strange trip from here to there and back here again. 

As I sit on the park bench, I’m staring straight ahead to the entrance of the bike trail.  There’s a large wooden sign right next to me.  It has arrows on it: This way to the Business District, this way to the municipal pool and camping; that way to Hogsback state trail.

I watch as a young couple disappears into the trees that overhang the trail.  Blissfully they peddle off on a sunny Sunday afternoon.  I sigh.

I have yet to work up the courage to ride that trail again.  I can’t even bring myself to ride a bike yet.  The Doctors tell me I have to be careful, you know?  Brain injury and all.  I haven’t yet, but right now I’m trying to get everything scribbled in this old notebook.   It’s like trying to remember the dream you had last night before it all fades away. Though the dream was so real, it dwindles more and more with time.  But this was no dream.  I still say it was real.  I know it was real. 

But I’m also thinking of her, the love of my life…. lives; Clarissa Saunders Morton. But I have to make sure I have this down on paper before I completely lose it.  When we first met she said “Say my name again: It’s Clarissa.” 

Her name sounded like warm summer rain drops splashing against a window pane.  I close my eyes for a moment.  

Sorry.

I don’t care what the Doctors here in 2017 say.  I know in my heart that I had lived with Clarissa for thirty five joyful years.  She was my wife. We raised a family, two boys.  We kept a farm and raised chickens and cows.  We cultivated wheat and corn.  We had horses and loved to dance together at the carriage Inn which was just across the field from our home.  The year was 1887.