The Journal of Arthur Pichler
I was jerked awake this morning by my car rocking violently as the result of a semi passing a little too close for comfort. It was still nighttime when I decided to pull off the road in the middle of Death Valley to get some sleep. That was 4 hours ago. Guess I needed it more than I thought, but I’m not surprised; I had been driving for almost 40 of the 55 hours that I’ve been cramped up in my car. I rubbed my eyes and put the car in gear.
My brother’s death came conveniently during my summer break making me the last remaining Pichler. I left him and my dad a year ago and went to college – community college in Bristol, just outside of Philly. I had to get as far away from them, their weirdness, their obsession with the desert, their lack of motivation to do anything with their lives, and… that mine. It was always like father-son bonding activity to go stare at the entrance of the mine, and by father-son, I mean my brother and my dad – I went with them once and watched them just stare at it for a few hours in near silence, then we left. I didn’t see the point, so I just stayed home after that.
Dad went missing the day I told him that I had received a federal loan to go to school in Pennsylvania and was found to have been involved in a hit and run five days later. He wasn’t in a car when he was hit. He seemed to be just wandering around the desert on some state road in the middle of nowhere. His body had apparently been obliterated by the collision and, at a cursory glance, unrecognizable as even human.
Unknown to me at the time, I reported him missing on the very day they found his body. It took about a week, but the state police finally put two and two together and requested DNA samples from his toothbrush, and identified the body as Henry Allan Pichler, my father.
My brother, on the other hand, seemed to have just gone insane in the time between my old man’s death and his own. He was about 6 years younger than me. He was 20, but to him and my dad, I was treated as his inferior – like a younger sibling. He was caught breaking and entering in the nearest town to the house we grew up in. He had woken the inhabitants when the door to their bedroom squeaked open and there he was – knife in hand and a surprised look when they turned on their bedside lamp. He panicked and tried to flee, but tripped and landed his dumbass on the knife. That’s not what killed him though. He committed suicide while awaiting trial.
According to the sheriff, he was found to have died from self-inflicted strangulation. “Before he died,” the sheriff told me over the phone upon notifying me of his death, “he scrawled the word ‘sliver' all over the cell walls… does that, er… mean anything to you?”
It didn’t. I had the feeling I had seen that word in an unusual context, but for the life of me, I couldn’t remember when or where.
It doesn't matter. As the last living Pichler, I am to inherit the house, land, and the family fortune. That’s right, we weren’t poor. Well, my dad and brother weren’t. I moved to Pennsylvania with $200 in a used 2004 Toyota Camry – the car I’m driving now to collect my inheritance.
Thankfully, it only took another 2 hours of driving to arrive at the house… my dad’s house. My house. It’s an old run-down place that might have been nice if anybody bothered to update it ever. It has an incredibly sturdy construction, however. It was built in the mid-1800s by my great great (great?) grandfather and has remained upright ever since. Well, he actually hired someone to build it.
It was strange being here again. I hadn’t been gone long, but the sameness of everything in and around the house gave me an uneasy feeling when it, at the same time, seemed wholly unrecognizable. As if I were remembering a dream.
The house was dusty; cobwebs hung like bunting in the corners of the ceiling and tiny bits of tumbleweed in the corners of the floor. Every step I took was met with audible protest from the creaking hardwood. The walls had the same old nick-nacks – mining relics, old albumen print photographs of people who I’ve never learned the names of, etc.
I made my way to what used to be my dad’s room to find it unsurprisingly in the same condition as last I saw it. I had never been in here unsupervised. I could finally satiate my desire to snoop around my old man’s things without him getting angry, and sometimes, he’d get angry.
He never hit any of us, but he would lose his shit on more than one occasion. His face seemed to have the ability to summon a devil-like appearance, the veins would bulge in a Y shape in his forehead to suggest that there were horns just beneath the skin trying to break free.
I began looking through the old man’s closet. There wasn’t much besides clothes, boots, a taxidermy bobcat that slid out from behind the folded louvered doors – scared the shit out of me.
After regaining my composure, I moved to the top of the closet. Up on the shelf above the hanger pole, there was a book. It had a layer of dust about a third of an inch thick. It hadn’t been touched in decades. I pulled it down and wiped the cover off on the old man’s bedspread. It was beautifully leather-bound and had silver top edge glit. On the cover, in decorative, silver, debossed lettering read, “The Journal of Arthur Pichler.”
I carefully opened the book. The pages were dry and brittle like the dead leaves I had seen in the fall back in Pennsylvania - the first fall I had ever experienced in my 26 years. The writing was elegant - calligraphy-like. After thumbing through, I finally landed on the first page and was shocked to see the date the first entry was written: “The 3rd of June, 1859.”
This book was almost as old as the house. I never heard the name Arthur before, but based on the last name and the date, I assumed this journal had to have belonged to my great, great, (great?) grandfather.
Only referenced by my dad as such – even he couldn’t keep up with how many greats he was – he was the man my dad said we should thank for what we had. He’d never go into detail, but anytime there was any sort of economic crisis or housing shortage, or just for the fuck of it, he’d tell us “you had better thank your great, great, great [give or take a great] grandpa for leavin’ behind all his money [and/or] land [and/or] house!” When North Korea was launching missiles over Japan, he even said “you’ll be glad we got that ol’ mine out there once the nukes start flyin'!” I’m sure his dad told him the same exact thing when he was a kid and his dad before that.
I wonder if this book had anything to do with why my dad and brother were the way they were. I wonder if there’s some clue to a secret treasure or something buried out on the property somewhere… or hidden in the mine somewhere. I was half-joking with myself, but thinking back to all the times they’d go out there and just stare at it and how obsessed they were with the desert in general, there may have been something to it. It might explain why so many generations of Pichlers resolved to stay right here, far from civilization, completely isolated, in this run-down shit hole.
I guess it wouldn’t hurt to read a few pages. If anything, it’ll put me to sleep. I needed the rest. I looked down at the dust-covered bedspread. Maybe I’ll read it in the living room.
The 3rd of June, 1859
I have not kept a journal of any sort before now, but due to recent events, my sanity has been cast into turmoil, and my proclivity for education and understanding is under constant threat of madness. It is for that purpose this journal is to be kept, lest my waning sanity prevents divulgence of the appropriate information to the scientific community if something should happen to me or mine. I will record important events and findings heretofore and thenceforth regarding but not limited to the premature birth of an abnormal boy on the 8th of March, 1859 – my own child.
Well, that’s fantastic, I thought, looks like insanity runs in the family.
I put my feet up on a dark-red suede ottoman. Dust flew out from it, turning the thin strips of sunlight coming into the room into ribbons of swirling particulates.
I continued reading.
Abigail, my wife, became pregnant with our first child some time in October of 1858. The pregnancy left her weak and sickly on the best of days and convulsive and unresponsive on the worst. A doctor from town on a house call determined it to be of no consequence, citing “all pregnancies are different.” Nonetheless, the doctor retrieved a bottle labeled “laudanum” from his bag and said it would “help with her nerves.”
I pulled out my phone to look up “laudanum,” but after 3 minutes of watching the load bar remain in the same place, I gave up. My phone is just a phone out here, so sayeth the desert.
As Abigail neared the end of the first trimester, her face had become gaunt – her once soft countenance had become a harsh blightscape of sunken features, her skin clung to the form of her bones as if it were as thin as gossamer, and her pregnant belly was like desiccated fruit, so much so that the child she bore appeared trapped under her skin rather than developing in her womb.
We had planned on sending for the doctor again to discuss Abigail’s rapidly failing health, but to our shock, Abigail fell into labor on the night of the 7th of March, 1859 and in the back, unused bedroom of our home, she spent 16 grueling hours to deliver our baby boy. But Abigail’s motherly instinct to cradle the child was disrupted by the look of terror on my face as sat between her still-open thighs, holding what came out of her.
Protecting Abigail from beholding the rotten fruit of her loins proved a useless endeavor because she could soon hear it – its cry was low in pitch and had the modulation similar to the lowing of a wounded cow.
Abigail’s brief glow of joy – the first that she had experienced in months – had all but instantly faded into sobs as she tentatively requested that I hand over the child to her. Upon my placing the child onto her bare chest, Abigail became hysterical – crying and screaming uncontrollably and covering her face with her hands.
I quickly took the child away from her and put it in the room that we had been getting ready for it where it cried that God-awful bellowing for the rest of the night.
I have only ever achieved a general study of human biology and child development, but one needn’t a medical degree to recognize the significance of a premature birth – one such as that that took place on the evening of March 7th – surviving for more than mere hours, to say nothing of it thriving for months, as what would turn out to be the case.
There was also the matter of the peculiar… deformations. I hesitate to use that particular word to describe the child’s anomalous anatomy, and soon, dear reader, you’ll understand why. But first, I will describe in layman’s terms what I consider to be medical oddities:
The child came into this world 4 months early and bottom first – a breech birth; the amniotic fluid that accompanied the birth was the smell, color, and consistency of crude; the placenta, however, seemed normal; the child’s legs were like that of a dog’s hindquarters – digitigrade to walk on the balls of the feet; the toes were long and seemed capable of grasping with the same strength of fingers; the arms extended the length of the body with fingers long enough to wrap around the child’s own head; the child’s face was thinner than any infant that I had ever seen – the skin was taut around the skull causing fine definition in the jaw, cheekbones and abnormally large eye sockets. As for lips and ears – there were none, instead present were traits reminiscent of a reptile: small holes on either side of the head where ears would be, and a thin ridge that, though capable of independent movement, held firm to the maxilla bone and mandible when the mouth was at rest; the child’s skin, to include eyelids, was translucent, causing the circulatory system to be quite visible and likely the result of the child having been born prematurely. I assume this to be the case of the absence of ears and lips as well.
Now then – as for the reason for disliking of the term “deformed" being used to describe the child – it is also the reason I had begun to document the development of it: the child’s anatomy doesn’t appear to handicap it in the slightest.
The child had already displayed extraordinary awareness and dexterity mere days after being born. I have taken to not putting diapers on it because it is able to undo the pins and free itself. Despite its apparent intelligence and capability, the child had preferred messing its bed to having it contained, in fact, it was perfectly content to lie in its own waste until such time that I would clean it up.
This by itself still isn’t the basis for documentation, the preceding was merely a preamble. Yesterday, on the 2nd day of June, 3 months after its birth and one month short of its original due date, I witnessed the child walking on all fours as if were its nature to do so.
I shut the book.
None of what I’ve read could have been true. I’m no medical genius either, but – deformed baby aside – I’m pretty sure that even with today’s medicine and technology, a baby born that premature doesn’t have a good chance of survival, let alone be able to fucking walk “on all fours" at three months old. This has to be fiction.
It’s all bullshit. Has to be.
I put my feet down and tossed the book onto the ottoman. I reached in my shirt pocket and pulled out my cigarettes. I lit one and sat there slouched over the ottoman with my arms resting lazily on my knees, letting the smoke from the cigarette cascade up my face as I held it in the corner of my lips. Just staring at the book.
“Goddammit,” I sighed and yanked the book off the ottoman and began reading again.
It happened late at night.
Abigail hadn’t seen, nor did she want to see, the child since the night of its birth. Needless to say, she didn’t want it anywhere near her breasts. I kept it alive by giving it Abigail’s breast milk that had been expressed using an empty squeeze-ball perfume bottle as a pump.
Abigail was, and still continues to be, bedridden to recover from the toll that carrying and birthing the child had taken on her physical body as well as her sanity; for the most part, she was catatonic, only responding infrequently to my urging her to eat. She could only eat soup, and only in small quantities.
Due to sleep deprivation caused by the child’s daily and nightly moaning and howling, that night I had collapsed in the parlor on a chaise lounge from exhaustion.
I was awoken, not by any noise or clamor, rather the lack of it. The child had stopped bellowing. I sat up and leaned towards the child’s room to listen more intently, but I still heard nothing.
Upon making my way to the corridor, I peered into the child’s room. Still befuddled from sleep, I was admittedly a bid unnerved to find that the child was no longer in its bassinet. It had just vanished.
For a brief moment, I considered the possibility that the past few months had been a horrible nightmare, and that I would go into my bedroom to find Abigail healthy and still pregnant.
I began walking down the corridor to our bedroom, picking the lamp from the hallway table and lighting it with a match. The lever squeaked as it lowered the glass over the flame.
I could see at the end of the corridor that the bedroom door was slightly ajar and it was black as oil inside.
I slowly opened the door the rest of the way, and I was aghast as to what I saw. There, crouched on the balls of its hind feet, leaning forward on its knuckles at the foot of the bed, staring at me in the door with glowing orange eyes that burned in the dark like embers, was the child.
It sat there for a moment with an expression that I interpreted as one conveying imperiousness as if it understood that I wanted it off of her, but did nothing to stop it. It knew I was afraid of it, and it knew that it could use that to assume dominion over me.
Slowly, it crawled headfirst off the bed while it displayed indifference to my presence. I moved aside as it walked slowly out of the room on all fours. The child had always made me feel uneasy, but watching it move was unnerving – its gait was like that of a jungle cat, but with longer front limbs; its shoulder blades peak and sink like a sea’s swell.
Abigail never rose during the event, and indeed, I haven’t told her about it. She has expressed in no uncertain terms her apprehension and at times, outright terror about the child even sharing residence with her. On one of her more sprightly and loquacious days, she spoke at length of nightmares that she would have in which the could swear that she saw it peering at her through the dark corners and doorways. I had not considered these dreams to be anything more until yesterday.
She had also displayed scratches on her face. I determined them to be self-inflicted because I had witnessed on more than one occasion, her grasping at her own face during a hysterical episode.
These episodes were triggered by the confliction of motherly instincts with intrusive thoughts of disdain, fear, and violence toward her own offspring. It was for these reasons that I began documenting the development of the child: to understand why it is the way it is and to have a record should anything happen.
The 18th of June, 1859
Abigail’s night terrors persist; however, I have not seen the child leave the room since that night of the 2nd of this month. The child has, however, taken to withdrawing into dark corners or behind furniture during the daytime hours in an apparent attempt to escape the sun. It shields its eyes even in the dimmest of light. I have hung thick draperies in the room because of this.
This detail in the child’s behavior has caused me to research myself in an attempt to better understand what role, if any, genetics has played into the… mutations of the child.
I too have an aversion to sunlight. Though not quite as severe as what the child demonstrates, my slight photophobia has played a significant part in many details of my own life, primarily, my occupation; however, it is my occupation that has determined where I live, geographically, and my place of employment is where I met Abigail.
After graduating from the University of Michigan's physical science program (out of only 49 others to have done so to this day), I would take a trip to New York City for holiday, but on the way there, a scheduling conflict had resulted in having to overnight in a coal town in Ohio.
The lifestyles of the miners there intrigued me and I would become elated at the idea of working underground. In the dark. Suddenly, it all seemed to make sense to me, but I didn’t understand why. I knew I wanted to be a miner, but Ohio was much too cold. I preferred a warmer, arid climate. So, financially aided by my reluctant adoptive parents, I bought some land and built a house near the Cerro Indigo silver mine in Death Valley and was quickly given employment as a general laborer, despite being educated and coming from a wealthy family.
I have much to learn of my own history in order to ascertain the significance of genetics in the development of the child. As I mentioned, I am adopted. Thomas and Anita Briggs of the highly successful Thaxton and Briggs Steam Engine Company took me in when I was five years of age. It’s unclear the precise circumstances that lead to this, but the decision was made due to the Briggs' inability to conceive a child of their own after years of trying. They wanted a male heir to their half of the company and fortune. They had brought me up to understand the business and much of the science behind what made the Thaxton and Briggs engine so successful.
The irony is that after I went to university, Anita Briggs surprisingly became pregnant at the age of 40 and gave birth to a healthy baby boy: Edward Allan Briggs.
I paused for a moment to reflect on the significance, if there were any, of what I had just read. My middle name is Allan, my brother’s middle name was Allan, and my father’s middle name was Allan. Dad said it was tradition to give Pichler men the middle name Allan. If Arthur was adopted, wouldn't his last name be Briggs? Where in the hell did "Pichler" come from?
I took a long drag off of my cigarette while keeping my feet propped up on the ottoman. I scanned across all the red-hued albumen prints hanging on the wall trying to figure out which, if any, were Arthur or Abigail.
As a matter of deduction, there was one photo that didn’t contain more than two people and wasn’t a picture of one or both parents with a child – that couldn’t be them though, they look more like brother and sister than husband and wife.
I narrowed my eyes to focus on the picture on the wall across from me as I took another drag. I kept darting back and forth to the other pictures, but I kept coming back to that one. I got up to get a closer look. There might be information on the back of these frames. I reached up to pick the picture of the man and woman off the wall and –
BANG BANG BANG
Startled, I dropped my cigarette.
“What the fuck,” I said aloud.
“Sheriff’s department,” a voice came from the front door followed by another BANG BANG BANG.
“Jesus,” I whispered to myself as I picked the still-lit cigarette up off the floor, “almost gave me a fuckin' heart attack.”
I opened the door to a uniformed man standing on the wooden patio. I must have been so fixed on those pictures that I didn’t even hear is heavy-booted footsteps on the old, loose redwood boards.
“Mornin'," he said, “you must be Gregory Pichler's brother, we spoke on the phone a few days back.” The end of his sentence had an upward inflection as if he were asking a question.
“That’s right. What brings you out?”
He looked left and right along the wall of the front of the house before looking back at me, “mind if I come inside?”
I stood to the side of the door and gestured. He took off his hat and placed it on top of a lawyer’s bookcase and a ring of dust puffed out from beneath it.
“You know who this woman is?” He held out an enlarged print of an old Polaroid of me, my brother when we were little kids, and my mom.
“That’s my mom, Judith Pichler.”
“Judith… Pichler? As in Henry’s wife?” he asked.
“Uh… yeah,” I scoffed.
“We don’t have any records that Henry was ever married.”
I shrugged, “common law then, I guess.”
“Where is Judith now?” he turned his head slightly but his eyes still focused on mine.
“She died when I was 10. Like, 16 years ago.”
He stepped a bit closer, “how did she die?”
“Uh-uh- a car accident.”
“Were you there?” he asked rapidly.
I shook my head, “that’s what dad told us – what is this all about?”
“An 18-year-old-girl went missing in 1995 from Las Vegas, her parents filed a report, and after about 17 years her parents died never knowing what happened, but her sister kept the search alive by giving every sheriff’s department within 400 miles of Vegas pictures and age progression renderings until one day we found someone in a picture of a suicided B&E suspect's car who looked an awful lot like those pictures. That missing girl’s name is Judith Holloway. Your mom.”
So, what, you think my mom was kidnapped, held here for twenty-something years, while she lovingly raised and took care of the family,” I asked defiantly, “what proof do you have besides a blurry picture and a common name?”
“That’s what I’m here to find out,” the sheriff said rubbing his chin scruff as he panned along the wall with the albumen prints, “I’m here to collect evidence, and if you think your old man was innocent, you’d let me take whatever I need.”
“don’t you need a warrant for that?”
The sheriff took his eyes off the wall to face me. His prickly whispered lips curled into a mischievous grin. “Young man, do you have a death certificate for Judith… Pichler?”
I stared at him waiting for his angle.
“Because if you don’t, that means she may still be alive somewhere and that this estate belongs to the state until Judith, the alleged wife Henry Pichler, is found and awarded the estate, or it’s determined that she is in fact no longer around to inherit it.”
I didn’t know what to do. It seemed that if I told him to kick rocks then he’d have me arrested for trespassing in my own home, but if I agreed, he’d probably bring the Inyo County cavalry to come snooping around in my family’s personal lives.
“So,” the sheriff rested his hands on his duty belt, “what'll it be?”
I threw my hands up, “whatever dude, just don’t steal anything.” I picked up the journal and raised it up, “I brought this here, it’s mine.”
He nodded, “you can wait in your car, this shouldn’t take long – it ain’t a giant house.”
I walked out of the house and the dry desert air wrapped me up in that nostalgic heat. Wind-blown sand against rocks and cicadas played a droning accompaniment for the rhythmic concerto of a distant rattlesnake. It was home, but it wasn’t. It was limbo.
I got in my car and turned the key to turn on the AC. I sat there with the book in my lap staring at the house for several minutes, trying to imagine what, if anything, that sheriff was finding… Or was going to find.
Dejected from the lack of control or representation I had in the matter, I cracked the window, lit another smoke, and started thumbing through the journal to find where I left off.
Abigail’s family history, on the other hand, though tragic, is uncomplicated: she grew up with her mother, father, and younger brother in New York. The tragic particular of her past stems from a single event in which her younger brother murdered her parents and fled, never to be seen again. She has maintained a proclivity to avoid expanding on this fact or a number of other details; for example, early in our relationship, I had a fascination with New York, so upon learning that it was the city of her upbringing, I wanted to learn more. I simply said, “oh! I love New York! What town?” her initial reaction to my innocuous question would have one think that I had accosted her, then she would shake her head and put her face down. Any memory of New York had been soured by that one event it would seem.
She never spoke of her parents outside of the short brief utterance of their death, and she insisted that I refer to her by first name from the day we met. I found this odd, but given that she was not high-society, I thought nothing more of it. It was not until a month after making her acquaintance she asked if I could help her settle a small debt at the company store that I even learned of her last name, and it wasn’t from her.
“I understand times is tough for everybody these days, Miss Pichler,” the shopkeep said, “especially since the since the mine ain’t puttin' out what it used to.”
The shopkeep was right about two things that day – her name was Abigail Pichler, and the mine would be depleted of silver and closed down not a year later. I expanded my property by buying the land that the mine was on from the company for cheap since it was only worth the steel rails that they left in it. I would continue to go underground to be alone with my thoughts in the dark.
The 12th of July, 1859
The child’s eating habits have begun to slow, one reason for this case is because of its teeth. I had been aware of some teething behaviors in which the child would gnaw on furniture legs and seat cushions, but that was only a few days ago – it already has teeth and has presently bitten the nipple off of the bottle I was using to feed it and wasted the milk onto the floor.
I returned to Abigail to try to pump more and she questioned why I needed more so soon. I should have lied to her, but I didn’t. I told her what had happened and she immediately became hysterical. She told me that she didn’t want the child in the house anymore or else she would kill it.
Part 9 is Live! Early Access Available to Supporters of My Buy Me a Coffee Page!