Back in the motel, by the weak light of a bedside lamp, Will read through his stack of clippings gathered from newspapers around the country:
THE BOSTON GLOBE
“… I was walking in old Salem, up near the hill where they used to hang the witches, you see, when Buster, my dog, barked up a storm, and a terrible feeling come over me. I saw them silhouetted by the mist in their black dresses, some with heads wobbling on broken necks and eyes dark with hate.…”
THE CEDAR RAPIDS EVENING GAZETTE
Mr. and Mrs. Samuel Stuart of Altoona have asked for any assistance in locating their daughter, Alice Kathleen, who disappeared on her way home from a territory band dance. The orchestra in question, the Travelers, has also disappeared, and curiously, no other territory bands can remember much about them at all, though there are many accounts of people who’ve gone missing once the band has come through town.…
THE NEWPORT MERCURY
… Passing by the site of a former slave auction block, the ship’s captain, John Thatcher, claimed to hear terrible cries and swore that he saw, for a moment, stretched out along the port, the ghosts of whole families in chains, their eyes on him in accusation, inciting in him a feeling “as if a day of reckoning were at hand…”
THE DOYLESTOWN DAILY INTELLIGENCER
… Mrs. Coelina Booth will not enter the woods beyond her home anymore, for she believes they are haunted by malevolent spirits. “I noticed the birds had stopped singing in our trees. Then I got a chill for no good reason, and I heard giggling. That’s when I saw them—two phantom girls in pinafores with teeth sharp as razors and all around them the bones of the birds.…”
… The longtime groundskeeper reported graves desecrated and one tomb left open.…
… Graves disturbed… cattle mutilated…
… Sudden fog rising up on the road late at night near the old church cemetery…
… The farmer discovered his faithful horse, Justice, by the drinking pond, “torn apart and covered in flies.…”
… Claimed to see a gray man in a long coat and a tall black hat out in the field during a lightning storm…
… Claimed to see a man in a tall hat standing in the graveyard under a yellow moon…