Law of Secrets

LAW OF SECRETS

Rachel Law Paranormal Realism

Author Bio: Orville Burch has a PhD in Biology. Orville is a scientist, with over twenty-five peer-reviewed publications and reports. He has presented at professional conferences twenty times; twice as the keynote speaker. He is an entrepreneur, writer, paranormal researcher, and motivational speaker. For two years, he and his wife owned a haunted barn. Even when the barn was completely empty, they could hear footsteps from the upper level.

Dedication: Orville wants to thank his wife, Terry, who is the ultimate fan of the old B-horror movies, and the new ones. Together, we have seen them all. I also want to acknowledge the support from our family of dogs and cats, many of which are directly responsible for any typographical errors.

Trigger Warning: Law of Secrets is a dark paranormal that contains aspects of violence, abuse, bullying, and rape. While not graphic, in nature, some aspects may be disturbing to some readers.

Chapter 1.

August 1886.

Orley Drake cried. Soft tears, the kind that could come only with sadness. Soundless beads of water sliding down his cheek onto his beard. Happiness was torn from his life, leaving only revenge to fill the void. These sad tears were endless. He used the back of his shirt sleeve to swipe his face. In 1886, men didn’t cry. Men were raised to be tough and strong. Their family depended upon that resilience. Orley was no different, and no one could claim that he was not a man. He lived through more horror than most men could stomach. Yet he cried.

Lubang Island, 1944.

To Lieutenant Onoda, the synonym for the word quit was dishonor. He might break, he might die, but he would never quit. It was his dogged resolve to finish a job that made him perfectly suited for a dangerous assignment. He wasn’t being honored, or given a position based on rank, they gave him a death sentence. He knew it, his superiors knew it, and there was no reason to sugarcoat it. The chance of him surviving the harshness of the hostile environment, the local savages, and the invading American forces was negligible. Lieutenant Onoda’s, mind drifted briefly to his home and beautiful wife, but only briefly. Duty first. As they rowed the boat to shore, he didn’t look at the island. He knew what horrors awaited them.

July 1947.

Never in the planet's history had such an honor been bestowed upon a single person. The parades and parties hosted in his honor became countless. All the news marketed the event as the greatest adventure of a lifetime. He would be the first to visit an alien world. If he only knew that this would be his last journey, he would have started it out differently.

Knights Imperiled Rose (K.I.R.) Present Day.

For a hundred years, they operated in darkness. Darkness so total that their black robes not only hid their presence, but reflected their heart. It wasn’t always that way, and certainly not in the beginning. Once, they had a noble cause. A cause worthy of pledging an allegiance to die, or kill. Then their heart was pure, but not now.

Franklin Furnace, Missouri Present Day.

Ben Franklin once wrote that, ‘three may keep a secret, if two of them are dead.’ I mean no disrespect to Ben Franklin, but he didn’t know shit about the paranormal. 

My name is Rachel Law, and I know for a fact that some dead can’t keep secrets any better than the rest of us. I didn’t always know that. I learned it over the years as I grew up and spoke more regularly to dead people. Sure, there are some that are tight-lipped, don’t get me wrong. Others, however, once you get them talking, they will tell you everything, even dirty secrets you don’t really want to know.

I live in Franklin Furnace, Missouri, a small rural community about half-way between St. Louis and Jefferson City. That half-way is in reference to miles. As far as any other units of measurement, we are worlds away from either city. Maybe Franklin Furnace is like other rural towns in America, maybe even similar to your town. As I crisscross America, in fact, other countries around the world, I gravitate toward the smaller out-of-the-way places. You can find these small crossroads communities anywhere you look. They seem sleepy, dying, or dead, but a lot is hidden from the eyes of strangers. Each time I travel through a small town, I wonder about the secrets that are hiding behind the walls and under the ground.

Franklin Furnace is no exception to the small town rule. You can travel from one end of the town limits to the other in a minute. Our town has one yellow blinking traffic light at the only intersection in the town. I’m pretty sure the light was intended to make drivers slow down, but it doesn’t really work that way. If you slow down, you will notice four businesses, the entire extent of our town community. We have a post office that looks the same as the day they built it in 1952. Next to the post office is the oldest building on Main Street, which now houses The Burner, our local newspaper produced, edited, and distributed by Mark Elliott. Across the street are two little Cape Cod-style houses. Sally Gilmore uses one for her beauty salon. The other is our shop that we call Relic.

We are not a tourist destination unless you’re seeking nothing but grass, corn, and cows as your vacation wonderland. Or unless you follow paranormal. Not all rural communities are paranormal hot-beds. But Franklin Furnace seems to be. I once thought that I was lucky to have been born in such an active paranormal environment. Over the years, I have learned that it wasn’t luck, it was me. The dead are obsessed with me. They follow me wherever I go. I’m not sure why. They won’t tell me. That’s a secret I’m still trying to pry out of them.

Many old rural communities have old cemeteries, some even have more than one. We have our own family cemetery that began with a single grave of an infant in 1799. The stone just says ‘baby boy 1799.’  For years, I would visit the small graveyard on our property. It is just an old family plot that sits high on the hill above my cabin. In it rests the remains of some of my earliest ancestors along with secrets they took to their grave. We don’t bury family there anymore. Now, it is more like a memory museum. The stones are old, I guess most or the secrets are as old. The stones are weathered, and some are cracked, just like the secrets. But not all the secrets are generations-old. Not the ones I shared.

I visited the little graveyard many times while I was growing up. Mom would take me to help her weed and plant flowers. Once, I even helped Dad paint the white picket fence that held the graveyard together. My parents would point out different stones and tell me stories about the person buried there.

This story all started one summer day, when I was twelve-years old. Mom pointed out the tombstone of a relative by the name of Orley Rose Drake. The stone was not fancy, just a simple marker made of local sandstone. The freezing and thawing of our winters had taken a toll on the stone. Some letters and numbers were worn, but I could read all.  I traced the outline of his name with my finger. Then I traced the dates of 1844 to 1864.

Rose! That’s a strange name, I remember telling Mom.

Mom was planting geraniums around the stone. She paused and stretched her back. Name fit him. He was a strange one. Joined the Union Army and died in the war. But even after that, there were stories.

My ears perked up when I heard the word stories. I collected family stories like other kids collected Beanie Babies. What kind of stories?

Mom looked at me for a few moments before she said anything more. She knew she had already said too much. Stories you’re too young to hear. Those kinds of stories. Hand me that flat of geraniums. The red ones.

I’m already twelve, I pleaded back. I know things. I handed Mom the flat of flowers and dug out a clump so she could place it in the hole she had just dug.

Mom smiled at me. Little girl’s shouldn’t be so nosey. Now doesn’t that look Mom said as she appraised Orley’s grave.

What should they be? I asked, as I continued to trace his name.

Sugar and spice and everything nice, Mom answered. Remember that little rhyme? She laughed, not a loud laugh, but a laugh of resignation. She knew that her daughter would never be the sugar and spice kind of girl, I was more the snips, snails, and puppy-dog tails.

He took a lot of secrets to his grave. Leave it at that, Mom said as she resumed her planting.

I snapped my head up and focused on Mom like she had just shared with me a revelation. Secrets to the grave? I repeated, What kind of secrets?

If I knew they wouldn’t be secrets now, would they?

That was the first time I could remember hearing that phrase, Secrets to the grave! I like that. I traced his name once more. I didn’t know you could take secrets to your grave. What secrets do you have, Orley Rose Drake? I have some of my own.

Maybe it’s about buried treasure? I bet Orley was a pirate during the war. That would be a big secret. I said to Mom. Wouldn’t that be an enormous secret for us to have a pirate in our family? A pirate buried right here.

Oh, Rachel, you and your obsession with buried treasure. Where do you get that from? Mom asked as she wiped the fresh flower dirt from her hands onto her work apron.

Get what? I asked. But I knew what she meant. I was always a freethinker.

All your fanciful ideas and wild speculations. Has to be from Dad.

I shrugged my shoulders. I didn’t know where my over-active imagination came from. It was always there. When we dig in the garden, I find things.

Trash! You find trash, not treasure, Mom reminded me.

It might not have been an authentic treasure, but the rusted nails, horseshoes, and scraps of metal were all treasures to me. They came from a different time in history, and I was lucky enough to find them.

I bet if we dig Orley up, we’ll find gold instead of bones in his casket, or maybe a secret map. I bet his body will be wrapped in one of the Jolly Roger flags.

Rachel. Don’t you be digging him up, or anyone else in the cemetery, Mom warned. And... don’t be talking your cousin Marl... or any of your cousins, relatives, or friends into doing it, either. Does that cover everyone? You understand me. I want to make sure I covered all loopholes. No digging!

Mom knew I was a loop-hole girl. I used to get away with it, but now my parents seem to know how to close them. Like the summer before, I got it in my mind that a pirate had buried his chest of jewels under the tree in our backyard. It wasn’t too farfetched, because I found a belt buckle, and it could have been from a pirate belt. As I was digging, my parents stopped me and told me not to dig. So I convinced my cousin Marl that a treasure was under the tree and agreed to share it if he dug it up. The next day, we had a huge hole in the backyard, but no treasure. I told my parent’s that I didn’t dig, but Marl thought there might be a treasure, so I let him do it. Loop holes can be very handy!

Dad was repairing the back section of fence that was damaged by a tree limb that came down in the last big storm. The entire cemetery was encased in a wooden picket fence. There was a small gate in the front and one in the back. I left Mom to finishing up the flowers, and I decided to try my luck with him.

You need help? I asked. He had already removed all the broken pickets and was replacing them with the new ones that he had made.

You want to help paint? Dad asked as he handed me a brush and a small pint-jar of white paint.

So Dad, I have a question.

Just one? You coming down with a cold or something?

So I ask a lot of questions. I can’t help it. Well, maybe more than one, I said as I started painting the fence.

Why white? I had noticed that most wooden fences around small cemeteries were painted white. I figured there had to be something really significant about that color. Maybe it was a color that kept ghosts in or evil out.

No special reason, Honey. It’s what I had.

That’s it? But other cemetery fences are white.

Move the brush in nice, smooth, long strokes. See how I’m doing it? Dad instructed.

I copied his painting technique. Since I was able to walk, if Dad was doing something, I was copying him.

Back in the old days, when I was your age, and even further back, a lot of farmers made their own paint out of milk.

Dad. I’m twelve. You can’t fool me. I know that milk is never this thick.

Never could get anything by you. That’s why I don’t try. I’m serious. It’s called milk paint. Milk was one ingredient.

So I can make paint whenever I want? Just out of milk?

I didn’t say that. If you need paint for something, you tell me before you paint it. Okay?

Sure. Anyway, that wasn’t the real question. Was kind of like a warm-up.

I see. So what’s the real question? Dad asked, not really knowing if he wanted to know.

Why was Orley a strange boy? What kind of secrets would a twenty-year-old want to take to his grave? You think it was about buried treasure?

Well now. That was all before my time, way before. So I only know what others have said. Rumors, only. You remember how we talked about spreading rumors and how rumors are

I didn’t like how this conversation was going. I remember, and I promised I wouldn’t spread any rumors. I rarely spread any rumors, but I liked collecting them. Even if you don’t spread rumors, they are still interesting, though. Right?

Dad chuckled. Right. He agreed, but he didn’t offer any rumors.

I painted the fence and remembered to put extra paint on the nail heads. I tried to be patient; not one of my stronger traits. Finally, my patients hit its limit. Well, you sharing?

I’m sure Mom already told you that the stories are not for your age.

I groaned. Being young was so boring. She said I should be sugar and spice. Yuk!

You just be who you are and don’t let anyone tell you differently.

I started to argue my case for buried treasure, but Dad cut me off.

I doubt it was about buried treasure. So no digging! It’s illegal to dig up a body. You could go to prison.

Really illegal, or just like a bad warning not to do it?

Dad stopped working on the fence and looked at my paint progress. You’re doing great. Really illegal. You can look it up. I doubt it was a secret about treasure, anyway. I assume he saw things during the war that were horrible. He probably didn’t want to tell people. Maybe it was those secrets. We’ll never know for sure.

Dad left it at that and I knew it would be useless to pursue that line of questioning, so I asked a bunch of other questions about paint and how to make other than white, why pickets had points, and other interesting stuff as we finished the fence.

Orley was dug up. But I was not the one to do it. I was sort of responsible. That was many years later, so I get ahead of myself a little. It was not in search of buried treasure, but it was in search of secrets. Before that all happened, I visited his grave and talked to him. You see, I love secrets. I can’t stop thinking about secrets and how special they are. Sometimes, I would stretch out on Orley’s little lawn and think about the billions of people on the earth and how I knew something that maybe only one or two others might know. You can bet I would never share that secret with anyone, except for Orley.

I spent a lot of time asking Orley about his life and the war. Then, I asked if he wanted to give up any secrets; he never did. Over the next few years, I must have visited a hundred-times or more. Each time something bad happened to me, I would spend time telling him the secret. I thought my secret was safe in his grave.

Orley wasn’t the only person who knew some of my secrets. I also share secrets with my two best friends. I tell some to my cousin Marl, and some to my friend Mara. I’m careful about what I tell them. Mara is pretty good about keeping secrets. Not as good as Orley, but good. Marl can’t keep a secret. I only tell him secrets that I want others to know.

Marl is my favorite cousin. I know I shouldn’t have favorites, but I do. His real name is Marleton Simpson, but we call him Marl or Marley. His mom, Auntie Kathy, is my mom’s twin sister. Marl and I live on adjoining farms. My front door is only a few feet from Marl’s back door. We’re about the same age, but I’m a month older, so mostly I’m the boss. We grew up together and are very close. Both of us felt we had two moms. It was almost like interchangeable parents. Except my dad looked nothing like my Uncle Carl. Dad looks like a young version of Clint Walker. Many people think so. Uncle Carl didn’t look like anyone famous. I guess he was an original.

My best friend, probably for life and way beyond, is Margarita Machuga. Not even her parents call her Margarita. Her mom calls her Rita, everyone else calls her Mara or Sugar. She lives in another valley, but we went to grade school together and have been friends since day one.

My first real secret, not some fluff secret that anyone could know, but a real secret that was terrible and had to be kept secret, occurred when I was twelve-years old. Just a few months after I had met Orley. Before then, I could have told all my secrets to either Marl or Orley. But the secret that happened to me was so scary. Orley was the only one I could trust. Besides Orley, only one other person knew my secret. That was my cousin David. I would not have told David, I wouldn’t have told anyone, except Orley. David just happened to be there, so technically, it wasn’t a secret, to be exact. It was not really a secret that I had to tell him; it was a secret that he had to keep. I knew Orley would keep it. I made David swear on the fate of his pinky finger, swear at the threat of having a needle stuck in his eye, and several other equally horrendous curses. They both kept my secret. I think it was easy for Orley. David had a harder time and paid an enormous price to do so. No, it was not the loss of his pinky or eye. It was the loss of his freedom. A seventeen-year loss of freedom!

My secret didn’t begin as a secret, or anything scary. It began as a fun time. It was a Friday night in early September. School had started. I was in sixth-grade. I suppose I should mention that I got along very well with school. Even when I was sick, I never missed a day. I also never missed an answer to a question, not even the super hard bonus questions. I was the girl that kids called a nerd, but I didn’t care. I was also socially awkward. I had a lot of friends and a lot of cousins, but I was shy when it came to making boyfriends. Most of the girls in my class were already paired up, some even were talking about marriage. The only boy I really liked was Kevin Manley, but he was six-years older than me. So I just hung out with my best friend, Mara. The kids called us queer, dyke, and other horrendous names. Sometimes it bothered me. I didn’t think I was queer. I didn’t know what I was. To make matters worse, I was chubby. Before the start of sixth-grade, I was fat. The summer before sixth-grade was good to me. I grew taller, all the way to five-feet and nine-inches. I also grew thinner. I actually went from being fat to being chubby. I even had to get new clothes that were a couple of sizes smaller.

Several of my older cousins were now on the high school football team; the Franklin Furnace Devils. They wore red and black uniforms with a picture of a mean looking devil painted on the helmet. I had not been interested in attending the games, but now that I was in sixth grade, and my cousins played, I was all over the idea of being a Devil fan.

My secret happened at our homecoming game. Homecoming meant that it was the first game of the season that we played at home. Homecoming was a big event in Franklin Furnace, Missouri. Maybe it is a big event in your town as well. To make it even a bigger event, we were playing our archenemy, the Pride, from up by Hermann, Missouri. We hated them. The Pride always won the state championship. They were bigger, stronger, and more of them than what we could field. Still, we always played them tough, and the games were close.

For homecoming, we even had a parade. Fire Departments from all around us came and drove their trucks down Main Street with sirens blaring. A few farmers drove antique tractors pulling a wagon filled with hay, and football player or cheerleaders. Then came the Devil marching band playing fight songs. Finally, there were three fancy cars with their soft-tops rolled down. The cars drove slowly so that they could show off the pretty high school girls. Each year, the pretty girls in school competed to be crowned homecoming queen and court. I’m not sure how the competition played out. I never really cared. The girls waved to the crowd as they sat on the back of the cars. They were all thin and pretty. They also kind of looked alike. I’m not a jealous type, but I’m very competitive. I know I would never want to be the type of girl paraded down Main Street, but I wanted the right of refusal.

This homecoming was even more memorable because it was also the first time that I had successfully argued with my parents about allowing me to go to the game without them. Prior to that, I grew up as a be-home-by-dark child. During the day, when not in school, I took off, and with my cousins, we did all we could do before dark. After dark, we had to be in. I wasn’t so sure about why, but it seemed like a small price to pay for the freedom of the daylight.

Mara and her parents were going, all of my older cousins were going. I had plenty of people to look after me. As if I needed a babysitter! They relented. Their little girl was growing up too fast for them. For me, it seemed I was never getting older. This homecoming was a successful step in the right direction.

I dressed in a red skirt, a black t-shirt, and carried a black sweater. I was Devil all the way, except for my black cowgirl boots ‘Not sure what boots the Devil wore, but I suspect not cowboy’.

My cousin David, who had already finished his senior year at school, was picking me up. I was so excited. David’s dad is my uncle George. Of all my uncles, George is probably the strangest of them all, therefore one of my favorites. He is a strong, independent man who is so emotional that he will cry over most anything. While my other uncles grow practical things like cows and pigs, Uncle George grows fun stuff. His chickens are not normal chickens, they are silkies and they each have a name. Instead of cows, he has a small herd consisting of llamas, a camel, a bison, and even a zebra. David’s