The Stamford Pistachio Trail, Part I

The Light in the Field

In February of 1970, a frigid wind pressed through the silver dark woods of the Adler property, spinning dusty snow cones across the frozen hard-packed field off behind the house. Inside, four cousins gathered by a window in the dark family room for a glimpse of the mysterious light.

The authority as usual was thirteen-year-old Ronnie Adler. His sister Merri was eleven. Andy Weber was also thirteen, and eight-year-old Rosie Weber was still rubbing the sleep from her eyes after being awoken by her brother´s urgent, crackled message over the walkie-talkie stationed on her nightstand:

“-- want to see the light or not? Family room, hurry!”

Rosie had begrudgingly clicked a response and climbed out of bed. In her experience the Adler bed sheets were always fresh and crisp and just like new; her Aunt Ann’s doing, she knew. Ordinarily she’d be hard-pressed to leave them. But the light was legendary, and she needed to know exactly what it was about. Rosie didn’t mind having her own room here: it was always the same room, and she pretty much thought of it as her own with crisper sheets. What she did mind was having to navigate the strange house in the middle of the night, the wind howling outside and the hallways and stairs so dark and unfamiliar.

Now, these large folk were crowding the window and blocking any view of the light.

“I can’t see!” she erupted, near tears.

Merri stepped back. “Go ahead, then.”

Rosie knelt on the straight-backed chair in front of the window -- suddenly with the best view of all. Outside was the gray, weird glow of the hard-pack: a vast no-man’s land receding into night and the distant woods. Closer there were a few dark spindly shapes: the young trees separating the backyard from the field and planted no doubt by her Uncle Jerry, a cross, intimidating man no one seemed to like very much and neither did Rosie.

Then all at once she saw the light: a faint, yellow orb set off in the field, and could even make out the dark outlines of the old decrepit shack from which the light shone.

Someone, or something, was out there.

“What are they doing?” she wondered.

“Not ‘they,’ you dope -- ’him,’” said Andy. “Try listening for once.”

Then, in the relatively safe stillness of the family room, cousin Ronnie said to Rosie:

“There are many disputes as to the source of the light. But most believe the original legend to be true, or should I say ‘most likely.’”

“Go out there and look,” she suggested.

“Be my guest...”

“I wouldn’t go alone.” She glanced at Merri.

“Not on your life.”

“Merri knows better,” Ronnie said.

“Maybe it’s a drug-pusher,” Andy suggested.

“What would a pusher be doing out there?” Merri asked him.

“I don’t know -- cutting it up, hiding it?”

“It’s more likely old Creedy,” Ronnie said to Rosie. “He’s a ghost, if you believe in that stuff. They say he returns to his shack every now and then. All this land, for miles around, used to be his, that’s documented. The government took it all away for back taxes, and the night before he was supposed to vacate with his family, a cold winter’s night like this, he went out to his shack and had a midnight snack, his shotgun, and blew his own head off.”

Rosie looked back out the window. “He has no head?”

“Go look, you tell me.”

In the muted, far off shack, the light seemed brighter, a beacon in the cold windy night. She wouldn’t be sleeping anymore tonight, not alone.

“Don’t worry,” Ronnie said. “He hasn’t come into the house once. Anything that used to be his is in the shack. We can go out there tomorrow and look for boot prints. It’s supposed to snow tonight, maybe he’ll leave a trail.”

“A trail of blood?” asked Andy.

“In this weather, I doubt it.”