Mr. Hont's Funeral Home

Muscatine: Monday night on Memorial Day Weekend, I got lost on my way home after taking a wrong turn on a highway construction detour near Geneseo, Illinois. After chasing the setting sun westward for an hour or so, I finally saw a sign so overgrown with vines that I had to stop my car and pull away the tangled dead vegetation until I could finally read it. It read, "Overman's Ferry, Iowa: 5 Miles".

     Now, I expected to see a bridge after driving the 5 miles, but after rounding a bend, I found myself driving down a narrow causeway leading out to a dock with a barge pulled up at the end. A large sign hung overhead: "Ferry Crossing To Iowa: ". A little shack with a window supported a large sign detailing weight limits. As I pulled up a young, swarthy man smiled at me as he leaned out to take my money and told me the ferry was leaving in five minutes. I drove onto what was a stubby barge paved over with black top. Another young man wearing a crumpled captain's hat and mustache waved me to a yellowed lined space in the center of the barge and I turned off my engine. Ahead of me, a comical looking old flat bed truck loaded with caged chickens stood at the head of the line near the bow. I was just about to get out when I heard something rumbling over the deck behind me. I looked up in my rear view mirror just in time to seem the immense chromium-armored grill of an old black hearse slow to a stop behind me. On either side of the grill, two great silver headlights leered into my rear window. I got out of my car to look at the hearse. Just then, the barge's stern banged and creaked as the captain chained the rear gate shut and then walk to a cramped wheelhouse that sat off to one side of the barge. The horn blared two raw, staccato blasts; the man from the ticket shack pulled lose the last mooring line and threw it over onto the deck. The barge's engine shuddered once or twice, resolved into a steady thrum, and sluggishly shoved the barge away towards open water.

     The lovingly maintained antique hearse dated from the mid-thirties: the long, narrow hood and curved, flare-ended fenders were polished to a gleaming jet black. The maker's plate on the radiator read "Dussenberg". Although it was a hearse, its lines reminded me of a picture I had seen of my grandfather who owned a car very like this many years ago in Chicago. My father showed me a picture of it and was very proud that Gramp had once owned a big Dussenberg. I sauntered about, trying to imagine my Gramp as a yuppy banker executive in the era of gangsters and bathtub gin. Despite the gleaming festive front end, the rear half meanwhile bore the somberness of the vehicle's trade; grim letters below the window read "Hont's Funeral Home, Overman's Ferry, IA".

     I wanted to talk to the driver about the car, but the windows were tinted so dark, it was impossible to see if anyone was inside. I tapped on the window once, then again after a moment or two.

     "I wouldn't go disturbing' 'em, missy." came a voice from behind me. I turned and saw the ferry captain behind me.

     "Why?"

     "If Bartholemew Hont wants to talk to you, he'll talk to you," he smirked. "If not, then he's best left alone."

     I watched him walk back towards the little wheelhouse. "Does he ever talk to anybody?" I shouted.

     "Not to my recollection," the captain answered. "Like some coffee?"

     We had only just gotten underway and the air had already become cold and clammy and the idea of a hot cup was a welcome one. He introduced himself as Lev Overman and firmly shook my hand. I stood at the doorway of the wheelhouse and sipped at a big white mug-full of joe and observed, "Undertakers are supposed to be friendly."

     "Not Hont. He doesn't need to be friendly."

     "He's been here a long time, I guess." I asked. "From the car, I'd guess he's been here since the twenties."

     "Oh yeah. You can see the place from here," he pointed to the bluff on the other side of the river.

     The sun had not yet set, but had gone down behind the rim of the steep bluff over a quarter a mile a way. While most of the sleepy river town lay in the gloomy premature twilight, a vast brooding Victorian mansion perched atop the bluff above blazed in the brilliant vermilion glow of dusk's relentless approach. Only its chimney and tottering windowed cupola caught the sun's last rays. Directly beneath it, jammed up tightly against the bluff's base, a dank and singularly bleakedifice with gray castle walls garlanded with barbed wire sent a horrible thrill through me.

     "That shambles below the house is the old penitentiary. Bartholomew Hont took care of the bodies after hangings there until the government closed it right before they opened Alcatraz. They built it over the old territorial prison after the civil war. The old one was supposed to be so bad, the Union Army refused to send confederate POW's there." Lev lectured, watching me from the corner of his eye.

     "Ooh, and I bet there's even a secret tunnel from the house to inside the penitentiary," I retorted.

     "So I've been teasing you---a little. But it's all true. Far as I know, nobody's ever seen or spoken to Bartholomew Hont. Nobody has ever been inside that funeral home." Then he added, "There's been so many stories 'bout him in this town for years that people don't like talking about him."

     "Who owns the old prison now?"

     "Hont," Lev answered.

     I was about to ask him about the Dussenberg hearse when suddenly the air got quite cold. Fingers of fog with a peculiar purplish cast reached up over the side of the barge and a worried look wrinkled Lev's brow. He excused himself; then reached behind the door, brought out a bucket of rock salt, and rushed past me out to the bow. I watched him frantically throwing handfuls of rock salt into the water. I thought I heard him chanting but I wasn't wholly sure because a stiff wind suddenly blew up moaning in my ears. As soon as I drew along side him at the bow, the wind had ceased and the fog had dispersed, leaving only a pungent fishy stink. Lev caught sight of me next to him and reeled back a step so that he had to grab onto the top rail of the gate. He smiled sheepishly, and muttered something about old river superstitions.

     "Why bother if it's just superstition, then?" I retorted sharply, trying to provoke an explanation of the eerie event.

     "Somethings you just do," he smiled broadly.

     That's when I noticed his fangs.

     I made an awkward excuse about wanting to get back to a book my car, then. Lev studied me with a knifing gaze and then ambled back to the wheelhouse without another word.

     I got in my car turning over what I had just witnessed. The brief account of Professor G.G. Angel came to mind concerning the wreck of the U.S.S. Schadenfreude in 1864. I recalled the horrible butchery that followed that doomed vessel's envelopment in bizarre fog (see: Wreck on the Mississippi, August, 1996, vol. 3, Issue #8). But that was where the similarities ended. Lev's fangs, the strange old hearse, and the ghastly fog drove a cold spiking fear into my soul. I instinctively dreaded of reaching the other side at Overman's Ferry.

     The enigmatic hearse shone at me in my rear view mirror. I thought of my Gramp again and recalled the story he told me when I was little a few years before he died of how he got shot in a hold up back in 1930. I couldn't remember too much---I was 7 at the time---but Gramp said his boss had been killed and he was wounded in the thigh by a man named "Schumer". Gramp said Schumer was the last man hung in an old pen by the Mississippi in Iowa...

     The engines roared and shuddered one last time as the ferry barge eased into the dock at Overman's Ferry. Lev swung the gates at the bow wide open. A traffic light on the side of the ticket shack shone green and soon I was following the chicken truck off the barge, the vintage hearse creeping smoothly behind me. As my car bumpety-bumped over the metal ramp onto the dock, I amicably waved good-bye to Lev. He gave me a toothy smile and waved back. I shuddered.

     At the end of the dismal street leading to the dock, I paused at a stop sign to get my bearings. I needed directions to a highway leading to Iowa City. The town's lights shone dully on the street ahead. I glimpsed up at the mansion on the bluff top, now immersed in a dark, brooding funk since the sun had sunk below the horizon. A few lights appeared around the windows on the main floor and then suddenly a single light shone from the cupola at the apex on the roof. It moved up and down three times, paused, and repeated. As I marveled at this, the Dussenberg hearse blared its horn behind me. I snapped to my senses and set my sights on a tavern-looking sign a few blocks ahead. But as I started across, the shining black hearse roared around me and barreled away down the street.

     That angered me. I should have just headed north along the river road and gone on to Muscatine, but my vindictive curiosity got the better of me. I knew where the old hearse was going and I was going to find out what was really happening up there. I stayed about a quarter mile behind as the hearse jounced past the deserted penitentiary. The road up the bluff was steep and swung around a switch back until it leveled off on top of the bluff. There I saw the hearse's tail lights turn down a wooded lane and disappear behind the now dark mansion. The road, meanwhile, continued straight ahead to the west; probably clear to highway 218 and then north to Iowa City. I pulled off to the side of the road near the wooded lane and got out of my car.

     A weathered, rotten sign stood sentry at the mouth of the lane. It read only "B. Hont's Funeral Home, Founded---" The year was illegible. I made my way down the lane and as I did so, the complete darkness of the place enveloped me with dread. The massive black shape of the mansion rose before me as did the wet stink of decaying plants. I found no sign of the hearse especially since the lane ended right at the mansion's front steps. The wrought iron railings on either side were draped by thick vines of what I took to be deadly nightshade by virtue of its musty stink. The porch reeked of decayed wood and as I carefully walked to the front door, I grew half afraid I might crash through a rotten floor board at any moment. I reached the double doors and to my fearful delight, one swung open at my mere touch.

     A small oil lamp on a pedestal by the door gave feeble to a sitting room. The old furniture lay under thick dust. Old magazines and newspapers moldered on a low table in front of a sofa, their edges curling with age. A headline read: German Reichstag Burns! The date was February 27, 1933. My apprehension deepened.

     I sneaked across the room as silently as I could to a doorway opposite. It led down a narrow passage, on either side of which stood a door. The first one I opened was dark and seemed after to be closet. The other loosed reeking formaldehyde at me as soon as I opened it. Light glowed faintly around the outline of a door left ajar below and stairs stretched in that direction before me. Half way down, I heard some sort of rhythmic sucking sound. At last I reached for the door knob only to have it suddenly wrenched from my grasp.

     An incredibly old man leaned there in the doorway before me holding aloft an old oil lamp. "Mr. Hont is not receiving visitors,' he croaked.

     He would have been tall, but he his head lolled awkwardly to one side like a chiropractor's dream. His skin hung from his wizened face and his hands and shirt were covered in a rust-colored goo. I told him my name and fabricated a story about my car breaking down and needing help but he just stared intently at me.

     "Cavalier," he repeated, mulling over my name with perverse malice. Suddenly he grabbed hold of my wrist with such ferocity and power that I screamed. "You're coming with me!" he shouted and started pulling me through the door.

     "Let go of her," someone said in a measured threatening tone. I looked up behind me and saw someone standing in the shadows above.

     The old man hesitated, but tightened his grip all the harder on me. "What are you doing here, Overman?"

     "Your Master has no use for her. That should be apparent," said Lev, stepping into the lamplight.

     "But I do! A man has right to revenge, doesn't he?" the old man shrieked, yanking me hard to his fetid side. "Especially after a noose alters his posture!" He twisted my arm, grinding the nerve at the base of my thumb against my wrist bone. I bit my lip rather cry out.

     "There's that little favor you owe me," Lev sneered. "The charm still works, doesn't it? You're still wearing it, afterall. What would your Master say if...?"

     "But I am owed this girl's life!" the old man screamed with violent emotion. Terror electrified me. I swung a punch at the decrepit old man but he deflected it easily and jerk my arm harder.

     "And you owe me," Lev answered coldly.

     The old man hesitated then threw me from him like some form of contemptuous vermin. Not waiting, further I crept up the stairs to Lev. "Best get back to work, Schumer," Lev spat. "By the look of you, I'd say you were in the middle of somebody."

     The old man growled, then disappeared back through the door. Without another word Lev snagged my other arm and, despite my demanding questions, half dragged me out of the house. He didn't stop until he got us to my car and yanked open the door.

     "Get in!" he shouted, his teeth bared revealing his fangs.

     "What are you going to do? Turn into bat and fly back to your coffin?" I demanded, shaking my sore hand.

     "I am a very busy ferry captain with a short temper," he shouted. "And for your information, I drive a Volkswagen. Now go home!"

     There was little point in arguing further then. The road I was on did eventually take me to Highway 218 and then to Iowa City where I arrived sometime after midnight. The next morning, I went into the office and looked up Overman's Ferry in Morganna Oley's Atlas of Spiritual Forcelines In Iowa. The hand tinted map in the front of the volume showed the town marked in crimson ink, showing it was highly psychically active. But the pages detailing it had been torn out from the book. The only other piece of information that I discovered was that the US Army imprisoned an unusual band of Natchez Indians to the territorial penitentiary in 1836 and that they were later executed---though no official reason was recorded.

     Some dark horror lies buried at Hont's Funeral home, one older that the state, perhaps as old as the river---and grimly entangled with my own.