The House Specialty
There's a sucker born every minute.
Or so goes the old adage famously ascribed to showman P.T. Barnum, Barclay Sargent's greatest rival. In his ten years of owning Sargent's Traveling Show of Curiosities—often dubbed the second-greatest show on earth, a moniker the owner detested—Barclay found the statement to be untrue: there was not a sucker born every minute. He estimated if there were ten people born in any given minute, nine of them would be suckers and only one would be blessed with the intelligence God gave the average chimpanzee.
Nine out of ten were good odds, Barclay believed. They enabled entrepreneurs such as Barnum and Barclay himself to prosper in the business of exhibiting human and animal oddities such as the Fiji mermaid, Zip the Pinhead, Chang and Eng, Jumbo the elephant and General Tom Thumb. Thankfully, there were enough oddities to go around. The market for freakish abnormalities was so good, in fact, that Sargent built a sizable fortune getting Barnum's leftovers—so to speak. The showman was able to find and exploit a pair of Siamese twins, a two-headed dog, a man with a cone-shaped head, a cat with three tails and a woman who tipped the scales at over a thousand pounds.
In addition to people and creatures with genuine deformities, the enterprising Barclay frequently exhibited more questionable aberrations of nature: a mummified animal that he claimed was the remains of the Jersey Devil, a human femur that supposedly once belonged to American patriot Mad Anthony Wayne, a dubious Egyptian mummy and a living Wolf Boy whose hirsute face terrified as well as fascinated the female customers.
Such hoaxes were not uncommon in the "freak show" trade. Barnum was well known for trying to pull the wool over the eyes of his gullible patrons. His ease in doing so had impressed and inspired Barclay. As a small-time confidence man, Sargent had in his youth managed to milk a few dollars out of his marks, but the world-renowned showman was able to make money on a grand scale.
If Phineas Barnum can make millions of dollars by deceiving the general public, Barclay reasoned, why can't I?
With the money he made from his confidence games, Sargent acquired a failing travelling show, and with hard work, skillful management and keen insight into human nature, he was able to make it profitable. Still, he pushed himself to the limit. He would not be content until he had a made his first million dollars. To do so, he would need a star attraction to top Barnum's fare, what the fancy French restaurant he visited in New Orleans referred to as the spécialité de la maison, the house specialty.
It was while Barclay was taking his traveling show through the pre-Civil War South that he was presented with the opportunity to acquire an exhibit that would rival anything that Barnum was parading before his patrons.
"Where did you say you were from?" Barclay asked the wiry old man who was sitting opposite him in the showman's personal train car.
"Adams, Tennessee," the elderly visitor drawled.
"And exactly what did you want to see me about, Mr. ...?"
"Mosley. Abner Mosley. And I came to see you because I hear you like to get your hands on unusual things."
Barclay took note of the man's attire and correctly assumed he was a poor farmer.
"It depends on what you've got. What is it you want to sell me? A two-headed calf? A three-legged chicken?"
"Nope," the old man replied with a stony face. "I got something way better than that. I got the bones of the Bell Witch."
"The Bell Witch?"
"Yup. You ever heard of her?" Mosley asked.
"I read somewhere that Andrew Jackson had a run-in with a witch while he was visiting a man named John Bell."
"That'd be the same one," the old man confirmed. "There was never a blacker heart than the one that beat in the breast of that witch. Tormented the whole Bell family, she did. That hellcat wouldn't rest until she put poor John in his grave."
"And you say the bones you have belong to her?"
"Well, they ain't exactly in my possession," Mosley admitted sheepishly.
"Then where are they?"
"They're buried on my property, and I want them off it."
"Why don't you just dig them up and dispose of them then?" Barclay asked logically.
"And have her kill me like she killed poor old John Bell? Ain't no way in hell I want to tangle with her!" the old man exclaimed.
"Then why come to see me? I thought you wanted to sell me the bones."
"Now, look here. I never said nothing about selling you anything. You can have them free of charge. All you got to do is come up to Adams and dig them up."
"And how do I know if I do go through all that time and trouble of exhuming the remains, I won't be digging up the bones of your grandmother or some other harmless corpse?"
Not that the truth really mattered to Barclay. A good hoax would sell just as many tickets as the genuine article.
"If you see the grave, you'll know. Not a damn thing will grow on that spot: not crops, not grass, not even weeds. Course I don't expect you'll take my word for it. My farm is less than an hour's ride from here. Why don't you come with me and see for yourself?"
Barclay pursed his lips and tapped his fingers on his desk, considering the matter. He asked himself a question he'd asked hundreds of times before: what would Barnum do? The answer was obvious. Phineas would follow the old man back to his farm, dig up the bones and put them in his show.
Having made his decision, Sargent stood up, put on his hat and jacket and motioned for Abner Mosley to lead the way.
* * *
Even from a distance of several hundred yards Barclay Sargent could see the blackness of the barren ground, which was surrounded on all sides by lush green grass. He was a no-nonsense businessman with his feet firmly grounded in reality and his head far from the clouds, yet even he shivered with apprehension when he felt the unnatural cold and quiet atmosphere near the unmarked grave.
"And you're certain someone is buried here?" the showman asked.
"I saw her body put in the grave with my own eyes," the farmer replied.
"How did she die?"
"After John Bell passed, the people of Adams wanted justice ...."
"Justice? Or was it revenge?"
"Does it matter?" the old man asked, shrugging his shoulders. "The sheriff tried to arrest her, but she barricaded herself inside the house and wouldn't come out."
"And?" Barclay prompted Mosley, eager to learn more of the story.
"One of the men suggested there was only one way to deal with a witch: burning. So, we set the house on fire. The next day we sifted through the ashes, found her bones and buried them in an unmarked grave."
"On your property."
"It originally belonged to her. Those of us who had land adjoining the witch's split up the property among ourselves. I got three acres, which included the area we're standing on now. And in more than thirty years, I haven't been able to get a single thing to grow on this spot."
"And you think the ground will become fertile again if I take the bones away."
It was a statement, not a question.
"I'd be much obliged," the farmer said hopefully.
Barclay did not waste time considering the matter. Although he believed the remains were those of a harmless, possibly senile, old woman, he would not pass up such a find. After a long, fruitless search, he had found his spécialité de la maison.
He stared at the lifeless patch of ground, smiled and asked Mosley, "You got a shovel?"
* * *
Darkness had already fallen when Barclay returned to his show with a sack full of denuded human bones. He handed the sack to one of his employees, instructing the man to find a safe place to store them for the night.
"What's in here," an employee named Jasper Canning inquired, "the rest of poor old General Wayne?"
"Would you believe me if I told you it was the remains of a witch who was burned alive and then buried in an unmarked grave?"
"As long as you pay me my wages, I'll believe whatever you tell me, Mister Sargent."
"You're a good man, Jasper," Barclay said, heading toward his personal railroad car where he hoped to wash the dust of Abner Mosley's farm away and eat a good meal before getting some much-needed sleep.
Those plans had to be temporarily postponed when the showman heard a noise behind him and turned to find Jasper Canning lying on the ground, the sack still clutched in his hand.
"He's dead," a second workman pronounced after a quick examination of the body.
"What happened?" Barclay asked. "Did he trip and fall? Is his neck broken?"
"Nope. Must have had a heart attack. He just fell down like a sack of potatoes."
"Well, you and Pete put him in one of the storage cars for the time being," the owner instructed. "I'll send someone into town to get the sheriff first thing in the morning."
Meanwhile, Barclay thought it best to put the bones inside his own car for safekeeping. After his bath and a quick supper, he opened the sack to make sure the witch's remains had not been damaged in transit. To his astonishment, several of the formerly loose bones were held together by what appeared to be articulate ligaments.
I'm not a medical man, he thought with wonder, but I don't think tissue can grow on bones.
The showman's amazement was coupled with delight: this particular oddity—definitely his spécialité de la maison—was sure to pull in paying customers. Better yet, it had not cost him a cent!
* * *
News of Jasper's sudden death spread quickly through the group of itinerant workers that accompanied Barclay's traveling show. These rootless men and women, few of whom had any real education, were highly superstitious and viewed the death as a sign of ill luck.
Their fears were justified when the following morning, not long after Jasper's body was taken to the town undertaker for proper disposal, a second death occurred. Gertrude Kenner, an old widowed woman who worked as the show's laundress, was found dead in Barclay Sargent's car. She had apparently gone in there to get his dirty laundry and promptly died, just like poor Jasper. Her body was discovered on the floor beside the sack containing the remains of the Bell Witch.
Barclay was not alarmed by the news. Gertrude had been getting up there in years, and the fact that she died so quickly after Jasper did was a mere coincidence. He saw nothing to link the two deaths, both of which had no doubt been brought about by natural causes.
After the laundress' body was taken away, Barclay saw a number of workmen standing beside the railroad track, talking.
"I wonder who'll be next," he overheard one of them say.
"Next?" he echoed.
"These things always come in threes, Mr. Sargent," the man replied, quickly making the sign of the cross to ward off harm.
"All right, everybody, the show is over," the impatient showman ordered. "Let's all get back to work."
The moment Barclay entered his train car, he immediately saw the sack of bones on the floor and correctly surmised that Gertrude had opened it, most likely to see if it contained any dirty clothing.
"I hope none of the bones were damaged when the old woman fell," he said, shamelessly feeling more concern for his new exhibit than his recently deceased employee.
As it turned out, the showman had no cause for alarm, for now the once brittle bones were well-protected by a system of healthy tendons as well as ligaments.
"What in hell?" he exclaimed when he saw this new development.
Most men would have pondered the miraculous growth of fresh tissue on the old bones. Such an occurrence was, after all, against all existing laws of nature. Bodies decomposed after a person's death, eventually leaving nothing behind but the skeleton. Never, to Barclay's knowledge, had the process occurred in reverse, yet this was exactly what appeared to be happening.
The busy showman did not waste his precious time trying to understand the ineffable phenomenon. He did not seek out the advice of a doctor, a scientist or even a man of God. He was not interested in obtaining answers. Instead, he took the sack to the traveling show's carpenter and told him to stop whatever he was doing.
"I want you to build a special display case," Barclay told him. "I want it the size of a coffin and made mostly of glass, so that everyone can see the bones inside."
"Whose bones are they?" the curious carpenter asked.
"Supposedly they belong to the Bell Witch, a woman who caused a lot of trouble for a family in Tennessee. Legend is she had a run-in with Andrew Jackson once, too."
"A witch, you say? Maybe I ought to build a real coffin, and you can put the bones back in the ground where they belong."
"Never. The skeleton is going to become our biggest attraction. Phineas Barnum will turn green with envy. You wait and see."
When Barclay received word later that day that the coffin-like display case was completed, he quickly finished his bookkeeping tasks and headed toward the carpenter's work area. When he entered the specially equipped railroad car, he saw the unfortunate craftsman lying on the floor in a pool of blood. The glazed, unseeing eyes were an indication that the carpenter was dead. Apparently, he cut off his hand while sawing a piece of wood and bled to death before help could arrive.
Barclay ignored the grumbling of his workers, who saw the carpenter's death as the third in a series of mishaps that plagued the show. Many of them breathed a sigh of relief, believing no more harm would come. Only Barclay, the level-headed owner who did not share his employees' foolish superstitions, had cause for concern, for only he had seen what was lying inside the cabinet the carpenter was building. The bones of the Bell Witch were nearly covered with skeletal muscles.
The witch's body is regenerating, he thought with the mounting certainty that the miraculous biological changes were directly related to the deaths.
He quickly covered the witch's corpse with a cloth before anyone else could see it, and once the carpenter's body was removed, he locked the train car and pocketed the key.
After leaving the woodshop car, he returned to his usual duties as owner of the traveling show. There were bills to be paid, letters to be signed, publicity announcements to be written and travel arrangements to be made. Yet even though he worked to his usual efficiency, his mind was not on his job. He could not forget the appearance of the Bell Witch's remains. They looked like a corpse of a person who had been skinned alive.
* * *
Two days passed without incident. On the third another tragedy occurred.
It was a Saturday afternoon, and a sizable crowd had gathered to glimpse the show's bizarre exhibits. An elderly husband and wife were walking back to the field where their horse and buggy were tied up when the man suddenly grabbed his chest and fell to the ground. His wife screamed for a doctor, but he was beyond medical help.
The employees of the traveling show were not troubled by the old man's death since he was not directly connected to their troupe. Barclay, however, was filled with apprehension when he saw the dead body lying less than two feet from the late carpenter's train car, wherein the remains of the Bell Witch were being kept under lock and key.
That night, after the show closed and the patrons left, the owner removed the key from his pocket and let himself inside the locked railroad car. His hand trembled as he reached for the cloth that covered the coffin-like exhibit case. He gave a slight tug, and the material fell to the floor. Barclay bit his lip to keep from screaming when he saw the woman's body that was now covered with skin and hair.
When Abner Mosley, the farmer from Adams, Tennessee, told him the tale of the Bell Witch, Barclay assumed she had been a hag—a gray, toothless and bent old crone. He was understandably stunned then to see the body of a young and beautiful woman in the display case. Her angelic looking face had a creamy complexion with a blush of youth on her cheeks. It was framed by a head of long, luxuriant hair the color of copper. Had the corpse been a living, breathing woman, Barclay would have been attracted to her, but she was not human. The creature was some demonic being that inspired only dread and disgust in the showman.
He wondered briefly what he should do with the corpse.
What would Barnum do? he asked himself.
This time the answer did not come so quickly to him, for he was not sure that even Barnum would exhibit an evil creature that could cause swift and certain death to innocent people in its vicinity.
Not even grass would grow over her bones, he thought. She probably sucked the life out of the ground.
"I don't give a damn what Phineas would do!" Barclay suddenly shouted. "I'll not have that monster in my show!"
No, he decided. He would take the remains back to Tennessee and rebury the body on Abner Mosley's land, where it belonged.
Sargent took two steps toward the Bell Witch and then stopped in his tracks. The head turned in his direction, and the eyes opened.
"No!" the showman screamed. "You're not alive!"
The voice that came from the witch's lips was soft and eerie, little more than a whisper in volume.
"You need not fear me. I could have taken your life force at any time, but I didn't. I don't want to harm the man who rescued me from the grave."
"You're evil, and you must be destroyed."
"No. Let me be, and I will reward you handsomely. I need only one more life in order for my heart to beat again."
"I can't let you hurt anyone else," Barclay argued.
"Please. Just one more ...," the Bell Witch pleaded.
The showman was adamant.
"Thou shalt not suffer a witch to live!"
Barclay picked up one of the carpenter's hammers, raised it above his head and brought it down with deadly force.
* * *
The following morning the men and women who worked for the Sargent Travelling Show of Curiosities woke as usual. They rubbed the sleep from their eyes, donned their clothes and headed toward the food car for breakfast.
"After tomorrow's show, we'll be packing up," the barker announced.
Those around him groaned. It was hard work to take down the tents and load the equipment and exhibits on the train cars, and none of them was looking forward to it.
Several hours passed before someone noticed the absence of the show's owner.
"Where's Mr. Sargent?" asked the woman who cleaned his train car. "His bed wasn't slept in last night."
"I don't know," one of the ticket sellers replied. "I haven't seen him all day. Maybe he went into town to see about hiring a new carpenter."
As the day wore on, more people asked that same question, but no one had an answer.
Finally, when the sun began to set, someone suggested volunteers search for the missing owner. As a group of men armed only with lanterns examined the tents and train cars, there were renewed whispers concerning the recent deaths. Maybe the streak of bad luck had not yet run its course.
Others had more practical concerns.
"What if he doesn't show up?"
"I don't know. Should we pack up and head to the next town anyway?"
"Without Mr. Sargent?"
"We've never done it before."
"He probably went to see about a new exhibit."
"Why didn't he tell someone where he was going then?"
When the cone-headed man shined his lantern into the carpenter's railroad car, all speculation came to an abrupt end.
"I found Mr. Sargent. He's in here."
"What happened to him?" the Wolf Boy asked, turning his head away from the grisly sight.
"It looks like someone crushed his skull with that bloody hammer," cone head replied.
"Murder!" the hirsute man bellowed with horror.
No one disagreed with the Wolf Boy's conclusion.
* * *
With Barclay dead, the majority of the exhibits that once belonged to the Sargent Traveling Show of Curiosities found a new home in P.T. Barnum's American Museum in Manhattan. As for the murder of the unfortunate owner of the defunct oddities exhibition, the local police concluded it was the work of an unknown individual who killed the showman during an unsuccessful robbery attempt.
Meanwhile, an hour away in Adams, Tennessee, a beautiful redheaded woman stood in the shadows of a copse of trees, smiling as she watched a small farmhouse for signs of its owner. The resurrected witch was determined that Abner Mosley, like John Bell before him, would rue the day he crossed her path. Mosley would be the first to die, but not the last. She vowed not to rest until she had destroyed every man who had participating in setting her house afire and watching it burn to the ground. Only when her enemies were in their graves would Barclay Sargent's spécialité de la maison head north and resume living the life the men of Adams, Tennessee, had tried to take from her.
This story was inspired by the legend of the Bell Witch from Adams, Tennessee.
Speaking of animal oddities....
