The Execution of Eleazer Menzies

1

Upon my return to Salles, I found the town maddened with bloodlust.

Something akin to the air of death brooding overhead as I rode my horse townward. Dark evening clouds hovering ominously low above the distant Salles. Heavy, thick and gray fog proceeded from the clouds and, as if by intent, coiled its form into a cloaking plume around Salles all the while leaving the surrounding plains untouched. The impossible sight cast cursed visions of cold and wet suffocation. Yet, terrible weather however ominous was the least of my fears. Standing tall and lonely on Salles Hill was the wooden gibbet!

They had actually done it. They had built the gallows in Salles.

The wooden device towered over the plains about a mile outside of town. A simple structure; composed of an upright beam about thirteen or fourteen feet tall and a much shorter beam that extended outward. Perhaps it was the simplicity of the deadly frame that cooled my blood; or that it was the first device of its kind to be built in Salles. How many people would lose their lives on that monument in the name of justice?

#

That evening, my friend Jon Aimes confronted me in my home with the disturbing news. I poured him a light drink on account of it not being too late for conversation before settling in the chair facing his.

“You’ve seen the gallows built in your absence?” asked Aimes his eyes visibly bloodshot even under the dirty light of kerosene lamp.

“How could I have missed it? The damn thing is visible at least a mile out.”

Aimes made no reply.

“You look like you need rest Aimes.” In truth he looked more disturbed than tired. The dark circles under his eyes and the white stubble seemed to have aged him considerably.  

“I shall rest tomorrow, when Menzies hangs.”

I nearly choked on the drink.

“Menzies? The gallows were built to hang Menzies?” I rose from the chair, dropping the glass on the low table with a clatter.

There was only one Menzies in Salles and—

 “Well, he has been sentenced in front of the town tribunal.” Aimes’s voice remained stoic, hands clasped in front of him, eyes grim.

“And you are hanging him tomorrow?” I was pacing to and from the chair my soul heated with confusion. In the space of a month, they had built the gallows in Salles.

And on the morrow they would—

“For what crime?!” I bellowed.

“You remember the girl, went missing the week before your provincial business trip?”

“Desideria? Yes, but the thought was that she escaped the troubles of her family. . . that she left for the city.” I said, dreading the implications of him bringing her up.

“Well she didn’t. Eleazer Menzies had abducted—”

“Impossible!” I shouted, glowering down at the unfazed Aimes.

“A sentiment I would have shared with you had I not come upon the horror myself.” He said as a tear rolled down his cheek.

Aimes whom I had known for more than a decade had never shed tears in my presence. It was then that I decided to take my doubts and wrestle with them internally. At the very least, I had to listen to what he had to say.

So, I crumpled back into the seat, my heart on the verge of breaking at the idea of an acquaintance of mine inflicting any kind of violence on anyone, much less on a little fourteen year old girl.

I had always considered myself a good judge of character. I took pride in surrounding myself with men of honour. How Menzies, a man I considered a good man just a few hours earlier, could be responsible of any crime deserving of death bothered me incessantly.

After a few moments which for me were spent in bewilderment and for Aimes; face hidden, mouth drooping and tears falling, I braved myself for his tale.

“Listen to me” he began, after drinking the glass empty.

“I know you have your misgivings about the death penalty. Believe me I understand, as this too was my position regarding the matter until this revelation. This . . . man must die. This man, whom to us presented an amicable disposition, is a monster of the vilest order. I will tell you briefly the extent of his crimes so that when he does hang tomorrow your conscience will be clean.”

My conscience would be clean. The conversation had already become too taxing for both my fatigued body and mind. Still, I had to hear my friend’s justification for his imputations against Menzies.  

“The night of, about a week ago now,” Aimes began. “Our mutual acquaintance Eleazer invited me to his house for dinner if you can believe it, the unmitigated gall. I accepted under the pretence of discussing agriculture, —not that I needed a reason to break bread with him. I mean, he was a friend after all.”

Even the word friend, Aimes said with great trepidation.   

“I was served a roast, lentil soup, . . . some bread. Following dinner, we fell to discussing cattle breeds and facilitating purchases and transportation until eventually I decided I had to use the privy. Menzies directed me outside through the backdoor to the shed. After relieving myself I returned to the house but my host was nowhere to be seen. I looked in the dining room where we’d been sitting but he wasn’t there. I resisted the urge to call on his name deciding instead to snoop around.

“It didn’t take long before I found the basement door ajar. I could see light flickering from below the staircase. There being the most logical explanation of Menzies’s sudden disappearance within his own domain, I decided to follow him.

“My own curiosity got the better of me; for I should never have descended those stairs. But what foreknowledge does a man have that such a simple decision will land him face to face with death?”

Aimes paused as though for a second he was entertaining such a ridiculous question.

“As the stairs creaked from beneath me betraying my presence to Eleazer, I heard him shout for me to ‘wait there by the stairs, I’ll be right up’. Out of good-natured defiance I suppose, I actually chuckled. ‘Come now Eleazer what are you hiding down there, the finest wine I hope?’ I said, thinking that he was probably preparing some -some gift for his visitor.

“But, I heard footfalls of Menzies scurrying about, moving things, as if he was concealing something. Presently, I became aware of the thick, unmistakable scent of sulphur. And as I gazed to the left of the staircase, I could see directly into the adjacent room. That is when I came upon the horrific dungeon. The stone floor was marked by a deep red river of coagulated blood. In an instant, my eyes had followed the blood, past Menzies onto beholding a human foot lying on the table.”

“Christ Almighty!” I interrupted.

Jon Aimes swallowed dry spittle from his mouth then shook his head.

“Before I could even register what I had seen, I glimpsed Eleazer’s face above the lamp light just as he extinguished the wick, plunging us into darkness. Those eyes . . .” Aimes shivered. “They were gaunt and hawkish, his face angular and dark with disdain. In that moment I saw the face behind the Eleazer Menzies we knew. I saw a man bared of all his secrets. A most dangerous man.

“I heard the lantern drop to the floor and didn’t need instruction on what to do next. Feeling for the railing, I began my ascent in a haze of fleeting survival. I had to reach the door if I was to escape that house of horrors. The man behind me was grunting like a starved beast.

“The stairs which once seemed like a small elevation of about ten feet now seemed a treacherous slope. But I ran up those steps, even leaping over some of them. Just as I reached the door something pulled at my right foot. I fell, reaching for the railing again in an effort to slow my fall. Instead of the railing my hands landed on Menzies and we both rolled down in a chaotic scuffle. I cursed, punched, slapped for dear life and until now I have no idea how I managed to break free.

“In a frenzy, I ascended the stairs once again and this time I made it out of the basement. My sense of direction remained true despite the intense stress. I ran out of that house screaming and shouting into the street like a madman. Bill Graves, by some timely fate, heard my call. That is how we got the town guard back to capture Menzies.”

“Menzies didn’t run?” I asked.

“It's the strangest thing. When we returned to his house, Menzies was still in the basement. That is when we saw the true extent of what he had done. It was Desideria whom I’d seen lying on that table. Her chest had been eviscerated. The body was decomposing but the smell of sulphur was strong enough to mask any stench. I suspect that he employed its use for this very purpose.”

I was mortified. Morbid images of Aimes’s story flooded my mind as he spoke.

“It is suspected he held her alive for at least a day before beginning his . . . sacrifice. The entire room in that damned basement had been transformed into a bloody occult altar.”

“Good God!” I muttered.

“Trinkets of strange origin and antiquity were laid out around this altar of horrors” continued Aimes.

“And Menzies?” I enquired again.

“In the ultimate form of disrespect and dissonance from the gravity of his actions Menzies was prostrating at the feet of the eviscerated corpse. In his hands was a strange book with jewels studded into its cover. He was reading it, muttering what I can only assume as the dictations of the illegible writings contained within those aged pages. None of the men I came with could understand the tongue. Not that any of us cared about deciphering it. Our immediate objective was simply to arrest the bastard which we managed without resistance. He was outnumbered.”

Jon Aimes paused, then, nodding slowly as if to reaffirm his conviction said, “So, as part of an audience and as per his sentence, tomorrow at noon I shall watch him hang by the neck until dead for the pain he inflicted on the girl and his attempt at my life.”

I remained silent for a few minutes, staring at the lamp’s wick which seemed to burn undeterred while my mind battled the conflicts of the man I knew as Eleazer Menzies and the barbarous lunatic who had killed Desideria Biers.

Aimes remained silent.

“But the urgency of it” I said finally, “hanging the man just a week after you caught him?”

“Ellis. Surely you—” Aimes leaned forward, looking visibly perplexed. “Are you arguing leniency for a man committed murder most foul?!”

His words stung at something deep within my core.

“I . . .” What was I arguing?  Menzies, a man with whom I had shared pleasantries, trivialities and even a meal or two was to be hanged by the neck until dead. And my friend had witnessed his crimes, along with other men like the much respected Bill Graves.

 “Mrs. Biers, a widow who lost her husband to Consumption, is now faced with the grizzly demise of her only child. You would have her breathe the same air as that murderer?”

I had no reasonable reply. In fact, nothing had made sense ever since I had seen that fog upon my return home.

“If it’s the image of the personable Menzies that is bothering you, I can assure you; that man wouldn’t lose sleep over killing you my friend. That beast must die Ellis.”

2

And so, it was by my association with both Jonathan Aimes and the condemned Eleazer Menzies that I walked with the procession of about thirty people to the Salles Hill gallows. I mention this not to lay blame for the great tragedy I was audience to. I simply mean to explain the reason, order and consequence of these incredible happenings.

Following the previous night’s revelations, I spent the rest of the night in a sleepless stupor. The imminent death of Menzies and the unreal evil of his crimes broke me. I didn’t even want to consider my new perspective towards the punishment to which he had been condemned. With Desideria in consideration, it seemed just; the ultimate punishment rendered for the ultimate crime. As for Menzies, had he really killed her?

My stomach riled at the idea of actually going through with the sentence.

We had arrived at the gallows. In a few minutes the man would be dead and maybe I would finally wake from this deranged nightmare. Still, if Menzies had indeed dabbled in the occult, did he believe in all that mess?

“Still troubled Ellis?” asked Aimes solicitously as we stood on Salles hill.  

“Something feels off. I . . . I don’t feel too well.”

“Bah! Mere superstition Ellis. I thought you were above that” he said. “Our senses don’t transcend the physical five. Intuition, like religion like superstition, is a sense that has no empirical evidence to which we can draw upon. Look where superstition and religion brought us through Menzies. I reject intuition and so should you friend.”

Aimes fancied himself learned. The man was well read on philosophy and religion. He was a self-professed moral naturalist. Now however, his obsession with the impending execution of Menzies seemed to me to contradict his philosophical conclusions. I suppressed the urge to bring up this contradiction to him. Besides, I couldn’t afford to add this argument to my own internal contentions.

A dirty mixture of heartburn and something like solid nausea was rising from within. I was about to watch another man hang . . . and that man had been a friend.

The sun was at high noon when the hang party arrived. That perilous fog from the previous evening now a thing of forgotten dreams and repressed memories. Gravel-stained from the walk and sweaty beneath my suit jacket, I yearned for better days when heavy ideas like death didn’t govern my existence. The party was made of the seven members of the town tribunal, two town guardsmen, the hangman who wore distinctively black clothing and a black overcoat, the town orator and Eleazer Menzies who sat at the back of the cart which was pulled by two horses.     

Menzies was a tall man of average features. He had lived for eight and thirty years. He had long black hair which I had only ever seen tied neatly into a ponytail. Now, that hair ran loose sticking to his clammy face. The man I had known always presented himself to be of high status. Here, his tattered trousers, a dirty brown shirt and with hands bound behind his back spoke of a different reality.

How had a man so non-threatening ended up venturing into the unspeakable things of the occult? Or more harrowing, how had he ended up performing the illegal autopsy of a murdered corpse.

The crowd chattered and whispered as the disgraced man walked up the steps on to the hanging platform. Curiously, almost daringly, Eleazer Menzies stepped upon the dais with the confidence of some great orator about to sound the call for total war. Maybe it was the awe granted him by his crimes, but the man exuded an improper demeanour at the face of death.

The two guards led him to the rope and dressed him with the necktie. Then they helped him stand on the wooden stand which would be activated to incite his execution.

The announcer began reading the sentencing.

“Eleazer Menzies, you are hereby condemned to death based upon your crimes relating to, the killing of one Ms. Desideria Biers, the obscene tempering with a human corpse, grave robbery and desecration. As you have refused your last rites—”

“What of Mrs. Biers?” I asked Jon Aimes after noticing her absence from the crowd.

“That woman has seen enough death. She refused to come. I cannot blame her.” Aimes said. His eyes were fixed on Menzies who seemed to be staring back at him. “I shall see that dog hang . . . for her.”

“. . . So it is by common law that your punishment is to hang by the neck until you die.” The announcer said closing his statement. “Any last words, sir?”

The air seemed to grow still as the crowd listened intently.

Menzies, still standing on his final anchor to the ground, grinned then cleared his throat.

A slimy slug crawled down my back.

Evidently, the man in front of us was Menzies the murderer not Menzies the accused.

“I call upon the grim father,” he began, voice hoarse and parched. “Lord of the deep and ancient. From shadow to shadow. For sacrifice paid in blood, I request blood for blood. I curse my murderers—”

“THAT BASTARD” Aimes’s voice was loud enough to cause vibrations through my chest.

The crowd gasped.

Menzies-the-mad continued his barbarous rant, which seemed to meld into an incoherent tongue. If the man ever had sense or remorse, he had murdered those within himself.

If I hadn’t known it by then, I knew it now. This man deserved to hang.

It was in accordance with the law.

And the law was just.

“. . . Death to death. These words are my last.” said Menzies ending his speech.

“He must hang.” The realisation escaped my lips as a pathetic whisper.

Just then, the hangman removed the floor upon which Menzies had been standing.

Menzies fell about three feet making the rope taut.

The man— NO. The animal that was Eleazer Menzies began his slow death.

Due to the short drop he would die by strangulation. Menzies’s legs flailed about in the air. His eyes began to bulge, face red with blood. Vigorously he tried to free his hands which were still tied behind him. The audience, still silent, remained glued to the grim spectacle.

We watched the man struggle for a good six minutes. We watched still as though expecting the man who had defied common law to also defy death by the hangman.

Finally, the man once known as Eleazer Menzies crossed the threshold. In place of the arrogant murderer that once beheld our eyes was a purple, bloated face with wide bulging eyes and a limp protruding tongue.

The butcher of Salles was dead.

#

“He is dead,” echoed Aimes from beside me.

“Yes.”

There was an anticlimactic finality to it all. The man who had seemed larger than life due to his heinous deeds had died just like that. He had struggled at the end but was it enough to atone for his crimes? If there is a hereafter then perhaps he might receive adequate punishment. All this I thought as the crowd began dispersing.

         Just then I heard a cry, a loud and harrowing cry.

“What is it?!” I shouted at Aimes who looked just about as horrified and confused as I was.

We both looked back to Menzies’s corpse half expecting him to have risen.

NO! Menzies was still hanging by the neck and dead as prescribed.  

So what was that cry? Surely no one could mourn that—

“Ellis! Look.” Aimes was pointing a tremorous finger away from the gallows and at the small crowd.

There, in absolute defiance of all that is logical, empirical or even reasonable, was Ronald Seys rising as though lifted by some chains that my eyes refused to see. The crowd burst into hysterics. I watched the man with unblinking eyes as he looked behind and above himself as if sensing some presence lurking from behind him. A presence that somehow remained hidden under the illusive cover of broad daylight!

 Ronald Seys —the town judge— screamed a foul scream that only served to terrify his audience.

 “HELP ME. Someone hel—” His voice cut off as he reached helplessly at the invisible force that seemed to be choking him.

“My God! He is being hanged— MY GOD” shouted Aimes from my side.

Bill Graves who was closer to Seys tried reaching to grab Seys’s foot and bring him down. With my own eyes I saw Seys’s ascension as if through flight, to a height that was beyond reach.  People screamed and ran in the background as if fleeing some plague.

Meanwhile my soul had left my body. I didn’t scream nor did I speak or move. My eyes remained fixed on the horror of Ronald Seys’s hanging. The image of him wrigling and that of him taking his last breath will remain with me until I breathe my last. As soon as he died, his corpse fell helplessly like a discarded rag closing the gap between him and the ground.   

Menzies’ cursed ramblings began echoing through my mind. Had he somehow exacted his revenge from beyond the grave?

Eventually, my senses attuned to my surroundings. The crowd had scattered.

There on the ground I saw the remnants of Menzies’s judgement.

SEVEN MORE CORPSES LAY DEAD.

 All had been mangled from a method I had seen done to Seys —a long drop that followed being hanged. They all exhibited the visual signs of hanging; their faces red with trapped blood and ligature marks seared onto their necks. One by one I began recognising the victims. Mrs. Forsworn, Mrs. Fell, the hangman, Fero Kidane, Mr. Rede, Mr. Gray Mr. Denys all mangled from the fall.

All were members of the town tribunal, with the exception of the hangman who was fatefully contracted to the intimate act of towing Menzies into eternity.

I knew what this was. Despite the absurdity of it we all knew what had happened.  Menzies had successfully taken his executioners with him.

#

For two whole days the corpses lay unmoved on Salles Hill. Finally, out of respect of the families of those deceased, Bill Graves, Aimes and I mustered enough courage to retrieve the corpses and give them Christian burials. With the help of some of the town guard we succeeded in this endeavour. Silently, we moved the corpses onto the cart fearing that we might wake whatever it was that Menzies had ushered in prior to his death.

Once it seemed the conditions of the curse had expired and no one else was going to die we hoisted Menzies’s corpse from the gibbet. His body was ripe and rank as were the others. We threw him into the bonfire prepared right next to the gallows which was fed for the whole day and burned overnight to ensure his complete cremation.

Menzies’s house along with his belongings was also reduced to ash. All possessions but that one strange artefact remained. The book suspected of containing whatever occult incantations that the executed man employed. A communal decision was made by the elders that the book was to be sent to Mt. Mundo Monastery under strict warnings and a written account of the tragedy on Salles Hill. Perhaps an account of similar occurrences might exist within the monastery’s thousand-year-old archive. However, as of my writing this account, we still await a response to our request for exorcism. 

I understand that simply writing about these events might render me a fool with fantastic ideas but I too have struggled with the delirium surrounding these events. However, I say with certainty should you find a resident of Salles who witnessed the hanging of Eleazer Menzies, this individual can vouch for my sanity and for my account of things that contradict the natural laws which all mankind seem to be governed by.

Even so, I challenge my critics to present the reason behind the deaths of all the members of the town tribunal. I personally witnessed the murders of these men and women on Salles Hill, though I can only attest definitively to but one of these deaths (that of Seys). These hangings were done through means I can only attribute to the occult manifestations invoked by the madman Menzies on that fateful afternoon. Manifestations which I relate perhaps fantastically to that cursed fog-like form which took it upon itself to engulf Salles on the eve of the hangings. 

In the six months that have passed since the hangings, my friend Jon Aimes’s mental state deteriorated. He has cut off contact from all of his confidants. He rambles on and on about Menzies’s curse being upon him. Once, he spent the whole day wandering through town proclaiming that he was being followed by the deceased Menzies.

On some days I too think Menzies’s curse is still upon us. On those days I think of the beings that lurk outside of the periphery of our own reason. Beings that are always watching, always brooding, waiting ever so patiently for that one fool to crack open the veil between this realm and total chaos.

THE END