Jeffery Dalmer murdered over seventeen men from 1978 to 1991 in Milwaukee. He started with animals as a child. At his trial he claimed to have acted alone, however in 1964 I saw evidence that he might have been connected to a long-running nationwide Satanic cult. I wrote about it in my unpublished novel WICKED YOUTH.
An excerpt from WICKED YOUTH.
The Blue Hill Reservation ran six miles east to west from the marshes of the Neponset River to the abandoned Quincy Quarries. Old trails crisscrossed woods and we scoured them for places of curiosity. Chuckie and I were walking on the Sawcut Notch along Pine Tree Brook. We had never been to this part of the woods, but he spotted a collapsed Quonset hut, with a steeple toppled on the ground. New England winters were hard on abandoned building. The makeshift church bore the scars of a recent burning and Chuckie threw a rock at a window. It missed by a foot. We heard a flutter of feathers and turned our heads to a dead elm at the end of the overgrown field.
Hundreds of black crows perched on the tree's withered branches. The rustle of dry leaves slithered a command and their scavenger heads swiveled to a burnt patch of grass in the field. I blinked several times. “You see that?”
“Yeah.” Chuckie was scared. So was I.
A whitened skull had been stuck on a chest-high stake. Dead animals were impaled on five smaller poles wrapped with arcane rags. Some people claimed the Blue Hills were cursed by the massacred tribe of Massachusetts Indians, but these dead animals had nothing to do with dead red men.
“That big skull belongs to a dog and the others look like cats.” Chuckie picked up a stick.
“Red Halley said the Devil was in the woods. I thought he was drunk.” The crows followed my bending over for the rusty steel rod and I peeked from the corner of my eyes.
Just because I couldn’t see a face or a body didn’t mean the woods were empty. Chuckie had had a pet dog. “You think the dog might be Skippy?”
“No, Skippy is long gone.” I knew that his father had given Skippy to a poor kid, who had no mother. I never told him the truth.
“Just like your bunny rabbits.” I had had pet bunnies for one day. They had jumped from the box in my garage. The fall had put them out of their misery. We had cried when they died.
“Yes, just like the bunny rabbits.” This setting was a sacrilege and we charged the skulls with a scream.
The murder of crows wheeled overhead, as we knocked the totems to the ground and pounded the skulls to shards. Chuckie and I ran from the meadow followed by demonic cawing. We didn’t stop until reaching the giant slabs of granite marking the boundaries of the quarries. Breathless Chuckie turned to the woods. “Who you think did that?”
Our usual list of villains of men in black hats, Nazis, and aliens from outer space never stuck the animals on stakes. “I don’t know.”
“Me neither, but whoever did it is will be angry with whoever messed it up.” Chuckie was right.
“This will be our secret.”
A savage howl pierced the summer air.
Both of us started with horror, thinking the howl might belong to the dog’s skull, but I recognized its owner. The Rolla’s black dog had smelled my scent. Her was more scary than any dead dog.
Years later I found the following photo in the newspaper.
It came from the collection of Jeffery Dalmer.
I had seen it before.
In 1964.
And I shivered thinking Jeffery Dalmer was not alone.
