White Hart
Maine State Police
Major Crime Unit
Fort Kent, ME
Official Report - Addendum
Submitted January 12th, 2024
Det. Lt. Richard Taylor
Re: Rockwood case
After having been examined by Maine MCU and submitted for forensic testing, the transcription of the so-called manifesto of the suspect, Walter Rockwood, has been returned to MCU to be stored with the files regarding the Rockwood case.
Forensics have confirmed to as near a certainty as possible that the recording attributed to the suspect does in fact match his voice pattern and is genuine, having been compared to other known recordings of the suspect, although no claims can be made about the veracity of its contents.
See Rockwood case files for a complete account of the events leading up to the incident at Walter Rockwood’s cabin near Howe’s Lake on the evening of November 29th, 2023 and for the details regarding Douglas Chambers, the man whom the suspect, Walter Rockwood, calls Jacob Marley throughout his account.
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Marley was dead to begin with.
I know Dickens said that first but hear me out.
Marley was dead to begin with.
Because I killed him.
Yes, yes, thou shalt not kill, and all that. Actually, there are two words for kill in Hebrew and the one used in the famous commandment means ‘to commit murder’ as opposed to ‘to kill’. That’s a different word. So the commandment is actually ‘Thou shalt not commit murder’.
So, Marley was dead and I killed him.
Let me emphasize that again. I killed him. I did not murder him. As I’ve just said, there’s a difference. I killed him like you’d swat a fly or put down a sick dog. It wasn’t as easy of course but the result was the same.
And, no, my name isn’t Ebenezer Scrooge.
I’m here in my cabin at the moment, way out in the woods of Maine. I have no doubt they’ll find me eventually but for the moment I’m alone and it’s nice and quiet and the snow’s just beginning to fall outside.
I love that hush that comes with a good snow fall. Everything gets muffled in the city. Out here, it’s quiet already but it just makes it even quieter. I can hear everything. I can really think out here.
Which means I can put all this down and set the record straight. Not many people will really care, or understand. But I’m still breathing and as such, I still care.
Jacob Marley was my business partner. We had a law firm, Marley and Rockwood. Small practice, mostly real estate, some tax law, intellectual property, that sort of thing.
We were more than business partners. We were friends. Bangor’s a small city and we’d grown up there and so did our wives. Our kids played together. We’d go to Bar Harbor on the weekends in the summer.
Nice normal boring suburban. Perfectly fine, perfectly normal. People put down the idea of the American dream. They spit on the suburbs as manufactured, phony, inauthentic. Fine, but you know what? They’re quiet and there’s no crime and we don’t live cheek by jowl with every Tom, Dick, and Harry in apartment buildings full of loud music and drugs and barking dogs. Go to the city to see the sights, visit a museum, but live there? The noise alone will drive you crazy.
I’m not, by the way. Crazy, that is. They’ll say so. I know they will. Screw them.
I was at the office one day—we had a small office on Roosevelt with windows looking out onto the street and a front desk for our secretary, Janice, some chairs and a small office for each of us in the back—and Jacob comes in making noise as usual, which is fine, I put up with it. He was a big guy, tall, a little overweight, bigger than me certainly, and inclined to go red in the face when talking. He had this way of talking where he would lean forward and keep going and you’d wonder whether he would ever take a breath and right when you were sure he had to he would go for just a little bit longer and then take a big gulp of air before going on.
Well he came in one day, that day, that day because everything changed that day, and said he had to go meet a client out at the old sanitarium across the river near Holden cause the guy wanted to buy the place and turn it into a hotel or something or maybe knock it down and develop the land.
I said fine by me and he said not to wait around for lunch since he wouldn’t be back until later.
I had a couple phone calls with clients and one came to see me, a lady that owns a strip mall in Bangor Gardens about trying to evict one of the businesses that leases space from her.
The day passed uneventfully and when Janice and I closed up for the day at five I figured Jacob had gone straight home from meeting with the client instead of coming back to the office.
I was just getting ready for bed that night when Susan, my wife, came into the bedroom.
I could tell something was wrong by the look on her face. You get to know your wife after years and years together, and she you.
“Carol just called,” she said. “Jacob didn’t come home tonight.”
“What?”
“She said he didn’t come home.”
“I saw him this morning. He went out near Holden with a client. Did she call the police?”
“Yeah, you know Carol. She made them file a missing persons report even though they tried to feed her the line that a person isn’t missing ‘til they’re gone for twenty-four hours.”
I started to get dressed.
“Where are you going?”
“I’m going to Holden where he met the client. It’s a quick trip, just across the river. Don’t worry, I’m just going to see if his car is there.”
Jacob was big and boisterous but it wasn’t like him to be out so late and, even if it were a matter of keeping secrets between the two of us, I could say truthfully that he didn’t step out on his wife or anything like that so I was fairly worried as I headed out in our minivan, a relic of days when all of our kids still lived at home. Now it was just little Ashley, although she wasn’t little anymore.
I took Union across the Penobscot River and turned right on Main. The river was wide and dark on my right and reflected the few lights of the city. Bangor was a small city after all. I turned off the radio and just listened to the engine. It was easier to think that way. I liked listening to the gears change in the old automatic transmission, waiting to see how long each gear change would take, where the valves were starting to get old and sluggish.
I jumped onto the 395 figuring it was not only the more direct route but also the route that Jacob had likely taken and somehow it made sense to me to look out for his car while driving even though I couldn’t see anything but headlights at that time of night.
It was a lonely drive out to Holden, not because there weren’t other cars on the road but because I was completely focused on Jacob and what might have happened and where he might be. There was no one to share my worries with and even though I was doing my best to convince myself that he had taken the client out for drinks and ended up drunk somewhere else, catastrophic scenarios kept springing to mind.
A medical emergency? A fight with the client? Jacob could sometimes rub people the wrong way.
I exited 395 outside Holden onto the little rural strip with gas stations, McDonalds, Subway, Dunkin Donuts, a fireworks store, and a seafood market.
I turned south on Copeland Hill and drove through black pine forest. The headlights illuminated little past the side of the two lane road as the forest creeped in on either side. A tiny brown historic landmark sign pointed the way to White Hart Sanitarium. A small blue sign indicated that the same road led to Fields Pond.
I turned right down the road and followed it as it wound around to the north side of the pond. The trees thinned out and I passed the boat launch and some cottages on my left, the first signs of life I had seen since getting off the highway.
The road went further on, hooking around the pond, and came to a sudden stop.
A gate loomed ahead in the darkness flanked by two brick pillars with a wrought iron sign arcing across the top that read, White Hart Sanitarium 1879.
A chain link fence straddled the road but stood open, as was the heavy interior gate. I squeezed the minivan through and went up the drive.
There stood a massive brick Victorian building, still impressive after all these years. Dozens of windows in neat rows stared out from the brick facade. Stairs led to double doors in the center of the building, which was precisely symmetrical with a wing on either side extending slightly forward from the main facade.
And there in front of the building was Jacob’s silver Toyota Camry illuminated only by my headlights and the weak crescent moon. Next to it was a black Lexus sedan.
My heart sank as I realized they had gotten to the place but hadn’t left.
I put the van in park and turned off the engine but left the lights on. I grabbed a flashlight from the glove box. As I opened the door the alarm letting me know the lights were on beeped at me but I ignored it and shut the door.
I was struck by the scent of pine. The trees were on all sides and came close to the building blocking out all view of the pond on the other side. Gravel crunched underfoot.
I shone the flashlight on Jacob’s car. There was no one inside. I couldn’t see a wallet or keys either, or his phone. Same thing for the Lexus, although the darkened windows made it hard to see inside.
I shone the flashlight up at the building. I stared down at me ominously.
I’m a grown man. I haven’t been scared of the dark since grade school but that place at night creeped me out.
The abandoned cars didn’t help either and the bad feeling that had been growing in my mind during the drive over was now at a fever pitch.
I should have called the police right then and there to report that I’d found Jacob’s car but the open front door just called to me and I couldn’t resist going in to look for him.
Why they would have needed to go inside, or wanted to, was beyond me. Though I suppose in daylight the place would have been a lot less intimidating, maybe even charming.
I kept the flashlight fixed on the double doors as I walked up the front steps. The doors were a dark wood, probably oak, and intricately carved with ivy swirling in relief around carved columns. In the center of either door was the head of a hart, presumably to represent the sanitarium’s eponymous white hart.
The door on the right was ajar and I pushed it open all the way and walked inside.
My flashlight illuminated small patches of the entryway and the headlights from my van swept past me to help dispel the dark. Tile with dizzying geometric patterns extended into the wide entryway. There was a closed door on the left side of the entryway and a sliding glass window at a counter on the right. The air was musty and stale. Wind whistled through a cracked window somewhere nearby.
I walked forward, past the closed door, which I tried but was locked, and the window. The walls opened and long dark hallways stretched down the length of the building, farther than my flashlight could reach.
Ahead of me was a staircase.
I don’t know why but I decided to go up instead of wandering around the first floor. For some reason higher ground felt safer, like having my back to a wall, and at that moment I would have given anything to feel less spooked.
It was utterly cliche and still utterly terrifying. An abandoned sanitarium. Two missing people. Pitch black. No sounds but the wind.
I started up the dark staircase angling the flashlight beam up and craning my neck to try to see up to the next floor before I got to the landing, not that it did any good.
I kept going, one step at a time, each step getting harder and harder for no apparent reason. As I got higher and higher my mind felt oppressed, terrified and my legs strained as if with each step a sandbag was thrown on my shoulders.
My eyes cleared the level of the floor. A faint light was emanating from the window at the far end but my attention was instead focused on the dark shapes interrupting the geometric tile pattern beneath the window.
I mounted the final few steps and walked shakily over to the window.
There on the floor was Jacob, face down, blood around his head.
Next to him was a middle aged man with a neat gray mustache and silver hair flat on his back, arms outstretched. His throat had been cut ear to ear.
Neither was moving.
A bloody piece of pipe lay on the floor in front of me and right at Jacob’s feet. The gray-haired man held a broken piece of glass in his hand.
I willed myself forward and squatted down, trying to avoid the blood. I felt Jacob’s neck. He was cold. The other man, presumably the client, was cold too.
The place felt like a tomb, like they would both be there forever, and me with them.
I stood up and reached for my phone and dialed 911.
My hand was shaking and my breathing was coming fast.
Thankfully the call went through. I told the operator where I was and what I’d found. She told me to stay on the line but I wasn’t about to stand there on a phone call staring at my friend’s dead body so I gave my number, although I’m sure they had it already, and hung up.
And that was when Jacob moved.
Not much, just a kind of stretching motion, like he was waking up from a nap. His arms, which had been bent awkwardly at his sides, reached straight out.
A halting rattling gasp issued from him.
“Jesus Christ, Jacob, I thought you were dead.”
He coughed and I rolled him over and pulled him up to a sitting position. His normally jovial face was dark and splotchy and covered in blood.
I crouched down, helping to hold him up with one hand cupped on his neck. His eyes were unfocused but moving around like they were trying to see.
I could feel a pulse under my thumb that was pressed into the side of his neck.
A pulse under my thumb.
Hannah had said something about that. Hannah, my daughter who was a nurse. And I remembered in that moment: you shouldn’t take a pulse with your thumb because you can feel your own pulse in your thumb instead of the patient’s. Or, in this case, instead of your friend and business partner’s pulse.
I set the flashlight on the floor to free up my right hand and placed the tips of my index and middle fingers on his neck. I pressed. I moved my fingers and pressed again.
Nothing.
Jacob gurgled something. His eyes snapped to, focused, and looked right at me.
“Walter. What took you so long?”
“Jacob?”
“Yeah. Why are you looking at me like that?”
“I thought you were dead. I—I think you are dead. You don’t have a pulse.”
“Oh, well, that’s what happens when you die. It’s alright though.”
He said this as if it was the most natural thing in the world.
“What? It’s alright? What are you talking about?”
“It’s okay. We’ll show you.”
He gestured in the direction of the gray-haired man who was also getting to his feet.
I recoiled, the piece of pipe rolling under me.
Scrambling to my feet, I held out the pipe pointed at them both.
“Oh great, Tommy,” Jacob said to the other man.
Tommy gurgled a reply.
“Yeah, I know.”
Thinking back now, I have no idea how Jacob understood what Tommy had said but at the time that was the least of my worries. Tommy I could take. Jacob was a big guy. Plus, can you hurt someone who’s already dead?
I backed up slowly heading toward the stairs. Jacob came at me, hands up ready to intercept a blow from the pipe. Tommy circled around, glass shard in hand.
He came in quick, swinging in wide arcs. My reach was longer. I cracked him on the side of the head and he went down hard.
Like a train, Jacob hit me in the chest, knocking the wind out of me, and taking both of us backward through the railing and down the stairs.
We must have twisted in the air because I landed on top of Jacob. He cried out and we rolled the rest of the way down the stairs.
I picked up the pipe and stood over Jacob. His leg was at an unnatural angle.
“Walter,” he said breathlessly, “you gotta help me. Help me.” His eyes bulged. “Come on, man, we’re friends. Help me.”
“What can I do? You’re already dead.”
“Help us.”
“Who is us?”
“Help us, help us,” he said, spitting and frothing and shouting over and over.
I brought down the pipe and silenced him.
I dropped the pipe and walked toward the front door where red, white, and blue flashing lights were playing across the entryway walls.
I went out onto the steps.
A state trooper was just getting out of his squad car.
“Hey,” he said, putting on his hat, “you okay? Did you call us in?”
I held up my hand to wave. “Yeah, that was me,” I said.
He came over. He looked young, clean shaven, but the light was behind him and I couldn’t make out too much except for his blue Maine state trooper uniform. His hand was on his hip. He shined a flashlight on me.
“Jesus, you’re covered in blood. Are you okay?”
“Yeah, I’m—I’m okay.”
“What happened?”
“They attacked me.”
“Attacked you? We got a call about two dead bodies.”
How do you square that circle? What the hell was I supposed to say to make this guy believe the impossible.
I gestured over my shoulder. “In there. You’ll see.”
“Don’t move,” he said and went inside.
I wasn’t in the mood for taking orders so I went over to my van and got inside. I started the engine so the headlight warning alarm would stop blaring at me.
What a difference a little time makes. I had very different problems when I first heard that sound, what was it? Fifteen minutes before?
Something nagged at me. It wasn’t the fact that I found myself in a Stephen King novel where a haunted building had killed then possessed my best friend and our client. Or that I’d just sunk a lead pipe into my best friend’s head.
It was how to explain what had happened to anyone.
And that was when the state trooper came out of the front doors with his gun drawn pointing right at me.
“Turn off the car!”
Of course he thought I did it. That’s what any normal, rational person would think.
“I didn’t kill them!”
“Turn off the car!”
I glanced in the rear view mirror then leaned over so I was hidden from view and threw the car into reverse. I cranked the wheel hard and floored it. A bullet went through the windshield. Then I put it into drive and floored it again.
The old tires spun, kicking up gravel, finally found purchase, and I was gone.
One more bullet went through the rear windshield but I was off racing back the way I had come.
I couldn’t go home so I came here to Howe’s Lake.
I knew they would find me here. It’s my cabin. But I didn’t want to go home. Didn’t want my wife and kids to see how this was going to end.
No one will believe what happened. Of course they won’t. I wouldn’t either if it didn’t happen to me.
So, like I said, I killed Jacob Marley. But I didn’t murder him because he was already dead to begin with. Something very wrong with that place by Field’s Pond, but I’ll never find out what. Maybe I took a little piece with me. Maybe it got to me just like it got to Jake.
Oh look. They’re here. I can see the lights. Let’s see how this plays out. What’re the odds I get out of here alive?
Disclaimer: This is a work of fiction, strictly a product of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance, perceived resemblance, or similarity to any other fictional works, to actual events or persons, living or dead, and any perceived slights of people, places, or organizations are products of the reader’s imagination. This fiction is the result of a partnership between a human writer and the character(s) he accessed with his creative subconscious as he raced through the story with them. No AI of any kind, generative or otherwise, was used in any way to write this story.
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