Far to the north of
Oklahoma City, past Guthrie, past Perry, and at an even higher latitude than
Ponca City—but still not in Kansas—there was a town. A town of mystery and deceit. A town of gloom and desperation. A town containing a horror great enough to
drive even the sanest person mad. A
despicable, deplorable, ghastly horror so incredible that not even the most
veteran police officer in Oklahoma would have supposed it to be possible. It could be found here, right off I-35 in a
town best known as a gas stop for empty Kansas tanks.
The town was called
Blackwell—a fitting name, if there ever was one. Both parts of it stood for something. Black
stood for darkness, evil, deceit, terror, and all manner of ghastliness. Well
stood for cesspool, as all those aforementioned qualities ran together here in
this little community. Blackwell,
Oklahoma: population, 7,092. Blackwell,
Oklahoma: America’s Hometown. Blackwell,
Oklahoma—metropolis of terror.
Oh, you never would’ve
known it, if, by some chance, you’d strayed any farther than the Braum’s, the
gas stations, and the hotels right off the Interstate. You wouldn’t have suspected it, motoring down
Highway 11, watching some fields flick past the window and wondering when you’d
ever hit the town. You wouldn’t have
guessed it had you seen the Dollar General, the Conoco, the Pizza Hut, the
grocery store, and the other businesses off the town’s busiest street. Even if, for some unknown reason, you’d started
exploring, chances are you still wouldn’t have noticed it. Some towns are awful for their populations at
large. You know. The ones whose jails are always full, the
ones whose police officers are viewed as enemies by a majority of the community,
the ones whose neighborhoods aren’t walkable.
Their problems don’t all stem from one source; they stem from many
different ones, all working together to make the district a worse place to
live. That’s the easy type of evil to
spot.
What’s hard to detect is
the type that’s caused by one person.
London had a particularly famous example back in the 1890s—Jack the
Ripper, that mysterious villain that roamed the city, committing brutally
horrible murders. Those crimes, so
shocking in their nature, stood out from the rest as clearly the work of the
same individual. Yet Jack only committed
six murders. That barely dented the
population of England’s largest city, and tourists weren’t turning up dead
bodies at their door every night. If you
were just passing through London, you might not notice, but if you lived there,
you’d feel it. The abject terror of
walking through the streets, wondering if that man in the coat walking past you
bears a knife, ready to follow you into some dark alley and end it all—
But London’s not that
great an example. It was a huge town,
full of crooks, bandits, and villains.
How else did Scotland Yard establish its reputation? Blackwell, on the other hand, was a little
town of decent, hard-working folks just seeking to earn a living. It never had crime trouble—at least, not
until lately. Even now that it did, most
of the crimes weren’t that severe. No
one had gotten killed, or even assaulted.
It was more a series of burglaries, robberies, and arson that had the
police scratching their heads, trying to explain the cause.
Ah, the cause. That
was the source of the horror for the town.
Most people were unaware of it; their lack of fear did nothing to erase
the threat. They saw it every day but
didn’t realize what it was, and so they welcomed it into the community, unaware
of the trouble they were asking for. A
few were aware of it, but these were powerless to do anything about it. They were like the passengers on the Titanic, knowing the boat was about to
sink and unable to get off. But even if
they’d been able to tell the rest of the town what was going on, their story
wouldn’t have been believed. Far from
being vilified, the cause was made a hero, leading to an ever-worsening cycle
of chaos and destruction. All who met
him fell under his spell in one of two ways.
Either they saw him for the man he pretended to be, and applauded him,
or they saw him for the man who really was, and were controlled by him. Everyone in town fell into one of these two
categories.
Except for one resident. And that’s who this story is about.~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
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