52 - The Case of the Chaste Wife

"As you know," Roberta said, as she took up one of the remaining candles. "My studies are in parapsychology. Psychical research. Forces that seem stirred most by strong emotions. Love, lust, hate, betrayal, these seem to attract such activity more than anything else. I was called in to investigate one such instance, in what I call

THE CASE OF THE CHASTE WIFE

Blacksmiths used to be a necessity in every town. Railroads needed someone who could shape metal on-site, even if the nails, rails, spikes, and tools were all manufactured in factories elsewhere. Horses needed to be shod. In an era when supplies could take days or weeks to arrive, the blacksmith was a vital part of the community.

George Marshall was the blacksmith of Dagon's Hollow. He had come from Florida, a man of limited education, tremendous strength, and a jealous disposition. His marriage to Miss Fuyumi was one the first mixed-race marriages in the town. That caused some discontent. But a town needs a blacksmith. The townsfolk could not afford to ostracize him or his wife.

Fuyumi had learned to read and write English in San Francisco, where she was born, and helped her illiterate husband keep the books and write receipts. In her diary at the Historical Society, we get a glimpse inside a marriage that was marred by distrust. I can recall one passage from memory:

"Today, my husband fitted the chastity device to me. It was hinged, with a grilled port between my legs, too small for anything larger than a finger to enter. A chain about my waist cinched it tight, and a heavy padlock holds it locked together. In this way, he says, he will ensure I remain chaste while he is out of town on business. Though it is heavy and awkward, he is my husband, and I meekly agreed to this. The key, of a size to fit in the palm of the hand, rests on a chain about his neck."

Such travels were frequent, if brief. Marshall serviced not just Dagon's Hollow, but a number of small communities nearby. Sometimes he traveled to farms and ranches a day's ride; other times he might take the train to towns further away. Fuyumi's diary keeps careful track of his comings and goings.

Jealousy, however, is a terrible thing. Every time he returned, he would **** her out of her robes or skirts so he could inspect her chastity device. A difficult item to keep clean, and yet she was very conscientious to do so. She wrote of his scowl as he examined the lock for any scratch, the bars for any bend, the links of the chain for any sign of cut or weld. Finding none, he would take the key from around his neck and unlock it. Let it fall off, so that she could clean herself properly, and prepare herself for her wifely duties.

It is evident that Fuyumi's diary was a refuge for her thoughts, a place she could write things that she knew her husband could not read. Yet there are things she did not write in her diary. Gaps in what she dared write. On the times when Marshall was gone, there were small stars listed in the margin. Sometimes one, sometimes as many as seven. And the final entry in the diary read:

"My husband will not unlock me from this cage. He curses me and calls me a whore. Says he can smell it on me. That the sounds of my infidelity haunt his dreams. I swear I am chaste, but I am trapped in this iron prison. We both are. There is no escape."

The Hollow Herald recorded Fuyumi's **** three days later. Fuyumi had purchased a small barrel of wood **** to deal with pests around the house. The illiterate blacksmith had poured the deadly poison to refill the sake bottle his wife drank from. An inquest was held, and Fuyumi's diary was seized as evidence—but the **** was ruled, ultimately, an accident. Her family wanted Fuyumi to be buried in the Japanese cemetery, which Marshall would not consent to, and the white people in the town would not have her in the Eastside. So he buried her in a corner of the yard of his house, still locked in chastity, the key on a chain around his neck.

What happened next we know from the letters of Dr. Grumman, writing to a brother back East.

"George M. has been having strange dreams of late. Always in the dark he hears lewd slurps and a salacious suction. When he awakes, there is a pervasive smell as of semen around his house. For six nights since he buried his wife in the yard, the dream has reoccurred, and now he fights sleep, taking refuge in strong coffee. Yet the image does not abate. I fear guilt over his wife's suffering may be disordering his mind. He continually strokes the large iron key that hangs from his neck."

In a later entry in his own private journal, Grumman wrote:

"George M. looks quite bad now. He sleeps at his forge, but work has fallen off. The smell around him is pungent. Any horse that comes to shoe him grows randy as if in heat. Dogs and cats sometimes follow him in the street, and it is much the same. He is a big man, balding on top and with a bushy beard, always stroking that huge key that can barely fit in one hand, yet the cowboys and farmers have begun to look at him queerly. I must admit I felt a strange and terrible stirring myself, one that I had to take care of swiftly once I'd shooed him off with a prescription for laudanum. Is it strange to say that I imagined a pair of full, sensual lips as I committed the sin of Onan?"

The Hollow Herald recorded Marshall's **** not long after. The front page contains a picture of the bedroom where the body was found, with stars scribbled over every surface. Yet the most cogent detail was never reported publicly, but appears only on the **** certificate that Dr. Grumman signed: George Marshall died with an iron key, a full twelve inches long, jammed in his throat, lips locked around the base. He had choked to **** on it.

"What happened to the key, after that?" Anya asked. "Buried with him?"

"Or in his wife's grave?" Asenath said.

"Or do you have it on you?" Latoya guessed.

Roberta shook her head.

"No one knows. There is so much of this story that can only be guessed, that can never be known. Was George Marshall really haunted, and if so, by his wife's ghost? Or was it his own guilt and pent-up lust that led him to his end? I do not known. Dr. Grumman was a drinker even in those days, and his letters and diaries include many strange tales. But...I will tell you this: other people have dreamed that same dream."