01.01.2016
The boys’ father clambered up the chicken coop and crouched there cradling his son’s heads. His wailing drew others from their homes, and the group he’d searched with stood, watching him, unsure of what to do.
When the boys’ mother walked out on to her porch, holding a half-eaten muffin in her hand, she looked around for the source of the sound. When she located her husband on the chicken coop, she looked at first puzzled, and then a possibility hit her.
She dropped the muffin and ran to the house, swept her legs and dress over the wooden fence, snagging it in the process, and scrambled up the broken coop. When she saw her little boys’ faces, and the realization of their deaths hit her, she threw her arms around first her husband, and then her boys’ heads.
She clutched them to her chest and stained the white blouse she wore with tears and blood and spinal fluids. She and her husband rocked with shock and grief for a while before someone had the sense to pull them down from the coop, lead them (unwillingly) away from the murder scene, and to their home.
The lady who took the initiative told them the town would prepare the bodies for a funeral service and they would have everyone gathered in a few hours’ time. The sound of the mother’s crying lasted hours, and poured out of their upstairs bedroom over the hot and humid summer air. The father sat on the front porch, staring blankly at the wooden panels of the porch.
Everyone else from the town helped collect the boys’ remains, and get them over to the doctor’s house. As he examined and prepared the bodies for burial, several others helped remove the broken chicken coop. The damage was so extensive, including the staining with blood, that they would tear this one down completely.
A bucket brigade brought water from the cove to wash blood from the ground and fence and help get rid of the gore. Once these chores had been done, and people sat down for the first time in hours, the first reaction was horror at what their eyes had seen, and then despair for the family who would never be the same.
Many more parents comprised this town, however, so how could they take action to make sure this did not happen again to any more of the poor children? The children were told to stay inside the homes as the parents worked, but many little eyes peered out from curtains through glassy windows.
After the funeral, and condolence meal, they would send out a search party, armed with muskets, to look for the wolf’s trail. Hammer strokes sounded along the street as the carpenter put nails through wooden boards as he constructed the coffins. Full-size for the children, even though the remains would fill a small portion of it.
The carpenter took the coffins to the doctor’s house, and some time later was loading up a cart for horses to draw to the town square. Flowers and ribbons of many colors were laid out around and on the closed coffins, which lay side by side on bales of hay.
A small cemetery nearby was host to several strong individuals who were digging the deep graves. From the end of the street came the town’s oldest living person. She was seventy seven, and in rather good health. Her son and grandson held her arms as she walked toward the square. She would be responsible for saying a few words during the ceremony.
A small group of people went to the parents’ home, helped them get dressed, and lead them, all clad in black, to the town’s square, and sat them on plush chairs which had been brought from nearby homes. The elder sat on another bale of hay, next to the coffins, and spread a few more flowers over them before she slowly rose to speak.
“I’ve the unfortunate duty to announce the passing of the Doolsun’s boys, Dean and Hunter. They were taken from us last night by what appears to be a wolf.”