St Alban's Bane

The newspapers spoke of a missing child, 11-year old James Barbour from St. Albans, West Virginia. It was the ninth day of his disappearance. The Barbour family has by now issued several calls for help in the surrounding states, urging the authorities of these bodies to act upon the case. No clues have yet been found. The ball James was playing with the day he was abducted still lies dry on the outer edge of the lawn.

12-year old Robert Richter, young active resident of Keyser, West Virginia, learned something about life at an early age; he learned about its loss: death... Robert found James Barbour’s body in the woodland property outside his house on the morning Saturday. Robert reports to have “smelled something weird when playing with the dog, and [I] wanted to see what smelled weird,” which led him to the discovery of the murdered abducted child. James had Robert’s same stature, hair color, and skin tone. Robert remembers seeing the faces posted on posts, walls and windows around the town he schooled in, and at his school. He never knew James and never thought much of the pictures. His parents report having come in from playing outside and innocently told them the boy from the pictures was in the woods.

The boy had been cut with scissors throughout the entire body. The face was barely recognizable as that of James Barbour. His stomach could be described as a table on which a game of chess had been played, but replacing the game pieces with knives. Bruises were found in several areas, as well, most prominently on the thighs, where constant blows had broken the bones beneath and incapacitated the child. Maggots had already captured feeding ground by the time of discovery and had dug into the bottom half of the skull, exiting through an incision in the neck, believed to be the cause of death, and reentering the body into a small hole behind which stood the stilled heart. Mucus and blood and brain matter mixed and pooled into the right eye and, in excess, dripped onto the ground.

There are no clues, nor leads, towards any suspects. Parents of the murdered child and neighbors report nothing as to who might have committed the crime. Christmas will be different for the Barbour family this year, for James was their only son. After the discovery, the body was seized by the state in order to assess the causes of death and evidence of the murder. The Barbour family wanted the death of the guilty, but most importantly they wanted the life of their child. However, time has taught each individual that its proclamations are marked upon mountains, and cannot be erased, burned, nor hidden. No one believes the murderer will be found; seizing an innocent child from an isolated town results the perfect victim to anyone’s crime.

Today James Barbour is buried in St. Alban’s cemetery, next to the grave of his grandfather, Louis Barbour. Two dates are carved out of the tiny stone of his marker, one marks his birth and one marks his death, beneath the initials R.I.P. squeezed between two lethargic angels. In the coffin under the earth, the blood and mucus have been cleaned, the face reconstructed, the maggots retrieved. One could now say, if one were to desecrate the grave soon enough, that the child doth rest in peace. In the town of St. Albans, the few yards once populated with playing children have been vacated after the incident. The dry leaves of autumn remain dry and dispersed by the wind.

Across the state, Robert Richter still ponders his discovery, he sees someone similar to himself when he closes his eyes. “That could have been me,” a soothing voice constantly repeats. It is the voice of his conscience, and he wishes it would stop, so he could once again sleep.