The Darkwood

Chapter 9: Abner Zimmerman

About one hundred and twenty years before that day in The Darkwood, in the early morning just before dawn, was a picturesque valley. Cannons were rolled from forests on either side of the valley to face each other. The serene valley was to be the site of another bloody battle in the American Civil War. As if the curtains were being drawn open for players to take the stage, the sun rose and the battle began. It was the sudden burst of cannon fre that caused a pregnant nurse in a musty smelling canvas medical tent to go into labor on that feld of battle. So it was that Abner Zimmerman was born to the sounds of guns, and the smells of death.

Labor went quite quickly, and Abner was healthy– that is, he was living, which was rare that day. As Americans killed other Americans with fervent passion nearby, Abner was swaddled into a small blanket. There was little celebration, because too many wounded were coming in to be able to deal with the new baby. So, he was handed off to his mother who cradled his ears to shield him from the sounds of the cannon roars.

After the battle had ended, survivors went looking for other survivors– picking through the remains and readying the dead for burial. A Union soldier came across the remains of a

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burning medical tent, from which inside could be heard the squalls of an infant. Abner was found, slightly burned, but on the whole okay– minus any parents however. Orphans were not uncommon at the time. There were fevers that took out most of many families; and there was the war which took so many American lives. Abner was placed into an orphanage in hopes that someone might adopt the slightly scarred baby; but no one did– most likely because he looked different, and sounded a little different.

As he grew into a small child, it was obvious to the staff of the orphanage that Abner was a little different than other children. Some of the staff began calling him things like "not all there" or "a little funny in the head." In the orphanage, things like extra food or more desirable treatment often came down to appearance and behavior. Therefore, the larger children with more muscle could easily continue their stature, while the scrawny children with problems like Abner, were left malnourished and neglected. Those factors, in addition to whatever was wrong with him, resulted in Abner being sent to an asylum when he was in his early adolescence.

Abner was studied by many doctors and given therapies available at the time. He had been diagnosed with "dementia praecox," but as the

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asylums flled in the late 1800s, they released Abner because he just wasn't violent or as bad as other people. In fact, most of the time he was quite normal, agreeable, and happy. Therefore, the staff felt institutionalizing him would not be effective, and let him go.

In 1885 Abner made his way to a small town called Red Rock looking for a job and a fat. He found both at the local grocery. He got a job bagging groceries and an apartment upstairs. The people of Red Rock at that time were very similar in their manner to the common folk of Red Rock one hundred years later. At frst they did not pay at any attention to Abner, who was of course an outsider; but when people observed him staring in a strange way at things that "weren't there" or acting in "an unusual way," he began to be noticed. So, for the good of the town, the grocer decided he should let Abner go. "And shucks, we just can't let you stay in that apartment when you don't have a job." The people of Red Rock assumed that action would force Abner to "move on" as a vagrant and their problem would be solved. They were horribly wrong.