by Ray Garton
As I slept, I dreamed of them. The woman with the wet, runny hole in her face…the armless, legless figure that crawled over the floor pulling a toy duck…the guffawing, pregnant, microcephalic woman…and, of course, Matthew Bollinger, with his dangling skin and turkey-wing arm and his incomplete legs in the pants with the cuffs sewn closed. I heard his voice, smelled his house.
I cried out when I woke up and the nurse was at my side again in a few seconds.
“Have a bad dream, honey?” she asked.
“Puh-please, can I have more water?”
I sucked on the straw as if to save my life, and once again, she pulled it away before I was finished.
“You don’t want to make yourself sick,” she said as she put the cup back on the small table to my left. “The police officer outside is pretty anxious to talk to you. I told him I’d ask if you felt up to it, but if not, I don’t want you to worry about it, Andy. He’s waited three days, he can wait a little longer.”
“He’s been waiting outside my room for three days?” I asked. “Why?”
“Well, um…” Her eyes moved from mine and darted around the room. “Why don’t you just wait and ask him that, okay?”
“I need to talk to him. Could you send him in, please?”
Seconds later, Perry Milner stood beside my bed in uniform and cap. I knew and liked Perry. Every year, I helped out with the Mount Crag Police Department’s Christmas toy drive, and I often had lunch in the diner with him. He took Carrie out on occasion, and the three of us had spent a lot of time talking at the diner’s counter.
“I’m really sorry about what happened, Andy,” he said hesitantly. “I’m…Well, I’m just…sorry about everything.”
“Perry, I’ve got some things to tell you. Before the accident, I was up at the—”
“Wait, Andy. Before you go on…I’ve gotta say something.”
“What?”
“Well, you’ve been unconscious the last three days, so I couldn’t…um, since this is the first time I’ve been able to talk to you—” He took off his cap with one hand and swept the other back over his close-cropped, thinning blond hair. “Andy Sayer…you have the right to remain silent. Anything you say—”
“What?”
“—can and will be used against you in a court of law. You have the right to speak to an attorney—”
“Perry, what the—wait, what’re you doing?”
“—and to have an attorney present during any questioning. If you cannot afford an attorney, one will be provided for you at government expense. Do you—”
“Perry, what the hell is going on?”
“—understand your rights as I have explained them to you?”
“What’re you doing, Perry, why are you—”
“Please answer the question. Do you understand your rights as—”
“Yes, yes, I understand them!” I tried to sit up, but the pain in my head grew unbearable and I dropped back onto the pillow. “Are you arresting me?”
He bowed his head a moment, then put his cap back on and nodded once. Quietly, he said, “Andy, you’re under arrest for the murder of Carla Firth, Victoria Schmidt, and Anna Quinn.”
The last three women to be found dead and mutilated in the woods. My mouth opened, but I couldn’t speak. I suddenly felt a bone-deep chill, as if someone had opened a window on an icy winter night.
Perry put his hands on his hips, looked around the room as if searching for something on the walls. When he looked down at me again, he was frowning. “In your car, we found articles of clothing, jewelry, and other personal effects belonging to those three women. There was blood on most of them.”
I heard Bollinger’s thunderous voice as clearly as if he were in the room: You don’t know it yet, boy, but you gonna hafta come back here ’cause you got nowheres else t’go!
Determined to sit up in bed, I clenched my teeth and tried to ignore the pain in my head as I attempted to prop myself up on my elbows. But I no longer had two elbows. I could feel my right arm, it moved when I wanted it to move. But it was no longer there.
“I don’t think you should be moving around like that, Andy,” Perry said. When I started to speak, he added, “And I don’t think you should say anything now until you get an attorney. Okay?” He turned and went to the door, looked back at me, and said, “Again, I’m real sorry. About everything.”
After he left, I stared at the ceiling—
… you got nowheres else t’go!
—and contemplated my situation.
I don’t know how much time had passed when the telephone on the table rang. I ignored it at first, just let it ring and ring. But it would not stop. Finally, I reached for it weakly, clumsily, took the receiver from its cradle and put it to my ear. Before I could say hello, a familiar loud voice spoke at the other end of the line.
“Real sorry to hear about your accident, boy,” Bollinger said. “That’s a terrible thing. But I hope it’s made y’realize where y’stand. Know what I mean?”
“You son of a bitch,” I said. My weak voice failed convey my anger and hatred.
“Oh, now, we can’t have that, Andy. That kinda talk, thass not very Christian. You need to get y’self right with Jesus, boy, ’cause from what I hear, you in a real spot a trouble. Ever’body’s talkin’ ’bout it. The story’s all over the place.”
“Why did you do this?” I asked. “Why did you put that stuff in my car?”
“Well, now, Andy, I’m not sure I know what you’re talkin’ ’bout.” He was silent for several seconds, then: “I told you y’wouldn’t have nowheres else t’go, Andy. I meant it.”
I said nothing. I wanted to shout at him, scream curses at him, but I was too weak.
“So, boy. You ready to come home where y’belong? You ready to go back t’school so you can take on my bidness for me when the Lord calls me home?”
I laughed quietly, hollowly. He was insane. “I’ve been arrested. For murder. Three murders. I won’t be going to school anytime soon.”
He returned my laugh with one of his own. “What’m I gonna hafta do t’get it through your head, boy? I own this mountain an’ all the mountains around here. And everything on ’em and around ’em. Don’tchoo unnerstand that? One phone call from me, Andy, and you ain’t under arrest no more. One phone call from me to the president a the college, they’d take you in if you was a polka-dotted alien from the planet Jupiter and ate coeds on a stick for lunch. I can fix it so all this’s just a stupid mistake, an’ ever’body just shrugs their shoulders and goes on with they lives. Or I can fix it so you get the chair. S’up to you, boy.”
There was a silence so long that, for a moment, I thought the connection had been severed. Then Bollinger said, “So, whatta y’think, son? You ready t’come home?”
Ten
Matt put me in the same room where I’d broken the window with the chair. The couch opened into a bed and there was a bathroom attached. Later, when I’m better, he says I can move upstairs.
“You’ll be sharin’ Dexter’s room,” he said the day they brought me home. “He’s been yackin’ about nothin’ but you ever since you met, so I promised him you’d be movin’ in with him.”
Daisy brings me a gift every morning. A bouquet of plastic flowers, an ancient encyclopedia, a box of business-size envelopes, a thimble.
Every evening, Matt comes into my room with three or four of the others—I still haven’t met them all—and reads a chapter from the Bible, then leads us in prayer.
Every night, late, Amanda comes in and wakes me. She takes off her robe and lies naked beside me, whispers to me all the things she wants to do when I’m better.
The things she wants to do with me. To me. Smiling, she conjures filthy fantasies about the two of us, and in all of them, we come very close to being caught by Matt, who would be furious, I’m sure. She always excites herself with her own words, and usually masturbates quietly before she leaves. She never uses her hands, but I can hear the soft sounds of w
et movement between her legs. Sometimes, she uses her tongue, but when she does that, I close my eyes.
“Daddy says we Bollingers are all exceptional,” she whispered one night. “Different. But he says I’m the most exceptional, because I’m not like any of the others. I’m different… inside.”
Children come in and out all day. I read to them from battered old Dr. Seuss books and a collection of Mother Goose tales published in 1924. Making them laugh is the only joy I’ve had since coming here. Their deformities seem to melt away when they laugh.
But their laughter makes me ache, as well. Because I have already decided what I’m going to do once I get my strength back and I can walk again. I have not yet decided how, though. With so many of them involved, my options are limited. I’ve narrowed it down to somehow poisoning the food or burning down the house. At first, I wanted only to kill Matt Bollinger. But it did not take long for me to see that he was the glue of the entire family. Without him, they would all be lost. So I will kill them all, even if I kill myself doing it. I think I will be doing them a favor. And if I have to die as well, I just might be doing myself a favor, too.
They are a family that should not be, that never should have been. They are people who never should have been conceived, let alone born. There are days when I hate them all, and days when I feel nothing but pity for them.
I’m not sure which is behind my decision to kill them—my hatred or my pity.
Sometimes it’s hard to tell the difference between the two.
Afterword
First of all, thank you for reading The Folks. There are more books to choose from than ever before, and you chose this one. I am grateful.
Secondly, If you have not yet read the novella, please do not read this Afterword.
It contains spoilers and might compromise your enjoyment of the book. Read The Folks first, then come back here.
Some of the harshest criticism my writing has ever received has been leveled at The Folks. Fortunately, there wasn’t a whole lot of it, but it was out there. The book exploited genetic deformity, they said; it was without compassion and solely for horrific effect, one critic claimed. I’m assuming these critics were new to the horror genre, because creating horrific effect is the whole point. Horror is not only politically incorrect, it is typically incorrect in every way imaginable. It is a genre that routinely defies nature itself, so it will inevitably offend some along the way.
I object, however, to the claim that the book is without compassion. The protagonist is a misfit, an outsider. We are all outsiders in some way and the feeling of not fitting is something familiar to all of us. Our brains are wired to focus on the negative in everything, including ourselves. That trait was no doubt helpful when we lived in the wilderness and had to kill every meal; I’m sure it kept us out of a lot of trouble. These days, however, it can be problematic. When we aim that trait at ourselves, as we inevitably do, it can do a lot of damage over time.
The book’s compassion is for human beings, across the board, whether twisted by their genetics or by the natural negative bias of their own brains.
Great compassion is expressed in the book for the Bollinger infants and children.
After all, they did not ask for their various conditions.
But I’m not sure how much compassion Matthew Bollinger deserves. Remember, he’s the guy who did all of this, knowingly and intentionally. He’s the head of the family.
Yes, it was done to him first, but he’s obviously an intelligent man who knows something of the world and how it works—unlike the family he has kept isolated from the world like some kind of cult—and at some point, he had to have an awareness of what he was doing, the damage he was perpetuating, and he had to make a conscious decision to keep doing it. I’m a little short on compassion for Matthew. As far as I’m concerned, he’s the villain here.
Every missing limb and disfigured face, every twisted deformity in that family is an expression of who and what Matthew Bollinger is.
I always advise young writers to never respond to critics. It’s simply bad form.
Normally, I do not. And I’m not exactly doing that here.
The Folks was published in 2001, a while ago. Since then, people have become much more sensitive. Baseball has been replaced by outrage as the National Pastime.
All that’s needed is something at which to aim that outrage. And criticism, unfortunately, has been replaced by bitter personal attacks.
Because it has only been available in a limited edition that’s now nearly two decades old, this book will be new to some. And it will be an easy target.
I’m not so much responding to the critics of 2001 as I am anticipating the possible attacks of 2018.
The horror genre has a long history of stories about inbred families. I think it’s safe to call it a subgenre by now. The Dead River trilogy by Jack Ketchum—Off Season (1980), Offspring (1991), and The Woman (2010), which was written simultaneously by Ketchum as a novel and Lucky McKee as a movie—Wes Craven’s The hills Have Eyes movies, and the incest-packed novels of V.C. Andrews are among the most famous, but many writers have contributed.
I have found some of those stories to be pretty horrifying, but in an enjoyable and entertaining way. Horror is meant to horrify, and I can think of few things more horrifying than being a child in such a family. But these stories usually aren’t told from a child’s point of view (the novels of V.C. Andrews are an exception). They typically are told from the point of view of an outsider who is then in some way menaced or victimized by the family.
I wanted to tweak the subgenre a little. Most inbred families in horror stories are also cannibals. Not the Bollingers. They are rich and they eat well, but they don’t eat people. While they live in an isolated house that climbs the side of a mountain, they are by no stretch of the imagination hillbillies, which is a common trope. Matthew Bollinger is a successful businessman with connections around the world and an unspecified fortune—we just know it’s enough for him to be left alone to do as he pleases with his family without anyone knowing about it. And the Bollinger family goes back—way back. All the way back to the Mayflower. They’ve been here from the beginning, and who knows how much power and influence Matthew Bollinger really wields. The story is told by an outsider, but not only an outsider to the Bollinger family—an outsider to the world, someone who does not fit because of his disfigurement and who, for that reason, is vulnerable. And rather than being menaced or victimized by the family, Andy is embraced warmly because Matthew wants him to take over the reins in his place.
Instead of writing The Folks, with all that hideous deformity, I could have written about a dysfunctional, abusive family with a lot of children, and that abuse could result in a different mental illness in each child, which would bring them nothing but misery and stigmatize them as adults, and I could have blamed each of those mental illnesses on the violent and sexually abusive patriarch of that family.
Well, I maintain that I did precisely that—but in my own way.
I don’t write the kind of books described above. I read them and enjoy them, but I don’t write them. I’m a horror writer, and I write horror fiction. If I wrote the book described above, I think my readers would be annoyed with me.
No matter what genre they write in, I think all writers are essentially writing about the same thing—the human condition. They’re writing about that even if they’re not writing about humans. Each writer approaches that same subject in a different way, from a different angle, and all of those writers bring their own experience to their work, which is why readers have such a wide variety of genres to choose from when reading fiction.
This particular book falls into the category of horror fiction, which you most likely knew going in. If you found it horrifying and offensive, I have done my job. If you then complain about it and blindly throw accusations at me because it horrified and offended you, then you are reading the wrong kind of fiction and you should read something else from now on. Or s
top complaining. One or the other.
Fortunately, readers seem to overwhelmingly disagree with those critics. One of the things I’m most commonly asked is when I’m going to write another book in The Folks series. It appears to be a favorite among my readers—probably for the very same reasons that it offended those critics in 2001. For those who have enjoyed the first book in the series, I will soon be making The Folks 2: No Place Like Home available as an eBook and paperback, and I’m currently at work on the third book in the series, The Folks 3: Home is Where the Heart is.
Horror is not for everybody. I cannot think of a single thing that is—and I’ve tried.
We all like different things for different reasons. That’s not a character flaw or an aberration of some kind—it’s part of what makes up an individual personality. And without those, we are exceedingly boring. If you’ve ever spent any time with someone who has no individual personality, you know what I mean.
I’m happy that The Folks will now be reaching a wider readership, and I hope those readers enjoy it. But it seems inevitable in this social climate that some will be upset by the book. For them, I want to make the following assurances:
1.) None of the people in this story are real.
2.) Nothing in this story really happened.
3.) No real people with genetic deformities were harmed in the writing of this imaginary story.
If you feel some outrage coming on, keep telling yourself, “It’s only a horror story…it’s only a horror story…it’s only a horror story…”
Keep reading,
Ray Garton
April 15, 2018