by Greta Cribbs
“I did what I had to do,” she said. “I had to teach you...”
“You did teach me, Mother. You taught me that I was evil.” I still had the rock in my hand, and I punctuated the word “evil” with a blow to the side of her head. “You taught me I was worthless.” Another blow. “You taught me that I would never be good, no matter how hard I tried. Well guess what? Here I am, all grown up, and you were right about me. I am evil and worthless and everything you always believed me to be.”
A frenzy took hold of me then, as it had when I pulled Joanna from the car that night two years before, and my memories of what came next are hazy. Dreamlike. As though it didn’t really happen, only I know it did.
One minute I was holding her against the wall, the next she was on the floor and I stood above her with the rock still in my hand and my clothes spattered with her blood.
I don’t know if she was still alive when I dropped the rock and walked out the door. I don’t know if her heart still beat when I slid a dime into the pay phone in front of the motel and called the local police. I don’t know how long she had breath in her before the first cop car arrived.
All I know is that by the time the medical personnel loaded her into the ambulance, she was already dead.
And I was finally free.
Though I was handcuffed and sitting in the back of a patrol car, though I was on my way to jail, then to a trial followed by a lifetime of incarceration, for the first time in my life, I was free.
Chapter Nine
“Mr. Tolloch...”
“Yes?”
Meredith’s brow furrowed. “You began our interview by saying it wasn’t your mother’s fault.”
Tolloch sat back and smiled. “It wasn’t.”
“But you just told me...”
“I just told you about something that happened eight years ago. I’ve had a lot of time to sit and think about it since then.”
“And in all that time..?”
“In all that time, I’ve managed to forgive her.”
Meredith leaned forward and rested her arms on the table. “Pretty convenient that this change of heart came about after you killed her.”
Some of that fire returned to his eyes. “Nothing about my life has ever been convenient.”
She took a breath before continuing. “No. I don’t suppose so.”
“I had to be free from her before I could see things clearly. I had to put some space between myself and everything that had happened.”
“So you no longer blame your mother?”
He shook his head. “No.”
“And you don’t blame your father and his companions, either?”
“I don’t blame them.”
“But if they hadn’t done what they did, none of the bad things that came after would have happened.”
Tolloch smiled. “Plenty of bad things would have happened. We’re talking about Crimson Falls, after all.”
“So we’re back to the town curse?”
“Yes.”
“You really believe that?”
“I believe something bigger than me, bigger than Mother, bigger than any of us is at work in that town, and has been for a very long time.”
Meredith lifted an eyebrow. “Well...maybe it was the devil who made you do it after all.”
“Maybe so.”
“All right, let’s cut,” said Greg.
The rolling of camera and tape recorder ground to a halt and Greg came to stand in the center of the room.
“Thank you, everyone. That’s a wrap.”
Greg turned and shook hands with Tolloch as Meredith stood and massaged the back of her neck. It had been a long afternoon.
She, too, shook Tolloch’s hand, thanking him for his time, then stepped out into the hall while Sam and Carl packed up their gear.
The guards who had been waiting silently just outside the door entered the room as Meredith exited, emerging again after just a couple of minutes with a handcuffed Tolloch walking between them. He flashed Meredith a smile as he went past, then disappeared around the corner at the end of the corridor.
Meredith lit a cigarette and was surprised to notice her hands trembling. Had Tolloch really gotten to her that much? It wasn’t as though she had never talked to people with severe emotional problems before, that being basically how she earned her living.
But someone who channeled those negative emotions into something as depraved as murdering college students in cold blood? That was new territory, and it was affecting her more than she cared to admit.
She leaned against the wall and took in deep, tobacco-flavored breaths while she waited for the crew to finish their packing. She smoked until her cigarette was a tiny nub, then walked across the hall to the bathroom and flushed the butt down the toilet. When she stepped back into the corridor, the guys were waiting for her.
She was silent as they walked through the hospital’s various security checkpoints. She was silent as Sam and Carl loaded their equipment into the back of the van. She was silent as they pulled out onto the road and the three men discussed where they might grab a bite of dinner.
Later, when they sat huddled together in a booth by the window of a twenty-four-hour diner, she silently sipped a cup of black coffee while her three companions tore into plates piled high with the best fried food America had to offer.
The evening’s conversation had consisted primarily of small talk, leading Meredith to believe she was the only one still reeling from Tolloch’s story.
Then Greg said, “God, what a sick-o.”
“You’re just now realizing that?” said Carl. “I mean, what did you expect when you went into a hospital for the criminally insane to meet a guy who killed his own mother plus three college girls?”
Greg shook his head. “Doesn’t make him any less sick.”
“You got that right,” said Sam.
“He was abused,” said Meredith.
Carl laughed. “Abused? Is that what you think?”
“Yes, that’s what I think.”
“Oh, give me a break. You shrink types always want to make such a big deal about this stuff. Maybe his mom was a little heavy-handed with the discipline. So what? If I had a penny for every time my old man took a switch to my rear end...”
“Those things he talked about...that was more than just discipline.”
“If you say so.”
Meredith narrowed her eyes at Carl. “His mother grabbed his genitals and squeezed to punish him for having an erection. Anything like that ever happen to you?”
Carl’s cheeks flushed and he cast his eyes down toward his half-eaten plate of fried shrimp. “Can’t say that it did.”
“Do you have any idea how messed up you would be if it had?”
He glanced back up at her. “So, what? Are you saying that excuses what he did?”
Meredith looked down at her coffee, as though all the answers could somehow be found floating at the bottom of her mug. “Of course it doesn’t excuse what he did. Just like what happened to his mother doesn’t excuse what she did to her son. To say that it does is an insult to all the victims out there who manage to recover and go on to live normal, healthy lives.”
“So Tolloch was a victim?” asked Greg.
“When he was a child, yes.”
“How do we know that?”
“His story...”
“Exactly. His story. We haven’t fact-checked any of the things he told us.”
“How are we going to fact-check what happened between Tolloch and his mother?” Meredith asked. “The only person who could corroborate his story is dead.”
“Pretty convenient for him, don’t you think?” said Carl.
Nothing about my life has ever been convenient.
Meredith shook the thought away.
“So what do you think?” she asked. “Do you think people are just born evil? Maybe it was the town curse after all. He couldn’t help it because he was conceived on October 13.”
“I
don’t believe in any curse,” said Carl.
Greg was shaking his head. “Town curse, abused child, free will...whatever reason you give, I still don’t understand what could make a person turn into...that.”
Sam, who had said little up until that point, swiped a long strand of hair behind his ear and said, “Original sin, man.”
“What?” asked Greg.
“Original sin. Didn’t you ever go to Sunday School?”
“I seem to remember my parents dragging me to such places a few times in my childhood. What does that have to do with Tolloch?”
“Who’s responsible for those girls’ deaths?” asked Sam.
“Tolloch, of course,” said Greg.
“But Tolloch turned out the way he did because of how his mother treated him. And she only did that because she didn’t trust men after what happened to her.”
“So the whole thing is the three rapists’ fault?” said Meredith.
Sam shrugged. “I’m sure if we were able to find out who those guys were, we’d see that it goes back even further than that.”
“So how far back does it go?” asked Carl.
“That’s what I’m saying, man. It goes back all the way to the beginning.”
“What? Adam and Eve and whatnot?”
“Maybe.”
Carl laughed. “I gotta tell you, Sam, I didn’t take you for one of those Bible thumpers. I figured Woodstock was more your style than tent revivals.”
Sam laughed too. “No, man, I don’t go in for that kind of thing. I’m just saying this is one messed up world we live in.”
“So what? We’re all doomed to do these horrible things to each other and there’s no hope for anyone because it’s been going on since the dawn of time?”
Sam shook his head. “There’s always hope.”
“And what’s your solution? Let Jesus in our hearts? Or make love, not war?”
“Hey, don’t look at me. I’m just a boom operator.”
Having reached such an impossible conundrum, the guys meandered back into their small talk while Meredith once again did her best to disappear into the murky depths of her coffee.
What if Sam was right? What if all the bad things people did to each other was part of some chain reaction that had been set in motion so long ago no one could find its source? And what if there was no hope of stopping it? Was there any point, then, in doing what she did for a living? Was there any healing to be had in this fallen world?
She took a sip. The coffee was hot, but it did nothing to alleviate the chill that had settled upon her. She shivered and wrapped her hands around the mug.
And what of Tolloch? Could a man like that ever be reformed? Was there any hope for him?
Was there any hope for anyone?
The Crimson Falls Novella Series
Original Sin by Greta Cribbs
The Last Dupont by Rachel Renee
All the Dark Corners by Emerald O'Brien
Flawed Plan by Amabel Daniels
Returned Home by Julie Strier
Sight in the Dark by AM Ialacci
The Stranger in the Woods by Kiersten Modglin
Little Girl Lost by Laurèn Lee
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About the Author
Greta Cribbs has worn many hats over the years, from mom to schoolteacher to church choir director. She constantly seeks out opportunities to indulge her many interests, but writing is the passion that has been with her the longest. She wrote her first poem at the age of nine and has been creating stories ever since. She published her first book, Amelia’s Children, in 2015, followed by Primogénito in 2016, and Road to Yesterday in 2017. In 2018, she published Venganza, a prequel to Primogénito. Original Sin is her fifth published work. You can follow her on Twitter, Facebook, or her website for the latest information about her writing and other projects she is working on.