“Do you remember that night me and you and Tom was at the cemetery and saw those folks down in Old Man Turner’s field?” I asked Glenn.
“Yeah, about a month or so ago. I’d plum forgot about it. Why?”
“I don’t know. For some reason this just made me remember it. We ought to go down there tomorrow and check that place out.”
“Tomorrows the Fourth of July. Ain’t you gonna go to the dinner at the Community Center?”
“Yeah, I’m goin’ and Snake’s goin’ with us, but the Community Center is at the cemetery. We’ll be right there. We can just sneak out and ease off down there.”
“But we’ll have on good clothes,” Glenn said, like I was crazy or something.
“Ain’t you got any imagination, Glenn? Bring some old clothes in a bag if you’re worried. You’re gettin’ as bad as old Cob about your clothes. We get dirty playin’ all those games like the one legged race and the sack race, anyway.”
“Alright, we’ll ease off down there. We could go in the morning before everything starts, you know.”
“I’m sleepin’ late in the mornin’. By the time I get in the bed it’s gonna be past midnight and I’m readin’ a good book. I expect to be readin’ for an hour or two after I go to bed.”
“You’re always readin’ somethin’. I ain’t never seen nobody like you.”
“Readin’s good and books are good,” Snake finally joined in the conversation.
Me and Momma had been helping Snake and Frank with their reading. Momma had taught school for a few years and Daddy was an avid reader. There were all kinds of books in our house and a lot of nights we never turned on the TV because we’d all be reading a book. Anyway, Snake was progressing well. He could already read simple things, mostly from sight, and Momma suspected the teachers didn’t spend much time with him in school and probably gave up on him too early. The fact that he was older and more mature now made him much more eager to learn.
The next day, after dinner was over and the games were beginning, me, Glenn, Snake and Tom disappeared into the woods and made our way down to Old Man Turner’s field. We stayed in the edge of the woods as we worked our way around, so we hopefully wouldn’t be spotted. When we got to where we judged the truck might have been that night, we began looking around to see if there was any loose dirt anywhere. Glenn had mentioned that night that it looked like one of them might have had a shovel. There was no use looking for tire tracks because any that had been left wouldn’t have been distinguishable from all the others that had been made when the hay had been cut, raked into windrows, baled, and then hauled in. We had helped Old Man Turner get in the hay, but at the time didn’t even think about what we’d seen that night. We were just trying to get finished and get out of the hot sun, even if we were getting paid by the hour.
We all separated and looked in different directions. We had no idea how far into the woods they could have gone, and those woods went on for a long way. In fact they didn’t stop until you were on top of Sand Mountain. But if they had been carrying something they wanted to bury they couldn’t have gone too far with it if it was very heavy at all.
“Hey, y’all, come here.” It was Snake. We’d told him not to holler, but I doubted if anybody at the celebration could here him, anyway. We were bound to be close to a half mile away, and there were a lot of frivolities going on up there with people yelling and carrying on.
We all made our way over to where Snake was bent over, digging with a pointed stick. “Ya’ll looka here,” Snake said, never looking up from his digging.
I walked over to where Snake was busy with his primitive shovel. There was no doubt the ground had been disturbed there. There had been old leaves that had fallen from the deciduous trees in years past that had been used to cover the spot up, but Snake said he could tell when he stepped on it that the ground was too soft. Snake might not know a lot of things but he knew the woods. He’d spent almost every day in them since he’d quit school and a considerable amount of time before that.
“We’re all as dumb as a flock of geese,” I said. “Why didn’t one of us think to bring a shovel?”
“How were we gonna sneak away carryin’ a shovel,” Tom answered, making good sense.
“Well, we could have come early and hid one somewhere,” I said, always hating to look stupid.
“Somebody wanted to sleep late,” Glenn chimed in, looking at me with a shit eating grin on his face.
“Well, it may take a while, but I guess sticks will have to do.” I started looking around, trying to find a limb lying on the ground that wasn’t too rotten. I spotted one that had a good fork on it that was still partially attached to a hickory tree. After yanking on it and bending it back and forth, it finally let go, sending me stumbling backwards and falling on my ass.
I joined Snake with the digging. He already had a pretty nice little hole started. The deeper we got the easier the digging got but the problem we were having was removing the dirt from the hole we’d already dug out, so we just decided to dig straight down. If we found anything we might not be able to get it out, but we could always come back later with shovels.
After we had dug down maybe four feet, with Tom and Glenn removing what dirt they could with their hands away from the hole, I had almost decided we were wasting our time. We were sweating like pigs and our clothes were covered with dirt, which our sweat was turning into mud. Then, Snake hit something soft. It sounded kind of like he had hit a watermelon or something. We dug out from around the hole, making it wider. We were beginning to smell a foul odor and knew whatever it was, it had once been a living creature. It couldn’t be a cow, because nobody could have gotten one this far back in the woods without a tractor. It could be a small calf, I thought.
We eventually got enough dirt moved away to see what it really was, and what I think all three of us thought it would be, but were really hoping it wasn’t. The thought probably wouldn’t have entered our minds a month ago. But with what had been found on the William’s place, now things were different. We dug a little more until we could see what we had thought and feared was real. The skin, at least what we could see of it, was a grayish blue. We thought we were looking at part of a leg. Maybe the thigh. There was no hair on it and I was wondering if it might be a woman. We stopped digging and looked at each other. We would have been terrified a few weeks earlier in a situation like this, but it seemed now it was becoming commonplace. The brain can become desensitized quickly after it has been exposed to something shocking and morbid a few times.
“Well, I guess we better go tell everybody. This is gonna ruin everybody’s Fourth of July, that’s for sure. Kinda like findin’ a turd in the lemonade,” I said.
Snake thought this was hilarious and started laughing. Then we all started to giggle until we were laughing out loud like a bunch of idiots. If somebody had come along and seen us laughing hysterically, standing over a partially exposed, decomposed body, they would have put us in straight jackets and sent us to the mental institution in Tuscaloosa.
*****
The sheriff decided quickly there was no way to get a backhoe down into the woods, so a few deputies started digging with shovels and hauling the dirt out of the hole with buckets. They tried to make us boys leave, saying it was now a crime scene and we shouldn’t be seeing something like this at our age, but we were adamant about staying, saying they would have to forcibly remove us. To my utter shock, Daddy agreed. “The boys found it, Andrew,” he had told the sheriff, “they ought to be allowed to see it through.” Momma didn’t like it one bit, but she didn’t argue with Daddy. Neither did Glenn or Tom’s parents. Poor Snake had no parents to argue about it one way or another.
When the body was finally exhumed, it turned out I had been right. It was indeed a woman. She was completely naked and looked like she might have been fairly young, although it was hard to tell, she was in such a state of decomposition. I could see maggots crawling around her face and in her nose and mouth and quickly looked a
way. All three of us boys now wished we had listened to the sheriff and our mommas. What was Daddy thinking? I decided that he thought it might be a good thing for us to see first hand what evil looked like.
Somebody had robbed this poor girl of the remainder of her life. No more birthday’s, no children to watch grow up, no wedding day, unless she was already married, in which case there would be one more person who would be devastated. I started silently sobbing, and I didn’t know this girl from a can of paint. The girl was examined by the coroner and after numerous photograph’s were made, she was put into a body bag. The only positive thing I could think of was that her body had not been completely dissolved like the one’s in those barrels.
The results from the dental records had come back and had been matched to two of the men that Sheriff White had gotten the missing person reports on. He had always had a feeling that they would, although he’d never mentioned it to anybody but his secretary, Kate. A lot of people thought the sheriff and Kate had something going on besides work, but they didn’t. They had just always found it easy to confide in each other and the sheriff trusted her more than anyone else on earth, including his wife. Kate was extremely intelligent and could figure things out before the sheriff could a lot of times. The sheriff always believed Kate to be way over qualified for the job she had and should have been a lawyer or something.
One of the victims had been identified as Larry Logan from Bristol, Virginia. The other was James Potter from Slidell, Louisiana. The sheriff had looked at a national highway map and seen that U.S. 11 ran through both towns. He was convinced now that the majority of the missing men were most likely the victims of a killer. A serial killer. And the way it looked, this killer was either in or at least near the county he had been sworn to protect.
CHAPTER NINETEEN
Harold had two roommates. Or maybe a more appropriate term, given the situation they were in, might have been cellmates. They had been there for six days now and had been fed just enough to make them really hungry. The food had been delicious, there was just not nearly enough of it. Weird music had been piped non-stop into the room they shared since they’d been held captive. The same strange tune over and over. It sounded like a mixture of Chinese music and some mad man playing one of those giant pipe organs. There was one toilet with no door and a small shower they had been forced to use together twice a day. Why their captors had been so adamant about hygiene was a mystery to all of them. Of course the whole damn, crazy scenario was a mystery that none of them thought was going to turn out well. But they were keeping that to themselves and had decided to stay positive. As long as they were still alive, there was always a chance.
To add to their torture, a woman that was as sexy as any woman they had ever seen or even dreamed about, came into the room once every day and performed the most provocative, erotic strip-tease they could imagine. During her performances the music changed from the strange tune that was playing to a song more appropriate for burlesque. As soon as she walked out of the room, the strange sounds that were almost like hearing someone scrape their fingernails across a chalkboard, would resume. She could touch them, but they were not allowed to touch her. Jimmy, the youngest of the three, had let temptation get the best of him and done it anyway on the third day. He had paid for it dearly by being stripped, chained to a wooden post, and receiving ten brutal lashes across his bare back with a bull whip. Every lash had cut into his back and drawn blood, the pain so excruciating he passed out after the seventh blow was delivered.
The three men had no way to entertain themselves and pass the time except conversation. Apparently what they were saying was not being monitored, because they had called their captors some awfully derogatory names and had not been reprimanded in any way. Or maybe the people who were torturing them wanted them to hate them as much as possible. Who knew? Harold and Steve had talked about their wives and children and about their jobs. Jimmy was not married and was a student at Tulane so he didn’t have as much to talk about as the other two. He was in his junior year in pre-law and that didn’t leave him much free time for extra curricular activities, thus not many stories to tell. It was difficult to make real estate and tax law sound interesting. But all three could talk about their childhoods and diverse backgrounds. They had obviously gotten to know each other very well in the last six days and had formed a bond. An us against them mentality. They were in this together and if there was any way out it would have to be done together. No one would be left behind.
It was mealtime again, and the man who always wore the hood brought the food to them on a cart with a silver service set that looked like it must have cost a fortune. Why they went to so much trouble for so little food was a mystery. The man was always armed with a pistol and a rifle that was slung across his shoulder with a strap. There was no hope of trying to escape at mealtime. One false move and they would probably all three be dead. Before they were served their meager portions, the sexy woman treated the wounds on Jimmy’s back with some sort of medicated ointment. He was young and healthy and his wounds were healing quickly.
The food was divided into tiny, equal portions and was consumed in four or five gulps. They had become so hungry by now, they didn’t even bother to chew. The man held the gun on them for the thirty seconds it took them to eat, then replaced the heavy silver lid and walked back out, closing and locking the heavy steel door. The one luxury they were allowed was a big mug of black coffee after every meal. Jimmy had never drank coffee but had learned to love it after the first two days of near starvation.
The lights were always turned out at what they believed to be somewhere around midnight. Their watches had been confiscated before they had been put in the strange room, so perception and guessing was all they had to rely on. The volume of the music would be lowered slightly at bedtime, but so would the temperature. All they were provided for cover was one large, thin sheet that they folded as many times as they could and still be able to cover all three of them. The room became almost like an icebox. After the first night of shivering to the point that their teeth were chattering, they decided the only way to get warm enough to be able to sleep at all, was to toss aside their fears of being defined as something other than normal heterosexual men, and hug each other tightly, using each other’s body heat. After the initial discomfort and embarrassment, they were finally able to get a few hours of sleep, though it was always filled with strange dreams and nightmares.
On the morning of the seventh day, they awoke and waited in anticipation the daily ritual of being served breakfast and then being forced to shower. Their internal clocks told them that the man in the hood was running late this morning and their stomachs were beginning to growl. Not that they hadn’t growled for most of the last five or six days, but they were growling almost in three part harmony now.
After another thirty minutes or so of anxiety filled small talk, they could hear the lock on the door being turned. It opened slowly with a sound that reminded Harold of the creaky sound effects used in the old radio mystery serials. The hooded man, armed with his pistol, entered the room. This time he had no service cart and was walking slowly and looking at them as if they were some newly discovered species. He pointed to Harold and then to Steve.
“You two, come with me,” he said, motioning with the pistol toward the door.
“What are you going to do with us?” Harold asked, trying his best to keep his voice from shaking.
“You two are going to be rewarded with an all you can eat buffet this morning. The other one will get to have a good meal at lunch. He has to wait a little longer. That’s his punishment for breaking the rules with my dancer the other day.”
It sounded too good to be true, but they had no choice but to believe the hooded man. He was the one holding the gun. Maybe they were going to feed them well, no doubt to keep their strength up for whatever it was they ultimately had in mind for them.
Steve spoke up, “We’re not going without Jimmy. Either he goes or none of us do.�
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Before any of them had time to bat an eye, the man backhanded Steve, drawing blood from the corner of his mouth. The man was tremendously strong and as quick as a cat.
“I make the rules around here, chief. Now I told you, young Jimmy there gets to eat at lunch. Either both of you start walking or one of you dies and I get to save some food for later.”
Harold and Steve started to walk toward the door, but the man stopped them, pulling out two hoods from the back pockets of his jeans.
“Put these over your heads. You can take them off when we get to the dining room. I’ve gotta cuff you ,too. Wouldn’t want you to try anything stupid.”
The dancing woman walked in, also brandishing a pistol, and held it on them while the man cuffed them. Then they slipped the hoods over their heads and were led out of the room.
They hadn’t gone far when they heard a door open and could feel the heat of the July day. It was the first fresh air they’d breathed in seven days and it felt good. The temperature was above ninety degrees, but it was welcome after spending the last few days in what felt like a meat locker. They were then loaded into some kind of vehicle and heard the doors shut and the engine start up.
After riding what seemed like several miles, the vehicle came to a stop. The man and woman got out, leaving Steve and Harold in the back of the van. Several minutes past and the waiting was torture. The silence was eerie. Wherever they were, there was no doubt it was extremely remote. Both men were afraid to utter a word. They even tried to breath as quietly as possible. Steve was just about to nod off when the doors were jerked open.
“You can get out now. We’ve taken you to our special dining room where we only entertain our most important and distinguished guests.” It was the woman’s voice.
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