They walked only a few feet and heard a door open. From what Harold could tell, it sounded like a wooden door that hadn’t been opened in a while. The room they were led into had a musty odor like a barn where horses or cows would be kept. The smell of dried hay was redolent and he could tell he was walking on either hay or some sort of straw. Their cuffs were removed and they were told to keep their hoods on until further instruction. Both men were starting to become very nervous, neither believing they were about to be fed a gourmet meal in a barn, or whatever the hell it was they were in.
They did as they were told and waited. They heard the door open, and after a few minutes, they could here movement coming from what sounded like it was somewhere above where they stood. Then the man spoke;
“Okay, gentlemen. You may remove your hoods now.”
Harold and Steve pulled the hoods off slowly, fearing what they might see and what may be in store for them. Harold had been right in his assumption. The place they were in resembled a barn, and the floor was covered with a thick layer of what looked like dry wheat straw. The thin rays of bright sunlight that were coming through the narrow cracks in the walls were heavy with dust. Up above them, perhaps twenty feet, was the hooded man, the woman standing beside him, smiling. Harold and Steve both could see two weapons in front of them. One was a steel ball with deadly looking spikes that was attached to a wooden handle by a chain that looked to be about two feet long. Steve thought he remembered the name of the ominous, medieval looking contraption to be a flail. The other was an antique looking sword that had been polished to a high shine, the edges razor sharp.
“Alright gentlemen. You may now choose your weapons. Good luck to both of you and may the best man win. Now, I know what you’re thinking. You have been together constantly for seven days, never being separated. You believe you have formed some sort of life-long bond, since you’ve had to rely on each other for body heat to be able to sleep and you’ve told each other your life stories and most intimate feelings in an attempt to pass the time and to keep from going stir crazy. Now the time has come to decide if that bond you feel you have toward each other is stronger than your own desire to survive. Now, I know both of you will probably refuse to fight unless your life is threatened. I could tell you I was going to shoot one or both of you if you don’t cooperate, but then I wouldn’t get to see a fight if I actually had to do that. So, I’ve taken that into account and come up with another plan. As you can see, the entire floor is covered with extremely dry straw, about a foot deep. The structure you are in is constructed completely of well seasoned pine. It will ignite very easily, and once it does, it won’t take very long at all for it to turn into an inferno. So gentlemen, you are essentially standing inside a tinderbox. You are about to see a torch dropped in the back corner of the building. Once it is dropped, you won’t have much time to think. The one who strikes his opponent what I perceive to be a death blow, and I must deem it lethal, I will immediately drop a ladder for the victor to climb up to safety. The floor my assistant and I are standing on is covered with ceramic brick and the walls and roof are all metal. Once you are up here you’re safe.”
Steve screamed to the top of his lungs in a horrified voice, “Why are you doing this to us?!”
There was no answer. Only silence for a long minute. Neither man made a move to pick up a weapon. They just stood staring at each other, terror in their eyes. Then, just as the man promised, a torch fell into the corner of the building and the dried straw burst into a sudden flame, as if it had been doused with gasoline. The fire spread so quickly the heat became almost unbearable in just a matter of seconds. Still, neither man moved. The fire quickly began crawling up the walls of the structure, the flames looking like caged animals trying to find a way out. At this rate the whole building would be consumed in only minutes. Harold looked at Steve who was shielding his face from the heat and smoke with his arm. Neither man had ever had a violent bone in their bodies. Harold had a sense that Steve would just stand there and burn to death before he would make a move to save himself. The flames were beginning to lick at their feet and lower legs.
Harold grabbed the handle of the flail and shouted, “Please forgive me, Steve!” Then he swung the spiked ball as hard as he could, the adrenalin rushing through his body causing him to have more strength than he realized. It struck Steve in the right temple with a sickening thud, two of the spikes embedding deep in his skull. Harold wasn’t sure if the blow would be deemed lethal by the mad man above, so he grabbed the sword with both hands, held it over his head, and with his eyes closed ran it through Steve’s body at the spot where he judged his heart to be. He looked up and immediately saw the ladder being lowered. But he had hesitated too long about making his decision to save himself and end Steve’s life. The fire had spread so quickly that his clothes were completely ablaze, clinging to his body like they were made of rubber. Rubber that was being melted and fused to his body making him feel like he had been submerged in one of those machines that melt tar for paving highways. The pain was excruciating and the smoke was so thick that he lost sight of the ladder. None of that mattered anyway, because his legs had already been burned so badly they were beyond functioning. No one would ever know if the actual cause of his death had been asphyxiation from the smoke or being consumed by the flames. It really didn’t matter. He was dead just the same.
*****
Around noon, the hooded man came for Jimmy.
“Time for you’re feast, my friend,” the man said as if he were about to take Jimmy to a five star restaurant.
“Where are Harold and Steve?” Jimmy asked, fear in his voice.
The man looked at him and said, “You worry too much, young man. I’m letting them get some fresh air and walk off the big meal they had. Those two really put it away. They’ll be here when you get back.”
Jimmy expected to be hoodwinked like Harold and Steve had been, but the man never mentioned it. He did hold the gun on him as he was led down a series of narrow corridors and into a little dining room that was decorated with several flower arrangements and had a long table that was filled with so many delectable dishes he couldn’t even count them. The room had an incredibly wonderful aroma which immediately permeated his senses. He could here his stomach growling as the woman led him to his chair.
“Now dig in,” the woman said, “and don’t worry about manners. I know you’re starved.”
Jimmy didn’t know where to start. He grabbed a chicken leg and quickly devoured it to the bone, then grabbed another one. He ate green beans, mashed potatoes, sliced ham and some dishes he couldn’t identify, but were delicious. Then he dove into the cakes and pies. He ate so much, so fast, he was afraid it might come right back up.
“That’s enough for now, sweetie,” the woman said, grabbing his arm. “I promise you can have more a little later. You don’t want to overdo it in one sitting.”
They led Jimmy over to a couch and the man offered him a cigarette, which he readily accepted. The man gave him a light and then lit one for himself. They sat and smoked in silence, Jimmy rubbing his full belly and feeling as relaxed as he had been since his arrival. After they had finished their cigarettes, the man spoke in a casual tone;
“Okay, Jimmy. In about five minutes you are going to experience a terrible wave of nausea. But don’t worry because it won’t last but a minute. The poison we used works very fast and after the nausea and a short, but painful, bellyache, it will all be over.”
Jimmy jumped up, a look of terror on his face, “I….I’ve b…been poisoned? Where….where are my fr….friends?”
“Well, Jimmy, my boy. Let’s just say a part of them are with you now. Literally. One of those casseroles my assistant prepared that was so delicious had a source of protein other than chicken, if you know what I mean. And your friends didn’t require much preparation. You see, they were sort of pre-cooked.
CHAPTER TWENTY
A week had gone by since we had found the girl on Ray Turner’s proper
ty. Old Man Turner did have a Christian name, it’s just that none of us kids, or a lot of adults for that matter, ever used it. The girl had still not been identified but was believed to be between eighteen and twenty years old. The coroner said she had been sexually assaulted and that some artificial device had been used to penetrate her. He said conventional rape could not have caused the damage that her female parts had sustained.
Sheriff White could not fit this piece into his puzzle. He was sure that most, if not all, of the missing men he had gotten reports on in the last year were connected. But there were no reports of any missing girls or women, or at least none that he was aware of. The fact that she was found on Ray Turner’s property was another conundrum. Were people going to be as quick to accuse Mr. Turner of murder as they had been Hugh Williams because the body had been found on his property? He knew the answer to that was a resounding no. This latest victim had to be connected to the ones found on Hugh’s property. What were the chances of their being two murderers in Long Hollow, Alabama, a community that up until now had had only one murder in over fifty years? There had been some pretty bad beatings and a couple of people killed that were judged as self defense, but no murders.
Maybe finding this girl on Ray Turner’s place would remove the lingering suspicions some people still had about Snake and Frank, and even posthumously exonerate old Hugh. Or at the very least create some reasonable doubt. The sheriff had never believed Hugh was a murderer, despite the overwhelming evidence. He had always believed it to be a setup that had been orchestrated by someone who knew how to cover their tracks and wouldn’t stop killing until they were caught. The body that George Jr. had found when he was helping Jack Bynum find his old bull still hadn’t been explained. All the deputies and state detectives had gone over that creek bank with a fine tooth comb. Hell, George Jr. had tripped over that mound of dirt! There was no way they could have missed that. But it would have taken someone extremely brazen and intelligent to get that body onto Hugh’s property after it had become a crime scene with cops running around everywhere.
The state boys didn’t know what was worse, admitting that they had somehow missed a mounded up grave that a fourteen year old boy had tripped over, or letting someone haul in a body and take the time to cover it with dirt and even attempt to camouflage it with ferns, all right under their noses. They eventually decided it didn’t look quite as bad to say they just somehow overlooked the mound of dirt. The Putnam County deputies would look just as stupid because they were searching right along beside them. But if they had come clean and admitted that somehow, some stealthy killer had managed to get the body past them, Hugh Williams might still be alive and consequently, so would his wife.
Aunt Lena told me that the Bullards were already spreading rumors that Snake and Frank had killed a girl and buried her on Ray Turner’s place to throw the cops off their trail. Why else would he have been with me, Glenn and Tom when we found the body? The Bullards said that Snake led us to it, making sure we found it.
“They’re sayin’ that the way Snake and Frank always go around actin’ goofy and dumb is just an elaborate disguise,” Aunt Lena was saying, becoming more animated and angry the more she talked. “Only they didn’t use the word elaborate. Their vocabularies are not much more advanced than the grunts of the Neanderthals.”
Almost all my family, on both sides, were avid readers and Aunt Lena was no exception. She may have been forced to quit school after the eighth grade to earn a living, but that didn’t impede her education in the least. The only thing that changed was that she had to become her own instructor. She could still get books at the library and from educated neighbors like Doc Killian. People like the Bullards, on the other hand, avoided books like the plague which was evident to anyone once they’d been around them for no more than two minutes.
“They are bound and determined to stir up trouble for poor old Snake and Frank,” Aunt Lena continued, “they have to keep something goin’ all the time. They thrive on stirrin’ up grief. They always have and I believe it gets worse with each generation of them. It couldn’t get any better for them than bodies bein’ found on Hugh’s place and then Hugh getting killed. They know Snake and Frank won’t fight back, so they’re easy targets and they won’t have much trouble convincin’ some of the more ignorant folks around here that those Williams boys are killers that need to be run out of Long Holler.” Aunt Lena was smart and knew better, but she still pronounced hollow as “holler.”
It was in her DNA and there was nothing she could do about it.
*****
There was a five acre pond right smack in the middle of our farm that had water as clear and blue as any ocean on earth. It was the result of the quarrying of limestone rock off our place when I-59 had been built seven years earlier. The geologists that were contracted with the construction company said our farm had one of the richest veins of limestone they’d seen and Daddy had made a tidy little sum for the rock they hauled out. It also left us with the perfect swimming and fishing hole, the sides of the pond being almost solid limestone and the water being constantly replenished by three underground springs.
Ironically, it was Hugh Williams that had been one of the first to start stocking the pond with fish. Every time he or his boys would catch more than they could eat, which was often, they would turn the surplus loose in the rock quarry pond. Other people started doing the same thing and before long it was pretty well stocked, considering it had five acres of surface area and was over a hundred and twenty feet deep in many places. With the fecundity of most species of fish, even a pond with that much water would eventually become bountiful.
It was a real challenge to try and catch some of the bigger bass and catfish because there was so much water and so many small fish and other things for them to feed on. But Glenn and me had discovered the summer before that the time to catch catfish was at night using chicken livers as bait. Fishing at night was also a good time to catch folks who were in search of the perfect place to make a stolen car disappear or to make their own car disappear to collect the insurance on it. Our pond had become famous for it because nobody was ever going to find a car or anything else in water that was over a hundred feet deep. The Bullards were some of the ones that were on the sheriff’s short list of having stolen cars and stripped them down of everything of value, then sending the frame to the murky depths of our quarry pond. On rare occasions, the cars would get hung up on one of the limestone ledges that jutted out just a few feet under the water and the cars had been retrieved by McAllen’s Wrecker Service. But there was never enough evidence to charge anyone with any crime, so they say.
Snake had become mine and Glenn’s shadow since we had found the body of the girl. It was as if the poor girl nobody knew had cemented and made stronger the bond that had already existed between me, Glenn, Tom and Snake. He had gone from hanging out with us occasionally, to showing up every day. If we were doing chores, he’d help us. If we’d hired out to get in hay or hoe cotton, that was even better because he got paid for it. Nobody had ever had a problem hiring Snake, because he worked like a dog at the things he could do. But we had noticed a reluctance from some people to hire him lately from some people, probably as a result of all the foolish rumors that had been instigated by the Bullards.
With Snake in tow, me and Glenn were out on our little flat bottom boat in the middle of the night trying to hook some of the giant catfish in the quarry pond. We had rigged a lantern holder out of a cedar sapling and attached it to the side of the boat and had our Coleman lantern burning brightly, trying to attract the whiskered lunkers. We had gone around the last couple of days bumming chicken livers from anyone that fried, baked or prepared a chicken in any way, or for that matter had a chicken die of old age or get hit by a car. We didn’t care what the cause of death was, we just wanted all the livers we could get our hands on without having to use our hard earned money to buy them from the store. We were having a pretty good night with eight on the stringer, two weigh
ing over five pounds. I was trying to enjoy myself while staying in constant fear that all of Snake’s moving around, especially when he got excited, was going to turn our boat over. I had told him at least ten times to be careful. He’d apologize, stay still for a couple of minutes, then get caught up in a story or see one of our floats sink and damn near capsize us again. But what could I do? Hell, we had a bond now, remember?
On a whim, which was the way we did most things, we decided to row completely to the other side and try our luck there, as if all the fish we’d caught had been bunched up in one immotile school and we had caught the last one. I could never help but wonder what it looked like down there where my baited hook was. What was the fish seeing and were there others watching, daring him to take a nibble? Or were they hoping he swam away so they could eat the delicious chicken liver or worm or cricket. What had they been eating until I came along? What about when they found out they were hooked and were being pulled out of the water. Did they think they were getting paid back evil for evil for trying to eat the poor, defenseless chicken liver? Or that maybe the chicken liver wasn’t so defenseless after all and had turned out to be just a bad-assed chicken liver that didn’t take no crap from a fish? Any reasoning, rational mind would ask the same questions.
When we were almost to the center of the pond, I looked up at the sky. The sky was as clear as a bell and there was only a quarter moon, which made the billions of stars more visible. I knew that ancient astronomers and mariners had made shapes out of the stars and named them a long time ago, but I still enjoyed making my own. I was scanning the sky looking for the Big Dipper when I saw a big orange glow to the north, back in the direction of Long Hollow. In the direction of home. Sometimes on a clear night the lights of Fort Kane would light up the sky in that direction, but I had never seen it to this extent.
I pointed to the glow and asked Glenn and Snake what they thought it might be.
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