by M Murphy
Impatience grew with every minute and after about five Tidwell was about to give up. He had things to do and possibly, just possibly, he could be on alert for nothing. Picking up the rifle, he was about to give up when he caught a glimpse of a man moving around the edge of the barn off to the left of where he was looking. At first the man had been simply a blur in the corner of his eye but he appeared again moving towards the front of the house. Tidwell didn’t recognize him, but was worried because he had the appearance of government agent. This was not one of Trenholm’s people or Jack Francis. In fact, quite the opposite of what Tidwell had expected. Broad shoulders, polished suit, and hair combed and locked into place suggested more. Maybe taking the woman had brought the wrong kind of attention, and he still hadn’t had the chance to get any information from her.
Watching the man with one eye, Tidwell scanned for others. No one would be dumb enough to come out here alone, and if this man was a government agent wouldn’t he have a
partner? That blur he saw earlier. The thought that someone was in the bushes behind the house. That had to be where the other was hiding. Not wanting to make the first move, Tidwell waited. He knew he had to get out of the mess taking the woman had made, but Tidwell also knew his retribution would not end without a fight. If he had to he would kill them all. No one was around for miles and the sound of gunfire in these woods came from hunters all the time. And getting rid of a few bodies, well, that was simply too easy. Or better yet he might make a display of them to prove to Francis and Trenholm that he meant business.
Chapter 65
Giving Colin a chance to make his way around to the front of the house, Makem and I began our plan of attack. There were two possible points of entry for us so we split up. Makem took the entrance on the main floor opposite of where Colin would come in on the front of the house, while I was going to go in the servants’ entry. We moved quickly from our spot behind the bushes and broke off when we reached the house. I went under the porch and Makem up the stairs to the main level. There were two ways of going in; loud and fast or quiet and slow. As a group, we decided that quiet and slow was our best bet.
The servants’ entrance had a door that was misshapen due to the warping of wood over the years. With gun in hand, I pulled it open very gently waiting for the rusty hinges to make a sound. They didn’t. There was a small entry room with storage shelves that led into the kitchen. Coffee was on the counter and appeared to be fresh from the smell wafting through the room. There was no movement and no sounds coming from anywhere. I couldn’t hear footsteps on the floor above me and wondered if Colin and Makem had made it inside yet.
I looked over the kitchen while keeping an eye on the two doorways leaving the room. The first one, to the right of where I came in housed the stairwell, and the second continued on to a storage area. Remembering back to Hannah and my visit to Ashley
Hall I had to assume that this area once housed furniture that the slaves could change out with the season. Now it was empty. The floor was dusty and there was a table, laundry sink, and some fishing equipment in the corner. If the room was used it was not often.
Moving on I began to realize that the first floor of the house was primarily a basement, only not underground like in the North. The second floor above me was the central area of the home, with the third containing the bedrooms. It was similar to what I had seen at the McBee House at Ashley Hall, but not on the same scale in size or grandeur. I cleared three more rooms that I had to assume had once been used as storage before heading back towards the stairs. There was still no noise coming from above me and I began to get a little worried.
The stairs leading up to the main floor were dirty, but it was also obvious that they had been used recently and often. The dust and dirt had collected to the outer edges of the wooden steps from the breeze caused by someone walking up and down them. Moving slowly, each time the weight of my foot touched the wood it gave a small creak. The sound wasn’t much, but in the deathly silence of the house it seemed like a thunderous roar announcing my arrival. There wasn’t a thing I could do and continued step by step.
The stairwell opened up into the main hall of the house from the entrance point hidden behind the main staircase. With my gun out in front, I moved into the open room checking the first doorway I came to…nothing. The second, third, and fourth rooms were all empty too. And I mean empty. There was very little furniture in the house and most rooms had none at all. I saw a cabinet in one room and a lawn chair and small television in
another, but that was it. My gut had a feeling I didn’t like and I was beginning to wonder where everybody was. There were four other people that should have been in the house. I knew for sure
Colin and Makem, but I had to assume Hannah and Tidwell were here somewhere too.
When I took my first step to begin the climb up to the next floor, I finally heard something. It was the sounds of whispering. Too soft to hear the words or even who it was, but I could tell that upstairs someone was talking. With a little bit of
excitement and apprehension I began to make the ascent. At the top of the landing, the floor was broken up with two rooms on either side. The noise came from the door on the far side and to my right. Quietly, I moved with my back to the wall taking silent miniature steps. The voices had stopped, but I knew whoever was in the room still had to be there. Reaching the doorway I stopped and listened again, but there was nothing. In one quick movement I made the turn into the room with my Glock at the ready, but it wouldn’t be needed. Inside was a barren room, dusty floor that housed a small cot. Colin was kneeling by the cot gun aimed at me and the doorway. Behind him, and still half tied, was Hannah looking more pissed than scared.
Chapter 66
Helping Colin, we quickly finished untying Hannah and the three of us moved towards the door. She gave me a quick squeeze of the hand as we got up. It might have been a thank you or simply a sign that she was okay, but either way it was nice.
“Where’s Makem?” I asked Colin.
“No idea. He took the main floor and I came up here. I guess you didn’t pass him on the way up.”
“I haven’t seen anyone.” I said in a whisper.
As a group, the three of us moved out into the hallway and towards the stairs. Colin had taken the lead and I was in the back with Hannah in between us. At the top of the stairs, Hannah paused suddenly.
“I’ve found Makem.” She said.
Through the window at the rear of the house, we could see Makem moving awkwardly towards the river. With his gun in one hand, he struggled to carry a massive urn-shaped object in the other. He walked like a penguin as he balanced the urn on the side of his hip for support.
“That’s why he wanted to come.” I said.
“What’s he carrying?” Colin asked.
“I’ll explain later, but for now let’s go catch him.”
Our group changed gears and speed up as we made our way down the stairs to the main floor of the house. We took the back door out to the porch and down another flight of stairs to the overgrown grass below. Makem was still within site, but in the distance I could hear the drumming of an outboard motor revving at a high speed.
We ran, but even in his challenging state Makem was closing in on the old dock. I wondered for a second if the rotted wood could even hold the large man and the hefty urn, but I never got a chance to find out. Within five feet of the water’s edge, a man jumped from the woods in front of Makem and swung the butt end of a rifle across the side of his head. With a thud and a cloud of dirt billowing around him, Makem went down hard dropping the urn and his gun. Elliott Tidwell kicked the gun away from the fallen Makem and then glared at our group still fifty yards away. With a wicked smile, he grabbed the urn from where it had fallen and darted into the woods as fast as he had appeared. Tidwell was a scrawny man, but he made off with the urn more swiftly than any of us had expected.
Hannah was the first to get her run into another gear as she surged ahead of Colin and I.
We took her lead and soon found ourselves in an all-out sprint for the woods where Tidwell had disappeared. He couldn’t get far carrying that urn and there were three of us and only one of him…odds were in our favor I thought.
The three of us hit the woods with a crash with no thought of stopping to check on Makem. He had obviously come
here for the urn only, so nobody was feeling sorry for him at the moment. I also could hear the boat approaching and figured whoever was picking him up could see to the Irishman’s wounds.
Beneath the cover of the trees, there was no sign of Tidwell. The three of us spread out. Hannah was in the middle,
Colin was to her left and I was on the right, as we navigated the terrain. We followed the sound of Tidwell ahead of us barely audible over our own noise. It seemed that he was moving at the same speed as us, but that couldn’t be possible. Hannah stopped so quickly that Colin and I had run past her before either noticed. There was silence in the woods. The noise from our running was gone and so was the sound of Tidwell.
The three of us walked a little closer together with heads turning looking, waiting and watching for something to move. No birds chirp. No leaves crunched underfoot, and the breeze seemed to have even paused momentarily.
“What happened?” Hannah asked.
“He is armed. Maybe he realized running was pointless and he is hunkering down behind some log waiting for us.” I said.
“I wouldn’t.” Colin interjected. “That rifle he hit Makem with was an old Winchester, and the only other thing I saw on him was two pistols in his waistline. They actually looked like dueling pistols.”
“He has a thing for antique weapons. I know for a fact he carries a sword too.”
“I didn’t see it on him.” Hannah said to me.
The silence was broken as the firing of a gun echoed between the trees. Birds silent and in hiding suddenly flew off
from the trees and bushes around us. Instinctively, I looked towards the area where the noise had come, and then with a gaping mouth back towards Colin and Hannah. Colin looked back at me and dropped to the ground for cover. Hannah was already down and I followed suit just as another shot came from the woods in front of us.
“How many shots do you think he has with that rifle?” I yelled to Colin, not realizing the woods had grown silent again.
“Who knows? I didn’t see any kind of ammo belt on him. We need to make our way closer. I don’t hear any movement, so he must have himself pinned in somewhere.”
I looked over at Hannah and she looked towards me with a forced grin. Then the three of us began to crawl our way through the South Carolina woods towards the spot where the shots had come from.
Chapter 67
Like crawling through a fox hole, I took the lead and slithered my way across sharp palms, fire ants, roaches, and mud. Colin was behind me and Hannah had fallen to the rear. Tidwell had to know we were on the move from the rustling of our movements, but he stayed quiet. His silence told me that he either did not have a sight of us or he had limited ammunition. In a perfect world, it would be both.
A hundred feet or so of crawling through the muddy forest floor and I finally could make out a spot where Tidwell was probably laying low. A little shack, at one time painted white, had been taken over by Mother Nature. A small window faced us framed in Kudzu and darkened on the inside. I looked at Colin and without a word he began to move off to the left to get around the shack. I looked for Hannah when Colin moved and I couldn’t see her. With a strain, I looked over my right shoulder hoping she had moved to my side, but she wasn’t there. I sat up slightly and turned myself around so I could clearly see the woods behind me and there was no sign of Hannah anywhere. How did she just disappear?
My movement must have set an alarm off for Tidwell because another shot rang out and clipped by me and buried itself into a tree trunk. I turned back onto my stomach and got low with
the ground. There was no way I could go find Hannah without dealing with Tidwell first. Now that he had my location I couldn’t go lolly-gagging through the woods trying to find her.
Sliding my Glock back out I decided to give Tidwell some of his own medicines and fired a couple rounds into the darkened window of the cabin. Maybe I would get lucky and hit him, but at least I would let him know what it felt like to be shot at. After my shots, I waited in silence before moving closer towards the shack. Wanting to stay out of view I had to be careful, but I also needed a better angle to see into the window. Colin was out there somewhere and hopefully he was getting closer from my distraction of Tidwell. When I got the angle I wanted, I stopped my crawl and positioned myself to take another shot. The window was still dark from the inside, but at least now I had a larger target to fire into.
I put another shot through the center of the window and then tried two through the rotted planks on either side of it. Tidwell had to be tucked in there somewhere, and even though I didn’t really want him dead, I wouldn’t have minded wounding the crazy man. For the next five minutes, I took sporadic shots towards the ramshackle building wanting to keep Tidwell’s attention on me. The darkened window lit up with light and in that second three shots fired. Two from a Glock and the third from another weapon.
Slowly, I got up from my position and when no one tried to shoot my head off I ran towards the building and around to the back side. When I reached the doorway Colin was leaning against the frame breathing heavily. The heavy breathing worried me and I thought he had been hit, but the FBI Agent shook my worries of with a wave.
“He shot the minute he realized the door behind him was opening.” Colin said regaining his breath. “Luckily, I had gone low and he fired where I would have been standing.”
I poked my head inside the shack. There was blood pooling below the window. Old bottles filled a corner, dusty and surrounding a small still. Tidwell lay towards the opposite end with his head against the wall and feet displayed out towards the center of the structure. He had taken two shots to the chest and I also noticed one in the shoulder. I must have wounded him at some point. On the floor rolling next to Tidwell, was the urn going back and forth slowly until it came to rest just past his outstretched hand.
“Where’s Hannah?” I heard Colin ask.
Chapter 68
At the realization that I had forgotten about Hannah, Colin and I quickly left the lifeless Tidwell and sprinted back into the woods towards the direction we had come. There was no silent stalking this time. Instead there was crashing and yelling from two grown men as we called out for Hannah and moved with a disregard for bushes and branches in our way.
“Son of a bitch!” I heard Colin yell, as a branch came back to smack him in the back of his head.
It was then that I noticed Hannah, laying only a few yards from where I had last seen her. She was facing down in the dirt, one arm outstretched, and the opposite leg pulled forward as if to crawl. Hannah lay motionless, but I could see her back move up and down with slow struggled breaths.
“Hannah!” I called out to her, moving quickly to her side.
She looked up at me for a moment and then reached towards her outstretched left leg with her hand. I could see now what I hadn’t crawling in front of her. There was blood pooling around her upper thigh and being soaked up by the earth.
“Colin, over here.” I waved desperately. “She’s been hit.”
Colin rushed over as I slowly flipped Hannah onto her side so I could tie my jacket around her thigh to provide pressure and a temporary bandage.
“I’ll get the car and bring it as close to the edge of the woods as I can.” Colin said. He stood and began to crash through the foliage as fast as his large frame could.
I wasn’t a doctor, an EMT, or even had training over basic CPR so what I had done for Hannah so far was all I was going to be able to manage. Lifting Hannah, I carried her in my arms carefully back the way we had originally come. It was the only sure route I had to get out of this forest without taking the risk of getting lost or getting
stuck in the marsh. Between the extra weight of carrying Hannah and navigating the obstacles around me it took me way too long to reach the clearing. Colin pulled up with the car as I came out of the woods and hurried to help me get Hannah into the back seat. I jumped up front to drive and Colin grabbed the passenger seat, and we were off tossing mud from the rear tires as I drove through the yard.
A glance from my rearview told me that Makem was no longer laying on the ground knocked out, but I did see a small center console at the dock. The thought was quick and then lost in the moment, but I wondered where they had gone off to. I didn’t care. Hannah’s bleeding was getting worse and I was worried that the bullet hit something big. I knew that if the femoral artery had been severed by the shot then Hannah was short on time.
We raced down the drive and back out the small winding roads that had led us to the plantation. Colin tried desperately to get a cell phone signal, but it wasn’t working. We needed to have an ambulance meet us because I doubted Hannah would make it back into Charleston without medical attention. It had seemed like forever before we escaped the time warp of White Hall Lane and exploded back out onto Highway 17.