Night Crawlers

by Ron L. Carter

The more Jed thought about it the more he knew he wouldn’t have any trouble getting rid of what they stole and obtaining the drugs once he made his first contact with “the fence” and the drug dealer. He had met each of his dad’s contacts on several occasions while his dad had done his transactions with them. All his contacts were still in Sherman’s phone, which was a great relief to Jed. After he did a lot of preparation, he made up his mind that he was ready to take control and do what he had to do.

  He knew he was going to do some extra planning on what houses he and Justin should break into. He knew he would have to scope out the three little towns for himself, just like his dad had done, before he started stealing in the Red Mountain area. He also knew, that in addition to what his dad had taught him, he would now have to rely heavily on his own instincts to help him and Justin survive.

  Once he felt confident, he talked to Justin and told him, “There are a lot of homes in Red Mountain we haven’t hit yet because they have big dogs that are always barking when anyone gets near their houses. I want to hit some of those houses, but we need to do something about the dogs first.” Justin immediately replied, “I don’t think that’s a very good idea Jed, dad always stayed away from the dog houses.” Jed knew he would respond that way so he replied, “I know Justin, but I’ll get rid of the dogs, and then we’ll break into the houses when the owners are away.” Rubbing his hands together, he continued, “Those houses have a lot of treasures, just waiting for us to take.” Justin liked what Jed said about the treasures, but he was still stuck on the dogs as he asked, “What are you going to do about the dogs?” Jed already had a plan and said, “Don’t worry about them Justin, I’ll come up with a way to get rid of them.” Justin thought for a minute and then just looked at Jed and said, “Ok, Jed, you’re in charge. Let’s do it.” Jed didn’t tell Justin that his plan was that he was going to poison them with Rat poison and that’s how he was going to take care of them. He knew Justin wouldn’t like that idea any more than he did, but they needed new places to hit in Red Mountain. The dogs were just another obstacle that stood in his way of doing what his mom needed him to do.

  When Lynn went to town a few days later, Jed asked her to pick up ten pounds of hamburger meat and several boxes of rat poison. He told Lynn, “I’m going to poison some of the dogs that have been getting in our way here at Red Mountain and then we can break into those houses.” She didn’t like the idea of killing the dogs but didn’t ask him any questions because she knew he was doing it for her. His plan was to help get her the drugs and anything extra the family needed to survive.

  When she got home from shopping that afternoon, Jed took the hamburger meat out of the package and mixed the rat poison in with it. He made the poison balls of meat about the size of baseballs and that was what he was going to use to kill the dogs.

  He waited until it was the middle of the night before he went out on his deadly mission. He crept up to the houses and got the dogs attention. He then made sure each dog had their share of the deadly poison as he threw each of them a couple of balls. He repeated that scenario several more times at the different houses before he headed back home to sleep and let the poison do its job.

  A few days later, Lynn was getting groceries in town when she overheard a neighbor, she recognized from Red Mountain, telling the cashier about all the dogs that had been killed in the Red Mountain neighborhoods. She told the cashier, “There’s an outrage in town from the dog owners because eight dogs have been found dead in their own yards. No one knows who killed the dogs, but the owners of the dogs vowed they would find out and get even with whoever was responsible. They put the word out in town they were going to shoot whoever poisoned their dogs. They said they were going to shoot first and ask questions later.” The neighbor saw Lynn standing in the line behind her waiting to pay for her items and asked Lynn, “Did they kill your dogs?” Lynn acted surprised as he quickly said, “No, that’s terrible. When did it happen?” The neighbor said, “It just happened a few days ago and everyone is up in arms about it.” Lynn said, “Well, I don’t blame them, I would be too. Maybe I should keep my dogs in the house for a while.” The neighbor looked at Lynn with kind of strange look on her face and said, “That’s weird, because they killed most of the big dogs that did a lot of barking, and your dogs bark a lot.” Lynn said, “Yes, that is weird, I wonder why they didn’t kill mine too?” Lynn thanked her for the information and didn’t say anything else about it as she finished her shopping and headed back home.

  When Lynn got home she told Jed what the neighbor lady had said about the dogs being killed and the shooting first and asking question later. Jed was glad to hear his plan had worked, but he took the death threat serious. He and Justin decided to wait and hit those houses when the timing would be better. They were going to wait for the anger to die down a bit.

  In the mean-time, they started breaking into the abandoned homes in town that had been sitting empty for years. They ripped out all the metal, copper wiring and anything else they thought might have value that they would be able to sell to their “fence.” They took it out of the house and hid it in a safe location until they could go back with their pick-up before daylight and load it up. Once they had it on the truck they took it back to their house and hid it in the “secret hiding room.”

  They waited until Jed felt like they had enough stolen items or until Lynn’s habit forced them to take the trip to Los Angeles. Lucky for Jed, they had a lot of success selling the metal and other parts of the house to their “fence.” Those loads were in big demand so they continued to steal from the abandoned houses for several weeks. When they got bored with just stealing from the abandoned houses, they would break into one of the houses where Jed had killed the dogs. Jed would stake out the houses for a few days and wait for the owners to leave and then he and Justin would go break-into it. No one in or around Red Mountain knew when, where or who the “creeper” would strike next.

  It was during one of those nights when they went to one of the houses when they had a close encounter with the owner. Jed had staked out the house and watched it for a few days to see what kind of activity was going on. He watched as the owner left and he didn’t see anyone come or go for a few days and thought it was safe for them to break in. He was positive the owners had left town and believed it was time to make their move. It was dark and windy as they got into their creeping mode and headed for the house. Jed didn’t know it, but the owner of the house was trying to lay a trap for them. For the past several days, the owner had someone drop him off down the street just before dark. He would then sneak back to his own house, hide inside and wait to see if someone tried to break in. He had his shotgun and pistol ready to kill whoever was stealing from the people in Red Mountain.

  When Jed and Justin arrived at the house, all the lights were off and everything was quiet. Jed had a funny feeling about it as he moved over to Justin and whispered, “Something just doesn’t feel right about this place. Every light in the house is off. Usually when people go out of town they leave at least one light on somewhere. I thought I remembered an outside light being on when we were watching it last night. Maybe it just burned out.” Justin whispered, “Do you think we should skip this one, Jed?” Jed was very apprehensive as he answered, “Maybe, but let me get up closer to the house and see what happens. Stay back by the fence, just in case something goes wrong.” Jed then crept up to one of the bedroom windows and waited for several minutes. He didn’t hear or see anything so he broke a window. As soon as he broke it, he heard a rustling noise from inside the house. He wasn’t sure what it was, but it spooked him momentarily. His heart was starting to pound in his chest a little faster than normal as he wondered what made the noise. He said under his breath, something just isn’t right here. It sounded like someone or something is inside the house. He immediately waived for Justin to get down and stay behind the fence. Justin did as Jed motioned him to do and they both sat
frozen for several more minutes to see if they could hear another sound or see if anything else would happen.

  Jed wasn’t hearing anything unusual so he decided to raise the window very slowly to get a look inside. Just as he got the window half-way open, he saw a dark figure emerge from the back of the room. He then realized they were not alone as he said to himself, there’s someone here and he’s coming straight at me. It looks like he has a gun. He saw a figure coming toward him and quickly ducked just before the shotgun blast tore out the bottom part of the window where he had been standing. Immediately, after he heard the first blast, he ran for the outside corner of the fence where Justin was hiding. He had just made it there when they heard another two shotgun blasts that were aimed in their direction. They could hear the pellets hitting the fence and bushes all around them. They took off running and once they were far enough away from the shooter, they stopped and knelt down. Justin was breathing heavy as he said, “You ok Jed? It looked like you got hit.” Jed was also breathing hard as he replied, “Nah, I’m okay the blast missed me by a mile. How about you? Did you get hit?” Justin momentarily looked down and felt his body and said, “No, but that was close.” Jed let out a deep sigh of relief and replied, “Yes it was! Man, let’s get the heck out of here and get back home.” They quickly headed home, stopping at their familiar spot to make sure no one had followed them.

  When they got back home and had time to reflect on what had happened, Jed and Justin got into an argument about the entire incident. Justin said, “See, I told you we shouldn’t have hit the dog houses. That’s why Dad never did. That’s why he stayed away from them.” Jed already knew he had made a huge mistake and was angry with himself for what had happened. He didn’t really want to hear from Justin about how he had screwed up. He angrily responded, “Yea, do you think you can do any better? If you do, then I’ll gladly give you the job because I never wanted it in the first place!” Justin wanted to stay mad at Jed, but he knew Jed was right. He knew Jed never wanted to steal things from other people or to buy drugs for their mom. He just did it because he had too. Justin knew he wouldn’t be able to do everything Jed did so he just shrugged his shoulders and said, “No you’re doing a good job, Jed. I just got scared.” That was it and the argument was over between the two of them.

  When they finally got to bed in the early morning hours, Jed couldn’t sleep and kept running the episode through his mind over and over again. He thought to himself, I screwed up. We both could’ve been killed. Just the thought of that sent a shiver up his spine. He kept wondering to himself what went wrong. For a moment, he started to question his ability to do the break-ins the way his dad had taught them. He knew what happened back at the house would never have happened to their dad because he would never have chosen that house to break into. Justin was right, their dad would’ve stayed away from the houses where he had killed the dogs. When he used to ask his dad about killing the dogs he would tell Jed the owners would just replace them with new dogs and they would be right back in the same predicament in a few months. He told Jed that people with dogs usually have guns for protection too and they’re willing to use them.

  As he lay there, Jed also felt bad that he had let Justin and Lynn down because they weren’t able to steal anything from that house. The more he thought about it the more he realized, from that point on, if something didn’t feel right, he needed to follow his instincts and stay away from it. He knew that even though it was a close call, he felt like it was a good lessen to learn and he wasn’t going to let something like that happen to him again.

  The next day Jed sat down with Justin and said, “I’m sorry about what happened last night, it should never have happened. I don’t know what exactly went wrong, but from now on, we’re only going to hit places we are one hundred percent sure no one is home. I don’t want to get caught with my pants down like that again.” Justin just laughed out loud and said, “Me either! That was way to close for comfort. We could’ve been killed.” Jed told Justin that he had been thinking about doing something different. He said, “Maybe we should go Randsburg or even Johannesburg and hit some houses in those two towns for a while.” He was thinking that maybe they needed to just get away from Red Mountain for a few months. He told Justin, “I don’t like getting shot at and I’m a little burned out on stealing things from the people around here.” Justin clapped his hands in agreement and said, “Me too, let’s go somewhere else.” Justin loved the idea of going into Randsburg and Johannesburg.

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  Chapter 7 - Joshua Trains Mister