Long Holler Road - A Dark Southern Thriller (14 page)

  “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 away. 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.”

  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.

  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 property. 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.