The days that followed June 10th, 1973 would always stick in my mind, not just because they were humid days. I remember them as if they were yesterday. During those days I was a kid of thirteen just minding my own business, walking through the yard of old man Morton on my way to the library where mom would be working. The lawns were freshly mowed and the smell made me as intoxicated as a drunk staggering out of a bar on a hot Saturday night. Soon, though, the days would come to an end with me vomiting from being so drunk…drunk on what happened under that hot Midwestern sun. The police were gathered around the old dilapidated barn that sat on old man Morton’s property and there she was on the back side of the barn, sitting straight up against it, a dark pool of blood settled around her like an all consuming darkness that waited for the moon to shine. She had cuts on her wrists, ankles and her neck, which was slit from ear to ear. I can’t believe that I walked right beside that barn…she was there…bleeding. The police questioned Morton. The interrogation took only a few minutes because they could tell with Morton that dementia was starting to set in. He hadn’t really been much since his accident twenty years earlier, at least that’s what he said it was. I decided to let the police do their job and walked along the path to the library which was on the corner of Frederick and Jones streets. I met mom outside the door.
“Did you hear about what’s going on at the Morton place?” I was overexcited, I’m sure she could tell.
“Yeah,” Mom said. “I don’t want you ever going through his yard again. Do you understand me?”
“Sure.” I said.
“Promise me.”
“I won’t, I promise.”
“Good.”
The walk home with mom was a silent one indeed. The path to our house went by the Morton place and her pace quickened. I, being sort of a hefty kid, needed to up the ante just to keep up with her.
Geraldine Rivers was her name. She was the local gossip and according to some of the townsfolk, sad to say, her passing was not going to hold much fanfare. Her husband committed suicide some years back and there where those that said that her constant nagging led him to it. I was instructed to stay in most of the day on June 12th, a few days after they had found Geraldine’s body. Over the course of two days there were the usual speculations.
Wonder who could have done this horrible thing?…
Wonder if it could be a local killer?…
She got what she deserved…
No one “gets what they deserve” I deserved a piece of apple pie after supper the day of the murder, but I didn’t get it because of the trouble I got into by going through old man Morton’s yard. Now that I think about it, I deserved a far worse punishment than that. There was one speculation that I never heard from anyone…who is next…
On the 12th there was rain, on the 13th however, the sun rose in the sky and sat there like a gaseous orange fireball. I swear you could see eyes and a mouth imposed upon the sun’s surface, getting ready to release the most sinister of grins. It was hot. You know what was even hotter, Miss Lou Anna Jenkins. She would be the answer to the question, who is next? I had the biggest crush on her even though I was only thirteen at the time. She was a flaming red head, who was also flaming for big John Carl, who owned the only liquor store within a forty mile radius. There was many a night that she would be waiting for him to close up shop. They would get into his car, turn up the radio and blaze off into the night like a cat with its tail on fire. So much a young kid should not know.
When big John closed up shop on the 13th, she was not there to greet him at his car. Instead she was in his car, in the backseat to be more precise, hands tied behind her back, with her head, lying face up, on the floorboard. The threads of skin attached to her neck were in a jagged fashion as if someone or something had just ripped her head off. The 14th would not be a good day for John Carl.
“I didn’t do it man!” John Carl barricaded himself inside of his house while the police surrounded the place. There was a policeman around every corner of his house, the one he rented on Caddell Street. The heat must have gotten to John Carl that day. Soon there were bullets blazing and two officers were dead. He still maintained his innocence when he walked out of the house but it didn’t matter, he was dead as soon as he stepped out onto the lawn. Those officers that were left started firing their guns as soon as he opened his front door. They didn’t wait to see if he had his hands raised. They didn’t wait for him to throw away his gun. They let go a barrage of hot lead that pierced his body in slow motion. There were ten gunshot wounds in all.
Within the course of three days, two more killings took place. Linda Greggs, who worked with my mom at the library, was killed on her way home. The body was found without the head as well and the jewelry had been removed, she wore a lot of it. The more peculiar of the two killings had to be the murder of Janice Emberton. Janice, bless her heart, was an invalid who lived on Palmer and Brice. She lived in the oldest house in town, a large, luxurious, Victorian style home. She lived there alone with her three cats, Mr. Wiggle, Ju Ju and Moxy. What was strange about her death was the fact that her body was intact when the police arrived. It looked as though she had been strangled and the killer left a calling card. Officer Barton noticed blood soaking through her shirt. He gently pulled it up to discover a bloody message carved into her stomach, it read:
JUST FOR FUN…
A look of terror flooded Officer Barton’s face.
“Mom?” I held her hand as she sobbed over Linda’s death. The past few days sent her into a tornado of emotions and rightfully so. She stayed in bed the entire day of the 20th. I had to fend for myself if I was going to get anything to eat. Dad left us when I was 5 and I always wondered where he was, what he was doing, who he was with. I found out later that dad left us for some cheap floozy he met while on one of his weekly excursions out of state. He drove a semi for Hartford Meats, delivering to restaurants and grocery chains that sprawled across the country. He went everywhere, every state, every town. There might have been more than one floozy but neither I nor mom knew if that was true or not.
There was a storm on the 21st. The town meeting was going to take place at six o’clock that evening and the topic was of course going to be the killings. Officer Barton was not looking forward to be held on a spic and grilled by the ensuing questions that he could not answer.
“First of all let me assure you that we are doing all we can!” Officer Barton yelled out to an overzealous crowd. Officer Barton was tall and thin; you could have looked at him at that meeting and have mistaken him for a scarecrow that presided over a cornfield made of people. Officer Barton called for everyone to take their seats and to settle down. The town hall was standing room only and outside, the streets were empty.
“You honestly want us to believe that the local police here have everything under control.” One man said. “I don’t really see that.” You could hear muffles of agreement.
“Barton! You can’t give us false hope, now!” Another person yelled above the crowd.
The townsfolk were in the makings of becoming a lynch mob. In all of this, one man stood up and spoke. His words seemed to quiet everyone down. It was Jeremiah Greggs, Linda’s husband.
“I can’t speak for everyone here, but I need to know who did this, especially to my wife. The murders were senseless and my two girls have nightmares because of it.” Jeremiah sat down and sobbed. I went right up beside him and put my arm around his shoulders. You couldn’t tell the rain from the tears that fell down Mr. Greggs face. It was during this meeting that Officer Barton called for a town curfew that would last indefinitely. One thought was racing in my mind…whatever happened to Janice Emberton’s cats?
A few weeks went by. The killings seemed to stop but still there was the curfew. Every shop in town had a sign near closing time that read:
Our Shop is
Imposing the
9’oclock Curfew
Curfew, I hated it. There was still time enough to go outside, what with the daylight lasting so long. It stayed though, even when weeks turned into months. It was close to Halloween when I found out what happened to Janice Emberton’s cats. It seems as though they had taken refuge in the woods that covered about four acres that surrounded part of the town. It was getting too close to curfew on the day that I had discovered them. There they were, walking across Gadson Creek road, together. I followed them into the woods on the other side of the road, trying not to scare them away. Their trail led me through the thick autumn woods, the skinny, decaying branches covered the clearing like long slender fingers, grasping for me. Soon my path came to an end when I reached a certain area that was overgrown and wild. The cats were climbing on a mound of some kind of trash or dirt or something. But it wasn’t trash at all. It wasn’t dirt. There were dead bodies there, lots of them. They were piled in some kind of hideous form. From the top to the bottom was six feet. I covered my nose and mouth with the crease of my arm; you know where the forearm and upper arm meet. That didn’t do any good. These bodies had been here for a good while. Chunks of flesh had been ripped off. The cats were having a field day. When I finally came out of the woods and reached Gadson Creek road, it was then that I noticed something that I should have noticed before. Small blood stained paw prints.
There was evil in the air that day. You could blame it on the Halloween spirit or just the simple fact that the killer was still out there. My discovery of those bodies triggered a mass hysteria in the town. Officer Barton lowered the curfew to seven o’clock. A bulldozer was sent to those woods on all hallows eve. A hole was dug and the bodies were buried in a mass grave. The cats were gone now.
When I went to bed on October 30th, I sat by the window and breathed in the cool, crisp autumn air. I took it in so slowly and opened my eyes. I quickly closed them when my gaze lifted past the old oak tree in our yard to the eyes of a man in the distance. He was cloaked in a hooded robe. The bright yellow moon illuminated his face and heightened his sinister grin. When I opened my eyes again, he was gone.
“There was a man outside my bedroom window last night.” I said.
“Really, you sure? Mom said unbelieving. “It wasn’t a figment of your imagination was it? Of course, after what has been going on in this town, I wouldn’t doubt what you saw.” Mom was shaking now.
“I mean you did find those bodies.” She sat down on a kitchen chair. “All those bodies.” Mom was staring out into space. I touched her shoulder.
“Mom?” I said.
“What.”
“Are you ok?”
“I’m trying to be.” She slowly got up from her chair and headed down the hall to her bedroom. I didn’t hear anything else, except the door close behind her. Halloween was the time for ghosts and goblins and the time for children to act like them. I wondered if the cloaked man would show himself tonight. Seems like this night would be the right one. He could roam around freely and be inconspicuous, hiding in the shadows, and no one would be the wiser. Was the cloaked man the killer? Would he strike tonight? The curfew was going to make things tough. Officer Barton did what he had promised; he pushed it back to six. Trick or treating would take place at four o’clock. Four o’clock, are you kidding? We would barely be back home from school in time. I was at the age where I wanted to do more tricking than treating. I wanted this day to feel normal. I met with some of my friends when school let out. We all got on our bikes and started to ride. Our bikes ended up in the woods where I found the bodies earlier. An eerie feeling came over me as we passed the mock burial site. I was ready for those bodies to burst out of the ground and attack us as we rode past. It didn’t happen. We really didn’t want to trick anybody, we just wanted to get away for awhile and see if we could stay out past the curfew. Our ride led us out of the woods and into a clearing where a shack stood. There were no trees and nobody around. We were alone.
“You think anyone lives there?” Jimmy Monford said, his eyes pulsating and doing double takes as he looked around the clearing. “I would hate to think that someone was watching us here.” His voice started to quiver.
“You scared, Jimmy?” Daniel Trolley was the lead bike that led us out to this shack. He was a good friend of mine just like Jimmy and he tried to sound tough. He leaped off his bike and ran towards the door of the shack.
“You coming, Nathan?” Daniel taunted me.
“No.” I gasped.
“You and Jimmy are just alike.” Daniel said. “Besides, its Halloween, you can’t go through this day without being scared at least once.” He sounded determined now. The sky was growing dark and surely six o’clock had come and gone. We had done it. We stayed past the curfew and lived to tell about it. At least I lived to tell about it. Daniel’s hand started to twist the rusted doorknob that was barely hanging on the ramshackle door.
“Last chance, losers.” He said with a laugh and a smug look on his face. He ventured inside and the door slammed shut behind him. There was something or someone in there after all. Jimmy and I looked at each other and started to shout out his name. Behind the door you could hear the most god awful screams ever to pierce a dark night such as this. We darted off on our bikes as fast as we could. Our young minds would never forget this night as long as we lived.
A few days later we were at the funeral of Daniel Trolley. Officer Barton had found the shack just like Jimmy and I had told him. He took to his grave the things he saw in that shack…things that should never be said in public…things that should never be seen by human eyes. He didn’t even go to the funeral. Still the thought of the cloaked man haunted me for awhile after. Soon the curfew became ridiculous. Five o’clock. For awhile we never saw Officer Barton. The town soon learned of his demise as he was found in the graveyard hanging from the oldest tree in town. Whatever he saw must’ve spooked him really bad. To this day I never knew who or what was hidden in that shack. I never even saw the cloaked man anymore after that. We breathed a sigh of relief when the curfew was finally lifted. Before I called it quits on those olden days so long ago, I finally saw one of Janice Emberton’s cats on one December morning, and it was unusually warm that day. I saw only one…I think it was Moxy…walking along Gadson Creek road, away from the woods. Moxy’s paws prints were dirty. I saw something sticking out of its mouth. I never really got a good look…a piece of bone, perhaps?
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