The Horn Man: The October Killer (conclusion)

This is a work of fiction

Warning: adult themes, graphic detail, smoking, alcohol use, substance abuse, violence

Time and location unknown

Date unknown

For a week, at least, Frank had been in and out of consciousness. It was always dark, but not the kind of dark he had been suspended in. He was on his back, blankets piled on him. He was sweating, but cozy and comfortable.

Somewhere near his feet, off to the left, a red glass lamp glowed, an antique almost exclusive to the south.

His body gradually began to filter pain in, a little bit at a time, always promising more to come. He was also sore in what felt like every muscle group.

Then he felt the urgency of a full bladder and the need to relieve it.

Slowly he sat up, groaning as his back creaked with resolute resistance.

Slowly and with ridiculous weakness, he turned to his right, lifting heavy quilts and blankets away until his feet touched a cold floor. This wasn’t a hospital; the floor was concrete.

But the urethral catheter…how did he have one of those if he wasn’t in the hospital?

“Hey,” a voice said in the dim light, “Take it easy, you’re going to get dizzy and fall!” The exclamation was delivered in a whisper but still carried the warning quite clearly. “You’ve been out for a long time.” A rush in the dark, strong hands supported him under his armpits. “Let me get that catheter out first, then you can go. The IV is already out. I’ll help you to the bathroom.”

Once the catheter was out, a steady stream of urine came immediately gushing behind it and Frank couldn’t control it. “It’s okay, Frank. Don’t worry about it.” But his guide still kept him moving to a small room with a white light.

The nurse, or whatever she was, helped him wash at the sink; a bed bath standing up.

He was hurting so badly that a woman washing his pits and penis didn’t bother him.

Protectors of the Earth

When he was led back out, still nude, he saw her. He stopped, his mouth open with horror. Randi Ghas was making his bed, changing the linens. “Hello, Sleeping Beauty,” she smiled. “You had me worried.”

As he was helped into a fresh gown, Frank was given a situation report. He was in a large basement, and outside, through a window the size of one in an oven, he saw the light of a sunset. He never understood why, but he could always tell the difference between the glow from a sunset and a sunrise. They were very different.

He looked back at Randi, more beautiful than he remembered, and sensed only a gentleness from her. Was this really what attacked him, or just a woman?

As if she had heard his thoughts, Randi said softly, “it wasn’t me. I was hurt that you thought that, but I understood it. Dealing with the supernatural isn’t easy.”

When he was settled into bed again and a man in scrubs mopped the floor, Randi, clothed in black robes, a rosary chain and beads around her neck, explained, “I tried to tell you it was a shapeshifter. It isn’t a striga, though. We know your doctor. We know lots of doctors. This is the first time one has ever resorted to calling us in. He really thinks a striga was after you but he’s wrong. It is much worse than that.

“Frank, we did have dinner together that night, but you drove me home and dropped me off. We didn’t sleep together. Our enemy took over your mind. That’s what almost killed you. At any time afterwards, or when you were in your doctor’s office, did you notice any kind of insect?”

“It’s almost dark. Tonight is Halloween, the last night we can catch it and kill it. I hoped you would be able to come with us, but you’re too weak.”

And he did; he was sweating, his eyes were in and out of focus, and doing scary things to her image.

Outside the window, as if from a fair distance, a truck’s air horn sounded: a bugle signaling the beginning of a battle.

Randi said, “your horn man is calling us out.” She sounded frightened.

“Of course I’m coming with you. Just give me some clothes and my gun and lead the way.”

“Frank, it’s Halloween. Don’t you know how long you’ve been out? And before that you were in a coma. You almost died.“

Frank said, “I don’t care if I have to crawl, I’m coming.”

She turned to a woman who had been sitting quietly in a dark corner of the room and asked, “Mother Superior?”

Frank had a rush of confidence and the feeling of strength. The nun was powerful in her faith. “Go ahead. He’s old and he’s very weak right now, but it will work just the same.”

Randi sat back down on the edge of the bed. From the stand beside it, she picked up gloves, donned them, then quickly swabbed his upper right arm with an alcohol pad and just as quickly jabbed a syringe into the muscle. He felt like a lump of fire had been deposited there; he winced while the nurse and Randi stripped him of his gown and put his feet into a pair of blue jeans and drew them up. As they continued to dress him, his body began to jerk uncontrollably, the fire spreading throughout his bloodstream. He groaned in pain and begged for water. They were lacing up trekking boots then they sat him up. A T-shirt and pullover sweatshirt followed, and he was lifted up again. A cowboy-style gun belt and holster was tightened to his waist. The long handgun required a long holster which had a leather thong that had to be tied to his leg. He pulled the pistol and marveled at it. 1896 Colt, very rare, a .45 with a ten-inch barrel, a subdued black model that, if it had ever been fired, had not been so used very many times. He spun the cylinder and it was loaded, six huge bullets of death.

“Shouldn’t I get a Stetson, too,” he joked. He was handed a black watch cap. The joke was ignored.

He thought hard because her tone told him it was important. “Anything at all, Frank. Maybe you heard a sound?”

He had heard something!

“Like a dragonfly I couldn’t see. Funny sound.”

Randi looked at the elderly nun. A knowing exchange.

“Franklin,”the nun asked, “What do you think of faeries?”

Frank let out a snort of laughter.

“Don’t laugh,” Randi warned darkly, her voice low.

“I don’t know. I thought they were a myth.” His mouth was as dry as the desert. He asked again for water and the nurse poured him a glass full.

“On the contrary. For eons, people have reported bizarre creatures they encountered in the wood and forest regions from Ireland to the Baltic, and usually the stories told end badly. Reports of missing time, being trapped, harmed, or witnessing the death of a traveling companion at the hands of various species of the Fae. Some can change appearance, even to human form. Anything they wish. Others are limited to animal forms, and the benign fairies cannot or refuse to change. Those avoid contact with humans at all costs, including hiding while their land is disturbed and exploited by men. They die because their dwelling places take generations, that is to say, centuries, to build. Their babies die without shelter. Yet, none have ever been rumored to seek revenge.

It’s said that the last survivor of a camp can, if she wishes, pray to become human, and if permission is granted by God, they emerge as beautiful human1 women, ready to marry and have children. Her descendants can, if they wish, return to the fae. But it takes decades. Do you believe this?”

“I do, Mother. Now that I’m purely terrified, would you mind telling me what you shot me up with? I feel…weird.”

“I will never tell you. Suffice it to say that you will be highly resistant to their mental attacks and therefore can expose yourself to fight them as you wish. You–we–must be quick, however; the serum is secret, so I’ve never allowed a half-life analysis.”

“And you know all this because you’re one of them.”

Randi gasped. “How did you figure out so quickly?”

“I meant to say you’re all, all three of you, fae. As you put it. You left them to become human and now it’s too late for you to change back.”

“Perceptive, Franklin,” the mother said, “but not exactly correct. Our court left the fae behind centuries before the Romans invaded England. We are the protectors of the Earth. We have always worked, even fought, to keep a balance of nature, mankind and the creatures of legend, to prevent the destruction of any one of them. Humans for the most part mistreat the planet, while fairies mistreat humans, and the few humans who knew, killed every eldrich being they encountered. The work never ends. If humans ever had proof of all creatures around them, they would kill with abandon, while fairies rarely go rogue and kill. They are punished, but you know as well as I that this would not be justice in the mind of any human. They would wipe my kind out. During the bombings of Britain and Europe in World War Two, so many of us were killed that entire bloodlines died out. Yet we did not retaliate because it was understood to be a war that unintentionally harmed our kind. We have a code of ethics that prevents us from taking revenge for accidental deaths.”

“Enough. Just tell me where we’re going and what to do.” Frank had a sick headache.

“We’re not going anywhere. They’re coming. And in a few minutes the serum will finish changing your DNA, and whatever gifts you receive, you’ll know how to use them, so let us go outside and stand our ground.”

He had a moment with Randi as they waited and the air horn grew louder.

“I’m sorry, Frank,” she said. When you came to me for advice, I took all of one hour to realize I was falling in love with you. I thought I could protect you. I’m sorry I didn’t. If you really love me, then forgive me and we will get through this because nothing is more strong than love.”

“Oh, you already know that I love you. I know you do. And we’re gonna kick ass. I feel like I can take on an army.”

Ahead, there was a two lane steel arch bridge, but Frank had never been here or seen it before. Beyond it, there was darkness; no streetlights pierced the void, yet he could see something. Something was moving and the horn grew ever more loud.

“Get ready,” said the mother, returning from scouting the area. “It’s all clear,” she said, but was instantly proven wrong when a giant owl with a fifteen foot wingspan swept down and closed its giant talons around her head, tearing her neck. She died just like that, her eyes rolling back into her fractured skull.

The nurse threw something at the owl, whose eyes glowed angry red, and blue light hit its breast. Frank drew the Colt, pulled the hammer back and fired. The recoil was too much and the gun flew back, the hammer hitting his forehead. He felt blood running down his face, but the owl wasn’t dead. It was hit, a hole in its breast, and the nurse’s blue light had dazed it. He fired again, ready for the recoil, and the head shot dropped the bird, which fell to the gravel lot they were on, its wings spread wide, the body face down with the head mostly gone.T

He air horn stopped. A tractor without a trailer had pulled to a stop ten yards away. Air brakes hissed, the door opened, and a man stepped down. Still shrouded in darkness, he said, “We meet again, Kallia,” using her fae name. He dripped with hatred. He projected it so strongly that she was off balance. “You remember me. I’m the one cast out of our court by your deciding vote. Banished, made homeless and powerless, having to kill men for survival, for sustenance. And you three have killed my mate. She only attacked your mother superior because she wanted to protect me. Must this go on? I was living in filth and yet people had to disturb our solitude, our peace.”

Frank looked down at the owl. A woman’s body lay there instead, its head nearly gone, surrounded by blood. “They’ll come for you now,” Randi said. They know you’re killing humans now. They’ll condemn you. And you ask why it continues.” She shook her head. The nurse held out her hands. A sizzling, electric green bolt of lightning shot at him, striking him down, but in a minute, he was back on his feet. He shot her with some type of weapon Frank couldn’t see, and she was torn by double-aught buckshot, blood flying in every direction. She dropped heavily, dead before she hit the gravel.

“You cursed demon!” She whispered to Frank, “Ready?’

He nodded, and as the mother superior had said he would, he knew exactly what to do. They both ignored the five county police cars skidding to a stop right beside them and at once they both concentrated on the horn man and he simply blew apart, exploding with a loud concussion, leaving only pieces that made splattering plops when they hit the ground.

Drained, Frank fell to his knees and Timothy Cobb ran up, asking if he was okay. Randi began to tell the officers what had happened when suddenly Frank began to shrink!

Frank felt it happening and knew what it meant. That damned injection. It was never temporary. In agony, pain everywhere in his body, his back was torn open. Wetness ran down the crack between his glutes and then his legs, and his wings emerged. Still shrinking, he begged Cobb, “Shoot me!”

All of the officers were now staring, horrified and unable to move. But Cobb could move. He didn’t have to think. He didn’t have time to ask questions. He drew his Glock and fired twice into the child-size torso, and the shrinking process stopped. Frank lay still, blood pooling around him, his dragonfly wings also unmoving but sickening to behold.

The woman who looked goth laughed at him. Cobb turned quickly, lined up the target and fired three quick shots. She vanished, leaving behind laughter that echoed as it rose above them, the sound of insect wings going with her.

When Cobb looked back down at his friend’s body, it had been returned to normal size, without the wings.

He was dead.

The Horn Man: The October Killer (Part Two)

This is a work of fiction.

Warning: adult themes, graphic detail, smoking, alcohol use, substance abuse, violence

Monday

20 October

Frank had spent a fruitless week interrogating the survivors of the abandoned truck stop murder, and he knew that they were innocent of the death, but he regarded them as chickenshits of the highest order. He told them so. Their wide eyes hardly ever blinked. He asked the doctor to let the boys get psychiatric treatment, finally realizing that they were traumatized beyond anything he could have understood at first. What the hell had they seen? he kept asking himself.

When pressured to describe the killer, they had one response: they had tears roll down their cheeks and slowly shook their heads, a two thousand yard stare fixed in their eyes.

On Thursday, he had consulted with a local folklorist named Randi Ghas who worked out of Atlanta but knew the state very well. She, being a goth, had dyed black hair hanging to her waist, lots of ink and black eye shadow. She was younger, hot, and exotic, and fuel for an old man’s fantasies.

Randi Ghas, on the other hand, found Frank Sanders a real man, confident and focused and exciting. His looks were fine to her biased eyes, and she had encouraged him to take her card, pointing out her personal number that she wrote on the back.

The front the card bore her name and the name “Georgia Historical Society” and Frank knew that name well. He had gone to them numerous times for research.

But when presented with a description of the body, which he cautioned her had not been released to the press yet, swearing her to silence, Randi became visibly ill. After some time in her office bathroom, she emerged, pale and shaky.

“I’m sorry, Ms. Ghas, I shouldn’t have been so graphic,” Frank said, getting up to help her sit. She thought, all this, and manners, too? Where’s this guy been all my life?

She reached into a file drawer in her desk, lifted a hefty, aged manilla folder and plopped it on the desk top and opened it. Halfway through the stack of paper, she pulled out several pages stapled together. “I thought this one was over before I was out of elementary school. I remember my dad working the story, and he worked hard, but he couldn’t print anything. He was threatened. The sheriff had a crony judge do it. Daddy was a good man and he wanted the truth known but he followed the gag order anyway. He was writing a book about it when he died, but he told me once that if I ever could, I should make sure it was printed.

“This case terrorized all of southern Georgia and especially in the west, where the mountain folks get superstitious over acorns falling too early. They’re really good people, and I’m treated like a celebrity by them because they know I respect their integrity and believe their stories. They see and hear and know things nobody else does. Well that’s where your story begins.” She paused. “This is against my instinct, but if anyone can be trusted, it’s you. I just don’t want you to get hurt.” She looked at him with affection in her green eyes, and handed him the papers. “I’m probably the only one in the county with a staple remover, so if you need it, let me know. It’s around here somewhere.”

Frank was horrified. These were copies of police and sheriff reports on unsolved murders going back to 1939.

All of them had one thing in common: their bodies had been found face down with their backs torn open from the rectum to the neck, vertebrae turned into jagged pebbles.

One every October and one the following month. No witnesses and no weapon found.

This was chilling indeed; if done by the same killer, the unsub must be at or past a century old or there was a damn good copycat. The murders had stretched from the Florida state line to North Carolina. He instinctively knew there had been some in the mountains as well, but nobody up there would ever talk to him about it.

Tuesday

21 October

They had shared dinner at a restaurant in Merriweather County, then gone to her house. It was old, homey and full of rich paneling and antebellum hardwood floors. The night was cold but she broke out blankets from a linen closet and they made love before she could even lay them out.

It was great at first, but as it continued, Frank began to feel drained and sick. He finally had to ask her to stop and though visibly upset, she dismounted him and rolled over.

He was sick, weak to the point of passing out, but he wasn’t staying here; and while she voiced her concerns about him, he dressed and prepared to leave. A sheet covering her to the waist, she said he’d feel better tomorrow as if she knew.

He had worse than the usual nightmares that night and awoke at 02:30. He chain-smoked Camels and drank two Scotches and couldn’t think of anything but his nightmares.

Saturday

25 October

She had been correct; he had felt better the next day. In fact, he felt better driving back that night, and the long drive, a stop for Dunkin’ Donuts coffee and icy air coming in through his cracked window, and by the time he turned into his street, he was fine. If not for waking up from nightmares he would have been in a great mood.

Just in case, he saw his doctor on Saturday, and aside from his already existing maladies, he was fine. He got a flu and a covid shot, but before leaving asked one nagging question.

“Doc, I was, uh …”

“What’s up, Frank?” Never did know you to be bashful about anything.”

“Okay, Monday night I was havin’ sex with this younger lady, and –“

Doctor Allan Kneebreaker, who regretted his unfortunate family name, but never dreamed of changing it because down here that wasn’t done, said, “You want Viagra.”

“No, I don’t want Viagra, will you quit clownin around? This is serious.“

“Go on, Frank. I apologize.” He could see now that this was something that had his patient and friend almost frightened.

“Well, everything was fine at first. She’s young, beautiful and…”

When he was finished, Frank saw something he had never seen on his doctor’s face: fear. The man had even gone pale.

“What is it, Doc? What the fuck is wrong with you?”

Doctor Kneebreaker fell into his chair without looking, still drained of color. He held up one shaking finger as if asking for a minute to get his shit together, then swiveled around to his desk. He pulled out a bottle of pills and swallowed two without water. He was breathing rapidly and trembling from head to foot. Frank had the unmistakable feeling that he had been right not to answer Randi’s calls all week. And not just because she happened to be in all of his nightmares.

He had seen flashes he couldn’t explain while they made love, images that came and went too swiftly to make out, but which were nevertheless disturbing. Each time, he felt as if he had expended a massive burst of energy. Now, as he watched his doctor, he decided that he was wrong, very wrong.

“You’ve heard this before, Al.” He said.

The doctor nodded as vigorously as he could, but five minutes of silence followed before a powerful drug kicked in and he stopped shaking. “Stay away from that thing.” He pulled a small flask from his lab coat and took a sip from it. Bourbon, Frank said to himself. He’d never known his friend to be a drinker; the man would order ice water or club soda at the bar when they played golf.

“Frank, have you ever heard of a striga? The correct spelling, if you’ve ever seen it, would be s-t-r-z-y-g-a. It’s from Hungarian and Polish but the creature’s origins aren’t known. By definition, they’re timeless. Female demons who eat human flesh and drink their blood. Therefore, they would always have been here and can’t be killed. They can fly, I think, in the form of an owl. But here’s the thing that no reference source says, and it’s you. If they fall in love, if they choose a man to mate with, copulation is rumored to be fatal, and the striga always forgets that. It kills what it loves most, and henceforth lives with a broken heart.

“I believe that this is who — what you were with on that night. She was draining energy from you without intention. It’s just what they do. So if they get pregnant, which seems ludicrous, it’s rare. Yes, I have absolutely seen patients before with the same thing and you won’t believe this, but they described the same woman. One of those men died in Atlanta General.”

“She claims to be a folklorist,” Frank whispered. He felt as breathless as if he had been gut-punched.

“Well she would make a good one,” the doctor said. “She’s been alive since before humans.”

“What am I supposed to do?”

“As a doctor, my advice is to stay away from her and let her pick another mate.”

“Is that supposed to be funny?”

“Not at all. There’s nothing funny about this, Frank. Forget it. Fallen though they may be, demons are still angels, and we can’t kill them.”

Frank froze. His eyes closed for a moment then flew open. He gagged, reaching for his throat with both hands. “Frank!”

Doctor Allan Kneebreaker hadn’t seen this before. “Nurse! Bring me the crash cart and call EMS!”

Frank was sitting on the examination table and he lowered the detective to a prone position then to his side. He used his penlight to check the airway and it was clear, but Frank was already beet-red, and that was serious.

The nurse wheeled the cart in and other doctors from the clinic were entering from another door.

When all clothing had been cut away, and the patient had been intubated, Frank Sanders was unconscious and in big trouble. Two men, doctors of cardiology and pulmonology, worked on him speedily, but his vitals were bad and getting worse.

“It’s not an infarc,”

His lungs are clear, the trachea is clear,”

“Start IV saline, push atropine.”

Paper and plastic packaging fell on the floor. The medics arrived but stayed in the hall. Words like “established” and “no change” were followed by “push epi!”

This much Frank heard, then he went into a place of darkness. He wasn’t standing or lying on anything, and he knew somehow that he was alone and there was nothing around him. The darkness went on, in every direction, forever. He felt no emotion. He just knew one thing.

That Randi had, across a distance he didn’t know, reached inside of him and killed him for telling the doctor about her. And she wasn’t finished killing, either; his last impression was that she was going to kill more than her annual bag limit, she was so angry.

The Horn Man: The October Killer

This is a work of fiction.

Warning: adult themes, graphic detail, smoking, alcohol use, substance abuse, violence

Monday, 13 October

03:40

Detective Sergeant Frank Sanders was slow to wake up. It seemed to him like the phone had been ringing for a while, but he didn’t know for sure; his sleep had been deep but troubled. Always with the fuckin nightmares, he thought. As the memory of this one already began to fade, the ringtone on his department cell phone, the music from The Munsters, grew louder. Wasn’t that part of waking from sleep paralysis? He didn’t know.

His supervisor, Lieutenant Timothy Cobb, had heard his ringtone in the squadroom last week and snapped that it wasn’t funny and that he should be a bit more sensitive; it didn’t do for a homicide detective to play such a thing because Herman represented a body put together by a grave robber.

“Fuck you, Tim,” Frank had retorted, making everyone else in the room smother laughter, turning away and holding both hands over their mouths. Frank Sanders was the only detective who got away with things like that, and no matter how jealous some were, two cadets working with the Robbery detail cringed as if Frank had just uttered a blasphemous thing that would land him in Hell the moment he died.

Lieutenant Timothy Cobb wasn’t even mad at him; he had learned long ago that Frank was irreverent, smart-assed and deeply cynical. But the veteran detective made him and the whole department look good: in his 30 years of service, over twenty of which had been spent as a detective, not once had he failed to solve a case, a miraculous feat.

Cobb was aware that now, at age fifty-two, grizzled, gray and a wreck of a man, Frank dreaded retirement. He by no means was compelled to retire, but he was deathly afraid of being retired by the department. Everyone knew he was an alcoholic, but only Cobb knew about the pain pills. Still, his body was wrecked. That was serious.

In such an expansive part of Georgia, there shouldn’t be a single man who had, in the line of duty, been shot, beaten half to death too many times to count, stabbed and slashed, and had taken over a thousand stitches, so many that the department’s insurance had paid for cosmetic surgery, and also, long ago, he had even been gored by a bull with a raging erection.

He’d lost his spleen to that bull, whose owner had, before Frank had even been wheeled into surgery, riddled the animal with bullets from his antique Thompson submachine gun. The dairy farmer would later tell Frank, “…that fuckin bull, even dyin he had a fuckin boner.”

But the dairy farmer had not stopped there; he had then shot every single cow sired by that old evil bull.

Lieutenant Cobb was positive that once retired, or confined to the office, Frank Sanders would die. And so were a lot of cops and people in the county. Frank had been around, and he had friends everywhere. Starting around the 18th of December, they would bring pumpkin pies, donuts, wrapped gifts, gift packs of Scotch, and someone inevitably would donate a Christmas tree to the department, which would stand in the lobby until the end of the holidays.

Cobb also dreaded the day he would lose his friend to retirement. He was an Eastern U.S. legend. And he got the job done.

Frank missed the call, but the iPhone hurt his eyes with the screen light, so he put it back down on the bed beside him.

He groaned. His back ached and he had to pee. He didn’t want to move, but if he didn’t —

Sure enough, he didn’t make it in time. He was already pissing before he got to the toilet. Then his head started to ache, and the hangover was on. He ignored the phone, turned on the shower, kicked his soaked briefs toward the hamper and fixed up a glass of Alka-Seltzer.

Fuck, it’s cold, he thought. The furnace should have kicked on, but when he looked, the thermostat and temperature matched, 71 degrees. He turned it up.

Shivering, he stepped into the shower, not caring about the water being too hot.

Barely audible, the phone rang on. In the middle of the night if his phone rang like that, someone had been killed. It could be a suspicious death, or something obvious. The iPhone made it seem like this was the obvious kind.

He let the water soak his pounding head, then he leaned forward to throw up. Nothing in there to throw up: a yellowish slime was all; he was killing himself by not eating and instead downing half a bottle of Cutty.

He let the water rinse down the shower tub, then gently, slowly, he soaped and rinsed. Once out, with a towel around his waist even though he lived alone, he answered the phone. “Tim, what the fuck? Did someone shoot the president in my county? Pin a plastic, gold-leaf toe tag on his limpy and UPS that sorry fucker to D.C.”

Without bothering to humor Frank, Cobb said, “You remember that abandoned truck stop down on I-

60? That spooky-ass fucker?”

“Of course I do.” Frank’s furnace was groaning like a living thing threatening to eat him. “What the hell would happen there? It’s surrounded by thickets and brambles and all kinda shit. Can’t get into the fuckin place. Don’t tell me someone out walkin their dog just happened to find a stiff!”

“No. But some boys, they cut a path, drive in and start looking round and they see an old cabover Brockway, and Sheriff Hardesty over in Merriweather County says it had air, which I didn’t know was possible, so they pulled on the air horn, it wouldn’t release, and some guy yells, “Stop it or I’ll shove that horn up your ass,” so they high-tail out of there, left their pickup and everything, cause once they saw the guy, he scared them to death. So there’s four guys, a four-seater Dodge, and a junked Brockway, and some crazy homeless guy that they never anticipated being there, except they make it back to the ramp to the highway and one of em is missing. So they go over to Hardesty’s office cause it’s closer and he says by the time they flagged down a ride, they heard him screaming back there. But they couldn’t call 911?

“Anyway I’m heading there now but I asked Hardesty for backup. That truck stop scares me.”

“Don’t feel bad about it. That place is enough to scare Stephen King.”

“Not helping, Frank. He’s scared of everything. That’s how he writes all them books.”

“Well then it’s enough to scare the devil, how’s that?”

“Shut up, Frank. You got your socks on yet?”

“I will in a minute, you stop talkin long enough.”

He ended the call and finished toweling dry.

Skinner‘s 76 Truck Stop! It was more than scary. It had operated from 1960 through 1979 when Interstate 60 was closed east of it within two miles. Once a busy place to eat and refuel, get repairs or just get some sleep, it was obsolete by 1970, too small to handle the traffic its 80 foot neon sign attracted. The in-ground tanks only held ten thousand gallons between both, and the pumps would get shut down regularly. The restaurant didn’t have the room to sit, much less the staff to feed the truckers who were hungry, and the repair shop lost money because once drivers got sick of not getting what they needed, they detoured over to the US highway then the new interstate after five more miles. A newer and much bigger truck stop awaited ten miles from there, and by July of 1979, the restaurant had to close, sealing the fate of Skinner’s 76 Truck Stop. One day in June, only one customer had come in, and had coffee. One of two waitresses had quit by sundown and the last one did serve customers afterward but never received even a cent as a tip.

The state had, on finding that the entire place had been abandoned, issued a warrant for the owner’s arrest, but he was never found. There was still fuel in the ground, and the tanks slowly leaked, rendering the whole area contaminated.

A few hulks of trucks once awaiting repairs sat in the spacious shop, but strangely, there was no registration information on them. No plates, no tax decals, not even a company placard on the doors.

Eventually details like this made it into the local papers, and when the state finished pumping the diesel from the tanks and scrapping them once they were lifted out of the soil by a crane, Superfund refused to do anything because the contamination extent was so negligible.

This made Governor Atkinson so angry that he initiated a lawsuit, which didn’t get results. Here was prime real estate, ready for rezoning and homes and a state road to connect to closer towns, a new shopping mall, and Interstate 50. And it was useless!

Atkinson lost his bid for reelection. The site, including four acres around it, was fenced off with 12-foot chain link topped with barbed wire.

It was possible for someone to buy a house six miles away and never know the place was there nowadays. It was hidden by trees and bushes, wild and overgrown with weeds that blocked it off more efficiently than barbed wire ever could have.

Until now. Frank, dressed and ready to go, walked to his car and unlocked the door. He had no use for newer cars with key fobs. His 1989 Viper, custom ordered in a beautiful metallic dark green, still gleamed and ran perfectly. He used good money to keep it that way, and his mechanic still drooled every time she saw it.

He headed out, suddenly getting the feeling that he was going to regret not retiring.

Skinner’s 76 Truck Stop (abandoned)

04:17

Frank was confused. He couldn’t see anything. No police lights, flood lamps or anything. He called Cobb. “Where are you guys? I’m at your end of the exit ramp but I can’t see anything.”

“I see your lights. I’ll walk out to you. Just move forward about fifty feet and park it. Make sure you carry your flashlight and your weapon, but don’t shoot me.” He sounded grim. Frank had never heard Cobb sound like that. Like his mother had just died.

When they were facing each other, Frank asked, “What? What’s in there, Tim? The hell’s wrong with you?”

“I’ve been to some weird crime scenes in my time. But I’ll betcha a steak dinner even you never saw anything like this shit.“

“Cheapskate. Even if I win you ain’t going to do that. You shitting me?”

“Frank, after tonight, you’ll be a vegetarian.” He turned and led through a path cut to the dirt through tall grass and weeds and a freshly cut gap in the fence big enough to drive a Dodge Ram through. Up ahead the back of the truck was visible and beyond that were flashing lights, red and blue, of several county SUVs.

“We found the missing boy. The others are being held at Hardesty’s office. Once we found the kid, we kept them out of here. If they’re the killers, they’re really sick pups. The oldest one is nineteen, and the deceased is sixteen. Brace yourself Frank. This made the Merriweather boys puke.”

Again, Frank had the unmistakable feeling that he shouldn’t be here. He saw why when they stepped inside the shop. Portable floodlights connected to a small generator just outside the door glowed over the most grisly scene Frank’s eyes had ever beheld.

“Jesus Christ!”

“Told you,” Cobb said grimly.

His long light in one hand, Frank holstered his 1911 Colt. Rumors among the department had it that Frank had notched the grip with the number of kills he had made, but it wasn’t true; he had killed and wounded with it, but he certainly never wanted to think about that. Taking a life, any life, was serious business and every pull of the trigger was traumatic to him. He buried it as deep as he could and just did the job. He never had a shooting that was not justified, but that had never been any comfort.

The victim was not in one piece. He lay face down on a floor covered in grass and weeds that had grown through cracks in the concrete or on top of soil blown in over the years. It was hard to tell which pieces had already been removed and dragged about by the enormous rats that darted about and which ones had been taken apart by his killer.

Blood was everywhere, even ten feet away, indicating arterial cuts while the boy was still alive. He must have died slowly though, because there was just too much of it, and after death, blood settles in the lowest part of the body. He’d bled out in agony or had gone unconscious, but this was a horrible way to go. The worst thing he had ever seen.

Frank didn’t get closer. He couldn’t move. He stared. What kind of monster could do a thing like this?

“Motherfucker,” he whispered. This person, he decided, would never be arrested. If he found the fucking animal, he was going to kill on sight, and it would not matter if there were witnesses. The person, or persons, who did this were already tried, found guilty, and sentenced to capital punishment. There could be no other outcome.

However it had been done, Emory Samuel Phillips the Third was a testament to the existence of the Devil in Hell himself. No human could have done such savagery to his body without help.

The body had been hacked open from the gluteal section to the shoulder blades, right between them, turning the spine into gravel. Vertebrae stuck out like pebbles covered in ketchup. The stench of the opened entrails made them all sick, nothing else smelled like that. But what had been done to the intestines was just weird. A truck’s air horn had been torched into pieces and shoved inside. Finally, gloved and masked with Vick’s inside the mask, Frank knelt beside the boy. “Tim, this was done or at least started while the boy was conscious. Look at the initial hemorrhaging. I’d say he immediately passed out and never regained consciousness even when he hadn’t bled much yet. Whoever did this is still here. Have everyone pair up, no more than twenty feet apart, and start a search. He’s armed with a heavy blade, looks like a vintage machete. Could even be a small chain saw. Everyone has swords these days so watch for that too, probably a medieval long sword. If anyone gets hurt, I will personally deal with them. Nobody else dies today. Nobody even gets a paper cut.”

Cobb, always wise enough to follow Frank’s orders, could see that his friend was on the hunt. That was normal.

What wasn’t normal was everything else. This case was bad, and it was going to get worse.

“Get the K-9s out here. He’s still close. I want a chopper too. Bag the body. He needs to be transported.”

The coroner had already been notified and was standing by. Frank prepared himself to face the parents.

The Catholic Church Conspiracy

I toured the Vatican.

But it is smaller than I had pictured. The guide (s) took us to different places and threw enough monologues at us that I grew very sleepy.

Mostly it was rooms, different ones where sections were defined by those velvet ropes on brass stands. Some woman I couldn’t see kept interrupting the guides to ask leading questions about this or that. She had her own instructional monologues. One man (Drink Coke Zero) who smoked (Camel) unfiltered cigarettes with us smokers on a break in a small courtyard (Buy Blue Bunny Ice Cream) had a good voice for his section of the tour and once when I sleepily went from one section to another and left my pack of (Camel Filtered Cigarettes) at the table, he silently went behind me to the next section of the tour and made sure I got them back. He smiled solicitously and made me sick.

The tour of the Sistine Chapel was something I looked forward to (“Anticipation” by Carly Simon plays over a ketchup commercial) and it was taking forever. We were warned in advance that no smoking was allowed and I’m thinking “No shit, lady, us smokers ain’t allowed to smoke nowhere anymore,” because people choke and cough for miles away and I swear you can hear them, or, if they see you light up, they whine, “Oh no, I’m allergic to cigarette smoke,” and you look and they’re all the same, morbidly obese women with suicide blonde hair, yoga pants and a fucked-up attitude…

We were also not to carry any cell phones (Get the new Samsung 360 for only 2,300 dollars and a fifty-five-year contract while this sale lasts), paper clips (Office Depot) or pens (Paper Mate Wright Brothers Pens available in Eckerd’s, Dart Drugs, Read’s Drug Store and Montgomery Ward) and oh jeez shut up already. What did they think we were gonna do, graffiti Michaelangelo’s shit? Make paint chips fall off the walls with Wi-Fi signals? Steal panels by paper-clipping them inside our coats?

The subject of some obscure dead dude who predicted all the names of the popes ending with Francis came up. The theories that Pope Leo XIV is the last one and the third prophecy of Fatima were being discussed at sleep-inducing length. I thought, this was supposed to be a tour.

Instead I was getting half-history, half-conspiracy theories poured straight into my brain by an opening in my skull I never even knew was there ((Ask your doctor if Ketamine is right for you)).

But (((Get Boar’s Head deli meats!))) whatever I was hearing, it seemed like I could never see the speaker. Their voices were always behind me. That just didn’t seem right.

Then, in a section marked off with large white ribbons or crepe paper (Party City has everything you need for your next indoctrination) hundreds of school children on some sick field trip were filling steel fold-up chairs in front of us. One youth was carrying an Igloo container full of grape (Yeah, Kool-Aid’s here, bringing you cheer) drink. He offered a cup to a kid who did that weird punk shrug in defiance. I decided I hate kids on the spot. Rebellious wastrels with a diminished respect for free speech who then turn out to spout the worst, most mindless crap you ever heard because they watch Tik Tok all day and eat shrooms (Fresh Portabello mushrooms at your neighborhood Giant, only 10.99 a pound!) or sneak (Pabst Blue Ribbon Beer) into their bedrooms and brag in school the next day that they drank a six pack last night even though one can of warm hick beer had them puking for an hour. They’re stupid. They’re limpets mom will never see move out.

Sometimes things don’t work out. The tour ended without the Sistine Chapel.

By then I was so weary that all I wanted was a smoke (Come to where the flavor is. Come to Marlboro Country!) and some sleep.

I did, however, find myself in a small connecting corridor looking for the Men’s room. I had to go.

Now, I don’t care for conspiracy theories, which is why I lampooned the really sick ones about The Brady Bunch and Gilligan’s Island, so if you want, you can read those. Conspiracy theories are a waste of time because they’re usually absurd and paranoid in nature, and can neither be proved nor disproved because people don’t listen to the truth, they’d prefer a lie any day.

Faked “evidence” is all over the place on the Internet and stacks at libraries, if there are any of those left.

The recent flood of conspiracy theories including the resurgence of the Apollo moon landings make me sick. Look, if you don’t believe they happened then that’s your decision. Remember, though, it’s a choice.

And remember that we have all chosen to believe lies before. Sometimes, we just didn’t know. But sometimes we were staring straight down the throat of the truth, and along came some Fox TV special about mysterious black boxes in cars that made them crash or lead police into high-speed chases. And of course, the one about Stanley Kubrick faking the moon landings with NASA.

I’m not going to bother with that crap. If you want to believe that hundreds of people kept those a secret, that nobody talked, goody. But it is truly stupid.

And another thing.

While subliminal advertising may have or maybe just once been rumored to exist and work, and could even be in use today, there’s no reason to believe it does work, or is necessary at all, when real commercial ads have you craving KFC at two in the morning when nothing is open and the only KFC you know of is 75 miles away.

Oh, and the Vatican tour?

About that: I don’t care about the archive rumors. I don’t care for Dan Brown’s novels. I don’t care about Catholic-Nazi collaboration in WW 2. I don’t care if the church made a deal with the Devil in Hell himself, if, in the end, it saved innocent lives, or even if it didn’t but was intended to, then I at least can understand that. Whether you or I approve makes no difference; it’s done. Long ago, done and over.

I think the Catholic Church does make one mistake, though.

In the grand trappings of the priests, bishops, cardinals and the Pope, there’s nothing holy. They’re just men, and Jesus never said for his disciples to stand out like that. He did pronounce words to the Pharisees, describing them as whitewashed on the outside but on the inside being full of dead men’s bones. That’s a pretty big deal.

His ministry was humble. Simple. He offered hope in a land where little was to be found under Rome’s hobnailed boots. He gave us all the promise that faith would be rewarded to those who believe and hold out to the end. But of gold and silver candlesticks, paintings and painted ceilings and walls with images, he would repeat that none of it was holy, none of it would get anyone into Heaven, and that works mean nothing next to faith.

Trappings of wealth or status are horrifying to me and that’s why I loved Francis. He didn’t live in Vatican City or wear the ridiculous Halloween costume (Party City has all your cosplay and Halloween party needs!) of tradition.

My tour of The Vatican was a miserable one. Maybe.

Or maybe I awoke at 03:47, accidentally ingested two Blue Bunny Ice cream sandwiches, chased them with a cup of Columbian brew, and turned on a documentary about the prophecy of the popes, put my headphones on and fell back asleep, forgetting about auto play and sleeping listlessly through programs about the Vatican, Nostradamus, and Catholic Church conspiracy theories.

No wonder the voices sounded like they were behind me.

So the next time you think you have it bad, just remember, you’ll sleep better with the TV off.

In fact, just unplug the bloody thing.

Have a wonderful weekend. I won’t. Because maybe subliminal advertising is real (I smoke Marlboro cigarettes, not Camels. But I do have the impulse to go to Party City, buy a Rambo costume, and hunt wild boars with a knife. And eat their heads.

Sure is a good thing ain’t no boar around here!