Disappearance at Hangman's Bluff

by J. E. Thompson

  The whole time I had been afraid she wouldn’t hit him hard enough, but Bee must have been totally juiced, because she gave him a really good whack. The sound was sort of hollow and squishy, like dropping a watermelon on the floor. Possum hit the ground like a sack of potatoes, and his flashlight and pistol clattered away on the cement.

  “Possum?” Lenny’s voice came down the stairs. “What’re you doin’?”

  The sound stirred Bee and me into action. Right away we did what we had talked about. I blew out the candle, put the fly rod on the workbench, and hid the skull under a pile of rags. While I was doing that, Bee grabbed Possum’s flashlight and gun and put them on the floor by the coal bin.

  All that took about ten seconds; then we rushed to where Possum had collapsed. Each of us grabbed one of his ankles, and we started to drag him. Possum felt as heavy as a dead horse. We both pulled as hard as we could and got him moving. His head was cut from where Bee had hit him, and it left a smear of blood on the cement as we dragged him into the deep shadows over by his flashlight and gun. Tiptoeing as fast as we could, we hurried back to the canning room. No sooner were we inside than Lenny shouted again.

  “Possum!” His voice was sharp. “What the heck’s goin’ on? Is somethin’ wrong?”

  We pulled the canning-room door most of the way closed, held our breath, and waited. Thirty more seconds went by, and then we heard Lenny again, his voice much closer.

  “Possum, answer me, darn you! Stop screwin’ around. Don’t make me come down there! You ain’t gonna like it if I do.”

  Another half minute went by, maybe more, and then we heard Lenny’s footsteps as he descended the basement stairs. The boards squeaked on the third and then the seventh step, and then we heard his feet scuff the cement.

  In the next second he must have seen the bloody trail leading into the other room, because he stopped. “What the . . .” he said softly.

  I heard Possum let out a moan from the other room.

  “Possum?” Lenny hissed, his voice full of caution.

  After another second he stepped into our view. He had his back to us and held a flashlight in his left hand and a pistol in his right hand. He began to shine his light around the room where the coal bin was and he stepped through the door, following the blood.

  I knew he must have spotted Possum, because I heard him say, “What happened to you?” as he hurried across the floor.

  Possum was moaning louder now and trying to talk. “Gemme outta here. Gemme outta here,” he mumbled. “There’s ghosts.”

  It was time to move. I pulled the canning-room door open and gave Bee a nudge. She sprang out and tiptoed up the stairs, remembering to step over the two steps that squeaked. I hurried out after her, quickly reaching the top of the stairs and following her toward the kitchen.

  As we came around the corner I was hoping we could rescue the hostages right then. I couldn’t hear Lenny behind us yet, so all we had to do was untie everyone, run outside, maybe jump in Grandma Em’s car, and drive away. We would all go hide somewhere and wait for Judge Gator to show up with the police.

  That idea lasted only until I got a good look at the prisoners. Grandma Em, Daddy, and the three LaBelles were each tied to a kitchen chair with thick rope that went around their arms, legs, and chests. I ran to the back of Daddy’s chair, but the knots were pulled so tight, I couldn’t budge them.

  I needed a knife, and I cursed myself for leaving the X-acto on the workbench, but even with that I wouldn’t have had enough time. I could already hear Lenny talking to Possum, his voice getting louder as they moved toward the basement stairs.

  “Abbey,” Daddy whispered. “Go! Don’t let them catch you!”

  Grandma Em hissed at Bee, who was pawing through a kitchen drawer looking for a knife. “Do what Mr. Force says. Get out now!”

  I looked at Daddy and felt tears spring to my eyes because he was right. We had come so close, but we weren’t going to free anyone, especially not if we were caught. And now Lenny would be here any second.

  “Go!” Daddy hissed.

  There were tears running down Bee’s cheeks.

  “Bee, get!” Grandma Em whispered.

  Bee nodded blindly and turned toward the back door, but I grabbed her arm. “Not that way,” I said. “We’ll make too much noise.”

  I shoved her toward the hallway. “Go out the downstairs bathroom window.”

  The bathroom was just around the corner, a few steps down from the kitchen. Before we left, Bee turned.

  “Donna,” she whispered, “tell them you need to go to the bathroom.”

  Donna just blinked, too scared to even respond. There were stumbling sounds coming from the basement, which meant Lenny and Possum were starting to climb the stairs. We couldn’t wait. I grabbed Bee’s arm.

  “Donna!” Bee whispered again. “Tell them you have to go to the bathroom! Understand?”

  She stared at us, her eyes glazed and dull. More footsteps thumped on the stairs. Finally she nodded.

  Once we were in the bathroom, I closed the door silently while Bee moved to the toilet, stood up on the seat, and grabbed the window. As she raised the sash, the sound of the storm rose sharply with the wind whistling through the joint where the two shutters came together. Together we undid the fastener and opened the shutters.

  “Out quick,” I whispered.

  Bee was bigger than me, and the opening was small. Once she got her shoulders through, I picked up her feet to keep her from kicking and making noise and I shoved her the rest of the way. She thumped onto the ground below. This was followed by a groan and a muffled curse, but a second later she was on her feet waving me out.

  Behind me in the hallway, very close, Possum let out a loud groan. “I’m tellin’ ya,” he said, his voice quavering with fear. “They was ghosts.”

  “Knock it off,” Lenny said. “There ain’t no such thing as ghosts. You musta knocked your head on somethin’.”

  I fought down a fresh wave of panic as someone grabbed the doorknob on the other side and started to give it a turn. The door was unlocked.

  I climbed onto the toilet seat and stuck my head out the window, but I was too slow. The knob creaked. Lenny was going to grab me or shoot me before I got halfway out. Bee was reaching for my arms, ready to help pull me through, but it didn’t matter because I wasn’t going to make it.

  Behind me the door squeaked as it started to open.

  “Hey, Lenny,” Daddy shouted, his voice very loud. “This young lady needs to go to the bathroom right now. Better let her go first, or you’re going to have a big mess to clean up.”

  Daddy’s shout gave me focus. He was thinking, even if I couldn’t. It made me calm down and work my way forward. As I wriggled my hips through the window, the wind grabbed my hair and tore at my clothing. Raindrops smacked into me, soaking me at once. I welcomed the violence of the weather, knowing it meant freedom, even though any second hands could grab my ankles and pull me back inside.

  Bee reached for my wrists and pulled me through the rest of the way, and we both splashed to the wet ground in a big lump. As soon as I hit I jumped back up, ignoring the pain.

  “Quick,” I whispered. “Get me on up your shoulders.”

  Bee squatted down, let me on, then struggled to her feet. From there I was able to reach up, grab the window sash, and slide it closed. I just had to hope so much rain hadn’t splashed inside that it would give us away.

  Bee let me down, and for a second we stood there collecting our wits. Part of me hoped we might have seen the flashing lights of police cars by now, but there was no sign of help. The storm continued to rage all around us, cutting us off from the world.

  If the cavalry ever got here, Bee and I could quit what we were doing and let the police do the rescuing. But wishing wasn’t going to save anybody. Daddy always said that when you’re in a terrible storm, you have to assume that you and whoever you are with are the only people in the world, because for at least a few hours you may be
that alone. At those times you have to think calmly and clearly and only worry about things you can actually do something about. That meant I couldn’t worry about when the police would come.

  I looked around and took a deep breath. While the rain was still very heavy, the wind was definitely dropping. Maybe the eye of the storm was approaching. It would mean the winds would become nearly dead calm and the sun might even come out for a brief time, but then the back side of the storm would hit us. While the winds would not be as strong as with the front edge, they would still be plenty bad.

  Even as I was thinking these things, a faint sound came from inside the house. Donna LaBelle was looking out at us.

  I got on Bee’s shoulders again, and she staggered over to the window, and I helped Donna raise the sash. Once it was up, I whispered, “Stick out your head and arms, and we’ll pull you the rest of the way. Just be quiet.”

  She was standing on the toilet seat, but she looked so scared that I thought she might break into sobs. She just needed to keep quiet long enough to squirm out of the window without getting caught.

  “I don’t know if I can,” she said in a too loud whisper.

  I held my finger to my lips. “Stop it! You have to! Hurry up!”

  She looked down at the ground and shook her head.

  “Donna!” I said, in a voice sharp enough to make her eyes widen in surprise. “Don’t you want to save your parents?”

  She nodded, but she still looked frozen.

  “You have to come out, right now! They’re not going to let you alone for long. And if you go back in the kitchen, they’re not going to let you live much longer.” I reached out my hands. “Come on. Now!”

  With the window open, the sounds from the house spilled out, and a fist hammered on the bathroom door. “Enough time. Come on out of there!” Lenny growled.

  Donna looked over her shoulder; then she thrust out her hands and grabbed for mine. Behind her someone was shaking the bathroom door, but Donna must have locked it, because a second later a foot or shoulder slammed into it.

  Donna squirmed out the window even as the lock broke and the door knocked back into the wall.

  “Hey, come back here!” Lenny shouted.

  I had Donna by the wrists and as she squirmed Bee backed up until Donna shot through and we all collapsed on the grass.

  “Quick!” I whispered. I grabbed Donna and jerked her to her feet as the three of us ran behind the thick trunk of a nearby live oak. When I peeked back around the trunk, I could see Lenny looking out the window, swinging his head from side to side.

  “Girl!” he roared. “You get back here right now, or I’m gonna hurt one’a your parents real bad. You hear me? Girl?”

  Donna flinched beside me, and I grabbed her arm and held her in place. She’d been scared almost to death to start with and now that Lenny was threatening her parents she was even more scared, but if we were going to get all the prisoners out safe and in one piece, we needed her. She wasn’t going to like the plan that was taking shape in my head, but it was the only plan we had.

  Lenny yelled a few more times, but then he reached out, pulled the shutter closed, and fastened it. A second later the window slammed.

  “We have to move!” I said. “They’ll be coming after us any second.”

  We turned and started to run up the drive, away from the house. Behind us the front door of the big house banged open. It was still raining but not quite as hard as before. Lenny would be able to see us, and if he did, he’d probably start shooting.

  There were fenced grassy pastures on our left, several barns and equipment sheds on our right, and behind them about fifty yards of woods and then a big field of collard greens, where we could get down on our bellies, crawl between the rows, and stay out of sight until we got to the much bigger woods on the other side.

  “Over here,” I said, heading in that direction. I vaulted the fence and Bee did the same thing. Donna slowed down and climbed over like an old person.

  “Come on!” I shouted. Lenny was running in our direction, only about fifty yards behind.

  Donna hopped off the fence and started to run. I grabbed her arm and shoved her in front of me so I could make sure she kept moving. “Don’t stop!” I commanded.

  Behind us Lenny yelled something I could barely make out.

  “But my parents—” Donna began.

  “We’re the witnesses. They can’t hurt them unless they catch us,” I shouted, hoping desperately that I was right, but knowing at the same time that surrender was not an option. “Run!”

  Nineteen

  Bee led the way toward the nearest equipment shed. She ran inside, past a couple of tractors and straight out the back. Donna followed and I came last. As I ran out the rear of the shed, I looked down, my eyes drawn instinctively to a black shape at my feet.

  I almost screamed but realized instantly that the snake was too skinny and too long to be a cottonmouth. It was a black racer, a type of snake we protected because it was a great rodent eater.

  Even though I knew Lenny was close behind, I stopped. A black racer is as fast as greased lightning and almost impossible to catch with your bare hands. When I looked more closely, I saw a cedar shingle that the wind had torn off one of the roofs. It had hit the snake right behind its head and killed it.

  With a crazy idea lighting up in my head, I grabbed up the snake and ran after Bee and Donna. The snake hadn’t been dead long. Its muscles were still loose, and it coiled naturally around my arm. Up ahead Bee and Donna had come to a barbed-wire fence and didn’t know how to cross it. Bee saw the snake, but she was smart enough not to ask. Donna was looking in all directions, still too close to panic to notice.

  “That way,” I said, pointing. I knew where there was an easy place to get under just ahead.

  The wind had died enough so that I could hear Lenny cursing behind us as he splashed along the flooded ground. He had almost reached the equipment shed, and I knew we had to hurry. If we could make it through the fence without him seeing how we did it, we might be in the clear.

  We ran a few more yards, to a spot where the ground dipped into an indentation, so the lowest strand of barbed wire was a foot or two off the ground. The dip was filled with water, but Bee had already figured it out. She dove onto her belly and rolled through the water. For a second she completely disappeared but then came up on the other side of the wire and got to her feet.

  Donna hesitated for a second, but then she got flat on her stomach and rolled into the water and out the other side.

  Lenny was in the shed, checking behind the tractors and mowing attachments to make sure we weren’t hiding. “You in here, girls?” he shouted.

  I threw myself down as soon as Donna was out of my way and rolled into the water and out the other side. Once I was on my feet, I tucked the arm with the dead snake under my T-shirt and followed Bee and Donna into the swath of trees that stood behind the sheds. We quickly hid ourselves behind the ancient live oaks and tangles of wild grapes and thick wrists of honeysuckle that grew in tight profusion.

  Right where we squatted a small hole in the undergrowth allowed us to peek back and see the equipment shed and part of the fence line. I could just make out Lenny. He was standing outside the back door, confused.

  After a few seconds he balled his hands into fists. “I’m gonna start killin’ your parents. You don’t get back to the house right now, the first one dies in five minutes.” He held up one arm that I guessed held his wristwatch. “I’m counting!”

  Donna let out a moan. I took a deep breath and did a gut check. I really, really believed that Lenny wouldn’t take the risk of killing four people if he knew he had three witnesses running around in the woods. If I was wrong, I would never be able to live with the consequences, but if I was right, we had no other choice than what we were about to do.

  “Donna,” I said. She had mud, sticks, and leaves in her normally perfect blond hair, and a big smear of dirt along one side of her face. Her clothes
were soaked, torn, and filthy; her eyes bloodshot. She looked perfect for what we needed.

  “Donna,” I repeated. “You were right before. You have to go back. It’s very important.”

  “Me?” Her eyes grew huge, and once again tears started to spill down her cheeks.

  “You need to go back inside the house.”

  “Just me?” She looked at me like I had just threatened to cut off her arm. After a second she began to shake her head in tiny little movements that made me wonder if she was having a fit. “Sneak in?” she squeaked.

  “No. You’re going to go in the front door and let Lenny and Possum know you’re back. You have to scare them, so I want you to start out by screaming.”

  “Why?”

  “Because when you run into the house they need to think you’re running away from something really scary.”

  Donna gave me one of her looks. “I’m not going to start screaming.”

  “You have to. Do it now.”

  She rolled her eyes to tell me what an idiot I was; then she let out a scream that wouldn’t have frightened a mouse. “There.”

  “It has to be louder and a lot scarier.”

  “That’s as scary as I can make it.”

  “Then I’m going to help you.”

  With that I pulled out my arm from under my shirt and held out the snake.

  The scream Donna let loose could have shattered glass.

  “Get away!” she shrieked.

  I kept the snake close to Donna’s face, moving my arm fast so she couldn’t tell it was dead.

  “Get away! Get away! Get away!” she screamed, the words separated by guttural howls that made it sound as if she were being ripped to pieces by some horrible monster.

  I waited a few more seconds; then I pulled the snake away and threw it behind me.

  “Okay, okay,” I whispered. “Quiet.”