“Well, sure I will, George. I had two follow Roscoe Burt home with his boy. They’re gonna stay there and watch the place all night. I’m also gonna get the city police here to keep two officers outside of Snake’s hospital door, it’s just that while this is still kinda fresh on his mind…..”
“His mind is tired, Andrew. He’s not thinking clear right now. I know my son. Maybe he’ll be able to think better when he’s rested up.”
“Alright, George. I’m not gonna try to force him into it. Just try your best to bring him in the morning as early as you can. Or, if you’d rather me come to your house, I will.”
“How about I just call you in the morning as soon as Junior wakes up,” Daddy said. “We’ll decide then.”
*****
After me and Daddy had eaten, we were driving to the house and I decided it was time to tell him the whole story.
“How long has it been since we first got to the hospital?” I asked him.
“Well, let’s see,” he said turning on the interior light of the truck and looking at his watch, “your momma and me got there about six-thirty, that was three hours ago. You had probably already been there thirty minutes. Why do you want to know?”
“I had to give her some time,” I said, staring out the window into the darkness.
“Give who time? What are you talkin’ about?”
“The person who helped me escape. I promised her I would wait awhile before I told anybody.”
“Why would you do a fool thing….”
“Because she risked her life to save mine, Daddy. I owe her my life.”
Daddy pulled the car over on the shoulder of the road and gave me his undivided attention. He didn’t seem angry, but rather confused.
“Well. Who was it?”
“Madge Harper,” I said, barely above a whisper.
“Madge Harper! How in the hell did she find you?”
“She didn’t find us. She was already there,” I answered.
“What was she doing there?”
“It was her and Carl who took us.”
Daddy started rubbing his eyes, trying to comprehend what I had just told him.
“I think they are the ones who put those bodies on Hugh William’s place, too. And the body I found on Old Man….uh, Mr. Turner’s property.”
“Madge and Carl. The one’s who are always givin’ money to the church and helping people out who are down on their luck?”
“The same ones,” I said.
I went on to tell Daddy the whole story, leaving out the horror show we’d witnessed and especially the part about my little tryst with Madge. Then I told him what Madge had said about the sheriff being involved and how he was in some sort of illegal business dealings with Jake Bullard. He really thought I’d lost my mind then. But after two or three times of me telling him and never wavering and giving such a compelling account, I finally convinced him I was telling the truth.
“Madge said we needed to call the state police and the FBI and that I should watch my back. We’re supposed to go see the sheriff in the morning. We had better try to get in touch with somebody tonight,” I said.
“What if she is lyin’? Hell, she is at the very least a kidnapper and probably a killer, too.” He shook his head and rolled his eyes. “If it wasn’t you telling this story, I wouldn’t believe a word of it.”
“I know it sounds like a fairy tale Daddy, but I swear it’s all true. She risked her life to save mine and there’s no telling what Carl will do to her. Why would she lie about Sheriff White?”
“Okay, son. If she’s telling the truth we better call the state police as soon as we get home. Andrew White has been a friend of mine almost all my life. If she is lyin’, that will probably put an end to that.”
*****
That night I had alternating dreams of being eaten by wild animals and Madge and me making love in several different places, one of which was my boat on the quarry pond. Sometimes the dreams would combine themselves and become a nightmare with moments of horror and others of fantastic pleasure. Needless to say, I didn’t sleep well. Daddy had called the state police the second we got home and after they explained to him the penalty of giving false information to law enforcement officials, and he was able to convince them he wasn’t a drunk teenager trying to win a bet, they got serious. They said they would look into it the first thing in the morning. Then, when he told them he feared for my safety, they said they would send some state troopers to keep watch and make sure we were safe. For some reason I didn’t believe they would put much effort into it and neither did Daddy. Daddy said Sheriff White was friends with many of the state troopers and cops liked to stick together. When he finally managed to figure out how to get in touch with the Birmingham field office of the FBI, Daddy got a little more cooperation. It turns out they had been investigating Jake Bullard for some time.
When I woke up the next morning from my fitful night of sleep, I ate a few bites of the bacon and eggs Daddy fixed and drank two cups of coffee to help me wake up. I told Daddy I had to run down to Aunt Lena’s store for a minute. He objected vociferously, telling me I was not to leave the house.
“I’ve got something very important I have to do, Daddy. I promise I won’t be gone more than an hour. Probably not that long. Nobody’s gonna bother me at Aunt Lena’s store or right in the middle of Long Hollow. I’ll take one of your pistols with me.” I knew that winning this argument with Daddy was gonna be tough, but I had to go and find that letter. After a few more minutes of arguing, to my surprise, he reluctantly gave in.
I ran out the door in a sprint and didn’t slow my pace much until I’d reached the old sawmill road. I stopped and bent over, putting my hands on my knees and trying to catch my breath. A few days ago I could have made that run with no problem. Football practice started in three days and I was out of shape. I had a very good reason for it, but I knew coach wouldn’t understand. He hated excuses of any kind. I looked up and down Long Hollow Road to see if anybody was out in their yards that would see me. Madge had managed to hide the letter in the absolute worst place she could have. She had to have known about Nell Fuller and how she never missed anything that happened within a mile of her house.
When I was sure no one was watching, I quickly slipped down the ditch bank and walked over to the culvert. Luckily, it hadn’t rained in several days and the ditch and culvert were dry. I looked into the dark concrete tunnel and saw a piece of plastic. I reached in, pulled it out and stuffed it down in front of my pants, making sure my shirttail covered it up. I had to go somewhere close by where I wouldn’t be seen. I didn’t have very long and I had to make an appearance at Aunt Lena’s store to cover my tracks and to keep from being a liar. I went to the copse of woods behind the store and found the old rusty pick-up truck body that my Uncle Lee had abandoned several years ago. I sat down on the old tailgate and removed the plastic and the newspapers until I saw an envelope. My hands were shaking like somebody that had been on a three day drunk as I tore it open.
The letter was neatly folded, the creases perfectly aligned. When I unfolded it I don’t think I’d ever seen neater penmanship. At the very top, in the margin, was written in bold letters: PLEASE READ THEN DESTROY COMPLETELY. Then it began:
Dearest George,
I had to write this letter to try and explain to you everything that has happened in the last two months. First of all, let me say how truly sorry I am that you had to get caught up in all of it. I assure you that was the last thing I wanted to happen. You are the last person on earth, along with my husband and mother, that I would want to hurt. As many horrible things as I have done in my life, I still have the capacity to love.
Let me start at the beginning. I was born thirty-two years ago to a wonderful woman who was then just a frightened, sixteen year old girl. She had fallen for a man who was several years older. She thought he returned her feelings, but found out after it was too late that he did not. He offered to do the honorable thing, but after realizing
that he didn’t love her and never would, she refused his proposal and moved away. No one in her family or her community ever knew she was pregnant. They just thought she moved away because she wanted a better life than she thought she could ever have in Long Hollow, Alabama.
After her child was born, she found enough odd jobs to support herself and her baby for awhile. But mere survival was about all she could manage and she wanted her daughter to have a better life than she could afford to give her. After much soul searching and many prayers, she decided to let a very nice couple that was relatively wealthy adopt her little girl. It almost killed her to do it, but her unselfishness was part of what made me love her so much in years to come. She eventually worked her way through college and got a job as a teacher. She was a natural at it with her love for children and her ability to teach and connect with even the most challenged.
After a few years, she got very homesick for her family and moved back home where she met and married a wonderful man. She didn’t actually meet him. She’d known him all her life, though he was a few years older than her. He never knew, and as far as I know, still doesn’t, about the daughter she had.
I grew up in Chicago and my adopted parents gave me a loving home and provided me with everything I needed and more. I was too young when I was adopted to remember my real mother, but my parents never led me to believe otherwise and would have never prohibited me to have as much contact with her as she or I desired. I didn’t manage to make contact with her again until I was a senior in high school, or rather she contacted me through a letter. The letter was addressed to my adopted parents and actually asked their permission to let me read the letter. She wasn’t sure if they’d ever told me I was adopted. Since that first letter, we’ve stayed in contact by letter and on occasion telephone ever since, until I moved here five years ago. I didn’t want her to know I was living within walking distance of her because I knew she would want to see me and I didn’t want to cause any trouble between her and her husband and disrupt the wonderful life they’d made for themselves. You see, they had a son of their own.
I was starting to feel very worried with where this letter might be going. I was hoping I was wrong and hesitated for a minute before I started reading once again.
You can’t imagine how difficult it was living so close to my own mother and brother and not be able to even acknowledge them. That is the reason I am so reclusive and never show up in any stores or social events in Long Hollow. I always left all of that to Carl.
But I’m getting ahead of myself. As I said, my adopted family gave me all I needed and more. I think they tried to overcompensate for the fact that I was adopted. To put it mildly, I became spoiled. My parents never put a lot of restrictions on me when it came to the people I hung out with or the boys I dated. As a result, I started hanging with some hard cases. One in particular that I quickly fell madly in love with and shortly thereafter, married. His name was Marcus Santelli. You know him as Carl Harper. His family had long been involved in organized crime and I knew it from the start. Marcus had a Harvard education and was extremely intelligent, although it was all wasted. In fact, Harvard is where I met him. We were both attending Harvard Medical School. But all he ever wanted was to be involved in the family business, so after he asked me to marry him, we both dropped out. He always treated me like I was a princess. Like I was the most special person on earth. And he never brought his work home with him. At least not at first.
After about three years of marriage he was hurt badly in an accident. He changed drastically after that. He never changed the way he treated me. In fact, if anything, he treated me even better. But it seemed he used up all the love he was capable of giving on me alone. As a result of the accident, he became impotent. He couldn’t show his love for me anymore in a physical way, other than hugs and kisses. It was then he asked me, no, he pleaded with me to have sex with other men. He wanted me to be fulfilled and he knew I had always had a strong sexual appetite. I told him his love for me was enough to sustain me, and I meant it. But he insisted, telling me that he would actually derive a lot of pleasure from it himself if he could participate. I was repulsed by the idea at first, but eventually capitulated when he began to plead with me like his very happiness depended on it. So that explains my promiscuity.
Now on to darker things. As I said, Marcus, or Carl, only loved me and nothing else, not even his closest relatives, with the exception of his mother. Though I never asked him, I was sure he’d been involved in killings before, either directly or indirectly. But he started killing his families enemies on his own with reckless abandon without the upper hierarchy in the crime family’s orders or consent. He bypassed the middlemen, or hit men, and chose to do the dirty work himself. It became like an addictive drug to him. It seemed he derived more pleasure from it than anything I was ever able to do for him. But killing wasn’t enough. He had to torture his victims as well. And the more he tortured, the more creative and elaborate it became. That’s how I got involved. I suppose I derived some twisted pleasure from it as well after the first couple of times.
I’m an evil person, George. I would never want my mother, nor my adopted parents to know the things I’ve done. I didn’t want you to know either, but unintended circumstances changed that. When Marcus finally got to the point his family couldn’t control him and the heat was starting to affect their business, they sent him to a place where no one knew who he was and gave him an alias. Carl Harper. They decided he could still work for the family by handling some of their drug distribution and to keep an eye on one of their other associates who was beginning to handle a large amount of marijuana every month and lived in a little hick town in Alabama. That distributors name was Jake Bullard, who also happened to be my natural father. Carl’s family thought a little Podunk town in Alabama would be about as safe a place as anywhere in the country from the FBI agents who were investigating him.
When I read this, I became physically ill. I was nauseated to the point that I almost puked up what little breakfast I’d eaten. I didn’t want to know any more, but I had no choice.
I’d known Jake was my father from the time I was about fifteen. Somehow he’d found out about me, though I never discovered how. He’d send me letters and they always had a pretty hefty wad of cash in them. I didn’t really care to know him because I always assumed he had abandoned my real mother.
Jake Bullard is also the father of Sheriff Andrew White. Apparently Jake got around quite a bit in his younger days. The sheriff’s mother never married after he was born and raised him on her own. Jake came around quite a bit and always gave her enough money to support her child well, but I don’t believe he ever knew Jake was his father until he was grown. That’s the reason the sheriff has always overlooked Jake’s illegal activities. That and a pretty good payday every month.
Anyway, I’m running out of time, so I must hurry and finish. I wish I could have gotten to know you, George. You and your mother, who is also my mother, are the only blood relatives I have that I care to acknowledge. I wish things had turned out differently and I hadn’t become an evil person. But I am evil, George. I have done things that most people don’t even venture into in their worst nightmares. I wish I could say I was ashamed of them. Sometimes I feel ashamed, but I go right on doing evil things, so I guess I’m never shamed nearly enough to change.
The bodies that were found on the William’s place were planted there by some of mine and Carl’s associates. So was the body of the girl you found on Ray Turner’s farm. There may be more found, and if there is, we are most likely the culprits. I never wanted to hurt Snake. I always liked him and I guess I felt sorry for him. At least I felt as sorry for him as a person like me who has no conscience was capable of.
I know you probably hate me even more so, now that you’ve found out we have the same blood coursing through our veins and I don’t blame you one bit. I need to be hated. I deserve to be hated. Hate should be repaid with hate and I am full of hate. I even hate my adopte
d parents who gave me a good life and almost everything I wanted. But my hate does not extend to you, our mother, or Carl. You are the only people on earth I love, as much as my twisted heart and mind is capable of loving.
And please don’t blame yourself or feel guilty for what happened between us. You had no choice, nor did I, and you had no idea what our relationship was. You would never have been able to escape if I had ever let on that you were my brother and I loved you.
I have to go now, but please, please, never tell any one about anything in this letter. I don’t want our mother hurt in any way. It would hurt so many people if you ever breathed a word of this to anyone. I would give anything if I had been able to have spared you any pain, but I wasn’t. I’m sorry.
Love always,
Madge
CHAPTER THIRTY-FIVE
There wasn’t much discussion of psychiatric therapy in Long Hollow Alabama in 1974. I think it would be a safe wager to say ninety-five percent of the people had no idea what the term even meant. I had a vague idea of what it was, but had a feeling I was going to become a lot more familiar with it. On top of all the things I’d witnessed in the past two months, now I had the knowledge that I’d had sexual relations with my half-sister. Granted, I had no knowledge of our relationship at the time, and I was restrained and in fear of losing my life, but that didn’t make me feel any better about it. There would probably be chapters written about me in whatever kind of periodical journals or publications psychiatrists receive. Hell, I’d probably wind up in college textbooks in several different sections on various subjects. My half-sister, besides being the one I had lost my virginity to, was also a serial killer with a penchant for torturing her victims in ways any sane person could never imagine.
I quickly pulled out a penny box of matches and struck one, tilting it at an angle for the flame to catch the stem. I pulled out each sheet of the voluminous letter my dear sister had written me one at a time and burned them individually, lighting one off the other. I made sure that not even the tiniest scrap was left for any human being to ever see. I knew I needed to be going. It had taken me a long time to read the letter. I couldn’t imagine how Madge had found time to write it, unless she’d started it and kept it hidden from Carl sometime before our escape.
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