by Billy Wells
She ran to Harry, threw his arms around him, and kissed him passionately. He stood rigid and did not reciprocate with a warm embrace. She felt something heavy in his breast pocket as the tears started to roll down her face.
Feeling the sticky substance on her dress, Harry recoiled with a sudden start, and looked at her coldly. “Helen, you’re covered with blood. Have you been shot?”
“No, I’m fine. I got his blood all over me when I crawled across the floor. How did you get his gun away from him?”
Harry loosened his grip on her shoulders and stepped back. After an awkward silence, he said, “I brought a gun of my own.”
“A gun of your own? Where would you get a gun?” Helen asked dumbfounded.
“I bought one for this occasion. It’s the surprise I told you about.”
“Surprise? What on earth are you talking about?”
“I decided not to pay Louie the money I promised him to kill you. You should have seen the look on his face when I pulled the trigger. He never suspected I’d have the balls to do it.”
“You paid him to kill me?” Helen choked in disbelief. “I thought you loved me.”
“Loved you? I’ve loathed you from the moment we met, but unfortunately, I couldn’t leave without your money. By killing you, I’ll have it all, which will allow me to continue enjoying the lifestyle I’ve grown accustomed to.”
“You ungrateful bastard. You’ll never get away with it.” Helen stammered.
“I think I will. Louie killed you, and I killed Louie in self-defense. There’s nothing to tie me to the three-time loser. It’s the perfect crime.”
“I have a big surprise for you, too, my darling.” Raising the Glock, she said coldly, “I have a gun of my own.” She saw the priceless shock in Harry’s eyes as he made a feeble attempt to draw his gun just as Helen planted two gaping holes in his midsection. The impact of the bullets sent him flying backwards into the coffee table. His gun skittered across the tile floor.
Helen walked over, placed the barrel in the middle of his forehead, and considered obliterating his pathetic face from her memory. But reconsidering, she decided such an act would be too hard to explain to the police.
Suddenly, the overhead lights came on, and she winced seeing how the scarlet pools of blood clashed with the living room’s beige color scheme. She wiped her fingerprints from her gun and placed it in the stranger’s hand. Her story would be the intruder shot Harry with a gun he found in the master bedroom, and Harry managed to return fire and kill the intruder before he died. She would say she was an eyewitness to the gruesome affair, and poor Harry saved her life.
Based on her stature in the community and the reputation of her parents, she did not think she would come under suspicion at all. She had not been a suspect before when her parents, Jimmy, and Gillian’s deaths were investigated. She had never known why Hugo had confessed to all the murders she had committed after he tried to strangle her. The gentle giant had always done things no one in the family could understand, even as a child.
She went to the wet bar in the study and made a very dry martini. Returning to the living room, she opened the curtains, and turned on the Christmas lights on the tree. Taking a seat on the sofa, she listened to the unsettling sounds with a new frame of mind. Somehow, after what she had been through, they didn’t seem to bother her as much.
She could not believe she’d fallen in love and lived in harmony with Harry for so long, not knowing, he loathed her. He had fooled her completely. She had never in her wildest dreams imagined he had married her for her money. He had certainly played a convincing role in the bedroom. At least, she had enjoyed her share of blissful orgasms.
Harry had certainly been a handsome devil. He had always reminded her of Clint Eastwood in Play Misty For Me. If he had never loved her, she wondered about the affairs he must have had along the way. Oh well. She would start looking for someone new in a month or so. If it didn’t work out, there was still a lot of water in the lake or in the ocean, whichever worked best.
She had always been a cold, ruthless woman. Someone who knew what she wanted and how to get it. Even as a little girl, she had never liked to share. She had to be number one. Always. When her parents favored Jimmy and Gillian right from the start, they had unknowingly written their death warrants.
Helen remembered her parents screaming for mercy as the flames enveloped their master bedroom suite. She had barricaded the bedroom door and trapped them inside. They couldn’t escape through the windows because of the security bars. Afterward, she removed the two by fours before calling the fire department, and no one knew the difference. Everyone suspected her parents had passed out from smoke inhalation and never tried to reach the door to escape.
She could still hear their pathetic screams even now, but not once had she lost one minute of sleep regretting having all their wealth for herself. She could still hear Jimmy and Gillian pleading for help after she pushed them off the yacht into the deep water. Neither of them could swim worth a damn, but Gillian made a gallant attempt treading water until her head finally went under that last time. It took so long for her to drown; Helen thought she might have to give her a whack in the head with one of the lifeboat oars. Thankfully, she finally stayed under without the extra effort.
Poor Hugo was the only one who could see the evil in her. He knew what she was capable of all along. When her parents died, he looked at her with that knowing smirk on his face. The same one he had on his face when her brother and sister had been carried away in body bags from the lake. I guess he knew he would be next, and that’s why he decided to strike first. Thank God Malcolm was there to save her.
She picked up the phone and dialed 9-1-1. She told the woman who answered her gruesome story with all the remorse and emotion she could muster. Afterward, she put down the phone and took a sip of her martini. Outside, the snow falling on the lake brought back fond memories of Jimmy and Gillian and the wonderful holidays they had shared before she killed them. She watched the Christmas tree lights blinking on and off in her memory.
Like a ghost from the past, the reflection of a tall shape in a hospital robe shambled into view from behind her in the picture window. She recognized the same infernal smirk on his haggard, scarred face as his strong hands gripped her neck the same as they had so many years before. Only this time, Malcolm had the day off.
She wondered if the gentle giant would stop strangling her if she asked him about Osgood, his favorite teddy bear. She wanted so much to make him stop; there was so much more life she wanted to live.
With her last gasp, she pursed her lips and mouthed the only words she could think to say, “Hugo, forgive me.”
IT LURKS ON THE MOUNTAIN
“Another Bud,” Jack Springer said, inserting a ketchup-covered fry into his mouth. He had been game warden in the county for more than twenty-five years, and during that time, had knocked down many a beer at Bubba’s Bar and Emporium. He remembered the good old days with every stool and table occupied with shit-faced, paying customers.
Bubba Rexrode, the owner and currently the bartender, put down an icy draft on a coaster, wiped a dollop of mustard from the bar top with a wet rag, and said with a long face, “Friday night, and I’ll be lucky to take in $100 when I close at midnight.”
“I told you when you fired the pole dancers it would be disastrous for business,” Jack teased with a wink.
“I’ll bring ‘em back if you want to pay for them,” Bubba lamented. “When the muffler plant shut down, the town died. We just didn’t know it for a year or two. All the young people moved away, and the geezers, who were regulars, started dying.”
Jack took another sip of Bud and ogled the half-naked calendar girl on the wall next to the cash register. He reminisced the good times that he assumed would never roll again.
Sprinkling a few more peanuts into the bowl on the bar, Bubba continued, “We need something to bring new people into town. A corporation could start up the old muffler plant with
a new product for chump change. The wages would be dirt cheap.”
“Good luck on that,” Jack replied, popping a peanut into his mouth. “Who would they put on the assembly line, you and me?”
Bubba ignored the sarcasm, “I also heard a few years ago a company was planning to put in a ski lodge. Pennsylvania has a lot of ski lodges. They make artificial snow.”
“Don’t hold your breath on that.” Jack smacked a ten on the bar and rising from the stool said, “Don’t take any wooden nickels.” Exiting the bar, he saw only one couple at a table in the back. Something had to happen soon, or Bubba would have to close.
Jack headed for his office at the town hall. Stepping inside, he stopped at the front desk where Lucille Piddy sat painting her nails with a shocking, pink polish.
“Anybody get lost in the woods this morning?” Jack joked. “How many grizzly attacks so far? Avalanches?”
Lucille, a plump, dirty blonde with a slight mustache looked at him and smiled, “None of those things we’re called in so far, but I do have something for you to check out that’s even more exciting.”
“What’s that, Lucille?”
“There’s been another Big Foot sighting.”
“Where ‘bouts?” Jack asked, rolling his eyes and putting another piece of bubble gum in his mouth.
“Widow’s Peak. Three campers called it in right after you went to lunch. Pausing to control her laughter, Lucille chortled, “They seemed very distraught, but I told them not to worry, Big Foot is afraid of people and has never attacked a human being in these parts before.”
“I guess I’d better get up there. At least, I can have a good laugh this afternoon.”
Jack went to the parking lot, climbed into his Jeep, and headed toward the mountain.
As he drove deeper and deeper toward the campsite, Jack had to chuckle at the absurdity of the legend that continued to raise its ugly head every few years. It all started when Rocky Jenkins put on a gorilla suit and had one of his friends film him running through the woods. Rocky wanted to attract hunters to his fishing and tackle shop at the foot of the mountain, and attract them, he did. After the local paper ran the picture on the front page of the morning edition, there was a tourist or a hunter with a camera or a rifle behind every tree. That is, until Rocky knocked out the front tooth of his camera friend in a bar fight, and he retaliated by exposing the hoax.
Pulling into Deer Creek State Park, and continuing deeper into the thick forest, Jack remembered that after Rocky’s picture made the headlines, four hunters shot four other hunters on four different occasions when they thought they had seen Big Foot and tried to bag him.
After five years had passed without a sighting, there had been three in the last three months. Jack wondered if someone was prowling around in a gorilla suit again. Three sightings in such a short period did not seem like a coincidence. The only reason he could think of for making people believe Big Foot was on the mountain when he was not would be to bring hunters and tourists back to the area. He and Bubba had talked about the Rocky Jenkins deception a shitload of times, and he wondered if his old friend had something to do with the recent sightings.
Pulling into the parking lot, he saw a dilapidated truck and three men with rifles sitting at a picnic table. The men stood and met him as he got out of the Jeep.
“I’m Jack Springer, the game warden in these parts. Are you the hunters that think you saw Big Foot?”
The tallest man stepped forward pointing at a rocky crag in the distance, “What would you call a big, hairy giant about ten feet tall bounding over the top of that ridge. We know what we see’d. We tried to follow the critter, but he disappeared like a fart in the wind. That’s when we came upon the body parts.”
“Body parts?” Jack choked, almost swallowing the massive wad of bubble gum he had in his jaw. Why didn’t you mention that to Lucille when you called?”
The tall man continued as the other two men stood silent with big chaws of tobacco in their jowls, “At first, we didn’t know if they were animal or human. We thought we’d let you decide when you got here. But after we called, we found a loose eyeball in the leaves, and then an ear. The rest of it was a hodgepodge of blood and guts, the likes we never see’d.”
Jack looked at the three of them like morons and demanded, “Show me what you’re talking about. If you’re hunters, you must know what animal parts look like.”
A man in a plaid shirt with a maroon baseball cap piped in, “It didn’t have a head and no arms and legs. It was so torn up, we didn’t know what it was until Jasper spotted that eyeball. Then, right beside it, like Buford said, we see’d the ear that thing musta ripped off one of them heads.”
“Haven’t you ever dressed out a deer? What kind of hunters are you?” Jack retorted.
The tall man replied, “This is our first hunting trip. We never see’d bloody body parts and an eyeball out of its socket before. Believe me; it’s nothing like what you see on TV or the movies. I never knowed blood was so red. I puked all over my new boots when I saw it. I think they’re ruined.”
After a few minutes, the man with the maroon baseball cap, who had wandered away, shouted, “It’s over here!”
A buzzard squawked and flew off when the foursome emerged from the bushes. When Jack saw what the men had described, he did a double take at a sight far more gruesome than anything he had ever seen. Blood and pieces of torn flesh littered the terrain.
Jack grimaced as he inspected a splayed ribcage, “It’s human all right. In fact, I think it might be three or four bodies of different ages. Maybe a family. It’s hard to tell with no heads and no arms and legs. It looks like pieces of torsos all chopped to hell to me.”
Huge footprints of a barefoot person encircled the grisly remains. Judging by Jack’s size twelve shoe, which he placed beside the print, he estimated the apparent giant would wear a shoe twice his size.
“You say you saw a hairy giant disappear over that ridge.”
“Yep, he went right up yonder,” the third hunter with orange suspenders said, pointing to the spot.
“I want you guys to stay here and keep the varmints away while I call the sheriff and the coroner?” Jack replied, heading for the parking lot.
Nothing he had seen at Widow’s Peak made any sense. He couldn’t get a signal on his cell and had to use his car phone to call the office. When no one answered, he said after the beep, “Hey! This is Jack, Gloria. Some hunters have found some body parts up here at Widow’s Peak. It looks like some kind of animal attack, but the heads, arms, and legs are missing, which makes no sense. I don’t think these guys are telling the truth. I need Ed up here ASAP to tell me what he thinks, before I call the Sheriff. I’m in sector 28. Tell him to meet me in the parking lot.”
Signing off, Jack heard screams from the direction he had just come from and raced back with his sidearm ready.
When he arrived at the place where he had left the hunters, they were gone. He remembered their old truck still in the parking lot when he had come running to their rescue.
Suddenly the sound of the forest seemed graveyard still. Straining to hear the slightest movement, he started back toward the parking lot with wary apprehension. Reaching the Jeep, he got in and quickly locked the door. He cracked both windows and stayed alert, watching and listening.
After a half an hour of peering into the eerie woods, he saw two white vans approaching in his rear view mirror. When he recognized the coroner and his crew pulling in on both sides of his Jeep, Jack breathed a little easier.
When Ed Forbes, the coroner, got out of his van, Jack stepped from his vehicle to meet him and said, “The body parts are behind those bushes over there. Follow me.”
The coroner and two men followed him to the crime scene now swarming with flies. Forbes put on some rubber gloves and stooped to pick up a bloody piece of flesh. He smelled it, and examined it under a magnifying glass he extracted from his suit coat, and then placed it in a plastic bag. Shaking his head, he lo
oked at Jack and said, “The flesh is human all right, but it smells like it’s been swimming in formaldehyde for quite a while.”
Forbes’ eye fell upon something almost buried in the leaves under a slab of meat that had a belly button. Moving to it, he picked up a plastic bag with red liquid residue inside and concluded, “I’d say someone bought some blood plasma and splashed it around for effect, but were too dim-witted to take the container with them. Yes, Jack, my initial assessment is this is a hoax, and not a crime scene.”
Jack looked at Forbes incredulously for a time, and then exhaled deeply at this conclusion.
The coroner shook his head and replied, “I can’t believe anyone would be so stupid to think an autopsy wouldn’t uncover the difference between a fresh kill and a body preserved by formaldehyde. It must have been someone who never had a TV to watch CSI.”
Jack thought about the hunters and the gaps of their missing teeth and said, “I think I know just the morons who probably did this. I hate to say it, but I think Bubba put them up to it.”
“Bubba? He seems too smart to come up with a ridiculous idea like this.”
“I think he’s desperate to attract more people into town and had poor judgment in who he hired to pull it off. Actually, sending public officials on a wild goose chase is the only crime our favorite bartender may have committed today. If we can connect him to this ruse, I think we can drink free beer at Bubba’s for at least a week.”
Jack left the coroner and his crew, returned to his jeep, and headed for town to confront Bubba. He noticed the hunters’ truck remained in the parking lot. He thought of the creepy feeling he had felt when he was alone before the coroner arrived. The sheriff would have to send out a search party, and he would probably be asked to join them.
Pulling into one of the many empty spaces along the street in front of Bubba’s, Jack went inside and took a seat at the bar.
His old friend twisted off the cap of a bottle of Bud, and placing it on the counter; he said with a wry smile, “I hear there was another Big Foot sighting today.”
