“How are you feeling, Ms. Long?”
The best I could, I cracked a smile and nodded.
“Just fine.”
“You need anything?”
I shook my head.
“How about you, Sheriff Thomas? Water? Coffee?”
He smiled and shook his head. “No, thank you, ma’am.”
“Well, visiting time is just about over. Ms. Long is going to need some rest,” Shelby said.
“I’ll be leaving in just a few. Just got a couple of more questions to ask her.”
Shelby smiled. “Great.” She looked down at me. “I’ll check on you in another hour or so, okay? And just buzz if you need anything.”
“Thank you,” I said, trying to smile. And Shelby left the room, shutting the door behind her.
Once she was gone, Thomas stood and then glared back down at me.
“So, do you understand?”
I nodded.
“Good.”
He started to turn around, but I still had so many questions.
“Wait,” I said.
He turned back to me.
“What about my friends? People, their families, are going to be wondering about where they are.”
He smiled. “God damn, girl. You almost made me forget.” He cleared his throat. “The car burned. You were thrown from it, which is the only reason you survived. The other four burned inside the car, knocked unconscious.”
Again, I’d begun to cry. How was I supposed to hold this lie with me the rest of my life? And how would I lie to the families of my four best friends?
But I had another question.
“Why?”
He narrowed his eyes at me again. “Why what?”
“Why did you save me? Why didn’t you kill Don? I’m so confused.”
Thomas exhaled a long, slow breath. He looked out at the sunlight coming in through the window, apparently thinking about if he should answer the question or not.
“There are…rules. To the game. Don broke those rules.”
“Rules?” I asked, thinking for sure that he wouldn’t answer.
“When you got to The Crossroads, you technically escaped. No one in the Family is supposed to touch you once you get there. That’s why the ground had begun to shake. He was sending Don a message.”
“Who?” I asked.
But Thomas just glared back at me.
I couldn’t believe what I was hearing. Growing up in the South, I’d been taught over and over that God and Satan were real. After these last few days, I now only had proof that Satan was real. Because how could God have allowed all this stuff to happen to us?
“But, you didn’t kill him?”
Thomas stared at me for just a moment. He began to unbutton his shirt, pulling his arms out of the sleeves while it fell off his shoulders, revealing a plain white t-shirt underneath. He put up his right arm and slipped the short sleeve down. And on his triceps, there was a tattoo.
It was an upside down cross with the word “Family” underneath it.
The same tattoo that everyone else in the town had had.
Neither of us spoke as he slipped his arms back into his brown, long-sleeve uniform, and buttoned it back up.
He glared at me before turning around and heading for the door.
As he reached it, he put his hand on the handle and then turned back to me.
“Don’t talk about us. Stick to the story. Go mourn your friends. Live your life. Be thankful.”
He looked back to the door, and then looked back at me one more time.
“Hank isn’t too happy about what you did to his face. You don’t want to see him again.”
My jaw dropped and I stared at Thomas as he opened the door.
“Hank? But I killed him!”
The door shut, and Sheriff Thomas was gone.
31
The few weeks that followed were the most difficult of my life. Honestly, the time I spent lying to friends and family about what had happened, holding in the truth about the atrocious horrors I’d seen, might have been more difficult than the few nights in that tiny town watching my friends be butchered one by one. People continued to come see me during my recovery from “the car accident”, and each time I was forced to rehearse the same lie over and over again.
The funerals were on consecutive days.
Rob on a Tuesday.
Allie on Wednesday.
Michael on Thursday.
And finally, Blake on Friday.
There were no bodies, only caskets. Police had told me that they’d discovered Blake’s Ford Bronco on the highway we’d been traveling when we’d stopped for directions at the gas station. It was basically in ashes when they’d found it, with four unrecognizable bodies inside. I was lying on the ground about fifteen yards in front of the vehicle. Everyone had told me that it was “a miracle I’d survived the wreck”. And of course, while it was a miracle that I’d survived, only I knew the truth. That the whole thing had been staged, and that hitting a tree and burning unconscious in a car would have been a much more merciful death for my four friends.
After the incident, I took a year off from school. I went back home to Madison, Mississippi, and lived at my parents’ house in the old bedroom that I’d grown up in. Every single day that I was there, I waited for Don or Hank or one of the other maniacs from the town to show up at my door, but they never did. As promised to me by Sheriff Thomas, all I had to do was keep my mouth shut, and they’d leave me alone. I couldn’t believe him, and I became an insomniac, never able to sleep more than an hour or so at a time, if I was lucky. Years later, this passed, but I’d still find myself keeping one eye open, just waiting.
Every now and then, I’d check missing person reports around the Delta, but rarely ever saw anything. I never found out where exactly that town was, though I tried many times to look on a map and find it. It was hard enough for me to find the gas station on the highway, but I had no idea how much time had passed when Don had knocked me out in the truck on the way to the town. It could have been anywhere.
In the fall of 1996, I went back to school. I couldn’t go back to Tulane, as it would bring back too many memories of Blake and my friends. Instead, I stayed a little closer to home and transferred to the University of Southern Mississippi in Hattiesburg, only two hours south of my parents’ house. I graduated in the spring of 1997 with a bachelors degree in education.
After graduation, I again moved back to Madison and quickly landed a job teaching at Rosa Parks Elementary.
For the first few years, I enjoyed it. But as time went on, my internal pain of holding in such a huge lie wore on me. It became more and more difficult for me to interact with people from day to day, especially with children. So, I quit, and went back to school for accounting.
While I was teaching at the elementary school, I met Justin, the man that I’m married to today. He’s a bit of an introvert, and for some reason, things just felt right with him. Though I’ve held this secret from him and our kids, living with him has been fairly easy and comfortable. I never thought I’d be able to marry. Getting over Blake was the hardest thing I ever had to do, and to this day, I still love him and wonder often what our lives would have been like. But I had to move on. And Justin provided the path for that, and we’ve been able to live a mostly happy life together.
But the events of the days surrounding July 29th, 1995 will always be with me.
They’ll haunt my thoughts and my dreams, every day and every night.
And I’ll carry out the impossible task of trying to live, knowing that they’re still out there.
Waiting.
Rebecca Long
July, 2014
EPILOGUE
March 4th, 2015
As he walked to his car after a long, slow day at the office, Drew Garrett gave a nod and a wink to an attractive woman passing by. She smiled and kept on walking. He turned his head, hoping that she would look back to see if he’d do exactly what he was doing, but she n
ever did. So he just took the moment to admire how great her ass looked in the black pencil skirt hugging her waist over black tights.
Drew wasn’t a pig, just a single guy who enjoyed the visions that a beautiful woman could provide him with. He was quickly approaching his mid-forties, but didn’t let his age slow him down one bit. Drew was handsome, with dark hair, slightly curly, and always kept the shadow of a beard that would make women swoon.
The job was great and paid well, though it had been slow lately, which Drew didn’t mind one bit. Jackson, Mississippi wasn’t the safest town in the world, and it was nice to have a few less murders as of late to give him a break.
Drew popped the trunk of his white Infinity G37 Journey, and dropped his laptop bag inside.
As he opened the driver’s side door, a blonde woman passed by, and she smiled at him before he’d had the chance to tease her with his charm.
When she’d passed by, he was looking toward his office building, grinning from ear to ear. And when he turned around, she was staring back at him, flashing pearl white teeth under bright red lipstick, her blue eyes glaring from the sun, right through him.
“Well, God damned,” he said.
***
Drew hit the interstate, flipping the business card in his hand. On the back it read “Meghan”, and had a phone number scribbled on it, followed by “xoxo”.
He slipped the card into his pocket, and moved his hand to the volume knob on his radio.
The song “Get Your Buzz On” by The Cadillac Three blared through the speakers, and Drew began to nod his head, drumming his hands on the steering wheel.
“There ain’t nothing wrong. If you want a knock-down, drag-out, go on let your hair down. Party on the farm ‘til the rooster crows, yeah,” he sang. It was one of his favorite songs, and reminded him why he loved living in the South.
As he pulled off I-55 onto the Natchez Trace Parkway to head to his house in Ridgeland, a suburb of Jackson, Drew thought about how he was going to spend his weekend. He was tired, and would likely take the opportunity to relax since work had been so slow and he may have the rare chance to do nothing. But he also had Meghan on his mind, and the tight black yoga pants she’d been wearing when they’d met just minutes ago.
He smiled, patting his pocket where the card with her number on it rested, as he turned onto Old Canton Road.
***
Just past 6 p.m., Drew pulled into the driveway of his suburban three-bedroom home. The place was too large for just one person, but he was partially living there to help out an old friend. One of his high school buddies, Jake Ross, had accepted a job in California, and didn’t want to have to sell the house he owned with his wife. Drew had agreed to move in and take care of the place. In exchange, Jake charged him exactly what the mortgage was, which was about the same as renting a one bedroom apartment would have been, so the deal was a no-brainer.
He stepped out of the car and headed down the short driveway to check the mail. One of the neighborhood kids rode by on a bike, waving. Drew returned the gesture, simultaneously reaching for the handle to the mailbox, whistling Kelby Ray’s twangy steel guitar riff from “Get Your Buzz On”, which still played in his head.
He pulled out a small stack of white envelopes, all either credit card applications or bills, and a large brown envelope which was folded slightly inside the mailbox.
Drew looked at the envelope, the dying sun holding onto its brightness and causing his eyes to narrow. It was addressed to “Detective Andrew Garrett”, but there was no return address.
“How’s it goin’, Drew?” A man asked from next door.
“Great, John. Just grabbin’ the mail and heading inside.”
“Catch any killers this week?”
Drew gave a fake smile. “Not this week.”
John looked disapointed. “Well, alright. Let’s catch up soon, huh?”
“Sure,” Drew said, waving at his neighbor and rolling his eyes as he walked toward the front door of his home.
***
Drew tossed his wallet and keys down on a table just inside the front door. He walked to the kitchen and set down his laptop bag on the dining room table, and put the mail down beside it, including the large, mysterious envelope.
He walked over to the large flatscreen in the den and turned it on, before retreating to his bedroom on the other side of the wall to change clothes.
While he removed his sport coat, he listened to the muffled sound of a car insurance commercial coming from the television. He slipped the straps of the harness off his shoulder, throwing it down on the bed with his glock still resting in the holster. He unbuttoned his shirt, and revealed his firm abs as the shirt slipped off of his back. He looked in the mirror hanging on the bathroom door, and observed the scar near his belly button. Three years earlier, he’d been shot in the stomach while investigating a murder in South Jackson. In his entire eighteen year career in law enforcement, this had been the only time he’d killed anyone.
As he walked back out into the living room only wearing his dress slacks and socks, the news came back on the television. A man and a woman were on the screen, and Drew turned up the volume so that he could hear what they were reporting while he went into the kitchen and poured himself some Jack Daniel’s into a whiskey glass.
This is Brittany Johnson, reporting live from the October Woods subdivision in Chattanooga, Tennessee with Breaking News.
In the house behind me, a woman was found dead earlier this afternoon from an apparent suicide.
The victim is 41-year old Rebecca Edwards, an accountant for a local insurance firm.
A neighbor informed me that she was asked by Mrs. Edwards’ husband, Justin Edwards, who was out of town on a business trip at the time, to go check the house after Rebecca failed to show up at work this morning, and Mr. Edwards had received a call from her workplace to inform him. When the neighbor, 68-year old Edna Baker, went over to the home, she found Mrs. Edwards in the middle of her bedroom, with a revolver lying next to her and a single gunshot wound to the head.
Mrs. Edwards leaves behind her husband, aforementioned Justin Edwards, and two children.
You may remember that Rebecca Edwards, a Madison Country native whose maiden name is Long, made national news twenty-one years ago when she survived a horrific car accident in Northern Mississippi, where four other college students died after the vehicle was engulfed in flames. Later in 2004, Rebecca was brought back into local news when her parents, Richard and Silvia Long, died in a car accident, bringing back memories of her miraculous survival.
In the meantime, our thoughts and prayers go out to the friends and family of Rebecca Long Edwards.
Reporting from Tennessee for Channel 4 News in Jackson, Mississippi, this is Brittany Johnson.
Drew stood at the edge of the kitchen, shaking his head as the camera shifted over to a male meteorologist who looked like he’d spent at least four hours of his day in a tanning bed.
“God damn,” he mumbled, placing his hand to his forehead.
Drew had known Richard Long. As a detective, he’d known just about every lawyer in the Jackson area, and Richard had been one of the better ones. Richard Long was a prosecutor, and had worked many of Drew’s cases in the past. The passing of the man had been hard on Drew, though their relationship was purely professional and never passed the threshold into a friendship. He’d never met Rebecca, but felt almost as if he had, seeing her smiling face flash across the television.
“How many bad things can happen to one fucking family?”
He sat down at his kitchen table, briefly picking up a GQ magazine before grabbing the stack of mail he’d thrown down on the table.
The first envelope said “You’ve Been Pre-Approved!” across the top, and he immediately tore it up and tossed it into the trash behind him.
Next was his water bill, his cell phone bill, and then one more credit card offer. He put the two bills aside and threw the credit card offer in the trash, allowing its ti
ny pieces to swim with that of the other one he had destroyed.
Now, only the large brown envelope stared back at him. He was curious, but hesitated to open it. The thing that threw him off the most was the way his address had been elegantly handwritten across the middle. It signaled that this package was personal.
Finally, he picked it up, and ran his finger under the adhesive flap on the back side. The flap raised, and Drew took a sip of his whiskey before he pulled out the contents of the envelope, the burn of the liquor stuck in his throat.
He pulled out a thick, bound collection of white 8 ½ x 11” paper. By the look and the shear weight of it, it had to be at least two-hundred pages.
Drew peeked inside to see if there was anything else inside the envelope, but all he saw was the bubble-wrap that lined the interior wall of the envelope. Just to be sure, he turned the envelope upside down, but nothing fell out.
His reading glasses were on the middle of the large wooden table, and Drew reached over to grab them, taking another sip of Jack as he slipped the glasses on.
He flipped through the pages, and saw that each one was filled with words from the top margin to the bottom.
Drew turned to the cover and, centered in the middle, were words typed in a fourteen point Times Roman font.
I Am The Witness
The Untold Story of the Murderous Crimes of July 29th, 1995
by Rebecca Long
He opened the manuscript again, and a folded piece of paper fell from the inside of it. Drew squatted down and picked up the sheet of paper, unfolding it as he stood.
It was a hand-written letter.
Dear Andrew,
My father always had the upmost respect for you. He told me that if he ever weren’t around and I found myself in a bind, that you were someone who could be trusted if I ever needed any help.
The Witness: A Slasher Horror Novel Page 13
