GRAVE TALKING

Copyright (c) 2018 by Randall R. Peterson ALL RIGHTS RESERVED This is a work of fiction. All persons, locations and actions are from the author's imagination or have been used in a fictitious manner.

By R. Peterson

“I can’t believe it’s been a month since I … since you went away from me.” Her voice quavered and then broke. Tears rolled down sixty-eight year old Edith Barnes’ face as she stood by the final resting place of her late husband. The cemetery Sextant had compacted the dirt and covered the grave with sods of grass. It appeared he’d also carefully placed two vases of silk flowers sent by her children. A November wind blew from the east but the old woman was beyond caring about the cold. “I’m so very sorry for everything.”

After a few minutes Edith composed herself, she had to be strong for her children even though they lived thousands of miles away in California and New Hampshire. They must know that people sometimes make horrible mistakes but life must go on. Her voice continued in a broken whisper. “The judge said my driver’s license could be reinstated in two years if I don’t violate my probation for vehicular manslaughter, but we know that’s never going to happen. I never want to drive again.” She closed her eyes and the memory came back like a sleepless nightmare. That rainy night in October. The windshield wipers streaking across the glass. The stop-sign she didn’t see and the horrific sound of her Ford Fairlane crashing into the side of Victor Hick’s pickup. She had only been traveling around forty miles an hour but the investigating officer determined from the skid marks, that Hick’s pickup was doing at least twice that. Still it was her fault. She ran through the stop sign and caused two deaths. One was a stranger … the other the love of her life.

“I went to see Fred Hicks,” Edith continued. “I had Mary Francis drive me out to his trailer house on River Road. I thought those Doberman dogs he has was going to eat me before I could walk around all the discarded appliances in his yard and knock on his door. I had a plate of chocolate chip cookies that I baked for him. I know it was a stupid thing to do, but it was all I could think of to show how sorry I was. He came out on his old wooden porch when I was only half-way there. He was holding a rifle in his hands and he pointed it right at me. I told him I was so very sorry about his son and if I could give my own life to bring him back … I would. He yelled at me and called me a murdering bitch. He said that once you become a killer there is no stopping you. He said if he thought he could get away with it, he’d kill me right now. He must have seen Mary sitting in her car. He yelled at me to get the hell out of there and never come back!”

For the first time since the funeral, Edith felt the bitter cold and she pulled her tattered coat around her. Looking around the deserted cemetery she felt uneasy, as if someone was watching her. She looked at the grave and shook her head. “There was murder in his eyes, Frank. I saw murder in Fred Hicks’s eyes.”

-------2-------

Edith took three Seroquel sleeping pills with a glass of warm milk; it was the only way she could sleep after the accident and the … funerals. She opened the front door and yelled “Blue Boy … come here boy.” She’d been allowing the Blue Healer to sleep with her after her husband’s death, something he had always forbidden. Frank had built a pet entry door into the bottom of the front door and Edith thought about closing it, but decided not to. The dog might need to go outside and in her drugged condition she might not be able to wake up. Blue Boy came bounding up the steps and Edith heard the deck planking creak. Frank was a good husband, but he was a bit lazy and he’d never got around to replacing the rotted wood on the porch.

Near midnight after, the Johnny Carson show signed off the TV, Edith finally fell asleep. Blue Boy was snoring in that funny way dogs do on the bottom half of the bed. It was near morning as the drugs wore off that she finally began to dream … a flock of crows flew from the trees in the orchard as if they knew something evil was coming. It began to rain.

She walked outside to call Frank to breakfast. It was late fall and he was splitting wood for the wood stove. Red and gold leaves covered the ground. “Bacon and Eggs on the table,” she threatened with mock sternness. “Be inside in five minutes … or I’ll feed them to the pigs!”

Frank had his back to her. He was slumping in his bib overalls and she wondered what was wrong. He often looked like that when he was upset but she could hear him singing in a too-high voice … a child’s nursery song. “Itsy bitsy spider came up the water spout …” When he turned, Edith noticed blood dripping from the splitting mall … a lot of blood. Frank grinned and he didn’t look like himself, he looked more like a Halloween Jack-O-Lantern that someone had left on their porch all winter. “There’ll be no more bacon and eggs,” he growled pointing with the axe. A sow and her five piglets lay butchered on the bloody ground next to the wood. “Not for the killer of two people. In fact there just might be no more Edith!” Frank lurched toward her, raising the dripping axe over his head. Several of the dead piglets began to wiggle. The butchered mother pig turned its severed head in the saturated mud and stared at her with cold, dead eyes. “Run,” it squealed. “Ruuuuuun!”

Edith tried to scream but her voice became the skidding of tires on a wet and cold October night … then there was a crash … a horrible crashing noise that seemed to echo on and on … forever.

The phone on the nightstand was ringing as she sat up in bed with a start. Blue Boy was gone. She brushed leaves and muddy prints off the bed spread. It took a few seconds for her heart to slow. There was no answer when she said “Hello.” Edith hung up after repeating the word several times when she heard a click. This wasn’t the first silent-call since the accident.

The face on the Felix the Cat clock Frank had given her for Christmas six years before showed it was 10:35 AM as it swung its tail ticking off the seconds.  Was it her imagination or did time seen to be running slower?

It was a good thing she hadn’t locked the pet door she thought as she climbed out of bed and got dressed. Animals had certain needs and what she didn’t want at this time in her life was another mess to clean up. She made up her mind no more drugs and maybe there would be no more nightmares. It was when she walked into the kitchen and stared at the emptiness that the tears came. Frank was the love of her life and they had been together every morning for over fifty years. She dropped the glass coffee pot on the floor and it shattered. “What have I done?” she bawled as she looked for her broom. “What have I done?”

-------3-------

When Blue Boy hadn’t returned by lunch time, Edith decided to walk to the Porter’s farm about a half mile away and see if he’d been there bothering their female collie. She’d fed the two dozen chickens gathered the eggs and did the other chores. The shortest way was through a wooded area filled with cotton woods and boggy slumps of wet land. It was really the only choice …. She wasn’t allowed to drive anymore, and besides her 1971 Ford with a broken windshield and smashed up front end lay rusting away in the impound lot behind Victor Pool’s Auto Salvage.

She had the same feeling she’d had the day before visiting Frank in Black Rose Cemetery. As if someone was watching. It was hard for her to hike any faster. Her sixty-four-year-old legs didn’t move like they used to. Hell she was never a runner. She breathed a sigh of relief when she finally glimpsed the Porter’s barn through the trees and smelled the over three hundred pigs they farmed. Her legs suddenly turned into rubber and she collapsed on the ground. There was a storm and rushing wind. Blue Boy hung upside down with a thick rope from the branches of an old cottonwood. Blood dripped from what appeared to be two bullet holes in his side and stomach. He stared at her with accusing eyes and his voice came out as a low growl. “That’s three people you’ve murdered!” Then the sickness and darkness came … and she felt only relief.

-------4-------

Mary Porter dropped Edith off at the Comanche County Courthouse office while she went to do grocery shopping. Sheriff Walker was in Butte for two weeks testifying at a murder trial and Deputy Butch Jensen took her complaint as he ate from a cardboard box of glazed donuts. He pushed the box toward her but she shook her head.

“You know anyone who’d want to hurt your dog?” he said as he wiped sugar off his note pad.

“Only one person since the accident, but they don’t want to hurt my dog they want to kill me,” Edith told him.

“Let me guess,” Butch told her as he dropped the pad and pen onto his cluttered desk. “Fred Hicks?”

“I went to see him about a week ago,” Edith shook her head. “To tell him how sorry I was. I couldn’t be anywhere near any of his family at the funeral. I watched everything from afar.”

“Hicks and his family are a bad bunch,” Butch told her, “every damn one of them. I doubt very much if Fred cared a lick about his shiftless no-good son but he has a sick meanness in him … they all do … that lets them fuel a revenge feud whenever any opportunity presents itself.”

“Can you ask him why he killed my dog … and not me?” It would have been much easier if he had … and she and Frank would be together.

“My guess is he wants you to suffer,” Butch said. “But I’d watch out! Knowing that family, things are apt to get worse before they get any better.”

“I’d appreciate anything you can do,” Edith told him. She could hear Mrs. Porter honking her horn in the street.

“I’ll drive out to Hick’s place and warn him to stay away,” Butch said. “But I wish John Walker was here. The sheriff handles these things much better than I do.” Edith heard the deputy toss the empty donut box into the garbage can next to his desk as she opened the door.

-------5-------

Mary dropped her off and declined to come inside for a cup of coffee. Edith decided to check the chicken coop for any extra eggs. The hens didn’t always lay the way you wanted them to. She could smell burnt flesh and feathers before she even opened the door. An empty can of lighter fluid lay on the floor. It was a wonder the entire wooden structure hadn’t burned down. One wall had turned to charcoal and there was a blackened hole in the ceiling. There was that same buzzing as the world began to spin …. And then there was blackness … and rest.

It was dark and raining when Edith woke up. She stumbled into the house covered with mud blood and feathers. There was no phone and Edith didn’t dare walk through the woods in the dark so she found Frank’s old twelve gage shotgun, loaded it and barricaded herself in her bedroom. It was so lonely without Frank … and now without Blue Boy. She swore no more drugs but after a while she didn’t care. She took five Seroquel sleeping pills this time.

------6------

It was almost four in the afternoon when she staggered into the kitchen wishing she hadn’t broken the glass coffee pot. She opened the refrigerator looking for something cold to wash away the sleep. Deputy Butch Jensen’s severed head lay on the bottom rack. Cold lifeless eyes stared at her in horror. “How many more have to die?” The cold lips pressed against a jar of mustard moved. “How many more?” Thank God for the buzzing and the relief as the darkness came.

Darkness covered the house like a blanket. Had she been out an entire day? Edith searched for the light switch and when she found it … it wouldn’t work. Her house was without power. She could see lights a mile away at the neighbors. Someone had to have cut the power lines. She banged her legs against various items of furniture several times before she found her way into the bedroom and recovered Frank’s shotgun … then she waited.

It must have been well after midnight when the sound came, heavy boots climbing the stairs and moving across the broken porch. Edith couldn’t wait. She flung open the door and fired the gun twice. There was just one shot in return. The buzzing and darkness came again. This time Edith knew it would be permanent. The sheriff’s patrol car and two others sat in the barn yard with their red and blue lights flashing. Sheriff Walker bent over her as she lay dying.

“I thought you were in Butte at a trial?”

“The defendant decided to plead guilty, so I came back yesterday.” The sheriff’s face was white … although this wasn’t the first time he’d taken a life. “I’ve been investigating you all day.” The sheriff shook his head. “We’ve been investigating you ever since your husband’s accident.  Around the area where you dog had been strung up, we found footprints that matched the muddy boots in your closet. The bloody knife you used to cut off my deputy’s head was hidden under your mattress. We suspect you also started the fire that roasted your hen house.” Edith was fading … the world was slowly moving away from her. “Why?” Sheriff Walker asked. “Was it the drugs?”

“I always had it in me.” Edith smiled. “It wasn’t the drugs fault … but they helped.”

“I don’t understand.” The sheriff slipped an arm beneath her shoulders, to help raise her head.

“It’s like Fred Hicks said.” Edith took her last gasp of breath. “Once you become a killer there is no stopping you.”

THE END?