The Last Jeskey - Chapter 15

 

The Last Jeskey

By Karen Singer

 

Chapter 15

 

(Day 3 – Saturday)

 

Freaky

 

Dave had only gone out the door a few moments before when I heard all kinds of commotion out in the front yard.  I was still on my hands and knees with my face plastered in that bowl of dog food when I heard it.  It was enough of a distraction that I had to get up and see what was going on.  By the time I got there, I saw a cop car turning around and spinning its wheels in the dirt before it sped off.  I was guessing the cop was trying to catch up with Dave.  There was another car in the yard too though, and after a moment, I saw Natalie get out of it.

Once the cop car had disappeared, Natalie walked up to me on the porch.  I was surprised when she reached out and hugged me.  “How are you Freaky?” she asked.

“Fine,” I told her.

She looked at me and stared at my face.  “What’s all over your face?”

“Dog food.  I was eating breakfast.”

“Dog food!”

“I’m gonna get punished,” I told her.  “The dog food is the least of my worries.”

“The least?”

“Yeah.  Whenever I get punished I get put on dog food for a long time.  It’s the other stuff they think up to do to me that really worries me.  But it’s okay.  I deserve it.”

“Deserve it?  Freak, nobody deserves to eat dog food.  That’s barbaric!  It’s disgusting.”

I didn’t know what barber something was.  I shrugged.  “I’m used to it.  I wind up eating it a lot.  Some kinds that they get me are better than others though.”

“I’m sure they are,” she replied.

I led the way into the house.  I watched as she seemed to look all around.  “You wouldn’t believe the mess the cops made of this place yesterday,” I told her.  “It was awful.  Everything was thrown all over the place.  It took me a long time to get it all back the way it belongs.  And they did it in every room!  Now I know why everyone hates the cops so much.  How can you stand living with one?”

“Sometimes I wonder,” she replied.  “But I love it too.  I love him.”

I shrugged, not knowing what she meant by that.  “I need to finish my breakfast,” I told her.  “If the guys don’t find my bowl empty, they’ll kill me.  And I don’t need to make them any madder than they already are.”

“Your bowl?” she asked as I headed for the corner of the kitchen.  I got back down on my hands and knees and took another mouthful of the dog food that Dave had poured for me that morning.

“No!” Natalie yelled.  “Don’t do that!”

I pulled my head up, chewing the dry food bits.

“Oh Freaky,” she said, sounding like she was disappointed or something.  “Stop that.”

I finished chewing and swallowed.  “Why?  I need to finish, or they’ll punish me for it.  Like I said, I’m already worried about what they’re going to do to me.”

“You mean other than making you eat dog food?  What do they do to you?”

“Lots of different things,” I told her.  “The last time they took me out into the woods, took my clothes off me and hung me upside down by my ankles.  Then they whipped me real bad, then left me there like that for a few days.  Natalie, there’s bears, and lions, and tigers out in those woods, they could have eaten me!”

She seemed to go from one shocked look to another.  “Tigers?”

“Yes!”

She shook her head.  “That does it!” she declared angrily.  “Stand up,” she said.  “I’m taking you out of here for your own good.”

“Out of here?  Away from the farm?  No!” I screamed.  “Not again!”

“Freaky, you can’t stay here!”

“Yes I can!”

“Freaky, this is not a life.  It’s a death sentence.”

“I haven’t died yet.”

“Freaky, no matter what you think, I’m not giving you a choice.  I found you a place in a women’s shelter.  It’s only temporary, but until we can work out something better for you it’ll have to do.”

“I don’t know what that is and I don’t care.  I’m staying right here where I know what everything is and how it works.”

“And that Freaky, is a major part of your problem.”

“What problem?”

“You’re living in a horrible situation, and you don’t even know it.”

“What’s horrible about it?  I like it.  I know it.”

“Dog food?  Really?”

Maybe she had a point, but really….  “I deserve it.”

“Deserve it?  Hell no!”

“I talked to a cop!” I argued.  “Lots of cops.”

“So what?  You’re supposed to do that.”

“That’s not what I was told.  And yesterday, Will, your cop husband, told me that Dave wanted me to show him where his hiding places were, and Dave didn’t tell him to do that at all!  I shouldn’t have been talking to him in the first place, or anyone else that he brought with him.  I probably shouldn’t have talked to you either.  You’re married to him.”

“Freaky, I spent a good part of the last few days trying to help you.  That’s what I’m still trying to do.”

“I know that’s what you were trying to do, but it was all just too much.  I was so lost and confused that day.  I was so scared.  All day long I just wanted to go home, and I had to wait till yesterday to finally get here.  I don’t want to go through that again.  I don’t want to leave!”

“Freaky, I hate to tell you this, but one way or another, you’re going.”

“No!” I shouted.

I watched as she turned away from me and pulled her cellphone out of her purse.  She called someone, but whoever it was didn’t answer.  She tried another number.  “Hi, this is Natalie, the sheriff’s wife.  …  Yes, I’m fine.  …  Have you heard from the sheriff in the last few minutes?  He went off chasing Dave Jeskey and he’s not answering his phone right now.  …  Yeah, I’ve kind of got a problem.  I’m at the Jeskey place and he was going to help me drag Freaky out of here.  She’s not exactly wanting to go, and I need a bit of help.  …  Yeah, that would be great, and maybe Amanda would be the best person to help.  Thanks.”  She ended her call and turned back to me.  “Amanda, your new cop friend, will be here in a little bit.  Pack a bag if you’ve got anything to pack.”

“Pack what?” I replied before walking away, fuming.

I didn’t want to go anywhere!  I went into the living room, wrapped my hair around me, and sat in one of the chairs, hugging my hair.  I had been so lost when they had taken me away before.  Nothing had made sense.  Now they wanted to do it again.  Natalie sat in another chair across from me.

“How long will I have to be gone this time?” I asked.

“I don’t know,” she told me.  “Possibly, hopefully, forever.”

Natalie thought I was going to die if I stayed here.  I knew I was going to die if I left.

Amanda showed up eventually and between the two of them, like it or not, they forced me into the back of that police car Amanda had arrived in.  They left Natalie’s car at the house, and I had no choice at all but to sit there and watch as the only world I knew faded out of sight.

I had no idea where we were going.  Natalie had said a shelter, but what did that mean?  Shelter was someplace you went to get out of the rain.  Was this another house?  Wherever it was, I hoped it wasn’t full of more cops like that one place had been.  Don’t talk to cops.  And now I was riding in another cop car.  I’d get hung upside down, buried alive, roasted over a fire, and probably be eating dog food for the rest of my life!

It seemed like we were in that car forever.  But Amanda finally pulled up in front of another weird looking place.  It was amazing how many different weird looking places there were.  Since I was so far from home and had no idea how I was going to get back there again, I got out of the car when they told me to, and I didn’t put up any kind of fuss at all when they made me go into that building with them.  As we went inside, I noticed two women back a ways from the door, staring at me.  One of them was what the guys had called black.  The other white.  The one who was black looked like she was standing there with her mouth wide open.  Why?

There was another door inside that was open and they led me through it into a small room.  There was a woman there sitting behind one of those weird tables that had lots of paper and stuff on it.

“Hi Jess,” Natalie said as we walked in.

The woman was…weird.  I hadn’t met many women in my life, and had only talked to some of them in the last few days, but somehow I knew that this woman was old.  Her hair was all grey and curly.

“This is Freaky?” the woman asked.

Natalie turned to me and said, “Freaky, say hello to Jessica Kriss.  She runs this place.”

I searched for a reason not to talk to her at all, but in that situation, I quickly decided that it wasn’t going to hurt…too much…I hoped.  “Hi,” I said tentatively.

“Hi Freaky,” she replied with a smile.  “I hope your stay here won’t be too bad at all.”

“I want to go home,” I told her.

She shook her head.  “From what Natalie there has told me, I think home is the last place you want to be.”

“No, it isn’t!”

“Even after the way you’ve been treated?”

“I don’t know what you mean.  I know what everything is there.  I know how it all works.  I can’t figure anything out when I’m not there.”  She didn’t seem too happy with my answer, but it was all true.  I just wanted to go home.

“Let’s hope you decide differently after a few days.”

She grabbed some papers on her table and a pen, like she was going to write something.  “Okay,” she said.  “I hear your name is actually Freak, but you like to be called Freaky.”  She wrote something on the paper.

“You can write!” I exclaimed.  “But…you’re a woman.”

“Of course I can write,” she replied.  “What does being a woman have to do with it?”

“Girls don’t need to know anything about reading or writing things.  That’s all men’s business!”

“Who told you that?” she asked as if she was surprised.

“Who?  Bo, Steve, Ben…all the guys.  If something needs to be read, that’s their business and they read it for me.”

“So you can’t read or write…at all?” she said.

“Of course not.  I’m a girl.  A good girl!”

“I can see that,” she muttered.  She looked back down at the paper and asked, “What’s your last name?”

Huh?  “Freak,” I said.  “My name is Freak.”

“Yes,” she replied.  “But what’s your last name?”

I looked at Natalie, confused.  “I don’t understand.”

“Freaky,” Natalie said.  “All the guys had two names.  A first name and a last name.  Like Bo Jeskey, or Steve Jeskey.  How about you?”

“Oh,” I said, suddenly understanding.  “I don’t know.”

“Are you a Jeskey?”

“I don’t know.  I’m just Freak…or…yeah, I do kind of like Freaky.  Don’t tell Dave or Gary that!”

“It’s okay Freaky,” Natalie told me.  She looked at the old woman.  “Can we just skip a last name?”

The woman nodded, then turned the paper around and pushed it toward Natalie.  It still bothered me to see her writing something, but Natalie seemed to do lots of things that women shouldn’t.

“I guess there’s no chance of getting you to sign your name,” the old woman asked me as she pulled the paper away.

“Sign…”  I looked to Natalie.  “Don’t worry about it,” she told me.

“I don’t understand anything out here,” I replied, totally frustrated.  “I just want to go home where I don’t have to worry about it.”

“Sorry Freaky,” she said.  “We can’t.  Not with the conditions you were living under.”

“Conditions?”  But she didn’t answer.

“What else can’t she do?” the old woman asked.

“As far as I can tell, an entire world of things,” Natalie told her.  “Too many things.  And it all seems to be things that she has no concept of at all, no matter how basic they are.”

I got the impression that the old woman wasn’t happy.

“We’ll leave her in your care then Jess,” Natalie told the old woman.  “And good luck.”

“Yeah,” the old woman replied.  “She’s certainly not the first woman to come here who can’t read.  Not by a long shot.  But something tells me I’m going to need that luck with her.”

Natalie hugged me briefly, then said, “You need to stay here now Freaky.  Whether you think so or not, it’s for your own good.”

I didn’t see it that way at all.  Natalie and Amanda walked out.  Now what was I supposed to do?

The old woman got up from her chair.  “Come on Freaky, let me introduce you to a few of the women.  They can probably show you around better than me.”

She led the way out of that little room, and I followed her.  I didn’t think I had much of a choice.

There was another door ahead of us, and she walked right towards it.  I could hear strange sounds coming from inside that room.  Sounds I couldn’t understand.  She led me through into that other room.  It was a big room.  But it was those sounds that had caught my attention, so I didn’t pay much attention to the room itself.

“Are those…kids?” I asked staring at the three tiny people running around some colorful stuff in the room.  And then there was the other sound I had never heard before.  “Is that…a baby person?” I asked, staring in disbelief at what a woman there was holding in her arms.

“What do you mean?  Of course it’s a baby,” the old woman replied.

“I’ve never seen a baby person before, or kids either.  But…”  I looked at her.  “I think I was a kid once, but it was a long time ago.”

She was staring at me funny.  “Freaky, I can guarantee that you were a kid once.”

“Why is the baby making so much noise?” I asked.  “It…bothers me.”

“He’s crying,” the old woman told me as she headed in that direction.  “Babies tend to do that.”  She kept heading toward that woman with the…baby.  “Aw,” the old woman said.  “Let me take him for a minute.  Poor little thing.”  She took the baby and seemed to hold it in her arms very carefully.  I heard her talking to it, but the baby didn’t answer.  She just seemed to keep talking to it and bouncing it around in her arms a bit.  And then the baby stopped crying.

“I don’t know how I’m going to do it!” the woman who had been holding the baby before told her.  “I…can’t!”

“You can!” the old woman told her.  “You’re not doing a bad job at all Bess.  Just keep trying.”  She handed the baby back to the woman.  I noticed that the three…kids…in the room didn’t even bother looking to see what was going on.  They just kept doing whatever they had been doing with that colorful stuff in that part of the room.

“Ladies,” the old woman said loudly so that everyone in the room could hear.  “This here is Freaky.  Please make her feel welcome, and please give her the quick rundown on this place.  She’s…naive about a lot of things.  Too many things.”

That black woman stood up from one of the seats in the room.  “I got her Miss Kriss.  I’ll be glad to show her.”

“Thanks Shantel,” the old woman replied.  “I’ll leave her in your care then.”  She turned to me and put her hand on my arm.  “Try to enjoy yourself as best you can, okay?”

I said nothing.  She walked off and that black woman was quickly right there next to me.

“Hey,” the woman said.  “I’m Shantel.  Did she say your name is Freaky?”

I looked her in the face.  Why did she seem so excited?  “It’s actually Freak…I think, but don’t tell Gary or Dave but I do kind of like Freaky.”

“Cool,” Shantel replied.  “And I don’t have a clue who Gary and Dave are, so don’t worry about it.”

Another woman was suddenly there with us.  The same white woman I had seen earlier.  “I’m Lisa,” the new woman said.  “Welcome.”

I wasn’t sure what welcome meant, but I figured that it was something that wasn’t exactly bad.  I ignored it and finally looked around the room.  It was big.  And it was nice.  Real nice.  I noticed something that surprised me and I walked over to it.  “Is this one of those…T…Fee things?” I asked.

“T…what?” Shantel said.

“T…Fee,” I repeated.  “You know, kind of like a cellphone.”

“It’s TV honey,” Shantel replied.  “Please don’t tell me you ‘ve never see a TV before.”

“I saw one a few nights ago, when I was at the cop’s house.  You can’t talk to the people you see in there though.  He said they’re not real.”

“Uh…no, they’re not,” Shantel replied.  “Honey Pie, what the hell kind of place did you come from?”

“The farm of course.  Where else?”

“That wasn’t exactly what I meant, but maybe it’s close enough,” she replied.

“Freaky,” Lisa said.  “Can I…would you mind if…I touch your hair?”

I was surprised.  “My hair?  Why would I mind?” I asked.

Lisa and Shantel both began grabbing lengths of my hair and looking at it closely.  “I wanted to get my hands on your hair the moment I saw you,” Shantel said.  “It’s incredible!  How do you manage with it?”

I shrugged.  “How else should it be?  I don’t know why all women don’t have hair like mine.”

“Honey Pie, if we did, we’d never be able to do anything.”

“I have no problem.  I can cook and clean just fine.  And when we have pigs or chickens, I can take care of them too.”

“Amazing!” Lisa said.

“Come on,” Shantel said.  “Let me show you around.  In case you haven’t figured it out, this here is the common room where we can all get together.  She looked over at the kids playing.  Sometimes when there’s a lot of kids, it can get a bit noisy, but usually they’re more quiet than the ones we’ve got now.  I think the mothers of those three are taking a shower right now.  The kids though seem to be just fine playing with the toys for a bit.”

Toys.  I wasn’t sure what that was.  Maybe those colorful things they were…playing…with.

Shantel and Lisa led me out of that…common room.

“It’s amazing the way your hair drags on the floor behind you,” Lisa noted.

I shrugged.  “It didn’t used to before Natalie washed it, and that other woman untangled it.”

“Untangled it?” Lisa asked.

“Yeah.  Stopped it from being so jumbled up and took all the knots out of it.”

“You mean you don’t brush it much?” Shantel asked.

“Brush it?” I said.  “The only brush I have is for when I do laundry.  Why would I need a brush for my hair?”

Shantel stopped where she was and looked at me.  “No hair brush, and T…Fee, I think you said.  Honey, most of us here have come from literal hell.  I’m wondering what kind of hell you just left.”

“What do you mean by hell?” I asked.

“A bad place.  A real bad place, where they treat you like shit!”

“I lived on a farm,” I told them.  “And I took care of five guys, and they took care of me.”

“Yeah,” Shantel said, “but how exactly did they take care of you?  Come on, let’s find you a bed.”

“What do I need a bed for?  I’m a girl.  Girls don’t sleep in beds.”

 

The Last Jeskey - Chapter 14

 Hint: Pay attention to this one!

The Last Jeskey

By Karen Singer

 

Chapter 14

 

(Day 3 – Saturday)

 

Sheriff Cobb

 

I had gone to sleep last night with those damn Jeskeys on my mind, and I woke up in the morning the same way.  Dave had attacked one of my deputies and driven off.  Nobody knew where he had gone, even though we put the word out to the surrounding areas to be on the lookout for him.  Had he ever come home last night?  Had he gone back to the farm?  Despite it being the weekend, I would have to check on that this morning.

It was early and Nat was still asleep.  Worried about Dave and Gary Jeskey, I got out of bed and headed to the kitchen.  Five minutes later I had a mug of hot coffee in my hand.  My head was still wrapped around the Jeskey men.  I sat down with my coffee at the table and stared into the abyss.

Steve Jeskey was dead of course, but we had always had him pegged to be just as much of a psychopathic killer as his father Bo had been.  But just like his father, we never had any proof.  Never!

And then there had been Ben Jeskey.  Ben was different than all the rest.  Quieter.  But that didn’t mean he didn’t shy away from being willing to kill.  We had Ben pegged as having the most brains in the family.  Bo may have been in charge, but we were betting that it was Ben who was making all their business deals.  And trust me, we knew that none of those Jeskey boys had ever worked at a job a day in their lives, but every last one of them seemed to have plenty of money.

Dave was the next oldest, and now the oldest since Steven and Ben were dead.  I was guessing that made Dave the head of the family now.  A family of only two, him and his brother.  We always figured that Dave was the follower of the bunch.  Still mean as a rattlesnake, but more of a follower, inclined to just do whatever the others told him, even if it included killing…or anything else.

And then there was the youngest.  Gary.  The problem with Gary was that he wasn’t just mean, he was something of a prankster.  He liked causing trouble.  That fact alone had me worried about him.

Yeah, maybe Roxie had made a mistake when she killed the others.  She really should have killed Dave and Gary as well.  Would it matter?  Only time would tell.  And I was worried about that.

And then there was the other thing I had on my mind concerning the Jeskey boys.  Freak.  It was thanks to her that we had found all that stuff the Jeskey clan had hidden away.  False walls in a barn.  Who would have ever thought?  Evidently, they did.  And those places had been hard to spot too.  Drugs, stolen goods, and guns.  Lots of guns.  It had been the guns that surprised us the most.  We knew about…I mean suspected…the drugs, but gun running was another matter.

As much as I didn’t want to even consider such an idea, I supposed I had to be grateful for the help Freak had given us on that score.  Did that mean I owed her anything?  I wasn’t even going to consider such a dumb idea.

Natalie and I had talked quite a bit last night after I got home.  I told her all about what had gone down at the Jeskey farm with finding their hidden stashes in the barn.  I didn’t leave out that Dave and Gary Jeskey were both fugitives right now and we considered them both to be armed and dangerous.  Shit!  Just mention Jeskey to any law enforcement agent anywhere, and they automatically knew they were armed and dangerous.  With the Jeskeys, it was a given.

As she had told me she would, Natalie had done a lot of digging around, trying to find some kind of shelter where we could put Freak for a while.  She’d had a lot of trouble finding anything at all, but she finally got lucky two counties away.  A women’s shelter had a couple of spaces open, and after Nat had talked to them on the phone, and then driven all the way out there to further talk to them, they had agreed to take Freak in for a while.  Of course, it was only for a limited time, and only as long as they had the room.  And if someone else from their area needed the space, Freak would be out.  Still, it was a solution, if only temporary.

In telling me what she had told the people about Freak, Nat had used the word ‘slave’ a number of times.  As far as I could see, it was just as good a word for her as any.  In fact, it might have been the perfect word for her.  Even if, as Nat said, Freak didn’t realize she was a slave.  She probably didn’t even have any concept of what a slave actually was.

When we left things last night, Nat and I had both decided we would head up to that farm this morning.  She had to talk to Freak and let her know of the space available for her in that shelter, and I had to check to see if either Dave or Gary had bothered to go home.  Going there and finding their trucks there would be about the best thing I could think of.  How likely that was, remained to be seen.

Nat finally came out half-dressed.  She kissed me on the top of my head before pouring herself a cup of coffee.  “Are we still on for this morning?” she asked.

“Absolutely,” I confirmed.

“Good!” she declared.  “I want that girl out of there.”

“Huh!” I grunted.  “The only problem is, I don’t think she’s gonna want to go.”

“How can she not?”

 I shook my head.  “Something tells me that convincing her isn’t going to be as easy as you think.”

“Will, my boss said we’ve got to get her out of there, no matter what.”

“You’re willing to go there and drag her out forcibly?”

“Yes!  If I have to.  Even my boss told me to drag her out if I need to.”

I considered that.  “Yeah.  I’d agree with that too.  Just remember that I don’t expect it’s going to be that easy.  If we do get her out, one way or another, are you prepared to drive her all the way down to that shelter by yourself?  We don’t know how much of a fight she might put up.”

“I’ll do what I have to,” she told me.

She sounded confident, but I knew she was worried about that situation.

“Let’s round her up first,” I said.  “Then we’ll stop at the station, and I’ll have Amanda ride down with you.  I’d feel a whole lot better about it if you had a deputy along for protection.”

She considered that, then came over and kissed me on the head again.  “Thanks Will.  Now get dressed or we’re never going to get this done!”

Damn woman!

Natalie drove to where she works, and I headed to the station.  The first thing I did was to check on any news about the Jeskeys.  Neither Gary nor Steve had been spotted yet.  Damn!  Something told me they were once again going to be difficult to find.

An hour later, Natalie called me and told me she was leaving for the Jeskey farm to get Freak.  I got into my car and headed that way too.  The plan was for us both to get there together.  When I got to the dirt road, I found Natalie’s car sitting in the middle of it, waiting for me.  I followed right behind her to the farm.  The road led us through the gate and toward the house.  I noticed four pickup trucks parked in front of the house instead of just the three that had belonged to Bo, Ben, and Steve.  One of our fugitives had come home!

I had just turned my engine off and had started to get out of my car when one of those pickup trucks suddenly moved, and it started moving fast!  I swore up and down as I got back in my car and got it started again.  I had noticed Dave driving that truck as it literally screamed past me throwing up dirt and dust all around it.  By the time I got my car moving and turned around, his truck was completely out of sight.  I floored the gas.  It wasn’t until I was out of the gate that I turned on my lights and siren.  It was only the dust cloud from the dirt road in the distance that showed me where he was.

Yeah, I was driving a squad car.  A car with a big engine and a suspension built for chasing other vehicles, but make no mistake, I knew that the truck Dave was driving had a big engine too, and it was probably loaded with all kinds of stuff to make chasing him a bit more difficult.  No matter though, I knew that in the end I could outrun him.  Unless he headed offroad.  Then I was going to be in trouble.  There was no way I could keep up with his truck if he cut cross-country.  Something told me he probably knew that too.

With my lights and siren screaming, I hit the paved road and was able to push even faster.  So did he.  No surprise.  I was catching up, but slowly.  When he got to the turn off, I expected him to fishtail all over the place.  He did some, but not nearly to the extent that I expected.  That was bad news for me, it meant he could drive.  Unfortunately, when he had made that turn, he had turned in a bad direction for me.  He wasn’t heading anywhere where I could get help from one of my deputies.  He was heading further out into the boonies.  Still, the chase was on.

Make no mistake, mile after mile we screamed down that road at speeds that boggled my mind.  He had that truck of his running at over a hundred miles an hour.  If some unlucky driver got even close to our side of the road, he’d be left dead and splattered all over the place, and I’d have to stop chasing Dave to handle the problem.  If Dave actually hit a small enough car with that big truck of his, Dave would probably survive it just fine and escape.  The other car, well, it would be gruesome.

But then Dave turned again, and I mentally did a lot of swearing.  He had turned off onto another dirt road, and I already knew that road led to areas where he could leave the roads behind completely.  I was going to lose him to the fields and woods, and there wasn’t anything I’d be able to do about it.  Still, I raced after him, catching up slowly.  Too slowly.  What the hell was I going to do if I ever got on his bumper?  At a hundred miles an hour, that was a death sentence for me too.  But catching him was my job.

I saw the big field up ahead and didn’t miss all the trees back behind it.  I also didn’t miss Dave turning off the dirt road to go directly into that field.  Shit!  I couldn’t follow.  But what happened next was something completely unexpected.  As Dave turned off to go across the field, he hit a bit of a culvert.  Normally, that probably wouldn’t have caused him any problem at all in that truck he was driving, but at a hundred miles an hour?  Dave’s truck went rolling sideways and kept tumbling and rolling for the longest time.  I hit the brakes and didn’t get my car stopped until I had reached the point where he had gone into the field.

That pickup had tumbled its way for what I could only call an enormous distance.  What was left of the truck was now a mangled mess, and it had finally rolled to a stop completely upside down.  I had no doubt I’d be looking at nothing but a dead body inside when I got there.

I got out of my car and didn’t run, I saw no need for that.  I walked my way cautiously out into the field.  Halfway there I drew my gun, just to be safe.  I held the gun ready to shoot as I cautiously approached the upside-down pickup.  I stayed way back at first, knowing that if Dave was somehow alive in there, most likely he’d have a gun, and he wouldn’t be afraid to use it.  What I saw though, showed me that Dave wasn’t going to be much of a danger to me at all.  I put my gun away and moved in closer for a better look.

The windshield of the truck was on the ground.  Inside, the steering wheel had broken away and Dave’s body was impaled on the column.  A closer look showed me something else.  Unbelievably, he was still alive.  He just wasn’t going to remain alive much longer, and there was nothing anyone could do about that.

He must have heard me coming because his head moved slightly in my direction.  Just moving it that much had to be an effort for him.  “Sheriff,” he said.  “Damn you.”

What do you say to a man like that, who’s dying?  “Dave,” I replied.

I crawled my way under the truck as close as I could get and took a better look at the situation.  I needn’t have bothered.  I gave him, at most, another minute to live.

“You found the stuff in the barn,” he breathed more than said.

“Yup,” I replied.  “Came as quite a surprise.  Especially the guns.”

He tried to laugh and wound up with his body spasming painfully.  I thought he’d be dead there and then, but he kept breathing.  “You didn’t find it all though,” he said at that point.  “Ha!” he managed to laugh.  “You didn’t even find the half of it.  Especially our money!  And you’ll never find any of it.”

“Money?” I said.  The fact that there was some didn’t surprise me in the least.  It only made sense.

“Lots of it,” he bragged.  “Gary will get it all now, and you’ll never find him.”

“If we don’t catch him first,” I told him.

“That’ll never happen.  Gary’s too slippery.”

I said nothing to that.  I knew we’d get him eventually.  But Dave was dying, why ruin his only hopes.  Since he was dying, and seemed to be in a talkative mood, I decided to do some asking, just in case he might actually answer a question or two before he’d never be able to talk again.  “Dave, you guys have killed people, right?”

He grunted in pain, and I saw it affect his entire body.  “I guess you could say that,” he finally replied.

“Who?” I asked.

He managed to get out a small laugh.  “Wouldn’t you like to know.  Too many for me to remember, and even I don’t know how many Dad and Steve have done themselves.”

That wasn’t good news.  “Where do you put the bodies?” I asked.

“Where you’ll never find them.  And don’t bother asking.  I may be dying, but I’m not telling.”

Shit!  Still, he was being somewhat talkative.  I needed something else to ask, but that something else was the something that had been taking up way too much of my mind for the last few days.  “How about Freak,” I said.  “What’s her story?  Where’d she come from?”

I wasn’t sure if I’d get an answer or not out of him, especially since his body was suddenly wracked with a huge spasm that I could tell was nothing but pure pain.  But once his body settled down and he had a chance to gasp a few breaths, he managed to get talkative again.

“Freak,” he said.  “The freak.  We never did come up with an actual name for her.  We just referred to her as the freak, and for no better reason we just kept calling her that.”

“So you don’t know who she is?” I asked.

“I know most of it,” he said.

“Then where’d she come from?  We never had a clue there was anyone like her living out there with you.”

He nodded.  “You weren’t supposed to.  Dad wanted us to keep real quiet about her, so we did.”

“Why?” I asked.

His body had a bit of a minor spasm, but he doggedly stayed alive.  “I don’t know what it was all about, but Dad had some kind of big falling out with his father, my granddad.  And then we heard that when Granddad died, he left everything to Bo’s younger brother Clive.  I only met Uncle Clive a few times in my entire life, cause the two of them hated each other so much.  I can only guess that it had something to do with the reason Dad and his father didn’t get along, but I could be wrong about that.  Dad refused to talk about it at all.  Anyway, after Granddad died, Dad found out that Clive inherited everything from him, including all the land and all his money, and it was a lot of money.  Bo was hoping mad about it, so I guess he and Steve went off in search of his brother.  They found him and killed him.  But when they found him they discovered he had a wife and a small son too.  They killed the wife along with Clive, but Dad decided to take their son instead of killing him, kind of like as revenge for whatever was going on between Dad and his father, and Dad and his brother.”

“Wait a minute,” I said.  “A son, right?”

“Yeah.  He was just a real young kid.  I don’t know how old, but…young.  Three, four, five maybe, but not any older than that.”

“What happened to the boy if Bo took him?”

“He and Steve brought the kid back here to our farm with the intention of raising him.”

“Who was the kid?” I asked.  “Other than Clive’s son.  Did he have a name?”

His body got hit by another painful spasm for a moment, then he took a moment to breathe.  “It was a long time ago.  I’m not sure of his name anymore.  Brad or Brian, or something.  Who knows.”

“So where is he?” I asked.  “What became of him?”

He tried to laugh and wound up in major pain for a minute.  Then said, “Who do you think Freak is?”

“Wait a minute.  Are you trying to tell me that Freak, is a boy?”

“I told you, Dad took the kid instead of killing him, just to get some kind of weird revenge against his old man and brother.  And he couldn’t think of any better way to do that than to make that kid into something so embarrassing that his father and brother would probably put a bullet into the kid’s head if they knew.  In fact, Dad always regretted that neither of them would ever know what he did.  I have seen Dad when he was drunk, after Freak brought him something, then as soon as Freak left he would go off a bit and stare up at the sky and yell, Clive, see what I did to your son?  And I’m only gonna make it worse!”  He tried to laugh again and wound up with another major pain spasm.

“Vindictive,” I noted.  “So Bo turned the kid into Freak.”

“Yup.  Oh, not right away.  The boy hung around the house for about a month or two, then Dad took him to a woman he knew, and when they came back, the boy was wearing a dress.  All girl’s clothes.  From that point on we were never allowed to call him by his name, and we weren’t allowed to even refer to him as a boy in any way at all.  We were supposed to consider him a girl…period.”  He had a minor bout of pain then settled down.  “Seemed stupid at the time to all of us but Dad, but we all got used to it.  After a while, it was all just normal.”

His face winced up into some major pain, then it settled down and he breathed for a moment.  “Eventually, Dad even got some kind of girl hormone pills that he made the kid take every single day, and she’s still taking them.  They must have worked.”  He laughed again, but this time it didn’t hurt him as much.  “Have you seen her?  All girl!”  He laid there panting for breath for a few moments.

“Steve,” I said while he was struggling to breath.  “Freak’s…sexual area.  It’s all…modified.  What happened there?”

“Yeah,” he said.  “Dad wanted to make sure the kid would never be anything but a girl, ever again, so he had it done.  The idea was to make sure that no matter what, Freak would never be able to have a kid.  His brother’s line of the family would be completely gone, leaving just us.  Dad also got a kick out of the fact that for the rest of her life Freak would never be able to enjoy sex with anyone.  Not normally anyway.  Huh!” he tried to laugh, then winced in major pain again.  “I’m pretty sure that didn’t work out as well as Dad intended.  I get the impression that sometimes Freak likes getting pounded up the ass.  Shit, we do it to her often enough, and she never even acts like she minds at all.”

His body started spasming again and I figured it was the end for him, but he calmed down after a few moments and gasped a couple more breaths.  Then he tried to laugh again.  “Now you got yourself some real trouble Sheriff.”

“Why’s that?” I asked.

“Cause now that I won’t be around anymore, Gary is the only one left.  And what you may or may not realize yet, is that Gary is by far the worst of us.  He’s quieter and sneakier too.”  He struggled for a moment to breathe, then continued.  “It wasn’t me and Gary that was so close, it was me and Ben, and Gary and Steve were practically two peas in a pod.  Ben and me actually handled most of the business for the family, while most of the time Dad, Steve, and Gary handled the rough stuff.”

He laughed again and went into another brief spasm.  He gasped another breath, then said, “I know for a fact that Gary’s already planning on killing you and your entire family.  And before he’s done, he’s gonna kill Freak as well.”  Once again he tried to laugh, which only sent him into more death spasms.  “That’s what you get for messing up our business!”

I watched as he went through a few moments of total agony.  I had no doubt he was going to die right then and there, and there was nothing in the world that anyone could do to stop it.  But instead of dying, he calmed down a bit and managed to gasp a few more breaths of air.  I took a chance and asked one more question.  “Dave,” I said.  “If Bo did that to Freak, then who did the mutilation on him?”

He was about to try to answer, when he was wracked with more spasms of pain.  I figured there was no way I was going to get an answer, but as he was breathing his last breath, he breathed, “The witch.”

With that, I realized I was looking at a corpse.  Not just someone who was dying, but someone who was already dead.

Gary was coming after not just me, but my entire family, which meant Natalie.  I could accept the risk to myself, but not Nat.  She was going to need protection.

And what about Freak?  Nat had more reason than ever to get that girl…yeah, girl, away from that farm.  Whether Freak liked it or not.

The Last Jeskey - Chapter 13

 

The Last Jeskey

By Karen Singer

 

Chapter 13

 

(Day 2 – Friday)

 

Freaky

 

How much trouble was I going to be in when Gary found out that the cops had taken all their stuff?  When Gary found out?  More like Gary and Dave both.  Maybe I better just start eating dog food from the floor right now.  But I hated doing that, and so far, they didn’t know.  But the guys often disappeared for a few days.  They would be back though.  Both of them.  I had no doubt at all.

I continued around the house, trying to pick up from where the cops had made such a big mess of everything.  Why had they done that?  Was that just something that cops did all the time?  Made a mess of things?  No wonder all the guys hated cops.  I hated them now too, and that didn’t count them taking me away from here and putting me though so much weird stuff the day before.  That little room with the warm rain had been nice though.

It was dark and getting late when I heard a truck pulling in out front.  Were any of the guys back yet?  I went out to the front porch to see.  It was dark, but I could still see that it was Dave’s pickup that had pulled into the yard, and right behind him was more lights.  Gary’s truck.  They would be wanting dinner!  I hurried back inside to get something started.

“Hell only knows what they found,” Dave said as he and Gary came into the house.

“Hopefully, nothing,” Gary replied.  “Hell, they’ve never found anything before.”

I saw them notice me in the kitchen, beginning to fix a late dinner for them.  Gary stopped dead in his tracks and shook his head.

“I told you,” Dave said with a laugh.  “She looks great, but go take a better look at her hair.  Look how long it is.”

Gary came around the table and stared at me.  “Damn!  It’s dragging on the ground.”

“Yeah,” Dave said.

“Ben would have had a fit.”

“True,” Dave replied with another laugh.

“Don’t bother with dinner,” Gary told me.  “We ate.”

“What did the cops do?” Dave asked me.

“Made a big mess of things,” I told him angrily.  “You should have seen the mess I had to pick up.  I got most of it though.  And now I know why you all hate them so much.  Damn cops!”

“True,” Gary agreed as he opened the beer fridge and pulled out two cans.  He handed one to Dave.”

“Do you know if they looked in the barn?” Gary asked me.

“They looked in the barn.  They looked in the house.  They looked in the root cellar.  They looked everywhere there is and then some…and made a big mess everywhere.”

“That’s cops,” Dave agreed.  “Come on,” he said to Gary.  “We better check the barn, and everywhere else.”

The two men went out and I breathed a small sigh of relief.  But I knew they’d be back.  Probably soon.  The only question now was, how badly would they punish me?”  I could only stand there in the kitchen and wait, but yeah, I knew I deserved whatever punishment I got from them.  I had talked to the cops.

It was a while before the boys came back.  Longer than I thought, but not long enough for my frightened stomach.

“There she is!” Gary exclaimed angrily the moment he laid eyes on me.

My fear went crazy as I saw the two of them head directly for me.

“Did you show those cops any of our secret places?” Dave demanded.

I was a bit confused.  “But he said, you told him to tell me you wanted me to show him where they were.”

“He said I wanted you to show him?” Dave asked.

“Yes!  He said you would punish me if I didn’t.”

“Shit!” he swore loudly.  “How the hell did you know where those places were?  That’s men’s business.”

“But feeding the chickens and pigs isn’t,” I told him.  “And when we had some, we kept them in the barn.  I’ve seen where you go.  I just never went near those places myself.”

Gary opened up one of the doors under the counter and pulled out my bowl.  He grabbed some dog food and poured it in, then he set it on the floor in the corner.  The message was clear, I’d be eating dog food for the foreseeable future.  “That’s on top of whatever way we decide to punish you for talking,” Gary told me.

Now I was really scared.  But…I knew I deserved it.

“Any ideas on what we should do about our stock?” Gary asked Dave as they headed into the living room.

“Not yet, except get some more,” Dave replied.  He pulled out his cellphone.  “In fact, I’ll start working on that right away.  They didn’t find any of the money, so we’re good with that much.  We can easily cover our losses with the drugs, and fortunately the guns were all paid for.  We were just looking for buyers.”

“Good!” Gary told him.  “And while you’re doing that, I know what I’m gonna do.”  He grabbed his hat.  “I’m gonna kill me a cop.  I just gotta find someone who can tell me where he lives.  And when I get there, I’m gonna kill him, and his whole family too.”  He grinned.  “It’s the least I can do for payback.  We gotta have some revenge!”

“Got that right,” Dave agreed.  “Want some help?”

“Let me figure out how to find him first,” Gary told him.  “You handle the business stuff.  You’re the one who’s good at that.”  With a nod of his head, he added, “Don’t wait up.”

Dave laughed.  “Yeah right!  Good luck!  And watch your back.”

Gary wasn’t around, and Dave didn’t say a single word to me all night.  He mostly talked to people on his cellphone.  Eventually, I laid down on the floor near the back door.  As always, I wrapped my hair around me and used part of it to lay my head on.  I went to sleep in total fear.  They were going to punish me.  They were going to punish me bad, even though I didn’t know I had done anything wrong…except to talk to the cops in the first place.

As I laid on the floor, memories of past punishments ran through my mind.  Memories that scared the daylights out of me.  The ones that scared me the most were the ones where they had dragged me deep into those woods.  They always whipped the daylights out of me when they did that, then they always left me some horrible way for a few days, reminding me about the bears, the lions, and the tigers that lived in the woods, and that they would probably come and eat me.  I’d seen bears a lot of times when they came too close to the house and there were always lots of them out where they punished me, but I’ve never seen a lion or a tiger.  The guys had described them to me though as being absolute monsters and the most dangerous things imaginable.  It was hard to imagine anything more dangerous than a bear.  Especially after a few days of being punished and having them all around me.  After a few days of that, I was always amazed that I was still alive.

Then there was the punishment where they took me once when they were all drunk and….  I didn’t want to think about that one.  It had been too horrible.  I had nightmares about it a lot.

I had done wrong.  I had messed with men’s business.  I had talked to the cops.  And because of that, I deserved whatever I was going to get.

The Last Jeskey - Chapter 12

 

The Last Jeskey

By Karen Singer

 

Chapter 12

 

(Day 2 – Friday)

 

Sheriff Cobb

 

My deputies finally finished inside the house.  The haul of guns we had found in there seemed to be huge, but the reality of it was that there were five men who lived in that house, and they all hunted.  I didn’t want to think about what they did with all the handguns, but no doubt they used them for murder.  They probably used most, or all of those rifles for murder too.  No proof though, except maybe the clothes I had gotten from Freak.  And if we didn’t find any bodies or proof of other crimes, more than likely all those guns from the house would have to be returned to Dave and Gary Jeskey.

Amanda came back into the house after putting Freak’s bloody things in the car.  We were just waiting now for one of my men to bring back something big enough to cut the locks on those false-wall hiding places in the barn.

“What now Sheriff?” Amanda asked.

“Other than waiting for those bolt cutters, nothing.  I’d send a bunch of you out into the woods to start searching for anything else, but somehow I think that’s going to be a much bigger effort.  Too much for right now.  My first priority is getting into the places we found in the barn.”

“What about her?” Amanda asked.  “Not to mention, I just carried practically every stitch of clothing she owns out to the car.  What are you going to do with her?”

What was I going to do with her.  That was my big problem.  “I still don’t know,” I told her.  “We’ve got nothing to hold her on, and I get the impression she doesn’t exactly want to leave.”

“No, she doesn’t,” Amanda agreed.  “But how’s she going to take care of herself?”

I shrugged.  “Dave and Gary are still around.  Although I can tell you that Dave is going to jail for a bit just as soon as we can find him since he attacked Lowrey and ran off.  Still, I guess it will be up to Gary to take care of her now.  According to Dave, Gary disappeared last night some time and hasn’t been back.  He doesn’t have a clue where he is, and he didn’t seem to care.  Said Gary is a grown man.  He can take care of himself.”

“So she stays,” Amanda realized, she sounded sad about that, and I couldn’t blame her.

“For now,” I agreed.  “But someone’s going to have to drag that girl into the real world, and something tells me it isn’t going to be easy.”

“No,” Amanda agreed.  “She’s too…set in her ways.”

“Brainwashed!” I told her.  “That’s how I’m looking at it.  My wife thinks so too.”  Amanda nodded and walked away.

Out of the corner of my eye, I kept a watch on Freak as she went around picking things up from where my deputies had made such a mess of the place.  I kept one deputy out front on Gary watch, just in case he showed up.  I wanted to know as soon as possible.

The deputy finally showed up with the biggest pair of bolt cutters I had ever seen, and most of my deputies followed me into the barn.  The deputy had to struggle like crazy with those cutters since the lock and chain were so big, but he finally got it cut.  The chain was pulled free and the deputy turned the handle and pulled.  A three-foot section of the wall at the back of the horse stall swung open.  Someone had done an awfully good job of disguising that door.  If I hadn’t seen it, I wouldn’t have believed it.  I led the way inside.  It was dark just inside the door, but my flashlight noticed a light switch against the wall.  I flipped it and a row of lights lit up that went from one end of the barn where we were to the very back.  And inside that space…the mother-load!

Shelves seemed to stretch along the outer wall from one end all the way back.  And those shelves were loaded with things.  There were stacks on those shelves of drugs of all sorts.  And further back, what I could only guess were stolen items.  Everything from jewelry to paintings.  It looked like the Jeskeys had been busy.

“I’m guessing this is enough to arrest Gary Jeskey?” Deputy Russ said.

I looked up and down the inside of that hidden space.  “Yup!  All the drugs pretty much cements it for Gary and Dave both.”

“And what about Freak?” Amanda asked.

That of course, was another problem.  I didn’t answer.

When we finished on that side, we all trooped over to the other side of the barn to another horse stall and found the little hidden door there.  Once we got inside, it was like being hit over the head with a lack of reality.  Guns!  Lots of guns.  All kinds of guns.  Enough to start a small war.  Maybe a big war.  I found boxes of explosives too.

“Leave it all!” I told my guys.  “With this much, I’m calling in the state crime scene people.  It’s too much for us to handle now.”

I walked out of there.  Once out of the barn I pulled my phone out and made a call to a number I had programmed in, but had figured I’d never call.  I told them what we found and tried to imprint in the guy’s tiny imagination just how much we had found.  The guy laughed but said he’d pass on the message to someone.

My next call went to the D.A.  Dale didn’t seem to completely believe me either.  He wasn’t exactly happy about the fact that I had called in the state crime guys.  I suggested that maybe we could get them to pay for all the DNA we needed to have tested.  Suddenly he seemed to be a lot happier.  He authorized the arrest of both Dave and Gary Jeskey right on the spot, not that I figured I needed any authorization for it.

I sent half my men back to the station to tend to business, but I hung around with five others that included Amanda, just because Freak was there.  Dave never came back.  Gary never showed up either, but the state crime scene guys rolled in halfway through the afternoon.  I showed them the side of the barn with the drugs.  They didn’t seem all that surprised by any of it.  But when I showed them the side with the guns, the lead guy walked out cursing.  He turned to me and told me that I was going to be considered a hero for finding all that stuff.  Shit!  I wasn’t even going to get a thank you from anyone, and I knew it.  I stood there and listened as he called his boss and told him they needed another truck to hold all the evidence.

It was nearly seven o’clock at night before they all cleared out.  It was time for us, including me, to leave.

“And Freak?” Amanda asked.

Yeah, she would have to remind me.  I headed back into the house and found Freak sitting in a chair hugging her long hair.  “We’re going,” I told her.  Then I decided to give her the option.  “Do you want to go with us?”

She seemed suddenly afraid.  “No!” she said.  “Please no.  I can’t take any more of that!  I want to stay here.”

I nodded.  “I don’t know where Gary and Dave are.  I don’t know if they’ll be back.  Are you going to be okay?”

“I’ll be fine,” she assured me.  “Sometimes all the guys go away for days at a time.  I don’t want to leave!”

“Fine.  Tell you what though, I’ll have someone check on you tomorrow.”

“I’m fine,” she told me.

I touched the brim of my hat and lightly pushed it down.  “Bye then.  And good luck.”

“Was that wise?” Amanda asked as we headed back to the car.

“She wants to stay, and according to the D.A. we can’t hold her,” I replied.

That night, I filled Natalie in on everything that happened that day.  Naturally, she was more interested in Freak than in all the contraband we had found.  “If we can ever get our hands on Dave and Gary,” I told her, “she’s going to be all alone out there.”

“Will,” Nat said.  “She’ll have no way to get any food or anything.  Not to mention, you left her with practically no clothes to wear at all.  What’s she going to do?”

“I don’t know I admitted.  “And before you say anything else, yes, I am concerned about it.”

It was almost five minutes later before Nat said anything else.  “Will.  What if I checked with some of the women’s shelters.  There’s none here in this county, but maybe I can get her into another one.”

I considered that.  “Do it!” I told her.  “That sounds like about the best idea I could imagine.”

“Of course, it would only be temporary,” she said, “but maybe it will do until we can find something better for her.”

“Nat,” I said, “do it.  I’d much rather see her in one of those places than anywhere else, and I’m getting tired of worrying about her.  I’ve got bigger issues to deal with right now, but she’s taking up all my time.”

“I’ll talk to my boss tomorrow,” she agreed.  “I’ll let you know what I can set up.  If, I can find any place to take her.”

“Yeah.  And if I can get her off that property again.  She didn’t seem too fond of modern life.”

“No,” Amanda agreed.  She didn’t.”