The Last Jeskey - Chapter 17

 

The Last Jeskey

By Karen Singer

 

Chapter 17

 

(Day 3 – Saturday)

 

Freaky

 

There were actually a lot of people in that shelter place they had sent me to.  More people than I was comfortable being around.  I was surprised to discover that the only people there though were all either women, or women and their…kids.  Actual kids…and a baby.  That fact somehow made me very uncomfortable, although I didn’t know why.

Shantel and Lisa tried to introduce me to a lot of the women there, but by the time they were halfway through them all, I simply couldn’t take any more.  It was too many!  I left them and ran, trying to find a quiet place where I could be by myself.  I wound up standing outside the door that led into that old woman’s room.  She wasn’t there though, which was good.  I just wanted to be left alone.  Why did this place have to have so many people in it?

I finally found the courage to go back to that big room with all the chairs and the kids and the TV thing.  I sat by myself and got fascinated by something.  That something being the baby in the woman’s arms.  I couldn’t stop watching it.  It was so…little.  And helpless.  And…I didn’t know the words for it.  Only that it fascinated me.

As far as I could see, that TV thing was fascinating everyone else.  All it did to me though was to confuse me.  I didn’t understand the pictures on it, and I didn’t understand what those pictures seemed to be saying.  As far as I was concerned, that TV thing was men’s stuff, and they could have it!  Would that woman let me touch her baby?  Or at least take a closer look?

“There you are Baby Doll.”

 I looked up and saw Shantel and Lisa heading for me.

“Feeling better?” Shantel asked.

“Yeah.  I guess,” I told her.  “It’s just…too many people.  Why are there so many here?”

“Hony Pie,” she said, “There’s a lot of us women who’ve been through hell.  Too many of us.  This is just a place we can go to get a bit of help.  And trust me, places like this are few and far between.  I wish there were a lot more.”

“I didn’t need help,” I told her.

“Maybe you just didn’t know you did,” she replied.  “Now…” she said.  “Lisa and me…okay, just me, I was wondering…”

“What?” I asked.

“Ever since I first saw you, I’ve been amazed at all that hair you’ve got.  And Baby Doll, I love playing with hair.  So, would you mind if I played a bit with yours?”

I was confused.  “Play with my hair?  What for?”

“Cause I want to,” she said.  “If I can ever get my life straightened out, I’m hoping to become a hairdresser someday.  And Honey Pie, you have got about the biggest head of hair I’ve ever seen.  So what say?  Can I play?”

I unconsciously hugged the mass of hair in my lap.  “I don’t want my hair cut!” I told her.

“Heaven forbid!” Shantel replied.  “That’s something I would never do…unless of course you wanted me to.  Then I’d give it a go.  So…what say?  Can I play?  I want to get my fingers in that mess so bad!”

As far as I could see, she had been trying to be nice to me since I got there.  “I guess,” I told her.

“Good!  Come on, Baby.  Let’s go find someplace quieter than this.  We can talk easier there too.”

Against my better judgment, I got up and walked with her and Lisa all the way down to one of the rooms full of beds.  Shantel grabbed a chair and pulled it out between the rows of beds and had me sit in it, then she started grabbing all my hair and pulled it back, running her fingers through the top of it.  I don’t know what she was doing, but it felt really nice.  I closed my eyes for a moment and just enjoyed the feeling.  “Mm,” I said.  “That feels good.”

“Just enjoy it Baby Doll,” she said.  “Man, you got some hair here.”

Lisa sat on one of the beds nearby.  “Did you have a family where you came from?” she asked me.  “Do you have any kids?”

“Kids?  Me?” I said.  “Where would I get kids?  I wasn’t supposed to be seen by anyone.  If the guys knew how many people have seen me now they’d probably kill me for sure, and that’s on top of the fact that they’re already going to kill me for what I’ve done.”

Lisa looked surprised.  “You weren’t supposed to be seen?” she said.  “What do you mean?”

“The only time the guys let me be seen by people coming to the house, was when they said it was okay.  Otherwise, I was supposed to stay hidden like a good girl.”

“A good girl?” Shantel asked.

“Yeah.  Of course.  You know.  Girls are supposed to take care of the men, otherwise, they need to stay out of the way and out of sight.  You know that.”

“Honey Pie, I don’t know any such thing!” Shantel exclaimed as I felt her sectioning off part of my hair at the side.

Lisa reached out and lightly grabbed my hand.  “I had a boyfriend,” she told me.  “And I really loved him.  Still do I guess.”

I had no idea what a boyfriend was supposed to be, other than a boy of course.

“I wanted him enough that we finally got married.  I was convinced we were going to be happy together.  But then the beatings started.  And they got worse and worse, and they seemed to come more often.  I wound up in the emergency room a couple of times.  The last time, the police brought me here.  I don’t know what I’m going to do now.  I still love my husband, but if I go back, I know he’s going to beat me.  Maybe hurt me really bad.  I just don’t know what to do.”

“Don’t go back!” Shantel told her.  “I’ve told you that a million times now.  You can do better girl.  A lot better.”

“But…”

“Yeah,” Shantel said.  “You love him.  Hell, get your ass out of the gutter and get over it.”

“And what am I supposed to do?” Lisa said.  “You know I’ve got no way to support myself or take care of myself.  And my parents want nothing to do with me anymore.”

“Yeah,” Shantel said softly.  “I know.  It’s a problem.”  I felt her pulling up on my hair.  “It sounds like this one here’s got her problems with family too.  Just like I do, just like all of us here.  I guess, that’s what we’re all here to figure out.  How do we move on from where we’ve been.”

“Freaky,” Lisa said.  “The people you lived with.  You said they tried to keep you hidden.  Did they ever…hurt you?”

I was surprised by that.  “All the time,” I told her.  “Any time I did anything at all that wasn’t like a good girl, they punished me.”

“H…how did they punish you?” she asked.

“Lots and lots of ways,” I told her.  “They were always inventing new ways to do things to me, and it seemed like all of them either hurt, or I was lucky to be alive when they were over.  Lots of times Bo or one of the others would tell me they had no reason not to kill me, and if it wasn’t for them, I’d already be dead.  And it’s true.  If it wasn’t for them, I would have died a long time ago.”

“Are you saying they tried to kill you?” Lisa asked.

“It seemed like it,” I told her.  “They always said I was lucky to still be alive.”

“How did they try to kill you?  With a knife or a gun?”

“Oh, no,” I said.  “They take me into the woods instead.  I hate the woods.  It’s dangerous there.”

“They just took you into the woods and left you?  Why couldn’t you just find your way back?”

“Because they keep finding new ways to punish me.”

“Like what?” Lisa asked again.

“Like…the last time, they took me to a big tree and hung me upside down by my ankles.  Then they whipped me real bad, then they left me hanging there like that for a few days.”

“Days?” Lisa exclaimed.

“Yeah.  Sure.  They always leave me for a few days.”

“Upside down?”

“That was just the last time.  The time before that, actually most of the time, they dug a hole in the woods and put me in it so that just my head was showing, then they stomped all over the dirt so it was packed down really tight.  I couldn’t move anything.”

“And how long did they leave you like that?” Shantel asked, no longer doing anything with my hair.

“A few days, like always.”

“Damn!” Shantel muttered before she went back to what she was doing with my hair.

“Are all your punishments like that?” Lisa asked.

“Mostly,” I told her.  “Of course, every time I get punished I also wind up eating nothing but dog food for a real long time.  I hate that, but I know I deserve it.  I try to be a good girl, but it seems like I keep doing things they don’t like.  Right now, I’m supposed to be eating nothing but dog food for the foreseeable future, and I don’t know how Gary and Dave are going to punish me when they get back.”

Shantel dropped my hair and walked around in front of me.  She pointed her finger at me.  “Girl, don’t ever say you want to go back to that place again.  You belong here.  Just like all of us.  Maybe more than all of us.  You need this place.”

“No I don’t.  I just want to go home!”

“Hell.  Get that out of your head.  No you don’t want to go back there.”

“Yes I do,” I told her.

Lisa grabbed my hand again.  “That’s my problem too.  No matter how bad it was, I still love him.  I want to go back.”

“And you’re both nuts!” Shantel said as she went back to fussing with my hair.  What was she doing with it anyway?

I sat there and let Shantel do whatever she was doing.  She seemed to be working further and further away from my head.  “I’ve never been able to talk to other women before,” I said.  “Other than the guys, I’ve never been allowed to talk to anyone before.”

“Never?” Lisa asked.

“Never,” I told her.  “I always wanted to, especially another woman, but there’s not that many women who came to the house, and most of the time the guys made me hide when they were around.  I saw a few of them though.  I even brought them beer once in a while.  I was just never allowed to talk to them.  And mostly, they still wanted me out of sight.”

“There you are!” someone said.  I turned and saw that old woman walking into the room.  She took a look at what Shantel was doing to my hair.  “Nice,” she told her.  “Shantel, you’re going to make a real good hairdresser someday.”

“That’s my goal,” Shantel told her.

“Keep at it.  I’ve got a couple of old hairbands in my desk if you need them to hold that when you’re done.”

“Thanks Miss Kriss,” Shantel replied happily.  “That’ll help.”

“How you doin’ Lisa?” she asked.

“Fine Miss Kriss,” Lisa told her.  “We’re just sitting here talking.”

“Good.  It’s good for you,” Miss Kriss replied.  Then she turned to me.  “Freaky,” she said, “I got a call from your friend Natalie a little while ago, and I’m afraid I’ve got some good news for you, and some bad.”

I wasn’t sure what that was supposed to mean, so I said nothing.

“Natalie told me it’s not for sure yet, but they’re pretty sure they figured out what your last name is.”

“My last name?  What for?”

“Cause it’s something you should have.”

“For what?” I asked.

“For…whatever.  But it seems your last name is Jeskey.”

“Like the guys,” I realized.

“But there was some bad news too.”

“What’s that?” I asked.

“It seems that someone called David managed to crash his pickup truck, and he died in the accident.  I’m sorry, but he’s gone.”

“Uncle David is dead?”

She nodded.  “So it seems.  I’m sorry.”

I realized something.  “That just leaves Gary.”

“So you’ve still got some family,” she said.

“Yeah but…Uncle Gary likes to hurt people.  Including me.  And he already told me before he left that he was going to kill me.”

“Miss Kriss,” Lisa said.  “When she says he’s going to kill her, she means…kill her!  As in dead.”

 

The Last Jeskey - Chapter 16

 

The Last Jeskey

By Karen Singer

 

Chapter 16

 

(Day 3 – Saturday)

 

Sheriff Cobb

 

After spending a major part of the day dealing with Dave Jeskey, I finally had a chance to get to one of the primary things that had been on my list, going out to talk with Wendel Cramp, the guy who owned the junkyard and had supposedly seen Bo Jeskey kill Tommy Simmons.  I was about halfway out there when my phone rang.  “Hello,” I said, praying it wouldn’t be another something to keep me from doing what still needed to be done.

“Hey Will,” Natalie’s voice came back.

“Hi Honey,” I replied happily.  “Everything go okay with dropping Freak off?”

“It took Amanda and me both to get her out of that house, but we just dropped her off and we’re heading home now.”

“Good,” I replied.  “Have a good trip.”

“We will,” she replied.  “Did you ever catch Dave Jeskey?”

“Yeah.  But not until he turned off the road, hit a ditch, rolled his truck a few dozen times, and died as result.  I did manage to talk to him a bit before he actually died though.  And mostly the only thing he was willing to talk about was Freak.”

“Freak?  What did he tell you?”

“Not nearly enough,” I replied.  “Except that the only reason she seems to be alive was so that Bo Jeskey could turn her into some kind of living example of something too shameful to believe.”

“Will,” Nat said.  “You know that because of my job I’ve seen some women who’ve been living in the worst conditions possible and who’ve gone through some pretty horrific things.  Things even worse than Freaky seems to have been through.  But there’s just something about Freaky’s situation that really gets to me.”

“Yeah,” I said.  “I know what you mean.  One new thing I can tell you though is that Dave let me know that Freak is actually related to all of them.  Something happened between Bo and his brother Clive, and Bo went out and murdered both his brother and his wife.  Then he took their kid home with him for the purpose of some kind of warped retribution against his brother.  There’s a problem there though that I’m not going to go into over the phone.”

“What kind of problem?” she asked.

“One that most likely we’re not going to be able to do anything about.”

“Like what?”

“Don’t worry about it.  It’s a bit too unbelievable to be true.”

I heard her sigh.  “Like everything else in her life.”

“I guess that’s true,” I agreed.  “But now that Dave is dead, Freak and Gary may be the only two Jeskeys left on planet earth.”

“The only two?” she asked.

“I don’t really know,” I conceded.  “But it’s very possible.”

“Will.  A thought just occurred to me.  If it’s just Freak and Gary left, is there any possibility that Freaky might be able to lay claim to any money that Bo and his boys might have had?”

“Not a clue,” I admitted.  “But now that you mention it, when we searched that farm, the one thing we didn’t find was money.  And I’m pretty sure there’s got to be some somewhere since they were running not just drugs, but guns too.  And despite the fact that none of those men ever worked at a job in their lives, they all seemed to have plenty of money for their needs.  Hell, that truck of Dave’s that I chased this morning had to cost a good bit.”

“Is there any way we can check to see if she’s entitled to anything they have?”

“We haven’t even found any money yet,” I reminded her.

“But just in case.”

“Uh, I really don’t know.”  An idea struck me.  “Tell you what.  Roxie asked for a public defender, which around here means either Pam or Les McGregor.  I can mention it to whichever of them shows up to talk to Roxie, which should have already happened since I’ve been tied up with Dave Jeskey all day.  Either way, I’ll get in touch with them about it.”

“That might be good,” Nat replied.  “Will, when you check with them, maybe they might have an idea for a better solution as to what we can do with her too.  We were lucky to get her into that shelter, but I already know they’re not going to keep her very long.”

“Yeah,” I replied.  “I think that’s usually the case with those places, especially since they’re not in our county.  Tell you what, I’ll call the McGregors now and pass the word for you.”

“Great Will.  Thanks.”

I ended the call and pushed the buttons to call back to the station.  I instructed my chief deputy, Russ, to contact the McGregors and have one of them give me a call.  Another thought came to mind before I hung up on him.  “Russ,” I said.  “I also need you to put the word out to all the law enforcement agencies in the state to see if any of them have a possible murder case for a Clive Jeskey and his wife.  Or at least see if any of them have ever heard of him.  According to Dave Jeskey, Bo killed him and his wife.  Knowing Bo though, I’m betting this could be a missing person’s case instead of murder.  And Russ, it would be a pretty old case if it exists.  Let’s at least see if anyone has ever even heard of Clive Jeskey.”

“Who’s Clive?” Russ asked.  “I’ve never heard of him.”

“Me either,” I told him.  “Evidently, he was Bo’s brother.”

“On it,” Russ told me.

The junkyard came into sight.  It was time to get back into my overdue business so we could put the murder of Bo Jeskey and his sons to rest.  Not to mention, we might have another murder case on our hands, Roxie’s brother Tommy.  If there was an ancient case concerning Bo’s brother Clive, I wasn’t sure who’s jurisdiction that would fall into, but hopefully it wouldn’t be mine.

Wendel Cramps wasn’t exactly the brightest lightbulb in the bunch, but we had never had any problem from him.  He was actually a rather soft-spoken fellow who mostly kept to himself.  The only reason I knew him as well as I did was because we often had to have vehicles towed out to his junkyard.  I found Wendel in his small, junk-filled office.

“Sheriff!” he greeted me pleasantly.  “What can I do for you?”

“Hi Wendel,” I said.  “I need to talk to you about something Roxie Simmons told me.”

“That would be what I seen when Bo Jeskey killed her brother Tom,” he replied.

“You saw that?” I said, looking for confirmation.

“Sure did,” he replied.  “And now that I hear Bo and those two boys of his are dead, I don’t mind talkin’ to you about it so much.  Mind though, I’m still more than a might worried about his other two boys, Dave and Gary.”

“Well, Dave is dead now too,” I told him, “so you can cross him off your list.  And I’m hoping to have Gary in custody very soon, so you can stop worrying about him too.”

“Then what do you want to know?  Like I said, I seen it happen.  Scared the shit out of me, but I seen it all.”

“What exactly did you see Wendal?” I asked.

“I was out grabbin’ a part from an old nineteen-ninety-eight Ford truck I had parked out by my back fence,” he told me.  “Mind you, I was underneath the thing at the time, but that don’t mean I couldn’t see everything just perfectly fine.”

“Got it,” I replied.  “You were hidden out of sight…legitimately.  You had a reason to be out there in the first place.”

“Yup!” he said.  “Anyway, I saw this red pickup come drivin’ out right behind my fence.  Now what the hell would someone be doing back there?  Especially when he stopped and parked not far from me.  I was about to crawl out from under that truck to find out, when I saw two more pickups come drivin’ up too.  When the other two trucks arrived, I saw Tom Simmons get out of the red one, and Bo and two of his boys, Steve and Ben got out of the other two trucks.”  He shook his head.  “Sorry, but I couldn’t hear a thing of what they were sayin’.  I could see them real well, but they was too far away from me to really hear.  Anyway, I kept a good eye on them all ‘cause as I saw it, they had no business bein’ back there to begin with.”

“Okay.  What happened?” I asked.

“Well, all of a sudden, Bo reaches behind his back and pulls out a gun and shoots Tom dead.  Then he leaned over and spits on him.  He talked to his two boys for a moment, then headed back to his truck.  Ben walked up to Tom’s body, pulled out a gun, and shot him too, even though he was already dead.  And then Steve did the same.  The two boys picked up the body and threw it in the back of Tom’s pickup.  Ben drove it off and Steve drove his own truck.  That’s all I saw Sheriff, but I can tell you, it scared me to death.”

“And you didn’t feel like you could let us at the sheriff’s department know?”

“Sheriff!  That was Bo Jeskey and his boys we’re talkin’ about.  You got to know what kind of trouble I’d be in if’n they ever got word that I had told you what I seen.  And those guys got ears everywhere.”

“Yeah,” I said.  “More than likely, you’re right.  I guess you’ve got no idea where they took Tom Simmon’s truck.”

He shook his head.  “Not a clue.  Just that Ben drove it off somewhere.”

“Okay,” I said.  “So like it or not, we’ve got another dead body out there somewhere that we need to find, but at least we know for sure who did it.”

“Hell yeah Sheriff,” he replied.

“Wendel,” I said.  “The next time you see someone getting murdered, don’t worry about them finding out and getting retribution against you for it.  Just call us.  We’ll handle it.”

“Sheriff,” he said.  “You just told me Dave Jeskey is dead now too, but that still leaves Gary.  Do you have any idea how much trouble that one is?  Trust me, the others may be dead, but I’m still worried.  Gary is a bad one.  Real bad.”

“So I’ve heard.  Take care Wendel.”

I left him and went back to my truck.  What the hell did the Jeskeys do with the dead body, not to mention Tom’s pickup?  Not to mention, what did they do with all the dead bodies we suspected might be out there?  No proof.  This time we had an eyewitness to a murder, but once again, no body to pin that murder to.  Without that body it was all hearsay.  Proof and the Jeskeys just didn’t seem to go together.

I was practically back to the sheriff’s station when my phone rang again.  I didn’t recognize the number.  “Hello?” I said once I had connected the call.

“Sheriff?  It’s Pam McGregor.”

“Pam!” I said, recognizing the lawyer’s voice.  “Thanks for getting back to me.”

“What do you need?” she asked.  “Did you arrest anyone else for us to defend?”

“Not exactly,” I told her.  “Sorry, but you missed out on Dave Jeskey.  Seems he enjoyed rolling his truck a bit too much instead of stopping so we could chat, and he died as result.”

“Sorry,” she said.  “I can’t defend someone who’s dead.  But I’m guessing you didn’t call about him.”

“Nope.  But as it turns out, I am calling about someone related to him.”

“We’re already defending Roxie Simmons, and she let us know that Bo, Ben, and Steve are dead, and you just told us that now Dave is dead too.  That just leaves Gary.  Did you catch him?”

“Nope.  Not yet.  But we hope to soon.  Believe it or not, I’m calling about yet another Jeskey.  One we didn’t know about.  A girl.”

“One of those Jeskeys had a daughter?  I didn’t know.”

“She’s not actually Bo’s or one of his boy’s offspring.  But Bo…sort of…raised her as his.”

“What’s sort of mean?”

“Pam, it’s too much of a story for over the phone and a lot of it is a bit too unbelievable to believe.  My wife, Natalie, just dropped the girl off down at a shelter for women a few counties away from here, so she’s away from their farm, but it’s only temporary.  But Nat had this idea that maybe, since she and Gary may be the last Jeskeys on earth, that maybe some of the money that the dead ones had might be able to go to her.  The only problem is, we don’t know about any money yet, or even what would happen to it if we found it.  And if we do find some, I’m sure the state would want some, if not all of it.”

“No doubt,” Pam agreed.  “Sheriff, since your wife is one of the few social workers this county has, I’ve worked with her more than a few times.  Let me call her and see if I can get any more details.  One thing I can tell you though, is that more than likely I’m going to want to have a meeting to get all the details about her before I even decide if I’m taking her case or not, and that’s if there even is a case.”

“That’s fine,” I told her.  “Work it out with Nat.  If you need me, I’ll try to be there.”

“Good enough Sheriff,” she said.  “I’ll be in touch.”

“Thanks Pam,” I told her before ending the call.  It would be nice if I could finally get Freak off my mind and out of my way.  I had a job to do, and she didn’t need to be such a major part of it.  Finding Gary Jeskey, that was now the most major thing at the top of my to-do list.

After talking with Dave Jeskey earlier today, I had another item on my ever-growing list of things to do too.  Something I never figured I’d ever have to do.  Talk to a witch!

 

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.