By Coldcase Detective, Maggie Maise
Dark Boy wandered down a singular country road on Slain Street. His ripped and torn three-thousand dollar designer jeans spoke of the teenagers he had helped slaughter. They hired them to sell drugs for the string of dealers from here to Arkansas. And then they killed them fast. With no one to avenge the boys, some of them came from families who did care, some who cared and were too poor to do anything about it ~ And still others, nice boys who got lost in the shuffle of the mean mother who stuck her brat drug using and selling kids out front because she was too mean to punish, and hoped hers would punish innocent and other humble kids for not having served her little bullies best.Dark Boy’s Bleedville, Illinois mother thought she taught him how to do it better. How he loved to puff up in his red-robin pride when he thought of himself and of all of the evil satanic godlessness he had secretly committed and gotten away with. But mostly he slithered around Bleedville hanging out in the dark and crusted drug shacks painted farm crackle white and heisting heinous lies for leveredge of later days ~ Or so he thought. But what he did not know is that the latter days were already here, and the bells had come to toll for him. As mama taught him, when he opened his mouth to lie, his black tongue dropped down and fell out green and smooth. Something like a woman’s pre-pregnancy goo, green of color, slithered out of the mean idiot’s slummed-up mouth, because like his mother, when did he tell a lie? Every time he opened up his mean mouth.As a cold wind hit him, he spoke. And the white chill of winter got him every time and froze the slime like a thousand years of flem on two lines below his wide, flared nose. Like the time he made plans to hide the drugs at mama’s house. Using her house for the pivotal Satan point-of-sell contact, the dark, arrogant then eighteen-year old outsmarted police by what he bragged to everybody about in Bleedville, Illinois ~ That he gave free drugs to some people in the area who said they served the local government there. At least, that’s what he said he and they did. To keep things quiet for himself.
One could never really know though, could they? But one thing one could know for sure as a cruel summer day in Bleedville, Illinois and it’s sister towns of Tebecca, Spleenville, a good place to breed and raise a wicked and corrupt family, Torento, Illinois is long. He killed his older brother and he did not care. And neither did his mom. It was the other woman’s son she sacrificed for hers. So what the heck. All was fair in love and war in Bleedville, Spleenville and Torento. Dangling there, the meth tucked in his younger sister’s shirt pockets totalled thousands of dollars. Hiding on her father’s property, she loved stealing and selling the meager property of his new wife even though she knew he kept her carless, and penniless and never gave her jack, because of the girl’s mom’s own meaness against him. She examined the tattoo on her body on the back of her neck that matched that of her mother as she hung hiding from the old oak tree like a bat fresh out of Hell. Soon the cops would be on the way. She laughed wickedly as she remembered the night she and her boyfriend drove up and sacked all of her dad’s new wive’s only belongings in the army green pick-up truck and sold it for crack. Even the Curtis Mathes Stereo. The girl knew the woman could prove she bought it in Tulsa, Oklahoma. That records, paperwork and sales receipts could be traced ~ The greedy girl had no more respect for that than the young man’s life she had ended in a car wreck just to get more crack into her body. Like her mother, it was all for me. And none for you. Scoot. Boot. And ugly.
No holly, jolly Christmas that. Dark boy continued walking down the dark road called Slain Street. This was no rubidue of a plan tonight. He planned to get some prime cash for selling the life of his older brother to some crooked drug boys to get them out of hock for their lives and greedily and self centered as usual, his. His brother lived over the bar called The Black Owl. The father had thrown the good boy out because of the assignment of Dark Boy’s mother. Life or death. Bread and butter. Who cared. It was all the same. He bit into a hard snicker bar filled with nuts and let his tongue travel lustily over each and every one. He thought of his ugly hearted girlfriend, and mumbled to himself about how he was going to trick the nimwit into buying him and his sister some kind of desired material thing next. He smacked his stomach and broke out into an evil version of the Mr. Bojangle dance, and danced farther on down the black smogged country road.
The town was undergoing a shakedown. The good governor’s son who wanted to move his good family to the small town of Spleenville and buy a house there, had heard from somebody at the state capitol of Illinois that there was a lot of corruptness going on in the town. This made the good governor’s son very sad, as his great, great, great, great, great grandmother had bought a piece of property in Spleenville when the French settled the town. Known for the little hills and vales that once emanated a slice of French countryside, the original Europeans likely did not envision the crack ridden murdertown, or the existential criminal regime under the direction of the dark boy’s mid level illegal drug and teen murder management team.
But unbeknownst to the town, the governor’s son moved another friend’s good son into a job at the local sheriff’s department. This man, not used to performing an undercurrent of godless evil and flowing in it much like the dark boy’s black hooded late night of the church of the devil meetings. At Christmas time and otherwise, many of the older and more gentle humble elderly people of the town secretly wished they could roast the dark boy, actually of German European descent, on an open fire.
Christmas eve came quicker than everyone expected. And during the night that dark boy and his sister usually spent robbing houses and terrorizing the other kids their age at the high school – A thing that caused many of the parents to sell their houses and move to Shedwardsville, not a much better choice. The land where all of the attorneys charged way too much and did way too little. In any case, though, this was the night that Dark Boy decided to sell his older half brother’s life for a piece of silver. Giving him the kiss of death earlier that day, he visited him at his little dump of an apartment over the top of the street tavern. He pretended to invite him to Christmas dinner at his dark hearted mom’s trailer dump for the next day, for a meal of turkey and thick, plump gravy as dark as cow manure. Faryl, the older boy said he really just wanted to stay in and rest over the holidays as he’d been working for a double promotion at the construction yard just to get his rent paid. Faryl told Dark Boy, whose real name was Smaddam, he knew he’d told Smaddam eight months before or more that he was done with drugs. Aw, said Dark Boy. “Now you know I got that crack hid in my mom’s kitchen cabinet.” Flour bin theology tsked Faryl. “Dark Boy, it’s time to knock it off and get right with God. You know they’re going to find out your behind the deaths of all of those teenage boys one of these days.” “But, I have so much hatred in my bones and my veins. This dark, ugly, angry, violent bitterness my mother put here monitors me every second of my life. Everything I touch turns to hate.” Dark Boy took off down the stairs. But not before putting dubs on Faryl’s boots and guitar. Memories, he knew he’d grab of the boy’s dead carcus and a few of his belongings once his Satan friends got through beating him to death. He went to meet the murderers, not even realizing as he drove by in a stolen old dark, cranberry Cadillac the new sheriff who passed him by the road on the other side. The man, the epitomy of godlight probably shielded in it noticed the dark entourage floating by on the other side, and discerned an immediate evil.
Standing at the edge of Howl Creek off of Demented Road in Torento, Illinois, the dark boy and his two accomplices discussed the night’s business. “He’s a big boy. He knows boxing. He won’t be that easy to haul off,” they complained. “Naw,” insisted the dark boy. “Promise, I’ll make it so smooth and easy, the police’ll never know who did what until we have some time to move around and get away.” “Look,” said Dark Boy. “Give me the cash for selling you my half brother’s life now, and meet me next to Snalderman Bogie’s house at eight pee m.” The other slightly darker boy, also a white boy and the son of the town minister and the second-in-line pastor for the local Church of Satan, handed dark boy a sack of cold cash money, filtered with a good stash of freshly made homemade meth, he’d just cooked up in the midst of a group of stinking, nasty pitbulls at Dark Boy’s sister’s house.
The murder plan for the night was all set in order. One of many that Dark Boy had sold and supervised for the tri-state drug ring. But this one had one small gliche. The new sheriff in town. Walking into the police department of Spleenville, Sheriff John Dorighty, finally, sniffed a sleeze in the air. Sneezing out loud, the thing was so powerful he thought the force used properly could blow the windows out of the home of a lying bastard anywhere at any time. He was right. He’d just finished casing the sprawling, flat stretching seemingly bored farmfields of the tri-communities when he heard an ambulance go by. Ambulances in this area didn’t do much save take old people to the grave, and old people round these parts meant 90’s and 100’s for those who lived a good life and usually 60’s or 70’s or sooner for those who didn’t and 19 or 20 or less for those who used meth.
Sheriff Dorighty hurried to the new cop car he’d just got out of. Thinking it best to check to see who was being rushed and headed fast to the hospital, his intuition told him something. When he got to the emergency ward, the first he saw on a stretcher with a group of emergency ward crew was a young teenager boy covered in stab wounds. The crew worked fast to bring him back to life. Sheriff Dorighty pitched in, rolling up his sleeves and performing C.P.R. as fast as he could and with everything he had within his soul along with the hospital emergency team! Sweat pouring down every face, the unconscience red headed boy with a freckled nose showed no signs of life whatsoever. The color of the Irish looking boy’s white skin drained from every pore of him. Sheriff Dorighty kneeled down next to the blood filled white bed sheets, and as one drop hit the sharp shining smart, furniture polished white linoleum hospital floor he prayed. “Dear Jesus, don’t let the boy die, please God, if you’re a real God.” Weeping profusely, while ripping and tearing at his stiff, starched gray sheriff’s shirt he looked down at the glinting star badge, and remembered his vow to God and to himself years ago. And as one finger reached down to touch a single drop of blood, osmosis met fingertip, all workers looked on. A single eyelid fluttered open. And Sheriff Dorighty Finally smacked the floor repeatedly playing a series of Thank the Lord My God patty cakes with open webbed fingers hooked to the gentle surgeon-like white, clean smelling dear, delicate hands. The chapped, crack lipped boy mumbled something. “No, no my boy,” hushed the good sheriff gently standing. He wanted to take him in his arms like a child and caress his sweet, soft red curls. The two males blinked at eachother with eyes covering dual spirits bred of the original sweet innocence of the bo didney kindness of the Lord God, Jesus Christ himself. Sheriff Dorighty knew that somehow, someway he had to get to the bottom of this. Who was killing and trying to kill more teenage boys, and seeming to get away with it all? He knew right then, he had to find the center nucleus of the dark creature heading up and responsible for all of this. And little did the dear, good man know that he had just passed him on the cornfield that day while making his rounds. The presence so dark, that it seemed not even Satan wanted to look his way.
Dorighty asked the Lord God to direct him in wisdom, information and discernment. And soon it was if the supernatural hand of destiny had reached down and drove him to an overall redemption, encompassing a broad and vast territory of everything he was ever built, birthed and designed for. Through sovereignity, he downshifted and sped through misty country roads. Nearly spinning out at a turn, he stopped at a man’s house. It was just a sniffing suspicion, and hoping he wouldn’t get stoked out, Sheriff Dorighty and this particular man stood on the man’s large over hundred years old front porch whispering back and forth, while he stared at the scuff marks on the porch and watched how dull the long since unshined thing looked. But it didn’t take long for Dorighty to figure out that a showdown was getting ready to take place. Dark Boy, or somebody named him or like him.
Dorighty jumped into his sheriff cop car and sped down the road toward the Black Owl. Skimming past a dirty glass door that said Free Drink’s on Lady’s Night, he didn’t detect anything out of the unusual. A sweet, young and kindly girl who exuded the light and purity of a large, southern church simply lit up with sparkles of light blue eyes as her glistening short bouncy hair curls bumped up against her forehead and cheeks. She smiled sweetly at the sheriff and her energy like to of brought him to his knees, again. He watched several young men shooting pool. One short brown-haired guy aimed at the eight ball and called them all home. And did it.
Dorighty sensing something more than what meets the common eye down here thought of the tenants in the number of small one-room shanty apartment utilities who lived over and atop the Black Owl. He asked the one bar owner with a bright-lit cigarette hanging out of one side of his mouth if he’d seen any strange action or strange people hanging out at the Owl lately. Remembering memories, Dorighty saw a man with a little boy propped up at the bar. The man, with a wad of expensive bills flowing out of his sharply tailored suit coat pocket laughed as the small child chomped big on a fried fish sandwich.
Glad that the little boy could be a partaker of the delicious food and no slave to it’s grease, the man laughed and joked with the bar tender of the old 1930’s or something sooner, scene. Dorighty woke up from his daydream staring at something, or rather someone dark. Dark Boy strode through the doors of the Black Owl’s Christmas eve glitter lights. And suddenly, Sheriff Dorighty knew the reason why he was here at this time. And at this place. And at this exact minute. The horror of the moment struck him in the way of a reality. Dark Boy pulled his black ugly stretch hood over his long waist length black Indian hair – And, where some might try to make him a movie star, Sheriff Dorighty knew better than that. The kid was a menace. A brat. Dorighty took a seat at the far end of the bar and ordered a fresh baked fish sandwich with pickles, onions and double tarter.
Dark Boy ordered vodka, straight. He slugged down several shots in a row before breathing. And when he did finally breath, a dark cold stream of black smoke like the breath of Satan came out of his mouth. Dorighty played it cool. He pretended to have a need to use the men’s room and went there. He came back. He munched on his fish sandwich while the secondary bartender joked and chatted with a regular man wearing a Cardinal’s ball cap sitting next to the dark boy. People laughed and chatted and a fear of shouts went up here and there as the sound of pool balls cracking in the background and the juke box played Jimi Hendrix Purple Hayes, one of the dark boy’s favorite songs.
Dark Boy got up suddenly and started walking toward the hallway of the upstairs apartments. Sheriff Dorighty stood up slowly and followed. For a few slow seconds, Dark Boy felt confident. After all, he’d always gotten away with it all. They let him. But this time, for the first time in all of the born days of his short and very spoiled rotten life, the boy turned around sideways. And what he saw both brought a sudden and trembling terror filled anxiety to his very soul and produced seven identical sweat beads over his top lip. He speeded up his pace. One of his lopsided legs tripped and made him fall face down across the stairs. Nervous, he released a blast of quiet, yet nervous gas. The smell almost overwhelmed Sheriff Dorighty. Dorighty held the railing of the peeling paint walled stairway and held on for dear life. Despite the nauseus smell, he managed to put another foot on the stairs, and keep going.
Dorighty knew he must do it now. Walking across Dark Boy’s back while Dark Boy howled out bloody murder, Dorighty sped up the stairs toward the bright headed, blue-eyed blonde boy’s little apartment adobe. Looking down from the top window, he saw two boys like Dark Boy sitting in a large, older classical cranberry red Cadillac. Dressed in black too, the nasty boys smoked a cigarette apiece and sat quietly in the car, side by side, like two spouses married to Satan for life. He strode down the faded carpet of the hallway, and knew what he must do next. While fighting God’s redeeming visions like a night time movie of all of the teenage boys before who they’d killed, he knew he must make it to the older brother’s place before they did. A shuffling in the hallway behind him, and he turned to see Dark Boy pulling his one scraggly leg behind him hand rocking back and forth sideways as he both dragged the leg and then ran and walked.
Dark Boy tackled the sheriff, and he was down. He began clawing his face and with a look on his face much like his dark dad’s when he beat his new wife to a pulp, Dark Boy burnished a piece of broken soda water bottle glass. Determined to begin stabbing the sheriff’s face, much the same way some of the teenage boys he’d killed, found on the sides of outer Spleenville sheds and over by Torento, Illinois, Dark Boy raised his hand to get the sherriff good. His dead carcass doesn’t know to this day how the sheriff slipped like grease from the spirit of his father’s own two wicked arms.
The sheriff made his way to Faryl’s apartment and bursted through the door like a saint ridden angel god. Sheriff Dorighty turned his face like flint to the heavens and stormed at Faryl telling him to brace his life from danger. Faryl began immediately digging in a nearby duffle bag. He threw the sheriff a noosed rope and held two in the bush of his hand for himself. The two accomplices of Dark Boy stormed into the apartment together, one twin more evil than the other. They wrapped their arms around Sheriff Dorighty. Faryl threw out a rope and one magically noosed and lassoed Dark Boy around the waist. Pasting down his arms, he pulled. But since the dark things came for a murder assignment Faryl grabbed, pulled and dropped the boy out of the nearest open window. Hitting the pavement, his brain split wide open and spilled all over the pavement there. Death to a future prison convict came quickly. Sheriff Dorighty snapping out of his delusion quickly grabbed the other boy, and stabbing him an exact thirteen times watched in wonder as blood rolled and flowed out of his mouth and down his neck like a volcano at full lava eruption. His eyes bulged and you could tell he knew the suffering of a silent scream. And although he could not communicate it, it was almost as if he could talk, and say that he wanted to tell you that justice had finally been done.
Dark Boy screamed liked a Rambo with severe brain damage and with black pools of angry tears cascading down his cheeks charged at Dorighty like a madman. His nostrils flared with anger. A sudden look of horror more frightening than the Amittyville Horror and the crooks who killed his father that got the electric chair when the great Mississippi River floodgates broke, and filled the corriders of the prison just as the execution was taking place ~ Dark Boy’s ears filled and spilled with blood, his dark heart excreting same. He had run his dumb chest into Sheriff Dorighty’s star badge. Dorighty ripped it all the way down to Dark boy’s belly without flinching a bit and with no emotion whatsoever.
The star of David saved the two Jews of Black Owl from a certain extermination that night. Faryl threw the lasso around Dark Boy and roped him on in. Just before Dark Boy took his last breath, and as a chorus of Jingle Bells winded up on fumes of hot chocolate and frothed apple cider, and some chose to celebrate with coffee singles, he said, “I did it. It was me all along. I killed them all. Grandma hid me out on Fate Street in St. Louis, Missouri.” But it looked like not even the mean streets of North St. Louis could protect or hide him now. Faryl lowered Dark Boy’s mangled body out of the window, but dropping the rope accidentally, the deceased Dark Boy fell head-first out of the window leaving black and purple bruises all over his dead, dark hateful face, after he hit the pavement. Despite, it looked like he had been beat to death instead of stabbed by a star.
But the fearefull, and vnbeleeuing, and the abominable, and murderers, and whore mongers, and sorcerers, and idolaters, and all lyars, shall haue their part in the lake which burneth with fire and brimstone: which is the second death. ~ Revelations 21:8
Mysteries & Other Short Stories 