“I can’t explain it now, maybe later, but we have to get you to the hospital. You are still bleeding quite badly from your head and shoulder.”
He let himself be led to the side of the stage and they gingerly stepped down, Linda taking most of his weight. They shuffled round to the front of the stage but Ed stopped then swayed. He felt dizzy and his knees started to go weak. They slumped back and sat at the edge of the stage as far away from Rosen’s body as they could get. As they sat together, the engine on the police cruiser stalled and the bare lights above them grew dim.
“Oh what now?!” she exclaimed.
“What’s that, over there?” Ed pointed over to the workbench that was now in half darkness. They saw some figures emerging from the darkness. A young Asian girl took a step further into the light. Ed’s heart missed a beat. Barefooted and dressed only in a brown hessian type dress, he instantly recognised the girl from his dreams, the girl from Vietnam, but this time there were no wounds, no blood. She was quite beautiful, just as he remembered her, as if it were only yesterday, his heart lurched. When she had moved from the darkness to the light she had seemed translucent but now she looked alive and vibrant, almost shining. In her left hand she carried a wooden doll, his doll, the same doll he had carried with him as a reminder of his sin for all of those years. She held her right hand out to the side, beckoning for someone to join her. Another figure stepped forward from the gloom and took the Vietnamese girls hand; it was Grace Benjamin. Slightly taller and wearing a lovely floral dress, she looked as pretty as the picture from her birthday.
Ed glanced at Linda, with a ‘can you see this too?’ look. She nodded at him then looked back at the two girls in wonderment; tears were starting to form in her eyes again. Instinctively she knew the little girl was the one from Ed’s dreams, the one who had haunted most of his adult life. The girls smiled at each other, held a hand out each and waited. Two much larger apparitions manifested themselves and joined hands with the girls. Buster took Gracie’s hand and Elsa, Buster’s wife, took the hand of the Vietnamese child and wooden doll. In unison, Ed and Linda stood up and faced the group before them.
Ed looked into the faces of each of them for a long moment and then rested on the young Asian girl. He was close to tears now too.
“I am so sorry for what I did to you, I really am, there isn’t a day goes by that I don’t think of you…”
The child let go of Grace’s hand and put a finger to her own lips to silence his words. Then she smiled; a beautiful, serene, peaceful smile that Ed knew was full of forgiveness, for him and him alone.
“Thank you.” He sniffed and stifled a sob. He could hardly speak through his emotions but he turned and looked at Buster.
“Are you okay my friend?”
Buster looked down at his daughter, squeezed her hand then raised his empty right hand and gave Ed a thumbs up and a huge toothy grin. They all smiled; each and every one of them, as tears rolled down Ed and Linda’s face. The four apparitions raised their hands in a wave, bowed their heads in thanks then turned and walked back towards the workbench and darkness. The girls disappeared, then Elsa, and lastly the gentle giant. Buster paused, turned back to Linda and Ed, gave another thumbs up in thanks then walked into the darkness and faded away.
After a few moments, the lights hanging from the roof of the barn grew brighter again. Linda looked up into Ed’s lovely face. “You felt that didn’t you, the happiness? They are all at peace.”
“Yes, I felt it.” He managed to reply. He looked down into her angelic face. “What now?”
“Now, we go and get you checked out, get Josh, then we go home.”
“Home? Your home?”
“Of course! You don’t think I am letting you ever go back to that motel do you?!” She replied. She kissed him on the cheek and herded him towards the barn door, pausing long enough to pick up her bra and shirt, slipping the shirt back on.
“Darn it.” Ed said in mock disappointment as she covered over her incredible body.
“You’ve had enough excitement for one night don’t you think? Anyway, there’ll be plenty of time in the future for you to explore.”
“Really?”
“Oh yes, plenty of time.” she said smiling as they walked out of the barn into the first early rays of a bright dawn and a glorious day.
EPILOGUE
Ed sat under the picture of the three P-51 Mustangs, warmed by the roaring log fire, deep in concentration, reading the headlines from the Columbus Dispatch, central Ohio’s main newspaper. They and most of the news organisations from around the country had followed the breaking story of the eight children and almost as many adults found buried in a mass grave in the lower foothills of the most western point of the Allegheny mountain range. The story had even been syndicated around the world. The papers and TV stations had followed the story through, from the initial finding of the grave and arrest of eight men caught trying to disperse the bodies, with a ninth man being arrested at a local hospital, all the way through the trial, to yesterday’s guilty verdicts in the Supreme Court of Ohio held at the Thomas J. Moyer Ohio Judicial Center on the east bank of the Scioto River in downtown Columbus. Most of the evidence had come from the owner of a motel in Ludlow called Sam Ryan, one of the nine men accused of the murders, who had bargained for leniency by helping the police with their enquiries. Ed Saunders read that over the past sixty-odd years, Ludlow’s mayor and the sheriff had formed a ruthless and murderess club of Ludlow residents with a penchant for sadistic and ritualistic torture of minors. The sadistic killers had fashioned themselves on a Nazi-style lodge but statements from the Thule Society vehemently denied having anything to do with the group. Most of the victims had been travellers passing through the city limits and had been stopped by the sheriff for minor misdemeanours and if found to be suitable victims, were tortured and murdered by the vicious group in a horrific ritual. The adults seemed to be collateral damage for the gang and of little significance. The vehicles they had been driving were crushed by one of the gang who owned and ran the local junkyard. A few of the licence plates had been found in the junkyard owner’s office and helped identify some of the missing persons. When I-71 fully opened in the sixties, through traffic started to dry up so the gang resorted to abducting occasional local residents from the poorer quarters of town. Kids they thought wouldn’t be missed all that much. Thankfully, almost all of the bodies had been identified except for a vagrant that happened to pass through Ludlow at the wrong time. The report went on to say that the local librarian, a Mrs Linda Saxon, had uncovered the atrocities when filing old issues of a local newspaper, and with one of the surviving relatives, had done some incredible investigative work then managed to unnerve the perpetrators into trying to move the bodies further away. A local militia had followed the murderers up into the hills and caught them red-handed trying to dig up and move the evidence. Two of the murderous club; the leader, Mayor Frederick Willets and local junkyard owner Ashley Barrett were killed by one of the militia, who also sadly was killed by gunfire. The militia victim Eugene ‘Buster’ Benjamin also happened to be the father of one of the gang’s victims, Grace Benjamin. The other ringleader of the deadly society, Ludlow’s own Sheriff John Rosen, disappeared the night the group were found out. Although a large amount of money, passports and his cars, including the last car he was seen driving, his Sheriff’s Patrol Car, were found at his residence on the outskirts of Ludlow, no trace of him has yet to be found. In his absence he was found guilty of murder of the people from the mass grave and an elderly woman from the town who apparently disturbed the sheriff while he was robbing the mayor’s house. A shrine or altar of sorts was found in one of the sheriff’s outbuildings along with his revolver, which had been fired, and a large amount of dried blood which through DNA testing was found to be Sheriff Rosen’s. Due to the enormous amount of Rosen’s blood found at the scene, federal agencies do not believe he could have survived whatever disturbance occurred there and are not actively looking for Rosen although he remains on their wanted list. Traces of a second blood type were found at the scene but did not match anything in the police database but were thought to belong to one of his victims. The guilty men were due to be sentenced next week.