SUSPENSE THRILLERS-A Boxed Set (79 page)

"Yes. When I worked for my paychecks as a foreman at the sewing factory, I was on the hunt. When I shopped for food, I was hunting. When I finally got a car and took little trips into the panhandle of Florida and down to Mobile and up to Montgomery and Huntsville, I was on a hunt.

"That's why I was never caught, I suppose. I took them from everywhere and brought them dead back here. Back
there
." He meant the untamed acres behind his house where he had buried the bodies.

"Why didn't you turn yourself in when you…when you stopped?" she asked.

"I didn't want to go to the electric chair. That should be obvious. What happened to me was something unexplainable, something that I had unearthed by killing with my full faculties, a beast inside me that I called forth through vile hatred. I have lived with my guilt after the day I woke knowing what I was and what I had done. That was not punishment enough, I know. But I was a coward. I knew what death was, I had caused so much of it. I feared my own death, what it held for me. It was not until this last year when I knew I was going to die--my heart is failing--that I've faced it. When I heard of your project I knew I had to tell. There are missing people, families bereaved and wondering where their loved ones disappeared. Now you can let them know. I've put things to rest finally."

"Do you know the names of the people you buried in the graves?"

"Yes," he said. "I kept their wallets and identification papers." He stood shakily from the rocker, spit tobacco onto the ground, then moved to the screen door. "You won't leave, will you?" he asked, holding the door open and looking at her. "Will you wait here for me to bring it all to you?"

She nodded. But he saw something waver in her eyes and suddenly he knew she lied, that she would flee the moment he turned his back.

"Why don't you stop the recorder and come with me? It's a large box—a suitcase really-- and I might need help lifting it."

He saw how skittish she was and how unhappy at his suggestion. Nevertheless she halted the recorder and stood to follow.

He smiled inwardly at the wonder of his persuasion. Hadn't he told her how vulnerable victims were, how they were led into danger without a qualm about their safety? Had she some way missed that warning, deluged as it was with his rambling, detailed confessions?

In his bedroom he held onto the polished maple wood bedpost to lower himself to his old knees. He reached under the bed frame into the dusty gloom there and pulled out a metal suitcase, an old tin contraption he had kept from the forties. It was scratched and dented and even the handle was missing. He struggled back to his feet.

"Could you lift it to the bed?"

He stepped away so that she could get a grip on the old suitcase. As she stooped, slipping her fingers beneath the heavy case, his good left hand felt along the dresser near him for the silver-plated letter opener he had bought in Evergreen one Christmas more than twenty years ago.

Just as the girl lifted, using her back, grunting, he closed his fist around the stiletto-sharp opener and plunged it with his remaining strength down into her back.

She screamed, dropping the suitcase with a clatter. She fell onto the quilt-covered bed and the springs creaked in accompaniment. Her hands came behind her feeling for the object sticking in her back.

He sat down on the bed to wait.

He talked to her as she died.

He said, "Don't worry, I'll make sure your things are back in your car, except for the two tapes, of course. I'll have to burn those. I can still drive, you know. I'm old and it is true my heart is in terrible condition, but I can still drive your car into the river where they won't find it for ages. Not until long after I've departed this old Earth. They will probably publish your book anyway. You had enough interviews to fill it already, didn't you? It was grand of you to care so much about this place. This wild, unrestrained, backwoods place."

"I thought…you…said…" She gurgled low in her throat and a scarlet ribbon of blood slipped from the corner of her mouth. She had stopped trying to reach the letter opener in her back. She lay now with her arms at her sides like an obedient child taking a nap.

The light in her eyes was fading, flickering in, flickering out, a candle flame in the wind.

"You should never have taken the word of a murderer, young lady. I never did experience that day of reckoning, that day when the urge left. I wouldn't know what that might feel like and expect that never happens to people like me." He smiled beatifically. "I haven't killed anyone for a long time, though. I'm so old, and yes, I'm weak, and I can't go on the hunt the way I used to do.

"I have to wait for the prey to come to
me
."

She cried tears that wet his bed, she whispered a curse against him, and then she died.

After the tedious efforts of disposing of her car, catching a ride back to his house, and burying her in the woods behind his place, Hank Borden decided not to burn the tapes she had made of his life. He opened the tin suitcase and dropped them, along with a driver's license from her purse, onto the mounds of material he had collected over a long lifetime of carnage.

Some day someone would find all this.

After he was gone, after his pitiful old pump stopped pumping and he stepped into that void, they would come here and go through his things and they would find out about his past. Only then would they know the real Hank Borden. The tapes would help them.

And all except for the profound remorse he said he had experienced, and the resultant change he claimed came over him, everything that he confessed on the tapes was God's gospel truth.

THE END

If you have enjoyed these digital books, please visit Billie Sue Mosiman’s website at
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for other titles by this Edgar and Stoker Nominated author.

Other books of suspense included BAD TRIP SOUTH.

Bad Trip South

Jay and Carrie Anderson are in a troubled marriage. Jay is a police officer in a small town and Carrie, a school teacher. Carrie has a decision to make. Either she stays with Jay and takes his abuse, allowing their ten-year-old daughter, Emily, a glimpse of what marriage is not supposed to be like, or she leaves him. Emily, who isn't like other children, is telepathic, and can hear the thoughts of those around her. While on vacation, an escaped convict and his accomplice kidnap the Andersons, needing a way to make it south . . . to the border of Mexico. Jay battles with himself, fighting the urge to go over to the dark side, forsaking his vows with his wife and those of a police officer. Carrie searches for the strength to face the truth about herself and her marriage. And Emily, beset by the thoughts of her captors, tries to keep her family together and safe. All in all it's going to be one bad trip south.