Ep.94 – The Wolf of Fagan County - There's a Monster Among Us!

Episode Notes
A sleepy town has always had dark secrets but when young people turn up dead, mutilated and partially eaten a brother and sister decide they have no choice but to find out who's killing the townspeople.
The Wolf of Fagan County by David O'Hanlon
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Transcript:
Maybe Whistler was a nice town once. It seemed that way until the summer of ’86. The old folks always whispered about certain places—about the places you don’t go and the boogeymen that dwelled within. Everyone in Fagan County knew a local ghost story. Back then, I loved to hear those stories.
Nowadays, not so much. 
My dad trucked crops from the farms into the neighboring states of Louisiana and Mississippi. I didn’t see much of him. He left before dawn and got home after sunset. The day before my thirteenth birthday, he took a load to Shreveport. I awoke to a stack of used horror comics the next morning with a note that read “You’re old enough for the good ones now, soldier.”
I loved the way those pages smelled. After all these years, I still have a couple of them in the suitcases I live out of. I’d read through the entire bundle in a week. I flipped through them and found the one I’d enjoyed the most for a second visit when my mother called from downstairs.
“Connie! Come quick,” she shouted.
I hated when she called me that. It was bad enough being named Conrad. The effeminate nickname caught on with my friends in second grade… and then with the rest of the student body by the end of recess. Something sounded off in her voice as I trudged down the narrow staircase that descended into the kitchen. Mom was sitting at the table with her elbows pressing into the vinyl top and her hands hiding her face. My sister, Lisa, had her head down, shrouded in her arms. Her body convulsed as she bawled noisily inside. I held my breath all the way to the table.
No one spoke to me as I slid the chair away from the edge and eased into it. Mom reached over and put her hand on mine.
“Something terrible’s happened,” she whispered.
Something terrible had happened a few weeks ago, too. And a few weeks before that. We’d discussed both of those events as a family. No one was crying then. Sure, Mom had been shaken up by the discovery of the first body, but it seemed like nothing to worry about. 
We all knew Old Man McGarrah from around town. He would pop out like a magician’s rabbit to grump about what a bunch of slack-jawed hippy-spawn all the kids were whenever you least expected it. The police said it was a heart attack that took him and that coyotes took to eating his remains.
Grotesque and unseemly as it were, my folks delivered the news to my sister and me with just the facts and reminded us to stay away from the woods. Coyotes rarely attacked people, but Dad said there’s something different about any animal—including man—once they got a taste for blood. The second time we were called to the table, it was clearly more bothersome.
Mom wasn’t handling it well, but she remained calm as she told us about the bodies found out along County Road 63. A couple of teens gone to make out got cut up real bad. Chief Hardesty said it was just a freak occurrence—a crime of opportunity—and that the killer was likely long gone. Our parents told us to be home thirty minutes before sundown after that and to never go anywhere alone, just in case.
This time was different.
“Connie,” she started, tugging at the silver locket dangling from her thin neck. Her voice trembled. “It’s Brenda.”
My stomach knotted.
Brenda Knowles had been Lisa’s best friend since kindergarten. She’d babysat for me on a few occasions and came to eat dinner with us every Wednesday. She was my first crush too. I sniffled, but held back any other reaction until Mom could finish. Maybe it wasn’t what I thought. Maybe those old Tales from the Crypt comics were poisoning my imagination the way Father Dean said they would at youth service. Maybe she was moving away. That would explain why they were so upset.
 “Chief Hardesty found her this morning,” Mom continued.
Nope. It was exactly what I thought it was.
I don’t remember the exact moment that I realized the killings were a month apart, but I do remember Lisa raising her face to stare at Mom and then me in turn. Her lips quivered and then she stood up fast enough to knock the chair to the floor. She slammed her fists onto the table and screamed. That I’ll never forget. That look… and those words.
“She was eaten!”

Lisa cried until she passed out that night. I watched the news with Mom to see if the police had anything to say. The station’s newest reporter, Rex Willits, looked like he’d been sick as he raised the microphone close to his chin. His hand shook slightly and his trademark smile was nothing but a thin line of white teeth below his bushy mustache. Rex nodded slowly and started his report when the phone rang in the kitchen and Mom went to answer.
“I’m here at the Ridley Funeral Home in Fagan County to report on a grisly, unimaginable crime,” Rex started. He swallowed hard. “The body of fifteen-year-old Brenda Knowles was found just before dawn this morning. Brenda had been babysitting for family friends the prior evening. She started the short walk to her home just before eleven pm.”
I turned my attention to Mom’s shouting in the kitchen.
“What do you mean ‘two days,’ Paul?” she growled. “It doesn’t take two damn days to get a mechanic.”
Dad’s truck broke down. That happened a lot when he was hauling rice to Shreveport. Only then, though. Mom noticed too. She had a pretty good idea of what was going on.
“What about the kids?” she wailed. “You know what’s going on here! You’re leaving us alone so you—”
Her voice became muffled and I scooted closer to the television to hear what Rex had to say. I heard the phone slam against the receiver several times and Mom stomping up the steps.
“I’ve seen the body… my God in Heaven, I’ll never unsee it now,” Rex said when movement caught his attention. 
He snapped his fingers and pointed his cameraman in the direction of the police chief. Other reporters rushed in around him. Rex elbowed one of them out of his way and reached out with his mic.
“Don’t you buzzards have anything better to do?” Chief Hardesty barked. “A child is dead for Christ’s sake.”
“How?” Rex asked. “How did she die?”
“Violently,” Hardesty answered in his low, gruff drawl.
“Is this related to last month’s double homicide?” a woman’s voice asked.
“We don’t have conclusive evidence linking the two, this early in the investigation,” Hardesty said. His shoulders sagged. “There are… similarities.”
“Were the other victims missing flesh and muscle?” Rex quizzed him. “Were there bite marks on them as well?”
Hardesty glared at Rex and then spoke with forced restraint. “At this time, I’m asking all residents of Whistler and the outlying areas to stay indoors at night. The curfew is merely a request, however.”
The wail of sirens cut the report short. We wouldn’t find out until the morning that they’d found another body. Crazy Delores lived in a shack on the edge of town. She sold herbal remedies and told fortunes for a dollar. No one knew how long she’d been dead.
I climbed into bed, but didn’t dare go to sleep. I opened a comic and thought about Dad. Maybe the rig really broke down, but I didn’t buy it. He was spending time with some woman. In a strange way, that made me feel better. He was more worried about getting laid than he was about the killer on the loose, so maybe it wasn’t a big deal.
My door creaked open and Lisa slipped through the gap. I laid the comic down. I didn’t know what to say. ‘Sorry your best friend was brutally murdered and partially eaten’ really didn’t seem like it’d help the situation. Then again, ‘we’re going to find Brenda’s killers’ wasn’t a winner either, but that’s exactly what Lisa said as she leaned on my dresser.
I gawked at her and waited what felt like an eternity for her to say something else.
“Look, Connie,” she started, then paused and chewed her bottom lip. “Chief Hardesty is a scumbag. He’s going to pin all this on the first person that ain’t Baptist enough for him. Then the murderer is just going to drift away.”
I was still too young to know how common that sort of thing was around there. Or what kind of a man Baxter Hardesty really was. I did want to make sure that Brenda’s killer got caught, however.
“The killings are about a month a part,” I said, hesitantly, unsure of exactly what I’d discovered. I shrugged. “What if the killer travels and just stops through here every few weeks?”
“Or lives here and returns home once a month?” Lisa offered. “Dad’s friend, Ted, is a long-haul driver.”
I remembered. Ted tried to convince Dad to work with him all the time. I also remembered Ted coming to my birthday party. I shook my head.
“I’m pretty sure he’s out of town now.” I scratched the two recently sprouted hairs on my chin. “What about a delivery driver? Brown’s only gets a few deliveries a month.”
Lisa thought it over and nodded. “Okay, we’ll go by and see when they got a delivery.”
Thinking the conversation was done, I lifted my comic.
“What is that, Connie?” Lisa asked, shakily. “What are you reading?”
I closed the issue and looked down at the cover. Bright yellow eyes stared up at me above fangs dripping blood over a broken skull. I looked up to my sister. I knew what she was thinking and I wanted to tell her she was stupid. I wanted to, but I didn’t. The same thought hit me when I look