“Oh, this shit is just getting better and better!” he whispered aloud harshly to his reflection.
He stripped naked and redressed in the fresh clothes after checking the rest of his body for other injuries but he found none. He watched in the mirror as he finished the last button of his shirt and then as an afterthought grabbed up a deodorant stick from the dresser and lifted his shirt, applying a liberal amount and after, tucked his shirt in before he took up a hairbrush that he had noticed earlier and ran it through his short-cropped hair. He took a seat on the bed and pulled on his clean socks and his same tennis shoes from earlier and afterward he stood and took one last look in the mirror before heading for the door but he paused, holding the doorknob, while giving himself a pep talk internally as he closed his eyes. You can do this, he said quietly in his mind, striving for calm.
He took a deep breath as he opened the bedroom door and headed down the hall. He could hear the blare of the television giving the evening news and he followed the noise and found Mark sitting in the living room in a recliner watching the set.
“Mark! Timmy! Dinner!” Cindy called from the kitchen.
Dave walked slowly into the living room, giving Mark a chance to get out of the recliner and then followed him but Mark turned around suddenly with an angry snarl, towering over Dave and pointing the way to the kitchen.
“Move your ass, punk!” he hissed with menace.
Dave was quick to obey, again having absolutely no idea what he had done to have set the asshole off. The guy must be bi-polar at best or a sadistic child abuser at worst he decided because he was definitely not all there. Dave sensed that the dad was right on his heels and breathing down his neck, so he stepped up his pace, heading out to the kitchen to have dinner with the family and grabbing a chair as far away from Mark Thompson as he could manage. This is such bullshit! Dave thought silently, I am so over this entire experience.
Chapter 37
Seriously? Seriously! Could this time warp last any longer or be any more pointless? The love of my life is possibly about to be murdered, and I am in my goddamn Cousin Phyllis’s living room in Fremont standing on a foot stool as she works at hemming my new blue-cotton party dress. The pins around the wrists of my dress are poking me uncomfortably. The black-and-white television blaring Jackie Gleason while Phyllis’s husband Charlie Walters howls with laughter and stomps his feet on the floor with the most annoying regularity is about to make me snap! While the heavy cloud of pipe smoke swirling around Charlie’s head and filling the room with its noxious odor is enough to make me want to retch and now, damn it all to hell, I feel tears welling up and can’t stop them.
“Mother, I need to go to the bathroom,” I announced sharply.
“Lisa! Good heavens, must you be so dramatic and you’re as flighty as a hummer tonight,” Phyllis observed glaring up at me from the floor where she knelt as she finished a pin and smoothed the skirt down carefully before, with a flip of her hand, she waved me off of the stool.
“Now you hold that dress careful and don’t you dare disturb those pins,” she called after me as I dashed from the room.
Instead of going to the bathroom, I ran for the kitchen and out the back screen door, which slapped shut behind me and I gulped in great lungful’s of the humid warm and yet wonderfully clean and fresh air. The night was quiet but for the sound of crickets and other night creatures, but the sky was filling with towering clouds and to the southwest I could see heat lightning dancing across thunderheads. It was almost 8:00 p.m., and that would mean that, unless Dave was back from the warp now and in bed waiting for me, he was probably on his way to the arcade in Craton.
I paced back and forth across the back porch of the small house that sat along Main Street and then walked down the steps and around the side of the house, heading down the driveway toward the street. The diner was visible from the house and there was a blue neon light on the roof of the building and a red blinking arrow pointing down to the parking lot. The name in blue neon said Blue Bird Café. The Finish Line Diner and everyone who I knew from that place were still fifty years out in the future.
I turned and paced up and down the drive again and again, clenching and releasing my hands at my sides, my palms clammy with nervous perspiration, while my tears welled up and spilled over. My stress level and my fear for Dave over-flowing like an overfilled cup.
“God, please help me! Grandma Rose, Grandpa Judson! Spirits! Someone! Help me get home!” I whispered aloud desperately, looking up at the darkening sky. “Please let me get back home to Dave.” My voice broke on the word Dave and I covered my face with my hands.
It took me several minutes but I finally got ahold of my emotions and smoothed my tears away, taking deep breaths until I could again think logically and I shook my head at my own stupidity for my ridiculous pleas because there was no one who was going to be able to help me with this and so without any other choice, I wiped one more stray tear that was tracing down my cheek and turned, heading back toward the house and the pipe-smoke-filled living room to continue my private purgatory. There was nothing else for me to do and nowhere else that I could go.
***
I felt like I slammed onto the bed at a hundred miles an hour directly from the heavens. The jolt of reentering from the time warp was palpable. I found I was on my side facing the outside of the bed and glanced at the clock on the night stand, 3:00 a.m. I snapped on the bedside lamp and turned over quickly toward Dave.
“Dave,” I said gently, shaking his shoulder. He was lying on his back, with his hands across his waist and covered by a light sheet.
“Dave!” I said louder and sat close beside him, shaking his shoulder hard. Nothing—he was still gone. I bent over to listen to his chest, and the slow rhythm of his beating heart was comforting although it really meant nothing that his heart was still beating now. If I returned just now at 3:00 a.m. and if the warp continued on, on its own schedule, then it was still only about 8:00 p.m. there and the murders didn’t happen until just before midnight, still four hours from now.
This half-baked theory of mine about the time warp schedule didn’t make sense, even to me—the creator of the theory! It didn’t seem like the warps ran on a logical or chronological timetable and more likely, the warp, if he were to stay in it, could last until 10:00 a.m. or later because most often, we awake later rather than earlier. That I’d come back so soon, that was the puzzling occurrence.
I clambered out of bed then and dashed downstairs clicking on light switches as I went. I opened the living room closet, stretched up to the shelf, and pulled down a cardboard box that held albums full of documents from my research. I dropped the box on the floor and sat down on my heels as I yanked out the album labeled ‘Newspapers’ and laid it on the floor, opening it and flipping to the tab labeled 1959.
Shadow came up beside me, nudging me underneath my left arm, wanting me to pet him.
“Shadow, go lay down,” I commanded firmly and he obediently responded, moving several feet away to lie down on a rug. He put his head on his front paws and watched me while I paged through the album.
The slick sleeve containing the articles about the mass murder of my Thompson cousins was overflowing. I’d found so many newspaper articles from the Craton News, Eddyville Times, Fremont Gazette, Oskaloosa Herald, Keokuk Daily Gate, Des Moines Register, and Ottumwa Courier. Each one of them laid out the final day and night of the Thompson family and what had occurred back on July 3, 1959.
I snapped open the album clasp, leaving the album and box out and taking the sleeve, ran back up to the bedroom. I turned on the overhead light and sat on my side of the bed beside Dave while I pulled out two original folded articles from the sleeve, which had been in the effects of my grandpa Arlan when he had passed away. The rest of the documents were photocopies from microfilm that I had gathered from several public and genealogical libraries.
I paused to watch Dave’s chest rise and fall, and getting to my hands and knees crawled over to
him and reached for one of his hands, lifted it to my lips, kissed it and laid it gently back upon his stomach. Then even though I knew it was pointless, I tried to rouse him gently once again and leaned over him to kiss his closed lips and ran my fingers lightly through his glossy dark hair.
“I love you, sweetheart,” I said softly.
I turned my attention back to the articles and then sitting close beside Dave, I unfolded the first one and laid it across my pillow to read, being careful because the paper was fragile and yellowed and the print faded. It was one of the original articles from the Keokuk Daily Gate, and it provided the time line.
Mass Murder at Craton!
The headline screamed, dramatically set in bold three inch type.
Saturday, July 4, 1959—The entire state of Iowa has been shocked by the brutal murders of Cindy Thompson and her children, gunned down in cold blood on Friday night while at their summer cabin on Craton Lake. The murderer is still at large and is believed to be the father of the family, thirty-nine-year-old Deputy Mark Thompson, who is a Wapello County sheriff’s officer. He had been undergoing some psychological counseling and had been on medical leave from the department for the past three weeks. He is believed to be armed and dangerous.
I folded the article and went on to the other original story from the Fremont Gazette.
Thompson Mass Murder Plot Revealed
Thompson Captured in Agency Home
July 6, 1959, Agency, Iowa
The massive manhunt that involved more than 100 law enforcement officers and a dozen trained bloodhounds came to an end yesterday when Mark Thompson was captured at his residence in Agency. Officers had checked the residence twice, but apparently Thompson had been able to avoid detection by hiding in the crawl space underneath the structure. Bloodhounds were brought in and discovered him about midday. He was disarmed without incident and no injuries to the suspect or officers were reported. Once disarmed of his service revolver, he was quickly taken into custody.
As Thompson was being returned to the county jail in Ottumwa, the route took him past the funeral procession at the Arbor Hill’s Chapel and cemetery in Ottumwa where a mass funeral was being held for the six members of his family. The entire community turned out in huge numbers to attend the tribute to the innocent victims.
**New details emerge**
On Friday, July 3, the family had spent time in Eddyville shopping for supplies needed for the July 4th celebration. The family was to be part of the traditional parade in Craton where they have had a Norwegian heritage float for the past five years.
After the family returned from town, Thompson and his son Tim spent the rest of the afternoon hiking along the trails near the Des Moines River. Several boys fishing off the bridge on Cliffland Rd. reported that they saw the two at approximately 3:00 p.m.as they arrived at the bridge but that they had quickly turned around, heading back the way that they had come. The boys reported that Mark Thompson seemed to be very irritated with his son. The boys also stated that the son seemed equally concerned about his father’s behavior. “The kid kept telling his dad to calm down,” one boy reported.
About 8:00 p.m., Thompson drove his five children to an arcade in Craton about four miles from their cabin on Craton Lake. He dropped the kids off at the door and told them that he would be back by ten o’clock to pick them up.
After Thompson left the kids off, authorities plan to prove that he drove back to the family cabin on the lake where he got into an altercation with his wife, Cindy and then killed her in cold blood. Cindy Thompson’s body was found in the family’s car in the garage and she had been shot once in the right temple. Authorities suspect that Thompson shot Cindy inside the house and then removed her body, placing it inside the car as there were signs that he had attempted to clean up all evidence of the crime.
No one in the vicinity reported hearing any shots, and it is believed that Thompson was using a sound suppression device, which he would also use later as he stalked and executed his children.
Chapter 38
Dave Cameron, currently stuck in a noisy arcade in the little town of Craton, Iowa, sipped at his Pepsi Cola and looked dispassionately about the room. It was decorated with streamers of red, white, and blue hanging from the rafters and wound about posts. The place had been packed with pre-teen and teenaged kids when they had arrived but the crowd was dwindling now.
He was keeping an eye on the four kids who were his siblings. The three girls, his sisters, were across the room near the concession stand while Ricky, his little brother, was sitting close by at an arcade game fighting off aliens or something. He couldn’t afford to lose sight of any of them and possibly get left behind. He would have no way to get back to the lake and the cabin, if he did. Horn-Rims had left them here almost three hours ago and he was supposed to come back and pick them up but he was an hour over-due, while Dave Cameron was over-stressed.
He had decided hours ago during this endless, torturous warp that Torie had been right, they needed to quit staying the night at her house, and they needed to leave these goddamn warps in the past. They had a real life to live together and he had finally had enough of this. He wanted to marry the beautiful and caring woman who had make his every day magic since the first moment that she had come into his world. He wanted to bring her to his home to live for the rest of her life and he wanted to have children with her while they were still young enough to be parents. They didn’t need this shit to add something missing to their lives; this was taking them away from their lives.
Knowing that his body was lying beside Torie this moment back in Fremont, he thought about how he could be reaching out to pull her to him, could feel her body under his hands, feel the heaven as she would turn to him and embrace him. He could be making love to her this very minute, instead of pulling a splinter from his hand, which he just picked up from the goddamn roughhewn table he was sitting at!
He watched Ricky, Suzanna, Bridget, and Barbara crossing the room to join him and wondered what was up as they approached the table until he felt a huge hand clamp down roughly on his shoulder, squeezing hard and he nearly jumped out of his skin when Horn-Rims leaned over, shaking his head and dripping water off of his flat top onto Dave’s upturned face.
“Storm’s coming in,” Mark announced. “We’d better get on the road. Ready?”
Dave jumped up, using his own shirt sleeve to remove the sprinkles from his face, and reached for his lightweight brown cotton jacket. Hell yeah, I’m ready, asshole! he thought angrily.
“Where have you been?” Barbara snapped.
“Oh, I just had to finish watching Jack Benny. Your mom didn’t want to watch alone,” he replied casually.
The girls and Ricky stomped past, heading out the door so Dave really had to hustle to keep up with them.
***
As they started off, the girls in the backseat all expressed their opinion of their dad keeping them waiting for so long, which Dave felt was very risky on their parts. Thompson could flip out on them at any moment, like he had witnessed earlier in the day and he knew that Horn-Rims would go off for no reason but the girls didn’t seem to have any fear of him or maybe they were just hardened from years of abuse. Dave felt that they should fear him, but had another thought which was; perhaps he reserved all of the abuse for Tim alone.
After the girls had finished venting, the rest of the ride was pretty quiet as they drove, until the thunderstorm started really coming on and the rain began pelting the top of the Buick like a jackhammer. They were coming up on the turnoff to the campgrounds but instead of turning, Horn-Rims continued on straight down the highway.
“Where are we going?” Suzanna asked in her whiniest voice.
“I gotta run to the house and pick up the barbecue tools for your mom; she forgot them the last trip home and she wants her good table-cloths for the picnic. We’ll just be a few minutes.”
As they arrived and parked in the driveway of a neat, well-maintained ranch-style house in the town
of Agency, Horn-Rims ordered them to stay in the car and told them that he would be right back as he dashed out into the roaring thunderstorm, leaving the car engine on and idling.
“Tim, would you turn on the radio?” Bridget asked, from the backseat.
Dave was riding shotgun, with Ricky in the middle and before Dave had a chance to react, Ricky had reached out and clicked on the radio.
“KZRN,” Suzanna ordered from the back seat. “Turn it!”
With a heavy sigh, she leaned over the seat as Dave was trying to assist Ricky and they were both fumbling with the dial, trying to figure out what channel she meant.
“Get out of the way squirt, I’ve got it,” she said, slapping Dave’s hand away.
Fine by me, Dave thought. Knock yourself out, sis.
He went back to watching out the car window, at the flashes of lightning that filled the night sky. Fremont was so many miles away from him now and he longed for home and was homesick for Torie’s company, but his Fremont and his Torie weren’t there and they wouldn’t be there for another fifty years. A sudden clap of thunder jerked him back from his thoughts and he became aware of the other kids in the car and the warmth of Ricky as the little boy’s head lolled in weariness and rested comfortably against his left shoulder.
“It’s gonna be a stormy night,” Barbara predicted just then unnecessarily, from the recesses of the darkened back seat.
Chapter 39
I glanced at the clock on my nightstand: 9:00 a.m. I stretched my hands above my head and then reached out to caress Dave’s leg lightly before touching his face and the slight moisture beading on his forehead. I wiped it off with the palm of my hand and leaned over to use my breath to cool his flushed face. He was overheated and so I removed the sheet from his body, letting his legs be exposed and draping the tail of the sheet over his hips, preserving his modesty.