Page 12 of Nightmare

Then he glances back down at nothing.

“It’s okay,” I say, turning and going to grab the bottle of whiskey. I top his glass up, “I’m not everyone’s cup of tea, but you’ll come to like me a whole lot. I promise.”

“Bonnie, table six needs a new round,” Luna calls.

I turn and nod, giving her a wave.

She’s trying to get me away from the mysterious stranger.

I understand it, but she doesn’t know just how determined I am.

He will talk to me.

I’ll make sure of it.

~*~*~*~*

EYES HEAVY, I CLICKand scroll through the articles I’ve managed to dig around and find on the internet. I’m committed to this case, and to be committed, I need to know everything there is to know about what happened that day. Every single little detail. I might not be able to find it all, but I can find out enough to get me started. I’m going to talk to Braithe’s mom. It might be a stretch, but she is still local and, while she doesn’t say a lot, I’m hoping she’ll talk to me.

Clicking, I open up a newspaper article with Western’s young face on the front page. I can see the similarities, but back then, his eyes weren’t deep, never-ending pits of despair. I’ve never seen eyes quite so empty in all my life. Looking at his picture here, it almost seems like two different people. Young Western is lean, muscled, clean shaven and his hair is messy, but not long like it is now. His lips are full, his jaw perfectly sculpted.

I know that he had a lot of fans when he was in prison, women that were utterly obsessed with him and would send letters. I found an article about it. It happens, and is a strange phenomenon, but often times people convicted of a deadly crime have a fan base, those that become utterly infatuated with the person behind bars.

Mayor Bill Whart made the call on Tuesday, June 22nd, 2003, when he saw local man, Western Aiken, abduct two people at gun point. Following them into the swamp, he witnessed the murder of Daniel Gregory and the attempted sexual assault and then murder of young teen, Braithe Gregory.

Frowning, I make a note to try and get hold of the autopsy report for both Daniel and Braithe. I always found it hard to believe that Braithe was about to be assaulted. It seemed like a far stretch. The entire story just doesn’t make sense. Bill is just waltzing down the street and “happens” to witness Western force the two people into his truck at gunpoint and then decides he’s just going to follow them instead of immediately calling the police?

Bill is someone I don’t trust.

He has a huge fan base in town after this event, but, mostly, I think it’s because people would rather see him as a hero and Western as a villain, than to really consider that maybe, just maybe, the man behind the suit is actually the monster.

It’s easy to blame a biker’s son.

It’s not so easy to blame a man who is in control of your entire town.

I write down a few notes, mostly wanting to see if I can get my hands on those autopsies and, also, if I can find out more about Bill.

His involvement in this runs deeper, I just know it.

I keep scrolling until I stumble across a blog post, written by a local lady named Sally, who claims that the Prisoners of Purgatory are involved in the cases of local foster kids who continue to go missing. She claims that they take the boys and sell them to human traffickers. They go for foster children because there are far less chances of the family really trying to find them.

There have been multiple boys go missing in the last decade, all local, and the club is still claimed to be the biggest suspect.

Narrowing my eyes, I write down some notes to look into that, too.

Could the club be involved?

Is Western truly a monster?

Or is it all so twisted and intertwined that it’ll be almost impossible to find out the truth?

Either way, I’m going to find it, even if it is the last thing I ever write as a journalist. It very likely could be, if things go wrong here. I could be digging into a case that is even more dangerous than everyone thinks, yet I can’t seem to find myself able to stop.

The low buzzing of my phone snaps me from my thoughts, and I reach down and pick it up. Leo is calling. Frowning, I answer it.

“Everything okay?”

“Not really. I’m in lock up.”

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