Long Holler Road - A Dark Southern Thriller

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Long Holler Road
is a work of fiction. The characters are all fictitious . All incidents, descriptions, dialogue and opinions expressed are the product of the authors imagination and are not to be construed as real.

Grammatical errors are intentional and meant to reflect the dialogue of the region.

Published By

Enlightenment Books

Cover design by Benji Laney -
[email protected]

CHAPTER ONE

LONG HOLLOW, ALABAMA - 1974

  U.S. Highway 11 runs north and south 1,645 miles from New Orleans to the Canadian border. Interstate 59 had been completed about seven years earlier and runs parallel and along the same route as Highway 11. It winds its way through Alabama and a tiny wedge of northwest Georgia before crossing over into east Tennessee. Most people opted for the faster route of a four lane highway and a speed limit that was 70 miles-per-hour instead of 55. Besides the fact that on Highway 11 you would invariably find yourself stuck behind a tractor or a slow moving log truck if you travel more than ten miles. But for a lot of people old habits die hard and they still chose to take U.S. 11, despite the pitfalls.

  There were quaint old farms with rolling green fields and filling stations that hadn’t changed much since World War II that could frequently be seen on Highway 11. If you got hungry, there were still a lot of mom and pop diners along the way that hadn’t changed much more that the filling stations. The waitresses called all the men
sweetie
or
darlin’
and the women got to hear all manner of juicy gossip. Both men and women frequently got their “hearts blessed” for everything from a broken heart to a broken nail. If you had to pee or had an emergency of some kind, you could stop anywhere you wanted on Highway 11 and didn’t have to drive another ten or twenty miles to an exit ramp.

  Dr. Richard Parker was an American History professor at the University of Alabama in Tuscaloosa. On Friday night he was headed to a seminar at the University of Tennessee in Knoxville that was to begin on Monday morning. His plans were to drive all the way through that night so he could spend the weekend in a little cabin one of his friends owned in the peaceful serenity of the Smoky Mountains, just outside of Knoxville. He had cobwebs that had slowly and methodically attached themselves to the corners of his brain and he needed a day or two of solitude to try and clear them away.  A traveler could go directly from Tuscaloosa to Knoxville on U.S. 11, and he had looked forward to the scenic drive that ran along the Appalachian foothills of North Alabama and East Tennessee. A drive he had made several times.

  The professor was just north of Collinwood, Alabama. He was dog- tired and needing some distraction from the monotony of chasing the endless white lines along the highway. He started fiddling with his radio, trying to find a decent station. ‘Can’t pick up anything here in these mountains,’ he said out loud to himself. But he kept at it, turning the knob slowly, occasionally getting a signal for a brief minute only to lose it the second he removed his hand. Just as he managed to find a station that seemed to have a little less static than the others, he heard a loud bang that almost caused him to jump out of his skin and lose control of his car. His first thought was that it sounded like a gunshot. The steering wheel was vibrating wildly and was like trying to hold on to a jack-hammer. There was no way he could have seen the piece of plywood that was painted black and was full of twenty-penny nails that covered half the highway. It was all he could do to hold the car in the road until he was able to slow down enough to pull over to the shoulder.

  “
Well of all the bad  luck. A blown out tire. I just bought these tires less than a month ago, too”
he was thinking. Richard couldn’t even remember the last time he’d had a flat. He sat there for a minute before getting out of the car, looking around to see if there were any nearby houses with their lights on. It was about eleven o’clock, so he knew it would be doubtful in this rural part of the country where everyone goes to bed not long after dark, even on Friday night. He thought hard for a minute, wondering how he would be able to change a flat when it was pitch dark outside. There was just a tiny sliver of moon hanging in the sky that very closely resembled a fingernail clipping. Then he remembered he had a flashlight in the glove box. He opened the small door and reached to get it, hoping the batteries weren’t dead. He flipped it on, and a good strong beam of light emerged. ‘
At least something’s going right’.
Richard was worn out. The last thing he wanted to do was have to struggle with a dirty, heavy tire and a greasy jack. He slowly got out and stretched a couple of times, trying to get the knots out of his tight muscles. He walked back to open the trunk where the spare tire and jack were kept. ‘
Maybe somebody will come along that can at least hold the light for me while I change this tire
’. Richard couldn’t see that all four tires on the car were flat and completely ruined from driving almost a mile on the rims.

  He fumbled with the bulky wad of keys on the overburdened ring, trying to find the right one to get the trunk open. After he finally managed to find it, he placed the flashlight between his teeth and bent over to take the wing-nut off that held the jack in place. To his knowledge, it had never been removed and he was having trouble getting it to turn. He bent over further into the trunk to get a better hold.

  It happened as quick as a flash of lightning. It was as if it just appeared out of thin air. A thick, muscular forearm grabbed him from behind in a vice-like grip, jerking him up straight. His head banged the bottom of the trunk lid hard, making a sound like throwing a rock down into a dry well. In the fraction of a second his mind had to assess the situation, he couldn’t decide which was more painful; the hard blow to the back of his head or the strangling from the incredibly strong arm that had him almost paralyzed and was cutting off his wind. He instinctively put his foot on the bumper of the car and tried to push, but the man, or whatever it was, was too strong and wouldn’t budge. He was struggling with all the strength his out of shape body could muster, when the phantom assailant put his other hand over Ben’s mouth and nose. The hand held some kind of cloth and Richard could detect an acrid, chemical odor. Then everything went black.

  Richard was quickly loaded into a white utility van. The kind of generic vehicle that is so common among plumbers, electricians and other tradesmen, that they are all but invisible to most people. He was immediately given an injection of Demerol. Just enough to keep him sleeping for a couple of hours.

*****

  When the chemically induced slumber had run its course and Richard slowly came around, he tried his best to focus his eyes and locate something familiar. It was as if he was looking into a long tunnel through a thin veil of fog . He had been dreaming about an old uncle that had lived on a big farm and had died years before, where he used to spend part of his summers when he was a young boy. The strange surroundings reminded of him of when he was a child and would spend the night away from home in an unfamiliar place. He would always wake up wondering where he was. After a few minutes he would eventually get his bearings. But this time, no matter how deep in his cluttered mind he dug, he couldn’t find
anything
familiar.

  He thought he could hear a television playing faintly in the background. He listened hard for a minute, thinking he recognized the commercial. It sounded like little Speedy, the Alka-Seltzer boy. He started looking around the room that was brightly lit with neon bulbs. The gas filled tubes had an almost imperceptible hum that he would have never noticed had he not been looking straight into them and seeing the slight flickers. The place looked a lot like a hospital room, which he guessed it must have been. Somebody had found him and taken him there, was his assumption. He couldn’t remember what had happened other than having a blow-out. Had he wrecked? He tried to raise up and found that he was strapped down to what appeared to be an examination table. His legs were restrained in stirrups, much like those they use for a woman giving birth or getting a gynecological exam. Though he could barely move, he didn’t feel any pain and didn’t believe he was injured badly, other than his head that felt like it had been hit with a sledgehammer.

  Richard could crane his neck just enough to see what looked like a thin, rectangular piece of cloth covering his groin area. He then noticed that he was completely naked,
except
for the covering on his privates. After a  brief moment of trying to decide which feeling was most dominate; confusion, embarrassment or fear, he called out, quietly at first, for a nurse or anyone else that might be nearby. No one responded. He spoke a little louder, telling whoever might be listening that he was awake.

  After what seemed like an eternity, he could hear soft footsteps coming toward him, occasionally making a squeaky sound on the tile floor. It was a nurse. Or at least it appeared to be. She walked up to him smiling and bent over, her ample cleavage right in his face, almost touching his nose as she rubbed his forehead.

  “How are we doing, sweetheart?” she asked, almost in a whisper.

  Richard had never seen a nurse as beautiful as this one. And he had certainly never seen a uniform like this. It looked like a cross between a nurse’s uniform and something a bar maid would wear in an upscale honky-tonk. She wore it all very well, too. She filled it out in all the right places.
I’d visit the hospital more often if all the nurses looked like this
, he was thinking. He suddenly forgot about his throbbing head.

  The nurse walked around him, looking him up and down as if she were doing an inspection on a used car. He wondered what she was doing, but wasn’t about to question her. His mouth felt as dry as powder and he asked her if he could have a drink of water.

  “Why, sure sweetie. We want your stay here to be as comfortable as possible, given the circumstances” she answered.

 
Well you’re getting off to a good start,
he said to himself. She quickly came back with a big glass of ice water and held the straw to his mouth.

  “Can I get these restraints taken off?” he asked her.

  “Sorry, handsome. Doctors orders.” She was once again rubbing his forehead.

  “I don’t really understand why I have to be strapped down like this now that I’m awake. Am I injured in some way that requires me to be restrained?”

  “The doctor says you have some pretty severe nerve damage, dear. That’s the reason you don’t feel much pain.”

  Richard laid there for a minute, wondering what had happened that could have caused such an injury.

  “So, I guess I must have wrecked then? I..I just can’t remember.”

  The nurse looked at him as if she were trying to keep from breaking some awful news. She had started to turn away, when Richard spoke in a pleading tone, “Nurse, pl…please tell me what’s wrong! Do I
really
have a severe injury of some kind?”

  “My dear, I’m afraid you do. But nothing life threatening as long as we get you into surgery immediately.”

  “S…surgery,” Richard said in a voice barely audible. “Wh…where am I anyway? What hospital is this?”

  “This is a private clinic, sweetie. You’re lucky there was a place like this in close proximity to where your accident occurred,” the nurse answered as she busied herself in what appeared to be getting medical instruments together.

  “I…I must contact my wife,” Richard said, his voice noticeably starting to show the sound of fear.

  “Sorry, dear. No time for that now.”

  Richard’s voice transformed from fear to anger in an instant. “Nobody’s going to perform any kind of surgery or any other procedure on me until I contact my wife,” he bellowed.

  The nurse said nothing. She just kept lining up ominous looking, stainless steel instruments on a small table. Richard struggled against the restraints that had him bound like an Egyptian mummy. He wanted desperately to see what this strange nurse/barmaid was doing.

  “Can you at least tell me what kind of procedure I am about to undergo? And where the hell is the doctor?”

  The nurse’s tone didn’t change at all. She spoke gently as if she were speaking to a small child. “Certain parts of your foot have sustained irreparable nerve damage. Some muscles in your calves may have to be removed as well. We don’t want to run the risk of a blood clot…..”

  “Wh…what the hell do you mean removed? You or no one else is removing anything….”

  The nurse walked over to him and leaned down, her face only inches from his. Despite the fact he was scared to death, he couldn’t help but notice how extraordinarily beautiful this creature was. Her eyes looked like pale blue pools of water. They were almost hypnotic. Her breath was warm and smelled sweet like some kind of exotic spice.