Murder

With

Mayhem

By

S.G. McKinley

Murder With Mayhem

Copyright 2012 S.G. McKinley

Published by Sharon Watson

Smashwords Edition

Smashwords License Notes

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*****

Murder sometimes can go unnoticed…

Danger lurks everywhere.

*****

Chapter 1

From out of the darkness screams penetrated the silence. A feeling of fear hung heavy in the air. The odor of blood lingered all around.

Painful moans echoed in the parking area as a dim security light flickered further away, thanks to a former resident keeping the light on in order to see things when they went to work around their property.

In this small town, nobody meandered out after dark; therefore anything that went on can never get detected until someone runs across something odd the next day. That rarely happens, because nobody lives in town any longer. Thus…the surrounding people deemed Echo as a ghost town.

The screams continued, along with a woman’s voice begging, “Please don’t! Leave us alone! I don’t even know you. Why are you doing this to us?”

“Shut up!” a brusque male voice shouted. “If I want you to talk, I’ll ask you to.”

Scuffling sounded as if someone fought with another. Once more a sharp cry from a female resonated off walls, but afterwards her shrieks became muffled.

“You bastard,” an extra male voice yelled out. “All we wanted to do is come here to see this old town; not to become your prisoner.”

“Well, you came along when you should have gone the other direction, or else passed this place by. You’ve come upon something you shouldn’t have. I can’t let you live and take a chance on you telling anybody.”

“What do you mean…come upon something? What are we supposed to have seen? I haven’t seen a thing.”

“Is that a fact!” snarled the gruff man. “You expect me to believe you two came up sight-seeing and thought you could see the town in the dark! Tell me something better than that.”

“Honest, Mister, I swear! We planned on staying in the car for the night and looking around in the morning. We’re not lying!” the female uttered.

“Bitch…I told you to shut up! I see you don’t listen too well,” the evil rough man shouted at her.

“Leave her alone! Can’t you see she’s scared to death?”

“Scared? To death, you say? Then maybe that will save me the trouble of doing you in, myself. Get over in the corner of the room and stay put! I’m tired of hearing you two talk.”

“What are you going to do to us? What have you done that is bad enough you don’t want us to see?” the young man with the female asked.

The evil man turned to them, eyeing them over as well as he could in the dark. His right hand held onto a shotgun, while the left fingered a knife. Both weapons looked eerie in the dark, and knowing what he could do with them frightened the man and woman who unfortunately decided to stop for the night.

The bad man knows that he owns no rope to tie them with; therefore he suspects he’ll have to watch them during the rest of the night in order to stop them from escaping. Earlier he finished killing the young woman who gave him a ride in her vehicle as he and his sister hitchhiked earlier in the day.

The dead woman’s car stayed hidden down the road a ways out of sight. The man had fully intended to take it at daybreak and drive on through to the next town, stealing some gas and getting far away from this area. He had not figured on this young couple coming up on him without any warning.

The couple huddled together in one dark corner of the old station. It made a good shelter from the weather in case it rained, but the bad man didn’t want to remain that long.

Walking over to the two, he kicked at the man.

“Get up. You’re coming with me for a walk. Have you a rope or something that I can tie your woman with? I don’t want her running.”

“Where are we going? It’s too dark out to go for a walk.”

Hitting the young man with the butt of his gun, the rough man growled, “I said we’re leaving! I won’t ask you again for a rope. If you can’t furnish one, I’ll kill you both right here and now.”

“All right, okay,” the young man mumbled. His hands waved in the air. “Let me go get it. We have one in the trunk of the car.”

“No…we will all three get it. I’m not as stupid as you might think.”

Walking over to the woman, he spit at her and gruffly ordered, “Get on your feet. One wrong move and you’ll find a bullet in your belly.”

She whimpered, but did as he asked. Walking in front of the stranger, the couple eased to their car and the man opened the trunk, pulling out a rope and some other bindings.

After the unfortunate man handed the items to the gunman, the stranger pushed the couple around to go to the building once more.

“Okay, this is better. I’ll tie Miss Pretty real well, and then you and I will take a little walk along the road about a mile. I saw something I want to investigate. First, give me the keys to the car.”

As he talked, he busily put the bindings on the girl, who remained too afraid to fight. He picked her up and tossed her over his shoulder to carry her.

The young man that had ridden with the girl on their trip reached into the car and grabbed the keys, handing them to the fierce individual holding them at gunpoint. He felt he had no choice.

Shuffling his feet, the young man then started out to the side of the building where the wall had caved in. The man made him walk in enough to deposit the girl over in a far corner.

“Let’s go,” the man said, waving the gun to the caved-in area.

The stranger prodded him on with the gun, occasionally taking the point of the knife and touching his back. The young man trudged onward, wondering where they’re going and what the man wants to see.

While they walked away, the young woman looked around to see if she could make out anything in the small building. With night making things very dark in there, she couldn’t see much. She eased around as well as she could with her bindings, and she tried to crawl across the floor.

As she managed to move around three feet toward what appeared to be a boarded window, she felt something next to her. She tried to maneuver around to get a better feel, and as she put her bound hands on the floor, she found herself to have put them in something sticky. She lifted the hands and shook them, and continued to try to see what the bulky object could be that lay beside her. As she placed her hands back on it, she encountered what felt like jeans.

She slid her hands along the jeans, finding another different fabric. This time, it felt like the type of material companies make t-shirts out of. A sick feeling began in the pit of her stomach, but she forced her hands to go further along the fabric until she felt the hair on the end. Gasping, she jerked her hands back and shut her eyes tightly.

She knows a body lay there, now. The person must have been more unfortunate than she and her man, because obviously this person is dead. She still remains alive, and hopes to stay that way.

As the young woman scooted back the best she could, she heard a different sound. It came to her as a low, sorrowful moan.

Deeper cries accompanied it, and the young woman whispered, “Hello? Is someone there?”

Quiet answered her, but then a little afterwards the sound came again.

“He…hel…help me, please?”

She could tell it sounded like a man, but she didn’t know where he might be located inside the building. From the sounds, he seemed not very far away, but with her hands and feet tied, she couldn’t move very fast in any direction.

“Where are you? Sir? Are you hurt?” she asked in a trembling voice.

“Yes. My head…he hit me. His gun…it hurts.”

“Can you tell me where you are? I’m tied. I can’t move very fast.”

“Close to the wall. If you…can come here, I might be able to…untie you.”

The young woman struggled to crawl and roll along the floor, trying to avoid touching the body lying close to her as well as she could.

She went a few inches before stopping and whispering, “Talk to me; I need to find you.”

The man sighed, groaning in pain.

“By the wall. My head hurts. How close are you?”

“I’m almost there. Keep talking and I’ll find you.”

“Okay…please. He’ll come back. He’ll kill us.”