Post by Joanna on Oct 27, 2013 12:57:21 GMT -5
Horror on Halloween
Halloween was just three days away when Angie Stapleton, the 9-year-old girl next door, disappeared.
People didn't disappear in small Southern towns, not children anyway. The occasional husband or wife would "run off" with another man or woman, but that was different. Angie was walking to the home of a friend who lived on the next street, a walk of no more than five minutes through the woods behind our houses, and something happened.
The lots on Pine Street – all the streets north of downtown were named for trees – were huge, so there was a good distance between the houses. The Stapleton house was at least 30 yards from ours. It was a medium-sized wooden home built in the 1920s or '30s, with a broad front porch – almost every house in town had a porch – and the trim around the windows and the chairs and swing on the porch were all painted blue. As I drove past on my way to the store, I noticed there were two jack-o-lanterns sitting among pots of red and gold mums on either side of the steps. Most of the children in town already had their costumes and I wondered what Angie had planned to wear trick-or-treating this year.
Volunteers were searching the woods and surrounding area and when I returned from the store, I was surprised to find Randy, my husband, sitting at the kitchen table reading the newspaper. I assumed he would still be out with the others combing the woods.
"Has the search been called off for the day?" I asked.
He shrugged. "People have looked everywhere there is to look. If she was out there, they would've found her."
"So what are you saying? Where do you think she is?"
"If somebody grabbed her," he replied, "he would've got her in his car and carried her off somewhere to a place he could do whatever he wanted with her and wouldn't risk being seen or heard. Maybe to his house, if he lives alone, or to an empty house, or out in the woods somewhere that nobody ever goes. Guys that grab kids know what they're doing. They don't hang around a few yards from the kid's house."
I thought his attitude was somewhat condescending. He acted like he was trying to explain something that any person of normal intelligence would already know. Not in the mood for an argument, I didn't say anything else and proceeded to put away the items I'd bought and started dinner.
The next morning, I wanted to walk the children, particularly Sara, my 10-year-old daughter, to school, but Randy wouldn't have it.
"She'll be fine walking with her friends," he insisted. "Whoever took Angie isn't going to risk taking a child in the same area the next day."
After I finished the breakfast dishes and made the beds, I had an appointment for a trim at the beauty salon and when I walked in, the women, all of whom I knew, gave me a somewhat funny look. "What's going on?" I asked.
"Have you seen the morning paper?" Sandy, a new girl who had just started, asked from the manicure table. The "morning paper" was a newspaper from the state capital. Most people in town subscribed to the paper from a city around 40 miles north, which was delivered in the evening.
"No," I replied. "Is there any news on Angie?"
Mildred, the owner of the salon, handed me the paper, tapping her finger on the photo of the sketch of a man. I froze. The man bore an uncanny resemblance to my husband! "Does he look like anyone you know?" she asked.
Quickly, I regained my composure and laughed. "My goodness," I exclaimed, "he looks something like Randy. But his hair's too short, his face is thinner and his eyes are closer together."
I assumed someone had seen this man with Angie, but after reading a few lines, realized this was the sketch of a man believed to have been involved in the disappearance of a 10-year-old girl in Louisiana five years earlier.
I smiled and made light of the situation, but my mind was working like a calculator. My first husband, the father of my children, died five years ago. I met Randy two years later and we'd been married almost three years now. He was originally from South Carolina and had relocated to our town when the company he worked for opened an office here. Then I scolded myself. Why was I letting this get to me? These sketches were always way off and in cases where they guy was caught, he never looked anything like the picture. Besides, just because someone sees a stranger where a child disappears doesn't mean he did it.
"Wonder why they're running a sketch of a man from Louisiana from five years ago?" Margie, another customer inquired, as she inspected her nails.
Sandy piped up, "It's not just five years ago in Louisiana, if you keep reading, you'll see that the same man was suspected in some missing girl cases in South Carolina."
South Carolina! My heart skipped a beat.
Returning from the shampoo room, I sat down in Mildred's chair and explained my hair was getting so long on top it was going flat and asked that she take more off the top this time. By now the gossip had moved on to the bank vice president, a chronic womanizer, and his latest affair.
Once I left the salon, I wondered aimlessly along Main Street window shopping and nodding to people I knew – which was almost everyone. I was home by 2:30, watched my favorite soap opera, did a little housework and decided to make meatloaf for dinner. But no matter what I did, I couldn't get that damned picture out of my mind. A man resembling my husband was connected to disappearances of little girls in Louisiana and South Carolina and I had a 10-year-old daughter!
Randy and the kids came home, we had dinner, watched a little TV and got ready for bed. I was hesitant and instead of showering as I usually did, decided to take a long, hot bath, but in the back of my mind, I knew the real reason I was lying in that tub of hot water was because I was hoping Randy would be asleep by the time I got into bed.
The following morning, the routine was the same – fix breakfast, get the children off to school, my husband off to work and clean house. As I vacuumed and dusted, I suddenly realized I was shaking all over, took one of my nerve pills and decided to walk downtown to the library. It was just five blocks and the crisp, autumn air would do me good.
I went straight to the reading room, chose a comfortable chair near the window and read the article in the previous day's newspaper from beginning to end. The girl in Louisiana had disappeared in a city called Minden. Randy’s grandparents lived in Shreveport, but Louisiana was a big state and the two cities could be hundreds of miles apart. The article was continued and as I fumbled to locate it, I began to feel queasy. And when I saw Columbia, South Carolina, I almost fainted. Randy had been in the Columbia office before his transfer. Two other girls had disappeared in Aiken, South Carolina, and another had gone missing in Augusta, Georgia. Augusta was only around 75 miles from Columbia and Aiken was even closer! And serial killers travel!
According to the paper, the sketch was from a witness in Aiken, who had seen a man fitting that description in the neighborhood where an 11-year-old girl was abducted on her way home from school in early October. The Georgia girl had disappeared just three weeks later on Halloween night. She went trick-or-treating and never returned!
I stood up to leave. Suddenly, the big, grinning jack-o-lantern at the check-out desk, the cutouts of ghosts and witches and the skeleton dangling from the ceiling made me nauseous. All those little girls had disappeared during the month of October. It was October and Angie Stapleton was missing!
I didn't remember walking home. The kids were already there, arguing about something, but I ignored them. Randy would soon be home. Randy, the serial killer! Randy, the child killer!
My parents lived in a small town just 20 miles away and I went to the phone and dialed their number. My mother answered and as soon as I spoke, she could tell something was wrong.
"I'm thinking about taking the kids out of school and coming home for Halloween. I'd like them to go trick-or-treating in the neighborhood where I grew up before they're too old." I realized I was babbling, but couldn't stop. “The little girl that’s missing lived next door and they haven't found her ...."
"But they caught the boy!" Mom interrupted. "They got him just a few hours ago. His last name is Hutto. I don’t remember his first name. He’s 16-years-old and he lived next door to the house that little girl was going to visit. He tried to bury her behind his house. I don't know all of what happened, yet. It's on the radio now ...."
I couldn't believe it! I had been driving myself insane for nothing!
The back door opened. Randy walked in and I hurried to give him a long, tight hug.
"Hey, what gives?" he asked. "You've been as nervous as a cat in a room full of rocking chairs the past couple days."
"I couldn't help it. Angie going missing like that and Sara, the same age ...." I was babbling again.
"Yeah," he said, "I've always thought that Hutto boy was a weirdo. He pretended to be some kind of peace loving freak with all that Bob Dylan music and Ann Rand crap, but underneath it all, he was nuts."
After dinner, we watched a movie called The Mephisto Waltz on TV. It wasn't really appropriate for young children, but I let them watch anyway. It was Halloween and they were supposed to be scared.
I went to bed first and waited for Randy. I couldn't believe what a fool I'd been.
There was a full moon that night and as I looked at my husband's familiar shape silhouetted against the window, I was overcome by a feeling of horror. No, Randy hadn't killed Angie Stapleton, but the man who took those five girls in Louisiana and South Carolina was still out there. Or was he in here? – Anonymous
Halloween was just three days away when Angie Stapleton, the 9-year-old girl next door, disappeared.
People didn't disappear in small Southern towns, not children anyway. The occasional husband or wife would "run off" with another man or woman, but that was different. Angie was walking to the home of a friend who lived on the next street, a walk of no more than five minutes through the woods behind our houses, and something happened.
The lots on Pine Street – all the streets north of downtown were named for trees – were huge, so there was a good distance between the houses. The Stapleton house was at least 30 yards from ours. It was a medium-sized wooden home built in the 1920s or '30s, with a broad front porch – almost every house in town had a porch – and the trim around the windows and the chairs and swing on the porch were all painted blue. As I drove past on my way to the store, I noticed there were two jack-o-lanterns sitting among pots of red and gold mums on either side of the steps. Most of the children in town already had their costumes and I wondered what Angie had planned to wear trick-or-treating this year.
Volunteers were searching the woods and surrounding area and when I returned from the store, I was surprised to find Randy, my husband, sitting at the kitchen table reading the newspaper. I assumed he would still be out with the others combing the woods.
"Has the search been called off for the day?" I asked.
He shrugged. "People have looked everywhere there is to look. If she was out there, they would've found her."
"So what are you saying? Where do you think she is?"
"If somebody grabbed her," he replied, "he would've got her in his car and carried her off somewhere to a place he could do whatever he wanted with her and wouldn't risk being seen or heard. Maybe to his house, if he lives alone, or to an empty house, or out in the woods somewhere that nobody ever goes. Guys that grab kids know what they're doing. They don't hang around a few yards from the kid's house."
I thought his attitude was somewhat condescending. He acted like he was trying to explain something that any person of normal intelligence would already know. Not in the mood for an argument, I didn't say anything else and proceeded to put away the items I'd bought and started dinner.
The next morning, I wanted to walk the children, particularly Sara, my 10-year-old daughter, to school, but Randy wouldn't have it.
"She'll be fine walking with her friends," he insisted. "Whoever took Angie isn't going to risk taking a child in the same area the next day."
After I finished the breakfast dishes and made the beds, I had an appointment for a trim at the beauty salon and when I walked in, the women, all of whom I knew, gave me a somewhat funny look. "What's going on?" I asked.
"Have you seen the morning paper?" Sandy, a new girl who had just started, asked from the manicure table. The "morning paper" was a newspaper from the state capital. Most people in town subscribed to the paper from a city around 40 miles north, which was delivered in the evening.
"No," I replied. "Is there any news on Angie?"
Mildred, the owner of the salon, handed me the paper, tapping her finger on the photo of the sketch of a man. I froze. The man bore an uncanny resemblance to my husband! "Does he look like anyone you know?" she asked.
Quickly, I regained my composure and laughed. "My goodness," I exclaimed, "he looks something like Randy. But his hair's too short, his face is thinner and his eyes are closer together."
I assumed someone had seen this man with Angie, but after reading a few lines, realized this was the sketch of a man believed to have been involved in the disappearance of a 10-year-old girl in Louisiana five years earlier.
I smiled and made light of the situation, but my mind was working like a calculator. My first husband, the father of my children, died five years ago. I met Randy two years later and we'd been married almost three years now. He was originally from South Carolina and had relocated to our town when the company he worked for opened an office here. Then I scolded myself. Why was I letting this get to me? These sketches were always way off and in cases where they guy was caught, he never looked anything like the picture. Besides, just because someone sees a stranger where a child disappears doesn't mean he did it.
"Wonder why they're running a sketch of a man from Louisiana from five years ago?" Margie, another customer inquired, as she inspected her nails.
Sandy piped up, "It's not just five years ago in Louisiana, if you keep reading, you'll see that the same man was suspected in some missing girl cases in South Carolina."
South Carolina! My heart skipped a beat.
Returning from the shampoo room, I sat down in Mildred's chair and explained my hair was getting so long on top it was going flat and asked that she take more off the top this time. By now the gossip had moved on to the bank vice president, a chronic womanizer, and his latest affair.
Once I left the salon, I wondered aimlessly along Main Street window shopping and nodding to people I knew – which was almost everyone. I was home by 2:30, watched my favorite soap opera, did a little housework and decided to make meatloaf for dinner. But no matter what I did, I couldn't get that damned picture out of my mind. A man resembling my husband was connected to disappearances of little girls in Louisiana and South Carolina and I had a 10-year-old daughter!
Randy and the kids came home, we had dinner, watched a little TV and got ready for bed. I was hesitant and instead of showering as I usually did, decided to take a long, hot bath, but in the back of my mind, I knew the real reason I was lying in that tub of hot water was because I was hoping Randy would be asleep by the time I got into bed.
The following morning, the routine was the same – fix breakfast, get the children off to school, my husband off to work and clean house. As I vacuumed and dusted, I suddenly realized I was shaking all over, took one of my nerve pills and decided to walk downtown to the library. It was just five blocks and the crisp, autumn air would do me good.
I went straight to the reading room, chose a comfortable chair near the window and read the article in the previous day's newspaper from beginning to end. The girl in Louisiana had disappeared in a city called Minden. Randy’s grandparents lived in Shreveport, but Louisiana was a big state and the two cities could be hundreds of miles apart. The article was continued and as I fumbled to locate it, I began to feel queasy. And when I saw Columbia, South Carolina, I almost fainted. Randy had been in the Columbia office before his transfer. Two other girls had disappeared in Aiken, South Carolina, and another had gone missing in Augusta, Georgia. Augusta was only around 75 miles from Columbia and Aiken was even closer! And serial killers travel!
According to the paper, the sketch was from a witness in Aiken, who had seen a man fitting that description in the neighborhood where an 11-year-old girl was abducted on her way home from school in early October. The Georgia girl had disappeared just three weeks later on Halloween night. She went trick-or-treating and never returned!
I stood up to leave. Suddenly, the big, grinning jack-o-lantern at the check-out desk, the cutouts of ghosts and witches and the skeleton dangling from the ceiling made me nauseous. All those little girls had disappeared during the month of October. It was October and Angie Stapleton was missing!
I didn't remember walking home. The kids were already there, arguing about something, but I ignored them. Randy would soon be home. Randy, the serial killer! Randy, the child killer!
My parents lived in a small town just 20 miles away and I went to the phone and dialed their number. My mother answered and as soon as I spoke, she could tell something was wrong.
"I'm thinking about taking the kids out of school and coming home for Halloween. I'd like them to go trick-or-treating in the neighborhood where I grew up before they're too old." I realized I was babbling, but couldn't stop. “The little girl that’s missing lived next door and they haven't found her ...."
"But they caught the boy!" Mom interrupted. "They got him just a few hours ago. His last name is Hutto. I don’t remember his first name. He’s 16-years-old and he lived next door to the house that little girl was going to visit. He tried to bury her behind his house. I don't know all of what happened, yet. It's on the radio now ...."
I couldn't believe it! I had been driving myself insane for nothing!
The back door opened. Randy walked in and I hurried to give him a long, tight hug.
"Hey, what gives?" he asked. "You've been as nervous as a cat in a room full of rocking chairs the past couple days."
"I couldn't help it. Angie going missing like that and Sara, the same age ...." I was babbling again.
"Yeah," he said, "I've always thought that Hutto boy was a weirdo. He pretended to be some kind of peace loving freak with all that Bob Dylan music and Ann Rand crap, but underneath it all, he was nuts."
After dinner, we watched a movie called The Mephisto Waltz on TV. It wasn't really appropriate for young children, but I let them watch anyway. It was Halloween and they were supposed to be scared.
I went to bed first and waited for Randy. I couldn't believe what a fool I'd been.
There was a full moon that night and as I looked at my husband's familiar shape silhouetted against the window, I was overcome by a feeling of horror. No, Randy hadn't killed Angie Stapleton, but the man who took those five girls in Louisiana and South Carolina was still out there. Or was he in here? – Anonymous