own blood?”
“Positive,
I’m the person who found him. I saw it all with my own eyes,” Eddie responded
as he could hear Stevie swallow hard on the other end of the line. “You know
what this means don’t you?”
“Someone
knows, someone remembers,” Stevie declared in a low voice with his wife
still yelling in the background. “I knew we were doing wrong. I knew it’d come
back to get us.”
Stevie
couldn’t be more right in Eddie’s mind.
“We
need to meet, all of us,” Eddie said. “We need to figure this out.”
Stevie
went quiet again as he was obviously shocked and disturbed by what Eddie told him.
The news hit him from out of nowhere. His comfortable existence was
suddenly threatened.
“I’ve
got to go,” Stevie said, not knowing how to deal with the problem that now
confronted them.
“You
can’t just ignore this!” Eddie said in a loud voice. “We’re all in it!”
“I’ll
talk to you later,” Stevie responded before hanging up.
Eddie
knew he couldn’t just trust Bart to take care of things since he had kept him
in the dark all day. Still emboldened with liquor, he decided he would take the
lead. Bart had gotten them into this anyway so why trust him to get them out?
Eddie was going to call every member of the gang. Together they could figure
something out and perhaps come up with an answer about what was going on. He
would call Glenn Satterfield next, or at least he planned to before he heard
the movement outside his trailer.
Eddie
strained his ears and hit the mute button on his television trying to hear
if the noise repeated itself. Seconds passed but he heard only the slight
breeze outside.
He
was about to hit the button on his remote to turn the television back on,
dismissing his scare as alcohol induced paranoia, when he nearly jumped from
his seat. There was a loud bump outside his living room window. Something hit
the side of his trailer! This wasn’t paranoia. Something or someone was
outside!
Eddie
scrambled to his bedroom. He tripped over a chair and cursed as he
stubbed his toe. He then headed straight to his nightstand and pulled out
his thirty-eight caliber pistol from the bedside drawer. He checked the clip to
ensure it was loaded, jamming the clip back into the gun before chambering a
round.
“They’re
messing with the wrong man,” Eddie mumbled to himself as he stumbled out of his
bedroom and headed back to the living room. His arrival was greeted
by another loud thump outside the trailer.
“You
hear me! You’re messing with the wrong man!” Eddie yelled as he clutched his
gun, pointing it randomly around the room. “Come in here and I’ll blow your
head off!”
The
gun shook in his hand as he tried to clear his vision. He rubbed his
eyes as if that would wipe away the day of drinking. Then the noises returned,
an unmistakable beating, a rapping outside, the sounds circling around his
trailer. Eddie followed the sound of the pounding with his gun.
“Get
out of here! I’m warning you!” Eddie yelled.
The
fear was now telling in his voice. “Whoever you are, whatever you are, go
away!”
His
threat was answered by an even more intense pounding as the sound continued
moving around the outside of his double wide. The impact of the rapping
reverberated through Eddie’s body as the whole trailer shook.
His
threats of being armed had no effect on the intruder. Actually, his shouts
only served to embolden whatever was outside. He had to try another
tactic.
“Okay,
I’m calling the police!” he yelled as he reached for his phone.
The knocking
suddenly stopped after his announcement. Had his threat worked?
“I’m
calling them right now," Eddie shouted. "You’d better get out of
here!”
Eddie
was about to dial 911 to make good on his threat but was stopped by a bright
flash outside his back window. A moment later his trailer was plunged into
total darkness. Unable to even see his hand before his face, Eddie felt in the
pitch