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“Next time Dana Murphy shoves that camcorder in my face I’m going to break it,” Brian bitched as he sat down at their lunch table in the cafeteria.
“She’s just doing her job,” Mel defended the editor of the yearbook.
This year they were doing something different with the yearbook and Justin was excited about it. Of course he had found himself in awkward moments just to look up and see Dana with that damn camera. Like when his locker jammed, and he pulled it too hard and the whole door came off and him falling to the ground and hitting his head. Everyone got a good laugh including his asshole of a boyfriend. The office gave him a different locker rather than fixing his. Now he was near Home Ec.
“Well, her job is pissing me off. Every time I turn around she’s got that thing on me.”
“You are the soccer king of the school. The closest we have to another star athlete is Janna Kirk and her mastering of Tae Bo in gym class. Our football team sucks, no offence Ben,” Lindsay said with her cheeks turning a bit pink. He smiled and didn’t look offended. “Our baseball teams sucks. No one cares about most of the girls sports but lately they have sucked too. Only our soccer teams have been winning.”
Brian rolled his eyes and started to ignore everyone agreeing with her.
“I ordered a copy of the first semester yearbook; I can’t wait to show Daphne the Fall video.”
Brian looked at Justin with distain. “What? To make fun of the hicks?”
That wasn’t what Justin meant at all, but it seemed lately Brian found fault with everything he did. Justin was pretty sure Brian was going to break up with him. Apparently he just didn’t get used to having a boyfriend. It had only been a little while, but he wouldn’t make a fool of himself by begging Brian to stay with him. His mother said this was the best time of his life. He hadn’t agreed when he was being bullied at St. James back at home. He was bullied here but he had more than just Daphne backing him up. Just the other day Blake cussed out a football player twice his size because the idiot was teasing Justin.
After lunch Justin decided to skip out for the rest of the day, he wasn’t really feeling school. He couldn’t go to most places because if he went to the diner, Debbie would tell his mother. If he went to the Dam any number of people could see him and tell his parents.
Getting an idea he decided to go to the town’s library to see if they had old newspapers of the time of his aunt’s family’s deaths. The library was quite small, barely big enough to be considered one he was sure. It looked like it used to be someone’s house, their small house.
“Aren’t you supposed to be at school?” the librarian asked as she saw him.
He didn’t know her from Adam, so he lied. “I was sent by my History teacher Coach Kent. To look into local news from the past for my project. I have to work after school, so this is the only time I have to do it.” Justin was shocked the lie came so easily. Brian hated lying so he would have to watch what he said around him.
“The microfilm machine is in the back in the room with the camera painted on it. I hope you find what you want.” As he started to walk away she called him back. “One more thing, I’m on the school board and there is no Coach Kent at the high school. I’ll give you today but don’t try this again or I’ll drive you back to school myself.”
The woman was about eighty if a day, but he had no doubt she could follow through. He just nodded and headed to the room. Maybe being a spy or criminal wasn’t for him, he’d get caught day one.
The machine was old as dirt but he was able to find the first issue that detailed the accident.
Three Dead in Hit and Run
Robert Coleman and his two daughters Brenda and Diana were killed in a hit and run on Old Oscar Road. Mona Coleman, Robert’s wife and mother to the children, said they were going to Mule Day in Columbia when they were hit. Mrs. Coleman wasn’t with them, she was working and said she was going to meet them later.
There were no witnesses in the hit and run so police are baffled. One Massie Simms was quoted as saying “Things like this just don’t happen here, we’re good folk.”
The last deaths that shocked our small community was the Logan Massacre in 1962 when Christopher Logan killed his family of ten in the very house that the Colemans lived before their unfortunate deaths. This reporter isn’t one for mystic things but if there ever was a curse on a house it would be that one.
Justin sat back barely being able to breathe. People were killed in the house he was living in. Did his mother know? Did his aunt Mona know? There was no way that none of his friends knew but they still didn’t tell him. He wasn’t going to sleep ever again. Maybe he could talk his mom into letting him stay with Brian. Who was he kidding, she would never allow it.
Even with a pit in his stomach he started the year 1962 on the machine. He found what he was looking for on the 12th of June.
Massacre on Logan Road
Justin read threw the dozens of articles on the murders. Mr. Logan was a farmer but after two seasons of all his crops dying because of what he suspected was someone poisoning his fields, he couldn’t take it anymore. On the morning of the 11th of June, he woke up and went about his daily chores. Grabbed his shotgun out of his barn and shot his wife first, then went through the house shooting each of his children. His boys shared a room that had a large tree out the window. That was Justin’s room now. The father went in and killed the boys on the only day he didn’t make them get up early to work on the farm. One boy tried to jump out of the window to the tree, he missed and fell to his death. He had only been eight.
It was a horrific death for each one of the family members. How had no one told him that his house was a murder scene? All the papers he found on the massacre said the same thing, Christopher Logan shot himself after the annihilation of his family but their bodies weren’t found for days. There were talks of tearing the house down, but Mr. Logan’s brother sold it. It was bought by a nice newlywed couple, Robert and Mona Coleman.
There was a tap on the door and a woman came in. It wasn’t the woman who let him in, this one looked a little younger but only a little. He had seen her around the diner, Mrs. Kirkland if he remembered right. She owned several little stores in and around the community before she sold them. Now she lives in a huge house on the hill. There was a white fence surrounding it and horse statues on the ground that can be seen from the highway.
“I’m sorry, hon, I was hoping to use the machine. This library is so small we only have the one.”
Justin jumped up. “Of course, it’s all yours,” he said but noticed she wasn’t paying attention to him anymore. Her eyes were locked on the screen.
“That was so horrible. I remember Helen, she was a good woman. My youngest was in the same class as one of her middle children. She may not have been the most overly warm woman, but she was a good worker and kept those kids hale and hearty. The baby wasn’t even one yet.”
“Did you know the husband?”
“Yeah, I knew him.” She looked at Justin with a piercing gaze. “Do you want to hear something?”
“Yes.” He was already so interested in what happened in his home, even if it did make him a little sick to his stomach.
“I never did think it was Christopher, he was a good man, but he hated using that gun. He only kept it for when foxes came for the chickens.”
“Who did you think it was?”
Her eyes darkened. She grabbed the chair Justin had jumped up from. “I always thought it was Joe Kinney.”
Kinney? Was she talking about someone that was in Brian’s family?
“Why did you think that?”
“One of the Logan girls accused him of being inappropriate with her. Next thing you know the whole family is dead and the blame laid fully on Christopher even though it was impossible for him to do it.”
“Why do you say that?”
“Tell me how a 5’4 man can shoot himself in the temple with a long barrel shot gun in the left side of his head when he was right handed?”
Justin didn’t have anything to say to that because he really didn’t know. All he was doing was reviewing his great Aunt Mona’s family’s death.
“I really don’t know. You’ve lived here a while it sounds.”
She chuckled before coughing. “Excuse me, sorry. I’ve lived here all my life.”
“Did you know the Colemans?”
Her smile dimmed. “That man got away with murder again.”
“What do you mean?”
“Robert Coleman accused Joe of stealing. Robert even went to the sheriff to make a statement. Right before the trial was to start for him stealing about 10 thousand dollars that the Colemans hid up in that farmhouse, Robert and the girls died. Mona didn’t care anymore about much of anything after that, including prosecuting anyone that wasn’t the driver that hit her family. So, the case seemed just to fall apart. There was only one person that had a reason. Joe Kinney.”
“You sound so sure of yourself.”
“I am, that whole family is rotten to the core. Jack, Joe’s son has put his boy in the hospital more than once. It’s the worst secret kept in town. Then there is the boy himself, he’s a punk and a bad mouthed and bad tempered one at that. The whole family is just trash and they always will be.” Justin had started to like her but after her bad-mouthing Brian he decided he didn’t like her very much. After saying goodbye Justin started his way home. Did his boyfriend’s grandfather kill Justin’s aunt’s family?
Tomorrow night was Halloween and he planned to go out with his friends to a party then do whatever they wanted. Could he look Brian in the face without him knowing what he learned after this?
To be continued.