Long Holler Road - A Dark Southern Thriller Read Online Free PDF Page A

with me. We followed the fence in the opposite direction of where the house was to see how far it went. We must have walked a hundred yards before the fence made a ninety degree turn. It continued on for what looked like an eternity, deeper into the dense woods.
      “There ain’t no telling how much they spent on this thing,” I whispered.      “I told you they were hidin’ somethin’,” Glenn said with a know-it-all look on his face. I hated it when he was right.
      We followed the fence farther. I couldn’t fathom why anybody would need such an elaborate, impenetrable fortress unless they truly were trying to hide something. They sure didn’t go to this much trouble and expense to keep cows in. Glenn heard it before I did and grabbed me by the arm, pulling me deeper into the woods. It was the unmistakable sound of an automobile. We laid down flat on our stomachs, both of us behind a separate pine tree.
      Over a small hill, a car came into view. And not just any car, either. It looked brand new. A shiny cherry red car with a black convertible top. I couldn’t believe anybody would be driving a car like that through a field. Then I noticed the car was traveling at a fairly high rate of speed and wasn’t bouncing around like it should have been driving across rough terrain. The reason was that it was actually driving on smooth pavement. Why would anybody have a driveway that was in worse shape than a logging road and then put a newly paved road in the middle of nowhere? This was starting to get interesting and kind of scary. Glenn poked me and pointed at the car.
      “That’s a brand new Oldsmobile Cutlass 442. That’s a bad-ass car,” he said, with a look of awe on his face.
      I had never been impressed by cars, which I know was odd for a teenage boy in the ’70’s. To me they were just another piece of machinery that served a purpose. No different than a tractor or hay baler. We watched as the car came to a stop. A man and woman got out and walked over to a huge limestone rock. The man looked around a few times, like a small animal wary of predators, then bent down beside the rock and started fumbling with something. Then the woman walked over to a small metal box that was mounted to an oak tree. She took what I assumed to be a key and unlocked a lid that covered the front of the box. She stood there for a minute, appearing to be holding down a button or lever. Then she walked back over to where the man was and they disappeared as if they had been swallowed up by the earth.
      Glenn looked at me like he’d just seen a ghost. “They’ve got some kinda underground room over there,” he whispered. His face looked like he was as shocked and afraid as I was. We laid still, almost afraid to breathe, until they emerged about ten minutes later. They looked around, got in the car, and quickly drove away. As soon as they were out of sight we jumped up and hightailed it out of there. Briars or no briars, we were running like deer. Whatever it was they were doing, I didn’t want to know.
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
    CHAPTER FOUR
     
      Every town or community in the United States, and probably the world, has at least one. A woman who is more than willing to accommodate almost any man that comes along. Most of the time it’s for money, sometimes it’s because they are lonely, and then some just plain old like it, I reckon. Long Hollow, or “Long Holler,” as it was pronounced by at least three-fourths of our inhabitants, had one too. Her name was Madge Harper and she looked to be maybe thirty years old. Most of these loose women aren’t ever going to be candidates for Miss America or any other beauty contests. But that was not the case with Madge. Madge was a real knock-out. I mean movie-star pretty.
      Some of the guys I knew that were a little older than me had made a few visits to Madge’s house, and once they did, their lives were changed forever. The conversations we