Authors: Damien Echols
When the final day arrived, we came to school as usual. We left when it was over, simply drifted off into the crowd, which was delirious with the realization that school was over for another year. No one even noticed us. It was a daisy of a plan, and came off without a hitch.
We took an extra long route that I had never before explored. In addition to Deanna and myself, Jason walked with us. If you’re roaming aimlessly, then why not begin with the magickal land of Lakeshore? It normally only took about fifteen minutes to walk from school to our places, but this day it took two and a half hours of constant walking. We trod through empty fields far from any road, where there was zero chance of anyone eyeballing us.
At first Jason and I carried on with our usual bantering while Deanna laughed uproariously at our antics. She was amazed, because Jason never spoke in school, 74
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yet here he was chatting like a magpie. He and I could play off each other’s words all day, until eventually we ourselves were incapacitated with laughter. Not many people know it, but Jason is pretty hilarious. He has a nasty, caustic, venomous sense of humor. After the first hour we got pretty quiet, though.
It was the heat, which was right at 100 degrees. The sun beat down on us without mercy, baking our brains in our skulls. On a day when the television was warning others to stay indoors and out of the heat, we were maintaining a strenu-ous pace. Every step we took sent bone-dry clouds of dust into the air, and my mouth was so dry I could barely speak. There was nothing but flat, featureless fields in every direction. No trees, no buildings, and no shade. Not even a living blade of grass. The three of us were dressed in black, which didn’t help matters any. At one point I thought I would collapse from heat stroke. I was positive that I couldn’t force myself to keep going, yet I still did, one step after another. One foot, two foot, red foot, blue foot.
We finally arrived in Lakeshore and proceeded to an empty trailer. The door was unlocked so we went inside and collapsed on the floor to rest. Even that hot trailer was a relief after facing the blistering sun. I handed Jason a wad of sweat soaked dollar bills and moaned “drinks.” He left and made his way to the Lakeshore store. While he was gone Deanna changed into a set of my clothes that weren’t wet with sweat, as I’d had the presence of mind to bring along some extras. I didn’t bother changing, but I became obsessed with one idea. All I could think about was how wonderful it would be to wait until nightfall, then slip into that cool, crusty green lake. I no longer cared that it was filthier than a septic tank; I could practically feel its coolness against my skin. My tongue was stuck to the roof of my mouth. We were alone, but so hot, tired, and nauseous that we could do nothing.
Jason finally returned with a paper sack of Mountain Dews and Dr. Peppers. I drained a Mountain Dew in one long swallow then popped open a Dr. Pepper to drink at a more sedated pace. I felt life returning to me. He’d even had the wisdom to pick up some candy bars, so I quickly scarfed one of those. Full of sugar and caffeine, I was ready to juke and jive.
I investigated my surroundings while Jason told me breathlessly, “Man, every freak in the world is out there.” When I suggested it might help if he were slightly more articulate, he explained that all the neighborhood kids were looking for me like a pack of hounds, because the police had been through looking for me, and they were now convinced they might receive some sort of reward for finding me.
It seemed Deanna’s parents had wasted no time in calling the authorities to report her missing once they realized skullduggery was afoot.
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“No shit?” I asked as I sat down in front of a piano, the only piece of furniture in the entire place. I found it slightly odd that someone lived in a trailer park but could still afford a piano. A few of the keys were busted, but I could still manage to play it a little, which I did while Jason told me they had tried to follow him, thinking he’d lead them to me. Deanna came and sat next to me on the piano bench while Jason peeked out a window. He turned to me and said something that hadn’t crossed my mind—“You better stop that, because if one of those freaks hear a piano playing in here they’re going to be pretty sure it’s not a ghost.”
I snatched my fingers from the keys.
I sat quietly in thought for a few minutes before telling Jason that Deanna and I would sleep there that night, then say goodbye to him in the morning. There was no chance of him going with us because he was the only pillar of stability in his home. If he was not there to take care of his brothers then they would go feral like the Lakeshore dogs. He truly did have to be like a father figure to them, and I was always impressed by how competently he handled the task. Most people twice his age couldn’t do the job half as well. He exited the scene to go make supper for them.
The moment he was gone Deanna and I fell upon one another. Within seconds we were engaged in the act of sexual congress. Next came a mystery that I have never found the key to. Somehow, we were found.
For the last half-hour the sky had grown steadily darker, until the sun that had scorched us earlier was no longer visible. It was not the approach of night, but signaled the coming of one big, god-almighty storm. The wind picked up until I was absolutely certain a tornado would arrive at any moment. Would it not be ironic if we escaped parental control only to meet our doom at the hand of Mother Nature’s great destroyer of trailer parks, the mighty tornado? Such was not our fate. The sky grew black as night and the wind continued to howl and blow so fiercely that it seemed the trailer would roll over, but not a single drop of rain fell.
The wind suddenly stopped. It didn’t die down, it just stopped all at once. A really bad feeling rippled up my spine. I stopped what I was doing and cocked my head to the side like a dog listening for a strange sound. “What is it?” Deanna asked.
I waited seconds before reluctantly admitting, “I don’t know.” All I knew was that my every cell had just been flooded with the fight-or-flight feeling, and I had a terrible sense of urgency.
“Then pay attention to me,” she said.
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Just as I leaned forward to kiss her I heard glass shatter. “Shit!” I hissed as we grabbed our clothes. Even though I knew it was pointless and the jig was up, we still attempted to hide. It was a cop. Instead of opening the door and walking in, he felt the need to smash in a window and fulfill some sort of swat team fantasy.
He later lied and said that we had busted out the window.
He was a real piece of work—about four and a half feet tall, with the sort of mustache you only see on cops or gay ’70s porn stars. He was the kind of guy that needed a badge and gun just to stop people from laughing at him. I’m certain he heard us moving because he came right to where we were and started jerking us around.
As he was escorting us out, Deanna’s father approached. He put his hand on my shoulder and began breathing hard, as if he were having trouble restraining himself. I looked straight into his eyes and grinned like a jackal. I wanted him to be able to look into my soul and see how much pain he had already caused me. I wanted him to know he could do nothing to me that was worse than what I’d already been through. The cop pushed him away and said, “Relax, just let me handle it.” He backed off and the cop put Deanna and me both in the back of his car before returning to talk to her mother and father. I noticed that even her older sister had come out for the occasion, and I gave her my most charming smile.
While we sat in the car she held my hands and said, “Whatever happens, you have to come find me.” I promised that I would, no matter what. She kissed me then, like she had seen the future. It was the last time we would ever touch.
Another cop had pulled up, and they split us up, putting her in his car. She blew a kiss at me and waved goodbye as it drove off.
I arrived at the county jail and was escorted to my suite. It was a dark, dank cell that smelled of feet and corn chips, a tiny space with a brown solid steel door.
There was no entertainment except the graffiti, which covered every square inch of the walls. I was amazed at the bits of information people had thought important enough to write there. For instance, someone thought it vital that the world know someone named “Pimp hen” was adept at certain sexual maneuvers. I felt a bit like an archeologist in a tomb.
I was left alone for what I estimated to be two or three hours, but it’s impossible to really tell time in a place like that. It’s a form of mental torture, and I only knew that it seemed like an eternity. I kept wondering, “Where is she? Is she in
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this building? Do they have her in a filthy rat hole like this one?” The graffiti offered no answers to these questions. I was pacing like an animal when a guard came and opened the door, motioning for me to follow. I was lead to an office in which sat a bloated, corpulent man with beady little rat’s eyes. Jerry Driver and I had come face to face for the first time.
He seemed to have a pleasant enough attitude as he introduced himself. He started asking questions and I answered honestly, thinking there was no reason not to. He asked why we were in the trailer, and I told him we had run away because her parents wouldn’t leave us alone. No, we didn’t know where we were going, and no, we didn’t know what we were going to do once we got there. We figured it would come to us in time.
This is where things started getting weird. The smile never left his face, which looked like folds of uncooked dough. “Have you heard anything about Satanists around town?”
I thought that a bit odd, but answered, “No.”
He continued to press on—“You haven’t heard anything about Satanists, plans to commit sacrifices or break into churches?” His beady little rat’s eyes gleamed at me, like he was really starting to get off on thinking about this stuff.
You could tell something just wasn’t right about him.
I was pretty certain I would have remembered a roving pack of bloodthirsty devil worshipers if they had passed me on the street while chatting about such topics, so I told him, “I’m pretty certain I don’t.” He seemed to be considering something as he chewed his bottom lip with tiny, yellow stained, rat teeth.
Finally he shifted his obese bulk to pull something out of his desk.
I could practically see his whiskers twitch as he said, “What can you tell me about this?” The object he held was Deanna’s little green diary. I wanted to reach out for it, but knew it was pointless. I brushed aside his question, knowing that it would be like trying to explain something to the Spanish inquisition.
“Where is she?” It was my turn to ask questions. He told me she was being held at a women’s detention center in a town called Helena. He watched me closely as he said she had had “psychiatric trouble” in the past, and her parents thought it might be best if she was sent for treatment. She was being held until tomorrow, when she would be transported to a psychiatric hospital in Memphis.
This was news to me. I knew nothing of any past “psychiatric trouble.” It may not have even been true, because I soon learned that you could believe nothing he said. I didn’t know that then, and sat there seeing images of Deanna in an insane asylum. All I could picture was the Anthrax video called “Madhouse,” in which everyone wore straight jackets.
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I was told I’d spend the next week in Jonesboro where someone would come talk to me. Jerry Driver himself drove me there. It was a jail. Everyone wore an orange jumpsuit that said “Craighead County” on the back, and you slept in a cell. There was a day room where inmates played Uno with an ancient deck of greasy, creased cards. Time seemed to come to an absolute standstill. Later I discovered that it made no sense for me to be there, because anyone else who had been picked up the way we were would have received nothing more serious than a warning or a year of probation at the most, before being sent home. Deanna and I were being put in jail because Jerry Driver was not finished with us.
One day I was escorted to see a mountain of a woman who looked like she applied her make-up with a spatula. She talked to me for about an hour then gave me a test, which consisted of showing me flashcards before telling Jerry Driver,
“we have a bed for him.” I was puzzled about the meaning of this until it was explained that I myself would be going to a psychiatric hospital within the next few days. I suddenly saw myself in that “Madhouse” video.
I was left in the jail while they made arrangements for me to take a vacation in the nuthouse. I had about three days to wait for my transportation, and during that time I continuously paced from one end of the cellblock to the other. There were about ten to fifteen other guys there at any given time, and I later learned they were all typical jailbirds. I say “typical” because over the years I’ve had the opportunity to observe many people behind bars, and most of them have a tremendous amount in common. I’ve always come to the same conclusion—it’s no wonder these guys are where they are.
There’s not much to do in jail, so one day I thought I’d call home and check up. My mother knew I was leaving home, and had even given me a little money.
She went to court when Jerry Driver argued before a judge that he should be allowed to keep me in jail instead of allowing me to go home, as would normally be done. I called my mother to see if perhaps she knew more than I did. I was in for quite a shock. My father was back.
It seems that mother finally came to her senses and gave Jack the boot. It wasn’t like she had much choice, because my sister had made accusations against him concerning molestation. Some branch of the government responsible for overseeing the well-being of children sent a representative, and they informed my mother that Jack was not to be in the house under any circumstances.
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After Jack was gone, my sister had started calling people, searching for my father. I never asked her why and she never explained. Joe (my father) was in Arkansas visiting, and he and my mother were talking about getting back together. I was stunned. It felt like the whole world had been turned upside down while I was sitting in a cage. Under other circumstances I would have been ecstatic, but right now there were other things on my mind. I’d given Deanna my word that I would find her, but time was slipping through my hands. I was beginning to feel that I would never again know what life was like beyond those walls.