Fraidy Hole: A Sheriff Lester P. Morrison Novel

Copyright © 2012 by Warren Williams

All rights reserved

Cover Photo and Design

b
y Warren Williams

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents
are either

the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously.

ACKNOWLE
D
G
E
MENTS

To M. Jane Merdian
,
without whose help

this book would
not
have been possible.

To
my wife
Ruth, for being there.

Chapter 1

Faint images, like an out of focus slide show, flickered across her mind’s eye; a bar, drunken men, a night sky
,
wet grass, then falling
…
falling.
Suddenly
, as if the projector lamp had popped, the mental screen went dark, the dream giving way to emerging consciousness. The girl lay in a fetal position, legs curled, knees drawn high, her elbows and arms tight against her chest. She stirred, shivered, and reached out for a blanket only to feel a sharp pain knife through her shoulder and ribs. There was no blanket, no sheet, only small
,
strange objects that felt light and crinkly, objects completely foreign to her normally safe and warm bed at home.
Her brain began to poll the other senses, to make some sense of time and place. One eyelid, the left, twitched and opened, but the eye saw nothing, no light, not even a shimmer, no shapes, no shadows, only blackness. The girl sensed that there was something wrong with the right eye and she slowly brought her hand up to touch it, to explore the problem, then winced at the touch of swollen flesh. There was no sound, the silence absolute, except for a faint and rhythmic t
humping
. It
took a moment to realize she was hearing the beat of her own heart.

The surface she was lying on, whatever it was, felt rock hard and cold, definitely not her mattress, she was sure of that
, and
there was that odd smell, damp and moldy, as if she had somehow fallen asleep on a forest floor somewhere deep in the woods. She wrinkled her nose as she caught a whiff of her own breath,
foul and
rancid with the odor of vomit. The thing to do, she decided, was to get up, find a light switch and
the
bathroom, and try figure out just where she was and how she got there.
A
drink of water
and a toothbrush, that would help
.
She rolled to her stomach, got a
foot
under her for balance, and
pushed herself upright
. It was a big mistake.

The pain exploded from her groin in a tsunami of fire, flooding her abdomen, crashing upward across her rib cage and shoulder and down her right arm. The great wave of pain crested, meeting
a
torrent of misery
from a
sudden
blinding headache in a crescendo of breathtaking, mind numbing pain unlike anything Melissa had experienced in her short life.
She
swam
in the pain, her body weaving, bobbing, sinking
beneath
the surface of consciousness, only to re-emerge, fighting for
her
life.
Like a tightrope walker, she spread her arms,
struggling for balance,
fighting the dizziness and nausea,
wondering if she were about to die.

The first trace of panic hit her in the pit of her stomach.
Adrenaline surged, her pulse quickened
as
her blood pressure began to rise. Her throat constricted as she sucked in more air, feeding the
fear
.
Arms in front
now
, fingers waving, she took a tentative step—very small—then another, not knowing if the next would send
her
over
an unseen precipice,
plunging into
the void of
a black hell.

A noise. Something moved, something on the floor, close to her feet, something small and quick.

Her screams bounced off the concrete walls, reverberating in the
hollowness
, the echo ringing in her ears, the sound of her own cries more terrifying than the darkness. She hopped from one bare foot to the other fearing the touch, or worse, the bite of whatever was there with her. A spider web
brushed
her cheek.
She flailed at the darkness,
new
fear suppressing the pain, her arms
wind
-
milling
in fright.
Her brain said run but where, what direction?
Then, a hint of illumination above and to her left, a faint rectangle of light, a thin halo of daylight and
possible
safety.
Stumbling, shuffling, feeling with her feet, arms
extended
, she moved toward the light, inching her way across the cold floor.
One big toe
collided with
something hard
and made her grimace.
She leaned forward, searching, probing, and made contact with…a board, that’s what it felt like anyway. It was solid and flat and damp. It was a step, and there was one more above that, and another. It was a flight of stairs. She could barely make it out
,
but it was there, a reality,
not a dream. And at the top, a door, or a hatch of some kind, a way out, a door to freedom and sanity. She pushed. The door was heavy—metal probably—and moved no more than a couple
of
inches, just enough to see
dirt, weeds, and glorious sunshine, but
then banged against something solid. She pushed again, harder, harder still, straining, feeling the pull in her gut and her ribs, aggravating the pre-existing pain and causing her to cry out in agony. But the door would not open. Just the two inches, maybe three, but no more.

Breathing hard, Melissa took two steps down and
stopped, straining
to see the floor
beneath her
, searching for the
thing
that mad
e
the
noise
.
But there was nothing to see,
or hear,
no movement, nothing alive with claw or fang.
It was still there, whatever it was, had to be. It was only a matter of time, she knew, before
it
sprang from the darkness and sank its teeth into her
bare
flesh.

Minutes passed, but there was no attack, no wild creature to grab and eat her. She choked down the panic, took a breath, held it, and listened again. Leaves moved, a rustling, skittering sound, then quiet.
With a fury she had never known, Melissa assaulted the door, this time with her fists, pounding and pounding with the heel of her hand until her arms ached and her muscles grew weak.
She tried another tactic, this time pushing with her back and using her legs for leverage, she heaved upward, again and again, until her legs trembled, her strength sapped.
She rested a moment and then with her
face
as close to the gap under the door as possible, began to yell, the loudest and most desperate yell of her life.

“H
ELP
! H
ELP
!
DOWN HERE
.
HELP MEEE
!

Feeling the strain on her already irritated throat, she paused and listened for a reply, but heard only the familiar southwest wind blowing across the plains. The adrenaline rush had faded along with her energy, the pain making an encore appearance, but she would just have to deal with it, she knew that now.

Animal or no animal, she had to rest. Picking her way down the creaking steps, she hesitated at the bottom and then leaned back against the hard damp wall. Her legs buckled and she slid down, raking her back
on the rough surface
, her butt hitting the concrete with a thump. Another pain, but not from the sudden contact, this pain was different, deeper, internal.
She touched herself under her short denim skirt and groaned. Her underwear was gone.

Oh no, oh God no, please no, not that.

Her head dropped to her chest as she clutched herself and shivered. Her long chestnut colored hair fell over and around her face.
Melissa Parker began to cry.

Chapter 2

The man stood in the bow of the 17-foot aluminum boat and cast the blue artificial worm to the back of the cove where the fallen limb came off the bank. He began a slow and steady retrieve, stopping every couple of cranks to let the bait fall in a most tantalizing manner.
On the second cast,
he felt the tic of a black bass as it touched the worm. He leaned the tip of the rod forward, ready to set the hook.

C’mon baby, c’mon. Come to papa. One more time. I know you’re hungry. C’mon, I’m ready.

The bedside phone shattered the moment with its irritating two-tone electronic trill.

“Son of a bitch,” the man mumbled, rolling over. He glanced at the clock. The oversized red numerals read 6:25. He reached for the phone.

“Sheriff
Lester P. Morrison here. Whoever is calling me at this gawd-awful hour of the morning better have a really good reason.”

“Sheriff, this is Nelda on dispatch.
Why are you always so grouchy? ”

“Damn it
,
Nelda, you scared the fish.”

“What?”

“Never mind, what’s going on?”

“Got a call just now from a Mrs. Parker, lives out east of town a ways, over by Keyes?”

“I don’t know her
,
Nelda. What did Mrs. Parker want?”

“She says their teenage daughter, Melissa, had an argument with her father last night.”

“Nelda, that’s no reason to wake a man up
at this time of day
. What else did she say?”

“Said Melissa stormed out of the house and took off walkin’ down the road.
Said her and her dad fight a lot and this has happened before. Said she usually walks down to her friend Becky’s house and sometimes spends the night.
Mrs. Parker said her and her husband went to bed—it was around ten o’clock she thinks—but when they woke up this morning, Melissa wasn’t in her bed and it hadn’t been slept in. Mrs. Parker called Becky’s house
,
but Becky said she hadn’t seen Melissa since they got out of school
yesterday afternoon
.”

The
S
heriff sighed.
“All right, I’ll go out there and talk to ‘em
,
but the chances are real good the girl will show up before I finish my first cup of coffee. Get me an address and directions.
Go ahead and call Billy Ray, no sense him sleeping if I can’t.
Tell him to meet me here at the house.”

“I’ll do that
,
S
heriff, but what was that about a fish?”