MJ Preston, Author at Author M.J. Preston

That day started like any other on the ice. I was on my second season on the ice, running my third trip up the ice in 2013. The weather had been strange that year. Temperatures in the north warmed up―the previous day, the sun was out, and the roads which crossed the portages began to glaze with a slick coating of ice.

We launched that day in darkness, departing the city of Yellowknife, our Super B’s loaded up with fuel, bound for the Ekati Diamond Mine. By the time we were up the Ingraham trail and onto the ice, an overcast sky hung above, its canvas flat opaque. Our convoy of three consisted of Brad Hardy, myself, and Gerald Keefe. Brad was in the lead, me in the middle, and Gerald was our tail gunner. As with every trip, I shot plenty of pictures. We talked for hours on the radio as we made our way across lakes and portages that would get us to our halfway point. Lockhart Lake. Talking, debating, and joking around on the VHF radio is what drivers do to stay ahead of the fatigue. A run to Ekati could take as long as 18 hours, and once you’ve committed, there’s not a lot of places to stop and sleep. So, it was a typical day. We were all in good humor that morning. As this was my second season, I was well acquainted with Gerald and considered him a friend. I had no idea that he would be there beside me when all hell broke loose.

We were coming off Gordon Lake when Brad called, “Three north on 20,” to alert southbound convoys of our presence. In some spots, it can be tight meeting a southbound truck. A small pond only separates portages 20 and 21, no more than 30 feet across. It isn’t a great spot to meet another rig, but it happens, and drivers adapt. Coming down the hill onto the pond is a feat in itself. You go straight down a hill, pushed by your twin tankers. Once you’re on the pond, you have to turn the rig in a hard right to climb the icy grade to portage 21.

I was on portage 20 now when I heard Brad call, “Three north on 21!” There was a pause. I was halfway across the portage when Brad called back, “Mark, get your foot into on twenty-one. I was wiping my feet all the way up that one.” Which meant he was losing traction. I readied myself for the next pond, feeling confident, wide awake. I’d done this pond crossing north, and south over fifty times, so I adjusted for conditions.

I came off portage 20 and got onto the pond with no issues, But when I started into the last part of the turn that would take me up onto Portage 21, the steer wheels lost their grip on the road and became skis. Instead of propelling up the hill, I was in a direct line with the bush. I tried to bring it back under control, but the tankers of fuel had power now. Next, I was crashing into the woods, small trees falling victim to my moose bumper. There was a thud, and as violent as the crash felt, it was over in mere seconds. I looked in my passenger window at the mirror and saw my pup was blocking the road. Gerald was coming, only half a kilometer behind me, probably more like two hundred meters by then.

Grabbing the radio, I called, “Everyone stop! I’m off the road at 21!” Then I was getting my winter gear on. Behind me, Gerald got word just in time. He got onto the brakes as he was coming off portage 20. With my arctic gear on, I got out to assess the damage. That was when my heart ended up in my throat. The driver-side fuel tank had struck a rock and been ripped open. I scrambled through the snow and under the lead tanker to grab my pails. Gerald was out of his truck.

“My fuel tank’s ripped open. Bring all your buckets!”

Then I climbed back under the trailer with three buckets in my hand. When I got up to the side of the truck, I couldn’t get the pail underneath the ruptured tank, so I jammed my arm underneath between the laceration and the rock it sat on and used it as a conduit to drain it into the pails. Gerald showed up with all his buckets and slipped on the same rock that had ripped open my fuel tank. He fell on top of me and then thanked me for saving his life. Twice.

“Huh?” I was kneeling in the snow, my right parka arm jammed in a crevice of rock and steel, acting like a candle wick directing fuel into a container instead of onto the ground. I didn’t understand what he meant.

Gerald pointed to the rock. He would have hit his head if I hadn’t broken his fall, and then he said, “I would run right into you. If you hadn’t called out, I would have hit you for sure.”

I looked at him and said, “You can buy me a beer when this is over.”

Gerald laughed. So did I, even though I felt like someone just fed my ego into a shredder. The damage to the truck weighed heavy on me. I was questioning what I could have done differently, and meanwhile? I was soaked in diesel fuel, pumped on adrenaline.

Security showed up, and when he got out of his pickup, he fell flat on his back. He picked himself up and walked like a drunkard wearing roller skates. He came down, “You guys need anything?”

“Something to put the fuel in,” I said, and as if by a miracle, a guy appeared with an empty 45-gallon drum and brought it down to us. Roughly a half-hour after the crash. I used a compound called Plug & Dyke, a powder that turns into putty and can work miracles on a punctured fuel tank, to seal the lacerations in the tank. You only have a few minutes to work with the stuff, but I managed to plug the holes and stop the remaining fuel from leaking out. Part of that dyke involved a tree branch that had pierced the aluminum fuel tank.

As I climbed back up onto the road with Gerald, the security commended both of us for containing what could have been a disastrous spill. I asked him, “You writing me up for this?”

“No, the road’s a skating rink. It was an accident,” he said and added, “I have to commend you, boys. You averted an environmental mess.”

“It’s what we do,” I said. That wasn’t arrogance―it’s bred into a fuel hauler―you don’t want to spill a drop. We train for it constantly. His words should have made me feel better, but they didn’t. In the distance, I could hear the recovery boys coming to pull me out. Generally, they will not pull tankers backward for fear of causing significant damage, including rollover and spill. When they got there, I signed a declaration of responsibility for all damage incurred during the recovery, be it mechanical or environmental.

Putting my signature on the document made me feel even better.

It took three winch tractors and four hours to pull me off that rock without destroying the undercarriage of that W900. When it was done, my wounded rig and trailer were dragged up to the sugar shack. An oxymoron because you found quite the opposite of sweetness in that in the sugar shack. It was, for lack of a better word, a shit house.

“The road is open!” Security called, and the convoys began rolling north and south, packs of four twenty minutes between each. Each passing, taking in the battered spectacle of my rig. With the road cleared and my rig waiting for recovery, it was time for my friends had to leave. Gerald and Brad returned to their trucks and started heading north. I was on my own at this point. I felt the sting to my ego as gawkers drove by taking in the truck that had hung them up for hours.

**The second casualty that day, another tractor pulling super b’s finds itself jackknifed.**

I ended up jumping into a pickup with the 2IC of Nuna Road Maintenance out of Dome Lake. Nuna had sent the three winch tractors to recovery me. It was their job to maintain and keep the road open. Word came that Big Red, driven by Curtis, our winch truck operator for Ventures West, was on his way with a replacement rig for me and to take my battered W900 south to Yellowknife for repair.

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“Stop!” A diver called. I’m spun out on twenty-two,” A driver called, and the road was again closed. We drove to the scene, where I jumped out, helped the driver chain up, and took about fifteen minutes to get him rolling again.

“The road is open!” The 2IC of Nuna announced on the VHF radio, and trucks began again. Then two more reports of spin-outs came across the wire. “The road is closed.” We darted across the portages, and I helped out two more drivers get their chains on while heavy equipment pulled them up the grades. Over the next ten hours, the road would reopen and close over a dozen times as calls for assistance came from drivers losing traction. I chained up seventeen out of the eighteen trucks that sent out distress calls.

After midnight, a Kenworth pulling super b’s jackknifed on a portage, and I found myself assisting with that recovery. That was the final recovery of the day. On Gordon, Lake trucks had been circling for hours because they could fit on the portage. I heard one driver say, as they circled for what must have been the hundredth time, “Here we go again. I’m living in Nascar hell.”

The entire day had been surreal. I was exhausted, I smelled of diesel, and I would be getting a shower until my replacement rig arrived. That happened around 3 AM when an exhausted Curtis showed up at the Sugar Shack with the flatbed and a replacement rig. The Kenworth was running, so I went back to my truck, stripped out of my gear, and put clean clothes on. It was better, but I needed a shower which wouldn’t be forthcoming until I reached Lockhart Lake. We decided to grab at least four hours of sleep before switching the tractors. I climbed up onto Big Red’s flat deck and into the idling Kenworth, where I collapsed from exhaustion.

The following day the sun came out, and Curtis and I pulled my new wheels off and then put the W900 on his deck. That done, we chained it down, and Curtis was gone south. Now all I had to do was wait. Eventually, I tagged onto a northbound convoy, and we went onto Lockhart Lake. When I came in, there were looks from other drivers who knew. Some guys came up and chatted, tried to be supportive. Many looked with the interest of a rubber-necker.

**A grader [front] and a winch tractor [rear] attempt to pull a jackknifed truck and trailer out of the bush.**

I carried on up the road, and by the time I got back from the Ekati Diamond, the boys in the shop had my W900 rigged up with a new fuel tank, and I was back in the game.

I reflected on what happened that on the ice. It’s something every driver does after an accident or an incident. The melting of the road and the dusting of snow made it a skating rink, but I will always wonder if something I could have done differently. Maybe if I turned a little wider? Perhaps if I hadn’t been so aggressive to get up that icy grade? Maybe?

Now, I look back, and though it was an unpleasant experience, it was also a chapter in the story of my ice trucking days. One I will remember for all my days. One I would never want to repeat. I can’t remember if Gerald bought me that beer for saving his life twice, but I’ll never forget how he was there by my side on that day from hell on the ice.

Thanks for listening.

THE EQUINOX by MJ Preston — **GRAB A COPY OF MJ PRESTON’S STRAIGHT UP HORROR, THE EQUINOX**

MJPreston #FFS

#FFS Featured Free Story

By MJ Preston on Sunday, March 7, 2021

Ths week I am giving away a story that was originally published in an anthology called: CANOPIC JARS Tales of Mummies and Mummification. The story is called Run-off 31. It was published by Great Old Ones Publishing, and edited by Gregory L. Norris.

It apperared alongside authors such as, H.P. Lovecraft, Gord Rollo, B.E. Scully, and many more fantastic authors. This is my all time favorite anthology.

I’m going to do this every once in awhile. If you dig my stuff please purchase one of my works and leave a review.

Anyhow, that’s enough of that, here’s Run-Off 31.

Enjoy

RUN-OFF 31

A Short Story by MJ Preston

Chicago, Illinois

Summer, 2013

The bodies started turning up in late July. Before long, police began to think that this was not the work of one serial killer, but two, possibly even three. The only flaw in this thinking lay in the fact that every victim had been left with an identical incision from solar plexus to belly button. Some of the detectives called them the ‘X Killings’, because carved into each victims belly was an X that was not a symbol, but the end result of evisceration. The reason they speculated the killings couldn’t possibly be committed by one perpetrator, the sheer number of victims. To date there were 44, and the dead weren’t more than a day or two old when they began turning up. Now, into the end of August, meant only one thing, the killer or killers, were claiming a victim a day on average, with the odd double.

Sean Woodman was not assigned to the case, he wasn’t even a cop anymore, but he followed closely through the papers. It reminded him of a case he’d worked back in his days as a Chicago Police Detective. A case that was never closed. He’d been young and cocky back then, but along with his damn-the-torpedoes attitude, he also had a talent for seeing things others missed. And with the exception of that one unsolved case, he’d cleared a lot of murders. Those cleared cases garnished a respect which would eventually pave the way to a door plate which read: Deputy Chief of Police. That was the end of the line for Woodman. He wasn’t a cop anymore, just a PR man who practiced politics with the best of them. Truth was, he hated it. He missed the smell of an unsolved case and made it his business to poke his head in on a task force or two to get a whiff of that scent.

At first they thought he was some crazy micro-manager from upstairs. But Woodman proved a great help to his fellow officers; and even better, he took zero credit. Word got around, and after a while the task force cops started coming to him for insight.

Chief Jorgenson didn’t like it though when Woodman got down in the trenches with the troops. Woodman thought that dislike was born out of resent. Jorgenson had been a career pencil pusher and had no cred with the cops he commanded. Although Jorgenson disapproved, there was no real reason to put a halt to Woodman’s actions. Woodman had balanced his position while Deputy Chief with an occasional task force consultation quite well. When a case cleared, the Chief did what any politician would do. He held a press conference – congratulated his officers, and basked unabashedly in their success.

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Then the unthinkable happened to Woodman. The unthinkable being, a car accident that resulted in the death of his wife Jesse. Then there was the trace amounts of alcohol in his bloodstream that hardly registered .04 on the breathalyzer. He hadn’t blown enough to be charged, he wasn’t legally drunk, but Jesse was gone and when word got out, the media hooked onto him like a pariah. They dogged him about the accident, and about how much he’d drank after someone leaked the blood alcohol tests.

His career ended in much the same way Jesse’s life ended. Abrupt and without mercy. He found himself standing before the Mayor and Chief Jorgenson. On either side of them, like book ends, a Public Relations Bitch and the City Lawyer. Set neatly on a table before them, a stack of paper roughly an inch and a half thick.

That’s the “The Big Fuck You”, he thought. Somewhere through that he heard the Mayor offering words of regret, and there was even a round of condolence. But it was hollow, the papers on that table spoke more about what was at play than these four assholes put together. In the end he did the only thing he could do. He signed his resignation, took a handsome buyout and left them to pat each other on the back. That was the end of Sean Woodman’s career in the Chicago Police Department. And though he was gone, he never forgot that one big case that got away. The one with the Indian named Blackbird and the bodies of woman they found in the Chicago sewers. They had also been eviscerated, but the belly’s of those girls had been torn open. They called the case Little Big Horn, because on the evening of the last murder there had been an exchange of fire which included the use of a cross bow. Considering that Daniel Blackbird had been of Native descent and was the one firing the arrows, the name stuck.

Scott Emmett showed up on Woodman’s doorstep with a case file thicker than a city phone book. He liked Emmett, but he was adamant that his days as a cop were over. Emmett was the son-in- law of his partner and best friend, Brad Rosedale. Coincidentally, Rosedale had been a part of that forgotten case as well. Unlike Woodman, Brad moved on. In fact he moved all the way on down to Tennessee; somewhere between Nashville and Memphis with his third wife.

“I can’t do this Scott. In fact if Jorgenson found out you were on my doorstep you could find yourself in deep shit. You could lose your job.”

“Well, normally I’d say fuck Jorgenson, but to be honest, he sanctioned this visit,” Emmett replied.

“Don Jorgenson told you to come see me?”

“Yeah.”

Woodman laughed, not because it was funny, but because he couldn’t believe the bastard would have the nerve. “Nothing personal Scott, but you can tell Jorgenson to go fuck himself.”

“We need your help Sean.”

“Why should I care? I’m not a cop anymore.”

“The last one was a 10 year-old girl.”

“Jesus Christ.” Woodman sighed and pushed open the screen door. Emmett stepped through the doorway and followed Woodman down the hall of his two room bungalow. “You know that the whole ‘last one was a ten-year-old girl’ is pretty fucking lame, little girls get murdered all the time.”

“There’s something else.”

“Yeah, what’s that?”

“We have a suspect.”

“You’ve made an arrest? I didn’t read anything in the papers.”

“No, not exactly, but we, know … I need your help.”

“So, you want what? Me to sit down with this guy. Jorgenson can’t be agreeing to that. This is all over the papers. I could see the headline. High profile case pulls disgraced Deputy Chief out of retirement. As much as I would love to make that Fuck-Stick squirm, I still have my daughter to think about.”

“How is Stacey?”

“I don’t know, she hates my guts. I killed her mother after all.”

“There’s one other thing Sean.”

“What’s that?”

“The suspect says he knows you.”

“What? Who is he?”

“He doesn’t have a name, but he says he knows you and won’t talk to anyone else.”

They rode in Emmett’s car. Woodman leafed through the case file, Emmett briefing him as they rode. “He’s approximately 40 years-old, no tattoos and he’s huge.”

“You mean fat!” Sean was staring at one of the crime scene photos. It was the body of a woman, she was nude, her stomach unzipped.

“No, tall. Stands like 7 foot 3. Scary looking fucker.”

“Where did you pick him up?”

“That’s where we’re going now.”

“How would he know me?”

“I don’t know, but we found something.”

“What? What did you find?”

**THE EQUINOX IS AVAILABLE AS AN E-BOOK for $1.99** GRAB A COPY HERE

Emmett turned toward him, his face serious. “It will be better if you see it. This guy identified you by name. He said you would know him if you met him and he said one other thing.” Emmett turned his attention back to the road.

“What?”

“He said: I am Number 4.”

“What? Where? What the fuck? Where the fuck are you taking me?”

“We’re going to the run-off.” Emmett glanced over, then back to the road. “ Run-off 31.”

Woodman fell silent, but his mind raced. Run-off 31. Did they? Was it possible? After all these years? Had they finally caught him. His teeth clenched, turning his cheeks out into hardened contours of meat.

Being back down here, plodding through the sewers, sent tremors through Woodman. It wasn’t just the claustrophobia, it was the smell, the dripping sounds, and below the pungent order of methane and human waste lay something darker. Woodman thought about the Nazi death camps and the smell associated with them. Real or imagined, those who visited those dark satanic mills associated that smell with death. This place was very much the same and though it had been almost 14 years, he still recalled the bloated headless corpses in Run-off 31. They got more than they bargained for when they, Chicago PD, went down below. A log jam of bodies, all headless and eviscerated, crammed into that run-off, like…

“Spoils.” Rosedale called from the past. “Like a bunch of fucking discarded chicken carcasses.”

Up front, Emmett waded through the sludge, stirring the septic slew with his hip waders, creating a tide of lurching waves that lapped against the scum coated walls of the underground tunnel. Woodman felt the pressure of the liquid pushing his own waders against his legs. Emmett had come prepared.

“You boys are going to bring the suspect through this shit, seriously?”

Emmett stopped, swung about, the beam of his flashlight gliding across the glistening walls. Facing Woodman, he said. “He’s already there.”

“I thought you said that you guys had him in custody.”

“Not exactly. He’s contained.”

“What the fuck is up here, Emmett?”

Emmett chewed his lower lip, eyes losing focus momentarily. Then his gaze hardened and he turned to continue on. “It will be better if I show you.” Woodman considered protesting, but his curiosity had the better of him and at this point complaining would accomplish little, if anything. So, he did the only thing he could do, he followed the young officer and they continued on toward the run-off.

They reached the mouth ten minutes later. The arch of concrete was a little over eight feet high. This section of the sewer was as old as the city itself. The walls pitted and worn, falling victim to the elements and toxicity of gas vapors. Emmett halted, tracing the beam of light up the wall until it fell upon a rectangular plate stamped out of brass that had long since faded and turned green.

It read: RUN-OFF 31.

Woodman didn’t need the sign. This place was etched into his memory. Through that archway, thirty feet ahead bobbed the horrific memory of his cold case.

“Are you ready?” Emmett’s gaze was neutral, even distant.

“Yeah, lets do this,”

They waded forward; sloshing liquid bounced off the conduit walls announcing their presence to the subterranean wildlife. A rat scurried along the edge and dove into the slew dog-paddling away from them. Thirty feet in Woodman stopped, listening for the ghosts of his past, wondering if they were watching him now. Emmett said nothing, waiting patiently for the moment of silence to pass. It did and Woodman whispered, “Let’s go.”

Sixty feet in, they came to a Y-Junction, to the left, the run-off continued its course to wherever it was the water flowed. To the right, the path began to climb out of the murky liquid. At its base slimy cobble awaited, but further up it looked dry. The archway was still high enough to walk upright and for this Woodman was thankful. His back was thankful as well.

“What do you make of this?”

Scrawled into the cobble by their feet was a single word: CHARON. The inscription was not old, weeks, perhaps as long as a month, and it was done free-hand, chiseled into the cobblestone and blotted with what looked to be blood.

Woodman studied it, something in that name struck a chord, but he couldn’t put his finger on it. “I don’t know. Could it be the name of your Perp?”

“No, I don’t think so.”

“Okay, that’s it! What in the name of fuck is going on here? First you tell me you want me to speak to a suspect, then you drag me down into the sewers. Now I’m taken back to the scene of an old case and you’ve been … well, cryptic seems to be the operative word.”

Emmett’s gaze was trained upon him, but he said nothing.

“Okay that’s it!” Woodman swung around, ready to wade back into the septic stream.

“Wait.”

He stopped.

“Almost everything I told you is true, Sean. We need your help.”

His back still turned, Woodman responded. “You want my help. Start talking.”

“Okay.”

He pivoted back around to face Emmett. “I’m waiting.”

Emmett took a long, deliberate breath then exhaled. “We tracked our suspect here this afternoon after the body of a ten year old girl turned up in St. Paul Woods. This was a fresh kill, crime scene puts it down to hours. The mother wasn’t even aware yet that the daughter was missing, let alone dead. She’s a turn key kid, with a single mom working two jobs. Some old homeless guy picking bottles and cans came across her, and he saw the murder.”

“He didn’t intervene?”

“As I said before, the Perp is huge, I don’t think our witness could have done much.”

“Never mind, carry on.”

“The old man, he’s a mess. He said that the girl was screaming when the ghoul cut her open. Screaming and begging for her life.” Emmett stopped, took another deep breath and carried on. “So, when it’s over, the old guy says the Perp removed her organs and put them into some kind of carry bag then starts out across the park. The homeless guy decides to follow at a fair distance I might add, but God love him for showing some balls. He follows the Perp out of St. Paul over to Oakton Street all the way into Skokie. Two fucking miles, Sean. Guess where it leads him?”

Woodman said, “Little Big Horn.”

“You got it. Same place your guy was dumping bodies down the sewer. Same alley. Same fucking manhole. Except this guy pulls back the manhole cover and goes down the hole like a fucking … what did they call those underground moles in H.G. Wells’ The Time Machine?”

“Morlocks?”

“Yeah like a fucking Morlock. Not far from there, there’s a community Precinct. After the Perp goes down the hole, the old guy makes for the Precinct. Takes him about 20 minutes to convince the community cop he’s not a loon, twenty more minutes to locate the body and another ten to call us. We were mobile within an hour and a half. I figured he was long gone. Then, on a hunch I decided to check the Run-off. That’s where we found him. Where he is now.”

“Why isn’t he in the tombs under lock and key?”

“Because we don’t have him in custody. We just have him cornered.”

Anger bubbled up. “Cornered! You brought me to an apprehension? I don’t even have a gun! What the fuck is the matter with you!”

Emmett reached into his jacket and produced a Desert Eagle 9 mm. “You can have this if it makes you feel better, but you won’t need it. He’s behind some kind of plexus-glass barrier.”

“Barrier?”

“Sean, please. Come with me, it’s only another 600 yards. He says he knows you. Says that he is Number 4, he won’t talk to anyone but you. The others are waiting. We’ve got ten armed cops down there, you have my spare gun. I need you to talk to this guy, he’s up to something, but I’m not sure what. I can stand here and debrief you for another hour, but it will be easier if you just follow me the rest of the way.”

“Is it the man from Little Big Horn? Do you think this is my guy.”

“I really don’t know. That’s for you to decide.”

Both men carried on into the darkness.

“This is Detective Emmett! I am entering the scene with former Deputy Chief Sean Woodman!” Emmett shifted impatiently from one foot to the other. “Answer, God damn it!”

“Okay Detective, it’s clear for you to enter.”

The light at the end opened up into a pumping station that had been cut in half by a barrier that indeed looked like plexus-glass. On one side, strategically positioned, police officers stood, weapons drawn and at the ready. On the other, a lone silhouette sat staring out at his captors over a sea of clay pottery. The lighting was dim, but Woodman caught the grin that suddenly formed on the strangers face and knew that this sudden show of pleasure was due mostly to his arrival.

“What the fuck is he doing here,” Woodman cussed when he saw Jorgenson walking toward him.

“I’m sorry Sean, I didn’t think you’d come if I told you.”

“You’re right, I wouldn’t have.”

“Thank you for coming Sean,” Chief Jorgenson stuck out his hand.

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Woodman turned his attention from Emmett to Jorgenson. “Put it away, Jorg, I’m not shaking your fucking hand,” he said, then raising his voice just slightly, added. “Would I be correct to assume that that pottery contains what was taken from the victims?”

“Yeah, that would be correct.” Jorgenson lowered his hand and placed it into his pocket. He took a cursory glance around to see if his subordinates had noticed; they had.

“How did he get in there?”

“We don’t know.”

Then, from behind. “Wood Man.”

Startled, Woodman pivoted to face the Perp.

He rose, strode forward, coming into the light. He was a giant of a man. His hands hung like machinery at his sides. His clothes still stained with copper, giving testament to the last killing. His face was hard and angular, bone and muscle pulled his skin back making him look gaunt.

“I have been waiting for you?”

“You have. Why?”

“Because you have seen him.”

“Who?”

“Keh Run of course.”

“I don’t know any Keh Run. Who are you?”

“I am Number 4.”

“How did you get in there? Who is Keh Run?”

The stranger frowned. “I do not like games, Wood Man.”

Woodman thought back to the inscription in the cobblestone. Charon. “Was that his name at the base of the tunnel? I thought it was pronounced Charon, not Keh-Run.”

“Yes, Charon.” He smiled again, revealing uniform planks of yellow teeth, looking more like old fence boards stacked on top of each other. He folded his hands neatly in front him, tilting his head downward.

“You said you knew me.” Woodman decided to ask the question that was eating him. “Have you done this before? Back in 2001? Was that you?” He brought his eyes up to meet the stranger, steeling his expression and waiting.

The stranger’s smile melted back into his milky complexion. He turned and moved back between the pots, settling down on his pedestal; arms crossed. From there, shadows fell upon his face, making it look skull-like.

“What now?” Emmett whispered.

Woodman cocked his head right, catching Jorgenson and Emmett’s attention and glanced toward the opening of the pump room. They took the hint and followed. Once out of earshot, he began talking. “This isn’t my guy.”

“How can you be sure?”

“The girls back in 2001 were torn open, their heads literally twisted off. This wacko is emulating that, but he wouldn’t know the state of the victims were in. Does anyone have a cell phone that works down here?”

Emmett pulled out his iPhone. “Yeah, I have a signal.”

“Okay, Google Charon.”

From above, a muddy drop of water fell downward and splashed across the screen.

“Fuck.” He wiped it with his sleeve or he tried to, then stopped. “It’s going to take a second, the touch screen doesn’t react well to liquid poo.”

Woodman and Jorgenson both laughed, but stifled their amusement when they saw the other sharing in the joke. “So what’s your contingency plan?” Woodman asked.

“I’ve got a SWAT team coming down with a fixed charge. If you can’t talk him out, we’ll go tactical and take the fucker out.” Jorgenson nudged Emmett. “How are you making out?”

“Give me a second, the signal is pretty weak.”

“There has to be another way in? Are you looking at that?”

“I’ve got a city works guy coming with blue prints, but these are some old fucking tunnels. When I called over the Chief of Operations he asked me if I was kidding. Said that finding a blue-print of this section might take a lot of hours.”

“But he found them?”

“Yeah, he’s conferring with the SWAT Lieutenant.”

“Got it! Holy shit, if this is right, this dude has some serious expectations of you, Sean.”

Woodman reached over, took the phone and began to read. He didn’t have his glasses, but the font was large enough that he didn’t struggle too much. After he finished, he passed the phone over to Jorgenson and said, “Well, at least we know who Charon is.”

“He’s certifiable,” Jorgenson said.

“Really? You needed Google to figure that out, eh, Jorg? The whole evisceration thing didn’t tip you off?” Woodman regretted letting that out only a second after it spilled from his mouth. Bitterness would accomplish nothing here.

THE HIGHWAYMAN SERIES Book 1 – **HIGHWAYMAN** Book 2 – **FOUR**

Jorgenson glanced up, his face red and angry. “You don’t want to be here. I’ll have an officer escort you out. I didn’t end your career, you did.”

“Could we save this for another time?” Emmett interrupted.

Woodman didn’t give Jorgenson a chance to respond. He walked out of the pump room back to the plexus. “The boatman. You’re waiting for the boatman to arrive?”

The stranger rose. “Charon, yes. I have a tidy sum to give him.”

“Who are you?”

“I told you, I am Number 4.” He reached down and lifted the lid from one of the pots. “One left to fill, then Charon will come for me.”

“What is this? Why did you ask for me?”

The stranger smiled. “You will see.”

From behind, Jorgenson whispered, “ I just got word, they have found another tunnel that’ll lead them in. Tactical will be here in five, keep him talking.”

“Why do you call yourself Number 4?”

“Because I am not the first.” He stood, walked to the back of the enclosure. “I am the fourth servant, cast down to earth. But to find my way back to the Master, I must first do his bidding and payment must be made.”

“Payment to Charon?”

From behind, Jorgenson again. “Four minutes.”

“Yes, but he is also a servant. He will take my payment, but the cargo will not be his to keep.” The stranger reached up onto the wall and flicked a switch. The room lit up, shadows retreating into the walls and in their absence Woodman saw it all.

There behind him, amongst the many clay pots, smeared with copper that could only be coagulant held a new source of concern. Was it? Could it be? Beneath a tarpaulin standing upright was a figure that could only be…

“Behold, Wood Man!” The stranger said and pulled away the tarp.

Horror cut through him like rusty barb wire. Woodman’s eyes widened, his thoughts spinning and as shock melted over him he could hear himself screaming. “No! No! No! No!”

From behind, Jorgenson again. Panicked. “Keep him talking. Tactical is close.”

“Stacey!”

She was barely conscious, not a strip of clothing on her body, her arms tied behind her back, her belly exposed. Like a witch on a stake.

“Jesus Christ, no! Let her go, please. ”

“Forty five is the number, Wood Man.”

There below her, a pot was waiting. It’s lid removed.

The Officers at the scene raised their weapons. Safeties clicked off.

The stranger reached down and produced a knife, its blade long and curving into a hook. He stepped forward and blew into her face. “Wake, child.”

“You fucking psycho, let her go!” Woodman was blubbering. “Please, take me instead!”

Suddenly conscious, Stacey whimpered, “Daddy?”

“It’s time, Wood Man.” He grinned and raised the blade.

“Shoot! Shoot the fucker!” Jorgenson ordered.

The underground room exploded in a barrage of gunfire. Bullets ricocheted off the plexus, one zipping past Woodman’s head. Another struck Jorgenson in the throat opening his jugular. Blood spurted out of the wound, splashing upward against the plexus; first defying gravity then it began to flow downward. Another officer was struck in the ankle, bone fragments splintered from the skin in porcupine fashion.

The stranger seemed not to notice.

Woodman begged – pleaded – cried and then fell to his knees when the knife cut up into her belly on its first diagonal pass. Stacey stiffened, her eyes locking with her father’s. Then, after the second cut, she screamed, but only for a second; it was drowned out by her father’s howls of anguish.

Emmett ordered, “Hold your fire! Hold your fire!” Then a bullet cut into his guts, turning his knees to rubber. As if in prayer, he dropped and let loose a groan that exemplified agony.

Woodman could only hope a stray bullet would take him, but the barrage fell silent, replaced by ringing disbelief. Stacey’s chin rested against her chest, her mouth opening and closing, her pupils dilating.

Woodman prayed, Take her, please take her now.

Then, with one hooked hand, the stranger who called himself “Number 4” reached inside and to eviscerate her. She was gone before the audible plop, her insides warming the cool clay jar.

The stranger came to the glass, and with one bloodied finger wrote the word: Charon.

“Your soul for hers,” he invited.

“You bastard, you fucking psycho piece of shit!”

From the headset that now lay beside a dead Jorgenson, he heard, “One minute to breach!”

The stranger returned to the center of the pots and stood on his pedestal. Then he began to pray aloud in some foreign tongue. It was rhythmic, rising and falling. Woodman had never heard the language, but it was indeed a language.

“You’re going to get the needle for this, you sick fuck!”

“Shay-gra-che-Keh-Run-la-a-Jee,” he prayed, a chant of psychobabble. “Keh Run-la-a-Jee! Charon! La-a-jee! Charon! La-a-jee!”

Something began to happen.

From each pot a light began to bloom, first growing then pulsing like a heartbeat. All of them, all 45 glowed in a myriad of color. The temperature plummeted, frost forming on the walls, turning breath into vapor.

“What’s happening?” someone asked.

The stranger began to change as well. His face hardening, the milky skin turning first to serape and then ashen. The radiance from the pots increased, the stranger raised a hand, his skin crumbling away like cigarette ash leaving only an accusing boney talon. “Behold,” he said.

Behind him, the wall began to ripple and then fade. Light dissolved the matrix of reality and the wall was no more. Reality buckled – came apart – a corridor materialized; a long wide passageway set in stone bookmarking each side, halfway filled with water. Down that passage was a place that those who feared for their eternal soul would not dare look.

Woodman, mouth agape, remembered what he’d read. Dark and dismal, the River of Acheson and across the Styx cometh the boatman: Charon to collect the payment for safe passage to Hades.

The light inside each of the pots rose and materialized corporeally.

First he saw a man, then woman, then a child, then Stacey. Behind them, the stranger continued to decompose, muscle degenerating, skin tightening, until only mummified bone remained.

“Oh my God,” the officer whose ankle had been shot called out.

Down the corridor, pushing against the current, the boatman was coming.

The ghostly forms gathered about the one who called himself Number 4 as he stepped from the pedestal, following him to the shoreline as the boatman approached.

“Hades,” Woodman mumbled.

“What?” Emmett grunted.

“Your soul for hers,” he had offered.

There’s still time. I can save her. I can stop him from taking her!

Woodman reached into his jacket pocket, felt the gun, wrapped his fingers around the pistol grip. “I can’t let this happen! I can’t let him take her!”

Almost at the shore now, soon the boatman would be ready to take them aboard.

“Sean! What are you doing?” Emmett cried.

Sean Woodman placed the gun barrel under his chin, closed his eyes and squeezed.

***

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Research

THE HIGHWAYMAN FILES

By MJ Preston on Saturday, February 27, 2021

PART II – THE CASE OF THE COED KILLER

When I decided to start the Highwayman series, I spent most of the creation process in the cab of a truck running up and down the road turning over ideas in my head. I coupled this with research, sometimes on audiobooks, reading true crime, and watching documentaries on the subject.

HIGHWAYMAN is a two-book project which follows the birth and evolution of a serial killer named Lance Belanger. When I started this project, I was faced with a couple of questions. The first was, “How do I want my character to be?” That’s an open-ended question. I mean, do I want Lance to be sympathetic or just plain evil? Most serial killers are evil people, but what really makes them tick? What is their reasoning for doing what they do? How do they compartmentalize their acts, and what emotions do they have that the reader can identify with?

In the case of HIGHWAYMAN, Lance Belanger knows that he is different. He shares in many of the aspirations of ordinary members of society. He has wants, needs, insecurities, and he also has regrets. While we share many of those traits, our interpretations of our wants and needs are limited by the lengths we will go to accommodate those needs. For instance, if a normal person sees something they desire, they are usually defined by an internal moral compass. They will not cross the line to steal, or rape or murder. But let’s be honest. We’ve all had thoughts. Maybe about someone we don’t like or have been slighted by. We might think, “I’d like to bash that person’s head in.” But we don’t act on it, because internally we know that is wrong. The same goes for stealing or acting on lust.

†

The true sociopath lacks that moral compass and is driven by a need to do the unthinkable. Case in point would be the incarcerated California Coed Killer, Edmund Kemper. Kemper was imprisoned twice for murder. On August 27, 1964, Edmund Kemper, then 15, got into an argument with his grandmother, took a rifle his grandfather had given him and shot her dead. What made Kemper cross that line is anybody’s guess. Having read about him and based on interviews he gave to FBI agents, Robert Ressler and John Douglas, I have come to the assumption that part of it was seeded in his feelings of inadequacy around women. Kemper had a strong bond with his father but was always at odds with his mother. When they divorced, Kemper lost the only person he could relate to, or that was his explanation. After killing his grandmother, he waited for his grandfather to return and shot him as well. Presumably, because grandpa would have been a witness? That might have been it, except Kemper then called his mother and confessed to the crimes. She urged him to call the police and turn himself in. He did and was taken into custody.

Edmund Kemper had already crossed the line into the world of murder, but between 1969 and 1972 it appeared that Kemper was getting his life on track. He became briefly engaged to a 16-year-old high school student, worked for the Department of Highways and purchased a 1969 Ford Galaxy after receiving a $15,000.00 settlement for a motorcycle accident he’d been involved in.

But all was not as it seemed. Kemper began to take notice of the pretty California coeds hitchhiking in and around the university his mother worked at. In the trunk of his Ford, he kept instruments of murder and disposal. Bags, knives, guns, and handcuffs. He began dry runs, in which he would pick up female hitchhikers and let them go while easing just a little closer to his murderous fantasies.

On May 7^th, 1972, fantasy morphed into reality when he picked up Mary Ann Pesce and Anita Luchessa. After driving to a secluded spot, Kemper handcuffed, raped and murdered both women. He then placed their bodies into the trunk of his car, and returned to his apartment where he took photos, dismembered their bodies, and had sex with their severed heads. He then drove out to Santa Cruz and disposed of them into a ravine on Loma Prieta Mountain. Pesce’s skull was recovered the following August, but the rest of her body and the remains of Luchessa were never recovered.

Left to right: Mary Ann Pesce and Anita Luchessa.

Kemper would go on to abduct, rape, kill and defile the corpses of his victims. On September 14^th he murdered, Aiko Koo, a Korean dance student who had opted to hitchhike to class after missing her bus. On January 7^th, 1973 he shot and killed Cindy Schall, who he decapitated and after keeping her head for a few days, he buried it in the garden at his mother’s home. The following month, February 5^th, after a heated argument with his mother, Kemper abducted and killed Rosalind Thorpe and Allison Liu. Again, Kemper removed their heads and used them in his depraved sexual ritual. He disposed of them at Eden Canyon.

On April 20, 1973, Kemper’s mother, Clarnell Strandberg, returned from a party and her son, who was again living in her home, entered her bedroom. According to Kemper, his mother was indifferent, saying, “I suppose you’re going to want to sit up all night and talk now.”

Kemper said, “No.” Then withdrew from the room and waited for his mother to fall asleep.

He returned with a claw hammer and bludgeoned her to death in her bed. He then had sex with her head, placed it into his closet and purportedly yelled at it for an hour. He would commit other indignities, including cutting out her tongue and larynx which he attempted to destroy in the garbage disposal. He then left his mother’s home to drink and returning some hours later he invited his mother’s best friend, Sara Taylor Hallett, to come over. When she arrived, he attacked and killed her, then defiled and had sex with her corpse. After depositing her body in a closet, Kemper took Hallett’s car and fled California, driving through Nevada and Utah into Pueblo, Colorado. It was there he found a pay phone and contacted authorities. At first, they didn’t take him seriously and asked him to call back. After a few hours, Kemper did call back, asking for an officer he knew and again confessed to the murders of his mother, her friend, and the missing coeds.

Left to right: FBI Agent Robert Ressler, Serial Killer Edmund Kemper, FBI Agent John Douglas

After turning himself in and confessing to his crimes, Kemper received concurrent sentences of 7 years for each victim. He has repeatedly been denied parole and waived future hearings. Kemper stated that his murderous rampage ended with the killing of his abusive mother but claimed that he would still pose a danger to society.

In interviews with FBI agents, Robert Ressler and John Douglas, Kemper was extraordinarily forthcoming and likable. He stated that the only reason he was incarcerated was that he turned himself in. His words, “Came in out of the cold.” But Kemper would have been caught, the bodies of his mother and her best friend would eventually be found and link him to the crimes.

Ressler, in his book WHOEVER FIGHTS MONSTERS, spoke of how comfortable both he and Douglas had become with Kemper. This would later prove to be a poor judgment as Ressler, who was alone with Kemper, wrapped the latest interview and was waiting for the guards to let him out. After ringing the bell, with no response, Ressler waited uneasily.

That was when Kemper told him, “Relax, they’re changing shifts, feeding the guys in the secure areas. Might be fifteen, twenty minutes before they come and get you.” After pausing, Kemper said something that alarmed Ressler. “If I went apeshit in here, you’d be in a lot of trouble. I could screw your head off, and place it on the table to greet the guard.”

For the next 30 minutes, until the guards arrived, Kemper and Ressler jousted verbally. Ressler stating that FBI Agents don’t come to interviews unprepared. While Kemper countered, “They don’t let anybody bring guns in here.”

Kemper was a giant of a man, who could have easily overpowered and killed Ressler. After that, the FBI instituted a policy that two agents were to be with a prisoner during all future interviews.

Highwayman http://wbp.bz/highwaymana
FOUR http://wbp.bz/foura

That communication, with the likable forthcoming Edmund Kemper, was a wakeup call regarding psychopaths. They are master manipulators, disarming is a part of their arsenal, and it wasn’t the first time Kemper used his charm. After abducting Aiko Koo, Kemper locked himself out of the Ford Galaxy but managed to convince Koo to let him back into the car. He killed Koo after regaining entry to the vehicle. Gaining the trust of his victims and authorities is something Kemper does very well. The interaction between the two, in those very long 30 minutes, fed into one of Kemper’s fantasies of instilling fear.

FBI agent, Robert Ressler died May 5^th, 2013, after a lengthy battle with Parkinson’s Disease. Edmund Kemper remains at the California Medical Facility in Vacaville, California. He is considered a model prisoner, who narrates audio books for the blind. It is unlikely he will ever be released.

Kemper is one of a long list of serial killers who I researched when I decided to start the HIGHWAYMAN BOOKS. What stuck out for me was the relaxed nature of this man responsible for the killing of 10 known victims. What also resonated was his ability to manipulate his psychiatrists, both while incarcerated and even the psychologist who treated him during his release and run up to the coed killings. They didn’t have a clue. Kemper, like Ted Bundy, had a charm that hid the horrific intentions of the monster lurking behind the mask. In jailhouse interviews for the documentaries, THE KILLING OF AMERICA and NO APPARENT MOTIVE, Kemper is charming, engaging and comes off as cured of his homicidal tendencies, having ended them with the killing of his mother and turning himself in. But that is the mask he wears, and the monster that feeds on his fantasies is alive and well.

In the present day, we have turned some of these killers into pop culture icons. Charles Manson’s glowering face can be found on silk-screened shirts and posters. Fictional characters like Dexter Morgan portray sympathetic serial killers, driven to kill while conflicted by a moral code. Then there’s Edmund Kemper, who has been made a household name after the release of the NETFLIX semi-fictional series MIND HUNTER. I say semi-fictional because screenwriters have taken a lot of liberty with the original book written by John Douglas and Mark Olshaker. Make no mistake, I am not being self-righteous. I have no illusions that these are the monsters that inspire fiction. But I will admit that I was disappointed with the deviation and historical errors purposely written into the Mind Hunter storyline.

We, writers, draw from a pond of murder and mayhem to create the fictional characters in our stories. Or at least I do. Edmund Kemper was one among many subjects which I researched before beginning the Highwayman project.

In my next blog, I will be visiting another case from those research files.

See you then.

M.J. Preston

Highwayman http://wbp.bz/highwaymana
FOUR http://wbp.bz/foura

Memoirs

Ice Road Dispatches

By MJ Preston on Sunday, February 21, 2021

Yuri and the Wolves

It’s no secret that I was an ice trucker. Between 2012 and 2016, I drove the world’s longest ice road pulling fuel from Yellowknife north to a couple of diamond mines just below the arctic circle. As a result, I’ve got a few stories to tell.

This is my public memoir of those events.

ENTRY # 1 – YURI AND THE WOLVES!

Winter Road – 2013

The story I am about to tell you was related to me by an ice trucker at the Ekati diamond mine midway into my second year on the ice. I’d already heard the story. Every trucker on ice was talking about it on the VHS radio, giving their version of events.

“Wolves! Wolves on a portage! A whole pack of em!”

On my way up the ice, I heard a different version of the event from every passing convoy we met. Two popped up in the story. Cliff and Yuri. When I reached the Ekati Diamond sometime after midnight, we unloaded our fuel, parked our rigs, and went to the cafeteria to get a bite. We’d been into it almost for almost 18 hours, from start to end. We needed to get some food and shut down for sleep before heading south to get another load.

When we got inside, I saw Yuri finishing up his meal and wandered over.

“Hey, Yuri, what’s this about wolves?”

In his heavy Russian accent, he said, “I will come to your table and tell you.”

I got some soup and a sandwich and sat down.

Yuri joined us, but he never sat down. Instead, he stood before a captive audience as he recounted a harrowing evening.

It was night, and a driver, named Cliffy, spun out and needed to chain up. The problem was, Cliffy wasn’t precisely what you’d call a spring chicken. In situations like this, drivers pitch in and set out to help others. Whether chaining up, helping to cage brakes, chase air leaks, or any other problem on the ice, there is an unwritten duty.

So when Cliffy asked for a hand and gave his location, Yuri took the call, got his gear on from hard hat to winter gear, and set out to help Cliffy with his chains. The distance between Cliff and Yuri was at least a kilometer. Yuri was out of his truck and walking up the road that cut across the portage in the darkness. The winds were up, cutting across the tundra, making the temperatures all the more brutal. You can feel the elements pinching at exposed skin in this environment, turning it stiff and numb. At night, without the sun, temperatures can drop into the -50s.

Not long after Yuri started walking across the portage to help fellow driver Cliffy, he felt like he was being watched. Between the stunted trees on the portages, shadows moved low and fast. He kept moving with communication up the trail, midway between himself and Cliffy, passing the point of no return.

Over the VHF radio, Scarlet security sent out an order to everyone on the portage. “Stay in your trucks. There is a pack of wolves on the portage.”

The warning came too late for Yuri. He was over halfway to Cliff’s truck when something stepped out of the darkness and onto the road behind him. He turned to see an enormous wolf. One can only wonder if the wolf was sizing up Yuri as a potential threat; or a delectable meal. The great wolf was staring him down, to his right, in the inky darkness shadows moved. They were watching what he was going to do, waiting for him to react.

Yuri reached up and turned on his hard hat light. The wolf held firm, and slowly Yuri began to back up the trail working his way toward Cliff’s position.

“Go away, wolf,” he bellowed, which I speculate was most likely in Russian, but I never asked.

The likely wolf was probably hearing, “Blah Blah Blah!”

Yuri kept backing up, making noise, yelling―the wolf behind him followed at an equal pace― the pack moved in the shadows and waiting for direction from the pack leader. Yuri was sure that if he turned and ran, they would be on him, knocking him down, going for the throat. He would be dead if they all came at him because nobody knew he was out there. Yuri hadn’t reported on the radio that he was leaving his truck to go and help Cliff. He was alone, just him and the wolves.

“I thought I was going to die,” he told me.

He kept backing up. His only weapon was the headlight on his hard hat and his voice. He kept yelling, making noise, terrified to turn, and still, the wolf followed, seemingly unafraid. Then to his relief, he heard the rumbling of a diesel engine behind him. The wolf stopped as Yuri continued walking backward.

Then he was beside the passenger door of Cliff’s disabled but running rig.

He grabbed the door handle and climbed in without knocking to provoke an invitation.

Cliff was sitting in the driver’s seat. He was surprised to see Yuri. “Yuri,” Cliff said. “What are you doing outside? Didn’t you know there’s a pack of wolves running around out there?”

Yuri, whose voice was now hoarse and raw from yelling at the wolves, had no words.

***

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MJ Preston

A Day from Hell on the Ice

#FFS Featured Free Story

THE HIGHWAYMAN FILES

Ice Road Dispatches