Blood Echoes by Thomas H. Cook

rushed around the corner, whimpering softly as it turned and followed them around the edge of the trailer to where they gathered at the back door.
    Roy reached for the door and turned the aluminum knob slowly. It rotated smoothly. The door had not been locked. He tugged it open partially, then drew back. Bud stepped over to it, opened it a bit further, and silently peered inside.
    What he saw, although innocent enough on its face, sent a wave of terror over him. It was a single Pabst Blue Ribbon beer can sitting upright on the kitchen counter, and the very sight of it stunned him nearly speechless. Because the Aldays did not drink and so never kept liquor in the house, he knew that people very different from them had found their way into Jerry Alday’s trailer, and he felt instantly that something terrible had happened to Mary, his father, his uncle, and his brothers. For Bud Alday, a beer can resting on Jerry’s kitchen cabinet was as alien and incongruous a sight as a severed head might have been, or a rock brought from the moon.
    â€œWhat is it?” someone asked.
    Bud did not answer. He let his eyes drift downward and saw a rumpled pair of white panties lying loosely under the kitchen table. He took a quick, shallow breath, then drew his eyes to the right, where, in the bedroom at the north end of the trailer, he could see four legs dangling motionlessly from a bed, all in farm work clothes, all dusty from the very fields that surrounded him at that moment.
    He stepped back instantly and closed the door. “We got to get some help,” he said. “Something’s happened.”
    The Aldays returned immediately to the homestead, where Bud called Seminole County Sheriff Dan White, and a neighbor, Hurbey Johnson.
    â€œThere’s something happened up at Jerry’s trailer, Hurbey,” Bud said. “Mary’s car is missing, and there’s a light on in the trailer. Can you meet me at Ned’s?”
    â€œYeah, Bud.”
    â€œAnd bring a gun with you,” Bud told him.
    Johnson hung up, dressed as quickly as he could, and made his way toward the front door. On the way out he picked up a twelve-gauge shotgun.
    Bud was waiting in Ned and Ernestine’s driveway when Johnson pulled in.
    â€œSomething’s happened up at Jerry’s trailer,” Bud repeated. “Everybody’s missing.”
    Johnson looked at him, astonished. “Everybody? Who?”
    â€œEverybody,” Bud answered. “Daddy and Shuggie and Chester. Jerry. Jimmy. Mary. Everybody.”
    â€œMissing?”
    â€œNobody’s heard from them since yesterday afternoon,” Bud went on, “and all the cars, the tractor, Jerry’s jeep. They’re just sitting in the driveway. Mary’s car. That’s the only thing that’s not at the trailer.”
    Johnson felt his hand tighten around the shotgun. “Have you been in the trailer yet?”
    Bud shook his head. “Not all the way in,” he said, unable to add anything else.
    Johnson glanced around at the large assembly that had gathered in Ned’s driveway. Ernestine, Fay, and Barbara were there, their faces ghostly white in the moonlight, along with a neighbor, Eddie Chance, the long stock of a shotgun cradled in his arm.
    â€œRoy and Andy are up at the trailer,” Bud said. “They’re watching the front and back doors in case anybody tried to come out.”
    Johnson nodded.
    â€œAnd I called Dan White, too,” Bud added. “He said he’d be there in a minute.”
    â€œOkay,” Johnson said. “Let’s go.”
    The men drove the short distance to the trailer and got out of the truck. Roy Barber and Andy Alday converged on them, their shotguns at the ready.
    It was now 2:45 on the morning of May 15, 1973, and as the men advanced on the trailer, they could feel a thick and terrible dread coagulating in the air around them. In response, they fell completely