Day 419: 5 Minute Freewrite: Thursday - Prompt: history

history

"This house comes with a history,"

old man Saterlee said, as if every house didn't have a history, as if Dale was buying the place for its freaking atmosphere created by whoever lived here before. He fanned the stack of hundreds, noisily, hoping to get the old goat to cut to the chase.

"I got the money," Dale said. "I'm ready to sign on the historic dotted line."

"This is the house my father was born in."

Gawd. This could go on for weeks. "My dad was born in a hospital. Like most people in modern times."

"I was raised here, and so were my children."

Dale fidgeted.

"You're getting this house for a steal because it is haunted."

"So you say. I don't believe in ghosts, so I don't care if someone else thinks they saw ghosts here."

Saterlee leaned back in his chair, squinting at Dale. "Gets pretty lonely out here for a recluse like me--can't imagine a young buck like you lasting in a place like this."

The derelict farmhouse was structurally sound, even though the linoleum floors were cracked and wallpaper that went back to World War I was peeling off the walls, and the window glass was that went back to the Civil War was all warped. It was made of actual 12-inch squares of glass in the days before big sheets of glass existed. Saterlee had taped clear plastic over all the windows to keep out drafts.

Didn't keep out ghosts, from the sound of it.

"Do you want to sell me the house or talk me out of it?" Dale said, amazed at his own patience. He spread the money out on the table. "Your daughter-in-law wants you out of here." He knew the sad story by heart. "She wants you in town where she can keep tabs on you, check in every day, make sure you didn't fall in the bathtub and die." Ok, his patience wasn't holding up so well after all. He added in the details the man left out. "Your son was taken by drug traffickers and put through a wood chipper somewhere nearby and you found his jawbone at your front door, so it sounds like you ought to be paying me to take this shit hole off your hands."

"Just sign here, and you can move in tonight."

Heh. Finally. That got the old goat to shut up and finish the deal.

source

Ed Saterlee unloaded his 1959 Dodge Power Wagon

by himself. A Korean war vet with shrapnel in his back, he didn't need nothing from nobody, but his grandkids might turn out like their meth-dealing dad if he didn't move into the basement bedroom and help Darcy keep an eye on them.

Darcy unfortunately kept a close eye on him, but she couldn't keep it up 24/7. Too much else in the busy life of a widowed mother of three unruly boys. At least he'd gotten her situated in a house two hours away from that hell hole of a town that looked like a Norman Rockwell print of all that's good about America.

Ed might look like a last-century patriot who barely learned how to use a VCR before digital wonders and internet altered the world, but he knew how to wire a house. Hell, he could wire a whole acreage.

He settled into his room to watch the footage. He had to speed through most of it, but it was only a matter of days before he saw he wanted.

Using one of those Christmas projectors that beam Nativity scenes onto the side of a barn, Ed had been beaming pictures of his son. One was a close-up of Jacob's blue eyes staring into the camera.

Or staring into the soul of Dale Greenlee.

"I don't believe in ghosts,"

the punk said, but Jacob's staring eyes were only the tip of the iceberg. There wasn't a room in that old two-story that was safe from Jacob's laughter, Jacob's smile, Jacob's favorite songs playing from out of nowhere.

The surveillance cameras caught Dale and his henchmen talking about the "haunting."

"I still don't believe in ghosts," Dale said. "I think Saterlee has the place wired and is out to get vigilante justice. Chip ain't making any arrests. Even if they could get us on trial, the jury would never find sufficient evidence to make a conviction."

Chip, the local sheriff, was well compensated for his cooperation.

And Ed had everything he needed on video, including the meth kitchen. Why the hell else was Dale willing to live out there--to hunt deer?

He himself had a wad of Dale's money now, secured in a college investment fund for the grandsons.

Better yet, Ed still owned that property. Dale was street-smart but book-stupid. He didn't read the fine print. The kid was so impatient he'd have signed a confession to murder, not having bothered to look over every word of a legal document.

Ed's evidence didn't come with a search warrant, but it was enough to get the FBI in to break up the trafficking. The old "goat" was smarter than he let on. When even the FBI accomplished the usual nothing and the cold case remained cold, Ed would hack into the local TV news to broadcast Dale's guilt. His gang might walk free, but there was no alibi for the silence of everyone in town who passed up a $10,000 reward rather than rat out one of their own. Nobody would come forward with information to convict Dale and his buddies of murder, and the cold case might stay cold until hell froze over, but the world would know that everyone in town was complicit.

source

The town had a history, and Ed Saterlee would make sure everyone knew it.

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Thank you to @mariannewest

and everyone at the #freewritehouse for these daily prompts and incentives to write! It's made all the difference in getting me to let go of the inhibitions and just get things down on paper. Later, we can sift through these stories for something worth developing into a longer story or even a novel.

JaNoWriMo,

did you say, @kaelci?

Sounds catchy!