Free Spook Lights: Southern Gothic Horror by Eden Royce Page A

fell into nothingness.  My voice was a stage whisper as I repeated the words that had been my mantra all through the investigation and the trial. “He’s our son. We raised him.”
    “Well we fucked up, didn’t we?” Bill stood up from his recliner, grabbed his jacket from the peg in the hallway and stormed out the door.
    I ran after him to the garage door, my stocking feet slipping on the polished hardwood. “Where are you going?”
    He didn’t answer. Just got in his car and drove away. Some men would have peeled out, screeching tires and stinking smoke. But Bill buckled his seat belt and checked his mirrors before reversing out into the cul-de-sac and away. And he didn’t come home until five hours later. When he did, he wouldn’t let me pull him into conversation again.
    After that so-called argument, Bill never discussed Hardin prison again. If he had—or at least come to see his son once—maybe I wouldn’t have let that guard escort me to my car. And I definitely wouldn’t have listened to him when he said he didn’t live far away. Maybe then his offer of coffee and a sympathetic ear would have gone unanswered. 
    But I stayed, against my better judgment. In the guard’s bed and in my son’s corner. My next two months of visits to Hardin tumbled by in a blur. Today wouldn’t be so kind.
    “You know something? My baby isn’t going to be anything like me.”
    “Your what?” Heat rushed to my face and my heartbeat sounded loud in my chest, like hail on a rooftop.
    My son ran his hand over the peach fuzz on his face. “My wife is having a baby. Oh, yeah. And I got married. Didn’t I tell you? It’s the only way you can get a fuck in here. From a chick anyway.”
    Heat boiled over inside me. How did they let him marry?  Who would marry a man convicted of murdering eight women?
    I stuttered, but no coherent words came out. My shock and dismay brought a smile to my son’s face. “I’ll tell you more about it next time. I gotta go. It’s con-jew-gull visit day.”
    He pushed back his chair with a scrape that set my teeth on edge and strutted out of the room, his oversized orange jumpsuit baggy around his waist and hips. As the guard ushered him out, he winked at me over his shoulder.
    I walked out of the visitation rooms in a daze, my short steps almost heel to toe. All around me, the prison flashed by as if in fast-forward. The movie reel in my mind of my son growing up was the only normal thing. Holding him for the first time. Teaching him to swim. Clapping and whistling at his championship soccer game. At the front desk, I fished around in my handbag for my keys.
    A young woman approached the desk where I stood and handed the attendant a box wrapped in bright paper. When she gave her name as Mrs. Phillips, I turned to look at her squarely.
    Thin and not fashionably so. Her eyes had a dull look, sunken and vacant. Resigned. Desperate. But it was her hair that made me snap. Long, lank blonde hair. 
    “He did it you, know. He killed them,” I could hear my voice rising, becoming hysterical. “What are you doing here? Why are you visiting him?”
    The girl shrugged, unsurprised by my outburst. “Why are you?” Her dead tone gave me a start, which quickly turned to itchy fear, but somewhere deep inside, I felt the need to defend myself.
    “Because I’m his…” The word caught on my tongue and I bit it back. I didn’t want to speak it aloud. Didn’t want to claim him or his deeds. But I was tied to this monster, had held him in my arms for years, inside of me for months and still the need to deny him burned deep.
    Before I could cough the word out, the girl turned away. Then she followed the guard through the sliding iron bars, leaving me on the outside.
    I knew it with a certainty that hadn’t been there before. All of the support and faith ebbed from me as I walked to my car. False hope giving way to a resignation that was somehow freeing. There would be no celebration. My son wasn’t