A Summertime Journey by Jerome Sitko

Author:Jerome Sitko [Sitko, Jerome]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: horror, YA, Summer, YA fiction
Published: 2019-12-12T22:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

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IN A PAST LIFE, Charlie was a serial killer, a rapist, and a sadist. For a decade, he terrorized the towns along the Oregon and Washington coasts. He was a meticulous and smart man, choosing his prey carefully and planning every detail of his crimes, right down to the disposal of the bodies so they would never be recovered. Dumb luck eventually caught him.

He hijacked what he thought was an abandoned cabin deep in the Washington forest, accessible only by a crude trail that was overgrown and showed no current signs of use. The cabin was small—just one room that served as the kitchen, living room, and bedroom. The windows had boards across them to protect from weather or nosy neighbors of the four-legged kind, so it was dark and damp. Water had to be brought in, and the only light came from candles or the old black wood stove in the center. The closest humans were more than ten miles away. Ponderosa pines surrounded the cabin and nearly impossible to find unless you accidentally walked upon it. By all accounts, it should have been the perfect hideaway. The day Charlie was caught, he was enjoying his seventh victim.

She was a beautiful, seventeen-year-old runaway named Lori. Charlie watched her on the streets of Yakima for hours before making his move. He watched her get off the Greyhound bus with only a small brown suitcase. As soon as she stepped off, she sat down, clueless what to do next. She looked terrified, sitting on the bench in front of the bus station. Charlie didn’t know if she was waiting to be picked up by someone, but he doubted it. So he continued to stalk his prey.

She sat for nearly an hour before picking up her bag and walking down the dingy, littered street. She found an all-night diner and spent another hour sipping coffee and nibbling on a doughnut trying to figure out her next move. When she’d decided to run away, it was in haste, and she didn’t have a plan. She was wrestling with her thoughts on whether she should return home and admit defeat or try to make this work. Her reason for running away was stupid; She snuck out of her house to meet her boyfriend and got caught, and her dad grounded her for a month. Lori’s home life was great; she got good grades and never missed school, didn’t smoke, drink, or do drugs, and her parents loved and cared for her. That’s why she was so mad. One, she turns eighteen in less than a week. Two, she never got in trouble, so to be grounded for a month for a first offense was too extreme for her.

She finally looked up from her coffee cup and asked the weathered-looking waitress, “Do you know where I can find a motel?” Rosie, the waitress, was numb to these young runaways. They came and went as often as the buses themselves. They all have the same sad story—parents don’t understand them, parents are too strict, boyfriend cheated on them.

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