Moonlit Massacre by James Cooper

Author:James Cooper
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: literatipressok
Published: 2024-09-20T00:00:00+00:00

An hour later in the high noon sun, Sam wipes his sweaty arm across his face, dirt from his forehead. He’s squatting in green grass, tying electric poly rope to the bottom of a wood fence post.

Cattle flood across the wheat field by the dozens when he’s done, grazing grass and weeds. He watches cattle move past him, some he’s birthed as calves. Flies buzz as manure bakes in the sun. Bales of hay consume his thoughts. He counts cattle in his head, how much hay his farm will need to feed their cows in the coming months.

The grandfather clock begins its full chime sequence at the bottom of the mahogany staircase, its melody striking across the farmhouse. Framed Ford family photos ascend along the wall down the staircase. The sheriff ’s bed made upstairs. The framed photo on his nightstand of Ryan in his sheriff’s uniform, smiling with Mary Mae, their names inscribed on the frame. The door to Dylan’s room closed on the north side of the hallway. Short rope hanging outside Dylan’s room from an attic door in the ceiling. The door at the west end of the hallway open to Sam’s room, sunlight across his bedroom’s wood floors, the cloth color photo of earth from the moon hanging above Sam’s headboard, chimes downstairs concluding Westminster Quarters.

Sam’s in the kitchen, pulling a plain white t-shirt over his head, his hair still damp from his shower.

The grandfather clock chimes from his living room again, then once more. Two p.m.

A spiral cord dangles from a yellow phone attached to gray brick wall lining the west side of the kitchen. The window closed above the kitchen sink beside the gas stove. Two cast iron skillets clean on the stovetop. A note on the fridge, “Missed you this morning, brother. Dylan.” Sam rubs his beard, studying the note. He looks to the window above the sink, thinks about Sarah, the red barn out the window where he passed out the night of the Sulphur murders, the small creek behind the barn, the wheat field disappearing east behind the creek.

He looks to his side at the quiet narrow hallway through the laundry room north of the kitchen. He slips another note from his back pocket, holds it for a moment, worried, glances again to the window above the sink.

Sam picks up the phone, contemplating numbers on a circular dial. He’s memorized the note he’s holding in only six hours, hears a dial tone on the phone, imagines turning the finger wheel, but can’t.

Moments later, the dial tone stops.

Sam clears his throat, waits, anxious, the phone to his ear, the note in his hand. A young man’s voice picks up on the other end, “Hello?”

“Matthew?”

Violins swell an hour later at the start of a song Sam’s heard before but can’t name, soulful jazz as he stares at a movie poster framed on a rust red brick wall. A vibrant golden image of a polished metal robot, shaped like a woman, staring back at

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