On Emma's Bluff by Sara Elizabeth Rice, edited by davebccanada (audio ebook reader txt) 📕

and sold the land. The new owner, being a deacon in the First Baptist Church, had agreed to rent the family a small shotgun house for a meager amount of rent.

This same year, Elizabeth's older brother, Thomas Earl Lewis, had had to quit high school and find a job. The closest work turned out to be some sixty miles from The Bluff. So Earl rented a room and sent most of his paycheck back home. Earl Lewis, as he was known, ended up doing well for himself in this job. By the time his family was back on their feet, the saving grace being his mother's sewing, which turned out to be a fairly lucrative business, Earl had been promoted and able to save some money for himself.

The year he became supervisor at the plant he bought a house.   The following year he married Grace Anne Bates.   It was after some ten years of marriage that Emma had been born.   And for the first decade of her life she was the apple of her father's eye.

Her first thought when her niece entered the kitchen that Sunday morning was, "my lands will that child ever learn to put on a little makeup before she leaves this house." A full ten seconds elapsed before she realized that something was really amiss.   Emma looked like she had been crying. Her eyes were red, but there was also a wild look to her expression.

"Aunt Liz." The words barely came out.

"Sit down. Tell what's the matter."

Instead of sitting the teenager flew into her aunt's arms. With her lips close to Liz's ear she breathed, "They are dead. They are all dead."   Then the sobbing began. Then she was shaking from head to toe.

"What? Who?" Liz held the girl out from her to look into her face.   "Calm down." She took Emma to the sink and thrust her wrist under the cold tap water. "Calm down. Tell me."   But before Emma could say anything, Liz screamed, "Roy, get in here right now something bad has happened."

Roy was up the back steps and in the kitchen in a flash. "What is it?" he hollered.

"Somebody has been killed," Liz told him as if he should have figured that out for himself. They both looked to Emma, but all she could do was point. She pointed in the direction of the road where she had discovered the bodies.

"Stay here. Let me go take a look," Roy said as he headed back out going in the direction Emma was pointing. Liz did not try to speak any further with Emma. She merely took the girl by the arm and led her to the glider on the back porch. Holding Emma's hand she rocked back and forth.

It was a good thirty minutes before Roy returned. "It's a couple of kids," he said slowly, "My god, what could have done that to them."

A heavy down pour had started later that morning. Cindy watched from the upstairs window as trucks, cars, and then an ambulance came up the road. What little talk she could hear from downstairs indicated that the men were talking about going out to look and see if they could find whoever had done this thing.   "Couldn't be nobody local," Cindy heard Shooter * (yep, our chat room shooter has been added here specifically per request) say. "Yeah, must be some ..." Cindy quit trying to listen. All she could think of was that Sammy and Angela were dead.

Emma, who still had barely spoken, lay supine on the bed intent on the ceiling. She had been that way since Liz had brought her upstairs.   Susan and she had helped Liz remove Emma's jeans, upon which they had first noted what looked to be flecks of blood, and then her T-shirt. Liz had wrapped Emma in an oversized robe and walked her to the bed and there she still lay.   Cindy supposed she was in shock, after all she had actually found them. Cindy's mother had called three times already to tell her to not step foot out of that house until her daddy got there to pick her up. Cindy had just seen Susan's parents arrive out front.

"Emma," Susan said softly," I fixing to have to go now. Is there anything I can do?"   Emma rose and looked at Susan.

"Okay," she said with no feeling, "Here let me help you with your things" and she reached for the soiled jeans.

"No, Emma," Cindy stopped her, "Here put on these." She handed Emma a pair of sweat pants and a shirt from off the top of a pile of clean laundry.

Emma froze, looked at the shirt, and started one continuous scream.

When Liz finally made up the stairs with Roy close behind her, the girls had succeeded in quieting the scream. Now Emma sat on the edge of the bed her chin trembling, her teeth chattering.

"What's the matter?" Liz shouted while trying to catch her breath.

"We don't know," Susan offered, by now her parents were also in the room looking just barely relieved.

"I handed her this shirt to put on. She looked at it. And then she just started screaming." Cindy told them. Liz picked up the shirt and held it out.

"This isn't Emma's shirt."

" It isn't?" Cindy asked. " But the maid brought it up with the rest of the clean clothes. I saw her put them all down over on that chair."

"Cindy," Liz looked long and hard at the teenager," We don't have a maid."

No one said a thing for a while and then Susan spoke up," That's the, that's the shirt Angela was wearing last night."

After that the rest of the day seemed like a blur to everyone. So many people calling, so many people coming out, the Wilson's just kept repeating what they knew. It wasn't until late that evening that Liz had time to sit down and talk to her own precious daughter, Barbara Lee.

"Oh, mamma, they were probably parking. You know making out. Petting what ever they called it in your day."

"That is no reason why someone should have ................"

Barbara Lee interrupted her, "And I am telling you, I am worried about you and daddy. Won't you just think of moving in closer to town?"

"But who would..." Liz started again.

"Some crazy person. Mamma are you listening to me?" Barbara Lee demanded to know.

"Oh, Barbara Lee, your daddy would never leave this river and besides I don't think we could afford to move into town."

"You could if you sent Emma back to live with Aunt Beth."

Roy stood looking at his niece. His finger was in his right ear and he was shaking it. Emma registered this familiar habit and remembered that this was what he did when he said his inner ear itched.

"Em, you feel up to talking to Red Humphries?"   Red was the sheriff of Sunflower County. Emma shook her head yes and stiffly stood.

"I am really sorry, Uncle Roy" she said.

"What? Why would you say that? Oh Emma baby, come on downstairs with me." He placed his big beefy hand on her shoulder and led her down the stairs.

Red Humphries was the tallest man Emma had ever seen.   Six foot six she had heard someone once say. She had heard of people being taller, but here now standing in front of her five foot three height Red looked like a giant. Aunt Liz had been persuaded to let Red question her alone in the living room.   So Emma was now alone with the sheriff. Red stood in front of the fireplace studying the pictures on the wall.

"Why don't you just start at the beginning, Emma, " he said without even turning around to face her.

"I am not sure where the beginning is," she replied. " I guess it was about a week back." This caused the sheriff to turn around. He had only been expecting an account of how she had found the bodies that morning.

"I see." He moved toward her. "And what happened back then?"

When Emma caught his expression she knew that she had messed up.   Why had she said a week back? But there was no getting out of it now. She told Red about the day her Aunt Liz had come home and thrown all the catfish out of the freezer.

"And you think this has something to do with these murders," he asked clearly puzzled.

"Well that seem to be when people started dieing," she offered. Maybe that would be the end of it, she hoped.   And then she went on to tell about finding the bodies that morning.

"Weren't those two here at a party just last night?" he asked.

"Y-yes."

" Well, why don't you tell me everything you saw or heard from them last night? Did they mention anyone? Maybe someone you were not familiar with? Did they seem concerned, anxious, scared? Tell me everything you observed about them during the party?"

"Let's see, Angela had called that afternoon and asked me if she was invited to the party and I told her of course.   She did not seem strange in any way. Then they got here, her and Sammy that is. I didn't really see much of them or talk to them that much."

"Weren't they fighting?" he asked . How did he know that, Emma thought.

"Ah yes, yes they were. They got in a fight at the bon fire. Angela ran off. Sammy went off after her. He told us he would just walk back to the house."

"So you did speak to him?"

"Well, I guess he was telling that to me."

"What was the fight about?" Emma felt the panic, her goose was cooked. What should she say?

"I am not real sure." She thought about bringing up the beer, but that seemed to be a bad idea, and how in the world could she tell this man about the Bill Simmons incident. " I know that Angela just started raving. She even kicked sand on me.

“Then,” Red jumped in. "Why would she kick sand on you?"

"I don't know.   I guess she thought I was flirting with her friend's boyfriend." There that should do it, she thought.

"And why would she think that?"

"Ah, well we were sitting next to each other at the bon fire."

"I see. Well that should do it."   It was over. Emma sighed, probably too loudly. Emma stood there not knowing what to do next. "You can go now. She tried to not look as though she was rushing from the room.

"Oh, and one more thing, Emma" He stopped her. " You will tell me if you remember anything else unusual about this weekend." It wasn' t even a question, it was a command."

"Yes sir, I will," she lied.

 

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Emma had a hard time getting to sleep that night. Over and over her thoughts tumbled. What was going on? "Am I going crazy," she said more than one time out loud to herself. Finally she just wore herself out and began to fall directly into a dream. In the dream she could hear singing.

On the back porch, silhouetted by the moonlight, sat the ancient black woman. She rocked back and forth, singing a spiritual whose words were lost to all but herself.

 

 NOTES

 

(Some Notes for you, Sara) delete these from your manuscript (ms) before you submit it to a publisher.

The main corrections I have attempted to make have been in punctuation. Sentence Spacing seems to be a problem for you. I think it is expressive of the way you think. Not to be critical, but a publisher will reject an ms on such a small error as leaving three spaces between sentences instead of two if it happens frequently. Quotation marks should start a piece of narrative directly without any spacing.   Ex. - “Johnny was bad!”

If you choose to include punctuation inside the closing quotation mark be consistent, don’t change styles in mid novel. They can properly be placed inside or out but I see you choose to include them. That is perfectly alright. Just make sure you don’t leave a space after the punctuation