Totaled

 

       Saul’s old truck was displayed in the lot at the corner of Wilton and Main, the one where Ham Boyer ran his wrecker service out of. Its front end was bent and twisted. The truck`s windshield was smashed and its roof caved inward.

       Ham had towed it in earlier in the evening. Townspeople had been coming to look at it all night. What was strange was that Saul himself was unaccounted for.

       The wreck was reported by passersby out on old Hinson road near the old fallen down house where the Hinsons used to live, and the Sheriff had called for the wrecker. Ham had not wanted to go out there in the dark to tow it, as that was an eerie stretch of road and there used to be unusual stories circulated about the Hinsons.

       The sheriff had waited while Ham had hooked up and pulled the old truck out of the brush to the highway. On the way back to town, Ham was comforted by the patrol car's headlight beams behind him.

       The Hinsons were long gone, but the talk about them lingered on .

       It was said that the Hinsons were never seen out and about in the daylight and that they were night owls who liked to wander after dark. One day, the mailman noticed their mail piling up, and when he went to investigate, he found their living room full of closed coffins. Yeah, full of coffins, Ham had heard. The postman had said that through the Hinsons' front window, it looked more like a funeral parlor than a living room.

       By the time that the sheriff had arrived there, there was no one to be found about the old place. They had never returned and the house had slowly fallen down about itself in disrepair. The gardens and lawn became overgrown and tangled with kudzu vines and blackberry briars. On the stretch of highway near the old house, people often reported seeing walkers who mysteriously seemed to disappear as the vehicles approached. It was always at night.

       There had been several accidents on the hillside there. Strange thing, though, the drivers and their passengers were always missing, abandoning the wrecks and leaving the scene.

       Saul Benjamin wasn't one to play games. ‘Where was he at?’ Ham wondered. Sure, Saul liked a brew, but he wasn't taken to wandering off. He wasn't home and had not reported his truck stolen. The shape his truck was in, if Saul had been in it when it crashed, he would still be in it. The fire department had had to pry the doors open. Saul had been nowhere to be found.

       Dawn was not far away, and it came early to the Hinton farm, it being on a hilltop. In the waning darkness, Saul Benjamin's screams, which were coming from the old Hinton fruit cellar, were just beginning to die away, as the last of his blood was being eagerly drained from his body.