On a day like any other, Will spotted a young man lying on the side of the road. He invited the young man into his car and promised him a night of safety and rest. The youth, Paul, accepted the offer. Will had no idea that that day-that decision-would change his life forever. He and Paul would soon become the targets of a sadistic rapist and wannabe murderer named Tim. Paul knows his hunter. When Paul was twelve years old, his grandparents took in a drifter-Tim, who stayed at their house for a cheap price while acting as handyman and babysitter to Paul. It wasn't long before the abuse began, and Paul became the victim of brutal sexual assaults for several years, all of it kept secret from his family. Paul thought he could escape; he couldn't have been more wrong. Victims and Vultures is a chilling tale of a monster's insatiable obsession for his victim. Will sees the horror in Paul's reality, as old man and young man band together to fight back against a vicious attacker. Slowly, Will watches Paul change from an insecure, terrified creature into a self-assured leader, willing to act as bait for the bloodthirsty Tim. But in the end, will it be the victim or the vulture who lives to see another day?

VICTIMS and VULTURES

A Pride Manor Production Chiller Tale: A Novel AutobiographyBy Will Kalinke

Trafford Publishing

Copyright © 2011 Will Kalinke
All right reserved.
ISBN: 978-1-4269-5244-9

Chapter One

WHAT BEGAN AS A LAZY FALL DAY

Breathtakingly beautiful and gorgeous - I can't think of any other words to better describe the day. It was one of those soothing, mesmerizing, days. This day gently took me drifting back to childhood memories. I grew up on a farm in the days of cows, horses, sheep, ducks, chickens, and turkeys sharing one farm and often sharing one barn and oats from the same bin. This was a lazy day, a truly lazy, lazy day. On those childhood days, after I had completed assigned chores, such as bringing kitchen wood to the wood box or fetching a pail of water from the well, I would take a walk down to a nearby stream to watch and listen to the water ripple over a rocky bed. If I had enough time before my self-allotted time expired, I'd stroll down the pasture lane and watch the cows lazily grazing on tufts of grass, with the geese and ducks quacking beside them.

On a truly, truly lazy day, I'd plop down on a smooth spot on my favorite rock pile in the east pasture to look up at the light blue sky. I'd watch the fleecy white clouds slowly drift by, while I named them one by one for Popeye characters, one of the few comic strips of my childhood. The autumn air was cool, dry, and refreshing in September and October, not the hot and humid summer air as in July and August.

After an hour or two, I'd just meander back home, while talking to a cow, goose, duck, or any other creature willing to look interested, even a crow. I was the middle child of five. When older siblings were busy doing `their' assigned chores, such as gathering and cleaning eggs or feeding chickens, I could often escape into my own dream world and return before anyone missed me. At least, so I thought. Oh, those were the carefree days of childhood before I took on the tasks of adulthood, family, and expected societal routines of earning a living and paying bills.

Those were the days before I knew of vultures circling over victims, checking for signs of life before they descended to pick the carcass clean.

That's the way the day began, a breathtakingly, beautiful, gorgeous, relaxing, lazy, fall day, but that's not how it ended. I was no longer the carefree child back home on the farm in the nineteen thirties. However, I was intent on not discarding those relaxing memories, as I aged and accepted family and societal responsibilities. Nor, was it possible for me to discard, or forget, those memories, not with my genetic pre-programming, which made me curious, daring, risky, adventurous, and nosy. That's the genetic spirit, which brought my ancestors (Aschbrenner, Kalinke, Klueckmann, Kramer, and Wienke) from Germany to Wisconsin and Cousin Clara Pagel around the world starting in late 1936 to discover signs of World War II everywhere she traveled with my later fellow teacher, Erna Flatter.

"No, no, don't! Help, help, ah-rap-ph, ouch, eaguh, aeigh! You're killing me. Cough! Cough! No, no! Stop! Help me, somebody help! Ullgough! I'm choking! Errg. Cough. Cough. Gasp."

Those words and sounds, shrieked that night and other nights, thereafter, would haunt me for years. The sounds were shrill enough, and loud enough, to cut through the strongest steel as like soft butter and reduce glass to a pile of ashes. Never before had I heard such anguish, such pain, such moaning, or such screams for help, while I felt so useless - so completely helpless! This was not within the area of my expertise. I was not into law enforcement, psychology, or medicine. Why did I get involved in the first place? I had truly lost it! I must be nuts! Yes, I'm possibly nuts and then some!

That was how my day ended. It was anything but relaxed and lazy, the way it had begun with relaxation while thinking of childhood memories.

I broke my own rule when I extended the invitation to Paul to get out of the impending storm and share my home for the night. Paul was a complete stranger! Now, where would this invitation take me, other than to a well-deserved early grave? If somebody else doesn't kill me, I'll do it myself or stand in the path of a killer. I had thoughts of suicide after I lost my best friend and wife, Connie, years earlier. However, I had no intention to commit suicide, not this way on this day!

That wasn't the way the day started – or how it was meant to end. I had enjoyed most of the leisurely drive back from a demanding but satisfying day of work. I had hardly expected that the peaceful drive through the colorful roadsides of northern Wisconsin, in the mid-autumn of the year, would end in blood-curdling, life-threatening screams! The screams were worse than any that I had ever heard before. Never, never before had I heard such screams, except in horror movies, or from auto accident victims before the ambulance arrived, or before they died.

I was driving along at sixty-five miles an hour on Highway 8 in my old l995 Dodge Caravan at four-thirty-eight in the afternoon, after a long but productive day that had begun at three-thirty in the morning. My day started early to allow adequate time in the bathroom, to stretch my muscles, to have breakfast, to prepare coffee and snacks for the road, and to drive the more than three hours it would take to get to the Long Ridge School District. There I would observe the interaction between staff and students followed with a training session for faculty and parents on revitalizing learning situations to recapture dysfunctional alienated youth. Due to the dropout rate, which exceeded the state average, the school district became eligible for federal grant funds to identify possible causes.

I would spend the school day observing students and staff interacting during classes and between. Following the dismissal of the students, staff and parents were to gather in the auditorium to hear me summarize my observations and provide recommendations for the revitalization of learning situations to make them more meaningful to the learners. This was to be the first of three such sessions throughout the year with a target of decreasing the number of dropouts and increasing enrollments in higher education.

My day started with a cool shower, a brisk ten-minute workout on my skiing machine, a cup of decaf coffee, and a bagel with a low-calorie, low fat, cream cheese spread. I prepared a quart container of decaf coffee, a `peanut butter and jelly' sandwich, and a few little munchies like celery sticks filled with peanut butter to take with me. Connie, my best friend and wife of twenty-nine plus years had suddenly died of heart failure. Following her death, I moved several times as I was adjusting to the life of an older widower, serving others in a role I knew best. I had lived in the fast lane scrambling through years of artificial `schooling' and a mad scramble of real-life experiences, while seeking my fame and fortune, often losing sight of the values in life that I recognized in my childhood, while watching the fleecy white clouds drift by.

In my senior years, I wanted to try to help others find the simple joys that I had experienced on the rock pile of my childhood. My longevity gave me time, to once again, enjoy the beauty of a lazy fall day under the open sky, while naming the fleecy white clouds after childhood characters from the Popeye comic strips.

After graduating from the Langlade County Normal...