Evangeline (19 page)

Angeline turned her head and lifted a teary-eyed gaze to see a gnarled, fleshy stump with a hole poked in the end.

“Your little friend do this?”

Sister answered weakly, “Yes.”

“Does the bitch have a name?”

“Evangeline.”

“Evangeline, huh?  I piss like a goddamn woman because of that cunt.  Get her out here.  We’ve got unfinished business.”

“No,” Angeline whimpered softly, rolling toward the wall again. 

“The hell you say,” barked the man, and whipped her again with the buckle.  “Come on out here, Evangeline.  Come out, come out wherever you are.”

Friends, despite the recent unpleasantness between us, I was ready and willing to help my poor sister in that time of crises.  In fact, I was just dying to come out and give my old pal Ted a big “howdy do and fuck you too”.  Only Angeline wouldn’t allow it.  Now that her genie was back in the bottle, she wasn’t going to pull that cork no matter what happened.  Sister had decided that if she had to go down, she was going down as Angeline Gottschalk.  Period. 

“I’m done playing games with you,” Stumpy bellowed, beat faced and sucking wind.  “Bring that cunt out here!  I’m gonna kill that bitch!” 

He resumed his savage assault, whipping Angeline over and over while thundering with each swing of the belt, “Bring her out!  Bring her out!  Bring her out!  Bring her--” 

THUMP!  THUMP!  THUMP!

Ted stood up straight, heaving for breath.  The sound had come from outside the storm cellar.  Someone, or something, had banged hard on the shelter door. 

“Keep your mouth shut,” he hissed as he hurried to rethread his belt.  

When he was done he paused to listen, but heard nothing more than the muffled boom of thunder and the hard rain drumming against the hatch. 

“Stay quiet,” he warned Angeline under breath, then moved to the foot of the steps and paused there to check the chambers of his revolver.  Satisfied that each had a loaded bullet, the deputy snapped the cylinder back in place and started up the stairs, gun gripped in both hands and muzzle trained on the door.  He pressed a hand against the heavy hatch, walked it up a couple more steps and gave it a hard shove that flung it over on its hinges.

A cacophony of sound came rushing in.  There was a brilliant flash of lightning and a thunderclap overhead that shook the cellar walls.  Both of the deputy’s hands were back on the pistol grip now.  He moved up another step.  A second blinding flash lit the cellar.  Thunder boomed and a dark form leapt into view.  The revolver discharged and the surprised deputy flung out his arms and lurched backwards, tumbling hard down the stairs and landing in a heap on the storm cellar floor.   

Dazed, he tried to lift himself from the dirt.  But before he could, a wraith-like figure came shrieking down from above.  My friends, can you believe it?  It was Mother!  The woman’s once lifeless countenance wore a crazed look.  Her eyes were bugging out, the teeth were bared.  And there was some kind of object clenched in her right hand.

Stumpy’s golden bowling pin!

Before the man could lift a hand in self-defense, Mother brought the pin down on his skull, striking it with a sickening crack.  As her husband collapsed onto his back, she swarmed over him.  The assault was frenzied and savage.  Again and again she raised that golden club.  Again and again she brought it down on the head of Holt County’s ten pin champion.  Mother was completely out of control, bless her heart, beating Ted’s melon into something unrecognizable… a gooey mash of flesh and bone and brains.  She just couldn’t kill that sonofabitch enough, I guess. 

And when the woman was done and thoroughly spent, she stood over Stepfather in her gore-spattered nightgown, the bloody pin dangling at her side, and said in a voice that was strong and clear…

“Theodore had more brains than I thought.”

Brothers and sisters, it was at that moment, and with swelling pride, that your good and faithful servant could say at long last…

That’s my momma!

It was with surprisin
g
strength that Mother cradled her daughter’s bloodied and battered body in her arms and carried it up the storm cellar stairs and into the farmhouse.  Once inside she ran a warm bath, stripped Angeline’s clothes, and gently helped her into a warm tub.  

Using a wet washcloth, Mother gently wiped the tattered skin, pinkening the bathwater with Sister’s blood.  After a long silence, broken only by the sound of the washcloth being wrung of water, the woman said matter-of-factly, “You been killing folks, aintcha?” 

Angeline raised her head.  “That wasn’t m-m-me, mmmomma,” she stammered in a voice barely audible.

“Of course it was you,” said Mother, running the washcloth along Sister’s shoulders. “You’ve got the sickness, child.  Like I have it, like your grandma had it, and her father before her.  It’s in your blood.”  She wrung water from the cloth, paused and said, “How many lambs?” 

Angeline turned with a curious look. 

“How many?” repeated Mother without explanation. 

Angeline knew what she meant. 

“Five… I think.”

The woman raised a brow at this.  “You’ve been busy,” she said, before lightly dabbing at the cuts along her daughter’s bent back.  “Well… I suppose we can put your stepdaddy in the pond with the others, but it won’t do us much good.  You let the Quinn boy live, and I’m afraid that’ll be the end of us.  There’s nothing can be done now.”

“Others?” asked Angeline. 

Mother turned with a questioning look.

“You said others are in the puh-puh-pond.”

“Well, let’s see now,” said Mother, sighing aloud.  “There’s that lawyer fella from O’Neill who showed up here a few days back-- that one really got my hackles up.  And before him was the telephone repairman, a Jehovah’s Witness, that nice couple who came asking for directions and… oh, yes, let’s not forget Pastor Hale.”

“The pastor?”

“Reverend Hale was not a righteous man,” explained Mother, dipping the washcloth again.  “I’m afraid your father shared the same affliction… a weakness for the flesh.” 

Angeline was almost afraid to ask the next question.  “Is father in the pond, too?”

“Good heavens, no.  Your daddy’s not in the pond.  He’s out in the soybean field.  I wanted you to have his truck.” 

So J.D. Gottschalk wasn’t coming home after all.  The man was gone for good, fertilizer for soybeans… bless his soul. 

As Mother was wringing more bloody water from the washcloth, she noticed Angeline’s glum look.  “I’m sorry, child,” she said to her tenderly.  “I know you miss your father.  So do I.  Despite his dalliances, J.D. was a good man.  He just married a bad woman.”

Early in the mornin
g
, just after sunrise under a clearing sky, Angeline bundled up against the cold and helped Mother haul Stumpy’s body up the storm cellar stairs by his ankles, bouncing his battered noggin off each step along the way.  Across the muddy yard to the cruiser they dragged him.  After jamming the stiffening body into the passenger’s seat (no easy task), they drove him up the driveway to the irrigation pond and let the car roll down the bank and into the murky water; a true mother-daughter bonding experience.

As the cruiser drifted out toward the middle of the pond, slowly filling with water, Mother whispered to herself, “Alas, we reap what we sow,” then extended a hand to Angeline and said, “Pray with me, child.” 

“O Almighty God, merciful Father,” Mother began, making her pitch for forgiveness, “We are but poor, miserable sinners, confessing to you all our sins and iniquities with which we have offended you and justly deserve your punishment now and forever.  We are heartily sorry for them and sincerely repent of them, and we pray you of your boundless mercy, to be gracious and merciful to us, your poor and sinful beings.”

Amen,” said Angeline as the cruiser sank from sight, taking Deputy Gottschalk with it.

“Good riddance to bad rubbish,” concluded Mother, slapping her hands clean and starting back to the farmhouse with her daughter in tow.

Before they reached the front door, the first sirens were wailing in the distance.

epilogue

The storm that ravage
d
Holt County on the night Stumpy died was nothing compared to the whirlwind of publicity that followed our arrest. 

When Mother and I were taken to the county lockup in O’Neill, and later to the courthouse, reporters from all over the country blew into our little corner of Nebraska like a plague of locusts.  The ravenous media, and the bloodthirsty public that sucks its vile tit (and, yes, that includes you dear friends) just couldn’t get enough of the Gottschalk girls.

The authorities drained the irrigation pond and found Deputy Gottschalk in his cruiser, along with five other vehicles with their waterlogged owners inside-- each one an unsolved missing persons case that somehow never led to Mother’s locked door.  Guess the fact that it was all happening right under the nose of a deputy sheriff kept the whiff of suspicion away from the Gottschalk farm.

And when the verdicts were handed down at the freak show otherwise known as the L3K murder trial, and the jury pronounced Margaret and Angeline Gottschalk “Not Guilty”, well, it was hard for any rational person to disagree.  Both had family history on their side and, if that wasn’t enough, the sixteen year-old’s “evil twin” once proudly wore Exhibit A… a necklace made of pricks.

Ah, yes, insanity.  Such a lovely defense.  Let them call it schizophrenia, multiple personality disorder or just plain nuts… I call it getting away with murder. 

For six years now, thanks to a court order, I’ve been a guest of the Forensic Psychiatric Services Unit here at the state hospital in Lincoln.  As loony bins go, this one isn’t half bad.  The staff is pleasant enough, the crazies get clean sheets and three squares a day, and if you look beyond the security fences, topped with concertina wire, the pastoral views across acres of manicured lawns and tree-lined paths are really quite nice.  Sure beats the alternative… a one way ticket on the stainless steel ride; better known as lethal injection. 

As I look around my quaint little room here in Building 3, at the dusty novels on the armoire and the small wooden box filled with keepsakes, I think of dear Angeline and all those lovely memories we shared together. 

Come April, my sister will have been gone three years.  I suppose in the end, it was all just too much for that delicate child.  After the trauma of her arrest, the public spectacle that followed and her unpleasant experience here in the nuthouse, the poor thing fell into a depression and withered away, allowing yours truly to take the wheel once and for all.

Oh, and Mother is gone now, too.  For a few years we were roomies here in Building 3, but after she plunged a pencil into her therapist’s neck, they shipped her ass over to 2 West, what we call the “ding wing”, and dosed her with copious amounts of antipsychotics.  And that’s where the woman died a few months later, launching herself down a flight of stairs and breaking her neck after taking a bite out of the orderly who tried to stop her.  Got to hand it to Mother, the woman went out in style, and took all those nasty imps and demons with her. 

Which leaves just little ol’ me, standing at the end of the bloodline. 

The last of my kind.

Of course the nut doctors don’t know that.  As usual they’ve got everything ass-backwards.  Thanks to your humble servant’s superior acting chops, I’ve got those white coats convinced their therapy and psycho-pharmaceuticals have done the trick; fixed what was broken inside Angeline Gottschalk and exorcized the “bad one” who did all those horrible things back in Holt County. 

Well, guess what?  The joke’s on them.  The state of Nebraska might consider my ass crazy, but I can still outsmart those geniuses with their fancy post-graduate degrees.  You just have to know how to play the part… and I play a killer “Angeline”. 

Don’t get me wrong; there are still mountains to climb before they release me from this loony bin.  Nothing is a slam dunk when you’ve got “serial killer” on your resume.  But I can promise you this; the next time those shrinks evaluate the patient formerly known as the L3K, they’ll be looking at the perfect picture of mental health; someone who is polite, engaging and well behaved-- a testament to the exemplary care available in Nebraska’s better psychiatric hospitals.

And once a judge agrees with the experts that Miss Gottschalk is no longer a threat to society, well, I’ll be back in business, boys and girls.  Back to the bloody work I was born for.  Because the truth is they can lock me up, dig around in my brain and dose me with their chemicals; but there’s no changing the person I am.  That person is still, and will always be…

Your friend and faithful servant,

EVANGELINE

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

I’ll keep this brief.

Thanks to the nut doctors at the Forensic Psychiatric Services Unit for the therapy, the kick-ass drugs and for encouraging me to write this book... and to all my fellow loonies in Building Three, a great big “howdy-do”!

Special thanks to my dearly departed Mother for her understanding, and to my soul mate KC who climbed inside my head and wouldn’t leave until all was said and done. 

Finally, my deepest gratitude goes to my dear sister, Angeline; best friend and best part of me.  I miss you, kiddo.  Sweet dreams.

E.A. GOTTSCHALK

State Psychiatric Hospital

Lincoln, Nebraska