The Road Out of Hell (21 page)

“You stay here. And cover up his head to quiet that God-awful noise.”

“Cover? With … with what?”

“There’s a pile of dirt and a shovel. Use your head!” He tossed the hatchet at Sanford’s feet. “Aw, Sanford isn’t going to go all soft and gooey on me, is he?”

“Uncle Stewart, this boy is still alive. Maybe we should—”

“Cover his head. Now!” Sanford reluctantly pushed some of the dirt in the pile over Nelson’s face. “That’ll shut him up. Now watch; and when you see me take Lewis back into the incubator house, you come along and bring the hatchet. I’m going to keep him looking at me while I turn the eggs, so his back will be to the door.”

“Uncle—”

“Somebody
is going into that hole next to little Nelson down there! You do this, or the next body in the hole is yours! I told you, I’m sick of you.” Uncle Stewart spun on his heel and hurried back toward the house.

The weight pressing down on Sanford was so terrible by that point that he could hardly believe that his legs worked at all. Somehow his scrawny body weighed as much as an elephant. He began to move, but he was going so slowly that time speeded up once again. He blinked once, and Uncle Stewart already had Lewis in the incubator house. He blinked again, and he was standing in the doorway of the incubator house looking at Lewis’s back as he sat talking to Uncle Stewart.

He blinked just in time to get an impression from his peripheral vision: his own hand swinging the hatchet down onto Lewis’s head. The first blow stiffened the boy, but he didn’t fall over. Sanford’s arm lifted the hatchet and struck a second time. This time Lewis Winslow dropped to the ground like a stone.

He blinked again, and he and Uncle Stewart were carrying the boy back to the grave house. After another blink, they were standing over the bodies of both boys. Lewis was also just barely alive when they placed him in his grave. He took those same awful breaths while he expired.

Sanford blinked a few more times. He and Uncle Stewart had filled the dirt back into the shared grave on top of the dying boys, smoothing it over and covering the new surface with straw. Uncle Stewart got the bright idea to move in a dozen hens or so and left them to roost and defecate and raise a smell. It would cover any odor of decomposition that might start leaking up through the ground within the next few days.

He threatened to make Sanford spend the night in the grave shed and sleep on top of the dead boys in return for giving him such a hard time about doing what had to be done. But Uncle Stewart was tired and satiated and stinking to high heaven. All he wanted to do was go back to the house and sleep until the next day and then make Sanford strip the bed and wash everything while he bathed at the wellhead.

Tolerance filled Uncle Stewart, or so he said, and he decreed that so as long as Sanford raked up any blood that was on the dirt floor of the incubator house, he would be allowed to sleep out there for the night instead of having to stay in the burial coop. Then if he was good, he would be allowed to return to the ranch house the following night.

Sanford was barely able to move any part of his body. There were at least three elephant-loads of guilt packed onto his scrawny frame. The terrible weight slowed him down so much that by comparison, Uncle Stewart’s voice became a staccato series of squeaks. Sanford knew better than to speak up, but horror and outrage filled him. It hurt his head to think, but he could not stop the thoughts from coming.

He realized it then, plain and clear: he would die there in that place. Either Uncle Stewart would kill him during one of his rages, or somebody would show up there and shoot both of them. Maybe the law, maybe the father of one of those boys. Either way, there was no doubting that the moment of reckoning was closing in. Sanford could see that it was one thing for all of this to happen to him, being a piece of shit and all. Maybe he deserved all this in some manner that he failed to understand. Maybe he was only where he belonged. But if God truly existed, it seemed plain that He simply could not and would not permit this beast called Gordon Stewart Northcott to continue to ravage innocent people. Kids. This indescribable existence simply could not continue, in any sort of a just world. Otherwise it would do worse than to prove that there was no God—it would prove that there is indeed an omnipotent God but that He hates humanity and He is criminally insane.

By now, Sanford was convinced that anything was better than being left to die at the torturous hands of Uncle Stewart, perhaps buried alive like the Winslow boys. Especially if the cops killed him with one good round to the head. In that case it would all just be over. God had allowed this festering nightmare to become real; let Him deal with the aftermath. At least Sanford’s time in this world’s Hell would be done. He wondered if a head shot would even hurt. Nobody would have to trouble with him after that. And most of all—absolutely most of all—Sanford would never have to see the looks on people’s faces once they knew.

Once they knew. Thinking of what he did not want people to know caused all the images to leap into his mind. He imagined the newly covered grave of the two brothers, saw the earth still shifting slightly while the children under the surface fought for life and inhaled loose dirt instead of air. In real life, they had not moved the earth. He was certain of that. Fairly certain. It made no difference. His memory saw the shifting earth. His memory could almost hear their muffled screams.

And that was only his part in one horror show. By Sanford’s best estimate, Uncle Stewart had killed as many as twenty boys since they first moved onto the ranch. How many boys died before that was anybody’s guess, but Sanford had to wonder why his grandparents had moved out of Canada.

In totaling up the figure on the ranch victims, he forced himself to go back to the beginning, back to those first few months when he accepted the bullshit about Uncle Stewart supposedly taking the boys someplace where he could drop them off. It took him a long time to force himself to answer the question of how often anybody could do the sorts of things that Uncle Stewart did, causing boys to scream for mercy, and then let them just walk away.

The boys may have been illegal migrant workers or their children, or runaways whose family was so scattered they had no real way of staying in touch. But how could all of them have been throwaways? Outside of this place there were people with human connections. Sanford remembered rare visits to the homes of certain friends from school, places that seemed healthy and safe. They were places that had a natural warmth, not where you looked around for reasons to get away. He had seen places where people behaved as if they were glad for each other’s company and not just angry and resentful of one another. Somewhere among those boys there was sure to be one who had the backing of people who would grow concerned, ask questions, come searching—even if all the others did not. He was certain of that. Somebody was going to show up there any time now.

“You’re in for all of it!” Uncle Stewart liked to taunt him. “The whole family will swing like Christmas tree decorations in a sharp breeze, unless we
all
stay out of jail, ha-ha-ha!” The first time Sanford heard Uncle Stewart say those words, he dismissed it as just more of his demon craziness. Now he could feel the truth of it. And for him there was no issue about the fear of capture or even fear of the hangman. What was a hangman? Only death. The real issue was the shame. People would know that he was beyond forgiveness. And that knowledge would be the main thing that he left behind in this world.

Image Gallery

The tiny main house of the Wineville murder ranch.

[HERALD EXAMINER COLLECTION/LOS ANGELES PUBLIC LIBRARY]