Eli McMorn and the Strange Case of Kill Devil Hill – Part Five

Giles Proctor looked shockingly unwell. I arrived at the nursing home on Dellet Street just after breakfast and found Proctor in an antique wheelchair. He had a worn-out Bible in his lap, open to the Book of Revelation.

It had been several years since I’d talked with Proctor face to face. I wasn’t sure if he would remember me. When I introduced myself, he smiled after a few seconds and motioned me into an empty chair with a gnarled hand twisted with arthritis.

“Of course, I remember you,” he said. “I still read the newspaper every day. The Herald drops off a free bundle here every morning before daylight.”

Proctor’s face and hands were liver-spotted, and he wore a black patch over the eye he lost in World War II. Some say he got his eye shot out at the Battle of the Bulge in January 1945, but I’ve heard other tales that he actually lost the eye during a mysterious incident on Tarmagant Island in December of ‘44. He would have looked tough without the eye patch, but with it, he looked like the hardest old man in Claiborne.

Proctor closed his Bible, which had a square and compass stamped on its black leather cover. “What can I do for you today, Mr. McMorn?”

“I want to ask you about a story you wrote in ‘88 about a bunch of kids who died on Kill Devil Hill.” I reached into my pocket and pulled out three Montecristo cigars that I’d bought at Lowe’s Tobacco on Wilcox Street. “I heard you liked these.”

The old man gathered them up in one deft motion and dropped them into a satchel that hung from the side of his chair. He winked with his good eye and said, “Wouldn’t want the nurse to see those.”

At that exact moment, two EMTs rushed past the door with an empty stretcher, headed towards an emergency in another room down the hall.

Proctor leaned back in his chair and stretched. “I haven’t thought about those kids in a long time,” he said. “I got assigned to the Claiborne election lawsuit story right after the first story on those kids, so there was no follow-up as far as I know. Not that that’s a bad thing. Those kids were messed up bad, and I don’t think investigators ever figured out what happened.”

“Did you go to the scene?” I asked. “Take any pictures?”

“I did go out there, and I regretted it too,” he said. “It was beastly. There was blood all over the place. Those kids were as messed up as bad anybody I saw in the war. Deputies wouldn’t allow any pictures of the bodies, not that I wanted to take them anyway. Why do you want to know?”

“I’m doing another story on it,” I said. “I plan to go out there myself to check out the site, spend the night, see what happens.”

A dark cloud seemed to pass over the old man’s face. “You need to talk to Tommy Lawson first.”

“Who’s that?”

“He was the lone survivor. His name was withheld at the time of the incident. In addition to being the only one left alive, he was also a ne’er-do-well. There were warrants for his arrest at the time. He ended up in a psychiatric hospital.”

“Wonder what became of him?”

“He was a gibbering wreck the last time I laid eyes on him,” Proctor said. “As far as I know, he’s still alive. I haven’t seen his obituary in the paper.”

I was stunned by the unexpected news that a survivor from the Kill Devil Hill incident was out there in the world somewhere. “Which hospital?” I asked, presuming it would be Bryce Hospital in Tuscaloosa.

“Unless they’ve moved him, he’s locked up at Haines Island with the other dregs of humanity,” he said. “That place is more of a prison than a hospital, kind of like this place now that I think about it.”

After a few more minutes of small talk, I thanked Proctor and headed toward the nursing home’s exit. A few minutes later, I was in my Jeep and headed towards Haines Island, Southwest Alabama’s institution for the criminally insane. A bolt of lightning flashed across the northern sky. It began to rain.

(All rights reserved. This story is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents either are products of the author's imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events or locales or persons living or dead is entirely coincidental.)