A Knock At The Door!

A Knock at the Door!
By
Joshua D. Vesper



"Hey Smith!" the prison Warden spoke at the gaunt figure behind the cell bars.

"Yes Warden Johnson?" Mr. Smith replied nonchalantly, "What can I do for you today?"

Warden Johnson got a disgusted look on his face and said, "You've only a few hours left, monster. Here are pen and paper. If you have any last words, write them down." With that, the Warden threw the pad and ballpoint pen into the cell and walked away, down the rest of the last mile to his office, for he was the supervisor of D-block, this prison's death row.

In the cell, Mr. Smith picked up the paper pad and pen and sat down on the edge of the bunk where he had spent the last few months of his life.

"Where should I begin?" He thought as he began to write:

**********************************************************************
Hello my dear friends and former neighbors. Most of you know me as the Barnes County Reaper. For those who may not know me, wether it is because you’re new to our little "slice o' southern paradise" or otherwise, I will tell you. You may call me Mr. Smith. I have come here today to enlighten you, if you will let your humble narrator, with my story.



It all began shortly after my moving to this shitty hick town in Barnes County called Westonburg. I was a hit man for the mob. I killed people for money. And because I was the best in the business, I had made a lot of enemies. In short, the job had forced me to relocate this little shit stain on the map. It also may have been because I was fucking my boss's wife and daughters at the time that I was sent to this hell hole. I'll never know for sure but I hated all the aspects of it. Most of all I hated the fact that I now had to find a new place to stay. The only place available at the time was more than one hundred year’s old. For reasons unknown to me the old house and all the surrounding lands were for sale in one large package for an unbelievably low price, almost too good to be true. Bein' the dumb ass that I sometimes am and not thinking rationally, I bought it straight out immediately.




When I first saw the majestic old Groden Homestead, which according to local myth was reputedly haunted and the place I had bought, the old house and large yard and fields emitted a serene feeling. And for a house as old as it was, it was in excellent condition. It was almost as if the old place was calling out to me, saying stay here, I'll take care of you. I moved in in late October. Two weeks later I was just about settled in when it started happening.



It was storming a hellish maelstrom that night. Torrents of rain pounded the roof of my house as lightning struck sharp as razor blades. Thunder rolled across the sky like a ghostly freight train. I was watching the last movie of a monster movie festival on TV when suddenly there was a knock at the front door. I had the porch light off to discourage visitors from coming that night, so I just figured that someone couldn't take a hint and ignored it at first. But the knocking wouldn't stop. I started getting angry. The nerve-racking noise continued until I was so pissed that I got up to go kill the s-o-b at the front door. Silent as a mouse, I walked over to the closet by the front door. Easily opening the door to the closet, grabbed my baseball bat. I moved swiftly over to the door and through it open.



"Hi. Mr. Smith is it. My name is Greg Dickers. I am here today representing the Byron Vacuum Cleaner Company. May I come in?" the young man before me said as he pushed his way into the door.



"Sure." I replied with an evil smile in my thoughts and malice in my heart. The salesman walked by me unsuspecting that I was about to bash his head in. I slowly closed the door behind him. I had lost any sanity that I might have had when I saw that this prick that wouldn't leave me alone was a goddamn door to door salesman. I walked up behind this cur and swung the bat. I tell you dear friends, the sound that his head made as his cranium caved in from the force of the blow, the way his brains and blood shot out of his ears and nose, and the exasperated sigh he made was like sweet music to my ears. Even the way his eyes flew out of their sockets and dangled disgustingly by the optic nerves was a damn Picasso to me at the time. The poor wretches’ body fell lifelessly to the floor. I replaced the bat back into the closet and sat down to watch the rest of my movie.


After the movie ended and I had taken a piss, I went upstairs to go to bed. That’s when I remembered I had not gotten rid of the body. "Shit!" I said to myself as I walked back downstairs. "Maybe I did do it and just don't remember" I thought to my self. Wishful thinking. Sure enough, there the damned thing was, lying right where I had left it.



"This bastard weighs a damn ton!" I said out loud as I lifted the corpse over my shoulder and took it cautiously out the back door. Walking quickly over to the back of my shed, I dropped the body in its shadow, as the storm had finally passed and the full moon shone brightly, illuminating everything. I then went back around to the front of the shed and grabbed a shovel from inside the door. Determined to get the job done before anyone suspected anything, I walked back around to where the corpse lay and began digging a hole. After about two hours of digging and smoking breaks, I finally had the hole big enough and deep enough to hide the remains of this obnoxious fellow for all eternity. Within another hour the deed was done.



After I had disposed of the body of the hapless son of a bitch and was on my way inside to go to bed I remembered the prick had drove to my house and his car was still in the driveway. What was worse, I had just buried the only set of keys that were to the car under four feet of dirt!




"Oh gimme a fuckin' break!" I shouted and stomped back to the fresh grave with the shovel. Another hour of swearing, smoking, drinks, and digging had me searching through the dead salesman's pockets. Success came a few moments later, when I found and retrieved the keys. I quickly covered the corpse back up. Before I left the grave that night, I added one last insult to the asshole by taking a piss on the grave. Then I quietly left the site and snuck around to the front of my home and got into the shmuck's car. Let me tell you, it was a complete piece of shit! Hell, a five-year-old from Brooklyn coulda hotwired da' damn thing. That information alone pissed me off beyond belief. Grumbling even more, I started the car and drove to the new bridge construction site in Traxton. Carefully moving every barricade outta my way, I drove the lemon onto the half-completed bridge to a few feet from the edge. Using some of the skills that had got me here to begin with, I set the car up so that all I had to do to get it over the edge was to pull the emergency brake release. The damn thing went flying over the edge and took a straight nose dive into the frigid water below. I watched with a gratifying pleasure as the car sank out of sight and out of mind. After carefully replacing the barricades, I caught a ride back to town with a truck full of Mexican farm workers, sharing a few shots of tequila with them and ending up engaged to one the guys' teenage daughter.



"Finally!" I thought as I went in to go to bed. After a snort of whiskey and one more Marlboro red, I crawled upstairs and went to sleep. I slept like a baby for the rest of that night, and when the cops came to see me the next morning about the missing salesman, I told them "I told him I wasn't interested and sent him on his way." All dat day was a peaceful day. I had a good day at work, a great nooner with my "fiancee,” and got my first paycheck. I made $500 for only one week. That night, however dear friends, was something else altogther. It had started out just as the night before, only there was no storm. I had just settled in to watch a horror movie on TV when there was a knock on the front door. Again I ignored it at first, but again it rose to and intense pounding that started pissing me off. I lost my temper even worse than the night before as the pounding increased. At the point at which I had just about lost my sanity again, it stopped. Starting to cool down I sat back down in my chair to continue watching the movie. All of a sudden there was another knock at the door. I snapped. I ran over to the closet and grabbed my bat again. I threw the door open. Inspector Grimes of the County Police was there.



"I came by to ask a few more ques-" He began but didn't finish as I had already swung the bat. The wild strike against his head ripped the police inspector’s head clear off. "Damn, now I'm in for it!" I said to myself as I quickly dragged the corpse to my back yard and buried it with the salesman's body.



Being a little wiser than the previous night, I remembered to get the keys from the good inspector's body before I threw it in the hole. Quickly I clambored into the county policeman's car and sped off to the junkyard. This vehicle I got rid of using one of my favorite techniques. I knocked out the only junkyard attendant on duty that night and tied him up in a way as to I could knock him out again without him seeing me if he woke up before I was finished. I then drove the car to near the electromagnetic crane. I then put on gloves as to leave no fingerprints on the crane controls and climbed into the crane's cab. Using the crane, I lifted the car and dropped it into the compactor. After a few minutes the car was nothing but a massive cube of car material. I then picked up the cube and spotting a vat nearby, dropped it into a pit of molten metal. As with the night before, I watched the car disappear into nothingness.




The deed done, I jogged the five blocks from the junkyard back home. I walked back inside and fixed myself a glass of rum and coke, smoked a cigarette, and decided to turn in for the night. I went to bed shakily that night, but still in good knowledge that I had done the deed without getting caught. And when the police came the next morning, I was able to lie to them again without any regrets.



The day again was peaceful, but the night ended the same way the previous one had. Only it was my ex-wife Angie and her abusive live-in boyfriend Eddie that bought it this time. They had come all the way from New York to try and force me to pay the last payment on the car they were driving around. It was mine to begin with and it was legally in my name, so I told them to go to hell. Staggering like a damn fool and so drunk that I didn't understand how his liver was even functioning, the damn prick Eddie stood up to me and told me that I was going to pay for that car or he was going to kick my "ssa.” She then got into her bitchy attitude started in on their little fuckin' joke as well. I lost my temper then and swung the bat in my hand with all my strength. It caught the slut's little head right in the temple. She dropped with an exasperated sigh and was also put into the ever populating hole behind my shed. I then put a bullet into the back of Eddie's head with my silenced glock 9mm. He I put in a separate hole that I had just dug earlier. And once again adding insult to death, I took a shit on his corpse and wiped my ass with her face.



After burying them I walked around to the driveway and saw my chance to get away with it. The dumbass Eddie had ridden separately from her driving down on his motorcycle. Although I hated to destroy such a beautiful Harley as that one was, necessity said I had to. I shed a silent tear as I watched the fine vehicle disappear into the vat of molten metal at the junkyard. On my way walking home I stopped at a convenience store a couple of blocks from my house and bought a cobra forty and a new pack of cigs. Finally I got home around two a.m.. I quickly finished off my forty, smoked a cigarette, and went upstairs to go to bed. Where I had been shaky about killing the night before I felt extreme satisfaction in finally getting revenge on that bitch Angie and her dickhead boyfriend. I slept soundly for the rest of the night.



By the next morning the police were starting to catch onto me, or so I thought. They took me in for questioning about the disappearances of my four victims. I cooly told them that I didn't know what the hell they were talking about. The dumbass pigs let me go without so much as a fuckin' warning. What's more, I got my damned car back.


That night I decided to stay away from my home, and so I took a trip over to the nearby town of Lynnville and checked into the Holiday Inn there. Unfortunately for your narrator, my dear friends, The knocking followed me even to there. I tried to ignore it by having sex with a beautiful young maid named Kim that worked there. That poor girl. She must've been no more than a high school or college student. As we went on through the act, the noise became even more intense. I began strangling her. My grip on her throat tightened and tightened until I felt the bones begin to crack and everything else felt like mush. Immediately the knocking stopped. I regained my composure and realized what had happened. Fearing that I would be caught for sure, I hid her body until the wee hours of the morning. Around 3:00 A.M., I quietly gathered all of my things and threw them in the back seat of my car. I then stuffed her still cooling corpse in the trunk and drove home. Hers was the last body I dropped into the first hole. I slowly walked back into the house. The rest of the night I stayed awake, puffing on Marlboros and drinking scotch like there was no tomorrow. The whole time I was waiting for the Police to bust in and arrest me for four murders. But as I said before, this is a hick town and county in the middle of bumfuck nowhere. The pigs in charge of maintaining the peace were about as bright as the treestump in my front yard. They didn't know anything other than what I had told them and weren't after me. Around 6:00 a.m., I called in sick to work and went upstairs to sleep off the alcohol, content in the knowledge that I could kill anyone, bury the body in the back yard, and get away with it. I also gained some insight on the pounding that drove me crazy each night. It disappeared once I killed someone.


From that night on for the next two years I went on a rampage throughout the county. Almost every night I was in either Westonburg, Lynnville, Traxton, or one of more desolate places of the county crushing some person's head in with my trusty bat or slashing somebody's throat with the survival knife I picked up off one of my victims. Some night’s people would come over to my home to visit. At those times I just killed them right there and buried the bodies.


I remember this one night in particular. I believe it was just a few weeks after my first killing. I was roaming the area near the Traxton when I came across two fag’s skinny dipping at a secluded section of the river. Silently I watched from afar off, assembling the custom-made sniper rifle I had got as a gift from my former boss. After putting the gun together, I slithered slowly and cautiously closer to the butt-buddies. At one point I was so close that I didn't really need the scope. Quietly I sat there for another half an hour until the ambiguously gay duo walked out of the water, their asses red and bleeding from there disgusting actions. The pounding went on a supersurge in my head. I lost it. Taking aim, I squeezed off two rounds. I laughed in glorious joy as the two queers slumped to the ground, their chest cavities exploded by my hollow tip bullets. Quickly I dragged the two corpses over to the trunk of my car. I threw them in nonchalantly and slammed the hatch closed. Lucky for me the two had ridden out to the spot on bikes. I quietly grabbed eveything that could link me to the place and loaded it all into the back seat of my car. I then tied the bikes to the top of my car. A few minutes later I was at the end of the half-done bridge. Quickly I untied the bikes and threw them over the side and drove home for the night, stopping long enough for a pack of Marlboro red's and a couple of bottles of Mad Dog.


I got home around 2:30 in the morning. I drove around to the backyard and dropped my "special shipment" off next to the hole where I had buried Eddie. I then drove around to the front and parked my car. Silent as a churchmouse, I crept around back and opened the hole with Eddie once again. As I looked down onto Eddie's body, a funny thought came across my mind. I stooped down and sarcastically said to the three corpses," Eddie, meet Bert and Ernie. Bert and Ernie, meet Eddie. Now you three can be one big buttfuckin' Brady Bunch. Enjoy." With that I threw the two new corpses into the hole and recovered it. I then walked inside and opened up one of the Mad Dog bottles. After finishing the liquor off and going through three Marlboro reds, I went to bed. Now I remember this one particular incident because the newspaper headlines the next morning read " A Grim Reaper has landed upon Barnes County." And that is where I got the nicname the Barnes County Reaper.


At some point during that period the poundings on the door stopped, but I still heard it in my mind. I began killing just to be killing. It became a psychotic hobby of mine. Male, female, old, young, gay, straight, white, black, green, blue, yellow, red, purple. It didn't matter to me anymore. I was an equal opportunity homocidal maniac. I even killed the professional hitman my obnoxious former boss sent to kill me after finding out about me getting all his womenfolk pregnant.



Now that hitman was a handful. He followed me around like a damn dog for a fuckin' week. Finally on Saturday of that week he made his move. Unfortunately for him, he was dealing with a psychopath that didn't give a rat's ass about trying to survive and carried a big damn axe. I took his head off with one fell swoop. Since he hadn't drove but rode the bus, I didn't have to worry about a car. That night I buried everything but his head. The next morning I drove up to my former boss's home and left him a special package. After setting up a camera to catch his reaction, I came back down to my home and had a little one man party. I watched the TV as he read the note I left out loud, " Obviously he couldn't hack it. Too bad I could. Signed the Barnes County Grim Reaper. P.S. See you soon!" The look of pure terror on his fat old face was priceless. It was even more priceless as he peered into the box and pulled out his favorite Hitman's head. Scifi's scare tactics ain't got shit on me. I recorded the whole thing with the camera and watched that tape many times afterward.



Also during that time the cops brought in special agent Phillips of the FBI as an outside investigator to help find out what was happening and why everybody was disappearing. And it was Phillips that finally caugt me after he witnessed my final murder on the outside six months ago. He caught me as I was raping and killing my former boss's family in front of him. I had already done the mother, doin' her doggie style while slashing her throat, and the eldest teenage daughter. She I had strung up like a puppet and gutted. I had just started in on the younger teenage daughter, whipping her with a cat of nine tails whip. After a few minutes of that I put her out of her misery with a bullet to the head. As I walked toward my former boss, bat in hand he yelled at me through my front window to stop where I was. I payed no attention to him or the sirens that ever closing in. I walked up to the backstabbing bastard that was my boss and raised my bat to him. I swung at him so hard that when I connected the bat became lodged in his head. About that time the entire county's Cops busted in and arrested me.



After a quick farce of a Trial I was found guilty of 125 murders and three disappearances. I was sentenced to death and this is where I talk to you from now. And now my friends, I bid you farewell. It seems that I, Mr. Smith, am my own final victim to be reaped through the state’s help. But do rejoice, for the pounding will finally end, and the madness will go away.

***********************************************************************
Warden Johnson appeared in front of the cell again, accompanied by a host of guards.

"Smith. It’s time." He spoke solemnly.

"Very well." Smith replied. Quietly he sat the pen and pad down on the bunk and stood up. The cell door slid open and the guards walked in silently. They shackled him and escorted him out of the cell and down the hall called the last mile.

***********************************************************************
The next morning’s newspaper headlines read: "Killer Dies with a smile on his face! The Barnes County Reaper Executed!"


***********************************************************************


A few months after the execution the townspeople decided to tear the old home down and build a park on the lot for the town. As the demolition team tore the home and yard apart, they were shocked to find not 128 bodies but 129. 128 of the bodies were uncovered in the backyard. It was the 129th that shocked them. The remains of number 129 were later identified as belonging to the home's original owner Charles Groden, who had disappeared without a trace in 1853. But the most unusual part was not that he'd finally been found, but where the remains were found and the condition they were in. They were found walled up in an unknown alcove behind the front door, the skull smashed in just like the killer’s victims.


The End