Horse of the Hanged

CHAPTER ONE

Memoirs of Patience Lewis

         On my way from the airport, I wondered why I hadn't

made the trip to Savannah until now.  I had begun to have

nightmares about the place.  All the time I had spent digging in

the past had begun to bubble up in my dreams, nightmares. 

Most people might come here for the Southern quisine, the

architecture or moss-laden trees, but not me. I had come to

put my grandparents to rest. I didn't come to bury them

because they've been dead and buried since before I was born,

dead for sixty five years.  I had come to Savannah to learn the

truth about why my grandfather murdered my grandmother. 

Did mental illness run in the family?  Was there a mutated

gene hiding somewhere in my DNA waiting to express itself in

some bloody way? 

Growing up, it was like they never existed.  No one in the

family was ever allowed to talk about them, but a boy's

curiosity is hard to control.  It almost became a game with me

as I grew up.  I dug up old photos, went to the library, used the

internet to eventually build up my own secret dosier about

them...about the murder.  I would have nightmares about

it sometimes.  Wake up in the middle of the night, sweating,

heart racing like a jack hammer, unable to move, unable to cry

out. 
         It had begun to affect my relationships too.  I

wouldn't let anyone get close to me afraid of what monster

might be hiding inside my mind.  I had to find out the truth. 

When I learned that my mother's nanny was still alive and in

her eighties, I knew I couldn't waste any more time, so I

jumped on a plane from Baltimore and now sat motionless in

the lobby of the nursing home where she was recuperating

after a fall.  I was nervous and could feel the sweat running

down my back.  My tie was too tight.  Years of family secrets

would finally be answered by someone who had actually been

there.  The newspaper clippings said she was the one who

found them first.  She had only been sixteen at the time, just a

young girl.  Now she was an old woman at the end of her life. 

If I could just get her to talk to me, tell me what had

happened.  What would cause a man to stab his wife to death

so violently?  She knew...she had to know the answers.