Chapter 4
Carrie kept telling herself she’d be all right with her brothers and sisters in the same room, but she didn’t believe herself.
They were horrific to her, and everyone knew it.
She just wanted today over with so that she could go back to somewhat of a normal life and have some fun for a change.
Even going to visit her mom when she wanted to would be something she’d not been able to do because of her family.
But she did have a good visit yesterday with her mom.
She not only knew who she was, but she was telling her what she’d had for lunch before she’d gotten there as well.
After fixing her hair and making sure that her room was tidy, they sat in the front lounge and talked for about an hour before she began slipping away again.
It was the saddest part of her visit when her mom no longer knew who she was, nor was she as nice.
Mom could and would get combative if she didn’t know who you were, and you tried to get her to understand.
Carrie usually left in tears after that, and it would hurt her to her soul to have to leave her when she kept wanting to know when she was going to get to go home.
The courtroom was packed, and she didn’t understand that.
Of course, it took her nearly an hour of waiting for her family’s turn to be spoken to in order to understand that they would have their pretrial one at a time.
They had opted to be seen that way, so that’s the way that the court hearing would go when they got around to that as well.
The room was silent when they were brought into the room in cuffs and chains.
Christ, they didn’t look the same as she remembered them.
“Remember, they can’t get to you.” She was ever so grateful to Zander for reminding her of that.
They really couldn’t hurt her the way they were chained up, but that didn’t do much for her fear factor.
They’d been beating her nearly all her life, and she didn’t think there was much out there that would stop them when they wanted to knock her around again.
When Allen stood up as well as he could, she grabbed Zander’s hand and held onto him.
He’d been a good friend to her since this all started, and she knew that he’d keep her safe.
“I wanna know why I’m here.” The judge told him he’d get to that when it was his turn. “No. I want to know now. I’ve been cooped up in that jail for three days now and ain’t nobody telling me shit.” He was told to watch his language. “I’ll do what I want and say it too. Do you know who I am?”
“Allen James Sharp. I know who all of you are. Now sit down and shut up until it’s your turn to have a say.
Not that I care what you have to say about the matters that brought you here, you’re going to have a trial when I say so, and that’s final.
” Allen told him he was the head of the family and that his word was better than the judge’s.
“Better than mine, you say? Well, if that ain’t the funniest thing I’ve ever heard.
Sit down before I have the officers sit you down.
Now you’ll wait your turn like everybody else has to, and that’s the final word I have on the matter. ”
Allen sat down when two officers came to stand behind him.
He didn’t look happy, and she was afraid of him again.
There was never a time when she wasn’t afraid of him, but when he had that look in his eyes, it meant that he was going to be killing someone or close to it soon.
He was a mean mother fucker and didn’t care who he had to kill to get what he wanted, just like most of her family.
Allen and the others had been treating her like a punching bag since she was a toddler.
They’d knock her around and then take whatever she had that had meant something to her, like her dolls that she’d gotten for her birthday.
They’d destroy them, then blame it on her when she went to tell on them.
She soon learned that her mother wasn’t going to stand up to them, any of her children, because she’d been beaten by them as well.
Their father had left them all long ago, when she’d been about five and had never returned.
She put the blame for the way their mother was on their heads for the way they treated her all these years.
The poor woman didn’t stand a chance against the bullies that were her children.
Thanks to the Ericksons, she had a good job, and her mother was in a facility that took great care of her.
She wasn’t beaten anymore, and she had three meals a day too.
When she’d been taking care of her mom, it had been hit and miss if there would be enough money for her meds, much less food, when they took her social security check every month.
Carrie worked three jobs just to make sure that there was electricity in the house, and they’d take that money too.
When it was Allen’s turn finally to talk, all he wanted to know was when he was going to get out of jail so that he could get some money. The judge told him that there wasn’t going to be any money unless he was working, and Allen shook his head.
“I have recourses.” He asked if he meant resources. Allen hated to be corrected, and this time was no different. “I have ways of getting me some money, and I aim to get it. Carrie is going to start carrying her weight, or she’s going to be dead.”
“Did you just threaten your sister, Mr. Sharp?” He said that she’d better come through with it or he was going to make sure that their mother was no longer around.
“My god, you’ve just threatened two people in my courtroom, and we’ve barely gotten started.
I’ll have you know that you’ll not be harming anyone while in here. ”
“I’m not going to be here forever, now am I?
When you get up off your ass and let me go, then I’ll be able to knock them around a bit to get what I want.
And I always get what I want. Even if I have to knock a few heads together to get it.
” He looked at the rest of the family with him until he spotted her.
Every muscle in her body tensed up when he glared at her.
“There you are. What did you do with our mother? If you put her in a nursing home, you can just get her out again. I want her check monthly, and you won’t be giving it to anyone else that comes around.
They’ll know better than to fuck with me. ”
When he finally looked away toward the judge who was banging his gavel against his desk, all her breath let out at once, and she was dizzy from it.
He’d threatened her again, and there wasn’t anything that anyone could do about it.
She knew that if he got out, she’d be dead because there wasn’t any way that she was going to give up her mother to him.
She liked her just where she was staying.
Zander stood up so that Allen could no longer see her and told the judge that he had a list of crimes that the family as a whole had committed.
He also had a list of things that they did individually that were in a separate file, he told him.
As he gave dates and the crimes, she could see that there were a great deal more than them just hurting her.
It seemed like everyone in town had had some kind of interaction with her family, and none of it was good.
When he got to the checks that had been stolen and forged, the judge sat up and listened.
Carrie was sure that he’d heard it all before and was just listening to him go on about all the seemingly petty stuff that her family had done compared to the checks.
The judge had questions as to when the checks had been stolen and by whom.
He also wanted to know what was done to them by the police department.
“I can only find where they were arrested the one time for forging the checks. The bank manager had called to say that he knew for a fact that the check he had wasn’t signed by Mrs. Sharp and wanted someone to come and arrest Allen.
He never made it to jail, it seems, and that was the last time that the bank manager had ever called the police.
He didn’t cash the checks every time they were brought in, but he did on occasion.
” The judge wanted to know why he’d cashed them at all.
“I don’t know, Your Honor. I could never get an answer from him other than it was Allen Sharp that wanted them cashed, and he knew better than to not comply. ”
“So you’re thinking that he threatened the bank, too, are you?
” Zander told the man that he didn’t know what to think, as no one was talking to him about it.
“And I know you and your brother well enough that you would have left no stone unturned trying to find the answer to that, too. Let me look this over.”
As the judge looked over the files that Zander had given him, she looked at her family.
Syble was dressed in one of the orange outfits that the jail gave a person, but the others were dressed in their street clothing.
Allen had on a suit, which he usually wore when he was walking around town, but the others were in jeans and t-shirts.
They weren’t clean, any of them, but they looked like they’d spent the last several weeks in a jail cell.
If they could stay there for the rest of her life, that would make her feel much better. She knew that she’d live longer.
When the judge cleared his throat, she looked back at him, but not before Allen got her attention.
He was making a slit across his throat with his fingers, and she knew what he meant.
Yes, she hoped that they stayed in the system for the rest of her long life, or she’d not be around to see that her mom was well taken care of.
There was no doubt that Allen would kill her or any of the others.
They were all just as bad about hurting her, but Allen was the worst.