Chapter Twenty-Eight
Warden of Quiet Graves
Butch
He eased his finger along the trigger, the crosshairs gliding with each shift of movement. Butch smiled when he had realized what the deputy was up to. It would be important to keep a close watch on Willow and her property now.
His finger slid off the trigger. This wasn’t the right time to kill.
The biggest problem he had with Willow was that she cropped into his thinking more and more.
Butch had never felt attracted to anyone.
He wasn’t sure if what he felt for Willow was attraction.
He did know it was something. For now, the deputy caused more of a problem.
Killing him had to be handled delicately.
Cops protected their own and took an officer’s death to heart.
Everyone on the ranch would be suspect, and he didn’t want the sheriff’s department at his door.
An antsy feeling followed Butch throughout the day. Trips to his burial ground calmed him, and he hadn’t gone since Willow and the deputy spotted him. He decided to go early the following day. He had a run to Vegas coming up, and the hike would do him good.
When the sun was barely over the horizon, he stuffed his large backpack with four, five-pound weighted bags. It was four miles to the burial site, and even when he had no bones to carry, he added weight to his pack for exercise.
As the years went by, Butch upgraded his truck and now drove a long-nose Pete. It had a better sleeper cab and was a more comfortable ride. He was able to purchase it new, and he felt pride in his accomplishments.
His kill plan evolved, too. The hunt became psychologically more important, and he gave his victims a chance.
It was a very minute one, because Butch made sure the odds were always in his favor.
He still liked to see their eyes when death settled in, but he’d noticed pain changed things.
A knife slice, a broken bone, it didn’t matter; the hurt made their eyes come alive before they went dark.
The torture, like with the pigs, was very short-lived, which he was proud of.
Processing the bodies also changed as his kill count rose.
His experimentation led him to new heights.
He began dismembering and stripping the body of usable parts.
He dried the bones to cut down on the weight.
He hadn’t done that in the beginning, but he was a younger man then.
He journaled each person’s weight, before and after each process.
On average, once the bone dried, a man weighed twenty pounds and a woman sixteen.
Butch worked hard on staying fit, but he had a small pooch in his gut that wouldn’t go away.
Protein was a man’s best friend, but he wondered if the human flesh he consumed placed the extra fat in his belly.
He began bringing live victims to his home in order to vary their diet and discover the differences it made to his health.
There was now enough data to publish, even though Butch knew that would never happen. The world wasn’t ready for what he’d discovered.
He woke early the following morning. He grabbed extra water due to the weather report.
It would be hot, even though the overall temperature would change soon.
There were several small trails he followed, but never one more than another.
He didn’t want a clear track to his destination.
His thoughts wandered to Willow, and he stumbled over an unseen root from a shaggy bark tree that he shouldn’t have missed.
It angered him because he couldn’t shake her off.
His journey continued, though he paid closer attention to his surroundings.
A broken leg this far from home could mean a death sentence.
The thought made him smile. For a very long time, he thought himself invincible.
The gray in his hair, the lines on his face, and body aches changed that.
Maybe that’s why he kept thinking about Willow. Could a man like him settle down?
A grumble sounded in his chest. She had crept into his thoughts again.
He looked at his surroundings and realized he was almost at his destination.
He walked up the final rise and stepped into a large expanse of emptiness.
Well, not all of it. There were a few scattered shrubs here and there.
If someone stumbled upon his monument for the dead, they would only see an ugly grove of dirt and rocks.
For him, even the air was different here. It was as if the land held its breath in reverence for what was buried beneath the surface.
Butch smiled at the invisible mounds stretched before him, neat in their unevenness and only visible in his mind. This was his collection. His lifetime of butchery for those who went unnoticed and unwanted. It was a memorial of death, and he relished each and every memory it brought.
He knew the locations and names of each grave. Some of his victims didn’t have identification, so he gave them names himself. They were documented in his records with details related to each killing, like age and gender.
Butch walked to the first grave, where he removed his pack.
With his hand out, he knelt and picked up a handful of sandy earth and allowed it to run through his fingers.
Leslie had begged for her life with more passion than most. Her frantic squeals and the final twitch were nothing compared to the pure silence that followed. Not even the wind blew that night.
Other truckers, possibly highway patrol, were a hundred yards away, driving down the highway with no idea of what was happening so close.
“Perfect,” he whispered, almost tenderly as he looked at the ground.
Dizzying superiority swelled in his chest. People spent their lives building houses, carving names into plaques, and chasing fleeting accomplishments. But he was the only one who could claim a secret kingdom of death. He arranged them here, beneath the soil, like the prized trophies they were.
He crouched lower, drawing in the scent of dry earth, imagining the bones beneath, stacked silently in their final rest. Power hummed in his veins.
The world didn’t understand, but here, in this sacred place, Butch was more than a man.
He was the author of last chapters and the warden of quiet graves as God looked over it all.