Carnies and Wildcats: Ulciscor

By Robert Spearman

In November 1980, one week after the Wildcats and Vikings squared off for their last football game of the season, someone raised the stakes beyond the realm of practical jokes, petty vandalism and theft. Someone in town committed a cruel, monstrous act. The carnival was in town with its rides, games, and sideshows and was finishing its last night in Valdosta before returning to Florida for the winter.

After the carnival closed for the night, people leaving the back gate discovered a twelve-year-old carny girl's lifeless body in front of the back gate's ticket booth. Hanging around her neck was a sign: "We Hate Carnies and Wildcats"

The killer was never found and her father swore one day to return for justice. Thirty-five years later Dr. J. L. Seiffert, hypnotherapist, moves to town and buys the old Daniel Ashley Hotel--for some folks in Valdosta, a city called "Winnersville", things will never be the same.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Robert Spearman
• Release date: Oct 25, 2015
• ISBN: 9781311162281

Robert Spearman

Robert Spearman grew up in Hahira, Georgia, fifteen miles north of Valdosta. He attended Lowndes High School in Valdosta and Georgia Christian School in Dasher, Georgia. He has lived the past ten years in China and Southeast Asia and attended Beijing Normal University in Zhuhai, China. He is fluent in Mandarin Chinese and speaks enough Cantonese and Thai to "get him in trouble." He is currently working on his second novel, "Obadiah: A Ghost's Story", which will be released early in 2017, a sequel to "Carnies and Wildcats" entitled "Escape from Oddities", and a sci-fi novel entitled "The Donner Syndrome" both due to be released in mid-2018.

Book preview

CHAPTER ONE

Valdosta popped up on Georgia’s map in the early 1860s as a whistle-stop railroad town fifteen miles north of the Florida line. After the Civil War ended, Savannah and Atlanta were both in ruins and folks searched for a new place to settle. Many chose Valdosta, and the one-horse town grew into a city. The new residents brought with them money and plans to build big, beautiful homes like the ones they owned before Sherman and the war.

Money rolled in.

Commerce came.

The railroad expanded.

Cotton was king.

Tobacco filled warehouses to the brim.

The city was growing, alive. Old residences were a constant reminder of the city’s past, while the new businesses and industries opened doors to the city’s future.

Many of the stately homes remained, but not as the residences of Valdosta’s elite or wealthy. These were now the offices of Valdosta’s lawyers, doctors, and architects.

Sitting on a block in the center of town was the requisite post-Civil War, county courthouse. Circling the courthouse in surrounding city blocks were churches and the remnants of the downtown’s once vibrant shopping area—revitalized with chic restaurants, boutiques, and government offices.

A few blocks north of the courthouse was The Crescent. This grand old home was one of Valdosta’s most famous landmarks. Its name originated from its veranda, which was shaped like a crescent moon. The veranda contained thirteen columns, which symbolized the original colonies of the United States. No longer a residence, it served as host for weddings and fifty-year wedding anniversaries.

North of The Crescent was Valdosta State University with its sprawling campus and Spanish architecture. Once a small women’s college, it was now one of Georgia’s largest universities.

Century-old, moss-laden live oaks grew around The Crescent, the university, and stately homes throughout the old part of the city and along the city streets. These ancient trees provided giant, leafy canopies that kept areas of the city blanketed with constant shade—a needed shade during the hot, sweltering dog days of summer.

However, oak trees and Spanish moss were not Valdosta’s botanical claim to fame. It was all about azaleas that yielded millions of multi-colored blooms in the spring.

During the middle days of March and through the end of April, the aroma of azaleas permeated the city like the perfume counters at high-end department stores. Valdosta loved its azaleas more than Pasadena loved its roses. When those flowers bloomed and spread their colors throughout the city, Valdosta became The Azalea City.

But something more important to Valdosta than azaleas, old homes, and live oaks was high school football. After the azaleas lost their blooms, and the trees shed their first leaves of fall, The Azalea City changed its nickname once again to Winnersville. Forget the azaleas, because that was the name that made Valdostans swell with pride. National sportswriters gave the city this name because of its reputation for being a winner at the game. For years, Valdosta High School, The Valdosta Wildcats, had more national and state football titles than any other high school in the United States.

The small, local county high schools had their own football programs too, but none of them matched in size to Valdosta High School. Valdosta’s big money, social elite made sure the city school had the best facilities and coaches. A few folks living in the county sold their homes and moved to the city just so their little Johnny could play for the nationally famous Wildcats.

In 1966, everything changed. The county high schools in the small towns of Hahira, Clyattville, and Lake Park merged and formed a single school, Lowndes High School. The county built this consolidated school on a huge tract of land near the interstate highway and constructed a new, modern stadium, giving birth to a crosstown rivalry.

The cross-town football adversaries often mocked the students of the new county high school. Every year, during football season, signs and banners appeared around town, calling the county school the Plowboys instead of the Vikings. The Plowboy name attempted to slur the new high school’s origins, but instead, it because a proud nickname.

At first, the Vikings accepted their ribbing from the city folks with laughter. During football season, they had hayrides and students wore straw farmer’s hats and overalls on the Thursday night before the big game on Friday. These overall-clad Plowboys gathered and burned a stuffed Wildcat doll in a roaring bonfire.

The Vikings struggled with its football program during the first fourteen years, but in 1980, they won their first state championship. The county team earned their place as being a winner in the Wildcats’ Winnersville. Folks in the county acted like kids getting their first bike for Christmas, and the folks in the city acted as if they received a lump of coal.

Throughout the years, the ribbing continued, but some of the good-natured jesting turned sour. People needed more than light-hearted joking. They wanted one-up the other side, and football was not enough. That led to practical jokes, which often escalated to fights, vandalism, and even theft. The coaches’ houses rolled in toilet paper, school walls spray painted, trophies swiped from the trophy cases of both schools, locker rooms pilfered, and football jerseys stolen.

In November 1980, someone raised the stakes beyond the realm of petty vandalism and theft. Someone committed a cruel, monstrous act. The football season had come to a close, and the carnival, which visited Valdosta once a year, was getting ready to pack up and move to the next town.

The last stragglers were leaving through the back gate when they discovered twelve-year-old Allison Pritchard’s bloody, lifeless body in front of the back gate’s ticket booth. Her throat was cut from ear to ear, and hanging around her neck was a sign, painted in her own blood:

We Hate Carnies and Wildcats

CHAPTER TWO

Valdosta had its share of wealthy doctors and lawyers, but a few folks made their money in the less glorious world of buying and selling. Harvey Ridley was such a person. The Ridley family came to Valdosta from Savannah in the early 1900s, and Harvey’s grandfather opened a general mercantile store on Central Avenue in the heart of the city. Harvey’s father, Milton, was not interested in selling dry goods and groceries. So, when he took over the store from his father, he narrowed the business’s focus from general merchandise to retail hardware.

Like his father before Harvey decided to change things. He bought land in the new business park near the airport and built a ten-thousand-square-foot warehouse and distribution center. Once the building was complete, he sold the retail store in town and moved the wholesale and industrial departments to the new building. He formed a new company, Ridley Specialties and Supply.

Harvey was raking in the cash, and the company continued to grow. His wife Myrtle wanted to start a family, so Harvey bought a huge home on three acres of land near the country club. Myrtle trained her replacement and stopped working at the office. She wanted to turn the new, big, empty house into a home. Eighteen months later, Myrtle gave birth to their first child, Harvey Allen Ridley, Jr.

Allen led an unspectacular childhood. Myrtle and Harvey pampered him and gave him their endless attention, and he loved it. Things were going grand for Allen until Dottie’s birth six years later.

Allen hated her from the minute his parents brought the small bundle of noise, shit, and pee home from the hospital. His mother had been away from him for a week while she delivered Dottie, and he hated her for that too. Allen’s hatred for Dottie grew.

Dottie was like a chubby, porcelain doll. Her hair was so blond it appeared white, and her eyes were the color of a blue, winter sky. Family, friends, and strangers loved to pinch her round, chubby cheeks. Dottie giggled and smiled when someone pinched her. As she grew older, when they reached for her cheeks, she would exclaim, Don’t do that! while turning her head to offer the other cheek, laughing the whole time. Allen hated her cuteness, her giggles. He hated everything about her.

Dottie’s terrible twos were more than terrible for Allen. Endless days of Dottie breaking Allen’s favorite toys, putting his toys in her mouth, or chewing the heads off his toy soldiers.

Several times, Harvey and Myrtle found Allen standing beside Dottie’s bed while she slept, staring at her with a scowl on his face. As Dottie approached four, they would hear her screaming in her room for no apparent reason. For a while, it was a daily occurrence. Myrtle discovered whelps and blood blisters on Dottie’s arms and legs. At first, they assumed these were insect bites. One day, Dottie screamed, and Myrtle caught sight of Allen running out of Dottie’s room.

Myrtle convinced Harvey to hire a nanny, and her instructions were clear. The nanny must always be in the room with Dottie if Allen was indoors. The nanny lasted six weeks and later told one of her friends, That boy is evil, just plain evil, but never elaborated.

Myrtle continued to go through nannies at a rapid pace until they ran out of candidates willing to take the job. In a small city like Valdosta, gossip spread like wildfire in an autumn forest. Nannies, cooks, and maids were quick to share their dirty secrets of the city’s wealthiest and prominent in their own little intelligence network.

Dottie grew older and learned to handle Allen’s painful abuse. Myrtle soon discovered that Dottie had developed a habit of scratching and biting her older brother. Allen never complained to his parents, and Myrtle suspected he enjoyed it in some sick way. Myrtle had enough, she convinced Harvey to enroll Allen in military school the start of his fifth-grade year.

Allen fought with his parents about this, but they did not change their minds. Harvey took him away to a military boarding academy for boys in the North Georgia mountains. The school was rough on Allen. The older boys bullied him, and the teachers were more akin to drill sergeants and slave drivers than teachers.

Allen called his parents every weekend and pleaded to come home, always promising them he would be a good boy. Myrtle and Harvey could not bear hearing him cry and beg, but they did not relent, they were more concerned about Dottie’s wellbeing.

Allen stayed in the boarding school for one year. At the end of the year, Harvey brought him home. The school had summer classes, and Myrtle pleaded with Harvey to let him stay there for the summer, but Harvey was more tenderhearted than Myrtle—he just couldn’t leave his son there any longer. Allen came home, and his mother welcomed him back.

Dottie was happy to see her big brother and smothered him with sloppy kisses. Allen smiled at Dottie, patted her on the head, and then picked her up and hugged her. He told Dottie that he missed her. Allen’s affection surprised Harvey and Myrtle. Maybe their family could now live in peace.

Harvey’s business continued to grow, and he bought a lake house on Ocean Pond near the Georgia-Florida state line. The house was in need of minor repairs, and the dock was in total shambles—almost ready to collapse into the lake.

Harvey hired carpenters to come do the house and dock repairs, giving them strict instructions to finish by the end of July. Harvey wanted to bring his family there in August to enjoy the lake before school began in September. The carpenters finished a week early, and Harvey put extra cash in their final paychecks.

The first week at the lake was full of fun and frolic. Harvey and the children spent hours jumping and diving from the new dock. Harvey taught both the children to do cannonballs. Allen learned fast, but Dottie was fearful yet determined. Dottie gained her confidence and soon followed her brother, dive for dive and cannonball for cannonball. Myrtle spent most of her week reading a novel and magazines. Smiles and laughter filled the house. It was the happiest Harvey and Myrtle had been in a long time.

He enjoyed the time with his family, but he needed to be at work. He ended up splitting his time between work and the lake with his family, making quick stops at the house in Azalea Estates to make sure everything was okay. Each night, Harvey would arrive at the lake house around six. The late, summer sun gave Harvey enough time to swim or fish with Allen and Dottie while Myrtle made dinner.

Thursday of the second week, Myrtle woke up with a terrible headache. Harvey debated on whether to go to work, but Myrtle assured him they would be okay. The sky was gray and overcast. Thunderheads were building to the south.

Myrtle made the children a breakfast of scrambled eggs and toast. After cooking, she took a pill for her headache and slept in Harvey’s recliner. Several times, she woke to hear Dottie whining and begging Allen to go with her to the dock.

Allen was in the middle of putting a jigsaw puzzle together and had no desire to go to the lake. He hated listening to her whine, and the whining just made him more determined to stay put and finish his puzzle.

Dottie kept complaining while Myrtle drifted between wake and sleep. Dottie had enough and stopped her begging. She thrust her hand into the middle of Allen’s puzzle and grabbed a handful of pieces. Dottie ran away shouting, I guess you will listen to me now!

At that moment, Allen’s newfound, easy-going nature disappeared. Dottie saw the anger in his eyes and ran to the screened-in back porch of the lake house. Allen turned to make sure his mother was still sleeping and then ran after Dottie. She was standing in the middle of the porch, the puzzle pieces still in her hand.

Give them here, Allen whispered. He did not want to wake his mother.

Come and get them. Dottie ran out the back door toward the dock.

Allen ran after her, but Dottie arrived at the dock before him. When she neared the end of the dock, she turned to Allen and smirked. She tossed the puzzle pieces in the lake. Allen’s jaw tightened. His face turned red, and his lips quivered. He lunged at Dottie and shoved her into the lake.

Dottie gasped and breathed in water as she fell into the lake. She popped back up to the surface, frightened. She fought for air, and her arms thrashed the water trying to swim.

Allen jumped into the water and waited for her to pop up again. Dottie came to the surface, her eyes wide with panic. Allen’s hands forced her under the water and held her there. Dottie continued to thrash around for a few minutes, and then her body went limp and offered no more resistance to Allen’s hands as her blond hair floated on the water like fine strands of golden silk.

Allen searched for the puzzle pieces and found a few floating near Dottie’s body. He shoved them into his pocket and walked back to the house. Allen crept onto the back porch and stared through the open, sliding-glass door that separated the porch from the den. His mother was still sleeping. He removed his wet clothes, except for his underwear, and put them in the corner of the room under an old rocking chair. He slipped into the den, made sure he had not woken his mother, and continued down the hall to his bedroom.

Once inside, he stripped off his briefs and threw them under his bed. He grabbed new clothes from his closet and changed. Allen took another jigsaw puzzle from the shelf, tiptoed back to the den, and opened it. That is where he sat, working on the new puzzle, until his mother woke up.

Myrtle Ridley opened her eyes a few minutes before noon. The headache was gone. She went to the bathroom, and a few minutes later, she returned to the den.

Where is your sister?

I dunno, Mom. Did you look in her room?

Myrtle walked down the hall leading to the bedrooms.

Dottie? Dottie? she called out. Myrtle made a tour of the house calling Dottie’s name. She returned to the den and then went into the kitchen. She walked out to the back porch. Allen heard the screen door of the back porch open, a few seconds later, his mother screamed.

Dottie! Oh my God, Dottie! Myrtle screamed. No, no, no, please God, no!

Allen walked outside and saw his mother wading in the lake. She was holding Dottie’s limp body in her arms. Allen was close enough to see his mother glaring at him.

You did this! I know you did! she screamed. She kept walking toward the house, and Allen backed up as she came closer. Look what you did. You’ve killed your sister! Get in your room and don’t come out, I will deal with you later!

Allen ran inside and locked himself in his room. He remembered the rage in his mother’s eyes and could hear her crying in the next room. He tried to cover his ears to shut out the noise of her wailing. Allen covered his head with a pillow, but her grief was getting louder and louder. He needed to escape the torment of his mother crying, the sounds of her pain were maddening. He unlocked the window in his bedroom and climbed out.

Myrtle laid Dottie on the sofa in the den. She was weeping with deep, heavy breaths—her face streaked with tears. Her trembling hands reached up, grabbed an afghan from the back of the sofa, and covered Dottie’s body. She forced herself to concentrate on what to do next.

Call Harvey. Must call Harvey.

She struggled to get to her feet and stumbled to the nearest phone. Her hands were shaking as she tried to dial the number. She made several attempts before she managed to get it right.

Good afternoon, Ridley Specialties and Supply. Harvey’s secretary Linda answered.

Linda, I need to speak to Harvey!

I’m sorry, Mrs. Riley. Harvey is in the warehou—

I don’t care where he is! I need him now! she screamed into the receiver, panic twisting deeper into her stomach with each passing moment.

I will go get him. Linda responded, but Myrtle was beyond listening. What seemed like a lifetime later, her husband’s voice came over the line, Myrtle, what’s gotten into you? Linda said you screamed at her. I know that’s not like—

Harvey, come home now. Dottie is dead. I need you NOW!

Harvey dropped the phone and ran to his car.

* * *

Harvey made the trip from the office to Ocean Pond in record time. As he turned onto the gravel road leading to the lake house, he glimpsed Allen sitting on the side of the road. Harvey did not stop but continued speeding to the house.

He entered the house through the kitchen and heard Myrtle’s relentless sobs and her repeating the words, Oh my baby, my sweet baby. He walked into the den. Myrtle was kneeling on the floor beside the sofa, stroking Dottie’s hair.

Harvey went to console her, but she pushed him away. She scowled at Harvey. "It’s your fault, all your fault. You just had to bring him back, and now look what he’s