Lies in the Darkness

By C.J. Williams

Lies in the Darkness takes place in the picturesque town of Woodloch, Virginia. Distantly removed from the rat race of the nearby big cities, nestled just along the Appalachian Trail, Woodloch's small town charm also comes with small town secrets and lies. After the abduction and murder of several young women in the area and the arrest and conviction of the man thought to be responsible for the heinous crimes, the town of Woodloch is desperately trying to re-brand their image through community engagement by hosting an annual festival and memorial vigil. Media attention is quickly redirected from the festivities upon the discovery of bodies dumped in a shallow grave only minutes away from the bustling town square. Trust and egos are put to the test as distractions dissipate, shining light on the truth.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Lulu.com
• Release date: Jul 14, 2023
• ISBN: 9781312339231

Book preview

FOREWORD

Woodloch had always just been a quaint little antique hunting town where the locals lived a quiet life and tourists visited on the weekends to watch the leaves change colors. During the Fall, the crisp winds whip through the passes and valleys carved into the mountains by the river. Preparing for the harsh winter to come, deer, rabbits, and other small woodland animals scurry about frantically. Nibbling up the endless fields of branchy, scraggly-looking chicory plants that coat the countryside with beautiful blue flowers in the spring and fall, they try to survive yet another hunting season.

Visitors from all around frequent the farmers market in the fall for the delectable smorgasbord of fresh apples, apple cider, and apple butter, as well as gourds, pumpkins, jams, and jellies, but the showstopper has always been the fresh, locally sourced, spiced molasses apple pie. Visitors and locals alike set up picnics, snacking on apple pie and hot apple cider doughnuts in the town square as local bluegrass bands carry the mood into the late evenings. Woodloch was the perfect destination for pursuing local craft shops, taking in a long country hayride, or just enjoying the awe-inspiring panoramic views of the mountains from a quaint bed and breakfast.

Well, at least that's the way it was before the town made national headlines. Since then, the Woodloch community has been doing everything it can to erase its new image, from active public relations campaigns to, well, hosting parades. Murder-Town, USA is what Woodloch is known as nowadays to everyone, except the locals, that is. History and media have branded this sleepy little town as some sort of evil vortex full of crazed killers.

There is still some fall tourism, but now it's mostly amateur crime scene investigators and wannabe reporters trying to stir up the locals by searching for any gory details they can find, or make up, to get their five minutes in the spotlight. Locals call the media storm The Woodloch Witch-Hunt, but despite the sudden economic boost from all the outsiders, everyone just wants to get things back to the way they were...before.

FRIDAY - OCTOBER 13, 2006 - 6:00 PM

The frigid air stings like needles against her bare skin as the brisk autumn temperatures continue to rapidly drop with every passing minute. Blindfolded, she can’t see if he’s gone, but it has been quiet for some time now… and he hasn't assaulted her in hours. The pungent odor of kerosene lamp oil and rust thicken the damp air, making it heavy and difficult to breathe. Shivering and cold, she listens intently, scared that he will come back. She struggles fervently, tugging and pulling the ropes as she squirms to free her hands from the crudely tied knots that he used to restrain her. Frenzied, her heart is pounding in her chest so hard that she confuses her own heartbeat for footsteps. She panics, afraid that he has come back to catch her trying to escape. She freezes, still as a statue, the sound of water dripping echoes over the sound of her labored breathing as she lay still, listening for any signs that he may have returned. She lies petrified, sobbing softly, dreading the thought of enduring any more of the terror and abuse that she had been forcibly subjected to for the past forty-eight hours.

Hel...Hello… is anyone there? Her voice cracks and shudders wearily as she lies in the frigid, dark abyss. Nearly ten minutes pass, which seems like an eternity as she lays on the cold ground in the darkness listening to the distant water droplets splatter against a hard surface. The uninterrupted 'splat, splat, splat...splat, splat, splat...', resonates off the walls and ceiling like a metronome, 'splat, splat, splat...splat, splat, splat...'

Resurrecting the courage and strength to attempt to fight her way loose again, she begins to torque and twist her wrists and hands, trying to break free. Her wrists sting and begin to bleed as the rough, rigid fibers of the rope slices into her bruised and tender flesh. Brittle from malnourishment, her fingernails crack and break off as she fervently struggles, grinding them into the coarse concrete floor. Her hands are swollen and infected from the splinters that pierced into her flesh as she tried to escape the three other times before. She quivers, groaning in pain as she struggles to free herself. Although he didn’t take all of the slack out, this time the knots are tight. She rises up to a seated position, leaning against the coarse wooden post behind her. Splinters rip into her wrists as she scrapes the rope against the rough wooden surface. Whimpering in pain, tears wick into the blindfold, blocking out even more light as she grinds her tender wrists against the rigid post. 

Yes, yes… Thank God!, oh my god, oh my god… She mumbles in relief as she feels the left knot loosening more and more with every scrape. She can feel her heart lighten as she wiggles her hands free. Her adrenaline pumping, she springs to her feet, immediately ripping off the blindfold, and still... darkness.

She hesitantly reaches her hand out into the endless void of darkness. She can’t see anything, no discernible landmarks, no features to focus on, no floor, no walls, no sky, only darkness. Unable to see, she kneels back down to the floor.  Trying to feel her way out, she begins to crawl, the gritty, abrasive concrete gouging her knees and palms as she blindly scrapes her way across the ground. After crawling a few feet, she feels the hard concrete slab stop. She runs her hands over the ground, feeling powder-fine soil, and gravel. She rubs her hands in the cool soil letting the tiny grains run off her fingertips. Unable to see it from only inches away, she listens to each granule and pebble as they fall and bounce off the ground.

She begins sobbing faintly as she realizes that she is freed from her restraints, but not freed of this nightmare; nor is she freed of the monster that could be lurking anywhere in the shadows of the crippling darkness. Crawling across the ground, the harsh, gravel-laden soil stings as it scrapes and scratches her tender freezing skin. The warm seeping blood cakes-up as she drags herself across the dirt floor. With every inch she scoots, she packs the dirt deeper and deeper into the hundreds of cuts and scratches that cover her body. Ignoring the excruciating pain, she tries focusing on the thought of getting out, being free; in her head, over and over again she repeats, like a mantra, 'One more inch, the next one is it… just one more,' as she claws her way across the ground in the darkness.

She collapses under her own weight from exhaustion, falling flat onto the gravely floor. She begins shivering uncontrollably as the temperature continues to plummet. Freezing, her whole body aches as she lays curled-up into the fetal position, weeping alone in the abysmal darkness, realizing hypothermia may soon be a real concern. 'Keep moving… a moving body is a warm body,' she continues to repeat to herself in her mind. She gathers her resolve and scoots a few inches, cringing and moaning as the sharp gravel gouges and scratches, digging into her hips and thighs. She shuffles again, inch-by-inch, she drags herself forward a few more feet as the jagged pebbles rip into her bruised flesh.

There is no stopping. ‘If I stop, I die,’ she thinks to herself as she lunges forward. In the darkness, she sees a sudden flash of light and hears a loud, indistinct ringing. Blinded and in a daze, , her face begins to throb. Every single heartbeat rings like an anvil in her head, making it difficult to focus. Instinctively, her hands fly to her injured face. The cut stings as she inadvertently rubs the dirt from her hands into the tender wound. She can feel the fresh warm blood oozing over her cold numb fingertips and down her arm as she holds the gash above her left eye.

She begins to laugh hysterically, realizing that she had not been caught, but had simply slammed her face into a wall. Ha, ha, ha… Oh, thank you God! she exclaims, crying out into the darkness.

Instantly, her heart skips a beat, and she begins holding her breath, immobilized by fear she lay on the ground motionless, her thoughts running rampant in a panic: ‘Oh no! Did he hear me? Now he knows I'm trying to escape! He's going to kill me!" What seemed to be ten minutes or more must have passed as she lay silent, listening, waiting to see if anyone had heard her. ‘Maybe someone will come for me,’ she thinks to herself as she tries to regain her fighting spirit. ‘Maybe he will come let me go…’, she unrealistically thinks to herself. Recognizing the absurdity of her thinking, she begins to deflate, losing all hope. She begins to cry as she comes to grips with the reality that no one is going to come to save her.

Her knees, bruised and bleeding, are shaky as she slowly rises up onto her feet. Barefoot, small gravel pebbles dig their sharp edges into her tender feet as she stumbles her way through the darkness. Her whole body is aching from the repeated beatings and rapings that she had endured. Grasping-out, she stumbles forward as she reaches for the wall. Leaning against the wall, she pats and grasps blindly as she tries to guide herself out. Dragging her feet as she wearily traverses the cold gloomy void, she covers nearly twenty feet before she stubs her toe on a boulder and collapses onto jagged rock floor.  As she lay groaning in agony from the pain and exhaustion, she remembers his voice. She remembers the words that he had said just before he’d raped her. He would say it every time, like a broken record, over and over, They’ll never hear you down here.

She remembers the last time he came, he brought the lantern like always, but he also had a headlamp.

‘Down here', she thinks to herself, ‘down where?’

It all begins to add up, ‘lamp oil, rust, fresh soil, and wooden rafters,’ she thinks to herself. '...the mines... I’m in the mines,' she says aloud, as she finally realizes where she’s been taken. She begins to sob gently, tears of relief, as she gains a modicum of hope one again.

In the darkness, she searches the floor for pebbles. Finding a few, she scoots backward, putting her back against the wall, and throws a pebble to her right. The pebble lightly clinks as it ricochets off the wall… A dead end. She grabs another pebble, tossing it to the left. It clinks as it bounces off a wall, Nooooo! she cries out...another dead end. Her tears begin to freeze to her face in the bitter cold abyss. Taking another pebble in her hand, she realizes that the last direction is either going to be another dead end and she will die in here, or it may be her only way out. She throws the tiny pebble with all the strength she has left. Her heart seems to stop as she anticipates the clink.

'Thud,' she hears delightedly, as the pebble makes a soft impact, skidding across the dirt-covered ground.

Thank You, Thank You, Thank You! she mumbles, exhaling a deep sigh of relief.

She blindly stumbles with both arms extended in front of her, in the direction that she'd tossed the pebble. The gravel digs into her tender feet with every agonizing step as she shuffles towards her impending freedom. She feels the sharp bite of a cold draft as it faintly wisps by, chilling and hardening the warm blood as it drips down her face. She drops to all fours and begins crawling across the ground following the draft, inching further and further away from her captivity. She whimpers as she begins to scurry, scooting faster and faster.

The air… the air is fresh, no lamp oil, she thinks to herself, drawing in a deep breath. As she exhales a sigh of relief, she realizes that she can see her breath. Pulling herself up, she drags her feet across the jagged gravel, limping as she scurries faster, driving herself forward. She starts to hobble faster and faster as the sharp gravel begins to thin out into powder fine soil as she makes her way out of the darkness. She can smell the fresh dirt as her feet kick up a plume of dust...and the trees, she can now smell the sweet aroma of the evergreens wafting in the crisp air.

She begins to run as she sees the moonlight peeking through the wood framing of the mine’s adit entry. As she passes through the crude wooden frame, she feels a huge pressure lift, knowing she is finally free. She can taste the sweetness of the crisp fall air as she draws in several deep breaths. She begins to sprint, running as fast as she can across the moonlit valley to the edge of the woods. Reaching the tree line of the forest, she kneels down under the foliage of a large spruce tree. As she stares back at the eerily illuminated gateway that leads down to her nightmare, her adrenaline begins to wane, and the effects of her prolonged detainment and frantic escape begin to take hold. Freezing, bruised, beaten, bloody, and raped, she loses consciousness at the edge of the forest.

She lies motionless, staring up as the night sky comes into focus. It is as black as the abyss from which she had just crawled out, only recognizable because of the full moon brightly looming overhead and a few faintly flickering stars glimmering through the nearly naked treetops. She doesn't know how long she had been unconscious, whether she had been out for a few hours or only a few minutes, but she doesn't plan on sticking around to be discovered by him. If he finds her, she is dead!

As she rolls over onto her stomach to get to her knees, she sees lights glimmering and shining through the otherwise eerily motionless forest. Her heart begins to race, pounding in her chest as she stays lying flat on the ground, silent, trying not to breathe so he doesn't see her steamy breath fogging in the cold air. Laying perfectly still and silent, she hears footsteps as they approach. Pine straw and dried fallen leaves crunch louder