30 OCTOBER 1977

7:16 PM

The sun was setting and it was glaring in Margaret's eyes as she drove down the dusty country highway. She was running low on gas and her stomach was growling in hunger, and a sign for a roadside attraction caught her attention.

Captain Spaulding's

Museum of MONSTERS and MADMEN

Fried Chicken & Gasoline!

She wrinkled her nose but merged into the exit that lead to the roadside attraction. Margaret wasn't much of one for spooky, scary things. Psycho had given her nightmares for weeks, and the desolation of the empty Texas highway was setting her on edge to begin with. She hated driving after nightfall and she didn't trust the old rustbucket of a car she'd bought off her uncle back in Shreveport.

Turning in to the gas station, she pulled up to one of the gas pumps and killed the engine, the car clunking down to silence. She sat there for a few minutes, listening to the pings of the engine cooling. The place looked even more decrepit and terrifying than what she'd been expecting, old clapboard walls strung with garish decorations and flickering neon advertisements. She pursed her lips, then got out of the car to begin fueling — only to jump nearly out of her skin when she came face to face with a grinning, intensely sunburnt man. The man let out a bray of laughter at her undignified yelp, gesturing with the fuel nozzle in his hand at the Full Service sign nearby.

Margaret wasted no time scuttling away from him and into the station proper, flinching at the bell clanging against the door behind her. Looking around, she was too captivated by the grotesqueries in the display cases to notice the clown behind the counter.

"Heeey, uh, girlie? Y'need something or are you just gonna stand there gawpin' at the gator lady all night?"

The rough voice had Margaret whipping around with a gasp. "I — oh — um. No. No, sorry, I need to buy some gas, I'm filling up — that…" She gestured at her car through the window, trailing into silence as she fully took in the man's appearance.

White greasepaint with blue smeared at the eyes, some of the worst teeth she'd ever seen, and those eyes. She couldn't have recalled their color if her life depended on it, what had stuck in her mind was the flat meanness in his gaze. He immediately made her think of a junkyard dog, mangy and vicious. A moment later and his entire being animated, eyes sparkling and jovial and hands coming up to punctuate his words. "Well, girl, let's get you taken care of, then! Want some chicken? I got the best damn fried chicken this side of Dallas." Margaret opened her mouth to reply and he waved her off, already filling a paper bucket with chicken. "Sure y'do! Ain't no one gonna say no to a bucket of Captain Spaulding's chicken! What has you coming out to the back end of nowhere, girlie? You ain't a local." His words were thrown out rapid-fire, conversational, but Margaret still felt uneasy.

"I'm, I'm out here to visit family." She said, then continued. "Are there any hotels nearby? I got a ways to go and I don't much care for driving at night." Nerves made her over-share, and she cringed inwardly.

Spaulding paused mid-inhale, then shook his head. "Well, darlin', there's a family up the road a way who'd happily take in a lodger for a couple bucks. Good folk, you know, just a little hard up these days." He waved her up to the counter and rung her out as he kept talking, rattling off a quick set of directions and simultaneously drawing her a crude map.

"Nah."

Spaulding stopped mid-word at the new voice, looking up with an irritated grunt at the newcomer. Margaret looked over her shoulder and froze. If she'd thought the clown was intimidating, he had nothing on this new person. While the newcomer was thin and rangy, nowhere near the solid mass of the clown, there was something feral to his posture that said that he was well-acquainted with violence. However, he also looked sickly — skin pale and waxy, eyes red-rimmed, and hair so pale it was nearly pure white in the light. "Locals are all riled up tonight, ain't gonna get no sleep there. Next nearest hotel is about forty miles out the way you were headed." He continued.

Spaulding and the pale man exchanged a look that Margaret couldn't decipher, the clown's expression going dead and mean again as he curled his lip, "Is'at so, Whitey?" He drawled.

The newcomer — Whitey? — gave Spaulding the barest shake of his head. "Yeah, s'fuckin' so, Cutter." He snapped, coming closer and putting a hand on Margaret's shoulder. It took everything she had not to yank herself bodily away from the man, compounded when he laughed at her immediate tension, squeezing her shoulder before letting his hand drop. This close, Margaret could smell him, and she wished she couldn't. Dirt and the distinct odor of farm life undercut with sweat and something that brought old roadkill to mind, along with the distinct nose-burning tang of gun oil and gunpowder. He leaned in close to her ear, "Go to the hotel, mama. You don't look much like the partying type and there's a hell of a shindig going on at the house tonight."

Margaret stepped back, simultaneously grabbing her change and the bucket of chicken off of the counter. "Yeah, the hotel sounds like a good idea. Thank you, um, Mister Whitey, Mister Spaulding. I'll be going now, y'all have a good night, thank you for the chicken!" She bolted out of the door, nearly running into the gas attendant in her hurry to leave the store. She was all-out running by the time she got to the car, the feeling of something right behind her riding up her spine.

She didn't calm down until she'd been on the highway for a good ten minutes with no other cars or people in sight, and by the time she pulled in to the hotel, she had polished off half the chicken and was feeling guilty for her abrupt, kind of rude exit. Maybe the locals were just a little strange when compared to the city folk she'd grown up with. Captain Spaulding definitely made good chicken, too. Probably some of the best she'd had since leaving her mama's house.

The rest of her trip was uneventful, peaceful, and she quickly forgot about the weird gas station and it's weirder people.

18 MAY 1978

8:45 AM

"Coming to you live from Ruggsville county, I am standing outside the perimeter of what is turning out to be the most horrific crime scene since Jack the Ripper stalked the streets of London. What police have uncovered reads like this — words can't describe it — 'human skulls used as ornaments, body parts stuffed in refrigerators.' And I can't believe what it says here: 'a mass grave of decomposing bodies dumped under the crawl space of the house."

Margaret was barely paying attention to the news as she picked at a bowl of cereal, but the announcement on the TV made her glance up just as the newscaster continued.

"The leader of this group, who is something of a local celebrity, goes by the name of Captain Spaulding, along with two other suspects known as Otis Driftwood and Baby Firefly…"

The spoon fell from Margaret's nerveless fingers as she stared at the mugshots on the screen. "Oh, my God. Oh, my God." She whispered, then lunged and slammed her hand on the TV's power switch, leaning against the wooden case and staring blankly at the wall.

Go to the hotel, mama.