The
Blood Curse of Abraham Wesley Walters
By: Moose
The cool night air was comforting as
Abraham Wesley Walters stood immersed in blood. His black fedora was cocked to
one side due to the thorough stabbing ten minutes ago which had made the hat
fall to one side, A.W. straightened it. He was older now, road weary, and haggard
from two decades of killing. Standing in this home he could see that his own
demise was becoming much closer while his guitar rested comfortably soaking in the
blood.
Twenty years ago he had come home to
find his family tortured and murdered. His wife tied up at the ankles and
wrists and wounds so deep at points that they went straight through her torso.
His two children were each stabbed once deeply to their heart, while sleeping
in their beds. Abraham was a blues man, and that night, much to his wife’s
chagrin, had gone to play across town. They needed the money though, and he
would only be gone the night and be back “before the sun came up.” He was true
to his word and back before that sun came up. He, in bliss, lit a cigarette and
with zero haste managed to polish off the bottle of lightning he was given that
night reveling in a wash of gratitude. He made some decent bread, more than he
had any previous night before, and riding the high he sat on his porch. Unaware
of the horror inside, and oblivious to the metallic smell lingering in the home
due to the amount blood shed from upstairs, and tired as hell he sat in his
chair in the living room and drifted off to sleep.
He awoke a few short hours later to
the sun shining through the front window, and rubbing the sleep out of his eyes
and caught a whiff of that metallic smell. He was finding it odd as well not to
hear the kids playing or smelling something Grace was cooking up for breakfast
in the kitchen. It was when he made his way to go up the short flight of stairs
to check on everybody when he stopped and saw that the downstairs mirror was
shattered the way it does when someone punches it. Worried and a little scared
he walked up the stairs and saw the horror that had befallen his family. He
slunk down the door jamb to the children’s bedroom and watched with tears in
his eyes as the blood gathered within the wood grain of the floor boards. Trauma
can do some horrific things to people sometimes, and this time was no
different. He stayed in that house for a little over a week mourning and plotting.
His anger and grief swelling within him like a volcano ready to burst, and yet
he managed to remain calm.
Pastor Williams lived not too far
away and Abraham had reached out to him to come by after the horror. They sat
for a while. The pastor telling him they will have a proper funeral for
Abraham’s family, and if there was anything he needed to stop by the church
anytime. The pastor questioned Abraham if he had killed them, but those
accusations were put to bed once Abraham showed him the sixty dollars he had
made from playing the night before the murders along with the bottle of
lightning. The pastor asked if Abraham knew who it was that killed them Abraham
had no idea. What the pastor didn’t see was the brewing volcano of hurt and
anger that Abraham needed to release. The way in which he would release this
pain and anger was forming within his traumatized brain. Revenge, pain, and
anger all boiling in the cauldron of his mind and the violent day dreams were
relentlessly poking at him like needles to skin. With the brewing stew of
violence endlessly rotating in his mind sleep had decided it would not be a
part of Abraham’s life.
Abraham settled things at home, and
figured it best if he went on his way. ‘A new town and a fresh start” at least
that is what he told the pastor. While the fresh start was true there was no
settling into a new town. Home was taken away from him the night his family was
violently murdered. Home was wherever the bloodletting could simmer his pain. The
first of the twenty year murders happened in a flurry. A.W, which is what he
was going by, now, played a show and a woman came up to him after he finished.
They got to talking and buying each other drinks. AW throwing on his charm and
charisma. Turning it on or off like a light switch. A trick he picked up while
playing shows. She however had no idea what his true intentions were and would
be. Trusting him and her being lonely she told him of a place to get a room for
the night that was cheap, and by the morning he would be gone. As they began
kissing AW grabbed her throat and held till she went unconscious. He opened his
guitar case and within a secret compartment he pulled out his hunting knife, he
cut a piece of a pillow case and tied that around her eyes. Then proceeded to stab,
viciously violent, so violent and brutal that mid-way through he had to stop
because his arms were sore. After what seemed like an hour he finished. He took
a shower and changed his clothes, but as he sat in the chair having a cigarette
the tormenting voice that had now took up residence within his head said “welcome
home.” He grabbed his guitar from under the bed and was off to the next town his
twenty year murder spree now on its way.
As A.W. stood in this home immersed
in blood twenty years later he knew his end was near as it had been resting
upon him like a blanket. The voices in his head were getting louder, and he was
tired. Death himself or one of his cohorts had been lingering around AW for the
past two weeks. AW would see him at the grocery or while he was sitting on the
porch. A man in a hat and black suit standing against the tree in his front yard
or sitting a few tables away at the diner AW would frequent for breakfast in
the early morning hours. Right across from him in the other chair in the living
room or following him around the house, and watching him while he slept. AW
could see him quite clearly, and it wasn’t until the man in the hat whispered
“it’s time” that AW understood his own demise was underway. With the killing of
this family of three all finished AW bought a boarding pass for the next train
out of town with the man in the hat right by his side watching him as they sat
in the train car. A few days later AW’s body was found inside a boarding house
that he was staying at by the 21 year old son of the woman that owned the place.
He had come by to do some maintenance and the smell hit him when he opened the
front door to the building. AW’s room was on the ground floor and Bill Walters,
the son, opened the room and saw the fly and maggot filled corpse of AW. The
fedora lying on the floor behind the chair AW was sitting in, AW’s throat slit,
and his guitar case on the floor at AW’s feet resting with its lid opened and
resting comfortably in the blood.
Bill phoned the police, but before
he did he took the guitar and put it in his truck. Once all of the questioning
was over Bill brought the guitar home with him. Bill opened the case gently and
found the deep red of the wood entrancing. He ran a cloth over the body to
clean it up a little, checking for any cracks, and getting used to the feel of
it. By the next afternoon he was found by his mother when he did not show up to
the building. His mother told the police that she found him sitting in his
chair with a belt around his neck. The police questioned her for a while and
told her they would keep investigating. The police knew full well that Bill had
committed suicide and knew that was in direct conflict with the mother of Bill.
Bill’s mother went back to Bill’s house to clean things up and found the
guitar. She had no need for it, but she figured she could sell it. William
Fitsimmons came calling for the guitar after seeing the ad in the paper. He
bought it for twenty dollars. William
kept the guitar in its case for about a week. Then curiosity got the best of
him and he opened it up. The red on the body caught his eye, and he too ran his
hands along the body and neck of the guitar, gave it a quick tuning, and
strummed a few chords. His wife arrived home from work and cooked some Brussel
sprouts and roast beef. William sat at the table across from his wife, smiled
at her, and during that smile his face changed to terror as he began choking on
one of the Brussel sprouts. His wife within a fit of panic could not dislodge
the sprout, and William choked to death. The wife sold off the guitar to a
family member. Who died, much in the same way as everyone else. Shortly after
receiving it the family member merely looked at it and was found the next
morning strangled by a belt.
The trail went cold for a few years.
Nobody is sure what happened to the guitar or where it went after the wife sold
it to the family member. Then in the spring many years later it made its
arrival in New Orleans. A music historian and guitar aficionado named Lawrence
Dupree bought it at a local auction of all kinds of things. He saw the
instrument up for bidding and won it for sixty five dollars. Lawrence being the
inquisitive and curious type was not interested in how it sounded but of its
history. He kept a meticulous journal of all his instruments and findings of
said instruments. He had a shop of sorts that was filled with all kinds of
instruments from violins to tubas. Each instrument with a record and file kept
in a file cabinet. When Lawrence came upon this instrument though something
struck him as odd, something that simply did not feel right about the
instrument, there was darkness to it that Lawrence became fascinated with. Lawrence
wrote that he noticed the case was “handmade” and “etched into the lid of the
case were the initials A W W.” Then, as he always does, he put on a fresh pair
of white linen gloves and began his inspection.
He started with the case. He took
the guitar out and set it aside as the craftsmanship of the case, the time this
would have took, and the sweat and care that went into building this was, for
Lawrence, was a piece of art. He found a compartment underneath where the neck
of the guitar would rest. To his dismay it was empty, however, somebody loved
this guitar as the inside was custom fit to it and protected the guitar from
any damage. Lawrence moved onto the guitar. During his inspections of any
instrument Lawrence would use black lights to illuminate the things you cannot
see, much like a crime scene investigator. Once he turned on the black light he
noticed blotches in random spots on the guitar. On the neck, front of the body,
the backside, inside, and along the body being the inquisitive one that he is
he took a sample and passed it along to a friend who worked in the DNA lab at
the New Orleans police department. It was then that the sample Lawrence sent
along was soon found to be blood and all of the blotches and spots that glowed
through the black light were blood as well.
Lawrence soon found himself unrelentingly
enthralled by the guitar. It was all he could think about. He would go to sleep
thinking about it and wake up with it as the first thing on his mind. Obsession
can do strange things and soon Lawrence was not eating correctly nor sleeping
well as the guitar had sunk its teeth deep into Lawrence.
While working late one night on the
guitar Lawrence completely immersed in the little discoveries, slipped and hit
his head on the corner of the table then split his head on the linoleum floor
from the fall. He was found by his co-worker Daniel the next morning. Daniel,
along with the Police, wondered how he could have slipped when there was
nothing for him to slip on where Lawrence had been standing. Fortunately,
Daniel and Lawrence installed a security system within their shop. Lawrence is
standing at the table inspecting the guitar then falls. Over and over again they watched it, and over
and over again the same thing happens. There was nothing to suggest anything
else other than a slip and fall.
The police went no further with it,
however for Daniel it wasn’t over. Before he could even get started on his own
investigation into how Lawrence had passed he too was inspecting the guitar,
and during the inspection he too fell in the manner Lawrence did. Daniel is
inspecting the guitar scratches his head then slips and hits his head both on
the table and the floor. Arriving in the mail that day was a letter from the
DNA lab on the blood that was tested in the hopes of finding a match.
The letter went unopened and unread,
and the guitar had one last trick up its sleeve. A fire broke out in the restaurant
that was next door. Nobody was sure how the grill was left on, but when the
owner and his son opened up in the morning and Phil Thompson lit his morning
cigarette the fire engulfed everything. Killing Phil and his son Thomas,
meanwhile, the guitar was safe, in its case, and unharmed.
“Carl look what I found!”
“What do you think we should do with
it?”
“I’ve always wanted to learn how to
play guitar.”
“The
world’s funny. Take care of what I’ve done, and I’ll see you, on my way home.”
-Abraham Wesley
Walters 1937 (note found inside his guitar case.)
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