On a day like any other, Will spotted a young man lying on the side of the road. He invited the young man into his car and promised him a night of safety and rest. The youth, Paul, accepted the offer. Will had no idea that that day-that decision-would change his life forever. He and Paul would soon become the targets of a sadistic rapist and wannabe murderer named Tim. Paul knows his hunter. When Paul was twelve years old, his grandparents took in a drifter-Tim, who stayed at their house for a cheap price while acting as handyman and babysitter to Paul. It wasn't long before the abuse began, and Paul became the victim of brutal sexual assaults for several years, all of it kept secret from his family. Paul thought he could escape; he couldn't have been more wrong. Victims and Vultures is a chilling tale of a monster's insatiable obsession for his victim. Will sees the horror in Paul's reality, as old man and young man band together to fight back against a vicious attacker. Slowly, Will watches Paul change from an insecure, terrified creature into a self-assured leader, willing to act as bait for the bloodthirsty Tim. But in the end, will it be the victim or the vulture who lives to see another day?

VICTIMS and VULTURES

A Pride Manor Production Chiller Tale: A Novel AutobiographyBy Will Kalinke

Trafford Publishing

Copyright © 2011 Will Kalinke
All right reserved.
ISBN: 978-1-4269-5244-9

Chapter One

WHAT BEGAN AS A LAZY FALL DAY

Breathtakingly beautiful and gorgeous - I can't think of any other words to better describe the day. It was one of those soothing, mesmerizing, days. This day gently took me drifting back to childhood memories. I grew up on a farm in the days of cows, horses, sheep, ducks, chickens, and turkeys sharing one farm and often sharing one barn and oats from the same bin. This was a lazy day, a truly lazy, lazy day. On those childhood days, after I had completed assigned chores, such as bringing kitchen wood to the wood box or fetching a pail of water from the well, I would take a walk down to a nearby stream to watch and listen to the water ripple over a rocky bed. If I had enough time before my self-allotted time expired, I'd stroll down the pasture lane and watch the cows lazily grazing on tufts of grass, with the geese and ducks quacking beside them.

On a truly, truly lazy day, I'd plop down on a smooth spot on my favorite rock pile in the east pasture to look up at the light blue sky. I'd watch the fleecy white clouds slowly drift by, while I named them one by one for Popeye characters, one of the few comic strips of my childhood. The autumn air was cool, dry, and refreshing in September and October, not the hot and humid summer air as in July and August.

After an hour or two, I'd just meander back home, while talking to a cow, goose, duck, or any other creature willing to look interested, even a crow. I was the middle child of five. When older siblings were busy doing `their' assigned chores, such as gathering and cleaning eggs or feeding chickens, I could often escape into my own dream world and return before anyone missed me. At least, so I thought. Oh, those were the carefree days of childhood before I took on the tasks of adulthood, family, and expected societal routines of earning a living and paying bills.

Those were the days before I knew of vultures circling over victims, checking for signs of life before they descended to pick the carcass clean.

That's the way the day began, a breathtakingly, beautiful, gorgeous, relaxing, lazy, fall day, but that's not how it ended. I was no longer the carefree child back home on the farm in the nineteen thirties. However, I was intent on not discarding those relaxing memories, as I aged and accepted family and societal responsibilities. Nor, was it possible for me to discard, or forget, those memories, not with my genetic pre-programming, which made me curious, daring, risky, adventurous, and nosy. That's the genetic spirit, which brought my ancestors (Aschbrenner, Kalinke, Klueckmann, Kramer, and Wienke) from Germany to Wisconsin and Cousin Clara Pagel around the world starting in late 1936 to discover signs of World War II everywhere she traveled with my later fellow teacher, Erna Flatter.

"No, no, don't! Help, help, ah-rap-ph, ouch, eaguh, aeigh! You're killing me. Cough! Cough! No, no! Stop! Help me, somebody help! Ullgough! I'm choking! Errg. Cough. Cough. Gasp."

Those words and sounds, shrieked that night and other nights, thereafter, would haunt me for years. The sounds were shrill enough, and loud enough, to cut through the strongest steel as like soft butter and reduce glass to a pile of ashes. Never before had I heard such anguish, such pain, such moaning, or such screams for help, while I felt so useless - so completely helpless! This was not within the area of my expertise. I was not into law enforcement, psychology, or medicine. Why did I get involved in the first place? I had truly lost it! I must be nuts! Yes, I'm possibly nuts and then some!

That was how my day ended. It was anything but relaxed and lazy, the way it had begun with relaxation while thinking of childhood memories.

I broke my own rule when I extended the invitation to Paul to get out of the impending storm and share my home for the night. Paul was a complete stranger! Now, where would this invitation take me, other than to a well-deserved early grave? If somebody else doesn't kill me, I'll do it myself or stand in the path of a killer. I had thoughts of suicide after I lost my best friend and wife, Connie, years earlier. However, I had no intention to commit suicide, not this way on this day!

That wasn't the way the day started – or how it was meant to end. I had enjoyed most of the leisurely drive back from a demanding but satisfying day of work. I had hardly expected that the peaceful drive through the colorful roadsides of northern Wisconsin, in the mid-autumn of the year, would end in blood-curdling, life-threatening screams! The screams were worse than any that I had ever heard before. Never, never before had I heard such screams, except in horror movies, or from auto accident victims before the ambulance arrived, or before they died.

I was driving along at sixty-five miles an hour on Highway 8 in my old l995 Dodge Caravan at four-thirty-eight in the afternoon, after a long but productive day that had begun at three-thirty in the morning. My day started early to allow adequate time in the bathroom, to stretch my muscles, to have breakfast, to prepare coffee and snacks for the road, and to drive the more than three hours it would take to get to the Long Ridge School District. There I would observe the interaction between staff and students followed with a training session for faculty and parents on revitalizing learning situations to recapture dysfunctional alienated youth. Due to the dropout rate, which exceeded the state average, the school district became eligible for federal grant funds to identify possible causes.

I would spend the school day observing students and staff interacting during classes and between. Following the dismissal of the students, staff and parents were to gather in the auditorium to hear me summarize my observations and provide recommendations for the revitalization of learning situations to make them more meaningful to the learners. This was to be the first of three such sessions throughout the year with a target of decreasing the number of dropouts and increasing enrollments in higher education.

My day started with a cool shower, a brisk ten-minute workout on my skiing machine, a cup of decaf coffee, and a bagel with a low-calorie, low fat, cream cheese spread. I prepared a quart container of decaf coffee, a `peanut butter and jelly' sandwich, and a few little munchies like celery sticks filled with peanut butter to take with me. Connie, my best friend and wife of twenty-nine plus years had suddenly died of heart failure. Following her death, I moved several times as I was adjusting to the life of an older widower, serving others in a role I knew best. I had lived in the fast lane scrambling through years of artificial `schooling' and a mad scramble of real-life experiences, while seeking my fame and fortune, often losing sight of the values in life that I recognized in my childhood, while watching the fleecy white clouds drift by.

In my senior years, I wanted to try to help others find the simple joys that I had experienced on the rock pile of my childhood. My longevity gave me time, to once again, enjoy the beauty of a lazy fall day under the open sky, while naming the fleecy white clouds after childhood characters from the Popeye comic strips.

After graduating from the Langlade County Normal School at Antigo in 1947 at age nineteen, I began teaching in the Farewell School, a modern one-room rural school with a central wood-burning space heater and hand-pumped running water, serving children in grades one through eight. After three years there, I moved to the Twin Oaks School, similar to the previous school with the added challenge of thirty-five students, for one year before accepting the draft into the army for the Korean War. Nearly two years in the army with time at Camp Younghans, Japan, as an instructor and military director of an army education center, I returned to the University of Wisconsin at Stevens Point, where I had transferred my prior education records. There I completed a Bachelor of Education degree in one year and two summers with the transfer of USAFI credits, followed with a Master of Education degree at UW-Superior in four summers, while teaching in the Green Bay area and the Wausau area public schools.

Further advanced studies in the ensuing years, summers and one year, took me with Connie and children to Greeley, Colorado, Minneapolis, Minnesota, and Madison, Wisconsin, while bouncing rapidly from one more challenging job to another in an upward vortex. The one year at UM-Minneapolis was as a research fellow and instructor.

Several years ago, I had retired from my job as an administrator of special education in schools of Marathon County. After that retirement, I served as a substitute assistant administrator in the Stevens Point Area School District when Dr. Dwight Stevens was the superintendent, and as a substitute teacher at the St. Augustine School, West Allis, in the Milwaukee diocese where my friends, the Geenan sisters from Beloit, who were Sisters, taught. Those were two experiences previously missing from my resume. I inherited an insatiable desire to find personal answers to life and living – the what and why.

Over the years I had been a professor at the University of Wisconsin – River Falls, after having experiences in Minnesota and Wisconsin as a classroom teacher and principal, and later having taught for the University of Minnesota – Minneapolis, Mt. Senario College at Ladysmith, Cardinal Stritch University at Milwaukee, and the University of Wisconsin – Stevens Point.

My last role was as a consultant on improving staff proficiency in meeting organizational goals, whether in business, industry, or education. In addition to the more than eight years of higher education studies and my varied experiences on different jobs, I had developed my observational and listening skills to a high degree.

I concluded that few people polish their listening and observational skills to be fully aware of their surroundings, as a child walking down a pasture path among the grazing cows, talking to the butterflies. How can people expect to make quality decisions when they don't absorb quality input? I was intent on sharing my latest bit of knowledge by proposing beneficial changes to the lives of others for their increased satisfaction and happiness.

I wanted others to share in the joys of my childhood, pleasant memories that still lingered in my adulthood. Why make life a cruel, torturous, task, when life can be relaxed and enjoyed, as I had enjoyed my childhood gazing at clouds from a pasture rock pile? Why needlessly stress out? Focus on pleasant beneficial memories, not on punishing experiences.

It was the last week in September in northwestern Wisconsin near the Minnesota border, where I presently lived. This was part of the great northern strip of Wisconsin, some of the most breath-taking beautiful country in the world. This was fantastic lake country. This was bountiful fishing country. This was deer hunting country. This was spectacular birch tree and mountain ash country. This was abundant maple tree and maple syrup country. This was the relaxing countryside of my childhood. Each season had it's merits. Winter enthusiasts would delight in opportunities for hunting, fishing, skiing, snowshoeing, and snowmobiling. Hundreds of continuous miles of groomed trails were available to the enthusiastic snowmobiler.

The fall of the year in this north-central area of the country was to me the most beautiful season of all in the whole world that I knew. Evenings were crisp, but not frigid. The morning air was cool and clear without heavy humidity common during periods of rain in the summer. This day reminded me of those wonderful fall days of my childhood. An early morning deep breath of crisp dry fall air was better than caffeine to rev up the inner motors to start the new day.

My second place winner for breath-taking, relaxing beauty, especially when the air is dry and leaves turn color in autumn, is the strip along Highway 35 from St. Croix Falls south to Prairie du Chien along the Mississippi River that separates Wisconsin and Minnesota. That is a `must see' trip by car or bus for anyone who enjoys the beauty and refreshing scents of nature.

It is just northeast of La Crosse, at Highway 35 and Interstate 90, in the rugged but fascinating 'coulee' country, where I first considered planting my seeds for retirement – someday! When I was principal at the Ettrick Elementary (K-8) School, my wife, Connie, and I would often take a Sunday afternoon ride into one of the ravines to pick out a possible building site or consider an existing set of older small farm buildings ripe for tune-up remodeling. We loved the beauty of the countryside and, more importantly, the beauty of the people in that Gale-Ettrick School District. They were genuine, honest, kind folks. They may not have lost sight of the simple pleasures of their childhood.

The third light frost of the season, had gently informed the trees that winter was on the way. They had better get ready to shed their leaves to prepare for cold blasts of northwestern winds pushing snow, hail, sleet, and minus zero wind chills. In preparation for the winter ahead, leaves of maple trees had turned to beautiful shades of reds and orange, which they would hold until the first strong wind, which would strip the leaves from the trees. Leaves of other trees had turned to shades of yellow, gold, and brown. No artist could do justice in recreating that natural beauty along with the musty, sometimes moldy, odors of drying leaves.

The next days or weeks would be some of the most beautiful, relaxing, days of the year, before the dried leaves were stripped from their branches to lay down a carpet of insulation, over which snow would pile and form even more insulation, for the roots of plants below. In addition to the trees, thousands of painted sumac shrubs lined the woods, lakes, and roadside, to add long, pointed, brilliant red leaves to the colorful scenery, reminiscent of colorful quilt patterns mom made years ago.

I enjoyed the full beauty of the seasons in the home I had built on a five-acre lot on a side road off Highway 8, where I captured much of the beauty of the surrounding countryside. My long ranch-style home, with a two and a half car garage at one end, and large insulated windows in the living, family, and dining/kitchen areas opened to the beauty on front and back. From the large patio deck to my side and back yards, I could look into a part of nature that I had preserved. The trees, bushes, and homes of little creatures were left as undisturbed as possible when the house was built.

I had prepared for this day with over eight years of college education in various phases of educational theory and practice, and business administration, twenty-one years of experience in the classroom, five years in the supervision of instruction and administration of schools, and five years, including summers and nights as a professor/instructor in the preparation of teachers.

Last night I went to bed by nine-thirty, after a light evening picnic-style meal of hot German potato salad, creamed coleslaw, hot Boston baked beans with bacon, roasted cheesy wieners laced with beer mustard and relish, and a dab of tapioca pudding for dessert bought from a deli on my way home. I had been to Minneapolis during the day for some leisurely shopping at the Mall of America and had driven east, back through St. Paul to Hudson and north on 35 to St. Croix Falls, where I had stopped at a favorite delicatessen in a supermarket.

While munching on the snacks, I reviewed some notes that I had made about activities and behaviors of students interacting with staff, which I wanted to observe.

After an hour of snacking and reviewing notes, I started feeling sleepy. I got up, stopped at the bathroom on my way to my bedroom, set the alarm for three-thirty in the morning, set my electric blanket to #2 for a little warmth, and went to bed. It was too early in the season to turn the thermostat on the furnace above sixty but it got too chilly to sleep without the warmth of the blanket. It was just what I needed to get to sleep rapidly. On days when I was home long enough to read or watch television, I would bring in some kindling and pieces of maple wood to warm the family room with the genuine wood-burning fireplace. Heat from maple wood brought back memories from my childhood on the farm. Maple wood with a few pieces of basswood gives off a special aroma all of its own.

(Continues...)

Excerpted from VICTIMS and VULTURESby Will Kalinke Copyright © 2011 by Will Kalinke. Excerpted by permission of Trafford Publishing. All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
Excerpts are provided by Dial-A-Book Inc. solely for the personal use of visitors to this web site.