Chapter 54: And The World Turns

Upstairs the house was filling with smoke and the last four parishioners were out on the lawn, herded together with Bosco. I had Lynn in my arms and she was in tears. Erin walked to the group with Bosco and got right in the middle of them.

“Now you listen to me real good. You and your church are done. You were actually going to sit there and watch that woman get branded on the face and you thought that was proper. You should thank God that she didn’t want you to die in the basement. Now listen to me. I want you out of this town. Soon!”

“What about the other’s families. There are going to be children left alone.”

“Where?” Erin demanded.

“In their homes.”

“Erin, it just occurred to me that there are no other cars here. How did those people get here?” I asked.

“You heard the man’s question. How did all of you get here?”

The survivors looked back and forth and finally the one remaining man spoke up.

“We walked here in the tunnels.”

“The tunnels?” I asked.

“Yes. When the subdivision was built, tunnels were built from each home to this one. The developer built the homes and connected them. There are four cul-de-sacs behind the house, arranged like a clover leaf.”

“Why would they do that?” Lynn asked.

“For the Church. We didn’t have a church building yet and the developers wanted to limit the membership. There are twenty connected homes all totaled.”

“Who is the developer?” Lynn asked more firmly.

“Isaiah Crawford, Joan’s father. He’s the head of The Freedom From Sin Coalition,” one of the women said.

“What I said still stands. Get with anyone who’s left. Get the kids from the dead and take care of them. You started this feud, you can clean up the mess. Then get out of Boise,” Erin announced.

Lynn added, “I strongly suggest that you not go to Tullahoma, Tennessee. I am going to end this feud. If I see you in Tullahoma, I’ll shoot you and your families. The O’Dells are a peaceful family but we will not be trifled with. If I have to wipe every one of you off the face of the Earth to keep my children safe, I will, without a second thought. If you value your families, let this feud die here and now.”

“The other members didn’t want any part of this whole thing. That’s why there were only ten of us at the meeting. Everyone else has had enough. After the kidnapping of your children at the Church and the assault on you, the others dropped out of the church. They won’t be a problem. Please don’t make them move. I’ll pack up my family and take some of the orphans,” one of the women said. Then she added, “Lynn, I’m sorry. I didn’t understand what they were going to do when they called the emergency meeting today. I sat there in disbelief that they would consider branding you but I didn’t know what to do. People who stood up for you against Joan, had horrible things happen to their families.”

“It’s true,” another woman said. “One little boy had both his arms broken. My friend’s husband was hit by a car and disabled. They only get by with gifts from the Church but those gifts would stop if they disobeyed the Church again.”

“Well now there will be no Church anymore,” Lynn answered. “Right now, gather up the orphans and make sure they’re safe.”

“The fire department and cops will be here soon, Lynn,” Bosco said.

“Do you want to leave?”

“Me? Nope. The cops need to hear what I saw and I need to take advantage of Terri’s absence to look at Erin’s tits.”

“Bosco, I’m going to tell Terri,” Erin said as she slightly bounced up and down on the balls of her feet.

Sirens could now be heard off in the distance and getting closer.

“Everyone, come to my house and you can get to the others through the tunnels from there,” one of the women said.

The survivors quickly ran next door and disappeared. A few minutes later a couple of fire trucks drove into the cul-de-sac right behind three police cars and one unmarked car. The familiar face of Lieutenant Clifford got out of the unmarked car and made a beeline for me.

“Mr. O’Dell is this that not getting into trouble thing we talked about?”

“Long story,” I said.

“I’m not going anywhere.”

“Come on over here,” I said leading him away from the hustling firefighters. As they passed, I yelled at the lead firefighter, “The fire is in the basement and it’s really intense.”

“OK, Lieutenant, it’s with the Church again.”

As soon as I finished my sentence, Lynn, Erin, and Bosco joined us. After some casual “Hello’s” from everyone, I started off with the attack on Lynn and mines date night and how we found that the attacker was Larry Crawford, son of the Church leader and former school principal, Joan Crawford.

Lynn stepped in next and explained her anger and frustration that this family of religious zealots was after her family with no end in sight. She finally figured enough was enough and she decided to see Joan face to face and talk it out. When she got to Joan’s house, she was attacked before she could explain the reason for her visit.

“Lieutenant, I woke up, tied to a chair in Joan’s basement. It was made up like a church. It had pews in four rows and tapestries on the walls all the way around. There was a stage in front of the pews and a pulpit opposite where the chairs I was tied in was.

“The ten people came filing in wearing robes, followed by Joan and her sone Larry. She went to the pulpit and started preaching about something but I wasn’t paying attention because Larry had moved a tapestry aside and open a small door to a furnace. He pulled out a branding iron with a big, red-hot, “W” on it. Joan told the group that they were going to brand me on the head with the sign of the whore. I started trying to kick and scream but I was strapped to the chair and gagged. That’s when my family broke in.”

“I broke through the door,” I inserted, “and was immediately attacked by some people in robes. I saw Lynn in a chair. She was screaming. Someone grabbed me and I shot them.”

“I saw Larry run towards Paul and then turn back towards Lynn. He had what turned out to be a branding iron in his hands and her turned back towards Lynn so I shot him with the taser. He dropped and the branding iron fell against the wall and started the tapestry on fire.”

“I ran to Lynn and started to undo the straps holding her and then I heard shots.”

“That was me,” Bosco admitted. “Two guys pulled out pistols and pointed them towards Erin so I shot them with the shotgun. The patterned spread wide and took out four guys and two women.”

“During all this,” Lieutenant Clifford asked, “was anyone trying to exit the basement?”

“No,” Bosco said. “I was by the door and the only people coming towards the door had weapons. No one was trying to get around me. Now there were a few that were hiding in the pews but most were in the fight.”

“What did you do when Lynn was released?”

“We headed for the door. There were a few church members who came with us.”

“What about the Crawfords?” Lieutenant Clifford asked.

“They were on the floor unconscious last time I looked,” Erin answered.

“You didn’t try to save them?”

“Hell no!” Lynn answered. “They were going to brand my face with a big “W”. Their family has killed and attacked our family. We found out that they were threatening their own members to keep them in the Church. Fuck them!”

The fire department investigators found the tunnels and determined that those tunnels had fed fresh air into the basement and that super-heated the air enabling the fire to completely incinerate everything in the basement to the point that the bodies left in the basement were reduced to ashes except for some of the heavier, harder bones.

The DA looked at everything and although not happy that the family had gone to rescue Lynn O’Dell, he also recognized that if they had called the police that Lynn would have ended up branded or worse before she could have been freed.

Lynn turned her attention to the Churches home base in Tullahoma and soon all sorts of financial mishaps were happening to the Crawford clan in Tennessee. Three branches of the family got together and traveled to Boise, Idaho.

The bell at the front gate rang and the cute little naked butt of Blossom O’Dell wiggled out of the ballroom and the classes she was teaching, to the front door. She keyed the intercom and said, “Hello. This is Blossom O’Dell, who is this?”

“This is Douglas Crawford of the Tullahoma, Tennessee Crawfords and I and a few of my relatives would like to speak to Lynn O’Dell.”

“Oh shit,” Blossom exclaimed before keying the intercom again.

“I’m sorry but Lynn is not here right now.”

“When may we come back to speak with her? We are not here to cause any trouble. We are not members of the radical branch of the family but we are being targeted. We truly need to speak to her.”

“Why don’t you come back in about two hours. She’ll be available by then but no tricks.”

“Two hours? We can do that. And don’t worry there will be no tricks. We want to present some facts and talk.”

“OK. We’ll see you in two hours.”

“Thank you, Blossom.”

The little Latina closed the intercom connection and turned around.

“LYNN! PAUL!” She called out at the loudest level her voice could reach while she ran to the back of the house.

Erin, Lynn, and Paul came running to meet her, reacting to the panic in her voice.

“What’s wrong Baby?” Erin asked, her massive breasts heaving and swaying.

“Lynn, we just had a member of the Tullahoma Crawfords at the front gate. They asked for you specifically.”

“What about?”

“They want a meeting with you. I didn’t think you’d want to meet them naked and unprepared so I told them you’d be available in two hours and they thanked me and said they’d be back. They said they wanted no trouble and needed to talk with you.”

“OK,” Lynn responded. “Paul, call Jason Smith, we may need some legal advice. Blossom go back to the kids and have everyone dressed and ready to get upstairs if things go south. Everyone else be ready for the worst.”

The front gate bell rang two hours later.

“Here we go,” Lynn said before answering the intercom.

“Hello, this is Lynn O’Dell how may I help you?”

“Mrs. O’Dell, this is Douglas Crawford. My family lives in Tullahoma, Tennessee and it seems that some of my kin have started a war with your family and We’d like to talk to you about a truce.”

“Are you armed and how many of you are there?”

“No ma’am. It’s just the four of us.”

“Drive up and park in front of the door.”

Lynn disconnected the call and turned to the others.

“Blossom are the children all ready to act?”

“Yeah, but Margaret Erin wanted to be present, at least at the start. She said, as a representative of her sister.”

“Really? OK. Paul, Erin ready?”

Erin and I both nodded.

“I have Bosco on the speed dial and Lieutenant Clifford knows what’s happening and is going to have a unit standing by.”

“OK, here we go.”