The Road to Maine is Bloody Part 1

Ashley ran her hand along the marble counter, dust coating her fingers as she looked around the kitchen, her mind wandering back to the last time she was in her childhood home. It was summer of 1972 and she could still picture her mother at the counter she stood at now, kneading dough for fresh made bread, clouds of flour wafting up in the air and the scent of another loaf baking in the oven.

She’d been 12 at the time and never dreamed that it would be the last time she’d see her mother, neither of them realizing the horror that was about to take place right in their own home. Her step-father had passed away from cancer the previous year and baking always seemed to help her mother cope with his loss. She mourned him even though he cheated on her. For Ashley she became rebellious and started hanging out with an older crowd, often partying down by the old Needful Thing’s store, now famous for Stephen King’s novel of the same name.

Ashley had been out with her friends behind the old store, getting high on whiskey and a joint passed around the circle. This town had bored her to tears and she couldn’t wait to leave but she had known back then that wouldn’t happen until after that night. The night she came home to find her mother on her bedroom floor in a pool of blood, her throat ripped open nearly decapitating her.  

It looked as if some animal had torn it open with his teeth but the bloody footprints coming down the off white carpeted stairs told a different story. She knew all the stories from when she was a little girl till the death of her mother. The stories kids told one another around a roaring campfire out in the woods not far from here, mostly exaggerated but the one that stuck with her the most was the one about the crazy old man who lived in a house about a mile or so from Mr. King’s home.  

The story goes that twenty years after Stephen King moved into his house, a man of about 50 or so moved into the house from Oregon and everyone thought he was strange, not that it was much different from the people here in Maine.