Part 1
https://www.reddit.com/r/nosleep/comments/16f9nsx/my_town_is_a_slaughterhouse_part_2/?sort=new
I should probably mention this now since I know this is going to come up later. I’m of course referring to the “supernatural” as you might call it. I don’t believe in the supernatural, but I know why we believe in it. It fills blanks that we aren’t capable of understanding. Whether it’s vampires or ghosts, it’s just an explanation we use. I believe that whenever we see atrocities that are so inhuman… we can lose our ability to stick with logic. At that point the only rational explanation is that it’s related to the occult or the supernatural. I mention this because what I have seen I don’t understand. I can assure you that somehow there is a rational explanation, but I can’t find one.
Anyways, let’s get back to the story. Henry said that I should look into the killings of Tommy and Harriet Nash. Little was known about these killings, besides the story of Tommy and Harriet Nash. Tommy and Harriet were two African Americans who had opened a small shop together. Within a couple months, they were found outside of the shop, nailed to the boards. The popular theory was that this was a hate crime, due to their race. Considering that this was a small southern town, that seemed plausible. There had been a series of lynching’s a couple years earlier, but it was well known that they were connected to the Ku Klux Klan. It wasn’t surprising to find out that your grandpa had attended Klan meetings, hell I knew kids in highschool who probably attended Klan meetings. I was working under the impression that the murders I was investigating were connected, so I decided to rule out the possibility of the Nash murders being Klan related. However there was one small difference regarding these murders: there were no organs removed, just stab wounds and mutilation.
I wasn’t sure why the Nash killings were different from the rest of the murders. My theory was that they were done by a “copycat” killer as they are called. Additionally, most serial killers do not cross racial lines. With a few exceptions, most killers target victims of the same race. Of course I didn’t understand why this was back then, but I knew that this was unusual behavior.
I tried looking through old police records, but I couldn’t find a single thing about the Nash murders. Back then police would rarely investigate matters involving colored folk, so I ruled that it was due to historical prejudices. It felt like I was chasing a ghost at that point, considering how little historical evidence there was. There is a saying that history was written by the victors. I believe that to be true, especially in the slaughterhouse of a town that I live in.
I decided to visit the site of the Nash murders around 1995. The shop was preserved, and there was a plaque on the front explaining what had happened. One thing had caught my eye about the story: the two had a child named Ezekiel Nash. However he was born in 1898, which meant he would have been five years old around the time of the murders. On top of him being incredibly young at the time, he would have been in his late nineties by then. This was a long shot, but there was a chance that he had some information, and there was a chance that he was still alive.
I couldn’t find anyone by that name in San Gutierrez, so I had to look all over the country. I searched for the name Ezekiel Nash, and found close to a thousand results. After filtering by age, I had narrowed it down to fifty matches. Locating each and every one of the matches would prove to be a difficult and time consuming task. I remember staying up till three in the morning looking through documents online, and writing down all of the locations. Most of them lived in nursing homes, so then I had to call each individual home to see if there was a match. Only seventeen of the matches were African-American, so that narrowed it down even further. I had to beg the nursing homes to let me talk to them, and after asking each Ezekiel Nash about their parents, I got the wrong answer, until I asked Ezekiel Nash from Joplin, Missouri. I figured he didn’t get many visitors, so he was more than happy for me to come.
On the flight to Missouri I reread my notes on the Nash Murders. I couldn’t find any new details, and the information was thin and far between. Ezekiel was my last hope for finding anything new about these murders. I thought of every possible question I would need to ask, and memorized every single detail regarding the murders. I couldn’t afford to lose my job as a writer. Henry paid me a whopping eighty five thousand each year. I realized that his books had made him tens of millions of dollars each year. At first I had thought that he was some obscure unknown author, until I realized the sales of his books.
When I arrived in Missouri, I collapsed as soon as my head touched the pillow. I was relentless back then, fueled by coffee and obsession. I was anticipating visiting him the next morning, but then a realization dawned on me. I felt stupid for not considering the possibility of Ezekiel being senile or having Alzheimer’s. It was incredible that he had lived this long in the first place. I walked in the senior center, and asked to see Ezekiel Nash. I was surprised when she said that he was probably reading in his room. I knocked on the door, and he was delighted to see me. I introduced myself and asked him if I could record the interview. Below I’ve included a transcription of the interview.
Ezekiel Nash, October 5th, 1995
Mark Rivers: So do you mind if I ask you some questions?
Ezekiel Nash: Depends.
Mark Rivers: Well, I’ve been working on a book about the series of murders in San Gutierrez. I know that it’s been a long time since the murders but…
Ezekiel Nash: It didn’t happen how you think it happened. It ain’t one man who did those killings. It was the Klan.
Mark Rivers: The other killings with the painted X’s were all white folk, so I’m not sure if it was.
Ezekiel Nash: I ain’t got the greatest recollection of when I was younger, but I can tell you one thing. My folks knew it was going to happen, and that’s when they told me to run upstairs and hide. They told me to run to my aunty a couple blocks away. I can recall crosses being burned in the neighborhood. I can prove who did it. Nobody ever listened to me. I’m telling you, it was the Winchester family.
Mark Rivers: Why would you say that?
Ezekiel Nash: John Winchester was a head Klansman. Everyone knew it. They owned a store that allowed colored folk to buy stuff, but they sold it at a higher price to profit off of us. They didn’t like it when my folk sold at better prices.
Mark Rivers: This doesn’t make sense though. How come they didn’t just lynch them the same way they did to the other people?
Ezekiel Nash: Simple, they needed to send a message by making it look like they were killed by the same demon that killed the Walker boy. Everyone was scared about the “gray man” as they called him. I think that demon punished them for pretending to be him. Demons don’t like it when people get involved with their craft…
Mark Rivers: Grey Man? I’ve never heard of that one before.
Ezekiel Nash: It was a story that we all heard about the Grey Man who would sometimes snatch people. Some said they saw him walking out in the fields. I’m not sure whether to believe it or not, but something ain’t right about that town.
Mark Rivers: I don’t think that whatever happened with the Walker child was some demon. I think kid’s would just make up stories to scare people.
Ezekiel Nash: I think that the devil sometimes gets tired of reigning over hell, and sometimes sends something in the form of a man to come and do his bidding. All I can say is that whoever would kill a child like that can’t be an ordinary man like us.
Mark Rivers: But you don’t believe that whoever killed your parent’s was a demon?
Ezekiel Nash: The devil never does his work as poorly as the Winchesters did. They sent letters warning my folks to close up shop. As much as I truly despise them, when their house was burned down there was a little girl and a baby in there. The thing that did that was some sort of higher evil, not just a man who is in touch with the devil. No creature of god would kill an innocent child like that. Children and babies ain’t ever done anything that would deserve a fate as horrible as that.
Mark Rivers: With all due respect, I think the fire that happened was an accident. It couldn’t have been…
Ezekiel Nash: Last I heard, they caught him pleasuring himself over the rubble before he ran away. I’m telling you, this wasn’t a man. This was an agent of the devil.
Mark Rivers: I think this whole gray man thing is a story you kids made up to scare each other. Is there anything else you would like to add?
Ezekiel Nash: I mean, what else can I say? You step in the devil’s land, and you get burnt. All I’ve got to say. You can’t trust him either.
Mark Rivers: All right, I’ll give you a call if you want to talk again. Pleasure meeting you.
Ezekiel Nash: God bless you sir.
Interview ended.
I realized that I had wasted my time on an unrelated case. I didn’t doubt any of the accusations about the KKK being involved, especially after finding out that John Winchester was indeed a Klan leader after doing a couple hours of research. I brushed off the story about the gray man. After all, it just sounded like some kind of children’s story. There was one thing that stood out to me though. I had looked through images of the rubble in the Winchester house, and found a few things that were highly unusual: The Winchester’s young daughter, Anna, was never found in the wreckage.