Terror & suspense strike the Music City - FBI hunts serial killer

"Horrible plans are in store for the prettiest and brightest female country music stars in Nashville... If The Music City Madman has his way."

By Twilight Surfers Media Services

Just released is the second edition of Stephen J. Hill's, "The Music City Madman", an imaginative, and highly entertaining novel of terror & suspense. Follow FBI special agent, Mark Peterson and local detective Wayne Tilson on a twisted and unexpected path as they hunt for this fiendishly clever serial killer who's striking a chord of terror into the heart of the country music industry.

At the heart of the mystery lies beautiful and talented songstress, Sharon Sharpe. The darling of Nashville. Recently widowed, and all alone in a rambling Nashville estate, the Madman quickly finds her dead in his sights.

Experience the story that will keep you turning the pages well into the AM, courtesy of Stephen J. Hill, a true master of suspense. This thriller will scare you again and again, and the plot twists as a Tennessee country road might.

Editorial Reviews

"It's chilling from cover to cover. I couldn't put it down, and was still scared when I did!" – Ms. Barbara Dorris - The Hendersonville TN Star News.

"A delightfully creepy story." – Mr. Larry Underwood, AKA: Dr. Gangrene, the fiendish super-ghoul & host of TV's Chiller Cinema.

"A wonderful thriller. This is story that takes you on a chilling ride through the eyes of a madman. There are many unexpected twists and turns that will leave you reeling, and wanting more. It is a wonderfully written story with plenty of suspense and mystery. A MUST read!" – Angelina (a fan) from Buffalo, New York.

Highland Home - A Ghost Story

"Will Jernigan used to live by the sword, in the army, during the Second World War."

Dory Franklin spoke in a raspy timed whisper and the fire crackled, adding weight to the speaker's words.

Dory held young Chris Kilgore in rapt attention. He was seated next to the old man, and he leaned in close to hear the old-timer.

"Will Jernigan came home from the army in January of forty-five, a hero. The next New Years Eve is when it all happened."

Curling smoke from Dory's smoldering cigarette, and from the fire sifted upward lazily and pooled near the ceiling before the wood beams soaked the blue-gray into its pores.

The fire was warm, and the temperature outside was a chilly thirty.

"He used to sit in that very chair, Fred," the storyteller pointed.

Fred pulled his cap brim lower and looked around, eyes bulging. The store's interior was getting dimmer, and Fred hollered out to Emma the proprietor to cut the lights on.

Soon Emma fired two oil lamps, and the alabaster quality of the light seemed to shroud the awkward corners of the store even more.

Fred didn't like tight spaces, and ghost stories even less, he thought. Fred hopped up, said, "I gotta get home before the wife has my hide." The other listeners watched Fred go, heard the door with the attached bell clank and tinkle.

Dory Franklin smiled and continued.

"You know, Fred never will listen to that story. He says there's something evil in that house. Says he's been in there, and never wants to go back, not under any circumstances."

Chris was excited, leaning up he ask, "Why, tell me why." His face bore the quizzical expression of an eager boy, still excited to be here with the approaching dark.

"Well, young man... for starters, they found the entire family dead as Lincoln. The three children were chopped to ragged bits scattered around, and Jernigan himself was hanging from the rafters in the attic, a swollen and purple tongue

lolling out for the world to see. Flies were nested in his nose and maggots were living on what was left."

Dory paused here for maximum shock value. He grinned, showing a tobacco-stained smile, thinking to himself that he'd been telling this story for a long time, and he most definitely knew the good parts.

"The head of the littlest was found on the hardwood stairs going up from the second floor to the attic, which had to be broken down because it was locked from the inside."

Chris's mouth hung agape, and Dory figured that he was probably only twelve or thirteen, asking himself why his mama didn't have him home already.

"Does that answer your question?"

Chris nodded unblinkingly.

"The wife, Regina Jernigan was nailed to a beam up there too. Whoever done it used Will's carpentry kit. The Sheriff said it would have taken a superhuman effort. Oh, Will was a fine carpenter I know. Helped his daddy to build that

big house up on the highland too. William, that's Will's Father, he and Will Junior probably built half of this town too, before Will went to fight the Germans in the European theatre. Poor Will never got over the fact his old dad passed

away while he was still fighting overseas."

"Who did kill that family Mr. Franklin?"

"Well son, I've got ideas, but please just let me tell the facts," he said, raising a wavering finger in Chris's direction. Chris noted this and settled further into his ladder-back.

"We sat here, day after day, playing checkers in the evenings, chess and backgammon. Will was particularly fond of this well-worn set of dominoes here."

He pointed again, this time to the set of black and white game pieces in the tattered package on the shelf lining the wall.

The night seemingly approached all at once, darkness replacing the last glimmer of light for the evening.

"Then one day he just didn't show up and we started to worry."

"Where was he?" asked Chris. This time Dory ignored the question.

"Two more days go by and Will Jernigan doesn't show up to play with the fellows and well we got real worried. The sheriff asked around if anybody had seen Regina."

In the potbelly, a log's resin popped loudly, eliciting a pause from the storyteller.

"After not finding out anything, the sheriff went to the old Jernigan place, right on the edge of Highland Home. The stink overtook the sheriff, and he had to send for a mask. The sheriff's eyes changed around that time too. He took on

a shell-shocked appearance almost like the boys back from the war that had seen too damn much. You know he never shook that look until the grave got him a few years ago. It was the cancer; he was black in the end. But damn he

put up a good fight, lived with it for three whole years I think. But anyway, I'm getting us off track."

Chris perked up, sitting straighter in his wicker-bottomed chair, contemplating the mysterious murders and what the bodies probably looked like with his young imagination.

"Will Jernigan was a good man, but he told me a couple of real strange things in December of forty-six. That's the year it happened. He said his dad wanted them out of the house. That's why I said I thought he never got over his

death. Said he heard him plain as day, and yes he wanted them out, and the sooner the better."

The door rattled, and Chris jumped a little in his seat.

"Only a paying customer Chris, why so jumpy?" Dory grinned, his lips twisted upward in a gleeful grin continuing, "I never heard so much crying and praying from folks around Elba, Ozark, Troy, and especially here, Highland Home.

These Alabama folks hadn't seen nothing like it before, and people spoke of haints or ghosts if you will. Course spooks and creeps, they're all the same."

"I've heard this one a hundred times already Dory, why don't you spin some new yarns already," Danny McCullogh said as he used the attached bottle opener on the icebox to pry the cap from an icy bottle of cola.

Before Dory could answer, Emma came along, and put another log in the pot-bellied wood stove, and Dory stopped talking while she finished. She gave the old stove a good stir with a long iron poker and returned the tool to lean

against the stove's pitted side.

Danny didn't wait for an invitation to sit, and he did so sipping his drink. Dory's smile faltered, because he knew that Danny would try to take the fun out of talking about it.

"Anyway, as I was saying, the police never found out what really happened, but they found a couple of clues that were called strange."

"Firstly, there were smudges of black grease and sawdust on the walk. They said they might be footprints, but didn't know what to make really of them, gosh I guess it's been twenty-five years gone by."

"What do you mean footprints?" Chris asked, "I don't understand Mr. Franklin."

The boy's eyebrows were arched, and Dory rubbed his wrinkled, age-spotted hands together, thrilled to have a new audience.

Dory's eyes misted over, recollecting the events. He began speaking quicker, but more softly.

Freshening the tissue-thin skin of his aged lips with his tongue, he said, "If they were footprints, they led into the house, not away from it."

Chris's eyes grew round, the blues irises expanding toward Dory in a look genuine wonder.

"It's like whoever killed them all must have came back in sometime afterward, just tracking all that grease and sawdust on the flagstone walk. But for what I don't have the answer."

Dory's face took on a hardened look as he talked.

"Then there was a single word scrawled in the same grease on the wall, written black as the ace of spades."

"What word?" Chris said.

Danny broke in as Dory knew he would inevitably, supplying Chris an answer, "Come."

"Come?" Chris questioned, and Danny said, "Yeah, they speculated it was part of a larger message that Will never finished."

"Do you mind Danny, I'm telling our young friend the local legend, and he's new to hearing it, so hush. Besides, not everybody's so sure that it was Will that done it. Anyway Chris, I tell you, everyone was buzzing about this all those

years ago. But that's not all, a couple of years after the murders, Jernigan's sister Amy moves into that house all the way from Mississippi and starts talking about specters of men and axes in the upstairs attic. She and that husband of

hers moved right out soon enough, I'll tell you that. Ha! But nobody ever proved anything about that either. But Amy Jernigan and her husband only stayed a week."

"Oh yeah," Danny said, "I heard that some people have seen faces in those cracked windows. That house just sits out there, with nobody living in it. Hell, the paint is peeling so dreadfully on the outside it looks ready to collapse. God

only knows what it looks like on the inside. I think I've seen one of those faces too, driving by that house. I don't like even going near it, but I still say it's just so much bunk."

"Danny, I'm just trying to tell this with truthfulness. I was here when it happened. I'm not talking about ghosts, just the facts. One thing Jernigan said right before New Years Eve. He said Dory, you ever thought about what it takes to kill

for a living." That statement settled over Chris and Danny and the warmth of the stove, and the small country store seemed a little too hot now to Dory, so he figured he'd wind the story up.

"I've heard people say they went up there to neck or what not, and heard strange things, felt strange things. Even one boy said his girl wouldn't see him now on account of she said he tried to choke her there. He denies it of course,

but other people might not find it impossible to tie all the strange things that's supposedly happened out at the old Jernigan place together."

The doorbell jingled again, and a young pretty blonde woman walked in. Dory thought she looked like she was probably from Birmingham, or at least Dothan.

She went to the metal box in front of the counter, and pulled out two cool bottles of soda. Emma waited in her white apron behind the counter to make change.

"That will be fifty cents," Emma said, as the woman set her purchases on the counter.

Dory watched the customer fish around in her small bag and produce a couple of quarters. She gave them to Emma, and asked, "Does anyone know how to get to Jernigan Farms? I'm Andrea Jernigan, we just moved here."

Dory's eyes squinted at hearing the very name that was the topic of the evening, like so many others. He smiled, thinking that there would be another chapter added soon to this ongoing local legend. Inside, he thrilled at hearing the

name Jernigan again. He knew what had happened, but everybody else was just stupid.

That house was evil and no good, he thought, but he didn't want everyone in town thinking he was bats in the attic. He had to look impartial.

Andrea Jernigan listened as Emma explained the two turns she needed to make to get there.

"Thanks, ma'am."

"Oh, call me Emma, everyone does, but please, did you say you were moving into that house."

"Yes, why?"

"Well, nothing, I just hope your going to like it, it's kind of rundown. I know that's not nice to say."

Emma folded her hands before her on the counter, and Andrea replied, "That's ok, my husband is a great carpenter."

Dory grinned another brown grin while Jim Jernigan sat outside in the pickup truck waiting for his wife. She returned with the two open bottles of cola, and clambered into the cab.

"This is gonna be great," he said, and in the Jernigan house, at the same time, something in the attic moaned the words, "Come."

When Jim first heard the sound a few nights after settling in, he was entranced by the rasping sound. Night after night it grew more familiar, and his dreams were replaced by the malevolent desires of the spirit of William Jernigan that

inhabited the attic.

After a week passed, he settled in the covers ready for a good night's sleep. After a few moments, he shot bolt upright.

His wife snored a blat. One thought burned in his mind, had he checked the children tonight?

The spirit in the attic fumed upward in a shadowy mist. Red eyes squinted in the inky depths of the sealed attic, and then the entity took on the form of Will Jernigan. Dressed in bib overalls, he carried an axe with a reddish tint to the

steel.

"Come," it screamed in Will's mind. It wanted them out of the house it built. They didn't deserve to live in his fine home. It was his and would stay that way as long as he remained.

Jim dazedly made his way up the creaky attic staircase. He placed a sweaty grip on the old crystal doorknob. Light emanated through the hole made for the skeleton key, and Jimmy stopped to consider this read beam painting electric

shadows on his pajamas.

Before he could open the door, it flew open of its own accord. At the top of the stairs Jim could see Will Jernigan reborn.

"Little Jimmy," it said, "I'm so glad you're here. We have a lot to do wouldn't you say?"

To bad little Will didn't stay here with me after he'd gotten rid of his family, I do get a little lonely, it thought, but assuming his form was so easy, and convenient to his goals.

"Yes uncle, we do."

Soon, it thought, these new Jernigans would be gone, forgotten by the living, but maybe little Jimmy can stay for a while, help me fix the place up right.

Jim continued into the depths of the entity's domain, carrying a blank stare. The door swung shut behind him so hard it almost flew from his hinges.

Inside the closed and darkened attic it said, "Go, Jim, you must go."

"We'll just leave, we'll all leave," Jim whimpered, trying to regain control of his mind enough to escape what he knew was pure evil. Yet, as red eyes pierced Jim Jernigan's last mental barrier, he said in a flat monotone, "Yes Uncle, I'll go

now."

Jernigan took up the axe and walked slowly down to the second floor, where the bedroom doors to the children's rooms stood open and waiting.

Jim approached his wife holding the axe in both hands.

The small nightlight the couple kept in their bedroom provided an amber cast, and the light's quality muted the red tinge of the chinked blade.

Jernigan's lips peeled back in an inhuman grin.

"I've come," it whispered. "Come to deliver you to... my new family. Now we must go."

The axe fell again and again, and upstairs in the attic mist seethed in every crack, urging Jim to hurry and check the children.

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