The Twisted Tales

Those deaths on the hill

              Children love the old hill, up by the top of the village. Every summer for generations, children have sprinted up the hill to play, climbing the branches of the old oak tree overlooking the village. The parents like the hill, as it is easy to look over to check on your children playing without needing to interrupt their playtime. The hill is as much a part of the community as the town hall, with weekly bingo on Mondays. The hill is at the end of the long road that bisects the town, and when it rains, the rain floods off of the hill into the stream at the bottom where the children like to swim. In the village, neighbours look out for each other and the hill watches over.

That was until last Monday, when bingo was cancelled because the hill had turned against the village. The constable and the mayor had to close off the hill pending an investigation. No one was to go near the hill. The village had seemed colder, although it was mid July, as the leaves of the old tree had already fallen leaving it a skeleton of what is once was. With the leaves gone, from everywhere in the village anyone could see what the tree had been hiding this year.

They say a man and a woman had entered the village, but all they did know was that little Timmy was dead and more skeletons were being dug up every day. It had gotten so bad that the tree was cut down, and the wood was used to carve a memorial. The memorial will not be complete for a while, as with everybody that got dug up a new name was added. Once they had flattened the hill, the number had reached 10.

The village is no longer a quiet, sleepy village. It is the murder village. With the title came money, but with money came the loss of most of the village. The village is now a ghost town for people to explore the mind of a serial killer. If you go along the tour, starting at the memorial of course, you get to see the branch left of the tree where people had hung – even see where the groove was worn from many a broken heart. The next stop is a skeleton whose bones had been crushed, as if hit by a lorry. Oh, and the next one is a treat for many who despise society helping with mental illness, as the next is the TV renown therapist Dr Katrina who said she could cure anyone. Unfortunately, the doctors found that she had no cure for a snapped spine.

Further on down the tour, if anyone is brave enough to venture past the third skeleton hidden within the village's now flat hill, then you get to be the lucky one to see a child sized skeleton that looks like it is sleeping. The mortuary said that this one had died peacefully, as if the killer was sparing the child from a worse fate. The other damage to the bones were not caused by death, and this is what lead them to this conclusion. The next one is the stuff of ghost stories, a mainly decomposed corpse that was cooked before buried – but not by fire, no, by humanised lightning.

Then past the next three corpses of alcohol, drugs and abuse comes the crowning glory of the whole show. These corpses were too fresh for any creation to be made to replicate them. The wounds too sore for any amusement. The last two corpses, which were the reason the hill was dug, is a man holding Timmy as if he was his own. Timmy was a bullied kid, but if you read the text carefully you can pick out the story that is written, that the man was meant to be Timmy's father but his wife had cheated. The man never knew his wife had borne a babe, because he was on tour at the time. The statue depicts them as they were found, snuggled as if watching TV. The man, however, was shunned by the tour, even though it only existed because of him.

He was the murderer of Green Leaf Hill, the small sleepy village in the countryside. He had once been a neighbour, a hero of the village. He had been shunned when the his wife had been found as the village tart and subsequently died. No one had wanted this, however. He had died in his uniform, with all of his medals and a small simple note.

"Please save those I couldn't"