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Thomas Kleaton

The July Featured Story is by Thomas Kleaton

Please feel free to email Thomas at: thomaskleaton@centurytel.net

Thomas Kleaton

ONE BULLET
by Thomas Kleaton

A dark cloud passed over Jillian’s mind the moment she discovered the revolver.

Officer down.

The gun lay in a wet and decaying King Edward cigar box against a cool wall of the cellar. Forgotten behind Mason jars filled with colorful butterbeans and squash with Jillian’s grandmother’s neat script on the labels, rainwater trickling down the wall had warped the cardboard. She shivered as a cold February wind blew a draft over her from a crack in the foundation.

A newspaper article discolored by brown water stains was taped to the inside of the lid, along with an oddly-shaped key attached to a heart-shaped metal tag. Sweeney Hotel was etched on the tag, followed by the number six. A golden badge with an eagle at the top lay near the pistol. Detective was embossed below the eagle, followed by Police. Jillian was familiar with the hotel her great-grandfather died in. It was now a condemned relic, overgrown with green Kudzu.

Jillian sat on a dusty fruit crate and turned the gun over in her hands. It was an ancient snub- nose, a Colt Detective Special, one of the cool six-shooters she imagined Jimmy Stewart carrying in the Alfred Hitchcock movie Vertigo. The short barrel and cylinder were encrusted with oxidation, and wooden grips still clung to the pitted frame. She tried thumbing the hammer, but corrosion had taken its toll. A single .38 caliber brass shell gleamed from one of the chambers.

As if frozen in time, she thought.

Jillian wished Alex could be here; she pictured her ex-husband in the blue t-shirt and jeans he was wearing the first time she saw him, all dark hair and smiles. He was leaning over a plastic box full of old eighties rock cassettes, tapes with names like Def Leppard, Bon Jovi, and Ratt on them. He loved rummaging through people’s things at yard and garage sales, much the same way she liked to sift through the ashes of their marriage to come up with happy memories, photos singed by the fire but not completely burned up.    

Her thoughts were interrupted by a cracking voice from the top of the stairs.

“Yoo hoo, Jillian? We’re home! What’re you doing down there?”

Jillian stood up, startled, and jostled the single naked bulb dangling on a cord from the floor joists. Shadows flickered over the dirt floor in random patterns.

“Just looking, Aunt Trudy.”

 

“Well, come on up. Your Uncle John’s setting the table now. We stopped by KFC and picked up a bucket of chicken on the way back. You know he’s always ready to eat just as soon as he gets home.”

                                                                  *****                                                                                                           

Jillian had gotten the news from Aunt Trudy. Jillian’s grandmother, Kate, lived alone after her grandfather, Martin, died. Aunt Trudy checked on Kate three times a week, and it was during the last visit that Aunt Trudy discovered Kate sitting up in her favorite chair, tea spilled on her flower print dress, dead of a heart attack.

They were staying in Jillian’s grandmother’s house, having attended her funeral that morning. Jillian stood next to Uncle John at the graveside service, staring at the polished teakwood casket while Aunt Trudy, dressed in dark attire, dabbed at her puffy eyes with a tissue. After the funeral Jillian wandered off to locate her great-grandfather’s gravesite.

She found his headstone near a grove of pine trees on the outskirts of the cemetery, a small weathered slab atop a concrete vault. It sat alone amongst the others; no matching gravestone kept it company. A bronze plate tinged with blue made it easy to read the words: Detective, followed by Roy C. Harker, 1899-1935. Jillian leaned over, her blonde hair spilling over her shoulders as she squinted to read the tiny letters of an inscription below the dates.

KILLED IN LINE OF DUTY MAY 4, 1935

A cold breeze sighed through the tops of the pine trees and ruffled Jillian’s collar. Sudden unease gripped her and she looked around, wary, and then returned her attention to the plaque.
Jillian had never known her father, who left before she was born. When Jillian was fourteen her grandfather, Martin, was driving back from the feed store in his old Ford pickup when he suffered a fatal heart attack and veered over the double-yellow line into the path of an oncoming dump truck. Jillian’s mother, Joan, who was sitting in the passenger seat, was killed on impact. Jillian lived with Aunt Trudy and Uncle John before joining the police force. Uncle John was the only father figure Jillian knew.         

Officer down.

Broderick was her partner that day five years before. Jillian had a bad feeling from the moment she woke up that morning; an instinct down in her gut that told her something horrible was going to happen. Their patrol was routine up until noon, when the call came over their shoulder mics: Two-Eleven in progress, intersection of Hillman and Stroud. Jillian was familiar with the address: the state ABC store. She recalled the way Broderick crumpled to the pavement after the shot, the way blood gushed from his torn jugular in a tide.

She remembered the American flag draped over Broderick’s closed coffin most of all.

                                                                 *****

That Aunt Trudy had had more than her share of gin that afternoon was obvious.

“What happened to great-grandpa Roy?” Jillian said, picking at the crust on her drumstick like a child playing with her vegetables. “I mean, you’ve never talked about him.”

“Your great-grandfather was a coward, Jillian, plain and simple,” Aunt Trudy paused to fork a spoonful of cold mashed potatoes into her mouth. “He got a bunch of people in the hotel killed, that’s what happened.”

“I know you’ve had a difficult day, Trudy, but don’t be so negative about Roy. I can tell you from experience you never know what will happen in a fire fight,” Uncle John said. He would know. He had been 1st Force Recon in Vietnam.

“My own grandmother said Grandpa was a coward,” Trudy hissed at him. “She couldn’t handle thinking about him after what happened. Why do you think she was buried next to her second husband?

“Isn’t the hotel supposed to be haunted, Aunt Trudy?”

“There’re all kinds of old tales about the Sweeney Hotel,” said Aunt Trudy. “Wouldn’t want to go poking around in those woods at night, for sure.”

 By nine p.m. Uncle John and Aunt Trudy, exhausted, had retired to the guest bedroom. Jillian sat on the stiff mattress of the antique wrought-iron bed that was her grandmother’s, maybe even her great-grandfather’s, caressing the newspaper clipping with her finger, studying the headline.

FOURTEEN KILLED IN HOTEL SHOOTOUT

The crisp scent of Downey fabric softener wafting up as her hand felt the smoothness of the linen reminded Jillian of childhood afternoons spent watching her grandmother toss wet sheets over her drooping clothesline. The sheets would billow like a sail, then sink back toward the ground as white clouds coasted by overhead in a pastel-blue sky and wood thrushes nibbled at the fruit of her grandmother’s fig tree.

White sheets…he was under white sheets when they wheeled him away… 

Jillian glanced around the bedroom, taking in the rich redness of the mahogany dresser, the elegant frame of its square mirror. She imagined her great-grandfather standing proud like Eliot Ness in front of it, his Fedora cocked at an angle over his forehead, adjusting his tie before putting on his vest and shoulder-holster, the man who had been her inspiration. She never had a close relationship with her grandfather. The man who married Roy’s only daughter was a callous man whose education never went past sixth grade.

Jillian fell blissfully asleep curled up on her grandmother’s bed, thinking she might do a little detective work of her own in the morning.

                                                               *****

Nick Schaffer shuffled to the door in a casual gait, roused from his nap by the shrilling of the doorbell. He leaned on his cane as he peeped through the viewer. Nick opened the door slightly, the chain-guard still in place.

“Can I help you, miss?” Nick said, sizing Jillian up with tired grey eyes.

“Mr. Shaffer? Hi. I’m Jillian Sutton,” Jillian showed him her badge. “Mrs. Broder at the county courthouse said you might be able to help me with some questions I have about my great-grandfather, Roy Harker.”  

“Oh, you’re Roy’s great-granddaughter, eh? Come on in!” Nick sidled back far enough to unlatch the chain, and swung the door open. Jillian stepped inside. Cool air assailed her. Oval picture frames graced the hallway. Mr. Shaffer and an older lady, with dyed blond hair, smiling. A younger couple surrounded by children. A little girl about eight years old grinned around a rather disgruntled pudgy gray tomcat she was holding up by its front legs. A soldier in an army uniform from what Jillian judged to be the Korean War. Another frame hung beside them, a Purple Heart and Bronze Star gleaming from behind the glass.

“I’m doing some research on the the purported haunting of the old Sweeney Hotel,” Jillian forced a prim smile. “I was actually hoping you could tell me a ghost story.”

“The old Sweeney place, eh? A lot of history there, Jillian. A lot of history,” said Nick, settling back into his favorite chair. “My grandmother married a Sweeney. Amos, his name was. He and his brothers were the original settlers of the area, having emigrated from England. The hotel was originally a boarding house. Bill Sweeney inherited ownership of the place back in the twenties, had it converted into a hotel. Small-time thug is what he was, trying to follow in the footsteps of Clyde Barrow. Just another bad seed on the Sweeney family tree.”

“What happened the night of the massacre?”

“I was young then, no more than a child, but I remember the story well. The police interviewed one of the gangster’s molls, a woman of about twenty. Found her scared to death under the front desk. Roy, confident the loot from the Stillwater Bank robbery was going to be split up that night, hid in the closet. Surprised them all. Got two of the gang and had his gun drawn on Bill Sweeney when he saw something. Something bad.” Nick’s eyes appraised her in a level manner. “Something so bad he froze on the trigger. Bill went on a rampage in his own hotel. Fourteen people died that night, including your great-grandaddy. They never saw Bill or the money again. Just vanished into thin air.”

“Do you know any of the history behind the stories of animal worship being practiced by the Sweeneys?”

“Let me think,” said Nick, closing his eyes. He opened them, seeming to stare off into space. “I do recall my grandmother making mention of some of the Sweeney clan practicing what you might call nature worship. Animal worship, tree worship or nature worship. It’s all the same to me. Druids, that’s what they were. Believed that living in those woods around the hotel allowed  them to harness the power of nature. Some of them even believed they could assume animal form.”

“So you’re saying that these settlers practiced something similar to modern-day Wicca?”

“Wicca? Maybe. Of course, I also heard stories about some of those Sweeneys going bad. Started worshipping demons instead of trees.” Nick pressed his index finger to his pursed lips and looked toward the ceiling, thinking, and then pointed at Jillian. “You know, come to think of it I’ve got an old photograph of the Sweeney family, taken in 1866. You just wait right here.”

Nick got up, mindful of his arthritis, and ambled over to a closet just off the living room foyer. He reached in and removed a photo album from the top shelf. He set it down on the coffee table, opening it to a cardboard print about four by six inches. It was a cabinet card photograph, sepia-toned in stunning detail like one of those Wild West photos. Three gruff-looking men stood in front of the original Sweeney Hotel, a two-story rock boarding house. They were cradling hunting muskets. Several women posed in their day dresses, bonnets laced around their chins.

One man in particular stood apart from the rest. Dressed in buckskin, he was sitting on the edge of the porch in the picture. A raccoon sprawled at his feet, and a stout hickory limb used for toting well water-buckets was positioned across his shoulders. His arms flopped over this limb, and two crows perched on it, one on each side.

“Who is that?” said Jillian. She was pointing to the man in buckskin, but her eyes never left the crows.

What’s up with the crows?

Nick scrutinized the photograph, remembering. “Ralph Sweeney, if I remember correctly.” Jillian studied Ralph’s face. Something about him sent chills down her spine. Something she couldn’t quite put her finger on.

“Mr. Shaffer, do you mind if I borrow this photograph? Just for tonight?” said Jillian. “It will help my research, and I promise to bring it back tomorrow.”

“Anyone connected with Roy Harker is okay in my book,” said Nick. His lips were pursed in a smile. “You keep that album as long as you want.”

Jillian started for the door. Nick took his time hobbling along behind her.

“Yes sir,” said Nick. “I liked Roy a lot. He was just an all-around good cop.”

Jillian waved goodbye as she stepped onto the walkway, the photo album tucked under her arm. Nick chuckled to himself in the doorway. His words followed Jillian down the sidewalk. “I remember my grandmother saying Ralph could probably call the hawks down out of the sky.”

Jillian shivered, pulling her jacket tighter around her as she hurried down the sidewalk.

                                                                *****                         

Pine boughs shivering in the cold stood like sentinels to her left and right, closing in on her as the Xterra rolled down Highway 14, headlights cutting a swath through the darkness. The moon appeared to play hide and seek amidst a grove of trees on the horizon, peeking through small openings in the thick foliage. The Sweeney Hotel was just a few more miles, on a high ridge overlooking a backwater canal of Lake Martin. Jillian always considered herself a good cop. Having to work twice as hard to garner the respect she deserved had made her tough. She wasn’t above taking the easy way out, though, and found money sounded like easy street to her, at least for awhile. She wished her great-grandfather could ride along with her, Nancy Drew and Mr. Remington Steele himself.

Jillian pushed a CD into the stereo. Tina Turner began to sing about what love’s got to do with it. She lit up a cigarette and sang along as the roadside shadows grew darker, her thoughts turning to Alex. Their marriage ended over the course of two sultry summer months, the victim of her inability to cope with Broderick’s death and her husband’s night spent with a brunette from the loan department young enough to be his daughter.

Jillian spotted the small bleached out sign nailed to a leafless oak tree as she came around a curve. Sweeney Hotel was printed on it in white letters. A newer, black and red sign had been stapled to the bottom of it: NO TRESPASSING. Ignoring the sign, she turned onto the ruddy clay of the dirt road that led to the empty shell of the hotel. The wind was whipping around the Nissan now, rocking it on its suspension. Tina’s I Wrote a Letter blared from her speakers.

Screw it. Jillian stubbed out her cigarette and stabbed down on the CD player’s source button.
I’m better off without him.

And on the heels of that: Here I am smack in the middle of the wilderness. Why did I have to go and find that box?

Looking back on it later, Jillian would think maybe she didn’t just find the box. Maybe her great-grandmother hadn’t just found the key, knowing it was the one her late husband used during his undercover investigation. Maybe she hadn’t just taped it to an old cigar box along with a newspaper clipping and tossed the revolver and badge in as an afterthought so she wouldn’t be reminded. Maybe she had been inspired.

She pulled up to the old hotel a minute later. It was a massive two-story building, sitting there on the hill like a lump in the dark. Three upper rooms resting on five support posts at the front created a makeshift porch. Its upper windows resembled great lidless eyes resting the weight of their stare upon her. A rusting Nehi machine sat near the front door. It was easy to imagine Model Bs with V-8 engines and straight 8 runningboard Buicks parked outside on their fat whitewall tires while jazz played within, moonlight dancing to the music on the water below as the breeze sent ripples across its glassy surface.

Have you lost your mind, girl? Jillian reached into the glove box and retrieved a small cat paw pry bar along with a Streamlight Stinger flashlight. She tested its beam on the floorboard. She tried her cell phone, which read: No Service.

Cold wind bit at her neck when Jillian opened her door. She pulled her Blair winter jacket tighter and stepped up on the porch. The tattered screen door shrieked on its rusty hinges as she opened it. A hasp and padlock guarded the door, simple work for her pry bar. Once inside, Jillian moved down the trash-strewn hallway, playing her flashlight beam over the doors to her left and right until she found number six.   

Jillian stood outside of the room, listening, the beam of her flashlight focused on the lock. There was no sound save an occasional cold gust pummeling the windows behind the staircase at the end of the hall, whistling through the broken panes. She patted the lump in her inner jacket pocket, the revolver she’d adopted as her good luck piece.

 Jillian didn’t really believe in luck, life had dealt her too many unfortunate circumstances for that, but she did believe that bad things happened to good people. For that reason she carried her own version of fate…her Glock Nineteen service semiautomatic. She stood examining the peeling door frame, but her thoughts were elsewhere.

                                                               *****

Broderick had been out of the car and running even before Jillian brought it to a stop, yelling for the guy with the tangled hair to get down on the ground. Jillian had leaped out, pulling her own weapon to cover her partner. The suspect was walking now, arms splayed out as if shrugging his shoulders, grasping an oblong bottle of something clear, vodka or gin, in his right hand. The bottle dropped, sunlight winking at Jillian from its glistening surface as it cascaded to the ground, her eyes following it.

Sunlight beating down. High noon. The time for gunfights, she thought. She pictured a man stepping down a set of dusty steps, spurs jingling…

There’s something in his hand…

…watching tumbleweeds chase after a buckboard wagon, a dog barking in front of the meat market, the shadow beneath the hat brim of the man calling him out into the street. A hand moved with lightning speed and sunlight glinted off the barrel as he gripped the handle of his…

Gun. There’s a gun! Oh no, in his hand. A gun…

The bottle of vodka splintered into a hundred sparkling pieces on the pavement as the guy pointed his pistol at Broderick and fired.

Officer down.

Jillian had screamed it, thumbing the button on her mic as the guy with the wild eyes brought his pistol around and she saw the rotten stumps of teeth and wrinkled skin of the crystal meth user as fire belched from her own weapon.

                                                               *****

She stuck the key in the lock and twisted it. It turned immediately. The door opened on rusty hinges, dust raining down in a soft cloud. Something ran squeaking across her foot, and she jerked the flashlight downward. A tiny mouse went scampering up the hall. Her heart galloped in her chest.

Get hold of yourself. Next thing you know, you’ll be hearing clanking chains.

The hotel room was bare except for a few broken chairs and cobwebs from long-dead spiders. A single tall window with a white frame and multiple panes, half of which were missing, peered at her from the opposite wall. Brown leaves and pine cones lay beneath the broken window, a makeshift floral arrangement lit by moonlight, mourning the loss of the once-lively resort. A nifty little closet was nestled into the corner by the window, with a smaller room to her right. She nudged her flashlight beam into the open entryway. Light flashed back at her in unison.

Her heart leaped up into her throat, and her hand went instinctively to her Glock. Then she realized it was just a mirror. She stepped into the cramped bathroom, passing the beam to her left.  Layers of filth encircled the toilet bowl where water had evaporated, resembling the stony hills of the Painted Desert. The tank hung on the wall at eye level, with a long pull-cord on the handle. Green mold sprouted from the wall over an old claw foot bathtub. She moved to the medicine cabinet. Her eyes stared back at her from the mirror, wide and frightening in the light from the Stinger. She looked inside. A small jar of Black and White vanishing cream sat on one of the glass shelves, keeping company with an empty bottle of Bayer aspirin.

A small crack near the bottom of the cabinet caught her attention. A tiny message bordered in red rested on top of the slot: Place Used Blades Here. It was a facet of all medicine cabinets of the early twentieth century, a place to dispose of dull razor blades in the wall space between the studs. Jillian probed the opening with her flashlight beam.

And saw a tiny flash of green.

She squealed with excitement. No, no, no, it couldn’t be. Surely not. Surely…

Jillian pried at the corners of the medicine cabinet with the cat paw. Flakes of rust silted down as the cabinet loosened, then separated from the wall. Folded paper money fluttered to the floor like birds’ wings. Jillian picked up one of the bills and studied it, her hands trembling as she held it. It was a hundred, a Benjamin. Tiny words leaped out at her: Redeemable in Gold on Demand at the United States Treasury, followed by Series of 1928A.

She stared, enthralled by the bills on the floor, the pile of money still buried in the wall cavity. She pictured Bill Sweeney standing in front of the medicine cabinet, folding each crisp bill lengthwise and stuffing it through the opening…

Fell through the cracks…

…in the back of the cabinet. Jillian figured she had stumbled onto better than five-thousand dollars. She whistled under her breath… 

…and was answered by the tinkle of music, a lilting melody punctuated by the sharp burst of horns and a duo of voices. The tune was familiar to her: Dream a Little Dream of Me. Ella Fitzgerald’s voice, accented by the deep bass of Louis Armstrong. Jillian pivoted around.

A single bulb hanging by its cord from the high ceiling lit the room. A young woman with clingy blond hair sat against the wall, moving her shoulders in time to the lively music coming from a squat radio on the small table to her left. Her fine hair lay close to her skull, curls dangling at the bottom like Fay Wray’s hair had in the movie King Kong. She wore an ivory strappy back dress with a slit up the side showing a lot of leg, and silver stilettos adorned her feet. A man in a tan trench coat leaned against the wall, talking with two other men in white shirts with shoulder holsters under their armpits. A cigarette dangled from his lip. One of the two men turned toward Jillian…

He’s looking right through me…

And her hand went for her gun.

The closet door burst open then, banging against the window pane behind it. A smaller man stood there, his blue eyes darting between the three men, calculating. Jillian glimpsed a badge behind his coat as he moved forward, a revolver in his hand. The two men without trench coats reached for their guns simultaneously. Two sharp cracks shattered the air and one of the men fell to the hardwood floor, blood pooling around his head.

The blond woman shrieked and leaped for the floor, dragging the heavy radio down with her. The second man was groping for his pistol when the small man’s revolver fired twice more. Something was swinging up out of the third man’s trench coat now, something with a large caliber barrel…

Billy…Get your gun!

Jillian recognized it from old black and white photographs as a Browning automatic rifle, better known as a BAR. Like the rifle in the photographs, this one also sported a sawed-off barrel. The small man with the badge moved with lightning speed, bringing his revolver around. Time stopped. His arm sagged, as if halfheartedly aiming for a fleeting deer that was out of range. His face contorted in horror, his mouth drawing down in a grimace at what he was seeing. His eyes squeezed shut in agony as several 30.06 shells ripped into his gut. He toppled forward. Jillian tried to bring her weapon up, tried to shout, but it was like watching a nightmare unreel in slow motion on a movie screen.

The man in the tan overcoat was swiveling toward her now, the smoking barrel of the BAR coming around. Her breath caught in her throat as she glimpsed its face…

The face of Ralph Sweeney in the photograph…

And the light bulb winked out.

Blackness reached for her, swirling around her with dark fingers.

                                                                 *****

Deadly silence surrounded her again, serene. Jillian shivered. The wind was howling outside now, making the loose tin of the roof bang against the rafters. The revolver was in her hand. It wavered in the light coming in the dusty glass of the window as the whitish orb of the moon drifted in and out of the violet clouds overhead, becoming less substantial. Its lines blurred in her vision, and then sharpened in clarity. It was rusty and pockmarked, then pristine, shiny blued steel, and she knew that time was somehow different in this room. She pictured clocks perched on shelves at different levels about the room, grandfather clocks, cuckoo clocks, clocks melting like in a Dali painting, alarm clocks with sparkling bells on top, some with hour and minute hands ratching forward, hell-bent for leather, some with blue digits spinning dizzily backwards as if counting down the final seconds to lift-off.

It started as a darker shadow moving in the blackness, something that smelled like a dead rat in a mousetrap. It began to ripple, to shimmer like the air above scorched pavement on a hot summer day.

Images of black cats in crypts deep inside Egyptian pyramids flashed in Jillian’s mind, colorful hieroglyphics painted into the stone, ancient spells muttered in torch-lit blackness. She pictured Ralph Sweeney crawling around on all fours at midnight amongst the fragrant pine trees surrounding the old hotel, bowing to the influence of the disturbing presences that sought him out in the dark woods. Bad things that demanded sacrifice. She thought about the inscription on her great-grandfather’s headstone:

KILLED IN THE LINE OF DUTY

Jillian wondered if maybe Roy had been immune to it somehow, had avoided the grisly fate the thing had in store for him. The air became frosty, the temperature dropping. Her heart was hammering, forcing warm blood to her chilled skin. Jillian’s breathing became faster, her expelled breath forming small clouds in the frigid air…

As if he’d seen a ghost…

She shuddered, realizing why her great-grandfather had hesitated on the trigger and what would happen to her if she followed suit. She sensed it moving toward her now and saw the yellow glitter of dead goats’ eyes peeping at her from the dark.

Jillian stifled the scream building in her throat and brought the revolver up, felt the cold metal under her index finger. It was incredible what a difference one bullet could make, how the consequences of something so small set in motion had come crashing down through her life like a massive dreadnought. She was sorry about Broderick, sorry for the life she couldn’t take back, sorry she was such a miserable excuse for a human being.

She imagined her great-grandfather, Roy, a man she admired but had never known, crumpled on the floor, blood pouring from his bullet wounds as he reached down through time toward her, his arms outstretched, pale blue eyes imploring her to do her duty.

This time she would not fail her partner.

The revolver’s hammer rested on an empty chamber, a throwback to cowboy days. Jillian, a petite woman who put eight rounds through a silhouette target in a four inch group, thumbed the hammer backwards. The cylinder rotated with an oiled click, showing no signs of corrosion. It locked on the only loaded chamber, this one remaining…

Silver…

…bullet which Jillian was confident would be more than sufficient to take out her great-grandfather’s murderer. Her breathing steadied as she sighted down the barrel, her finger poised on the trigger, her voice piercing in the vacant room:

“Freeze!”

Thomas Kleaton is a freelance horror writer. He has had stories published in SNM Magazine, Dark Eclipse Magazine, and the anthologies Cellar Door: Words of Beauty, Tales of Terror, Serial Killers Tres Trias, Bones, and What Has Two Heads, Ten Eyes, and Terrifying Table Manners?

You can find more about Thomas HERE