only twice can i recall having memorably visited the scene of a murder.
the first occasion was dealy plaza, in dallas, where kennedy was publicly slaughtered in a swirl of mysterious circumstances over 40 years ago. the day i visited was sunny and pleasant, and i could barely perceive the dim echo of tragic history as modern vehicles sped over the spot where that flag-bedecked, 60s lincoln limousine had once famously passed and been captured on grainy film. all traces of the crime and it's attendant conspiracies had long since been washed from the scene, leaving only a vague dissonance between the sense that something tremendously important had happened there, and the extreme ordinariness of the place itself.
the second occasion was altogether a different sort of experience, intimate, with a tangible atmosphere of violence, and i was greatly disturbed by it. the location was "pine valley", an island of scrabbly coniferous forest in a sea of mesquite shrub and oaks on the rolling plains of central texas, 15 miles from the nearest town, local amenities consisting of a gas station and a livestock feed / cowboy apparel store. beyond that you have to drive to town for anything. the pines are interspersed with a variety of dwellings, many of them somewhat ramshackle, inhabited by various shades of rednecks and aging hippies, many of whom associate together and often partied late. my friends and i were just beginning high school at the time, and we had a lofty treehouse in a tremendous pine tree near the back fence of my father's property, which allowed a view over the surrounding scenery. so far as i could tell the "pine" part was true, but there wasn't any actual "valley" to speak of.
far from the diversions of town, we sometimes amused ourselves with various forms of petty criminal mischief, driven more by boredom than by any malicious or profitable intent. sometimes we broke into houses just to see what sort of lives people were living, delighting in the discovery of secrets carefully concealed beneath clothing in dressers or under papers in nightstands, but rarely leaving the scene any different than we found it. once we were gleefully laughing over some repulsive german porno magazines that had turned up when a house's occupant suddenly pulled up in a pickup truck, obliging us to dash out the back door in a state of high panic, breathlessly sprinting through the woods until well out of sight.
some kids had heard their parents mention a murder in pine valley several years before, but since the victim and the perpetrator weren't well known to the general population, there were very few details. it was said to have been a love crime, some fatal fit of jealously or resentment in which a man had been shot and killed by his girlfriend or wife, but whether that were true or not nobody knew. it was strange that none of us had been to the house where it happened, because it was just up the road from the treehouse, and you could clearly see an overgrown set of tire ruts departing from the road, although the house itself was concealed beyond sight in the forest. actually none of us knew precisely where the murder had happened, so we weren't expecting to find anything out of the ordinary when we opted one autumn afternoon to follow that shadow of a driveway and see where it led. the path took a few wide curves and went up a slight incline, terminating in a shady clearing with a double-wide trailer home propped up on cement blocks. some trailers have a metal skirt that makes them look slightly more permanent, but you could see the rusty metal undercarraige of this one in the shadows beneath the main bulk. it seemed unoccupied, no curtains on the windows, no recent tire tracks, and none of the usual detritus of life (broken down cars, childrens toys, gas cans, ect.) littering the ground around the trailer, as was the general rule in pine valley. the house was locked, but it was easy enough for us to discover an unlatched window and lift in the smallest to admit the rest through the front door.
inside there was no furniture, just an empty shell except for a few random things lying around on the dark brown carpet; a set of brass curtain rods, a pair of crumpled blue jeans, a supermarket receipt, and most interestingly two thin, broad hardback books dealing with matters of the occult, each in a separate room. the books were from a time-life publishing series that i had sometimes seen advertised on late night television years before; the title of the series was "mysteries of the unknown", and each black bound volume dealt lightly with some topic such as ufos or ghosts, with plentiful photographs and illustrations and only a page or two devoted to each case examined. the book in the smaller of two bedrooms dealt with mysterious ancient ruins while the one in the living room concerned itself with witchcraft. i was very interested in the books and spent some time leafing through the pages, looking at pictures of macchu pichu and the great pyramids, or reading briefly about the legend of merlin, while the other kids sought in vain for some hidden treasure in the empty kitchen drawers and closets. i paused from my reading and scrutinized the living room for a moment, taking in the pale afternoon sunlight streaming through dusty, streaked windows, the dark, false-wood veneer walls, the gaudy orange and eggshell patterned vinyl flooring of the adjoining kitchen.
glancing over the floor near my feet i noticed quite a large stain in the center of the room, a dark spot where the carpet fibers were matted together, an irregular blob that seemed to suggest a significant spillage of oil or wine at some point in the past. i closed the book and passed into the adjacent master bedroom, where my attention was immediately drawn to a long horizontal rip in the closet door, about chest level, that upon closer inspection revealed itself to be the splintered trail of bullet that had passed obliquely through the door. visually retracing the projectile path i discovered the wall between the bedroom and the living room was perforated with several small holes about the width of a chopstick, or a small caliber bullet. i excitedly called out my discovery to the other kids, and we all marveled at the evidence, beginning to make the connection between this place and the talk of murder we'd heard. we further examined the stain, crowding around it squatting down to get a closer look at the dried life-blood of a murdered man. there was nothing particularly sinister about the atmosphere that day, and we spent a few more minutes in wonderment before leaving the house, satisfied it had no further secrets to reveal. i took the book about ancient ruins with me, but left the one about witchcraft due to some vague superstition.
some days later i had read the entire book and decided it had been silly to imagine the other one somehow cursed or unlucky, actually the topic of witchcraft seemed an interesting one so i resolved to fetch the book read it. i took the shortcut to the treehouse and crossed the fence, soon thereafter following the disused driveway and arriving at the trailer. it seemed just the same as before, an empty, benign structure slowly aging in the shadow of surrounding pines. we'd left the door unlocked, so i entered easily and went straight for the book still lying on the living room floor where i'd left it. i spent a few minutes further inspecting the bullet-ripped door and walls, afterwards returning to the stain in the living room where i paused standing for a moment to leaf through the book in the near perfect silence of a windless day. the atmosphere in the trailer was very still, but bright with diffused sunlight.
suddenly a terrifying presence was upon me! the hair at the back of my neck stood up with an electric shock and i was filled with mortal dread, a surge of adrenaline flooded my senses and my chest felt icy, constricted! some foul demon had retuned to the scene of it's exploits or else the tortured spectre of the victim cried out in anger and agony! instantly the atmosphere became heavy, oppressive, hostile; whether it was only the emotional echo of the fatal event or indeed some entity come to terrorize me, directing it's terrible awareness towards me i didn't know, but i instinctually fled that place with the greatest possible haste a mere fraction of a second after the atmosphere shifted. i threw open the front door with such violence it bounced against the frame and slammed loudly behind me as i ran heedlessly from the trailer, dashing down the winding drive, my footfalls crunching dry pine needles and sand, my chest heaving. when i reached the road i paused to recollect myself. now that i was in the open sunshine, in public space, i felt safe again and directed my bewildered, unsettled gaze down the weedy drive, wondering if i had played some subconscious trick on myself. i clutched the book in my hands, but never returned to that house again.