Samantha, having little choice, left her home and hitched a ride a few miles up the road to Manawa, where she had a friend who was willing to put her up. Later that week Samantha got herself a job at a nearby fast food restaurant, the HOT BERGER, and became quick friends with the manager Charles Wooding, a 34 year old ex-marine from Waco, Texas and a born again Christian. Charles had moved here from Waco after being released from Corpus Christi Penitentiary where he served time for two counts of statutory rape. Charles skipped out on his three-year probation up to his sister’s in Manawa. There he became born again and got the job as manager of the HOT BERGER, and years later met Samantha Orm. Charles invited Samantha to come and live with his sister and himself, convincing her that it would be a better environment to raise her yet unborn child, which would besmirch her soul until she took Jesus into her heart.
Samantha agreed to move into Charles’s modest home. However, she was immediately sorry for it, because, though at first Charles and his sister Shelly were hospitable—clearing a room for Samantha and encouraging her to become more involved in the Church—they were very strict. They never let Samantha out of their sight, not even to go to the bathroom, and always found a reason to inflict a physical punishment on Samantha before they locked her in her room, which was large dog kennel in Charles bedroom. They called these severe beatings “cleansings” meant to rid Samantha of her heathen ways. Her heathen ways—and eventually her unborn child, which miscarried after one of Charles’ more savage cleansings.
Driven mad by these nightly bouts with her righteous guardians and grief-stricken over the loss of her child, Samantha, in a fit of blind insanity, slaughtered Charles and his sister Shelly with a large, metal cross. A cross that hung over the mantle and was crafted by Charles’ father, Philip Wooding, for Charles’ confirmation back into the good graces of the loving arms of Jesus. He had crafted this cross from spare pieces of metal melted down and poured into a wooden mold, which had been handed down through six generations of Wooding men.
Philip Wooding was a very staunch Lutheran who yet found it necessary to molest his son and beat his wife mercilessly while she recited the Ten Commandments. He also called these “cleansings” and rationalized that they were for his family’s own good. However, after Philip’s death, Charles continued the “cleansings,” resulting in Charles impregnating his mother with his sister/daughter Nancy, and later the death of his mother by her own hands, in church on Easter Sunday.