Prodigal Blues

I had no choice but to search the entire house.  I started upstairs and worked my way down.

In my blackest nightmares I have never imagined any devices like those I saw in the various bedrooms; devices for torture, for restraint, for the mouth and genitals, strap-ons, leather hoods, spiked heels, whips, studded gloves, studded collars, an Iron Maiden, cages with children's toys inside them, chains, handcuffs, enema bags, rubber tubes, rubber gloves, leather underpants, a machine with needles and clamps stained with blood… if I stood still and held my breath, I could still hear the children’s cries.

I never knew there were so many different ways to scream, Christopher had said.

Back downstairs, shaking like crazy but still on my feet, I passed what I at first thought was a charcoal drawing of Jesus Christ in a gold frame, but I was wrong; the frame was gold-plated and it was an enlarged photograph of Charles Manson.

I found the door to the basement and went down to the kids' room; all I found there were their beds, single-sized, arranged around the walls like bunks at sixth grade camp; if it weren't for the chains hanging from the walls, you could almost mistake it for a children’s bunkhouse.  There was a small refrigerator, a hot plate, a small combination TV/VCR unit, a large stack of videotapes five-deep, a bookshelf that displayed such titles as Yertle the Turtle, Bridge To Terabethia, The Chocolate War, Summer of My German Soldier, Where the Sidewalk Ends, and many others… but no Wi

The floor down here was lined with opened specimen jars, as well.

The door to the sub-basement, to Ravenswood, was at the far end of the room; it, too, was unlocked but creaked and screeched as I pulled it open.  An opened specimen jar sat on either side of each step all the way down; twelve wooden steps, twenty-four jars.  A single bare bulb hung from a wire in the ceiling, casting a sick white glow over everything and making the shadows to the side seem deeper and endless and hungry.

"Christopher?" I called, my voice made deafening by the narrow space.

No answer.

I started down the steps, looking only at the large iron door at the bottom, never at what was inside the jars.  What was inside the jars had once been the light of some parents' lives, a giggling ball of cuteness in a high chair plopping its face down into its very first birthday cake, a hyper thing that had to chase after constantly because they ran everywhere like they knew something really exciting might be happening over there and they didn't want to miss a thing…

I hit the bottom of the steps and had to steady myself against the door.

All this death, all these remnants of lives ended too soon and too brutally.  I could feel all of them behind me, around me, above me; I could hear the ghostly echo of their voices crying out for someone, anyone, Mommy, Daddy, please somebody come help me.

From their jars the remains of these forever-lost children whispered:  How can you be a part of this?

I think there are places in this world, ruined places, dark places, places where human apathy toward human perversity runs rampant, and these places become a cancer unique to any known disease; spreading, chewing apart anyone who comes into contact with them, forever infecting anyone who even knows they exist; places that, for whatever reasons, have gone unchecked and u

Places can be as evil as any human being.

And I knew such a place lay on the other side of the door I now faced.

I am a good and decent man, I thought.

The image of Grendel's grisly rose flashed across my mind's eye.

I am a good and decent man.

The door was the same kind you see most restaurants use for their meat lockers; there was even a temperature-control panel in the wall beside it.  Right now it was an even thirty-two degrees inside.  The door was thick and heavy; if Christopher was in there, he wouldn't have been able to hear me.

I grabbed the handle and yanked it back, opening the door.

Cold mist rolled out, covering my hands, my legs, my torso, snaking up to my face.

"Christopher?" I said, my breath foggy before my eyes.  I blinked against the battling temperatures of the stairway and sub-basement, then stepped inside, waving the mist away.

He was lying on the autopsy table, naked, a rubber tube around his arm and an emptied syringe hanging from his arm.

I think I might have screamed as I ran toward him but I can't be sure.  I do remember that I grabbed him and pulled him upright, slapping his face and shaking him but he'd been dead for at least a day; his back was discolored from the blood that had settled there.  He'd gone to great lengths to make sure his makeup looked smooth and natural—he'd even added a few wrinkles near his eyes like Rebecca had done.

I held his body against me and cried, rocking him back and forth like a father singing a lullaby to his newborn child.  His head flopped backward and I could see that his facial prosthesis on the left side was starting to come loose from exposure to the cold.  I pressed it back into place but it wasn't going to stay.  I'd need to find some spirit gum.  I reached down and removed the syringe from his arm.  A glass vial lay on the floor near my feet; I could easily read the word methylmorphinan on its label.

He'd given himself a massive overdose of morphine.

At least he hadn't been in pain, that was something.

Wasn't it?

I kept rocking him back and forth, and was soon aware of the sound of someone signing, softly, slowly, with great tenderness.  It was a voice I didn't recognize.  It was my own.

"Sleep my child and peace attend thee,

All through the night.

Guardian angels God will send thee,

All through the night.

Soft the drowsy hours are creeping,

Hill and dale in slumber sleeping,

I my loved ones' watch am keeping,

All through the night..."

Except when I got to the "…hill and dale" line, I sang:  "…Bill and dale look dumb-er sleeping…" but no one laughed.

I stopped myself, then lay him back down carefully, pushing the prosthesis back into place once again.

And that's when I saw the folded piece of paper held in his palm by a rubber band that he'd wrapped around his hand.

I slipped it from his hand and unfolded it:

Dear Pretty-Boy:

If you're reading this, then I'm guessing you're not exactly thrilled with me at the moment.  I'm sorry.  This wasn't something that I did in the heat of the moment or in the depths of despair or anything all melodramatic and tragic like that.  I gave it a lot of thought, and realized that it was really the best thing all the way around.  I'm saying I was happy with the decision, okay?

I had a great last night.  I made pizza and popcorn, and I watched a bunch of great movies, and I listened to records, and I finally read Wi