Prodigal Blues

There's also another envelope full of money in there, about another thirty thousand dollars.  Take it and buy that wife of yours something nice.  She deserves it for putting up with the likes of you.  And don't get noble like I said, don't turn the money over to the police or anything like that or I'll be really put out.  My guess is that once all of this is made public, the names of the families will come out soon enough.  Send it to them, or give it to charity, or hand it out to homeless people, I don't care.  Just don't tell anyone you have it.  Consider it our way of spitting in Grendel's face one last time.

Take whatever you want from the house.  There's some really nice stuff.

But don't leave this house standing.  You'll find about a dozen cans of gasoline over by the shelves down here.  Douse this place and burn it to the ground.  What the gas doesn't take care of, the alcohol and formaldehyde will.

I don't want people turning this house and what's inside it into a freak show.  The idea of newspapers and television and tabloids foaming at the mouth over what happened here makes me sick, and it would only hurt Arnold and Rebecca and Thomas and Denise.  None of them will name you, Pretty-Boy, and neither will I.  (You'll notice that I haven't once used your name in this letter?  That's just in case you're not as smart as I think you are and someone else finds it first.)  But if you go public with this and they ask one of them if they know you, they'll tell the truth.  But that question will never be asked if you keep quiet.

I'm sorry to dump all of this in your lap, but like I said, you're one of the good guys and I trust you to do the good and decent thing.

I never was one for long good-byes, so I'll just say please leave me here and thank you for being my friend an go now. 

Burn this fucking place to the ground.

I bent down and kissed his cold forehead, adjusted his hair piece, then put the letter in my pocket and turned toward the gas cans.

I was just starting with the last can of gas when Tanya came up onto the front porch and saw me.

"What the hell are you doing?"

"Honoring a last request," I said, handing over Christopher's letter.

Tanya read it and began crying softly.  "Oh, God, Mark…"  She began moving toward the threshold.

"Stay on the porch, Tanya, you don't want to see what's in here."

"Piss on that," she said.  "I've never been a helpless female and I'm not about to start now."  She stepped inside and saw the jars and what was inside them.  She brought a hand up to her mouth and held it there.  "Our Father, who art in Heaven, hallowed by Thy name…"

"Outside," I said, pouring a trail toward the porch.

"…Thy kingdom come, Thy will be done…"

I backed down the stairs, still pouring the gas.  "Please go start the car and get it turned around.  When this goes, it's go

She put her hand on my arm.  "I'm so sorry, Mark."

I said the first thing that came into my mind:  "Why?  It's not your fault."

"For all of… all of them," she said, pointing into the house.  "For Christopher.  My God, how alone he must have been."

I touched her cheek.  "Please go start the car."

She said nothing, only nodded her head and sprinted away.

I finished pouring the last of the gasoline.  I was about twenty feet from the bottom step of the front porch.  We'd have maybe, maybe forty seconds before it all went up.  I pulled a pack of matches from my pocket and was readying to stroke one when I remembered the computer in the hall closet.

I ran back inside, choking on the gas fumes, and opened the door, pulling out the shoulder bag—

—and revealing a framed color photograph that had been placed underneath it.

The frame was solid silver and weighed about five pounds.  The photograph had been taken outside this house; it showed Denise, Thomas (before the fire), Rebecca, Arnold, and Christopher sitting together very close on the porch.  They were smiling and waving at the camera.

A Post-It note on the frame read:  "One of the few good days we ever had here.  I thought you'd like to have this."

I slipped it into the bag, then ran outside.  Tanya had the car ru

I knelt at the end of the gas trail and, after three attempts, finally got a match lighted, then set fire to the whole book and tossed it down.  The gas ignited instantly and began ru

The first set of downstairs windows blew out before the house was out of sight, and by the time we reached the end of the side road and turned onto the main drag, there was an explosion the likes of which I'd never experienced and the ground shook and the car shook and the sky behind us was black with smoke and flying debris.

"I hope he's rotting in Hell," said Tanya through clenched teeth as she banged the steering wheel with her fist.  "I hope that sick fuck is getting ass-reamed by Satan himself."

"I'd like to think that even Hell has its standards."

She looked at me, her tears almost spent.  "Goddammit, Mark, I love you so much."

"I love you, too."

We spent the night at a Holiday I

I turned off the television and looked at Tanya.

"Is it over now?" she asked.

I shook my head.  "No.  I don't know that it ever really will be."

I crawled into bed beside her and wept for my dead friend and all the others who didn't make this far.

It has been a month since I set that fire.  Thomas, Rebecca, Denise, and Arnold all made the national news for a while; "The Four Brave Escapees", they were called.  All of them have so far refused to give the name of the man who "rescued" them.

So far no one has discovered the bus and trailer, so the bodies are still in that mine, rotting away.  The thought makes me smile.

Tanya thinks she might be pregnant.  She's seeing her doctor in a couple of days to confirm what we both already know.  I have applied for an adjunct faculty position with the English department, and it's looking good; my second interview, this time with the department chair, is on the same day as Tanya's doctor's appointment.  I hope at day's end that we will both have good news for each other.

Speculation as to the nature of what happened in the "Woodstock House" (as the news media has named it) remains just that; although the remains of dozens of bodies were removed from the debris, the damage to the house itself—which had been all but razed—has thus far prevented forensics experts to form any solid conclusions; all they know for certain is that several children may have died or been murdered in the house.  The tabloids are going nuts with it, but not many have tried to get on-scene.  There's nothing left.

I distract too easily these days; if we pass a car on the road and I see a crying child with their face peering out at me from the window, my first thought is always:  They're scared to death and need help; if I see a kid in a store struggling to pull away from the adult who's got hold of them, I immediately wonder if they've only moments ago been snatched away from their mom or dad or other family member; if I hear a child yell or scream in the evening when our street is filled with children at play, it never occurs to me that the sound might just be one of glee or excitement or good-natured Let's-Scare-So-and-So because they're such a wuss—no, in my ears it is the sound of a terrified, helpless child being yanked into a stranger's car and shrieking for someone they love to come save them, please, please, Mommy, Daddy, somebody, anybody please help me.