a short story of horror

by

JASON McKENNEY

Copyright ©2014 Jason McKenney

All rights reserved. The unauthorized reproduction or distribution of this copyrighted work, in whole or part, by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, is illegal and forbidden.

This is a work of fiction. Characters, settings, names, and occurrences are a product of the author’s imagination and bear no resemblance to any actual person, living or dead, places or settings, and/or occurrences. Any incidences of resemblance are purely coincidental.

Larry Morgan was a practical man. He had been the head prison warden of Greenview Correctional Facility in West Virginia just one week shy of two years when the prison’s first successful inmate escape in more than five decades became the lead story on the local news. Now, nearly 48 hours after their escape, Governor Ryan Wilshere was being slow-roasted in the media for supporting the installation of the new electric fence, a technology put in place on Morgan’s recommendation. A practical recommendation given the circumstances.

Morgan’s excuses came in a wide array of PR-generated trial balloons, each one floated out, so to speak, to see how long it could last before being shot down by the big blow dart of journalistic awareness.

“The internal high-tech security system failed us due to a brief power outage.”

“We have over 1400 inmates but only 159 correctional officers. The 6000-volt fence is the best backstop we have to such inadequate staffing.”

“After fifty-two years of a spotless record, the reality is at some point the dam is bound to break.”

That one really got people going. In fact, none of these excuses satisfied the local electorate, especially those who lived within a fifty mile radius of the prison. The rural folks living between Branchland and Barboursville had no idea which way the convicts were headed since the isolated Greenview bisected the two small towns with roughly twenty five miles between each population center and the prison. All they knew for sure was that four felons, all convicted killers, were free on the lam headed for any one of their humble homes and possibly arriving at any moment. Maybe they had already showed up, hiding in their children’s closet, waiting in their cellar, or camped out in their basement, patiently waiting to greet a hapless homeowner with a knife to the throat.

Dennis Kampman had been convicted of killing a teenage couple six years earlier in a low income neighborhood of Huntington. The high school sweethearts had been walking home late after a football game and made the unfortunate decision of taking a shortcut through an abandoned housing complex.

The forty-three-year-old Kampman had been squatting in one of the units for several days living off a steady diet of canned Spam and boiled heroin. When he saw the smiling couple walking along a darkened street just after ten o’clock, he grabbed the butter knife he had been eating with for the previous week and ran out to greet them, bright eyed and bushy tailed.

Asked if they had a cigarette to spare, the two kids said no and tried to maneuver away from Kampman by turning towards another street. Dennis grabbed the girl, seventeen-year-old Sara Turnbull, by the wrist and held the sticky knife to her throat. According to Kampman’s full confession given four months later, the boyfriend, Jared Pond, supposedly made a disrespectful remark about the small butter knife and Kampman’s unruly hair. When these details finally made their way to the public, several of Jared’s friends and members of his family refused to believe the deceased would engage in such ill-advised and foolish banter at such a moment of peril. Whether prompted by Jared or not, something clicked in his brain send the paranoid Kampman over the edge.

Unable to slice Sara’s neck proper, he brutally jabbed the small vane of metal between her clavicles, performing a makeshift tracheotomy. He jabbed her several times in quick succession. Blood spewed out like a mainspring, dousing Jared as he watched in paralyzed horror. The dull knife wasn’t cutting her flesh, more like throttling it to pieces. Sara tried to scream, but only a silent gasp of agony escaped her mutilated throat. When Jared reached for her, Kampman went wild, grabbing the young man by his hair and stabbing out his eyes. Both kids crumpled to their knees, Sara dying quickly, Jared writhing like a vampire in the sun. Dennis laughed at the suffering like a mad hyena before finally putting Jared out of his misery. Dennis later claimed that justice had been served.

Tracy Dallard was in year seven of a lifetime sentence for the rape and murder of a young Mexican immigrant woman name Adriana Navas. During previous stints in the pen he had boasted freely among select peers of having his way with more than seventy women in the tri-state area over a five year span (I bet I left a trail of bastards that would put King Henry to shame.) It was the testimony of one Danny Renee and the fortuitous finding of a DNA sample that finally put Dallard behind bars.

Danny Renee was a parking garage attendant working swing shift on a sultry August night in 2004. The parking structure was part of a complex just outside Columbus, Ohio, sharing space with a movie theater, a Budget Rent-a-Car, and a string of moderately priced restaurants like Red Robin and the Northstar Cafe.

It was nearing one o’clock in the morning. The crowds of the day’s final movie screening had dispersed. The restaurants were closed, but the garage was open twenty-four hours for the benefit of business travelers flying out of nearby Port Columbus International. Locals would regularly leave their car in the garage before taking a shuttle over to the airport.

At 12:58pm, Danny was sitting alone in the attendant’s booth, patiently waiting out the remaining two hours on his shift. The garage had digital pay station machines on each floor leaving Danny with little to overlook for the three hours he was alone each night beyond basic security. It was a serious job to Danny. He loved it. His most prized accomplishment. He was two years out of high school and felt like he finally had life by the balls.

That morning his mother had ironed a staunch crease down the front of each leg of his navy pants. He wore a lovely white button-up shirt. Pinned right over his left pectoral was a polished silver badge that read Montgomery Security and Provisioning just above his badge number: 30117. Absolutely his most prized accomplishment.

Those other punks from high school didn’t have a badge. They either dropped out of school early or were rejected from Tillman Community College. Scumbags, all of them. Serves them right for making fun of Danny all through junior high and high school. Adam Ladnick and Shawn Royston were the worst. They had been big studs in high school playing sports and bedding cheerleaders. Both had graduated two years ahead of Danny.

Danny had seen Adam Ladnick going to the movies a few days ago and he savored the sight of the former football star who was now quickly morphing into an overweight, balding truck driver. Adam drove big rigs for a living and had already wrecked two of them in less than five years. Look at that second chin beginning to show. Scumbag.

Danny was feeling extra fidgety that night. Jackie Houston and Cindy Kemp had parked in the lot earlier in the afternoon before doing some shopping. They had also been Seniors in high school when Danny was a Sophomore. They had poked fun of him as well. They called him retard and Fish-face due to his wide ocular countenance. Bitches, both of them. As they were driving out of the lot, Cindy recognized Danny and instantly made a production worthy of Meredith Willson out of it, pointing and shrieking for Jackie to get a looksee. Danny heard both girls mocking his badge (So long Ossifer Fish-face!) as they turned the corner onto Prairie Avenue. His insides were left smoldering, hot coals on a summer barbecue.

For his entire young life Danny had always either been coddled or teased; shielded or poked fun. The doctors said he had a learning disability and subtle slowness of mind. That’s actually what he heard them say to his mother. A slowness of the mind.

Scumbag doctors.

12:59 am. Danny was texting one of his friends about selling him a used guitar amp when a car pulled up to the booth with the window rolled down. A young woman Danny didn’t recognize told him there was a van up on the top level and that she and her friends (there was a clean-cut young man driving the Sonata and another couple in the back seat) thought they could hear yelling and screaming coming from inside the van.

Sometimes the kids coming out late from the movies would talk trash, crack cruel jokes, or be ass-pains in general towards Danny, but he didn’t get that feeling from this woman. There was genuine concern in her voice. None of the other passengers were holding back laughter. Danny told them he would check it out, doing his best to sound confident and in command of the situation (that’s how his daddy always taught him to be even if it ignited giggles from others). The Sonata left, leaving Danny alone once again.

He checked through the CCTV monitors, looking for the one covering the roof level. There were a few cars up there, mostly left by travelers. In the wide-angle view he could see one of those large, windowless vans (what scumbags like Adam and Shawn always referred to as a Rape Van) in the far dark corner of the lot. It appeared to be double parked.

On-site security of the parking structure didn’t carry guns (that would change within two weeks of the incident) so Danny took the elevator up to the top level, the 6th Floor, armed with just his radio and his iron nerves. When the elevator doors opened, Danny could see the van straight ahead on the far side of the lot. Most of the lot was deserted with just a handful of cars parked near the elevator. The van sat parked near one of the two shoebox LED fixtures that provided light for the top level. The light on the far side of the lot was burnt out. Danny cursed under his breath. The service ticket to have that light repaired was already three-days overdue.

Danny made a call on his walkie-talkie to Silva Security headquarters letting them know what was happening. If anything went down he could call for the police and the Franklin County Sheriff’s Department would have a squad car over in five minutes. Danny had been working at the parking lot for four months and had only called the police three times: once for two guys fighting after one rear ended the other, and twice to get rid of drunk vagrants who insisted on using the stairwells as toilets.

Danny’s black work shoes clicked like a Grandfather Clock as he made his way across the pavement. He took in deep, even breaths. This was his calling, his mission in life. To help others. To disrupt evil. If he proved himself in this job he would be a cinch for the police department. A real honest-to-Dickens officer. The big show! Then those scumbags from high school would really be impressed. They wouldn’t be laughing then.

Danny slowly approached the van listening intently for screams or voices. The only sounds he heard were the dull rumble of the planes descending at the airport three miles to the north. The van was a charcoal gray and appeared to be a hundred years old. It was beat up, wheels rusted. The front passenger window (the only window on the passenger side) had a lightning-bolt crack down the middle like a sheet of broken ice.

Danny’s throat suddenly went too dry to swallow. He felt the initial tremors of a deep-seated fear begin worming its way up the back of his neck like a dead baby’s fingers. He looked through the cracked window and knocked tentatively on the side door. (Be brave, son.) He got no response so he walked around the back of the van and towards the driver’s side, the side bathing in shadows. He knocked again and again received no response.

He was about to return to the first level booth when something he saw through the windshield caught his eye. It appeared to be a woman’s white shoe. There was a crimson smear across the side. Danny’s pulse accelerated. He could see the lower portion of a jean-covered leg, but that was all before the broad front seats obscured the view.

Danny ran back around to the other side of the van, his heart in his mouth. He wanted to run back to the booth and call for help, let the cops deal with this, but something inside made him stop. (You can do this, Danny. She’s hurt. Time is of the essence. She needs your help!) He gripped his ring of keys to use as a weapon if needed, the longest key sticking out between his fingers like an eagle’s talon. He walked back towards the van and tugged on the sliding door handle. The door opened and rolled back loudly along the body of the van sounding like a pile of sheet metal being trampled over by warhorses.

What Danny found inside made him instantly turn and vomit against the concrete wall that ran along the edge of the top level. Strewn across the floor of the van was the body of Adriana Navas, a nineteen year old undocumented house cleaner who had been living in the US with some of her distant cousins.

Her jeans and panties had been tugged down to her knees. She wore a pink t-shirt soaked with blood from multiple stab wounds inflicted through her ribs and upper stomach. Shreds of intestine and kidneys were strewn about the van floor. Her tongue had also been cut out; her chin and neck were coated in rich vermillion (Was she actually smiling?). Her dull eyes were half-closed and appeared to be staring right at Danny.

He heard the stairwell door squeak near the elevators and Danny nearly jumped out of his uniform. His mind went spiraling like a runaway tilt-a-whirl but he did his best to remember his training. He took note of the time (1:06 am) and reminded himself to check the CCTV footage when he returned to his booth. His hands were numb with cold. His knees nearly buckled. He could smell his own vomit-drenched breath and it nearly caused him to collapse.

The police investigation discovered that the van was registered to a man called William Gibson of Sedansville, Ohio. Gibson had reported the van stolen from his house five days earlier. Security camera footage of the garage taken after 1:06am showed a wiry white man of moderate height taking the stairs down to the first floor and running out the south entrance of the structure onto Almond Avenue.

Several weeks later, Tracy Dallard was picked up for public intoxication outside a bar frequented by Ohio State University students (several with fake IDs). Due to his history of repeated arrests throughout Ohio and West Virginia, a DNA sample was taken and cross-referenced with a host of national databases in hopes of finding possible matches with other unsolved cases. The police didn’t have far to travel when they found their first hit. DNA samples taken from semen found in the van with Adriana Navas matched those of Dallard. The CCTV footage of Dallard making a getaway was simply icing on the cake.

When asked by the prosecuting attorney why he felt compelled to rip out Adriana’s tongue (a feat he completed with his bare hand), Dallard shrugged and told the court that he was tired of her screaming.

Danny Renee had quit his job as a security guard the following day.

Christopher Burgess was both the largest and the slowest of the four escapees. Neither Dallard nor Kampman wanted him along, but the cerebral core of the escape operation, Ian Mannish, wouldn’t have it any other way. Ian and Christopher had grown quite close during their five years together in Greenview. Burgess was nearly 6’6” and tipped the scales at just over two hundred and seventy-eight pounds. He was colossal in stature but small of mind. Not stupid, just apathetic. A massive upright walking bovine of a creature. He spoke few words, and he kept his dark hair cut high and tight like a Marine.

He had been sent to prison at the ripe old age of twenty-two. One year prior he had made a phone call to the Tucker County Police claiming to have witnessed four short men with big eyes and wide mouths murdering his parents. When the police arrived at the Burgess household they found big-boned Christopher looking calm, even indifferent, sitting outside on a tire-swing hanging from the old Magnolia tree in their front yard. It was a swing he and his father had hung up together fifteen years earlier. They had roped it up with extra thick hemp so it hung horizontal to the ground giving Christopher better support of his dense girth (even at seven years of age he already weighed an improbable on hundred thirty pounds). He may have even been reflecting on that long-ago day while the police entered the house, finding Mister and Misses Burgess splayed out on the living room floor like tossed puppets, both of their heads blown to hamburger by John Burgess’s 12 gauge Parker shotgun he liked to use for hunting.

Burgess explained to Ian one day at lunch, almost two years after his conviction, that several small creatures in the woods had been visiting Christopher on a near daily basis, telling the young man he had to help his parents.

“Help them how?” Ian asked his big friend between bites of bland green beans and dry cornbread.

“Help ‘em get to heaven,” Burgess had said matter-of-factly. “They told me to help my parents get to heaven. If I really loved them, I’d help ‘em get to heaven. So I did.”

“Who are they? These people you see?”

“I dunno. They just show up from time to time. But they scare me. I have to do what they say.”

Since that day, Ian had been sure to keep a close eye on Burgess around the prison yard. His size and solemn demeanor meant he was a good ally to keep on your side. His detachment from reality and unpredictable nature meant he was a dangerous predator to let out of your sight.

Ian Mannish had been born a child of privilege. His father Thomas managed one of the local oil refineries and his mother Jolene was a country and western singer. She had released half a dozen songs prior to Ian’s birth, even performing as opening act for the Oak Ridge Boys when they passed through Huntington on their 1977 Y’all Come Back Saloon Tour (actually she was the opener for the opener).

None of her songs ever reached Top 40, but that didn’t seem to matter to her friends in the small town of Covington. Everyone there still thought of her as a celebrity and enjoyed the fact she and her husband had remained in the cozy little town when they could have easily moved on to greener pastures. She hung up her mic for good when their first baby was born. They named him John Michael. A year later came the girl named Apollonia. Two years after that, another boy they named Ian Travis Mannish.

Psyche evaluations are held regularly at Greenview due primarily to the large number of violent offenders the maximum security prison contains.

Maximum security, Larry Morgan would think. What a joke.

At this very moment the very practical Larry Morgan is probably still writing requisition letters for additional funding, resources, and anything else he can get the Governor to help him with. Psyche evaluations are relatively cheap and they act as a great bulwark against negative media stories staking claims about too many criminals, not enough reform, and the South’s growing prison-industrial complex.

When activists setup their banners and marches outside the Governor’s mansion on Bristol Street, Wilshere and Morgan can look directly at the rolling news cameras and say they’re doing all they can. In addition to carefully examining the state’s public services budget line-by-line, expert psychologists are meeting with every single inmate within Greenview’s walls searching for those common elements that could help them detect and reach out to other poor souls before they commit similar acts of heinous mayhem.

It was all great theater.

The psyche evals continued. Sometimes they were requested by various defense attorneys looking for medical support of an insanity-plea. Some evaluations were conducted by graduate students from either Marshall or West Virginia University’s Forensic Psychology and Criminal Justice Departments. Some were conducted by professionals simply to make the numbers, but the reality was that little information gleaned from the questionnaires and the interviews could be used to predict violent crimes before they happened. Such lines of piffle were nothing more than sweet-smelling peyote used to disarm the tension occasionally fueled by prison protestors. West Virginia had abolished the death penalty forty years earlier, for God’s sake. What else do these people want?

Many of these evaluations tended to form common and familiar pictures for the psychologist. Christopher Burgess was socially awkward; an introvert who had spent most of his free time with his parents in their small rural crackerbox house. He also admitted to being diddled by his kindergarten teacher when he was five. When she heard this, one psychologist immediately tried to draw tenuous lines between Burgess at five and Burgess at twenty. Other signs of depression and anti-social tendencies were more obvious. He often experienced hallucinations, psychosis, and described strange little fantasies. He claimed he often saw tiny bouncing men with no arms whispering at him from the dark corners of his room. He claimed that loud static noises like wrapping paper being wadded up would fill his ears until he would nearly cry with pain.

Similar profiles appeared for Dallard and Kampman (save for the bouncing men and crackling noises). They could be manic one moment, depressed the next. They were calculating and highly intelligent but had lacked any positive structure during adolescents. There had been nothing for them to pour their hyper-kinetic energies into when they were younger, and unlike Burgess they weren’t very close to their parents.

Ian Mannish was the exception to these common patterns. His profile revealed no evidence of poor or underserved upbringing. His parents were supportive and loving. His relationships with his siblings had appeared normal and healthy according to other family members and friends. Ian was doing well in school and appeared completely well-adjusted to all who knew him. There were no shady or sinister characters in his past. No diddling teachers, no religious wacko mothers, no being chained in the basement with rats running over his face. Ian appeared completely normal. A bit glib at times, maybe even too charming, but nothing to make an arm-chair psychologist stand up and point “A-ha!”

And that’s what made his crime all the more horrific.

The family made a yearly summer sabbatical to a time-share cabin deep in the woods along the Blue Ridge Mountains of Virginia. They had made the trip seven years on the trot, always a couple weeks prior to the start of school for the children. In early August of 1992, the Mannish family made the four and half hour drive from Huntington, across the state line into Virginia, and into the Jefferson National Forest. The whole troop was on hand, Thomas driving the Jeep Grand Cherokee with Jolene navigating; twelve-year-old John Michael in the rear seat with eleven-year-old Apollonia (called Apples for short) and nine-year-old Ian in the middle seat.

Ian’s Aunt Lizzie would later pine to interviewers about how much Apples cared for her younger brother. She always believed Apples would have made a wonderful mother herself.

The cabin was a two-story rustic palace complete with a sleeper sofa, two TVs, a fireplace, a large kitchen, a gas grill on the patio, and even a game room with a foosball table. There were two bedrooms, a master and a second with two sets of full size log bunk beds used by the kids with one mattress to spare. Both bedrooms were upstairs. The downstairs den was decorated like a ski lodge with dark brown wood paneling and paintings of Blue Ridge vistas hanging from the walls.

Outside in the driveway were two green four-wheelers, gently used. Plastic red fuel canisters sat near the small toolshed. There were three other families that participated in the time share. Two of them were older couples who never used the four wheelers. The other family had two young girls who had no interest in them. The only riders the previous two years had been John Michael and Thomas. This year Thomas was thinking that Ian might finally be old enough to ride along on his own.

Ian had been to the cabin with his family every summer since he was three. Friends and family members interviewed after the incident claimed to never have heard of any problems or causes for concern coming out of any of those previous visits. Why this one went so terribly awry is still anyone’s guess. Twenty-two years, four foster homes, two juvenile halls, and one maximum security prison later, paid professionals, walls sagging with framed degrees, are still trying to figure it out.

Based on multiple interviews with Ian over the ensuing years as well as better-than-average fire investigation forensics work by the Virginia State Police, the best formed timeline of events follows something like this:

Sometime between midnight and 2 am on the night of Tuesday, August 4th, while the rest of the family slept comfortably to the muffled drone of chirping crickets, little Ian crept out of his lower bunk wearing nothing but Ninja Turtle briefs and a t-shirt. He went downstairs, walked out to the tool shed, and brought one of the fuel canisters back inside the house.

At this point the various retellings by Ian seem to conflict. When asked by Officer Chuck Perero, one of the first responders to the blaze, to lay out how he ended up the only family member outside, Ian said he had been looking for cookies and had accidentally locked himself out in the dark. He claimed he had finished the bag of Toll House peanut butter chips in the kitchen and he was walking outside to see if another package had been left on the patio where the grill was located. When he found himself locked outside he ran to a neighbor’s cabin to get help. When he came back, the place was engulfed in flames.

At that point Ian was still claiming innocence of the event. When questioned by Detective Lawson Hill a couple days later, after Ian finally admitted to igniting the blaze, his revised story made no such mention of either cookies or accidentally locking himself outside. This isn’t surprising since once he admitted to the crime, his flimsy cookie alibi no longer held. Recently, however, more than twenty years after the fact, Ian once again went on record in an interview with West Virginia Law Professor Dr. Peter Leach. This time he claimed again that he had locked himself outside while looking for snacks. What was supposed to be just a simple prank on his older brother had instead turned into a shocking tragedy.

Once returning from outside with the gas tank, Ian went upstairs and doused the lime green cut-pile carpet around the bunks as well as the master bedroom and down the narrow stairway. He walked to the back door, leaving the fuel can tipped over on the floor, struck a match from a booklet his father had picked up at Bobby Mackey’s Music World honky-tonk a few days earlier, and flicked it towards the stairs. The flames erupted in a raging ball of fury, climbing the steps in a heartbeat, licking their way into the bedrooms like dragon’s breath, and sending the temperature of the cabin interior soaring to nearly a thousand degrees within seconds. Ian watched the light show in his underwear outside by the tool shed as if watching a bad cable movie. An empty package of Toll House cookies lay by his feet.

It didn’t take long for investigators to determine the cause of the fire, regardless of what ignorance and denials young Ian initially threw at them. They recovered the scorched fuel canister and they identified the flowery pattern of gasoline burn marks along the flooring. The marks were seared into the blackened planks below the melted carpet and padding, looking like sidewalk chalk drawings of dark clouds.

The stairwell had burned to a crisp. The hand rail was gone. Only a few blackened balusters remained, looking like series of crusty charred stalagmites. The interior of the cabin was a disaster, ripped to pieces in a way that only a raging flame can do it. The wood paneling was turned to ash. Sofas looked like the smoldering husks of dead buffalo. The walls were black and crumbling. Smoke drifted out slowly for miles, carrying tiny burnt flakes of the Mannish family along with it.

The flames raged for nearly two hours before the fire department finally arrived. They were called more than an hour after the fire began by Sgt. Don Jenkins (ret), the owner of a neighboring cabin nearly two miles away. As he had several nights previous, Donnie had awoken that night with a dull ache in his kidneys. When the seventy year old stumbled to the bathroom to relieve himself he noticed a warm glow rising above the tree tops over the hill. Warmer than he could imagine.

The bodies of Thomas and Jolene were found in the kids’ bedroom. They were all hovered together near a small window with the glass smashed. The scalded and bleeding body of Apples was found on the ground outside the house. In an act of heartbreaking desperation, her dying parents had pushed their daughter out the second story window in search of salvation.

Already suffering gruesome 3rd degree burns over most of her body, her lungs filled with smoke, Apples landed awkwardly on the gravel driveway shattering her fragile right femur. That’s where she was found three hours later when the fire department arrived. Her hair had been singed off, replaced with ballooning red and black burn marks. She had bled from a gruesome host of lacerations gained from being pushed through the shattered window.

The bottom half of the bedroom windows opened by sliding up. The upper half always remained covered making it difficult for anyone larger than a small child to slide out. Possibly thinking of his own impending escape or possibly from a fit of panic, Thomas had thrown Ian’s portable tape player through the glass, smashing the window in an attempt to create more space. Apples was then sent out, her burning flesh being snagged on cracked remnants along the way. The autopsy reports showed she had died only an hour before the fire department arrived. Whether or not Ian knew of his older sister lying on the gravel remains unknown. He has never admitted as such in any interview.

Ian Mannish had been raised with no obvious physical or psychological deficiencies that may have given warning to his participation in such a ruthless and disturbing turn. While being held in the children’s psyche ward in Clover Creek, West Virginia, he was profiled multiple times by an array of specialists, some of whom flew in from as far as St. Louis just to meet and study this boy who had made the national news. The boy who set his family on fire.

Ian’s interviews were standard and polite in demeanor if not completely upbeat. Dr. Howard Wilkes from Louisville claimed the boy was normal in every aspect of the questioning save for one part. Whenever the young Ian was asked about his home life prior to The Event (as many of the interviewers had come to refer to it) he was consistent with his answer: happy and enjoyable. Asked if he loved his parents, he answered in the affirmative. Asked if he loved his older brother and sister, again he’d always answer yes. Without hesitation. Asked if he was angry at his family for any reason he’d answer no. Asked if he missed his family he’d say yes. But when asked directly why he did it, the only reason he’d give was startling.

“Because I was curious what would happen.”

After months of interviews, EKG readings, questionnaires, and intensive profiling completed by more than a dozen specialists, the consensus was that Ian was a unique case among the unique cases of pre-teen mass killers. There was nothing in his background that showed a tendency to anti-social or violent behavior. Nothing where the experts could cleanly file him away as such-and-such psychopathy case #XX-X.

Instead, the verdict was that there was an unfortunate missing connector somewhere in his brain. It’s bound to happen from time to time. There are 7 billion people on earth with billions more quickly on the way. A million people could be born this way it would still just be a cosmic rounding error. A strange, unexplainable mutation of biology. A misstep of evolution. A young, innocent child who suddenly finds no disgust or horror in the act of burning their own family to death. A child who, the next day, would be excited about getting ice cream and would be too scared to sleep without a night light on that first evening alone in the children’s hospital. A random mutation. A Satanic X-man. Sometimes it happens.

* * *

The sun would soon be setting beyond the high hills and thick trees of Eastern Kentucky. It was simmering down from a blinding yellow to a muted orange. The late summer humidity would hold on to the day’s heat well into the night. Winged grasshoppers, fat with juice, could be seen gliding along the ground ahead of the boys’ shoes, traveling in elongated parabolas. The weeds had grown thick along the hills. The small town of Grayson, population 4200, lay in a shallow valley about twenty miles west, but otherwise the four boys were alone in their element, marching through untamed wilderness like their pioneering forefathers had done six generations earlier.

The march was led by two brothers. At sixteen, Nick Pelphrey was the eldest of the group. His brother Alex was two years his junior. They lived in mobile home nestled neatly on a hillside along the Ohio River, the natural boundary between Kentucky and West Virginia. Packing up sacks of food and sleeping bags and roaming through the backwoods beyond their home without adult supervision was one of their favorite past times. Their father Dave Pelphrey was a truck driver for A&R Transport and usually spent five or six days a week out on the road. Their mother Louisa worked as a bookkeeper at the refinery.

Their cousin Scotty Brewer lived with his folks Larry and Margaret and his younger sister Cindy just a few miles further up the river. Their home wasn’t far from the same coal and oil refinery where Louisa Pelphrey worked. The refinery was responsible for most of the better paying jobs available in the area. Scotty had just turned ten a couple months earlier, but he was a seasoned vet at camping out with his two older cousins. His first trip with them had been when he was five with both Larry and Dave leading the boys, teaching them how to build a campfire, cook food, tend to wounds, and listen for wild animals (being sure to avoid the migrating black bears that passed between Kentucky and West Virginia on a regular basis each summer).

James Ferguson was the only camper on this latest excursion who wasn’t born and raised in the sticks. His father Ronald Ferguson had married Dave Pelphrey’s younger sister Amanda three years after meeting her in a Freshman Sociology class at George Washington University. After graduation, Amanda moved east with Ronald to Philadelphia where Ronald’s family lived. From then on she would only make the occasional trip back home for the big holidays: Christmas, Thanksgiving, and Easter. Each time she showed up her mother noticed her daughter’s hair had grown a little bit longer and her accent had been covered up a little bit more.

“Ow! Shit!” Scotty stopped walking and bent down to look at his leg. He had followed Alex and Nick Pelphrey through a prickly set of gooseberry briars and one had punctured his bare legs just above the sock line. Alex, feeling responsible for the group’s well-being, stopped and walked back to check on Scotty.

“Told you to wear pants,” he said when he saw the blood accumulating into a large round drop on Scotty’s lower shin then seeping down into his tattered white sock. “You want a Band-Aid?”

Scotty wiped the blood off his leg and looked at his hand, smelling the copper-scented stain. “No. I’m okay.”

“Hey guys! Looky here!” Nick was another twenty yards ahead of the others. He had paused on his march, oblivious of Scotty’s brush with briars. “Watch your step,” he said as the others caught up. What he had found was a deep trench in the ground that ran along the length of the brae. It dipped nearly straight down about five feet before angling sharply and rising back up to the hillside surface. The gulch was like an abandoned booby trap, possibly left behind by Confederate soldiers building defensive earthworks, now withered with weeds and decorated with trash. A forgotten tribute to the state’s fighting history.

Having gone to seed, the grass grew tall and inviting like green wheat (what the local kids referred to as Witch Grass), but at the trough of the trench was a base of sharp rocks and a few empty RC cans left by previous explorers, most of whom were probably teenagers smoking dope or getting laid.

The boys climbed down amongst the sweet-smelling grass and clovers, balancing themselves on the rocks before climbing up on the other side. Spindly green katydids vaulted out ahead of them as they went. Down in the gulch, where the stagnant heat felt at least ten degrees higher than on the surface, the grass stretched up to eleven-year-old James Ferguson’s waist. The swaying puffs of seed tickled his wrists, making them itch. There was a shudder in the weeds near his feet. A second later he saw a small gray rabbit bolt out from the trench heading for the trees behind them.

James was still thankful for heeding Alex’s advice and wearing pants. Granted they were designer jeans picked out by his mother and much too nice to be used for camping, but they kept his legs protected from cockleburs, skeeters, and snakes.

Coming out on the other side of the trench, Nick zeroed in on a wild blackberry bush sagging with fat berries the size of ping pong balls. Nick was smiling as the others caught up, his teeth already stained with dark juice.

“Black berries. The dark ones are good. The lighter ones are sour as hell.”

“I wouldn’t be eating those if I were you, Nick,” said Alex. “Those are Mister Gillum’s berries.”

Nick stopped chewing. A look of confusion clouded his face. “But Mister Gillum’s dead.”

“Who’s Mister Gillum?” asked James. He was tempted to pick a couple berries, but he wanted to hear about this mysterious dead owner first.

“He’s the old shit that used to live down that valley there.” Alex pointed towards a lonely fold that ran between two hilltops, the one the boys were climbing and a taller hill rolling in the distance. James took a few steps along the hillside until he could get a good look down into the valley. He saw a clump of elm trees surrounding a rusty fence gate. Beyond the gate was a thick entanglement of trees with leafy branches hanging over what looked like an abandoned shack. It was a small wood paneled structure with black shingles. Blade-like weeds had sprung up along the base of the house and green creepers were slowly encompassing the front door. The tiny windows were empty dark squares like the eyes of homemade Raggedy Ann. It looked as if it hadn’t hosted a living human in decades.

“But he’s dead, Alex,” said Nick once again.

“Yeah, but his ghost still haunts these woods. And he damn sure hates kids,” Alex said.

“Dad says if Gillum’s ghost finds you trespassin’ on his land he’ll shoot you with his old Franchi shotgun,” said Scotty, his eyes transfixed on the abandoned house. “You think that’s true?”

“Really? A shotgun?” James was easily startled by many of the outlandish descriptions his rural cousins offered up about the local color. His clear blue eyes spoke of manicured suburbia, clean schools, and 24-hour police protection. His cousins were from a world far from that.

“Maybe. I heard if he catches you trespassin’ he’ll drag you inside that old shack of his and chop your dick off,” said Alex. “That’s what Mitchell Amos told me.”

“Sounds possible,” Nick said. “Chop off your dick and feed it to his roosters.”

“Feed your cock to his cocks!” Scotty smiled like he won a prize, waiting for the others to appreciate his pun.

“But he’s dead?” asked James.

“Yeah. Widow Reeves told our mom about it. She’s probably his closest neighbor. She lives by herself on Catnip Hill about a mile that way.” Alex pointed due north. “She usually didn’t care to bother ol’ Gillum, but she needed to borrow some butter for those oatmeal cookies she always makes. She walked all the way out here and knocked on the door but no one answered. His screen door was closed but the main door was open. She could smell something foul and nasty wafting out from the house. Something terrible but familiar that made her heart race.”

“A sausage fart.” Scotty began giggling.

“Shut up, Scotty!” said Nick. Scotty instantly hushed.

Alex continued, “Misses Reeves went inside and called the old man’s name. Still no reply. She followed the putrid scent until she found the kitchen. There at his old wooden table was Mister Gillum. His wrinkled face was collapsed in a bowl of Cheerios. Flies had gathered around the curdled milk, buzzing in and out of the old prick’s hairy ears. He had been dead for three days.”

“Just like Jesus,” said Scotty.

“Dead of a heart attack,” said Alex.

James’s lips had gone dry. “Is that true? Are we on his land now?”

Alex looked around. “Well, yeah. These are his berries. Guess we better get goin’, huh? Definitely don’t wanna be around here after dark.” He glanced at his younger brother and winked as he turned and pushed further up the hill.

The boys chose a spot that Alex and Nick knew well. Not far from Reynold’s Creek, along a low hilltop, was a flat field that stretched out from the trees with short, beaten down grass. Down the hillside behind them, past the trees, was a large moss-covered pond that sat as still as a corpse, rippling only when the random water bug happened to land on it.

Alex brought a lighter and they all pitched in to gather kindling for the fire and stones for the boundary. Each cousin brought something for the cause. Scotty had hot dogs. Nick brought marshmallows and chocolate. Alex swiped a half-empty bottle of Southern Comfort from their grandmother’s kitchen (hidden in the high cabinet, behind the Morton can). James brought a small lemon cake baked by his mother just that morning. It had always been Ron Ferguson’s favorite. One of the many things Ronald loved about Amanda was her gifted skills in the kitchen. That lemon Bundt cake with the sugar drizzle was famous for miles around.

The boys roasted hot dogs on sticks before putting them on buns and lathering them with French’s mustard. Charred marshmallows and lemon cake made a dessert fit for a despot.

“James. For you.” Alex handed James a plastic cup filled with two thumbs worth of whiskey. He knew his mom would be upset if she discovered he was out in the woods getting drunk with his cousins, but how often do eleven-year-old boys choose the guidance of their distant parent over the goading pressure of peers sitting right next to them? Especially when those peers are family.

James sniffed the contents of the cup and the muscles in the back of his throat quivered. The tender insides of his nose burned. He never had a sip of alcohol in his life short of the time his father allowed him a taste of red wine. James let the whiskey flow past his lips. He scowled at the caustic warmth. It was sweet and bitter at the same time and made his eyes water. It made his tongue feel like it had touched a car battery.

“Delicious, ain’t it?” asked Alex, a smiled stretched across his face like a carnival barker.

“Yeah…” James cleared his throat and took another baby sip, lifting the cup up higher with a flourish to give the impression of a deep drink. The second bite was more tolerable but he still wondered how anyone could enjoy this stuff.

* * *

In the last fading light of day, as the orange cream-sickle sky melted into dark steel, four shapes made their way through the trees, roaming quickly, nervously, as far from their previous station of containment as their adrenaline-fueled legs would carry them.

“We should be there by now,” said Tracy Dallard. “I thought you said just a couple more miles? Been at least ten more now.”

“I said we’re close.” Ian was beginning to lose patience with his travel partners. “Shuttup and keep moving.”

Ian had been told of a tiny cabin deep in the woods not far from the prison, less than half a day’s hike by his unseasoned calculations. The cabin was owned by one of Dennis Kampman’s uncles. That was the sole reason Dennis had been allowed into the escape plan. Ian wanted to keep the group to as few members as possible. After Tracy Dallard first approached him with the inspiration to escape across the malfunctioning electric fences along the southern side of Greenview, Ian began working out what they would do next.

Lots of people escape prison, relatively speaking. Very few figure out what to do afterwards. Eight years earlier in northern Ohio, three young punks escaped a medium security prison, but were all found within twenty-four hours. One of those escapees had been found hiding in a church cellar less than three hundred yards from the penitentiary. Ian refused to wind up as such a pitiful case.

Ian looked over at the lone black man in the group. “What do you think, Dennis? Are we close?”

“I dunno. To be honest, I think we been through this way before.” Dennis wiped his face with his dark shirt tail and pointed at a dead tree. “I’ve seen that split tree there before, I’m pretty sure.”

“We’re going in circles, I knew it,” Dallard said.

“You’re crazy,” said Ian. “It all looks the same. We’re not going in circles.”

“It’s been two days, Ian! It was only supposed to be one!”

“Then you lead us, Tracy. Go ahead. Point out the way. I will humbly defer.” Ian performed a mock bow and stood waiting, his face the stoic scowl of Gideon.

Tracy looked around, suddenly not sure what to do. “Now, that’s not what I’m sayin’. Dennis, he’s your uncle, dammit. Don’t you know where this cabin is?”

“I just have an idea, is all.” Dennis looked around the woods as if expecting the trees to begin moving. “I ain’t actually been there. I just heard about it.”

“Oh, that’s great.”

Dennis had given Ian a seemingly detailed description of where the cabin was located one day at lunch in the Greenview cafeteria. “West four miles to Reynold’s Creek and then veer slightly south. Then less than two miles straight ahead. Just keep the North Star on your right and head west.”

It all seemed so simple, but Dennis was only guessing. All he knew for sure is he once had an uncle who possibly stayed in a cabin somewhere in the West Virginia woods some twenty years earlier. At least that’s what he half-remembered his old man mentioning long ago when Dennis was just a boy. The fact was he had no exact idea where the cabin was, or if it even still existed, but he wasn’t about to admit to that now.

They continued wandering, following Ian’s lead (headed west with the North Star on their right shoulder), but moving at a slower pace than the previous day. They kept their ears open for helicopters or chasing dogs. A chopper had flown over the previous night with a second one circling over not long after. Both helicopters shot down spotlights like a beam ray from a UFO, but trying to pick out four runaways in a million acres of unbridled Appalachia is a near impossible task. Ian had the forethought to grab several sets of dark blue guard uniforms from the laundry facility at Greenview. They ditched their bright orange prison unis for the navy shirts and slacks soon after their initial burst from the fences.

The band made their escape in the late afternoon during a change of shifts while one group of inmates was having rec time in the yard. Tracy had earmarked one stretch of Larry Morgan’s beautiful electric fence one day when he noticed that a small rabbit had been able to jump through both layers of metal links. That only happened when the charge was down. For whatever reason, be it rusting or circuitry, that length of fence had lost its charge, or at least enough of it to allow normal contact.

Ian and Tracy argued over specifics of their scheme for weeks. Ian wanted to make their escape during daylight hours, preferably their outdoor exercise time. Tracy wanted to go at night, but four inmates escaping after dark was nearly impossible with routine bed checks. Tracy hoped it would only be him and Ian. Then Ian agreed to let Dennis come along (it was only fair since it was sort of his cabin) and then inexplicably insisted on bringing the mammoth Christopher. Ian claimed it was because Christopher could be used for muscle if needed. Tracy figured it was because Ian had developed a soft spot for the quiet man-mountain. It was a regular party. All that was missing was the tapped keg.

Fortune smiled brightly on the squad that Thursday afternoon. While most of the prison population rotated through their outdoor rec time, the party of four remained inside helping the older inmates with odd jobs. Ian and Christopher collected laundry while Dennis and Tracy helped scrub the cafeteria tables. Once finished they were expected to reconvene outside with the others. They garnered little attention from the staff as they slinked off casually to their changeover checkpoints. Instead of heading through the security doors to the exercise yard, Tracy and Dennis met separately at the laundry room.

The Greenview laundry room had originally been constructed as an extension to the main building in 1943. In addition to its high ceilings, enormous machines, and gray walls made of reinforced cement blocks, the cavern of a room also contained a loading dock. Trucks showed up once a week bringing uniforms (for both guards and prisoners) from other prisons in the West Virginia system, smaller prisons that weren’t as well equipped in the cleaning department as Greenview.

These clothes would be laundered, pressed, and shipped back to the outlying locations. Thirty years later the room was refurbished with new industrial washing machines made by GE. Ten years after that the loading dock was updated with a cutting edge security system. Cutting edge at the time, but had since slowly broken down just like other parts of the prison perimeter. The laundry room had been identified as a point of weakness by teams of security auditors once in 1989 and again in 2001. Fortunately for Ian, funds for the dock’s updating never seemed to be available.

There were two prison workers in the laundry room when Ian and Christopher arrived. Greg Perry was a twenty-six year veteran of the penal system and had held nearly every job in that time from carpenter to painter to laundry maestro. Elliot Spencer was twenty-six years old and had just started working at the prison the previous week.

Having done his homework and knowing exactly where the blind spots were in the sweating laundry room, Ian led Christopher into a corner where they penned old Greg Perry behind a rolling rack of overalls with the intention of tying him up and locking him in the broom closet. In a sudden spasm of rage that Ian hadn’t anticipated, Christopher picked up Greg and slammed him hard against the cement wall. Ian watched amazed as the giant man shook his head in sharp jerks as if trying to dislodge a loose pebble. He did this while slamming Greg repeatedly against the painted cinder blocks until the back of the old man’s skull cracked open like an egg. Blood ran down the gray walls in rivulets. Ian made out Greg Perry’s last grumblings as something along the lines of “Burgess, you fat son of a bitch!”

Before Elliot Spencer could intervene, Tracy ran into the room and jumped the younger man from behind. Tracy took Greg’s gun and shot Elliot in the side of the head, blowing his brains across the cement floor. He threw the gun into one of the washing machines while Dennis lifted the aluminum door of the loading dock. Ian grabbed their change of clothes from the guards’ rack. He was pissed at the mess Tracy had left behind but it was too late to argue about it now.

Each man had been wearing the general issued attire used throughout the West Virginia Division of Corrections: oversized bright orange shirts made of twill with wide collars and short sleeves (oversized for everyone except Christopher). They had matching pants with button flies and elastic waistbands save for Dennis who had happened to be wearing his orange shorts that day. Black canvas slip-ons covered their socked feet. Ian had everyone quickly change into dark pants and blue shirts before exiting the laundry room.

The driveway winded north to the prison exit and Highway 32. Two watchtowers stood to the east of the laundry room exit (a point of major concern for the auditors). The four escapees quickly filed outside, spun west, and walked along the electric fence, zeroing in on the weak spot. With so many prisoners still engaged in outdoor exercise on the far side of the prison, Ian wagered they could make quite a bit of distance before they were found missing (provided no janitor happened to wander by the laundry room and see two dead guards lying on the floor).

Ian had Christopher touch the fence first. The big man, still jerking his head to free himself of scalding visions of jumping midgets, grabbed the metal links and climbed. He labored to get over; his heavy weight nearly crumpled the chain link fence. Tracy threw a floor mat over the barb wire. Christopher grunted and strained as he lifted his legs over. Tracy was afraid this would happen. The big fat bastard would tear down the fence inviting every guard this side of the Potomac to take shots at them. Christopher got his second leg over and he fell to the ground in a heap on the other side. The other three climbed over with surprising ease.

By sunset, they had put nearly five miles between themselves and Greenview. Ian’s plan had been to find the cabin before dawn, but as that deadline passed, they still felt no closer to their final destination than they had they day before. By the end of that second day, the real fear of being stranded in the woods began slowly creeping in around them.

Just before nightfall of the second night Ian heard the rumble of the Raven police chopper approaching again. They were out in the open so he barked at the others to make a beeline for a row of tall trees further up the hill. Each man ran as fast as they could handle, the strengthening hum of the rotary-wing aircraft pushing them as they went. Dennis passed Ian while running up the hill and attempted to run across a grass-covered trench. Instead of reaching the other side with one of his long gliding steps, he sank through the grass, his leg fully extended.

Ian heard a sickening crack followed immediately by a scream of immense agony. Ian reached the trench where Dennis had fallen in. He found him splayed out amongst the high grass like a used voodoo doll. Dennis sat up gingerly, his right leg bent out in front of him. Ian spotted the horrific wound immediately. Just above Dennis’s ankle, where the sock line ended, was a small white knot poking out from a tear of black skin and red meat.

“Oh, Jesus! Jesus! This ain’t good!” Dennis was nearly apoplectic.

Ian stepped down into the tall grass as the other two men caught up. Tracy ran by and only stopped when he caught a quick glimpse at the injury. His eyes lit up. “Holy fuck! What happened?”

“He fell in the ditch,” said Ian. “Now, let’s move him before the chopper flies over.”

“Move him?” Tracy looked back towards the skies behind them. He could see the black shape flying low from the east. It wouldn’t be long until they’d be spotted unless they moved under the trees. “We don’t have time, man! That bird’s on us!”

“Can you use your good leg to stand up?” asked Ian.

Dennis tried to get up on the weight of his left leg, but pain coursed through his nerve endings in throbbing bolts of electricity. He collapsed in the grass with an Italian widows face of anguish, tears rolled down the side of his jowly cheeks. “Son of God, that hurts! Can’t do it, boss.”

“He’ll be spotted in two seconds, Ian!” Tracy said.

“We’ll have to drag him. Chris! Gimme a hand.”

“No! You can’t drag me. You’ll tear my foot clean off. Just leave me, Ian. If they catch me, they catch me. You know I won’t snitch. You know me.”

Ian saw the copter now veering in a wide arc that would bring it overtop of them in moments. He thought quickly how to handle not only the current situation, but what problems they would be faced with soon after. His brain crunched the data and spat out the solution. He was holding a steel shank he had traded another inmate a couple chocolate bars for while in prison. He leaned over Dennis and put the jagged blade up to the wounded man’s thick neck. Dennis held up on his hands in shocked protest.

“Wait! What the fuck, man—“

He felt the cold shiv made from a garden trowel puncture his throat and rip through his windpipe like a vicious groundhog tearing through limp roots. His mouth immediately gushed with hot blood like a water balloon slashed with a box cutter. He tried to reach up and push Ian away, but his former cellmate held off Dennis’s flaying hand like a skilled mother fends off a child’s tantrum. Dennis felt his strength dissolving, his bright eyes grew sullen, his tongue lulled in his blood-filled mouth like an exhausted cow.

“Now help me move him before we’re spotted.” Ian spoke as the final gurgling gasps escaped from Dennis’s mouth.

Ian and Christopher did the heavy lifting while Tracy rearranged the grass so to look at least somewhat natural. They dragged Dennis’s body out of the trench and under a bundled canopy of dark green pines and tall larches. The copter passed over seconds later and continued along its wide arc.

The three remaining men held their collective breaths, praying intensely the helicopter would just continue along its way. Tracy couldn’t help but glance over at Dennis’s mutilated body while they waited. A lot of blood had been left behind. He hoped he had cleaned up enough to keep the searchers from noticing. The helicopter made one more lap around before finally fading away. Once it was gone, Ian led his reduced group out from under the pine trees.

“I sure hope you know where you’re goin’,” said Tracy. His forehead glistened as if it had been basted in oil.

“We don’t need Dennis,” Ian said defiantly. “I can find it without him. Keep the North Star to your right and go west. We have to find it eventually. Or at least hit a service station where we can make a phone call. This ain’t the 1700s for chrissake. Now keep moving.”

* * *

“The boy heard the clump clump clump of heavy hooves slowly climbing up the wooden stairs. ‘Who shot off my tail?’ the raspy voice said again. The boy’s blood ran cold in his veins. Too scared to run to his mom and dad’s room, he simply froze in his bed desperate not to make sound, his heart caught in his mouth like a dead fish. He heard the clump clump clump of the heavy hooves moving down the hallway approaching his bedroom door. ‘Who shot off my tail?’

“The voice was coarse and cruel and pissed off to all hell. More animal than human. The boy pulled his quilted blanket up over his head. He was so scared his chest nearly exploded. He nearly shit his Underoos. He heard the rattling of the door handle and then the opening of his bedroom door. ‘Who shot off my tail?’ The voice was as loud as ever. The boy knew the beast was in his room. He could hear it stepping across the floor. He could smell the stink of fur and rotten breath. He could hear it breathing thick and wet through its big nose. The boy tried to stay as still as a statue. He heard the beast pulling the tail off the wall, taking back the boy’s hunting trophy. He thought he heard it turn to leave … it took a step … and then—AHHH!!!”

Alex screamed abruptly scaring poor Scotty and James out of their sweaty skin. James nearly dropped his marshmallows in the fire. The two brothers laughed with delight as the younger two tried to recompose themselves.

“You alright, James?” asked Nick. He was holding a long stick over their campfire with two scalding frankfurters impaled on it (numbers 5 and 6 on the night).

James grinned with some embarrassment. “Yeah, I’m okay.”

“Yeah, Jamie don’t scare that easy,” said Alex. “You havin’ a good time, James?”

James lifted his stick of marshmallows out of the fire and blew out the baby flames smoldering on their surface. He looked around at his cousins, their warm faces glowing orange in the night looking back at him. James was indeed having fun. Easily the most fun he had the past three weeks. Even the half dozen swollen skeeter bites he’d picked up on his elbows and wrists couldn’t ruin this night.

“Yeah, this is nice. Thanks for inviting me.”

“Of course. Anytime.” Alex glanced around the group before looking back at James. “You know, we’re all real sorry about what happened with your dad. That really sucks, man. He was a great guy. But we’re here for you. Anything you need, wanna talk about. We’re here for you.”

“Yeah, man,” said Nick. “Anytime, you need to get outta that big city you let us know.”

James forced a smile holding back a tear or two. Not because he didn’t appreciate the notion from his cousins, but because those feelings of empty sadness underneath were still raw and throbbing, as fresh as open wounds. “Thanks.”

“Your dad’s the one who got me these at my last birthday.” Alex lifted up a foot showing his well-used Merrell Moab hiking boots. “I love these things.”

“He bought me that Gore-Tex jacket,” said Nick referring to a waist-length black jacket he had hanging in his closet at home. “I wear it every time it rains. Keeps me dry as cotton.”

“Remember when he’d take us over to Rankin’s for ice cream?” asked Scotty trying to contribute. He looked at James with a grin. “He’d always tell us not to tell your mom.”

James smiled, his eyes moistened with memories of his father. “Yeah, that was fun.”

The boys sat in silence, each reflecting on what they would be missing out on with James’s father out of their lives. In many ways Ron Ferguson had been one of them, a boy among boys. He had grown up a city kid in Philadelphia, but he also knew his way around the great outdoors. Summer camping trips in central Pennsylvania and weekend trips to Gettysburg and the Shenandoah Valley with his own father had instilled a love for nature deep in his psyche.

Reginald Ferguson, James’s grandfather, was from the rural Pennsylvania hamlet of Doylestown. His first job was in a Philadelphia rail yard when he was fourteen. He continued to work as a switcher on the old legacy trains in Ohio, Indiana, and Pennsylvania until after Ron’s birth. Then one rainy afternoon, nearing the end of a ten-hour shift, he slipped down between two moving cars while coupling. One leg was caught and crushed between the car’s massive bulk.

He would spend the rest of his life requiring assistance while walking, first crutches, then a cane, finally a wheelchair. James’s grandfather moved his family to a small house outside of Philadelphia, a city he learned to loathe but could never fully escape. One thing Reggie could do, however, was drive a camper, and when the notion so took him, he’d pack up his wife and three children and escape the city lights for a few nights of heaven. When he was older, Ronald Ferguson hoped to instill the same love for nature within his own son.

So Ronald met a country girl named Amanda with chestnut hair and a twangy accent during his Freshman year at George Washington University. She was a science whiz from the sticks of West Virginia trying on the big city of D.C. for size. In general, city living didn’t suit her, but she couldn’t help herself from being swept away by the cocky boy from Philly with the bright smile and playful manner. Ronald and Amanda quickly fell in love and were married right after graduation. James was their only child, but not due to a lack of trying. After giving birth, Amanda developed a blood condition that caused her to have four miscarriages within three years. She saw several doctors and tried a series of medications that promised results but had so far failed to deliver.

James was their little prince. The one destined to carry on the family name. Ronald and Amanda did their best to balance his upbringing, keeping both modern city living and an appreciation for nature delivered in fair measure. James’s cousins to the west quickly learned to look forward to the Ferguson visits. Ron often brought gifts from the city that were difficult to come by in rural West Virginia: the latest hiking shoes, outlandish fishing lures, and small RC drones developed by the engineers at McCormac and Associates Construction just to name a few.

The current hike was meant to be special. James had been on day hikes with Alex and Nick before, but had yet to camp overnight without his father being there. Amanda didn’t want James out in the woods on his own without some adult supervision. She knew how her nephews could get (Don’t let them fool you into drinkin’, James. Those boys can be rotten.). Ronald had promised James that when he turned twelve he would allow him to go alone. Unfortunately Ronald wouldn’t live to see James’s twelfth birthday.

Ronald’s job kept him moving all day. He worked for the McCormac and Associates Construction Company travelling from site to site around Philadelphia, making sure timelines were met and regulations were followed. If local crew leaders needed anything in the form of equipment, permits, or additional hands then Ron would act on their behalf to get those details squared away.

Three weeks before the camping trip, Ronald was inspecting a construction site in the Berrywood commercial district of Philadelphia. He was standing on the ground punching notes into his tablet, his mind deep into figures and process. In a momentary and ironic lapse of protocol he forgot exactly how close he was to the building that was going up behind him. Two men were carrying copper pipes along a fourth-floor scaffold when one of them, a twenty-three year construction veteran named Eli Greene, stumbled. Greene later claimed a loose bolt had caught the sole of his Carhartt boot, causing him to lose his balance. He nearly fell off the wooden plank himself before grasping out to catch the makeshift railing (basic aluminum piping reinforced with rough twine).

Instead of falling, he dropped two small gauge pipes that fell down to the ground like javelins. The first pipe landed a couple yards from Ronald causing him to look up from his tablet. The second, in a near-impossible feat of precision, shot straight through the back of Ron’s neck, snapping his spinal cord and killing him instantly.

James had been at school when the accident happened. Later, he told his mother he had felt an ice cold chill pass through his body just minutes before he was called into the principal’s office and given the tragic news. James had risen extra early that morning to share breakfast with his father, before either the sun or his mother was awake.

What was supposed to be just a pleasant bowl of Shredded Wheat and aimless conversation about the Flyers and losing one of his socks turned into a pensive argument over a poor showing in Math class and an argument with his mother the previous afternoon. James had felt ambushed by his dad. Ronald had been working long hours the previous two weeks and James’s mother had seemed to have lost every ounce of her once healthy sense of humor. She had been warning James for several days that he wasn’t putting enough time into his studies. She could see him beginning to morph into one of those mediocre kids that care little for math when they’re eleven and end up jockeying cash registers at Pieratt’s or driving forklifts around someone else’s warehouse for a living when they’re done with high school. She wasn’t about to let that happen to her own boy.

James’s pride had been hurt when he saw the C- grade on his test, and he knew his mother was going to be pissed when she saw it. He played the entire expected conversation in his mind a thousand times before he finally saw his mother that afternoon. As sure as New Year’s follow Christmas, it went exactly how he expected. He grew embarrassed and angry, demanding his mom leave him alone before slamming his bedroom door.

You won’t get any dinner, James!

I don’t care!

When he heard the news about his father he felt pure misery on two levels: one, because he had obviously lost his father, the ultimate nightmare for any young boy, two, because his last interaction with his old man had been a disgruntled argument about trying harder in school and treating his mother with respect. Ronald tried to get a hug from James before he took off to work that morning, but James was petulant. He kept his arms at his side while his father held him. James remembered the smell of his father’s aftershave and the heavy starch his mother used on his shirts when she ironed them. His father held him close but James had refused to return the hug. What a little douchebag he had been.

James would never forgive himself. He felt lost, adrift, wondering if he had hurt his dad that morning. At the time he wanted to hurt him. Now the thought made him sick. Maybe it was James he was thinking about just before he died. Maybe his father had been figuring out a new way to approach James that evening. That’s what his dad always did. If he couldn’t find common ground with James on a given topic (usually involving school performance) he would devise a different scheme to reach his only begotten. He never regurgitated the same arguments if they didn’t work. No bludgeoning of dead horses, so to speak. James loved that about his dad. And he missed him so much. Him not being around hurt like a sledgehammer to the gut.

On the camping trip he wore one of his father’s brown leather belts he purchased from Kohl’s. He kept it cinched up tight around his Levi’s. His mom helped his poke a new hole in it so it would fit better. It was his way of keeping his father alive. He had even refused to look at his dad in the casket at the funeral, hoping beyond hope that if he never actually saw his father’s corpse, that he would always remain alive someway somehow. That maybe the record of his death was a mistake. A case of mistaken identity. That his real father was still out there somewhere, lost but alive.

Night after night, while his mother sat in her room alone, sobbing, warming her throat with red wine, her mind drowning with memories, James would look at the front door from time to time. Part of him still believed his old man would climb those three concrete steps and turn the metal handle as he had without fail so many times before.

The trip west was his mother’s way of regrouping. She wanted to escape the loneliness of the city to find solace in her family, the only source of strength she had remaining. Being around her encouraging parents and supportive brothers helped with the healing process. Even the children did their part, pitching in to comfort the bereaved. That was the main reason Alex organized the current camping trip. It was a way to keep James’s mind occupied. And to have a little fun.

The boys told stories, ate too much, and passed around the bottle of SoCo (James taking little more than a single shot’s worth) until they fell asleep just past one o’clock in the morning. The relentless droning of the warm season’s cicadas was replaced with the higher pitched wheezing of black field crickets. It was a soothing, familiar sound for the other boys, but still an alien one for James. His home near the Chestnut Hill area of Philadelphia didn’t cater to woodland noises. The long hike and shot of whiskey had taken its toll, however, and eventually all four boys were asleep, their sleeping bags lined up around the shrinking campfire in the shape of a square. The stars peered down on them like ancient gods, watching from a distance, concerned, mindful of dark shadows moving through the trees towards the children.

James was dreaming of his father. In the dream he was following his dad on a hike, climbing up the same grass-covered hills he had marched up earlier that day. He then followed his dad up the side of an embankment that led into a dark forest, thick with black leaves hanging heavy and low towards the ground, a ground covered with brown grass, reeking of dead animals.

James did his best to keep pace, but each time he looked up, his father was further and further away.

“Hurry up, James!” his father would yell over his shoulder. Somehow, no matter how hard he tried, he couldn’t move his tired legs fast enough to make up the distance. He called out to his dad, but his voice sounded small and compressed, like a tiny bird chirping in a wind tunnel. He grew frantic. His father disappeared into the dark woods. James felt his eyes welling with tears. His lungs tightened with anxiety.

He woke up suddenly, the word “father” stuck in his throat like a sharp chicken bone, his eyes still wet. The campfire was still glowing warmly but his arms were freezing. His cousins were sleeping like drunks. Scotty farted once and coughed as he was apt to do while in slumber. There was a heavy pressure on James’s bladder. He stood up and walked over towards the waiting maples to relieve himself. He was zipping his jeans back up when he suddenly heard a twig snap in the darkness.

James took a step past the trees. He wondered if he might see his first deer. Did they walk around at night? Pastel moonbeams crossed his face. Another twig snapped. A shiver crawled up his spine. Suddenly coarse visions of a decomposing Mr. Gillum popped in his head. He envisioned a dead man with silver hair face-down in a bowl of breakfast cereal suddenly lifting his puckered head, curdled milk falling from his mouth in spoiled chunks (Come here, boy! Help me finish these here Cheerios!). James quickly decided to head back to the safety of the camp.

Before he could turn he felt a calloused and bony hand grip him tightly over the mouth. An arm that smelled like sweat and mothballs wrapped around his tiny neck like a python. He was pulled back behind the trees, out of the moonlight. A man with a dry, calm voice whispered in his ear. His breath smelled like a wet dog’s ass.

“Don’t make a sound, little man, or I will slit your throat right in half.”

The man dragged James away from the campsite and down towards the large standing pond that rested between the hills. The pond was dark and tranquil and covered with moss. Frogs gurgled along its perimeter. The night air engulfed James and his captor. The pale light of the moon outlined both of them in a menacing chiaroscuro.

“Now tell me, kid, how many of you good little boys are over there?” the shadow asked. “Don’t speak. Hold up fingers.”

James held up three fingers. He could feel the man turning around. He made a shushing noise like he was trying to get a dog’s attention. James noticed two other shadows moving through the trees and towards the pond, one narrow and short, the other tall and broad. When the two shadows stepped out into the moonlight James noticed the taller man wasn’t just broad, he was downright gargantuan.

In the half dozen years Christopher Burgess had been in prison, he had gained nearly forty pounds. In the thirty-two hours since their escape he had developed an astounding hunger, a hunger that even distracted him from the bouncing creatures he now saw waddling around the trees staring at him, whispering to each other.

Christopher had been the first to smell the meaty scent of roasting hot dogs wafting through the trees. Being so close to real food now, Burgess nearly lost his mind. He stepped quietly among the sleeping cousins, his size twenty-twos maneuvering with amazing finesse around the heads and hands of the boys. He spotted two Tupperware bowls on the ground. He picked one up and opened it, revealing the remainder of the lemon cake. His mouth watered like a golf course sprinkler.

Tracy Dallard shook his hand to get Burgess’s attention and pointed at the ground. He motioned for the big man to put it down. Instead Burgess grabbed the cake and pushed it into his mouth, using the heel of his enormous, filthy hand for guidance.

Dallard made a sour face.

“Hey!”

Dallard and Burgess turned to see the oldest boy sitting up, looking at them with big marbled eyes. He began scrambling to his feet when Dallard pounced on him like an alley cat, grappling Alex to the ground, holding him from behind and pressing a rusty seven-inch line of barb-wire hard against his upper chest like it was a stiletto.

“Don’t move, kid, or I’ll push this shit straight through your neck.”

Alex froze. His breathing came in gasps. The other two boys were awoken by the melee, but Burgess, his mouth still packed with cake, grabbed both of them as easily as a mother cat transporting its young. He held Nick in a headlock under his giant left arm. The smaller Scotty was gripped firmly around his neck with Burgess’s right mit.

“None of you make a sound or your buddy here’s gonna feel some serious pain,” said Dallard. “And none of you try and run. If you do, please see previous statement.”

“Tie them up,” said Ian. “They’ll behave.” He was walking James back towards the campfire, the metal shank held up to the young boy’s throat. “Use their shoe laces.”

Dallard grabbed one of Alex’s hiking boots with one hand. He immediately realized it was going to be difficult to both hold the boy with the weapon in one hand while untying the laces with the other. “Now, I’m gonna take this knife away,” he said. “But don’t you be moving none or your little friend over there’s gonna pay the price. Ya’ll understand?”

Alex looked over at James. He could see the grisly looking makeshift knife pressed against James’s neck. He then looked over at Nick and Scotty. Both boys were still under the complete control of the giant.

“I asked you a question, boy!” Dallard wrapped his wiry arm around Alex’s throat.

“Yeah…I understand.”

“You better. If he makes one move, Ian, you cut that one.”

Ian didn’t respond to Dallard’s order.

Both Dallard and Alex were on the ground. Dallard let go of the boy and began untying the boot. Let it never be said that Alex wasn’t impetuous. “Compulsive” was how his own mother described him. Nick described his older brother as “pushy.” However you want to line it up, Alex had a natural instinct against being told what to do especially by those who hadn’t earned his respect. If his truck driving uncle Joe Brewer who had built his own house by hand, volunteered time at the local fire department, and broke his back year after year to put food on the table for his family had told him to stay put then, by God, Alex would’ve stayed put. But this stranger who smelled of armpits and boiled cabbage? Who did he think he was barging into their campsite like this, ordering him around? He was barely taller than Alex. He had some strength, but he was rail-thin and smelled like he’d been sleeping with horses for a month.

Whatever the reason, Alex chose to ignore the man’s warning.

Dallard hesitated for a moment, admiring the fine hiking boot in the light of the waning campfire. Alex took advantage of the distraction. He dove for the barb-wire Dallard had laid in the grass. Whiskey still sloshed in his stomach. Alex’s acuity was off, and in the heartbeat moment where he dove for the wire Dallard had already responded. He dropped the shoe and fell on Alex, pinning his shoulders against ground. He pulled the wire out of the boy’s hand and in a fit of anger he jabbed it into Alex’s back. Alex convulsed with a loud yell. Dallard twisted the rusty wire inside the boy’s back like a windup toy.

“Stop! You’re killing him!” said Nick, trying in vain to kick free of Burgess’s grip.

“Enough, Trace,” said Ian. “Tie ‘em up.”

Dallard pulled the wire out of Alex’s back. A dark red spot immediately began to bloom through his t-shirt. Alex froze, his mouth gaping as if in a deep state of rigor mortis. It hurt too much to move. His scapula felt as if it had gone unhinged. Dallard leaned down close to Alex’s ear? His breath reeked like hot road kill in the summer. “I told you not to start any trouble, you little prick.”

Nick stared at his older brother lying prone on the ground. Tears trickled down his cheeks. Scotty was petrified. He had wet himself while being gripped tightly under Burgess’s arm. Warm piss ran down his leg, darkening his blue jeans.

Alex groaned as he tried to sit up. His face appeared pale and sickly. He rolled over slowly and lay on his back, grimacing at the white throbs pain pulsing across his back. He looked up at Nick, his face slick with tears.

“It’s okay. Just let ‘em take what they want. Then they’ll be gone.”

“Smart kid. Sensible response,” said Ian. “We’re just looking for food. Do you have any to spare?”

“Damn skippy they do,” said Dallard.

“I asked the boys,” said Ian.

“And fat boy, there, ate the last of the cake.”

“What do you need our food for?” asked Nick, still struggling helplessly to get free from Burgess. Fresh anger rose out of him, bubbling up from his belly. “You’re grown men. Why can’t you get your own?”

James thought of his mother spending all that time in the kitchen to make that cake, keeping her distracted from the loss of his dad. Tears again formed in his eyes.

“You won’t mind if we take a look for ourselves,” said Ian, ignoring Nick’s question. He pushed James down to the ground, sat on top of his back, and grabbed the closest sneaker he could reach.

“That’s my shoe!” said Scotty.

“And a dandy shoe it is, young sire,” said Ian. “Find comfort in the knowing your beloved conscript has given its all for the cause. A cause for freedom and liberty, my good man. A cause that Abe Lincoln himself would’ve given his left nut for.”

Dallard giggled.

Nick had no idea what this man was talking about.

Ian de-laced the boot quickly and tied James’s hands behind his back, knotting his wrists tight against one another. James yelped in pain, his shoulder joints strained heavily, feeling like they were about to pop out of socket. With a second lace Ian tied James’s ankles together. Dallard did the same to Alex and Nick. When Burgess couldn’t complete an effective knot for Scotty, Ian stepped in to assist.

Once all four boys were bound and lying in the grass, the men went through their bags looking for anything useful. They pulled out shirts, bug spray, socks, plastic rain ponchos, even clean underwear. Dallard found the last of the uncooked hot dogs wrapped in a plastic sandwich bag. He also found a chocolate bar, a half empty bag of marshmallows, a pocket knife, and the remainder of the fifth of Southern Comfort.

“Jackpot.”

“Well, looky here. You boys are alright,” said Ian as Dallard passed him the bottle. He took a long draught from the end and closed his eyes, savoring the rich flavor. “Oh, Jesus, yes. First real drink I’ve had in ten years.”

“Thought you went to prison straight outta grade school,” Tracy said. “Where’d you ever drink whiskey?”

Ian was about to answer when Nick interrupted him. “I hope you choke on that, you bastard.” His eyes were shadowed by a harsh scowl, a look that even disturbed Alex.

The visitors tied up all four boys like hostages and laid them on the ground like sand bags. Alex groaned when he was rolled over. Nick could see fresh blood seeping through his brother’s shirt and he could feel the hatred now clawing up his spine. “Assholes,” he muttered under his breath. “Rotten assholes. You OK, Alex?”

“Yeah…I’m good…”

Dallard looked at the campfire and turned to Ian. “We should put that out. Search parties can see it.”

“In a minute,” Ian said.

They had wolfed down the remaining raw hotdogs like starving migrants, too hungry to even cook them. Ian was seated on the ground, staring into the dying blaze. His mind appeared to be a million miles away. Possibly remembering something from a previous life. Dallard was about to ask again about the fire when Ian spoke up. “Do it. But let us take care of these here boys first.”

The words dug in like fish hooks. James’s heart began to pound, chugging like a steam locomotive.

“What’s the plan?” asked Dallard.

Ian looked over his shoulder. “The pond.” That’s all he said.

“What about the pond?” Nick’s eyes had widened. He was lying face down in the grass. He was struggling to lift his head up. Two dead blades of grass hung limply from his lips.

“Quiet, boy.”

“Hey!” Nick tried to sit up but instead he just rolled over like a hapless quadriplegic. “I thought you said you’d let us go?”

Ian stood up and held the bottle out for Burgess. The man-mountain declined with an efficient jerk of the head. He turned and gave the remainder to Dallard.

“Hey!” Nick continued struggling to stand up.

Ian stepped over towards Nick, his black canvas shoes stopped right next to his right eye. He squatted down and rubbed the back of Nicks head, his thick brown hair flowed through Ian’s fingers like sand. Nick tried to shake himself free but it was a waste of strength. “I’m sorry, my good man,” Ian finally said with about as much conviction as a soggy noodle.

“We won’t tell anyone you were here, we promise!” said Nick, he face suddenly filled with fear. “If anyone asks we’ll just be like ‘we didn’t see no one!’”

But the pleas fell on deaf ears. Ian gave Burgess his instructions to carry James down the hillside and to the moss-covered pond shrouded in inky blackness. Burgess picked the boy up like a sack of laundry and threw him over his beefy shoulder. Nick continued pleading for a stay of execution.

Scotty blubbered to himself, almost collapsing into shock at the reality of what was taking place. Alex felt weak. His face had broken out in a cold sweat, his mouth was dry. He felt suspended in nausea. The wire had hurt like hell going in, tearing through muscle and grinding against the edge of his shoulder blade, certainly leaving behind little bits of rust and bacteria along its journey. All three boys looked on helplessly while their cousin from the city, the one who was meant to be the prime beneficiary of this entire trip, was quickly and unceremoniously picked up and walked off with into the darkness, disappearing from view as if erased from existence.

Big Burgess carried James down the hill and into the hollow where the crickets were chirring loud and proud. A frog jumped into the water creating a widening fissure in the scum that coated the near end of the pond. It was a thick, green coating that would do nicely as the lid on any man’s watery grave.

It took a minute for James to snap out of his denial. He found himself sitting idly by, watching what was happening like a TV drama, allowing it to happen even to him. He could hear his father’s words in head, rising up from the depths from some long ago pep talk given when James had felt like quitting.

You’re only cheating yourself.

James had been studying for that all-important Math exam, one that could gain him entrance into a junior high AP class if he scored high enough. Ron didn’t say anything until later, but while James was studying (or was supposed to be studying) Ron had quietly looked in on his son as he passed his open bedroom door. Both times he found James reading a Joe Lansdale novel he had checked out from the library the day before.

When James failed to qualify for the AP class, Ron finally took him aside and relayed what he had seen. You’re only cheating yourself. Only you can decide to make your free time productive or not. That was just before his mom found out his score and went ballistic.

At that time, James had been bitter about his father for “spying” on him. He felt that reading was a perfectly legit way to spend his free time. The fact that time had been earmarked for studying was irrelevant to James. Now those words sprung up again in a situation that was most assuredly different. Funny how good lessons can always transcend the moment.

James began kicking and wriggling, doing his damnedest to shake himself free from the beast’s grip. It was like fighting against a bulldozer. At some point, the big man finally stopped walking and dropped James on the moist ground. James struggled to free his hands, but the laces were cutting into his wrists like razors. He tried freeing his feet by shimmying them together, hoping to sneak one out from the binds, but he accomplished little more than losing one of his dirty socks.

Ian’s instructions had been to kill the boys then weigh them down with rocks before dumping them in the pond. They would salvage what they could from the backpacks and continue their hunt for the rendezvous point, the mythical cabin in the woods.

James flopped over on his back in the muddy grass. The humid air felt heavy in his lungs. The tickling movements of tiny bugs could be felt on the back of his neck. His arms were now pinned underneath him, soaking in the cool mud below. Burgess rambled around like a disgruntled ox picking up rocks to tie down James’s corpse with.

While James laid there, the strength and determination slowly ebbing from his body, he thought of his mother and began crying again. She would be left alone. No husband, no son. If only his dad had been able to come with them. Then none of this would’ve happened. He would’ve protected them. He would’ve fought these goons off, showed them how the son of a tough railway worker defends what’s his. James wanted desperately to fight. To prove to himself his dad had raised no weakling. To give these filthy clods a good once over. The sole progeny of Ronald Ferguson could never be put down so easily, could he? It was beginning to appear that way.

Burgess now held Alex’s pocketknife in his oversized hand. The clouds had passed and the polished blade gleamed in the pastel moonlight like an elf’s rapier.

“Please…don’t kill me.” James summoned up the drive for one last attempt at survival. “Just leave us tied up. Tell your friends. You don’t have to do this.”

The giant man-mountain showed no expression in his round face, a face that looked like the moon itself save for the thin growth of black pubic hair that followed along his jawline. James had yet to hear the ogre speak before that moment. The man leaned in closer. His breath smiled like deviled eggs mixed with shit.

“Ian says.”

That’s all he uttered. A million thoughts collided in James’s mind, none of them useful. They smashed together, breaking into a million pieces, leaving no good ideas intact. How could he get this man’s attention? What was his bell?

Burgess grabbed James by the collar of his muddy t-shirt and pulled him up, stretching it out of shape. The flicker of the tiny knife caught James’s eye. He wondered if it would hurt. It looked like a gilded toothpick in the man’s ham of a hand.

Lacking any other ideas, James continued pleading for the man to let him go. Tears soaked his cheeks. His head was aching. Burgess pressed the knife up the James’s neck. James could feel the blade beginning to dig into his skin and he thought again of his father. Maybe he would be seeing him soon.

Then a very curious thing happened. The frog croaking stopped. The chirring ceased. The gentle breeze that had been ruffling the dangling tree limbs became inert. The entire valley seemed to come to a standstill. And then out of the sudden silence . . .

Christopher … Christopher, dear ... is that you?

Burgess pulled the knife away from James’s neck and looked around, searching for the source of the light voice. It was the voice of an older woman. Burgess felt the crinkles rising up in the back of his head again. Shocks of static ebbed and flowed across his scalp like a masseuse’s fingers. The shuddering sound of wadded up wrapping paper echoed in his ears. But it wasn’t strong enough to blot out that familiar voice.

... Christopher ... I see you there …

It was the first time James had noticed any sort of expression break the large man’s bleak façade.

…Christopher…I’m here, my little one…

“Who said that? Who’s there?” A strange quiver registered in Burgess’s soft voice. James noticed the giant man had the lightly padded speech of a small teenager. It didn’t fit his hulking presence at all.

It’s me, Christopher…and your father is here as well…

James felt a subtle twitch in the man’s grip on his shirt. “Mama?” He dropped James back into the mud. He looked towards a dark gathering of ancient Ash trees where he thought he noticed movement. “Mama? Is that you?”

James rolled over and leaned up on one shoulder, anxious to get a view of who was speaking. He could hear the voice clearly as well. Could it really be this man’s mother? Why would she be all the way out here? He wondered if she’d help him get free. Or maybe his family was made up of psychos like the Leatherface tribe.

Both man and boy stared into the shifting shadows away from the pond. Slow footsteps could be heard rustling through the tall grass near the Ash trees, snapping dead twigs like tiny bones.

We’re here, Christopher.

James watched in disbelief as two figures, like actors appearing on a stage, stepped out from under the low hanging branches and into the glowing moonlight that surrounded the pond, two figures that appeared human (for the most part). They looked to be an older couple based on their hunched shoulders and trudging movements. The man wore overalls and a flannel shirt. The thickening swell of a tubby gut hung above his waist. The woman wore a long homespun dress common among the older gals in the rural parts of Mercer County.

“Impossible,” said Burgess in a nearly inaudible whisper.

James noticed something terribly wrong with the woman’s face. At first he believed it to be the shadows playing tricks on him. As the two figures lumbered closer, laboring slowly like zombies, James realized the woman was missing a serious chunk off the top of her head. Actually more than just a chunk. The area from her right eye and above was simply gone. Above that was nothing but a concave wetness glistening in the night air; a ghastly shredded wound made James think of heavy hammer blows. The woman’s left eye was dangling down from the socket like a mountain climber hanging on for dear life. A dark smear ran from her mouth down her puffy chin.

We’re here for you, Christopher…We’ve come back…Can you believe it?

Burgess took a step back. The knife fell from his hand, landing in the dark grass near his feet. James took note of the noise, hoping he could find it as soon as Burgess stepped away. If he stepped away.

Whispers and static filled the big man’s head. “This ain’t right …what you’re doin’ ain’t right…” Burgess said, doing his best to sound strong. The fear in his voice was obvious. This big boy was shaken. The chattering whispers and crinkling in his ears grew louder, more distraught, more aroused. Tiny glowing balls began to dance before his eyes. He clenched his eyes shut and shook his head, but the dancing fireflies remained. And through them stepped the two figures.

Why, it’s me, dear…Your mother…and your father…or at least what’s left of him…You weren’t very kind to your father, dear, now were you? And after all we did for you…

James strained to see the other figure shuffling towards them. “Not very kind” was an understatement. Burgess had murdered his father with all the subtlety of a Peterbilt semi ramming through a country church. His father never believed his son would actually pull the trigger. After seeing his wife’s body shattered and slumped awkwardly where the floor met the wall in the corner of the living room, Larry Burgess walked right up to the twin barrels of the 12 gauge Parker his son levelled at him until he was peering down the dark tubes like he was manning a periscope.

Christopher, his ears buzzing with spitting whispers and loud crackles, had pulled both triggers with his fat finger. For a moment he saw the dark creatures jumping up and down in the shadows at the back of the living room. They were armless little buggers with pupiless glowing eyes and wide mouths. They hopped and chattered, their eyes bouncing like fireflies. Then they were gone, and only Larry Burgess’s headless body was left, falling back like a tipped over mannequin. His head had melted away like ice cream dropped in boiling water.

The police found bits of Larry’s brain and skull planted on the cupboards in the kitchen nearly twenty five feet from the origin of impact. The flying chunks of gray matter had zipped through the doorway between the living room and den, over the kitchen nook, across the dining table and found purchase on the pale blue cabinets that hung above the stove. Larry had put his heart and soul into building, sanding, painting, and hanging those cabinets. “Now his mind’s put into them as well,” said Officer Jerry Lampley, one of the more humorous investigators of the crime scene depending on who you talked to.

James nearly vomited up the last of his marshmallows when he realized what he was looking at. The man with the inner tube gut in the denim overalls was missing his head just above his lower jaw. The face was gone. The front and top of his skull was gone. Only remnants of his hapless occipital bone and the scorched mandible remained. A lifeless tongue dangled out over the surviving lower teeth like wandering fish bait.

“What…the fuck…” Burgess was really losing his shit now. “Who the fuck are you?”

Don’t you recognize us, sweety?

The woman was now within ten feet of her son.

We’re your parents. And we’ve come for you…we’ve come to take with us…to take you to heaven.

“Bullshit! Ian, tell me that ain’t you! Tell me!” Burgess took another step back. “This ain’t funny, man!” The dark jumping creatures were closing in, bouncing along like demons on a sugar high behind his parents (or whoever they were). The static was buzzing at a fever pitch.

Who is Ian, dear?

The trundling figures continued to move closer. Burgess couldn’t decide whether to fight or flee. He finally decided on the former trusting his size and strength would overpower these two pranksters. They were just pranksters, right? “I’ll give you just a warning, whoever you are. And this is it. You step up to me and I will smash you to hell.”

Hell ain’t where we’re going, Christopher. I told you. We’re here to take you to heaven. It’s your reward for sending us first. You always were such a considerate young man. All the neighbors may have chatted behind our backs, afraid of you, thinkin’ you were just a large boulder of dumb evil. But I never believed it. You were my son. And the most thoughtful boy a poor mother and father could ever wish for.

The woman was within three feet of Burgess now. Her voice, though lisping heavily and sounding a little flat due to her heavily damaged mouth, was very familiar.

I knew it was you who killed Sally Maynerd’s cat when you were nine. But I didn’t say anything to anyone. You were just a boy. You didn’t know any better. And I didn’t tell when you strangled John Sandiford’s little girl when you were in high school. I never told. And no one ever found out, did they? You were safe. I protected you, Christopher, for so long. You never even knew, did you?

The long dress, her tiny hands, the scuffed brown Oxford shoes, all of it looked so real, just like his mom. The crinkling sound of static pierced his eardrums. He shut his eyes again, fireflies dancing. He gave his head a jerk. He opened his eyes, took a step towards the woman, and raised his fist ready to bring it down on her already shattered face like a sledgehammer.

“Shut your mouth!”

As his massive arm swung down, it was caught short just below the elbow by the calloused liver-spotted grip of the thing posing as his father. The faceless creature held back Burgess’s arm like it was nothing more than a bag of chips. The big man tried to free himself, but the iron grip of the old man dug deep into Burgess’s forearm. James watched transfixed in wide-eyed bewilderment as the two figures surrounded Burgess.

Time to go, son. To be with us.

The father attempted to speak, but without a fully intact mouth he could only puff up wet gurgles through his ruined craw that sounded something like innocent baby farts. Both dead parents reached up to the son’s face with their old, knobby hands like blind school children grasping for guidance, prying at prone entry points, soft tissue, eyes, nostrils, lips.

Burgess began to scream. He saw the little black creatures hopping in the shadows beyond his parents, their yellows eyes bobbing up and down like fireflies. The little demons that had haunted Burgess all his life, prompting him to kill little Suzy Standiford as well as his own parents, would now bear witness to his own demise. For a brief moment he felt cheated. He had followed their orders. He obeyed their commands. Now he was in the midst of the most painful and unexplainable torture he could ever imagine.

Take you to heaven, dear. To be with us.

The tiny demons suddenly disappeared, evaporating into the ether.

Forever.

James saw one of Burgess’s eyeballs being scooped out by his father’s thick, arthritic fingers and he lost it. He vomited into the grass a gooey, light-colored mess. Some trickled out his nose. It smelled even worse than the fetid pond rot, motivating him to try even harder to free his hands. He tried pulling one hand out as far as it would go, until the lace dug deep into the skin. Then he pulled back with the other hand in an attempt to stretch out the laces. It was a painful and time-consuming process.

Burgess was still screaming as his parents pulled him down amongst the weeds and snakes. The sounds of agony soon subsided. James paused to watch Burgess’s lifeless bulk being dragged by his parents back into the black shadows under the waiting Ash trees, his mom pulling one leg, his father the other. Dutiful parents. Taking their wayward son to heaven, James surmised.

Dallard ran down the hill, nearly tripping over James.

“Burgess! Where is he?” Dallard looked down at James like a spiteful slave foreman.

“I--over there…” James had no idea how else to answer.

“Over where?”

“Over there?” James did his best to gesture with his shoulder and chin. “He went in those trees.”

Dallard looked over at the giant Ash trees. They stood silhouetted in the moonlight like an unyielding fortress. “What for? He take a piss? Burgess! You in there?”

Normal service had resumed. Frogs began croaking again. Crickets sang. Dallard began walking towards the trees. “Burgess, you piece of shit, what’re you doing? You better not be lyin’ to me, boy.”

James could see the tiny knife again reflecting in the grass near his hip. He continued straining to free his hands as Dallard disappeared into the shadows.

“Burgess, you back here?” Dallard walked into the gloom under the trees. The air was still and quiet like stepping inside a cold cellar. It smelled of moist earth and something else. Something dark and evil that Dallard found familiar, almost comforting.

The sounds of the woods began to fade away as if a door had been closed behind him. He was about to turn back when he heard a woman’s voice echoing through the shadows like a lilting violin. Dallard froze in his tracks. He wondered if Burgess’s yelling had summoned other campers.

The low hoot of an owl resonated overhead. He heard the woman’s voice again only this time it was right behind him. Dallard turned with a jump to see Adriana Navas standing there like a loyal servant. She was wearing the same blue jeans and pink top she had worn on that special night a decade earlier. Pale moonbeams broke through the branches and caressed her gentle face, a face framed by the dark trundles of her long hair. She was still beautiful.

Dallard couldn’t open his eyes wide enough. “You.”

Adriana smiled gently. Then she opened her mouth.

Blood flowed from where her tongue had been ripped out. Dallard gasped and jumped back. Adriana began saying something unintelligible and raised her arms towards Dallard as if to hug him.

“Fucking hell!” Dallard turned to run, but the being was on him like a nightmare, clutching his arms, pulling him towards her. She continued her attempts to speak, sounding like a Spanish mongoloid, her mouth frothing with blood, cold specs splotched across Dallard’s face in a sticky spatter. He could taste the metallic sourness on his tongue.

“Let go a’me, you bitch! Let go a’me!”

His eyes were as wide as planets. Adriana squeezed Dallard’s wrist until his bones began to grind. With her other hand she yanked down Dallard’s prison guard pants, exposing his shriveled manhood to the slowly cooling night air. He screamed in terror like a frightened brownie scout. She fondled his testicles and stroked his member, gently pinching the tip, doing her best to get the retracted blood vessels flowing smoothly once again. This shut him up for a brief second.

She looked up into his eyes, grinning like Pan’s sister. Her chin was dark and wet as if it had just been doused with a paint brush. She continued stroking, gliding her cool hand up and down Dallard’s expanding length.

“Yeah…that ain’t so bad…now, is it,” he said with cautious reserve.

Adriana smiled, showing her perfect teeth. She was an angel (or had been). An angel dipped in blood. With no warning, she gripped hard on Dallard’s tender man-sack with her bony fingers and ripped his best friends off his body like there made of wet tissue paper. Dallard unleashed an ungodly screech. When his mouth was fully open, Adriana reached in with her blood-soaked hand…and ripped out his tongue.

James heard the ungodly scream coming from the blackness just as Ian was walking down the hill to the pond. He was carrying Scotty over his shoulder. They almost looked like a father and son in the midst of innocent roughhousing.

“Now what on earth was that?” Ian asked no one in particular. James thought he sounded surprisingly calm, almost bored. He dropped Scotty next to James. He landed with a thud and a whimper, blubbering again with fresh tears.

“Where is everyone?” Ian asked James. “And why are you still alive?”

James was too disheartened to reply.

“Fuck it.” Ian picked up the first large rock he could find, pulling it out of the muck by the pond. He stepped back to James and slammed the rock against the boy’s temple with fatal veracity. It made a sound that reminded Scotty of the time Alex dropped a rotten melon off their grandmother’s back porch. James felt a savage pain ripple across his soul. Then be blacked out.

A moment later (A second? An hour?) he felt himself being picked up, floating in the air, flying. He blacked out again.

He thought he heard a splash somewhere off in the distance, a million miles away. A boy crying. A crow cawing. Worms digging. He blacked out again. He felt as if he was back in the womb, surrounded by water and mother earth.

Ian turned to Scotty. “As they say, if you want things done right.”

Scotty cried louder, calling out James’s name. Ian lifted the rock again, preparing to bash in the other boy’s brains, when he saw a familiar figure walking towards him out from the trees. The visitor was limping badly.

Ian? Where you been, man? I been waitin’.

Ian didn’t respond, not wanting to believe what he saw.

The shadow limped closer, moving through the early morning fog like a tug boat through Chesapeake Bay. Ian knew immediately who it was. He just refused to believe it.

I made it, Ian. I told ya I wouldn’t snitch.

The black man with a bad limp staggered up to Ian with the biggest grin east of St. Louis. Ian’s jaw nearly dropped in the water.

“Dennis…how…?” He noticed the ghastly slash across Dennis’s throat yawning open from time to time, leaking what looked like used motor oil. He looked down to see the cause of the Dennis’s limp. His busted ankle was still poking out through the skin. With one heavy step the stressed tibia cracked and his foot twisted to the side in an unnatural perpendicular angle, now just hanging on by one rusty hinge. It didn’t seem to bother Dennis one bit. He used his splintered shin bone as a stump for support, moving towards Ian like an old man on a crutch, first stepping with his good foot, then the peg.

Told ya I ain’t no snitch. I’m here. Let’s do this.

He had a maniacal look in his bright eyes. His teeth gleamed in the darkness.

“…do what…do what, Dennis?” Ian tried to swallow but his throat had turned to sandpaper. “You’re dead.”

Dennis stopped walking. His shattered shin bone sunk down in the mud an inch or two. He lifted it up and leaned onto firmer ground. He then looked at Ian. The fervent smile and bright eyes had faded. The man had stopped his progress within a yard of Ian. A waft of pungent vinegar filled Ian’s nose and coated his tongue.

No, sir. I ain’t dead.

Ian wasn’t sure if he really wanted to have this argument.

But these folks are. Yes, sir, they’re quite dead.

Dennis pointed behind Ian. Scotty shifted to his other side to see what the man was pointing at. There in the tall grass stood three blistered, bald skeletons and one badly burned little humanoid-looking thing standing behind him, waiting. The humanoid must’ve been a girl. The melted remnants of small, pink socks hung loosely from her ankles. They had little horsy shapes in pastel colors stitched into them. The stench of smoke and scorched ham filled Scotty’s lungs causing him to cough.

The blackened skeletons seemed to be staring at Ian with their empty sockets and devilish grins. The girl was covered with red blisters, black scabs, and dozens of dark cuts. Ian was mortified.

“A-Apples…is it …?”

Ish me, Ian.

The girl spoke with a hollow lisp. The interior of her mouth had been scalded beyond any proper working condition. Ian’s own mouth suddenly failed him. His lower jaw quivered as he searched for what to say.

“You…how…”

Why dee you do it, Ian?

Her face barely moved. She spoke like a bad ventriloquist. Her arms and legs and face were painted with rash-like burns. Some went very deep with seared muscle exposed. Scotty shivered at the sight of her blistered bald head. Only trickling remnants of what had once been beautiful flowing hair remained on one side of her scalp.

Why dee you keel ush, Ian? Why?

“I…I didn’t…it was an accident…”

No! You keel me, Ian! I kud uv live!

Tears began to drip from her bleached white eyes, cooked pure white from suffering an intense heat. She pointed at him with an indicting black finger and spoke calmly.

You shaw me on de groun. You di dis to meh.

She turned her head and tugged on the side of her swollen neck. An open wound spread apart like a big fish’s mouth, exposing a dark cavern underneath.

Ian gasped. “Not real. You are not real. You’re not fucking real!”

I wud uv live, Ian. I wud uv live!

Apples tried taking a step towards Ian and stumbled over Scotty still lying in the grass. Apples lurched forward and landed in Ian’s arms, the fractured femur tearing through her crackling skin. Her burnt face looked up at her older younger brother pleading for help, withered with pity. Her skin was rough, flaking in parts. Her stench was worse than rotting meat. It made Ian’s eyes water.

I kud uv lived.

James felt like he was waking up from a terrible dream. His eyes were closed and he couldn’t tell if he was lying down or standing up. His head no longer hurt. A warm glow surrounded him, and he heard a familiar voice approaching.

Let’s go, James. Up and at ‘em, boy.

James opened his eyes, expecting to see the gloomy depths of a dark pond. Instead he saw his father stepping towards him (or floating, James couldn’t quite tell). A bright light glowed behind him.

“Dad?” James felt the tender pain of his tear ducts convulsing.

Time to wake up, James. Time’s slipping away. You still got a lot of work to do.

“You’re alive, dad?” James soaked in the clarity of his father’s smiling face, his blue eyes, dark hair.

Now son, don’t make this any harder than it already is. This is tough for me as well.

“I don’t get it, dad. How…?” Tears streamed down James’s face. He tried to reach out to his father but his arms were still tied behind his back. The two of them were bounded within some sort of gently humming cocoon. It was dark and warm save for the bright light behind James’s father. The soothing drone of bubbling water surrounded them, like being immersed in a large aquarium. James noticed weeds floating in the dark water nearby (above or beside? he couldn’t tell). A yellow-eyed frog swam by, barely stealing a glance at the family revival now taking place in the depths of the pond.

Ronald reached towards his son and untied the laces from his wrists.

You’ll be able to free yourself now.

“Thanks, dad.” James rubbed his wrists with his cold hands. “How long can you stay?”

Ronald smiled

In this pond? Not long.

“I don’t understand, dad…why…” James found himself struggling to form coherent sentences.

Son, I am so sorry for leaving you and your mother like this.

Ronald looked at his son with regretful eyes.

“Dad … it’s not your fault …” James thought hard of things to say, all those things that had boiled up in his mind the previous three weeks, all those things he wished he would’ve said to his father before he died. But all he could do was sob.

Remember all those plans we made we never had a chance to do? All those trips we were gonna go on, you remember?

“Of course, dad.”

Tailgating at an Eagles playoff game. Getting that motorcycle you always wanted. You’re gonna be able to do all those things with your own kids. And you’re gonna be an even better father than I could’ve ever been.

“Dad…”

All I ask is you tell your own kids about your old man. Will you do that for me?

“Of course,” James tried to say, but it just came out as a pitiful gasp, his nose running. He felt his lungs beginning to burn. He wanted to reach out and hug his father desperately but his arms wouldn’t obey.

You have to go now, son. Your life’s waiting for you up there. Don’t let it pass you by. And keep an eye on your mom for me, ok?

“I will, dad, but wait…” James felt his head beginning to fill with pressure as if it had been plugged into an air compressor and was about to explode. “Dad, I’m sorry … I’m so sorry I was mad at you…”

Ronald smiled. James felt a calming warmth fill his chest as if an enormous burden had suddenly evaporated leaving an inner peace.

It’s okay, son. I acted the same way with my own dad sometimes. I guess it’s one of the perils of parenthood, but it’s worth it. You’ll know what I mean one day.

“I’m so sorry…I love you, dad…”

I love you too, son. I know you’ll make me proud.

He watched in agony as his father slowly floated backwards, disappearing into the bright light behind him.

“Dad! Wait!”

I’ll be with you, James. Just don’t forget what I’ve taught you.

Ronald slowly dissolved into nothingness. The light faded to black.

“Dad!” James tried to reach out to his father, but the pressure of drowning finally caught up to him. He scrambled madly for the surface, rising up through the dark muck. He broke through in an explosion of pond scum. Falling beads of water twinkled in the moonlight, flying through the air as if a woman’s diamond necklace had suddenly torn loose.

In a panic he floundered towards the muddy bank, struggling to gain purchase with his still-tied legs in the slick mud. He found the shore and collapsed between the tall reeds and cattails, gasping for air. His head was throbbing. He felt a swollen knot the size of a lime just above his eye. He winced, feeling as if he had been clubbed with a battle axe.

He sat up to untie his feet before collapsing again. He choked on cold water, wiping away warm tears. It must have been a hallucination. It had to have been. But how had his hands become untied? Maybe he had done it himself. Maybe falling in the water had loosened them up just enough to slip through.

“James! James! Is that you?”

He could hear Scotty’s shaky pipsqueak voice calling from the other side of the reeds.

“James! Are you okay?”

“Yes. I’m okay.” James was hesitant to answer too loudly. He had no idea where those men were lurking.

Scotty was still bound, stuck in the grass just a few feet from where James had climbed into the cattails. “Ah, James, you missed it! It was the baddest thing I ever seen!”

“What?” James stood up slowly, still spitting out scum and grit. His mouth felt like the underside of a dump truck. He stepped gently through the reeds, doing his best to keep the pounding head pains to a minimum. “Where are you?’

“Over here!”

James turned towards Scotty’s voice. It was still dark, but the first hints of dawn were already making their presence felt. In the graying light, James saw his younger cousin lying on his back on the ground, his arms pinned underneath him. He untied Scotty and helped him to his feet.

“What was so bad?” James asked.

“Oh, man. You’ll never believe it.” Scotty sat up and rubbed his aching wrists. “That guy…there was a girl with these nasty burns, and these skeletons that could walk! Oh my god! And they grabbed him and tore him to pieces!”

“Tore who?”

“Tore up the guy! That guy who tied us up!”

“He’s dead?” James winced each time he had to talk.

“Hell yeah, he’s dead! He’s…” Scotty looked around. “He’s gone. They took him.”

“Who took him?”

“Hey, man, are you okay? You were down there a long time. Underwater.” Scotty said the last part as if to remind James where he had been.

“Yeah, I’m alright. But who took that guy? And what about Alex and Nick?”

Scotty had a confused look for a second as if he had no idea who James was talking about. Then things snapped back into focus again. They two boys ran up the hill, Scotty a little faster than James.

Before cresting the hill, James looked back at the pond now below them. It was dark and tranquil. Stoic like a resigned old mare. Tiny water-walkers caused faint ripples on its surface. The sight of his father had been so real. But how was that possible? Maybe it had been figment of his oxygen-deprived brain. Maybe.

Alex and Nick were found alive. Alex’s injury had grown worse. A pink halo of infection was quickly growing around the stab wound in his back. It took nearly four hours to help him back to their house. It was just past eight o’clock on a Sunday morning when they showed up on the back porch of the Pelphrey mobile home. Alex’s parents were already awake. Louisa was frying up ham and eggs for breakfast and David was reading the paper. When they saw Alex’s wound, Louisa ran to the bathroom and brought out some disinfectant. David dialed up Dr. Lunezej, the family physician, to see if he could make a Sunday morning house call.

The boys told the Pelphreys all about what had happened. Scotty had described the black skeletons to Nick and Alex during their protracted return home, but neither of his older cousins believed him. James never mentioned the sight of his father. He stuck to a simple truth: he was thrown in the pond (explaining his damp rankness) and he fortunately regained consciousness before drowning.

David and Louisa had a tough time following Scotty’s kinetic descriptions of the skeletons and bald little burnt girl. They were more concerned about the three vagabonds roaming around the hillside.

“I think they’re dead, Aunt Louisa,” said Scotty.

“Come on! Killed by skeletons, Scotty?” said Nick, more jealous than incredulous that he hadn’t been able to see them as well.

After seeing profiles on the escaped convicts on the midday news, the boys agreed to talk to the police. They told the authorities everything they could remember (David advised Scotty to hold back about the walking skeletons this time). In the end they simply claimed the convicts moved on, headed west.

A three-day canvassing covering a radius of nearly fifty miles blanketed the woods west of the Pelphrey home where the boys had been camping. The searchers found little more than empty hot dog wrappers and some crushed soda cans. Not a solitary sign of the four convicts was found.

The boys stayed around the house those couple of days, keeping close to Alex as he recovered in his own bed after a painful tetanus shot and a cleaning of the wound by Dr. Lunezej. On Sunday afternoon he was taken to the hospital for X-rays and given some additional pain medications, but the poor kid was still going to be very sore for a few days.

The search parties were made up mostly of local residents armed with hunting rifles. They were more than eager to find the escaped convicts. When the first reports returned that none of the prisoners had been found the boys were shocked. Even Scotty expected Ian’s shredded remains to be found somewhere under those tall Ash trees, maybe attracting bears and wolves.

“Are you sure these were the men you saw?” asked Detective Persie.

“Yes, sir,” Scotty answered. “We all saw ‘em. A big guy, a real skinny guy, and the other one.”

“Maybe they just got away,” James said.

Detective Persie’s eyes were bloodshot with exhaustion. He had been involved in the search for nearly 48 hours with little rest. He jotted down a couple things in a tiny notebook and cleared his throat. He had just been getting over a late summer cold. He was an older man with a bristly gray mustache and deep lines across his forehead that reminded James of a tilled garden.

Persie didn’t want to believe the kids were making up stories, but it wouldn’t be unheard of. They go out camping, maybe begin rough-housing or trying stunts, one gets injured, they don’t want to tell their parents the truth so they incorporate details from a news story they see on TV. Persie wasn’t convinced that was the truth, but he was open to the possibility.

James knew the escapees hadn’t gotten away. He knew his cousins had told the truth, but those cops and that search party would never find those men. James didn’t care. His father’s words were still warm in his ear.

Life’s waiting for you. Don’t let it pass you by.

It had been real. He believed it. He felt crazy for thinking it. What would he tell his mother?

“Hey, honey, how was the camping trip?” “Great, ma! I saw dad underwater in the pond! He gave me some great advice! Oh, and he says hi to you, too.”

But it had been real. Every bit of it. James now looked forward to a life of putting his father’s advice into action.

THE END

CAMPFIRE TALES

The Protected

The Hunted

TIME TRIP SERIES

For Middle School Readers

The Journey to Ancient Greece

A Ride on the Underground Railroad

Witness to the First Thanksgiving

For Young Adult Readers

Killing for Country

Conquest of Mexico: To Follow the Cross

NONFICTION

A Beautiful Woman: A Memoir of Love & Loss

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