Genesis of Evil (9 page)

Lester lay in the hospital several weeks. At the end of his convalescence the doctor told Mr. and Mrs. Mede that, although Lester had mended physically, he had suffered irreversible brain damage.

Lester received all the therapy available. In the end, he was able to function, but just barely. For some reason known only to Lester and God he became obsessed with soldiers and turned everything into a military exercise.

He was enrolled in a special school that he attended with limited success until his eighteenth year. At that time it was universally agreed among the staff that any additional attempts at education were fruitless. The next step in his development was to find him a job of some sort. When the mall opened Mr. Mede called Michael Penton, the mall manager, who owed him a favor. After some haggling and wheedling Penton agreed to try Lester out as a janitor in the food court. Although everyone involved had their doubts, Lester turned out to be one of the most reliable workers in the complex. When given a task he immediately worked out a timetable for it—usually using the 24-hour clock—and attacked it. One could set his watch by Lester’s projects. And he never called in sick.

Lester finished the northeast quadrant and recalled his chair troops to converge with the table cavalry. Then he checked his watch once more and started across the floor toward the Taco Loco and his first coffee break of the day.

Jeanie Drexel watched Lester stride between the tables and turned to draw him a cup of coffee. She knew that by the time she had the cup filled and adjusted with the proper amount of cream and sugar he would be standing in front of the cash register holding out a quarter. She turned with the coffee in her hand expecting to see Lester smiling at her.

He wasn’t there.

Puzzled, she scanned the foot court and wondered what in the world had happened to the boy. She finally spotted him sitting at one of the tables. His head was cradled face down on his crossed arms and his entire body jerked spasmodically. Terribly frightened for him, Jeanie leaped over the counter, dashed to where Lester sat shivering and huddled down next to him.

She shook him gently by the shoulders. “Lester, what is it?” she cried. “What’s wrong?”

He mumbled something that she couldn’t understand.

“I can’t hear you! Are you hurt? Talk to me, Lester!”

He slowly raised his head and stared at her with the eyes of a doe caught in the headlights of an oncoming car.

“He’s in my head, Jeanie. Get him out of my head. I don’t want to do that, Jeanie. I don’t! I don’t!”

Jeanie ran for the button under the cash register that summoned security and hoped they had the number to call for an ambulance.

An hour later Dr. Holloway shook his head and stared across the desk at Lester Mede’s mother.

“I have no idea what’s wrong with Lester, Mrs. Mede,” he said. “I tested him every way I could think of but I didn’t find a thing. All he tells me is that somebody was in his head and wouldn’t get out. When I asked him if that somebody was still in there, he said no, not now. I don’t know what to make of it.”

Mrs. Mede looked off into space for a moment, then turned back to the doctor. “Is there anything else we can do?”

“Not that I know of. He seems normal now, at least as far as Lester is concerned.” Dr. Holloway stood and walked around his desk. “I’ll look the test results over one more time. If I find anything unusual I’ll give you a call. You might as well take Lester home.”

Dr. Holloway spent the next hour and a half checking Lester Mede’s test results. Finally, he concluded that he had done all there was to do. There was nothing physically wrong with Lester.

But Mr. and Mrs. Mede had to find Lester another job. He refused to go anywhere near the mall.

For anything.

Ever.

Chapter Nine

September 25, 2004

The Right Reverend Rimer Tillotson of the Trinidad Church of Divine Prayer sat on a bench near the food court waiting for his wife and daughter. He had been there for almost two hours. His trousers were rumpled, his shirt was twisted around his waist and his shorts had crept up so far he felt like a gelding. The two women in his life had, apparently, crawled down every aisle in every store in the south wing on their hands and knees dragging a loaded cement mixer behind them. They had returned briefly to deposit with him several plastic sacks full of booty. Then they swept off to assault the north wing.

The Right Reverend Rimer Tillotson sighed and slid his lanky frame farther down on the bench. He wondered at the difference between men and women when it came to shopping. Women, he had observed, needed to run their fingers across every item of merchandise in sight whether they were interested in buying it or not. Men, on the other hand, dashed into a shop, grabbed what they needed and ran out. There were more important things to do than shop.

The Right Reverend Rimer Tillotson laid his head back and dozed off, lulled by the constant muttering of the plastic monkeys and parrots that blended smoothly with the white noise emitted by the waterfall and the endless string of shoppers. He dreamed of an earlier time, a time when he had been unencumbered by responsibilities of family and church. He dreamed of his youth when he was a high school student, living for ball games and after-game dances with the nubile young ladies of his class. He dreamed of fumbling in the darkened back seat of his father’s Pontiac. He dreamed of…

Reverend Tillotson jerked awake with a grunt and looked around. The bench where he was doing his penance had a commanding view of the entrance to the video arcade. Kids of all sizes dashed in and out accompanied by squeaks, whistles, groans and assorted electronic noises from the thirty-eight video games inside. A girl in early puberty stood just inside the arcade entrance working the joystick of a game called Attack From Planet Zeta. He took off his glasses and polished them with the tail of his shirt, which had finally weaseled its way out of his waistband. Then he perched them back on his nose and took a better look at her. She wore a pair of shorts that displayed tiny half-moons of buttock and a halter-top that must have belonged to her younger sister. Her face was slick with sweat and the soft blonde down on her forearms flashed in the garish light from the game. Her nipples stood out like tiny pencil erasers inside the halter-top. Her right hand slid up and down the joystick.

The Right Reverend Rimer Tillotson had a massive erection. He pulled one of the sacks his wife had left with him onto his lap, slid a hand beneath it and squeezed his member.

Ten minutes later, when her quarters ran out, Geraldine Mockey stamped a foot and scowled. She reached behind her, pulled the skimpy legs of her shorts down over the half-moons of her tiny butt and strode from the arcade. Reverend Tillotson rapidly collected his wife’s sacks. Then he stood up and followed the young girl through the mall.

Behind the food court to the left was a hallway that housed five pay telephones, a water cooler, a stamp machine, the rest rooms and a storeroom for janitorial supplies. Geraldine Mockey wiggled her way toward the ladies’ room. Reverend Tillotson trotted along behind her with all the grace of a young colt. He held the sacks of goods in his left hand to cover his crotch. His fly was now open and his right hand was inside his trousers massaging his throbbing penis. His entire universe consisted of those tiny half-moons of Geraldine’s ass where they peeked once more from beneath her shorts.

Geraldine disappeared.

Reverend Tillotson stopped dead in the center of the hall, dismayed. When he concluded she had entered the ladies’ room, he looked about for somewhere to wait. Across the hall was the janitor’s closet. He hesitated a moment then sidled over to the door, stopped and looked around. Nobody seemed to be paying any attention to him. He released his penis, reached out and turned the knob. The door swung silently open. He backed swiftly inside and shoved the door almost closed, leaving a two-inch gap.

Seven minutes later a relieved Geraldine stepped from the ladies’ room. Directly across the hall a door swung open and a voice called to her. Geraldine swung her head in that direction, snapping her chewing gum impatiently.

The Right Reverend Rimer Tillotson stood just inside the closet leering at her. His trousers were around his ankles. He was whipping his willy with one hand and making come-hither gestures with the other.

Geraldine Mockey ran screaming toward the main hall. The Right Reverend Rimer Tillotson grimaced, unloaded on his left shoe, suddenly realized what he was doing and slammed the door shut in horror.

Geraldine Mockey dashed frantically past the BurgerBuddee, screaming like a hurricane in a flute factory. Billy Curran glanced up from his labors when he heard the first shriek. He recognized Geraldine from English class and wondered what the twit was yelling about. The old saw about walking and chewing gum sprang immediately to mind. In Geraldine’s case, he figured, chewing gum was all she could handle. Adding walking to the mix would blow one of her circuits. Billy wiped his forehead with the sleeve of his uniform shirt and dropped the basket filled with frozen French fries into the grease. Then he trotted toward the freezer for more of the same.

He hated lunchtime. In fact, he hated any time at all when anybody wanted to eat at BurgerBuddee, particularly if they wanted fries. He grabbed three sacks of the offending article, slogged back to stand in front of the oil-filled vat and glanced at the order monitor mounted above the cooker. There were orders for eight more pockets of fries. He sighed, ripped another sack open and dumped the contents into an empty basket.

Billy Curran hated working at BurgerBuddee almost as much as he hated Florida. He and his father, Don, had moved to Trinidad just before the start of the school year. The previous five years of their lives had been one disaster after another. First, Don’s wife had divorced him and moved to Idaho to live with a steel worker. Three years after that Don lost his job at the Cincinnati foundry where he had been employed for seventeen years. Father and son were forced to live on Don’s unemployment check plus whatever he could earn by doing odd jobs for cash. One morning as Don was sitting in the living room considering the robbery of an armored truck a letter arrived from a cousin in Chiefland, Florida. He wrote of a shortage of truck drivers in the area and wondered if Don would be interested in moving south.

“Do lawyers hang around courthouses?” Don asked himself as he headed for the phone.

A company in Perry was happy to offer him a job. At first he rented a house in town but Perry didn’t thrill either Don or Billy. The two of them drove from town to town on the weekends, found a house they liked and moved to Trinidad four months after arriving in Florida.

Billy thought the best part of the south was winter. There was no snow to shovel and it was possible to play basketball all year round. But when the first summer hit him, Billy thought he would melt and run down into his own socks. He couldn’t get cooled off. And then, to clinch the deal, the only job he could find was in this lousy burger joint in front of the French fryer where it was at least fifteen degrees hotter than it was outside at high noon in August.

“Come on, Billy, what the heck are you doing? That cooker is only half full. You’re holding up production,” Carol Joiner, the day manager, yelled in his ear.

Billy snapped his head up, glanced at the monitor and filled another basket. He pulled the first one out and saw that in another ten seconds those fries would have been extra crispy—like the Famous Chicken next door. He hoped Carol hadn’t noticed. He flipped the basket upside down on the loader table and refilled it. Then he stopped moving altogether and stared at the wall in fascination. It seemed to be sliding off into the distance. It swept through a green valley and disappeared behind a mountain.

The frantic noise of lunchtime in the fast food joint faded and was replaced with the sound of a forest in the spring. Billy smiled and looked around.

He stood in a wooded glade filled with trees and flowers. Visible through the branches was the tip of the mountain behind which the restaurant wall had vanished. The peak was covered with snow. A gentle breeze ruffled his hair. Billy looked down. At his feet was a clear stream that flowed from somewhere in the mountain. The stream was so clear he could see trout swimming along the bottom. The water looked so cool, so clean. And Billy was drenched with sweat. There were a few leaves floating on the water at his feet.

Billy leaned over, flipped the leaves out of the way and plunged his head into the refreshing water of the stream.

“Holy shit!” Rupert Swan screamed.

Carol Joiner whipped around with a scowl on her face, ready to rip a large chunk out of Rupert’s ass, but stopped with her mouth open. Rupert had turned almost white despite the fact that his ancestors had arrived on a slave ship from Africa. He was pointing a trembling finger in the direction of the French fryer. Carol spun about.

Billy Curran was sliding slowly down the side of the oil-filled vat, legs quivering, arms flapping mindlessly. Carol ran around the grill toward him but stopped dead in her tracks when his head rolled around to face her. He stared at her with blackened, empty eye sockets. His face was a ruined mass of cracked and charred flesh. His nose and lips had shriveled into nothing and his naked teeth flashed whitely in the glare of the fluorescent lights.

Then Billy Curran crumpled into a heap on the floor, shuddered once more and was still.