Prodigal Blues (43 page)

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

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

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

No answer.

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

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

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

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

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

Places can be as evil as any human being.

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

I am a good and decent man
, I thought.

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

I am a good and decent man.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

He'd given himself a massive overdose of morphine.

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

Wasn't it?

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

"Sleep my child and peace attend thee,

All through the night.

Guardian angels God will send thee,

All through the night.

Soft the drowsy hours are creeping,

Hill and dale in slumber sleeping,

I my loved ones' watch am keeping,

All through the night..."

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

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

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

I slipped it from his hand and unfolded it:

Dear Pretty-Boy:

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

I had a great last night.
 
I made pizza and popcorn, and I watched a bunch of great movies, and I listened to records, and I finally read Winnie-the-Pooh. Man, that was a good book, thanks for mentioning it to me.

Here's the thing; I left the other computer in the upstairs hall closet for you.
 
You need to take it.
 
I figured out Grendel's password.
 
You'll never believe what it was.
 
Ready?

Mommy
.
 
Ain't that a kick in the balls?
 
Imagine what a psychiatrist could do with that one.

Anyway, all his private files have been opened and saved in a folder called "Get This."
 
It's got everything, Pretty-Boy; the code-key for the e-mails, phone numbers and addresses of all his party guests and distributors, receipts, everything.
 
Take it, and use it, and fuck them up real good for me.

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

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

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

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

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

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

Burn this fucking place to the ground.

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

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

"
What the hell are you doing?
"

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

I slipped it into the bag, then ran outside.
 
Tanya had the car running and turned around; she'd also opened the passenger-side door for me.