by Greg Walker
Everything he would tell Eric later was true, except the timeframe. JT mistrusted the police or anyone in authority, held in contempt their inability to solve Adam's murder. He reasoned that bringing news of the bodies would amount to a confession of his guilt to some, would put him in the papers again, but for reasons that he didn't want running ahead of him to a new life. At Penn State, no one knew anything about him. In Lincoln Corners he alternated shifts as part time football hero and part time witness and suspect to a murder. He had served his sentence and played his part as whipping boy. The bodies, at least the one he had partially dug up, were skeletons. The graves weren't fresh, the killer likely long gone. Maybe to California. But he had to do something.
He decided on an anonymous note. He chose Paul, one of the few that he could call a friend. He left it in his mailbox the night before leaving for State College, then watched the news and the papers after practice for the story to break. Nothing. He imagined the mailman grabbing the unmarked, sealed envelope as outgoing mail and later eyeing it with helpless confusion, Paul dropping it from a larger bundle of letters and the wind pushing it away through the fields or Paul tossing it into the garbage stuck to a solicitation for a credit card. Or something worse, loose thoughts he didn't dare allow to congeal.
He agonized over a further course of action, finally decided that perhaps the dead only wanted peace, and that the living should try to find their own small measure. Maybe it was just an old cemetery, children of forgotten settlers. Wasn't all of the dirt walked on everyday just one giant boneyard anyway? But as he rose to national fame, as the NFL scouts started showing up in Beaver Stadium, a part of him always sat beneath the great oak or next to a dark swamp back in Lincoln Corners.
After the accident, pain and self-pity drowned out the childrens’ voices for a time. He returned to Lincoln Corners to be with his mother, at her request and devoid of any other place to go. She had gotten “saved” and baptized and went to church now. His skepticism of her claim to have changed lessened as she cared for him with a determination and tenderness his childhood had lacked. And while JT wanted nothing to do with any organization that could accept Arnie Fisk into its fold, he did grant her the forgiveness she begged him for and even considered God in his own fashion.
But he never forgot the woods, and when he felt strong enough he went again, paying dearly for it, barely making it home and setting his progress back a month. They still lay in the ground, but for the one exposed. And no new graves, which had been his greatest fear.
And he finally let the loose thoughts congeal. From a man's perspective, a proven warrior that no longer feared Arnie Fisk, he saw the threats as something more. He saw the fear in Arnie's face now, in the car before he so naively climbed inside. He considered that the envelope had been opened and read by Paul. He could take his suspicions to the police, but their presence in the town asking questions, and the lack of concrete evidence, would allow the killer, possibly Arnie himself, to go to ground. He would live his life as it was, and watch, and wait. A man could do worse things with his life than catch a child-killer.
But years went by, and he grew older and less hopeful. He risked the walk back to the woods several more times. Always fearing a new grave. Knew there could be another undiscovered cemetery and that he shared some responsibility if so. Should have told the police long ago. But he still did nothing but ride his Harley and drink sometimes and remind Fisk of his presence and feel the growing burden of a wasted life. He could often find someone on a barstool that wanted to buy him a beer and talk about his glory days, but he came away feeling pathetic and morose. What had been always preceded thoughts of what might have been, if not for the dump truck. He knew that the dead children had become his reason for living, a sad replacement for real purpose, his obsession no matter what he had told Eric. He needed to let them go, somehow, but didn't understand how and still ensure that some measure of justice be done, if a chance existed of the murderer facing punishment. Either a prison cell or a shotgun blast worked for JT. But he feared, after without a killer to catch, lying in bed as a damaged, hollow man, searching for a reason to get up.
When the man had entered the woods, his heart had hammered with excitement. When the man proved to be Eric Kane, he barely made it home under the weight of his disappointment. And then he saw how he might end it, but never saw how it would end.
The pounding on the door wasn't loud, but insistent. JT pulled on his jeans with curses, the loudest reserved for when he nearly tumbled over onto the floor. The dogs weren't barking, but he had trained them not to do that in the house; he knew they now waited silently on the other side of the door. He wanted a spontaneous and lively first meeting with John Wilkes and Lee Harvey for anyone foolish enough to break into his home.
Quarter after three. Had better be a damn good reason for this. If the Jehovah's Witnesses had added a midnight shift, there was one pair that would test the veracity of their claims right now.
He flipped on the porch light, and it illuminated a stranger. He later thought that he had spend so much time scrubbing Isaac from his mind that recognition was impossible. John Thomas told the dogs to sit and stay, and opened the door six-inches, still angry but curious despite himself. Maybe the guy broke down somewhere. Maybe it's the killer, come to confess and turn himself in, he thought dryly.
"What the hell do you want? Do you now what time it is?"
The man smiled slightly, and a chill ran down JT's spine although he didn't know why. He looked to be late thirties or early forties, with a pale complexion appearing jaundiced in the yellow porch light. Thin but not bony. He wore a black t-shirt and a pair of sweatpants. His face reminded him of someone...
"John Thomas Groves. So sorry to read about the accident. It was in all of the papers. I've thought about you a lot, even before that."
"Do I know you?"
"Yes. But we don't have time for that. Your friend Eric Kane may be in danger. You need to go now, to Paul Myer's farm. If you go the way...I can't remember the road...up the big hill. Before Paul's house there's a pasture and a service gate. I don't think anything's changed since you worked there. There will be a car parked on the side of the road just before you arrive." He spoke calmly, keeping eye contact, which made this whole thing more surreal to JT than if he'd been screaming and ranting, behavior better suited for three in the morning.
"Just...just wait. Who the hell are you?"
"Please listen, John Thomas. We don't have time. Follow the service road until you reach a path on the right into the woods. Walk on that path until you find the building that they built to keep me. It's several miles in, and I know it will be hard on your leg, but you must. Eric needs you. I should have stayed to help him, so I could explain, but I was afraid. He doesn't understand about Adam. Go now, John Thomas. I have to leave."
He turned around and started down the steps, and the sound of metal dragging on the old wood drew his eyes to the chain and the manacle. Alarms went off in his head. "Wait. This is just too weird. Tell me your name. How do I know you're telling the truth?"
The man continued walking, the chain sounding out every other step, and JT considered setting the dogs on him, but for what, really? Being a nut job?
He reached the gate to the fence, and JT could barely discern his shape lingering at the far reaches of the light's influence. He stopped and seemed to consider something, then said, "It's Arnie Fisk that Eric needs to look out for. I believe you and he have some unfinished business. He told me all about you, but I think he's wrong. I hope he is. My father is already dead. Arnie ran, but I think he'll come back, if he hasn't come already. Tell Paul I'm sorry." He paused again, then said. "You do know me, John Thomas. My name is..."
"...Isaac," they said together.
He stepped through the gate and JT heard a car start - recognized the sound of the damaged muffler and knew it was the pastor's - and then back down the driveway. The name, Isaac, broke through layers of denial that had scabbed and crusted
over the memory. He saw the face from that day at the swamp and the one still fresh on top of it as an overlay; they fit seamlessly but for the new lines and creases. He saw traces of Pastor Burroughs...who was dead if Isaac told the truth. That he drove the pastor's car gave his claims some weight. With a great effort, he pushed the mounting shock from his mind before it could immobilize him. Thought of Eric but then of Fisk, and the latter was a match to a fire that blinded him to all else. Fisk had known, on that day in the car. He had known all along. What exactly Isaac meant beyond that he didn't grasp, but enough to suspect that it all see the light of day before the sun rose. If he hurried.
He grabbed his keys, thought of his gun but decided there wasn't time, told the boys they were going for a ride, and drove at dangerous speeds to Paul's farm. Found Eric's car. Began the hike back, wincing with each step, the pain graduating from discomfort to needles to shards of glass but pushing through the agony as he had years ago when his body said he couldn't survive one more wind sprint or round of drills even when teammates collapsed form exhaustion around him. He would not let this slip away as he just had the second coming of Isaac Burroughs.
"Eric? Are you okay?" Mary put a hand on his shoulder, and his first instinct was to shake it off. He wanted to leave them all. Fisk and Burroughs and Paul Myers, Janine West at the grocery, Perry Rice whom he hadn't even seen yet, and Mary and JT. Drive away in some direction. Not Pittsburgh. Someplace he had never seen before. Maybe then he could just pretend none of this had happened, that he had never returned to Lincoln Corners, and eventually might even believe it.
Everything revealed until now hadn't been enough to unhinge him. But he wanted no other definition of Isaac Burroughs than the reason this his brother had spent every birthday since his eighth in a box underground. "I'm alive..because of him. Because of Isaac. He killed my brother and saved my life. What does that mean?" His voice rose into a shout, and a nurse peeked her head around the corner, a frown and words of condemnation ready on her lips. JT shook his head once with a frown of his own, and she departed, but left them with an expression of warning.
"It doesn't change anything at all, Eric. And I'm so sorry I let this go on for so long. You just have to understand...I was only a kid...and then, I just don't know," JT said.
Eric waved his apology away. "JT, I don't blame you for any of this. How could I? I didn't know what it was like for you, and for that I'm sorry. But I need to be alone for a while, try to understand all of this. I think the nurse is getting ready to throw us out anyway." He had composed himself, attempted a smile, and stood up. "But thank you, for telling me everything. Thank you for my sake...and for Adam's. I'll be back to see you later."
He walked to the bed and extended his hand. JT took it. Before he could register the action as a conscious choice, Eric leaned in an embraced his friend. And as he felt the big man's tears on his neck, he shed his own, realizing that no matter how terrible it may prove, the truth indeed will set you free. But that freedom came with no guarantees of any kind.
Chapter 20
Eric went home, back to Lincoln Corners. Back to the house of his childhood. Stay with me tonight, Mary had said, and he had wanted to, knew that he would end up in her bed, was tired of fighting it. But he had come to write a story about a boy become a prisoner to his terror, and he went home to finish where it began.
He pulled into the driveway at around ten that evening. A car rested in the Rice driveway, and a single light on the second floor announced a presence in the otherwise dark house. He stood outside for a moment and waited to see if a curtain would part, if Perry might come down to talk. Wondered if he even knew yet the transformation the town had undergone in his absence. But as he watched, the light went out, and he realized how cold he was. He looked around at the quiet town. Fortunately, the nearest motel was outside of Drake City, so no reporters or the morbidly curious could hang around after dark. He stared into the shadows, wondering if one of them hid Isaac, willing him to appear. He was no longer afraid. Even if he brought the same knife that killed his brother.
He went inside and locked the door, then turned around and deliberately unlocked it again. Let him come. He walked back to the study, turned on the laptop, and wrote; to finish his story, to see if the dead might finally be laid to rest, and maybe to summon the man who finally had a name.
Sean left the house dressed in a winter coat, his boots, a scarf his mother had knitted that before he had seen as too babyish to wear on the bus in front of the other kids, and a pair of gloves. He had slid his backpack over the coat with difficulty. Inside was a garden trowel, a bottle of water, and a half-full box of pop tarts. He carried the piece of wood from the cabin in his hands after nearly putting it in the backpack. But he didn't know if he had to maintain contact for it to work. He didn't know if it would work at all.
He trudged through the field, the snow deeper than a half hour ago, his tracks from the cabin now faint and fading impressions soon to be erased. The thought chilled him more than the bitter wind. If he never reemerged from the woods, there would be no trace of him. But if he stayed...that wasn't an option so he kept walking, plodding along in the same stoic fashion he had since this had begun.
He entered the woods and turned around, took one last look at his house. He had left every light blazing, and it brought a lump to his throat, as if his family were there, waiting, the light a beacon to guide him home.
Steeling himself, he turned around and a boy stood before him. Not Silas, but the small, demented boy from the field, his smile malicious and knowing. Sean could see through his form to the stark jumble of trees behind.
"Where are you going, Sean? There's nothing out here. Silas is a fool. Go back home. There's nothing you can do."
And his words made perfect sense. He looked into the boy's eyes and saw the truth, knew his quest was lost before he had begun. He slumped in defeat, and nearly dropped the wood, instinctively fumbled to catch it in his gloved hands, and broke eye contact with the ghost. When he looked up, he caught the flicker of fear and loathing in the boy's eyes, focused on the wood scrap, and knew Silas hadn't lied to him. He held it out before him, and the boy faded in and out, sneering but his certainty had fled.
"Leave me alone," Sean said, and advanced behind the wood. The boy snarled, and his face contorted, but he stood his ground. Sean closed his eyes and kept walking, and then heard only the sound of his boots shuffling through the snow. He opened his eyes, and the boy had vanished.
Sean laughed nervously, and made his way to the cabin, to make sure Silas was still there and the man hadn't gotten to him. He peered through the same hole as his tormentor had earlier but saw no one.
"Silas? Are you in there?" he whispered.
Very faintly, he heard, "Yes, Sean. Go. He's coming."
He wanted to get inside again, to hide in the one safe place in this hell, but knew that the siege of the weather and all that the man would bring made it only a temporary haven. And he wanted to beat the man, if he could be beat. His life might be forfeit either way, but better to die trying. He knew his father would be proud, and the thought bolstered his resolve.
Silas had said the land remembers, and he went to the far side of the cabin, facing deeper into the woods, and turned in a slow half-circle. He didn't know what to look for, so he looked for nothing in particular, tried to see what the land wanted to show him. His frustration mounted as hundreds of trees mocked him in their unremarkable sameness. He strained his ears to hear something, but only the clicking of branches in the wind and the low hiss of falling snow spoke back, a language he didn't understand.
He turned back to the cabin, to demand that Silas help him, when something registered and he spun around. There, fifty feet ahead, one particular tree bent into the woods. Not only its trunk, but its branches as well. Could that be it? Was it showing him the way? He stood frozen with uncertainty, decided he had nothing better to go on, and trudged towards the tree. On reaching it, he put out his fingers out to
touch it, and a small current passed through the glove and into his hand on contact. A flash of something passed before his eyes. A smile, a child running among some trees, summer, then nothing. He touched it again, but this time he felt nothing and heard only his glove scraping against the bark.
"Sean." He jumped at the sound of the man's voice at his shoulder, spun around but no one was there. He tried to keep the fear back, felt the wind increase and find the crevices in his clothing to slide against his skin beneath like icy fingers. He whimpered, and the fingers constricted and dug into his flesh.
"No!" he shouted, and the cold withdrew, but he could feel it lingering nearby, a presence cold, dark and waiting. He desperately looked for another tree, another sign. The wind had abated, but movement caught his eye. A branch bobbed up and down farther in under its own power, and he walked to it, feeling the presence keep pace. He ignored it as best he could, and on reaching the branch, stretched up to grasp it, standing on his toes. The same current flooded through him, and this time he saw the child, a boy, bent over, studying a beetle on the ground. A shadow lurked behind him, and Sean wanted to cry out in warning, but the image faded and he was alone in the forest. He searched again. Another tree like the first caught his attention at the far reach of his vision, the branches heavy all on one side.
