by Rick R. Reed
Dwight got his other hand up and around Jimmy’s neck. Jimmy closed his eyes because he didn’t want the last thing he saw to be this man’s face, enraged, crazed, his pale eyes blazing.
The hands squeezed tight.
There was no more air.
Jimmy’s eyelids fluttered and in that fluttering, he saw Father Grebb.
But then the darkness rose up.
* * *
Dwight would get the little bastard, make sure this time. He didn’t care anymore about saving the boy’s immortal soul.
He had his own soul to worry about now.
The pain was intense: white-hot, ricocheting through his body.
Dwight squeezed tight with the strength born of adrenaline and panic, feeling the little windpipe begin to collapse.
But then there was a sound from behind him. Dwight loosened his grip to turn to look. Had one of the little monsters gotten free? There had been other noises in the basement, the sound of wood breaking, but Dwight had ignored them, thinking that if he took care of the little slut boy here and now, no one else would be a challenge.
But before he could even turn, something sharp stabbed through the back of his neck.
Dwight didn’t even have a chance to experience the new pain.
*
Dwight Morris slumped on top of Jimmy Fels, the meat hook he’d used for torture sticking up out of his neck. When Richard slammed the hook into the back of his neck, blood spurted out in an arc that splashed onto Richard’s face. He could taste its slippery warmth.
Right now, he needed to get Jimmy Fels out from underneath the monster. Already, the gasoline fumes in the basement were becoming caustic, choking.
He reached down and grabbed the length of cord still attached to the meat hook and hauled Dwight up with it, ignoring the bright red blood pumping out of him. Gasping, Richard managed to get Dwight’s body out of the box.
Jimmy Fels lay silent.
Richard crumbled to his knees. The boy must be dead. He rolled Dwight over and away from the box, taking up the boy’s hand, squeezing it. “Jimmy,” he whispered,
“Not now, not now.” He bit his lower lip. “I saved you, Jimmy.”
Richard leaned down into the box, lifting the boy’s limp form to his chest and screamed, “No!” His cry was full of anguish and had all the force of lost love.
Epilogue
Richard held the dark-haired girl close to him as he watched the blaze. The heat from it warmed his face in the cold of this December dawn. Pinkish-grey light was just beginning to show over the eastern horizon.
Around him, the others were gathered in a tight circle. None of them spoke. Each of their faces was upturned, watching the flames rise up into the darkness.
Near the front of the crowd, an old woman stood. Her salt and pepper hair was pulled up in a bun and she gripped her coat tight around her. Just above her blue wool muffler, moist brown eyes peeked out.
No one looked down, where Jimmy Fels lay, covered by the priest’s coat, looking almost as if he were asleep. The flames flickered across his white face, giving his skin a luminescence, a glow.
He almost looked alive.
Until, Richard thought, you looked at the ring of purple around his neck.
Behind them, the neighborhood had awakened, and they too watched in silence as the blazing house collapsed.
And now the sounds of sirens. Their cries cut through the night air, distant, growing closer.
Richard pulled the dark-haired girl closer to him. She opened her eyes, looked up at him, and gave him a smile. A smile for the savior.
Richard shook his head, burying his face in her dark hair. He closed his eyes and saw the altar of his church.
He was preaching, reading from the Bible, Psalm 28.
“The Lord is my strength and my shield; my heart trusted in him, and I am helped; therefore my heart greatly rejoiceth; and with my song will I praise him.”
And on the altar near him, wearing red and white vestments, was Jimmy Fels.
Richard opened his eyes and took his face out of the girl’s dark hair.
The sirens were almost here, and he would have to take care of things.
