Sacrifice

by James, Russell

  The boys got to solid footing and ran down the basement steps. The fire above lit the basement in a golden glow. The bed stone lay at an angle, embedded in the dirt floor. Dave lay on top of it. His right leg was twisted obscenely. Jagged bone poked through his thigh. His eyes were closed, his face set in a grimace. Four of the five boys stood stunned.

  Paul rushed in. He grabbed Dave’s head and turned it towards him. Dave opened his eyes. His pupils were wide as saucers. Sweat poured down his face.

  “I can’t look, man,” Dave said. “I can’t feel it, but it’s gonna be bad. It’s bad, isn’t it?”

  “Yeah,” Paul said. “It’s bad.”

  Outside, the siren of the volunteer fire department blared to life. Some astute resident had no doubt seen the flames and called it in. Smoke filled the floor above, and the hole in the floor blew out heat like a blast furnace.

  “We gotta get out of here,” Ken said.

  “But Dave…” Marc said.

  The mill structure moaned as a great, blackened beam above them sagged under the heavy weight of the shingle roof. Sparks showered down like dying fireflies onto the bed stone.

  “I got him,” Paul said. He lifted Dave in his arms. “Go!”

  Chapter Fifty-Five

  Bob, Ken, Marc and Jeff dashed from the burning building. Paul followed with Dave in his arms and headed straight for the stream. The other four hunkered down in the lee of the mill.

  Flames engulfed the building’s upper levels. Sirens wailed, and red and blue emergency lights flashed from down at the end of Main Street. They were closing fast. Cops and firemen were on the way. The boys hunched down beside a clump of bushes.

  Bob knew they weren’t getting out of this one. He gave the cops about ninety seconds before they arrived. They’d chase any car seen peeling away from an arson scene. Unless they had something else to do.

  “Your car’s closest,” Bob said to Jeff. “You three run for it. You don’t want to wade back to mine.”

  Jeff and Marc sprinted across to the trail at the millpond’s edge. Ken looked at Bob with dread.

  “What are you going to do?” Ken said.

  “Buy you guys some time,” Bob said.

  “What makes you the one to do that?” Ken said.

  “Because the rest of you have a future,” Bob said. He pointed a thumb over his shoulder at the millpond. “Go find it.”

  The police siren was piercingly close. Ken glanced down Main in apprehension.

  “All for none, man,” he said. He ran to the millpond trail and disappeared amongst the trees.

  Bob sat on the ground and unrolled his pack of cigarettes from his shirt sleeve. An ember had melted a black hole in the center of the pack. The pack had spared his arm a nasty burn.

  “And everyone tells me these things are unhealthy,” he said. He shook one from the pack and fired it up. Headlights panned across the bushes, and a Suffolk County cruiser jerked to a stop in front of the burning mill. Two pumper trucks pulled in behind it. Men yelled commands about hoses and hydrants.

  Bob blew a cloud of smoke in the air. Splashes echoed down in the stream below the mill. The last two were safe. Or they would be.

  The cop began to search the perimeter of the building. As he approached the bushes, Bob stood. His glowing cigarette dangled from his lips.

  The cop drew his gun and leveled it at Bob. “Don’t move! Put your hands in the air!”

  Bob raised his hands.

  Well, this is going to suck, he thought.

  At least he’d made the mark he said he’d be happy with. He killed the Woodsman.

  Chapter Fifty-Six

  Main Street was quiet as Paul carried Dave over the stream embankment and back into the village. The burning mill was a mile away but still lit the night like a torch. Emergency lights flickered between the trees at the mill’s base.

  Dave was white as Paul carried him down the sidewalk. There wasn’t much blood loss, but Paul still recognized the onset of shock. Dave needed help before that set in.

  “I’ll get you to the hospital,” Paul said.

  “No way,” Dave said. He grabbed Paul’s shirt, but his grip was weak. “We’ll all go down. They’ll figure it out.”

  Paul knew he was right. But this wasn’t some gangster movie where they had an unlicensed doctor waiting for them in a warehouse.

  “I got an idea,” Paul said.

  “It may die of loneliness,” Dave managed. His smile was faint as false dawn.

  Paul laid Dave on the sidewalk in front of one of the more picturesque older homes. A sturdy maple grew nearby. He pulled Dave’s keys from his pocket.

  “When they come out of the house,” Paul said, “you pulled yourself from the car. You were distracted by the fire.”

  “What?”

  “Repeat it. You pulled yourself from the car. You were distracted by the fire.”

  “I pulled myself from the car. I was distracted by the fire.”

  “You’re going to be okay.”

  Paul ran across the street and behind the village shops. He fired up Dave’s Vista Cruiser and strapped on the seatbelt. He hooked the passenger seatbelt into a loop.

  He raced out of the parking lot at twice the posted limit. The heavy Vista leaned hard as he swung her right onto Main Street. He spied the target maple and checked to be sure Dave lay clear. He stomped the pedal, and the big V8 pushed him back into the seat.

  The tree approached so fast he barely had time to react. He lay down across the bench seat, grabbed the passenger seat belt and held his breath.

  The car slammed into the tree with a symphony of shearing metal and shattered glass. The steering column passed over Paul’s hip and impaled the back of the seat. The engine stopped. The punctured radiator hissed like an angered snake, and a cloud of sweet-smelling antifreeze formed over the crumpled hood.

  Paul disconnected his seat belt and kicked open the driver’s door with his foot. He could see Dave on the sidewalk. He opened the passenger door and slid out into the street.

  The light on the house snapped on. An older man in a bathrobe looked across at the wrecked car in shock. He got to the gate and saw Dave on the ground.

  “Mary! Call the police!” he shouted back to the house.

  Paul crouched along the far side of the big wagon and then sprinted across the street. The older man was far too busy with Dave to notice.

  Paul had an hour’s walk back home. The light from the mill fire had dimmed. Either the fireman had done their job or the conflagration had run out of fuel. He’d drive down and find out in the morning.

  He hoped he wouldn’t have to wait that long to find out if everyone else made it out safely.

  Chapter Fifty-Seven

  Sunday morning came on cold and cloudy. While the graduates in gowns didn’t miss a blazing sun overhead, the dark sky’s threat of rain had everyone on edge. The Whitman High principal had rolled the dice and gone with the outdoor graduation version since the limited seating in the gym for the indoor version sparked a few fist fights last year. Now it was in the hands of God.

  Bleachers flanked the temporary stage by the flagpole at Whitman High’s main entrance. A few thousand folding chairs faced the school, three quarters of them filled with proud parents and family members, most with umbrellas at the ready.

  Inside the school, a sea of dark green gowns and bobbing gold tassels filled the hallway. The cacophony of excited voices made the usual cafeteria commotion seem study-hall quiet. Teachers struggled to line up the eight hundred graduates in alphabetical order, only to have an excited student spy a friend and rush over to greet them.

  The number two topic of discussion everywhere was the mill fire. It had led WTAL’s quarter-hour news update all weekend. The loss of Sagebrook’s architectural touchstone was unbelievable, on a par with the Hindenburg explosion. The word was out that Bob Armstrong had been arrested at the scene. The hall consensus split into two camps. The first knew all along he was capable of something
like that. The second didn’t know who he was. In normal circumstances, the Half Dozen would have been his defenders. But these circumstances were far from normal.

  Ken milled around in the “S” section of the hall, near the end of the group. He hadn’t seen the others. He knew he wouldn’t see Bob. Bail was set at $250,000 (though the rumor mill had upped it to a cool million) and his mother didn’t have that kind of pocket change lying around. Ken hadn’t slept last night worrying about Dave. He had seen the compound fracture of Dave’s leg. He knew bad ones ended up being amputated, and the idea made him want to throw up.

  Paul walked up behind Ken and hit him in the shoulder as a greeting. Ken nodded. They hadn’t spoken since they split up at the burning mill. None of them had. Some combination of the horror of the events and the guilt about Dave’s injury had erected a barrier between them all. Even now, Ken was afraid to speak about Friday night in front of this crowd lest the rest of them end up following Bob to jail.

  “You seen the others?” Paul asked.

  “No,” Ken answered. “Dave?”

  Paul checked to see of anyone was listening, but the graduates were all enveloped in their private conversations.

  “He wrecked his car last night,” Paul said. “Broke his leg. An ambulance took him to the hospital.”

  That statement filled in enough blanks for Ken. That and the grave look on Paul’s face. “You see him in the hospital?”

  Paul looked away, awash in guilt. “What would I say?”

  In the din of the hall, the boys shared an uncomfortable silence.

  “Bob got caught down at the mill fire,” Ken said. “They say he set it.”

  “I wonder what he’ll say?”

  Ken remembered the last time he saw Bob, face lit by the mill’s flames, with the calm resolution of a Christian before Nero’s lions. “He’ll say he was there alone.”

  Brady and Block were alphabetical siblings so Jeff knew Marc had to be somewhere nearby. Under his mortarboard, Jeff had his Mets cap on, reversed with the brim down the back of his neck. Two weeks ago, when the world had been normal, he’d rigged his mortarboard with blinking green lights at the corners run off a nine-volt battery. The idea didn’t seem as funny today. They remained unlit.

  He replayed the last conversations they had in the drive away from the mill last night. Ken told them about the monster apparition in the mill’s main entrance. Jeff told them he saw the Woodsman outside the mill window, but kept the details of the Katy-inspired strip tease to himself. Marc said he hadn’t seen anything, just grabbed the bones for the ritual when he saw the vision of the constable disappear. Jeff had dropped them at their houses and hadn’t spoken to them since.

  With a few minutes before the ceremony’s start, Marc walked down the hall. His face was drawn. He was a small guy, but his gown was a size too large and it gave him a shrunken appearance. He seemed like someone else, a stranger. When Jeff caught his eye, Marc momentarily looked away. He got in line behind Jeff.

  “You good, man?”

  “Yeah.”

  Jeff didn’t know what to say. All the horror of the last week played out in his mind. The guilt of Dave’s injury and Bob’s sacrificial arrest pierced his soul. This wasn’t the right place to share all that with Marc, but he wasn’t sure there was a right place. It was as if the night’s multiple traumas had severed the bond he’d assumed was unbreakable.

  “Line it up! Line it up!” Mrs. Carrollton called as she shepherded the students into a straight line. “Stay in order or you’ll get someone else’s diploma!”

  “All for none…” Jeff said over his shoulder.

  Marc didn’t answer.

  The band outside struck up a tune and the line surged forward. The Class of 1980 marched out into the grey morning. The graduates filed into the bleachers. A little-known local dignitary sat on the dais ready to lecture the graduates about the brilliant futures that lay ahead of them.

  When they sat down Jeff searched the crowd, mentally working down the alphabet through the H and S sections. He found Paul, then Ken. Both looked tense and distracted. He wasn’t sure if they saw him.

  Then he made the search he had promised not to do and scanned the crowd for Katy.

  When he saw her, his heart did the usual back flip it did whenever she was around. Her mortarboard barely contained a set of elegant curls that swirled around her shoulders with a ballerina’s grace. Jeff sighed when he remembered that was how she was going to wear it to the prom. She wore just a hint of eye shadow that Jeff knew perfectly matched the dark blue dress hidden beneath her graduation gown. He had been with her when she picked that dress out.

  Katy stared straight ahead, oblivious to the chatter around her or the speaker before her. Her brown eyes, usually so soft and inviting, looked empty. Jeff looked away, unwilling to risk eye contact.

  A void spread within him with an intensity he’d never experienced. Katy was a dozen yards from him, but it felt like a million miles. He was the bad guy. He was a bad guy with good reason, but he was still the bad guy. He would never make this weekend up to her, and even if he did, their relationship could never be the same. He had destroyed the magic they had shared. After two years with her, he could not imagine a lifetime without.

  When the ceremony was over, what was left of the Half Dozen were whisked away by their individual families for celebrations of their accomplishment. Over thirty years would pass before the four of them would be in the same place again.

  Act III

  Resurrection

  Chapter Fifty-Eight

  1980

  Minutes before the mill goes up in flames.

  “Ellen! Wake up!”

  Ellen Silas felt someone shake her foot through her covers. She forced her eyes open. Between the moonlight streaming through the windows and the Minnie Mouse nightlight she could see the man on the edge of her bed quite clearly.

  He had a kind face, like her father. In fact when she first opened her eyes, that’s who she thought it was. But while he resembled her father, he was different. His nose was a little narrower, his face a little longer. And Daddy never wore a hat, certainly not a strange, swept-back one like this man wore. He felt like a relative, like Uncle Billy who always came for Christmas.

  “Wakey, wakey,” the man said with another shake of her foot. He gave Ellen a big smile that melted her four-year-old heart and relieved her of any fear this stranger might have engendered.

  “I’m awake now.” She rubbed her eyes. “Who are you?”

  “I’m a relative,” the man said. “Like a great-great grand uncle, come to visit.”

  “Like Uncle Billy?”

  “Exactly,” the man said. “Now you get to do something special. You get a secret mission.”

  Ellen snapped up in bed. A secret mission! Detective Diana went on secret missions every Saturday morning on TV. She solved mysteries, and Ellen wanted to do that.

  “You’ll need to keep your mission a secret,” the man said. “You’ll do it years from now.”

  “Can I tell Mommy and Daddy?”

  “Why of course,” the man said. “I’d tell them myself, but I can only talk to you. You tell them I was here. Great Uncle Tom with the swept-back hat. They know all about me. All my descendants do.”

  Ellen leaned forward, as if to listen harder.

  “Soon I will be gone,” the man said. “Trapped somewhere bad.”

  “Like a prison?”

  “Yes, only worse. But you will rescue me. You will have the key to get me out.”

  “I can do that.”

  “Let me show you how.”

  The bedroom dissolved and gave way to the exterior of the mill. The man stood hand in hand with Ellen. It was a bright sunny day and birds chirped in the trees.

  “Where are we, Ellen?”

  “At the waterwheel,” Ellen said, which was what she always called the mill.

  “Very good,” the man said. “Now you will go inside the mill, into the basement.�
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  He led Ellen forward and they passed through the mill’s stone wall. Ellen smiled in amazement. Inside the basement, the man pointed at the earth along the west wall.

  “You’ll dig here. You will find a bone. That will be the key.”

  “A bone is a key?”

  “Exactly. Others will tell you how to use it but you will be the one who knows where it is. Because that is your secret mission.”

  “Wow,” Ellen said.

  The man turned to Ellen and knelt to be eye level with her. “So what will you look for?”

  “A bone. A bone is the key.”

  The man smiled like a cobra. He placed his index fingers at each of Ellen’s temples. The scene melted back into Ellen’s dark bedroom. Ellen’s eyes glazed over.

  “You will remember all this and tell your father,” the man said, “as he told his father and as did his father before him, so the generations know my story.”

  Ellen gave a dazed nod.

  “But you are the one with a secret mission,” the man said, “so in thirty years you will remember it all again and free me when time has made others forget, and a generation will await unprotected.”

  Ellen nodded again.

  The man’s face was overcome with fear, and he stared off as if he could see through the walls at something unfolding miles away. He dropped his hands from Ellen’s face. His body shrank to a vertical line and then disappeared.

  Ellen got out of bed and stumbled into the hallway. She wandered down to her parents’ room and pushed open the door. She padded over to her father’s side of the bed and shook his face. His eyes fluttered open.

  “Ellen?” he croaked.

  “Daddy, Great Uncle Tom just visited me in my room.”

  Her father’s eyes went wide. He sat up in bed. “All right, Ellen, tell me everything he said.”

  Chapter Fifty-Nine

  Present day.

  The remaining five of the Dirty Half Dozen went to work in Bob’s garage. Bob’s sister Lori was going to have the place cleaned out soon so they needed to save Bob’s Museum of the Woodsman today. Besides, what would anyone who walked into the garage think looking at the grisly collection on the walls? The only thing they could think: serial killer. And as a convicted felon… Bob’s reputation already had enough undeserved mud.