In Dark Places

by Darryl J Keck

  I turn around to find Benny strolling back in my direction. Patricia isn’t walking alongside him nor has she moved from her hunched-over position against the tree. I saw her hands shifting slightly, so she was definitely alive several minutes ago. After 25 years of imprisonment, wouldn’t a mother’s first priority be standing up to hug her son? Jesus, maybe she lost her right leg and can’t get up.

  Benny doesn’t look very happy over the lukewarm reception. “Why are you back over here so soon? What did your mother say when she saw you standing there?”

  “She won’t say nothin’,” he says, nervously. “She won’t make a peep or even look up from her hands. I told her three times that I was standin’ there. I can’t talk to her if she ain’t gonna talk back. I was around some quiet folks like that at Franklin Hills, and I don’t like seeing her this way. I’ve been waitin’ too long to be with her.”

  “Come with me,” I instruct as I walk past him. “Let’s get some answers from your mother.” With him at my side, Patricia may be more inclined to snap from her stupor and be forthcoming about what transpired here. I’ve pulled confessions out of some very obstinate individuals over the years.

  “Ms. Jackson, can we have a word with you?” My words hang in the air as I crouch alongside her. Patricia isn’t even mumbling, but her limbs are all intact. As I try to get her attention with a slight nudge, her hands remain cupped over her face. “Ms. Jackson, can you please shed some light on what happened to this town?”

  If any of what has transpired here is Patricia’s doing, I’d expect her to be a bit cagey, but nothing will make sense if she remains unresponsive.

  “Mama, he’s an off-duty police officer that brought me over here,” Benny says. “He’s here to help; he ain’t gonna arrest me.”

  She doesn’t flinch. Upon my third attempt to get her to open up, she finally pulls her hands away from her bloodshot eyes. Trails of remorseful tears extend down both of her cheeks.

  “I didn’t mean for this to happen,” she mumbles, almost inaudibly. “I just wished for Benny to be free and for his problems to go away.”

  “Is that exactly how you worded the wish?”

  I can’t believe how “wish” has suddenly become such an integral and widely-used word in my vocabulary.

  “Yes, sir. Those were my exact words,” she says, obviously wondering how a simple request could have been so severely misinterpreted. This sounds hauntingly familiar to what happened to Mandi after making her wish. “After counting to 20, the rumble of sounds in the distance all went away in one loud thud. I thought a meteor entered the atmosphere and collided with the quarry on the edge of town. It then became so alarmingly quiet.”

  “We experienced the same thing at Franklin Hills.”

  “I assume you are Mr. Delaney,” she says. “Did I get the name right? I believe that’s the person she said would be escorting Benny. I may have known your mother a long time ago. I have a message for you.”

  “Who told you my name?”

  “The woman that granted the wish,” she says, nervously.

  “Was her name Abellina?”

  “I believe that was her name, yes. What did I get myself and this town into?”

  “Maybe you should tell me the message first.”

  “That’s a good idea,” she says. “I’m an old woman now, so I don’t exactly retain every word all that well. She told me these words just seconds before she popped out of the picture and I started counting; I will try to recall the highlights without missing much.”

  “I’m not concerned that the message may be slightly abridged.” I’m actually a little scared to hear a second-hand message that originated from the mouth of an omnipotent witch. A few hours ago, she was my counselor. After today’s events, I’ll never be able to visualize her that way again!

  “She said to tell Mr. Delaney that when something unexplainable happens, most people are busy looking for aliens with large heads or a dark figure walkin’ around in a cloak. People love blaming the grim reaper for every unexplained or senseless death. When people see what happened, the religious fanatics will be pointing the finger at Revelations. She said no one other than you will truly figure it out.”

  This seems like a weird message to pass along. People always make illogical assumptions following a tragedy. What the hell did she mean that I’d be the only one to figure it out?

  “This first part of her message bothered me, but I had no idea my wish would result in the leveling of my town,” Pat says with deep regret. “But the last thing she said made me realize that something bad might be coming. I was just too excited about Benny getting out of that psychiatric hospital to rescind my wish. After 25 years of imprisonment, who would blame me?”

  “Ms. Jackson, no one is mad at you, and I’m certainly not blaming you for this.” I do think she was rather impulsive to get the ball rolling for an immediate release. I’m not a dad, so I cannot relate to the despair a parent feels when a child is locked away for life . . . especially when they are certain their son did not commit the crime. Maybe I’d do the same thing in her position. With a sympathetic tone, I add, “Do you remember the rest of what was said?”

  “I pretty much remember this last part word-for-word. She said that the events about to transpire are in compliance with the wording of your heartfelt supplication. You wished for Benny’s problems to all go away. In actuality, everyone in this town will continue to be a problem for your boy. After so many years of confinement, he can only start a new life with a clean slate. No one residin’ within twenty-five miles will ever treat him as anything other than a convicted murderer. Therefore, drastic action needs to be taken to ensure he gets restitution. She then told me to count to 20. I opened my eyes and saw all that white stuff hangin’ in the air.” She hesitates. “Once that stuff faded, all the buildings were gone. I wanted to tell the woman that our problems didn’t belong to the town. Then the town was gone and so was the woman.”

  “Patricia, your wish was fully open to interpretation,” I tell her calmly, without an ounce of vilification for her act. I don’t need her falling apart. Benny would get inconsolable. “You are entitled to feel sorrowful, but I feel Abellina had a score to settle with the town. Her mother was killed by a group of evil residents that then kept her locked up for years. The decimation of the town may have been the ultimate goal, all part of some master plan.”

  “How could you know this? What master plan?”

  “Well, someone else’s wish brought about a change to a moment in time that caused Benny to be locked up. As it turns out, Willie McAllister was the triggerman in those murders,” I point out.

  “I never trusted that good-for-nothing creep,” she says. “I suspected him several times, but the blasted police said he was cleared.”

  “Mama, we passed by Willie McAllister’s wooden headstone just before. He’s all gone.”

  Benny has been keeping quiet, paying more attention to the dirt lodged under his fingernails than anything we’ve been saying. He sure chimed in at the perfect time when it was necessary to communicate a fact. Suddenly, I realize his painful stalling to study each grave marker wasn’t actually wasted time. Life has a design where we all play a necessary role.

  “If Mandi McAllister hadn’t removed the weapon, Benny would not have been pinned for those crimes,” I explain. “She was the beginning of a chain that resulted in Benny losing 25 years of freedom. What you requested was understandable. You were not in control of how it was carried out or decoded.”

  No matter how Patricia worded her wish regarding Benny, I believe this town was going to cease to exist by someone’s foolhardy directive. Patricia was just in a position to make it happen quicker.

  “I am directly responsible for how two people died today,” she admits. “I’ll be facing the man upstairs for my part in that, but I do believe my actions will save many lives going forward. I have no regrets for having them put out of their misery, but I have remorse for what happened to the others
in this town.”

  “Who are you responsible for, uh, putting out of their misery?” Killing is just one of those words that never comes off as favorable.

  “All of the cement inside the well was my doing. Two trucks filled the thing up while two godless fools were down inside.”

  A woman with such limited ingenuity could not have orchestrated such a complicated action. I only caught the trucks pulling away. What happened to the wishing well sure doesn’t feel as if it could have been Patricia’s idea; I could barely dream up an objective so involved.

  “Patricia, are you trying to convince me that you called the people at All County Ready Mix and paid to have two of their trucks dump cement down the well? I’m not buying it.”

  “I didn’t exactly do it the way you are saying, but I might as well have. I’m the reason it happened. When the woman said she’d get rid of them, I gave my consent.”

  “Tell me slowly what happened with the wishing well.”

  “That pretty white woman told me that the Jezebel and the lout down inside that well would perish as part of my wish,” she says, quite guiltlessly. “I was fine with it. They both deserved what they got, but I just didn’t expect the town to go with ’em. I thought I’d be doin’ everyone a big favor getting rid of that detestable Agnew McAllister. I couldn’t help that the McAllister girl was down in the hole with that holy terror, but she carried around plenty of her own sins. I’m not God nor am I a judge, yet I knew my wish would take their lives. I’m suddenly on a greased pole to Hell for authorizing such a careless wish. Maybe we are already in Hell.”

  “Do you assert that Mandi McAllister was down in the well when it was filled with cement?” I ask, masking my horrification.

  “That’s the only McAllister girl I know. She’s that racist little blonde shit—pardon my vulgar words. The woman verified that the McAllister girl’s nasty wish caused my Benny all that pain; she went and tampered with crucial evidence. You verified it too. I just wanted that bad girl no longer to be a bother to either of us. If ya ask me, what happened to the hussy was more than justified.”

  I can’t exactly disagree that Mandi was due some punishment for what happened to Benny, but she didn’t deserve to be in encased in cement. With Mandi’s terror of closed-in spaces, the sheer panic she must have felt during those final breaths is dreadful to consider. I take a few seconds to picture how she would have even entered such a dark place. Some trickery was at play; she was too scared of tight spaces to be down in the wishing well willingly. A packed elevator would have made her struggle. It’s dispiriting that her newfound spunk backfired so critically. Whatever happened to a good old-fashioned spanking for wrongdoing?

  “Why was Mandi down inside the well in the first place?”

  “Apparently, she was attempting to revoke her wish by retrieving the gun. Agnew went down to stop her, and my wish prevented them both from returning to the surface.”

  Damn! This just got more complicated. No one will be able to verify that Agnew is ensconced in cement down there without chipping away at all the concrete. At least Agnew no longer poses a threat to anyone. He’ll just never surface again. For as many tight places he escaped from, it’s hard to believe the squirmy little shit is actually trapped forever. The darkest days always have their silver lining.

  “Did she show up after you made the wish?” I ask. Considering the way Abellina approached Mandi, I want to discover if there was a pattern.

  “No, sir,” she says. “It was the strangest thing. My good friend Clarence told me about a visit he had with the McAllister girl just after 4:00. She told him about a mistake she had made—one that was greatly responsible for Benny’s incarceration. It sounded like a big pile of crap at first. A few minutes after, there was a light knock on the door. I thought my dear friend showed up to pass on more details, but it was a charming woman. She told me the only way Benny would be free from his oppressors was to make an immediate petition at the old well. She handed me a necklace with some old penny inside and turned away. I knew it was too much of a coincidence that she had shown up shortly after the McAllister girl had graced my front stoop. After looking at the odd Indianhead penny, I caught the bus down here. I didn’t have much time to think it all out, but I followed her instructions. Even if it was some type of hoax, would any harm come from making a simple wish?”

  She just answered her own question, but I’m not about to point out the obvious.

  “After you made your wish, where did Abellina go?”

  “Your guess is as good as mine,” Patricia admits. “She was long gone after I was told to close my eyes and count. When it suddenly got quiet, I was expecting some twinkling piano music as you see in those tearjerker movies when a family is about to be reunited. Instead, I opened my eyes to a heapin’ of white dots barrelin’ through the air. I shut my eyes and wished so hard for everything to return to normal. It didn’t take ’cause deep down I just wanted my Benny to be free; he didn’t do nothin’ wrong. Clarence didn’t know the McAllister girl from anyone, yet she confessed her sins like she was talkin’ to a priest. Our sheriff never listened to nothin’ I ever said over the years, so I took it upon myself to bring about his freedom. I thought I was asking for the right thing. I didn’t think the people and the town would perish as a cost for Benny to be released.”

  “Apparently, everyone pays a steep price for making a wish.” Taradiddle Tony, Mandi McAllister, and now Patricia Jackson found that lesson out after it was too late.

  “I was hoping that the wishing well would open back up so I could wish all the people back,” she says. “I will need help explaining to the authorities that I didn’t mean for a simple wish to result in a Wilkinson Creek holocaust. Would it help if they knew how seeing my boy walking unhampered in the sunshine fills my heart with joy after he received such a senseless verdict?”

  “What you are saying is very touching,” I say, but all the vanilla in the world isn’t about to make anyone think 7,000 people should have been traded for the freedom of one innocent man. “I’m afraid those that will investigate this event will come from distrustful divisions of the government. They will find your testimony absurd and debunk everything you say. Benny has spent too much time in an institution to watch you get placed in one next. To keep Benny safe and free, you will need to get as far away from Wilkinson Creek as humanly possible.”

  “How will that be possible? They’ll have Benny’s picture posted in every post office and police station from here to Timbuktu.”

  “The investigators will assume you are both buried along with the other residents,” I insist. “There will be so much land to dig up, and I doubt they’d have the resources to verify everyone all that quickly. This vacant town will bring about immunity. Come to think of it, if they were worried about Benny, they’d be just as unsettled over the other residents of Franklin Hills as well—some that would be considered a greater danger to society.”

  Franklin Hills had some deadly nutbags locked behind those security doors. No one places metal bars on a fourth-floor window unless the individual behind that glass would still be considered a danger to society after falling four floors.

  It dawns on me that the authorities will not be able to locate a grave marker with Benny Jackson’s name burned into it. With an entire population buried under large rocks, Benny may not be much of a concern. The less the boy pokes his head out, the less chance he’ll have of being noticed.

  “How do you expect me to move away? I’ve lived here upwards of 50 years.”

  “Look around, Patricia. There is nothing left here for you and Benny. You will need to take pleasure in the next chapter of your life and never look back.”

  I explain to Benny and Patricia that they will need to keep from drawing any unnecessary attention, work only for cash, never apply for credit cards, and to find someone reputable that can eventually get them new identities. I feel as if I’m aiding and abetting, but Benny isn’t guilty of anything other than giving me a mig
raine earlier. Patricia, on the other hand, seems to have made a careless request that inadvertently deleted an entire town—one that could probably get her awarded two-hundred consecutive life sentences. Like Mandi, Patricia wasn’t specific enough in her request. If you ask me, she totally shit the bed.

  “It’s imperative to follow what I’m suggesting in order to remain free,” I state. “I may know the law, but I also know some crafty ways around the law.”

  “He’s right, Mama,” Benny interjects. “We can’t stay here. This is a bad place now.”

  “Benny,” she says, “it has always been a bad place!”

  Chapter 33

  Derek

  After Devising an exit strategy for Patricia and Benny, I finally convinced them to follow me to the west edge of town. I’m blindly escorting them since I have no clue how far the destruction extends. Will every city and township be destroyed for hundreds of miles? If so, we might as well be tucked under one of those grave markers because we’ll die of thirst long before ever reaching anything resembling civilization again.

  Due to the high rock bluffs on the north and south side of the landscape, we know precisely where Highway 173 should be cutting through the town. I spent most of the walk devising a plan for Benny to stay off the radar. Keeping my mouth running prevented him from asking too many questions. It didn’t stop him entirely, but Patricia handled those interruptions with an iron hand.

  “Benny, you’ll need to hold your tongue,” she said. “The adults are talking.”

  Even though Benny towers over her by seven inches and can probably buy beer at any liquor store without an ID, she still sees him as a little boy. Institution or no institution, Benny may always have some chains latched to him.