by Greg Walker
Eric thought the answer should feel patronizing, but it didn't. Because he thought the man probably correct in his assessment. He sat still and waited.
"First, let me say that in all honesty, I don't know why specific things happen to specific people. Why your brother and not someone else? Why my wife? But if we think in those terms, we also have to ask why did every other bad thing - natural disasters, accidents, birth defects, the list goes on- happen to someone else and not you or me? We simply don't know. It doesn't make it any less painful, maybe more so, because it doesn't seem to make any sense.
But I believe this is a fallen world, both the creation itself and the hearts of the people living in it. Since we have free will to choose salvation or reject it, that also extends to moral choices beyond that singular one. Some make wonderful decisions and build and discover amazing things that benefit us all. Some make terrible choices that have horrifying consequences for individuals and entire nations. Could God stop the latter? If he's all-powerful He could. But to do so would take away their choice. But when the consequences fall on children, it's hardest to swallow. And at that point many stop short and spit in disgust at a God that could allow them to be hurt, no matter what the explanation. But ultimately, children are fallen beings too, living in the same fallen world and suffering its effects, and are ultimately not innocent, because the seeds of sin are sown in them already. I'm not saying it's easy to grasp, or that they deserve it, and I'm not saying it's palatable and it would be worse for us if it were. But God didn't spare his own truly innocent Son even when he could have. Instead he gave us a way out at His expense; He was known as the Man of Sorrows.
“In the end, you must accept it in faith that there is a reason God allows specific things to happen. And it's hard. Doctrine is one thing. Being in the crucible to test it is quite another. I'd be lying if I told you that when my Carrie died, I wasn't sitting where you are right now. I almost walked away from the ministry before I embraced it. And I embraced it in a way that led to Isaac's detriment. The curse of original sin lives on. But I've found out that in all the tragedy, the mistakes and the pain, it's worth believing. So hard sometimes, but most good things, most true things, usually are at some point."
He'd been leaning forward in his rocker during the short but loaded speech and Eric imagined he saw him as he appeared in the pulpit, seemingly ten years younger, the lines on his face marks of wisdom, battle scars of a still vigorous warrior. After finishing, Burroughs sank back, slowly deflating, until he settled against the chair, which groaned with the repositioning of his weight. The lines became just lines of age once again.
Burroughs brought a hand up to his temples, said in a weak voice, an old man's voice, "So think on that, Eric. If you like, at some later date, we can go more in depth. I have a series of sermons I prepared on Job, sort of God's Poster Boy for suffering. But, I'm so sorry but I think I'm going to have to lie down now. Seem to have developed quite a headache."
"Can I get you anything, Pastor? Some aspirin?"
Burroughs waved away the suggestion with his free hand, the other still fixed to his head." No, but thank you. I get them sometimes, and the only thing that seems to help is sleep. I'm just sorry it had to be tonight. But please, take the lasagna in the refrigerator home."
"I'll do that, thank you. Are you sure I can't do something, at least help get you to your bed?"
He responded in a voice no louder than a whisper, "No, I'll just need to sit here for a few moments, and I'll be all right to do that myself. Good night, Eric."
"Okay....good night, then. Thanks for everything."
Eric got the container of lasagna and came back for his coat. He thought to say something else, maybe extend a future dinner invitation, but felt that he'd been dismissed, perhaps even forgotten to the obviously debilitating pain. As he opened the door, he turned around to look at Burroughs one more time, considering whether he should call an ambulance. The older man kept his head down, his eyes closed, but lifted his free hand in a small tremulous wave. Eric decided it might be meddling, and since this wasn't something new, likely resented. He finally left, yet still with some reluctance.
He stepped out into the cool night, and thought of the leaves that would soon be in transition, fall a favorite season of his. But his mind drifted back to what the Pastor had said about suffering. He was surprised how neutral he felt, expected anger or disgust or something negative. But it was an honest answer, and in the end he realized that no amount of sermons or explanations would bring him peace. He would find that, as Burroughs said, by accepting in faith what couldn't be understood. At least now he had somewhere to start, and perhaps he was finally ready to listen. Where he'd end up was the wild card.
The pounding on the door startled him, the noise like hammer blows into his aching head. He imagined that several malicious imps had gained access to his skull, and were making the most of their windfall. Imps. In a pastor's head, no less, the book of Job on a miniature scale. Sometimes he wondered if God were punishing him for his misdeeds in the form of a migraine.
The knock came again, an impatient banging that rattled the windows, and he realized he would need to get to the door before the third round; sure it would be the knock-out blow. He might have shouted, but didn't have the strength nor wanted to hear his own voice bouncing around in concert with the throbbing echoes of the visitor's insistence.
He flipped on the outside light to make sure Eric knew he was coming and ward off anymore knocking. He liked Eric, was pleased with how the evening had gone up until the end, but felt irritated that he'd come back knowing his state, and especially with the pounding.
He opened the door, shielding his eyes from the porch light and was almost knocked over by Arnie Fisk bulling his way in. He felt a momentary flash of pure hatred but bottled it up. As though God couldn't see it. No, but he needed to control it.
"What did you tell him?" Arnie shouted.” Why the hell did you invite him over here in the first place, Pastor?" He had told Arnie to call him Patrick years ago. Titles were important to Fisk. Deacon Fisk, that is.
In a hoarse whisper, he answered, "Arnie, keep your voice down. I have one of my headaches. As to your questions, I told him nothing as it pertains to your context. What would it benefit me? I asked him over because it's what neighbors do."
"Eric Kane isn't my neighbor. His coming back here only makes trouble. If he isn't careful he's going to find some." He'd dialed down the shouting to the level of a man trying to be heard over conversation in a crowded room. Still far too loud for Burroughs.
"Arnie, I can't deal with this right now. But don't you touch him. Don't you dare touch him. Wasn't one Kane enough?" Despite his headache, he brought his eyes up to meet Fisk in a hard, challenging stare.
"Pastor, you know this isn't good for any of us. And by you inviting him over, making him feel at home, he's likely to stay. Hell, he's already screwing Mary Collins, I'll bet. The little whore. Let him be, and he'll get tired of this little vacation and go, figure out he doesn’t belong here."
"You'll watch you mouth in my house, Arnie. Now please leave. We'll discuss then when I'm in a better state to do so."
Arnie smiled, a small, mean smile and the hatred returned to Burroughs, and this time he couldn't deny it, probably couldn't hide it either.
"I'll leave, Pastor, but I'm not making any promises. I'll do what I need to. This is our town. Nothing changes now. We’re in this as deep as you, and it isn't just yours to decide on."
He left without another word, leaving the door wide open, striding quickly away as he always did. Shutting the door, careful not to bang it, Burroughs engaged the locks and shuffled to the bedroom, collapsing on the bed fully dressed and letting the dark and quiet seep into his head. The hatred for Fisk slipped away as well, and left him feeling empty.
He could hate Arnie; hate how he'd taken control of things, loathe how he'd used the situation as leverage to benefit himself. But in the end, Arnie was right. They were
all in it deep. Desperation makes men do desperate things, he supposed. But when those things level out again, the consequences remain. The ones seen, and the ones still yet to be seen. And he knew that without Arnie's knowledge they could not have accomplished what they had done; Arnie paid too much attention to the business of others to conduct something of this nature without discovery.
But was what they had done really wrong? As a minster, he felt that he should have a ready answer. But he simply didn't know. Or didn't want to. He had entertained this debate with himself off and on running for years without resolution, and in the end it really didn't matter. Arnie was right in the one thing that did; they had been in this too long to change course now. And except for the headache, the evening with Eric had been a success. He knew now he could deal with him living in the town, had sincerely wanted to see and talk with him but also discover how difficult having him as a neighbor might prove. Eric never had to know, and things could just go on. The trouble that Fisk foresaw might be of his own doing if he didn't settle down.
He began to mentally recite psalms from memory, which helped subdue his headache. Before falling into sleep, where the pain became the thunder of a distant storm, he uttered a short prayer for Eric, that he would find the peace his soul so desperately sought.
Chapter 10
The boy awoke, but this time with no brief moment of forgetfulness. In a way this was a blessing. Better just to know and not waste time on wishing. But know what exactly? He had no idea what the man wanted from him. He was lonely and afraid all of the time. There was one thing yet he hadn't tried, and that was escaping through the woods. The van wouldn't work there, and he thought maybe, just maybe, he could get away.
But he feared the woods. It was large, he knew that, imposing even in daylight when the world had been sane. What other beasts it might contain he didn't want to think about. Before this, or at least before the books and the fear, he could have laughed at the thought of werewolves or nameless creatures with daggers for teeth and a taste for tender boy flesh. Now, when nightmares had come to life, who knew? It came down to facing the unknown versus the known. And the unknown could be bad, but worse than the man?
The boy went downstairs, cautiously, fearing company but the house was silent. He wished that if the man planned to kill him too, he would simply do it. He crept to the front door and looked out on tiptoes through the square of glass without opening it. A plate of food lay on the floor again, and although his stomach wanted it, this time he refused. Instead, he went into the kitchen and poured himself a bowl of Lucky Charms. They were a little stale, but the milk was good, and at least had no taint from his town's murderer like the food outside.
He looked out the window, at the crisp blue sky devoid of clouds, the colorful leaves still on the trees but sporadic in their coverage as more fell to the ground revealing the bare bones underneath. He realized it would snow soon. If he were alive then, would he make it through the winter? And what about school? He should be back today. Randy too. Would they call, and when they couldn't get through, would someone come for them? He began to feel hopeful. Sure, someone would come. A whole town couldn't just disappear without someone noticing: friends, relatives, customers to the few stores here would notice and call the police.
As if on cue, waiting for this thought, the boy saw a police car cruise slowly down the street in front of the house. He dropped his bowl of cereal, the milk splattering impressively on the linoleum now speckled with red hearts, yellow stars, green clovers and blue diamonds and the rest that he thought looked like cat food but had to be eaten with the little marshmallows if he expected his mother to buy it.
He ran out onto the porch, waving his arms and yelling, but the car had already passed the house and continued its crawl down the road. He ran into the yard to get his bicycle, only vaguely aware he had no shoes on. The fallen leaves that his father should have raked blanketed the front yard and crunched vigorously under his feet. Preparing to ride after the cruiser, he stopped on seeing motion originate from a house slightly ahead of the policeman's route. A man came out.
The man.
The car stopped as he approached and the driver's door opened. A uniformed cop got out, and the boy expected him to pull him gun and shoot, or at least make an arrest. Instead he approached and the two talked for a few minutes in what appeared to be a typical conversation between two men that he had witnessed hundreds of times. He couldn't hear anything, only make out some hand gestures - pointing, a shrug, and then shared laughter. This last thing broke his torpor and he got on the bike and rode towards them shouting.
"Officer! He killed them all. My family. Everyone here. Please, help me!" He continued to ride, heedless of the fact that the man stood right next to the police officer and his pedaling carried the boy closer.
The man said something, but the officer put up a hand and stepped in the boy’s direction. He looked alarmed, shouted, "What's the matter, son? What's happened?"
"He killed everyone. Please, you have to...look out!"
The officer turned but not in time. The boy saw the blade burst from his neck, all the way through from the thrust of its entrance on the other side. The man drew the pistol from the cop's belt and shot him in the forehead. He let the body fall to the road, holding the knife handle and letting gravity pull it from the body.
"No!" The boy skidded to a stop ten yards from the scene, and waited for the blade or the gun. He couldn't run or ride fast enough, he knew. He watched the policeman's blood pool on the road and slowly brought his eyes up, following the line of sight of the dead man to his assailant. The man hadn't come any closer, but was looking at him. He wore the ball cap again, his eyes in complete shadow but his mouth frowned in what the boy felt was...disappointment? To emphasize his mood, the man shook his head back and forth, as one would to express disapproval of an idiot. He took a step towards the boy, who couldn't move, still in shock at the policeman's death. Not just his physical death, an act to which he'd almost become accustomed, but the easy dispatch of the symbol to which the boy assigned all power and rightness and ultimately his salvation.
But the man didn't come for him. He spoke, the first words he'd heard. The voice was surprisingly normal, not the devil voice he'd expected, and it made it all the more terrifying.
"This is your fault, Sean. If you just do what's expected, it will be so much easier for both of us."
"What do you want from me?" He asked, his voice small and distant, pleading for understanding, to make this end.
"Everything, Sean. I want everything. I have to go now, and take care of Officer Boone. Say’ goodbye’, Officer." He reached down and grasped the dead man's sleeve, raised and shook it in an imitation of a wave.
The boy screamed. The man smiled, then dropped the arm and grabbed the policeman's heels and dragged him on the road to the cruiser, his head bouncing obscenely on the asphalt. The man opened the back door and threw the body in as if tossing a scarecrow filled with straw.
He stood up and smiled at the boy. "See you soon, buddy," he said, and the boy, Sean, whimpered, as the man got in the car and drove away. As he reached the end of the street, he flicked on the siren for a moment, the sound echoing off of the vacant buildings and making Sean jump. An arm poked out of the car in a wave as it turned towards the main highway and disappeared.
When he found he could move again, the boy's thoughts turned to flight, but he'd tried that. Even if it seemed the man had left, had business with Officer Boone, he knew that once he had reached the edge of town, the man would intercept him. Seeing the police officer had caused him to revert to being a child again, and so he went home and fell on the couch as a child and wept.
Eric stopped and re-read what he wrote, and then added more. In the story, over the course of the next few days, the man began creating domestic scenes inside the former homes of the corpses he’d taken away. Sean came across the first, a family from up the road, the Sweets, sitting at their dinner table, their mouths forced in
to grins, silverware placed into their stiff hands, their own guts sitting on the plates in front of them. He'd wake in the morning to find similar exhibitions in the yard, or on the street. The boy approached a breaking point, in which he'd either go insane, find some way out, or some hatch a plan to defeat the man. And here Eric’s ideas truly dried up. He simply didn't know. And wondered now if it mattered.
He knew he could manufacture something. It was his job. But the whole point had a work with an autobiographical underpinning, and this possessed something of that flavor, more symbolic than real but still. It would be anticlimactic if the boy just accepted his plight and the killer faded away to memory.
He sighed, unsure of the story or anything else, and looked at the clock. Two in the morning. He wanted to call Mary, but she kept realtor's and not writer's hours. He saved his work, and then shut off the light in preparation for bed when he heard the screen door bang shut. He froze. Icy terror, some real, some residual from immersion in Sean's world, ran through him. His bladder, full and ignored while writing, nearly let go.
Angry now, thinking of Fisk, he walked to the front door and flipped on the porch light. He saw no one, but what appeared to be a sheet of paper sat on the porch, and again the feeling that Sean's world had crossed into his own seemed more real than it had any business being. He opened the door, looking around for someone but seeing only his reflection in the windows. Approaching the paper, he prepared to stifle a scream if whatever message it contained came in large block letters.