And just like that Jason knew that he could do it. Knew without a doubt that he could get away with it. Knew that it wouldn’t take any doing either, nothing special. It was right now, that’s when, and that was all there was to it.
Kevin was in a murderous daze, spurred on by the killings of the boy and girl, made deeper by the smearing of the blood all over the back seats just before he dumped their bodies by the barrels alongside the old saw mill. Jason remembered watching the unseeing eyes of the little boy, his throat sliced wide, his innards mixing with the weeds, and the wind fluttering saw dust across the small face and still moist lips. He saw the face of the girl, too, just as clear but couldn’t bring himself to see anymore, especially after what Kevin, that disgusting pig, had done to her corpse…
It was now, had to be. The trucker had made it clear as day. He had called someone on the radio. That someone would be waiting for the Dart. Near the Old Brick Church, perhaps…maybe a bit farther along but waiting nevertheless.
It had to be now, while Kevin was distracted, while his foot was stamped down all the way on the gas pedal and he wasn’t paying any attention to poor, defenseless, scared to death Jason.
The Dart passed the truck and continued to pick up speed. The needle was passing one-twenty now and he could feel the Dart start trembling, start vibrating as if giving them a clear signal that enough was enough.
Well, enough was enough…this had to stop. Jason was sure of it now, there was no better time. If not now, it would go on and on and on, Kevin would never be satisfied. His lust for blood, little kid blood, was just too strong to be overcome. There was no helping him, no helping Kevin’s idiotic rage, Kevin’s will to slice and carve and cover himself with young blood.
The steep rise in the roadway that was about a mile away from the Old Brick Church was just coming up now and Jason was waiting for it. The truck was about two or three hundred yards behind and the Dart took air as it crested the rise, slamming back down on the other side in a shower of sparks.
At that moment, while Kevin was in the midst of another scream, while his attention was fully concentrated on the Dart’s getting airborne over the rise, Jason made his move. He seized control of the Dart, yanking the wheel hard to the left and stamping his foot down on the brake. The car skidded, threatened to roll over as the driver’s side came broadside across the lane. The stink of burning rubber and mashed brakes filled the air, the smoke rising from the tortured tires and passing through the open windows was acrid and hurt Jason’s raw throat.
Kevin realized something was wrong and tried to gain back his control of the Dart but it was too late. Jason smiled as the relative silence of the Old Brick Church Road took over for one glorious second. The Dart stood motionless, lying broadside across the lane at the bottom of the rise, and without Kevin’s senseless screaming the sounds of the birds and the crickets singing their song in the dying light of the setting sun brought a smile to Jason’s lips.
Kevin screamed one more time, as he realized what Jason was trying to do, and made one reckless attempt to gain back control of the vehicle. Jason’s right foot almost came up off the brake, too…almost.
That was all Jason could think about as the tanker truck crested the rise and the rig’s blaring horn reached Jason’s ears. With Kevin’s final scream still bouncing around in his head, Jason Kittlehorn turned his eyes toward his onrushing death and thought to himself just how cool the truck’s grill looked glowing gold in the setting sun.
Jason and Kevin never felt the impact that crushed the Dart like an accordion, split the car in two and sent both pieces skidding off into the overgrown weeds where they rolled over several times before coming to a stop within view of the Old Brick Church.
* **
Trooper Flannery was the lucky one that day. He got the call and arrived on the scene of the accident involving the old Dart and the tanker truck on the Old Brick Church Road. He spent an hour or so in the waning light of another day gone watching the town’s lone fire truck douse the flames that burned both halves of the car to a crisp. He interviewed the truck driver, one Michael Katzen of Suffolk, Virginia, despite the man’s shock and tears. It seemed that Mr. Katzen had never before killed a man with his truck and the shock to his system was hitting him pretty hard.
There had been a lot of blood in the old Dart, more than seemed likely to end up in the back seat. Katzen had mentioned just a single time that he could’ve sworn the blood was already back there just before the crash, visible on the seats as the car had passed him on the driver’s side. Although the flames had burned hot, much of it had caught on to the weeds and crab grass covering the side of the road. The front half of the car had burned much worse than the back half did, the two pieces smoldering in the near distance about thirty feet or so from each other. A large and menacing knife had also been found in the grass along the side of the road, about ninety feet from the two halves of Dodge Dart…something that still didn’t sit right with Flannery.
Although old Katzen was half out of his mind with grief over killing another human being, Trooper Flannery wasn’t too sure if the truck driver hadn’t just done the entire county a huge favor.
It seems that a young father of two, a little boy and girl, had reported his kids missing outside Ted Philper’s old gas station and convenience store about ten miles up the Old Brick Church Road and an old Dodge Dart had also been reported leaving the scene around the same time. This wasn’t the first report of missing children in this part of Tennessee over the past two years, no sir, but two halves of Dodge Dart and a whole lot more blood than one person should have inside them along with one mysterious and nasty looking knife spelled a lot more clues than any of the other crime scenes had yet to surrender.
And then there was old Katzen’s statements about the seconds just before the crash, too. Just as he crested the rise on the Old Brick Church Road, and the Dart came into view at the bottom, sitting across the road with a wake of skid marks following closely behind it. Old Katzen said he knew that there was no chance of stopping in time, no chance of swerving to miss that old piece of crap car. So he did what he could do, he sounded his horn, slammed full on the brakes and tried to look into the face of the Dart’s lone driver for any sense of a reaction.
What he saw there, what old Katzen claims he saw there, were two people within one face. One screaming, one looking toward the rushing truck, one shaking with rage (especially in the eyes) and one smiling at sure death.
He claims to have seen this all within about a half a second but it was enough to cause old Katzen to sit there and cry like a baby as he gave Trooper Flannery his statement.
One body, dead in those weeds, crushed to death by a multi-ton murder weapon cruising at about seventy down the Old Brick Church Road. One body…charred beyond recognition, smashed in the crash…but two people, one in a rage and one in serenity… watching their deaths come for them…watching through one set of eyeballs as life was lost within view of the Old Brick Church.
This wasn’t the first death to be claimed by this road, no, far from it. There’d been plenty of bodies strewn across the pavement and a fair amount of blood drained into the ditches along the Old Brick Church Road. There was something about the Old Brick Church and the long lonely road leading up to it that seemed to beckon death like a siren singing her song…only the death knell rolled out over endless fields of weeds and dried up old scrub brush, not over ancient oceans of blue and deep water.
The Old Brick Church Road would claim many more lives before Flannery reached his end, too, of that he was sure. Only this time, the death that it had claimed made the Trooper feel somehow safer… made him feel somehow good about the chewed up blacktop and the old relic of a church sitting among the high grass not too far off, now bathed in deep shadow as full darkness settled over the Old Brick Church Road.
THE END
THIS ONE IS BENJAMIN by Daniel J. Kirk
BENJAMIN:
There was a knock on the door, followed
by a few footsteps, and then the door opening. That’s all I could hear from my bed. I crawled down to my bedroom door and laid my ear against the floor.
“Like I said, no one here by that name.”
I knew instantly they had come for me. My heart raced when the man started to rattle off my other aliases.
“No.”
He must’ve left one out—the name I gave the woman downstairs. I was getting careless, I used that name too many times in the past, but why hadn’t the man at the door mentioned it if he knew all the others?
“It’s just me and my son here,” the woman said.
My teeth almost snapped off. Don’t say my name!
“Your son Benjamin?” The man had been clever.
I could already hear the woman answering proudly, when she surprised me. “I don’t know what your business here is but I would ask that you leave.”
I almost pounded the carpet with glee.
The way the floorboards creaked beneath the man at the door’s feet I knew he had grown frustrated. Perhaps he was even trying to push the doorframe apart, eyes boiling red.
“I’m sorry to bother you. Here is my card, if anyone by the names I mentioned happens to show up you will let us know?” He sounded so pleasant.
“Sure, what’s this about?”
“A missing child.”
I could feel the woman gasp even if I couldn’t hear it with these tiny ears.
“I hope you find them.”
“Me, too, ma’am,” the man said, and the floorboards sighed as he pushed through the screen door and walked off the porch. A few seconds later, the woman closed the front door. The deadbolt clashed. Then there was silence. I could hear her heavy breathing as she watched the man leaving out the window.
I was almost foolish enough to jump up from the floor and go look out my bedroom window, but he’d be smart enough, he’d be watching for such a careless error.
“Ben!” She called for me.
I rose up and waited for a moment before I opened the door, lest she assume I was spying.
“Yes, Mommy?”
“Why don’t you come downstairs and help me in the kitchen for a while.”
I didn’t argue. I could hear the protective tone in her voice. She was going to keep me safe if that man returned.
I walked quietly down the stairs and kept clear of any windows until my head sunk below the kitchen counter and I was next to the woman’s hips.
“Are we going to make cookies?” I played the part. I’d played it so many times before, made it to adulthood most of the time. A few careless mistakes happened early on, but not this run. This run I planned to make it to what they simply call ‘dying of old age.’
“Sure, honey.” She wrestled her fingers through my hair and feigned the kind of smile she imagined herself making months before I was born.
One day that smile will hurt her.
><><
JACK:
My throat was going to be scratchy the rest of the night; I almost took my anger out on the mother. But the fear in her eyes was satisfying enough. I paced until the stinging went out of my chest and my fingers started to feel like they were receiving blood flow again.
“You should’ve let us explain,” My partner said, holding his blood-soaked leg in the corner of the room. He found some more colorful words to mutter while he shook the feeling back into his arms.
It was the worst part of this job.
The best was when we knew we caught one—that we got it off this earthly plane for a few more months.
Once all the feeling in our bodies returned, that’s when the pain hurts more, but it is more like fuel. Making you want to go back to school and learn the art better so that next time you can catch this brat on the first try.
“I don’t understand.” She was in the sobbing stage. Perhaps that was the worst part. All the duped mothers in total shock, no not my child!
Every time.
Not her fault. We had guys in the hospitals these days. There were ways of predicting a birth. Of course that wasn’t my expertise. My expertise was taking pain.
“We will…” I coughed. “…provide a cover story, we have several to choose from that will make this situation easier for friends and families.”
I was going by the book now, what I wanted to say but couldn’t say was that this evil seed of destruction she thought was her perfect little son is still on the loose and his refusal to come easily means we kill on sight. It was going to be messy and for all the misplaced love in her heart she wouldn’t want to know about it.
“What is he?” She looked at me through the tears that could very well be drowning her.
“Ma’am, they found a way to be born. For centuries they have snuck into our world for more than just mischief. They are the destroyers of kingdoms and the rapists of dreams. Shakespeare spoke pleasantly about one, named him Puck. Another you might’ve heard of by the name of Rumpelstilskin, or if you want to stretch fiction a bit more, Damien is also another good example.”
I needed a glass of water followed by some rum. That would clear this cough up. She blinked waiting for me to continue.
“He used you like a way station. Just biding time for when he was older and his powers could do more to harm mankind. I’m sure he was the perfect child, the child every mother wished she could have.”
><><
MOTHER:
Every cough pierced my mind, sharp wretched daggers like thunder. If I can collect my thoughts and remember what I saw, it will make this all easier. I will be able to stop crying. I will be able to get up and help these two men who broke into my house and battled my son.
Battled Benjamin.
My son.
I can’t hold it together and he has the nerve to keep answering my sobs.
“And I can guarantee he would’ve continued to be a sweet young boy for a few years more. But the day would come. It’s better now. I’ve seen parents who’ve killed themselves when they learned what their ‘child’…” he put such a strong emphasis on the word as if he meant solely to mock my failure to see the evil in my own son.
He coughs and almost doubles over this time. I think he is coughing up blood. My son did that to him.
No. Not my son.
Benjamin did that to him.
And the other one in the corner curses my name. He blames me for this. It is my fault. I let him inside me.
I birthed him.
“Another team is on their way, Ma’am. Don’t you worry, they’ll take care of him.”
He was talking about his partner bleeding to death on my carpet. I wanted him dead. He didn’t matter to me. I wanted Benjamin to be my son again.
My perfect little angel.
My Benjamin.
I said his name out loud.
“It was the name he gave you. It wasn’t one you or your husband picked out. These guys are very particular.”
He was pouring himself water and started to look through my cabinets for what? Something to eat?
“You got any of the hard stuff for my partner there. Just so he can hold on until the other team gets here?”
Had I not heard his partner wailing in the corner? Had my sobs drowned out the entire world around me?
“Behind the potatoes in the pantry,” I said like it was nothing. It was nothing. Nothing mattered anymore.
I pushed the last bit of liquid from my eyes and slammed them shut.
I thought of the day he was born.
I begged to hold him as the nurse wiped clean his face.
How I knew his name. We were going to name him after my father, right up until that last second when I saw his eyes open and look back at me.
I held him up for my husband to see and said, “This one is Benjamin.”
THE END
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