He walked up to the third house down, the one that seemed a little more run-down than the others. His leg screamed a few choice words at him during his climb up the four steps of the front porch. But he climbed them, paused a moment at the top, and went up to the front door.
Tommy rang the bell.
There was a funereal silence on that front porch. Not even the wind seemed to care, and Tommy soon thought no one was home. Finally there was a shuffling inside, a slow drag, as if answering the door was going to be the major accomplishment for the day.
The door unlatched. Two locks.
Charles Baristow opened the door. He looked at Tommy, the fading sunlight warming over the old man’s milky cataracts.
‘Goddamn,’ Charles said, looking over the man on the porch. ‘Tommy Devereaux. What the hell happened to you?’
Tommy held out his manuscript, which was now streaked with blood and tearing at the edges. A thick rubber band hugged the middle of the pages.
Charles took the manuscript as if he had no choice. He looked at it for a second and then looked back up at Tommy.
There was only one thing for Tommy to say.
‘I know what happened to your boy.’
AFTERWORD
It was 1981 and we were twenty minutes away from the rest of our lives. Time and direction, wrapped around each other and wielded like a club, smashed all of us that day. Rade Baristow died before he even knew what it was like to drive a car or kiss a girl in the back of a movie theater. Jason’s life ended a decade later, a rope around the neck the only thing that let him escape what he had seen. Mark made it to his forties before that summer afternoon finally caught up with him. Elizabeth and Alan Stykes died two years ago today, violently and with great suffering, only a few dozen yards from where Rade’s body would eventually be discovered.
I still wonder why she came back. Why then? If she wasn’t really sick, why at that moment, after thirty years, did Elizabeth decide to torpedo my world? Maybe it was because she saw my teaser chapter and felt threatened by possible exposure. That makes the most sense, though sense had a very loose relationship with Elizabeth Stykes. My guess? I think she was desperately lonely and insecure. I think she read my chapter and liked the attention and wanted more. Moreover, I think she hoped I had turned out like her. She wanted a partner, someone to share a very singular existence with. Mark was too conflicted with his religion and career ever to be a true partner for her. She had told me that night in the alley that she had come back not for her, but for me. She wanted to teach me ‘the game’. I think she wanted me to kill, with the hope I would feed on it as she did. I was her next hope. But even though I have killed, I’m nothing like her.
So here I am. The only remaining witness to what happened that day in the woods, and I can’t say for sure there haven’t been moments in the last two years where I envied those already dead. You can call that self-pitying if you want and you’d be right, but that doesn’t make it less true.
There’s nothing so powerful as the urge to forget, except maybe the force that makes us remember.
Charles Baristow took one look at me that day on his porch and called nine-one-one. It wasn’t lost on me Alan Stykes himself would normally have been one of the responders, but he was too busy being dead. Paramedics came and did something with me, but I don’t much remember. All I do remember is waking up in a Portland hospital and still breathing. In my life I had never appreciated that simple act as much as in that moment.
If you’re reading this book, you probably already know the rest of the story. Pretty much hard not to; press has been up my ass and through my mouth for two straight years. You probably know about my wounds, my permanent limp. You know about the attention I got in the hospital, and then my arrest, which just about broke my children’s hearts. You might have been one of the five million people who watched my two-hour interview with Piers Morgan, where I told the story as best I could, even though my lawyer advised against it. Fuck it. I was tired of lying; besides, I’d written it all down anyway. What would happen, would happen.
You have likely read Mark’s suicide note, which his wife finally released to the press. He called himself tormented, though there was no mention of Elizabeth or anything that actually tormented him. But I know the truth. Mark was tormented because he was more like Elizabeth than he was like the person he presented to the world. He had the darkness, Elizabeth said. I think that’s just about the perfect way to put it. Did he really have an affair with her? I don’t know for sure, but I do believe Elizabeth was right when she said she was for Mark both god and demon. I believed he killed himself because he didn’t know how to live with both of those things inside him. Mark was the one who decided to crash his car that night, but in the end it was Elizabeth who killed him.
You probably saw the breaking news the day Rade’s body was finally discovered. You might even have watched as each additional body was eventually unearthed, although it seemed that by the time the final body was pulled from the earth the media slacked a little in its coverage, kind of like the third moon landing. No one even seemed to care about all the other unsolved killings in Oregon, all the missing boys from the towns where Stykes and his family lived for brief moments before uprooting once again.
Maybe you know about my fund for the victims of childhood abuse. I would urge you to donate at www.forgottenonesfund.com. Even a little bit helps.
Did you watch my trial? A lot of people did. What a fucking circus that was. Some people decided to hate me and that was that. Most people didn’t. Most supported me, and some of the letters I received touched me more than I could ever describe. Maybe you watched the verdict. Maybe you were happy when the words ‘not guilty’ stumbled from the foreman’s mouth. Maybe not.
This book was more than a little past its original deadline. Two years and some change. But I’ve been a bit preoccupied, not to mention I didn’t know if my publishers were going to jettison me like some kind of cruise-ship waste. They didn’t. (Thank you for that, by the way.) Two years late but hopefully worth it, though that’s for you to decide.
My kids are my soul and continue to grow with me, even as they’ve been put through more than any child should have to bear. All my worst fears about what they would be exposed to have pretty much come true. They’ve endured hateful things said by kids in their school. Sometimes even by those kids’ parents. One teacher told Evie her daddy deserved to go to prison. One of the few happy moments over the past two years was when I got that teacher fired.
But, thankfully, my kids are in my life, and I share their time with Becky. Fifty–fifty, as they say. Funny: I always think of fifty–fifty as being a term about survival chances. I guess in some ways the term applies here. I need my family to survive. Right now I’m at fifty–fifty. A year ago, I’d have put my odds at thirty–seventy against. So I’m chipping away, day after day, just trying to increase those percentages. Just trying to survive.
I don’t live with Becky, as you’ve probably gathered. We’re not divorced, but we’re separated, which is just divorce with a thin glaze of hope spread on top. I had left my completed manuscript along with my letter for her before I set off that day for Oregon, so even if this hadn’t come out she would eventually have read that the one-night-stand-with-a-stranger I had confessed to her was actually an affair with Sofia. Now she (and anyone who bought this book) knows everything, the manuscript laying bare my life for all to see, the tidbits of good and the mounds of the bad. I do think Becky believes me when I tell her nothing has happened between Sofia and me in the years since our affair, but that doesn’t make it any easier for my wife. It just keeps it from being more awful, which is little consolation to someone already hurt.
Sofia and I agreed to part our ways professionally. She moved to New York and is dating a chef, which is perfect since she can’t cook for shit. I don’t hear from her much, but when I do, she seems happy. Her first novel is coming out next year, and I couldn’t be more proud and excited for her.
She’s a fine, fine writer and I encourage everyone to pick up her book when it comes out. I don’t know the finalized name of the book yet, but the working title was The Last Time I Saw You. It’ll rip your heart out.
I see Becky as often as I can, which isn’t enough but probably more than I deserve. I can’t say she’s forgiven me, but she hasn’t cut me from her life, and that alone shows the depth of her character. There was a fundamental shift in our relationship, and she doesn’t quite know how to get her footing back, at least not enough to make her want to keep standing next to me for the moment. Losing her, even if not yet entirely, is like waking up every day and forgetting who I am. She is how I define myself, and without her there’s just empty space and an unwrinkled side of the bed.
We have a date tonight. Our first one since she even agreed to begin speaking to me again, in fact. I decided to finish this book today because of this. I like the idea of today being the last chapter of one thing and the beginning of another.
I’m taking her to Beatrice & Woodsley, a little restaurant here in Denver. It’s modern enough to be hip but cozy enough to be romantic. Funny how I’m over-thinking every detail about tonight, just like I did when I was a much younger man. If all goes well, she’ll say yes to another date, and perhaps one after that. I don’t have any illusions about our future, but I’m not giving up on it either. All I can do is try, because I need her, simple as that.
Baby steps. Survival skills.
Maybe after tonight, we’ll be at fifty-one–forty-nine in favor.
Tommy Devereaux
Denver, Colorado
Acknowledgements
First off, this book would never have sold without the tireless efforts and critical feedback of my wonderful agent, Pam Ahearn. Pam, I owe you a margarita. Or two. And thanks to Edwin Buckhalter, Kate Lyall Grant, Joe Pittman, Anna Telfer and all the other fine folks at Severn House for taking this book on and making it better.
All authors need a critique group to keep them honest, and the people in mine have done more to sharpen my writing than anyone else. Ed Bryant, Sean Eads, Dirk and Linda Anderson: salut.
Ili and Sawyer, to whom this book is dedicated: I keep promising someday I will write something age-appropriate for you, but by the time I get around to it you’ll be old enough to read my scary stuff. At least I keep my nighttime stories tame.
To Jessica, thank you for your love and support, as always. You’re always the first one to read the finished product. I like that.
Mom, thanks for reading this and not thinking something went terribly awry with my upbringing. Sole, thanks for being a great parent and wonderful friend. We’ve done a good job.
Dad, I miss you. More than anyone, you taught me how to appreciate a good story. Just listen.
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