Ashes, Ashes

by Charles Atkins

  Houssman startled. ‘What? I thought he came home after the event.’

  ‘No,’ Peter said, ‘it was an important lesson. A boy needs to be taught what it is to be a man. Women need to know their place. I made Richard watch.’

  Houssman shuddered, his hand shook on the page, imagining the horror of what a four-year-old Richard Glash had been made to witness – this man bludgeoning his wife to death. Tears came to his eyes, as he remembered the little boy and his ever-present sketchpad.

  Peter Glash saw Houssman’s revulsion. ‘See, you think you know me, but you don’t. I was born in this house. I was the sixth and last child.’ He stood and looked down at the yellow pad to be certain Houssman was getting it all. ‘Four of us are still alive; we don’t talk much. My sister Bertha died of influenza when she was three. And only my brother Frank visited me while I was in prison. I paid him to do that. Frank is the only other one of us to marry and have children. Don’t you find that odd?’ he asked. ‘Don’t you want to ask me questions to clarify this point?’

  Houssman’s throat was dry; he struggled to find his voice. ‘You said four of you are still alive, and you told me about a sister and your brother Frank. Who else died?’ His heart pounded and raced in his chest, the dull, squeezing ache had returned to his jaw.

  Glash smiled. ‘Good, you’re paying attention. I’ll tell you about my brother Edward. He was three years older than I and mean. He’d play tricks on me and my sister Katie. He’d lock us in closets and hammer us up inside packing crates. He’d leave us for hours. One time we couldn’t find Katie for over a day. She was down here in the cellar. He’d put her inside a packing crate with no food or water. He took her favorite doll and cut off its head, arms and legs and put it in with her. When we got her out she cried for days. She’d soiled herself and wouldn’t let my mother throw away her doll.’

  ‘What did your parents do? Did they punish Edward?’

  ‘My father laughed,’ Peter said. ‘He thought Edward was funny. He thought the cruel tricks he played were amusing. Edward was his favorite. He was the oldest.’

  ‘What about your mother?’

  ‘She was weak. Women are naturally weaker than men. She bought Katie a new doll, but she couldn’t stop Edward.’

  Houssman, realizing there was more to this story, looked hard at Glash. ‘But you’re not a woman, and you’re not weak. What did you do to your brother Edward?’

  Peter cocked his head and met Houssman’s gaze. ‘You are a smart man, aren’t you? A pity that you couldn’t have taken care of Richard. Do you wonder about that? What if you could have figured this out and found a way to take care of him? You failed him, but if you hadn’t’ – he held up his hands – ‘would any of this have happened? I think not. And, if that’s true’ – he cocked his head and now stared at a corner of the room – ‘and I think it is, then this will all be because of you …’ He turned and met George’s steamed-up gaze. ‘But let me tell you about Edward and how I killed him – although my father convinced the police it was an accident. He was fourteen. After that, I became my father’s favorite. It’s why he left the business to me. It’s why my name is on the deed. You want to know what I did to my brother Edward?’

  ‘Yes,’ Houssman said.

  ‘He deserved to die for what he did to Katie, just as Dorothea deserved to die for being a whore. Katie never recovered. Edward had done other things to her, terrible things … sexual things. Incest is a grave sin. Don’t you agree?’

  ‘Yes … What did you do?’ Houssman asked, feeling like an archeologist delving back into prehistory. He’d evaluated Peter Glash decades ago, but none of this had ever come up.

  ‘We had rats in the basement,’ Peter began. ‘We had to keep them out of the candy. They’d chew right through the crates. If they got in, my father would have to dump it. He’d get very mad, losing lots of money. So every day he’d come down here with Edward and they’d shoot the rats … I asked to help. He gave me a gun and showed me how to use it. We practiced on the rats. When I was able to hit them every time, I came down here and shot Edward in the head. I wanted to be certain that he was dead. I needed to be certain that my father saw that I had killed his favorite son. He asked me why I shot Edward. I told him because of what he’d done to Katie. He deserved to die.’

  ‘What did he do?’ Houssman asked, as his eyes darted around the basement, now aware that this was a place where many horrible things had occurred.

  Glash stared past Cosway toward a windowless corner of the cement-floored space. ‘He said that he understood, and that no one must ever know. I’m only telling you now because it no longer matters. My father told me that we would tell the police it was an accident. He told me that I would have to cry and that I would have to tell everyone that I was very sorry for accidentally shooting my brother. He told me that if I did all of those things, and never told, not even my mother, not even Katie, then I would become his favorite son, and when I grew up he would give me the store. I did as he asked. I cried real tears; they weren’t for Edward, but for what he did to Katie. She never recovered … I love my sister Katie. Edward deserved to die.’

  ‘How did you manage to keep this building?’ Houssman asked. ‘I’m surprised the state didn’t take it, while you were incarcerated.’

  ‘They tried,’ Peter said, ‘but my father had the foresight to leave it to me in a trust, just as I’ll do with Richard – they couldn’t touch it. And I always made sure the taxes were paid, and for a while Frank continued the business.’

  More questions formed in Houssman’s mind. He couldn’t help but be fascinated by the multi-generational transmission of some variant of autism, with its rigid thought pattern and mathematical approach.

  Peter Glash looked at Houssman. ‘The question you really want answered is why I’m doing this. Why I am helping Richard?’

  ‘Yes,’ Houssman said, again pushing up his glasses so he could see.

  ‘I was locked away for over ten years. My son was taken from me. He in turn was locked away far longer. How do you put a price on those things? Certain things are priceless … aren’t they?’ He peered intently at Houssman. ‘Aren’t they?’

  ‘Yes,’ Houssman agreed.

  ‘Time is priceless – we have just so much. The love of a child is priceless. Freedom is priceless. All taken from me and from Richard. We need to be paid for our time and for the love that was taken away. We are taking payment in kind.’

  ‘You don’t care that thousands could die?’

  ‘I hope it’s more,’ he answered, getting up, ‘for Richard’s sake. He has the ambition to be the greatest killer of all time. As a father, it’s important to support my child. Wouldn’t you agree?’

  ‘Don’t you care that you’ll both probably die?’ Houssman replied. ‘That your son will die?’

  ‘No, because what we have is not a life.’

  ‘But your son, don’t you want to see him go on with his life? To maybe have a family, a child of his own?’

  Peter Glash shot across the space that separated them and slapped Houssman hard across the face.

  His head jerked to the right. The sharp pain and the crack of flesh on flesh shocked him. His glasses caught in the band of his mask.

  ‘I’m not a fool,’ Peter said, glaring at Houssman. ‘Those things are not possible for Richard. We both know that. He’s being hunted down and they’ll shoot to kill. My son is destined for greatness, and I’m doing everything possible to see that happen. I don’t want just thousands to die,’ he added, moving toward the stairs. He glanced back at Houssman and then at the monitor and Cosway. ‘I want them all to die.’

  Twenty-Nine

  Richard Glash wakes in a bed-drenching sweat. Dream remnants float in his mind: a giant clock ticking, a river of blood and him running toward something. He stares at the cracked plaster ceiling of the bedroom that should always have been his. In the dream he’d known what he was racing toward, and that it kept stretching ahead, just beyond his reach
. Now, as he listens to the beat of his heart pounding in his ears, he can’t remember what was so important.

  He sits up, and has to pause, noting a light-headedness. He holds still, thinking for a moment that he might pass out. He grabs the TV remote and examines his hand; it looks thinner, the flesh taut over clearly visible veins, tendons and arteries. He sees the pulsing of blood.

  He flicks on the television. As he surfs, he stops to hear experts discussing him … and then Clarence Albert – ‘Both paranoid,’ one dark-suited commentator remarks, ‘but both with IQs in the genius range.’

  He turns up the volume as a beefy man dressed in a white space suit with the hood and shield removed gives a press conference with the Ashokan Reservoir in the distance. At the bottom of the screen it reads: ‘Last night’s 9 P.M. press conference with Homeland Security Agent, Corbin Zane.’

  ‘We’ve dodged a bullet,’ Zane responds to a reporter’s question.

  ‘Mr Zane! Mr Zane!’ Hands shoot up, as the Homeland Security agent points to a local correspondent.

  ‘Mr Zane, what is the status of Richard Glash and his hostages? We’ve heard conflicting reports, including one stating that he’s dead. Where is he?’

  Zane pauses and stares into the nearest camera. ‘I am now authorized to inform the public that Richard Glash, the man responsible for this heinous attack, is dead. It is also my unfortunate job to add that Martin Cosway, a dedicated American, a true patriot and my mentor in the Department of Homeland Security, also died along with the esteemed psychiatrist Dr George Houssman.’ Zane takes a deep breath. ‘Their deaths were not in vain. They made the ultimate sacrifice—’

  Glash flicks the channel. He sees a photo of Martin Cosway and one of Houssman. His breath feels hot through his nostrils. He looks across at the dark mirror over the dresser that was once his mother’s. Even from a distance, his face looks different. He turns on a bedside lamp and studies his reflection. Under his right eye he sees the cheek puffing out, a blister has popped up over his left brow and another tingles below the surface of his lip. He takes a deep breath and as he lets it out, he feels a rasping inside his chest; it’s almost time.

  He pictures Albert, and remembers their many discussions, as they weighed the perfect point for spreading the disease.

  ‘It needs to be in the lungs,’ Albert had said. ‘Then, when you start to cough you’ll send millions of active bacteria through the air.’

  Behind him another station reports on safety measures being taken around Manhattan and the five boroughs. ‘At this point,’ he hears the newscaster say, ‘quarantine has been determined to be unnecessary. Scientists from the Centers for Disease Control have taken thousands of samples from the Ashokan – thus far there have been no detectible quantities of plague or any other infectious agent. We’ve received word from the Department of Homeland Security that there has not been a single reported case of plague. It’s good news.’ She smiles into the camera. ‘We’ve been informed that the lethal bacteria that was introduced into the New York City water supply has been effectively neutralized.’

  Glash feels a tickle in his throat. He thinks about Mary … how pretty she had looked. He starts to cough. She’d told him that she would marry him. ‘I’m going to be very famous,’ he says aloud.

  He catches his breath, stands up and waits for the dizziness to subside. He heads downstairs to the cool basement. It smells bad, like something died. It reminds him of dead rats.

  His father sits across from Dr Houssman. He doesn’t want to look at the old man; every time he does, the bad feelings come back. So he focuses on Cosway, who is barely conscious, his face and skin covered with open pustules, his breath just wheezes. ‘He’ll be dead soon,’ he says.

  ‘Yes, son. We don’t have much time.’

  ‘You’ve replaced the tapes?’ Richard asks.

  ‘Yes.’

  Richard looks at the red light on the camcorder and then at the monitor that’s relaying Cosway’s demise – it’s perfect.

  He walks over and disconnects the camera. He carries it back to a workbench set up with a laptop. He plugs the camera into a USB port on the computer and clicks on the icon for his cinema player. Pressing the fast-forward his eyes scan on the rapidly moving images of Martin Cosway. His fingers move quickly over the keyboard, slicing small wave files and rapidly stringing them together. He presses save and then replays his home movie. It’s about a minute long and he includes the red time stamp at the bottom of each frame. It shows the progression of the plague. In only twenty-four hours Martin Cosway has been brought close to death. ‘He’ll go within the hour,’ he says.

  His father answers, ‘Yes.’

  Richard plugs the high-speed Internet cable into the back of the laptop and composes an email. He then collects the addresses he’s had his father collect for both the national and local news stations and programs, as well as for the video-posting website YouTube. He reviews his message:

  To the media:

  I am Richard Glash and I am alive. I faked my death at the Ashokan Reservoir.

  Attached is evidence that the strain of bubonic plague developed by Dr Clarence Albert is viable. Minutes after you receive this, I will have begun to spread plague. I cannot be stopped and by the time this is over I predict that millions of people will be dead. Bubonic plague killed one third of Europe’s population in the middle ages. The strain developed by Dr Albert cannot be treated with antibiotics. I predict one third of the world’s population will die from it.

  Ring around the rosy,

  A pocket full of posy.

  Ashes, ashes,

  We’ll all fall down.

  Sincerely:

  Richard Glash

  He attaches his homemade movie of Martin Cosway. He looks at his father and hazards a glance at George Houssman, still wrapped in the blue tarp from the van. ‘You’re old,’ Glash says to Houssman. ‘Write this book quickly …’ He presses the send button for his email.

  ‘Father, it’s time.’

  ‘Yes, son,’ Peter Glash says. ‘I’ll get the van.’

  Thirty

  Justine turned her plastic nametag backwards as she pushed the six-foot tall breakfast cart toward the heavily guarded quarantine ward. Her stomach cramped – this was taking a horrible risk and she’d only get one chance. She pulled down the thick gray plastic curtains – designed to keep the food warm. Dressed like everyone else in a hazmat suit, she struggled not to think about what could happen if she were stopped. The cart was mostly empty, but she’d managed to steal several fresh breakfast trays from the cafeteria.

  She rang the buzzer for the ward’s outer door.

  ‘Yes?’ a voice asked through the intercom.

  ‘Breakfast.’

  The door buzzed and she was in.

  She passed three armed guards seated around a TV at the nurses’ station dressed in hazmat suits, and thought how eerie this felt, more like a prison than the wing of a hospital. At the end of the hall was the room where Barrett was being held. As far as she could tell they were the only patients in the ward.

  ‘Hey, you!’ a guard called out.

  Justine froze. ‘Yes?’

  ‘You got any extras? I’m starving.’

  ‘Just the meals for the patients. Didn’t they send you up anything?’ she improvised.

  ‘Hell no, and they’ve not relieved us since yesterday.’

  ‘Let me deliver these and then I’ll get some food for you guys. They’re at the end of the hall, right?’

  ‘Yup,’ he said, and turned back to the TV.

  Justine tried to steady her breath. No backing out now. But what if Barrett had everything wrong? As the thought passed through her, she knew her sister was solid. If Barrett said there was a problem, you’d better believe there was.

  As she approached the guard outside the room she tried to make eye contact through the visor of his suit. ‘I’ve got their breakfast. Is it safe for me to go in?’ This is not good, she fretted, as the guard got to
his feet. He walked over to the cart. ‘God, I’m starved,’ he said, poking the edge of the curtain with the tip of his M16.

  ‘I hear you,’ Justine said, and then trying the helpless female bit, added, ‘I’m a little nervous. Can you come in with me?’

  ‘Maybe,’ he said. ‘You got one for me too?’ He unlocked the door. ‘They haven’t come by with anything since this morning. Not even a bottle of water. I’m starving.’

  ‘That’s terrible,’ Justine said, pushing the cart through the opening. ‘That’s just what the guys at the nurses’ station were saying. Seems like somebody needs to be taking care of our men in uniform. You know,’ she said in a conspiratorial tone, ‘I didn’t have enough for the guys down the hall, but I do have one extra tray.’

  ‘God, I love you,’ he said, holding the door as she passed.

  Thank God this guy wasn’t a regular hospital security man who’d know she wasn’t supposed to bring the cart into the room – especially one where yellow and orange biohazard signs were clearly posted. She looked up and caught Barrett’s eye, as she continued to chatter with the guard who’d followed her in. ‘I can’t promise you’ll like what I’ve got, but if you don’t I’ll find something better in the kitchen. But let’s see. OK, the choices are …’ She parked the cart in the middle of the room and lifted the gray plastic flap in order to take stock of her offerings. ‘We’ve got scrambled and bacon, some kind of breakfast sandwich thing … this could be oatmeal, but it looks kind of nasty. Then we’ve got …’ She heard a thump and turned to see Hobbs standing over the unconscious guard. ‘Grab some sheets,’ he said.

  Barrett and Carla hurriedly ripped off the bed linen as Hobbs stripped the guard of his hazmat suit and put it on. ‘Tie him up good,’ he said, ‘and gag him.’

  ‘Please hurry,’ Justine fretted, thinking of all the other armed Guardsmen she’d passed in the hallway.