The Road Out of Hell

by Anthony Flacco

  “It’s Lewie.”

  “Okay, Lewie. Just write what he tells you when he brings the paper in. I’m telling you now, it’s easier that way. Just do it.”

  “Sanford—” Little Nelson began again, but Sanford was already out the door. He closed it behind himself so that he did not hear whatever Nelson wanted to say. Outside, Uncle Stewart leaned against the wall right next to the door where he had listened to it all. He handed Sanford the padlock for the door and Sanford slid it into place. Then Uncle Stewart took him by the lower ear lobe and walked them both away from there until they were out of earshot.

  “Want to do one? I like Nelson, but you can have Lewis.”

  “No.”

  “Oh, as if to say that you are virtuous and pure—eh, Killer?”

  “It’s not that.”

  “Suit yourself. But you don’t think it keeps your hands clean, do you?”

  “I don’t think my hands are clean.”

  “Yeah, and just so you don’t forget, go inside and take all those clippings about Walter Collins and hang them back up in the kitchen.”

  “I hate seeing those things.”

  “I know. That’s why you need to get used to them. Sanford. Sanford! After you do one murder, everything else is free! How many times can they hang you? Ha-ha-ha! You owe it to yourself! We have a level of freedom that all those working stiffs out there are never going to know. Doesn’t that make you feel sorry for them?”

  “I was thinking more about those kids.”

  “All right, shut up and mind your own business. Get in there and close up the house; all that plaster’s dry by now. You stay there tonight and bring breakfast in the morning.”

  “Enough for all three of you, though, right?”

  “Why not? Keep the guests happy.”

  The next day, Uncle Stewart posted a letter to the frantic parents of the Winslow brothers from a mailbox in their home town of Pomona:

  Dear Mother and Dad: We are going to Mexico to make a lot of money making yachts and airplanes. A woman gave us something to eat. Don’t worry. We will be O.K. —Lewie and Nelse

  One week later, Sanford stood inside a freshly dug hole in the floor of another neglected coop. It served as a storage shed but was nearly empty. The hole in the ground was wider than his shoulders, about as long as his own body. Fresh earth lay in a grim pile right next to it. Uncle Stewart leaned in the doorway and watched him work. “That’s about good enough,” he finally said. “Took you long enough. Hell, all day to dig one hole?”

  “This hardpan dirt is the worst you can imagine. And you didn’t give out any help at all around the place today.”

  “And risk getting a callus? Do you not remember my mother?”

  Sanford put the shovel down and looked up at him. “All right. But if this is big enough now, it’s time for me to turn the eggs in the incubator house.”

  Uncle Stewart failed to answer right away. He took a deep breath through his nose and stared thoughtfully ahead. He took a second deep breath through his nose before he replied. “Turn the eggs. Mm. Yes. Good a time as any. Good a time as any, I say.”

  “You want to help this time?” Sanford asked, daring to find himself for a moment in a little smart-assed humor while he smacked the dust off of his pants.

  “Believe I will.”

  Sanford stood up straight in surprise. “What, really?”

  “Oh yes indeedy, my good man.”

  “What’s going on?” Sanford asked before he realized that a good-sized portion of his brain preferred to avoid the answer.

  “You’re doing it again.”

  “What?”

  “Playing dumb to avoid something that you already know. You just dug a grave, asshole!” Uncle Stewart kicked at the butt of Sanford’s pants.

  Sanford tried to think of a reply and came up empty. He could only fall back on his basic skill of keeping his eyes on the ground.

  “Things outlive their usefulness. You’ve done a good job of not outliving your own usefulness. So far. Lewis and Nelson have been here for over a week now. That’s about as ripe as I can stand ’em.”

  “Uncle Stewart, is your mind made up to do this?”

  “Maybe. Why?”

  “I just mean, if you could see your way clear to, this time, just—”

  “Just what?” Uncle Stewart hollered so loud that it hurt Sanford’s ears. “Let them go? Is that what you want? You want two boys out there who could bring the police down on us? You don’t seem to believe that you are just as far into this as me and your grandmother.”

  “Why do you call her that? She’s your mother.”

  “Well, well! We’re feeling ornery today, aren’t we, my little darling?”

  “I’m not ornery, Uncle Stewart, but those boys are both really scared.”

  “Is a chicken scared before you wring its neck?”

  “I don’t know. Maybe.”

  “Exactly! And who cares, right? Look, I’ll tell you what: you go get Lewis and take him over to the house. Tell him to go in and wait for me. Leave Nelson in the incubator house and then meet me back out there. First we’ll make sure that little Nelson can keep a story straight, and then I’ll have a talk with Lewis, and since he’s the oldest, if he can see his way clear to promising me for both of the boys that he will keep quiet forever, and that if he ever talks we will hunt him down and kill his entire family, then we can talk about letting them go.”

  “Really? Oh God! I’ll be right back.” Sanford took off toward the incubator house where the two boys were still being held. As soon as he pulled the lock and opened the door, he saw that both were asleep. So he stepped over to Lewis, unlocked his chain, and gently shook him.

  “Lewis!” he whispered. “Lewis, it’s Sanford. Wake up.”

  “Huh? What’s going on?”

  “Shhh. Don’t wake up Nelson. You have to come to the house with me and talk to Uncle Stewart. He’s thinking about letting you guys go!”

  Lewis bolted upright. “Really?”

  “Shhh! Let your brother sleep so you don’t raise his hopes until you know for sure. It’s gonna be up to you to talk your way out of here.” He pulled Lewis to his feet and out the door, then softly closed it without bothering to lock it against the chained younger boy. He took Lewis on a fast walk toward the house. “I talked to him! He’s gonna give you a chance! All you have to do is promise not to say anything to anybody about him or about what happened here, you know.”

  “What am I supposed to tell people about where we’ve been?”

  “That’s what I’m telling you! You have to make up something that you can tell people and then tell Uncle Stewart that it’s what you’ll say to everybody. Lewis—” Sanford clasped Lewis by the shoulders and looked him in the eyes, something he never did to anybody. “You guys can get out of here tonight if you play this one just right!”

  “Okay! Uh … uh, let’s see—well, that first letter that he made me write said that we were going to Mexico. We could always say that we just got homesick.”

  “That’s it! That’s a story that you can both keep straight. It’s hard for two people to keep a story straight. You have to be ready when he asks you about it—make up all the little details, you know: where you stayed, who you met, things you did, all that stuff. You have to make him believe that you can make everybody else believe it.”

  “Details? Sure, I can make up details. Hell!”

  “Yeah, but this guy is the Devil’s own liar. You have to keep your facts straight. Uncle Stewart can lie for an hour nonstop and never trip over a single detail. That’s what he’s gonna want from you.”

  “I can do it. We can both do it. We lie to our parents all the time.”

  “Shame on you,” Sanford replied with a straight face. Both boys laughed at the same time, and it was like a clean wind had just blown in. Sanford put an arm around Lewis’s shoulder in a protective gesture that he did not understand bu
t which felt good anyway. The boys walked up to the front porch of the little ranch house.

  As soon as Sanford opened the door, he was surprised that none of the lanterns were lit and the house was pitch-black inside. “All right,” he told the boy. “I’m going to go over to the incubator house and talk to him now, and then he’ll be right back in here. Practice what you’re going to tell him. Make it good!”

  “I will!” Lewis agreed. Sanford turned to go, but Lewis stopped him. “Sanford?”

  “Yeah?”

  “I’m never gonna forget you helped us.”

  Sanford smiled. It felt wonderful. “All right, just get your story straight in your mind. I’ll be back with Uncle Stewart.”

  “I’ll be ready.”

  Sanford sprinted away and back to the incubator house. He poked his head inside just after Uncle Stewart had awakened Nelson. The boy was out of his chains and sitting up on a wooden chair near the candling table. He was still rubbing sleep from his eyes while he gazed around in mute confusion.

  “Nelson,” Uncle Stewart said, “you can go ahead and sit there. Talk to Sanford while I turn the eggs in the incubator here.” He stepped over and physically maneuvered Nelson and the wooden chair until the back was to him. “Sanford, you’ve explained things to Lewis already, yes?”

  “Yeah, just now.”

  “Good. You may tell Nelson, then.”

  “What about Lewie? Where is he?” Nelson demanded.

  “He’s over in the house,” Sanford told him. “Don’t worry, he’ll be right back. In the meantime, Uncle Stewart has this idea about how you and your brother can go back home!”

  “We can?” Nelson’s breath caught in his throat. He started to cry. Uncle Stewart whirled from the incubator table holding his hatchet and smashed it into Nelson’s head so hard that the boy gasped a noise that sounded like “Pwuhhh!” and fell out of the chair.

  Sanford screamed before he found the words. “No! No!”

  Uncle Stewart flew across the tiny room and clubbed Sanford with the blunt end of the hatchet, sending shooting stars across his vision. Then he clapped his hand over Sanford’s mouth and softly said, “Shut up! I need his brother to be calm. Don’t you dare let him hear you. Do not make one sound, Sanford. You so much as shed a single tear and I will take you out next! I’m sick of you anyway!” He gradually released Sanford’s mouth, making sure that he wouldn’t try to make any noise.

  Blood streamed from Sanford’s scalp. He pressed his palm onto the broken skin and went down to one knee to keep from falling. He didn’t dare to attempt to warn Lewis; he had no idea how he could do that for a chained boy anyway. If all he did was to scream out some kind of warning until Uncle Stewart bashed him the same way that he had just done to Nelson, it might scare the hell out of the surviving brother but it would do nothing to save him.

  “Come on,” Uncle Stewart said, grabbing the dying boy under the arms. “Pick up his feet. We’re gonna carry him back to your brand-new grave.”

  Sanford did not say a word, as ordered. He was unable to speak. If he dared to make a sound, he might slip and begin screaming in horror and outrage and not be able to stop. His weight instantly increased by threefold, maybe even four. His limbs were so heavy that he could barely carry Nelson at all. When he let go of his head, the bleeding continued; but he needed both hands, so he had to let it stream down his face and onto his shirt. He walked with the boy’s feet and legs while Uncle Stewart carried the heavier end. In less than a minute, they had little Nelson inside the shed and dropped him into the pit. Nelson moaned a little when he hit the ground. The sound nearly peeled Sanford’s skin. Half a moan and half a gasp, it was as awful a sound as he ever wanted to hear.

  “You stay here. And cover up his head to quiet that God-awful noise.”

  “Cover? With … with what?”

  “There’s a pile of dirt and a shovel. Use your head!” He tossed the hatchet at Sanford’s feet. “Aw, Sanford isn’t going to go all soft and gooey on me, is he?”

  “Uncle Stewart, this boy is still alive. Maybe we should—”

  “Cover his head. Now!” Sanford reluctantly pushed some of the dirt in the pile over Nelson’s face. “That’ll shut him up. Now watch; and when you see me take Lewis back into the incubator house, you come along and bring the hatchet. I’m going to keep him looking at me while I turn the eggs, so his back will be to the door.”

  “Uncle—”

  “Somebody is going into that hole next to little Nelson down there! You do this, or the next body in the hole is yours! I told you, I’m sick of you.” Uncle Stewart spun on his heel and hurried back toward the house.

  The weight pressing down on Sanford was so terrible by that point that he could hardly believe that his legs worked at all. Somehow his scrawny body weighed as much as an elephant. He began to move, but he was going so slowly that time speeded up once again. He blinked once, and Uncle Stewart already had Lewis in the incubator house. He blinked again, and he was standing in the doorway of the incubator house looking at Lewis’s back as he sat talking to Uncle Stewart.

  He blinked just in time to get an impression from his peripheral vision: his own hand swinging the hatchet down onto Lewis’s head. The first blow stiffened the boy, but he didn’t fall over. Sanford’s arm lifted the hatchet and struck a second time. This time Lewis Winslow dropped to the ground like a stone.

  He blinked again, and he and Uncle Stewart were carrying the boy back to the grave house. After another blink, they were standing over the bodies of both boys. Lewis was also just barely alive when they placed him in his grave. He took those same awful breaths while he expired.

  Sanford blinked a few more times. He and Uncle Stewart had filled the dirt back into the shared grave on top of the dying boys, smoothing it over and covering the new surface with straw. Uncle Stewart got the bright idea to move in a dozen hens or so and left them to roost and defecate and raise a smell. It would cover any odor of decomposition that might start leaking up through the ground within the next few days.

  He threatened to make Sanford spend the night in the grave shed and sleep on top of the dead boys in return for giving him such a hard time about doing what had to be done. But Uncle Stewart was tired and satiated and stinking to high heaven. All he wanted to do was go back to the house and sleep until the next day and then make Sanford strip the bed and wash everything while he bathed at the wellhead.

  Tolerance filled Uncle Stewart, or so he said, and he decreed that so as long as Sanford raked up any blood that was on the dirt floor of the incubator house, he would be allowed to sleep out there for the night instead of having to stay in the burial coop. Then if he was good, he would be allowed to return to the ranch house the following night.

  Sanford was barely able to move any part of his body. There were at least three elephant-loads of guilt packed onto his scrawny frame. The terrible weight slowed him down so much that by comparison, Uncle Stewart’s voice became a staccato series of squeaks. Sanford knew better than to speak up, but horror and outrage filled him. It hurt his head to think, but he could not stop the thoughts from coming.

  He realized it then, plain and clear: he would die there in that place. Either Uncle Stewart would kill him during one of his rages, or somebody would show up there and shoot both of them. Maybe the law, maybe the father of one of those boys. Either way, there was no doubting that the moment of reckoning was closing in. Sanford could see that it was one thing for all of this to happen to him, being a piece of shit and all. Maybe he deserved all this in some manner that he failed to understand. Maybe he was only where he belonged. But if God truly existed, it seemed plain that He simply could not and would not permit this beast called Gordon Stewart Northcott to continue to ravage innocent people. Kids. This indescribable existence simply could not continue, in any sort of a just world. Otherwise it would do worse than to prove that there was no God—it would prove that there is indeed an omnipotent God but that He hate
s humanity and He is criminally insane.

  By now, Sanford was convinced that anything was better than being left to die at the torturous hands of Uncle Stewart, perhaps buried alive like the Winslow boys. Especially if the cops killed him with one good round to the head. In that case it would all just be over. God had allowed this festering nightmare to become real; let Him deal with the aftermath. At least Sanford’s time in this world’s Hell would be done. He wondered if a head shot would even hurt. Nobody would have to trouble with him after that. And most of all—absolutely most of all—Sanford would never have to see the looks on people’s faces once they knew.

  Once they knew. Thinking of what he did not want people to know caused all the images to leap into his mind. He imagined the newly covered grave of the two brothers, saw the earth still shifting slightly while the children under the surface fought for life and inhaled loose dirt instead of air. In real life, they had not moved the earth. He was certain of that. Fairly certain. It made no difference. His memory saw the shifting earth. His memory could almost hear their muffled screams.

  And that was only his part in one horror show. By Sanford’s best estimate, Uncle Stewart had killed as many as twenty boys since they first moved onto the ranch. How many boys died before that was anybody’s guess, but Sanford had to wonder why his grandparents had moved out of Canada.

  In totaling up the figure on the ranch victims, he forced himself to go back to the beginning, back to those first few months when he accepted the bullshit about Uncle Stewart supposedly taking the boys someplace where he could drop them off. It took him a long time to force himself to answer the question of how often anybody could do the sorts of things that Uncle Stewart did, causing boys to scream for mercy, and then let them just walk away.

  The boys may have been illegal migrant workers or their children, or runaways whose family was so scattered they had no real way of staying in touch. But how could all of them have been throwaways? Outside of this place there were people with human connections. Sanford remembered rare visits to the homes of certain friends from school, places that seemed healthy and safe. They were places that had a natural warmth, not where you looked around for reasons to get away. He had seen places where people behaved as if they were glad for each other’s company and not just angry and resentful of one another. Somewhere among those boys there was sure to be one who had the backing of people who would grow concerned, ask questions, come searching—even if all the others did not. He was certain of that. Somebody was going to show up there any time now.