The Road Out of Hell

by Anthony Flacco

  Grandma Louise already had her arms around Uncle Stewart. She buried her face in his neck and murmured to him, “Not her, son. Not her. You can’t do anything to her. I know you want to keep your freedom. Not her. Shhh. Not her. You want to keep your freedom, don’t you?”

  “I do, Mother,” he whispered back, just as if they were the only people in the room. “You’re right.” He turned to Jessie and offered his hand to help her back up. “Sorry, Jessie. Lost my temper for a second.”

  She recoiled from his outstretched hand and reached toward her brother instead. Sanford immediately stepped forward and helped her up, then put his arm around her and said to the others, “Let me talk to her outside a minute.” He turned to Uncle Stewart and said in a softer voice, “I’ll talk to her. I will. I’ll talk to her.” Then he quickly led her out the front door and toward the open yard.

  “Somebody needs to,” Uncle Stewart managed to interject just before they got outside. Sanford nodded but kept on going, eager to be out the door.

  Sanford and Jessie spoke only in urgent whispers while they walked around the block, even though they were both in a state of anger and outrage. In the Los Angeles of 1928, no adult who possessed the slightest degree of social refinement would publicly discuss personal matters. The act of keeping it to oneself was accepted as being every adult’s responsibility, to the point that the social damage caused by failing to maintain this standard placed the offender at the level of someone walking around with a jagged rip in the seat of their pants and the remains of a road apple coating both shoes. Only if a car or bus rattled by with an especially loud engine would they raise their voices to penetrate the noise. They circled the block three times and slowly worked their way through the effects of Uncle Stewart’s attack. Most of that time was consumed by long pauses broken only by short bursts of muted conversation.

  “That’s just a taste of what he’s been doing to you,” Jessie said at one point, keeping her eyes straight ahead while they walked. “Isn’t it?”

  “Jessie … I know it looks bad.”

  She snorted at that. “Oh, you’re willing to give it that much, are you?”

  “I mean, I know it’s bad. But the thing that matters is for you to go on home. And do it before there’s a conflict that we can’t get you out of.”

  “I cannot believe that we are talking about a member of our own family, talking about having to protect ourselves from him as if he were some kind of complete fiend.”

  “Except ‘fiend’ is a word for things in the movies. He went way past being a ‘fiend’ a long time ago. Hollywood only makes movies to get ugly people to buy things, anyway.”

  “Excuse me?”

  “Skip it.”

  They walked for another few minutes, then she reached into her pocket and pulled out a small fold of cash. “I set this aside for you. It’s just enough to get you a train ticket up to Seattle.”

  “Jessie, I can’t—”

  “I don’t have enough for food. Try to take something with you when you go. If you can’t bring anything, go anyway. A little hunger won’t kill you.”

  “Jessie….”

  “I’ll leave later this morning. All you do is wait until I’m gone. I arranged to pay the fruit vendor on the corner to run you to the station.”

  “Jessie, he’ll never let—”

  “Listen! I am going to wait for you in Seattle. I don’t have any money to remain in that city. Everything we have left will go to get us back home, so you have to come right away. As soon as I’m gone and Uncle Stewart relaxes, you have to find a minute to break away. Just get down to the fruit stand there on the corner.” She handed him a small envelope with money in it. “The ten-dollar bill in the front is for him. He knows that he has to take you to the train station if he wants it. If he won’t do it for any reason, then you find a way to get there on your own, by God. You can do it.”

  “Are you going to call the American police?”

  “I thought about it. But I’m afraid that they might not want to listen to a woman from Canada about a boy who’s not supposed to be here in the first place. Besides, if they gave it away to Uncle Stewart somehow, then you would be stuck there alone with him. Trust me. This is the only way out for you.”

  “There’s no way out for me at all, Jessie.”

  “I swear, you stop talking like that or I won’t go. I won’t even leave you alone with him. No, never again. I don’t know and I don’t think I ever want to know just what in the Lord’s name has really gone on out there, but you are coming home one way or the other. Now.”

  “You really wouldn’t leave here without me?” Sanford’s heart cracked open for her like an egg against the edge of a frying pan.

  “Not unless you give me your solemn promise that you will be on that late-night train to Seattle tonight. Don’t leave me hanging alone up there by myself, all right? That’s not home for either one of us, up there.”

  He felt a rush of gratitude for witnessing firsthand the kind of goodness and courage and decency that some people represent. It was a joy to help save her. It was an honor. “All right, Jessie. You’re right, then. I’m sorry. I didn’t think about it like that. You go straight on ahead and I will be on that train tonight.”

  “You are looking at me and swearing your word, Sanford.”

  He gazed straight into her eyes. “I know, Jessie.” His throat seized up when he tried to say “I love you,” but she got the idea anyway and wrapped him in a hug that squeezed the air out of him. It was excruciating and joyful at the same time to feel her arms around him. He would have loved for her to just keep on squeezing, stronger than a man, stronger than anything human. Just keep on squeezing until his bones snapped and crumbled and his flesh wadded into a ball. They could bury him out in the henhouse. Put him in the hole that would be easy to open because the dirt was already loose where he had been ordered to dig the graves for the Dahl family. A young woman with Jessie’s strength could easily scrape it back out.

  How fine it would be, since there was no way to keep Jessie from knowing forever, if she could be the only one who knew. How extraordinary, how full of grace for him to only have to suffer the shame and humiliation of letting her know and of sharing the grief with her over the death on his hands. If she could be the keeper of his secret and bury him out there so that no one would ever know he was gone. It seemed plausible enough. If his uncle or grandparents never said a thing, who would complain? Except for Jessie, everyone in his family had allowed two years to go by without any contact except those absurd letters dictated by Uncle Stewart.

  If only he could apologize to the world by letting her finish the job on him and drop him into the newly opened grave and maybe even throw dirt over his face so that he could expire by trying to breathe through it until he sucked it into his nostrils, his mouth, his throat, his lungs. Sanford’s apology to her, to the boys, to the human race, would be to die with fire in his chest and the torment of useless mortal panic exploding inside him while he forcefully shit himself and died in protest over what the demon had done to his boyhood.

  “Jessie—” he began to protest, but that was as far as he got.

  “Damn it! Damn it, Sanford, you do this! You do this! You get to that train station and get to Seattle. That is all that you have to do. You can do that. You can do that much. You have to do that much, Sanford. You see that there is no way I can just ‘go back home’ here, don’t you? I could do that on the same day that I sprout wings and fly around the moon. Now there is a late train tonight that goes all the way through. You tell me that you are getting on that train, come Hell or high water. And say it like you mean it!”

  “Jessie … Jessie, there is so much that you don’t….” He stopped and took in a sigh so big that it creaked the muscles in his back when he exhaled. “All right. I’ll get on that train. If you’re already gone, he’ll let his guard down. Then when he’s not looking I can sneak away.”

  “You can
do this, Sanford.”

  “Yeah, sure. No. I can do it,” he smiled back at her. It was true after all, as far as it went. He could do it, get to the station with or without the fruit-stand guy, take the money that she gave him and buy a ticket and ride all the way back up north to Seattle. Even if he had to make the trip without any food, it was less than three days. It would hardly kill him, and he might even be able to smuggle out something to eat that he could bring along.

  If he was capable of taking advantage of it, Jessie’s help would enable him to break away and make it all the way back to Canada. He would have to live with his sister, but after everything that she had seen there, she would not refuse him. He could help with the household income and be an asset to her. There would be plenty of challenges, but they would have a chance at a life. Both of them. The plan could be made to work and his escape could be “pulled off without a hitch,” as his favorite pulp novels liked to put it.

  If only he’d been just about any other living human being on the planet. If only he did not share in the guilt created by a loathsome monster named Gordon Stewart Northcott. If only there were not twenty or more dead kids tied to that demon. And most of all, most of all—if there were not three perfectly innocent and terrified little boys whose cruel end left a bloody trail running back to Sanford himself.

  For that reason, it made no difference whether or not Jessie concocted the most brilliant escape plan ever conceived. It could not bear fruit. The roots were poisoned. Still, he noticed that Jessie’s attitude took a marked upswing as soon as he promised to go along with the plan. The change in her convinced him that he was right to make the choice to feed her a bunch of crap. He kept up the charade all the way to the train station, and even though Uncle Stewart was careful not to give them a moment of privacy, she managed a quick whisper while she hugged him: “Tonight. Seattle.” Sanford gave her a wink and a nod.

  It was just the reassurance that she needed to get aboard the train, because, after all, Jessie still did not know Uncle Stewart, not really. She actually thought that just because she was on her train, he would relax his vigilance on Sanford. And maybe he would have, before this dreadful visit. Not any more. She had not stumbled into any open graves, but Uncle Stewart knew that she had caught the smell of death.

  The conductor called “all aboard,” and within moments the train began to inch forward and gain momentum. Sanford’s heart lifted on a burst of joy. He stood with Uncle Stewart on the platform at the station and watched Jessie lean out the window and wave to him. He felt the physical sensations of a part of himself tearing away and following her on that train, but at the same time he could hardly believe his good fortune. Jessie was aboard the train to Seattle; her getaway was finally taking place. He wanted to leap and scream in victory.

  And then she was gone and the station was empty. Sanford and his uncle turned to go back to the car. They were in the endgame now. He knew it, whether or not Uncle Stewart did. Sending Jessie away was all the “escape” that he could expect. That was good enough for him, anyway. He had saved one more potential victim from Uncle Stewart—and that was what mattered most after his years of helplessness in that place. He figured Jessie would eventually forgive him for using lies to do it. She would stop waiting for him, go on home, and remain safe from all of this. She would eventually forgive him for not using her money to get on a train.

  Uncle Stewart was walking back to the parking lot without so much as a glance back at Sanford. He had complete confidence in Sanford’s inability to run off. He was correct about that part of it. Sanford let out a long sigh while another thirty or forty pounds worth of the invisible weight pressed down on his shoulders. It was time to go back to the ranch and die there. Whether it was at Uncle Stewart’s hand or some police officer’s gun did not make much difference. At least he would never have to see the look on Jessie’s face when she learned the horrible truth about him.

  The fact that he had actually gotten her out of there alive was the first instance of mercy that he had witnessed in years. Maybe because it wasn’t for me; it was for her. The joy of it washed over him. The most precious thing that he’d been able to give Jessie was her unknowing escape from that place, free from personal witness to the horrors there, free from being made a victim herself. He knew she was the type who would understand all of that, once the truth came out. It made the thought of going back to die at the Hell ranch easier to tolerate. That, and the certainty that there was nowhere in this world where they would not kill him if they recognized him for what he was.

  Twelve

  “I don’t care what she said.” Grandma Louise insisted to all of them back at their house in Los Angeles, “I say the look in her eyes gave her away. She knows something, or she thinks she knows something. And Jessie is not the kind of girl who is going to let go of that. She is vindictive, like a bad dog with a good memory. We’ve got to put the border between us and that ranch.”

  The Northcotts worked like frenzied beavers while they grabbed their personal belongings and packed up to flee. Sanford had never seen anything like it, and he savored watching them succumb to self-generated panic. It would have made him laugh out loud if he’d still had it in him to laugh. This time, this one time, nobody seemed to mind that he was not helping with the work.

  Grandpa George and Grandma Louise and Uncle Stewart all seemed to appear and disappear around him in a frenzy of activity. They occasionally called for him to lift this or move that, but unless he was under a direct order he just stood there, and nobody challenged him over it. Sanford figured this must be how it felt to have your sanity dissolve. Everything was there, still the same, but broken into a million pieces like the world’s most confusing jigsaw puzzle—so fragile that every time he exhaled, it blew some of the pieces around. Any time that he moved to put those pieces back in place, his movements disturbed others. They swirled away and formed unrecognizable piles. Everything he did to fix it only made it worse.

  The Northcotts were all doomed too, but they honestly seemed to think there was a way for them to escape and just go on living their lives. Some sort of blindness or willful ignorance appeared to possess all three of them. Their personal radio sets were not tuned to the idea that sooner or later Uncle Stewart would victimize someone who was connected to the kind of people who would take it upon themselves to hunt down the killer. And in grabbing Uncle Stewart, they would inevitably grab Grandma and Grandpa as well.

  In spite of Grandma Louise’s displays of affection for her son, her main goal always seemed to be simply that of calming him down and shutting him up, making herself safe from his volatile outbursts. Would Grandma’s heart be ripped open if her son inexplicably disappeared? Because Grandma clearly understood somehow that if her baby boy ever got started against her, he would never stop until she was dead, or perhaps merely almost dead while she struggled to breathe underneath a light layer of loose dirt and sucked it into her nose, her mouth, her throat, her lungs.

  Grandpa George was so mad that he didn’t say a word to anybody while they went about their tasks. There was no time to sell the ranch itself, so Sanford realized that the old guy was seeing his savings go up in smoke. Lotsa luck, buddy. It was all so they could raise a few quick dollars and run off with their demon son. He found it vaguely interesting that Grandpa George had not decided to just shoot all of them for causing this disaster and take what he could get for himself.

  Only one thing truly mattered to Sanford now. It was the only thing that registered in his mind as a clear presence: he had managed to get Jessie out of there unharmed. Unbelievable good fortune! She was packing a pretty good black eye, but in this environment that was nothing. Instead, Jessie was safely away from all of them now—even safe from him, as hard as it was for him to think so. There was no telling what sort of foulness he might have attracted down onto her if she’d stuck around. He was far from being able to conceive of divine intervention in anything other than a storybook sense. It barely occurre
d to him as an option. Somehow the forces that had seized him, trying to force him into the life of a demon, had slipped and allowed him to do something good and decent without any intervening horror. He was content with that for an explanation.

  As soon as they returned to the chicken ranch, the sensation of guilt paired up with his premonition of a well-deserved doom to make him so heavy that he was practically a thing of stone. The sensation of extreme heaviness slowed him down enough to make time slip by faster in relation. The others began to look like speeded-up actors in a jerky silent movie. Uncle Stewart was stuck in his blubbering baby mode, allowing Grandma Louise to call all the shots while she bullied Grandpa George into bringing the neighbors over to buy out the farm equipment and liquidate as much of the property as they could before leaving. The farm stock disappeared like tumbleweeds. Within hours the chickens and rabbits had been trucked away by the gleeful new owners who were allowed to practically steal them.

  Now that Sanford was no longer a part of their survival plan, the Northcotts seemed to forget about him. No doubt they all three would have loved to roast him over a spit for being the cause of Jessie’s suspicions, but their frenzy was that of rats fleeing a ship headed straight for the bottom. Revenge was a luxury of time; Grandma Louise had decided that they were fresh out.

  They worked all through the night, and the sun was already well into the sky the next morning when Uncle Stewart finally climbed into his car along with Grandma and Grandpa and their remaining belongings. Their story to Sanford was that they were making one last run into town for supplies and that they would come back for him. They said nothing about why all three should need to go together or why he should stay to guard the empty stock pens of an abandoned chicken ranch. Even the house was depleted of anything worth stealing. But no experience was complete in the world of the Northcott family unless somebody was being fooled.