All For One

by Ryne Douglas Pearson

  “I was surprised you guys wanted me for treasurer,” Elena said, a quiet confidence in her voice. She took a dainty bite from her sandwich, something with lots of green, healthy stuff hanging over the crust.

  “It’s a great idea,” PJ said. The red had gone from her eyes, and she had actually been able to get through a couple twenty minute stretches of class work that morning without being depressed by melancholic recollections of Bryce.

  “You can be with us now,” Joey added with enthusiasm.

  “I never told,” Elena told them, looking one at a time to Joey, PJ, and Jeff. “I promise I never did.”

  “We believe you,” Joey said, then looked to Jeff and asked, “Don’t we?”

  “Yeah, we believe you.” Jeff palmed a bunch of M&Ms and dropped them rapid-fire into his mouth. He chewed and said, “They’re burying Bryce right now.”

  “Why wouldn’t they let anyone go?” PJ asked.

  Joey shrugged, but Elena said, “His parents blame us. His friends. They think we should have known that Mike was mad at him.”

  “Mike didn’t do anything,” Joey protested.

  “Wait a minute,” Jeff said, looking hard at Elena. “How do you know they blame us?”

  Elena swallowed and said, “My mom is friends with Bryce’s aunt.” She took another small bite and added morosely, “At least she used to be.”

  PJ put a hand on Elena’s back. “Thanks for not telling.”

  Elena shook her head. “Thank you all. This all happened because of me.”

  Joey’s head shook slowly. “Guy started it. No one else. Everything is his fault.”

  “He’s right,” PJ assured Elena. Jeff said nothing and dropped another handful of M&Ms into his mouth.

  “Listen,” Joey said, bringing up what he’d been thinking of all morning. “We have to talk to Mike somehow.”

  “He’s out of jail, you know,” Jeff said.

  “I know. I tried to call him.” Joey laid his bag of chips on the tabletop and slapped a flat hand on it. It popped, splitting down the seam at the back. It was the cool way to open chips. “His parents won’t let him talk. Someone’s got to get to him and find out what happened.”

  Jeff put his chips on the table and dropped his cast on the bag. It popped open down the seam, but all he had was a bag of salty crumbs. “Shit.”

  “How are we going to get to him?” PJ asked.

  Jeff sneered at the destruction his damn cast had caused and dumped the contents to the ground. Let the bugs at least enjoy it. “I’ll do it,” he volunteered with a snarl.

  Joey looked at him. “You’ll do what?”

  “I’ll get to Mike,” Jeff declared confidently.

  “You?” PJ said. “How?”

  Jeff grinned at her, that grin that made them believe he would either be president or a talk show host someday. “Who do you think taught him to climb through windows back in third grade?”

  * * *

  Bryce Homer Hool

  Dooley stood alone before the temporarily placed headstone and stared long at the engraving, wondering if Bryce had ever been teased for his middle name. He felt infinitely sad and silly for never asking him.

  And he felt guilty to the core for bringing this on.

  The service was nice, if funerals for eleven year olds could be called that. Lots of flowers. Lots of tears. Anger boiling low, like a covered pot waiting.

  No one had removed the lid, thank God.

  The saddest part, Dooley thought, was seeing Bryce’s twin sisters led forward to plant little girl kisses on the casket, and then running back toward their seats with giddy smiles beaming. They just didn’t know. He wondered when it would hit them. What age? Seven? Eight? ‘Mommy, what happened to Bryce? How did he die?’

  Someone wrapped a wire around his neck until he couldn’t breath, Dooley thought, adding, And it was my fault.

  Dooley examined the years, born and died, and wanted desperately to come back with a hammer and chisel and change ‘died’ to ‘murdered’. And maybe add ‘by’, and the name of his murderer. And maybe the unwitting accomplice.

  He wondered if there was a bar nearby. There should be, by logic. Bars should ring cemeteries and have two-for-one specials for the grieving.

  Cheap booze couldn’t wash troubles away, he recalled someone saying. Who was that? Who?

  “You picked the wrong friends,” Dooley said to the headstone, including himself in that grouping.

  He walked six rows over and said to another one, with Guy Daniel Edmond carved into it, “And you picked the wrong enemies.”

  Forty One

  Dooley stayed away from Bartlett for almost two full days. He bought a new car and signed his pension papers.

  He also dreamt of Mary, the kind of dream where she wasn’t what she was, but what he wanted her to be. In the snippets of drowsy fantasy she wore a hat and rode a horse a lot. The horse and hat were incidental. In the dreams she was with him.

  He didn’t dream of Bryce. He suspected cowardice in his subconscious.

  His only reason for returning to Bartlett that Thursday afternoon late was to meet with Tim Markworth at his request. He arrived as the sun was low behind grey-black ribbons of cloud, burning orange in an icy wind.

  Elena’s father thanked him for coming and grabbed a coat. He didn’t invite Dooley in.

  “So you have the one that did it, I hear,” Tim Markworth said. He led Dooley off the porch and across the lawn to a summer fountain. A naked little boy with curly hair and immature, stubby wings graced the center of the bowl. When it was warm, water would arc gently from his tiny stone penis. Inspired by a master, Tim Markworth thought as he touched the glaze on the rim of the basin. Dream it up today and you’d do ten to twenty.

  “We do,” Dooley confirmed. He noticed that Tim Markworth kept his back to him, and his gaze low, except for a furtive glance toward one of the windows on the second floor. Light inside made the curtains yellow. Dooley thought he heard music from the spot.

  “He killed both of them,” Tim Markworth almost muttered.

  Dooley nodded at the man’s upturned collar. A label showed. LL Bean. “We believe so.”

  Tim Markworth stared fully at the window now. His daughter’s room. Willa was in there with her, helping her pack for the conference at that camp. Elena had been smiling. Had even put a CD in her hot pink boom box.

  It was the first time since summer there’d been any sounds other than night screams from her room. And she hadn’t cried out at all in nearly two weeks.

  “I told you when you were here before that Elena was under a doctor’s care.”

  “You did,” Dooley said, remembering. It hadn’t surprised him.

  “The doctor is a psychiatrist,” Tim Markworth said in admission, as though he’d loosed some horrid secret. “I’m telling you this in confidence. Off the record.”

  “That’s for reporters, Mr. Markworth.”

  “Then it’s off whatever you guys call it,” Tim Markworth told him angrily.

  “Fine. This is just you and me talking. Your daughter is seeing a psych.”

  Tim Markworth turned away from the window and gripped the edge of the basin. The frost sizzled on his fingers. “There’s more than that. I didn’t ask you to come just to tell you what kind of doctor she was seeing.”

  Dooley softened his stance, his demeanor. “I’m listening.”

  “Sometime after school started in September, Elena began having nightmares. Terrible nightmares.” Tim Markworth’s chin sank toward his chest, his whole posture pained. A parent’s pain. “She always slept so well before, and then all of a sudden she starts waking up screaming. Just wailing like she’s being killed. She’d never even open her eyes. It was like whatever was terrifying her wouldn’t let her wake up. Like it wanted her to scream.” He reached up and wiped a tear with the back of his hand. “We’d go to her and calm her, and she’d quiet down and drift away. I don’t even know if knew she was screaming.”

  Do
oley listened carefully, closely, to what Tim Markworth was saying. “Does this happen every night?”

  “Until the last couple of weeks. Willa and I have laid in bed waiting for it to happen. It hasn’t.”

  Dooley had thought Mary’s fit the other night related to recent happenings. Could Guy Edmond have wrought this much devastation on those around him?

  “You’re telling me this, about the psychiatrist and Elena’s nightmares, because...”

  “Because Elena’s doctor discovered what was causing the nightmares,” Tim Markworth said, sniffling, his voice on the verge of nothingness. “She had some sort of breakthrough just before the night screams stopped. Elena told her something.”

  “Something?”

  Tim Markworth’s chin rose into a nod. His grip on the basin more than his legs seemed to hold him upright. A quiet, tearless sob shook through him. His lower teeth bared like a wounded beast and he said, “About that monster. That boy. Guy Edmond.”

  Dooley glanced at the window. Shadows on the curtain now, one big, one small, arms joined in silhouette as they spun to happy music. Dancing.

  He looked back to Tim Markworth and waited for more.

  “He...did things to her, Detective Ashe. He...raped her. He touched her. He made her...” Tim Markworth’s face screwed into a hurt, curious scowl. “...do things to him. He did this from the first day of school. He...”

  Dooley hadn’t suspected this, but it did not surprise him either. Not from Guy Edmond it didn’t.

  A minute of spasmed silence dragged, then Dooley said, “I’m very sorry, Mr. Markworth.”

  Tim Markworth sobbed dryly, his fingers clamped to the basin’s rim, digging at the curved stone.

  “How...could...he... How could anyone do those things. She’s my little girl.” He looked quizzically at Dooley. Broken. “She’s my little girl.”

  Dooley gave the man his time to compose himself.

  “I’m sorry,” Tim Markworth said, wiping a wet sniff down one sleeve.

  “Why did want to tell me this?” Dooley asked easily.

  “So you would know what kind of...thing that boy was. So you’ll know what the other kids in that class may have gone through. So that boy who did it might not be seen as a murderer in your eyes. Maybe you’ll see him as a savior of those kids. I certainly do.”

  Tim Markworth let go of the basin and stood straight. He cleared his throat and looked around the yard. The beds were going to need a better coat of mulch if winter was as cold as the fall had been thus far.

  “I moved here to give my family a better life,” Tim Markworth said. He shook his head and looked at Dooley, then went back in the house, dragging regret with him.

  Dooley took a deep draw of cold air and walked slowly across the yard to the walkway, music faint behind, and to his new car, green like the forest, a year newer twin to his old one.

  As he drove away he imagined little Guy Edmonds spaced along the street like slalom cones, and he imagined himself flattening each and every one.

  * * *

  Michael Prentiss lay on his bed staring at the ceiling and the sparkles fused to its uneven surface.

  His baseball glove rested on his chest, rising and falling with each breath. The police had taken his bat.

  Waves of sadness swept over him. He thought of Bryce. His friend. His best friend until...

  Three quick taps on his window snapped Michael from this latest descent into tears. He looked at the glass and saw a small hand waving.

  He went to the window and saw Jeff pressed stealthily against the house. Open up, his friend mouthed.

  Michael eased the lower sash up and leaned partly out, whispering, “What are you doing here, Bernstein?”

  “I need to talk to you,” Jeff explained in an equally hushed tone. The softness seemed unnatural, like a third eye.

  “I’m in enough trouble already,” Michael said. “If my folks catch you here...”

  “They won’t.” Jeff surveyed the back yard and held his good hand toward his friend. “Come on. Help me in.”

  A few seconds of fretting delayed the inevitable, then Michael took Jeff’s hand and helped him through the window. Even with the cast it was no problem. Michael had lifted bigger things at his dad’s garage.

  Jeff looked around the room, and seemed particularly interested in the door. “Do they come in a lot?”

  Michael shook his head and slowly closed the window. He sat on his bed and said, “They don’t seem to want to see me.”

  Jeff squatted to a sit on the floor. “Are you okay?”

  “No. Would you be?”

  “No.” Jeff wanted to get right to business, but he couldn’t. This wasn’t like talking to Mike his friend. This was like talking to Mike who lots of people thought killed Bryce, his friend. He unzipped his jacket and said idly, “We’re gonna miss you at One Wing.”

  “I wish I could go.”

  “Yeah.”

  Michael considered his friend with reluctant glances, but fixed a steady stare upon him when he saw that Jeff was having more trouble looking at him. “I didn’t do it, Jeff.”

  “We know that.”

  “Then look at me.”

  Jeff did. He swallowed.

  “I didn’t do it.”

  “What happened then?”

  Michael clawed at the denim over his knees. “God, Jeff, it was awful...”

  “What?”

  The door drew a cautionary glance from Michael, then he said, “I’ve gotta tell you something.”

  “What?”

  “About that night at Bryce’s house.”

  Jeff nodded and listened. He listened for an hour, and then he snuck out of his friend’s bedroom window a different person.

  * * *

  She had gone to bed early, wanting to get a good night’s sleep before leaving for Camp One Wing the next morning. That was what she wanted, but it was not to be.

  Right before midnight, a good two hours after drifting off, Mary woke abruptly, her eyes jerking wide open and angling toward her open door. She heard only the faint, ghostly hum that silence reeked in the still din of the night. The nothingness that weighed heavy upon one’s senses if they listened, or looked into it, long enough. She heard that harmless nothingness, and buried almost beneath it the soft purr of Chester slumbering in the hall just outside her room. Heard that and nothing else.

  But there had been something.

  She eased her feet from under the covers and sat at the edge of her bed. Her eyes peered into the living room, the filtered, ambient glow of the outside lights painting it and all the furnishings in various monochrome shades. She was searching the normal night scene for something. The something that had yanked her from a deep, dreamless sleep. A sound of some kind. Very clear before she woke, but lost in the transition.

  Not like what she’d heard when Chuck Edmond had traipsed across her porch that night not so long ago, the night he hurled the stabbed apple through her window. That was sound with a presence; this was just...sound. If it had been more than that it would have stirred Chester.

  Mary gave her sleeping tabby a glance and stood slowly. She thought about taking the gun from her nightstand, but decided against it. She felt no threat. She felt only wonder. Wonder at what she’d heard.

  I did hear it, she thought to herself, whatever ‘it’ was.

  She walked gingerly past Chester and into the living room, fixing herself near its center. Looking left she could see the flat white glow on the still mismatched linen curtain. To the right into the kitchen. Ahead and a little to the right, the blunt curved end of her piano, its coal blackness deeper than the surrounding ni—

  Hee hee hee hee hee.

  There it was!

  Mary hurried toward the sound, toward the small, giddy laughter coming from the piano’s room. She entered fast and stopped, listening.

  Hee hee hee.

  There! On the far side, low by the keyboard. Mary scooted around half the big instrument’s perimet
er and scanned the floor around the bench, then crouched and looked by the foot pedals. Nothing.

  Her eyes scowled with worry.

  Hee hee hee hee.

  Where was that? Where? Mary stood quickly and looked beyond the piano. Tiny feet scurried across the hardwood floor.

  Hee hee. Hee hee hee.

  The laughter and the footsteps moved together to the kitchen. Mary followed, her bare feet squeaking against the floor.

  Hee hee hee.

  She came into the kitchen and blocked the doorway. One hand reached for the light switch, but she did not flip it up. Her fingers simply rested upon it. Held it there as she listened.

  Hee hee hee.

  Mary spun fast around. The laughter was behind her now, in the living room.

  Who are you?! her mind demanded.

  Hee hee—

  The giggle, across the room by the couch now, was cut off by the sudden clamor of the phone. It lanced the quiet and startled Mary. She listened after the first ring, and heard nothing. No laughter. No feet. Just the thick night once more.

  Chester strutted into the living room from the hallway and stared at Mary as another ring came. She started toward the phone, Chester purring, a quick, sharp spear of light traversing the dark behind her eyes and...

  Forty Two

  ...she stared out the clear windshield of her car at the buses gathering just past the front of the school, and at the piles of duffels and sleeping bags, and the small clusters of children and the parents there to see them off.

  Wha— Wha—

  The shocky question came as thought first, then Mary managed to say softly to herself, “What? What?”

  Two taps on her side window made her jump.

  Nan Jakowitz recoiled apologetically at the reaction. “I’m sorry, Mary. Not the best way to get your attention, is it?”

  Mary stared at Nan as normally as she could, drew a composing breath, and shook her head as she lowered the window.

  “I guess you think ‘Chuck Edmond’ whenever that happens, huh?”

  “It, uh...” My God, I’m...I’m at school. I was at...at home. Oh God. “...startles me sometimes.”