Prodigal Blues

by Gary A Braunbeck

"…do not lecture me right now…" he whispered.

  "Who is lecturing? I am merely pointing out that your behavior has given us yet another mess to deal with. You promised me you were going to stop acting this way. You promised, Christopher."

  "…I apolo—"

  "Oh, no," said Rebecca. "Not this time. Absolutely not. You broke a promise, Christopher, and you know what that means."

  He nodded his head, not looking at her.

  No one said anything for several moments, then Arnold turned toward me and whispered: "This is actually pretty serious."

  "I think I figured that much out already, thanks." Then: "What does it mean, when someone breaks their promise?"

  "It means," said Rebecca, "that the person they made the promise to gets a request, and that request has to be granted, no matter what it is."

  "No matter what," said Thomas, then giggled and went back to his song, singing softly to himself, which was starting to get on my nerves because I couldn't make out the words.

  Christopher looked up at Rebecca. "All right, then, all right." He got to his feet. "I broke my promise."

  "You broke it big," said Arnold.

  "Yes, you did," added Rebecca.

  Christopher sighed, then folded his arms across his chest and waited.

  "Does that mean something else?" I asked Arnold. "Is it worse if you break a promise big?"

  "You know it."

  "If you break a promise big," said Rebecca, "then the other person gets two requests; one now, and one later."

  "Do not push this too far," Christopher said.

  I watched silently. There had been a definite shift in the dynamics; Rebecca was, for the moment, in charge, and Christopher was respecting that; but I had the feeling that Rebecca's reign could only go on for so long before Christopher took back control—and when he did, Rebecca would respect his actions.

  For the moment, I was reminded of the way Gayle and I used to go back and forth when we were kids.

  Christopher massaged a part of his forehead, then exhaled loudly. "I am not going to stand here all day. You get one now, one later. What is your first request?"

  Rebecca smiled, then cocked her thumb in my direction. "Unlock him."

  "Now, wait just a minute—"

  "No! That is my first request and you have to do it. So do it."

  "I do not think it is a good idea. He might try something."

  "He is naked underneath that sheet. He is not going anywhere. Un. Lock. Him."

  Christopher pulled a set of keys from his pocket, flipping through until he found the one he was looking for, then removed it from the ring and tossed it to Arnold.

  "I wanted you to do it," said Rebecca.

  "You did not say that. You only said 'Unlock him.' Who does it was never specified."

  Her eyes narrowed. "That is so very close to cheating."

  "But not close enough that it counts against me."

  "They do this a lot," said Arnold, unlocking the leg iron and removing it from my ankle. "But it is not always this entertaining." He bent down and removed the rest of the chain from the bed frame.

  I leaned forward and began massaging my ankle. "May I please have the rest of my clothes? Including my shoes and socks?"

  "Your pants and underwear are not dry," said Rebecca.

  "I could give a shit—wait, sorry, excuse my language. It doesn't matter if they're dry or not, I'll wear them."

  "Are you sure?"

  I grinned at her. "No, but it beats being like this."

  She and Arnold retrieved everything. I slipped into my damp underwear (beneath the sheet), then stood and put on my pants, socks, and shoes.

  "Better?" asked Arnold.

  "Kind of squishes when I move, but at least I'm not dangling in front of everyone."

  "Was that a yes?"

  "That was a yes."

  "Just making sure."

  Rebecca sat on the edge of the bed and gestured toward Christopher. "Well?"

  Christopher looked at his watch. "We have now wasted the better part of an hour. All of you were supposed to be sleeping by now."

  "I am not tired," said Arnold.

  Rebecca shrugged. "Me, neither."

  In the corner, Thomas continued singing—and at last I recognized the song: "All Through The Night." Mom used to sing the same lullaby to both Gayle and me when we were kids.

  "Fine," snapped Christopher, removing the gun from the back of his pants and sitting on the footstool. "So who wants to start? I am not in the mood right now."

  "Start what?" I asked.

  "Telling you about it," said Rebecca.

  "If you are going to help us," added Arnold, "it is only fair that you know everything."

  "Only fair," Thomas repeated. "Only fair."

  "Sometimes," said Christopher, "the three of you really get on my nerves."

  Rebecca shook her head. "Christopher is Mr. Grumpy-Pants today. Please pardon him."

  Then they told me; and, as I listened, feeling soul-sick and diminished with each passing minute, I finally understood what is meant by the phrase "bad wisdom."

  7. The "One" Days

  They never learned his real name; for them—and several other children—he was and would always be Grendel.

  "He was very careful about that," said Christopher. "No mail ever came to the house—it was all sent to a Post Office box. Anything he ordered online was always sent through the mail, never through FedEx or UPS or any delivery company like that. He did not carry a wallet. There were no personal papers anywhere in that house, not that we ever found. And we looked. When Arnold and I started going through the computer files looking for his internet accounts information, we found at least fourteen different names he was using. All the names belonged to guys who have been dead for years."

  "How do you know that?" I asked.

  He glared at me. "Because he kept files with all that information locked up in one of his desks. Social Security numbers, dates of birth and death, names of relatives—all of them deceased, of course—all the information you would need to set up an internet account or apply for a credit card."

  "He must have… had help," I said. "I mean, information like that isn't exactly easy to get your hands on."

  Christopher's hands balled into fists. "I thought you were supposed to be listening."

  I shut up.

  Rebecca was fifteen now; she'd been thirteen when Grendel took her. "My mom and me were driving up to see her brother. Mom had to go to the bathroom, so we pulled off the highway when we found a rest stop. Mom told me to stay by the car while she went inside to pee. I saw this man and little retarded girl walking around between some buildings. They were both crying. They said they were looking for their puppy and asked me if I could help them look."

  Arnold was now twelve; he had been a week removed from his tenth birthday when Grendel snatched him away. "My stepsister took me to a carnival in the church's parking lot. He was dressed up like a minister when I met him. He asked me if I would help bring out the folding tables for the lemonade stand."

  Thomas was eleven; he'd been nine the day he disappeared. "I was waiting for Daddy to get out from seeing the doctor at the hospital. He got sick all of a sudden and we had to take a cab because Mommy was still at work and she had the car. I thought he was a doctor. He said it was okay for me to come with him to see my Daddy. He had the white coat and everything."

  And Christopher… Christopher had just turned twelve when Grendel seized him; he was now twenty-one. "I was useful to him. It was necessary to remain useful. If you were not useful, you were taken to Ravenswood—that is what he called the sub-basement. The group of us, we shared a room in the basement, directly above Ravenswood, so everyone always had to… listen whenever Grendel had someone down there.

  "I never knew there were so many different ways to scream."

  He would offer no explanation about how he came to be taken.

  This is what the four of them knew to be true:

>   Grendel told them he had been a medic in Vietnam; he spoke German, French, Spanish, and knew sign language; he had either once been a surgeon or a surgical intern, because his medical knowledge was encyclopedic; he knew quite a lot about electronics—computers, digital cameras, recording and listening devices, you name something, Grendel knew about it—and kept his house's security systems up to date, including a massive electrified fence surrounding the property. "He soldered electronic collars around each of our necks," Christopher said. "If any one of us moved farther than seventy-five feet from the outside of the house, all of us got a shock that knocked us out for hours. If you wet or soiled your pants when you got the shock, you had to wear them for two days afterward as punishment for being 'undisciplined.'"

  Grendel believed human beings could discipline themselves to the extent that even when their systems suffered massive trauma, they could control their excretory functions. The fence was put up to guard against the possibility one of them might somehow manage to remove their collar; it stood fifteen feet high and would fry you to a crisp. "Even if the power was turned off and you somehow made it to the top," said Rebecca, "you would never get over the rolls of barbed wire. 'I must keep all of you safe and sound,' he'd say."

  Grendel might have been married once, because he had a daughter—or, at least, a girl who called him "Daddy": her name was Connie, she was eleven, had Down's Syndrome, and would do whatever he asked without question or fuss; he had money, because the house was large and the property wide and private; he did not tolerate the use of contractions, foul language, or nicknames, Connie being the only one exempt from the first and last—none of them were exempt from the foul language rule.

  But Grendel's friends were.

  And he did have friends. Quite a few of them. They came over for monthly meetings. Rebecca was their preferred party favor, her body having three orifices, but eventually all of them received their turns at the meetings. "He did not believe in playing favorites," Arnold said. "He was concerned our feelings would be hurt. He was real thoughtful like that."

  "I wish someone would have hurt my feelings that way just once," said Rebecca. "His friends were rough. One of them used to hold a hot cigar against the back of my neck to make sure my head stayed down. None of them were ever gentle. And they tasted awful."

  "Heard that," said Arnold.

  Christopher nodded his head. "Preaching to the choir."

  "Bingo," sang Thomas.

  Except for the monthly meetings, Grendel and his friends communicated solely through the internet. The third floor of the house had been converted into one large room where Grendel kept several computers, as well as a server. For all appearances, he was the network administrator for about two dozen small businesses, all antique dealers, each with their own web site, email address, private chat rooms, all of it.

  "No one ever said what they meant," said Rebecca, "not even in the chat rooms. Everything was in code. If you saw one of the emails, it just looked like a list of stuff people wanted to buy, or prices, or receipts."

  Arnold grinned, shaking his head. "It was slick, I had to give them that. What they did, see, was they had a bunch of phrases, certain phrases, numbers, icons, text… text… oh, what is the word?"

  "Configurations," said Christopher. "Text configurations."

  "Right, configurations—you know, the way the letter was put together, the way the paragraphs were indented, stuff like that? Even how many spaces or periods there were between the end of one sentence and the start of the next one meant something."

  They knew this because, once a month, Grendel would gather them together and show them the "purchase orders" for the upcoming meeting, so that each would know what was expected of them.

  "He insisted on teaching us the codes," said Christopher. "That way, he never had to look us in the face and tell us what we were going to have to do."

  "I do not ever want to see the words 'decorative bathtub fixtures' again," Rebecca said, then shrugged, embarrassed. "Anytime they ordered 'decorative bathtub fixtures,' that meant me."

  "I was any Louis XIII furniture," said Christopher.

  Arnold scratched at one of his scars and tried to smile. "Mostly I was walnut. Or mahogany. Or cherry. Any of the darker woods." He shook his head. "Man, I hated seeing an order for a mahogany dining room table. That meant they were going to… eat off of me before they did their business." He wiped his eyes, then tried once again to smile. "I remember when Mom used to take me out for ice cream. I would always order a big banana split with extra whipped cream on top. It was not a real banana split without that extra whipped cream, you know?" His eyes narrowed, and for a moment he looked as if he might get sick. "Him and his friends ruined that for me. I almost hate him more for that than my face."

  "Thomas was an antique radio, or phonograph, anything like that," said Rebecca. "I will bet you can guess why."

  Grendel's friends included lawyers, doctors, police officials, city fathers, and others whose positions guaranteed these meetings would always be discreet.

  "They never called each other by name in front of us," Arnold said. "But they would, you know, talk about their jobs. The doctors gave Grendel any kind of medical stuff he asked for. Bandages, scalpels, equipment, thread for stitches, needles, cough medicine… all kinds of stuff. There were always a lot of drugs in the house."

  "Pick a prescription medicine," said Rebecca, "and it was there. A lot of it. He never wanted for any of us to have to see a doctor if we were sick or hurt. His doctor friends, they did not like the idea of having to treat us as patients, so they gave him everything he might need."

  They were always blindfolded during the meetings so as to not see anyone's face. "He would tape our eyes closed with duct tape," Christopher told me. "Then he would put the blindfolds on. 'No peeking,' he would always say, and then laugh."

  If they did well at the meetings, if they behaved themselves, if they did not cry or struggle or protest (unless crying, struggling, and protesting were part of the purchase order), and if they pretended to like it, then the following Thursday would be a "One" day.

  "We lived for those," said Arnold; then, after a moment, added: "You had to live for something, you know?"

  Grendel and Connie would go into town with a list of items the others had given to them. He would buy each of them one book from the bookstore, one movie from the video store, one new piece of clothing, one food of choice from the grocery store, one snack item ("And chewing gum counted," said Arnold, "which I never thought was fair."), one new toiletry item, and one piece of miscellanea—a tablet of writing paper, a jigsaw puzzle, a deck of playing cards, a music CD, etc. "The clerks and checkout girls always thought he was a father spoiling his child," said Rebecca. "They thought all the stuff he bought was just for one kid."

  "We got pretty good at combining the stuff we needed on the list," Arnold said. "Since we only got, like, one toilet item each, one of us would ask for toothpaste, the other one would ask for mouthwash, someone else would ask for toilet paper, stuff like that. We did the same thing with the snacks and the food, so we would have enough for meals. I would ask for bread, Christopher for sliced cheese, Rebecca would want lunchmeat… you know. That way, we would always have everything we would need. If we were careful, we could make all the 'One' day food last maybe eight or nine days."

  "Providing we remembered to ask for a two-gallon jug of water," added Christopher. "Sometimes we would need the food more than the water." He shrugged. "If you got thirsty enough, there was always the toilet tank."

  "We all got hooked on Harry Potter and Lemony Snicket," said Rebecca. "Connie picked them out for us. She recognized the books because she got to see the first two Harry Potter movies."

  Then Thomas spoke up: "I like Lemony. Lemony is very funny."

  "He never cared about the movies we asked for or the books we read," said Christopher. "If we did well, we got whatever we asked for." He looked up. "So, after a while, we always made sure we did well."


  No one said anything for a few moments after that; they only sat staring at me.

  "What?" I said. "Am I missing something?"

  "You can learn things from books and movies," said Arnold. "If you start picking the right ones."

  "That is enough with 'Twenty Questions,'" said Christopher, rising to his feet. "He is a janitor, not a journalist. There are only two more things he needs to know." He crossed to a corner of the room and picked up a large green-canvas duffel bag; from the way he struggled with it, whatever was inside must have weighed quite a bit. It rattled.

  "Christopher," said Rebecca, the warning evident.

  "Time for all of you to shut up," he snapped at her, then heaved the duffel bag onto the foot of my bed. "All right, Pretty Boy, have you gotten your sufficient jollies listening to all of this? Do you have a nice, nasty story to shock your pretty friends with?"

  "I never asked about—"

  He backhanded me in the mouth; hard enough to hurt but not draw blood or raise welts.

  "BE QUIET!"

  Rebecca jumped up, activating the Taser again, but froze in place when Christopher pulled the gun from the back of his pants and pointed it right at my face. "Sit down, Rebecca. I killed the last guy and I will kill him if you push it, understand?"

  Rebecca gave me a sorrowful look, then laid the Taser on the bed and sat down, hands folded in her lap, looking at the floor.

  "Now," said Christopher, slipping the gun into the back of his pants, "it is time you understood a few things. Do you know why there is only the four of us? After all, we have told you about the others. I assume even a janitor can do basic math." He began unzipping the duffel bag. "In the last four years, twenty-one children have passed through the House of Heorot. Not all of them adapted or learned as well as we did." He grabbed the unzipped bag at both ends, and began turning it upside down. "I think it is time you met a few of them."

  He gave the bag a violent jerk and the yellow bones tumbled onto the bed; pieces of hands, pieces of arms, legs, feet… and skulls. There must have been a dozen skulls of various sizes in the pile forming in front of me but I didn't count, I was too busy crying out and pressing my body against the wall and headboard as the pile tumbled out and forward, clacking, rattling, one nearly-whole hand flopping outward and almost touching my leg as a skull skittered down the pile and rolled down the length of the arm, coming to rest almost perfectly in the center of the opened hand; until that moment I had managed to not scream but as soon as that skull came to rest and I read the name—RANDY—written in black marker across the top I couldn't hold it in any longer and let fly, just opened my mouth as wide as I could and screamed from the bottom of my balls upward, twisting my head from side to side and wishing to hell my eyes would just close but they wouldn't, no matter how much I begged them to, they just kept staring at that skull and that name and then my legs gave out and I collapsed but Christopher was there to catch me from behind, one arm across my torso, the other coming around my shoulder so he could press his hand over my mouth and hold my head still—