Sacrifice

by James, Russell

  Jeff and Paul walked up to blessedly break this morbid train of thought. Paul looked shattered.

  “The men with the key have arrived,” Dave said.

  “No luck,” Jeff said. “Parker is a jackass.”

  “He’s still head selectman?” Marc said.

  “And still a douchebag. We need to do this the old-fashioned way.”

  “The classic breaking and entering,” Dave said. “Wait until dark?”

  Ken had another memory rush back from the brink—Paul’s story of Bob the night of the fire, standing in ooze downstream of the mill.

  “In the immortal words of Bob Armstrong,” Ken said, “’fuck it, we’re already here.’”

  The five rounded the mill in a fruitless search for an open window. At the rear they stopped at the basement door. The rest of the mill was a nuts-and-bolts reproduction, but the door had gotten an upgrade. The wood slats were now solid steel.

  “And how do we break into this?” Marc said.

  “No need,” Jeff answered. He picked up a shattered padlock from the ground. The hasp above was unlocked. "Someone beat us to it.”

  Paul pushed open the door.

  The area from the steps to the wall, where the Woodsman’s bones originally lay, was one big pit. The hole was at least twice as big as the one they dug thirty years ago and several feet deeper. The excavated earth lay in piles all across the floor.

  “They were already here,” Dave said. He reached down and scraped the earth inside the hole. “It was a while ago. The dirt isn’t damp.”

  “Whatever was here is gone,” Ken said.

  “Nothing was here,” Jeff said. “If they had found something, they would have brought back the Woodsman, and I’m guessing he would have paid us a visit by now.

  “Also they dug out way more than we did to find the bones. They would have found any strays long before they had to dig so deeply.”

  “So they don’t know where it is,” Marc said with relief.

  “And we don’t know where it is,” Dave said.

  “Sounds like the kind of stalemate we can live with,” Paul said.

  Only four of the five smiled at that remark.

  Chapter Sixty-Two

  It was almost eight p.m., the appointed time they had all agreed to meet for dinner in the Village Green Inn’s dining room. Even while he was agreeing to the rendezvous earlier, Marc knew he would miss the meal.

  He sat on the edge of his bed and pulled out his cell phone. He turned it on for the first time since he’d left LaGuardia Airport. It powered up with an angry beep, as if incensed at having been ignored for so long. There were a half dozen messages and twice that many missed calls. He bypassed retrieving his messages. They were all either from Dean Martins, his boss, or his wife Liz, the other boss. He dialed Liz. Caller ID allowed her to bypass the niceties when she answered.

  “It’s about time! Do you know how many times I’ve tried to call you? What has been going on? Did that Bob get you all in some trouble?”

  Marc let it all flow by him like a stiff breeze.

  “Relax, Liz,” he sighed. “Everything’s fine. There’s just been a lot going on.”

  “And with all my worries about you being there, you didn’t call. I knew there’d be trouble with those old friends of yours.”

  “You were right,” Marc said.

  The admission garnered a healthy silence, Liz having heard it so infrequently.

  “I’m leaving tonight,” Marc said. “There’s a lot more here than I bargained for.”

  “Thank God,” Liz said. “You’ll be back for campus orientation week. Dean Martins was worried.”

  Marc knew the dean was no doubt panicked he would have to do some real work.

  “I’ve got to go say goodbye to everyone,” Marc said.

  “Hurry home.”

  Pause. Marc swallowed hard. “Hey,” he said. “You know I love you?”

  “What’s wrong?”

  “What?”

  “What’s with the sad ‘I love you’?”

  “Nothing,” Marc said. “Just making sure you know.”

  “Go get on an airplane.”

  Marc hung up.

  His bags were already packed and in his car, though more for the later convenience of others than his own. He picked up a sealed envelope from the room’s tiny desk. The Village Green Inn was one of those places that still had stationery in the desk drawers. The clock read five after eight. The rest of the Half Dozen would be in the dining room now. He could skip the goodbyes. He left his room.

  Instinctively, he would have left the letter at Ken’s door, but his old friend had a distracted air about him this week, so he stopped in front of Jeff’s door instead. He wedged the envelope between the frame and the door so that it rested on the door knob. Jeff would pass his door on the way to Marc’s room when Marc didn’t show up for dinner. The letter would explain it all.

  He pulled out of the Village Green Inn parking lot with no pang of nostalgia, even though he knew he would never be back here again. He cruised past the historic buildings that still stood sentinel around the village green, still guarding the town’s little secrets.

  He could have bypassed the mill since Main Street was a block away from it, but the pull was too great. He turned right on Mill Street. The low sun cast the mill’s long shadow west across the waterwheel. The wheel loomed up in the gloom like some monster frozen half-surfaced from beneath the earth. Marc gripped the steering wheel a little tighter.

  He realized the cliché of the criminal returning to the scene of the crime. Or crimes. The mob murder of Tom Silas, the multiple murders of innocent children, the Half Dozen’s accidental arson. Then Marc’s personal transgression, for which he now knew there would be no forgiveness.

  But while this place was the scene of the crime, it was not the birthplace. That was another location, the crossroads where Marc’s life took the wrong turn that left any hope of normalcy in the rearview mirror. That was the place he really needed to visit just one more time, were he could conquer a final fear. He hit the gas and left the mill behind forever.

  Chapter Sixty-Three

  “Guys, you just won’t believe this.”

  Jeff looked thunderstruck as he approached Ken, Dave and Paul at the round table for five in the Village Green Inn dining room. He had a torn envelope in one hand and an open letter in the other. He slumped into a chair and tossed the letter on the table. Ken spun it around so all three could see it. Paul squinted, sighed, and put on a pair of reading glasses. The letter read:

  Friends,

  I’ll be gone when you get this, but there is something you need to know. It’s true that whoever killed Bob doesn’t know where the Woodsman’s lost bone is. That’s because I’m the only one who does.

  That night at the mill, I kept one bone from the sack. The Woodsman made me do it. I should have been stronger, should have found a way out, but…

  I was afraid to destroy the bone later, not without the right ritual. So the next day, I buried it in St. Andrew’s cemetery, in the shade on the north side of the old oak. In that quiet place, near the bones of people who may have been his friends, I hoped he would find peace. Those who killed Bob want to prove me wrong.

  Waste no time. Find the bone and destroy it. Tonight. Last time I was the chain’s weak link. I don’t trust myself not to fail you again. Good luck.

  All for none,

  Marc

  “Damn,” Dave said.

  “And his car is gone,” Jeff said. “He’s out of here.”

  “How could be betray us like that?” Paul said. “Put more people’s lives at stake?”

  “Whatever the Woodsman threatened,” Ken said. “It had to be big to get Marc to cave. We all know that.”

  “He feels awful enough about it that he can’t face us,” Dave said. “He could at least have told us the truth face to face, even if he couldn’t handle the ritual.”

  “And now I see why he was so set against com
ing home,” Paul said. “I had to shame him into it.”

  “All that matters now is that he told us where the bone is,” Ken said. “So let’s torch the son of a bitch tonight.”

  “I’ll go to Bob’s and get the collection of talismans,” Paul said. “He had everything we need, right?”

  “Except the prayer,” Dave said.

  Jeff smiled and slapped Ken on the shoulder. “That’s where Ken and his photographic memory come in so handy. Up to it?”

  “It hasn’t failed me yet,” Ken said.

  “We’ll meet up in the parking lot at eleven thirty,” Jeff said. “Midnight is a cliché.”

  Their waitress approached the table and pointed to the empty chair. “Are you still waiting on your fifth?”

  “We’ll hold the count to four musketeers tonight,” Dave said.

  After dinner, Paul left to gather the talismans and Ken retired to summon the Prayer of St Severinus. Jeff looked across the table at Dave. Alone with him for the first time, all he could think about was Dave with Katy that Senior Summer. He had to ask.

  “I went to the Venetian last night,” he said

  “Yeah? Do Katy’s folks still own it?”

  “Nope, it’s Katy’s now.”

  A flicker of fear crossed Dave’s face.

  “She says to say ‘hello’,” Jeff said. “She said that Senior Summer…”

  “Hey, it’s not what you think,” Dave said.

  “What was it then?”

  “I was immobile with my little gift from the Woodsman for weeks, and then had to follow that up with therapy that made me wish I’d died in the fire. Katy came by the first week after school. We talked. Later, she brought me stuff to read, gave me some contact with the outside world. She was a big help.”

  Jeff sat in silence.

  “And I was in a cast up to my groin,” Dave said. “So, no, nothing happened.”

  Jeff nodded in acceptance.

  “And what do you have to be touchy about?” Dave said. “Don’t get me wrong, I have put most of this behind me. But where were all of you when I was knitting my bones back together?”

  “I think we all felt guilty,” Jeff said. “But that’s no excuse. We should have been there for you.”

  “And you had broken up with Katy.”

  “Because of the Woodsman,” Jeff said in feeble defense.

  “And all summer long, you never tried to get her back,” Dave said. “Not once. So if something had happened between your abandoned friend and abandoned girlfriend, your justification to be ticked would be pretty weak, don’t you think?”

  “Point taken,” Jeff admitted.

  Dave looked off at the far edge of the dining room.

  “She wasn’t interested in getting close,” Dave said. “And she was pissed at you.”

  “You never told her about the Woodsman.”

  “Hell, no. And mad as she was at you, I could tell that she wasn’t over you.”

  Jeff’s anger at Dave’s perceived disloyalty turned inward at his own. He should not have abandoned his friends after the night at the mill. He should have thought better of Dave’s getting closer to Katy. Above all, from the first day, he should have trusted Katy with their secrets. How different things could have been at seventeen with just a few moments of fifty-year-old clarity.

  “I’m sorry, man,” Jeff said.

  Dave used the back of his chair for leverage to favor his leg and stood. “It’s all cool. Tonight we put this all to bed for good. All for none…”

  “…and none for all,” Jeff answered.

  Chapter Sixty-Four

  The water tower hadn’t changed a bit. From the ground it didn’t seem as tall as it was in Marc’s memory. The logo on the tower hadn’t had an upgrade since 1980, but at least the paint was fresh. The red beacon at the top pulsed its rhythmic flash to warn aircraft away. Marc wished it had been more effective on teenagers thirty years ago.

  Marc taught his literature students about the crucial points in novels, the critical moments when one decision sends the tale careening off on some unexpected trajectory. If his life ever imitated art, this was the place where it had happened. This damn tower and six kids deciding to pull the year’s best graduation prank.

  A closer inspection revealed the tower’s one big difference. The cheap fencing around the base had seen an upgrade. The chain link was a few feet higher, and now the top hosted three strands of barbed wire. A chain stout enough to hold a ship’s anchor bound the gate shut, secured by a lock thick as a phone book.

  Marc’s decision to scale the tower was cast in stone. Nothing less would do. Acrophobia be damned. Since going though the fence wasn’t going to work, that only left going over.

  Marc grabbed the wire mesh. Dew had already settled on the links, and they were slick and cool. He scaled the fence but his feet found poor purchase on the way up. Was it a tighter fence or did he have bigger shoes? Had they even climbed the fence all those years ago or had the gate posed less of a challenge? He couldn’t remember.

  His arms burned as he reached the top and cursed himself for getting so out of shape. He tried to grab the barbed wire between the points. He missed and the rusting steel scratched his skin. He got a flash of his overprotective mother making him get regular tetanus shots. He pulled up and swung his leg over the wire.

  Barbs caught the legs of his jeans. The wire tugged and then tore his pants. Another barb pierced his chest and sent a stab of pain through his sternum. Warm blood spread across his skin.

  “Son of a bitch.”

  At this point, it didn’t matter. He pulled himself across the wire strands. One barb sliced into his leg like a serrated knife. Marc stifled a scream and skittered down the back side of the fence. He didn’t bother to check the damage.

  Metal rungs ran up one of the tower legs. Fear-induced adrenaline pumped through his veins. He started to climb.

  As he scaled the tower the sensations of that pivotal night came back to him. The heady mix of exhilaration and dread. The camaraderie of being out at night with his five best friends. The anticipation of the school’s reaction when everyone saw the tower. Only now did he realize that moment had been his life’s high-water mark.

  The tower might have seemed smaller from the ground, but the climb to the top seemed longer. It didn’t help that pulling himself over the fence had strained a few muscle groups, and his bleeding leg felt like someone raked a knife against it with each step. Sticky blood soaked his sock and pooled in his shoe. He almost cared.

  The rungs were wetter than the fence had been. The soles of his shoes slipped against the slick steel, and he had to slow down just as anxiety demanded that he accelerate.

  When he made it to the tower catwalk he could see the whole town, from the sprawling subdivisions south to the old village and the harbor up north. Street- and houselights twinkled like a sea of earthbound stars.

  Thousands of people were planted in their living rooms now, watching reality TV and mindless sitcoms, unaware of the tempest brewing out here in the night. Unaware of the sacrifices of six kids at the mill three decades ago. Unaware of the risks the remainder were about to take to finish the job.

  A light breeze blew in from the Sound with a hint of salt and seaweed. Marc hated that smell, the scent of the harbor where he nearly drowned. He hated it as much as he hated the rank smell of the millpond where his friends almost died, and where they might die again, because of him.

  He grabbed one of the catwalk’s vertical supports and climbed up onto the catwalk railing. He looked down for a second and swayed. He clenched the support and regained his balance.

  Life rewound before him. Marriage, his teaching job, college graduation, hours of therapy, the last night at the mill. His last visit to the tower had set the Half Dozen down the paths they had taken, but only he had taken the lower, darker path. Only he had answered friendship with betrayal. He saved one life, but cost Bob his. How many more lives would his weakness reap before it was finally
over?

  Perhaps just one more. If there was a God who liked to bargain, he might just take the deal Marc was about to offer. One atoning soul in trade for the unstained souls of four others. Would a soul in the hand be worth four in the bush?

  Marc inched out along the catwalk railing until just his fingertips touched the support. He stood in momentary, perfect balance between past and future, between here and beyond.

  He knew they would find the note. They may never grant him forgiveness, but at least they would know where to bind the Woodsman to Hell. With no weak link in the chain, this time the plan would work. Marc just needed to add some insurance.

  He shifted his body weight forward. He closed his eyes and, arms outstretched, fell forward. At first it was in slow motion. Then as he accelerated, Marc felt weightless. There was no sense of falling, just the increasing, liberating rush of wind through his hair. The farther he dropped from the tower catwalk, the lighter he felt, until, an inch before impact, he was finally free of all burdens.

  Chapter Sixty-Five

  1980

  The mill on Friday night.

  The basement door crashed open. The silhouette that filled the doorway had on a peaked cap and a pistol hung from his hip. The boys froze.

  “Police! Don’t move,” boomed the voice of Constable Pickney.

  Paul launched a shovelful of dirt into the constable’s face. He sputtered and took a step back from the door.

  “Run!” Paul yelled.

  The boys scrambled up the stairs to escape. Marc, in the far corner, leapt across the excavated pit and missed the far edge. He slipped down the side and his foot crunched against dry bones. With hands and feet flailing, he clambered to the bottom of the stairway. His friends were gone.

  His way was blocked. The constable had transformed. In his place, lit by some personal illumination, stood the Woodsman. Strips of ragged flesh dangled from his face. His eyes burned like two emeralds trimmed in blood.