by C Thomas Cox
As I held Liz, I watched through the window. I tried not to look down at the unnatural gaps in her hair through which I could see her bruised scalp. Instead, I wanted to make sure that Thomas hadn't yet returned.
However, I soon wished I hadn't decided to look through the smeared glass for, as I did so, I saw an image that will be forever seared in my memory. In place of the lunatic who Liz and I were preparing to take down was the lunatic who'd initiated my journey toward Hell. Half-Ear sauntered down the path with a grin, and I wished I was lying beneath one of Thomas's mounds.
Chapter Thirty-Nine
I couldn't breath. I couldn't speak. I couldn't move after I collapsed on the floor. I rushed to disappear beneath the window. Liz silently dropped with me and cradled my head in her skeletal hands. I appreciated that she didn't ask me what was wrong. I didn't have the strength to answer any questions.
I couldn't allow Half-Ear to see me -- although he likely knew I was inside the shack. I was sure, though, that coming after me was the only reason he ventured into those woods.
How, though, did he track me down? Based on what I'd learned from Thomas, I assumed Liz was the only other person who knew about the shack. So, even if Half-Ear heard that I was missing from Oak Ridge, he'd never learn my whereabouts. Something was awry.
After calming myself down with several deep breaths, I whispered, "Liz, look out the window. Is he still there?"
She stood up without question and did so. After a few seconds she knelt back down and said, "I don’t see Thomas.” She brushed the hair from my forehead. “You okay?”
"You sure you didn't see anyone?"
"Wait," she said. "You think you saw someone other than Thomas?"
I nodded.
"Who?"
"The guy I told you about."
"The one who wants to hurt your wife?"
I nodded again.
She stood up, looked in all directions, and stooped back down. "I'm pretty sure no one's out there. At least no one I can see from this angle. You sure you saw him?"
I panted as I considered her question. Although I believed I saw Half-Ear heading toward the cabin, I'd recently believed I saw many things that didn't really exist. A Vietnamese jungle in my backyard, fire in my Oak Ridge room, and a marker turning into a knife were just a few. Perhaps no one was walking down the trail. "I guess I'm not sure."
She got back to her feet. "I'll keep watch just in case. Besides, that way we'll know when my brother's back."
The way she took care of me brought a smile to my face. Liz possessed a genuine empathy that dwarfed the artificial caring that Thomas, while we were in Oak Ridge, sold in order to purchase my trust. A way of caring for me even though she was the one who really needed care. A trust that helped me think that perhaps she could keep me safe.
"Have you ever tried to run...to get away from Thomas permanently?" I asked.
"I’ve thought about it plenty. I stay up most nights thinking about ways to escape. But I’m sure that if I do he’ll find a way to track me down. He goes nuts if he doesn't know where I am every hour of the day. Besides, up until this point I’ve felt guilty even considering abandoning him. He is my brother...the one man who's never abandoned me."
"If you're so loyal to him, why are you telling me all he's done?"
"You're not the first," she said.
I furrowed my brow. "What do you mean?"
She knelt beside me. "Mr. Richmond," she said, cradling my hand in hers. "I've told a handful of the other men who Thomas brought here what he was going to do to them...and what he'd already done to me. It makes no difference."
"No difference in what way?"
"You see, it doesn't matter what I tell you. Nothing's going to stop Thomas from killing you."
Chapter Forty
My shoulders slumped as I dwelled on the word nothing. I was a prisoner with a death sentence that would never be commuted. And Liz's words reinforced the reality that I didn't want to accept.
"But there must be something," I said. I was almost begging Liz to help me...to help us. To protect my life so I could restore hers.
"He has weapons."
"You mean more than just the gun?"
She nodded somberly. "Oh, guns are just the beginning."
"What do you mean?" I asked, not sure I wanted to hear her answer.
"Explosives. Enough to take down a building. Maybe even a big building. Perhaps one containing people who he feels didn’t treat him right."
I didn't need her to elaborate further. I was certain that Oak Ridge was his target. His depravity was going to lead him to destroy the hundreds, if not thousands, of residents and staff members inside the facility. "All because they wouldn't help him get into college?" I knew that blowing up a building over such a trivial matter didn’t make sense, but we weren’t exactly dealing with a run of the mill serial killer.
"Well," she said, "that’s part of the reason."
"What else?"
She gazed at the floor, and I could tell she was unsure whether she should continue. "It's okay," I said, my hand grazing the point of her elbow. "What do you have to lose?"
"Okay, fine," she said after a minute. "Thomas knew that one day he'd lose his job as a result of getting one of his grandfathers out of there. And when he did that, he'd need to destroy any remaining evidence of his crimes -- including the witnesses."
I shook my head. It didn’t make any sense. "Since he abducted others without getting caught, why wouldn’t he employ the same tactics when he snuck me out? He didn’t want the staff to stop us, but he didn’t exactly flinch when one of his co-workers saw us."
She leaned her back against the wall beneath the window. "Thomas can become careless when he has his mind set on reaching a goal. And from the first time he met you, he was certain that pulling you out of Oak Ridge was his goal."
"Why me?"
"From the first time he told me about you, he said he knew that you were the one. After years of searching, you were our grandfather."
"What convinced him?"
"Because, in addition to your service in Vietnam -- mandatory in Thomas's eyes -- you sympathized with him. You cared about him and his problems more than anyone other than a family member could."
I shook my head as I realized that I condemned myself multiple times without even knowing I'd done so. "Since he's so convinced that I'm his grandfather, can I assume that I'm safe until the DNA test comes back?" I asked.
She took a deep breath and exhaled slowly through pursed lips. "I wish that was the case." I pleaded with my eyes for a reprieve...for her to tell me that I was misunderstanding. Hoping that I, in fact, could trust the United States Postal Service to delay my end. "Thomas hasn't spent all this time tracking down his grandfather in the hope that our family will have some fairy tale reunion." I grimaced. "Now that mom's gone, he holds you responsible for initiating the chain of events that brought him into the world. He's spent the past several years in a quest to put an end to the oldest living relative responsible for our dysfunctional family."
"My God!" I said. "Do you know when he's planning on doing it?"
She shook her head. "Could be anytime now. At least he'll give you warning, though."
"Wait," I said. "Do you mean that he'll tell me when he's going to kill me?"
"Not exactly." Her eyes glazed over, and she appeared to be recalling past events to her tortured mind. "Every time I've seen him smoke a cigar, the latest grandfather has disappeared right after."
Realizing my life was nearing its end, I shifted onto my knees. I needed to get up...to find some way out. There was no time for conversation.
Perhaps I was right about the pig mug's contents. Thomas was going to kill me no matter what the test results revealed.
Just as I began to stand, though, I heard footsteps on the other side of the front door. I froze and prepared for whichever one of my two executioners awaited outside.
Chapter Forty-One
By the time Thomas
barged in, I had resumed working on the door jamb. Liz was seated in the recliner in which I had slept the night before...she confided that Thomas might shoot her if she sat in his chair. I wasn't sure whether she was joking.
Soon after we had first heard him walking outside, his footsteps began to grow further away. Curious as to what was going on, Liz had glanced out the bottom of the window. She reported that he was jogging away from the house, back up the path toward where he parked his car. We assumed he left something in it, and we used those few extra minutes to develop a rough plan. By the time he returned, we were ready to execute that plan.
"Do you happen to have any wood glue?" I asked as soon as he crossed the threshold. I did my best to hide my quivering upper lip.
"Liz," he said, "can you check the shed?"
"You won't let me have the key."
"Oh, right." He slapped his forehead with his palm. "Be right back."
As soon as he turned to head back out the front door, I said, "Hey, Thomas."
"Huh?" He spun around. "What do you want?"
"Do you need any help?"
"Oh, what the hey. Sure, come on out." He reached his hand into his pocket and withdrew two items -- his handgun and a cigar.
***
After he grabbed the lighter from the kitchen drawer and ignited the end of his cigar, he led me outside at gunpoint, a cloud of smoke obscuring his face. I was slightly concerned about the lit cigar -- not just due to its relationship to my impending doom, but because Liz had informed me that Thomas stored his explosives in the shed. Although I am far from an explosives expert, I doubted that smoking near them was a good idea.
I was thankful, therefore, when he dropped the stogie on the packed soil and stomped it out. I didn't, however, enjoy watching him stomp on the earth that covered the body of one of the men in whose path I was following.
Once we climbed over the last hump, but before we reached the shed, Thomas commanded me to stop walking. "I don't need the test results to confirm that you are who you say you are," he said. He pressed the tip of the gun against my forehead. "I'm sure you're the bastard who abandoned our family. But before you left, your seed gave rise to my pig of a mother. You sent our family on a path to ruin, and we could never recover. You ended my life before it began, and now I'm going to end yours."
I'll never forget the grin that broke out on his face as he prepared to pull the trigger. The pleasure that my impending death brought him was more painful than death itself. "Anything you want to say for yourself?"
I said the first thing that my senses brought to mind. "I smell smoke."
"What?"
"Smoke," I said. "Look at it."
All around us a cloud of dark gray smoke began to flow from the direction of the shack. But with his gun against my head, I was not going to risk my life by turning.
He, on the other hand, looked. "Oh, God!" he screamed. He shoved the gun into his pocket and took off toward the building. I looked, and flames were licking the inside of the window. A waterfall of smoke poured out from beneath the eaves.
He unlocked the door and thrust himself into the inferno. As soon as he did so, Liz propelled herself out over the threshold and collapsed to the ground. I dashed over, dragged her limp body twenty-feet away from the shack, and knelt by her side. I held her upright as she coughed and wheezed out the smoke that had infiltrated her lungs. Her left hand appeared badly burned, but otherwise she appeared unscathed.
"Thomas," she whispered. "Save Thomas."
"No." I wasn't one to hold a grudge, but I couldn’t fathom risking my own life for the life of a serial killer who wanted me dead.
"Please," she said. "He's all I have left."
I shook my head. "I can't." She pleaded with her eyes. "Do you know what you're asking?"
A tear trickled down her cheek. "Please."
I helped her recline on the ground, and then, against my better judgment, raced over to the door. I shielded my eyes with my hand as I peered inside. "Thomas!" I screamed. "Get out of there!" I couldn't control my coughing fits as the smoke got the best of me. The unbearable heat forced me to stumble backward.
Although it went against every one of my instincts, I prepared to head inside. I couldn't bear to see Liz suffer any more than she already had.
As I avoided the flames and stuck my head in, though, I saw something that made my stomach drop. About ten feet in front of me lay Thomas, wrapped in the shower curtain and clutching the pig mug against his chest. In his other hand lay the gun that he used to shoot a bullet through the side of his skull.
After recovering from the resultant shock -- and trying to shake the gruesome image from my mind -- I retreated from the fire and returned to Liz's side.
“I was too late,” I said. I held her as I told her what I saw. I needed her to know that Thomas ended his own life. I couldn’t let her think that the fire that she started took his life. She'd never forgive herself.
The violent fire devoured Thomas's home in minutes, the walls collapsing and the roof caving in on his lifeless body. And as I watched from afar, I realized that we were still in danger. "The shed!" I said, realizing that the fire would likely spread to it next. Liz had told me it was situated only a few feet behind the shack. "We need to get out of here!"
"I can't leave him," she whispered, staring at the blaze.
"There's nothing you can do." I yanked at her arms, but she didn't budge. "Come on!" I pleaded. It didn't work. Absent other options, I reached my arms under her frail frame, threw her over my shoulder, and took off as fast as I could. We needed to get as far away as possible before the shed blew.
Liz sobbed softly while I raced over leaves and twigs, once nearly twisting my ankle on a jutting rock, up the path and toward the car. I realized that Thomas's car keys were still likely in his pocket, but the path was the only way of escape from the fire. We could figure out transportation once we reached safety.
About halfway to the parking area, however, the explosives must have ignited. A manmade earthquake rocked the woods and threw us forward and onto the ground like we were rag dolls. Although I used my free arm to brace our fall, we still plowed into the solid earth. Liz, thankfully, landed and remained in a seated position. I, on the other hand, suffered a gash across my forehead. My bloodied hand didn't escape Thomas's postmortem vengeance, either.
I turned back to see the plume of smoke contaminate the clear daytime sky. While I stared at the smoke, I was sure its clouds coalesced to form a supersized version of Thomas's grinning face staring back at me. As quickly as it appeared, though, the blue sky absorbed Thomas's visage. Other than in my nightmares, I never again saw him.
Chapter Forty-Two
When we arrived at the clearing, I was surprised to find an ancient powder blue Chevy Cavalier instead of Thomas's Civic. "What happened to his car?" I asked.
By this point, Liz had calmed down enough to speak. "We switched. Knowing the cops were after him, Thomas abandoned his car on the far edge of town and had me pick him up. This is my car." I was surprised -- and relieved -- when she pulled the keys out of her pocket.
"Didn’t Thomas drive your car last?"
"Yeah, but he has," her voice caught in her throat. "He had his own key.” Of course he does, I thought.
After unlocking the car, she climbed behind the wheel and I settled into the passenger's seat. She started the car, put her hands on the wheel, and winced in pain. The pasty flesh on her left hand cried out as soon as it touched its faux-leather cover.
"Let's switch," I said. "I'll drive you to the hospital."
She tried to grip the wheel again, but to no avail. "I'm fine with you driving," she said. "But you can't take me to the hospital. They've issued a Silver Alert for you. It's all over the news."
"Dammit!"
We switched seats, and I tapped the accelerator with my toe as we climbed over the rough terrain. Although my own hand was cut, I was certain some antibiotic ointment and a gauze bandage were all I needed. Th
e glazed donut-like sheen on Liz's hand, however, told me the she needed professional medical treatment.
"I'm going to drop you off at the hospital!"
"You can't let them see your face."
"I won't. I'll drop you a hundred feet from the entrance, and I'll take off."
"But where will you go? How will I keep in touch?"
I'd read enough thrillers to know the answer. "Before we get to the hospital, let's make a quick stop."
We pulled out of the woods and onto a residential street. I wasn't familiar with our location, but Liz called up a map app on her smartphone and directed me. As she navigated us, I asked her what had happened inside Thomas's shack while he was preparing to shoot me. It turned out that she followed our plan...for the most part.
She had used Thomas's lighter to ignite the dry, shag carpet that must've been manufactured before the Federal government published their carpet flammability standards. That fire was intended as a distraction, something to keep Thomas busy while we ran. Before she lit the carpet, though, she was supposed to retrieve as many of the DVDs and photographs as she could carry. We needed evidence of Thomas's misdeeds and of the men whom he murdered.
She said that she did gather that evidence. However, at the last minute, she reconsidered. She wasn't prepared to live with the guilt that would accompany her being the one who was responsible for committing Thomas to a life behind bars. A life that, she thought, might end prematurely via a stint on death row. She wanted, instead, for him to admit his own guilt to the authorities. She promised herself she would do everything in her power -- including driving him to the nearest police station -- to convince him to confess all of his crimes. Although I could confirm that he kidnapped me from Oak Ridge, without evidence that he murdered anyone, he'd likely serve only a year or two of confinement for a single count of kidnapping or possibly false imprisonment. After that, he'd likely be free to find a new grandfather.