Chapter Fifty Eight
The four of us sauntered along the road out of the oil lease in no great hurry. We were about to go through hell with the cops. It was getting pretty damned cold out. Or maybe I just noticed. The fog was getting worse, and there was a wetness attached to it, a dewy mist. I was going to call nine-one-one but didn’t when I heard distant sirens. Neighborhood citizens must have called the cops after hearing me shoot Aaron. I hadn’t considered it, but the investigation was going to get pretty ugly. I had shot Aaron. How would I explain that? Paul’s death was self defense, but not Aaron’s. I suppose it didn’t much matter. If I got in some deep shit over it, so fucking what. It beat Aaron’s fate. All that mattered to me was nobody else got hurt. And Paul was dead. That was just as significant. I could take some comfort in knowing where Aaron was now: in Paradise.
Norrah and I walked with an arm around the other, as did Deborah and Brooke, Brooke keeping her weight off her sprained ankle. The four of us walked in an even rank, the bridge now only fifty feet away or so—it was impossible to say with the fog, but as I said there were occasional gaps in it, and there was just then, a brief one. I could see the bridge. I kissed Norrah on the side of the head. Sirens were getting louder.
Deborah suddenly made an indescribable sound, a kind of grunt-cry and tore off running ahead of us, nearly pushing Brooke to the ground in her haste. The rest of us halted and watched her run down the road toward the bridge.
The fog hindered me from seeing jack shit, so I didn’t think she was running toward something she saw. But I was wrong. Glory be, I was wrong. I began a light run toward the bridge, Norrah following. Brooke limped along. Deborah was already so far ahead of me that when a pocket of fog rolled over the road she became invisible in it.
“Deborah?” Norrah said loudly. “What are you doing?”
I picked up my pace, wondering what kind of shit we’d find ourselves in now. Deborah entered my view. She was stopped, statuesque. I saw two inscrutable figures up ahead in the fog, the objects of Deborah’s focus. I froze in place a few feet before reaching Deb.
“My Lord…” I breathed.
Norrah was now at my side, and her legs also seemed to lose the ability to propel her upon the sight of a taller figure and shorter figure facing one another. The taller knelt down on one knee and cupped the shoulders of the shorter, facing her. Deborah looked back at me with wide-eyed wonderment before returning her gaze to the bridge and its occupants. The tail end of a cloud eddied by, giving us a moment of unimpeded sight at who was before us.
“Is that Aaron?” Norrah whispered to me.
I nodded.
“And is that…?”
I nodded again.
There was a low voice, Aaron’s. I couldn’t make out what he said, and if Maggie said anything back I didn’t hear it. He looked like a proud father talking-up his kid on the sideline of a soccer game during half-time. He then caressed either side of her head, touched his forehead to hers. Fog rolled through them, erasing them from sight.
“Unreal,” I said.
I put my arm around Norrah once again, leaned into her, cried. Brooke finally caught up with us, hopping on one leg.
“What’s the matter?” she said.
Norrah and I shook our heads, said nothing.
When the fog finally cleared enough to see down the road, we saw Aaron walking away from us down the road, head down and hands in his pockets. Maggie was gone.
“Aaron!” I shouted.
He stopped, looked back. “Jay?”
Deborah ran to him, collided into him, where they stood embraced until I got there. He released her and hugged me.
“Dude, how are you alive?” I said, clapping his back.
“I think we both know how,” he said.
“Don’t be pissed at me, but I shot you. Intentionally.”
He smiled. “God says to forgive, so I guess you’re forgiven.”
I could see blue and red and white lights coming in our direction.
“You just can’t stay dead, can you?” I said and let go of Aaron and wiped my eyes.
“I guess not.”
Deborah wasted not a second. When I released Aaron she returned him into her arms, kissed him over and over. Part of his neck was exposed during this onslaught of kisses, and I saw something. I got closer and squinted at it. It was dark out, but not too dark to spy a little scar on the left side of his neck. It was where I had estimated to have shot him. Not a fresh scar, not a scab or dried blood, but a scar that might have been there for years, though I didn’t recall him having had it before.
Norrah was helping Tinkerbelle slowly along. They were late to arrive, but when they did, Aaron said, “Just a moment,” to Deborah and let her go. Tinkerbelle and Aaron faced one another. She stepped awkwardly to him, stopped inches before him, tears streaming down her cheeks. Of all the things she could have said to him, all the thank you’s and declarations of her gratitude for doing what he did for her, I think she summed it up best by saying not a damned thing. Words don’t always say it best. Her wet eyes and trace of a grin said plenty to Aaron. She slowly put herself into his arms, rested her head on his shoulder and closed her eyes, displacing puddles of tears. I was so touched by it that I wanted to bawl instead of simply cry. I can be a sentimental sap at times, though I try to conceal it.
Aaron stroked her back, kissed the top of her head. He murmured an apology to her but she wouldn’t have it: she shook her head the moment she suspected an apology was coming.
Doors slammed shut, cops were hustling our way, flashlights shining at us.
What a mood changer it was, for all of us to have to put our hands up and be treated like criminals, if only for a minute. I flashed my badge, which calmed them down a good deal. And then came the explaining. I did all the talking. I said as little as possible, dared not mention the man behind the horned mask, and didn’t feel it was necessary to mention that I shot Aaron, being that he gotten unshot since then. In fact, we didn’t even go down to the riverbed. Brooke, Norrah, and Deborah stayed behind as Aaron and I walked back over the bridge with a handful of cops in our company, toward Vintage.
I explained how I shot a guy to death, in self defense. I also said the guy I shot was responsible for killing the Demitri and Feller girls, though that probably couldn’t be proven. One of the cops asked if I was Jay Davis, from the missing twenty-three mystery. I said not only was I him, but the lady back there who was acting as a crutch for the cripple was Norrah Petersen. The words Norrah Petersen don’t need a moniker or epithet or a description, they stand well on their own. They were pretty jazzed by that, a kind of novelty. They were amongst celebrity.
As we strode along, I asked Aaron what Maggie had said there on the bridge.
“I shouldn’t tell you,” he said. “I suppose I could, but I think it was meant to be personal. But it’s over, Jay. It’s over.”
“I know, bud. Paul’s assuming room temperature.”
“And at last.”
“You should’ve seen it, man,” I said. “He shot Tinkerbelle at point blank range, twice!—and missed both shots. Nobody on earth is that lousy an aim.”
“I know,” Aaron said.
“You know?”
He nodded. “God kept His most precious creation alive.”
“I don’t know, I could argue that I’m His most precious creation.”
Aaron laughed and slapped my shoulder.
We arrived at the oil lease a couple minutes later. It didn’t dawn on me that the Dodge Ram was gone. We funneled through the gap in the fence and stopped short of where Paul had recently been slain. Paul, whose blood was puddled on the concrete, but the man it came from was inexplicably gone.
In Closing
As I write this, it has been just short of a month since the night I shot Paul. DNA tests on the blood came back negative, meaning that they couldn’t pair it to anyone in their databank. That doesn’t surprise me, being that Paul wasn’t there to submit to a cott
on-swab test at Norrah’s the night the twenty-three reappeared. He has no criminal record, and thus has no file in the system cataloguing his DNA. The five of us gave eye-witness testimony that it was Paul Klein, so that was good enough to put a warrant out for his arrest. But some good that would do: the guy was nowhere to be found. They found tire tracks with the type of tread that comes stock on the very Dodge Ram that Paul had owned, leading around the property and away from the oil lease, away from any road for miles, where they eventually faded away on a hard surface with little dirt. The truck will never be found. Feds seized his Wells Fargo bank account with twenty-eight grand in it. Bank transactions showed that he made occasional cash deposits, always thirty-five-hundred bucks. Nobody could guess as to where he acquired that money.
There’s a growing conspiracy theory that Paul Klein is responsible for the Demitri and Feller girls’ murders, with only circumstantial evidence to back it up. But because it’s such a popular theory, there is a lot of heat on Paul. He is wanted for questioning regarding those two girls’ deaths, as well as the attempted murder of Brooke Stanwick.
Also charged against him is something that enraged me when I heard about it, and that was sexual assault against Brooke. I spoke with Aaron the moment I heard them say it on the news, and he said he also heard about it, last night, and has since visited with the Stanwick’s, poking around to get the details. Sven and Juliann confessed that it was a lie, that their girl said that only to create more heat on Paul, and extend his jail time should he get caught and not be found guilty of killing the Boise girls. When Brooke escorted Aaron to his Tacoma outside the Stanwick house, she made him promise not to tell her parents before confessing that it wasn’t exactly a lie, the sexual assault allegation. She wouldn’t say exactly what happened, but she turned awfully red in her embarrassment, and vowed to God that it wasn’t rape or anything like that. It was only a little touching, minor stuff, and above the waist. Aaron supposed it was better than it could have been, but still… Paul was wreaking havoc on his sensibility even after the ordeal was over.
Aaron reports to me regularly on Brooke’s state of affairs. She’s doing fantastic, still dating Aiden, and her parents really like him, approve of their relationship. Since the night I shot Aaron, things changed drastically between he and Deborah. It matured their relationship overnight to the point that they are living together and talking about a not-so-distant wedding, a huge one with hundreds of guests—I’ll tell you a little secret: they went to the courthouse and secretly got married just so they wouldn’t be living in sin. They are so in love. I guess being that she nearly lost him, it made her appreciate him all the more. I’m a little jealous of Aaron, getting to see those glorious boobs of Deb’s on a regular basis. I’m a boob guy, what can I say?
The relationship between us (Norrah and I) and them (Aaron and Deborah) is such a strong one, visits between us so regularly that we made vague plans of living closer together one of these days. Whether it be we move to Fresno or they move to the mountains, we aren’t sure. But I wouldn’t mind policing up there, and Norrah has no job, so it seems likely we might move up there. As an added benefit, Brooke lives in Fresno and has become an important part of our lives as well—mostly to Aaron and Deb.
Aaron is getting pretty chummy with many of the twenty-two (twenty-three before Edward Berg’s death), Skyping with them, praying with them and for them. Not all of them have turned their lives over to God, but you can’t win ‘em all. The ones who cut Aaron out of their lives, I don’t know what became of them, if their nightmares returned or what. Aaron planned an annual party at his house—which is Deborah’s house, though after the marriage it will become theirs—and will invite the twenty-three (must I call them the twenty-two now?) and a few other close friends. It will be a religious gathering, but not only that. They are forever bonded by that night, a kind of brotherhood-sisterhood that will never lessen with time. And I have no doubt that they’ll go out of their way to make the party, as they are individual fragments of a larger picture all their own, as Brittney had earlier written.
Speaking of Brittney, would you believe that she’s pregnant! Her unborn daughter will by my niece! Okay, so Caleb hasn’t married her yet, but he got her an engagement ring. Their wedding will be next June.
I don’t know what else to add here. My ambition was to tell the story of the missing twenty-three, and the man behind the horned mask who isn’t a man at all, and I’ve achieved that with the help of Brittney, Aaron, and Norrah. But I guess I’m getting a little carried away detailing the lives of the others who played a role in all this. If you’re as nosy as my fiancé, you’ll appreciate reading this chapter. By the way, our wedding is in May, a month before my brother’s wedding. Caleb will be my best man. Aaron would have been, but he’ll be the minister marrying us.
Let’s see, what else…
In case you’re wondering what will become of the profits of this future book, let me tell you. None of us (those responsible for this novel’s contents) thought it would be appropriate to make money off of it. So I had my attorney create an account for the families of Lindsey Demitri and Susan Feller. The profits will go into that account for them. Well, that’s not entirely true. Ten percent of it will go to Calvary Chapel, and another ten percent will go into another fund set up to reward anyone who provides information leading to the arrest of Paul Klein. We are fairly certain that will never happen. Nobody will ever see him again, but it’s comforting knowing that once the bounty reaches a healthy amount, people will actively search for him. He’ll never be able to live a normal life knowing that there’s a reward on his head.
I guess that’s it. I’ve said everything I have to say. Oh! One last thing. About the white porcelain mask and hat with plastic horns that were found in Norrah’s basement following the disappearance of the twenty-three. Detectives took those items the day after I spied them in the basement, upon my phone call. I had wondered why they hadn’t bagged and tagged them the night the twenty-three disappeared, and the answer I got was they must have been overlooked. Better late than never. I have a friend on the force who is close friends with a detective on the case that will forever remain open. So I hear lots of shit second-hand. I suppose it would be a big deal if word got out, and I suppose now that I’m writing it something could come of it, but I want to tell you about that mask. The hat there isn’t much to say, it’s an ordinary hat and plastic horns. But the mask, that’s another story. It was dusted for finger-prints. There were none. And when I say none, I mean none. Not even mine. I had touched it in Norrah’s basement when I examined it. One of the detectives had touched it, too, when he handed it to the detective who tagged and bagged it. Being that it had no prints on it, and knowing that it had been touched, this intrigued the particular detective. He did a kind of test on it, touched it, then examined it for prints. The damn thing is impervious to finger prints! Porcelain in itself isn’t. From what my buddy tells me, they’ve done some experiments on it, nothing more than an effort to satisfy their curiosities over there in the lab, and they are very tight-lipped about it. What they’ve said is it’s like nothing else they know. The term they used was other-worldly. To me that makes perfect sense, being that he who wore it was not of this world.
Epilogue
Originally I had no intention of writing an epilogue, and if you’ve purchased the first edition of this novel, you haven’t read the following words. For you skeptics out there who always assume the worst, you might think I’m adding this to sell additional copies, as some people who purchased a copy already will go out and buy a new copy. Let me remind you that I’m not making a dime off this novel.
There is a topic somewhere around the middle of this novel that I didn’t spend much time on—or should I say Aaron didn’t spend much time on. It was just too theoretical; the word Aaron used was conjecture. It was baseless, so it was kind of left out, or left inconclusive. Let me say what I have to say before returning to this.
Yesterday I got a
call from Aaron. I’m going to write what he said.
His congregation has really gotten big lately. They expanded his church, thanks to Norrah’s donation, adding something like fifty new seats with the new space. People who lived closer to that Calvary than the other had largely refrained from switching churches due to the lack of adequate seating, but have now switched over. Being that Aaron was one of the known missing twenty-three bought him a small slice of celebrity as well, and that did things to his church’s attendance. After each sermon he always gets a handful of people coming up to him asking him questions about what happened. He avoids the topic mostly, but not entirely. Over the last month or so there have been very few empty seats in the pews. Last Sunday there were no empty seats in the pews, but that was likely an exception. The reason for the large attendance this last Sunday was that he was to sermonize about the End Times. As Aaron had written, prophecy always boosts attendance. People come out of the woodwork to listen to the message. When you add in his slight celebrity status and the conspiracy theories regarding Paul, things only got crazier, seating got tighter, word of mouth spread farther resulting in there being not just people standing in back against the walls and at the sides against the walls, but rows of them two and three deep. Aaron said there were easily three hundred people present last Sunday.
He arranged special hours that day, a three hour gap between his first and second sermons, with a short gap bridging them. He read from his prepared lecture, did some improvising, and thought it was the best sermon he had ever given. At the end he asked if anyone wanted to turn their lives over to God, and if so come on up. He ordinarily would have been ecstatic to see the thirty-plus people make their way up to the lectern. He was surrounded by these people, who dropped to their knees and supplicated to the Lord. He walked around them, touched them, God-blessed them. Hymns broke out spontaneously, people cried Praise Lord! and all that. Each one of those saved souls will be returning to church as born-again Christians. Yes, he would have been ecstatic to see those thirty-plus people turning their lives over to the Lord on any other day. But there was no room for joy or ecstasy yesterday morning in Aaron. I know wholeheartedly that he wasn’t flirting with the idea of placing the phone call that would make him a lot of money, though some would. Many would. Sometimes you got to wonder how someone with such face-recognition can get by in crowds without being spotted or fingered out. Maybe being amid a throng is actually a good disguise, as you just assimilate in, become lost in a sea of faces.
As Aaron was reading from his notes, speaking of the great deceiver, his pet the Antichrist, he felt a little tickle on the left side of his neck. He continued reading as he swiped at it, not giving it much thought. He felt wetness, brought his hand before his eyes, still reading, not breaking stride. There was blood on his hand from the mark on his neck. Still speaking, now on one of his tangents that had him speaking not from the notes, he glanced up to the crowd to see if anyone looked distraught over their bleeding pastor. Nobody seemed to notice or care. That is, until his gaze swept the back of the church, where he met eyes with one particular parishioner. He did seem to care. He was grinning that damned slanted grin at Aaron. Aaron might have continued his sermon, but if so he spoke automatically, or from his subconscious, a kind of sermonizing auto-pilot, but his mind was anywhere but on his lecture. Still grinning, Paul raised his arms up slowly, palms up, a holy gesture. Aaron remembered Paul doing that at the party and saying, “Go on. Have your loving God smite me if he can.”
Satisfied, Paul lowered his arms and threaded his way out the room, out of the vestibule and hopefully out of Aaron’s life for good. But somehow I doubt that.
“…and the Antichrist will rise from the dead,” Aaron said, staring soberly at the now-empty spot in the back of the church.
###
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About the author:
Jeff Vrolyks lives in Simi Valley, California. He is a new writer, in that he recently discovered a passion for writing and hasn’t stopped since. He was in the Air Force for a four year stint (cargo aircraft crew-chief), worked in the beer beverage industry, automotive industry, and in the oil fields on drilling rigs. His turn on’s include thunderstorms in the forest, rainy sunsets at the beach, and glowing reviews from you. His turn off’s include driving in Los Angeles, working-out in an over-crowded gym, and receiving scathing reviews from people intolerant of foul language and violence.
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