The Neighbor

Explosive thunder like Thor’s hammer coming down on the roof shook the walls and Renee’s bones as she sat up in bed, holding her knees against her chest like she did when she was a child.  She had lived in small town Minnesota her entire life and should have been used to the violent storms that march across the Midwest every spring, but they always put her on edge and, of course, sleep was impossible.

The noise that made her jump this time was her phone. It was after midnight, but the number was local so she answered it.

“Hello?”

“Hi Renee, it’s Ken from next door.”

“Hey, Ken. So I’m not the only one who can’t sleep through all this racket.”

“Janet could sleep through a nuclear attack, but I jump up if a floorboard creaks. But say, I’m actually calling for a reason. I’m not the snoopy type, but I get up a couple of times a night for the usual reasons, and so I’m up tonight and I see that your basement light is on. It’s never on this late at night, so I thought I’d just double check with you about it.”

“Ah. Well that is a bit unusual, but I did do laundry today.  I probably flipped on the switch and forgot to turn off the lights.”

“I’m sure it’s something simple like that.”

“I’m going to go down and turn off the light.  I hope this doesn’t sound weird, but would you stay on the line until I do that?

“Of course. You go ahead.”

“Thanks. I’ll give you the all clear.”

Renee threw on her bathrobe and padded downstairs and through the kitchen with her phone in hand. There was a thin line of yellow light at the bottom of the basement door, and Renee opened it cautiously.  She crouched and looked around the room, but everything appeared in order. Wanting to be sure, she descended the stairs and took a quick scan of the large room, then put the phone to her ear.

“Ken? Yeah, everything is fine.”

“I’m glad to hear that,” said Ken, in her other ear.

The Changing Room

It was move-in day for the Patterson’s. Their new home was one of those turn-of-the-century Victorians with gingerbread trim and a large welcoming front porch. Even though it was a fixer-upper, Joseph had paid more than he wanted to and it was larger than they needed, but Kelly was in love with it and he was hoping it might help their marriage get through the current rough spot in the road.

Boxes went in and tired, sweaty Patterson’s came out. Joseph carried a box marked “basement” down the creaking stairs into the underbelly of the house. Like all basements in older homes, it smelled of mold and spider webs were draped in every corner. He set the box on the floor under a small window, and as he rose up, he noticed something through a crack between two boards on the wall. He squinted to see into the darkness, and he could swear he was looking into a small room.

After a few minutes of searching, he pulled on a board and to his amazement a door opened. His inner child’s heart was racing with excitement. A secret room! The dim basement light revealed a small, stark chamber decorated with only an old overstuffed chair and a small table with a framed photograph of a very grim looking man wearing a stained butcher’s apron. Joseph felt drawn into the strange little hideaway. The moment he lowered himself into the chair, however, the door slammed shut. He could see out into the basement through slits in the wood, but nobody could see him. The darkness in the room pressed down on his body and he couldn’t move or speak. Then the whispers began.

It was dusk but still humid and the two sheriff’s deputies were sweating despite standing in the shade of the porch. Kelly leaned against a wall, her face blotchy, her eyes red from crying.

“I’m sorry, Mrs. Patterson. We searched the entire house and yard. Twice. He’s not here,” said the taller sheriff.

She was emphatic. “But where could he be? The car’s right there. His wallet is sitting on the kitchen table. This is insane.”

“I can understand you’re upset. We’ll continue looking for him tonight on our rounds. Try and get some rest. He may show up at any time.”

How could he just disappear she asked herself for the hundredth time as she brushed her hair before bed. He must be somewhere hurt, unable to get help or did the bastard just up and leave me? What would he—

Suddenly, in the mirror behind her stood Joseph. He was wearing the same clothes as this morning, but something about his expression was different, unsettling.

“Joseph? Baby, where have you been? What have you been doing?”

She caught the glint of a polished steel blade in his right hand at the same moment he spoke.

“Changing.”

Unforgivable

Low black clouds reflected Don Martelli’s mood as he drove down rain washed city streets toward University Hospital and Clinics. His older brother Les was dying, given only a few days by the doctors, and he’d flown in that morning to stand vigil during his brother’s final hours. The two siblings had not been close for many years, but blood is blood and he wanted to say goodbye to the man who had mentored him into adulthood.

His first view of his brother as he entered the hospital room was a shock. The robust, ruddy-faced man he’d last seen three years ago was now barely more than skin wrapped around bone, red eyes shut, his mouth agape to capture as much oxygen as possible. Don went directly to Angie, his brother’s wife, and pulled her to him for an extended hug.

“I’m so sorry,” he said, reluctantly letting her go.

“Thanks Don. I’m so glad you’re here. I know Les would be, too.” She daubed her dark eyes with a tissue. As he greeted other family members, Les began moving, as if irritated, and suddenly opened his eyes. Seeing that he was straining to speak, Angie put an ear close to his mouth.

“Don, he wants to tell you something.”

Excusing himself, Don went to the bedside and leaned down. Les struggled to form the words.

“I know about you and Angie,” he whispered. “I’ll never forgive. I’ll never forget.”

Nurses came in and out of the room, doctors and visitors strode the hallway, but Don was solely consumed by his brother’s words as he stood up.

“What did he say?” asked Angie.

The blood rushed from Don’s face. “Uh, he…just wanted to tell me goodbye. That’s all.”

As soon as he thought it was acceptable, Don excused himself and drove toward the hotel where he was staying, picking up a bottle of vodka along the way. The memory of the affair with Angie blew through him, the lies, the deceit, but it was twelve years ago, and Les had never said a thing to either of them about it.

A half-empty bottle on the nightstand, a cop show on TV, Don’s plan to drown his brother’s words in alcohol and soporific television was a dismal failure. There was something beyond the words themselves that kept rising to the surface despite his efforts, a sense of mission that no man a few breaths away from death’s embrace should have.

The call came two hours later. Les had passed away quietly and was on his way down to the morgue.

Gusts of cold wind blew through the cemetery, and mourners pulled their coats tighter around them as the pastor finished the eulogy. “Amen” everyone repeated, and friends and family of Les Martelli filled past the coffin before it was lowered into the ground. Don stopped the weary looking Angie as she headed toward her car.

“How are you doing?” he asked.

She raised her red, glistening eyes to his. “I don’t know. As good as I can, I suppose.”

“I’m staying in town until Friday, so if you need anything…”

Angie tried to smile, but could not manage it. She lightly touched Don’s arm and turned away.

A call lit up Don’s phone at 3:30 a.m. It was from a very distraught Denise, Angie’s sister.

“Denise? What is it? What’s wrong?” asked Don, trying to blink himself awake.

“It’s Angie. I can’t believe I’m saying this. Don, she’s dead.”

“Dead?”

“She committed suicide. Oh god. The police said she jumped from the Tenth floor of the Hilton downtown. Why would she do that? Why?”

Room 1066. It was the room where Don and Angie used to meet. The air in the bedroom suddenly chilled.

“Don? Don, are you there?”

The phone fell from his trembling hand and the only response Denise received was a scream for help.

Getting Away With Murder

Friends are overrated, Thomas Grayson would often think to himself, using it as an excuse to spend yet another night lost in his laptop monitor instead of going out and engaging other human beings. Bored with Facebook, Thomas jumped to YouTube and began scanning video descriptions. Something in the “Recommend” category stopped him cold, a video with his name under it, Thomas Grayson #4. It had been posted three days earlier and already had over a thousand views. The name of the poster was “GAWM.”

Curious, he clicked on the video and was suddenly looking down on a city street at night. The camera was following a woman walking down a sidewalk, then cut to a daylight segment of a woman walking to her car. They looked to be the same person, but Thomas couldn’t be sure until a third segment appeared. It was night again and the camera operator was filming through a window looking into a house. The same young woman was sitting on a couch watching TV. Her bare feet were propped up against the coffee table and she appeared to be eating popcorn. The video ended abruptly and Thomas felt both confused and frightened.

He watched the three other videos and found the pattern to be the same, with each one following a different woman as if someone was stalking them. Why was his name on these videos, he wondered? News articles he’d seen of a suspected serial killer in the city rose to the surface in his mind and his palms grew damp. Here were videos of someone following various women. Could they be victims? Prospective targets?

His mind started racing. Maybe somebody was trying to frame him. But who and why? He didn’t know enough people to have enemies. Should he call the cops?

After a fitful night, Thomas slogged through his morning routine. He tapped away at the laptop on the kitchen table in between sips of coffee and found that a new video had been posted during the night, Thomas Grayson #5.  Afraid to watch it and afraid not to, he finally clicked on the title. The camera followed a young woman through the aisles of a grocery store as she shopped. It then cut to the same woman carrying bags into her small house.

Three solid knocks on the front door sent a surge of adrenalin through his veins, and a second one hit when he opened the door to a man in a suit and two uniformed police officers.

“Detective Vince Anselmo. You Thomas Grayson?”

Thomas wanted to slam the door shut and run. “Yes. What’s this all about?”

“We have a warrant to search the premises. Would you mind stepping back, Sir?”

Detective Anselmo and the two cops brushed past Thomas. “Wait. What’s this all about? I haven’t done anything wrong.”

The Detective stood in the threshold between the living room and the kitchen. “So what are you doing on your laptop? Posting another video? How fucking stupid can you get?”

“No, no. You don’t understand. I didn’t post those videos. Someone else put them there.” Something was horribly wrong.

“Hey Vince,” called a cop coming down the stairs holding a GoPro camera in an evidence bag. “Found it sitting on top of his dresser, and there’s a coil of rope.”

Detective Anselmo shook his head as he pulled out his cuffs. “Jesus, Grayson. You have to be the world’s dumbest serial killer. You’re under arrest for murder.”

“No,” shouted the now panicking Thomas. “I didn’t kill anybody. I…I’m being set up.”

The cuffs clicked shut around Thomas’s wrists as he continued to protest, and a police officer guided him outside to a waiting squad car.  As the house grew quiet again, the YouTube page on Thomas’s laptop refreshed. A new video had just been uploaded by GAWM…Chad McNair #1.

The Silver Key

1958

A fist pounded impatiently on the front door. Someone yelled, “Let us in, Levi.” Angry men with guns paced in anticipation, and the front porch ached under their weight. Levi sat in his favorite chair a few feet from the fireplace, which was the only light in the room. He knew why the men had come and nothing he could say or do would sate their anger. These were his final days or hours. He held a small human figure made of straw in one hand and recited the words he had learned as a child from his “crazy” Louisiana aunt, words he believed contained power and magic.  The door flew open with a wall-shaking crash and police fell into the house, waving their weapons, expecting, maybe hoping, for resistance. Levi tossed the doll into the fire and stood, hands raised in the air, his shadow on the wall looking like a performing circus bear.

2014

Winter nights in the upper Midwest, beyond the meager yellow glow of the small prairie town of Brereton, are as cold and black as the bottom of a covered well. A lone pair of headlights bounced up and down on a rutted gravel road, capturing swirls of snow as they strained to cut through the heavy darkness. The driver, Josh Helms, grimaced after a swig of whisky from a bag handed to him by Gavin Larson, who gladly took back the half empty bottle and tilted it up for another gulp. The truck’s side windows were frosted, and Josh lowered his a few inches to gaze into the raw black void of a North Dakota night.

“Damn, it’s hard to see. Why didn’t we just do this in the daylight?” asked Josh.

“What fun would that be?”

“It’s snowing, dark as shit, and about 20 degrees outside. Somehow ‘fun’ doesn’t quite capture the moment.”

“Hey, I brought whisky so shut up.”

“And the key. Your old man’s gonna be pissed when he sees it’s gone.”

“He’s passed out by now. I’ll put it back on the counter when we get back. Besides, there was nothing on the envelope. It could have been meant for me.”

“Look. There’s the house up on the right. Damn dawg, it’s creepy.”

Captured in the bluish white lights of the truck was a farm house, at least the skeletal remains of a farm house, it’s clapboard siding dark and moldy with age, windows covered in grime, and vines crawling up it’s two story exterior like the tentacles of some terrestrial octopus. Josh pulled his truck to a stop and grabbed the bottle from Gavin.

“Why is there even a lock on the door? A person could just break a window and crawl in,” said Josh, wiping his mouth with his sleeve. “Surprised no one’s done it.”

Gavin looked down at the silver key in his palm with the name “Hastings” engraved on it. “I don’t know, but it’s like some kind of invitation. There was a photo with it, but my old man took it before I could see what it was.” He smiled at his friend and adjusted his tan UND baseball cap. “It’s all just too damn crazy to pass up.”

The young men stepped out of the truck into the frigid night air. Gavin turned on his flashlight and inspected the drooping remnants of a front porch. “Nobody’s lived here for a long time.”

“Like out of some horror movie. Maybe this—.”

“Don’t you wuss out on me now, Josh.” Gavin walked cautiously up the steps to the front door. “Weird. It looks like the lock is brand new. Come on.”

Reluctantly, hands deep in his jacket pockets, Josh joined his friend next to the door. A sudden gust of snow swirled around the two, perhaps a subtle warning, but Gavin slipped the key into the lock and turned it with a click. Flashlight in hand, he pushed the door in and signaled for Josh to follow. After the two disappeared into the darkness, the door slammed violently shut behind them, violating the deep-space quiet of a moonless prairie night.

Winnie Larson wiped the kitchen counter with a sponge in one hand and held her cell to her ear with the other. The plump, rosy-cheeked woman wore a concerned expression.

“I know he’s twenty years old, and I don’t normally keep tabs on him, but he’s usually good about texting me if he’s not coming home. I don’t know where he went. He was with Josh. I’m not trying….”

She paused at the kitchen window. In the middle of the freshly frosted front yard was what looked like a snowman, although she couldn’t make out any details. Whatever it was, it wasn’t there last night.

“I’ll have to call you back, Sis.”

A down coat pulled around her ample waist, untied boots plodding across the yard, Winnie approached the strange sculpture cautiously. It was a crude replica of a man with a frowning face. A knife was buried into one eye with red dye dripping down from the wound like blood. Confused, Winnie finally noticed the cap on the snowman’s head. It was a tan UND baseball cap stained with dark red blood. Her screams sent a tree full of blackbirds flapping skyward.

Beneath a grim charcoal sky, a procession of cars with their lights on made its way slowly down Main Street in the direction of Skjeberg Cemetery at the southern edge of Brereton. In the third car behind the hearse sat a somber Scott Schuster, a gifted young native of Brereton who left town three years earlier to attend law school at the University of Iowa. He’d grown up across the street from Gavin and the two had been closer than most brothers. Scott had been in a black state of confusion ever since his aunt called him to tell him that Gavin and Josh had both been murdered, their bodies found in a barren corn field east of town. In the 134 years since the town’s founding there had only been one murder, and in a single night, two young men out of a population of 800, were killed. On top of that, there were the horrific methods used. Gavin had been stabbed repeatedly, with the knife left stuck in his right eye socket. All of Joshes fingers were hacked off as well as his penis, and he was left to bleed to death. As intelligent as he was, Scott could not conceive of this level of brutality.

            Wisps of snow began swirling down during the graveside ceremony, coating the shoulders of the mourners and providing one additional layer of cold gloom to the proceedings.  On his way back to his rental car, Scott heard a familiar voice behind him. He turned to see former classmate Cindy Brule approaching wearing the first smile he’d seen since he arrived. Despite the circumstances, she betrayed a vibrancy and youthfulness that brought a small bit of warmth to a bitter day.

            “I was wondering if you’d be able to make it,” she said, putting a welcome hand on his arm. Hazel eyes, waves of autumn red hair framing a pale, freckled face, Scott was already thinking about rescheduling his flight out of Grand Rapids the next day.

            “Cindy. Wow, it’s great to see you. When did you get in?”

            She lowered her eyes and her cheeks flushed. “I never left. I manage Dell’s Café now.”

            “I didn’t mean—“

            “No, it’s okay. I’m really glad you’re here. We’re all in a state of shock so it’s nice to see an old familiar face.” Unexpectedly, she put her arms around Scott and hugged him. “Sorry. I’m feeling pretty emotional.”

            “Don’t be sorry. It’s an unbelievable tragedy. I was trying to talk Gavin into coming to Iowa City...” His voice trailed off.

            “Scott, I know this is forward, but have dinner with me tonight. I want to hear stories about when we were kids. We can go to Jackson’s Landing.”

            He nodded yes, knowing that they both needed to avoid being alone.

            The two reminisced over dinner, shared wine at Cindy’s house and had awkward, healing sex. Cindy was gone to work when Scott got up at 10:00. She left a note on the kitchen counter describing where to find the coffee and bagels, and ended it with a small heart. This was unexpected.

            Coffee gurgling, a bagel in the toaster, Scott sat down at the kitchen table with his phone ready to change his flight when he noticed a pile of mail on the table. On top were a square blank envelope and a silver key etched with the name “Hastings.” The name was familiar to him, as it was to most long-time residents.

            Levi Hastings was a recluse who lived in a house on the edge of town during the 1950s. Many in Brereton assumed Levi was mentally ill and kept their distance from the hulking, mysterious man. Children were cautioned by their parents not to be out late at night in case you meet up with Levi Hastings. In the summer of 1958, the battered body of a young girl, Alice Cumberland, was found in brush in the vicinity of Levi’s house. She had been molested numerous times and beaten to death. Suspicion immediately turned toward the hapless hermit and, despite his claims of innocence, he was arrested by local police based solely on the proximity of the body to his house. The parents of the young murder victim were well liked and well respected, and a palpable anger boiled up among men in the town as they nursed beers at The Lounge. This ugly disruption of the American dream could not be allowed to stand, and the next day, as the sheriff drove Levi out of town heading south to Grand Forks, his patrol car was stopped by a group of ten men with rifles. They took Levi out of the car, forced the sheriff to turn around and go back to Brereton, and then marched the resigned suspect into the brush. Levi’s body was never found, and no charges were ever filed.

             Dell’s was almost empty when Scott walked in and he wondered how Cindy could keep the doors open. Small town America had been decimated by the 2008 financial crises and it wiped out a lot of local businesses like Dell’s over the ensuing years. Looking stressed as she talked to one of the teenage waitresses, Cindy’s posture changed immediately when she noticed him walking to the counter and sliding onto a stool. She set a coffee cup in front of him and filled it.

            “Good morning,” she said with a knowing smile.

            “It is good, isn’t it?”

            “You going to be able to stay a little longer?”

            “Yeah. I got that all straightened out. Hey, I hope you won’t get pissed at me for being snoopy, but I noticed the key that had “Hastings” etched in it. What’s that all about?”

            The smile disappeared and Cindy busied herself adjusting the salt and pepper shakers on the counter. “It was in my mailbox a few days ago. I don’t know what it means. Do you?”

            “No. Well, we all know the story of Levi Hastings and the little girl, but—“

            “You know they found the real killer,” said the young waitress in passing.

            “What?” asked Scott.

            Ignoring Cindy’s scowl, the waitress went on. “After Pastor Gains died a couple of years ago, someone found stained gloves and a child’s hair barrette hidden in his house.” Cindy took the coffee pot to the lone table with a customer. “They checked the DNA and it belonged to the little girl.”

            “Pastor Gains?” said Scott with a confused look. “But isn’t he….”

            The girl smiled slyly and nodded in Cindy’s direction.

            Scott didn’t bring up the subject until that evening as he cleared dinner dishes from the table.

            “Cindy, I’m sorry about all of this Hasting’s stuff.”

            She rested her elbows tiredly on the table. “It was a shock. You can’t imagine what it’s like finding out your grandfather, a Lutheran minister no less, is a child killer. And that an innocent man…”

            Scott came over and knelt down beside her. “I know, but it’s ancient history. Damn, I just seem to be stirring things up. I probably should have stayed in Iowa City.”

            “Don’t say that,” she said, resting her hand on his. “I’m glad you’re here.”

            At two in the morning, Cindy’s phone rang. She went into the bathroom to talk, but Scott was awake when she returned and sat on the edge of the bed, holding her knees to her chest.

            “Cindy? What’s wrong?”

            “You remember Doug Willits?”

            “Sure. Played basketball. He got Wendy Larchmont pregnant senior year and…last I heard he was working his father’s farm.”

            “My cousin is a deputy sheriff. They found Doug’s body tonight. It was hanging from the limb of an oak tree in Heritage Park.”

            “Did they find—“

            “Yes. There was a snowman in his mother’s front yard, complete with a noose around its neck.”

            Having the morning free while Cindy worked, Scott began searching the Internet for something that might shed light on what was happening in his hometown. He found a pad to start mapping out the bits of information he was uncovering, but needed a pen. He looked around and started rummaging through Cindy’s junk drawer in the kitchen. Digging towards the back his fingers found a photograph. He pulled it out and set it on the counter. The photo was of a group of men in hunting clothes holding shotguns. The clothing had Scott guessing it was the 1950s. In the foreground were more than twenty dead pheasants lined up on the ground. It was obviously the bounty of a day’s hunting. It took a minute, but Scott recognized most of the men in the photo from his childhood. There was Karl Larson, Pastor Glenn Gains, Ed Willits, David Berglund, George Helms, and on he went mentally ticking off names. Between the two individuals he couldn’t identify was a man in the back caught in another hunter’s shadow and unrecognizable. Scott turned it over and there was a short handwritten note.

            Guess who’s back in town, Cindy?

            He glanced over to the pile of mail and noticed the key was gone. A sudden sense of panic clenched around his throat and he dressed quickly and drove to the diner. It was nearly deserted and worse, he did not see Cindy.

            “She came in for a little while, but said she needed to go see someone. Didn’t look too good…like she was coming down with something.”

            Scott started his car and pulled out onto Main Street. The connections between the Hastings incident over fifty years earlier and the key and the photograph were still hazy but slowly beginning to come into focus. There was a connection that ran threw the recent murders leading to the Hasting’s house.

As if just waking up, Scott found himself parked in front of Cindy’s place, although this wasn’t his original destination. His heart rate shot up and his palms grew damp when he noticed the snowman the middle of her front yard. He got out of the car and approached the effigy warily. This latest creation was another human figure, but where the face would be there was only a large red stain. Lying next to the monstrosity was a shotgun.

            Overcome with panic, Scott ran to his car and steered in the direction of the Hasting’s house, tires squealing as he made his way out of town. The car bounced violently on the rural gravel road, but he soon caught site of the dark house in the distance and pressed the accelerator down even further. Reaching the crest of a small rise, he caught site of something lying in the road. He slammed on his breaks and slid to a stop in a cloud of dust and flying rocks only a few feet from the object. He got out and went to the front of the car. It was Cindy’s lifeless body.

            “Nooo,” he moaned in disbelief, putting a hand to his forehead.

He was suddenly sick to his stomach, in shock, and as much as he didn’t want to, he walked slowly around the body. Just as with the snowman, Cindy’s beautiful face had been blown off and there remained only a bloody, raw mess.

            Scott sat on the back step of an ambulance, his head buried in his hands. The lights of several squad cars swirled around the flat, desolate landscape, as officers photographed Cindy’s body and searched the area for clues. A deputy sheriff approached Scott with a cup of coffee.

            “Here,” said dour officer, holding out the cup. “Warm yourself up.”

            Red-eyed and pale, Scott looked up and accepted the coffee.

            “Thanks. Anything yet?”

            “Nothing conclusive, but we checked the shotgun at her house and it had been fired recently. We should be able to get prints off of it. Did she own a shotgun?”

            Scott shrugged. “I don’t know. We were just starting to…get reacquainted. There’s a lot I don’t know about her.”

            “How about you? Own any weapons?”

            Scott scowled. “No.”

            “Haven’t found her car yet. So you wouldn’t know why she’d be out here by herself?”

            Scenarios flew around Scott’s head like startled bats in a cave.  “No,” he decided. “I don’t know why she’d be out here.”

            “Why were you here?”

            “I was just taking a drive. That’s all. Trying to visit some old haunts from when I was a kid.”

            The sheriff’s expression made it clear he didn’t like the answer, but after a few more general questions he told Scott he was free to go.

            That night, Scott sat in a chair in the dark living room of Cindy’s house, a hand clutching a bottle of vodka, his thoughts lost in the blackness surrounding him. Although he hadn’t put all of the puzzle pieces together, Cindy’s death made him realize that the Hasting’s house was the epicenter of the horror his hometown was experiencing. Someone or something was luring people to the house with the key and the photo, murdering them, and then torturing their loved ones with the snowmen. The “why” was still the maddeningly elusive question. A quarter of the bottle now coursing through his veins, Scott settled on a solution to the dilemma, and he rose unsteadily to his feet to carry out his plan.

            A half hour later, Scott pulled up in front of the empty, crumbling Hasting’s house. He stumbled to the trunk where he grabbed a five-gallon gas can, carried it to the porch of the house and began splashing gasoline around the front door. After emptying the can, he stepped back a bit, struck a match on the side of a box, and threw it onto the porch. Orange blue flames instantly flared up and Scott had to move back even further as the fire intensified. The weathered dry wood burned quickly and soon the entire front of the house was engulfed in flames.

            Back in his car, he watched the inferno grow for another moment, put the vehicle in reverse and drove back to Cindy’s house. Fifteen minutes after his return, he heard the wailing siren of the town’s only fire truck heading in an easterly direction. The house would never survive, he assured himself, and neither would the killer. He showered and went to bed not really caring if the local cops could put two and two together, which he highly doubted.

            It wasn’t the worst hangover he’d ever had, but the headache was distracting as he packed his bag for the flight back to Iowa that afternoon. Cindy’s relatives would have to deal with house, and he wasn’t up for another funeral. It was a cold, oppressive day with low grey clouds a person could almost reach up and touch. Scott threw his bag into the trunk of the rental car and started backing out of the driveway. He was out into the street about to shift into drive when he noticed the little faded red flag on Cindy’s mailbox was up. Okay. There was a choice here, he knew, to either drive off and put the ugliness of this visit behind him or…. He pulled the car over and went to the mailbox. Inside was a small square blank envelope. Hands shaking, he opened it and removed the silver key and the photo. The photo was the exact same one that Cindy had received, only the man whose face was in shadows was now circled in red. Reluctantly, his body perspiring despite the frigid temperatures, Scott turned over the picture and read the note.

Grandpa Gavin Schuster. Not the ringleader, but a willing participant. August 3, 1958.

Participant? He read the date again and it suddenly all clicked. This was the group of men who had kidnapped Levi Hastings and killed him. His uncle was one of them. They murdered an innocent man.

Dust and gravel flew up behind Scott’s Forerunner as he struggled to keep it on the road. For some unexplainable reason, he didn’t go into a state of head-exploding shock when he came over a crest in the road and saw that the Hastings house was exactly as it had been before the fire. It was just another bizarre event in a long sequence of bizarre events. He turned and braked to a wheel-locking skid in front of the house, finally stopping a few feet from the porch. Scott got out and went to the rear of his vehicle, reemerging with an axe in one hand, the key in another, and a face creased by rage. He stood at the front door for a moment, then briefly looked back over his shoulder as if saying goodbye.

The lock clicked and he walked into the darkness.

The door slammed shut behind him.

            Soft morning flakes drifted down and settled on the town of Brereton. An elderly woman wrapped in layers of clothing against the cold walked tiredly up a path through the middle of Skjeberg Cemetery. She stopped at a grave and bowed her gray head, praying silently over a lost loved one. On the slow journey back to her car, something caught her eye and she left the path to inspect the headstone of Gavin Schuster, who died in 1989. Someone had built a snowman just in front of the marker. It was the form of a human, but the round snowball head lay on the ground, and next to that was a blood-covered axe.