The Light at the End of the Tunnel (29 page)

“Hey, Baby Boy,” Edsel said, “Ya gettin’
anxious?”

“Yes.”

“So, ya still plannin’ta do the old lady
tonight?”

“No. I’m takin’ the young girl.”

Edsel stopped and grabbed Les Paul’s arm,
“You said
I
could have her!”

He slapped the hand away, “I changed my mind.
Tonight she’s mine!”

“No!” Edsel grabbed Les Paul’s arm again and
spun him around, then kneed him in the stomach, then socked him on
the cheekbone.

Les Paul started to go down. He had never
been in a fight yet in this life, had never been hit…but then those
deep, dark, far back, memories began to flash! Before his hands
even touched the ground his feet sprang to below him and stabilized
him and both his fists came up together and nailed the older boy in
the groin.

Edsel screamed and went down. Les Paul stood
and kicked the boy in the head, then went to work with his fists
pounding and pounding until the third boy pulled him away, “Baby
Boy, for Christ’s sake! You’ll kill him!”

He immediately slowed his emotions. That’s
what psychopaths did, they controlled themselves, they fooled
people into believing whatever they wanted them to believe. He then
squatted by the boy he had just beaten and felt for the pulse in
his neck. He had to feel a few places. He didn’t know exactly where
to feel but he had seen people on TV do it, then he found it. The
pulse sounded okay, “He’s fine! Let’s go!”

“What about Edsel?” the other boy asked.

“He can go back without us.”

“What if he tells?”

“He won’t! He should know I’ll kick his ass
again if he does!”

“But can we just leave him lying there?”

“Why not? He’ll wake up and go back or he’ll
be there when we come back, and then we’ll get’im up—let’s go!”

“Okay.”

So the boys went on. They didn’t see Sikorsky
watching from about eighty feet back in the direction they had just
come.

Two more blocks passed and they came to that
little darkened house with the one dim light in back. Les Paul
continued leading the way into the house, down the short hall and
stopped where a dim light appeared under a door.

He knocked.

The woman driver opened the door and was
still hanging onto that huge purse.
What the hell is in that
purse?
She then stepped back, “Welcome, boys,” she said, “Come
on in.” The two boys went in. The woman driver stepped to the hall,
“You said there’d be three of you.”

“There were,” Les Paul said, “The other
guy…got selfish, and impatient. I had to put’im down.” He still
wondered what on earth could be in that purse that, evidently, she
never let get out of her sight.

The woman driver’s face turned into a mask,
“Well, you’re still payin’ for three.”

“Fine,” he said, and glanced a grin at the
other boy, “I’ve got all the money, and I want the young one
tonight.” He began looking around, and finally saw her, scrunched
into the corner. She no longer was just a cute little
seven-year-old but now a red hot nine-year-old—if she would just
smile—
a memory hit his head like a board!
He
ignored
it! He forcefully pushed it away and refused to let it in! He
didn’t know he could control those memories—
from now on I
will!—
But he kept
seeing
it! Not really a memory but he
knew what was trying to get into his head: The memory of his own
wife and darling little girl child—he squeezed his fists and
gritted his teeth!

When the girl in the corner met his eyes she
flinched, and noticeably tried to scrunch herself further into the
corner.
To hell with those ancient memories!—daddy—that now he
knew he could control…but his head was beginning to
hurt—daddy—
He was going to love raping that girl, and seeing
the fear on her face!—
daddy
—He saw his hands going from
holding her in a love embrace to moving around her throat—
But my
head really is HURTING!!!!

****

Sikorsky alone had followed the boys closely,
but was returning.

“Sikorsky’s coming!” Nicole said, “Let’s meet
him.”

“What about that boy?” the chaplain
asked.

“Forget him, Radford! If he’s dead he’s dead!
If he’s just hurt he’ll live till later! Let’s see what Les Paul is
up to!”

Call it a premonition, though Nicole was hard
pressed to believe in premonitions, but little Cassandra had been
on her mind ever since leaving the residence of the girl’s last
foster home. If the boys were meeting up with women tonight, which
she was sure that’s what they were doing, even though the three of
them hadn’t verbally discussed exactly that, then she just couldn’t
get it out of her mind that Cassandra would be
part
of it,
and she had to get there in time to save her.

We have to!

****

Cassandra met the boy’s eyes, and felt her
whole body go cold, and empty, and stiff, and her skin begin to
crawl as that boy with the golden hair began to approach her, and
all those two-year-old memories started coming back. What was it
about that boy? There was something so cruel and empty in those
eyes. She pushed herself into the corner, but she could go no
further. Involuntarily her hands began to rise, as if she could
protect herself. She knew she couldn’t.

“Honey-girl!” the woman driver shouted, “You
put your hands down!”

Cassandra put her hands down, for just a
second, then brought them right back up, “No….” Was that tiny and
scared-sounding voice hers? “Please….” She was begging. She didn’t
want to beg! She could just let him do what he wanted and then he
would leave, and then she would have to do it again and again and
again with whatever man that awful woman found for her to do it
with—

****

No, Daddy, please don’t! I love you,
Daddy…
Les Paul saw his darling little daughter—
I have NO
daughter!
What he saw was this hot nine-year-old girl cowering
before him—his head began to hurt so
bad
!—
No! Daddy! Help
me! Please!—I have no daughter!
He loved seeing his women cower
before him…
Daddy, please, no!—
Why would that young girl, his
daughter keep appearing in his head?—
I HAVE NO
DAUGHTER!!!!

“Stop! She’s mine!”

Everybody’s attention flew to the door where
another boy had just appeared, and he was bleeding. The
golden-haired boy snarled and flung his arms down and charged and
hit the other boy and they both went down—
Edsel is not going to
hurt that young girl!—Nobody is!—
and the golden-haired boy just
started hitting him and pounding and kicking him.

“That’s enough!” cried the woman driver, and
she opened that huge purse and came out with—Cassandra couldn’t
believe it—a gun! “That’s enough!” the woman cried again, and aimed
the gun.

The golden-haired boy stopped and looked
back, and saw the gun, and stood up, then screamed and charged the
woman driver, who fired.

The golden-haired boy stopped and looked down
at his chest where red was appearing, then flowing and running down
over his stomach. The boy touched his own blood and looked at it in
amazement, like he couldn’t even believe anything in the world
could hurt him, then he looked at the woman driver, and then
settled to the floor and lay still.

****

“Drop your gun!” cried a man in the doorway
also holding a gun.

Then a woman came in behind him—
Nicole!
“Nicole!”
Cassandra just screamed the name, then ran to Nicole
and threw her arms around her and Nicole threw her arms around
Cassandra and buried her in her front, and lifted her and held her
close.

Cassandra started feeling very different. She
felt safe in Nicole’s arms and wrapped her arms and legs around
Nicole and her chest began feeling funny and hurting like it had
never hurt and she felt tears coming, real tears!—
and she
couldn’t stop them!
They just came and she began crying and
crying and Nicole held her so close, “Cry, my dear child, go ahead
and cry. You’re safe now. Come on, we’ll leave here.”

Cassandra held her tears and choked, and
pulled slightly away, and looked back at Mandy and her mom, “What
about them? They aren’t bad like…,” she took a sobbing breath and
looked back at the woman driver, and pointed, “Her.”

“I don’t know, Cassandra. For right now
they’ll probably have to go to jail too. We’ll see if we can help
them later. But you come now. Your nightmare is over.”

“Okay.” Cassandra looked back, and waved to
Mandy.

Mandy didn’t smile, but did wave back. Then
Cassandra again wrapped her arms around Nicole’s neck and laid her
head on her shoulder, and the tears, gently, continued to flow, and
she said, between sobs, “You can call me
‘Cassie’
again.”

“Thank you, sweetheart, I will.”

“‘
Sweetheart’
is okay too. I love you,
Nicole.”

“I love you too, Cassie.”

“She has to go to the station too,” Sikorsky
said.

“Fine!” Nicole returned, “But she’s
staying
in my arms.”

****

Later, when the bad people were all in jail,
and Cassandra—with her dolly, Rachel Ray, pressed against her
front—was asleep, between the chaplain and Nicole on the spacious
motel bed, the chaplain couldn’t contain himself any longer, “You
know what this means don’t you, Nicole?”

“No. What? What does this mean?”

“Les Paul. He’s finished. He’s finally dead.
He was killed, yes, but
not
by the state.”

“You’re right,” Nicole said, “The monster is
finally finished. Strange, though, in this life he maybe wasn’t so
bad…yet…I guess we just will never know.”

“You are correct, my dear, but he was well on
his way, and, you know, we didn’t prove a thing. So we
will
just keep recycling the worst-of-the-worst.”

“Nine years gone,” Nicole didn’t really
appear upset about it.

“Are you sorry?”

“No, Rad. I found you, and we found this
little girl between us. I wouldn’t change a thing.”

“Something strange, though….”

“Yes…?”

“That large woman who shot Les Paul…Sikorsky
let me read her statement. She said she had the funniest feeling
when she was watching the blond-headed boy approach our little girl
here…” he nodded toward Cassandra, “I think I can remember it word
for word, or close, ‘
There was fire and lust in his eyes—I mean
he WANTED that little girl—but when the other boy came, the one he
beat the hell out of—Edsel, I think—the blond-headed kid’s
expression and eyes changed completely. He almost became like he
was protecting his girlfriend…or, even more so, a dad protecting
his daughter.’
”

****

Les Paul saw that bright light at the end of
the tunnel that he had seen so many, many, many, times before…but
this one was different; it was dimming, getting farther away, going
out.

It went out.

Les Paul’s world reduced to darkness. He
stopped seeing, he stopped remembering, he stopped comprehending.
His many long lives of good-turned-evil were finally over. He at
last rested. His memories were gone…all but one.

But he was dead.

And then, he wasn’t.

A light appeared again, an even brighter
light, and a world of hills and trees and faraway mammoths appeared
and suddenly he was
in
it, and up ahead appeared a woman and
a little girl. They were too far away for him to really recognize,
but he was gradually getting closer—they both waved—he saw furs
draping both their shoulders….

--0--

Quotations

Beyond Good and Evil, Aphorism 146 (Friedrich
Nietzsche):

"Battle not with monsters lest ye become a
monster;

and if you gaze into the abyss the abyss
gazes into you."

Today Show Interview (1987) (Charles
Manson):

"Believe me, if I started murdering people...
there'd be none of you left."

Under Western Eyes (Joseph Conrad):

"...A belief in a supernatural source of evil
is not necessary; men alone are quite capable of every
wickedness."

“Murder is a horror, but an often necessary
horror, never criminal, which it is essential to tolerate in a
republican State. Is it or is it not a crime? If it is not, why
make laws for its punishment? And if it is, by what barbarous logic
do you, to punish it, duplicate it by another crime?”

Marquis De Sade quotes (French nobleman and
Novelist whose perverse sexual preferences and erotic writings gave
rise to the term sadism. 1740-1814)

“The beginning of love is a horror of
emptiness”

Robert Bly quotes

Characters
&
Places

Les Paul
(worst-of-the-worst criminal)

Baby Boy Doe9 (his foster
child name)

Warden Miles

Radford O’Hare (the chaplain)

Nicole Waters

(young nurse who found the
abandoned Les Paul)

Cassandra
“Cassie”

Rachel Ray (Cassandra’s
doll’s name)

Geppetto (shopkeeper who
looked like Pinocchio’s father)

Franny (Cassandra’s foster
father)

Mac (Franny’s
buddy)

(foster mother not
named)

Lola & Mandy (mother
& daughter sex slaves)

Their trafficker (not
named)

Evan & Leslie Markum
(Les Paul’s birth parents)

Kenneth and Donna
Tommerdahl (
thought
to be Les Paul’s birth parents)

Stanley (the Tommerdahl’s
first born, deceased)

Patrolman
Sikorsky