Writer's Journal

(This story features the same characters as my earlier Field Circus.  If interested in rereading that, you can find it here.)

Deputy Connors lay on his back in the yard, looking at the overcast sky. A circle of cigarette butts, some extinguished, some still burning surrounded him.

The house was quiet, save for the sound of the other deputies and the coroner rooting through what he had left for them.

He heard the Sheriff pull up and get out of his car.

“Aw, shit,” the old man said, as he hobbled up the drive and saw Connors laying on his back, “That bad.”

Connors turned away, not speaking.

The Sheriff continued inside, the gravel crunching beneath his feet and his cane.

#

The basement had been full of corpses and boxes of baking soda.

The bodies had been opened to find out what made them work.

The boxes had been opened to control the smell.

#

The coroner examined the body of the young man; the knife was still gripped in his left hand. There were nine bullet wounds.

“Connors kept shooting him after he fell?” Deputy Gibson asked, assisting the coroner by taking photographs.

“I don’t know,” she said, “but it looks like the angle is roughly the same for all of them.”

“Always knew he was a terrible shot,” the other deputy, Daniel Marcus, said.

“Two pierced his lung. One bypassed his intestines and probably lodged in his spine. One took the boy’s eye out and lodged itself in his brain. One hit the heart. another the aorta. The other three were limb shots. Two on the left leg, one on the right leg.”

Marcus whistled through his teeth.

The Sheriff came through the door, and reached into his pocket, pulling out a pack of spearmint gum before putting two sticks into his mouth.

“Sheriff,” Marcus said, standing taller.

“Sheriff,” Gibson said, nodding.

“Hello, Lew,” the Coroner said.

“Evenin’ Mary. What profoundly disturbing bit of back-hills evil has Connors dug up and shot at this time?”

“Either a very good serial killer, or a very bad amateur surgeon,” Gibson deadpanned.

“Just t’ facts, Gibson. This the kid?” Sheriff Mayer asked.

“Yeah,” Mary said, “White male, looks to be about fourteen, apparently lived here with his grandparents until he disassembled them.”

“Disassembled?” the Sheriff asked.

“Yeah. Apparently he was gathering people up and trying to find out how they work.”

“Work how?”

“There’s a skeleton down in the basement that’s had all the skin taken off and left to sit in a bathtub full of moonshine to keep it fresh.”

“This don’t make a damn bit of sense,” the Sheriff declared, “Why’d he take ‘em apart.”

“You’d have to ask Connors, Sheriff,” Marcus said, darkly, “he was the only one who was here when the kid was alive.”

“Goddamn.”

#

The clouds had begun to part, and he moon showed its face. Connors pointed his sidearm up toward heaven, took out the clip, counted the bullets, and put it back in.

“You really got to kick this nasty nicotine habit ‘a yours,” The Sheriff said, popping his gum.

“I know, Sheriff Mayer, and I don’t norm’ly smoke. But after an event like that…”

“So that’s why you always leave the pack in your car.”

“Yessir.”

“If I do say so, Connors you’re beginning to lose your accent.”

“Thank you, sir.”

“you want to tell me what happened in there?”

Connors took a deep breath and put his sidearm away.

“You remember how you told me to look into those disappearances around here?”

“Yes.”

“Well, all the abandoned cars were along the same stretch of road. I thought that it would be simple, and it was. There was about a half-mile-long path through the woods, going around that big hill over there, and coming right up to the cellar door. The kid thought he’d managed to cover it with brush, but I saw a scrap of blue flannel, stuck to a branch.

“So I grabbed an extra clip for my sidearm and a flashlight and snuck along the path. It rained a little bit, real cold.”

Connors fished in his pocket, and pulled out a crooked cigarette. He just held it.

“When I reached the house, I heard singing coming from the basement. All the windows had sheets over them, but I managed to lift up the cellar door without him noticing.”

He put the cigarette in his mouth and lit it.

“He had this head in a vice, with a hose from an air compressor going up into the neck-stump, and wires taped to the throat…wires attached to a keyboard. He was making it sing.”

“How’d he notice you?”

“I went inside to use his phone to call for backup. Mine’d died,” Connors said, a little ashamed.

“Well, you’re not supposed to enter a private residence without a warrant. We’re going to have to take you off active duty for a while.”

“Yeah. I…I don’t mind that at all.”