Prodigal Blues (14 page)

"We got pretty good at combining the stuff we needed on the list," Arnold said.
 
"Since we only got, like, one toilet item each, one of us would ask for toothpaste, the other one would ask for mouthwash, someone else would ask for toilet paper, stuff like that.
 
We did the same thing with the snacks and the food, so we would have enough for meals.
 
I would ask for bread, Christopher for sliced cheese, Rebecca would want lunchmeat… you know.
 
That way, we would always have everything we would need.
 
If we were careful, we could make all the 'One' day food last maybe eight or nine days."

"Providing we remembered to ask for a two-gallon jug of water," added Christopher.
 
"Sometimes we would need the food more than the water."
 
He shrugged.
 
"If you got thirsty enough, there was always the toilet tank."

"We all got hooked on Harry Potter and Lemony Snicket," said Rebecca.
 
"Connie picked them out for us.
 
She recognized the books because she got to see the first two
Harry Potter
movies."

Then Thomas spoke up:
 
"I like Lemony.
 
Lemony is very funny."

"He never cared about the movies we asked for or the books we read," said Christopher.
 
"If we did well, we got whatever we asked for."
 
He looked up.
 
"So, after a while, we always made
sure
we did well."

No one said anything for a few moments after that; they only sat staring at me.

"What?"
 
I said.
 
"Am I missing something?"

"You can
learn
things from books and movies," said Arnold.
 
"If you start picking the right ones."

"That is enough with 'Twenty Questions,'" said Christopher, rising to his feet.
 
"He is a janitor, not a journalist.
 
There are only two more things he needs to know."
 
He crossed to a corner of the room and picked up a large green-canvas duffel bag; from the way he struggled with it, whatever was inside must have weighed quite a bit.
 
It rattled.

"Christopher," said Rebecca, the warning evident.

"Time for all of you to shut up," he snapped at her, then heaved the duffel bag onto the foot of my bed.
 
"All right, Pretty Boy, have you gotten your sufficient jollies listening to all of this?
 
Do you have a nice, nasty story to shock your pretty friends with?"

"I never asked about—"

He backhanded me in the mouth; hard enough to hurt but not draw blood or raise welts.

"
BE QUIET!
"

Rebecca jumped up, activating the
Taser
again, but froze in place when Christopher pulled the gun from the back of his pants and pointed it right at my face.
 
"Sit
down
, Rebecca.
 
I killed the last guy and I will kill him if you push it, understand?"

Rebecca gave me a sorrowful look, then laid the
Taser
on the bed and sat down, hands folded in her lap, looking at the floor.

"Now," said Christopher, slipping the gun into the back of his pants, "it is time you understood a few things.
 
Do you know
why
there is only the four of us?
 
After all, we have told you about the others.
 
I assume even a janitor can do basic math."
 
He began unzipping the duffel bag.
 
"In the last four years, twenty-one children have passed through the House of Heorot.
 
Not all of them adapted or learned as well as we did."
 
He grabbed the unzipped bag at both ends, and began turning it upside down.
 
"I think it is time you met a few of them."

He gave the bag a violent jerk and the yellow bones tumbled onto the bed; pieces of hands, pieces of arms, legs, feet… and skulls.
 
There must have been a dozen skulls of various sizes in the pile forming in front of me but I didn't count, I was too busy crying out and pressing my body against the wall and headboard as the pile tumbled out and forward, clacking, rattling, one nearly-whole hand flopping outward and almost touching my leg as a skull skittered down the pile and rolled down the length of the arm, coming to rest almost perfectly in the center of the opened hand; until that moment I had managed to not scream but as soon as that skull came to rest and I read the name—
RANDY
—written in black marker across the top I couldn't hold it in any longer and let fly, just opened my mouth as wide as I could and screamed from the bottom of my balls upward, twisting my head from side to side and wishing to hell my eyes would just
close
but they wouldn't, no matter how much I begged them to, they just kept staring at that skull and that name and then my legs gave out and I collapsed but Christopher was there to catch me from behind, one arm across my torso, the other coming around my shoulder so he could press his hand over my mouth and hold my head still—

"Take it easy, Pretty Boy," he whispered into my ear.
 
"They are long past being able to hurt you.
 
They are long past being hurt.
 
Take a good look, Pretty Boy, look long and hard.
 
See that hand right there?
 
That belonged to a little girl named Jennifer.
 
She was four.
 
It took me three days to super-glue that hand back together, and even then I did not find all the bones, there were too many.
 
That is why there are so many
pieces
.
 
Unless you were right there
watching
when he cleansed them of their undisciplined flesh, you would have no idea which bones belonged to who.
 
But I was there for all their cleansings, hear me?
 
And I
know
all the bones by name, all of them!"
 
He spun me around to face him.
 
"I did not have to dig up any of them, either."
 
I started to say something—or maybe I started to scream again, I don't know—but he pressed his hand over my mouth again.
 
"You do not get to talk now, you get to pay attention.
 
Do you know why we were always so careful to make the 'One' day food last as long as possible?
 
Come on, Pretty Boy, take a guess!" On the last word, he twisted my head around so I could have another good look at the bones.

"Oh,
Jesus
…" I groaned.

"You see, we did not always get 'One' days.
 
Sometimes during the meetings one of us would squeal when we should not have, or maybe he would see a tear in one of our eyes, or sometimes one of us would have the gall to
bleed
too much!"
 
He snapped my head back around; he was right in my face now.
 
"Have you ever been starving, Pretty Boy?
 
Have you ever been so hungry that the emptiness in your stomach begins to
swell
?
 
Do you have any idea what it is like to go without food for so long that you start chasing spiders and cockroaches?
 
I once broke Arnold's nose over a couple of
silverfish
!"

"You got that right," said Arnold.

"I will let you in on a secret, Pretty Boy—when you have been left chained up in a basement room for two weeks with only water from a toilet tank to drink and the occasional bug for protein, you will eat
anything
that is put in front of you, even if it is something that you had to help slaughter, even if it was something that had a name and could call you by yours.
 
I suppose we should be grateful that Grendel had a thing about germs and at least
cooked it
first!"
 
He yanked me to my feet, spun me around, and pushed me down into the chair.

"Roll it over here, Arnold."

"Oh, hey, look, man, I do not think we need—"

"
DID I ASK FOR AN OPINION
?"

"Settle down, dude."

In three actions so quick and smooth they might as well have been the same movement, Christopher pulled the gun from the back of his pants, spun around, and fired a shot into the pillow on my bed; the gun made a short, sharp whistling noise like a single tweet from a bird, and the air was suddenly alive with dancing bits of stuffing.

"I swear to God," said Christopher through clenched teeth, "the next one goes through his right eye if you guys do not stop giving me grief.
 
Roll it over here right now, Arnold."

Arnold shook his head and sighed sadly as he rose to his feet.
 
"I hate it when you get this way, man.
 
This is not you."
 
He rolled the typing stand and computer around the bed and toward me.
 
He looked at Christopher as if he was going to say something else, then thought better of it.
 
He positioned the computer in front of me, then reached out and gave my forearm an apologetic squeeze before returning to the second bed.

Christopher stood beside me, pressing the silencer against my temple.
 
It was hotter than hell and scorched my hair and skin; I bit down on my lip and waited for the pain to ebb.
 
I wasn't about to try anything right now, even something as harmless as moving my head.

With his other hand, Christopher reached out and used the computer's
trackpad
to open a series of sub-folders labeled "Pictures", "Video", "Ravenswood", and "Cleansings".

"Please," I whispered.
 
"
Don't
…."

"Sorry, Pretty-Boy, but when we put on a show, you get the whole program."

He highlighted a file in the "Cleansings" folder:
 
C
onnie
.

"Connie was special in more ways than one," he said.
 
"Grendel would schedule private meetings between her and his friends—one at a time, of course.
 
And these private meetings were expensive.
 
Connie never said anything about them—or, at least she did not say anything about them for a long time.

"After he took Denise, Connie started acting different.
 
She talked more.
 
She complained.
 
She started saying no.
 
She started telling us secrets, like where he kept extra keys and cash.
 
I think she realized he was training Denise to be her replacement for the trips into town.
 
I think she must have been jealous.
 
She would be rude to Denise, pinch her or slap her when she thought Grendel was not looking.
 
He put Connie in the basement with us, and gave Connie's room upstairs to Denise.
 
Connie did not like that.
 
She tried to hurt Denise the next chance she got.
 
She tried to cut her face with a knife.
 
And that was it."

He double-clicked the file and a video screen came up.
 
He enlarged the screen to three times its size; there was no loss of video quality.

He pressed harder against my temple with the still-hot silencer.
 
"You will watch every second of this, Pretty Boy, or I will put a bullet in your kneecap."

"Why are you doing this?"
 
I sounded on the verge of tears or hysterics, and hated myself for the loss of control.

When he spoke again, his voice sounded almost sympathetic.
 
"Because I do not want to be the only person who knows what he did down there, and I will not make any of them watch."

He started the video.
 
"Welcome to Ravenswood."

I was looking at a large room with gray cinderblock walls.
 
Everything in the room was illuminated by harsh fluorescent lights that hung from the ceiling.
 
Metal shelves lined the walls on the left and right.
 
Specimen jars of various sizes were on the shelves; I couldn't quite make out what was floating inside them, then decided I didn't really want to.
 
In the left corner of the room sat two large medical waste barrels with locking lids.
 
In the center of the room was a long metal table with straps hanging from each corner.
 
The table was bordered with a gutter on both sides and both ends, and in each of the corners was something that looked like pool table pocket.

I had cleaned the School of Medicine's building long enough to recognize an autopsy table when I saw one.
 
Except none of those had straps.

Two medium-sized operating room lights, for the moment turned off, hung over the table.
 
A tray with a white cover sat next to the far right corner.

A door opened and a young man came in.
 
It took me a moment to recognize him; Christopher still had his nose and upper lip.
 
I suppose the metal jaw should have been the giveaway.