The Light at the End of the Tunnel (13 page)

****

From outside the girls’ room Les Paul heard,
“No! Please…!” He recognized the voice of the middle girl, the
seven-year-old, “No! I’ll tell!”

“What’re you going to tell, huh?” The
twelve-year-old said, “You got in trouble last week for lying, so
they aren’t going to believe anything you say. Now stand
still!”

“You’re the one who lied!”

“Right! But you’re the one who got in
trouble—now quit squirming!”

“No—!”

Les Paul heard much noise. Something hit the
floor and spilled, a chair tipped over. One of the other girls
screamed, then they both did.

“Shut up, you shits!” yelled the older
boy.

They stopped. More noise: A body hit the
floor, then another, then the seven-year-old didn’t exactly scream
but Les Paul could tell she was hurt, then maybe even gagged with
maybe a hand over her mouth.
Seven
, near the same age as the
girl in his dream, or that movie in his head,
or whatever the
hell it was!
He wanted in the worst way to open the door and
watch, but didn’t quite dare. Either of the bigger boys, he
figured, would not think twice about beating him up…

The fire in the middle of their cave burned
not brightly but subdued. He knew how to bank a fire just right so
that it would give them light and help keep them warm for at least
most of the night.

With his woman he lay in the furry skins.
One last peek at his darling little girl child not four feet from
the foot of the bed of her parents. She lay quietly, and certainly
was sound asleep. That evening she had played hard with a young
wolf puppy they had found in their travels that very day. How happy
his little girl had become when he allowed her to take the puppy
back to their hearth. He had heard of other people taming wolves,
which then became friends and great protectors of the family.

The pup now lay in the furs at the foot of
his little girl child’s bed. His family was happy and safe. They
were well fed. They were healthy. Life was good.

He turned to his woman and enveloped her in
his arms and legs. She responded with her own arms and legs. They
were entwined, and they shed their fur garments quite easily. He
kissed her, long and deeply. Their love was so real, and he had
been so alone in the world before he found her.

How many years had he wandered after leaving
his own mother and father and siblings. They were so far away now.
It would take more seasons to ever return, but now he wouldn’t, for
he had found his own love, and his own family had come from that
love. His little girl child was soon seven seasons old.

Their kiss continued and continued and
continued until his arousal was so full, and so ready, and
so…complete. His woman grasped him and squeezed him and pulled him
to enter her…and he went, and entered her as she wanted. Her arms
clutched him so firmly, her legs wrapped around his legs and she
held him as close as their bodies would allow as the peaks of their
love-making released them—

He removed his arms from around her body and
gripped her neck. She stiffened instantly. Her eyes crashed open,
big, round, eyes, showing fear. He loved seeing that fear. He loved
seeing those eyes get larger and larger and larger, even seeming to
bulge and leave the sockets as her fear grew, as she came to
realize she was dying, that he would not stop until the life was
gone from her—her body began to convulse as her life force left
her, but her arms and legs instinctively tried to fight him.

Then the body stopped. He released her
throat, but he needed to be sure. He grasped the sides of her head,
and twisted! He heard the snap of her vertebrae, something she
would never recover from. He released her, and rose from her body,
and dressed, and pulled the bed clothes up to cover her…

Les Paul shook his head more violently then
before! Where oh where did these stupid, stupid,
stupid!
memories come from? They were
not
his!
A wolf puppy!
So that’s what they had seen in his earlier memory! How could he
even remember that earlier memory? And how could the memories go
from good to evil so quickly? Why would he go from being nice to
that woman to killing her? At his tender age of seven he barely
comprehended the two words:
‘good,’ ‘evil,’
but he had seen
and heard the two words used many times on TV. So he knew the
difference and could see the difference in those memories that were
not his!
Not his! NOT HIS!!!!

Then came a sound from the room he had never
heard or even imagined, a grunting from one of the boys that lasted
several seconds, and muffled groaning—but not crying—from the girl,
the seven-year-old, then everything got quiet, for a few
seconds.

“Let her up,” from the twelve-year-old.

A second or two later, moaning but still not
really crying, the seven-year-old girl slammed out the door,
glanced at Les Paul, and ran to the bathroom and slammed the door.
Then he heard water running. There had been blood on the insides of
both her legs. He wondered what had happened to cause blood. The
door to the girls’ room was wide open so Les Paul looked in. The
two boys, the oldest one closing up his jeans, stood looking at the
other two girls cowering against the wall between the bunkbeds.

“I wanna do the little one,” the ten-year-old
said, “She’s the cutest.”

But then they all heard the front door open
and close, and the voices of the adults. The two big boys turned
and ran for the girls’ bedroom door. Les Paul, who had done no
wrong, just stepped aside as the two boys ran into the boys’
bedroom and closed the door. The seven-year-old girl, too, hurried
from the bathroom, again looked at Les Paul, then into the girls’
bedroom. Les Paul expected somebody to tell somebody something, but
nobody did.

And what, exactly, had just happened? He
really had no idea, yet a cluster of far back memories began
flooding through his mind…
of other girls, but not young ones
like these, mostly older girls, like maybe girls he had learned
were called teenagers, and still older girls, so many pretty faces,
and frightened faces, and then just quiet faces and blank eyes
seeing nothing…

His mind went to a room, a small room.
He
was in a chair, a metal-like chair, he couldn’t move, wires seemed
to be everywhere. A man stood next to an electrical box of some
sort on the wall. Straight ahead of him he saw people, several
seated people behind a large glass window, some were higher than
others like in bleachers, some looked familiar. They all were
looking at him, and looked like they were mad at him. Another man
entered the room—a man in a suit! A warden! He knew that man was a
warden from seeing wardens on TV, but why? And why did he think he
knew that man—and another, a white-haired man in minister’s
clothes! He knew that man too, but where…?

The minister approached and opened a book,
a Bible,“Les Paul
—“ Why is he looking at me and saying that
name?
WHO THE HELL IS LES PAUL? “—whether you renounce your sins
or not, I am here to ask God to take you into his arms and forgive
you…”

The man talked on. He stopped hearing him.
But, sins? What is he talking about? And what is a sin? And why was
he suddenly seeing in his mind girls?—
he saw one under him,
crying and looking at him with frightened eyes—
he forced that
memory to end, if it even
WAS
a memory.

His eyes moved to the man he saw as the
warden. He knew what a warden was. He had seen wardens on many cop
shows. Just something about them made them look like a warden, but
this one looked…familiar—

The minister stopped speaking, and made a
few motions with his hands, then the minister retreated to stand to
the side behind the warden. The warden nodded to the man by the
electrical box. The man pulled a lever down and instantly there
began the humming sound of electricity, and the sound of sparks. He
even saw some sparks—and smoke! Lots of smoke! He felt the current
entering his body. He knew his body was jerking as the voltage did
its work. He knew his body would be jumping all over the place if
he wasn’t locked down—WHY AM I LOCKED DOWN? WHY ARE THEY DOING THIS
TO ME?

How did he know these things he wondered?
He knew his life was leaving him, and all his life began
flashing before his eyes—all his many lives began flashing—what…?
Horses, swords, women, many beautiful women and girls—many, many
girls…
what was it about so many girls? Then the many other
horrible memories he sometimes had came back to him: Things and
events he didn’t really understand, mainly
why was it happening
to him?

The memory seemed to be taking such a long,
long, time.

He held his breath, held his eyes closed
tight, doubled his fists, but would not cry out his fear, if he
even was
feeling
fear.

He stopped hearing, mostly stopped seeing,
but still he saw the people behind the large glass window moving
farther away, like the end of a TV show, like a curtain closing,
gone, blackness….

****

“He reaped me!” screamed the
seven-year-old.

Unrealized by Les Paul, the woman of the
house had arrived and saw him standing and gawking into the bedroom
of the three girls.

Reaped? What is that?

Unfortunately, the young girl, still likely
upset by her ordeal, had pronounced the word with a long
‘e’
sound. To the seven-year-old boy it had sounded like
‘reaped,’
rather than
‘raped,’
but, regardless, the
sounds he had heard from both the boy and the girl made him think
that what had happened behind the closed door would be something he
would like. As soon as he learned to read he would
learn
that word, and
do
that thing.

Also, unfortunately, due to the short amount
of time he spent with each family, he had bonded with no other
male, not a father, not a brother, and for certain no cousin,
uncle, or family friend. Everything still was trial and error, and
yet…and yet he had these strange memories of things he liked but
didn’t yet quite understand, but as he continued to grow he would
come to realize that to learn anything he would have to bond with
another male, and then he would begin to learn more and more.

Most importantly, to him, he really wanted to
learn what that new word
‘reaped’
meant.

The woman of the house grabbed his arm and
pulled him to the kitchen where the man was. Then she lied just as
unapologetically as the young girl had, “This kid just raped our
seven-year-old girl.”

‘
Raped?’
He felt really confused. He
was sure the girl had said
‘reaped.’
No matter. He would
learn
both
words!

“We’ll have to take this one back,” the woman
of the house continued, “But we’ll probably lose the girl too, and
it’s still two more days till the middle of the month.”

Yeah! They’ll lose money!

Chapter 26
A few Foster Homes
Behind

The navy blue house with beige-colored trim
was a mansion: Two stories were capped with walnut-colored
shingles. It appeared to have a finished attic, as well as a
basement. Towers rose from two corners of the house, each floor
with a bay window, and other large windows everywhere. A
wrap-around porch appeared to go all the way around the house, with
columns about every eight feet.

The chaplain rang the doorbell.

“I think this is about the nicest house we’ve
ever been too,” Nicole offered.

“I was thinking the same thing,” he agreed,
“Raising foster children must be paying well.”

Two more years had passed before the chaplain
and Nicole—along with working for Riley Stokes—were able to track
Les Paul to this foster family. Nine long years had now passed and
they didn’t feel any closer to their goal—their unqualified goal.
And what, exactly,
was
their goal? Neither knew for sure and
they rarely discussed it, but both knew something had to come to
pass eventually. Also, they still had no unequivocal proof that
their quarry was actually Les Paul. The trail of evil, however,
left little doubt. But even the
idea
of evil, at times, was
hard to stomach, as most acts by Baby Boy-doe9, were usually rather
minor, yet acts not likely performed by 99.9% of normal children.
But then, of course, there were the two unproven murders, and no
law enforcement office in the world would believe a two-year-old
had flawlessly pulled off two murders.

They originally had thought that having the
name
‘Baby Boy-Doe9’
would make him easier to track. What
they hadn’t counted on was the number of different family services
centers they would have to deal with, plus attitudes and outlooks,
and plain stubbornness from the different personnel, especially the
ordeal of getting past each receptionist to even get to
talk
to someone who knew what was going on. Between every different
foster home it had been one hoop after another.

The charge of rape, though, as this family
was putting forward, seemed a bit much for a seven-year-old to
commit on another seven-year-old—today as a nine-year-old,
maybe
—but the chaplain definitely wondered if it could be
true. Strangely enough they both truly believed the two-year-old
had murdered, but
rape
…?
Come on!
He punched the
doorbell a second time. He could hear the chimes ringing inside the
exquisite house. Ten in the morning, but still. They should be up
by then.

Another moment passed. The door opened. A
woman in a forest-green robe with bright red hair, about forty,
appeared, “Yes, may I help you?”

“How are you, ma’am? My name is Radford
Ohare, and this is Nicole Waters. We’ve been hired by Baby
Boy-Doe9’s birth parents to find him, and bring him home.”