A Nightmare In Cravenshaw (standard:horror, 5723 words)
Author: G.H. Hadden	Added: Jan 02 2006	Views/Reads: 3621/2605	Story vote: 0.00 (0 votes)
What Craig remembers came back in the dark, and he faced it alone in his bed last night. A truth so terrible it cannot be real. It revisited him in REM sleep, when all dreams are as vivid as life—and a kid’s nightmare of death is doubly so.

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young face from the last small town the last time he clicked on that 
grave web link.  Yet time is an illusion, and for him, it all seems 
like a wild blur... 

"...And now the hour's top headlines from CBC Radio's Calgary office,
here is the CBC news..." 

It's coming from the nurse's station, in the hallway just outside the
door to his room in the D wing at Medicine Hat Regional Hospital.  He 
was powerless to stop it. 

"...An RCMP forensics squad and a haz-mat team from the provincial
health department are investigating the scene of a grizzly triple 
murder and suicide in the quiet Alberta town of Cravenshaw—-located 
twenty-three kilometers southwest of Medicine Hat.  Police are combing 
the area around a farmhouse last occupied by a family of squatters at 
the north edge of town.  There is believed to be evidence of the 
remains of as many as thirty children who have disappeared without a 
trace in the Prairie Provinces beginning in late 2001.  Spokesman, 
Constable Davis Carlsbad of the Medicine Hat detachment, had no comment 
on what specific findings the teams have discovered thus far, but they 
are matching DNA samples collected from families of the missing 
children with trace human remains found on site: 

‘We cannot comment at this time, but the investigation centers on the
recently deceased—forty-two-year-old Blake Marsden, his wife Katie: 
forty, and their two sons: Bryan, aged sixteen, and Dillon, aged 
twelve.' 

The RCMP is planning a news conference in Medicine Hat, scheduled for
later this evening.  It is not widely known what triggered the incident 
that lead to the brutal slayings.  The only apparent detail is that the 
youngest victim, Dillon Marsden, died of a self-inflicted gunshot 
wound. It is feared to be Canada's worst ever case of mass murder, 
surpassing that of Robert Pickton's killing spree of women from 
Vancouver's Downtown Eastside—-and possibly as horrific in scope as the 
Jeffrey Dahmer killings in Milwaukee, Wisconsin—nearly fourteen years 
ago..." 

He remembered the throbbing headache that beat to the time of his broken
heart, and blocking his ears with his fingers just like Wile E Coyote 
before the dynamite blows up in his face.  Still, that callous and 
detached newsman's voice filtered through, and his only defense was to 
roll and bury himself in the warmth of over starched bed sheets and 
cry. 

They gave him drugs to make him sleep; they poked him with needles and
probed him with swabs.  They gagged him with tongue depressors and took 
samples of his spit.  They drew blood from that vein on the inside of 
his elbow joint—and no amount of distraction could keep him from 
noticing how it flowed so alarmingly fast to fill two vials full in 
seconds.  Worst of all was being hunched over half naked like a 
gargoyle on the examining table as the doctors cleansed his lower back 
with alcohol in preparation for a CSF culture.  He held Mon's hand 
tightly and put on a brave face as they tapped his spine ("Don't worry, 
you won't feel a thing after we freeze it.") with a needle's sting and 
drew a sample of brain fluid.  "Good boy." that doctor said with an 
affable enough smile, "See, not so bad."  They took the tears from his 
eyes; they drained mucus from his nose and the piss from his dick. They 
took cuttings of hair, scrapings of skin and a piece of his shit. They 
took his soul...or was that already gone?  He shivered with thoughts of 
those computer monitors in the dark MRI room, with him lying in his 
underwear on that cold conveyor table inside the tunnel, tensed and 
goose pimpled. There was the hum and whine of motors, and that red line 
of light scanned over him. On screen they watched the fuzzy blots of 
bright red, yellow and blue inside his skull—brain activity in real 
time. He found himself trapped in a real life television episode of 
CSI.  Could these technicians read his thoughts too? 

Even with Mom and Dad hovering close by there was no comfort—-only worry
in their eyes and on their faces; only disbelief and discord in their 
quiet conversation when they thought he was already asleep.  Such is 
the way with parents when unforeseen tragedy strikes: they always 
wonder if they could have seen it coming, because in hind sight, which 
is always 20/20, there had to be some sign that all was not right... 

But he was home from that hospital in Medicine Hat now with a clean bill
of health, thankful to be away from the doctors in their white lab 
coats with deep magician's pockets and those false smiles on their 
faces.  Happy to be away from well meaning nurses whose good intentions 
always fell short—-never happier to be wrapped in the tight embrace and 
smothered with kisses from his baby sister. He was taking a week off 
school and would soon start sessions with a counselor. Then the 
questions would come. And how would they ever believe? Come right down 
to it, what did he REALY know about Dillon Marsen anyway? Honestly, the 
kid remains an enigma—-even now. 

Sharon was the first to visit since it happened—-what with Jimmy gone
and Nate in nearly as bad shape as he was.  She brought with her a 
funny Bart Simpson themed get-well card signed by Mrs Flaggerty and all 
the kids in his sixth grade class.  Even a sworn enemy like Davey 
(Bigballs) Ward had scribbled his name to it, and Cass too—-the very 
same kid who was willing to go ten rounds on the playground with him 
one fall day so very long ago.  It stood upon his bureau next to the 
religious one signed by all those at church, and the hockey one sent by 
Coach Greyland, signed by all his fellow Mighty Dragons teammates—-all 
except one.  The signatures that mattered most to him were missing, 
open reminders that things would never be the same. 

Nor would things be the same between he and Sharon.  He knew she was his
girlfriend now—no doubt about it—-and he knew he was in love and it no 
longer scared him.  As it turns out, there are much scarier things in 
this world than girls. Besides, it's good to be loved, to have someone 
care about you enough to tell you the secrets kept locked away from the 
world at large.  Secrets are shackles, the chains that bind us to 
insecurity and shame. "The truth shall set you free" he thought—-a 
quote from some eminent sage of wisdom crept into his mind. It rang 
hollow.  Craig knows all about secrets and truth now. It sickens him. 
Another, a more poignant quote from an old movie with Tom Cruise as a 
JAG prosecutor cross-examining Jack Nicholson, the battle hardened war 
general who says: "You want the truth? You can't handle the truth!" 
came to mind. 

But was that really the whole truth?  ‘There's got to be more', Craig
thought decisively, ‘and either I was too dense to see it or just 
didn't remember...' 

What he remembers came back in the dark, and he faced it alone in his
bed last night.  It revisited him in REM sleep, when all dreams are as 
vivid as life—-and a kid's nightmare of death is doubly so. 

He feels the crisp wind whip fine strands of hair across his face as he
peddled his bike over the old weed-choked ex-C.P.Rail branch line, past 
those Farmers' Co-op and Alberta Wheat Pool elevators standing sentinel 
at the edge of town.  Those wooden prairie skyscrapers are endangered 
species now, and those tracks are lucky to see a train a week outside 
of harvest.  Just past the cross bucks the blacktop falls away to dusty 
gravel. It's a dead-end road to nowhere, and few travel it.  The fields 
out here have run wild, abandoned by those who took the money and ran 
to the city. The land is owned by Esso, Shell, and Petro-Can, and is 
now the domain of oilmen like Dad, who see to it that the seesaw pumps 
and sour gas wells keep their precious black gold flowing. It's dry, 
desolate and treeless in these parts.  No one has lived out here in 
ages. 

'First Jimmy is missing, then Nate in hospital, and now Dillon is gone
without a trace—-what the hell's going on here?  That math genius has 
been absent from school now for almost two weeks without a word to 
anyone...' 

"He's missed two important tests, and his year may be in jeopardy if he
doesn't surface soon.” Mrs. Flaggerty pleaded with him privately in the 
classroom at recess. "Please, I know he's friends with you, don't you 
have his phone number?  The one we have here at the school isn't 
working, and the address doesn't exist.  We don't know how to contact 
his family." 

He shrugged his shoulders, electing to keep his friend's secret.  Craig
knew, but only because he spied on him one day, following his tutor 
home from the library all the way out here to the edge of the badlands. 
The truth is Dillon doesn't have a working phone and home has no 
address.  Each day at lunchtime for days now kids had been asking where 
Dillon was—and he honestly doesn't know.  Sick maybe?  Skipping? 
Skipped town?  There is another more sinister possibility he cannot 
acknowledge. (Missing!) So to assure himself that his worst fears were 
indeed nothing more than the whispers of an overactive imagination, he 
decided to bring Dillon his homework, because that's what friends do. 

He past the ubiquitous leaning barn (like the one seen in every Canadian
tourist book), that gray wooden landmark of rotten wood that defies 
time and nature. Not far now.  This road goes on some distance to the 
north, but he turns off and follows the twin ruts that go in about a 
kilometer more to Dillon's place.  Out of respect to Dillon, he's never 
gone farther... 

And how many excuses had there been?  Christmas and New Year's spent
with family in Edmonton, professional days at Craig's house because 
he's the one with the X-box and a computer.  Friday night sleepovers 
were always at Nate's, because he's the one with the ATCO trailer they 
always used as a clubhouse.  The rest of their time was split between 
the ice pond, the library, and the rink.  It was never a convenient 
time to call, nor the right moment to visit.  After so long and so many 
excuses, Craig finally gave up and accepted the hint that Dillon just 
didn't want any friends over at his place. He supposed it was probably 
for the best... 

That voice is soft and nostalgic as he points to the pictures on the
walls with reverence.  "Those were the best times. I was a horse 
breeder you know, the best in all Alberta. My thoroughbreds have gone 
on to win some of the most prestigious races in North America and the 
world, including the Preakness Stakes, the Queen's Plate and even the 
Kentucky Derby" 

Craig is out in the barn with Dillon's father, just waiting for his
friend's return with some coal for the stove in the old house.  As his 
eyes slowly adjusted to the dim kerosene lamplight he first realized 
how charming those albino eyes really were.  First pink like Dillon's, 
then red, then gold, then yellow, then green, then yellow, then gold 
again: always changing in a psychedelic swirl.  He could not pull his 
gaze away.  The conversation was one sided by now.  Mr Marsden spoke to 
him of blood, the importance of bloodlines, the purity of blood, the 
poisoning of the blood by consumption of processed foods.  He blames 
chemicals like monosodium glutamate, aluminum phosphate and polysorbate 
80.  Now this tall lycanthropic ghoul with white hair, sunken eyes and 
shrunken leathery skin is saying how even the stillborn foals can be 
recycled, their blood drained, their bones ground up, meat given over 
to the feed to make the others healthy and strong, pure and nourished. 

‘False!' Screams Nate's voice from somewhere in the back of Craig's
terrified mind, ‘This is the source of Mad Cow!  Creutzfeldt-Jakob 
Disease!' 

"There's nothing for bad blood but the leaches." Mr Marsden says, and
out comes his trusty little scalpel from the left breast pocket of his 
red and black plaid shirt.  The blade is sharp and clean, as 
immaculately kept as those heavily modified milking machines in the 
stalls where the horses are kept.  That twisted laboratory of feeder 
tubes and stainless steel fermentation tanks are his distillery for the 
essence of life in a place that has never supported dairy stock at all. 
Then Mr Marsden sits comfortably on a bail of hay and proceeds to roll 
up his left sleeve.  He slits along one of a roadmap of varicose veins, 
and a black viscous fluid that might at one time been red poured out.  
He dipped his arm in the barrel of stagnant pond water beside him, and 
when it emerged covered in the fattest black bulbous parasites ever 
seen by a boy's wide listless eyes; he laughed.  "Not a drop to waste, 
my pets." 

He stood again and ran his gnarled white fingers over Craig's cheeks and
lovingly caressed down his neck, and the boy neither flinched nor felt 
his cold touch.  Those dry lips cracked a sickening smile. "Yes," he 
murmured with joy, "such a sanguine boy you are; of good stock, of good 
blood and good humor." 

Craig was paralyzed, numbed by the certainty that he is to die. He's to
be the sacrificial lamb, led to the slaughter by his own misguided 
sense of loyalty!  Now he thinks sorrowfully of his mother and father 
who will grieve the loss of a son, and his sister who will grow up with 
only the fond memory of a brother's teasing tug of her hair.  If only 
hindsight were foresight, then such better fortunes we'd all have. His 
mind is screaming for him to break and run, to get away, but his body 
is not responding. His heart rate was in fact decreasing as the fear 
rose within, and the voice of mistrust spoke up again.  No!  He refuses 
to believe it. Why?  Because, how could Dillon lead him here to his 
doom, betray him after being so helpful?  After they'd helped each 
other.  Both his mom and dad were liars after all, neither of them to 
be trusted.  And Dillon's not here at all!  He doesn't know! Does he? 
How could he not?  Is he not one of them? Is he even still alive?  Had 
he been culled too?  Taken to quench this lust for pure blood? 

So now he's helpless before Dillon's father, dumb and statuesque, as
though he has rigor mortis and is only able to stand at all because he 
was like that when the condition set in. He's silent, but in mind and 
spirit he is screaming blind panic—-his soul trapped.  Only now that it 
is too late has he come to realize what they really are—-not merely 
albinos but blood drinkers, flesh eaters, cannibals—-perhaps even the 
immortal undead.  Can't be; they walk in sunlight.  No flowing black 
capes nor fangs nor coffins for beds.  Mr Marsden is dressed as all the 
farmers out here do, in blue jeans, work boots and a Stetson hat.  No 
haunted mansion on a hill; nope, just a ranch in the middle of nowhere. 
But can any living thing be truly immune to decay and demise?  And even 
if he did listen to the scolding voice within that so often tried to 
warn him, how could he possibly prepare?  Would wearing that silver 
chained crucifix he got for confirmation around his neck burn those 
fingers off?  Would the Power of Christ really compel?  What kills the 
undead—-holy water?  Perhaps.  Garlic?  Certainly not!  A stake through 
the heart—-well, that would kill anyone, wouldn't it? 

He never saw it coming.  None of them did.  First the wailing cry of a
banshee faltering along the path from the house a football field's 
distance away, distracting Mr Marden‘s eyes from the prize, and then 
before either of them heard that first gunshot blast Mr Marsden's neck 
exploded in a fine splatter.  They both fell over, Craig on his back 
spread eagle, lying dazed and confused in the straw with his head 
propped up like he was resting on a pillow in bed.  Mr Marsden 
collapsed the other way, dead or dying, bleeding a pool of black.  His 
eyes no longer spellbound, but Craig was still hypnotized all the same. 


When the barn door finally swung all the way open, bringing the sunlight
and a sudden gust of wind, Dillon stood, wearing the same rough boots, 
denim jeans and plaid shirt he often wore to school, making him look 
like a Sally-Anne orphan.  He was shaken and frightened, with tears in 
his eyes and his dad's .308 Winchester at his side. How such a small 
kid could have shot so strait was beyond comprehension.  Having the 
best target grouping of anyone his age is one thing on the range...but 
this was his dad!  This was for real.   He probably would have been 
white with shock, except his skin was always that color. 

"Hurry!" he shouts to Craig, "Get up!" 

Craig is unresponsive.  He wants to shout; wants to scream, wants to
shriek like that banshee too, because this cannot be happening!  It can 
only be a bad dream!  Only in such nightmares could your friend kill 
his own father in front of you, and only in such dreams could there be 
a creature like that one oozing its way out of his dead corpse.  Yet 
there it is, a gelatinous mass the color of yellow puss with the smell 
of ammonia, a shapeless amoebic blob of mucus that is pouring out of Mr 
Marsden's shattered neck like nothing that could bleed from any mortal 
human. Yes, it seemed to stop and actually sniff at the air.  It looks 
through hidden eyes and smells with unseen nostrils.  And oh yes, it 
thinks too, because it makes a conscious effort to flow itself toward 
Craig. 

There's no time to cry, no time to think.  Dillon drops to the prone
position and braces the rifle for his next shot.  The blast splatters 
it away from Craig, painting the far wall with foul residue.  But 
already the droplets are finding their way back, regrouping for another 
attack. It cannot be killed. It cannot be stopped. 

Craig takes a long strained breath, looking around like someone coming
out of a concussion.  He's moaning, he's screaming too, and this is a 
good sign. Up again, Dillon rushes in like he's storming the beach at 
Normandy, rifle raised diagonally against his chest.  "Come on, we 
gotta get out of here!"  His eyes are swirling in the same becalming 
psychedelic pattern his father's were, but Craig's eyes are scrunched 
up closed.  He can't stand to see the blood, the guts, or the reforming 
blob.  He dare not believe.  He dare not look. 

"Good." Dillon shouts, "Don't look. Just come with me!"  It's all he can
do to get his friend back on his feet again.  Craig is shivering, 
clinging to Dillon like a drowning man would a life preserver.  
Adrenaline is coursing through them both now.  "I'm sorry." Dillon 
says, leading him blindly out the barn.  There is the shatter of glass 
and the roar of flame, the smell of smoke and heat rushes their backs 
as they go, and Craig knows Dillon has set the whole thing alight. 

"What WAS that?" Craing asks,  "Why..." but the words won't come and he
can't understand.  It's that smell!   No, not the burning barn, but 
that smell he knew earlier—-that nagging distraction that Craig caught 
wind of when he first arrived at the door, taken in by a kindly 
middle-aged woman dressed in casual work clothes and white hair tied in 
a utilitarian bun. That voice!  She had ushered him to the kitchen 
table and offered him a piping hot mug of Indian tea at three o'clock 
in the afternoon.  The fancy italic words on that mug read ‘One of the 
greatest blessings God can give us is the gift of a friend who cares.'  
She had thanked him earnestly for the kindness he showed to Dillon, and 
assured him that he had only stepped out to replenish the coal box. 
Everything here was so old, but just like in a museum, kept in 
immaculate condition.  It was cozy and homey—-even with none of the 
modern electric conveniences.  Amish came to mind, or maybe they were 
from some other offshoot Mennonite sect; but of all the things he found 
strange about this happy little prairie home it was that smell that 
bugged him the most. It gave him a vague sense of warning—-that faint 
musky odor something like sweat and soiled sheets mixed with puke. It 
is the smell of old people; chronic disease, like maybe some relative 
bedridden and sick.  Craig ignores it as best he can.  Best not to 
think about it.  His own grandmother was in the same position, and she 
had died with that same smell in the hospital when he kissed her cold 
lips for the last time.  It was the smell before the smell of death, 
when things in the body were going foul, preparing for the eventual 
end. 

The end was coming fast now, running toward them, waving and calling out
to them, begging wildly for them to stop.  That smell made Craig open 
his eyes, and those eyes regarded a sight perhaps more incomprehensible 
than anything he's seen thus far. 

Oh, how it suffers! With woe and pain etched on its' face—-that of a
teenage boy laid low by a kind of leprosy, hollowed to a white waxen 
pallor far worst than that of his father.  His hair was white and 
brittle like straw, and he moved like an animated scarecrow.  His eyes 
were wild green marbles, looking as far away as runaway planets in a 
universe of hurt.  Reason in that gaze is gone, yet in those horrid 
pupils lurked yet a spark of lucidity—-encouragement, even 
orchestration, just as a puppet leading his masters to oblivion.  It 
hobbled along at a mindless gait, shrieking inexorable curses in it's 
own language of hostile gesture.  It is an abominable creature strait 
from the pages of any Tales of the Crypt Keeper comic book, zombified 
bruised bedsore flesh and blood and garment fused together, pleading 
for a death that never came. 

"NO!!  PLEASE!  STOP!  YOU MUST STOP!!!"  Dillon's mother is chasing
frantically behind with arms outstretched to the sky, as if begging a 
miracle from Heaven.  Her plain dress billows in the wind, behind her.  
Her mouth dropped as she saw the burning barn and drifting black smoke 
on the wind.  Craig knows now that her milky white skin has nothing to 
do with being inside the house all day doing chores.  That strong yet 
wonderful voice that hummed tunes from a bygone era as she poured 
Craig's tea was gone.  She screeched like a woman scorned, or a mother 
hen roused to protect her chicks from the fox.  "PLEASE!  YOU MUST'NT 
GIVE UP HOPE!!  BOTH OF YOU!!  DEAR GOD, YOU MUST LIVE!!  ALL WE DID WE 
DID FOR YOU—-THAT YOU TWO MIGHT LIVE!!!”  But her crying eyes and 
hitching sobs said she knew it was already too late. 

Dillon made great efforts to push Craig away, but he would not let go. 
He clung like a cat to a tree. "NO!" he shouted.  "You can't!  SHE'S 
YOUR MOM!!" 

"GO!" Dillon ordered him, again trying to shake him off, "Don't you see?
 We're already dead!  What you saw in that barn is in HER!!  IT'S IN ME 
TOO!!  IN HIM!!  There's no time to explain.  Just run.  GET AWAY WHILE 
YOU CAN!!" 

"NO!" Craig protested, and he looked into Dillon's eyes, and what he saw
scared him beyond protest. 

"Yes." Dillon said  "Once, my eyes were hazel, my skin was as tan as
yours and we were a normal family.  Look!  Look what that thing did to 
my brother at puberty!  He fights it every day!  It's killing him!  BUT 
HE CAN'T DIE!!  That's what'll happen to ME!!!" 

And Craig lets go, not knowing what to do or even what to say. ("It's
ok. If Harry Potter were here he'd shit himself too.")  It's Dillon's 
voice, coming from somewhere inside his own head.  The other boy 
doesn't have to say a word.  He listened to Dillon's instructions and 
did just as his friend told him to... 

Dillon got down to the prone position once again, held his breath and
took the shot.  His mom dropped face first in the dust, twitched, and 
did not stir again.  One more brass casing ejected, one more cock of 
the rifle, one more held breath, and one more headshot puts an end to 
his brother's caterwaul forever.  It's at that point that Craig first 
notices the handgun stuffed into Dillon's back pocket—-and he absently 
thinks of the Boy Scout's motto: "Be Prepared"... 

It is at this point that Craig awakes in a sweat on the verge of
screaming—-his heart pumping at a level he only knows from intense 
physical activity in gym class.  He doesn't remember the rest, but is 
certain there's more.  Why didn't those horses even try to make a break 
from the barn?  There was more fire, and a pit.  Yes, didn't Dillon 
show him a pit somewhere—-some kind of mass grave for them all?  Yes?  
No?  He couldn't say for sure.  He only knew that there were parts of 
the puzzle missing, and no one left to put it all together for him. 

"Walk away." Dillon's voice told him, "Just walk back home the way you
came—and remember the good times.  Think about the good things.  Sing 
that song you guys always used to sing.  In time you will forget all 
the bad stuff.  You will forget it all."  But the albino boy's power of 
suggestion was not yet fully developed, and so Craig walked toward home 
caught in a dense fog of the mind. 

As he walked he thought of those faces on that web site.  All those
missing kids' pictures—-that freckle faced nine-year-old in his little 
league uniform; that girl with fiery red hair from some town or 
other—and of course of his own friend Jimmy, with that winning smile, 
wild hair, that give'r all attitude and those mischievous eyes.  
Captain of the Dragons—-those “Mighty, Mighty Dragons!”   His bestest 
bud in the whole world ever since they'd been old enough to fall flat 
on their faces on the frozen pond playing shoot-outs in minus 30 
wind-chill. 

Unconsciouly he sang that song; the one Dillon told him to sing—-the one
he and his pals always sang on long bus trips. "99 bottles of beer on 
the wall, 99 bottles of beer.  One fell, what the hell, 98 bottles of 
beer on the wall..." 

And that's how they found him, walking back up the road to town like a
toy soldier wound up on a spring, with 55 bottles of beer on the wall, 
a shaken and disheveled gibbering idiot spattered with blood.  He 
remembered nothing of the ride to the hospital in Medicine Hat, 
catatonic, just like poor Nate was when they found him on that night 
when Jimmy disappeared.  Nate's still in Medicine Hat: that stubborn 
pragmatist—-the one least able to accept the unacceptable. 

‘It's incomplete.  There's more I'm not seeing...more I'm not
remembering...more I don't want to remember.' He hopes Nate will wake 
from his own nightmare soon. He must.  He will... 

Sharon's eyes were the most intriguing shade of blue he'd ever seen, a
shade so foreign to him that it defied description.  As much as those 
eyes said she cared a great deal, and how they wanted to soak up his 
pain and make everything better, he could do nothing more than look 
away.  After what he witnessed, after all he'd been through, he felt it 
would be a good long time before he could look anyone strait in the 
eyes again, even ones so beautiful as these. 

So now they're together alone, upstairs in his bedroom—-the one where he
and Dillon studied and watched videos on the computer, together with 
Jimmy and Nate.  Even though the door was open a crack there was no 
chance anyone would walk in and spoil the mood.  Somber though it was, 
they were at least content to be holding each other close against the 
trying times ahead.  The funerals were over now.  For Jimmy, a 
much-loved boy whose tragic end touched the whole town, everyone had 
attended.  No one shed a single tear for Dillon—-except Craig, who 
thinks he knows the truth, but can never, ever tell it.  To put it into 
words would be to acknowledge the unthinkable, to accept the 
impossible--to make it real.  He's not ready for that yet.  He may 
never be ready. 

His parents and Sharon's are on the backyard patio watching the
approaching spring storm roll in, no doubt talking of things that were 
and things that are, and things that might have been; all over a 
service of hot tea and coffee.  His kid sister is safely occupied 
downstairs playing X-Box, probably lost somewhere in Zelda's world. 

Sharon leaned in and kissed him gently on the cheek, and whispered into
his ear, "I want to help you forget.  I want everything to be all 
better." 

Maybe in time she could make it all better.  But still the question
remains, could there be more ticking time bombs out there like Dillon? 


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