Say Goodbye

THIRTY-SIX

HENRIETTA WAS DEAD. HE FOUND HER ON HER BACK inside the ICU, mangled legs curled up tight against her abdomen. He prodded her with his finger, the way a child poked a lifeless pet long after the moment had passed. Henrietta didn’t move. He tried one more time. Wasn’t ever going to move again.

He sat back in the darkened bathroom and for a moment he couldn’t breathe.

Was this what grief felt like? A hard, tight feeling in the chest, a shortness of breath, an overwhelming desire to scream? He pressed the heels of his hands against his eye sockets. It didn’t give him any relief. He could feel the pressure building, building, building.

And for no good reason, he thought of that toddler, the one the Burgerman had forced him to bury under the azalea bushes. His throat burned and his shoulders shook and he hated everything about it, the force of his grief, the ugly sound of his sobs, the impotence of his own pathetic tears.

The police had never recovered the boy’s body. The man knew because he searched the Internet from time to time. That boy remained lost, just as he himself was lost and Aaron and the new boy Scott, and approximately tens of thousands of other children each year.

His brother had been right, so many naughty boys for the Burgerman to grind into dust.

That’s what he’d been doing for decades now. Grinding, grinding, grinding. Devouring lives by the dozen, from the innocent to the not-so-innocent. It hardly mattered to him. He took, because destroying others was the only time he wasn’t afraid.

The end was coming. He could feel it now. The police scanner had been humming for the past three hours with word on a shooting at the historic Smith House. The dead was not a federal agent, but an unidentified boy. Aaron had failed. The agent had gotten him first, or who knows what. It hardly mattered. Henrietta was dead, Aaron was dead, and the younger boy had disappeared into the house lower on the hill. All that was left was Ginny, and she was nothing but a lying slut.

If the police found her first, she would give him up. Betrayal was what women did best.

He had to think, form a plan, but first, of course, he needed to tend to Henrietta.

Three-oh-five a.m. He happened to glance at the time, and the moment he noted the hour, it came to him. He knew exactly what needed to happen.

He laid out Henrietta in the middle of his bed. Then he crossed to his shelves, where the rest of his collection rested in row upon row of glass terrariums. He started on the left side and worked his way to the right, removing each lid. Then on to the nursery, the brown recluses’ room, the spinners’ room. Slowly, methodically, he set each and every spider free.

Then, out in the garage, he gathered half a dozen cans of gasoline.

He started with the computer, as that had the most evidence against him. Then into the living room, saturating the sofa cushions, the curtains, the cheap particleboard bookcases. Then into the boys’ room, moving from there up the stairs into his inner sanctum. He soaked the mattress bearing Henrietta’s body, a funeral pyre for a great warrior. Then headed back to the garage for the final two cans.

He heard sirens in the distance. More patrol officers heading to the Smith House. Or coming for him?

He’d already spent ten long years in the cruelest goddamn prison on earth. Like hell he was going back.

They should’ve found him, he thought with a fresh burst of outrage, uncapping the gas can, pouring, pouring, pouring. The stupid police should’ve trailed the Burgerman, burst into that first hotel room, and carried him valiantly away. But no, they never came. Not once in ten years. Not even at the bitter end.

They had failed him. They had let him become what he had become.

And now he would show them. He would show them everything the Burgerman had taught him how to do.

Last gasoline can was empty. He threw it into the guest bedroom in disgust, droplets spraying onto his hand and filling his nose with an acrid odor. He could hear the sirens again, gaining in intensity.

Not much time left.

At the top of the landing, he had to dance over four hairy forms, the first of the tarantulas escaping from their terrariums, trying to get the lay of the land. He took the stairs two at a time. At the bottom, he found two more of his pets, already locked in a savage embrace, fangs trying to rip through hard exoskeletons, legs grappling with each other’s heads. First taste of freedom and the territorial cannibals had already started to fight.

Girls, he wanted to tell them, you ain’t seen nothin’ yet.

But no time for talking. He jerked open the hall closet, where he kept the gun safe. A swirl of the dial, flick of the wrist. He popped open the vault and regarded his arsenal.

Sirens, cresting over the hill.

Nine millimeter, Glock.40, shotgun,.22 rifle. Boxes and boxes of ammo. He stuffed everything into his rifle bag, hands shaking, spilling out some of the shells.

Tires, screeching out front.

“Fuck it!” The man grabbed his bag and bolted for the back patio.

At the last moment, he remembered, fishing the Zippo lighter from his pants pocket, and letting it rip.

The first spray of fire leapt through the kitchen, singeing the hair on the back of his hands, making the droplets of gasoline on his own flesh start to burn. He swatted at his left hand impatiently, watching as the fire burst down the hall and made a mad dash for the stairs.

And maybe it was just his imagination, but he thought he heard the first spider start to scream.

Destroying the thing he loved. Doing what he did best.

Except there was one more person who owed him. A love that had never died, even after all these years. Aaron had failed. The Burgerman would not.

He hefted the dark green bag over his shoulder and slipped out the back door, as a white police van roared into his driveway, as the downstairs window blew out with the force of the flames, and as his entire collection started to burn.

Rita was awake and looking out her window when the first siren split the air. She didn’t react to the sound, but stayed in bed, watching as a bright orange ball rose above the trees.

She understood immediately where the fire was coming from, the old Victorian up the hill.

And it didn’t surprise her one whit when the boy suddenly appeared in her doorway, hands behind his back.

She didn’t talk, just threw back the covers, got out her gun.

“Child, you have something to do with this?”

“No, ma’am.”

“Been here all night?”

“Yes, ma’am.”

“All right. He’s coming then. We’d better tend to the doors and windows.”

The boy drew out a knife.