The remains

Chapter 67

I came to.

How long had I been passed out?

Long enough for him to dig a good sized trench in the dirt floor. For a time I just locked my eyes onto him; watched him working, a lit cigarette dangling from his lips. That wiry body soaked with sweat, plastered with dirt and filth, reeking of tobacco. Tiny, yellow teeth ground against one another while he worked, shoveling one spade full of dirt at a time.

Then he caught sight of me.

He saw that I was conscious and he smiled.

“Hello little kitten,” he said, softly. “Cry, cry, cry, little kitten.”

I knew then that what he had in store had nothing to do with his old motivation-his taste for young girls. There would be no touching here. No violations.

There would only be death.

He reached for me. I had no strength left in me to resist. He dragged me the few feet to the trench. He dumped me in. I did a complete roll, landing on my back. I heard him laugh. At least, I thought it was a laugh. It might just as easily have been a sob. He was standing above me, the little monster of a man looking almost huge now. God like.

He had that shovel in his hand.

He stabbed at the dirt pile, retrieved a shovelful of earth, held it over my prone body, and tossed it into the trench. The dirt smacked my body, sprayed into my face. It invaded my mouth, nostrils and blocked my air supply.

There was something inside the dirt. Something other than rock and gravel and clay. The black and white-colored shards of bone. The very old bones covered me. A jaw bone, the teeth still embedded in the broken jaw. A small portion of skull cap. A leg bone. Here finally were the remains of the victims of Whalen’s torture. At long last, the bodies had been found.

Another shovelful of bone-filled dirt fell onto me, this one down by my feet.

He was burying me alive, adding me to his basement cemetery.

Yet another shovel of dirt slapped my face. I coughed, choked as a worm wiggled in my mouth. I tried to wipe the dirt from my eyes, but all strength was bled out. I was already dead. I could still see him, but only through a cloud of dirt and pain.

The bone shards and dirt kept coming, filling the trench, filling my mouth and nostrils. With each shovelful, another bit of life emptied out of me.

I was still alive, but already dead.