I held his body against me and cried, rocking him back and forth like a father singing a lullaby to his newborn child. His head flopped backward and I could see that his facial prosthesis on the left side was starting to come loose from exposure to the cold. I pressed it back into place but it wasn't going to stay. I'd need to find some spirit gum. I reached down and removed the syringe from his arm. A glass vial lay on the floor near my feet; I could easily read the word methylmorphinan on its label.
He'd given himself a massive overdose of morphine.
At least he hadn't been in pain, that was something.
Wasn't it?
I kept rocking him back and forth, and was soon aware of the sound of someone signing, softly, slowly, with great tenderness. It was a voice I didn't recognize. It was my own.
"Sleep my child and peace attend thee,
All through the night.
Guardian angels God will send thee,
All through the night.
Soft the drowsy hours are creeping,
Hill and dale in slumber sleeping,
I my loved ones' watch am keeping,
All through the night..."
Except when I got to the "…hill and dale" line, I sang: "…Bill and dale look dumb-er sleeping…" but no one laughed.
I stopped myself, then lay him back down carefully, pushing the prosthesis back into place once again.
And that's when I saw the folded piece of paper held in his palm by a rubber band that he'd wrapped around his hand.
I slipped it from his hand and unfolded it:
Dear Pretty-Boy:
If you're reading this, then I'm guessing you're not exactly thrilled with me at the moment. I'm sorry. This wasn't something that I did in the heat of the moment or in the depths of despair or anything all melodramatic and tragic like that. I gave it a lot of thought, and realized that it was really the best thing all the way around. I'm saying I was happy with the decision, okay?
I had a great last night. I made pizza and popcorn, and I watched a bunch of great movies, and I listened to records, and I finally read Winnie-the-Pooh. Man, that was a good book, thanks for mentioning it to me.
Here's the thing; I left the other computer in the upstairs hall closet for you. You need to take it. I figured out Grendel's password. You'll never believe what it was. Ready?
Mommy. Ain't that a kick in the balls? Imagine what a psychiatrist could do with that one.
Anyway, all his private files have been opened and saved in a folder called "Get This." It's got everything, Pretty-Boy; the code-key for the e-mails, phone numbers and addresses of all his party guests and distributors, receipts, everything. Take it, and use it, and fuck them up real good for me.
There's also another envelope full of money in there, about another thirty thousand dollars. Take it and buy that wife of yours something nice. She deserves it for putting up with the likes of you. And don't get noble like I said, don't turn the money over to the police or anything like that or I'll be really put out. My guess is that once all of this is made public, the names of the families will come out soon enough. Send it to them, or give it to charity, or hand it out to homeless people, I don't care. Just don't tell anyone you have it. Consider it our way of spitting in Grendel's face one last time.
Take whatever you want from the house. There's some really nice stuff.
But don't leave this house standing. You'll find about a dozen cans of gasoline over by the shelves down here. Douse this place and burn it to the ground. What the gas doesn't take care of, the alcohol and formaldehyde will.
I don't want people turning this house and what's inside it into a freak show. The idea of newspapers and television and tabloids foaming at the mouth over what happened here makes me sick, and it would only hurt Arnold and Rebecca and Thomas and Denise. None of them will name you, Pretty-Boy, and neither will I. (You'll notice that I haven't once used your name in this letter? That's just in case you're not as smart as I think you are and someone else finds it first.) But if you go public with this and they ask one of them if they know you, they'll tell the truth. But that question will never be asked if you keep quiet.
I'm sorry to dump all of this in your lap, but like I said, you're one of the good guys and I trust you to do the good and decent thing.
I never was one for long good-byes, so I'll just say please leave me here and thank you for being my friend an go now.
Burn this fucking place to the ground.
I bent down and kissed his cold forehead, adjusted his hair piece, then put the letter in my pocket and turned toward the gas cans.
I was just starting with the last can of gas when Tanya came up onto the front porch and saw me.
"What the hell are you doing?"
"Honoring a last request," I said, handing over Christopher's letter.
Tanya read it and began crying softly. "Oh, God, Mark…" She began moving toward the threshold.
"Stay on the porch, Tanya, you don't want to see what's in here."
"Piss on that," she said. "I've never been a helpless female and I'm not about to start now." She stepped inside and saw the jars and what was inside them. She brought a hand up to her mouth and held it there. "Our Father, who art in Heaven, hallowed by Thy name…"
"Outside," I said, pouring a trail toward the porch.
"…Thy kingdom come, Thy will be done…"
I backed down the stairs, still pouring the gas. "Please go start the car and get it turned around. When this goes, it's gonna go fast and it's gonna go big."
She put her hand on my arm. "I'm so sorry, Mark."
I said the first thing that came into my mind: "Why? It's not your fault."
"For all of… all of them," she said, pointing into the house. "For Christopher. My God, how alone he must have been."
I touched her cheek. "Please go start the car."
She said nothing, only nodded her head and sprinted away.
I finished pouring the last of the gasoline. I was about twenty feet from the bottom step of the front porch. We'd have maybe, maybe forty seconds before it all went up. I pulled a pack of matches from my pocket and was readying to stroke one when I remembered the computer in the hall closet.
I ran back inside, choking on the gas fumes, and opened the door, pulling out the shoulder bag—
—and revealing a framed color photograph that had been placed underneath it.
The frame was solid silver and weighed about five pounds. The photograph had been taken outside this house; it showed Denise, Thomas (before the fire), Rebecca, Arnold, and Christopher sitting together very close on the porch. They were smiling and waving at the camera.