Something Devoid Of Humanity (Long story nearly 4K words)

Samuel Myers took over St Anthony’s in the fall of 2003. It was right after old Reverend Pickton kicked the bucket mid-sermon during the August heat wave that broke every town record since the heritage museum started keeping track in 1918.

He had been teaching the Sunday School class in the basement of the church for over a year at that point.

Sam was built like a defensive tackle. Over 6 feet tall, 300 pounds, and hands the size of oven mitts. His face was soft, without a hint of facial hair, and he had empty dark brown eyes, the colour of roasted maple.

The country children liked him probably for no other reason than he seemed to have the mind of a child himself, and most of their homes weren’t places they wanted to be, anyway. Plus, Pickton was a hateful old prick. So for them, they figured any change was good change.

But there was something in his eyes that wasn’t quite right. Something cold. Something devoid of humanity. Something evil.

When Reverend Pickton died, there was no one left at that small country church but him. Him and the children.

This was right around the time that Jeffrey Peters became a constable for Annandale PD, which was about 30 km south of Mill Haven. A small town, but a town nonetheless. A place the Mill Haven country rednecks only visited on special occasions. For a wedding reception or a birthday party where they’d get their kids all riled up by asking, “Who wants to take a trip to the BIG CITY????” And the kids would scream in excitement like they were heading to Disneyland, not a post-industrial wasteland, population four thousand.

Jeff was from Annandale, had spent his whole life there, other than heading out west to take the police course and hopping on the first flight back. He didn’t think the job would be a shoot em up Stallone flick, but he hadn’t accounted for the boredom. The fucking boredom.

Most evenings he patrolled for an hour or two. Going down Main St, then Water, circling back around Centre St, before hitting Main again, followed by some zig-zagging through a few small roads, and a couple of cul-de-sacs, then back to Benny’s. The only 24-hour cafe in town.

He was 33 with a kid a couple of time zones away, because Angie wanted to see the world, and Jeff assured her it was the same bullshit everywhere, just different scenery and customs. She had retorted that those were wise words coming from someone who’s never had the courage to leave his fucking backyard.

She left him, and because of Jeff’s history with alcohol and a small stint with heavy drugs in his early 20s, Angie had no problem convincing her uncle, the honourable judge Macmillan, who hated Jeff, that the safest place for Aaron was with her.

Benny’s head waitress, Jenny Anderson, was 42, and they were a hard 42 years. Once upon a time, she had been Miss Annandale. Back in 84 or 85, but that had been her peak, and since then it had been one shitstorm after another. Eventually she gave up trying to be beautiful, and settled for moderately content.

“Another long one?” Jenny said on the evening of November 4th. Jeff was staring out the window, whether at his own reflection or the vacant office building across the street, he wasn’t sure.

“Are there any others?” He asks and raises his half-empty cup of black coffee. She tops him off and smiles, adding that there are worse problems to have.

“Would you rather get a call saying there was a shootout across the street or something?”

He thinks about it, and wonders. The tough guy in him figures he would take that over this, but the introspective in him knows that hypotheticals don’t get you shot, or possibly killed.

“No, I guess not. I wouldn’t mind crashing an underage drinking party or something though”

Jenny laughs, then realizes that she has nothing to add, and becomes self-conscious and uncomfortable.

“I should get g-” she says, turning her body towards the counter, but Jeff cuts her off before she can finish.

“No, please. Sit. Don’t leave a guy to die of boredom.”

Jenny looks back at old Hendrix mopping the floor behind the counter, giving her the stink eye, and Jeff tells her to forget it.

“He says anything, I’ll put him in lockup.”

She laughs again. He doesn’t know if it’s sincere or not, but he guesses he doesn’t care. Her laugh is sweet and innocent. The softness of it makes him feel warm and comfortable, like the coffee in his hands.

It reminds him of his childhood. Something he misses desperately at that exact moment. Though those days were far from perfect, there was always the possibility of something brighter over the horizon. He sat in his room, even during the worst of times, thinking that there was so much time to turn things around, so much time to be someone else. Someone better.

He knew motivational speakers, and other parasite brethren like them, would tell him it’s never too late, he could change things anytime. But that was bullshit. Even they knew it.

The two of them are quiet for a minute. He can tell that she’s thinking of something to say. Anything at all to break the silence, because God forbid people stop talking for five seconds.

She scans the coffee shop before having her “A-Ha” moment and saying.

“You know Brenda Turcotte, right?”

“Yeah.”

“Well, she was in here a few days ago and she told me that Sam Myers is running that small church out in Mill Haven. Saint Anthony’s, I think.”

“Yeah, I heard that. Fucking guy is a creep. Or at least he was. I guess I haven’t seen him in years.” Jeff says, remembering that mongoloid as a mongoloid kid. A loner with a thousand-yard stare, who, despite being twice the size as the next biggest guy in school, took shit worse than anyone. Never swung back. Laid down like a log, and stared off into the ether. The stuff of nightmares.

“Remember him back in school?”

“I do.”

“Gives me the willies just thinking about it.” She says, rubbing the newly formed gooseflesh on her arms. “The kids love him, I guess.”

“Cause he’s a retard.” Jeff answers, realizing that maybe he’s letting a bit too much of himself out for a casual conversation at a coffee shop. She doesn’t seem to mind, though. That’s good. In fact, she nods her head in agreement.

“Anyway, she says that the kids are all excited to go to church now, but that he seems to just want them going. Not the parents.”

“What?” Jeff asks, wondering why no one in this town told him anything. The people here could gossip until they were blue in the face, but when they saw a cop, all of a sudden they thought they owed everyone in town some kind of loyalty, like it was code, and they zippered their mouths shut.

Even Jenny has a moment in Jeff’s eyes, where she thinks maybe she has said too much, for no reason at all other than he’s a cop.

“Yeah. She says that there’s always been Sunday School ya know? But now he wants them to go to some weekly kids’ sermon shit during the week, too. Most parents up there are drunk off their asses anyway, so they don’t really care. But Brendas said she’s worried, so she went down to see him. He told her this sob story about being a kid without direction. And that he was treated terribly and all he wants to do is give the kids a place to feel good, to feel loved because he knows that many of them aren’t getting it at home. And that he never got it at home either. That’s the whole reason he feels connected to kids. Not because he’s some pervert or something, but because he never got the chance to be one.”

“Uh-huh. So he wants to live vicariously through them. That’s comforting” Jeff thinks of the size of him and the size of those kids and the parents who will do anything to get them out of the house that they’ll turn a blind eye to the sun.

“Anyway. She said it half-assed convinced her. At least enough not to press the issue any further, but she still thinks something is up. She sees a light on in the basement when she’s driving home from work, and a couple nights ago, she pulls into the little driveway out of curiosity and gets out, walks around to the side of the church, you know by the little graveyard and peeks in. There’s movement, and she swears she hears a muffled scream or something, but she just gets outta there. She’s too creeped out.”

“No kids missing?”

“Well, the little Smith boy has missed a few days of school, but that’s no surprise, really. The kid basically has to take care of his folks. When Auggie is on his benders, the kid never makes it to school”

Jeff’s heart is racing. A missing kid. A new reverend who has always had a toolbox full of screws loose, wanting to be alone with them. And no one says a thing? Only in casual gossip does this stuff come out. What the fuck is wrong with you people? He wants to shout.

“Hmm. Well, you know what. I think I’ll take a drive out there. It’s only twenty minutes. I’ll come back in an hour or so. Probably nothing, but I’ve always thought there was something with that guy. Even as a kid. Taking those beatings, holding that blank fucking stare. He just seemed to know that the universe was going to reward him, eventually. And maybe Pickton dying was that reward. Anyway, I know it sounds crazy, but I'm gonna check. Thanks for the coffee”

“Okay, be careful.” She says, again with that look. Like she shouldn’t have told him about the missing boy because of the code. What code? She doesn’t have a clue, but she tries to live by it.

Jeff winks before dropping a ten-dollar bill on the table. He grabs his jacket and heads outside.

He takes a left out of the coffee shop and stays on Main until he reaches the streetlight at the intersection of Dover and Mason, a light that hasn’t worked since he’s sure Clinton was the President of the United States. It’s black, swaying with the wind coming off the river. He hangs a right then hits exit 327, towards Mill Haven.

He tells dispatch he’s heading out that way on a hunch. It’s a quiet night. He’ll be back within the hour. They don’t care.

The drive is as dark as what he imagines death is like. This sends his head swimming through a sea of unwelcome thoughts. Hateful ones about his town, himself, and even Jenny.

He hates that he’s a cop, an officer of the law, who goes to that coffee shop nearly every night and is met with nothing. These people know stuff. They all know shit. But he just gets a "Hi, how’s it going?" Like he’s a tourist here to see the famous smoke stacks rising from the pulp mill. But he’s not. He’s one of them, or at least he was. He’s spent nearly every second of his life in this town, and they still act like he’s somehow betrayed them. Betrayed the code, by wanting to serve and protect their little shithole.

Angie was right about this place. Right about getting out. It’s not just the scenery that'sdifferent. It’s the people.

The deep thoughts make him miss the Evergreen turnoff, and he takes the new highway that was just a thought in the Department of Transportation’s mind the last time he was up this way. He slaps his steering wheel, yells a few profanities before calming down, and realizing it’s only a few extra miles before he can turn on to Evergreen from the opposite direction.

He hasn’t been up this way in twenty years or so. Probably since Steve Jacobs’ birthday. Where his folks made a big announcement of a summer pool party, only for twenty kids to show up and see a blow-up pool for toddlers.

Stevie sitting in there, snot encrusted in both of his nostrils. Tiny bubbles blowing with each deep exhale. His old man standing over him with a water hose and a cigar. A smile as big and wide as a New York City skyscraper. “What are you waiting for, boys? Come join the fun!”

The memory makes him smile as he drives by Stevie’s old house. Dark and falling apart. Like most of the homes on this street. Lawns littered with shit like everyone is having a middle of the night lawn yard sale. Bikes, and cars without tires, kids’ toys, dog toys, leashes, animal shit, and God knows what else is hidden under the tall blades of grass.

He looks around, remembering why he stopped coming up here. This place was years behind Annandale, and probably decades behind any real city. It was a relic. Just waiting for a hard wind to blow it all down.

Then, out of the corner of his eye, he sees movement along the shallow ditch on the right. First, he thinks it’s a raccoon, a dog, a coyote, some kind of animal. He’s right around what the folks up here call “Dead Man’s Curve”, a sharp swerve where you could place a bet that you’d see an animal, but no bookie would give you any odds. But it isn’t an animal. It’s a kid.

“What the Christ is going on?” He says to no one inside the car. He pulls over on the gravel shoulder, exits the car, and says, “Hey, kid! Kid!”

The boy doesn’t even acknowledge his existence. He keeps walking at a crawl. Jeff calls his name a dozen more times before walking into the ditch and gripping the boy softly by his shoulder.

At the feel of his hand on his torn white shirt, the boy turns around and screams. That primal yell mixed with the unsettling silence of the country after-hours, makes Jeff’s blood run cold.

Again, he’s transported to childhood, where loud noises woke the monsters in the closet. Of course, at home, as an adult, those fears seemed like the results of a child with too much imagination, but out here? He looks around. You could believe almost anything was real.

“Shh, shh, shh.” Jeff says, pressing his finger to his mouth. The kid’s eyes remind him of his best buddy Jack Barthe when he came home from Iraq the year before.

Eyes that always replayed whatever horrors he’d seen in the desert. Horrors that weren’t supposed to be witnessed by human eyes, but once they were, attached themselves to the brain like a slug. Sucking out all the good in the world and leaving only the rest.

“What are you doing out here, kid?” He asks, then realizes the familiarity of the face. “Jesus, you’re Auggie Smith’s boy, aren’t you?”

The kid isn’t yelling anymore. He’s now cold. A face like a marble statue. He nods so slightly, Jeff doesn’t know if his head actually moved, or if he imagined it.

“What are you doing out here?”

No answer.

“Kid, you need to tell me something. What are you doing out here this late?” Again, silence. He sighs. The boy is shivering. So he leads him up the ditch and walks him to the passenger side door. He hesitates for a moment, then gets in.

With the dome light in the car on, Jeff notices dried blood snaking down the boy’s legs, all the way to his socks that could have once been white but were now caked with mud.

He feels sick. In fact, he turns around and throws up on the faded white line of the old highway. The kid doesn’t notice, or if he does, he doesn’t care.

Jeff walks around, looking out at the empty country again. His heart climbing faster into his throat. At that moment, a cup of coffee at the diner, staring at his reflection in the window, sounds like Heaven on earth. A conversation with Jenny. Bliss!

“You live right around Roger’s old gas station, don’t you kid?” The boy again nodding so slightly, Jeff can’t tell if it’s real. But he knows that’s the best he’s going to get and starts for the gas station.

They drive slowly down Evergreen for a couple of minutes before Jeff asks again, “Can you tell me anything, kid? Anything at all? Can you even tell me your name?”

The kid looks at the constable, tears fighting for their lives to stay hidden beneath the sockets, but gradually coming out despite the effort. They slide slowly down his eyes in a slug-race before dropping on his pants.

“Timmy.”

“Timmy. Yes, I should have known. Listen, Timmy.” Jeff says, making sure he says his name as often as he can without making it obvious. This is a deescalating tactic he learned during his training. Not that the kid is out of control, but it works for building trust. And trust leads to talk.

“If something happened out here tonight, Timmy, I need to know. If someone or something hurt you, I need to know Tim, so it doesn’t happen to anyone else, you understand?”

Timmy doesn’t answer. He doesn’t say a word, just points at his house when the constable nears it. He pulls into the driveway and parks the car. The house is decrepit. The exterior makes him think of what the inside must be like. Broken, torn, without a single ounce of love given to it. He feels sad and defeated because he knows that whatever happened to the boy won’t get better inside those four walls.

“Last chance, Timmy.” He says, as the boy reaches for the door handle.

“Reverend Myers.” He says in a pinch above a whisper. Then he exits. He walks with a slumped body towards the front door that’s hanging off its hinges, into a home of unbelievable darkness. Then he’s gone.

Jeff backs out. He places his left index and middle finger on his neck for a pulse. A nervous tick from when he was a boy, that has decided to remind him this evening that you never completely get over the past.

He drives fast the rest of the way down Evergreen. The zig-zag road was a death trap, even during the day, and he thinks about how this was the highway only a few years ago. Kids playing on the road as transports came barrelling through at a 100 km/h. A couple of kids died back in the late 80s and early 90s, but he’s surprised the body count wasn’t much higher.

Jeff pulls into the tiny parking lot of the church. There’s a light on in the basement like Jenny told him Brenda had seen coming home from work all those evenings, and feeling curious enough to check it out, but too frightened to do anything else.

He pushes open the door, his flashlight in hand. The main floor of the church is dark. The pews empty, the statue of the crucifixion behind the altar rising in judgment. But of who? Him? Or Myers? The stained glass windows are dark as red wine, with pictures of Saints in pain.

He walks slowly up the aisle, flashing his light at the pews on either side. Bibles, pamphlets, and nothing else. Except at the second pew from the front on the left is a shoe. A small converse sneaker, the classic black and white design.

Jeff walks back, and to his right, where there’s a small stairwell that leads downstairs. To the light. To the monster.

He takes a deep breath and continues. One step at a time, like a landmine, could be placed on any step.

On the walls to the right and left are pictures painted and drawn by what he guesses are the Sunday school children. They’re holding hands, with big black U’s for smiles, and dots for eyes. Squiggly lines for the girls, long hair, and little spikes for the boys. The sun is a semi-circle in the left-hand corner with protruding rays. Green grass, houses, hills, forests. All the things that children, especially country children, think of as true happiness.

He makes it to the bottom. His gun is out of its holster for the first time since training, and he’s going to that calm place in his mind. That place he has to go, so that his hands don’t shake. They need to stay firm. He needs to breathe.

There’s a shadow moving under the door, and he can hear muffled sounds but can’t quite make out what they are. He places his hands on the knob, and grips it as tight as he can, checking his pulse one more time, before turning it slowly. He pushes open the door.

Reverend Myers. A boy.

Without thinking, he shoots twice. One bullet hits Myers square in the chest, the other just below his left shoulder blade. The Reverend drops to his knees in pain. He’s screaming.

“Don’t do this. The kids need someone. They need someone to help guide them through this world. They need me.” There’s raw emotion in his voice, but his eyes are still empty.

Jeff has the gun pointed at his skull. Once the pleading stops, Myers looks at him. That same stare that tells him he will be rewarded. That same one he used to see back in school. He puts the gun back in his holster. A point-blank shot is too quick.

He bunches up his right fist and swings it at the reverend’s nose like a sledgehammer. He knows it’s broken the second he connects. No doubt about that. Myers hit the linoleum floor like a sac of rotten fucking potatoes. The constable climbs on top of his giant body and begins swinging. Myers doesn’t make a sound.

He just stares, until he can’t.