HAUNTING STURGEONS: Chapter Twenty-Five

Previously in this blog serial...

(Click here to read Chapter Twenty-Four) 

Now the HAUNTING continues...

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    I am placing pressure on the trigger, its metal warm from my touch.  This is it.  This is the moment I have been preparing for since my father’s funeral.  The moment I finally release the last ten years.  My mother’s tears, my father’s rage and my brother’s final breath all narrowed into a single bullet.  A bullet that I will fire into the man who failed to protect us.  Fury swells up inside me, ready to destroy everyone in its path. 

    Straker will feel the pain of my father as the bullet hits between his pale brown eyes.  A spray of blood will shower me as his body crumples to the ground.  His life will fade away, nourishing the grass and the nearby trees with justice.  I will leave him here to haunt these woods, like Tommy was left, becoming just a memory. 

    Sam will say his late husband’s name, sitting on the edge of a bed in their empty home.  His hands will clutch a memorial folder as tears begin to fall again.  He will crawl onto the bed and hold a pillow close, trying to detect a lingering scent of the one who is gone.  Sam will sob into the pillow, heavy tears of despair, like my mother after losing Tommy.  

    Eddie will wake up alone, finding my letter on the nightstand.  He will sit on the edge of the motel bed, clutching my words.  Confusion will be extreme for Eddie, like mine after Tommy’s disappearance, until he hears of the body found on Stickler Hill.  Then maybe he will try to understand why I left.  Maybe Eddie will hear more from his father and be able to forgive me one day. 

    I feel the fury cresting, Straker standing motionless in front of me.  We are both waiting for this one-sided standoff to end.  One shot and done.  He will be dead, the consequence of his inaction ten years ago.  Then I’ll walk away and…I don’t know.  Hide myself from the world?  Take my own life?  How would that be fair?  Even with my letter, Eddie will always have more questions than answers.  Straker’s husband will always carry a profound sense of loss.  A loss I will have caused.  The enormity of what I’m about to do fully hits me and I can’t.  I can’t inflict the same pain that my parents experienced, the same pain I continue to feel.  Fury breaks, crashing and draining away as I remove my finger from the trigger. 

    There is something in Straker’s eyes as I begin slowly lowering my father’s gun.  Did he suspect I wasn’t going to shoot?  Was he hoping I would?  A bellowing voice interrupts my thoughts and I freeze, the gun pointing at Straker’s chest.  I look towards the commotion, barely comprehending the sight.  

    A short, stocky man is running up Stickler Hill.  His dirty blond hair shines in the sunlight, his eyes wide in panic or fear.  It takes me a moment to recognize that Clyde Woodhouse, my childhood police crush, is charging at me.  It seems like slow motion as he jumps forward, shoving me to the ground.  He is pinning me down and I instinctively struggle against his strength.  I free one hand and begin pushing him as he grabs for my father’s gun in the other.  Like impetuous children fighting over a toy, we wrestle for the deadly weapon.  I jerk my other arm free, somehow getting it twisted between us, which gives him opportunity.

    Clyde Woodhouse is wrenching the gun from my hand, a look of fierce determination in his hazel eyes.  Either out of survival or an unwillingness to part with my father’s final possession, I stop pushing to reinforce my grip with both hands.  Then I feel it, a sudden lurch, like a quick punch to my gut. Then I hear it, the severe crack of a gunshot ripping through my ears, gradually reverberating into silence. 

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The HAUNTING continues in… 

   

Thank you for reading or listening to my half-blind words! 

Freak Out, 

JLH 

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