The Camaro Murders Read Online Free Page B

ambush me in sleep.
    I see these images through a lens of red, and they’re filled with every freakish image my subconscious can conjure up. Bodies torn to shreds, disembowelment, corpses moving around of their own accord…and all the while children running and playing in a deranged circle of oblivion.
    Are these manifestations of childhood fears? Maybe. I can’t see why my mind associates them with the cold. The earliest I can recall anything like them is clinging to my mother’s frantic arms. That was the night after Mendelssohn revealed to me his true nature.
    My mother held me and shushed me at the same time. She was so scared when she awoke to my gasping, but didn’t ask what was wrong. She only said, “It’ll be OK, honey.”
    My parents never learned what happened that afternoon in Mendelssohn’s house. I always imagined they had a sixth sense about those things, where they could look at a situation and know something just didn’t add up—my father especially.
    He found me in the back room, bangs plastered to my head in perspiration. Mendelssohn was on the floor. Certain he was dying, I just watched.
    I hate that day. I remember fighting back, as much as a scrawny boy could. I dealt Mendelssohn what I thought was a death blow—my thumb pushed through the soft, fleshy part of his throat so easily. At the time, my immature mind was convinced I was responsible for his passing.
    In truth Mendelssohn didn’t die until a month later. It was a stroke. A common death for a common man, some people said. Held in high regard, he lived as a humble servant of God, and commanded great respect in the Graehling Station Community Church. At least my father said so.
    My father looked up to people like Ezra Mendelssohn—men of order and integrity, men whose character stood above the rest. He would give Mendelssohn the best chair in the living room when he came to call on our family, and the most comfortable pillow to prop up his aching legs.
    I’d sit close by and listen to their good-natured exchange, usually after we finished dinner. My mother and sister would clean up the kitchen while Mendelssohn spoke to my father about raising Godly children and doing good works.
    They never talked about anything bad; most people didn’t. Most didn’t even say much when Starla disappeared. There was just a quiet murmuring about what kind of sick people operated in the world.
    No one got their answers, but I did. I found out all I ever wanted to know in Mendelssohn’s back room. I got my first taste of malaise and hypocrisy and stomached it like I had no choice.
    But I did have a choice. I didn’t have to keep my mouth shut for fear of what my parents would say, and I didn’t have to play dumb with the Sheriff. Those were my selfish decisions.
    The evening chill settles and I need to get the fire started. I’ll sit on the brown carpet and watch long enough to see the cobwebs on the wood melt. Then I’ll write in my notebook for as long as I can stay awake. It’s packed in my bag with a few changes of clothes.
    I never liked the idea of a diary—that no one would ever read it but me—so I journal instead. Someone needs to read my account of what happened. It’s mostly about when Starla went into the woods and never came back…but it’s also about what it’s like to feel my soul slipping away.
    There’s an internal disconnect that I can’t put into words. I’d just as soon dissolve, or fade into some dull smudge. To sink into solitude and forget that I exist is really all I want. Dissatisfaction outweighs everything I’ve ever tried to do.
    I imagine people would soon forget about me. They’d only have some faint recollection of a person, a random face on a random day. “He had a scar, didn’t he? On his forehead—no, his chin. On his forehead and his chin. And boy, was he ever skinny. Yep, he was a rail.