Shadow of the Past (37 page)

She shrieked with surprise, and he
winced as tiny bits of metal pelted his back. They looked back and
saw that one of the pipes had ruptured under the pressure and was
now shooting flames upwards and into the ceiling, which was already
beginning to catch fire.

“Oh god!” Christine screamed, joined by
high-pitched hissing as one of the other pipes began to give. He
turned and kept tugging, hoping the explosion had done something to
loosen the chain or the crossbar holding it up. The only thing it
had done was make it hotter and harder to breathe.

“Mark!” Christine said. “Get out of
here! Get help!”

“No, there’s no time!” he said, yanking
and pulling at the chain also. “I’m not going to leave you
here.”

“Mark,” she took a deep breath. “Don’t!
Just go before it’s too late.”

“No. This is my fault, and I’m going to
get you out of here.”

She opened her mouth to say something,
but there was another explosion. Not the furnace this time, but a
gunshot. The chain spilled off the bar it had been wrapped around
and down onto the floor.

“We’re all getting out of here,” David
said, down on one knee, using his knee to steady his gun
arm.

“The gun . . .” Christine said as the
three rushed up the steps.

“Spare clip on my belt,” David
said.

They sprinted through the kitchen and
when they got to the front door they found it open. Whatever had
been keeping it shut was hopefully too busy being burned out of
existence. On the first floor smoke was already pouring up through
the floor boards. Regular smoke, Mark noted before he left. Not the
black and evil kind.

“Go,” David said, waving them on after
they left the yard. “Don’t stop running until you get down the
block.”

“What are you--” Mark said, looking
back over his shoulder as he ran.

“I need to radio this in, get some fire
crews here. Go!”

They did as they were told, stopping
and leaning against a tree across the street at what they hoped was
a safe distance. David ducked into his car for a few seconds, and
then went over to the houses on either side of Corwin’s, which was
now producing a steady stream of smoke from the basement and ground
floor windows.

Christine looked over at Mark, who was
watching the scene with a blank face.

“We can go further down the block and
wait, if you want,” she said.

“No,” Mark said, not looking away. “I
want to watch it burn. I want to see it burn to the
ground.”

Chapter
Thirty-Four

“We need to come up with something,”
David said softly.

They were in a small, curtained off
exam room at the hospital, waiting for a nurse to come back with a
doctor to put stitches in David’s head. After running to warn the
neighbors, he’d almost fallen over from exertion.

“What do you mean?” Christine said,
rubbing her wrists where the chains had chaffed them
raw.

“We can’t exactly tell them the whole
truth,” David said.

“Why not?” Mark said. “I’ll just tell
them everything, and they can just do whatever. I don’t really
care.”

“Mark, I know you’ve had a hard day,
but that’s the stupidest thing I’ve ever heard,” David
said.

“Why?” Mark snapped, and then lowered
his voice. “I did it, remember? This whole thing is my fault. I
don’t need to drag you guys into this any further than I have. I
don’t care if they--”

“Stop it,” Christine said. “If you let
them take you away, if you tell them that you did those things then
Corwin will win.”

“Christine, it wasn’t like that. It . .
. it wasn’t like that.”

“What do you mean?” David said. “That’s
what I thought this thing was about too.”

“It was, and it wasn’t.”

“You better talk fast,” David said,
“because I can only stall answering questions for so
long.”

Mark took a deep breath and he told
them everything.

He couldn’t bring himself to look up
when he told them what Darren had revealed to him and how he knew
it was true. They didn’t question him at all, just stayed
quiet.

“Mark,” David said, coming close and
putting a hand on Mark’s shoulder. “This doesn’t change anything.
This wasn’t your fault and you didn’t actually do any of those
things. He used you, and I’m not going to blame you for something
that may have happened in a past life.”

“I guess.” He looked over at
Christine.

“You’re right,” she finally said,
looking up at the two of them. “It doesn’t change anything. Not
really.”

“Okay,” David said. “Let me think, and
as hard as it is, we need to remember exactly what happened, as
quickly as possible. I think I can fix this.”

It turned out that fixing it was easy,
because everyone wanted it fixed. Neat, tidy and packed away so
that Cedar Ridge was a nice place to live again. All they needed
was a story, and Detective Prescott and Mark were happy to give it
to them.

All they had to do was pin it on Jack,
and his unhealthy fixation with Mark. It was a fixation that ran so
deep that, after reading about Cedar Ridge’s one and only serial
killer in a book from his father’s rather extensive local history
collection, he decided to investigate it for himself. In doing so,
he found Corwin’s murder weapon and what he thought would be the
perfect way to terrorize Mark.

Jack targeted Mark’s friends and the
school guidance counselor who had, on several occasions, called
Jack “trouble” and “dangerous.” It was also at this time that
Jack’s friends noticed his increased interest in Mark, and they
even believed that Jack had been involved in a traffic incident and
assault in the following weeks, perhaps with some other group of
boys they didn’t know.

On the final day of his life, Jack
snapped and killed his father, and then headed for Mark’s house.
Mark wasn’t there, but his Uncle Joe was. He and Jack fought, and
Jack pushed the man down the stairs, killing him. When Mark came
home he found a note from Jack telling him to call him or more of
his friends would die. When he did he demanded that Mark meet him
at Justin Corwin’s house. Panicked, Mark called Christine to warn
her. She called Steve who then called Detective Prescott and all of
them made their way to the house.

When Christine and Mark arrived, Jack
took them hostage. When Steve and Detective Prescott showed up Jack
disarmed him, executed Steve and beat Detective Prescott into
unconsciousness. After that, Jack and Mark struggled, Jack was
shot, and the three of them escaped before the fire that Jack
started in the old furnace got out of control and burned the house
down.

The details the three of them cobbled
together all checked out. They thought they’d lucked out when they
found that Jack’s Dad had the same book that Mark had checked out
of the library, but the real nail came when they found a sheet
stained with Ryan and Mr. Baker’s blood. None of Jack’s friends
were eager to associate themselves with him after what he’d done to
his father came to light. After a talk with David they were more
than willing to corroborate the group’s story. It was thin and
far-fetched, but it was all the Cedar Ridge police had and they
were more than willing to put a close to the case that had put them
in an uncomfortable spotlight.

Mark went over their amended version of
events in his head so many times that in the following weeks when
he was telling it to police officers, lawyers and child services
agents, it felt more real than what had actually
happened.

Christine’s brother’s funeral was the
day after their ordeal in Corwin’s house, but Mark didn’t go.
Christine’s father woke up the following day and didn’t say
anything coherent enough to damage the official version of what
happened.

Mark didn’t go to Jack’s funeral, which
he was told was very small and organized by relatives from out of
state who dealt with the matter with as much speed and little
fanfare as they could muster.

He did go to Steve’s funeral. David
went with him, and Mark insisted that they stay as far away as they
could from Steve’s parents. That didn’t keep Steve’s mother,
hysterical with grief, from spitting at Mark and cursing at him at
the top of her lungs as they were leaving. At least now she has a
real reason to hate me, Mark figured.

Joe’s funeral service was small and put
together by most of his friends down at work. Mark had known so few
of them he hadn’t stayed at the service long, not wanting to hear
them extolling Joe’s virtues as a friend and drinker.

After that, Mark decided he had enough
of funerals.

“But things are getting better, right?”
David said, passing Mark the gravy.

“I guess,” Mark said. “I mean, I guess
it’s not like prison, but . . .”

“It’s still a group home. I know. It’s
not exactly the best place to be.” David said.

“What’s a group home?” David’s son Eric
asked.

“It’s a place where boys and girls go
who don’t have a family, sweetie.” Monica, David’s wife
said.

“Oh,” Eric said, forgetting all about
Mark and digging into his turkey.

“Thanks again, Mrs. Prescott,” Mark
said around a mouthful of food. “This is really nice. It’s been a
long time since I had a Christmas dinner like this.”

“Well, it’s the least we could do Mark,
and please, call me Monica. I’m still too young to be called
‘Missus’ all the time.”

David opened his mouth to say
something, but the phone rang. “I’ll get it. And if it’s
telemarketers on Christmas Eve, I’m going for my gun.”

They all laughed and Mark took another
bite of food. David pulled a couple of strings and got Mark a pass
to spend the holiday with his family, which definitely beat the
alternative of sitting around waiting to be assigned to a foster
family. Christmases with his Uncle had always been kind of dour,
but even though he was going back to the home later in the
afternoon Mark figured this one was going to seem like a picnic in
comparison.

“Mark,” David said, hand over the
mouthpiece of the portable phone. “It’s for you. You can take it
into the study.”

“Oh,” Mark said, getting up and taking
phone. “Thanks.”

“Hello?” he said when he got in the
study.

“Hey,” Christine said.

“Hey yourself,” he said.

“How’re things?”

“Good. You?”

“Good. It’s kind of weird here, but my
Dad is home and it looks like he’s going to be getting
better.”

“That’s really good to hear. I was
worried about him.”

“Yeah, we all were. I can’t talk long,”
she said. “My folks would . . . well, I don’t think they’d
approve.”

“I understand.” They paused, and,
grasping for something to say, added. “How’s the new
school?”

“Okay, I guess. Kind of like every
other private school I went to. Strict with terrible dress code but
other than that it’s school.”

“Cool, cool.”

“Look, Mark,” she said. “I just . . . I
just wanted to wish you a Merry Christmas and say sorry about
things getting weird. Y’know, after.”

Mark nodded. Aside from a couple of
hearings they hadn’t seen each other at all since that day, and
every time they’d been close she hadn’t so much as glanced in his
direction.

“No,” he said. “I’m . . . I’m real
sorry about everything. I wish you had a chance to not have things
be so--”

“It’s okay.”

“I mean, if you hadn’t met me,
then--”

“Mark,” she interrupted.
“Even with everything that happened I’m glad I knew you. Everything
that he said, even if it was true, wasn’t
really
true. It took me a while to
really digest everything but I know it wasn’t your fault no matter
what your past life might have been.”

“I know. I’ve been thinking about this
a lot, and I think you’re right.”

“Good, I just didn’t want you to be,
y’know, blaming yourself for stuff you couldn’t control. I may have
blamed you at first but I was wrong and I’m sorry.”

“It’s okay, I--”

“Mark I gotta go, my Mom’s
coming.”

“Okay. Well, take care of yourself,
okay? Merry Christmas.”

“You too,” she said, and then hung up.
Even though he’d done everything he could to make peace with what
had happened he could now feel the final piece of the puzzle click
into place and a weight lifting from his shoulders.

Oh sure, everything’s fine.
All you have to do now is live in a crappy “group home” with people
that make Jack look like Sunshine Bear while you wait for some
family to decide you’re worth having around. Then you get to go out
in the world with the small bit of life insurance money Joe left
you. It’s nowhere near enough to go to college so good luck finding
a job in a crappy economy with the albatross of being connected to
a mass murder spree around your neck. Yeah, everything’s coming up
Watson.