Either he miscounted, or I passed out briefly, because “ten” was the next number I heard him say. It was the last number I heard before unconsciousness — blessed unconsciousness — took me under again.
When I came to once more, I was lying on the floor, my legs and buttocks and back afire, my hands and feet tied. I heard a sound like a dying animal might make — half groan, half whimper — and realized it was coming from me. Then, through the fog and through the pain, I heard the seethe and slap of the leather strap again. “Stop,” I gasped, flinching and shrinking from the pain as best I could. The strap struck flesh with a loud whack, but this time I did not feel the impact. I heard another groan, but this time the groan came from someone else’s mouth.
A pair of feet and legs and the leather strap came into my field of view, and a man I did not recognize squatted down and looked at me. He appeared to be about my own age, maybe a few years older. His face was weathered and bore multiple scars — a thin vertical line down his left cheek, another over his right eye, and one across his chin — and the top of his left ear was missing a ragged crescent of flesh. His neck was as thick as a tree trunk, and his shoulders were beefy. The fingers of both hands — unlike Cochran, he had them both, I noticed, as he squatted with his hands on his knees — were tattooed with letters that spelled out F-U-C-K Y-O-U. His eyes flitted rapidly, never quite settling, as he looked at me. “Hurts like hell, don’t it?”
“Just go ahead and kill me,” I said.
“No,” he said. The corner of his right eye — the one with the scar — twitched slightly. “That’s not what I’m here to do.”
“I don’t understand,” I groaned. “Who are you?”
“I’m not somebody who’s got a quarrel with you,” he said. “I’ll cut you loose when I’m done. This here is between me and him. I’ve got a score to settle, and I’m only up to ‘five’ so far.”
Something was coming together in my mind — something about the man’s muscular build and the ragged, amateur tattoos: a prison body, and prison tattoos. “My God, you’re Anthony Delozier, aren’t you? You were in Starke until a few months ago.”
“I expect I’ll be going back again,” he said, “soon as I finish up my business here.”
He walked out of my field of vision, and I heard the dreadful sequence of the strap again. “Six,” Delozier counted. “Did you ever think there might come a reckoning?”
In response, I heard what I recognized as a strained, pained version of Cochran’s voice whisper, “Go to hell.”
“Seven, you son of a bitch. I hope it takes seven hundred to kill you.” There was another windup, and another blow of the strap. “How many of us did you beat? Eight. How many lashes? Nine. An eye for an eye. Ten. And a tooth for a tooth. Eleven. I thought you burned to death forty years ago. Twelve. I thought I’d put wings to my prayer. Guess I should’ve put a strap to my prayer instead.”
The phrase cut through the fog of my pain like a knife. “What did you just say?” My question was punctuated by another blow of the lash on Cochran. I raised my head and said, as loudly as I could, “Wings of fire. You put wings of fire to your prayer.” The lash stopped. The man’s legs walked toward me, and again he squatted. He stared at me as if he’d seen a ghost. “Jesus,” I said, “you’re Skeeter, aren’t you? We found your diary.”
“What are you talking about?” The twitch in his eyes accelerated; it reminded me of a fluorescent light that flickers as it’s heading toward burnout.
“We found your diary, Skeeter. It was in a Prince Albert can under a flagstone.”
“I’ll be damned.”
“It helped us. You helped us. You can still help us. Untie me and let’s call the police.”
My mind was racing back over the diary’s contents. “Your friend Buck. We found his bones. At least, I think we did. One of the sets of remains we found was wearing a compass around the neck. The compass you gave him to help him escape.”
His face — his iron-hard, lifer’s face — twitched and then crumpled, and he put a large, tattooed hand over his eyes and began to sob. His big body shook, and he sat down on the floor, wrapped his arms around his knees, and cried. After what seemed like a long time, the sobs subsided, but still he sat, hunched into himself, his broad back and shoulders rising and falling with deep, ragged breaths.
Underneath the sound of his breathing, I gradually became aware of another sound, and as its volume rose, I knew he heard it, too, because his breathing stopped while he listened. In the distance, a siren was approaching. He raised his head, unfolded himself, and got to his feet, the leather strap still clutched in one hand.
“Skeeter, untie me. Please.” He hesitated, then walked to the bedside and shook out the strap for a windup.
“FOUR-teen.” He grunted as he swung the strap at Cochran, putting all his strength into the blow.
“Skeeter, please stop. Let the police take it from here.”
“FIF-teen.” Under the rain of intensified blows, Cochran’s breaths grew labored now, wheezy. I’d heard such breathing before. It was the beginning of a death rattle.
“Skeeter, we’ve got a lot of evidence now. We found seven murdered boys. We found the chain around the door handles. We can bring this guy to justice.”
“Justice? What the hell is justice?… SIX-teen.”
“We can send this guy to prison for the rest of his life,” I said. “I know it doesn’t make up for what he did, but it’s the best we can do.” The siren was getting close now.
“It’s not the best I can do. SEVEN-teen.”
“Did you kill Hatfield?”
“Hatfield? The son of a bitch that ran the place? I like to think I’d’ve gotten around to it, but I hadn’t yet. If somebody beat me to the punch, I’d like to shake his hand. EIGHT-teen.”
“Skeeter, if you kill Cochran, you’ll never get out of prison.”
“Man, I’m in a place a lot worse than prison. I burned nine boys to death. Didn’t mean to. Didn’t know the doors were chained. Prison’s all I was ever fit for anyhow, thanks to fuckers like this. NINE-teen.”
The siren grew deafening, then fell silent. Blue strobe lights pulsed through the open doorway, casting surreal shadows as the strap rose and fell. “TWEN-ty.” Outside, a car door opened and closed softly.
I heard slow footsteps, then a low, gravelly voice. “Seth?” It was Judson’s voice. On the bed, Cochran groaned. “Seth?” Another groan. “This is Sheriff Judson. Anthony Delozier, if you’re in there, come out now with your hands up.”
“All right,” Skeeter answered. “I’m coming. Don’t shoot. Your man Brockton’s in here with me. He’s all right. But if you shoot, you might hit him.”
“Brockton, can you hear me? You in there?”
“Yes,” I said weakly. “But I’m tied up. Kinda beat up, too.” Through the fog of pain, I struggled to remember something, but what? Seth. Why had the sheriff said Seth? Who was Seth? I knew the name, but didn’t know why.
“Delozier, get your ass out here. Now. Hands up.”
“Coming.”
I heard a clatter, and saw the handle of the lash bounce and twist as it hit the floor. I breathed a sigh of relief, but my relief was short-lived. Delozier’s legs crossed my field of view. He grasped the handle of a tool that was leaning against the wall of the barn, and I saw to my horror that it was an ax. He walked quickly again to the bed where Cochran was tied. In the surreal glow of the blue strobes, I saw the shadow of the ax rise and then descend with a splintering, sickening thud. “Twenty-one, by God,” Delozier whispered. He turned and walked slowly to the door, the ax hanging from his right hand. “I’m coming out.”
When Delozier reached the barn door, he stopped. “You,” he gasped in the direction of the sheriff. “I know you. It’s been forty-five years since you and Cockroach put my friend in the trunk of your car, but I’d know you anywhere, you sodomizing son of a bitch.” He made a low, growling sound — an enraged, animal sound — and ran out of th
e barn, ran toward the strobing lights. A gun fired — once, twice, in quick succession, and, after a pause, a third time. The third shot was followed by a silence so heavy it seemed solid.
In the silence, I heard the answer to the question I’d asked myself a moment before: Seth was Cochran’s first name. The sheriff knew Cochran, and knew him well, I realized; he’d known him well enough to let Cochran select boys for him to molest. The sheriff had known that Cochran didn’t die in the fire at the school. And he’d known that Cochran was here; maybe he’d even known that Cochran was luring me into a trap.
And maybe now the sheriff was going to finish what Cochran had started.
“Brockton?” Judson appeared in the doorway. My only hope, I decided, was to pretend I hadn’t heard what Delozier had said just before the sheriff shot him.