Vengeance: Mystery Writers of America Presents

spaceship or anything a normal kid would create, the little son of a bitch was making a gallows, just so he could threaten me.

I charged across the room, my arm pulled back, and Dylan flinched as though he thought I might hit him. I didn’t. Instead, I swatted the blocks aside, watched them scatter across the floor. A couple of the pieces flew toward the easel and landed at Royce’s feet. He stared at me in utter shock. Rebecca whirled and stared at me. But I ignored her and looked right at Dylan.

“You knocked down my galley,” he said, his lower lip starting to quiver.

“Yeah, well, fuck you and your goddamn galley.”

I was about to say more when Rebecca stomped over, kicking aside one of the fallen blocks. “Eddie, get your stuff and go.” That was all she said, that I was fired.

When I got down to the lobby, I went into the bathroom and splashed cold water on my face and then ducked into a stall, where I tried to throw up. But I couldn’t. I was angry and confused. I went through it all, trying to imagine what I should have done differently, but I knew that things had had to end like this. Dylan had made sure of it.

I sat in the stall for an hour, maybe more, and tried to calm myself down. Dylan was dangerous. He was sick, truly sick. At least I wouldn’t have to see him again, but what about Britta? What if he tried to hurt her to get back at me? Or one of the kids I really cared about, like Amber?

I couldn’t allow that. I wouldn’t.

I slipped out of the bathroom, but instead of going for the exit, I ducked into the shadows of the sprawling lobby. Behind me, the basement door had been propped open and I stepped inside the stairwell and peered out from there. I heard the murmur of restless adults waiting for the elevators to come down. Through the faint noise, I soon heard the voices of eager campers, including some of mine: Amber and Michael, Royce and Cory.

I stepped out from the shadows and saw Britta leaning wearily on the baby stroller and talking to Rebecca. I wanted to wait for Rebecca to go away so that I could explain to Britta what had really happened with Dylan. I felt sure that she would understand.

In the stroller, Dylan’s sister opened her mouth in a wide O and began to wail. Britta fumbled around in the stroller, opening and closing zippers, muttering. Finally, she found a bottle and stuffed it in the baby’s mouth.

“Let’s go,” Dylan said, tugging at Britta’s hand. “I want an ice.”

“Just one minute,” she said, turning back to Rebecca.

Dylan began to push his sister’s stroller in circles around the lobby. Britta watched casually, listening to Rebecca, nodding. I wondered what kind of lies my former boss was telling her. Would Britta even want to go out with me after what she’d heard?

Dylan wheeled closer to me. It was almost as if he knew I was there. But no, he must not have, because he jumped when I put a hand on his shoulder.

“You think you’re so smart, don’t you, you little shit.”

Dylan was as solemn and obedient as if he were standing in a church pew.

“I am smart,” he said.

“Not as smart as me.”

I hadn’t thought about what I would do next, not really. It just happened. I grabbed the stroller from Dylan and started walking, looking down at the baby cocooned inside, sucking on her bottle, swinging her tiny fists, Dylan must have looked like that once too, I thought, so helpless and small. No one ever would’ve suspected what he would someday become.

“Where we going?” Dylan asked in surprise as I wheeled the stroller through the basement door.

“You’re going away, my little friend,” I said, and then the baby dropped her bottle. It rolled into the corner of the stairwell and she started to scream, but only for a moment. I had no choice but to act, so I did. I pushed. The whole thing took maybe three or four seconds and then the baby was quiet, the sound of Dylan’s tears filling the void.

I don’t know what happened next. I was already gone, out the service door, then walking calmly down the sidewalk. But I imagine that Britta and Rebecca ran over, and so did everyone else who was there, and they all covered their mouths in horror. I see the baby lying at the bottom of the basement stairs, covered in blood, head cracked open like a coconut. Dylan must’ve stared down at her in disbelief as Britta shook him by the front of his shirt and said, Why did you do this?

No, it was him.

It was who? Rebecca would have asked.

Eddie did it. Eddie, not me! He pushed her, he hates me, he did it! But as everyone knew, I had left camp at least an hour earlier. The police interviewed me several times, but they weren’t suspicious. Dylan was the guilty party. Of course, no charges were filed, since Dylan was only five and no one could — or wanted to — prove that he had purposely pushed the baby down the stairs. It was probably just an accident. Some blamed the janitor who’d left the basement door propped open, while others blamed Britta for not watching the kids more closely.

I went back to college that fall and I met a girl, one even prettier than Britta, and joined a fraternity. I had a lot of friends and a good life and whenever I thought about Dylan, I felt a little sadness mixed with relief.

Dylan’s story got lots of coverage in the papers. I read that he was hospitalized for a while and faced a barrage of psychiatric tests and behavioral evaluations. They must have prescribed him tons of pills. Someone who saw Dylan on the street three or four years later told me he was like a walking zombie, so drugged up that he wasn’t capable of hurting anyone. Not even himself.

I also heard that no matter how many times Dylan was asked, he wouldn’t admit to pushing his sister down the stairs. That’s too bad, because, as I’m sure someone must have told him, confession is good for the soul.

IN PERSONA CHRISTI

BY OREST STELMACH

Two days before the killers came for Maria, a gang of teenagers rampaged across church property. I was washing the liners under my prosthetic arm when I heard them. Their whistles and shouts came from everywhere, as though they had the rectory surrounded. It was just past dusk, too dark to see clearly out the window. All I could detect were amorphous black images, vaguely human, flitting in and out of my field of vision.

Manuel, Maria’s thirteen-year-old son, was the first to come downstairs. As always, he spoke with facial expressions and physical gestures, as opposed to using his tongue. He hadn’t said a word to me since he and his mother had moved into the rectory, two months ago. Given his father had recently been hanged to death over the course of an hour while a block of ice melted beneath his feet, I wasn’t surprised. He stood now at the base of the stairs, his deceased father’s gold watch around his wrist, lips quivering and eyes bulging, begging me to tell him his mother and he weren’t in danger again.

A Catholic priest must be a father. He is a spiritual provider and protector in the image of God, in the person of Christ. The role of father is my favorite part of being a priest, the one that comes most naturally to me and gives me the most joy.

I walked up to Manuel and put my arm around him. I spoke to him in Spanish. “Don’t worry, son,” I said, as though he were my own child. “There’s nothing to fear. I’ll take care of you.”

When I opened the front door, the clucking and crowing stopped immediately. The sight of a six-foot-three, two-hundred-twenty-pound, one-armed and one-legged priest limping on his prosthetic limb as an empty sleeve dangled at his side sent the boys scurrying. All I could hear was the sound of feet pounding the asphalt as they escaped into old Dillon Stadium, across the street.

“You boys go on now,” I said. “And don’t come back. This is a church, you know.”

The screen door was against my back. When I turned and swung it open, the springs let out a long, eerie squeak. It was followed by the sound of a teenage male voice from the direction of the stadium.

“You need me to hear your confession, Father?”