The Light at the End of the Tunnel Read online

  “My God.”

  “So you believe me? You’ll stop the execution?”

  The warden stopped and turned to the chaplain, “No, I will not. And you, sir, will speak to Les Paul tonight just as you have to the dozen or so other criminals we have executed since you’ve been here.”

  The chaplain shook his head.

  “You will, or I will replace you, with myself, if need be. I’m not a man of God and I don’t claim to be, but I can read a Bible verse to that vermin just as well as you.”

  The chaplain again lined his eyes with the warden, “I will do it, and may God have mercy on your soul.”

  The warden blinked. He had not planned on hearing anything like his own last rites. But it didn’t matter. It was up to society to change the rules, not preachers who claimed talking to God. He stared at the chaplain, then put his hand on the man’s elbow and directed them onward.

  No more words exchanged as they walked to the cell of Les Paul, where two guard-orderlies were wrapping the man in chains and shackles. The warden’s stomach tightened. He had never liked this part. The man was going nowhere but to the chamber. He could see no need for the bindings, even for a monster like Les Paul.

  The warden’s eyes finally moved to Les Paul, who was looking back, the bastard, always wearing that smirk! Well, it will soon end.

  Chapter 3 It’s Time

  Les Paul lay on a flat steel table. No swayback spring this time. They must want him to stay refreshed and awake. He retained his smirk right up until the needle prick, then suddenly felt cool, especially on his forehead. A buzz began in his head. Sensations that felt vaguely familiar. He didn’t watch as they taped the two tubes that joined into one, then led to the one tube and needle in his arm, his cocktail of death. He saw a white-haired man dressed in black, like a minister, enter. His mind returned to the idea of reincarnation…would it work? The minister-looking guy appeared at his side, “Les Paul,” the man said, “Are you ready to meet your Lord?

  Les Paul turned his head and made eye-contact, “I want to be reincarnated.”

  The minister’s eyes widened briefly before he answered, “I have no power to give you such a wish as reincarnation. We mortals don’t really know what lies on The Other Side.”

  “What power do you have?”

  “I have no power. I’m here only to give you…,” the minister hesitated again; his eyes widened again, and his brow rose, slightly. Les Paul wondered if he had touched some sort of nerve in the man. The minister finally continued, “…to, administer a final prayer for you.”

  “But you can ask, can’t you?”

  Again the chaplain’s eyes widened very briefly, then he blinked, twice, then he laid his hand on his chest, and patted, “That’s a request I cannot make. Now, are you ready to meet your Lord?”

  “Sure, what-the-fuck?” Les Paul turned his head back and gazed at the ceiling. The chaplain began reading a Bible verse. Les Paul heard but did not listen to the words until the end: “May God have mercy on your soul. Amen.”

  He barely mouthed his response, “Sure, whatever-the-fuck-ever.” Through peripheral vision he saw the warden nod. Here it comes. He smiled, and felt the drugs entering him, and felt his world speeding up. Like a jet plane—what a ride!—plastering him against the seat. The buzzing in his head grew louder and faster…

  For a few seconds he felt himself rising from the table. He looked back. His unmoving body was there. His eyes were open…where am I…? He felt like he was moving, leaving the prison—Good! I’m going somewhere! But, not, really. He felt himself being squeezed, like, from a tube, except he wasn’t leaving the tube, he was entering, becoming smaller, and smaller, and smaller, and sma…

  His awareness left him.

  Interlude

  The execution took place without incident. The warden would continue his duties and look forward to his approaching retirement, when he could spend more quality time with his son and daughters and grandchildren. The chaplain returned to the chapel basement intending to look again at the book—to satisfy himself that he really had seen and read such a thing—before approaching another religious authority.

  The wall was as plain and empty as it always had been. No locker and no book. For a few seconds the chaplain felt his blood run cold. It felt like a huge goosepimple had filled his entire body. If his hair could have turned another shade whiter, it would have.

  My Lord, that surely was Your true word.

  Chapter 4 First Evil Act

  Three months went by. Les Paul was swimming in a warm pool of amniotic fluid, but quite often found he didn’t have as much room as he would like. In his growing new brain, though, it took him another three months to realize why he didn’t have enough room. He was not alone.

  The other presence was larger and softer, and rarely moved. Les Paul had nothing even close to functioning thoughts and emotions, but his hands somehow knew he had to get rid of the other presence. With the tiny amount of sensation he had, his hands realized they both had an appendage on their stomach. The other presence was so close. Without cognizant thought he grasped the other appendage and wrapped it around the neck of the other presence, and pulled it tight.

  The other presence struggled. Its arms and legs jerked and kicked but made no serious attempt to fight, and soon was still, but continued taking too much room. Les Paul was—of course—not yet developed enough to feel emotion, so often his body just did what was necessary. He seized the other’s appendage and bit it and jerked it and pulled, until it parted and began spewing another liquid. He grabbed the end spewing and put it into his mouth.

  Then his whole pool began jerking and quaking and a loud noise began. A noise that in his previous lives his brain began to comprehend, to even—almost—remember, as screaming. He held the other’s appendage and began to kick and push the other presence, and the other presence began to move away, and the screaming continued and grew louder. He kept the other’s appendage in his mouth, feeding and doubling his nourishment and kept kicking the other presence as the screaming grew louder and louder. He listened and listened and fed and fed and sensed memories and gloried in himself.

  Suddenly, a very, very, tiny, blast, of light came…and then ended. Then the other presence was gone, and some of the fluid in his pool was gone, but just some. Les Paul relaxed, and firmly attached his mouth to the other appendage and continued feeding, and settled back in repose, and slept.

  Another three months passed. His warm pool had filled again and made his growing life very pleasant. He kept the other’s appendage in his mouth, but long ago it had stopped sending nourishment. He had stayed attached anyway, and staying attached kept the memory alive of getting rid of that other presence. The dim memory of that act caused his little face to begin to smirk, and past memories kept coming alive in his brain of things he had done that he would soon do again, but with more gusto.

  Then his pool began to shake and jerk, again, and the fluid began leaving, again, and the screaming began…again. He hung onto what was left of that appendage and allowed his body to follow that disappearing fluid and suddenly he saw a very, very, bright, light, something he had never experienced during the nine months inside his new mother’s belly—but he had experienced it. Untold numbers of times he had seen that bright light—then he entered the light and found his voice, his own voice screaming and crying and in some distant part of his brain he knew he was reborn, that he had another chance to perform his…evil….

  His first evil act in his new life, the murder of his twin, was forgotten the instant his body entered the air of the world. It didn’t matter. His twin had served its purpose by giving its life to serve a better life: The new life and times of worst-of-the-worst criminal, Les Paul.

  Chapter 5 Meet Cassandra

  When Cassandra was born her mother lived just long enough to name her but then died from complications of childbirth. Cassandra’s father, unable to be there for the birth, died on the same day while on duty for the Marine Corps
in Afghanistan. Unfortunately there were no siblings and no close relatives on either side, and the more distant relatives were not interested in becoming responsible for an infant they felt they didn’t even know. So Cassandra started her life alone. In foster care she fell through crack after crack and remained alone, as nobody—for some unknown reason—wanted to adopt this darling little girl child. So, she became a statistic. Lacking love of any kind in any part of her life, she soon discovered her crying voice brought her nothing, so she stopped crying. In her little mind one would wonder if she recognized the futility of crying, or did she just forget how? As she grew, she would not learn about that greatest of human emotion, love, and would not come to love anything, and would not come to trust…anyone.

  So, on October 18, this poor little girl child was born. Halfway across the country that other baby was born on the same day, just another child who would find no love, but for a different reason than Cassandra. Les Paul would find no love because from the very beginning he was not the warm, sweet, cooing, combination of his new birth parents. He was the reincarnation of evil, an endlessly long string of killers. He was born with the memories of each, not really intact memories but memories nonetheless, and they would serve him well in his new life.

  Chapter 6 Second Evil Act

  For the first two months of that new life Les Paul was close to being a normal baby. He didn’t actually realize he needed to be a normal baby, for at least awhile, but his memories—like the instinct of an animal—told him: you need to at least be dry, be able to hold your eyes open and your head up, and to focus, and to recognize certain people. You need their strength and care for at least a while, but when you are ready you can begin being yourself.

  So one day while he was nursing that self began to arise. His new mother held him closely, with his head next to her left breast and his mouth attached to her nipple. Everything was going along fine, except he was beginning to want the milk to come faster, so he began to suck harder—

  “It’s okay, honey,” his mother said, “Here, maybe I’ll just switch you to my other breast.” She began to move him…she began to try to move him, “Honey, you have to let go…oh—ow!”

  But he wouldn’t let go. He just sucked harder, and bit, and began hearing that sound like screaming—he loved that sound!

  “OW! Evan!” his mother shouted between her cries, “Help me!”

  His new father ran into the room, “What’s wrong, Leslie?”

  “He’s biting me!” Leslie held him away from her as much as she could, “Here, pry his mouth open!”

  Evan did as asked. Together they were able to pry the child’s mouth open and free Leslie’s nipple, which now was spurting not only milk but blood, and Les Paul began screaming, shrieking his anger at not getting his way and filling his hunger as quickly as he wanted.

  Evan carried him to his crib. At just two months old he was yet too small and weak to fight much. He had just used most of his energy trying to hold onto that nipple, but his voice was fine and he continued crying, just shrieking!

  His father took him from his day crib and carried him into the master bedroom, laid him down in his other crib, left the room and closed the door, and returned to his wife in the living room. They could still hear him screaming.

  “I won’t nurse him again, Evan,” Leslie said soberly, “He has held on before but I was able to pry his little lips apart, but that bite today scared me. I’ll just have to take that drug to stop my milk, because I won’t even go through the discomfort of milking myself for him.”

  “All right, Leslie, we’ll just do what we have to do.”

  “It’s not only that, Evan….”

  “Yes?”

  “You aren’t with him all day like I am. He’s….”

  “Yes? What…?”

  “For a newborn baby he sometimes looks at me like…I don’t know how to describe it. He…sometimes…recently—every day in fact…he…I can barely comprehend that I’m going to say this: he…frightens me.”

  “Honey, he’s our flesh and blood.”

  “I know. Physically he is, I guess. But, it’s almost like he is not, like, maybe, by mistake of course, we got the wrong baby.”

  Evan stared at his wife, barely able to believe what he was hearing.

  “I know! That sounds crazy, but it’s possible, Evan, and anyway, I won’t nurse him again. He’ll have to learn bottle feeding, and, right this minute we aren’t prepared for that, and the little…monster—“

  “Leslie!”

  “I’m sorry! But he is! He wants to be fed and we don’t have formula, so you have to go get what we need, and I will stay here and listen to his screeching.”

  “You won’t go and try to comfort him?”

  “Evan, he bit me! He bit me hard! He drew blood! No! I won’t try to comfort him…I…I don’t even know if I want to hold him again. It’s like he knew what he was doing, like he bit me just to hurt me, on purpose!”

  “Leslie, my God!”

  “I told you! You don’t see him every minute of every day like I do.”

  “Why haven’t you said something before now?”

  “Good Christ! He hasn’t ever done anything quite like this! I just kept hoping he would grow out of it, even that I was imagining that he’s….”

  “He’s what…?”

  “He’s evil, Evan. I don’t think I want him anymore.”

  Evan’s mind flew to the birth of their first child. He had been there for everything. He had seen what his darling wife, Leslie, had not seen, and he had never told her what he, the nurse, and the doctor, saw. And he still wouldn’t tell her that her first child was born with his twin’s umbilical cord in his mouth. He could not tell her, and barely believed it himself, and he would never forget the looks on the faces of the doctor and nurse, professional people who likely had already seen everything…but, evidently, had not, “What do you want to do, Leslie?”

  “Let’s take him to the hospital and leave him on their doorstep, just like they do it in Nebraska—they still do that, don’t they?”

  “I don’t know. Maybe they do…” Evan didn’t know what to say. He could barely believe that his beautiful wife had just said what she said, but far in the back of his mind he agreed.

  “What about DNA? Maybe all they have to do is check his DNA with their records and trace him back to us—I don’t want him, Evan! And I don’t want to go to jail for abandoning him.”

  “DNA, they probably can do that. They probably take fingerprints and everything these days.”

  “Then we’ll take him to another hospital—another state, Evan, all the way to Nebraska if we have to! Surely the millions of babies born aren’t in a federal data base…yet…are they?”

  “I don’t know—“

  “You keep saying you don’t know!” she screamed, “What do you know?”

  “I’m sorry, honey. Look, I’ll go get the formula and a couple extra bottles, and we’ll figure out what to do, okay…?”

  “Evan, I just haven’t told you, but almost from the moment we brought him home he has creeped me out—“ she tightened her hands, closed her eyes, gritted her teeth, gave a quiet, throat-rattling, scream, “When he was three weeks old he was screwing up his face, like he wanted to smile, like babies do. I was almost to call you to come and see his first smile—but it wasn’t a smile, Evan! It was a smirk! I wanted to scream right then! I want him gone!”

  “All right…all right, I’ll get the stuff we need, and we’ll figure out what to do.”

  “I will try to feed him again, with a bottle, and that’s all I’ll do for him, but only if you’re there with me.”

  ****

  An hour later Evan arrived with a warm bottle of formula. He handed the bottle to Leslie, who was seated in a rocking chair, then he went to the baby, picked him up from the crib, then walked to Leslie and handed him to her. Leslie at first just stared, then smiled a bit, then reached and took him into her arms, and placed the bottle to the baby
’s lips.

  Les Paul grabbed it with his lips and began sucking furiously. Leslie’s eyes enlarged as she watched, “Look at him, Evan. No two-month-old that I’ve ever seen has fed like this, and with my sisters I’ve helped with five babies.”

  Evan watched too, but said nothing.

  “Look at him! He’s even trying to hold the bottle!”

  Evan kept watching, and remembering the grip and hold that child had on his miscarried twin’s umbilical cord, and suddenly, quite unplanned, the barely-believable thought entered his head, was the twin miscarried…or murdered? He thought so hard that he quit watching this child feed and momentarily looked at the ceiling—

  “Look at his face! Evan!”

  Evan jerked back to his wife, “What, Leslie?”

  “He was smirking at me! He had a smirk on his face! My god, didn’t you see him?”

  “I’m sorry, Leslie, my mind wandered.”

  “Right.” Leslie removed the bottle from that ferociously sucking mouth. Les Paul immediately began screaming and reaching for the bottle, “My god, he smirked at me at the only time you wouldn’t see him!” Leslie held him slightly away from herself and handed the bottle to her husband, “Quick! Warm him some more. He knows we’re onto him now, so—“

  “Onto him?”

  “Yes!” She practically screamed her answer, “He smirked when you weren’t looking so that I would look like a fool who needs her head examined! He knows, Evan! He’s just a baby, but also he’s…he’s…I don’t know. I just don’t know!”

  “Will you be all right while I’m gone?”

  “Yes, just please try to hurry, and, Evan, we’re leaving tonight. Call your boss and just tell him…that there’s an emergency in our family and we have to leave. Immediately.”