Darkness Under the Sun

5

Ron Bleeker wasn’t reported missing by his parents until the following morning, because they had been out drinking all evening at a place called the Drop Inn. When they got home, past midnight, they assumed their son must be safe in his bed. Blackwood had left no other trace of his stay in the old Boswell building — not the bag of trash from their lunch, not the unfinished chips or cookies, not the torn photos of the Dugley house and garage — but he did leave the alley door ajar, evidently by intention. Mere hours after a missing-child alert hit the wire, a patrolman spotted the door and moments later found the body, which was not pinned to the wall but crumpled on the floor. The murder weapon was not left behind. The victim’s ears were found clenched in his fists, which the killer had tied shut using twine. With each ear was a black feather, though no one knew why.

They buried Bleeker not in the cemetery beside St. Anthony’s but in a public graveyard. Carved on his headstone, in addition to the name and dates, were three lines: OUR BELOVED SON / TOO GOOD FOR THIS WORLD / NOW AN ANGEL IN HEAVEN. A photograph of the deceased had been transferred to a ceramic oval embedded in the dark-gray granite; his handsome face and sweet smile were much like the faces and smiles of angels in movies.

Two months after the funeral, when Howie rode his bike to the graveyard shortly after dawn, a big bouquet of plastic flowers stood in the recessed urn in the base of the headstone; sun and weather had faded them. Bird crap streaked the granite, and the grass close around the base of the stone needed to be hand-trimmed. Howie came to say that he was sorry, that he wouldn’t have left Bleeker to his fate if he had known that Blackwood intended something worse than laying down new rules. He should have said his piece the moment he dropped to his knees on the grass, but at first embarrassment and guilt knotted his tongue. He knelt there in silence long enough for the engraved words and the ceramic photograph and the faded plastic flowers and the bird crap to work on him, which they did, worked like gasoline residue in a third-degree burn long after the flames were out. By the time that he could speak, he wouldn’t because he was unable to tolerate the falseness of it all, just could not stand the falseness — whether it was deception or delusion — that was everywhere here. He had never seen Bleeker smile like that, not innocently like that. ANGEL wasn’t true. The bird crap and the faded plastic flowers and the untended grass put the lie to BELOVED. Howie knew that if he tried to speak, he would only scream in frustration and abhorrence, and so he got to his feet and stood there until the shaking stopped, until his heart quieted. Then he walked his bike across the grass to the cemetery lane and rode home.

In another summer, on the one-year anniversary of the day that he had spent with Blackwood on the roof of the old department store, when Howie was one week short of his twelfth birthday, he received a letter postmarked from a town half a continent away. He was home alone when the postman delivered, and because he thought his grandma Alice, his mother’s mother, might send him a card with money for his upcoming birthday, he sorted through the mail as he walked from the curbside box to the house. He was surprised to see his name on a white business-size envelope, which bore no return address and was clearly not from his grandmother. It contained a single sheet of paper that enfolded a raven feather, which fluttered to the porch floor at Howie’s feet. The simple six-word message was in handwriting so neat that it almost looked as though a machine had produced it: I still remember your delicious sandwiches.

He tore the letter into small pieces and buried it at the bottom of the trash in the kitchen waste can. He took the glossy feather into the backyard, flung it up into the breeze, and watched solemnly as it sailed away toward St. Anthony’s and the cemetery.

Since the day at Ron Bleeker’s grave, ten months earlier, Howie understood what penance he must perform: For the rest of his life, he must never tell another lie, not so much as a little fib; he must never engage in even the most innocent deception of any kind, for any reason, no matter how justifiable it might seem. A pledge of truth was his only armor against the horrifying consequences that surely would result from his having made his deal with Blackwood. If his mother or sister found the feather and the mysterious message about sandwiches, he would have been honor-bound to explain it, to tell them all about Blackwood — and thereby rob them of their peace of mind forever.