The Bad Thing

S. Hileman Iannazzo

The Bad Thing

Reedsy - Elemental  Contest Entry

8/20/2021

The boy's name was Joseph, that was the only information the detective had managed to get after a half hour or so of sharing the small interrogation room.  No last name, just Joseph.  The kid looked to be about 12, maybe 13, he wore his hair long and in need of a cut.  He was unkempt and filthy down to his blackened fingernails.  The beat cops picked him up walking alone on the train tracks, just after dawn this morning.  He had soot in his hair and he reeked of smoke, not cigarette smoke, but the heavy cloying scent of a much larger inferno.  Joseph looked and acted like a hundred other street kids Detective Marks had dealt with over his last five years or so on the force. The kid wore the required uniform of a permanent scowl and a chip resting on his shoulder, yet something in his eyes told Marks this kid was different. There was sadness there. 

He slid a cold can of Pepsi across the table at the kid before he opened his yellow legal pad and clicked his pen.  Joseph opened it and chugged it in seconds.  Maybe his throat was sore from breathing in all that toxic smoke that had billowed out of the charred remains of the small house on Garfield Street.  The firefighters were still at the site, soaking things down, ensuring the flames were out entirely. They needn't conduct a full investigation to determine this was arson. It was a sloppy job, the work of an amatuer.  Finding the kid so soon and so close to the crime scene was pure luck. It wasn’t as if the boy had made any real effort to ‘escape’, looking at him, one could tell he’d stayed to watch. 

Detective Marks had a dozen questions, but something told him not to rush this kid.  He looked rough, but Marks saw a kid, dirty, and small, sitting  in the chair across from him, hugging his knees, he could sense fear radiating from the boy.  

“So, is this your first time playing with matches”? The detective asked, hoping to break the ice and get the kid talking.  Despite himself, Joseph chuckled. “Yes sir” he answered, before regaining what he hoped was a cool demeanor. “Pretty big mess over there Joe”, Marks said as he pushed a few polaroids towards the boy. They weren’t the best pictures, but even an untrained eye could see that there was very little left to the structure.  

Without looking down at the photos, Joseph asked, “Is it gone then?”  “Like all of it? Did it all burn up?”  There was a desperate eagerness in his voice. “Everything but the basement stairs” the detective replied. Joseph winced a little hearing about the stairs. He began to wonder and worry if the stairs surviving would make a difference. 

He’d been very careful, taking his time, dousing every corner of that damned house with gasoline he’d stolen from a nearby garage. He’d gone to the basement, he soaked the old mattress and sofa that were stored down there, he splashed stacked cardboard boxes and whatever else he could think would burn.  He needed the small split level ranch to cease to exist. He needed it to disappear. 

It had been  almost two years since the bad thing happened. The interior of the home, prior to Joseph lighting that bitch up, remained homey and lived in.  There were dishes in the sink, the dog dishes were still full, it was silent and dark in the hallway leading to the bedrooms.  The scattered belongings of two children were in sight.  Joseph had memorized this home well before he had come to destroy it.  He went there a lot. Sometimes he’d hook school and just sit in the dusty basement. He’d look at the photos on the wall and in albums kept under the coffee table. The family in the book was becoming harder for Joseph to remember clearly. 

Joseph had just turned ten when the bad thing happened, when they all left him.  A family outing to a picnic area on the outskirts of town, Joseph hadn’t gone as he’d been invited to Tommy Winslow's birthday party. Since the first day of Kindergarten, Tommy Winslow and Joseph had been best friends. They played together often, visiting each other's houses, and once during a sleep over at Tommy's , they’d  used an old utility razor and cut their palms, swearing an oath to always be friends, and from then on, they’d been blood brothers.  He’d been looking forward to Tommy’s party  for weeks. It was to be a pool party with pizza and even some of the girls from their class were coming. Joseph carefully wrapped the brand new Swiss Army knife he’d saved up for, and he was sure it would be Tommy’s favorite gift. 

Dad dropped him at Tommy’s on their way to the ledge.  The ledge was just a nickname for a place families went on short hikes with their golden retrievers and ate cold sandwiches from a cooler.  It was pretty there and his mom loved spending summer days down by the small swimming hole, snapping pics with her Iphone and drinking iced tea. Joseph felt a little guilty for missing a day at  the ledge with his family, but still he chose cake and ice cream over their company.

It was such a hot day, Joseph and his friends hardly left the coolness of the pool. They rough housed and played chicken and used super soakers to spray each other in the face.  They ate cold pizza and drank cans of Mt. Dew. He only thought of his family briefly, before cannonballing into the pool for the zillionth time. It was a great day, and Joseph was satisfied that the pocket knife was definitely Tommy's favorite gift.  

When the party broke up late in the afternoon, cars pulled up against the curb, while parents picked up their respective offspring who were pleasantly soaked, sunburned and tired. Joseph high fived Tommy and went to sit on the front steps to wait for his dad. After a while, and after a slew of cars came and went, Joseph felt his stomach begin to churn with dread when he realised his dad was over an hour late. Mrs. Winslow stepped outside and told Joseph to come in and wait, otherwise the mosquitos would chew at him. 

He sat, wrapped in his towel on their family room couch, as one hour turned into two and two into three. Tommy was playing Xbox next to him, but Joseph couldn’t partake, he couldn’t stop thinking about his parents and Tracy. His hands shook and he felt sick, like he may throw up.  He’d already dialed his mom's phone four times, but it just kept going to voicemail. Tommy’s parents kept assuring him that his family would be there soon, although as the day turned to evening, Joseph thought Mr. and Mrs. Winslow were beginning to look as nervous as he felt. 

Just before 8 o’clock, two uniformed police officers were suddenly standing awkwardly in the Winslows living room. Nobody was talking, and Mrs. Winslow had begun to cry quietly. The smaller, less imposing officer knelt in front of the couch and delivered the news that made the hair on Joseph's neck stand on end and he stared in disbelief at the cop.  Mum, Dad and Tracy were never coming to get him. He would never see them again.  Dead. All dead. Car wreck. His parents died instantly but 7 year old Tracy had fought for a few hours before she died on an operating table at the city hospital some forty miles away. Alone. Even his dog Marvin had to be euthanized due to extensive injuries. 

Joseph remembered that day, and every detail of it, with perfect clarity. He replayed it over and over again in his mind. He remembered sobbing for hours while the police and some lady from ‘the state’ tried to contact his Aunt Helen.  She was out of town. So the state lady took Joseph to a nearby shelter, handed him a small bag of toiletries and told him to choose a cot and get some sleep.  She promised they’d find Aunt Helen first thing in the morning. Joseph stopped her before she walked away, and asked, his face swollen from crying, where his family was. “They’re dead son” the state lady said, as gently as one could remind a child his life had just taken a devastating turn for the worse. “I know they’re dead”, he had said, “but where are they?”  The state lady (he never did learn her name) shook her head and said they were together, at the morgue. “Where’s the morgue?” Joseph asked, not really sure what that word meant. She was visibly uncomfortable when she told him the morgue is where dead people go, and that it was in the cold and quiet basement of the hospital his baby sister had died in earlier that day.  

She left him  in the corner of a gymnasium, on a lumpy bed with itchy blankets and told him to try to sleep.  He did sleep a little.  His body was exhausted, and the sadness in his chest weighed on him like a boulder.  He tossed and turned while horrid nightmares took shape in his dreams. He’d seen all three of them, and even stupid old Marvin, dead on slabs in whereever the morgue was. In his dream, their eyes were wide open, and flies were collecting around his mothers caved in head. He woke up screaming, but his terror fell on deaf ears. 

Aunt Helen showed up late the next day. She took him to her condo.  He ate canned soup and slept on her couch watching old television shows.  She spent the next few days on her phone, speaking  in hushed whispers, and leaving the room if she thought he was listening.  There was a funeral. Three flower laden coffins lined up at the front of a big stone church.  Joseph hated the suit Aunt Helen had bought him.  Tommy and Mrs Winslow sat close by and every once in a while, he’d feel Mrs Winslow's hand rubbing his back.  Joseph wished with all of his might that the doors of the caskets would open and his family would climb out and rush to where he sat. He wished all of this was just another of the frequent nightmares he’d been having. He wanted his own mom to rub his back and tell him everything was gonna be okay.

 He sat through the service staring at the stained glass windows of the chapel, sneaking a few glimpses at the elaborate flower arrangements that filled the front vestibule of St. Vincents.  Once he’d learned what a mercy meal was, he asked if they could hold this tradition at the ledge. Nervous and fidgety, Aunt Helen thought it was a very nice idea.  After they lowered the 3 ornate boxes into the ground at the cemetery, Joseph and a few familiar faces convened at his mothers favorite place by the swimming hole. They ate cold chicken and pasta salads. He stood on the waters edge, knowing he would never come back to this place.   

He moved into the spare room at Aunt Helens, and for two years he kept to himself, avoiding her, while she avoided him.  He spent hours walking back and forth  to the house.  He’d stare at it, wanting  to go inside, but couldn’t bring himself to do so.  Sometimes he threw rocks at it. Once he kicked in two of the basement windows. Since the crash, he’d become an entirely different kid. He rarely bathed and he had dark circles under his eyes. He barely spoke and walked with his head down, staring at his feet. He didn’t get invited to any more birthday parties either.  The kids that were once his friends, didn’t bother with him anymore. Not even his blood brother. Tommy Winslow called him a weirdo one day in the cafeteria, loud enough for everyone to hear. Joseph had simply picked up his tray and moved to a far away table. He couldn’t argue, Tommy was right,  he was weird. He was the weird kid now. He spent most of the next two years alone in his room, eating microwaved dinners and ignoring his homework and instead, reading comics. Still, with each passing day, he became more obsessed with the house Garfield Street. 

His graphic nightmares were constant now and getting progressively worse. Images of his decomposing family beckoned him. Telling him to come home already. He’d wake up, sweaty and shivering at the same time. Sometimes it would be hours before he drifted back to sleep, if at all.  He was 12 years old, but because he was so tired and frightened all the time, he had become pale and thin and looked like one of those sick kids in a St. Judes commercial. 

Joseph would try to speak with his dead parents while he dreamed but it was as if they couldn’t or wouldn’t hear him. His sister, Tracy, destined to be forever seven years old, would sometimes answer his questions, but she was so young a lot of what she said was nonsensical. She would walk with him while he slept, to the house and if he turned his back, she’d be gone. There was no joy in these nightly visits, just fear and guilt and sadness. 

On Tommy Winslow's 12th birthday,  2 years had passed since Joseph's family went to the morgue. 

A bunch of kids were celebrating Tommy’s birthday playing miniature golf and later, seeing a pg13 movie at the mall.  Joseph, of course, was not invited. He pretended he didn’t care, and mostly he didn’t. He had made other plans for that particular day anyway. A way to make the bad dreams stop forever. 

He stole the gasoline.  He knew the back sliding door would be unlocked. He quietly strolled through the house,  spilling the gas here and there, in places he thought would burn quickly.  He covered the coffee table, and the photo albums, tossing them onto the sofa. He went to each room, crouching and creeping while dumping the accelerant around as he moved. When the five gallon can was empty, he chucked it down the basement stairs. He took one last look around, and sighed deeply. He lit a match and dropped it unceremoniously onto an armchair.  It caught immediately, surprising Joseph. The heat became intense much faster than he anticipated. He turned, ran for the glass door, and leapt into the fresh air of the back yard. He walked around the house a couple of times, making sure the fire he’d lit was doing its job and destroying the damned house. 

When he was satisfied the place would burn to the ground, he left. He walked back the way he’d come, on the tracks following the route he’d used regularly for the last two years.  This day, while Joseph walked, there was an unfamiliar  bounce in his step that hadn’t been there since the bad thing happened. He sat for a few minutes on the rails of the tracks.  He screwed his eyes tightly closed and waited for the appearance of his dead repulsive family. They always came when he closed his eyes.  This time, for the first time since the bad thing happened so long ago,

his parents and sister (and Marvin) arrived in his mind's eye, and instead of sadness and fright, he felt content. They were tan and happy, smiling at him, waving at him. Joseph could have sat on those tracks all day, with his eyes closed, flush with visions of mum, dad and Tracy, who’s presence in his dreams had at last become joyous.  Burning down the house had done what two years of therapy hadn’t. 

He stood, tried to brush some of the dirt off, and on the railroad tracks he made his way back to Aunt Helen’s condo.  He didn’t get far before the cops stopped him. He remained silent while they bombarded him with questions before putting him in the back of a cruiser and delivering him to Detective Marks.  

He liked Detective Marks, Joseph could tell he was what his dad had always called a “no bullshit kind of guy”.  This was even more apparent when the detective locked eyes with him and asked him point blank “What the fuck were you thinking kid?” Joseph blurted out his truth, “They wouldn’t go away, they kept coming back”, he answered, his voice shaking. Marks looked at the pathetic child in front of him, and oddly, he believed the kid. “Joseph,” he said, grabbing onto the kid's hand and holding it loosely, hoping to comfort him when he said the words Joseph knew would be coming. 

“All of the Winslows are dead, Tommy, his parents, his brother, hell even the dog” the detective said gently.

“I know” was Joseph's only reply. He sat, slumped in his chair, chewing at his fingernails. 

After more questions from the kind detective, Joseph  leaned back, and closed his eyes. He was soon fast asleep in the interrogation room. 

At first, he dreamed about the Winslows and Tommy, but only for a minute. They disappeared and in his dream, in his mind, while he slept deeply, he saw himself sitting on a blanket  with his mother who smelled of sunscreen, and he smiled in his sleep as he felt the sun warm on his face. He could hear his father splashing nearby with Tracy. While he slumbered, his smile widened. Marvin was there too, nosing around for scraps, panting in Joseph's ear.  

Fin