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As Ben made his way towards the bridge, he heard Gil and the couple following after him. For a moment, he thought about turning around and leaving. He had only followed Jenny in the first place to put some distance between himself and his son. And now he was on this path again heading down towards the Lakebridge again. Even though he knew there was nothing more down there than a fallen tree sitting in that little lake. Even though he knew that tree ought to have rightfully fallen on that bridge, smashing it to kindling. Kurtz was as precise a lunatic as one would ever meet. If there was one person who didn’t need his head scrambled any more than it came by naturally, it was Kurtz. Of course he was Gil’s friend. Ben looked around at all the green, all the life of this place, all the beauty of this place and once again hoped that when he walked down the little embankment that led to the lake, the green - or the orange or the yellow or the blue or the white…so many beautiful colors in this place as the seasons went round - wouldn’t be spoiled by that damned red.
When Ben left Jack Bixby behind, he knew that the thing was there, waiting for him. He knew what the thing was and he knew where the thing was and he knew that all he had to do was turn around and go back and he would be safe. But he was responsible for the town. He wasn’t yet sheriff, but he knew he would be and so he was responsible for whatever came and he had to face it. When he finally came in view of the lake and the bridge, he thought about Jane Simmons and John Macintyre. Jane and John had never been the subject of rumor. Everyone just knew that they were for each other. When they were in the first grade, they played together while the other boys and girls still believed in the existence of mythical creatures called cooties that lived on members of the opposite sex and laid in wait to attack you if you got too close. What cooties would actually do to you, no one knew. All they knew was that you could catch them and, once caught, you had them and, once you had them, you could never rid yourself of them and would forever be pariah, a carrier of cooties. To all the other boys and girls, Jane and John were cootie central. To even go near them while they played innocently, one day with Jane’s dolls and the next with Jack’s cars, was to risk certain doom. The teachers worried that it was too early for a girl and a boy to be so close, so much more than friends. But some, like Miss Lauren Farnsworth, believed in soul mates and that as much as people could be predestined for one another, Jane and John were and it was so wonderful for them that they could find each other so early in life and never know the kind of void that she felt having never met hers. Although Miss Farnsworth was quite jealous of Jane and John, it was only in that self-pitying sense that someone who has waited for fate to find her rather than finding her own fate feels towards those who they see as blessed by what curses them. She didn’t allow her jealousy to twist her insides like others might. She was a romantic and saw that the joining of these two children was proof positive that the universe meant for people to be with specific people and she had been right all these years to wait. She would keep on waiting and, as far as Ben knew, she still waited. Ben asked her on a date one time, but she declined. She was polite in her explanation of soul mates and had even used Jane and John as examples before bursting into tears at the memory of the two. Ben shed a tear or two himself which made him think that perhaps Miss Farnsworth could be his soul mate, but did not mention this to her because she seemed quite sure of herself and had made it clear that she was quite certain that they were not soul mates. But Jane and John were. Everyone knew it as much as people believed in such things. For a while, their parents thought it wasn’t healthy or proper for a girl and a boy to spend so much time together, their parents having never quite given up their belief in the efficacy of cooties. They sent them off to camps away from one another in the hopes that they would make friends with other girls or other boys and learn about cooties and why it was so important to avoid them. Even though the pair made friends with other girls and boys and had the kind of fun one has at summer camp, whenever they were reunited at the end of summer, they picked up as if they had never been apart and even their parents began to realize that somehow they produced a girl and a boy who were uniquely perfect for one another. Ben had only been deputy for two years when he went walking down the path to the bridge that day and he thought about Jane Simmons and John Macintyre. He had only come into contact with them in the way a small town deputy comes into contact with any twelve year old, which is to say in that friendly, but authoritative manner that policemen have with young children on the verge of considering whether or not to be law abiders or law breakers. Friendly, to show them that the police are your friends and will always be there to help you when you need it and, hopefully, protect you if you need protecting. Authoritative, to remind them that the police will be there to catch you if you do bad things. Ben only gave the two as much thought as one gives to a girl and a boy who are about to discover the only cure for cooties is kissing. Ben hoped when he saw them start holding hands as they walked out of Osno’s that they could hold off awhile longer…that they could stay innocent even though what the two youngsters had was about as pure as one could imagine such a thing could be. Later on, when Ben started working on the case in earnest, he imagined other things about Jane and John. He imagined that someone had been thinking about Jane and John for a long time, for as long as they had been a couple. He imagined that someone had been watching the children grow and watching their bond deepen. He imagined that someone needed them for their purity and their innocence and needed them before they moved beyond purity and innocence. He imagined that someone had been preparing to do this thing for as long as that someone knew of the children and that someone could finally wait no longer, could not wait for the myth of the cooties to be dispelled with the onset of puberty and lust. Ben spent a long time imagining what made that someone use Jane and John that November day when he walked down towards the bridge. That someone had used them. Used them. Ben was already crying that day as he neared the bridge and saw what that someone had done to John Macintyre. That someone stripped the twelve year-old boy of his clothes. That someone placed the boy at the entrance to the bridge so he was facing the path. John Macintyre was there to greet any and all who came to see the bridge that day. John Macintyre stared with his lifeless eyes at any and all who came to see the bridge that day. That someone used five lengths of hand-made rope to tie John Macintyre in place. A piece of rope stretched each limb tight, making it seem as though the boy were floating. Another piece of rope kept the head upright, that someone had taken care to keep John Macintyre’s body from leaving its precisely placed position. Roy Childers from the state coroner’s office said that it looked like a pentagram the way the ends of the rope had ropes tied all around edges, completing the figure, like some kind of Satanist ritual. Roy was chiefly responsible for the theory that there were Satanists in Stansbury and that’s why God had forsaken the town. Even confronted with the evil of John Macintyre’s murder, Ben didn’t cotton to that theory. He knew the people of Stansbury and knew there wasn’t a coven of Satanists among them. He also knew that this was no black mass as people liked to attribute to Satanists. For one, the boy wasn’t placed in a pentagram. Sure, it seemed that way when you looked at John Macintyre. That someone might even have wanted people to think such a thing. Ben was pretty sure that someone didn’t much care what people thought, actually. The problem as Ben saw it was the way that someone had positioned Jane Simmons at the other end of the bridge. Ben had tried to point out to Roy and others that her body did not form an equivalent pentagram. Of course, Roy and the others had their easy theory and did not want to think why that someone might decapitate and dismember the girl, leaving only a torso with a left arm strung up at one end and right leg tied down at the other. They didn’t even want to think about how no one had ever found the missing pieces that someone had removed. They certainly didn’t want to look at the strange geometric figure that was created when Ben combined the forms as they appeared when he looked straight on through the bridge. It was a sym
bol that someone was trying to create, all right. It wasn’t a pentagram or some tribute to an evil lord. That was too banal. Ben researched the figure over the years as he worked on the case both during his spare time and during official time. He even traveled to England to show it to some people over there that knew about ancient evils and no one could be quite sure of what that someone was trying to do that day. Ben could only come to the conclusion that the bridge needed Jane Simmons and John Macintyre and that someone was responsible for filling that need. What was worse, what Ben seemed to know that no one else, except perhaps Gil and Kurtz, is in his own way, understood was that this wasn’t the act of some psychotic group of pseudo-Satanists. This had happened before and would happen again. Even Ol’ Jim seemed to finally buy into the Satanist theory. It was easier than Ben’s unfounded theories about that someone. Gil told him that someone was Lord Stansbury who had somehow survived all these years and would keep on surviving so long as the bridge was fed. Ben thought that it was a useful theory because that’s exactly what that someone might think. What Ben finally discovered was that the longer he stuck around Stansbury and tried not to think about it all, the easier it was not to think about it all and just go about his business. There were times, some times long stretches, when Ben would just go about the business of being sheriff and there were times that Ben was okay with not thinking about that someone. But it was his duty. He would always come back to Jane and John and those who had been sacrificed to the bridge before them and know he had to do something to stop it. So he built his case room to house his research and he spent time in that room every day pouring over everything he found. Somehow that worked to keep it from fading from his mind. It had worked for awhile at least, but then he found that there were days at a time that he would not go into the room, that he would just go about being Sheriff Ben and then he would snap back and remember what he had to do, what that someone had done and what he couldn’t let happen again. Gil never understood about the forgetting because Gil was immune to it. Gil didn’t understand that he couldn’t be Sheriff Ben and work on the case because he needed to leave Stansbury to think about it. When he was on his drives, when he was away from the town, he never forgot Jane Simmons and John Macintyre.
As Ben followed Jenny down to the bridge, he saw that the bright red was beginning to fade a little… just a little. He was sure that someone had seen it as well.