Chapter 21 - Vanquishing Monsters.

Brian stepped through the screen of rhododendrons and took a few halting steps down the path through the lush undergrowth. I followed as closely as I could. The path was pretty well-used, despite the fact that it’s entrance had been so effectively hidden from view. The trail was clearly delineated and easy to follow as it wound around the trees and rocks that lined the little stream. The summer air down by the creek was soft and heavy under the leafy canopy of the trees; the loamy scent of the forest permeated everything around us. The musical rustling of the creek we walked along seemed loud amid the hush of the forest. But, other than that and the pattering of our own steps along the path, there was only silence around us. It felt like we were in the middle of a total wilderness, not in the heart of Pennsylvania’s farm country. The screen of trees and bushes around us completely hid the rest of the world from sight as we followed the path. It was difficult to tell, in the tunnel of greenery, which direction we were going, but judging solely by the direction of the slowly dying daylight filtering through the leaves, I thought we were heading roughly east, skirting around the north side of Langley’s house. 

Brian’s steps got slower and slower the further we went, almost like he was scared of what we’d find at the end of the trail. He jumped when I got close enough to lay one hand against the small of his back, but he didn’t look at me. His eyes were pinned on the distant end of the trail where you could see a doorway of light leading to . . . Who knew what.

When we reached the portal out of the trees and into the light, Brian stopped completely. I could feel the tremors of - anticipation, fear, old memories, I didn’t know what - shaking through him as we waited for what felt like a long time. We simply stood there, just at the edge of the darkness, unable to look past the blinding wall of light to see what lay beyond. But I wasn’t going to push him; this was his journey, not mine. I was only there for support. I couldn’t guide him or take the steps for him. All I could do was be his companion as he finally faced the trauma of his past. At least he wasn’t doing it alone this time.

Finally, after several minutes of indecision, Brian took a shuddering breath and stepped out of the shadows into the relatively bright openness beyond the forest path. 

And there was the lake.

I don’t know what I’d expected. After listening through Brian’s nightmares for the past few months, I guess I’d thought this lake would look more forbidding. More evil. Maybe that the trees would look more threatening; like that scene in ‘Snow White’ where all the trees come alive, their branches bare and menacing, as they grab at the girl who cowers at their roots. But, no. This was just a regular old lake, set amid regular old trees, the setting sun glinting down on the water with a muted golden glow that sparked little flecks of silver across the placid surface. There were insects flying lazily through the open air, birds twittering in the branches of the trees, and off in the distance I glimpsed a fish break the surface. It smelled warm and wet and green. Everything looked calm and peaceful. Serene. Not at all forbidding or frightening. 

The path we’d been following ended just a meter or so beyond the treeline. There was a fringe of bare ground around the little lake, which couldn’t have been more than a couple dozen meters across. You could see the far side of the lake from where we emerged, although, off to our left, the water snaked around a little promontory of land and disappeared off to the northeast. Brian hesitated a moment or two before turning to his left and following the shoreline towards that bend. I followed. 

A little further along we came to a section of the lake that was shallower. The bank here was sandy and the trees receded further back from the shore. Brian stopped and stared at the cove, his hands clenching at his sides. I couldn’t see anything special about this spot, but something was clearly bothering him.

“Brian?” I prompted quietly, my voice sounding entirely out of place amid the quiet of the idyllic setting. 

“Coach used to let Buddy play in the water here. It was fun. Buddy liked to swim, especially when it was hot out,” Brian explained, his eyes unfocused, seeing things that weren’t there any longer. 

I held my breath and waited to see if that memory would be supplanted by something less enjoyable but Brian didn’t say anything more. He stood there for a good five minutes, looking at the water as the sun gradually lowered beyond the treeline to the west and the lake became draped in the gloaming of evening. Then, straightening his back so he stood a little bit taller, Brian turned and continued walking northwestward around the edge of the lake, heading for whatever lay beyond that bend. 

We reached the northernmost point of the lake after only two or three more minutes of walking. Just beyond the bend there was another path heading off through the woods, away from the lake, towards the north. Brian stopped at the head of that path, turned to face the lake, and then froze. Despite the deepening twilight, I could see the deer-in-the-headlights expression that came over his face as he stared out at the lake. I held my breath; which allowed me to hear the way Brian’s own breathing had become rapid and uneven, his shoulders heaving with the effort of getting enough air into his lungs to fight back the rising tidal wave of fear. I looked out at the lake myself but didn’t see whatever it was that was triggering this reaction. It still just looked like a lake to me. Then I saw Brian gulp, swallowing back his fear, trying to get himself under control, before he slowly pirouetted to face away from the lake, looking off down the new path. 

Even though I should have been expecting it, Brian’s reaction took me by surprise. 

I watched, fixed in place, as this usually larger-than-life man opened his mouth in a silent scream and gracefully fell to his knees. His face was contorted with an abject horror that caused a chill to creep up my spine in spite of the lingering summer heat. I didn’t remember I could move until I saw Brian curling up into the tiniest ball his big body could manage, his forehead digging into the damp dirt and his arms curling up around the back of his neck in a protective gesture, as if he were being attacked by something unseen. I rushed over and knelt beside him, trying to hold onto the body that was slowly rocking forward and back, forward and back. A barely audible keening noise eventually broke through the choking panic, the discordant noise contrasting jarringly with the silence of the evening around us.  

“No! Buddy! Noooo . . .” Brian sobbed.

Then he threw off my arms so he could turn to the side and violently puke up everything he’d eaten that day.

I don’t know how long we huddled there, Brian curled up on his side, lying in the dirt, rocking himself and occasionally mumbling plaintive little protests. “No . . . Please, Coach. I don’t want to play any more games tonight . . . Please, can I go home now? Please stop. That hurts. Please don’t hurt me . . .” It hurt ME to listen to him but I couldn’t do anything other than hold him and whisper vaguely comforting nonsense. It took a long time before Brian’s breathing calmed and he eventually quieted. 

That’s when I became aware of what was going on around me - letting my attention finally drift away from the crisis my partner had been suffering through - and I was surprised to discover it was now fully dark. The only remaining light came from the fireflies darting around over the lake; the trees that loomed around us, standing sentry like a wall of blackness, cut off all other illumination. The only noise was the cricking of insects in the bushes and the gentle lapping of the water against the shore.

There was something so disorienting in the contrast between the tranquil lake setting surrounding me and the raging tempest of emotions I’d just witnessed. It felt like the world should somehow physically reflect the pain Brian was experiencing. Shouldn’t that much torment somehow manifest itself on the universe around us? It just didn’t seem right that everything around me was so fucking peaceful while Brian was drowning in that much misery.

That’s probably why, a few minutes later when I noticed the voices yelling my name, I felt vindicated that the uproar shattering the silence of the night was completely justified. 

Looking across the lake, I could see the flicker of lights coming through the trees and heard the voices of several people calling out. I remembered my phone and, using the flashlight function, I signaled my location, eventually getting the attention of the posse searching for us. The various flashlights came together into a single grouping and ultimately made their way around the lake to where Brian and I were waiting. 

In the meantime, I had managed to get Brian up into a seated position and used my t-shirt to wipe his face. I didn’t think he’d want everyone to see that he’d been crying; he wouldn’t want anyone other than me to know just how vulnerable he truly was just then. Luckily, by the time the search party made it over to us, I think I’d managed to make him mostly presentable.

“Damn it, Kinney. Taylor. What the hell are you two doing sitting out here in the dark?” Horvath was already cursing us out when he was still a dozen meters away. “We’ve been looking for you for fucking ever!”

“Are you okay?” Bridges asked, blinding me with his flashlight as he checked to make sure Brian and I still had all our limbs. 

“We’re fine,” I answered for the both of us.

“Well, you could have told somebody before you went out on a stroll through the fucking forest in the middle of the night,” Carl complained even as he held out his hand to help me up to my feet. I accepted the assistance, glad to get the help since I’d been sitting on the hard ground for so long that my legs had gone stiff. “We were about ready to call out the Search and Rescue team.”

Bridges was helping Brian to his feet at the same time. I could see that there were two other men who’d come up behind Horvath and Bridges, both dressed in the gray and black uniforms of the Pennsylvania State Police. They all looked kinda pissed off at us. Like it was our fault they’d been blundering around in the woods in the dark? We were just fine and would have made it back to Langley’s cabin eventually. But, whatever.

Before they could further chastise us, though, Brian spoke up and distracted everyone from being annoyed. “I remember. Everything,” he stated, looking out towards where the moonlight lit up the surface of the lake. 

Everyone fell instantly silent and waited for Brian. 

“That’s the lake. The one from my nightmares,” he tilted his head towards the water. Then, squaring his shoulders, he turned around and faced down the path that led off through the woods. “And that’s the path.” He pointed into the darkness. Still sniffling slightly, he added, “you’ll find the cabin where they did all the filming at the end.”

“I’m afraid you must be mistaken, Son,” one of the two strangers - a stocky older man with a fringe of gray hair showing beneath the flat brim of his distinctly odd-shaped trooper hat - spoke up. “The only thing you’ll find at the end of that path is the old Stockwell place.”

Both Horvath and I spun around to stare at the man when we heard that name uttered. 

“Stockwell?” Carl questioned.

“Yep. Old Tommy Stockwell,” the garrulous trooper continued. “Tommy’s family has owned that cabin for about as long as I can remember. I think he’s a lawyer or something over in Harrisburg but he comes out here most every weekend. Not that I know him that well - he’s a bit of a recluse, you could say, keeping to himself mostly - but he seems a decent sort for all that.”

Brian, through the trooper’s entire recitation, didn’t look over or even blink. He just remained focused on the slightly blacker patch of darkness where the path in front of him disappeared into the trees. When the trooper paused, though, Brian immediately chimed in.

“He’s not. Decent, that is. Your pal Tommy and his friends are monsters,” Brian asserted, his voice quiet and emotionless, as if he was only stating bland facts. He swallowed and nodded solemnly towards the treeline. “It’s there,” Brian insisted again. “I remember walking down this path, probably a thousand times. Maybe more. Every time Coach would bring me out here up until I was about thirteen and my family moved away from Philadelphia . . . It’s there.”

“Well, there’s one way to find out,” Bridges interjected, speaking over his shoulder as he led the way towards the ominous-looking path heading into the dark between the trees. “Let’s go introduce ourselves to this Mr. Stockwell and see if he’ll consent to a search of his cabin or if I’ll have to call for a search warrant instead.”

We didn’t make it back to Pittsburgh until just before dawn. 

As Brian had predicted, the cabin from his recovered memories was located right where it should be at the end of the path. When we got there, however, it was clearly unoccupied, so Bridges had to call for that warrant after all. While we waited for the closest FBI office to get the paperwork sorted out, the state troopers had canvassed the neighbors and found out that Tommy hadn’t been around for several weeks. Nobody had seen anyone at the cabin since about the time Langley had been arrested; a curious coincidence. 

The FBI forensics guys showed up about an hour later, with a warrant in hand. They battered open the cabin door and swarmed in just like you’d see in the movies. Brian and I watched from a safe distance. Even after Bridges came out and told us it was all clear, Brian refused to go inside. 

Luckily, they didn’t need him; it was pretty obvious right from the get go that this was the place the cops had been looking for. The ‘game room’ in the basement was exactly as Brian had described it, complete with that same fucking soccer mural painted on the wall. They also found the cameras, computers, and other recording equipment Brian had remembered. And, after a bit of a search using some fancy-looking equipment that Bridges explained allowed them to detect hidden spaces inside the walls and flooring, they even found a concealed storage room containing a stash of photographs, tapes, flash drives, and all sorts of other incriminating evidence. 

We waited around until we saw them carting out the first of the computers and boxes of evidence and then Brian declared he’d seen enough. Brian fell asleep almost as soon as we got into Carl’s police cruiser and the rest of the drive back to Pittsburgh was quiet. Horvath and I spent the time chatting about inconsequential shit not at all related to the case as we sped home through the night. 

Carl dropped us off at the loft and we barely managed to make it upstairs and through the door before we collapsed into the bed. 

Around noon, my cell phone going off three times in a row finally woke us up. I wasn’t reassured by the caller ID notifying me it was Horvath calling. Didn’t the cops have someone other than us to bother? 

“This better be good, Carl,” I grumbled, putting the call on speaker so Brian could hear since this was, no doubt, primarily about him. “We only got about five hours of sleep.”

“Well, good for you because I haven’t had any sleep yet at all, thanks to your partner leading us to Stockwell’s cabin,” Horvath replied, sounding pretty damn tired to be honest. “We’ve already started going through the stuff Bridges’ FBI folks have found on those computers and it’s pure gold. We’ve hit the fucking motherlode here. There’s names and dates and contact info for more than a dozen people involved in this particular distribution ring. A couple of the names are big, too, including one former Pittsburgh police chief.” 

“Great. Go get ‘em,” I replied, having a hard time manufacturing enthusiasm through my exhaustion. 

“Oh, we will, you can be sure of that.” Despite his fatigue Carl sounded excited by the prospect. “However, to do that, we’re going to need you and Brian’s help.”

“Brian already led you to the ‘motherlode’ of evidence. What more could you need from him?” I groused, looking sideways to where my partner was waiting, silently following every word of the conversation. 

“We want to take this to the Grand Jury first thing tomorrow morning,” Carl explained. “We think that Wade Langley probably gave his buddy, Thomas Stockwell, orders to lay low after Langley was arrested. That’s why they’ve all stayed away from the Mt. Wilson cabin up till now. Which could work in our favor, at least in the short term. See, none of them probably know about last night’s search yet, so they won’t have been able to tip off their co-conspirators - we don’t want anyone destroying evidence or taking a previously unplanned vacation to the Maldives so they can avoid extradition - but the warrant Bridges got allows us only a seventy-two hour delay before we’re required to give notice to Stockwell. Meaning that we have to act fast to get as many of these scumbags indicted and arrested as we can. That means going to the Grand Jury as soon as possible and we’re going to need Brian's testimony - and yours too, Taylor - to accomplish that.”

I was about to object, worried that having to testify in court about all this, coming so soon after the traumatic experiences of the night before, would be too much for Brian, but he beat me to the punch. “Whatever it takes, Carl. We’ll be there, just tell us where and when.”

While Brian and Carl talked scheduling and went over the technicalities of giving Grand Jury testimony, I decided to make myself useful by getting us fed. Neither of us had eaten since around noon the day before at the Soccer Camp BBQ, so of course I was famished. As I looked through what was in the fridge, though, I realized nobody had stocked the loft with food supplies since before Gus had arrived in Pittsburgh for his summer camp stay. Luckily, I discovered there was still one of Deb’s casseroles in the freezer, so at least we weren’t gonna starve to death. But that also brought other possibilities to mind.

I stuck the casserole in the oven to heat up and then, grabbing Brian along the way, headed off to get a shower. I was happy to note that the agonizing experience of regaining his memories the night before wasn’t affecting Brian’s libido, meaning that our showertime fun lasted quite a while. And, by the time we were done, dried, and dressed, our lunch smelled like it was ready. 

“Whatever you’re cooking smells great,” Brian commented as he padded out to see what I was pulling from the oven. “I’m fucking starving.”

“Good thing we had one of Deb’s tuna noodle casseroles on hold in the freezer, right?”

Brian groaned. “You know I hate that shit, Justin.”

“Deb says it’s your favorite,” I teased, already dishing out a big spoonful onto a plate for the picky man.

“No, it’s not. I only eat it to humor her. And because, every time she brings one over, she makes me get her stoned, and she forces me to talk about shit I don’t want to talk about, and then we get the munchies and I can’t help myself . . .”

Brian stopped, looking over at me with suspicion. I smiled back, a mock-innocent grin stretched across my face as I handed him the joint I’d had waiting on the kitchen bar next to our plates. Brian whimpered in complaint. 

“Do we HAVE to do this now, Sunshine? Haven’t I already been through enough? Now you’re gonna use Deb’s tuna noodle casserole interrogation techniques on me too?” the big baby complained even as he accepted the joint and pulled his lighter out of his pocket. 

I picked up both our plates and followed him over to the couch. “You NEED to talk about this shit, Brian. You’ve been keeping all these memories bottled up for way too long. If you don’t talk about what happened to you, all those memories and the fear and shame and fuck knows what else, are going to make your head explode. So, yeah, we’re gonna talk about it.”

“I thought that’s what I was going to be doing tomorrow at the fucking Grand Jury thing?” Brian squeaked as he attempted to talk while still holding in his first toke off the doobie. 

“That’s not the same.” I grabbed the joint away from him and took a long drag of my own. “They’re only going to want to hear the bare facts. But you also need to work through all the emotions and other shit that you’re not gonna want to explore in front of a room full of strangers.” I handed him back the joint and started in on my extra-large serving of gooey-delicious casserole. “So, let’s just get it over with already, cuz I don’t want to see this shit eating you alive from the inside out for the NEXT twenty years of your life.”

Brian had killed that first joint and already started on a second before he finally started talking. Once he started, though, it was like somebody had opened the floodgates. We talked and smoked more pot and ate an entire casserole and talked some more until late in the evening. He told me everything. Every name and indecent act and humiliation he’d experienced during that eight year span of time when he’d been under Langley’s control. 

And it was absolutely horrible. Devastating. So much worse than I’d even imagined, despite having seen the pictures and videos that Bridges had used to try and trigger Brian’s memories. There was anger and cursing and a couple of times shit got thrown. There were a lot of tears, on both our parts. It was hard to imagine anyone had lived through that kind of abuse and survived; no wonder Brian had been forced to wall off all those memories in order to function. I kept repeatedly thinking that NOT remembering had probably been the only thing that had saved his life, because no child could bear to deal with that kind of trauma. 

But, as our talk was winding down, and I spoke that sentiment aloud, Brian confessed the one thing that almost broke me. “Even blocking it out the way I did, I almost didn’t make it. I tried to end it all at least three times . . .” That’s when he told me about the suicide attempts. The first, when he was only eleven, and swallowed half a bottle of his mother’s sleeping pills. The second, when he was fourteen, just after the high school shower blow job experience. The third, when he was in college, and a run in with his college soccer coach had triggered a flashback. “Who knows? Maybe all this shit with Langley even had something to do with that time Mikey stopped me from scarfing when I turned thirty. Maybe that’s why the thought of getting old and no longer being desirable seemed so overwhelming?”

“You . . . You tried to kill yourself the night before taking me to Prom?” That was the first I’d heard about it and I was wrecked all over again. “And then you had to deal with me getting bashed on top of everything else? Oh, Brian . . .” I sobbed, both of us devolving into tears yet again at that particular memory.

When that spate of emotion finally ebbed, and we were both lying tangled in each other’s arms on the floor cushions, totally exhausted after the catharsis of all that disclosure, Brian said the first hopeful thing of the day. “I think, maybe, I should probably talk to someone about all this shit? A professional, I mean. Cuz, if anyone needs their head shrunk, it’s got to be someone like me, right?”

“Excellent idea,” I instantly agreed, reaching into my shirt and pulling out the chain with my wedding band on it. “Because you promised me, this time it was permanent, Mr. Kinney, and I’m going to hold you to that.”

Brian smiled and folded my fingers around the ring, his own large  hand enveloping mine, a gesture I took as a promise for the future.