Callisto by Torsten Krol Page B

from the whack on the head he got. He went all dizzy out the back door and fell into the hole, which is the reason he’s not sat at the table right now talking with Chet about all this crap. Why didn’t I think of this before? Dean needed assistance right now because he hit his head again when he fell in the hole, I bet.
    â€œExcuse me . . .”
    I got up and hurried through the house to the back door and went outside. Over to the hole. The hole is empty. Okay then, big relief he isn’t there like I thought. Only where is he? Back into the house and up the stairs. Dean is lying on his bed like I left him this morning, exactly the same. I went over and poked him on the shoulder, and the way he didn’t wake up or grunt or anything made me know the truth, which I did not want to believe, so I bent low and listened close to his mouth to that awful sound of nothing at all. Dean was dead, had most likely died after I left and been laying there all day waiting for me to come back and discover him no longer among the living.
    Jesus Christ! What was I going to do now? I walked in circles around the room. I kept flinging my arms out and back, out and back, don’t ask me why, and bobbing my body up and down, I think, it’s hard to remember this part, what I was doing and what I was thinking as the full impact of this bad consequence of my actions with the baseball bat rose up to hit me from yesterday.
    I don’t know how long I walked in circles before I remembered Chet downstairs waiting for answers from poor dead Dean, who at least had died a Christian still withoutchanging over to being a Muslim person, so if it’s true what they say about the soul going to heaven then he went there instead of wherever Muslim folk go to, which I have heard has got virgin girls there, a whole bunch for every man. So maybe he would have wanted to go there instead, but it’s too late now, he’s gone and died a Christian. Been
murdered
like a Christian I would have said if I wanted to look at it clear and plain, which I did not, I wanted it all to go away and never have happened, every part of it from the time my Chevy died on me till right now.
    I heard Chet’s chair scrape on the kitchen floor. He couldn’t come up here, couldn’t see Dean lying there with no breath of life inside him. Murdered. Chet couldn’t see that, so I went down the stairs real slow, gathering my thoughts as they say, but it was a very small bunch of thinking, mainly just one thing – I couldn’t back away from being Dean now. I hadn’t told any lies as such, but from here on in it was all lying even if I didn’t say another word, that’s what I was thinking.
    I saw him standing in front of the grandaddy clock in the hall. “That’s a fine old piece,” he said, his face up close against the dial to see the scrollwork clear. “How long has it been in the family?”
    â€œOh, around fifty or eighty years, I guess.”
    Lie number one. It had started. Everything in my entire life would be different now that I had a Dark Secret to hide. It must have been affecting my mind, the sudden shock etcetera, because I had this picture of me murdering Chet and burying him in the hole in the yard, which made not one bit of sense seeing as he never knew about the Secret, so what threat is he to me? None at all, so I did not follow through andmurder Chet. I wanted him gone, though, and fast, before he sees there’s something changed about me, like there’s a sign hung around my neck that says
Murderer
or maybe something crazy in my eyes that he’ll see.
    â€œIs everything all right, Dean?”
    â€œYup, no problem.”
    â€œThe way you rushed out, I thought maybe there’s something wrong.”
    â€œNah, no way.”
    â€œWell, how about we get back to discussing the matter that brought me here?”
    â€œOkay.”
    We stared at each other for a little while, then