The Man Who Forgot The World

Chapter 1
Here he sits. Alone, just as he has nearly everyday, for the last sixteen years. Seemingly dead to the world and the world dead to him. Like the mailman, he's here rain, sleet or snow. Everyday, all year, every year. He was here on this same bench when it was a bus stop and he's been here since the bus quit coming in '87. The locals call him "Crazy George". They don't even know for sure if his name is George or where the name actually came from but they all call him crazy George just the same. "There's ol' crazy George", they say. "Best years of his life wasted on that damned bench. Been there since he got back from 'Nam." Most of them also aren't exactly sure he even went to "Nam" but that doesn't stop them saying it.

He's a poor site, ol' George. His constant wardrobe is made up of a greasy red ball cap (the kind your grandpa used to wear), blue Dickie work pants that are much too short, a white button up shirt that’s no longer white and loafers with no socks. If you look closely at his right hand you'll see the letters L-R-R-P tattooed on his fingers. Jim Wallace says it's a sign of an old secret group, somewhat like the Masons, but he just made that up because it sounded good. Only George knows what it means.

There were hard times for George in the late 80's. At that time there was an unusually cruel group of teenagers in town that liked make sport of him from time to time. They'd drive by and hoop and holler or throw beer bottles at him. But it got really bad the night they got their courage up and decided to give George a beating. They worked him over pretty good. They beat him with baseball bats and tire tools until finally, the cops showed up. When the kids scattered all they left behind were a few instruments of destruction and poor George, bleeding and unconscious. The police questioned crazy George, asking what he had done to provoke the kids. "Those kids all come from good families", the Sheriff told him. "They wouldn't just go and do this unprovoked."

George never answered their questions. As a point of fact, he never said a word. He didn't let them take his fingerprints, he didn't go to the hospital. He just got up and walked out. Some years later, four of those kids that gave George the beating, disappeared. The last anyone heard of them they had gone camping down at Marion Bottoms. But they never came home and nobody ever suspected crazy George had anything to do with it. Maybe he didn't. But that's the only day in the last sixteen years that George didn't show up to sit on the bench.

It was a hot June day when crazy George finally decided to make his presence known, he was sick and tired of being sick and tired. He was tired of being a non human, a thing never noticed. He had become just like the bench he sat on, a permanent and unnoticed fixture. Something no one cared about or cared for.

It was June 12th 1991 when he came back to the world, as it were. George stood up from the bench with a stern look of determination on his face and took off his greasy red hat. There was a crow that had lit on the back of the bench moments earlier. It had a blue ribbon in it's beak and it bothered George. Scared him. He couldn't remember the last time he was scared. Probably when he was five and his mother beat him almost to death and locked him in the cupboard.

He proceeded to take off his (used to be) white, button up shirt. He was painfully skinny; thin muscle stretched over bone coated in tight, pale skin. He had a hard and weathered look about him and slightly starved. George folded his clothing neatly, laid them on the bench and stepped in front of the number nine bus bound for Jeff City.

Chapter 2
Thankfully the driver had noticed George standing by the bench and slowed a bit to gawk. He thought it rather odd that a man was undressing in broad daylight and he, like most everyone else, hadn't noticed George in years. When George walked out in front of the bus the driver pressed hard on the brakes, throwing all the passengers violently forward in their seats. Before the bus had fully stopped, George was rounding the front to get to the side door. The driver, after a long pause of clearing his head and figuring out what had just happened, opened the door.
"What the hell are you doing, pal?!" said the man behind the wheel. George said nothing. He just stared and then slowly walked up the steps and turned to look at the passengers. He scanned them with his dark brown eyes, up and down and left and right. He studied every face in a split second's time and said, "What have you done with her?"

He whirled to face the driver, looking like he could kill them all with not so much as a second thought. "Where is Sylvia?" he said with much more calm than anyone had expected. That was the scary part. The fact that he was calm and yet still looked as though he could murder the entire lot of them, walk over to the bench, put his clothing back on and sit back down.

"I don't know what you're talking about, mister!" said the driver who was trying to figure out how to get his two hundred and fifty pound, five foot six frame (which was mostly belly) through the two by two sliding window of the bus.

"Someone does." replied George in a near whisper, speaking to no one in particular. Then he turned, exited the bus and started walking down the shoulder of the highway that led through town. All the while people were cursing at him and calling him crazy, not a word George particularly liked.

The police picked him up about an hour later, after much confusion of who they were actually looking for, standing on the courthouse steps mumbling to himself. They had all forgotten that they had a resident whom everyone had called crazy George and who sat on the bus stop bench day in and day out, never talking to anyone. But that's not surprising, most people had forgotten him a long time ago. George, as far as most people were concerned, didn't exist.

Once George had been read his rights he was fingerprinted and processed. All of which was done rather speedily because it wasn't exactly a county rampant with criminal activity. As a matter of fact, George was, at the time, the only inmate in the jail. Which was fine with him. He found over the years that he didn't like people much at all, especially the criminal type.

It was the duty of one Jeffery Morgan of the Marion county sheriff's department to question suspects. He had actually been to a two hour detective course in Jeff City about five years ago so Jeffery was the "detective" by default. Never mind the fact that Jeffery had been caught stealing groceries from the county jail or that there were allegations of drug dealing. The sheriff's office had an unofficial policy of "don't ask, don't tell" or "if you see, don't tell" or "I didn't see nothin'". There were some good cops on the force to be sure, but they were good only in comparison to their peers. Sheriff Nelson's shadow still hadn't left the force like people had hoped, even though it had been 23 years since he was killed.

In all the past times George had been questioned by Jeff Morgan, five in all, he had never uttered a single word. Jeff assumed this time would be no different. Deputy Morgan started by simply saying, "Name?" George didn't answer. He only stared blankly at the officer, as he had always done. "All right, damn it. We've been through this too many times, friend. Just answer my damn questions.”
George said nothing. Just stared. Jeffery sat staring back at him thinking he could make George look away. He lasted a respectable amount of time but gave up because his eyeballs were drying out and he finally blinked.
"Damn it.", Jeffery liked saying damn it, "we got you red handed holding up a bus in broad daylight. Your little silent act ain't gonna cut it this time!" And finally, after five interrogations spanning countless hours, over multiple years, George spoke. "I'm leaving", is all he said. He got up and walked toward the door. Jeffery was stunned. Not so much by George trying to leave but because that's the first time he'd ever heard George speak.

Deputy Morgan leapt toward crazy George in an attempt to restrain him. After all, Morgan reasoned, he did have twenty hours of hand to hand combat training down at the local dojo (to go along with his two hours of Detective training, a man has to be well rounded, y’know). He could also kill a man five different ways with just a number two lead pencil, or so that's what he liked to tell people. But he'd told it for so long that he had started to believe it, even if no one else did. Yep, for sure, ol' George was gonna eat concrete.

But George spun at the last instant, planting an elbow firmly in Jeffery's teeth, knocking him unconscious and being the stereotypical small town department, not a soul saw George walk out the front door of the office. Poor Deputy Morgan lay there in a pool of drying blood for nearly an hour before someone thought it wise to check on his progress or lack thereof. Once Jeffery was revived and joined the conscious world, the proverbial shit hit the fan. If you didn't know better and got a glimpse of what was now going on, you'd swear it was 1984 again and John Rambo was on the loose. It was pandemonium. Sheriff Cram wanted squad cars on the streets, a curfew set in place, helicopters in the air and dogs on the ground. After he spelled out his "plan of action" the good sheriff ended it with, "I mean now, damn it!", for good measure.

George hadn't gotten far by the time the cruisers hit the streets but he hadn't been trying to get far. He was walking without direction, not really knowing where he ought to go. It was then that his thoughts started to drift. He began to think about the townspeople and how in their minds he didn't exist. He was nothing, a nobody. It was so bad that he swore he could remember a time when a woman walked right through him like he was a mirage. So he thought, “If that's what it takes, then let them think it. Let them have it their way.” This was a cycle George had been stuck in for a long, long time. Let them remember, make them forget, over and over again.

Just at that exact moment in time, sheriff Cram was putting his plan to action and cruising the street in search of the hardened criminal known only as "crazy George". He was looking for a man of average height, slender build, wearing pants and no shirt. And there he was, right in front of the sheriff’s cruiser, rounding the corner by the courthouse, walking as if he hadn't a care in the world. Sheriff Cram picked up the radio to give everyone the heads up and call for backup. "Base, this is the Sheriff, over." he said.

"Go ahead, Sheriff" replied the voice on the other end.

Cram keyed the mic and readied himself to give the big announcement that he had....had what? Suddenly he couldn't remember what in the world he had called in for. He was drawing a complete blank. He was looking for a suspect, that much he knew. But he couldn't remember what the guy looked like or even what he had done. It was then that he thought he heard someone say, "let them have it their way" but there was no one in the car but him and he hadn't said it.

"Go ahead, Sheriff" repeated the dispatcher.

Chapter 3
The time had come, George thought, to try and remember why he was the way he was. Why he was looking for Sylvia and why no one seemed to want to remember him. It was time for answers.

He stood staring at the front of the old dilapidated two story house he had grown up in. At least he had grown up there until his parents sent him to a foster home, they said he was too much of a problem child. George's mom would say to neighbor ladies, "I just can't control him, he runs around doing as he pleases with no respect for me or his father." None of that was really true, she was an expert at controlling George. A master absolute.

Everything was a crisis for Norma Halloway, George's mother, whose name he now remembered. For Norma every mole hill became a mountain. She was, I suppose you could say, somewhat of a drama queen. When George thinks of her he feels nothing but contempt and hatred. He knows that it's not right to hate one's own mother but he has for so long it would be hard to quit now. Also pretty useless he reckons, since she's been gone for ten or twelve years at least. She used to drive by and see George on the bus stop bench and just keep driving like she had never known him. She really hadn't known him though. Norma sent George to the foster family when he was thirteen years old and he never forgave her or his father.

Parnell Halloway, George's father, was a submissive man. He let Norma make all the decisions and no matter how selfish or wrong those decisions may have been, Parnell never objected. He "just wanted to keep the peace". George hated when his dad would say that, it meant something or somebody, namely George, was going to get screwed.

George climbed onto the porch of the long since abandoned house, stepping over the fallen front step. He must have been a curious sight, walking around with no shirt on and tattooed like he was but no one seemed to notice him, as usual. He entered through the front, pretending to open a door that was no longer there. He walked in through the living room and into the kitchen where there was two sets of markings on the wall. One he remembered, the other he didn't. The one he remembered was a chart of his growth from age two to seven. His parents stopped keeping track around age seven because that's when George started to blend in. He was always quiet but he got even more withdrawn, sometimes not speaking to anyone for days on end. After that, they put him away for good. The other set of marks was also a growth chart, smaller than his and George couldn't recall what it was for.

Then he came to the pantry. That evil thing that reminded him of misery so deep he felt like throwing up. It was a small closet with shelves in the top for storing dry goods and the like. It was also where George's mother would put him when he was bad. Apparently he was bad a lot because he can remember entire summers being locked in that closet. Norma would open the door to give him his once a day meal and say with much enthusiasm, "If you continue being so good Georgie, you'll be out of here in no time".

What kind of monster would do that to a child? Who would even do that to an animal? "It doesn't matter", he thought. "She's been dead for a long time now. Ever since she forgot how to eat."

The inside of the pantry door still held proof of his captivity, his fingernail marks covered almost it's entire surface. It even, to this day, held the faint odor of human waste. All those long hours in that closet and his dad never lifted a finger to help him. After all, he "wanted to keep the peace". But that didn't matter either because Parnell Halloway forgot how to breathe in 1963 and George never shed a tear.

George pushed away the fear and the anger as he walked through the house to the back door. He stepped out onto the back porch or at least what would normally be called a back porch. It was more of a trash bin, everything from old cans to broken radios were stacked against its walls. Just at the moment George was getting ready to leave, he noticed something blue, George always had a fondness for blue. Lying among the trash was a blue so blue that it hurt his eyes to look at it, a treasure among the cast offs. He scooted a phone book from 1978 out of the way and picked up the blue thing. It was one of those old bicycle license plates kids used to get out of cereal boxes. George remembered them fondly and always wanted one but was never allowed to have one. He carefully wiped the dust from the front and began to read what it said. It had been a long time since George had read anything and even though it was only one word he had a hard time sounding it out. After many attempts at vocalizing what he was seeing he finally came out with the word "Sylvia".

Chapter 4
Sylvia was George's one true love. He'd known her since he was about seven when his parents had moved to the neighborhood. She had platinum blonde hair and the bluest eyes you'd ever see. George fell madly in love with her before he knew what love really was. The name plate he held in his hand used to swing from the back seat of Sylvia's red and cream colored Schwinn bicycle. It had those big, goofy looking whitewall tires on it and a bell on the handlebars and she loved that thing. She wouldn't let anyone ride it except George. He never told her that he really didn't like it and riding it made him feel like a sissy. He just politely said "yes" when she'd ask if he wanted to take it for a spin.

George allowed himself to be saturated in the thickness of the memories and he begins to remember things better left forgotten. He remembers the last time he saw Sylvia. It was raining and he was crying but she couldn't tell because of the rain running down his face. She was crying too but made no attempt to hide it. He told her he had to go to Vietnam and that he was sure he would die there. She promised him she would wait, no matter how long, and that they would get married when he got home. But they didn't. She died on that damned bus and George never really came home from the war anyway. The part of him that didn't die in the war died on that bus with Sylvia.

Now, for the first time in a long time, George wanted to remember and he wanted the world to remember. He had forgotten the world when Sylvia died but now it was time for a return. There were people who owed him some explanations and if they couldn't give him that then they owed him some screams.

George carefully placed the name plate where he had found it, with the care one would give to a sacred thing, and stepped off the back porch. It had started to rain just like it had the day he told Sylvia he was going to Vietnam. Just like the rain that came so often in that place. It was all good though, George thought, it fit his mood. He knew he needed to get to Washington DC somehow but he had no money for a car or a plane ticket. He didn't even have a driver's license or social security number. He sure as hell wasn't going to walk. He pondered this for a moment and remembered how he had traveled before he forgot the world and he concentrated on where he wanted to go. In this particular case he wanted to speak to a man named Major William J. Crow, his former Company Commander and handler. That is if you could even call it a Company, it was more like a loose organization of freaks. Granted, they were highly trained freaks, but still they were something less than what society deemed acceptable.

Crow was the only one left and George wanted a word with him, so he concentrated hard and he imagined. He imagined he was wherever Crow was at that very instant in time and space and he closed his eyes. When he opened them a few seconds later he was standing in a public restroom in the Pentagon building, looking in the mirror above the sinks. In the mirror he saw a gaunt, tattooed figure that he could only assume was himself and to his left stood a man in an Army dress uniform staring at him in disbelief. It was Major Crow and after he got over the initial shock of seeing a man appear out of nowhere in a public bathroom he became very afraid. Not because he had never seen anything like this, he was pretty sure he had, but because he recognized the man standing beside him. Crow had thought him dead years ago or maybe not. He couldn't really remember why he had forgotten him but it didn't matter because he remembered now and he knew his life had just taken a sharp and drastic turn for the worse.

Crow was a well built man weighing somewhere around two hundred and twenty pounds and standing about six foot tall. What wasn't muscle was mouth. He had the biggest mouth ever on a human being, both physically and figuratively.

Crow stood there in silence, looking surprisingly confident considering that he was doing his best to keep from pissing all over himself. This well muscled man in the prime of his life was absolutely terrified of the skin and bones figure that stood before him, that tattooed man known only as crazy George.

"Halloway", said Crow, "been a long time." George just stared the kind of a stare a lion stares when hunting a gazelle. "Must have been what? Fifteen years at least?"

Finally, George spoke. "Why'd you let them do it to us, Major?"
"Do what, George?", Crow answered.
"You can quit with the memory thing, Major. I'm not blocking you anymore and we both know it." replied George. "Why'd you let them do it? They just threw us out like old used up rags. They took all we had and then they murdered us."
"Look, George" said Crow, "I know it's hard but...you knew that going in, we all did. Anyway, they didn't get you. You made it."
"Yeah, I made it." answered George. "I 'suggested' that they forget I existed, but I was too late to help the rest of the team. They were already dead."

George stopped and looked like he was concentrating on some distant memory. "But I never told them to forget you." he said with an accusatory tone. "You didn't need my help. You'd already been bought and paid for."

And in true big mouth Crow tradition, the Major answered without thinking. "Oh suck it up, George! You killed more people than Hitler, for God's sake. You're no better than them or me. The only difference is I have to drink a fifth of whiskey to forget what I've done and you just have to tell yourself you don't remember and 'poof', you forget it all. Or you just make up new memories. Well I remember what a vicious son of a bitch you are. You ain't fooling me any." He paused for effect, also a Crow trademark. But he soon realized he'd let his over sized mouth go one step too far and it was evident by the look on George's face.

George moved closer to Crow with an intense determination and said, "You sold us all out for something. What was it?"

Crow searched George's eyes to see if he could detect what he might be thinking. Then the Major had a memory go through his mind, a very unpleasant memory of George's expertise in torture and he realized it wasn't something he had remembered on his own. George had "helped" him.

"It's time we had a talk, Billy" said George. To describe in detail what went on the next few hours would be pointless. In short, there was a lot of screaming that people in the hall, and even those coming into the bathroom, quickly forgot they had heard. There are lots of ways to put a person in pain without killing them and George knew them all inside and out and backwards and he used most of them on Crow that day. To top it all off Crow knew he had run out of time and that George was going to kill him no matter what he said or didn't say. So the Major sang like a bird.

George finally asked, “Was Sylvia part of this?”
Crow looked confused. Like a computer stuck in a loop and not able to comply with it's commands. “Who?” He said.
“Sylvia Larune. Don't act like you don't know who I'm talking about.” George tilted his head sideways and looked into Crow's eyes. They looked vacant. Blank.

"You poor, dumb bastard", said Crow. "You don't know a lot of things and it ain't because you wanted to forget them either. It's because you're a selfish son of a bitch who can't see past the end of his nose." Crow paused to cough up what looked like bloody lung tissue. "Did you know your little girl friend didn't die in that bus wreck? No, of course you didn't." George said nothing and remained emotionless.

"Yeah that's right", continued Crow, "when you pulled your little stunt the brass got nervous and decided they needed some insurance. So, they grabbed her, wrecked the bus and put some whore who washed up on the river bank in her place. They planted all of your girlfriend's I.D. and personal things in there too, they're very thorough like that. Only problem was, you were in such a hurry to make everybody forget you that the higher ups didn't have time to tell you they had her. At least that’s how I heard it." He looked confused again and said, “I think.”

Crow revealed a little smirk and said, "You know what that means, tough guy? You made everybody forget about you and anything or anyone to do with you. So your little darling sat in that cell all by herself. No one noticed she was there because you made them all forget. There she was, no food, no water. Screams didn't' help her, just like they haven't helped me. I'll bet her bones are still in that shitty cell."

George began not knowing whether to believe Crow or just put him away right here and shut him up forever.

"Hell, man", Crow continued, "can you imagine the stench? I bet those guys were running crazy trying to find out where it was coming from. Hahahaha." After his amusement wore off, Crow looked around almost instinctively for some way out of this situation, but he knew better. There was no getting out of this one.

"That's pretty bad," he said, "but that ain't all. Remember your little brother? Zack?" George's mind flashed back to the marks on the wall of his old house and he remembered that there were two sets. One for him and one for Zack.

"Yeah, you screwed him good too", Crow said in a way that suggested this was his last big reveal. In his voice was a hint of sadness. "The higher ups grabbed him a couple of days before they got your gal pal so they had plenty of time to beat on him. I saw that with my own eyes. As a matter of fact, he was in the middle of being questioned when you pulled your memory trick on everybody. So all the brass could remember was that Zack knew something. What? They couldn't say but that didn't stop them from beating on him. A lot.
Then finally they forgot about him too. They had him in a maximum security cell for your kind of souped up freaks. It was three stories underground. And you know what? I bet he's still there. No food or water but I bet that mean little bastard is still alive just waiting for the day some unlucky guard stumbles on his cell. Can you imagine how pissed he's gonna be? That'll make family reunions kinda uncomfortable huh, Georgie?" Crow paused momentarily, his eyes registered the blank look they had before he started talking about Sylvia and he said finally, “All that about Zack is all true, by the way.”

Those were the last words Major William J. Crow ever spoke. But he did however die with an expression of contentment on his face. He was satisfied he had delivered a sufficient amount of heartbreaking news to make George's existence even worse than it had been previously.

George cleaned the blood from his hands in the newly installed sink and stared in the mirror for several minutes. Inside he was an emotional wreck, he had caused untold suffering for his brother. And Sylvia. Sylvia he had left to die alone in an 8x8 shit hole. Her only fault was that she knew the wrong man. George thought someone should pay for all this but Crow was the last of them. Anyone involved originally either George himself had killed or the hand of time had taken.

There's a few things one should know about George Halloway. You see, the townspeople were partly right, he was crazy. Now that's usually not a horribly bad thing in and of itself, but add to that the power to kill millions with only a thought and you see the tragedy that could unfold. George knew of only one way to make things right. He knew no prison could hold him, he'd just make the guards forget he was there and then saunter right out the front door. He had done that before. He knew that if he wasn't put away for life that he could lose control and do unthinkable things in his want for revenge. That he had also done. No, there was only one thing to do. Make the world remember him. Then they would send a team to round him up and kill him. So that's what he did.

Chapter 5
Only the team never came. Turns out there were really only two people who remembered who he was. One was his brother Zack (who, as Crow had said, was still in that prison cell and had never forgotten) and the other was Cecil Carter, the prison guard.

Cecil Carter had been a guard at the Deepstep, New Mexico Facility for thirty one hard years and only just a few minutes ago he remembered that down in the bowels of the building was something very interesting. They called it "the tank", a place where secrets were kept. A place where they put away the unruly freaks who were hard to kill.

He can only remember one prisoner being down there the last time he was there. How long ago was that? He wasn't exactly sure. Who was this guy they had deemed such a threat that he had to be locked away three stories underground? He drew yet another blank. So Cecil, naturally, made the stupid decision to go and have a look-see. What his expression must have been like when he saw what he saw. It was particularly sad that he was only two months and five days from retiring to that beach home in Florida he and his wife had just bought only a week ago.

Chapter 6

George knew this very spot was where Zack would come. It was here that they grew up together before they were both sent to foster homes. It was here, in the old family house, that they had marked each other's height on the wall because neither mom or dad were sober enough to do it nor did they even care to if they were.

It was 2:15 on a warm Sunday afternoon when Zack walked through the front doorway of the old house on Taylor street, there he found George sitting patiently on an old milk crate. Neither brother said anything for what seemed to be hours, words came hard and didn't seem adequate to describe what they were feeling.

Zack was the first to speak. "I had to kill my way to the top, you know." He paused for a moment and then said, "They put me in a cell three stories below ground." Another long pause. "I was there for sixteen years, George."

George looked up. His eyes were full of tears that hadn't yet begun to run over and down his cheeks. "I'm sorry." he whispered quietly.

"All those guards I killed, they were young enough that they didn't even know I was down there. Didn't even know the tank existed. That didn't stop them from fighting hard though." Zack took a deep breath and continued, "Wrong place, wrong time."

George closed his eyes and rested his head against the wall behind him while Zack talked. "I didn't want to kill them. It wasn't something I would have chosen if I'd had my druthers. But they were between me and the sunshine. They could have dropped the entire United States Army down that hole with me and I'd have chewed my way through them to get to the sun again. It's all I could think about."

George replied, "You didn't want to kill them, but you do want to kill me. I'm the one got you locked up and the one who made them forget you."

"No Georgie, I just want to feel the sun on my face for the rest of my life." Zack said with a smile that had compassion and empathy behind it. "I never want to be in the dark again."

"I just couldn't take it, Z", said George. "I couldn't live this life without her. It hurt too much to remember her, so I forgot the world. I made everyone forget I ever existed. And I hid from the sun."

Zack sat down on the dirty hardwood floor next to George and said, “You hid long before that, Georgie.” George had a look of confusion on his face, he didn't know what that meant. Zack brushed by it and said, "I didn't forget though. You never could make me forget."
"I know", said George. "That's the most vile part, I abandoned you. Left you to die."

Zack stood up and walked to the window where he could stand in the sunlight. "Why did you call me here, Georgie?"

George got up from the crate slowly and said, "No prison can hold me. No judge can sentence me and remember he did. My desire to live will trump my desire to die as soon as my instincts kick in and I'll use my abilities to survive. No matter how horrible. No man can kill me. No man but you. My "skills" don't affect you, Zack."

Zack was silent for some time. He glanced back at George who was running his shoe through a pile of dirt on the living room floor. Zack thought he looked as he always had, a boy in a man's body. Neither brother spoke for some time. Finally, George broke the silence. "Remember Robert and Shirley Trist?"
"Yeah", said Zack, "they used to come by every Sunday morning and take us to church."
"'Till mom told them not to come back," George said with a hint of rage in his voice. "They said that church was full of hypocrites. But I always thought that's why people went to church, because they knew they were hypocrites like all the rest of us and they knew they needed forgiveness for it."

Zack was now deep in the memories of those times, with all of their happiness and moments of sheer terror at the hands of his parents. It was pain and suffering at home and the fleeting glimpse of acceptance in the message of Robert and Shirley Trist's God.

There was another long pause, a thick silence until George finally spoke. "I'll kill them all. If you don't put me down, I'll kill the world. I can't help it. I think sometimes they deserve it and so do I."

Zack looked at his brother with a sad sort of resolve. "I know", is all he said. He walked over to where George was standing and put his arm around his brother's neck. With the other hand he drew out his knife from the sheath and held it tight. Without looking at Zack, George said, “I left you a gift. It's on the back porch...you'll know it when you see it.”

“Ok, Georgie,” Zack said. And then, “Thank you.”

They stood there for a moment, each one traveling through the past. "Remember that song we used to sing in Sunday school?" Zack said. "How did it go?" Zack searched for the words buried deep in his memory and began to sing, "Jesus loves me this I know, for the bible tells me so." George joined his brother in harmony and they both wept as they sang it. In that moment, as they sank deep into happy times of old when it was only those two together, they were little boys again. They were free and the Son was shining on them.

Crazy George's life ended there by the hand of his brother. He would have had it no other way even if another way were possible.

Zack walked through the kitchen and onto the back porch. Laying on top of all the trash was a package wrapped in brown paper. On it, in George's handwriting. It said, “The Truth”. He picked it up and ran his hand across the top. The contents of that box would change Zack's life forever.

Epilogue

Police reports didn't have much to say about what happened at the old Halloway house that day. What was there was enigmatic to those reading it. It said that neighbors had heard boys singing an old Sunday school song and how it made them feel alive and hopeful. None could explain how they heard the boys singing when they weren't close enough to actually be in earshot. But everyone within a few blocks heard it nonetheless.

George Halloway was interred at the Masonic Cemetery beside his parents.

No one came to his funeral.