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[Devon]

THE EXPIATION OF CAMERON CLENCH.....few will understand it but that is no matter..

Read and comment if you dare.

Dev

[Devon]

THE EXPIATION OF CAMERON CLENCH by Devon Pitlor

　

I. The clumsiness of Cameron Clench

Cameron Clench, who worked as a stocker at Mega-Mart SuperCenter, may have been clumsy because he was always looking over his shoulder for the police. He may have been clumsy because he had not only killed his wretchedly unfaithful wife, Kristen, but also the original possessor of the name Cameron Clench, a homeless man who strongly resembled him and was laden with enough identification to make a new Cameron Clench almost instantly. The man even had a passport among his possessions. But the most probable reason for Cam's clumsiness was that during his thirty-five years of life he had never done much heavy work. Trained as a bond analyst, Cam (whose old name we won't bother with) had never lifted many heavy boxes as he was now required to do at Mega-Mart while stocking shelves at night. The heaviest thing he could remember lifting was Kristen's dead body and throwing it into an industrial incinerator. But now, living a new life far from Brookfield and his former suspicious neighbors, Cam was dropping things all the time. Tonight it was a case of ketchup in glass bottles.

Li-Sun, Cam's supervisor, came over to the mess as Cam was attempting to mop it up. Li-Sun, a dour Korean immigrant who adored Mega-Mart and held stock in the huge corporation, was personally offended by the loss of so many bottles of ketchup. He noted it on a clip board and gave Cam the type of sneer that only an Asian seems capable of. "Take bottles and box to dumpster," Li-Sun said. "Not for box crusher."

Cam thought for a moment that he would like to throw Li-Sun in the box crusher and see his nasty Korean face squeezing out of a bale of banded cardboard headed for the recycler. He had the usual thoughts that successful killers often do. Things about how if you've killed once or twice, then three or four times is no big deal. But Li-Sun was safe. Cam would soon be moving on. The original Cameron Clench, although a vagabond, had a valid passport and the new Cam was soon going to use it. Guatemala, he thought. Maybe El Salvador.

II. Kristen

Cameron Clench had never intended to kill his wife when he learned of her affair with the big Indian, Amos Tallfern, who ran the local scrap metal foundry in Brookfield, but things had turned out bad. Cam had only wanted to "choke a little sense into her" but he ended up choking all sense right out of her, and Kristen collapsed brushing her slight body against his knees and crumbling to the kitchen floor very dead. Amos Tallfern was convinced that Cameron had killed Kristen, but because he was conducting affairs with so many local women at the time, he kept his mouth shut. A nearly three hundred pound hulk with a two foot ponytail, Amos just slunk back to his unknowing wife, Erica, and their two children and never said another word. The police investigated him too, but cleared him rapidly because of his bona fide American Indian identification card. He was a member of some invisible tribe, and the police didn't want to go poking into that kind of political maze.

Cameron had an air-tight alibi for where he was the night Kristen disappeared, and that alibi came from his childhood friend Noah Danlon, a bachelor who swore under oath that Cameron had been watching a tennis match with him on television on the evening of Kristen's vanishment. Noah and "Cameron" had been close friends throughout high school, and Noah was convinced that Cameron had once saved his life by distracting a vicious bully from pounding Noah's head into the driveway of his father's house. Noah and Cameron had once been the victims of numerous bullies and had formed a seemingly unshakeable bond between them. In school, in the days long before email or text messaging or cellphones, they passed or left indecipherable notes for one another. These notes, based on a very simple code, comforted the boys and got them reasonably intact into manhood.

III. The code

Between Cameron and Noah, there were a few trivial secrets as between all shy and tyrannized boys. Stuff about girls they wanted to make it with but never could or the ambient whereabouts of the football players who so tormented them. Nothing vitally important, but it had been Noah's idea to use something cryptologists know as a book code to communicate. Both boys grew up in houses full of books, and it would be nearly impossible for anyone to know which book they held in common. As a minor detail, it was a 1923 edition of Edgar Rice Burrough's Pellucidar, not altogether rare, but not common either. The book code was simple enough: three numbers for each word---page, paragraph and position of word. As most cryptologists know, book cipher is nearly impossible to crack unless you know which book the participants are using. Following his flight from Brookfield, Cameron, upon Noah's request, threw his copy of Pellucidar into a landfill burn-off and did not pack it with his scant belongings. When he disappeared, the Kristen case was again re-opened, and even Amos Tallfern was again questioned, but by that time, one unknown and unrelated Cameron Clench in a different city had disappeared, and another one had emerged. The new Cameron, as we have noted, now fancied himself a seasoned killer.

IV. Mega-Mart SuperCenter

Besides being clumsy, Cameron Clench was known as somewhat of a creep among the night workers at the gigantic 24 hour emporium. He talked to no one, had no friends, and would not exchange pleasantries with the several female cashiers who found him attractive. One of them had given him the nickname Silent Cam, and another took it upon herself to call him Cam the Clam. Handsome men who didn't flirt were always suspect among the women employees. Morgan Sniderman, a pert and snoopy divorcee who ran Customer Service, had even followed Cameron home one night to discover that he lived alone in a transient hotel. Further inquiry on Morgan's part dislodged that he was unmarried and running from something ugly in his past. Cameron knew about this snooping and had briefly contemplated killing Morgan. It would be just one more murder on his list. He was not a natural killer, but what the hell? Why not develop the skill? Morgan might be a good place to start. The woman, like the others, needed to keep her distance. Every time Cameron passed her in the store, he thought of a different way of disposing of her. He was beginning to fantasize a great deal about killing again.

Li-Sun stood over Cameron as he cleaned up the ketchup mess. He said "dumpster" at least five times in his distinctly snotty Korean accent and made a mental note to check Cam's personnel file. Stockers came and went at Mega-Mart, and Li-Sun, loyal to his American company, wanted to see Cameron go as soon as possible. Unknown to Cameron, Li-Sun had a nephew---his American sponsor---on the local police force and had already asked him to look into some criminal records. A Cameron Clench had gone missing from a fruit importing company about five years before in another city. This was long before the new Cameron had killed Kristen, so no connection was made, but the police had a file anyway. It was only a matter of time before they came around to ask questions. The disappearance of the original Cameron Clench had left a few untied strings, mostly dealing with absconded funds. Cameron suspected most of this and was only waiting for his next paycheck to hit the road again---this time hopefully to Guatemala or some place where he could start anew. His chances were growing very slim, however, and, as it turned out, dropping the case of ketchup may have been the best thing that ever happened to him.

V. The dumpster

The morning sun was breaking over the interstate directly behind Mega-Mart. Its harsh rays were illuminating the quiet suburban town to which Cam had drifted and from which he needed to drift away soon. The parking lot was littered with food wrappings, empty beer cans and flattened boxes which had not yet made it to the crusher. The usual employees, mostly young boys, were rounding up the stray shopping carts, and the brooms began to appear. It was a quiet Sunday morning, and no one took much notice of anyone else, least of all the double murderer Cameron Clench who was pushing a ruined carton of broken ketchup bottles in a cart toward one of the enormous dumpsters which formed the barrier between Mega-Mart's property and the filthy stretch of unused wooded growth behind it. In these little woods, drunks and vagabonds sometimes hung out, but it was littered with debris of all sorts and swaths of discarded baling wire, broken bottles and ominous shards of jagged, discarded iron fragments which jutted up like rusting dinosaur fangs from the soil. It was not a welcoming place and certainly nowhere to hide if one had the notion of hiding. A crinkled no trespassing sign swung from a stunted tree just beyond the dumpsters, but it was generally ignored. No, it was not like the abandoned rail yard where Cameron had killed Cameron and had become Cameron. It was just a little patch of dirty, garbage strewn woods which led nowhere.

As Cameron tossed the case of broken ketchup bottles into the dumpster, he chanced to see the wide eyes of a skinny kid peering out at him from the tangled bushes and stunted trees. The kid could not have been older than fourteen, and Cameron wondered whether he was a runaway or homeless. He tried to avoid looking at the boy, but the latter, creeping more like a cat than a person, edged out of the woods and came toward him. Cameron was about to go back into the store, when the kid asked him for a cigarette.

"Go away," snarled Cameron. "I don't smoke and neither should you." For a few seconds Cameron thought of what it might be like to kill the boy and throw him in the dumpster.

The kid grinned at him and moved closer to his side. "Why not?" he said innocently.

Cameron was closing the lid of the dumpster with two hands when the blast of an ambulance siren screamed upward from the expressway. For a second or two, the sound blocked out all other noises. Then in one deft movement, the kid grabbed the wallet from Cameron's pocket and darted off into the thicket. Stunned, Cameron stared at the disappearing body and realized that all of his ID minus the passport was in that wallet along with over two hundred dollars he had been saving for his next get-away. Without thinking, he dashed into the wooded lot after the boy but tripped several times, cutting and bruising himself on the trash and wire under his feet. He struggled past some thorny bushes and slogged his way through at least five feet of wet newspaper only to be stopped by a row of discarded detergent barrels which blocked his immediate path. Rounding the barrels, he again struggled through the overgrown brush into the shadows beyond. Becoming desperate, he ran forward into the trees past more garbage and stumbled once again over the skeletal frame of a bicycle poking out of the mud. The kid was nowhere to be seen.

His heart racing, he called out "Come back. I have lots more money. Bring me my wallet and I'll pay you five hundred dollars." But there was no answer. Alone in the thicket Cameron paused to calm down and think. He was caked with mud and bleeding from multiple scratches.

VI. The thicket

From his vantage point Cam could look back into the huge parking lot of Mega-Mart and watch the coming and going of the customers and employees. He grimaced for a moment when he saw his night manager Li-Sun carrying a plastic briefcase, which was most likely empty, and heading for his car. Three of the lady cashiers who bothered Cam nightly were shuffling out behind Li-Sun. Cam froze where he was. This was no time to come out of the bush. His sudden appearance would only lead to more suspicion. He noted a couple of teenage kids circling the parking lot on bikes and realized to his dismay that the wooded lot was tiny and that his thief had probably left from the other end and was far away by this time. The chances of retrieving his wallet or ID were slim. Cameron felt a sudden pang of fear and regret for his entire life. He had been running and dodging like a desperate animal for well over a year now. He had strangled Kristen in a fit of anger, not really meaning to kill her. And then in the rail yards the Cameron person, who looked so much like him, had just offered him the opportunity by being there drunk and unconscious. Both killings had been spontaneous acts born of fear from a person who had been frightful all his life. Now most of the identification was gone, though the passport was still hidden in his room. In its photo he looked less like the original Cameron Clench than he had on the drivers license, which had given him the initial motive to kill the sleeping man anyway. He remembered his own days as a teenager, harassed and haunted by school bullies. He remembered that he was not actually a killer but rather a weak, sheltered and bookish boy with only one friend in the world. He thought briefly of Noah back in Brookfield. Could Noah help him again? That was doubtful and dangerous too. There was no way he could return to Brookfield. He sat down on a rotten stump and buried his head in his hands. Perhaps, he thought, he was getting what he deserved. Perhaps he should turn himself in. But no, there had to be a way out. Were the cops not as big a bullies as the husky football stars of his youth? No, he would never give up and turn himself over to more torment, not with cops or in prison where he would eventually go. He could claim that killing Kristen was an act of temporary madness, which it was, and probably get a lighter sentence, but even that he would never be able to bear----once again the morbid and lifelong fear of bullying. A thousand thoughts were racing through his mind when he looked up at a bar of light which illuminated a beaten path through the tiny woods. Who knows where it led? Maybe to another rail yard where he could find another near-twin and steal his identification. Most likely it led to the end of the wooded lot, to more piles of garbage and eventually toward a neighborhood. Mechanically, he rose to his feet and began to follow it. Within a few yards, the trash on the ground gradually disappeared, and the covering brush and trees became surprisingly thicker. The path led on and on, and within a few minutes the sounds of cars on the expressway were replaced by the morning twittering of birds and the scamper of squirrels in the lofty branches. The tiny woods turned out to be not as tiny as it should have been, wedged in behind Mega-Mart and the interstate. In fact, it became deeper and deeper as Cam walked.

Ten minutes of mindless walking brought him to a place where several beaten paths converged. He chose the one to his left because he associated the direction with the path his life had taken. To go right--in the metaphysical sense of going right---was not his destiny any more. He was a killer. Killers needed to take the distaff or sinister side, the left. More walking. The random grasses grew higher and higher and the woods became more and more silent. Where in the hell was he anyway? There could not be so much unused land in a suburb like this so closely adjacent to a major city. But Cam pressed onward. Ahead of him he saw something which jolted his attention. The sallow kid who had robbed him was sitting on a stump watching him approach. Cam moved in faster as he recognized the white teeshirt and torn jeans the boy had been wearing. The kid was waiting for him. What the hell? If Cam could catch him, he would kill him. Cam's life had taken on a new role, that of a killer. With the new ID came this new identity. Cam was still trying it out, but a distinct taste for blood was beginning to form in his mind. The thieving brat would make a good target.

As he neared the boy, Cam noticed that the dodgy looking kid had something in his hand. It was Cam's wallet. The boy held it out to him without saying a word. Cam grabbed it and rifled rapidly through the contents. His drivers license, social security card, Mega-Mart badge and everything else was still in place....even the banknotes. The kid had taken nothing. Cam stared in wonder at his wallet and back at the boy, who smiled pleasantly and finally spoke.

"Keep going straight," he said quietly. "It will take you out of the woods." Then the kid sprang up from the dead log on which he was sitting and sprinted forward, once again evaporating into the thicket. Cam followed but he was not sure why. It may have been something about killing once again.

VII. The boy lied.

Over a half-hour later, Cam was still walking in what was now a dense and seemingly untouched forest. It was early autumn and the ground, garbage free, was cleanly blanketed by fallen leaves. A peaceful woodland aura caressed the atmosphere all around him, and Cam, perplexed at the size of the woods, began to wonder why the boy had returned his wallet to him and then lied about the path leading out. A kid like that either stole or he did not. This one had robbed him for no good reason. Cam realized that if the event had been reversed, he would have most certainly kept the wallet and especially the money. He was "bad" now. He was the bully not the bullied. Why hadn't the kid not taken the money at least? And where in the hell was he? How did a forest this big exist behind Mega-Mart in a quiet neighborhood which he passed through every day on his way to work? He had once chanced to look at a map of the suburb where he had landed. It was posted on the lobby wall of his hotel. There were no green spaces anywhere even a tenth as large as this. Cam, when first on the run, had always looked for deserted locales, places to hide. The map had shown nothing of the kind.

Almost without noticing it, Cam arrived at the hovel of what he supposed at once to be a homeless person. An array of mismatched boards and pieces torn from abandoned pallets were positioned upward forming a crude shelter, the door of which was covered by a weathered brown khaki blanket. Once again, there was refuse on the ground, empty cans, milk cartons and other abandoned items. Cam, who had lived for over a month in such a collection of squats, recognized the scene immediately. It was the camp of a vagabond like himself, another refugee from society, a person with a desire to disappear from life.

A bearded man of indeterminate age came outside pushing the blanket aside. Cam prepared to defend himself, as was always required in such situations. He grabbed a thick branch to use as a club and waited for the man to react. The bearded man appraised him without fear. "Come have some coffee," he said. "You look tired."

Cam, still gripping his cudgel, walked over to the man, who was much shorter than he was, and stared at him. The man was dressed in a clean pair of jeans and was wearing a teeshirt that read Reebok. His eyes were tired and rheumy, and his movements were slow and painful.

Cam accepted a large cracked mug of coffee from him and took a long drink. "Got anything to go with this?" he asked, knowing that hoboes like this man often had either home brew or better something concocted in a homemade still. The man, who now appeared quite old upon examination, shook his head and produced a bottle of white liquid and immediately poured some into Cam's coffee. He looked at Cam quizzically as if examining his inner soul. Cam felt the welcome burn of the liquor and sat down on a stump near the entrance to the man's hovel. "Who are you?" he asked, "and where is this place?" The thought of killing the denizen crossed his mind more than once. But first he needed some answers.

The man's face creased deeply as if he were in terrible pain. Cam began to notice that his every movement seemed to bring him intense agony. Arthritis, he thought. The guy probably didn't have a joint in his body that was not rotted out. With a gesture of the hand, the man beckoned Cam to enter his shack. At first, Cam was leery, but there seemed to be something overwhelmingly compelling about the withered hobo. Moreover, he was fragile enough that even a weakling like Cam had no reason to fear him. Entering the hovel, Cam was shocked to see candles burning everywhere illuminating the walls. The shack was much larger on the inside than it appeared from without. From the ceiling hung a huge wooden wagon wheel converted into a makeshift chandelier dripping with the wax of at least twenty burning candles. As Cam's eyes adjusted to the brightness of the room and his nose became accustomed to the musty odor of the earthen floor and mud-sealed walls, he noted that every wall was lined with books. Many of the books seemed new, and some were paperbacks, but the largest quantity of the books seemed ancient. Having once, in what was now a distant life, been a sort of bibliophile, Cam asked the old man if he could examine them. The old man, still appearing wracked with physical anguish, bade him silently to proceed. The collection of older books was nothing short of astounding. Holding a candle in front of his eyes, Cam glanced at the titles. Here were books like Ratibon's Chirurgerie des Malcontents, 1927 Gallimard; Grosvenor's Epistolaries from the Edge, Archimarge 1902; a frazzled collection of Harrison Drewry's Poems of Demonic Invocation dated from an unknown publisher in 1856, John Palifox Key's Proofs of My Return, 1961; Doranelli's horrid Reges Fortes Acresque Ad Portas Nubium, 14th Century edition; Greeb's Cosmocopia, Lisbon 1702; and Alton Grobbel's fearsome Der Garten des Menschlichen Blut, 1625 Dortmund---for which the author was condemned to the stake and summarily burned.

Cam was both dazzled and terrified by the array of unusual to downright rare volumes, some of which had only heretofore been rumored to exist and most of which had either brought death or damnation to their possessors.

The old man spilled another long draught of white liquor into Cam's coffee and with great discomfort sat down in a comfortable chair in the center of the room.

Cam took a wooden stool beside him and drank deeply once again. "You have books that men have gone to prison or to the racks of torture for even claiming to possess. Again, I ask who are you and what is your name?" Cam still gripped his cudgel and was feeling the urge to use it.

Moving his lips with great difficulty, the old man replied "I am Lorenzo, my first name should suffice, and this place is everywhere and nowhere at the same time. You are here now. That is all that matters. You may stay on the mattress in this room, a clean and comfortable mattress. You may eat what food I have and drink my distillate. But I need to tell you that you were brought here for a reason. You have a duty to perform, a mission, if you will. But I cannot reveal it to you all at once. Soon you will know why you are here and what you must do." The old man writhed once again in a general distress which seemed to embrace his entire body.

Cam pondered some thought about the ravings of a maniac and glanced up again at the moldering books. "These books," he started to say but cut himself short when a huge white snake with the head of an earthworm began crawling out from behind the ancient volumes he had been examining. The worm must have been eight feet long and had the diameter of a man's arm. It slithered from behind the books and found its way blindly to the dirt floor. Startled, Cam recoiled from it, but within an instant it was coiled at his feet. Instantly, the robber boy sprang up staring and grinning widely at Cam. "Don't try to leave the house of Lorenzo," he said. "You will find that impossible. There are many paths in the woods but all of them lead back here." Then they boy sprang into the air and regained the shape of a huge white worm and blindly slid away behind the huge collection of antiquarian books.

Cam gasped at the transformation from worm to boy but credited it to the intoxicating effects of the white liquor. He looked about for his club, but his legs refused to lift him from the stool. Before him sat Lorenzo, his mouth trying to form new words but his face painted with the most extreme throes of agony.

VIII. Some numbers

After a few minutes, Cam had definitely formed a plan to club Lorenzo over the head and search the hovel for money or valuables. He relished his new-found killer instinct and was about to brandish the branch cudgel when Lorenzo rose to his feet and snatched a corked bottle off a nearby shelf. With visible strain he lowered himself once again into the chair, his face contorted in pain. Inside the bottle was a large, folded piece of paper. "Yours," said Lorenzo. "A message. It has been here a long time." Unable to extract the cork with his own gnarled fingers, he cast the bottle into Cam's hands.

Cam pulled out the rotting cork and shook out a piece of yellowing paper, a kind of decaying parchment scrawled with two columns of numbers, three in each group. At once, Cameron recognized the book code of his youth, his means of communication between himself and Noah, his only friend. The code meant nothing without Burrough's Pellucidar, and it needed to be the original 1923 edition as well. Surely that must be on the shelf somewhere. Thrusting the candle forward, Cam examined the fading tomes. Once again the arcane titles shocked him, things like the accursed Magna Veculata, which had been lost for centuries. Then the boy came out again from a room behind. He stood behind Lorenzo and smiled at Cam. Finally he spoke: "The entire unwritten, unknown history of the human race," he said slowly and with some satisfaction. "The real account of man's ascent on Earth. Things you can't read anywhere else, and you will have plenty of time here to read them." The boy tossed a frazzled quilt over Lorenzo as he sat silently in his chair. Instantly, he withdrew the quilt and Lorenzo was gone. Cam stared at the trick in shock. Surely there was a trap door somewhere. Lorenzo must have fallen through it, a cheap magic trick. The boy shook his head reading Cam's thoughts. "What you're looking for is outside on the card table in the sunlight," he said. Then he fell to all fours and became a kind of hyena-like creature which half barked and half laughed as it darted off pushing its enormous snout through the khaki blanket. Cam gripped his club and followed. The hyena thing was nowhere to be seen, but on the three-legged, wobbly card table was Pellucidar, the 1923 original edition.

Cam collapsed onto a wooden crate next to the table and gingerly opened the book to the inside of the front cover where, to his dismay, he failed to see his father's signature as it had been on his own discarded edition. Paper in hand, he reverted to a practice he had not done for over twenty years but one which came easily again, as if today were actually yesterday and the world was populated by hordes of bullies waiting for him at every street corner. He translated the code. It was time-taking but easy. As the words emerged from the numbers, he flipped the pages faster and faster and wrote them in order on top of the card table with the stub of a pencil he had found there.

"A great war is coming. Stay where you are. You are important in a way that you cannot even begin to imagine. Soon Lorenzo will be dead by your hand. You will take his place. You must trust what I have written. A great war followed by a great plague is coming. Stay where you are."

Cameron Clench read the words over and over again. His eyes filled with tears of remorse and regret for a past time. Memories of closeness to Noah came to his mind. Together they had escaped the bullies of their youth. Together they had written one another lofty-sounding messages like the one he now had scribbled before him on the table. Was he a killer? Or was he just a scared little boy? For the first time in two years he embraced a tender thought about Kristen. He had never satisfied her. He had told her from the start that he was inept at lovemaking, and he had lived up to his promise. She had needs too. How wrong had she been to cheat on him? What satisfaction had she really derived from a few frenzied moments in the embrace of the sweaty Indian? Why did she have to be dead? Then the nomad, Cameron Clench whose name he carried. What was his crime? Embezzlement? Embezzlement which led to his vagabond life on the tracks? Why did he have to die? In seconds, Cameron's face was streaked with sour tears of regret. He had no idea what the message meant, what the great war or the great plague were, but he felt a sincere repentance, a repentance for everything, even being born the quivering coward that he was. Alone in an impenetrable forest, he cried out for some sort of salvation, but his words fell deafly onto the leaden atmosphere of the quiet woods. The boy, turned into a hyena, was gone, and Lorenzo had vanished as well. What was he to do next? For some reason his only recourse was sleep. He was bone tired and found the mattress in the corner of the great room within the hovel. Sleep seemed natural and inevitable. His weariness seemed boundless and irresistible.

IX. The boy reappears

When he awoke the boy was standing at his side with a can of Spam and some Mega-Mart crackers. He offered these as well as some Mega-Mart soda to Cam, as Cam's eyes blinked in the harsh glare of the candles. Cam fleetingly felt yet another urge to kill the boy, but his cudgel was missing and his muscles were inexplicably sore. It amused him that both Lorenzo and the boy must have stolen or bought food from Mega-Mart all the time, as most of the labels were of house products---junk food, potato chips and unsliced baloney, Mega-Mart milk and Mega-Mart cookies. He ate.

The boy handed him an axe. He noted the brand name stamped on its wooden handle: Home Right. It was again the Mega-Mart house brand. Mega-Mart must be very close, he thought. I need to escape. He jumped to his feet and tore the axe from the boy's outstretched hand. "That way," the boy said pointing to the right. "Go right along the path. Take the axe." Then the boy flattened into a sort of huge crawling insect and scuttled under a bookshelf.

Cam took the axe and ran. Following a path to the right, he was certain that he would soon re-emerge at Mega-Mart, but the woods only became deeper and more tangled. At length, he tripped over an exposed root and fell at the base of a medium sized-tree with branches outspread in each direction like the arms of a man. The day was still bright and sunny, and Cam looked up into the tree and saw that it was not only a tree but also Lorenzo. Lorenzo's face and arms stood out in crude relief from the trunk. In effect, Lorenzo had become a tree and was anchored to the ground by legs that had taken the form of gnarled roots. Lorenzo's face was twisted in excruciating sufferance. He was trapped in the tree as if he had grown there. "You are a killer," he groaned. "Kill me. Kill me."

In a malicious fit of rage, Cameron attacked the tree with the axe, chipping huge gashes into its trunk. He seemed to have supernatural strength now. With every hit, blood squirted from the bark and wood of the tree. With every blow, Lorenzo gasped in pain. "Kill me," he continued to whisper. Drenched in perspiration, Cameron saw the tree, saw Lorenzo, fall to earth raising a cloud of dry dust. He dropped the axe and continued running along the tiny worn path, but was not surprised when it opened once again upon Lorenzo's makeshift hovel. The sky was darkening over into night. Cam once again fell exhausted onto the mattress. When he awoke, it was pitch black outside. The boy was nowhere in sight. Hundreds, perhaps thousands of dogs, seemed to be howling outside, and he could hear them brushing past the walls and blanketed doorway of the hut.

When daybreak came, Cam realized that he was indeed a prisoner in what the boy had called the house of Lorenzo. And so he remained. Food, always from Mega-Mart, was delivered to him by unseen hands and white liquor often materialized when he least expected it in bottles left by the door. Not the boy, nor any of his transformations, ever came again. Little by little, Cameron Clench, murderer, accepted his lot. He began to peruse the forbidden volumes from the shelves and learned far more than any man today can say he has learned. He learned about the true and secret origins of the human species and what mankind's role on Earth had always been, bits and pieces of a patchwork of recondite knowledge that he would never reveal because it seemed as if he was learning in a vacuum or during a prolonged trance. He sat in Lorenzo's old chair and read and read... Each night he forgot most of what he had learned during the day's reading. Each day he began anew, startled and galvanized by secrets too outlandish to remember or divulge, tales of unknown gods and progenitor creatures, some too frightening to imagine, others like the whisper of a long-forgotten fairy tale for his earliest youth.

Gradually, his muscles and joints became sore and then suddenly painful beyond belief. He was, in effect, turning into Lorenzo, but he realized that it was necessary and that the pain he bore was for all the accumulated sins of mankind as well as his own. His agony was a sort of required expiation. By day he read and tried to ignore the hurt. By night he slept fitfully to the ceaseless howling of the dogs.

X. Until one day (Conclusion)

Until one day... One day the sky above the lofty trees became slate gray and the sun no longer shone. At night the dogs still howled but their howling was dimmer and more muffled. His pain now was so unbearable that he could hardly go outside, but when he did, he sensed a thick, ominous atmosphere of evil and ruin. No birds twittered in the trees. No green leaves grew with the coming of the spring. No life appeared anywhere. Only the tarnished silver haze of death blanketed both the earth and sky, making the firmament cold and foreboding, and it remained so perhaps for years, perhaps for eons. Under the bleakness of the hardened sky, time had ceased to matter. During this period, the Mega-Mart food was no longer brought to his table. Instead, large loaves of coarse bread and roasted shanks of unknown venery appeared in wooden bowls and finally on trays of dark tree bark. The sodas and occasional bottles of white liquor were replaced by heavy brews of yeasty beer delivered in vessels cut from rough stone. Above all, the dreary dimness of the failed sunlight made all food seem brown and tasteless. Cam was in the passage of a horrid season of death and ruin, as was the world beyond.

And finally one day it lifted. A copper sun fought its way through the dull, slate-colored sky. The sounds of birds and animals returned, and on that day Cameron Clench, having looked at himself in a mirror, knew that he was old beyond years. He saw his long gray hair falling in matted clumps about his flanks and gazed at the length of his ragged full beard, witnessed the reflection of a face lined with the deep, unforgiving furrows marking the agony he had endured. He felt a sudden and unexpected need to revisit mankind one last time, and there was no thought of killing or hiding. He dragged himself outside. There the trail now led swiftly to a treeless green meadow which stretched for miles over a landscape that Cameron knew had once held both a suburban neighborhood and a Mega-Mart. Happy children with radiant faces reflecting the purity of their joy were playing with balls, wheels and stick men across the meadow. Young men and women with blankets stacked high with bright nourishment picnicked languidly across the vista. No one paid attention to him. No one knew who he was. Instinctively, he knew that he was in a world now reborn from the cataclysm of an older one. Smiling faces abounded. The laughter of children in strange languages rang out. That was enough. For an instant he managed to bask in the sublimity of the joy given to others.

Cameron's pain lifted, only to be replaced with an inexpressible weariness, and he fell headlong into the lush, clean grass. The smell of rich, fecund soil invaded his nostrils. He knew his time was short, and his final thoughts were of expiation. He had suffered for mankind, that he knew, and in some way he had contributed to this world of sanity and happiness which he could no longer share. Rolling over in the grass, inhaling the boundless fragrance of the fresh soil beneath his face, he passed from consciousness, as the pleasant glow of finality exploded within his expiring chest. He closed his eyes and was satisfied. His work was done. He became one with the Earth, and upon his rapidly dissolving remains a tree sprang up, burgeoned and became leafy and green in the innocent breeze of a new and better world.

___________________________

Devon Pitlor June, 2009



　

[Devon]

THE EXPIATION OF CAMERON CLENCH by Devon Pitlor

a good but hard to understand story.

Dev

[Dr. Woo]

Good story. The beginning was excellent. You kind of lost me after Cam got to the old mans house. It was more like two different stories that have little to do with each other. Looking at it from that perspective I think they should be two different stories as each has merits individually that the whole does not. Anyways it was still an interesting read

[The Goddess]

Wow D, just wow!

I'm out working in the garden so I can't write a lot right now, but wanted to check in and tell you I read it.

love to you.

[The Goddess]

Devon!

I just sent you a PM about your story...

[Devon]

Good story. The beginning was excellent. You kind of lost me after Cam got to the old mans house. It was more like two different stories that have little to do with each other. Looking at it from that perspective I think they should be two different stories as each has merits individually that the whole does not. Anyways it was still an interesting read

Robert,

Thanks for reading and thanks for the critique. I agree with you that there is a definite rupture in the flow of the story once Cam meets Lorenzo. I was after a sense of magical reality, somewhat borrowed from South American writers. I'm glad that the story succeeded for you on certain levels. You are good critic, and I appreciate everything you make mention of. Catch me on Scribd.com sometime too.

Love,

Devon

[Devon]

Devon!

I just sent you a PM about your story...

Once again, thanks for reading, and I look forward with love and anticipation for you comments. Will check PMs right now.

Love,

Devon

[Devon]

Devon what is that award that scribd is giving you? Explain.

No big deal. They give lots of awards for numbers of hits. ETC. Not a sign of anything. Only likes, favorites and comments count.

Devon

[The Goddess]

Dev- there was much I liked about this story.

I had no problem following it, and I liked how there was absolutely no physical description of Cameron- leaving the reader to construct their own picture of him.

It IS one of your very best stories.

Your description of the book code caused me to think this:
There was only one book that anyone involved in a secret society, in the past, could legally hold in their possession, and that was the KJV of the bible. I would be willing to bet that it was used in the way you describe.

Apparently the RCC had their own version.

Anyway, sorry for the tangent. I always enjoy reading whatever you write.
Congratulations on the scribd award, too.

Love always,

The Goddess

[sugar]

Devon,

Well, you've got quite the imagination. You once again kept me until the end. Very creative. :)

Thanks for letting me know this one was here!

[Devon]

Dev- there was much I liked about this story.

I had no problem following it, and I liked how there was absolutely no physical description of Cameron- leaving the reader to construct their own picture of him.

It IS one of your very best stories.

Your description of the book code caused me to think this:
There was only one book that anyone involved in a secret society, in the past, could legally hold in their possession, and that was the KJV of the bible. I would be willing to bet that it was used in the way you describe.

Apparently the RCC had their own version.

Anyway, sorry for the tangent. I always enjoy reading whatever you write.
Congratulations on the scribd award, too.

Love always,

The Goddess

Glad you enjoyed it. I'm always experimenting with new themes. I understand now what you meant by KJV. The bible never much comes to mind because I am not religious in any way, but I see what you mean.

The Scribd award is kinda cool. But it is only on the first tier. There are some people there who actually win money. But thanks anyway. I never will know who all these people in the stats are who are reading my stories. Glad I have you and Sugar and Woo and Heidi. I'm getting some positive feedback from others over there too.

Thanks again. I'm working on a new story now, but my job gets in the way. I used to never work much at my job. Now I do.

Love,

Devon

[Devon]

Devon,

Well, you've got quite the imagination. You once again kept me until the end. Very creative. :)

Thanks for letting me know this one was here!

Hi Sugar!!!

Thanks for reading and liking. You can also comment or favorite or like on Scribd if you don't mind. It always helps my stats. I like the idea of holding your attention until the end. Check here or Scribd from time to time. I still have a few stories left in me.

Too bad about chat the other night. I think it is broken down anyway. PM me here or on Scribd when you get a chance.

Love,

Devon

[The Goddess]

Long distance learning and what I retained today:

You are a thoughtful and kind person. Let's find ways for more people to appreciate your good qualities.
PATH- planning alternative tomorrows with hope!