the expiation of cameron clench

8/14/2019 The Expiation of Cameron Clench

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THE EXPIATION OF CAMERON CLENCHby Devon Pitlor

I. The clumsiness of Cameron Clench

Cameron Clench, who worked as a stocker atMega-Mart SuperCenter, may have been clumsybecause he was always looking over his shoulder for the police. He may have been clumsy becausehe had not only killed his wretchedly unfaithful

wife, Kristen, but also the original possessor of the name Cameron Clench, a homeless man whostrongly resembled him and was laden withenough identification to make a new CameronClench almost instantly. The man even had apassport among his possessions. But the mostprobable reason for Cam's clumsiness was that

during his thirty-five years of life he had never done much heavy work. Trained as a bondanalyst, Cam (whose old name we won't bother with) had never lifted many heavy boxes as hewas now required to do at Mega-Mart whilestocking shelves at night. The heaviest thing hecould remember lifting was Kristen's dead bodyand throwing it into an industrial incinerator. Butnow, living a new life far from Brookfield and hisformer suspicious neighbors, Cam was droppingthings all the time. Tonight it was a case of ketchup in glass bottles.



Li-Sun, Cam's supervisor, came over to the messas Cam was attempting to mop it up. Li-Sun, adour Korean immigrant who adored Mega-Mart

and held stock in the huge corporation, waspersonally offended by the loss of so manybottles of ketchup. He noted it on a clip boardand gave Cam the type of sneer that only an Asianseems capable of. "Take bottles and box todumpster," 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 nastyKorean face squeezing out of a bale of bandedcardboard headed for the recycler. He had theusual 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-Sunwas safe. Cam would soon be moving on. The

original Cameron Clench, although a vagabond,had a valid passport and the new Cam was soongoing to use it. Guatemala, he thought. Maybe ElSalvador.

II. Kristen

Cameron Clench had never intended to kill hiswife when he learned of her affair with the bigIndian, Amos Tallfern, who ran the local scrapmetal foundry in Brookfield, but things had turnedout bad. Cam had only wanted to "choke a littlesense into her" but he ended up choking all sense



right out of her, and Kristen collapsed brushingher slight body against his knees and crumblingto the kitchen floor very dead. Amos Tallfern was

convinced that Cameron had killed Kristen, butbecause he was conducting affairs with so manylocal women at the time, he kept his mouth shut. Anearly three hundred pound hulk with a two footponytail, Amos just slunk back to his unknowingwife, Erica, and their two children and never saidanother word. The police investigated him too,but cleared him rapidly because of his bona fide

American Indian identification card. He was amember of some invisible tribe, and the policedidn't want to go poking into that kind of politicalmaze.

Cameron had an air-tight alibi for where he wasthe night Kristen disappeared, and that alibi came

from his childhood friend Noah Danlon, abachelor who swore under oath that Cameron hadbeen watching a tennis match with him ontelevision on the evening of Kristen's vanishment.Noah and "Cameron" had been close friendsthroughout high school, and Noah was convincedthat Cameron had once saved his life bydistracting a vicious bully from pounding Noah'shead into the driveway of his father's house.Noah and Cameron had once been the victims of numerous bullies and had formed a seeminglyunshakeable bond between them. In school, inthe days long before email or text messaging or



cellphones, they passed or left indecipherablenotes for one another. These notes, based on avery simple code, comforted the boys and got

them reasonably intact into manhood.

III. The code

Between Cameron and Noah, there were a fewtrivial secrets as between all shy and tyrannizedboys. Stuff about girls they wanted to make itwith but never could or the ambient whereabouts

of the football players who so tormented them.Nothing vitally important, but it had been Noah'sidea to use something cryptologists know as abook code to communicate. Both boys grew up inhouses full of books, and it would be nearlyimpossible for anyone to know which book theyheld in common. As a minor detail, it was a 1923

edition of Edgar Rice Burrough's Pellucidar, notaltogether rare, but not common either. The bookcode was simple enough: three numbers for eachword---page, paragraph and position of word. Asmost cryptologists know, book cipher is nearlyimpossible to crack unless you know which bookthe participants are using. Following his flightfrom 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 againre-opened, and even Amos Tallfern was againquestioned, but by that time, one unknown and



unrelated Cameron Clench in a different city haddisappeared, and another one had emerged. Thenew Cameron, as we have noted, now fancied

himself a seasoned killer.

IV. Mega-Mart SuperCenter

Besides being clumsy, Cameron Clench wasknown as somewhat of a creep among the nightworkers at the gigantic 24 hour emporium. Hetalked to no one, had no friends, and would not

exchange pleasantries with the several femalecashiers who found him attractive. One of themhad given him the nickname Silent Cam, andanother took it upon herself to call him Cam theClam. Handsome men who didn't flirt were alwayssuspect among the women employees. MorganSniderman, a pert and snoopy divorcee who ran

Customer Service, had even followed Cameronhome one night to discover that he lived alone ina transient hotel. Further inquiry on Morgan'spart dislodged that he was unmarried and runningfrom something ugly in his past. Cameron knewabout this snooping and had briefly contemplatedkilling Morgan. It would be just one more murder on his list. He was not a natural killer, but whatthe hell? Why not develop the skill? Morgan mightbe a good place to start. The woman, like theothers, needed to keep her distance. Every timeCameron passed her in the store, he thought of adifferent way of disposing of her. He was



beginning to fantasize a great deal about killingagain.

Li-Sun stood over Cameron as he cleaned up theketchup mess. He said "dumpster" at least fivetimes in his distinctly snotty Korean accent andmade 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 tosee Cameron go as soon as possible. Unknownto Cameron, Li-Sun had a nephew---his American

sponsor---on the local police force and hadalready asked him to look into some criminalrecords. A Cameron Clench had gone missingfrom a fruit importing company about five yearsbefore in another city. This was long before thenew Cameron had killed Kristen, so noconnection was made, but the police had a file

anyway. It was only a matter of time before theycame around to ask questions. Thedisappearance of the original Cameron Clenchhad left a few untied strings, mostly dealing withabsconded funds. Cameron suspected most of this and was only waiting for his next paycheck tohit the road again---this time hopefully toGuatemala or some place where he could startanew. His chances were growing very slim,however, and, as it turned out, dropping the caseof 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 wereilluminating the quiet suburban town to whichCam had drifted and from which he needed to driftaway soon. The parking lot was littered with foodwrappings, empty beer cans and flattened boxeswhich had not yet made it to the crusher. Theusual employees, mostly young boys, wererounding up the stray shopping carts, and the

brooms began to appear. It was a quiet Sundaymorning, and no one took much notice of anyoneelse, least of all the double murderer CameronClench who was pushing a ruined carton of broken ketchup bottles in a cart toward one of theenormous dumpsters which formed the barrier between Mega-Mart's property and the filthy

stretch of unused wooded growth behind it. Inthese little woods, drunks and vagabondssometimes hung out, but it was littered withdebris of all sorts and swaths of discarded balingwire, broken bottles and ominous shards of

jagged, discarded iron fragments which jutted uplike rusting dinosaur fangs from the soil. It wasnot a welcoming place and certainly nowhere tohide if one had the notion of hiding. A crinkled notrespassing sign swung from a stunted tree justbeyond the dumpsters, but it was generallyignored. No, it was not like the abandoned railyard 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 ketchupbottles into the dumpster, he chanced to see thewide eyes of a skinny kid peering out at him fromthe tangled bushes and stunted trees. The kidcould not have been older than fourteen, andCameron 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 towardhim. Cameron was about to go back into thestore, when the kid asked him for a cigarette.

"Go away," snarled Cameron. "I don't smoke andneither should you." For a few seconds Cameronthought 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 hisside. "Why not?" he said innocently.

Cameron was closing the lid of the dumpster withtwo hands when the blast of an ambulance sirenscreamed upward from the expressway. For asecond or two, the sound blocked out all other noises. Then in one deft movement, the kidgrabbed the wallet from Cameron's pocket anddarted off into the thicket. Stunned, Cameronstared at the disappearing body and realized that



all of his ID minus the passport was in that walletalong with over two hundred dollars he had beensaving for his next get-away. Without thinking, he

dashed into the wooded lot after the boy buttripped several times, cutting and bruising himself on the trash and wire under his feet. He struggledpast some thorny bushes and slogged his waythrough at least five feet of wet newspaper only tobe stopped by a row of discarded detergentbarrels 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 treespast more garbage and stumbled once again over the skeletal frame of a bicycle poking out of themud. 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 payyou five hundred dollars." But there was noanswer. Alone in the thicket Cameron paused tocalm down and think. He was caked with mudand bleeding from multiple scratches.

VI. The thicket

From his vantage point Cam could look back intothe huge parking lot of Mega-Mart and watch thecoming and going of the customers andemployees. He grimaced for a moment when hesaw his night manager Li-Sun carrying a plastic



briefcase, which was most likely empty, andheading for his car. Three of the lady cashierswho bothered Cam nightly were shuffling out

behind Li-Sun. Cam froze where he was. Thiswas no time to come out of the bush. His suddenappearance would only lead to more suspicion.He noted a couple of teenage kids circling theparking lot on bikes and realized to his dismaythat the wooded lot was tiny and that his thief hadprobably left from the other end and was far awayby 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 beenrunning and dodging like a desperate animal for well over a year now. He had strangled Kristen ina fit of anger, not really meaning to kill her. Andthen in the rail yards the Cameron person, wholooked so much like him, had just offered him the

opportunity by being there drunk andunconscious. Both killings had beenspontaneous acts born of fear from a person whohad been frightful all his life. Now most of theidentification was gone, though the passport wasstill hidden in his room. In its photo he lookedless like the original Cameron Clench than he hadon the drivers license, which had given him theinitial motive to kill the sleeping man anyway. Heremembered his own days as a teenager,harassed and haunted by school bullies. Heremembered that he was not actually a killer butrather a weak, sheltered and bookish boy with



only one friend in the world. He thought briefly of Noah back in Brookfield. Could Noah help himagain? That was doubtful and dangerous too.

There was no way he could return to Brookfield.He sat down on a rotten stump and buried hishead in his hands. Perhaps, he thought, he wasgetting what he deserved. Perhaps he shouldturn himself in. But no, there had to be a way out.Were the cops not as big a bullies as the huskyfootball 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 wouldeventually go. He could claim that killing Kristenwas an act of temporary madness, which it was,and probably get a lighter sentence, but even thathe would never be able to bear----once again themorbid and lifelong fear of bullying. A thousandthoughts were racing through his mind when he

looked up at a bar of light which illuminated abeaten path through the tiny woods. Who knowswhere it led? Maybe to another rail yard where hecould find another near-twin and steal hisidentification. Most likely it led to the end of thewooded lot, to more piles of garbage andeventually toward a neighborhood. Mechanically,he rose to his feet and began to follow it. Within afew yards, the trash on the ground graduallydisappeared, and the covering brush and treesbecame surprisingly thicker. The path led on andon, and within a few minutes the sounds of carson the expressway were replaced by the morning



twittering of birds and the scamper of squirrels inthe lofty branches. The tiny woods turned out tobe not as tiny as it should have been, wedged in

behind Mega-Mart and the interstate. In fact, itbecame deeper and deeper as Cam walked.

Ten minutes of mindless walking brought him to aplace where several beaten paths converged. Hechose the one to his left because he associatedthe direction with the path his life had taken. Togo right--in the metaphysical sense of going

right---was not his destiny any more. He was akiller. Killers needed to take the distaff or sinister side, the left. More walking. The random grassesgrew higher and higher and the woods becamemore and more silent. Where in the hell was heanyway? There could not be so much unusedland 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 ona stump watching him approach. Cam moved infaster as he recognized the white teeshirt and torn

jeans the boy had been wearing. The kid waswaiting for him. What the hell? If Cam couldcatch him, he would kill him. Cam's life had takenon a new role, that of a killer. With the new IDcame this new identity. Cam was still trying it out,but a distinct taste for blood was beginning toform in his mind. The thieving brat would make agood target.



As he neared the boy, Cam noticed that the dodgylooking kid had something in his hand. It was

Cam's wallet. The boy held it out to him withoutsaying a word. Cam grabbed it and rifled rapidlythrough the contents. His drivers license, socialsecurity card, Mega-Mart badge and everythingelse was still in place....even the banknotes. Thekid had taken nothing. Cam stared in wonder athis wallet and back at the boy, who smiledpleasantly and finally spoke.

"Keep going straight," he said quietly. “It will takeyou out of the woods.” Then the kid sprang upfrom the dead log on which he was sitting andsprinted forward, once again evaporating into thethicket. Cam followed but he was not sure why. Itmay have been something about killing once

again.

VII. The boy lied.

Over a half-hour later, Cam was still walking inwhat was now a dense and seemingly untouchedforest. It was early autumn and the ground,garbage free, was cleanly blanketed by fallenleaves. A peaceful woodland aura caressed theatmosphere all around him, and Cam, perplexedat the size of the woods, began to wonder why theboy had returned his wallet to him and then liedabout 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 eventhad 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. Whyhadn't the kid not taken the money at least? Andwhere in the hell was he? How did a forest thisbig exist behind Mega-Mart in a quietneighborhood which he passed through every dayon his way to work? He had once chanced to lookat a map of the suburb where he had landed. It

was posted on the lobby wall of his hotel. Therewere no green spaces anywhere even a tenth aslarge as this. Cam, when first on the run, hadalways looked for deserted locales, places tohide. 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 ahomeless person. An array of mismatchedboards and pieces torn from abandoned palletswere positioned upward forming a crude shelter,the door of which was covered by a weatheredbrown khaki blanket. Once again, there wasrefuse on the ground, empty cans, milk cartonsand other abandoned items. Cam, who had livedfor over a month in such a collection of squats,recognized the scene immediately. It was thecamp of a vagabond like himself, another refugeefrom society, a person with a desire to disappear from life.



A bearded man of indeterminate age came outsidepushing the blanket aside. Cam prepared to

defend himself, as was always required in suchsituations. He grabbed a thick branch to use as aclub and waited for the man to react. The beardedman appraised him without fear. "Come havesome coffee," he said. "You look tired."

Cam, still gripping his cudgel, walked over to theman, who was much shorter than he was, and

stared at him. The man was dressed in a cleanpair of jeans and was wearing a teeshirt that readReebok. His eyes were tired and rheumy, and hismovements were slow and painful.

Cam accepted a large cracked mug of coffee fromhim and took a long drink. "Got anything to go

with this?" he asked, knowing that hoboes likethis man often had either home brew or better something concocted in a homemade still. Theman, who now appeared quite old uponexamination, shook his head and produced abottle of white liquid and immediately pouredsome into Cam's coffee. He looked at Camquizzically as if examining his inner soul. Camfelt the welcome burn of the liquor and sat downon a stump near the entrance to the man's hovel."Who are you?" he asked, "and where is thisplace?" The thought of killing the denizencrossed 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 everymovement seemed to bring him intense agony.Arthritis, he thought. The guy probably didn'thave a joint in his body that was not rotted out.With a gesture of the hand, the man beckonedCam to enter his shack. At first, Cam was leery,but there seemed to be somethingoverwhelmingly compelling about the withered

hobo. Moreover, he was fragile enough that evena weakling like Cam had no reason to fear him.Entering the hovel, Cam was shocked to seecandles burning everywhere illuminating thewalls. The shack was much larger on the insidethan it appeared from without. From the ceilinghung a huge wooden wagon wheel converted into

a makeshift chandelier dripping with the wax of atleast twenty burning candles. As Cam's eyesadjusted to the brightness of the room and hisnose became accustomed to the musty odor of the earthen floor and mud-sealed walls, he notedthat every wall was lined with books. Many of thebooks seemed new, and some were paperbacks,but the largest quantity of the books seemedancient. Having once, in what was now a distantlife, been a sort of bibliophile, Cam asked the oldman if he could examine them. The old man, stillappearing wracked with physical anguish, badehim silently to proceed. The collection of older



books was nothing short of astounding. Holdinga candle in front of his eyes, Cam glanced at thetitles. Here were books like Ratibon's Chirurgerie

des Malcontents, 1927 Gallimard; Grosvenor’sEpistolaries from the Edge, Achimarge 1902; afrazzled collection of Harrison Drewry's Poems of Demonic Invocation dated from an unknownpublisher 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 MenschlichenBlut , 1625 Dortmund---for which the author wascondemned 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 existand most of which had either brought death or

damnation to their possessors.

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

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



Moving his lips with great difficulty, the old manreplied "I am Lorenzo, my first name should

suffice, and this place is everywhere and nowhereat the same time. You are here now. That is allthat matters. You may stay on the mattress in thisroom, a clean and comfortable mattress. You mayeat what food I have and drink my distillate. But Ineed to tell you that you were brought here for areason. 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 whatyou must do." The old man writhed once again ina general distress which seemed to embrace hisentire 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 cuthimself short when a huge white snake with thehead of an earthworm began crawling out frombehind the ancient volumes he had beenexamining. The worm must have been eight feetlong and had the diameter of a man's arm. Itslithered from behind the books and found its wayblindly to the dirt floor. Startled, Cam recoiledfrom it, but within an instant it was coiled at hisfeet. Instantly, the robber boy sprang up staringand grinning widely at Cam. "Don't try to leavethe house of Lorenzo," he said. "You will find thatimpossible. There are many paths in the woods



but all of them lead back here." Then they boysprang into the air and regained the shape of ahuge white worm and blindly slid away behind the

huge collection of antiquarian books.

Cam gasped at the transformation from worm toboy but credited it to the intoxicating effects of the white liquor. He looked about for his club, buthis legs refused to lift him from the stool. Beforehim sat Lorenzo, his mouth trying to form newwords but his face painted with the most extreme

throes of agony.

VIII. Some numbers

After a few minutes, Cam had definitely formed aplan to club Lorenzo over the head and search thehovel for money or valuables. He relished his

new-found killer instinct and was about tobrandish the branch cudgel when Lorenzo rose tohis feet and snatched a corked bottle off a nearbyshelf. With visible strain he lowered himself onceagain into the chair, his face contorted in pain.Inside the bottle was a large, folded piece of paper. "Yours," said Lorenzo. "A message. It hasbeen here a long time." Unable to extract the corkwith his own gnarled fingers, he cast the bottleinto Cam's hands.

Cam pulled out the rotting cork and shook out apiece of yellowing paper, a kind of decaying



parchment scrawled with two columns of numbers, three in each group. At once, Cameronrecognized the book code of his youth, his means

of communication between himself and Noah, hisonly friend. The code meant nothing withoutBurrough's Pellucidar , and it needed to be theoriginal 1923 edition as well. Surely that must beon the shelf somewhere. Thrusting the candleforward, Cam examined the fading tomes. Onceagain the arcane titles shocked him, things likethe accursed Magna Veculata, which had been

lost for centuries. Then the boy came out againfrom a room behind. He stood behind Lorenzoand smiled at Cam. Finally he spoke: "The entireunwritten, unknown history of the human race,"he said slowly and with some satisfaction. "Thereal account of man's ascent on Earth. Thingsyou can't read anywhere else, and you will have

plenty of time here to read them." The boy tosseda frazzled quilt over Lorenzo as he sat silently inhis chair. Instantly, he withdrew the quilt andLorenzo was gone. Cam stared at the trick inshock. Surely there was a trap door somewhere.Lorenzo must have fallen through it, a cheapmagic trick. The boy shook his head readingCam's thoughts. "What you’re looking for isoutside 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 enormoussnout through the khaki blanket. Cam gripped his



club and followed. The hyena thing was nowhereto be seen, but on the three-legged, wobbly cardtable was Pellucidar, the 1923 original edition.

Cam collapsed onto a wooden crate next to thetable and gingerly opened the book to the insideof the front cover where, to his dismay, he failedto see his father's signature as it had been on hisown discarded edition. Paper in hand, he revertedto a practice he had not done for over twentyyears but one which came easily again, as if today

were actually yesterday and the world waspopulated by hordes of bullies waiting for him atevery street corner. He translated the code. Itwas time-taking but easy. As the words emergedfrom the numbers, he flipped the pages faster andfaster and wrote them in order on top of the cardtable with the stub of a pencil he had found there.

"A great war is coming. Stay where you are. Youare important in a way that you cannot even beginto 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 agreat plague is coming. Stay where you are."

Cameron Clench read the words over and over again. His eyes filled with tears of remorse andregret for a past time. Memories of closeness toNoah came to his mind. Together they hadescaped the bullies of their youth. Together they



had written one another lofty-sounding messageslike the one he now had scribbled before him onthe table. Was he a killer? Or was he just a

scared little boy? For the first time in two yearshe embraced a tender thought about Kristen. Hehad never satisfied her. He had told her from thestart that he was inept at lovemaking, and he hadlived up to his promise. She had needs too. Howwrong had she been to cheat on him? Whatsatisfaction had she really derived from a fewfrenzied moments in the embrace of the sweaty

Indian? Why did she have to be dead? Then thenomad, Cameron Clench whose name he carried.What was his crime? Embezzlement?Embezzlement which led to his vagabond life onthe 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, buthe felt a sincere repentance, a repentance for everything, even being born the quivering cowardthat he was. Alone in an impenetrable forest, hecried out for some sort of salvation, but his wordsfell deafly onto the leaden atmosphere of the quietwoods. The boy, turned into a hyena, was gone,and Lorenzo had vanished as well. What was heto do next? For some reason his only recoursewas sleep. He was bone tired and found themattress in the corner of the great room within thehovel. Sleep seemed natural and inevitable. Hisweariness seemed boundless and irresistible.



IX. The boy reappears

When he awoke the boy was standing at his sidewith a can of Spam and some Mega-Mart crackers.He offered these as well as some Mega-Mart sodato Cam, as Cam's eyes blinked in the harsh glareof the candles. Cam fleetingly felt yet another urge to kill the boy, but his cudgel was missingand his muscles were inexplicably sore. Itamused him that both Lorenzo and the boy must

have stolen or bought food from Mega-Mart all thetime, as most of the labels were of houseproducts---junk food, potato chips and unslicedbaloney, 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: HomeRight. It was again the Mega-Mart house brand.Mega-Mart must be very close, he thought. I needto escape. He jumped to his feet and tore the axefrom the boy's outstretched hand. "That way," theboy said pointing to the right. "Go right along thepath. Take the axe." Then the boy flattened into asort of huge crawling insect and scuttled under abookshelf.

Cam took the axe and ran. Following a path to theright, he was certain that he would soon re-emerge at Mega-Mart, but the woods only became



deeper and more tangled. At length, he trippedover an exposed root and fell at the base of amedium sized-tree with branches outspread in

each direction like the arms of a man. The daywas still bright and sunny, and Cam looked upinto the tree and saw that it was not only a treebut also Lorenzo. Lorenzo's face and arms stoodout in crude relief from the trunk. In effect,Lorenzo had become a tree and was anchored tothe ground by legs that had taken the form of gnarled roots. Lorenzo's face was twisted in

excruciating sufferance. He was trapped in thetree as if he had grown there. "You are a killer,"he groaned. "Kill me. Kill me."

In a malicious fit of rage, Cameron attacked thetree with the axe, chipping huge gashes into itstrunk. He seemed to have supernatural strength

now. With every hit, blood squirted from the barkand wood of the tree. With every blow, Lorenzogasped in pain. "Kill me," he continued towhisper. Drenched in perspiration, Cameron sawthe tree, saw Lorenzo, fall to earth raising a cloudof dry dust. He dropped the axe and continuedrunning along the tiny worn path, but was notsurprised when it opened once again uponLorenzo's makeshift hovel. The sky wasdarkening over into night. Cam once again fellexhausted onto the mattress. When he awoke, itwas pitch black outside. The boy was nowhere insight. Hundreds, perhaps thousands of dogs,



seemed to be howling outside, and he could hear them brushing past the walls and blanketeddoorway of the hut.

When daybreak came, Cam realized that he wasindeed a prisoner in what the boy had called thehouse of Lorenzo. And so he remained. Food,always from Mega-Mart, was delivered to him byunseen hands and white liquor often materializedwhen he least expected it in bottles left by thedoor. Not the boy, nor any of his transformations,

ever came again. Little by little, Cameron Clench,murderer, accepted his lot. He began to perusethe forbidden volumes from the shelves andlearned far more than any man today can say hehas learned. He learned about the true and secretorigins of the human species and what mankind'srole on Earth had always been, bits and pieces of

a patchwork of recondite knowledge that hewould never reveal because it seemed as if hewas learning in a vacuum or during a prolongedtrance. He sat in Lorenzo's old chair and read andread... Each night he forgot most of what he hadlearned during the day's reading. Each day hebegan anew, startled and galvanized by secretstoo outlandish to remember or divulge, tales of unknown gods and progenitor creatures, sometoo 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 thatit was necessary and that the pain he bore was for

all the accumulated sins of mankind as well as hisown. His agony was a sort of required expiation.By day he read and tried to ignore the hurt. Bynight he slept fitfully to the ceaseless howling of the dogs.

X. Until one day (Conclusion)

Until one day... One day the sky above the loftytrees became slate gray and the sun no longer shone. At night the dogs still howled but their howling was dimmer and more muffled. His painnow was so unbearable that he could hardly gooutside, but when he did, he sensed a thick,ominous atmosphere of evil and ruin. No birds

twittered in the trees. No green leaves grew withthe coming of the spring. No life appearedanywhere. Only the tarnished silver haze of deathblanketed both the earth and sky, making thefirmament cold and foreboding, and it remainedso perhaps for years, perhaps for eons. Under the bleakness of the hardened sky, time hadceased to matter. During this period, the Mega-Mart food was no longer brought to his table.Instead, large loaves of coarse bread and roastedshanks of unknown venery appeared in woodenbowls and finally on trays of dark tree bark. Thesodas and occasional bottles of white liquor were



replaced by heavy brews of yeasty beer deliveredin vessels cut from rough stone. Above all, thedreary dimness of the failed sunlight made all

food seem brown and tasteless. Cam was in thepassage of a horrid season of death and ruin, aswas the world beyond.

And finally one day it lifted. A copper sun foughtits way through the dull, slate-colored sky. Thesounds of birds and animals returned, and on thatday Cameron Clench, having looked at himself in

a mirror, knew that he was old beyond years. Hesaw his long gray hair falling in matted clumpsabout his flanks and gazed at the length of hisragged full beard, witnessed the reflection of aface lined with the deep, unforgiving furrowsmarking the agony he had endured. He felt asudden and unexpected need to revisit mankind

one last time, and there was no thought of killingor hiding. He dragged himself outside. There thetrail now led swiftly to a treeless green meadowwhich stretched for miles over a landscape thatCameron knew had once held both a suburbanneighborhood and a Mega-Mart. Happy childrenwith radiant faces reflecting the purity of their joywere playing with balls, wheels and stick menacross the meadow. Young men and women withblankets stacked high with bright nourishmentpicnicked languidly across the vista. No one paidattention 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 childrenin strange languages rang out. That was enough.

For an instant he managed to bask in thesublimity of the joy given to others.

Cameron's pain lifted, only to be replaced with aninexpressible weariness, and he fell headlong intothe lush, clean grass. The smell of rich, fecundsoil invaded his nostrils. He knew his time wasshort, and his final thoughts were of expiation.

He had suffered for mankind, that he knew, and insome way he had contributed to this world of sanity and happiness which he could no longer share. Rolling over in the grass, inhaling theboundless fragrance of the fresh soil beneath hisface, he passed from consciousness, as thepleasant glow of finality exploded within his

expiring chest. He closed his eyes and wassatisfied. His work was done. He became onewith the Earth, and upon his rapidly dissolvingremains a tree sprang up, burgeoned and becameleafy and green in the innocent breeze of a newand better world.

___________________________

Devon Pitlor June, 2009

the expiation of cameron clench

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