Please Don't Say Anything! Don't Start Any Trouble!

“Help, he’s gone, Justin’s gone!”

Her voice trailed off and I couldn’t hear the rest of what she was saying. I didn’t want to. Oh God no! I hang up the phone. If I don’t hear it, it’s not true. But she calls back…

“I called 911. They are here now! He’s gone. Oh God he’s gone”

But she didn’t’ say gone. She used the d word. A word I will not even say, let alone write.

Her words fade away as my husband Charlie takes the phone.

I hear screaming and realize it is me. “Go to Jesus” I scream over and over again “Justin, go to Jesus. I love you son. Oh please let this be some mistake, a bad dream.

We leave on a plane immediately still hoping, hoping he’s not gone.

But when we arrive our worst fears are realized. I think if I scream loud enough or cry hard enough God will send him back. I close my eyes tightly and scream Justin’s name so loud I lose my voice. “Bring him back! You did it for Lazarus! Isn’t my boy worth the same?” But nothing happens. No answer from above. No word from God. Justin doesn’t come back. I open my eyes to see emptiness now and forever. No one is gathering outside, no newsmen are asking for interviews, no fans with teddy bears or flowers. Well, why should there be? Justin was not famous He was certainly not rich. He did not have any sports medals. He did not win any contests or play in a rock band. He was not an American Idol finalist. To the rest of the world he was no one important. But to me he was the world.

“God, why did you let this happen? Do you love to see all of us hurting?”

I hear the devil laughing. “Should have stuck with me, kid” No, never, at least I know that is wrong. But I need to find out why God let this happen. Is it all my fault? Are the ‘sins of the father visited upon the son’? Is it the bad girl who caused this? Is it because I killed her all those years ago?

I make my way back to the shadowy swamp of the past. That swamp laced with webs alive with millions of spiders, quicksand, and muck, lies, back through rotted wood, rusted cars and overgrown vines. Back over screams, broken skeletons, and slithering snakes and crushed rats. Back to dig out that little girl where I left her hiding under a rotting tree biting her nails.

I could hear a faint moan in the distance…water. No she can’t still be alive, not after all this time.

I called out, running tripping, pushing off the cobwebs, shaking off the many spiders that fell out crawling on me. I didn’t care.

“Help me, monsters…”

And then I could hear an old song playing on the radio: “old Dan and I with throats burned dry and souls that cry for water...cool, clear water..”

Then I saw her. “I’ve been waiting for “ you she whispered in a soft gravely voice, like rustling leaves in the wind. I could barely hear her.