Chapter Twenty-One
The next few days were an awkward sort of quiet. They had set fire to the tree, and watched as Matt's body turned into a series of charcoal stumps.
The tree itself was blackened, but did not flame.
There were no quick transitions into what semblance of routine life had established itself prior to the incident. Each prisoner more uneasy, while going about their daily business.
None of them knew what had happened to Matt, only that something must have snapped within him, and he butchered himself.
****
On the fifth day after the discovery, John too went missing and his screams were suddenly heard echoing across the landscape and felt inside of the hearts of each member present.
Rob was the first to respond. He ran outside of the kitchen towards the cries, and witnessed with terror, two figures down by the dock.
Al and Harry also came out into the clearing heading towards the sound. Suspicion raged in the mind of each, until they realized that they were all running in John's direction.
Upon realizing that there was a stranger on the dock, they moved toward the lake at a full run.
Rob arrived first and found his brother tied in the form of a crucifix to a series of posts that had been driven into the dock. Nails pierced John's flesh, having been driven through each of his wrists, and through his ankles. Blood dripped down the wooden posts that supported John's frame, and a small pool of his blood was being formed on the dock.
John was being prodded with the barrel of a small firearm by a man who Rob had only seen in dreams since the night of the gas station fire. It was the police officer.
Rob cried out and clutched his chest as he began to experience an anxiety attack.
Al and Harry were alternately yelling at the man to stop and checking Rob was okay. The police officer had turned his weapon on them and they dared not approach.
The air smelled of gasoline.
John was nearly unconscious and groaning in agony as the police officer struck a match with one hand, never taking his eyes from Rob.
Harry desperately scanned the scene trying to find some form of resolution and decided to rush the officer.
Al called out for Harry to stop when he realized what he was doing, his cries jostling Rob from anxiety
Harry dove to tackle the police officer to the ground, but instead passed right through the image; skidding along the ground, and falling into the lake.
The officer's image wavered, and then resumed its solidity before he dropped the match at the base of the crucifix.
Flames climbed rapidly upwards consuming John's body. His screams reaching the sky. It sounded as though they were reverberating off of a ceiling, and bouncing back to fill the bodies of those present.
Harry climbed out of the water, pulling himself half-way onto the dock, just in time to see black smoke flow upwards toward the sky.
Part of the dock was engulfed in flames, and he had to swim diagonally out toward the shoreline in order to escape the inferno.
Rob stared in horror as the officer continued to stare at him, raising his weapon, as though he were about to shoot him on the spot.
Al shouted out in protest, and jumped to place himself between the officer and Rob.
The gun went off with a crack, and by all rights, Al should have been dead on the floor in front of Rob's sprawled out body.
The crack, however, was only the snapping of part of the dock's main support structure, the flaming crucifix crumbling into the depths of the lake.
The police officer turned into static; the image which formerly accompanied the effigy of Rob’s brother dissipating into nothingness.
When Harry reached the shore, he saw that the dock severely damaged and observed Rob's weeping, prostrate figure on the grass, adjacent to a bewildered Al, staring into the lake.