Part VI- The Words of Broken Men
Parker Edmunds
March 30th, 2031. 0815h. Everybody in Deertrack knows the Edmunds family, without exception. For five generations they’ve owned and operated the town’s longest-standing business, Edmunds Hardware, and with two sons of their own, Jeff and Janice Edmunds undoubtedly are hoping that one of those boys will keep the tradition alive and well for yet another generation.
Starting off as a tiny storefront no bigger than Jerry’s Diner, roughly the size of a modest apartment in sum total, Edmunds Hardware had undergone several expansions since it first opened in 1922 under the name ‘Edmunds Sundries’. It was re-branded as Edmunds Hardware in 1955 by Harlan Edmunds, the eldest son of Terrance Edmunds, who had first established the business.
Parker Edmunds is one of the Delta 26, and though he was one of the few I had reached out to back when I first began doing background research on the Delta Heights Massacre for this project, he only just yesterday finally returned that initial contact, informing me that his brother and sister-in-law had heard mutterings about town about my presence and purpose here in Deertrack, and related these tidings to him. In his email, he informed me that they had finally managed, in their loving but insistent fashion, to convince him to talk to me.
From everything I’ve heard around town, Parker is even more of a fixture at the family’s hardware store than his brother Jeff. This is understandable, seeing as Parker has no wife or children to spend time with or provide for. But though I’ve overheard idle chatter among some locals about the loving couple Jeff and Janice, I have heard almost nothing about Parker during my stay here.
Ever the curious fellow, I dove into the online realm to see what I could see. Parker turns out to be modestly active on social networking sites, and even has his own YouTube and Vimeo channels where he’s uploaded a handful of handyman do-it-yourself tutorial videos, principally surrounding basic household plumbing projects. In the videos, he’s jovial and amiable, and one can easily tell that he records and uploads them from a storage/workspace area at the rear of the hardware store, a section not open to the general public.
Two of his Vimeo videos stand out from the rest, however, as they aren’t filmed in the hardware store, and are only about seven minutes apiece. Dressed in camo BDUs, sporting a close-cropped, military-style haircut, Parker spends these videos explaining the basics and benefits of rigging the perimeter of a woodland campsite with small animal snares and traps, to both protect the starting camper or outdoorsman and provide, possibly, a healthy, natural bit of game meat. Halfway through the second of these videos, there issues from the nearby brush a rustling and snap, and Parker dashes off-camera for a minute, only to return with a small gray rabbit, trembling and balled up, cradled in his arms.
“Now, see, if you’re in a survivalist situation, this here is at least a couple of good nights’ rations,” he says to the camera with a gentle smile, stroking the rabbit calmly. “But seeing as this is just a demonstration, we’re going to let this poor little guy go. As you can see,” he says, holding out one of its rear legs gingerly, “the snare wasn’t taut enough to do serious damage, but he is going to have a little bit of a hitch in his giddy-up for a day or so. Go on, buddy,” he says, kneeling down and releasing the little fellow, who bounds away in a scurry.
By all appearances, Parker Edmunds seems to be a well-adjusted young man doing his best to carry on the way the Edmunds family has in these parts for over a hundred years. One thing alone, right now, strikes me as out of sorts. In the email he sent me, accepting my invitation to talk, he requested that I come to speak with him at his brother and sister-in-law’s private home, since he lives with them. At first blush, this should not come across as strange or unusual in any way; with the national economic situation of the last twenty or so years being what it is, especially in small-town-America, one would not see any hint of a red flag in this bit of information. Add to this that Jeff and Parker’s parents have both been deceased since 2024, when they sadly perished in an auto accident coming back home from a vacation in Florida, and one could reasonably understand that the brothers, brought closer by tragedy, would want to stick by one another.
Yet still, something in the back of my mind whispers that I should be very wary, and keep a keen, observant eye at the ready. Perhaps, that voice whispers, you should wear your running shoes, in case you need to beat a hasty retreat from the Edmunds’ home.
I’ll be heading over to talk to Parker at around noon today.
**
[Prior to the transcription of the interview proper, utilizing once again the ‘Interview Format’ as previously presented throughout this work, I feel it necessary to begin by setting the scene in a more traditionally narrative fashion. You will understand why in short enough order why I have opted for this.]
At approximately a quarter of noon, I pulled up in front of the home of Jeff, Janice and Parker Edmunds, a quaint two-story Cape Cod that appeared to be more than ample in size and sturdiness to support a family of three adults and two children, along with whatever pets they may have residing within. Situated only a five-minute walk from the family’s hardware store in downtown Deertrack proper, it certainly looked like one of the more valuable properties in the vicinity, with a beautifully manicured lawn, siding that couldn’t have been more than a couple of years old, and a chain mesh fence surrounding the front yard and running along either side of the house in order to form a perfectly square perimeter to differentiate the Edmunds’s property from their neighbors’ parcels of land.
There are two young maple trees off to the left side of the front lawn, both healthy and starting to look like they were in their full spring plumage. A tire swing hung down from a particularly sturdy branch perhaps halfway up the solid trunk of the one further from the concrete walkway connecting the public sidewalk to the house’s front porch, a perfect little slice of Americana.
Of course, this was slightly marred by what I could tell was a small security surveillance camera mounted on the same said branch, cleverly half-hidden by having been mounted between the two separate ropes that depended down to the old tire. I supposed this wasn’t too unusual; after all, the Edmunds family could honestly count themselves among the most financially stable and successful people in the town of Deertrack. It couldn’t hurt to be secure, as a result.
Standing in front of the latched gate leading down the walkway, I looked up and down the sidewalk to see if anyone was taking special notice of my arrival and presence there. Small towns like this breed a kind of nosiness that is best to get out in front of, so if I spotted anybody giving me the looky-loo, I’d openly approach them and explain the nature of my visit, so as to stem the tide of any whispers and rumormongering. With my OneNote in hand, messenger bag slung over my shoulder, and a roll of my head to crack my neck, I lifted the latch on the gate and pushed it open.
Getting closer to the house, I felt a peculiar kind of pressure on the back-right part of my head, and turned to look around, see if anything was out of sorts. All I could make out was a small flowerbed that Janice Edmunds had planted, guarded by one of those quaint but ugly little ceramic garden gnomes. A longer look, however, revealed the source of my discomfort- one of the gnome’s eyes was slightly zoomed in on me.
That marked at least two cameras on the property, watching who or whatever might approach the home. Nothing I had heard or read about Jeff, Janice or Parker Edmunds would lead me to believe that they possessed this level of paranoia or security-mindedness. Something was amiss, but I had already come this far, and obviously, I’d been seen. I turned back around and walked to the porch, ascending the steps at an even pace.
The third step up felt different than the others somehow underfoot, but I opted to just press on, so that I didn’t raise any further concerns than I may already have by looking directly at the two cameras. I was about to knock on the outer screen door, a plain white wooden number with a wide, tightly-woven screen mesh, when the inner, four-panel oak door clicked loudly and swung inward to reveal the smiling personage of Parker Edmunds.
“It’s good to meet you, Mister Hayes,” he said amiably, waiting for me to step aside so he could push open the screen door, then offering me his hand. I took it in my own, carefully choking off the urge to grimace at the clamminess of his grip. In the videos he’d uploaded, he looked poised, healthy, and almost weirdly upbeat. Here, now, in person and on the threshold of his home, he possessed a look in his eyes that reminded me of wildcats that have lured larger predators into their own little kill box.
I don’t like to admit it, but I thought about making up an excuse and begging off of the interview right then and there, with my hand still clasped to his own. When finally he let go of my fingers, Parker turned and started down the short hallway from the front door to a wide, semi-circular archway on the right side of the woodpanel hall, through which spilled a good deal of natural light. “Follow me,” he said, stepping out of view.
I followed a moment later, finding myself standing in the entryway of a broad, bright and very modern kitchen. The entirety of the kitchen space easily could have accommodated my little rented room at the TransAmerica Inn, with perhaps an extra foot of length to boot. A fine, shining dark mahogany dining table stood off to the right side of the room, a lacy tablecloth draped over it. A centerpiece set of napkin holder and salt and pepper servers took up the middle, doubling as a weight on the lightweight sheet. Dead ahead of me, Parker was approaching the wide double basin sink, and he picked up a soapy bowl from the right basin and started spraying it clean with the attached, extendable water faucet.
He put it back and shook the bowl dry for a moment, then turned to me and nodded. “Sorry, I didn’t want to leave this downstairs much longer, would’ve been a bitch to get clean,” he said, setting the dish in a drying rack nearby. He pointed then to a wide, heavy-looking black door standing beside the fridge. “We can head downstairs to set up and talk now.”
Parker led the way, first taking a key out of his pocket and unlocking the door with a loud ‘click’, sliding the deadbolt out of the doorframe. The hinges of the door, though they didn’t look to be in a state of disrepair or rust, creaked loudly. He took a moment to point at one of the upper hinges and grinned at me as I narrowed my eyes at some kind of thin yellow tube attached to the metal.
“Doesn’t matter how slow you open this door, if I’m downstairs, I’m going to hear it,” he said. The door opened, I saw, on a fairly steep set of wooden steps. Halfway down the descent, Parker paused and reached his left hand out to the wall for a moment, flicking down what I could see was a simple light switch. He took a few steps further down, to the concrete landing below, and turned to look up at me.
I took a moment to observe the switch, and felt my hand starting to come up toward it. “Don’t do that,” he said quickly, shaking his head. “Not on that step.”
“What’s it for,” I asked. Rather than answer immediately, Parker made a short hand gesture for me to join him, and I descended the rest of the steps and turned to face the climb once more. Parker headed back up a few steps, stretching out to reach the switch, which he flipped up. He then waved his hand in an exaggerated fashion to grab my attention, then pressed the flat of his palm down on the step he’d warned me to get off of, which swiveled into a vertical position with ease.
“I’ve got a magnetic conductor hooked up to the wiring,” he said, flipping the switch off again. He pressed down on the step, and it held firm. “Springs and plates on the underside of the step make it rotate to the slightest pressure, drops anybody coming down right down the stairs. Just a minor security measure.” I nodded, but started to feel beads of sweat threatening to break on my forehead. Parker didn’t seem to notice, and he even flashed his trademark grin once more as he came back down and guided me around the steps to a narrow hallway toward a heavy black door that appeared to be the twin of the one up at the top of his stairs.
This door didn’t have a standard doorknob, however, but rather, what looked like a sort of lift-latch device that used to be hosted on high school lockers, complete with a combination dial set above it. Parker used his body to block my view, spinning the dial until finally he lifted the latch and pushed the door open on a broad, dimly lit family room beyond him. “Come on in,” he said, stepping inside and to the left, out of my immediate view.
As I followed him in, I found myself looking at a chamber that might once have been described as a ‘man cave’, a lounge/living room area furnished apparently by a rabid Atlanta Falcons fan. On the wall to my left, behind a broad black sectional couch, hung two jerseys in glass cases, signed and bearing certificates of authenticity. A couple of simple shelves had been installed, holding an away and home game helmets, as well as some player bobbleheads from the Falcons’ historic 2029 Super Bowl run. On the other walls stood pennant flags and posters showcasing some of the team’s iconic skill position players in action shots.
On the wall to the right of me stood a god-awfully huge flatscreen television, a sizable oak entertainment center situated beneath it and covered with a couple of video game consoles, a standalone Blu-Ray player, and a modem and wireless router tucked on the middle shelf underneath, both blinking to indicate good signal.
In the middle of the room sat a wide glass coffee table, and on this, two laptop computers, each one open and facing the couch, upon which Parker lowered himself. All of this seemed perfectly normal, but a second look at the walls allowed me to spot thin black wires, subtley run and braced with gardening staples to the walls to keep them straight and largely out of sight. Following these wires, my eyes finally came to rest on a spot just above the door into the basement lounge area, where Parker had affixed a strange black box. Stenciled on the front of this box in bold yellow block lettering were the words, ‘FRONT TOWARD ENEMY’.
His sanctum was guarded with a Claymore mine.
“Parker,” I said evenly, inclining my head toward the device. “Is that what I think it is?” He looked up at the weapon, then back at me, and silently nodded. “Why?”
“Because you can never be too careful,” he replied amiably. “That’s why I’ve got that, too,” he said, pointing me toward the narrow, ground-level slat window set high in the ceiling by the wall which faced out toward the front of the house. I stepped over toward it and looked out on the front lawn of the property, but shook my head. I didn’t see anything of note. “It’s one-way glass. I can see out, but from the outside, it looks black. That, and I’ve got the entire windowframe electrified, so nobody can try to sneak in through there.”
I looked again, and saw a thin filament wire coming from the frame of the window, attached to the metal clamp holding it shut. The hairs on the back of my neck began to stick out; I had stepped either into a kill box, or, quite possibly, the most secure location in all of Deertrack, Georgia.
“Let me show you my bedroom,” Parker said, coming up off of the couch and walking over toward one another door, to the right of the couch in the corner of the room. I dutifully followed him, pausing to stare down at the end of the sectional that stopped just shy of his bedroom door; stitched to the side of the couch, where nobody entering the lounge would see it upon entry, was a holster, which hosted a shining Glock 9mm pistol.
If seated for a video game session or just relaxing and watching a movie, Parker had the option, it appeared, of either killing any intruder with either the Claymore, or, to minimize personal harm to himself, he could reach out of sight and draw out this firearm. As a member of the Delta 26, I would have thought him loathe to have anything to do with a gun; my presumptions were being thoroughly shattered on that front.
Parker opened the door to his bedroom, and what I saw within did nothing to help alleviate my sense of his terrifying level of paranoia. His bed, a simple, military-style cot, was situated in the far corner from the door, a bright red button sticking out of the wall just beside it. Over my head, I saw what looked like the bottom of some kind of metal shutter, weighing God only knew how much. In the corner to my immediate right was a bookcase lined with canned and boxed military-style rations, two cases of bottled water, and what looked like a simple chemical toilet, flipped upside down but kept at the ready for use. There was in the corner of the room directly ahead of me a Honda generator, five Blue Rhino propane tanks, and an old-fashioned landline telephone sitting on a low lamp table. Next to the phone was a hand-crank emergency radio as well.
The bedroom smelled like a funky combination of sweat and astringent cleaning products, and the absence of any carpeting allowed me to see a single wide, circular drain in the middle of the floor, which appeared to have been indented slightly.
Even from where I stood in the doorway as Parker stepped toward his bed, pivoting about to face me with his hands folded in front of his waist, I could read the titles of the small handful of books he kept neatly stacked under the edge of his bed. Two of them were survivalist guidebooks. One of the books was entitled ‘Mass Damages: The Worst Massacres of American History’. I’d read this work myself just a couple of years ago, and recalled that the final entry in it detailed the basics of the Delta Heights Massacre.
Another of the thick tomes under his bed, if I understood the title correctly, was a manual of improvised and historical military tactics. And, as one might expect, the last of his prized book collection in this, his most secured space, was a leatherbound copy of the King James Bible.
“We should probably talk out here,” I said, hooking a thumb over my shoulder back to the lounge area.
“Not a problem,” Parker said. As I let him slip back past me, I couldn’t help but notice the only non-book item under his cot, not even concealed and within easy reach if he were laid down to rest- a Remington pump-action combat shotgun.
**
[Format will now turn to interview style previously used for the duration of the conversation regarding the Delta Heights Massacre]
Matthew Hayes: I’d like to start by thanking you for agreeing to speak to me. I know you turned down a lot of media requests ten years ago, back when the incident first took place.
Parker Edmunds[PE]: I wasn’t exactly in a good place to talk to anybody who I didn’t know or trust at that time. [sniffs] None of us were.
MH: Have you had many requests in the intervening years?
PE: Only a few, but after about a year, everybody had pretty much moved on. The national attention span isn’t much longer than the memory loop of a goldfish. If it isn’t happening right now, and isn’t grabbing up all the airspace in online conversations, it pretty much dies out in a hurry. People don’t pay attention longer than they absolutely have to.
MH: Sadly, you’re quite right. [clears throat, looks to OneNote for first written question] You were a junior on the day that Norris and Sitanski committed their assault on the student body and staff, yes?
PE: Yes, I was.
MH: Where did you end up finishing out? I realize that’s kind of beside any other point to make here, but I’m curious.
PE: I ended up going to Bennett High for my senior year. And I didn’t take a year off, even though my parents and the, ah, the councilor they sent me to said I should consider it. It was that, or take my GED exam and just have done with it, you know? I was going to just end up helping my brother run the store, that was the thought at the time, so it wasn’t like I needed an actual diploma. But I wanted to have the option, you know? You have to have options. [At this point, seated as he is on the part of the sectional couch closest to the bedroom and his concealed pistol, I thought I saw his hand move toward it while his eyes glanced quickly to the Claymore rigged up over the door between his living room and the short hallway leading to the stairs.]
MH: What can you tell me about your previous familiarity with Norris and Sitanski? Before their attack?
PE: Um, wow. I, ah, I have to say, I didn’t know them very well, not on a personal level, but they had a reputation, that was for sure. They were a full grade ahead of me, and I sort of knew Brandon a bit better before then than I did Aaron. I mean, I took like, a year of karate, I think it was? The same little school that Brandon went to, he was really good, very natural. But he was also very aggressive, always wanted to spar and go full speed, never any kind of glove-touching tap and go kind of stuff.
MH: So, you already had an idea that he was pretty combative, aggressive?
PE: Yeah, kind of. But when the karate school closed shop, Brandon was able to find his way again, for a little bit, at least. He was on JV football for his freshman and sophomore years, I remember that, defensive end. I think he was a linebacker, the kind who uses more speed and maneuverability than pure size to make his game work. They never played him all that much, though. Sitanski, I never really got to know much about him, other than what I occasionally heard from other kids, rumors and whatnot.
MH: What kind of rumors?
PE: Largely stuff about the different websites and servers he’d hacked into, Although, there was a couple of months there where people were saying that Norris and Sitanski were, like, a couple, you know? Seemed like a silly thing to get all ‘Oooh aaaah’ over, you know?
MH: And why’s that?
PE: Because who gives a shit who or what someone else is attracted to? I mean, you couldn’t sweep through more than five ‘People You Might Know’s on Facebook back then without bumping into someone who identified within the LGBTQ community. But that was on the long view, not real life, I know. Those two got all kinds of hell with the rumors.
MH: Do you think that played a part in what ultimately happened?
PE: Sure, a part of it. [Parker at this point brings his hands up over his face, letting out a heavy sigh as he leans forward, elbows braced on his knees, nodding his head without looking directly at me.] People fucked with those two relentlessly, and there was just about nothing they could do about it. I was in advanced placement for English my junior year, taking English 12 and Speech and Theater, and I had Norris in my English 12 class. There was this one time, we were discussing the modern practice of censorship and book banning due to current attitudes toward language. Mr. Bronn had brought in copies of ‘Huckleberry Finn’ for all of us, copies he’d had to buy with his own money, and that was the first part of the whole unit, talking about how teachers were being forced to risk coming under fire to give their students a proper look at historically significant material.
MH: That title’s been banned in Georgia public schools for close to fifteen years. Would’ve only been five years at the time you’re talking about, but still, that seems like a step above and beyond. [I pause, thinking back on Mr. Bronn] He never struck me as caring that much about the curriculum. Or his students for that matter.
PE: Mr. Bronn said he’d gotten sick and tired of hanging back and playing it safe with the school board, and he didn’t give a shit if they tried to get rid of him. [strange snicker, shake of the head] He’d been diagnosed with some kind of heart condition, told us all he only had three or four years left anyway, so why not go all-in on his life’s work?
MH: That’s surprisingly commendable. Go on.
PE: So, we’re all seated in this ring of desks around the walls of his classroom, and Mr. Bronn looks around and asks the class, a couple of months into the year, how many of us actually read through the entire book. Only four hands go up, including mine, Norris’s, and two of the girls in the class. Bronn nods, and he says, ‘Now notice that of these four students, only one of them is black. Maggie, what did you think of Huckleberry Finn?’
MH: You recall what she said?
PE: Not verbatim, no, but the gist of it was that she didn’t give a shit about the old racist language because the book was written at a time when that was just how people talked, and she thought it was important to not try to erase that part of our history.
MH: If I may, Parker, what has that got to do with Brandon Norris?
PE: Well, after Maggie finished her explanation, Brandon raised his hand, and when Mr. Bronn gave him the go-ahead, he stands up and says, ‘Now, if I had said that, you’d all be jumping on my shit because I’m a white boy. You wouldn’t give a shit how logical or rational I was being in giving my reasoning, you wouldn’t even wait until I was done talking to form your opinion, which would be that I should just shut the hell up’.
MH: What happened to him with that?
PE: [shrugs] It was the only time I ever saw him speak up in class that nobody responded to him or tried to shout him down. And he looked completely lost for the rest of the class, like he’d been expecting backlash, almost spoiling for it. I really think that could have been a turning point, right there, to maybe put a stop to what he and Sitanski had in mind.
MH: Why do you think it didn’t turn out that way?
PE: Well, between periods, after we all got out into the hallway, three of the other guys from our English 12 class sort of boxed him in and rammed him into the lockers, head-first, and nobody did anything about it. I think that pretty much wiped out any good the previous period had done for us all.
[Brief pause as I asked to use the facilities, the door to which had been cleverly concealed in the living room area by the door being covered by the same kind of wood paneling as the rest of the walls. The inside of Parker’s bathroom smelled like a combination of ammonia and vinegar, and was obsessively spotless. On a hunch, I knelt down after using the toilet and turning on the water to give myself cover, and opened the cabinet under the sink. There were the standard cleansers there, and angling my head and using my phone as a light source, I found a K-Bar combat knife, the traditional weapon of choice of Marines for hand-to-hand combat, velcro’d to the underside of the sink.]
MH: Sorry about that.
PE: No worries, nature calls and you gotta answer. I get it. [He pauses to turn on his television and mute the news, turning on the Closed Captioning so he can put one eye to reading the news periodically] Keep firing, Mister Hayes.
MH: Very well. This next question may seem a little intrusive, Mister Edmunds. [Parker doesn’t look away from the screen, rolling one hand in a ‘go on’ gesture] Most of the members of the Delta 26 have some kind of lingering scar or handicap from injuries suffered during the assault. If you don’t mind my saying so, you don’t appear to have any such issues. [Here, Parker slowly turns his face away from the television, eyes half-lidded, to practically glare at me.] Forgive me if I’ve overstepped.
PE: No, it’s not an overstep. You’ve done your homework, I imagine, checked with Mercy Regional for admissions records, right? [I nod] And having done that, you know that I was never seen for injuries from the Massacre. [Once more, I nod] And I have to assume that you somehow tracked down the next month’s admission?
MH: You were admitted in late May of 2021, and weren’t discharged until August. I wasn’t able to clarify anything more than that.
PE: But you have a suspicion. [Here, Parker leans back on his couch and crosses his right leg over his left, hands clasped on his knee, foot slowly bouncing up and down] Go ahead and ask.
MH: Were you involuntarily admitted to Mercy’s Psychiatric Care Ward?
PE: No. I admitted myself, voluntarily.
MH: What spurred that decision, if you don’t mind my asking?
PE: Don’t mind at all. I was having these nightmares, where I was walking along behind Norris and Sitanski, out in the woods near the school. I was listening to them talk about what they were about to do, how epic it was going to be. And for some reason, in the dream, they didn’t seem to recognize that I was there, they didn’t address me at all, just kept talking among themselves. And so I tried to reach for one of them, can’t remember who, and I didn’t see my own hand or arm; it was like I was this bodiless ghost, even to myself.
After a few minutes, I heard the fire alarm, but it was really loud, like, as if it was right over my head, the speakers and bells. I start floating over toward the nearest set of doors into and out of the school, and I’m trying to yell at the kids and the staff to go back inside, that they’re going to get killed. Only, as they start coming out of the school, they’re already burned and blown apart, missing pieces, bleeding all over the place, like this mindless pack of zombies. And when they open their mouths, the fire drill alarms come out of them, dozens and dozens of bells just blaring at me, and I woke up about then screaming.
MH: That sounds horrific.
PE: Imagine what it was like for Jeff and our parents! [nervous chuckle] They couldn’t do much for me, God knows they tried, though. They talked to me, or made the effort to, wanted to pull me out of myself, but I refused to come out of my room. I situated myself under my bed for two solid days, only came out once early on to grab a couple of bottles of water from the kitchen, then squirreled myself away back up under my bed.
MH: So you weren’t eating?
PE: Jeff brought me a couple of sandwiches on paper plates, which I was very grateful for. But after drinking that first bottle of water, I used it to piss in throughout the day. I emptied it out my window a couple of times when I felt like it was safe enough to, but otherwise, I refused to come out from under the bed.
MH: So, what was the defining moment, then?
PE: My mom came up into my room, on the third morning, and I must have nodded off at some point. I heard this noise near my head, and snapped to, reached out and grabbed her wrist and yanked as hard as I could. She smashed her head against the baseboard of along the side of my bed and just dropped to the floor, crying, holding her head. She was bleeding, and I remember just staring at her, lying there on my bedroom floor, confused and hurt and probably terrified of her own son at this point. I crawled out and told her I was ready to go get some help.
MH: So, you had yourself brought to Mercy Regional. [I pause to look around the young man’s downstairs living room/deathtrap combination, letting my eyes purposely linger on the Claymore propped over the one door.] Parker, if you don’t mind my saying so, things don’t seem to have gotten much better for you. I mean, why the traps? Why so many precautions? What started all of this?
PE: [Parker takes in a deep breath, bringing his crossed leg down and standing up slowly, planting his hands on his hips as he slowly takes in his own domain. There comes to his eyes a filmy dampness, as he approaches the verge of tears, head slightly bobbing up and down as if he has come to some major decision. It turns out that he has.]
It started when I called 911 from inside the school, Mister Hayes. I’d seen those two heading into the woods when I was getting off the bus that morning, and I had a bad feeling about it. When the fire alarms started going off, I hung back, dragged my feet, then ducked into the faculty lounge on the north side of the first floor and used the landline to call. When I finished telling the dispatcher about what I’d seen, that was when I saw it; this blast of earth and body parts, and a bloom of fire going in all directions. It shook the windows so hard, I thought they were going to shatter and shred me to pieces.
[Here, Parker seems to issue some kind of frog-like croak as twin tear tracks run down his face, which he lowers into his muffling hands.]
And I saw them with those rifles, coming out of the woods, and I heard the first shot, and I dove onto one of the couches to hide! I laid there, and I heard more shots, and the sirens, and I just stayed right where I was for what felt like forever, until a police officer found me almost an hour later!
MH: You were just a kid, Parker. There wasn’t much else you could have done, nobody can blame you for that.
PE: But they can. [Parker here flops back down onto his couch, seeming somehow deflated, like something has let all of the air out of his spirit.] They can. You see, I didn’t tell anybody that I’d seen those two heading into the woods, not until I called 911. People already thought something was up with those two, and if I would have said something, maybe a teacher would have gone out there or called the cops in to take a look.
I had a chance to keep it from happening at all, and I didn’t take it. It’s my fault. [Hangs his head down] That’s why I go to The End of the World. It’s why I keep myself down here, where it’s safe.
MH: So, the downed plane, the shrine in the tail, that’s you? [Parker just nods silently.] Parker, would you like me to leave?
PE: No, but, can we be done? For now, at least?
[END OF RECORDING/TRANSCRIPTION]
**
April 2nd, 2031. 0750h. They say that guilt can drive a person to do terrible things. In the case of Parker Edmunds, it had caused him to live a life of obsession, focused entirely on survival and securing himself a kind of bunker under the home he shared with his brother, sister-in-law, and nephews. Nobody beyond his immediate family seemed to have known about the extreme measures to which he’d gone to keep himself safe in a misguided effort to keep his trauma at bay.
Another long-running axiom says that the truth shall set you free, which is a quaint little line that I’ve always hosted a soft spot for, especially working in the field of journalism. It’s a key component of my professional mission to shed light on the facts of various situations in the society in which I live as a contributing member.
However, there is an unfortunate downturn to shedding that light. You may recall that quote from Terry Pratchett that I quoted before (if it made the cut in the final draft of this project, at any rate). If you don’t remember it, or it didn’t make it through editing, allow me to restate it: ‘The light, fast as it traveled, was always surprised to find that wherever it went, the darkness had gotten there ahead of it’. Sometimes, most times, actually, there is a tremendous sense of relief for people when they’re finally able to own up to the demons that have been plaguing them. Confessions or admissions of information lifts the burden of secret knowledge from them.
In the case of Parker Edmunds, the intrusion of that light had indeed set him free, allowing him to finally come face to face with his own feelings of guilt over the events of the Delta Heights Massacre. Unfortunately, yesterday evening, the demons revealed in his confession to me took an even tighter hold on him after the light was shined upon them, and he used the shotgun kept in his bedroom on himself.
The Delta Heights Massacre, ten years later, has claimed another victim. I cannot help feeling partly to blame, but that’s something I’ll deal with with the assistance of my own therapist when I finally get out of Deertrack again, and get back to Minnesota.