Part VII- Final Days in Deertrack
Wind Up
April 17th, 2031. 0735h. The unveiling ceremony isn’t for another four hours and change, so I’m sitting here in my rented room at the TransAmerica Inn, my coffee set to the right, cigarettes and ashtray to the left of my tablet here. In the three days immediately following my interview with Aaron Sitanski, I was barely able to muster the energy to leave the room, only able to go as far as Jerry’s to take in a late breakfast before returning to the quiet sanctuary of the hotel.
There was a damnable truth to Sitanski’s parting words to me, after which he’d made a single hand gesture toward one of the guards nearby in the prison library, and I was asked to grab my things so that they could escort me out. Before even getting out of the library, I could hear Sitanski mutter something to one of those remaining guards, and when I looked back over my shoulder, that same said guard had his hand drawn back to the opposite shoulder, and he backhanded Sitanski so fiercely that the mass murderer fell out of his chair to the floor, a bizarre little giggle escaping his mouth as he fell down.
The guard was demonstrating Sitanski’s point for him, and I hadn’t even managed yet to escape the tundra-like presence of the Delta Heights Massacre’s mastermind. As I was bustled out of the prison, a kind of numbness took over, dulling any sharpness of observation powers I had brought in with me for the moment, instead focusing all internal efforts on getting out of the prison, into my car, and back to the hotel.
I hadn’t been in any kind of immediate physical danger, no, but there was a sort of psychic, spiritual trauma undergone by being in Sitanski’s presence for even that brief period of time. The man possesses a kind of alien logic that, while utterly strange to me on the surface, speaks to a greater shared truth underneath it all.
It’s easy to see now, looking back objectively, how he had managed to lure Brandon Norris into participating in his plan. Norris had been hot-tempered, impulsive, with very little self-control. Part of me suspects that Sitanski had a plan in place for the Massacre long before the school year even started. The fire alarms that had been pulled all school year, leading up to the Massacre itself, were already established by Sitanski’s own admission as being a form of reconnaissance, figuring out where the most damage would be done with the planted IED’s.
But something Dr. Renier mentioned keeps coming back to me; that Aaron Sitanski, even without the help of his partner Norris, would have ended up being a killer no matter what. A psychopath can only maintain the façade of their humanity for so long before some incident pushes them to taking lethal action.
So, I feel compelled to ask, if Aaron Sitanski had grown up in a whole family, without suffering the physical abuse that he did at his mother’s hands, would he have been able to control his volatility? If his peers had treated him with some modicum of decency, would he have spared them their lives? How many of those boys and girls would have gone on to do great things for the world in which they lived, to be decent, contributing members of society?
How much damage could have been avoided if someone had just had the minimally required amount of mercy and tried to connect with him and Norris, or offered them a platform from which to speak, even briefly? I’m not saying that any of their ideas should have been taken seriously, or given due consideration, but because they were heckled and shouted down so overwhelmingly, and Sitanski as a result removed all of his and Norris’s public posts, we are left with almost no idea at all what it was that they actually believed in, what notions they were espousing. We have only conjecture remaining, and that’s nothing to go off of.
I have a schedule of the ceremony right here. It doesn’t look very involved; a presentation speech by Ariel Richmond, the Georgia State Secretary of Education, followed by a guided non-denomenational prayer led by the Reverend James O’Rourke (why is it that so many men of the cloth, even non-Catholic, seem to come from Irish or Scottish stock?), and concluding with a collective Moment of Silence to remember the fallen.
I should start getting ready.
**
0937h. I almost couldn’t believe what I was hearing when I took the phone call just ten minutes ago, and even now, I’m not entirely sure what to make of it. I never would have thought that such a thing could be considered, given the nature of our nation’s criminal justice system.
Aaron Sitanski is going to be allowed an armed escort to attend the memorial ceremony. I just learned this from Brenda Mattheson, who received an email about it from Sitanski’s attorney, Miss Holly Maxwell. I was rather surprised to discover that I wasn’t Miss Maxwell’s first contact, but I shouldn’t be too surprised; after all, I’m an out-of-towner, and her client already ostensibly got what he wanted out of me.
I’ve already got everything gathered for observing the ceremony, so I’m just going to bring it all with me to Jerry’s. Growing up here, I know that that’s where most of the townsfolk who are active participants in the day-to-day lives of this small town will be gathered to discuss this oddity, though they will likely see it more as an obscenity than anything.
**
1015h. I wasn’t wrong about the people of Deertrack gathering here, at least, the best-known and most influential members of its citizenry. It makes me think a little of Luke’s Diner in the television program ‘Gilmore Girls’ in that regard. People are quite upset, which is no surprise, and they’ve already had a lot of bad vibes to deal with the last few weeks. Between my poking around and dredging up old wounds (along with the folks at CNN and Fox News), Parker Edmunds’s sudden suicide and the revelation of his fractured mental state, and the approach of the ten-year anniversary of the worst mass school slaying in the United States in over a hundred years, the people of Deertrack have every reason to be upset.
There are a few key people who I would have expected to be here who are not, however. Whether they have decided to stay home and avoid the whole maudlin spectacle altogether, or they refuse to be anywhere in eyesight of Sitanski, I can’t say. I just know that their absence is notable.
Also notable is one person’s presence, actually, and that’s Mark Stirn, the former soldier who lives up in the long-term suite at the TransAmerica Inn I’ve been staying at. He seems to be going from person to person to try to calm them down, to waylay their worries and megrims surrounding Sitanski’s presence at the memorial unveiling. Only the Reverend seems capable of matching the soldier’s calm, measured demeanor and ability to put people at ease.
Mark hasn’t struck me once in the time that I’ve been here for this piece as a ‘Man About Town’-type. His being here, while seemingly appreciated by the folks in Jerry’s, begs the question, why am I so ill-at-ease with his having come into town?
**
1054h. I can see Rick Allens and Tom Shavers out there near the pagoda in the town square, setting up their field equipment with the assistance of a couple of techs. They had been gone for a few days, but appear to have come back since the larger networks got word that Sitanski himself would be here for the unveiling ceremony. CNN has sent a different pair from before, though Phil Potter has managed to get himself attached to the new anchor sent on assignment for the event. Only a PA he may be, but as a member of the Delta 26, I am not at all surprised that he found a way to get himself brought back from Atlanta.
Chief Carlyle and several of his personnel are roaming the town square and the area immediately around it, seemingly looking for any signs of trouble. I’m hoping to get a couple of minutes aside with him to discuss the situation with Sitanski coming here for the unveiling.
**
1112h. Spoke briefly with the Chief, and he is wound tighter than a guitar string on an amateur’s instrument. The Feds had apparently reached out to him to inform him and his people that there was quite a bit of activity online talking about taking the opportunity to dole out fatal justice to Sitanski upon his arrival. He’s already had to question a handful of folks who he’d rather not, and his officers have confiscated several firearms from otherwise perfectly law-abiding citizens.
There is a brewing kind of mob animosity coalescing around the town square, and I cannot say I don’t comprehend it. These people’s world was irrevocably altered when Sitanski and Norris went on their rampage. Many of them had sons, daughters, brothers, sisters, and friends who perished in the Massacre.
Douglas Pershing, the older brother of Samantha Pershing, a science teacher who had been nearly vaporized due to her proximity to one of the explosive devices, has already been detained by Carlyle’s people for the day. He had shown up at the town square waving around a high-powered rifle and screaming about retribution, so he hadn’t left the authorities much choice.
I can practically taste the blood in the air.
Blitz
When Aaron Sitanski arrived at the edge of the town square, it was in the back of a large, dark blue Department of Corrections transport panel van. The vehicle was clearly marked along its sides, and there were three officers seated abreast in the front seat of the vehicle. As it double-parked on the north side of the square, the groans of disgust and dismay from the local townspeople vibrated the air in all directions.
The crowd gathered around the gazebo and the veiled structure of the memorial itself numbered roughly two-hundred strong, with more throngs of people lined up to watch from a distance along the sidewalks of the various businesses that ring the square. Already on edge and wondering about the number of Deertrack denizens who own and can operate rifles at a good range, I swept the area’s rooftops quickly, looking for any signs of a potential sniper.
I was pleasantly surprised to discover none that I could plainly see.
As the three guards opened the back of the prison van, two more guards in full combat gear were revealed to be riding in the back with Sitanski, who was himself wearing a full orange jumpsuit and a set of shackles that joined his bound wrists to his chained ankles. His range of motion practically didn’t exist. Over his torso, the corrections officers had additionally fitted a bulletproof vest; they knew full well what kind of hate he would have directed at him.
The guards frog-walked the psychopathic Sitanski toward the public seating area, but they pulled up short of it, with one of the combat-ready officers setting down a cheap folding lawn chair and roughly pressing Sitanski down into it with a grunt.
Two Georgia Public Works folks and the mayor of Deertrack stood in front of the covered monument, and there could be no mistaking the baleful glares they sent in the prisoner’s direction. He was the cause of all of this, the heartache, the downturn and slow rot of the town. Well, one half of it, but the other half had been dead for a decade.
At one minute past noon, the mayor made a sharp hand motion to the Public Works men, who grabbed the tarp and pulled it aside, revealing a marvelous marble statue in the shape of a backpack, engraved with a long list of names of those who had lost their lives in the Delta Heights Massacre. The mayor launched into a brief explanation of the piece, the artist’s motivations (she was herself a member of the Delta 26), and the importance of community in the wake of such a tragedy. I didn’t record the speech verbatim, but would simply like to say that the fellow did well for a small-town politician.
Likewise, the Reverend’s guided group prayer proved to be a lovely homily, and many were the heads that were bowed as the prayer was delivered. Yet even as the preacher was wrapping up, I could sense the sudden shift in atmosphere just ahead and to the left of me, towards Sitanski.
Taking a moment to look up, I spotted a group of perhaps twenty townspeople, all moving slowly in a cluster toward the mass murderer and his guards. For their part, the corrections officers didn’t seem too worried, or even aware, that there was something amiss. At the moment, I wasn’t one-hundred percent sure what was going to happen, though I had a sneaking suspicion. Before I could open my mouth to issue any kind of warning, however, that cluster of townsfolk broke toward their target at high speed, howling a wordless, bloodthirsty scream of collective rage.
Panic broke out among the rest of the gathered crowd, and feedback whined over the town square as the preacher dropped his microphone in his effort to try and call out to people to get hold of themselves. When that first cluster of people had closed on the guards and Sitanski, a block of other Deertrack residents, sensing that they may actually have the upper hand due to their sheer numbers, joined in the fray.
I hung back to avoid coming to harm, and it was less than a minute before someone called out, “It’s done! It’s over!” The bulk of the crowd drew back, revealing groaning guards and citizens, all trying to get back up onto their feet, a single corpse among their number. Moving opposite the crowd, I was able to weave forward enough to see Aaron Sitanski in full, plain view.
His face had been transformed into a purple-and-red mess of gore, his forehead caved in from either fists or feet, one eyeball gouged out and hanging, punctured, on his gashed cheek. Blood leaked from a dozen or more other stab wounds, though there wasn’t a single knife or bladed weapon in sight on the ground. Carlyle’s people were already sweeping into the ranks of the crowd to pat people down and ask questions, and the combat-ready guards, looking stunned, started trying to drag the limp form of Sitanski away from the place where he’d been felled.
I remained right where I was, patiently allowing one of the Chief’s people to do a pat-down on me and answering her brief questions about what I saw. Unfortunately, I hadn’t seen much in the way of details; the mass of the crowd had made such nearly impossible. The moment she finished with me and told me I could go, I managed to take a few steps away before vomiting explosively all over the ground.
Nothing could have prepared me for this.
Aftermath
May 8th, 2031. 0800h. It is good to be back in the Twin Cities, to be surrounded by the urban hubbub of the metro. I’ve had time to process what happened on that fateful day just a couple of weeks ago, and to learn more about the specifics. I’ve also, like everyone else in the media, learned about the disturbing prescience of Aaron Sitanski in his final days.
It turned out that Sitanski’s dismissal of me in the prison library had been a carefully scripted part of his plan. When I was gone, he had requested a blank sheet of notebook paper and a copy of the King James Bible, which the guards brought him, along with a pen. He spent a few minutes writing a letter of sorts, and folding it into the Bible, which he then brought with him to his cell.
After he was pronounced dead at the scene, guards at the prison went through his cell, and released the letter he’d written to the public. It read as follows:
‘To Matthew, and anyone else who believes that mob rule is not something to be genuinely concerned about, I write to inform you of my expectation that, should my request be granted to attend the memorial unveiling ceremony in Deertrack, Georgia, it will culminate in my demise. People are distressingly predictable, you see, particularly in this day and age where there is no accountability, no nuance, and no value assumed for the lives of those we find unsavory or undesirable. So easy is it to hate me that I would even go so far as to predict that even though arrests will be made in the investigation of my murder, no weapon will be found, and no genuine effort made to get justice on my behalf. This will come as no surprise to anyone who has been paying even the slightest attention.
You see, I’m just a murderous psychopath, less than human to most folks. I was less than human before, in my youth; straight, white, cisgendered male, so unworthy of being allowed a chance or place to speak, since so many like me had taken up all public forums throughout history. The mob declared me unworthy to speak before; now, the mob will declare me unworthy to live.
In the event that this does indeed happen, know this- I accept it. I accept their hatred, their rage. I accept that what I did deserves an end such as this. But I would caution you all to remember that no matter how heinous the crime, even the condemned are supposed to be given a fair shake.
But I doubt that will be afforded me in death. After all, it wasn’t afforded me in life.’
**
I’m not entirely certain how to feel about Sitanski’s ‘Farewell Notice’, as most outlets are referring to it. Clearly, he understood that if he was allowed to attend the ceremony, he was likely signing his own death warrant. Conversely, if he had been denied, I have a hunch that he would have soon taken his own life.
The memorial’s unveiling marked not only the ten-year anniversary of the Delta Heights Massacre, after all, but felt like the town’s effort to let go of the event, to start to heal. This was turned on its head, however, the moment the crowd turned violent and pummeled, stomped and stabbed Aaron Sitanski to death.
As he predicted, nobody has been charged with Sitanski’s death as yet. No weapon has been recovered, and from what Brenda Matheson has informed me (I am now in regular email contact with her), the Deertrack Police Department isn’t exactly burning through man-hours trying to figure out what exactly happened. It’s horrible to think that someone so fundamentally unwell could see through to how the crowd would behave, but it can’t be denied that Sitanski was spot-on in his prediction of how people would react to his attendance of the unveiling ceremony.
I try not to be a pessimist, but it feels as though, in his own way, Aaron Sitanski won the world’s strangest game. He and Brandon Norris were to be left behind by history, the memorial bearing neither of their names. Now, however, thanks to the inability of the mob to control its violence and thirst for revenge, he will be keenly remembered as the psychopath who dragged the town of Deertrack down to his level.
Is he the victim alone, in this case? Or perhaps a perpetrator, having known exactly what the crowd would do? If he is indeed a perpetrator, then he is one of the sort that rarely makes their mark in the world, the kind whose intended target is not aimed at to come to harm, but rather, to take some specific, pre-ordained course of action. He knew exactly how to play the people of Deertrack, and he did so with perfect execution.
Will the people of that small town in southern Georgia ever be able to come to terms with what they did? Is there some guilty conscience among their number who will step forward and claim responsibility for what happened? I can’t say for certain. All I can conclude with any kind of real authority is this; there are people in this world who, for one reason or another, will resort to the most heinous of actions to make themselves heard. If we continue to push such people to the margins of our society, they will continue to do precisely what Brandon Norris and Aaron Sitanski did. I say this not to serve as an excuse for what they did, or any kind of endorsement. I say it to serve as a kind of cautionary note.
The fire drill is a long-standing and effective training tool, something we’ve been using to instill in our nation’s young people a sense of order and control in the face of chaotic or dangerous circumstances. It is done as a precaution, as a means of keeping the kids and staff safe, of keeping everybody in the general public safe.
On April 17th, 2021, Brandon Norris and Aaron Sitanski used that ages-old mechanism in a lethal exploit to remind everyone that no matter how much we prepare for a disaster, we can never be completely prepared. Some may argue that they were pushed to the point of taking that action, while others will insist that they have only themselves to blame for the actions they took.
In the long run, it isn’t for me to say one way or the other, but to merely present you, the reader, with the facts as can be determined, and let you draw your own conclusion.
Epilogue
October 15th, 2031. 0830h. The more things change, the more they stay the same, some say. This piece of didactic wisdom is typically delivered in a dry and world-weary tone of voice, a tone I have tried to avoid using as long as is humanly possible in my own life. However, it can’t be avoided forever, because even I come occasionally to the end of my rope.
Yesterday, authorities in the township of Grawling, Montana, raided the homes of two young men, students at George W. Bush High School, after they were tipped that the pair were planning a ‘Delta Heights-Style Assault’ against their classmates and staff. Nobody has confirmed where the tip came from yet, but an unnamed source within Grawling’s Police Department has confirmed that they, along with members of the ATF, have recovered numerous homemade explosives from both homes, along with a dozen firearms and a stockpile of ammunition. The students’ names haven’t been released as yet, but that will come along in due time.
Nobody should be surprised by this. In the wake of the Columbine High School Massacre decades ago, there came a spate of similarly styled threats and attacks, most of them taking fewer victims, and the majority of them not amounting to an actual incident. Things quieted down for a while, but around the ten-year anniversary, there came an uptick in people attempting to stage events in a kind of homage to that original travesty.
In light of this pattern of human awfulness, I am left wondering, will any good come from this project? What can we learn from the brief conversation that Aaron Sitanski granted us? Can it be used as a means of seeing what we need to look for in order to keep future generations of students safe from the maniacs in their midst? I don’t personally know for certain. All I know is that these incidents don’t appear to be coming to a stop on their own, and even someone as empathetic as I try to be can find themselves growing almost numb to it. Let’s just hope that everyone continues to care enough to try and do something about it.
-Fin
So the mass killer gets killed himself by a mob...some form of poetic justice in that.
It reminded me of Jack Ruby shooting Lee Harvey Oswald live on television, and forever making the JFK assassination a riddle wrapped in an enigma...