After Story

“Hang on a second, you said he was arrested on charges of arson and murder. What happened to that whole subplot?” Lily spoke out after having held her silence for a solid 15 minutes.

“I lied.” It was a white lie.

“Oh my god.” She bugged her eyes out in an attempt to pull off a very surprised face. It looked quite silly. “Don’t tell me, the arson incident didn’t even happen?”

“Well no, there certainly was a fire and Sam Lake definitely got pretty seriously burned. It’s just that those so called ‘media photos’ were very fake and the cops couldn’t really find any signs of arson or felony.” I rolled down the windows ever so slightly. The rain outside showed no signs of tapering off as the cold wind hit me like sharp icicles. I could barely keep my eyes open.

“You made me listen to this tall tale of yours only to tell me that the most insane part of it is just straight up false?” Lily scowled at me. “I am never taking anything you say seriously again.”

“Hey now, I am not finished.” Lily raised her eyebrows in suspicion.

“Right… Go ahead.”

I let the cold air clear my head as it tousled my hair. Lily had at one point decided to lay down her head on my lap. It had taken a lot of effort on my part to try and maintain my usual nonchalant composure for this long. Emphasis on the ‘try’ part.

“Actually, you know what?” Lily got up and stretched her arms. Extending them outwards as much as the tight confines of the car’s interior would allow for. She looked towards me and smiled. “Let me take the lead on this.”

I knit my eyebrows.

“What exactly do you mean by that?” I asked, partly curious, mostly very concerned.

“Lily Hoover, private investigator. Hearing about this case all the time gives me a damn headache. Just wanna blow this joint already.” An attempt at a tired, raspy voice met with a resounding failure on her part. Clasping her hands together, she tried to emulate a serious expression. It ended up looking like a bad case of a resting bitch face instead. “So, Mr. Grayson- how about you don’t resist and answer every question like a good little boy. I assure you it will be highly beneficial for both of us.”

It took everything in my power to not burst out laughing. I suppose the cold air was helping after all. I decided to play along.

“How exactly would that benefit me, huh? Looks to me like a very one-sided deal.”

“Oh but you benefit the most. You see, I am not leaving this seat until I get my answers. You aren’t getting a single drop of water or a bite of food till I am satisfied.” The ‘investigator’ smiled. “By answering me, you get the chance to escape a very drawn out death.”

“Bullshit. You get nothing out of killing off your primary suspect.” I counter.

“I don’t need to kill you. I can just put you through such unimaginable pain that death would seem like an act of mercy.” She had a twisted smile. A smile of someone who didn’t lie. For a play-pretend detective, she certainly could nail the same sense of cruelty.

I stay silent. Neither affirming or denying such a statement, lest I show weakness when I least want to. That warped face of logical justice could surely see through it.

“Glad we can understand each other.” She paused. “Now then, about this Michael fella, what happened to him?”

“Never saw him again. Heard his family skipped town, one can only guess why.”

“He got called in as a suspect?”

“Yeah. Not for long though.”

“What do you mean?”

“Well, apparently he got called in just a few days later but he had a really solid alibi for the whole night of the crime. And later on they managed to find ‘natural’ causes for the fire itself, so the whole thing was kinda chalked.”

“What did they find?”

“Care to take a guess?”

“Not in the slightest.”

“Way to be a buzzkill.”

“Shut up and answer the question.” She jut her lips forward in displeasure.

“It was a silly, little candle set beside a junction box near his window.”

“Eh?” Lily looked incredulous. Well, I suppose that was a pretty reasonable reaction.

“You are really bad at leading a story, aren’t you?”

“Am not!” She pouted. “Okay, maybe.”

I chuckled as she sunk down on her seat and looked at her phone. It hadn’t been too long since the rain had turned the bright, sunny morning into a cold, miserable afternoon. But it felt like an eternity had gone by already.

“Let me explain from the start and you can jump in wherever you want to ask me specifics, ‘kay?”

“Mmmm…”

“Do I need to call the authorities, detective?”

“Oh my god, I will literally shove that voyeur crap up your ass. Eccentric arts?! Who do you think I am, the new fucking Crowley?”

“It’s funny you say that, because it’s actually very relevant.”

“You know when you started this affair, I thought it would be this really traumatic and serious backstory leading up to how this guy felt so overwhelmed by the incredible concept of recorded voices.”

“Oh we will get to that, don’t worry.” I paused to gather my thoughts. “After Sam Lake got hospitalised at his family’s clinic, the police got cut out of most forms of comms with the family itself. Of course in any other place, this would be a pretty strong case of obstruction of justice. But here in Willowby? With the kind of connections the Mayor has up his sleeve- most of his buddies just get a nice, little slap on the wrist and then they are in the clear.”

“Sounds about right.” Lily mused.

“Of course, they did get to do a preliminary rundown of what happened- wouldn’t be a case otherwise. Found out jack shit in the first week they spent investigating. I would imagine it was around that time when they heard about this whole story floating around. Well, I say they heard about it. It would probably be more accurate to say that someone let them know about it.” I closed my eyes thinking about the bag Luis had left behind. “It would probably be even more accurate to say that it was never about the story in the first place.”

“Huh?”

“A week later, we were called in- James, Mat, Daniel and me. It was kinda scary honestly.” I winced remembering that day. That call after dinner, my dad’s usually jovial face turning dour. “We went there at different times of course, but just knowing I wasn’t the only one made me feel…”

I stopped myself. Was I really going to say that I was relieved that they were there?

“It’s okay.” Lily said, looking out of the window. “It’s harder to pretend that you aren’t happy that the people you know are with you. Even if it’s in places that you wish they weren’t.”

Maybe. Maybe she was right.

“I remember how that room looked. Drab blue walls. A few old chairs and a table. And the gaze of the officer sitting on the other side of it.” It was almost like I was there again. “And then he took out his phone and played something. It was unintelligible at first. A discord of sound. But it slowly quieted down until I could hear 5 distinct voices.”

Lily reached out her hand as if to grab mine but then stopped. A distance settling in between us.

“It had always been about the epilogue. The after story. Everything we had talked about after it was over.” Of course it was, what fool would think it was because of one wild story told by a bunch of idiots in school? “The parts where Luke had directly admitted to the story being about the real Michael and the real Sam Lake. It was the reason they had ever put any stock into the story after all.”

“Why would he do it?” Lily asked.

I wondered the same thing often. Had Luis done it of his own volition? I couldn’t imagine it. But I didn’t know him. The friends with whom he had dunked Michael into the river probably did. I wouldn’t know. I didn’t know any Luis.

“No idea. Don’t wanna know.” Wouldn’t change a damn thing even if I asked. “The officer wanted me to elaborate on some things, ask a few questions about Luke but you know what the main reason I was there for?”

I hated thinking about it. I despised it. I abhorred it.

“I was there to be congratulated. Like a big, damn hero. Without me, there would never have been a story. No leads to go after, no one to victimise. And that would simply have been too much paperwork for those bureaucrats sitting on their ass doing absolute fuck all.” The memories were repugnant. Repulsive. “At least, that was the worst of it.”

And yet it wasn’t the end of things.

“Luke had no alibi accounting for the time of the accident. He was supposed to be on his way home from his part-time job at the Sunoco gas station. But the case couldn’t move forward without any word on the victim’s end. So it was stalled. The Rogers family was on house arrest until further notice. And then a few weeks later, we got to know the truth.”

I remembered what Luke had said that afternoon. Real life is so much wilder than fiction.

“The case for defamation was made on faulty legal grounds. On the whims of an overprotective father lashing out wildly at the simple idea of it. The police had no choice but to go along with his whims though. Special favours for the Mayor’s sponsor.” It always came down to abuse of power in this town. “It had been a clever move on his part regardless. Acknowledge the existence of such a wild tale and yet deny any allegations that could be based upon it. There was just one small issue.”

The downpour had finally slowed to a drizzle. Light enough that I could open the windows and let the cold air fill the interiors completely. Maybe in a few moments the Sun might peek through the clouds too.

“They found the real cause of the fire a few weeks later when getting Sam’s testimony. He looked more like a spotted bean than charred bacon then.” I cracked an ugly smile thinking about how he looked when he finally made his glorious high school return. “He had been practising candle magic.”

I let Lily soak it in for a moment. I saw her expression turn from confusion to anger to confusion again.

“Candle… magic…”

“Yeah, apparently it’s when you use candles as a sort of ‘focal point’ to ‘manifest intentions and desires’. Kinda like a spell, I guess? Turned out Sam was kind of into the occult. Like, a lot. He had inscribed symbols and words into a lot of his stuff. Anointed pieces of clothing with oil and herbs. Fascinating to hear about.”

“Did he place a candle, intentionally, beside a live power socket?” Lily asked. A dubious tone in her voice. Again, a pretty normal reaction.

“Supposedly it was a spot with the highest affinity of success for his wishes.”

“Wait but how did the forensics not find it on their own investigations? You can probably still detect lingering wax right?”

“That’s the thing, the fire was strong enough to burn away almost all of it. Visual examinations and trace evidence collection weren’t enough to find anything substantial.”

“So how did they manage to verify this later?”

“Chemical analysis of some sort. What did Luke call it again, uh… ‘Fourier transform infrared spectroscopy’? Something like that. They analysed chemical compositions from some of the remnant dust near the power socket and immediately found wax remains.”

“Wild. What happened after that?”

“The whole case was dropped. The Lakes wanted to keep everything on the down-low after that. No reason for the people to know how the successor to their prestigious family was involved in something so damn absurd.”

I felt a sharp ray of the Sun hit my eye. I winced and looked outside to find nature’s persistence finally waning. The light drizzle had subsided, along with the heavy gray clouds as they now dispersed all over the skies.

“Certainly not the ending I expected when you started this story.” Lily opened the door of the Chrysler and walked out.

I did the same only to find my legs cramped. I bounced on my tiptoes, trying to shake off the heaviness. I looked in Lily’s direction only to find her laughing.

“This is your fault, by the way.” I bellowed over the wind.

“How is it my fault?!”

“You literally lay on my lap for several minutes!”

“And you never complained, did you?”

“Hnghhh.”

“See? Even you make some pretty cute noises when the situation calls for it.”

The radiant glow of the Sun hit her yellow dress, lighting it in a brilliant golden hue. She pirouetted awkwardly, the tip of her shoe skidding in the water. It didn’t look perfect. But it looked like her. I made my way around the car and to her side. She grinned as she took my hand over her head and spun around. Her skirt billowed and expanded in this beautiful swirling motion.

She glowed brighter than the Sun. Melting away all of that distance between us.

“They were right, you know?” She let go of my hand and sat on the hood of the car.

“About what?”

“You do have a self-blame complex.”

“That’s not-”

“But that’s not all of it. I know. I get it.” I stopped and looked at Lily. She tilted her head and smiled. “I can only imagine what those weeks felt like. Lying in bed, alone with your own thoughts, tormented by those memories and your own words looping in your head. Trapped in a perpetual cycle of despair. The sound of that recorder in your head. Thinking about how your words led to all of this, even if none of it was your fault. Because you know it’s not and yet those voices in your head just never stop chasing.”

My eyes widened as I looked at her. It had got through. I let out a breath I didn’t even realise I was holding. The warmth of the Sun somehow felt more tangible at that moment.

“Must have been hard for you, to spend so much time recounting a terrible memory just for me.” She paused. “Even though, it really is kind of a funny story when you think about it.”

I laughed. She was right. Something had changed with me telling this story from start to end. Was it because I had finally faced those emotions head on? Maybe. I wouldn't know. All I knew was that being with this girl made me feel free. In a way no one else did. 

“It’s okay to just let it all out, you know? Scream into the void. Get it out of your system.” She got up from her seat and started walking. That easy-going gait that had captured me so easily. She turned around once to look at me. "Or, I could always be your only audience."

Ah, to be killed with kindness.

“Come to the workshop next week. At your own behest.” I nodded as she made her way towards the Mohican. Right, Jes could probably help with the car.

“Get a move on Gray-” She smacked her head on the speed limit pole. I guffawed. Spatially impaired, Lily Hoover would always be.