J. Gonzalez - Back From The Dead

“ — I’m just sick of this shit! I’ve had it! These people can fuck themselves!”

“We can’t just pack up and leave!” Tim’s dad said. Always the voice of reason, he was having a difficult time trying to talk Mom out of pulling up stakes and leaving town permanently.

“What else can we do? They’ve suspended the boys for the remainder of the school year! They’re trying to falsly charge them with a crime they did not commit!”

“Leaving is only going to strengthen their case,” Dad said.

Tim was sitting at the top of the staircase, listening as his parents talked downstairs in the kitchen. It was ten minutes till eleven in the evening. Despite his exhaustion, Tim couldn’t sleep. After leaving school for the day — hell, for the remaining week of the school year — Naomi and Tim had met up with George, Al, and their parents at Scooter’s, a bar and grill on Route 501, and talked. It was there that George and Al were quickly brought up to speed on Tim’s reputation in Spring Valley as the town pariah. Al had filled in some of the narrative as well, mostly based on his own observances over the last five years. This was all new to George and his father, as well as Al’s mother, who was shocked, having never heard of the incidents prior to today. Several times George and his father — a man named Bart, who worked in Lancaster as an IT manager — shook their heads in amazement. A few times, Bart said, “That’s the dumbest thing I’ve ever heard!” Those comments were usually made after Naomi or Tim brought up one of the more outlandish claims that had been levied against Tim…usually the ones involving witchcraft and Satanism.

“You know…we now have people on our side,” Naomi said. “The Ulrich and Romero families. They’re as outraged as we are this is happening to their sons, and they’re even more outraged it’s been happening to us for the past five years!”

That was the bright side of this whole mess. Contrary to what Tim initially believed when they were brought to the office, George and Al had stuck by him. And most importantly, so had their parents. Their sons were being accused of the same outrageous claims as Tim, yet not once did they blame Tim or his parents for being a “bad influence.” Instead, Tim and his parents had received unequivocable support. Mr. Ulrich even said he was contacting a lawyer for them, which he’d done promptly. One of the calls Tim’s parents took earlier in the evening had been from the lawyer, who was now representing all three families.

“I know,” Dad said. “And I think that’s great. But — ”

“We are not leaving! If we leave, they win!”

“This isn’t about who wins or loses, it’s about Tim growing up in a more stable environment!”

“Well, I’m sorry I even suggested we try moving back here.” Mom’s voice raised slightly and Tim winced; he could tell she was getting angrier. “It was dumb of me to even think things might have changed around here but I was obviously wrong.”

“Naomi — ”

“Maybe we should have stayed in Baltimore where we at least had neighbors that were more open-minded. Of course you still would have had to work at that suck-ass job you hated so much — ”

“Naomi, I’m not going to get into this with you now.”

“Why not? You wanted to talk about it, so let’s talk.”

Tim could only sit at the top of the stairs, listening as his parents talked on the verge of a full-blown argument. They’d had their squabbles before, mostly over minor things. This was the first time they’d gotten into anything this heated and Tim felt bad about it. Perhaps if he wasn’t so different, if he was just like everybody else, all this wouldn’t have happened.

“These fucking… idiots …had the audacity to get a search warrant and go through all of our things !” Mom was on the verge of crying. He felt torn between staying upstairs and listening or going downstairs to try to help Dad calm her down. “They went through our things — through Tim’s room and tore it apart! — and they took his books !”

That was the main thing that had kept Tim from falling to sleep. His bedroom felt tainted after the search. He felt like he’d been violated.

Officer Clapton had supervised the search, which hadn’t taken long. Tim had a chance to read some of the fine print in the search order that Officer Clapton gave to his parents, and the words “books, videos, and any items related to the occult” leaped out at him. Yes, he had several books that had occult themes, but so what? Apparently it was a big deal to whoever was driving this witch hunt because they spent a significant portion of their time in Tim’s bedroom going through his bookshelves, searching his closet, his desk drawers, looking under his bed. They carried out two boxes of belongings, mostly books — horror novels, primarily. Mom had bitched about it the entire time until Officer Clapton had to ask her to please stop denigrating his officers. They were only doing their job.

“And they said they were only doing their job!” Mom muttered downstairs, still on a roll.

“Let’s see what we can come up with when we talk to Doug tomorrow,” Dad said. Doug Fenner was the lawyer George’s father had hired.

“What I’d like to do is sue this goddamn town,” Naomi said. The conversation had moved to the living room now; Tim’s position at the top of the stairs kept him in the shadows, well away from their vantage point. “Somebody’s personal reading material doesn’t automatically make them a criminal, and these inbred religious fanatics need to learn that!”

Tim grinned. His mom was good and pissed off. Dad was angry too, he just showed it in different ways. After years of doing everything they could to keep their heads down in this town and avoid getting stoned by the marching morons who were giving their lives hell, Tim’s parents were finally starting to fight back.

“When I talked to Mr. Ulrich earlier this evening he said the police took books and a bunch of comic books from George’s room,” Dad said. “Mrs. Romero said the same thing. Any DA in his right mind is going to take one look at this and throw it out.”

“We can only hope,” Naomi said.

“That’s what’ll happen, and we’ll petition the court for Tim’s belongings to be returned. If they aren’t returned, we’ll not only sue the city for character defamation and harassment based on religious grounds, we’ll sue them for theft as well. The fact that we’ll have to enroll him in private school come fall can be another issue we can levy against them.”

Tim had been thinking of the religious thing for the past hour or so now. His father had explained to them when they got home that one of the things Mr. Ulrich was going to inquire about when he talked to Doug tomorrow was if they could sue the city on religious discrimination. Because there was no physical evidence tying Tim and the boys to the grave desecration in Reamstown, attempting to smear the boys and tie them to the crime anyway based on their love for comic books and horror novels was not only ludicrous at best, it was a witch hunt pure and simple. Because Tim had been labeled as a “witch,” and a “warlock” and a “devil-worshipper” by his peers ever since sixth grade, and because he professed no belief in the occult, much less being a member of any organized pagan group, it was clear that the harassment was clearly religious in nature. The kids who were doing the harassing all belonged to area Christian churches; Tim and his family did not attend religious services. And despite the fact that two books on paganism and witchcraft were among the books confiscated in the search warrant, the authorities failed to confiscate two Bibles that sat on Tim’s shelf. Not to mention a copy of the Qu’ran, and a book called Comparitive World Religions.