The Legend of
Bastien
By Karen Singer
Chapter 20 - The Strangest Things – Part 2
of 2
Chrissy
was miserable…as usual. But even locked
in the cell, he was less miserable than he had been back in Bastien. Every time anyone came near him, he only asked. “Will you kill me now?” The police weren’t sure if he needed a good
lawyer, or a shrink. The truth was, he
needed both.
As
more and more information about the situation began to trickle in, Chrissy’s
standing as a prisoner became more important. The problem was that much of that information
seemed to be confusing. And so far, the
reports were that everyone in the town of Bastien seemed to consider Chrissy to
be some kind of hero.
A
team of people spent hours talking with Chrissy, having no problem getting all
the information out of him about each and every murder. But things were confusing when he talked
about a law and some kind of addendum to it.
Later, when the team got more information, along with a copy of that
law, they had Chrissy in for another little chat, where they sat open-mouthed
as he confirmed all that they read about the law, and he told him what his
entire life had been like for the last six months.
None
of the team that talked with Chrissy knew what should be done with him. Eighteen murders! But…it sounded to each of them like he might
have had good reason for all of them.
--- §§§§§§§§§§ ---
The
strangest thing that Captain Grey had ever seen was the Cocksucker Law. But the strangest thing the people of Bastien
had ever seen was the helicopter landing on the village green, interrupting the
celebration that was still going on.
None of the citizens of Bastien had any idea who the people were who got
off that helicopter. They could only
surmise that the men were all someone important.
It
was mid-afternoon when a contingency of men from the helicopter walked into the
Bastien courthouse. Captain Grey
immediately hurried forward to greet them.
“Governor!” he said, shocked to see the big man himself. “And Mr. Attorney General.”
“We
had to see this place for ourselves,” the Governor said. “Nobody we’ve been able to find has ever
heard of it.
“Almost
nobody,” Captain Grey confirmed. “We did
discover them listed with the electric company, the phone company, a satellite
TV company, and one of the satellite internet companies. But nobody else! And those companies all have Bastien listed
as just another business account. The
entire town!”
“How
can that be?” the Governor asked.
“We’re
starting to get an idea,” Captain Grey replied. “But I’m afraid we don’t have all the answers
yet.”
“And
all the murders were done by one girl?
Twenty of them?” the State Attorney General asked.
“Eighteen,
actually,” the captain corrected him.
“And it’s not a girl, it’s a boy.
He just looks like a girl and has a girl’s name because of the craziest
town law you ever heard of, that made him the official town cocksucker.”
“The
what?” both the Governor and the Attorney General exclaimed.
“It’s
early days yet,” Captain Grey told them, “but there appear to have been things
going on in this town that frighten even me.
And it appears that it’s been going on for generations.”
--- §§§§§§§§§§ ---
The
governor and the attorney general were still being given a tour around the
community when another helicopter invaded the air over Bastien, but this one
didn’t land. This one bore the logo of
one of the national news outlets. That
night, those people who had TVs were all treated to a helicopter view of their
town. A town the news people all over
the country were now calling the town that didn’t exist.
No
pictures were shown of Chrissy since he was in jail, but the news people had
already gotten her name and the fact that she was believed to have
murdered twenty people in that community.
The
following day, the news helicopter did land on the village green, and the news
people managed to get all the details about everything that had gone on in that
town, much faster than the police had.
The
big news story of the day that rocked the entire nation was: Should someone who had committed so many
murders, be charged, after what had been done to him? And if so, what kind of sentence should he
get?
--- §§§§§§§§§§ ---
The
authorities spent days crawling through the entire community of Bastien and
talking with almost everyone. Each day
only cemented the picture that had started to become clear on the first
day. Bastien had been a town that was
forever locked in the unrelenting grip of homicidal tyrants.
It
had been almost forty-eight hours now since Chrissy had arrived at the station
and been taken into custody. Due to all
the conflicting information, he hadn’t been charged yet. As things became clearer by the hour as to
what had been going on in the town of Bastien, the county District Attorney
became more conflicted than ever over what should be done with Chrissy. Eighteen murders! But the circumstances….
The
District Attorney finally held a big meeting to discuss just what they should
do. The police Captain, Detective Walsh,
half a dozen others from the state police, and even the Attorney General of the
state were there. Every aspect of the
case, every aspect of what was going on in the entire town was discussed. In the end, they could all come to only one
conclusion. For the last one hundred and
twenty years, the town of Bastien had been run by not just a family of
psychopaths, but a dynasty of psychopaths.
And the entire Bastien family had done everything possible to keep it
that way. Generation after generation.
As
to what to do about Chrissy, the people in that meeting were of differing
opinions, despite how justified many of them seemed to think he was. Murdering eighteen people just couldn’t go
unpunished. But at the same time, there weren’t
just unusual circumstances, there were unprecedented circumstances. The District Attorney wasn’t at all sure he
could get a conviction on Chrissy. In
fact, what public opinion was out there already seemed to view him as a
hero. But eighteen murders? No!
In
the end, the District Attorney ordered Chrissy released and sent back home
while he studied the matter further before making a formal decision on the
matter.
Late
that night, Chrissy got taken from his jail cell again.
“Are
you going to kill me now?” Chrissy asked, hoping it would finally happen.
“No. Of course not,” he was told. “The D.A. is sending you home. For now at least.”
“Home?” That wasn’t what Chrissy wanted. He wanted to die. He would like to see and hold his mother one
last time though.
Before
leaving the station, Chrissy was given back the girl’s clothes he had been
wearing when he was arrested. McNally
and Clemson, since they knew where they were going, were given the task of
taking Chrissy home. An hour later, they
escorted him through the door into his house.
Tess
took one look at her son and stared in disbelief. “Chrissy!” she yelled as she got up from the
kitchen table and ran to him. She hugged
him hard as she cried tears of joy.
Chrissy
was happy to be home. He was happy to be
out of that jail cell, but he wasn’t happy to be alive. Before putting him to bed, his mother put a
cloth diaper and plastic pants on him under a thin nightgown. She kept telling him they would get him some
proper boy’s clothes in the morning, but he told her not to bother. He didn’t what them.
“We’re
going!” she told him with finality.
But
Chrissy knew what his mother didn’t know, or refused to realize. He knew that the Chris that used to be her
son was dead already. All that remained
was for him to kill the rest of himself.
Early
the next morning, as the sun barely crested the horizon, Chrissy picked out one
of the dresses he liked more than any of the others and got dressed. He even took the time to do his makeup as
well as he could. He didn’t worry about
the soaking wet cloth diaper he was wearing.
While his mother was still sound asleep, he quietly went through the
living room and out the front door.
Thoughts of his mother weighed heavily on his mind. She would never understand. She would take steps to stop him. But he couldn’t allow that. This had to happen. He had yearned for this to happen…for a long
time now. And finally, his mother was
safe enough.
He
took the dirt road out of town and followed the now familiar route through the
trees, all the way to the bridge.
Instead of seeing one of the town deputy trucks parked blocking the
bridge on this side, he saw a state police car parked just off the road on the
other side of the bridge. He wasn’t sure
why, except to perhaps make sure no vehicles crossed that were too big.
When
he got to the end of the bridge, he looked down at the rushing water and rocks
below. He had seen it before from this
angle, but this time he walked out into the middle of the bridge to look down
from there. The sight below him was even
more frightening.
The
officer in the police car saw the girl walk out onto the bridge. He got out of his car to see if she needed
anything. It wasn’t until he reached the
end of the bridge before he realized who it was. It looked like a girl, but he had heard that
it wasn’t. “Chrissy?” he asked.
Chrissy
turned his head to look at the officer, then looked back at the water below.
“Can
I help you with anything?” the officer called.
“No,”
Chrissy called back, still looking down at the water. He climbed up on the railing guarding the
side of the bridge.
“Chrissy! No!
You could fall!” the officer yelled as he started running across the
bridge in his direction.
With
one last look back at the officer, Chrissy said one last thing. “Bye Mom.
Love you. But I hate life.” With that, he pushed off the top of the bridge
and fell into the chasm of rocks and rushing water below.
They
searched for three days, but never found one sign of Chrissy’s body.
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