Chapter 16: A Grim Confession
There are nights when I find myself laying awake as I wait out my fate. I wonder if the Grim Reaper ever finds himself thinking about us. Not me in particular, but us as a whole. Our feelings, dreams, and dark secrets.
What does the Grim Reaper do as he awaits for another soul to claim? And what will he say to me when it is my time?
But enough of that introspection nonesense. I find myself trying to figure out where to begin.
My Dad Jean, sitting with his granddaughter Mulan. He loved her, maybe the best out of all of them. She had Mom's eyes and hair, and perhaps some of her spirit with none of the madness.
A birthday party was thrown for the boys as they became kids. Both sides of the family showed up, the Anchors (Bryan's family) and all of the Landgraabs. Even my siblings came.
My sister and brother would often times come to the waterfall, pretending not to see us as they read a book or two. But I knew they watched, waiting for something. What, I wasn't sure at the time.
Though I was very close to my neices and nephews, I hardly spoke with Zappa and Bryan anymore. Not that I talked with him much at all actually.
The twins were really close, always playing games together.
Or doing homework after school. It made me jealous I think. As I had grown up, Teddy had Bear. Zappa had Moonbeam, but she had always spent time with me. I guess I kind of felt she was a twin to me, but not really. Otherwise she may have kept close to me.
Instead she had found a surrogate with Bryan I suppose.
Bryan was an excellent father. Mulan was still a daddy's girl. She always asked for him first in the morning, and he had to put her to bed.
And he cheered the loudest as she grew into a little girl from a toddler.
She would also seek him out to share a story or tell him a joke. Poor Uncle Lucas overlooked again for HIM.
Though Dad was over 100 years old, we were all still shocked when his time finally came.
He didn't fight it when the Grim Reaper came for him, but everyone in the house was devestated.
I was able to convince Mom and Zappa to build a cellar out back to store the growing family graveyard, and their portraits.
They never even realized I had other reasons for it as well.
I think Bryan was a bit suspicious, he told Mom I seemed to have dug a lot deeper then he could see from the one cellar.
But he got distracted when Zappa shared that another baby was on the way.
Yep, that's me in the background, like usual. I had taken up painting so that we could keep up the family tradition of heir's portraits being kept as a reminder of where we came from.
Forget the fact that I would never have one done. I was not in the direct line of inheritance. What a bitter pill to swallow when I was asked to do them.
With Dad gone, Zappa had taken over the garden.
She now had time after achieving her LTW of being a Chess Master.
In fact, that is where she gave birth to her second daugher Anne. Little did she realize that something else was happening at the same time.
Bryan: Now what is this rubbish about meeting in the new cellar. I didn't realize it had two floors to it!
Those would be his last words to me, before I went up to the ground floor, and removed the flimsy stairs. This locked him far beneath the ground, never to be seen again.
Cruel yes, but I left him with a source of light and a chair to sit in. I guess that may be viewed as even more cruel then a quick death I suppose.
I now realize how cold I seem as I write this, not really caring even now about what I did. In the end, I still believe he deserved it.
I mean, it wasn't like anyone truly missed him. Zappa believed me when I told her he was visiting family, and Mom even started helping me exercise.
He did get one more phone call. It seems that Evelyn couldn't help but call to gloat a little bit about her ultimate revenge. She would corrupt an innocent into killing an innocent. In her mind, this would finally bring my Mom the kind of pain she had felt when she was used all those years ago.
Eventually a fire started.
And as the flames consumed Bryan,
My nephews became teenagers.
Just as the Grim Reaper came to gather a new soul, the rest of the family seemed to just sense the loss of Bryan.
I think Allan sensed it first.
But then Zappa seemed to know. She was destroyed.
She lashed out at me, telling me she knew I had something to do with it.
I lashed back out at her, telling her about the years of hatred I had harbored against Bryan. "He deserved everything!"
After that talk, I did the right thing. I called the police and confessed. The picked me up shortly afterwards, and I'm sure you read the trial in the newspapers. Well, this book is my total confession. I hope in the end, you can understand a little of what I did and why.
And Zappa, please forgive me. I did it all because I had loved you, perhaps more then I should have.
Be kind to me when you think of me in the end. And share with your children, even little Anne, that I was once a good boy who had just lost his way.