The Wicked

by James Newman

August 12, 2002,

Heller Home for Children, out on Pellham Road.

Joseph and Irene Heller

The final death toll was sixty. Thirty-seven children dead.

Right up to the end, Bobby Briggs kept smiling. Smiling. As if the troubled teenager knew all along that Morganville, North Carolina would never be the same.

Kate Little

The back of his head had been blown off, a Rorschach Test pattern of bright red blood and chunky gray matter splashed upon the wall behind him.

Barbie and Ken continued their fighting as parental ears lay deaf to their dilemma. She slapped his plastic face and, in the voice of a seven-year-old girl, he called her a dirty whore.

Fred knew there was no way he could quit drinking with those terrible nightmares plaguing him night and day. Hell, no. Nightmares of a very old, old man with a long, filthy beard that went on into forever.

Wouldn’t be such a bad job if he didn’t hate kids so damn much. And if he were allowed to keep a bottle of hooch by his side while he was on the clock.

He’d drive out there to the ruins against his better judgment, and he would just sit for hours in his truck, sipping at a can of Milwaukee’s Best, watching the breeze stir up the ashes, listening to the weeds whisper his name. Sometimes he would sit there well past sundown, thinking about the things that lurked out there. Wondering what had killed his son.

I think there’s a fine line between faith and fanaticism. And once you cross that line, I religion can be a dangerous thing.”

In the beginning, MOLOCH created the heaven and the earth.

The dedication it must have taken, the sick obsession...

“Moloch, motherfucker,”

Despite the situation, David felt a moment of pride as he saw her lean down, kiss Christopher on the forehead as if to assure the infant that everything would be okay.