Read Online 3 Ghosts of Our Fathers by Michael Richan - Free Book Online

his body,
including his face, and he had deep red cuts that were bleeding. Sean fell on
the ground in the garage and passed out. At first I thought he died, but then I
could see he was still breathing. I inspected the damage Frank had inflicted on
him, and I was angry. I didn’t know what to do about any of it. I knew the cuts
needed to be bandaged, but there were no clean bandages in the garage.
    “The boy in the junk pile was
extending a hand, and I went to it to see if there was food there. I fed Sean
what he was able to chew, but he kept passing in and out of consciousness.
Gradually he began to improve. Whatever was in that invisible food the boy gave
us helped heal some of Sean’s injuries; it was miraculous. Eventually Sean was
able to sit up. I didn’t ask him what had happened because I knew it was
painful for him to speak. And it was obvious Frank had beaten the crap out of
him.
    “I was surprised when the boy
called me over. I walked up to the face in the junk pile, and all he said was,
‘get Davy.’ So I ran across the street and brought Davy back. When he saw Sean
he was afraid. The damage was beginning to heal, but Sean was still covered in
blood and he looked pretty frightening. Sean was able to talk and he told Davy
what had happened with Frank. Frank had beaten him with the buckle end of the
belt, which had caused most of the cuts. I remember looking at Davy’s eyes as
Sean told the story and I saw the same hatred and anger in them that I felt.
    “The boy in the junk pile called
Davy over and they had a conversation. The arm extending from the pile gave him
something, and he returned to us. He told us the boy wanted us to use some
items on Frank. He showed us a small object that looked like a wooden matchbox.
The other item was a small paper envelope, and inside was some powder. The boy
had told Davy we should stop Frank by using the items on him. We asked Davy if
the items would kill Frank, and he said no, they would just stop him.
    “Sean said he’d do it, so Davy
gave him the instructions. The matchbox needed to be placed under Frank’s bed,
and the powder needed to be placed into something he’d drink. When Frank went
to sleep in the bed after drinking the powder, he would pass out. Sean was to
cut a piece of his hair and to clip a fingernail from Frank, and bring them
back to the boy.
    “Sean told Davy he’d do it the
next day. Davy said he wanted to be there when Sean gave the hair and nail to
the boy, so Sean said he’d call him over when the tasks were done and he had
the items from Frank. Davy went home for the night, and Sean and I talked about
how he was going to pull it off.
    “Sean decided he’d place the
matchbox under Frank’s bed that night, since Frank would likely be passed out
already. He planned to sneak upstairs in the middle of the night into Frank’s
room, and leave the matchbox. I asked him how he planned on getting the powder
into something Frank would drink. We thought maybe we’d try his coffee, since
he always took a thermos of coffee with him to the farm in the morning, and we
could put the power into the thermos overnight, and he’d fill it in the
morning. But we couldn’t risk him rinsing the thermos out before he poured the
coffee into it. We weren’t sure if we lost the powder or somehow wasted it if
the boy would give us more. We wanted to make sure it worked the first time.
    “We settled on putting it into his
booze, since Frank drinking his whiskey was as predictable as the sunrise. The
problem with that plan was that Frank tended to bring a bottle home with him
from work, and he’d polish off the bottle that night. There weren’t bottles of
whiskey lying around.
    “We solved that problem by borrowing
a bottle from Davy’s father. It was the same kind of whiskey that Frank drank,
and there was an inch in the bottom of the bottle, so we hoped Davy’s dad
wouldn’t miss it. Sean dumped the powder into the bottle and snuck upstairs one
night to