Introduction –

Charles Williamson needed to sit in the chair. His head was pounding, the veins and arteries in his neck pulsating pain with every heartbeat. It wouldn't be so bad, but he couldn't stop crying either.

He had no way of knowing that it would end like this. The four of them had raped, killed and stolen from everyone they had come into contact with recently, without remorse. It had been a liberating experience, to say the least. It was amazing what you find you could actually do when you didn't have the burden of guilt there in your head stopping you.

He was the last one. He and James had plotted, and committed, to killing the other two. It was easy, compared to what they had already accomplished. Chopping firewood for the cabin was Chester's responsibility. How could he fulfill that obligation with an axe splitting his skull like a firm, unripe melon? Charles thought that he would be disgusted when he saw the bone crack and the back of his head opened to reveal the gray brain matter along with lots of blood. He found it quite entertaining. When Chester hit the ground face first with the axe handle protruding down between his shoulder blades, a spurt blasted out under the pressure of his weight, spraying like a fountain, with half of his brains popping out along with the geyser.

The axe had been so meticulously sharpened that the one good overhead thrust had gone into bone and straight through the skull, embedding itself into the backside of Chester's forehead. The only agony felt was when Charles and James couldn't get the axe out of Chester's head. They both tugged and wiggled the handle until it finally gave way, and along with the razor edge came an eyeball pulled out from the inside by its connective tissue.

Peter, on the other hand, was a little more challenging. Charles was still sore in his upper arms from the struggle of the larger fellow, as he was lured to the window then strangled by the ragged curtain drawstring. Charles was tossed around for a spell as if he were riding a mechanical bull, but the advantage that he had was that he was still able to draw breath when he needed to, and eventually, struggle gave way to sleep.

The two remaining campers had thrown the bodies, as with all of the others, into the sweltering, fetid mud bog that was a short walk from the cabin. They were amazed at how the rancid liquid seemed to rise up and grab the bodies, pull them under and stabilize back to normal with no noticeable fluid movements so quickly.

That's when Charles decided to push James into the bog head-first. He watched until the non-struggling boots, the last of James, got swallowed by the thirsty mud.

He walked down to the shoreline of the lake after grabbing the most recent newspaper, three days old, along with a glass of water from the cabin. He stood and looked at the broken skeleton sitting in the antique Adirondack chair. They had amusingly defaced its final resting place during one of their raucous escapades by smashing its legs and snapping its arms off, tossing them around as if they were playing a game of "hot potato". They laughed the whole time, thinking who needs alcohol when the rush that you get from being here was far greater?

Now, he stared at the smug look in those empty sockets, as the burden weighed in on him, and thought that this guy needed to get the fuck out of that chair so he could sit there. He looked at the upright torso, with no extremities, with its captain hat on, and quickly wondered what his story was.

He couldn't take the pain anymore; he had to get off of his feet. He grabbed the skeleton by its bony shoulders and flung it forward, its skull making a splash as it fell into the cursed water.

After a quick hand sweep brushing the chair, Charles sat down. The 19 year old had had enough. Instantly, the burden had lifted. It was like they had just got there. No guilt, no sorrow, no remorse. That's when he realized that he had to piss. Cursing his bladder he stood up, and the overwhelming burden of everything the four of them had done over the last three months hit him as if a bus drove straight for him. He felt the pain of the victims, the tearing of the forced entries into the women they had made, the children crying before the knives plunged into them, the entire guilt of the crimes of the other three, as well as his own.

He fell to the ground and tried to crawl to the tree across the yard. He couldn't move. The uncontrollable sobbing and grief was too much that he didn't even realize that he had wet himself. His only goal was to agonizingly clamber back to that chair.

When he mustered the strength to pull himself up by the arms of the chair and fell into its pocketed embrace, and the burden was completely lifted, that's when he realized his plight. His fate would be the same as the captain's. The last survivor, left to carry the burden.

He laid his head back against the chair, eyes rolling inside his closed lids, struggling to regain his breath from the feeling of something crushing his lungs. He knew he would die here.

He didn't even think about the clue that he left under the chair.

The General Ledger Dated October 3, 1934, left the headline that read:

Four Murderous Hooligans Kill 17, Loot in Small Town Ogden, NH