Grady braces for the impact and the large black thing comes rushing at him as though it were a bullet fired down the barrel of a gun. The impact nearly knocks him out of the chair in the room where he sits next to the corpse of Casey Libby. He is enveloped in the blackness. It curls around his face and neck and down into his throat. He chokes on it and it goes up his nose. He memories start to pound him.

He is six years old and he is standing over the broken pieces of a vase his mother loved because her grandmother had given it to her. He had been playing where his mother told him he shouldn’t play. Still, he likes the room because he likes the way the sun comes in the window here. He is unable to move and he hears her coming. His younger brother is only three and he sits not far away. He walks over and grabs his squirming brother and puts him down next to the table where the vase stood. When his mother comes he points to his brother…

Grady nearly laughs at that one. He feels the sins pass through him like tiny needles. The sins are many but they are so minor. They fly at him and pound him in the chest and face and he can feel them pass through like stinging rain during a fall storm. He can sense, however, that there is something larger in the center of this cloud of blackness. It is like he is getting the outer-bands of a larger storm and he can sense something is coming.

His is in high school now. He has a huge test coming up and he hasn’t studied a bit. He is a big boy and the one kid in his class who always studies is far from that. Between classes he corners the kid in the boy’s room. He threatens him and when the threats don’t seem to work he punches the kid in the stomach. Eventually the kid relents and he sits beside him during the test. He looks over at the other kid’s paper…

Grady gasps and braces himself for the pain. It’s like being cut by a thousand razors as the countless small sins pass through him, cutting his soul. The blackness has not changed color. For a life so long there are so many sins and he can still sense the big sin hidden away.

He is still in his teens. He and his friends are out too late and they are bored. They find a store filled with everything from shaving kits to medicine to candy. Someone puts a brick into his hand and tells him to break the window. He considers it for a moment and then lets the brick fly. The night is shattered by the sound of breaking glass…

Grady moans and puts his hand to his head. There are so many. Over a hundred years of accumulated sins are pelting him. Unlike with Grafton who had a shorter life but more massive sins, these are small and it’s like being pelted by a million pebbles. Then he feels something move in the blackness. There is something alive in here with him and it has teeth. This will be something that can hurt him, tear him apart.

He is a soldier and he is part of a group that has been assigned to try to break through enemy lines. The sounds and smells of Gallipoli are all around him. He is terrified. He has no understanding about what this mission is supposed to accomplish. He and twenty others are sent through a pass that someone somewhere has determined will give them a way through. They are to gather as much intelligence as they can about the positions of the enemy and the enemy troupe size as they can and come back.

They head out into the night. He is terrified almost to the point of paralysis. They get lost. It is so dark and they dare not use lights for any length of time and not without being completely covered. They find light in the darkness however. They find a small house. There shouldn’t be a house here and they know it. They are so lost and they are so young and they are terrified.

They enter the house and find a family sleeping. The woman is young and she is terrified. The man is talking loudly in a language they do not understand. His friends begin to shout at the man and tell him to be quiet. He doesn’t listen. The butt of a rifle hits him in the head. The woman screams and then there is sound of children screaming.

He doesn’t know what to do. He turns and slaps the woman across the face and she falls. One of his buddies walks into the bedroom and takes the children out of the room and shoves them to the floor where their father lies crumpled. There is a lot of discussion about what they should do. Their blood is up now. Half of them are sick. Most of them are going to be dead before this nightmare is over.

One of the men suggests something lewd about the woman. There is silence. The man on the floor begins to moan. A bayonet appears and is plunged into his chest. The woman starts to scream again and this time he hits her in the stomach with the butt of his rifle. The wind rushes out of her and she falls silent.

One of his buddies moves forward and he is unzipping his pants as he comes. The children start to scream. He moves behind her and holds her shoulders down. Fabric tears. People are moving too fast. He is terrified but his anger is starting to overflow and he is going to take it out on this woman and this family.

One by one they come. They come to this woman and they do things to her that will haunt him forever. It will take every day for the rest of his over one hundred years to try and forget what happens here. When it is his turn he takes it. There is only anger here. He feels no passion. He feels no pleasure. He finds that her pain makes him feel a sense of power like he has never felt.

It goes on and on. The children start to scream again. Blood is running down through the floorboards from the man who has been stabbed and lies gurgling on the floor. Finally, someone thinks they hear something outside. The fear comes back. They leave…

“Oh God!”

Grady falls off the chair now. The weight of the sin slams into him like a sledgehammer. The horror of the vision makes him nauseous. He senses there is more to this story. There are parts of this story that he cannot see because they are not sins but an attempt to make up for this horrible sin. Grady suddenly understands.

Casey had that one moment of being a true villain. Caught up in the act of terror being inflicted upon him he and his friends inflicted a horror upon innocents. Lost in enemy territory with a group that were almost dead on their feet and without a clear objective they took out their anger at incompetent generals and war-makers on a family. For the rest of his life Casey Libby did everything he could to make up for that sin. He spent every waking moment trying to turn his life around and to do good for the world. He made money and gave that money away and did as much good as he can. He has spent nearly every waking moment of his one hundred plus years remembering that event and then using that as a reminder to why he needed to do good.

The black cloud is finally starting to turn gray around the edges. The sins from that point forward are minor. Casey curses and he lies. He cheats at a game played with friends. He makes an occasional business deal with someone who is, at best, questionable. They sting like the ones before but now, after that much pain from the huge sin that has defined Casey’s life, they are inconsequential.

Grady gets to his knees next to the bed upon which an old man’s body lies. In the white room inside his mind the white form of Casey Libby’s souls is becoming visible. The gray clouds pound through him, coming out as clean white light on the other side.

Finally the last of the gray tendrils wraps itself around Grady’s head and then plunges through his forehead. Grady realizes this last sin is a lie he has been telling to his great-granddaughter. Grady is a dazed after the memories of the rape and murder from so long ago. The exact nature of the lie he has been telling her eludes him and it is gone like a flash through his mind.

Inside the white room Grady is staggered but he still stands with his hands out to his sides. The pure white figure only vaguely shaped like a human being stands before him. Like he always does he reaches out toward the figure. Like they always do, the figure reaches out to him for one last touch of something human before moving on.

“Check near the bed.”

The words enter his brain more than his ears. He has never heard words before. He is shocked at the sheer force of will that Casey must have exerted in order to be able to force those words. Their hands almost touch in the world between what is beyond and what is on earth and then the white figure goes rushing back down the gun barrel. It is gone in a flash and Grady is left there in the whiteness.

Grady opens his eyes and finds himself staring at the side of the bed were Casey’s body now rests. He slowly pulls himself to his feet and sways a bit once he finally gets there. His head is buzzing. He reaches out and crosses Casey’s hands across his chest. He pulls the blanket up over his head.

Grady walks shakily around the bed. The words he heard in his echo in his brain. He looks on either side of the bed and notices a small table on the far side from where he was sitting. On that table he notices pieces of notebook paper have been laid out.

He approaches the pieces of paper with curiosity. Some of the dizziness is out of his head but his body feels heavy. So many sins have gone through him. He feels the need to take a shower, like he always does after he had used his powers. The pull of the papers overpowers that, however, and he approaches them. His hands reach out and he picks up the papers. The pages are written in a shaky hand that is thin and spidery.

Dear Grady,

I know by now that you have seen what I did and why my life is the way it eventually became. I don’t know how much you got to see. After we left we ran right into Turkish troops. Most of the people who were with me were shot down outright. I was wounded terribly in the leg and shoulder. I barely made it back. I was overcome by guilt.

I spent many years after the way lost in drinking. I wanted to blot out the memory of what I had done. One day I found myself in Sydney waking up somewhere outside and covered in my own vomit. I decided that this was not what I had lived through that for. I faced up to what I had done, at least with myself, and I started my career. I found myself achieving success. My success was tempered by guilt, of course, and that always helped keep me grounded. For every business I set up I also set up a charity.

When I finally reached a point where I had money and some power I decided to find out what happened to that woman. It took time and money and, as it turns out, I had plenty of both. I found out that she had a child because of that night. Of course, by that time it was impossible to know who had fathered the child. In the end, it doesn’t matter because of all of us who survived I was the only one in a position to help.

Money began to appear in this woman’s account. I made sure her children were taken care of. She never knew for sure who was doing this, but I always thought she might have known. She went on to live a long and happy life from what I could tell. I followed her children. She had two more children with a different husband after that night.

I made sure they were taken care of. I followed her grand-children. Again, I made sure that they were taken care of. It all became rather interesting with her great-grandchildren. Her granddaughter had been having trouble conceiving. Her and her husband were great people and they wanted, more than anything, to have a child. Once again, through various connections and putting as much space between myself and others I got them to the best doctors.

She finally got pregnant. It was a tough pregnancy but she got through it. Then came the night of the delivery. Grady, it was tragic. There was a car accident on the way to the hospital. The husband was killed outright. The great-granddaughter managed to hold on long enough to give birth.

Things within the family had gotten chaotic. My own grandson and his wife had been having trouble conceiving and it appeared that all of the money in the world wasn’t going to change that. I used my power and influence to get that child adopted by my grandson. I now had a great-granddaughter. I think you may have an idea of where this is going.

So, yes, Sharon is actually the great-granddaughter of the woman I and my companions raped back in World War One. We murdered her husband and brutalized her and I then spent the rest of my life trying to make up for it. She has never known that she was adopted. I gave her as much of a life as I could and my only regret has been my being unable to prevent her from marrying that horrific lout.

I would ask that you not tell her, Grady, but I felt you were owed the full story. I don’t think your life would be the best life for Sharon to end up connected to, Grady, but at the same time I couldn’t imagine a kinder and better person than you. I just wish that she could have found happiness with anyone but that man.

I hope that I am on to a better place now. I have made arrangements so that financially you shouldn’t have to worry either. On the other hand, the money is yours and you can do with it as you wish.

I thank you for listening to an old man and I thank you for helping an old man move on. I wish nothing but the best for you, Grady. Good luck. I have a feeling you will need it.

Sincerely,
Casey Libby

Grady reads the letter twice to make sure he fully understood what it was telling him. He has to suppress a smile at the craftiness of the man. He looks over at the body and would have bet anyone that beneath the sheet there was the merest hint of a smirk on the face. He crumples the paper and puts it into an ashtray he finds on a bookshelf. He lights a match and touches it to the pages and waits until they are burning nicely before dropping the pages into the ashtray to turn into ash.

Grady spares another look at the body and then out the spectacular windows with the spectacular view. Then he exits the room. He finds that he can suddenly picture every room in the house. He has never before found himself absorbing abilities or memories of those he has helped across but apparently Casey has managed to leave another gift for him. He finds his way to his room effortlessly.

Grady enters the room and removes his clothes. He feels good but his body and mind still feel full and his skin still itches and feels dirty. He climbs into his shower and turns on the water as hot as he can stand it. He sticks his head under the water and closes his eyes. Slowly, but surely, he feels the dirt and heaviness slide off of him. He wonders if there is blackness pooled between his feet and running down the drain if he were to look but he never opens his eyes. He has never opened his eyes before and he doesn’t intend to start now. He becomes Grady again.