CHAPTER TWENTY ONE

Bill Hartley sat on the cold earthen floor of the root cellar, his back against the rough-hewn wall. He stared at the unconscious young woman lying on the cot, her chest rising and falling evenly. Her hair splayed out like a dark halo, strands of it slipping through his fingers as he stroked it gently. The gun in his other hand felt heavy, but he held it ready for what he must do.

The chloroform had done its job well. Bill relished this quiet moment, the silence that allowed him to think, to plan. As he waited for Lisa to rejoin him, he watched and remembered.

There was no doubt in his mind now—she was Lisa. She had to be. The way she spoke, moved, even the way her eyes darted away from his, it was as if time had wound back, giving them a final chance to finish what they had started so many years ago. He felt a comfortable peace in the notion of finally completing their interrupted narrative.

“My last chance,” he muttered, grateful that she had come back to end it properly.

Even now, as he sat in the root cellar watching for any sign of consciousness, the echo of their whispers under the oak tree seemed to resonate through time. They had met in secret there beneath the sprawling branches, exchanging vows of rebellion and dreams of escape.

He remembered the roughness of the bark as he used his pocketknife to carve their true initials into the tree, SV + NS, Sid Vicious plus Nancy Spungen. It had been a defiant declaration that they would no longer hide. The promise of freedom filled the air as he spoke of a future unfettered by small-town chains and parental orders.

“Let’s tell them,” he’d said. “If your old man can’t accept it, we’ll just go, just you and me.” It was a pledge made with the bravado of a soul too young to grasp the gravity of its own proclamation—a vow to sever ties with everything except each other.

But on that final terrible night, Lisa had refused to take that pledge. He remembered how she’d refused to play Nancy Spungen to his Sid Vicious. Bill could still see the fear flickering in Lisa’s eyes when she spoke of her father, a man whose strictness verged on cruelty.

The details of what happened that night after Lisa’s break with his dreams remained elusive to Bill, obscured by a haze of alcohol and meth that had clouded his mind and left him grappling with fragments of memory. He remembered only a raw moment of tumult, their bodies locked in an unintended conflict—Lisa recoiling, the two of them struggling, then darkness swallowing him whole as consciousness slipped away. When he’d regained consciousness, he’d found Lisa motionless, blood seeping from the wound where her head had met the unforgiving edge of a rock. Her once vibrant life had ebbed away into the thirsty earth.

“Can’t be,” he muttered under his breath even now, trying to grasp at the frayed edges of recollection. “An accident,” he whispered, clinging to the belief with fervent desperation. It had to be an accident. The alternative—that he might have caused her death—was a chasm too dark to gaze into. He couldn’t face the prospect of being a killer, not when he had loved her so fiercely.

Bill had dug into the damp soil that night, clawing at the earth. He’d worked methodically, avoiding any thought that might confirm him as her killer. Each shovelful of dirt was an attempt to bury his guilt, to cover the possibility that he may have taken the life of the one person who understood him. By the time he patted the last mound of earth into place over her dead body, his breath was ragged, and sweat mixed with tears on his cheeks. The forest stood silent around him, the only witness to his torment.

With the first light of dawn came his resolution to discard the remnants of his former self. From that day, the Rigor Mortis frontman was no more; the stoner punker vanished, leaving behind the shell of a man desperate for redemption. Sobriety became his penance, teaching his salvation, but the ghost of Lisa Donovan haunted every corner of Bill Hartley’s existence.

A staid teacher, Bill stood before his students at Trentville High School, imparting the lessons of history. But beneath the surface lay the tumultuous currents of his past, a maelstrom of doubt and self-loathing that whispered incessantly of his inadequacy. The identity of teacher Bill Hartley felt like a facade, a poorly constructed veneer over the fractured psyche of a man who might be a killer.

“History teaches us,” he would say, “that our actions echo through time, shaping the future.” Yet, as he spoke these words, they rang hollow in his own ears, a stark reminder of the life he could not escape. He existed in limbo, caught between the man he aspired to be and the monster he feared he already was. The line from that Neil Young song often played in his mind, “It’s better to burn out than to fade away.”

As Bill organized his lecture notes, the sensation of being an imposter never faded. Every polite interaction with colleagues, each lesson plan meticulously prepared, felt like another layer added to his disguise. His very existence in this town was a daily performance, a role he wasn’t sure he deserved.

He remembered vividly the day that Lisa had stepped into his classroom again, calling herself Lauren Knox. It was a chance to correct the past. But steadfast in her new identity, Lisa had refused to play her part in his grim fantasy even when he’d brought her into his old root cellar and given her time to realize the truth. He’d had no choice but to silence her rejection with a bullet. But that had been long ago, and since then, he’d held fast to the mundane routine of teaching history to indifferent teenagers.

A sound stirred in the silence—a soft, involuntary groan from the young woman’s full lips. The chloroform’s grip was loosening, but for now, she was still his silent captive, unaware of the plot he had written for them both. But Bill was certain that Lisa’s spirit, embodied within this new young woman who had called herself Amber, was urging him forward towards their inevitable conclusion.

As Amber’s high school teacher, Bill had watched her from behind his glasses, her likeness to Lisa fracturing his years of carefully constructed normalcy. Each lecture had been a battle, suppressing the surge of dark nostalgia that threatened to overwhelm him. With her graduation and departure to Pinecrest, he’d thought his better self had won. Then Amber’s return to Trentville for the summer rekindled the embers.

He finally understood that it was indeed Lisa, come back to him once more with a different name. She was giving him just this one final chance to finish the story.

He brushed a lock of hair from her forehead, fingers lingering again on the soft strands. In her stillness, she was every inch Lisa. The gun weighed heavy in his other hand, a cruel counterbalance to the tenderness with which he touched her.

If this time she embraced her role as Lisa—if she consented to their shared ending—he would carry out the grim finale with gratitude. Together they would become a macabre echo of Sid and Nancy, immortalized in their final, desperate embrace.

Bill’s eyes traced the contours of the familiar face, searching for signs of her awakening. She was the key to the closure he craved, the last piece in a puzzle that had tormented him for far too long. Would she accept the fate he offered, or would she defy him, tearing at the fragile seams of his constructed reality?

A faint groan slipped from Amber’s lips, and Bill tensed. It was a small sound, barely more than a whisper, yet it resounded like thunder in the quiet of the cellar. Consciousness beckoned, and with it came the moment of truth. Would she open her eyes as Lisa, ready to complete their story? Or would she resist, forcing his hand as Lauren had done before her?

He couldn’t bear the idea of another failure, of having to end her life and live his own alone again—of having to wonder then if perhaps Lisa was truly gone, her return just a figment of his fractured mind. The pistol was a grim reminder of the stakes; it represented an end, a resolution one way or another.

Bill shifted slightly, his gaze never leaving Amber’s face. The musty scent of the cellar mingled with the fading sweetness of the chloroform, creating a nauseating cocktail that he tried to ignore. His plan had been clear, but now doubt crept into the edges of his certainty. She had to accept their mutual fate willingly; it was essential to the narrative he’d constructed over years of grief and guilt.

Another soft groan emerged from his captive’s throat, barely audible yet unmistakable in the quiet. Bill’s heart skipped a beat, his palms suddenly clammy as he gripped the pistol tighter. This was the awakening he’d been both dreading and longing for. He knew it wouldn’t be long before her eyes opened.

Would she look at him with recognition or with fear? Would she embrace the role he needed her to fill, or would she shatter his illusions again? Either way, he only knew one thing for certain—that she would have to die.