Forty-One After Midnight (Completed)

Chapter Twenty

Laney and Mark were both awake when we got back.

"Thanks for telling us you guys were leaving," Laney said in a sarcastic tone as we took our seats at the tables.

She was sitting back in her chair with her feet up on the little table in front of her.

"Sorry, we didn't plan to be gone long," I answered.

They both looked around at our group.

"You got them to join?" Mark asked.

"Yep."

"Wow." He and Laney looked at each other. "Well, we have some news."

I looked from Mark to Laney.

"We had dreams of course. Only parts of memories though, and we connected them while you guys were gone. It's hard to say, because we touched everyone in the room just to make sure we got a connection, but someone in this room is Mr. Williams's father. He was the one that stuck out the most. It makes sense. He was the main reason that Mr. Williams decided to do all of this in the first place."

I looked over at Jane who popped back into the room as soon as we all got back.

"Do you know what his dad looked like?" I asked her.

She shook her head. Great. She never saw him.

"We know what he looked like though." Laney looked at Mark. "And if anyone in this room has the most resemblance to him it's...." She stopped.

She seemed to be hesitant to say it, and after more silence, I was starting to think I understood why. There was one person in the room who had absolutely no clue what connection they had to any of this at all.

"It's me isn't it?"

Laney looked at Mrs. Reeves and nodded.

"You're the reincarnation on John Williams's dad. Your name was Stanley Williams. He was the reason for this whole thing, because John grew up to hate basically everyone, blaming bad parenting and bad children on the way he was treated. He wanted to punish them before they could make someone else's life as bad as his. He thought they'd all grow up to be like his father."

"These kids weren't violent before they came here though. Not all of them anyway. They wouldn't have all turned out like that," I said. "Why would he think something like that?"

Laney looked at me, and then at the ground.

"Being friends with him in our past lives, Mark and I can see through our dreams that Mr. Williams was not a rational thinker. More was wrong with him than what people could see on the outside. Being beaten almost to death for a large chunk of his life seemed to have done some real damage. We think he knew, but in order to keep his job and appear to be normal he had to hide it. He wasn't though, he was mentally unstable. To him, everyone and everything in the world was out to get him. He didn't even trust his friends, but he wasn't about to let them know that."

"Wow. So he figured he wanted to make people suffer. It was the only way that he was going to feel better about what happened to him, because he himself had to suffer."

"Pretty much." She looked back up at me. "I think, and I hate to say this, but I think we're going to need him for this. If we need the original people, then that includes him. He was one of them."