Tabula Rasa(15)

“You sure?”

“Yeah. Where are you guys?”

“We set up clear on the other end of the park near the Ferris wheel. We can’t even see the castle from here. Do you want us to come to you?”

“Nah, I’ll be fine. Though I did throw up in here so... sorry about that. It’s not pleasant.”

“Yeah, you sound sorry,” the guy on the other end said, laughing. “We might brave it tomorrow. I assume you don’t feel well enough to clean up?”

Shannon’s voice affected a sick sound, coming out more slow and labored. “No such luck. I might be puking the whole way to the car. You guys okay?”

“Yeah, we feel fine. We’ll catch you next trip.”

Shannon clicked the walkie talkie off. His gaze went across the room in a calm, assessing way, finally landing on me. “Are you absolutely sure you can’t face the world right now?”

I nodded.

“Then here’s what will happen. I’m going to dispose of the body, then I will take you out of here. You will stay with me. I will honor your desire to do this at your own pace. For now.”

That sounded too much like Trevor’s veiled rape threat that first night when I hadn’t swooned in his arms immediately.

“What is it?” he asked.

“N-nothing.”

Shannon wasn’t talking about sex. It wasn’t enough that I didn’t remember my life; now I had this new screaming vortex of horror to deal with.





Chapter Three


Once things had been decided, Shannon went into this laser-focused sort of zone—like the whole rest of the world just shut off, and everything turned to auto-pilot. He was suddenly so intense. I sat quietly while he assessed things. I think I imagined if I was very quiet he would forget I was there and leave without me. How hard could it be to get out of the park on my own in the daylight? Even though I’d never ventured to the perimeter, as it was so overgrown and Trevor’s warnings had kept me away, I felt certain it couldn’t be that bad.

Shannon came over to the table where I was sitting like a piece of statuary. He knelt in front of me and pulled a small flashlight from his pocket and shined it into my eyes. He felt the skin on my face with the back of his hand. I wasn’t sure what he was looking for. Signs of shock? Were my pupils relevant in that? I didn’t know. Ask me something about plants.

“Is there a big drain somewhere in the floor of the kitchen?” he asked. “Most industrial kitchens have one somewhere.”

“I-I don’t know. I think so. Why?”

“Trust me, you don’t want to know.” He picked up Trevor’s body and carried him back into the kitchen.

I stayed still and quiet where I was for half an hour—maybe longer—wondering if I was in shock. I must be, right? Everything felt like it had gone into slow motion. Dimly, in the back of my mind I felt I should be doing something... I should leave... get out of here. But I couldn’t quite figure out why that was so. My brain didn’t seem able to process what was going on. Everything felt foggy and surreal. Finally, I got up and went into the kitchen to see what Shannon was doing.

He was right. I didn’t want to know.

He’d found the drain in the floor and had bound Trevor’s body to a long metal food prep table. He’d propped it up with some heavy crates so the body was upside down at an angle. Shannon had slit his throat, and the blood was flowing out of Trevor straight into the giant drain.

My hand went to my mouth. I thought I was going to be sick again. I was sure of it.

“Oh---Oh God.”

“I told you you didn’t want to know,” Shannon said, not looking up from his work.

“Oh God.”

“If you’re going to vomit again, do it back out in the main room.”

I just stared at him. For some reason, I don’t know what I thought was going to happen when he said he was getting rid of the body. I just... I expected maybe he would bury it in the woods or something. I mean... it’s understandable. I thought this was just some new awful unpleasantness he would deal with for both our sakes.

But this... this wasn’t someone who’d never killed a person before. This was someone who had a... a method for body disposal. How many people did you have to kill to develop a method? They couldn’t all be self defense.

On the counter, he’d lined up all the pitchers of water from the fridge. For clean-up most likely. There were also about twenty gallons of purified water on the counter that Trevor must have had hidden somewhere. That must have been our well water. It reminded me briefly that Trevor was the only person here who had hurt me so far. But then off to the side I noticed big thick plastic sheeting and a wicked sharp saw... Oh... God.

Shannon finally glanced up. “I found that in the freezer. The plastic makes sense, but I have no idea why Trevor had a saw in there. I was sure I’d find something useful in the castle, it’s a big place, but... the angels are smiling down tonight.”

Or the demons were smiling up.

“Do something useful and bring me that sheet with all the blood on it from the other room,” he said.

But I stood there, frozen. My hands started to shake again, and the tremor seemed to move through my whole body.

H-how do you know to do all this?” “