The Dead and the Dark(19)

The front door clicks open.

He ambles into the kitchen without turning on the lights, stumbling like he’s drunk. He glances at the microwave and sighs. Even with all the lights outside, he doesn’t see her. He only sees the dark. Sometimes, Logan thinks it’s all he wants to see.

Alejo is already in bed. She should be in bed, too. Brandon throws open the refrigerator and absently stares inside, looking for something he never finds. The white light from the fridge pours over Logan’s face, but even then, Brandon doesn’t see her. He isn’t looking for her.

When he spots her, his gasp is small and nervous, the sound fluttering like moth’s wings from the linoleum. “I didn’t see you there.”

“Just getting water,” Logan says. Her words echo like she’s underwater. She is too close to her own voice. “Where were you?”

Brandon adjusts his glasses. Logan looks at him, but she can’t see his face.

“Research for work,” Brandon says.

“What kind of research?”

“Ah.” Brandon leans against the granite island and folds his arms. The room darkens around them. “It’s pretty late. Shouldn’t you be asleep?”

“Okay.” Logan slumps. “Good night.”

But Brandon’s posture changes. He puts an arm against the wall and blocks her from standing. When he speaks, his voice is deeper. It comes from everywhere at once.

“You know where you sleep.”

And then the kitchen is gone.

Logan is lying down. Fear rises up in her like bile. She is lying in a hole so deep the only thing she can see above her is the night sky, black and freckled with starlight.

Brandon reappears over her.

“Goodbye, Logan,” he says. He shovels a mound of dirt and tosses it over the hole. The dirt slaps across her face, and—



* * *



Logan woke with a gasp.

Urine-colored light glared through her closed blinds. The motel room was muggy and warm and smelled like mildew. Logan rolled to her side and her sheets stuck to her skin, hair plastered to the back of her neck. She choked until her throat was raw, until her mouth tasted like iron, until the crawling dregs of soil left her cheeks, until she was sure she was awake.

“Not real,” Logan whispered, tenderly massaging her neck. She touched her comforter, her nightstand, the wall behind her bed, and breathed, “Real.”

It wasn’t an entirely new nightmare. She’d dreamed of the kitchen a thousand times, but that last part—the burial—was a twist. She massaged her throat, gently reminding herself that here, in the motel room, she could breathe.

A knock sounded at the door.

Logan scrambled from her bed and pressed herself to the wall. She pried an opening in the blinds and searched the dark, but she couldn’t quite angle enough to see the door of her room. The motel sign flickered against a thin layer of fog, but otherwise, nothing moved. The parking lot was eerily still.

“Is anyone awake?” a voice called from outside.

Logan approached the door and peered through the eyehole. She didn’t recognize the boy on the other side of the door. He shifted awkwardly from one foot to the other, wearing a beanie, a flannel, and half-framed glasses that sat too low on his nose. Against her better judgment, Logan opened the motel door. Cool wind snuck under the hem of her sleep shirt.

“What?” she snapped.

The boy’s hands were clasped in front of him, fingers twisted into frantic knots. “Sorry. I, uh … you should come look.”

Logan rolled her eyes. The boy backed up and motioned to the wall between her room and room eight. At first, she couldn’t see it. She rubbed her eyes, blinking away the sleep, and the spray-painted letters shifted into focus.

The first word was one she’d seen a hundred times in the comment sections under her fathers’ videos. In person, it burned. She approached the slur; it stretched the full width of the wall between their doors, red paint glaring at her. Only four letters, but each one was a punch to the gut. Whoever had left it had the forethought to make it plural.

The phrase below it was what snatched her breath away. YOU KILLED HIM.

The door swung open. A pajama-clad Alejo stepped into the threshold and stifled a yawn in the crook of his elbow. Logan’s stomach dropped. She was overcome with the sudden urge to throw herself over the door if it meant he and Brandon didn’t see it, too.

“What’s going on?” Brandon asked, joining them outside.

Alejo rubbed his eyes and followed Logan’s gaze to the wall. When he saw it, he said nothing. The night smelled like old garbage and laundry.

“Bran, I don’t think you should—”

Brandon adjusted his glasses and stared at the slur. Wordlessly, he ambled back into the motel room, hand perched to cover his face.

“We should talk to the cops,” Logan said. “People can’t—”

Alejo turned and put his hands on her shoulders. His expression was impossible to read—concern, fear, anger, pity—and he shook his head. “No. Don’t worry about that. We—Gracia will come help us cover it in the morning. It’s not…”

“It’s not what?” Logan asked.

Alejo looked past her at the boy who’d woken them. “Elexis. I almost didn’t recognize you in the dark.”