The House in the Pines(68)

His hand on the table began to move faster, as if he were growing agitated.

“I started breaking into his study at night,” he said. “I’d go through his notes, read everything. I started to understand what my father was doing to me. His method. Over time, I learned how to do it too. It was the only way I could defend myself.”

It couldn’t be good, Maya thought, that he was telling her this. But she didn’t stop him.

“I was better at it than he was,” Frank said, as a smile crept into his voice. “More intuitive, much more subtle . . . When I used it on him, my dad was completely helpless against his own method.”

Suddenly his churning hand went still. He unfurled his pale fingers, and Maya knew what she would see when she looked down. She knew, but she’d come too far to turn back, and she too was the type who needed to know how the story ended.

Her every nerve had been taut as piano wire since the moment she walked into the bar—and since before then too. Ever since she ran out of her pills. But at the sight of Frank’s key, her whole body relaxed, a delicious warmth spreading through her, a feeling not unlike a high dose of Klonopin. The coziness. A heaviness of limbs. The sense that everything was going to be okay, regardless of the evidence before her eyes.

“I won,” he said.

She almost laughed. She almost cried. But she lacked the conviction to do either. She stared at the key, its sharp teeth, and knew she was in danger but couldn’t bring herself to care. The bar had gone quiet, and the table beneath Frank’s hand had changed. Instead of body parts, she saw pine.

The only parts of herself she could lift were her eyes. She looked up.

She was in the cabin. There was the tall stone fireplace. The cathedral ceiling. The rustic wooden walls. Instead of stale beer, she smelled fire, and instead of Weezer, she heard the sound of the stream.

Frank sat across from her with the door at his back. “Talk now if you’d like,” he said.

A voice deep inside of her screamed, but it was Frank who her mouth obeyed. “You . . .” Even her tongue felt heavy. Even her thoughts. “You hypnotized me.”

He looked almost proud of her.

She thought of the knife in her purse. But her purse wasn’t on the table anymore. Had he taken it? (Or had he taken her? And if so, where?) The voice inside of her screamed, but her mouth watered at whatever Frank had cooking on the stove. She smelled garlic. Fresh herbs. Cooked meat.

“Good for you for figuring it out,” he said. “You remind me of myself.”

“You . . . killed them.”

He raised an eyebrow at the word them. “It was either him or me.”

Maya realized he was talking about his father. Frank had killed him too. Her mouth hung open. Her jaw felt loose. And this felt good to her, like a long exhale, like the relief she’d been craving ever since being forced off Klonopin—or rather since starting on it in the first place. Ever since watching Frank kill her best friend, this tempting exhale, this heavenly unwinding, was all she had wanted. But now she fought against it as hard as she could. “Aubrey,” she managed to say.

His smile fell. “You think I wanted to kill her? I didn’t. But she figured it out. Can you believe it? I made the mistake of recommending a book to her about a famous mesmerist, and she made the jump to hypnosis. Pieced it together at the last minute. Aubrey was smart, I’ll give her that. I only did what I had to.”

“And Ruby?”

Frank looked as if she’d slapped him. “Don’t talk about her. You don’t know shit about Ruby.”

Maya hoped her phone, wherever it was, was catching all this. “Cristina,” she said.

“So you did see the video.” His lips curled into a snarl.

“I talked to Steven.”

“Fuck that guy. He didn’t know her like I did.”

“She wrote him a letter before she died.”

The snarl fell as a flash of worry crossed his face. “A letter?”

“She . . . told him everything.”

Frank’s face grew uncertain. “What’s that supposed to mean?”

Maya tried to stand, but her limbs felt made of concrete. She wasn’t going anywhere; his control over her was complete.

He leaned in closer. “Tell me what the letter said.”

She intended to evade, to drag this out. Keep him guessing.

Instead, to her horror, the truth marched obediently from her lips. She was an observer in her own body. “Cristina told Steven she was sorry for being a bad friend. She said she was moving in with you, into your cabin. He said it sounded like she was saying goodbye.”

Frank relaxed. He sat back, and Maya did the same. They’d been sitting in the same position the whole time, but only now did she realize it.

“That should tell you everything you need to know,” he said.

“She . . .” The answer came to her easily in this state of mind. “She knew she was going to die.”

“It’s what she wanted. I’d brought her to my cabin many times, and like you, she figured it out. She knew exactly what this place was.” His voice was raw with love, though it wasn’t clear if his love was for Cristina or his cabin. Or himself. “I only gave her what she wanted,” he said.

Maya felt like she was sinking, her bones melting into the seat, the seat melting into the earth.