The Lost Causes of Bleak Creek(92)

“I’m sorry, son,” Rex’s dad said, the first words he’d uttered to Rex since they’d driven him home from the Whitewood School the night before (after having been awakened by a call from Sheriff Lawson himself). “I’m sorry we didn’t believe you. I might never forgive myself.” He put his arm around Rex and kissed the side of his head, something he hadn’t done since Rex was little. “From now on, whatever you tell us, we will take you at your word. I promise you that.”

“Thanks, Dad,” Rex said, still numb as he continued to watch Sheriff Lawson lie on television to thousands of people. There was, of course, a ton that he wanted to tell his parents. And maybe they truly would have believed him, but he cared about them too much to take that chance.

By the time Rex had finally emerged from the spring—once it was obvious that there would be no more glowing and bubbling, that Ben and the others were just…gone, Sheriff Lawson had started to explain to everyone gathered on the shore what was going to happen:

Whitewood would be blamed for everything.

All the students—minus the Seven Lost Causes down in the spring—would be returned safely to their homes.

The Whitewood School would be shut down.

None of them would ever again speak about the cult, about the spring, about anything other than Whitewood being a mentally unstable murderer.

“But…we can’t taint Master’s name like this,” Mary had said. “He’s with the One Below now, but what if he comes back?”

“We don’t have a choice,” Sheriff Lawson insisted.

“Can’t we at least wait for the Seven Shepherds to come out before makin’ any decisions?” Travis asked. “I mean, the One Below’s got all the Lost Causes He asked for. It should happen any minute. Everybody will be thankin’ Mr. Whitewood once they understand what he did for all of us.”

“Master never told us how long the Purification would take,” Mary said. “It could be days. Weeks.”

“Right,” Sheriff Lawson said. “Which is why we need to stick with my plan.”

“You can’t stop us from talking about this,” Rex said.

“Oh no?” Sheriff Lawson took two menacing steps toward him. “Who do you think people will believe? A bunch of kids who have been tortured and brainwashed by a psychopath, kids who were already troubled to begin with? Or a dozen respected pillars of the community?”

“Guess we’ll just have to wait and see,” Janine said.

Sheriff Lawson looked to Mary Hattaway. “You destroyed the tape in that camera, right?”

Mary nodded.

“Good. Now, if any of you want to challenge me on this,” Sheriff Lawson had said, staring deep into Rex’s eyes, “I promise: I will make life very hard for you. For your friends. For your families. I wouldn’t recommend it.”

As Rex now felt the warm weight of his parents’ arms on his back, he knew for sure he couldn’t say anything. Sheriff Lawson and his crew had killed Donna’s father, and even if they weren’t willing to murder again, there was no shortage of horrible things they could do. They held such sway in the town; who’s to say they wouldn’t come up with a reason to encourage everyone to boycott his parents’ funeral home, crushing their livelihood in one fell swoop? No. Rex couldn’t do that to them.

“Unfortunately,” Sheriff Lawson continued at the press conference, “four students are still unaccounted for: Patrick Small, April Li, Josefina Morales, and Ben Merritt.”

Rex took deep breaths through his nose.

“Oh, baby, are you friends with any of them?” Martha asked.

Rex nodded. His parents held him tighter.

“We believe that Mr. Whitewood snuck these four students out of the school sometime in the past month,” the sheriff said. “He had been keeping them captive somewhere off the premises. They may still be at that location, or he may be moving them as we speak.”

“Sheriff Lawson,” a tall woman from the Raleigh News and Observer asked, “was the school staff aware of what Mr. Whitewood was doing?”

“We will be thoroughly questioning everyone who worked at the school,” the sheriff answered. “For now, though, Wayne Whitewood is our only suspect.”

The brazen lying was hard to take. Rex wished he could go back to the spring right now, this time with more blood, tons of it, to again try to activate the spring and dig out Ben and all the others. But it would have to wait, at least a day or two.

“I assure you,” Sheriff Lawson said, “we have our entire squad, as well as several in neighboring towns, scouring every square inch until we can find these kids and return them to their families.”

Rex desperately needed to talk to his best friends. He’d called Leif twice that afternoon; both times he’d been sleeping. He’d called Alicia and was told by Mrs. Boykins that she hadn’t started talking yet, “but Lord, wasn’t it a miracle that she survived?”

“And then,” Sheriff Lawson said, his tone more dramatic, “we will find this deranged killer and put him where he belongs: behind bars. We’re gonna find these kids, and we’re gonna find our suspect. And once we do, we can all move past this terrible stain on our town’s history.”

Rex extracted himself from his parents’ embrace and walked out of the room.