Wolfhunter River (Stillhouse Lake #3)(99)

I’m scared now, really scared. I look at him. I don’t blink. “If you hurt my mom or my sister, I’m going to kill you. And I can. I know how. My dad taught me.”

It sounds good. Scary. I’ve been practicing that since I learned it frightened off some of the bullies in school.

It doesn’t work on Mr. Sparks. He shakes his head, like I’ve said something stupid, and hits a remote control on the desk. I hear the office door unlock, and for a second I think he is going to let me talk to Mom . . . but then he grabs me by the wrist and drags me into the opening behind the bookcase. I yell and pull back, but he’s bigger and stronger and shoves me inside the opening. He reaches to grab a handhold that swings the bookcase closed behind us. I hear a click. I don’t think I know how to open it again. I think about my mom not knowing about any of this, just walking in. She won’t know. And if Mr. Sparks has a gun, then Mrs. Pall will too.

Lanny’s got to be in here—but she isn’t. It’s a small space, and then there are stairs going down. I can’t see her, but it’s dark at the bottom. “Lanny!” I shout. She doesn’t answer. I try to get free. I can’t. Sparks puts his hand around my throat and squeezes until I’m on my toes, gasping for air, and it hurts, it hurts really bad. He shoves me forward and keeps his grip on my throat. I stumble down a couple of steps, then a few more.

He keeps pushing me on. “I’m going to let go now,” he says when we’re in the middle. I can hardly breathe, and I’ve stopped fighting him. “You be a good boy or your sister will suffer.”

The pressure lets up, but he grabs my shoulders. Still pushing me down, step by step. “My mom is going to come get us,” I tell him. “She’ll find us!” I can barely say it. My throat hurts bad, and I’m shaking all over.

“No, I don’t think Mrs. Pall will allow that,” Mr. Sparks says. “Watch your step, it’s a little dark at the end, I must get that bulb fixed. Three, two, one . . . and we’re here.”

The lights come on, really bright and hard.

We’re in a cave. The second I realize that, I start feeling like I’m suffocating, because Lanny and I, we were in another cave once as prisoners, and all of a sudden it feels like the walls are moving in on me, the dark is too dark, and I want my mom. I want her so bad that I feel like I’m going to start screaming. I hate this, I hate that Mom is up there without us, and Mrs. Pall might kill her, and I hate this smiling man with his ugly, mean eyes.

I see Lanny and Vee huddled against the wall at the bottom, and the second I do, I run into my sister’s arms. She shoves me behind her, and as she does, I realize she’s found a weapon. It’s a piece of rock, and it’s not very big, but it has a wicked sharp edge on it.

“What is that?” Lanny asks, and nods toward the other end of the cave. There’s a locked steel door on that end with a window in it at the top, and a bigger dark window next to it, like you’d see inside a house. Only it’s blacked out. Mr. Sparks pauses where he is, and that smile gets wider.

“It’s going to be your new home, girls.” He has the remote control in his hand, and he presses a button.

The black window has a metal shutter on the other side, and it raises up, and I see the three beds in the other room. There are only two women in the room, though, and as soon as the window slides up, they both get up and stand there, staring straight ahead with their hands folded together. They’re wearing white dresses. And they have long hair.

I recognize their pictures because I looked at them online: the missing women of Wolfhunter. The sickly-looking blonde is Tarla Dawes; she’s the younger one. The other one is Sandra Clegman, who I think is older.

There’s one missing. Bethany Wardrip. I remember the awful body we found at the river, and I want to throw up when I remember her picture from the website. That was her. It had to be.

“You killed her,” I say, and look at Mr. Sparks. “Bethany.”

“No, of course I didn’t,” he says, and for some reason I believe him. He sounds offended. “I take very good care of my girls. She just got very sick. There was nothing I could do for her.”

“You threw her away. Like trash!”

“I left her for God and nature to purify,” he says. “You’ll understand how dirty women are when you get older. I’ll teach you.”

“Like you taught them?” I swallow back more vomit when I see that those women on the other side of the glass haven’t moved. It’s like they’re afraid to breathe. He’s going to put my sister in there too. And Vee.

But he hasn’t said anything about me. Which is scary. “Are you going to kill me?” I just ask. I’d rather know now.

“Of course not! I won’t put you in there with them; that wouldn’t be appropriate. I’ll teach you how to be responsible for them. Be their father,” he says. His cell phone buzzes, and he takes it out to read a message. He looks grumpy when he puts it back. “Stay down here with the girls. I will be right back.”

He points the remote at the window, and the shutter comes down. I can imagine the two women in there slumping over, sitting down. Maybe crying. They’re so frightened. I could see it in their faces—that they’re scared all the time.

Mr. Sparks is a monster, and I never saw it, just like I never saw it in Dad, and I hate it, I hate it that I can’t see it. Monsters shouldn’t look normal.