Gun Shy(87)

I’d watched him load his gun with three bullets, and I knew what he intended — one for me, one for Ray, and the final one for him. But Ray and I, we didn’t want to die. We were older and wiser, and we’d started to talk about how to get away.

We killed Father the same way he killed those girls. Ray knocked him out with a fry pan. We loaded him into the biggest box, the one Ray had first slept in when Father took him. We locked the box up, nice and tight, and as our Father screamed at us to let him out, we dragged his makeshift coffin down to the riverbank and pushed him in.

We had a choice: Go to the police and tell them everything. Or pretend that we’d died along with those poor girls, along with our kidnapper, and start our lives again.

Ray wanted to go to the police. I was the one who refused to do that.

All I could think about was my mother’s face if she knew the things I’d done. I’d have to tell her everything. I’d be in so much trouble for leaving the yard that day.

And so we became new people. And we never saw our families again.





CHAPTER FIFTY-SIX





DAMON





It’s not the hunger that will kill you.

It’s the thirst.

Thirst will drive you to madness, but I’m already mad. I made my peace with my insanity a long time ago. I’ve known for a long time that I was never meant to exist.

I’ve been in this box, in this room for so damn long, I don’t even have words to quantify it anymore. I know when Leo isn’t in the house — because that’s when Cassie comes up here. That’s when we talk. And other things.

And then the nosey fucker found me in here. I bet Leo got the surprise of his goddamned life when he saw me, locked in a box like a goddamn corpse. I haven’t seen myself in a mirror, but I know I must look hideous. I’m skin and bones, I haven’t shaved in what must be months and months and months. And I’m crazy. Batshit fucking crazy. I have moments of clarity, but those are the worst. Those are when all the pain comes back. I prefer the crazy.

I heard them talking outside the attic door, hushed voices. He was angry. She was screaming. A few hours later, a drill, right outside the door. He’s replacing the lock, I realize. He’s locking me in. He’s locking her out.

I panic, briefly, but I’ve already been up here for days without food and I’m too far gone. The only sounds I hear after that are the guttural battle cries of a woman bearing down, the intensity and the volume increasing through the long, dark night. I cry then, but no tears come out.

I think of the girl downstairs, with the straw-hair and the green eyes, and I wish that I’d been born a different person, for her. I loved her. I still love her. And that’s the thought that gives me peace as I feel myself drift into a blackness only a boy in a box would be acquainted with as he rubbed his fingers down splintered wooden sides and sang the song his mother used to sing to him at night. I’m too weak now to sing anything, too weak to even cry real tears, but that’s okay because I can still hear my mother in my mind. I can see her in the distance in my mind’s eye, a tall glass of water in her hand, outstretched to me, and I run toward her. It is my tenth birthday again and I am strong, and I don’t get in the van with Ray, and I run to my mother as fast as a boy has ever run before. And when I get to her she’s beautiful, and the glass of water has transformed into a carton of milk, and the carton of milk has nobody’s face on it because this is heaven and nobody is snatched into a van in heaven and milk cartons do not come with the faces of missing children printed on the sides. I drink from the carton of milk and it tastes better than anything I’ve ever tasted in my life, and my mother watches me with a smile and hands me a slice of rainbow birthday cake, and everything is perfect.

It’s not the hunger that will kill you, Steven Randolph used to say to me.

It’s the thirst.





CHAPTER FIFTY-SEVEN





LEO





If you’d asked me where I would have ended up in the world, the answer wouldn’t have been where I am.

I mean — I was never going to get out of this town, that much is clear to me now. It became clear somewhere in the moments between finding Damon King in a box in Cassie’s attic and then holding my newborn daughter just a few hours later. If the truth about Damon’s existence, about what he did, was the pile of bricks that weighed me down to this place, then baby Grace was the cement that filled up the hollow spaces and made sure I stuck.

I wanted to run away after she was born. I’m not proud to admit that.

I work at the garage most days, changing out oil filters and jump-starting cars for weary travelers who’ve left their headlights on too long while they grab a meal at Dana’s. The irony of where I work doesn’t escape me; smack-bang in front of the spot where the accident happened. Hell, I could throw a rock and it’d clear the stretch of highway where Damon tried to kill me — where he virtually killed Cassie’s mom — but that’s life in a town like Gun Creek. Everything and nothing happens on the same two-mile stretch.

I work because it’s something to do, because I need to keep my hands busy and my mind occupied because it’s too quiet in that house.

The night Grace was born, man, something flipped a switch inside me. Cassie was so fucking brave. So much pain to bring a baby into the world, so much anguish and all I could do was watch helplessly as she breathed and moaned and doubled over in pain in the bath, fetching her ice chips and massaging her back until my fingers went numb. Cassie was born to be a mother. I saw glimpses of it when she was pregnant, the way she spoke to her stomach as I rubbed oil into her stretching skin. But when she bore down and gave that final push, when she reached down and pulled our baby from her own body, dragging the tiny thing up through the birthing pool water and onto her bare chest, I watched Cassie be reborn. It made me love her in a way I can’t even describe except to say that I’d tear the entire world down to keep her and Gracie safe.