The Storm King(97)

“We did Thunder Runs against your mom. We salted the lawn, we—”

“That was nothing, and you know it. You think some dead grass makes up for this?” He indicated his back.

“You should have called the police.”

“Would that have made me feel better? Did all that hurt go away when they locked up Mr. Bennett for killing your family? Laws and prison sentences don’t balance the equations, Nate. The pain, it has to be burned away. You know that.”

Nate realized that the man in front of him was a monster of his own making. He’d had most of the pieces of the story, but hadn’t seen how they fit together until now.

“Why’d you do it, Owen?”

“Dad had it coming. He never took my side. He let her get away with it, which makes him almost as bad. He had to go. I knew that’d be the only way I’d be able to deal with Mom.”

“I’m not talking about your parents.” Heat built in Nate’s chest. It seared away the clouds in his vision and the lethargy of his limbs. “I’m talking about my girlfriend. I’m asking you why you murdered Lucy.”





SOUND WAS STRANGE in the undercroft.

Owen listened, silent and still in the nook of one of its rooms. Some nights this was the only place he could sleep. The lake’s sighs were like cradlesong. When he was here by himself, he could pretend he was not only safe, but powerful. Walking the dark and abandoned halls of the Night Ship he could imagine that this was his palace, and he was its Storm King.

He didn’t spend every night here, but he spent many. It was the best way to avoid home. Nate and Lucy were often here in the small hours of the morning. He’d listen to them up on the dance floor. Peals of Lucy’s laughter ricocheted around the warped halls. Owen was massive by any standard: many times larger than Just June had probably been, yet he was able to move within the hidden chutes and spaces of the walls to watch the lovers from the peepholes in the wood. He never told the others that he’d found the nightclub’s legendary secret passages, and for this he was glad.

He’d watch Lucy’s and Nate’s perfect bodies in a tangle on the floor. They were on the ground but still somehow soaring. He’d hear what Nate told Lucy as their passion crescendoed. Sometimes, Owen wondered if they’d be so beautiful if he weren’t there to witness it. On some mornings it was as if the three of them were equal parts of a single perfect thing.



Screams echoed through the halls tonight, but these weren’t driven by pleasure.

Lucy had arrived some time ago, Tom more recently. They’d talked, which was strange because everyone knew they hated each other. Then they’d gone onto the boardwalk, but only Tom had returned. Owen watched from the peephole as Tom sprinted back inside, wailing for Lucy, rushing for the spiral staircase.

Owen followed the foot-and handholds back down to the undercroft. By the time he reached the lower floor, a series of clicks and bangs resonating through the floor told him that Tom had opened the Night Ship’s boat launch. Lucy must be in the water.

He came to the Night Ship for all kinds of reasons, but tonight he’d come to think. Nate had been warning them for weeks that the Thunder Runs would come to an end, but Owen hadn’t really understood what this meant until today. Nate was already gone in every way that mattered, and Tom was just behind him. Even without a diploma, how much longer before Johnny left, too?

His friends and the secret life they shared here were all Owen had. Without the Thunder Runs, the long desert of the summer stretched in front of him. Endless, stifling nights. Without the others, without the Storm King, he didn’t know who he was or what his life would be like. He remembered how things had been before Nate ran into him that Halloween night. More than bleak, those days had been unbearable. He’d never told any of them, even Johnny, that when they’d collided with him in front of the barricade that night, he’d been wrestling with a decision of his own. He’d been wondering if he had the courage to trek to the Night Ship, take the long walk into the lake, and add his life to the silver water’s tally.

The others all had their strengths. He wasn’t close to being as handsome or smart as Nate. He wasn’t one percent as rich as Johnny or as well-liked as Tom. All he was was fat. Fatter than anyone in town. His friends were what made him strong.



Tom’s voice seemed to be coming through the floor planks now, which meant he was in the water. Tom had always been a worrier, but Owen couldn’t place the pitch of terror in his voice.

Something had happened.

Tom’s calls fractured into a low, irregular sound.

Risking a look down the hall toward the boat launch, Owen saw Tom on the floor in a puddle of water, his shoulders heaving with sobs in the lantern light. Lucy wasn’t with him.

“Stupid,” Tom said. He hit the side of his head with a closed fist—one, two, three times. “Stupid. Stupid. Stupid.” The punches seemed to shake Tom loose of whatever spiraling descent he’d been locked within.

“Evidence.” Owen heard him mutter. “Clean it up.” Tom locked up the launch again, then hurried back to the staircase as he talked to himself. “She was here by herself when she fell. They’ll say it was an accident. It was an accident.”

Owen crouched in the dark as he listened to Tom scurry across the planks above him. A few months ago, they’d taken a stab at cleaning the mold from the great expanse of derelict kitchen. Owen guessed there were still cleaning supplies somewhere.