Unspeakable Things(78)

“It’s okay, Sephie, I still love you.”

The skin of her face moved like insects were wrestling underneath it. “You can’t understand because you’re not a woman.”

That twisted my heart nearly free of its moorings. “Sephie, please. Come with me. We’ll grab Frank, and all three of us will run away to somewhere safe.”

“I can’t.” She lay back in bed and tugged the blankets to her neck. “Besides, there is no such place.”

Mom and Dad’s argument fired back up right below us.

I wanted to crawl under the covers with Sephie so bad. It’d been years since we’d slept together, months since I’d been brave enough to relax on top of a bed. I might have given in if she hadn’t whispered that last sentence.

“Frank is neighbors with Goblin, isn’t he?”





CHAPTER 54

Frank.

I had as good as served him up to Goblin, convincing him to ride with me to Goblin’s house, letting Goblin put his hands on my one true friend. I thought back to Goblin’s grabby eyes, his words massaging Frank for information.

And you’re the new boy, just up the road, aren’t ya? Your dad a farmer?

If Goblin was attacking the boys, then he had Gabriel in his house, and it was only a matter of time until he got my Frank because he wasn’t slowing down, Goblin, not one bit, he was going to keep hurting boys until he was caught.

If I rescued Gabriel, though, he could tell the police everything, and Goblin would be arrested. Frank would be safe, and the Hollow boys wouldn’t have to live in that quicksand fear anymore.

“I need to sleep in my own room,” I told Sephie.

She pouted, but she let me go.

Once there, quiet as a mouse, I pulled on my sweatshirt and stuffed my backpack with a flashlight, my Swiss Army knife, Nellie Bly’s Trust It or Don’t for courage, and my new Magic 8 Ball for direction. I couldn’t leave through the front door as long as Mom and Dad were still arguing. They’d see me.

I padded downstairs and took a left toward the bathroom. The window in there was normally closed because it lacked a screen. I hoisted it open, crawled out into the hot kiss of night, and slid the window closed behind me.

“Goodbye, I love you,” I whispered to Mom and Sephie.

A soft touch at my ankle startled me. I let my eyes adjust and then bent down to pet the cat. “Bimbo kitty, you can’t come with me where I’m going.”

I tiptoed to my bike, booted the kickstand, and pedaled into the soft night. The gravel gnawed at my tires. The trees murmured up at their very tops, shushering important secrets, but I couldn’t make out what they were saying. I let the fireflies lead the way, dancing just ahead of me, sparkling as I passed and then dimming to nothing.

I neared Goblin’s, fortifying myself with what I’d learned to survive living with Dad. Gather your fear, stuff it down. I lurched to a stop at the same spot where Sephie had stolen those strawberries a lifetime ago, the whoosh of wheelie gravel breaking through the nightsong.

Goblin had a light on inside his house. If his place was set up like ours, and like every other farmhouse in this county, that light was his living room. I rubbed my neck scar. The canned noise of a laugh track wafted across the night air. I couldn’t tell what direction it came from, but the sound of someone watching television made me feel safer.

The gigantic lilac bush near Goblin’s house would be a perfect place to hide. He would leave, or the living room light would go out, signaling he was going to bed. Then I would give him a little bit to fall asleep before sneaking into the house. If Gabriel was inside, I’d get him out. If I was wrong about Goblin, and he caught me in his house, I’d apologize just like when he’d found me trespassing the two other times.

I was heading toward the lilac when the moon glinted off something in the middle of the wild strawberry patch.

I dropped my bike and stepped toward it.

Sephie had stood in the exact spot. Whatever was catching the light of the moon had not been here when she’d eaten those berries.

I reached toward it, my hands trembling.

Because you see, I knew what it was even before I touched it.

Gabriel’s paper airplane necklace.





CHAPTER 55

I felt an aching drowning torpor as I watched Goblin’s house from the relative protection of the lilac bush. If I didn’t follow through on this I’d be floating in that gray hopelessness forever, always a hunted child, no matter how old I got, how safe, how big, how rich.

I knew that way down deep, where the truth lived.

The sticky night air was an unwanted breath at my neck. Mosquitoes buzzed, hypnotizing me, whispering sharp lullabies. My head grew heavy, bobbing, jerking up, bobbing. That’s why I didn’t notice the living room light flick off or catch the soft snap of the screen door opening and closing, or register the crisp click of a car door. It was not until the vehicle fired up that my heartbeat woke me with its thudding cry of look look look.

I started. My eyes were scratchy with middle-sleep. I rubbed them, focusing. It was Goblin. He drove off, toward town.

I darted out of the lilac bush, across his lawn, over his porch, and to his door.

It was unlocked.

The pushback at the thought of walking through that door was a tangible force. It felt grossly improper, the warning of wrong place wrong time shouldn’t be here crawling across my skin like an army of ticks.