Page 34 of Darkest Descent

My eyes widened, and I grew distant as it rushed back to me. That strange night when I was ten. I did remember him. He was a scrawny thing then. I could only recall flashes of pale limbs and a weak, pleading voice. When Dad realized I was there, after I’d not so subtly walked down the creaky steps, he told me he’d just found the boy there, that the police were on the way, ambulances to take him to the hospital and then return him to his loving family.

“We’d saved you,” I whispered. “He said we’d saved you in finding you there.”

Hunter threw his head back and laughed. “He kept me in that same room for another seven years until I took that needle and stabbed him in the hand with it. The distraction was all I needed. He was an older man by then. I beat him until he wasn’t moving and fucking ran. Did dirty work for dirtier men until I had enough money to survive. When you’ve been raised to be as emotionless as me, it’s not difficult to kill, to harm. Easy money.”

“I need proof.” My words came out of me with little thought. I didn’t need it, nor want it. I believed him.

“You don’t,” Asher said at last, raising his head from his hands and looking at me, a broken man. “He did it to me, too.” He winced. “N-not the needles, not the extreme torture, but the… he hurt me, Al.”

The image of him shattered the remaining piece of my heart, and tears flowed from my eyes at the sight of him so ruined. How did Dad get away with it? I lived with them, with him. We had family dinners, and he came to parent’s evening to listen to my grades. How?

“He’s bedridden, you know,” I told Hunter, my mind on fire with possibilities. Hunter nodded and smirked. It was a useless thing to say, but I was stuck in a loop. Rage at my father, shock at what I’d never known. I wasn’t naïve, but this… how could I ever have known. Our mother was good to us, vacant with it, but not unkind. Dad wasn’t good. He was away a lot, and when he was home, he was demanding. But… And he’d… I needed to look at Asher and make him tell me everything.

But he suddenly stood, grabbing the knife from the floor and striding to Hunter. Before I could do or say anything, he cut the rope holding Hunter up, and his large body slumped to the ground, legs probably numb from the hours of misuse. Mine had been. Asher fell with him.

I could only watch as the two men spoke through gazes. Hunter’s one eye displayed so much anguish and rage, bubbling and boiling beneath its light brown surface. So like ours. Fuck.

It was as if a shroud lifted. Took everything out of my sails and had me slumping back against the wall, staring at the two men.

Asher touched Hunter’s face, his expression pained as he grappled with the same thoughts as me.

“Why do it?” I asked. “Why hurt us? Do… all those things.” My heart squeezed. “What good did that do for you? It’s not like Dad knows.” My words felt hollow coming out, dots connected in my brain even as I said them. Dad had watched. He knew.

Hunter’s gaze grew to the darkest I’d ever seen. “I’ve shown the crippled bastard everything.”

“Of course you have.” If it was possible to feel even more hurt, more betrayed, more scared and shocked – I did.

Hunter chuffed a laugh and gave his head a shake, leaning into Asher’s touch. They shared the misery of their father, while I only had the misery of my half-brother in how he’d copied his every torture. “Since that first night, he’s had pictures, videos. He knew I was stalking you because I made it abundantly clear. You want to hear what he said to me once? I can show you. I still have it recorded from when I video called him from outside your dorm.”

I didn’t want to know. Refused to know. “Tell me.”

“He said just take one. Take one and fuck off.”

“You should have spoken to us, found us, you didn’t have to—” I stopped myself from shouting at the last moment, biting my tongue and taking a deep breath.

“He said it made no difference which. If I took you, then Asher was already half-trained. If I took Asher, then you’d make a good pet to sell.”

Asher reached for me, holding his hand out, stretching. It was no effort at all to cross the room and fall into his arms. He brought me comfort, love, and I let myself sink into it, even with Hunter right there.

But when I looked at him now, it wasn’t a tormentor I saw, it was a destroyed, damaged man. I needed to see all the evidence, hear everything. Not to prove it, but to let it take a grasp of me and destroy me, too.

The three of us, we were all individually broken, beaten, ruined. All taken to our baseline and built back up in destruction and despair.

And our father had no idea what was coming for him.

22

Asher

We left the basement once all our legs worked, and we were all cried out. No victims, no captives or kidnappers, no one tied up. Hunter showed us how to leave, gave us the password and handed back our phones, our bags. He told me he was done acting like our father, and that he regretted nothing because now we were together. He’d achieved his goals, lost an eye in the process, but done what he had set out to do.

When I looked at him, I didn’t see the man who’d tortured me and Alice. I saw my dad; I saw Hunter as his hand, his weapon. Everything inflicted upon me had come from my dad’s mind, and when I thought back on it, it was his hands I imagined. Not Hunter’s. It was an extension of what our father had already done to me. The way he’d forced me to my knees and shoved his dirty cock into my mouth. It never went further than that. Only words and pain, degradation and threats. He made me feel like I had to, promised me it would be Alice if not. It was easier to let it happen until I could get us away. College had been the reprieve. Until Hunter took us.

There was a lot of healing that needed to begin between us. The shock and hurt of discovery, of reliving how he’d tortured us, would be hard to overcome. But there was a newfound respect, camaraderie. The worst way to bond, in blood and depravity. But we had.

I knew it flowed between the three of us, this pain and terror we’d all caused each other. Hunter was the most to blame, but he was also the most damaged. Bruised and broken since he was a child. Raised unwanted, abused and used. Who could possibly expect him to be normal?

We were all quiet, exhaustion and shock dragging our limbs, but we stayed together, a trio of fragmented bodies unable to stop touching.

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