Page 134 of Confessions of the Dead

Matt blinked.

Matt blinked and found himself back in the middle school gym, crouching on the floor with both Gabby and Addie kneeling beside him as the girl who looked like Emily Pridham released his head.

It only took one look around the room to realize the vision the girl had shared hadn’t been with Matt alone but with everyone in the room, same as Keith Gayton moments earlier, same as Josh Tatum back out on the street—they’d all seen it. The look Stu Peterson gave the three of them said as much. What he told them next was like a nail: “Judgment claims you all. There are no innocents here.”

105

Buck

IF SOMEONE WERE TOask him, Buck couldn’t tell them exactly how long the climb down took. Time didn’t seem to work right in the hole, and it only got worse as they went deeper. He noticed something else, and this was far more disturbing—he had no trouble climbing down. Handholds seemed to find him, not the other way around, same with his feet. As if the hole wanted to get him to the bottom. The two kids climbed silently behind him, and he didn’t have to ask to know they were experiencing the same thing. Robby probably had a theory on that, too, but Buck wasn’t about to ask him. He didn’t want to hear about whatever was at the bottom and what plans it might have. All he wanted to do was find Emily.

Rescue Ellie, Mason, and Evelyn.

But yes, find his Emily.

Robby said she was somehow still alive, and out of all the craziness that had come from that boy’s mouth, that was the onething he wanted to believe.Had to believe.Because, on some level, he knew it, too. He always had.

His breath hung all around him, this icy mist with no place to go. The air grew colder with each inch.

When Buck’s foot found solid ground, it surprised him, and he looked down for the first time since they started descending. The flashlight beam pooled beneath him, a perfect circle in what could only be ice. But unlike ice found on the surface, this ice had a rough texture to it and when Buck lowered himself from the opening of the hole to it, he didn’t slide.

“Careful now,” he told Riley anyway, grabbing her by the waist and helping her down. He went to help Robby, but the boy gave him a look that quickly reminded him he didn’t like to be touched. He backed up and let him drop from the hole himself. He was wearing his red backpack; how he managed to get that all the way down, Buck had no idea, but at the sight of it, he remembered his shotgun slung over his back. He retrieved that and handed the flashlight back to Riley, who quickly rolled the beam over their surroundings.

They were in a narrow cave.

The icy air smelled of sulfur, heady with minerals.

The beam only caught her for a second, but that was enough for the heart in Buck’s chest to level a hard thump.

Emily stood at the far end of the cave, maybe thirty feet away. She wore the same sundress she’d been wearing the day she disappeared. She turned quickly and vanished down another passage, but not before a near-silent whisper left her lips—

This way.

106

Matt

THOSE WHO WEREN’T TRYINGto flee the gym were staring at Matt, Gabby, and Addie.

Still holding the Colt on them, Rodney Campos had this shit-eating grin on his face. “I gotta admit, if you’re going to step in it and end things the hard way, there are worse places to be than between these two.”

Gabby spit up at him. “Fuck you.”

She went for his face but came up short; it smacked across the knee of his jeans. That only drew a bigger smile from him. “Spicy till the end, like any good Mexican.”

When Gabby lunged, Eli McCormick held her back. He shoved her back down to her knees and kept her there until she stopped squirming. Long enough for Stu Peterson to point his shotgun at her. “I gotta envy your spunk, but judgment is judgment. You made your bed. Don’t matter how ruffled the sheets are, you gotta lie in it.” He pulled back on the slide and chambered a fresh shell. “Time to pay the piper.”

Matt turned to him. “You killed four children. Fourinnocentchildren. You said you were sorry for that. Was that bullshit, or did you mean it?”

At first, Peterson didn’t move, then he edged the shotgun slightly to the side so he could get a better look at Matt. “So you did watch it? The video?”

“Birmingham, Alabama,” Matt told him. “September 15, 1963. Four children dead in the Sixteenth Street Baptist Church bombing. KKK suspected. Thatwasyou. Don’t ask me how, but it was you.”

Peterson swallowed; guilt washed across his face. “Herman told us the bombs wouldn’t go off until that night, when the church was empty. He swore it. Nobody was supposed to get hurt. We only wanted to scare ’em a little, that was all.”

“Sunday school was in session. You killed four children between the ages of eleven and fourteen.”

“Herman said—”

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