Page 132 of Confessions of the Dead

“Wait!” Cody shouted. “I can help you!”

“Don’t need your help.”

“I know a way in and out of town. Someplace those people weren’t able to block.”

This was another lie, but Cody didn’t want to go out like this. Not a gunshot. Not alone. He wanted everyone. And Marcie still had the remote. He didn’t need the vest and the timer didn’t matter, not as long as she had the remote.

“He’s a kid, Stu, let him go.”

The side of Deputy Matt’s head was covered in blood; he’d been hit several times. His eye was swelling shut, but he still managed to look up at Mr. Peterson. “Christ, Stu, this isn’t you. Stop.”

“You still don’t remember?” Peterson told Matt, sounding surprised. “I don’t get it. Maybe you need something to jog your memory.” He stepped over to Gabby and Addie, grabbed them both, and pushed them toward the girl. Gabby let out a yelp as he kneed her in the back to get her to face forward. “Judgment,” he told the girl who looked like Emily Pridham. “You pick which.”

Her face expressionless, the girl studied both women for a moment. Then her hand came down on Matt’s head. Her fingers squeezed with inhuman strength.

103

Buck

BUCK WENT TO GRABEllie, but the girl and that Robby kid stopped him, batted his hand away with the force of a 250-pound linebacker protecting his quarterback. Buck had no idea where that strength came from, but he was glad for it, because the boy might have saved his life.

It took less than ten seconds for the icy frost to crawl over Ellie, Evelyn, and Mason, completely cover their bodies. It was like they were flash-frozen, like something out of a movie, but this was no movie; it sure as shit happened right there in front of him. All three were screaming, then they were not. The room got so quiet Buck nearly choked on it.

“They’re not dead,” Robby said with an adult-like understanding. “Their pupils are moving. I think they’re still breathing, and their hearts are pumping, but really slow.”

He was right up on his sister, way too close, trying to get a better look at her neck. Like he could see her pulse if he looked hard enough. Maybe he could. The kid spooked him a little, but nowhere near as bad as what happened next.

Ellie and the two kids vanished.

There was no flash of light. No accompanying noise. The three of them were there, frozen to that godawful-looking fallen tree, and then they weren’t.

No, that wasn’t exactly right. They didn’t just vanish; they fell. If the adrenaline hadn’t been coursing through Buck’s veins, he might have missed it, but adrenaline had a way of slowing things down just enough so you see more than you might want to, and Buck saw the three of them drop straight down into the hole in the ground.

And with that, Buck remembered Emily.

Remembered how the ground had swallowed her as she stood beside that tree all those years earlier. He didn’t need to go outside and look for landmarks to know it was the same tree; he was certain of that the moment they came up on the house.

When Emily disappeared, there had been no hole in the ground; there was nothing.

As if to answer this, another burst of frigid air bellowed out from the dark hole and filled the room.

“They’re down there,” Robby said not as a question, but as a statement. As if he already knew. And Buck knew the boy was right.

Mason had dropped his baseball bat, and Buck retrieved it. He touched the rim of the hole with the tip of the bat, half expecting it to flash-freeze, but it did not.

“Touch the tree,” Robby told him. “But be ready to pull away …”

Buck understood what would happen just like the boy did, but he tried it anyway, because on some level he wanted to be sure. The moment the bat touched the tree, icy frost raced down the length of it. Buck managed to let go as it found his fingertips. He shoved his index finger in his mouth and kept it there for a second. When he took it out, the tip was black.

“Frostbite,” Robby told him.

Fucking frostbite, Buck thought.

“We need to go down there.”

This came from Riley, who was still standing off to the side, following all of this with the beam of the flashlight.

Buck was already shaking his head. “Ineed to go down there. Both of you are gonna stay put right here.”

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