Page 81 of Turn That River Red

“Town?” My throat goes dry, and I’m not sure what I’m scared of. Ambrose? Is he lying and this is really an excuse to take me deeper into the desert to kill me? Or is he taking me back to the church like I claimed I wanted?

The idea makes me queasy.

“Yeah,” he says. “Cocana. Should take about half an hour.”

I want to protest, want to fight him, but I’m completely powerless. I don’t have his strength or his ruthlessness or his violence. I don’t have whatever demonic magic keeps him from dying.

So I go along with him. I climb into the passenger side of his Oldsmobile and buckle myself in, my fingers squeezing up my skirt the way I always do when I’m nervous. The car’s engine rumbles to life, the radio kicking on to the same staticky country music station that was playing when he dragged me out of the church.

The landscape is dark as pitch, with only the headlights illuminating the two-lane highway. Ambrose sings along softly to the radio, his voice low and dulcet. I hate that he can sing. I hate that he’s an evil inversion of what I used to dream about ina husband—a Godly man with a good singing voice, strong enough to protect me from harm.

We don’t talk on the trip into Cocana. Ambrose keeps singing, though, and drums his hands against the steering wheel. I stare at my foggy reflection in the glass as we wind through the empty streets, everything already closed up for the night.

Ambrose drives all the way to the other side of town and pulls up to the cemetery there, rolling out away from the highway.

“A cemetery?” My throat is dry again. Of all the things I expected, this was the last one.

“Yes.” Ambrose stares out the front windshield, his hands on the steering wheel. “This is where Raul’s family buried him.”

As soon as he says Raul’s name, despair floods through me—all that sorrow I’ve carried with me since the morning at the river. Because of the despair, it takes me a moment to register what he said.

“Wait.” I look over at Ambrose. “His family? Not the Church of the Well?”

“No.” Ambrose cuts the car’s engine. “I found his obituary online. He’s buried here.”

“So why’d you bring me here?” Tension squeezes my muscles tight and makes it hard for me to breathe. Tears form in my eyes. “To throw in my face what you did?”

Ambrose clenches the wheel, not looking at me. I suddenly wish I’d kept my mouth shut.

But then he says, “To bury him. The rest of him.”

He climbs out of the car before I can respond—not that I even know what I would say. I’m not even sure I heard him correctly. Not sure what to think if I did.

Ambrose opens the trunk and rummages around inside, but all I can do is stare at the cemetery gates. It’s locked for thenight, a big metal padlock holding the chain in place. But something tells me that’s not going to stop Ambrose.

He raps lightly on my window and stares at me, waiting with a shovel tossed over one shoulder.

“I’m doing this for you,” he says, voice muffled by the glass. “I was hoping you’d be there.”

I shove the door open, hoping, at least in part, that I can slam it into him. He jumps away at the last second, though, too nimble for me, even though he’s holding the shovel and?—

Raul.

He’s holding the bag I found in the freezer, letting it drop at his side.

He really is going to bury him.

“I—You—” I swallow, my throat dry. I don’t know how to react to any of this, and so I spit out the first thing I can think of. “Aren’t you afraid you’ll get caught?”

“No.” He tilts his head and his eyes catch some nearby light and gleam like a cat’s.

I jerk back in fear. “Your eyes!”

“I told you I’m the boogeyman,” he says, his eyes still flat from the light. “I can see in the dark. And I can smell humans. You’re the only living one here.”

Then he steps back, giving me space to step out of the car. I take a deep breath, trying to decide what to do.

I’m doing this for you, he said, and that makes me feel warm and strange and sad all at once.

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